At South by Southwest, Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic candidate for Texas Governor, said when he gets the job, he’s going to make marijuana legal in Texas.

“We’re going to make sure that we no longer lock up people for possession of a substance that is legal in most of the rest of the country, and most of the rest of the free world,” O’Rourke said.

And even though Texans of all races and ethnicities use marijuana at the same rate, black and brown people are arrested and locked up and convicted of drug crimes at a much higher rate, O’Rourke said.

It’s not enough to legalize marijuana, but Texas needs to expunge the records of those who have been convicted of marijuana possession and served time for their crimes so there is some justice for them, O’Rourke said.

Evan Smith, CEO and Co-Founder of Texas Tribune, interviewed O’Rourke at SXSW. He asked him how can he get a Texas Republican Legislative body to pass laws for the legalization of marijuana.

“I’ll let you in on a secret,” O’Rourke said. “Republicans like to get high just as much as Democrats like to get high.”

“That would be a secret, I’ll say that for sure,” Smith said.

This is one of the most broadly popular issues in the state, O’Rourke said.

In other issues, O’Rourke blasted Gov, Greg Abbott for failing to keep the lights on in the energy state of Texas during the February Winter Storm of 2021.

The storm resulted in hundreds of deaths and losses ranging from $195 billion to $295 billion, making it the single costliest natural disaster in the history of Texas. Among the victims, a Vietnam veteran froze to death in his truck, and a young boy froze to death in his bed, O’Rourke said.

Meanwhile, energy companies made more than $11 billion during a five-day period during the storm, O’Rourke said.

Energy Transfer CEO Kelcy Warren is suing O’Rourke for statements O’Rourke made accusing Warren of donating to Gov. Abbott’s campaign in exchange for favoritism. Warren made a $1 million contribution to Gov. Abbott’s re-election campaign. His company Energy Transfer allegedly made $2.4 billion from the Texas disaster.

In response to Smith’s question about how he can defend himself against the defamation lawsuit, O’Rourke said that truth is the greatest defense against defamation and that he is speaking the truth.

Every consumer will be paying an extra $45 every month on every utility bill to the energy companies because of the profits they made during the storm, O’Rourke said.

“We have a very clear case of a governor who stands with high donors and corporations and not the people of the state,” O’Rourke said.

He also said Gov. Abbott is focused on all the wrong issues. He has signed into law one of the most restrictive abortion laws. He has ordered an investigation into how parents care for their transgender children. He has activated 10,000 members of the Texas state guard to go to the border for a year.  

“It’s costing all of us billions of dollars,” O’Rourke said. “They are miserable and morale is suffering. That is not making us safer. That is more chaos and confusion.”

Meanwhile, children in Texas are suffering in foster care and one institution for girls was just shut down in Bastrop after the caretakers were found to be abusing the girls, O’Rourke said. He said that Gov. Abbott had been warned for months about the institution and he did nothing.

Texas is also seeing a spike in gun violence, O’Rourke said. Texas has had four of the worst mass shootings in the history of the country just in the last five years, he said.

“We do have real challenges in the state of Texas,” O’Rourke said. “When I’m governor I’m going to focus on them.”

Another problem in Texas is voter suppression efforts, In the primaries, ballot rejections in large cities were up to 6 to 22 percent, compared to less than 5 percent in previous elections, Smith said.

“This is not a flaw – this is a feature,” O’Rourke said.

Willie Nelson had his ballot request rejected, he said.

It’s targeted specifically in big counties to disenfranchise voters in those areas who primarily vote Democratic, O’Rourke said.

Texas has a history of voter suppression acts and poll taxes, O’Rourke said.

“It’s always the people in power trying to hold on to that power by stopping the people in this state from voting,” O’Rourke said.

He said he hoped the U.S. Department of Justice would intervene.

“I wish we would make voting rights a priority in Texas,” O’Rourke said. “It is easier now to carry a gun on the streets of Texas than it is to vote in our polling places in Texas.”

