When Moriba Jah started tracking space junk orbiting the Earth, there were 26,000 objects ranging in size from a cell phone to the space station.

Of those, 1,200 were working satellites providing services.

“Everything else was garbage,” Jah said. “So, 96% of all human-made objects at that time were junk.”

He saw pollution on Earth and in the oceans, and he saw the same thing happening in space, which prompted him to become a space environmentalist.

So much debris now hurtles throughout our orbit, and it worsens daily. The space race began in 1957 when the Russians launched Sputnik, the first human-made object in orbit.

Today, Jah is tracking upwards of 50,000 objects ranging in size from cell phones to the space station, out of which a little over 5,000 are working, and everything else is garbage, he said.

Out of the 5,000, half are working satellites that belong to Starlink, a company founded by Elon Musk, who also founded SpaceX and Tesla.

“If you didn’t know, he’s launching 60 to 100 satellites every three weeks,” Jah said. “So, in a busy year, we used to launch a satellite a month. Maybe we’re launching over 12 satellites per week, on average, to provide the Internet and all these other things.”

Jah spoke in a fireside chat with Neo4j’s Sudhir Hasbe at South by Southwest Tuesday morning in a session titled “How the Tech That Tracks Space Junk Will Save Life on Earth.” Jah is the co-founder of Privateer, based in Maui, Hawaii. His co-founders are Steve Wozniak, Co-founder of Apple, and Ripcord CEO Alex Fielding. Privateer maps satellites and debris in Earth’s orbit. Jah is also an associate professor of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin and the winner of a MacArthur Fellowship called the Genius Grant. He received the grant for creating the world’s first real-time streaming of near-miss collisions and activity in space.

The privatization of space travel has led to more and more companies putting satellites in orbit. Jah said that more regulation is needed to govern how they operate once they get there and what happens when they no longer function. On average, a satellite lasts five years, he said.

To track objects in space, Jah set up ASTRIAgraph, which assigns a dot to every human-made object it detects. The data can be accessed through Wayfinder, a program Jah created to allow everyone access.

At SXSW, Jah projected all the objects orbiting Earth on a giant screen in real time. He showed what he calls a “super spreader event,” in which an object explodes in space and creates a massive trail of debris. There are 2,000 more of these “ticking time bombs in orbit,” Jah said.

Jah showed a dot identified as junk; its removal from space would cost an estimated $20 million.

“Most of the stuff that we put up there either never comes back, or it takes decades to centuries to burn up in the atmosphere, and it pollutes the atmosphere,” Jah said.

Jah said part of the problem is that satellites are not recyclable and reusable. All that junk threatens other objects in space and the Earth.

“When things die in orbit, they continue to go at very high speeds because we don’t have this off-ramp kind of stuff, and so we just send up another thing and another thing,” Jah said. So these orbital highways are becoming congested mostly with dead stuff, and bad things happen when two things meet at the same place simultaneously with different speeds, he said.

Jah can’t track things the size of a bullet or a speck of paint. Still, those debris objects exist in space and can travel 15 times the speed of a bullet and damage a satellite or astronaut on a spacewalk, Jah said. If that happens, “It’s game over,” Jah said.

Jah said the data he relies on for ASTRIAGraph comes from everyone from amateur telescope operators to the U.S. Department of Defense and other governments, like a Russian Database.

If a company launches another satellite, it must know which objects are where and at what speed they are moving; Jah said all those calculations must be done to continue space exploration. Jah said there are no standards or taxonomies for cataloging junk in space.

Jah’s company is spinning out Gaiaverse, which will take ASTRIAGraph and link data and information from the land and sea with air and space because Mother Earth, Gaia, is a holistic system of systems, Jah said.

“Indigenous populations inspire my work,” Jah said. “Indigenous people still believe that all things are interconnected in an intergenerational contract of stewardship with the planet.”

Jah wants to provide humanity with evidence of the interconnectedness so he can delay the knee-jerk response of saying that’s not my problem.

“If you look deep enough, you will see that true independence doesn’t exist, and while we may escape some of the consequences in our lifetimes, the people we love and those they engender will not,” Jah said. “Our collective decisions are currently leading to our self-extinction.”

Through the Gaiaverse, Jah hopes to raise consciousness and allow people to recognize they have the power to control outcomes and make better choices regarding the stewardship of the planet.

Jah’s Privateer Space company also works with the National Geographic Society to create the Glint Evader. It will collect satellite data to develop software that predicts and helps astronomers anticipate when sunlight reflecting off satellites may interfere with their observations.

