Recently, many people approached me with this question. Does SXSW upload the presentations of the speakers and, if so, which ones deserve my attention? Of course they do! In a very good quality and relatively quickly. Dozens of brand new presentations have already appeared on the festival’s Youtube channel. It’s true that a lot of the presentations which I would really like to recommend are still missing from the channel but, after familiarizing myself with those already available, I came to the conclusion that some of them can also be really interesting for you.

Thus, below you will find my recommendations of presentations I personally chose and which are already available and truly noteworthy. My list is, of course, much longer, and I will remind you about new ones on the blog’s fanpage as soon as SXSW publishes them. I hope that this way you’ll be able to feel like the participants of this year’s event at least to a minimal extent.

On the futuristic and widely commented project called Hyperloop in the presentation of this company’s CEO – Dirk Ahlborn. Everything you want to know about the latest vision of the transportation of people in the future. A vision that is being developed today and which, according to Elon Musk, is absolutely achievable.



Dirk Ahlborn – Crowdsourcing the Hyperloop

On the futuristic and widely commented project called Hyperloop in the presentation of this company’s CEO – Dirk Ahlborn. Everything you want to know about the latest vision of the transportation of people in the future. A vision that is being developed today and which, according to Elon Musk, is absolutely achievable.



Jim Bankoff – Creating the Modern Media Company

CEO of the Vox Media group had – in my opinion – one of the best conversations at this year’s SXSW. Bankoff openly talks about how he built a media company that reaches 170 million Internet users and what values ​​are at the root of each of the businesses it comprises. IMO it is a mandatory material for the Polish online and offline media world.



Kevin Kelly – 12 Inevitable Tech Forces That Will Shape Our Future

The title of Kelly’s presentation doesn’t entirely reflect what you will see in the video. In essence, he spoke about the 3 major technological forces that will likely shape our future. The mentioned 12 trends are fully described in his latest book, “The Inevitable” – to be released in June. Kelly is a long-time columnist for Wired and author of several books in the field of technology and sci-fi. I strongly recommend it.



Kevin Plank – How a Sport Giant is Now Tackling Your Health

I already mentioned the interview with the CEO of the sports brand Under Armour on Twitter. It is a great material both for startups seeking inspiration to work hard on their projects and for developed companies that want to constantly stay a step ahead of the competition.



Douglas Rushkoff – Distributed: A New OS for the Digital Economy

It’s impossible to describe it in one short paragraph. You just have to watch it in full. In my opinion it is one of the top 3 most important presentations of the interactive part of this year’s SXSW.



Chris Urmson – Google Self-Driving Car Project

I try to know as much about self-propelled vehicles as possible and I closely follow the progress in this area of technology. However, not even the most in-depth article was able to provide me with as much knowledge about the complexity of this project and the problems that Google engineers face every day as Chris Urmson’s presentation did. He took us behind the scenes of the Self-Driving Car team’s work and presented specific examples. Yes, he also spoke about how ordinary people throw themselves (!) at the Google vehicle when they see it to check its reaction.



Barack Obama – Keynote Conversation with Evan Smith

7 years. That’s how long it took, from idea to implementation, to get Barack Obama to come to SXSW. The interest in the event was so great that all interested representatives of the media had to report to the White House in order to be verified and have their credentials approved. A live stream was set up in all the major halls of the event’s buildings for those who failed to get a pass. When the president of a country which is a global leader visits a commercial event covered by all the media in the world, it’s no wonder that his words dominate their home pages the day after.