A constant buzzword at this year’s South by Southwest festival is metaverse, which is the 3-D version of the Internet.

It’s also the place where the popular Prime Video series Upload takes place in the year 2034.

And on Friday as the second season of the sci-fi comedy was released on Amazon Prime, Greg Daniels, the show’s creator, writer, and executive producer, did a fireside chat with futurist Amy Webb.

“If you could digitize your memories and you could be hosted as a person somehow in a digital environment it’s an opportunity for people to create their own heaven,” Daniels said. “It would have all the same greed and foolishness that any society created by man has.”

In Upload, Nathan Brown, played by Robbie Amell, gets to choose his own afterlife in a place called Lakeview, by having his consciousness uploaded into a virtual world. In Upload Season two, Nathan is beginning to figure out that he was murdered, and his ex-girlfriend Ingrid, played by Actress Allegra Edwards, shows up in Lakeview but Nathan has grown attached to his customer service angel Nora, played by Actress Andy Allo.

The show, released in 2020, has struck a chord with real-life after Facebook renamed itself Meta and began calling its portal Horizon, which is the name of the portal in Upload, Daniels said.

“The show Upload is not a dystopian look or a Uptonian look, it’s a comedy show,” Daniels said.

For example, in the second season of Upload, KFC and Twitter have merged and Oscar-Meyer has merged with Intel to create the future of meat, Daniels said.

In Upload, tech companies have built out all these beautiful digital experiences based on luxury hotels. And people only exist in them as avatars. The tech companies in this world make money off them in every possible way that they can, Daniels said.

Daniels, who also worked on The Office, Parks and Recreation, King of the Hill, and The Simpsons, has always liked science fiction. At one point, his dream job was to work as a reporter covering science for the New York Times, he said.

Upload allows him to explore all kinds of science fiction ideas like hologram phones, 3D food printers, and prototype babies.

He got the idea for the show when he was working on 30 Rock in New York. He worked next to a bunch of electronics stores and they were advertising CD players as the new thing. That’s when Daniels came up with the notion of digitizing memories, which is a science fiction staple, he said, but it’s also a great satiric premise.

“You bring to heaven the ideas of fairness that would not be there if it was created by a tech company for money,” he said.

At around the same time, Daniels also watched his daughter playing Club Penguin, an online world aimed at children. His daughter asked him for 99 cents to put a television set in her igloo.

And that’s when he realized what it would all be like in the virtual world, Daniels said.

Today, people are spending millions of dollars getting real estate rights in the metaverse and buying virtual goods as Non Fungible Tokens, or NFTs.

Recently someone paid $650,000 for the Metaflower Super Mega Yacht in the virtual game Sandbox, Webb said.

Upload deals with real-life issues in the afterlife of income inequality and environmental degradation, Daniels said.

“I’m looking at the funny side of it,” Daniels said. “The intention of the show is to be entertaining. Some aspects of the content are intense. There is a love story between a living person and someone she can only relate to digitally.”

In Upload, Nora is trying to find a way to upload her dad to the afterlife, Daniels said. Her dad is dying of vape lung. Nathan, who was living an entitled life in Los Angeles, gets this second chance from being uploaded to develop a more compassionate and grounded personality with Nora, Daniels said.

Also in the second season of Upload, viewers find out that Nathan was trying to create an open-source version of the upload metaverse so someone murdered him.

“In the real world, we think about data and ownership and concentrations of power,” Webb said. “It’s so compelling that we are applying these same concepts to death.”

In the show, the interesting thing is digital life extension changes society, Daniels said. People are encouraged to save money for their digital afterlife, he said.

Upload also grapples with what it means to be a person, Daniels said.

“One of the laws we put into the show is that Uploads can’t work,” he said. “They would unfairly compete with living people. Should they be allowed to work, vote, or testify in a lawsuit? “

One of the things Daniels learned at SXSW 2022 is something called pseudonymity which is the near-anonymous state in which a user has a consistent identifier like an avatar, Daniels said. He believes privacy is not dead. He is not on social media at all.