Jah expressed frustration at the absence of government funding to solve the space junk problem. He emphasized the need for a collaborative effort.

Jah said there’s a huge need for space regulation. People must learn to live with space debris as a reality and work in a circular space economy where satellites are reusable and recyclable.

“We have to learn how to live within the filth of our bathwater, so to speak, and we can clean up some stuff,” Jah said.

Jah said it’s not if but when a black swan event will occur in space that brings global awareness to the problem posed by space junk.

Ridesharing companies have had a difficult time historically in Austin.

In 2015, Uber and Lyft didn’t operate during South by Southwest because of regulatory hurdles.

Ridesharing companies shut down operations the following year after Austin voters passed a proposition requiring driver background checks. The companies appealed to the Texas legislature, and Austin’s Mayor Kirk Watson, who served in the Texas Senate then, voted against Uber.

“We’re in a different place now,” Watson said Monday morning at a featured session at SXSW: A Conversation with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.

Khosrowshahi said he wasn’t with Uber then, but looking back at what happened, he said Uber’s communication with local and state leaders could have been more collaborative.

Today, Austin is one of Uber’s top cities, Khosrowshahi said.

Watson said Austin embraces new people, ideas, and concepts. Its ethos is to keep Austin weird, which means keeping Austin open to new ideas, he said. The key is that disruptors must embrace communication and collaboration with city leaders and citizens, he said.

“As the new ideas come into play, people will need to make sure they focus on the values and that they communicate and collaborate,” Watson said.

In addition to traditional Uber rides, Uber offers micro-mobility choices through its app, Watson said.

Uber has a partnership with Lime that allows consumers to book an eScooter ride on the app. Khosrowshahi said Uber is about multi-modal transportation and giving consumers a choice. He said scooters are popular with people who must go less than three or two miles.

Watson said Austin wants every tool in the toolbox for transportation, including scooters. “People are voting with their feet.”

Watson said that in 2023, there were over 130,000 rides in just under 130,000 miles of travel in Austin. Most of the trips were around three-fourths of a mile.

Watson said Austin’s universities serve as a fountain of youth for the city, providing many young people who are focused on sustainability and want better transportation options.

Austin is compelling and aggressive in protecting the environment, Watson said.

Transportation is at the center of sustainability for the city, Watson said.

It’s evident that transportation is the hub of a multi-spoke wheel,” Watson said. “If we do transportation right, we do the environment right. If we do transportation right, we do affordability right.”

Watson said one of the biggest pushes for sustainability in the city is preserving Austin’s light rail system, Connect, which is under assault.

“It’s key to protecting the environment,” he said.

“Unfortunately, in Texas, the word Rail is a four-letter word,” Watson said.

Watson said that Austinites are asking for clean transit.

Khosrowshahi said Uber Green is a big part of its offerings. However, when it comes to paying a premium for a green offering, consumers believe it is an investment that the government and private industry should make.

Khosrowshahi said Uber will be emissions-free and all-electric in Europe by 2030 and worldwide by 2040. Uber has the largest fleet worldwide, with over 125,000 electric vehicles. Uber also invests over $800 million to fund drivers’ switch to EVs and is helping to build the charging infrastructure in cities. In Austin, he said, the penetration of EVs is almost 9 percent.

Watson said that with the growth of Austin, autonomous vehicle technology offers a lot of potential.

“I see a lot of promise in those vehicles, but we’re not there yet,” Watson said.

Watson has been in office for 14 months. He said that for the first six months, some autonomous vehicle group wanted to come in and meet with him to tell him how they would change the world. But autonomous vehicles present safety issues, he said.

“Safety is the number one issue,” he said.

Watson said autonomous vehicles were not responsive to emergency vehicles and were parked in the wrong places. Cruise recently halted its AV rides in Austin and nationwide after safety issues arose in California.

“Accessibility is also an issue,” Watson said.

Human drivers cause more than 35,000 fatalities on the road nationwide every year, Khosrowshahi said. So, should an AV be as safe as a human being or five or ten times safer? Khosrowshahi asked Watson.

Watson said he didn’t know. But he compared riding in the back of an AV to riding on a motorcycle. He was impressed with the vehicle’s operation and attention to potential road hazards.

Khosrowshahi said Uber doesn’t have its own AV technology but partners with others, and those partners want to be multiple times safer than human drivers.

