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The devices they carried
I went to SXSWi this year. This is the first post in a series I’ll be writing about the conference.
It’s true, SXSW is a geekfest. It’s called geek spring break, and depending on how you want your experience to go, that is true (you can party like it is spring break, and/or you can geek out without judgement). The expectation is that most people are on twitter — sessions usually had their own hashtag — and a big deal was made about lounges that offered charging stations. I lost count of how many startups with apps were trying to get people to install in exchange for a free t-shirt.
Smartphones
It seemed as though everyone standing on the sidewalk was staring at their smartphone, probably using Google maps to figure out how to get to their next destination. There were also clumps of people — standing in a loose circle of three to six — looking like they would be talking to each other, but actually poking their smartphones. This behavior, along with smartphone poking while waiting for sessions to start (or true, during sessions) prompted a lot of “alone together” remarks. People also used their phones to snap a lot of pictures, using instagram, gowalla, posting to facebook, and sharing with freshly launched view.io.
MacBook Air
I spotted quite a few of these. They are so light but have a full keyboard and decent battery life… these people seemed happy. A lot of blogging and email seemed to be going on with these folks.
iPads
Many, many iPads. And after Friday evening, quite a few iPad 2s. I borrowed IAT’s iPad to take, and have to say now that I’ve gone to two events with the iPad, I can’t imagine not bringing one in the future. Light, great web browsing, and much easier to take notes on than my phone. They don’t feel as intrusive, compared to sitting behind a regulation-size laptop. I’m even wondering if I need to bring my laptop on my next work trip. Yes, I was one of the folks who scored a new iPad from Apple’s first-ever pop-up store. My timing was good — from joining the line to paying was about twenty minutes.
Laptop people
People carrying around a full-size laptop seemed sad. They were heavy, and you have to do a lot of walking around just to get to sessions in the conference center, let alone the nearby hotels. Yes I’m a Mac person so I have a bias, but it seemed more of the laptop people were using Windows (or possibly Linux, it is true I didn’t see their screens for the most part, just their hardware)
Less common
I didn’t spot too many dSLRs as most people were using their phones; once you discount official event photogs, bigger cameras were rare. I’m sure some of the people there had android tablets, but outside the trade show I didn’t spot any.
What about next year?
I would expect even more tablets — anyone waiting for the second generation iPad or android devices to hit the market will be buying. Touchscreen smartphones are already the norm and I think this will continue. SXSW is full of geeks, but it isn’t a hardware-centric event. I think this makes it a great place to see not so much what early adopters are using, but how and why they are using things… and what they aren’t using.
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Intuit Collaboratory – Innovate with Us
Most companies today know they can’t come up with all the good ideas themselves – they need to enlist the help of outside innovators to solve their business needs.
Working with innovators outside of Intuit – they could be individuals, academia or businesses – has enabled some of our offerings to grow faster. Live Community, for instance, is being enhanced with ideas and technology based on relationships with MIT, Carnegie Mellon, University of Minnesota and Yale.
“The talent at Intuit is impressive, but we know that we don’t have all the answers,” said Jan Bosch, vice president of open innovation. “Our history is built on a mix of home-grown and outside innovation. Fresh ideas from the outside are a key element to our innovation program.”
It’s now easier than ever for all innovators to let us know their ideas on Intuit Collaboratory, a marketplace for idea sharing between Intuit and the outside world.
Intuit Collaboratory is open for business
“We want to break down barriers between Intuit and the outside world to increase the free flow of ideas that could lead to game-changing innovations,” said Bosch. “Collaboratory will be the place where those outside can find exciting projects and information to help them engage with us.”
One way outsiders can let us know their ideas is to respond to a “challenge.” Challenges are specific idea requests that business units submit, with the goal of getting fresh thinkers to help tackle tough problems. They relate to new or extensions of existing products and involve mobile technology, software-as-a-service solutions and data analysis.
Collaboratory currently has 12 posted challenges, two of which are “bonus challenges” that offer a monetary prize.
The Accounting Professionals Division, APD, is challenging innovators to help accounting professionals, who want more efficient ways to collect and organize files, documents and other data from their clients. The information often is not timely and arrives in a variety of formats – e-mails, text messages, hard-copy documents and voice mails. The winner of the challenge will receive $10,000 and potentially the opportunity to collaborate with us.
“We are always looking for innovative ideas to solve our customers’ problems,” said Sanjiv Waghmare, vice president of product management in APD. “Collaboratory is a great way to engage lots of smart people to solve this big, important problem for our customers who are accounting and tax professionals.”
The other bonus challenge comes from the Consumer Group. Tracking paper receipts is a pain, and customers often can’t get a refund without them. To help solve this problem, we created QuickReceipts, which allows consumers to quickly and easily organize receipts online from participating retailers.
The Collaboratory challenge is to find ways to make this service more widely available by minimizing or eliminating the work retailers need to do to participate. The idea that solves this problem is worth $5,000.
Challenges are an ongoing part of the website and we encourage you to check back regularly, since the site will be updated frequently.
It’s clear how we benefit from this process, but innovators everywhere are eager to work with us as well. A relationship with Intuit can give you access to the company’s brands, large customer base, award-winning product lines, developer ecosystem and extensive marketing and distribution channels.
Proctor & Gamble, IBM and Xerox are just a few of the companies that have embraced open innovation with open arms.
Intuit Collaboratory is open to possibilities
In addition to the challenges, the Collaboratory site also offers information on current innovation events and video interviews with co-founder Scott Cook, CEO Brad Smith and other executives discussing entrepreneurship and the role of open innovation. It’s the place to learn about Entrepreneur Day, Intuit’s highly successful event where last August, more than 60 companies had a chance to meet with Intuit senior leaders and pitch their ideas and products to business leaders.
Intuit Collaboratory also invites external innovators to submit their ideas independent of the posted challenges.
Experts expect collaborative partnerships between big and small firms to increase in the coming decade. The recently released Intuit 2020 report predicts that small firms will contribute innovative practices with market agility that bigger companies cannot achieve as easily. At the same time, big firms will offer small businesses marketing and distribution power, enabling them to penetrate broader markets more effectively. Intuit Collaboratory helps get to this future vision.
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