“I just have a writing staff and I force them to go on it,” he said.

He said he believes surveillance capitalism does exist and he joked that he wears tin-foil underwear, and he feels naked without his tin-foil hat.

Upload Season 2 – Official Trailer | Prime Video

No Description

Creating in a shitstorm kind of sums up what it’s been like to be a content creator during the COVID-19 pandemic times.

That was a featured session Friday at South by Southwest by Jack Conte, CEO of Patreon and co-creator of the bands Pomplamoose and Scary Pockets.

No matter how much work creators put in they are never creating enough content to feed the beastly appetite of the Internet, according to Conte.

Connectivity has replaced connection, Conte said. People feel lonely and creators are feeling burned out, he said.

So, his hour-long talk focused on how to re-ignite that creativity and find inspiration and meaning. He also told the audience that he hates advice and that every time he yelled out advice they were supposed to respond with “Fuck you, Jack,” which they did.

Conte began the talk recounting his experience co-founding in 2013 Patreon, a subscription platform that allows musicians, artists, writers, filmmakers and other creators to get paid by people supporting their work.

At the time of launch, Conte was philosophically opposed to a monthly subscription business model. He believed that creators should be paid per creation, and they should be paid when they publish. He admits he was wrong. He said humility is a trait in business that needs to be emphasized more.

In 2014, Patreon reluctantly agreed to a monthly subscription model, Conte said.

“If we hadn’t added monthly, Patreon would have been put out of business by another subscription model,” he said.

Today, more than 90 percent of people on Patreon use the monthly feature, he said.

“My original idea for Patreon wasn’t a good idea,” he said.

The key in business is to admit when you’re wrong, and adjust your course, he said.

It’s a compelling piece of advice about humility, he said.

Also, when Patreon launched, Conte created a list of 40 creators he wanted on the platform, and they all turned him down. He paid $10.17 for the domain name, hired a designer on 99Designs.com to create Patreon’s logo and launched with just three creators including himself, his girlfriend and his roommate.

“I almost gave up,” Conte said.

But he didn’t. And today, Patreon has distributed more than $3.5 billion to creators worldwide since its founding, he said. Patreon makes money by taking a 5 percent to 12 percent fee from creators on its platform. To date, Patreon has raised $413.3 million in 10 rounds of funding from 37 investors, according to Crunchbase.

“Sometimes when you think you have a good idea you’ve just got to stick to your guns,” Conte said.

“A piece of advice about advice fuck advice.,” Conte said. “Advice doesn’t work.”

Every individual is different and the only one who can figure out what’s right for you right now is you, he said.

Conte spent the rest of his talk giving advice about customized design, inspiration, doing less and focusing on quality, being true to yourself.

Editor’s note: Silicon Hills News is on Patreon. Please visit the site to pledge just $1 a month to support the work we do at SiliconHillsNews.com. Thank you in advance for your support!

Amid some turbulent times, South by Southwest kicked off Friday morning in Austin with in-person events and some programing also available online.

It’s dubbed “URL meets IRL” URL stands for uniform resource locator or web addresses and IRL stands for In Real Life.

The blended experience exists, but people are most excited to be back in person in Austin, Hugh Forrest, Chief Programming Officer of SXSW said in opening remarks on Friday. The nine days of programming provide inspiration to so many, he said.

SXSW features more than 160 sessions across 15 tracks of programming from March 11-20 including conference sessions, film screenings, music showcases, professional development opportunities. The speakers include former Congressman and candidate for Texas Governor Beto O’Rourke, Grammy Award-nominated singer and guitarist of Japanese Breakfast, and New York Times bestselling author of Crying in H Mart Michelle Zauner, Lizzo, Beck, Dolly Parton, and many more.

“The need and power and the value of inspiration have never been more pressing,” Forrest said. “The world outside of SXSW has never been more brutal.”