Khosrowshahi said Uber is focused on affordability worldwide. It also wants to build an on-demand logistics Uber delivery network that will allow local businesses to deliver packages to consumers on the same day. He said Uber wants to empower every business to send packages. AVs will be part of that.

Austin aims to be one of the nation’s top hubs for the life sciences industry, which includes biotechnology, biochemistry, genetics, cellular biology, medical devices, and more.

To that end, a prestigious panel gathered Friday afternoon at SXSW at Antone’s Night Club on Fifth Street, which the University of Texas took over and renamed the Hook’ Em house.

Jay Hartzell, president of the University of Texas at Austin, said the life sciences industry is one of the most significant opportunities for the University of Texas and the Dell Medical School. In April 2023, UT announced plans for the UT Austin Medical Center with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and a UT Austin hospital.

Hartzell led the SXSW panel, which included Jim Breyer, founder of Breyer Capital, Andre Esteva, Founder and CEO of ArteraAI, Thomas J. Cahill, Newpath Partners LP, and Claudia Lucchinetti, Dean of the Dell Medical School and senior vice president for medical affairs at UT Austin.

“What we are seeing for the first time is the depth and maturity of AI and computation applied to the life sciences and healthcare,” Breyer said.

In addition, visual computing is becoming increasingly important in healthcare, he said. If healthcare workers harness these technologies, they will save people’s lives and improve lives so people live longer and better, he said.

Lucchinetti said technology’s impact on healthcare is transformative. It’s more than fixing a broken healthcare system; it’s about reimagining healthcare.

“You also think about what people want from healthcare, and they want a much more personalized, tailored experience,” she said. Data is the rocket fuel.”

Lucchinetti said the convergence of AI, computers, data, and machine learning leads to an accelerated discovery rate. The other significant change is that in medical school, students used to have to memorize a lot of information, but now that’s not the case anymore, she said.

“The EQ side of training our future physicians is even more important,” Lucchinetti said. Doctors also need to know data science. The workforce training across the board is changing. The healthcare industry is not prepared for the transition to human and machine care delivery, she said.

“The opportunities are endless,” she said.

Austin can learn a lot from Boston, the country’s number one life sciences hub, with 253 startups and 145 percent growth, Cahill said. The Boston life sciences hub grew partly through government incentives, including $115 million in tax deductions for biotech companies that are still being used today.

Cahill founded Arena BioWorks, a biomedical research institute in Boston. Breyer could open a second office in Austin. It’s like a Bell Labs for biotech, Cahill said.

Today, Breyer said that some of the nation’s top cancer scientists don’t even use computers. But in five years, he said most patients will not go to a specialist who doesn’t rely on deep AI and computational systems.

Breyer said these technologies are essential for drug discovery. They also enable doctors, nurses, and patients to understand more fully what’s wrong and what can be done about their health to live longer and better.

Also, today, few people own their medical data, but five years from now, 90 percent of all people should have the right to their medical data and the medical data of their close relatives, Breyer said.

“You need to see the data, and that just doesn’t exist today,” Breyer said. “Put it in the hands of patients, doctors, and nurses, and great things will happen.”

Good data is essential to healthcare discoveries, Cahill said. Finland is the best place in the world right now for the availability and quality of health data, he said. Cahill encouraged Austin to create its own data bank that would attract researchers and companies. He said he often travels to Helsinki to access its health data vaults.

In the late 1970s, Finland’s leadership started taking blood samples and patient data from everyone. Cahill said that the Finnish databank has led to most discoveries about genetics and disease, especially in the autoimmune space.

“The general public is not seeing it right away – CRISPR solved sickle cell disease – one of the biggest health issues – 6 percent of the population carries that,” Cahill said. “It’s going to be gone in the next ten years because of these drugs. That happened in Boston, and you can do a similar thing here with the leadership.”

Lucchinetti said she’s most excited about the potential to bring engineering and technology to medicine in concrete ways that solve medical diseases like MS, which she sees as an electrical engineering problem.

“Solving the greatest unmet needs of our patients in healthcare will require a transdisciplinary approach,” Lucchinetti said. There’s something special here at the University of Texas at this time in Austin.”

Breyer moved to Austin four years ago. He said what makes the city special is the ability to gather 10 people from UT, VCs, technologists, healthcare experts, and other disciplines around a dinner table to discuss ideas.

“That doesn’t happen in most other places where it’s a mix of skills and tremendous comradery,” Breyer said.

Esteva, founder and CEO of ArteraAI, said the four key ingredients for a health sciences startup hub are venture capital, entrepreneurs, talented engineers, and a top-tier research university, and Austin has all of them.

