Sessions at SXSW Interactive 2012 about Internet of Things

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Friday 9th March 2012

• Hacking SXSW for Smiles and DorkBot Street Cred

  by Paul Curry and David Caygill

  How do we take social media off laptops and phones and create real-world devices that surprise and delight? First, we take the top Arduino hackers around the globe and give them a brief: make SXSW smile. Then we watch them bring their web-connected Dorkbot action to the streets of Austin. The team with the most social interactions on and offline wins. And we get to present the results to you.

  What’s this about? We’re excited about the Internet of Things, but we’re also impatient. We won’t wait for R&D. We’re nerds and we want to make a point. We’ll walk the line between integrated experiences being useful tools to make our lives easier, and the ever-looming digital frontier of “over-helpful” electronics that analyze our every move. As we aim to create ever-smaller devices that connect us to our social grid, is it possible we’ll overstep a line? iPhone apps that analyze sleep patterns are great, but would we be intimidated by a bed which analyzed us while we slept?

  • Dorkbot
  • Hardware Hacking
  • Internet of Things

  At 3:30pm to 4:30pm, Friday 9th March

  In Room 616AB, Hilton Austin Downtown

Sunday 11th March 2012

• Can a Social Web of Things Keep TV Cords Connected

  by Alison Moore, Rhonda Lowry, Gilles BianRosa and Jack Flanagan

  It's 2015 and over half of the devices in your home are connected to the Internet. On the drive home you consider taking a longer route, but when you ask for directions the GPS system reminds you that you need to get home soon - you have a viewing party.

  The television recognizes you when you walk in the door and suggests that you pour a glass of wine since everyone else is online and waiting for you to join the Game of Thrones premier party. In response, the wine cooler switches on, illuminating the last bottle of red - a 2007 Scarecrow. You cringe but open it anyway.

  Your HBO app automatically loads a summary of last season's characters since you still seem to have them confused, and then asks if you’d like to join the group video chat. “Go ahead”, you say, “I will catch up as we go.”

  Join Rhonda and Allison as they think aloud about the future of media immersed in a world where everything is connected, and television becomes something that you live instead of just watch.

  • Internet of Things
  • Social Web

  At 11:00am to 12:00pm, Sunday 11th March

  In Room 18ABCD, Austin Convention Center

  Coverage audio clip

Tuesday 13th March 2012

• Creating an Internet of Entities

  by Drew Vogel, George Oates, Pete Warden and Tyler Bell

  The Internet today consists of a morass of partial and redundant content: the ~17m businesses and POI in the US, for example, are duplicated over 1.2 billion website across over 5 million domains. This tangle of duplicate, fragmentary, and often incorrect information ensures that unequivocally identifying a person, place or thing on the Internet will always be a challenge. The members of this panel are working to fix this, and will discuss their projects in the Library, Government, and Big Data sectors to create an Internet where real-world people, places, and things can be referenced unambiguously. It focuses on pragmatic, real-world examples: the panelists from Factual, the Sunlight Foundation, Jetpac, and the Internet Archive each highlight their specific experiences in creating platforms and apps that identify and disambiguate individual entities across applications and verticals, and describe both the pitfalls and benefits of working towards an Internet of Entities.

  • Identity
  • Internet of Things
  • Libraries
  • sxswLAM
  • URLs

  At 11:00am to 12:00pm, Tuesday 13th March

  In Creekside I & II, Sheraton Austin Hotel at the Capitol

  Coverage audio clip

• Closer to One: Buddhism and the Internet of Things

  by Sara Ohrvall and Vincent Horn

  For millennia, eastern philosophers have talked about the “interconnectedness of all things;" the idea of an invisible web that links together beings and objects, organic and inorganic. For the first time in human history, this idea is becoming physically manifest as we begin to network more and more objects—and even our own bodies—with the help of WiFi, sensors, and RFID.

  These technologies are turning up in everything from grocery packaging to household devices to self-monitoring tools like the FitBit and JawBone Up, and pointing to a future in which the minute details of our lives will be coordinated online.

  But could all this connectedness make us better people? In this fascinating session, we’ll bring together a researcher examining the trends of quantified self and “the Internet of things” (Sara Öhrvall from Bonnier R&D), a top connected-product designer (Matt Rolandson of Ammunition Group), and tech-savvy Buddhism teacher Vincent Horn, who will shed light on what the networked future might mean for human spirituality.

  • Buddhism
  • Internet of Things
  • Philosophy

  At 12:30pm to 1:30pm, Tuesday 13th March

  In Room 616AB, Hilton Austin Downtown