SXSW is a place where ideas are either born or launched. Some of these ideas go on to make it big, while others become features in existing applications.

And that’s why SXSW is one of the very few conferences that people genuinely look forward to. The energy is extremely high and everyone is open to new ideas. In a time where many industries are still recovering from the 2008 slowdown, it’s impressive to see that the spirit of innovation has not suffered. It is quite the contrary. Companies like Facebook and Twitter have thrived in these times.

As we fly away from Austin after 5 days of sessions and parties, there’s a sharp contrast of posters at the airport. Upon landing, attendees were greeted by posters from Salesforce.com. However, as we get ready to board our final flight out of Austin, it’s seemingly back to normal on the outside, but very different for the thousands of attendees who come, learn and apply innovation for their clients.

Thanks Austin!

This year we saw another equally phenomenal movie: Downloaded, by Alex Winter. It’s a documentary that explores the downloading revolution over the past ten years, and the direct impact over the entire entertainment industry – and, by consequence, every content producer.

The movie tells the story of two tech-savvy and somewhat socially awkward teenagers – Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker – as they stumble upon the concept of peer-to-peer sharing, and develop the very first real implementation: Napster.

If you were too young in late 90’s to be interested in music, let me quickly explain that Napster was a service that allowed users to easily publish their entire library of mp3 songs “to the cloud”. The revolutionary part was that users could exchange files amongst themselves directly, without a central repository. It was entirely distributed and operated by its users.

Shawn, then a 19-year-old bright computer programmer, launched the service in mid-1999, and it took the world by surprise.

I still remember when I tried Napster for the very first time. It was late ’99, and the service had only about tens of thousands of users. I searched for artists and songs that I loved and couldn’t find anywhere, and suddenly discovered it was all there. In less than an hour (remember: these were times of slow dial up lines) I had the whole album. I couldn’t sleep that night; it was like seeing magic. This would change everything. And it did.

Naturally Napster walked on a very fine line between democratizing access to content, and allowing outright illegal download of copyrighted material. Indie bands happy to promote their work for free vs. people downloading the latest unreleased Metallica album.

Both things were happening within Napster, and a good part of the movie is dedicated to explore the tensions between the company and the record labels, musicians and the entire legal system, that eventually brought it down.

But, as Sony Music CEO said in the movie, there was no way that the genie would be put back in the bottle. Napster showed that users could, for the very first time, have access to other users in the entire world, without relying on intermediaries. “People will pay for convenience – or find any other means to it”, as Parker said, at a very young age, more than 14 years ago. It seems that studios, record labels and even game developers still don’t get it.

The film director, Alex Winter, manages to tell the story from the mouths of those who lived the experience, including Fanning and Parker, and bringing then and now perspectives from John Perry Barlow (EFF co-founder and former lyricist for the Grateful Dead), Harvard’s Law School Professor Larry Lessig, record label CEOs, and many others.

Make sure you do not miss this when it hit the theaters later this year.

You can read more, including an interview with film director Alex Winter, here. You can also hear about the latest news and screen dates on the official Downloaded page on Facebook.

Margot explains that the rise of the Internet has caused brands to focus on convenience and short term interactions. Making things easier and faster for users is a tactic for short term ROI. For big brands, this is not always the best method of execution.  Rushing customers to purchase and not giving them enough information makes them less likely to advocate the brand and more likely to return items. This increases overhead and negatively impacts the customer experience. With this said, if long term ROI is your company’s goal, then validating the need to buy, and ensuring the customer is well educated is much better.

To demonstrate this, Margot showcased a Ford car show event line up. For those who attend such events, lineups are not uncommon. They can be painfully long and force customers into an experience that they don’t want to have. Unfortunately the individuals in line will associate that feeling with the brand.  They’ll remember how painful the line was. Margot explains that this does not need to be the case.

To ensure customers are happier, Ford decided to share rich and engaging content through interactive touchscreen points, and digital games. This information ensures that customers are engaged the whole way through, and are remembering the event for being cool, not for being long, and frustrating.

In short, online visitors are not always looking for the most efficient experience with your brand. They may be looking for a lot more, and if things take longer than expected it¹s alright so long as the content and user experience keeps them engaged and saying “that was cool”.

It’s hard to imagine quite what Doug Ulman, CEO of LIVESTRONG, must have felt like when tweets with hashtags #LieStrong and #LiveWrong started flooding in. While Lance Armstrong’s shocking admission of doping may be old news for some, Ulman made it clear the LIVESTRONG organization is still very much in the midst of a tumultuous period of time.

Ulman started his presentation with a bit of personal history.  At the age of 19, Ulman heard three of the most dreaded words in the English language: “You have cancer.” He remembers reaching out to various support organizations during his battle with the disease but finding very little support geared toward  young adults with cancer.

Ulman decided to do something about that state of affairs and started a small organization dedicated to helping young adults facing cancer. In 1997 he received an email from Lance Armstrong, offering his support. After discussing the idea for the next two and a half years, Armstrong asked Ulman to move to Austin and help develop programs for LIVESTRONG.

Today, Ulman leads an organization that has helped over 2.5 million people. LIVESTRONG Foundation is dedicated to providing free, one-on-one support for those facing any kind of cancer, anywhere, anytime. Ulman’s world came crashing down, though, after LIVESTRONG founder Lance Armstrong made his career-ending announcement. It was difficult for Ulman to put into words the shock he felt upon hearing the news.

Ulman had just six days to prepare for Armstrong’s exclusive interview with Oprah. The foundation had two choices: retreat, or take the challenge head-on. LIVESTRONG chose the latter. Ulman admits it was the more difficult path to take, but he doesn’t regret the decision. He offered the audience three pieces of advice for dealing with crises. First, be transparent. Second, over-communicate. Three, try to frame the crisis in terms of your organization’s philosophy. For LIVESTRONG, that was survivorship. They decided to focus on the people they were helping rather than the negativity surrounding Armstrong.

The strategy worked. In 2013, LIVESTRONG plans to serve even more people than the prior year. They’ve also undergone a subtle rebranding. While sticking with their trademark color yellow, LIVESTRONG has added the word Foundation to their logo to help more accurately convey their mission. After all, LIVESTRONG is not in the business to make money; it exists to help those in need, regardless of its namesake’s tarnished reputation.

Wunderman Reports met up with two rainmakes from Volusion handing out seed money to entrepreneurs.

Who goes? Mostly Americans – primarily from Texas, New York and California. This makes sense due to proximity, population and/or industry relevance, but all other states were represented – except South Dakota.

Outside of Americans, nationalities best represented are Canadians, Brits, Australians and the Dutch.

The demographics are young, affluent decision makers, primarily 25-34. That they’re considered decision makers in their companies reflects that these attendees are from traditionally younger companies – start ups, tech and agencies.

As for the content, Elon Musk was the most tweeted panelist – indicating attendees care about the cerebral. Grumpy Cat was the second – showing people care about the ridiculous.

The people make up the content. 1/10 attendee was also a panelist. While the average panelist had 3000 Twitter followers and 1000 Facebook friends, the average attendee wasn’t far behind with 1200 followers and 600 Friends.

The trends that stood out worked along a few themes:

1. A move towards connecting the physical with the digital – the “make stuff” generation is growing.

2. The rise of collaboration and open sourced content.

3. The importance of big data.

4. Entrepreneurship

5. Space. The final frontier.

While only time will reveal the impact of these trends, it’s interesting to note the shift from the highly personal location-driven trends of the last year to something more communal. Maybe, as people like Don Tapscott, have suggested, the age of the Internet has enabled a new ethos of global networks. Just think of all the things the attendees profiled here could accomplish.