ArteraAI, based in San Francisco, created tests for prostate cancer. Esteva formed a company in 2021 that raised $110 million and has 100 employees.

Hartzell urged Esteva, a graduate of UT, to move back to Austin and even jokingly offered him two tickets to the UT vs—Georgia Football game.
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Most people separate de-extinction from species preservation, said Ben Lamm, Colossal Biosciences Co-founder and CEO.

“But the problem is that conservation works. It just doesn’t work as fast as we need it to, and how fast we are destroying the planet,” Lamm said.

He said de-extinction is a way to look at a systems problem rather than just preserving land or stopping poaching.

“We have to invent crazy technology that we can bring back animals that we are losing every single year,” Lamm said. “I think it’s pretty important for us to have a de-extinction toolkit and not need it rather than not have a de-extinction toolkit and need it.”

Lamm spoke Friday afternoon at South by Southwest in a session titled “How the Science of De-Extinction is Helping to Save Species.” Actor Seth Green interviewed Lamm. The talk was similar to one he gave at SXSW in 2023. Still, the company has had some scientific breakthroughs since then and hired a documentary film crew to film the process from lab to rewilding extinct species like the Woolly Mammoth, Thylacine, and Dodo Birds back to their natural habitats.

Colossal Biosciences, founded in 2021, has raised $235.5 million to de-extinct species. Lamm founded the company with George Church, a Harvard geneticist and pioneer in personal genomics and synthetic biology. Colossal also spun out Form Bio, a software platform, which raised $30 million. The company is based in Dallas but has offices in Austin, Boston, Santa Cruz, California, and Melbourne, Australia.

Lamm said Colossal is building technologies and tools behind de-extinction that create a higher framework that all conservationists can use. He said no research and development dollars are going into the conservation category, so everything Colossal does is free to that community.

To that point, this week, Colossal Biosciences announced that their Woolly Mammoth team had achieved the first global induced pluripotent stem cell breakthrough.

The IPSC cells represent a single-cell source that can propagate indefinitely and give rise to every other cell type in a body. According to the company, the IPSCs extend far beyond this de-extinction project and hold tremendous potential for studying cell development, cell therapy, drug screening, and synthetic embryos.

Lamm said this allows Colossal to take stem cells, perform a fundamental process, and turn them into new products.

He said, “We can make unlimited numbers of rhino heads and never have to put that animal at risk.”

Lamm said early critics of Colossal’s research are beginning to see its benefits. The company publishes everything it does in science papers and makes it available to other scientists.

“Everything we do is open source, Lamm said.

Green asked about the rewilding part of reintroducing Woolly mammoths, Thylacines, and Dodo Birds back into the environment, which are the three species Colossal Biosciences is working on.

Colossal Biosciences will not be able to change the environment overnight, but these species can restore pieces that have been removed from the ecosystem and add incredible biodiversity, Lamm said. For example, Yellowstone reintroduced wolves in the national park, and Lamm said the rewilding experience had been highly successful.

Lamm said Colossal plans to make about 100 Woolly Mammoths. The Mammoth embryos will be implanted into Asian elephants, serving as surrogates. The elephants share 99.6 percent of the genetic makeup of a Woolly Mammoth.

Lamm said a Colossal lab uses ex-utero embryos and engineers them to grow outside an animal.

Lamm said that eliminating an animal from the environment can have a detrimental ripple effect throughout the ecosystem.

For example, he said there used to be 50 million beavers, but now there are 5 million. If the ecosystem adds 5 million more beavers, those wetlands they create will capture more carbon than the carbon-capture air systems people spend billions of dollars on worldwide, Lamm said.

“The planet works well,” Green said. “It’s just these humans that have jacked it up.”

Lamm predicts the biodiversity economy will mature in the next ten years. Increasingly, people are putting a value on protecting animals, he said.

Man hunted the Thylacine into extinction in 1936. It was the largest apex predator. They are about the same size as a wolf at eight pounds, Lamm said. They clean up the ecosystem, he said. If you lose an apex predator, you have many sick animals, Lamm said. For example, some of the Tasmanian Devil population in Australia have legions on their faces and carry a transmissible cancer today, he said. He said that if Thylacine existed, it would have eliminated the sick animals before they became widespread and problematic.

Green asked Lamm about the ethical implications of creating tools and technology that can manipulate genetics and modify traits and the threat of eugenics.

Lamm said that genetic engineering is not allowed in the United States. But in China in 2019, a scientist used CRISPR technology to edit a set of twin girls’ genomes to prevent them from contracting HIV from their fathers.

Lamm said global regulation is needed when manipulating human genomes. He said Colossal doesn’t work on humans, only on endangered species.

Colossal recently hired James Reed, director of the Oscar-winning Netflix documentary “My Octopus Teacher,” and his company Underdog Films, to produce a multi-year docuseries. They have exclusive access to follow Colossal as it works to bring back the Woolly Mammoth, the Thylacine, and the Dodo Bird and to rewild them into their natural habitats.

On International Women’s Day, attendees at South by Southwest stood in line for more than an hour to get into the main ballroom, and hundreds of others piled into the overflow ballrooms.

They turned out in masses for the keynote session “Breaking Barriers, Shaping Narratives: How Women Lead On and Off the Screen.” The panelists included Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex; Model and Movie Star Brooke Shields; Journalist Katie Couric; Sociologist and Pop Culture Expert Nancy Wang Yuen and Errin Haines, Editor at Large with The 19th News.

“This is the day where we celebrate just how far we’ve come,” Haines said. “But we also reflect on the work that we still have yet to do in a lot of our fields, whether that’s media, entertainment, or the movies – women’s representation still falls short, particularly for women of color and from others, so we’re here today to talk about those gaps and what we’re going to do to fill them.”

The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media and the non-profit organization Moms First released a report on March 7th titled “Rewriting Motherhood: How TV Represents Moms and What We Want to See Next.” The report discusses the support moms need to thrive. Haines asked Markle about the report, which Markle and her husband, Prince Harry, supported with funds from their Archewell Foundation and others.

Markle said she was interested in supporting the report to help understand women and their stories, lived experiences, and shared experiences. She also wants to ensure that women’s portrayals in the media reflect who they are and how they move through the world.

Markle said there’s a lot of work to be done to support women and moms, beginning with paid leave and equal pay. Women still earn only 62 cents for every dollar a man earns in the same job.

One of the findings of the report is that on television, moms are represented as thin young, white, and not working outside of the home, which is a patriarchal fantasy, said Wang Yuen.

“This is not our real lives, and it erases the fact that the U.S., out of all the wealthy countries, is ranked second to last when it comes to childcare and parental leave policies,” Wang Yuen said. She said finding secure, affordable childcare for her first baby in graduate school was harder than researching and writing her dissertation.

Movies and television are perpetuating negative or wrong stereotypes when they could be perpetuating positive images and representation, Wang Yuen said.

Markle said that representation is a critical driver for social change.

“We can all agree that representation matters. If you’re a young girl and you see yourself in a position of power, strength, or leadership, you can believe that that is possible,” Markle said. “If you look out on the screen or you look out in the world and you see no one that looks like you, it is incomprehensible for most people to imagine that they can have that level of success or joy or strength or whatever it may be.”

It’s also not a zero-sum game, Markle said.

“Just because someone else has the same advantage you do doesn’t mean you’re losing anything,” Markle said. “And it actually creates an environment that is so fair but also inclusive where people feel as though they have a seat at the table as they should.”

Markle also recounted a story about when she was 11 years old and saw a TV commercial for dishwashing liquid that proclaimed women all over America were fighting greasy pots and pans. At the time, the boys in her class said, “Yeah, women belong in the kitchen.”

“And at 11, I just found that infuriating,” Markle said. She wrote a letter to P&G and got them to change the commercial from women to people. It just goes to show that if you know that there’s something wrong and you’re using your voice to advocate for what is right, that can really land and resonate and make a huge change for a lot of people.”

In a moment that drew a lot of laughter, Shields pointed out that “this is one of the areas where we are different. When I was 11, I was playing a prostitute.” She played a child prostitute in the ’70s movie “Pretty Baby.”

A recent study from the University of Southern California Annenberg found that of the 100 top-grossing movies in 2023, the year of Barbie movie, only 30 featured female-identified lead or co-lead actors, Wang Yuen said.

“That’s a number that hasn’t been that low since the mid-2010s,” Wang Yuen said.

 “There are actually less women on screen in the year of Barbie,” she said. “I feel like we are living in the world of Ken.”

Courts and lawmakers have rolled back reproductive rights across the country; they’ve eliminated affirmative action in higher education and eliminated diversity, equity, and inclusion centers across the country, Wang Yuen said.

A disturbing study that came out of the U.K. recently showed that Generation Z boys and men are more likely than boomers to believe that feminism does more harm than good, Wang Yuen said.

Pretty Baby, the documentary about Shield’s life, came out on Hulu last year. It painted a picture of what it was like to be a young girl working in Hollywood in the 1970s and 1980s. The documentary is about the sexualization of young women in the U.S., and Shields was at the center of it.

“I was promoting it, and I was doing it, and I was lucky because I was surrounded by a very strong mom,” Shields said.

The community around here protected her from bullying and becoming a statistic of Hollywood.

“Hollywood is predicated on eating its young,” Shields said. “That’s what it wants to do. It wants to build you up and  then devour you.”

From a young age, she learned the importance of education. She went to Princeton University and got her degree because she knew no one could take that away from her.

“It’s gotten better but we still have a long way to go and one of the things the documentary I think did was start the conversation,” Shields said.

Today, Shields, 58, said the documentary doesn’t come from anger but from a place of understanding and harnessing lessons learned to help women now. Shields said that social media can make life difficult for young women today because social media networks constantly bombard them with messages.

Couric said she entered the T.V. news business in 1979 when she joked, “Harass was two words instead of one, and it was not a particularly hospitable place for women.”

She joined the Today Show as co-anchor in 1991 and negotiated a 50/50 division of labor with her co-host, Bryant Gumbel. At the time, she was 34 years old and five months pregnant.

“I think just making that demand eventually, I think I had as much power and took on important jobs on the Today Show,” Couric said. She knew little girls were watching, and she was a role model for them.

The industry has changed a lot over Couric’s career.

“I think we’ve made tremendous progress. I mean, I think we have miles to go before we sleep, but you know, if you look at the 19th, what you all are doing is amazing,” Couric said.

Couric said the presidents of the ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, and Fox news divisions are all women, and two of them are women of color.

“Unfortunately, this is happening as linear television is declining and its significance and as these outlets gravitate towards streaming,” Couric said.

She said the heads of the major streaming platforms are five white guys. Digital media is much, she said. She said only 20 percent of editors of the most popular international online publications are women. Women make up 50 percent of podcast listeners, but 79 percent of the podcast hosts are men.

“So, there are still a lot of inequities that we have to approach, but we’re definitely making progress,” Couric said.

Haines also cited the USC Annenberg Study that found that only three of the top 100 grossing films of 2023 had a lead female actor who was 45 or older. She asked Shields about whether that tracked with her experience in Hollywood today.

“It definitely tracks with my experience. I mean, the interesting thing is that I have. We don’t just feel this ageism in Hollywood. At 58, you’re too old to be the ingenue, but you’re not quite the granny yet, and they don’t know what to do with you,” Shields said. So, if you’re not a sexy woman at the bar, you’re in depends or dentures, she said.

The industry needs to quit pigeonholing women into dated stereotypes and portray them as they are with their depth of knowledge and experience.

“There’s just so much richness that can be given to roles when you have an actor who can bring that level of experience,” she said.

She said that even in the beauty industry, it’s not all about anti-wrinkle cream.

LiveOak Ventures announced this week that it has awarded $1 million in grants to 20 local nonprofit organizations through its LiveOakGives program.

LiveOak Ventures began the program five years ago.

According to its blog post, LiveOak’s grants to nonprofit organizations reflect its “ethos that the “rising tide should raise all boats,” not just the tech community.

The LiveOak Gives program leverages its network to support “local non-profit organizations that focus on the vulnerable populations across Texas in three categories: children, the elderly, and families/women trapped in poverty,” according to LiveOak Ventures. The nonprofit organizations selected for grants go through an application process “that looks for alignment with the firm’s values and priorities around supporting vulnerable groups and the ability for the grant to make a material difference on the magnitude of services and capabilities of the organizations.”

In addition to the monetary donations, LiveOakGives also recognizes and advocates for the organizations through its social media channels and community events. That has led to more volunteers, donations, and organizational support.

LiveOakGives selected the following nonprofit organizations for grants this year:

AGE of Central Texas is a center for older adults to socialize with their peers during the daytime.

Chariot provides transportation to adults 60 and over for medical appointments, grocery shopping, and other errands.

Friends of Children connects children with unique talents to a paid, professional mentor called a Friend. They hire and train Friends whose full-time jobs are to support our youth’s success from as early as age four through high school graduation.

Women’s Fund, founded in 2004, focuses on the needs of women in Central Texas by providing grants for housing, education, childcare, and women’s health.

In addition, LiveOak Ventures launched LiveOak Scholars this year to assist Texas high school seniors interested in studying business or STEM fields at a Texas university. The program will be administered through the Austin Community Foundation.

Audible is bringing a Sonic Ferris Wheel, game booths, and concessions to South by Southwest on Friday.

It’s one of the big activations at this year’s show.

The Audible Sound Experience will be at Third and Congress Avenue from Friday, March 8th, through Sunday, March 10th, and offers a carnival experience. It also includes an exclusive After Dark Party with a live performance by Grammy-nominated and multi-platinum-selling dance music duo The Knocks, in partnership with creative collective House of Yes.

Audible is owned by Amazon, which always puts on incredible activations at SXSW. A few years ago, they had a merry-go-round to promote Lizzo’s Big Girls show.

In addition to the carnival, Amazon Prime Video gives festivalgoers an immersive first look at its newest original series, Fallout. This year, it’s again taking over Hotel San Jose to create a post-apocalyptic terrain with activities like lassoing wasteland creatures, a shooting gallery, and encounters with rival factions.

Other SXSW sights not to be missed include Smirnoff’s Pop-up pickleball courts and Poo-Pourri spray’s 30-foot inflatable turd at the Camp Funk Experience.

Other activations include the Paramount’s The Lodge at the Clive Bar on Rainey Street. It’s the second year they’ve taken over the Clive Bar. This year, Paramount has put installations on the first floor dedicated to The Chi, Mean Girls, and Halo. Other floors are focused on Ink Master, with temporary airbrush tattoos, the iconic bridge of the U.S.S. Discovery, and more focused on Star Trek: Discovery. There’s even a space focused on Lawmen: Bass Reeves. The activation was well done last year and worth visiting, so it should be a fun time again.

South by Southwest 2024 kicks off in Austin on Friday, but SXSW Edu is already underway. This year, a crossover day, Thursday, is where people with SXSW badges can attend SXSW Edu programming. It’s a twofer on March 7th; all SXSW badges are admitted to SXSW EDU content.

There are so many incredible panels, parties, and performances this year, and Hugh Forrest, Co-President of SXSW and Chief Programming Officer, has been highlighting panels and speakers on LinkedIn. If you’re not following him, you should be. He’s got the scoop on everything.

SXSW is also full of surprises.

This week, SXSW announced the opening day keynote titled “Breaking Barriers, Shaping Narratives: How Women Lead On and Off the Screen,” on March 8th, which is International Women’s Day, featuring Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex, Katie Couric, Errin Haines, Brooke Shields and Nancy Wang Yuen.

Also, Forrest advises local attendees to pick up their badges early. “You can pick up your SXSW badge beginning Monday, March 4. Early week badge pick avoids all the stress of longer lines!” Forrest posted. More information can be found here.

UT at SXSW also has some great panels on brain implants, robotics, and Austin as the next hub for Life Sciences. UT’s programming is taking place at Antone’s Nightclub, which it has dubbed the Hook “Em House.

And there are more than 60 sessions focused on AI. Forrest created this list of the 60+ sessions in the AI track (March 11-15).

Forrest also highlighted a lot of content focused on Quantum computing.

Silicon Hills News tends to focus on Austin, San Antonio, and overall Texas-based content during SXSW; this year’s festival has plenty of it.  Forrest highlighted Austin-based sessions in one of his LinkedIn posts linked to this filtered list of Austin-based content.

And here are some excellent guidepost lists:

The Austin American Statesman has a comprehensive curated list of free stuff for the badgeless at SXSW.

Festival Saviors has a list of top attractions, musical and otherwise, at SXSW.

Are you looking for more activations and places of interest for badge holders and badgeless? Check out this list put together by ATXGossip.

Marc Nathan, a super-connector in the Austin startup scene, created the SXSW VIP Insider’s Guide, a comprehensive digest of tips, resources, and private events during Austin’s second and third weeks of March. 

Marisa Vickers of Builders + Backers also has a great list here.

Serial entrepreneur Aruni S. Gunasegaram is a veteran of Austin’s technology startup industry.

Gunasegaram has worked at SecureAuth,  Khorus, SailPoint, WP Engine, Querium, and other local companies. She also served as director of operations at the Austin Technology Incubator.

Gunasegaram was also a co-founding parent of the Magellan International School, a nonprofit language immersion International Baccalaureate school. She was also an adjunct lecturer on entrepreneurship at the University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business and is currently an MBA project coach.

Gunasegaram was co-founder/president of Isochron Data, a web and mobile application company targeting the vending and packaged ice industries (aka the “internet of things”), where she coordinated closing the company’s first $1 million in revenue, raising $15 million in equity financing, as well as built a team of employees, board members, and advisors. She co-founded Babble Soft, a web and mobile application company targeted at new parents. 

Gunasegaram talks about lessons learned from her entrepreneurial journey in this episode of the Ideas to Invoices podcast. Here are some key takeaways from the discussion. The entire podcast is embedded below and can be found on all popular podcast platforms.

1. Customer-Centric Approach: Gunasegaram emphasizes the importance of starting a successful business by understanding the customer’s needs and pain points. Successful companies often begin by providing solutions that improve people’s lives.

2. Human Connection in Customer Support: Despite advancements in technology and automation, maintaining a personal touch in customer support remains crucial. Gunasegaram highlights the challenge of balancing automation with personalized customer interactions, stressing the importance of the human touch in customer satisfaction.

3. Common Challenges Across Industries: Aruni identifies a common challenge across various industries, including cybersecurity, data privacy, and education technology, which is maintaining a personal touch while leveraging technological advancements. She emphasizes the significance of being the customer’s advocate, especially during challenging situations.

4. Experience at Austin Technology Incubator (ATI): Gunasegaram discusses her role at ATI and how it shaped her perspective on supporting entrepreneurial CEOs. She highlights the importance of having a supportive network for entrepreneurs, acknowledging the stress and challenges they face, and the need for community events and networking opportunities.

5. Importance of Mentorship and Networking: Gunasegaram emphasizes the significance of mentoring and networking in an entrepreneur’s journey. Informal mentorship, leaning from experiences and building meaningful connections contribute significantly to personal and professional growth.

6. Support for Female Entrepreneurs: Gunasegaram acknowledges the gender disparity in venture capital funding and advocates for more representation of women in decision-making roles within VC firms. She emphasizes the need for education, mentorship, and system changes to address this imbalance.

7. Focus on the Journey: Gunasegaram’s perspective on entrepreneurship emphasizes the importance of embracing the journey, learning from failures, and constantly evolving. She recommends books like “The Alchemist,” “The Monk and the Riddle” and “Siddhartha” for their insights into the entrepreneurial journey.

8. Future plans: Gunasegaram expresses her interests in supporting other entrepreneurs, investing in exciting companies, and exploring her creative side, including singing, songwriting, and publishing.

Wimberley, Texas, is more than 8,500 miles from Antarctica, but what happens there affects the local environment here.

“Mother Earth is our home; it’s a special place, and we need to protect it and understand it,” said Filmmaker James Douglas Cooper. “Whether we are standing on dirt here in Wimberley or on ice in Antarctica, it’s the same planet.”

National Geographic Photographer Rodney Bursiel is collaborating with Cooper to create a documentary on Antarctica called ‘Frozen in Time.”

On February 26th, Bursiel and Cooper hosted a fundraiser at the Montesino Ranch in Wimberley. More than 200 people attended the event, which featured music by Ruthie Foster, Jimmie Ray Vaughan, the Doc Carter Band, and Donovan Frankenreiter—the evening also featured a silent auction that raised thousands of additional dollars for the upcoming expedition.

“We’re at the beginning of the journey,” Cooper said. “We’re going to do something you’ve never seen before. We’re going to introduce you to places you have not seen before. We’re going to raise awareness for what’s going on and that we’re losing this beautiful white ice and how it’s impacting people back here.”

The filmmakers and photographers plan to take an eight-person boat to the area. Cooper said they intend to dive extensively in the new, undiscovered regions. He said the project will create a documentary, a book, and more. They plan to begin shooting next year, Cooper said.

They will track humpback whales, orcas, leopard seals, penguins, and more, Bursiel said.

“We’re documenting Antarctica, something that we are losing. It’s changing by the day, and we want to go capture this and see it before it’s gone because it could be gone in our lifetime,” Bursiel said.

The project seeks to create an awareness, Bursiel said.

Bursiel lives in Wimberley and has an art gallery downtown. In 2017, he won a National Geographic Travel Photographer of the Year award. He specializes in wildlife photography and has photographed famous musicians, including Willie Nelson, Paul Simon, Edie Brickell, Ruthie Foster, Kelly Willis, ZZ Top, and others.

For more information, visit Rodney Bursiel’s website and sign up for his newsletter. He plans additional fundraising events.