As the first SXSW in-person events kick-off for the first time since 2019, Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is on everyone’s minds, Forrest said. In fact, SXSW will sell special merchandise to benefit Ukraine and SXSW has added extra sessions to explore the conflict, he said.

In addition to the invasion of Ukraine, some of the moves by Texas legislators on anti-transgender bills and actions are reprehensible, Forrest said.  In January of 2022, a law that Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed into law went into effect requiring transgender students in K-12 public schools to participate on sports teams that match their assigned sex at birth.

And in February, Governor Abbott sent a letter to the Department of Family and Protective Services asking the department to investigate the parents of children who are given gender-transition procedures.

SXSW opposes these attacks on the transgender community and all forms of discrimination, Forrest said.

SXSW also features a talk by Alexis McGill Johnson, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund President and CEO, as the opening keynote speaker on Friday.

In addition to the anti-transgender bills, Texas legislators have also been focused on restricting the rights of women.

Last September, one of the most restrictive laws on abortion bans took effect in Texas. The law, SB8, bans abortion after approximately six weeks of pregnancy before many people know they’re pregnant. The law also incentivizes individuals to seek monetary penalties by suing anyone who provides abortion care or assists someone in obtaining care in the state.

SXSW also features several sessions about preserving voting rights, Forrest said.

“Do the people at SXSW have the power to change what is happening in Eastern Europe? Do the people in this room have the power to change repulsive legislation we are seeing in Texas and other states?” Forrest asked. “Yes, we do. I think the people in this room can help move the needle forward.”

SXSW shines a bright spotlight on some of the most innovative speakers in a variety of professions, Forrest said.

“We inspire each other with new ideas and new ways of thinking,” he said. “Indeed, we hope that the inspiration you receive from being at SXSW gives you need the energy to approach these difficult problems.”

SXSW is an opportunity to rediscover the power of face-to-face interactions and to brainstorm and ideate on a slightly better world than the world we live in today, Forrest said. He said it may sound “hippy-dippy” or “utopian” but gathering together and coming up with new ideas provides hope for the future and for resolutions to the world’s problems, he said.

Along those lines, Forrest then introduced Priya Parker, author of The Art of Gathering, as the opening speaker for SXSW 2022.

“What does it mean to gather in March of 2022 when there is this brutal invasion on the other side of the world. How do we resolve that with having fun at SXSW?” Forrest asked her.

“We don’t gather just to escape. We gather to engage. We don’t gather just to celebrate. We gather to mourn, to grieve to make sense of the world,” Parker said. “We gather to make sense of the world’s events.”

SXSW provides an opportunity for people to make sense of what’s happening in their communities, states, and the world and to figure out their role in it. Parker said.

“At moments of crisis is the most important moments to come together,” she said.

After two years of not being together, Parker said she embraces in-person gatherings and opportunities to engage the world and not to escape from it.

“When we finally get back to an in-person event, this invasion happens in Ukraine and it feels like Ground’s Hog Day all over again,” Forrest said.

Engaging means when there are people under threat people need to come together to make sense out of what is happening, Parker said. And it’s not just about Ukraine. Everyone needs to look at their own communities and injustices happening all around and collectively work together to find solutions, she said.

The moment Parker knew how big the COVID-19 Pandemic was going to be was when SXSW got canceled in March of 2020.

The City of Austin canceled SXSW on March 6^th a week before Friday the 13^th and that was the worst experience in the history of SXSW, Forrest said. It took 11 months of planning to put on the event that never happened.

And two days after its cancellation, SXSW laid off a third of its staff, Forrest said.

SXSW did an online event in 2021 and learned a lot from that, Forrest said.

“But the bread and butter of SXSW since 1987, what is really about is bringing people together face to face,” Forrest said. “Technology is slightly less important than having those interactions in a real-world setting. Sharing new ideas, making new connections. It’s the power of getting together. That is why we are so excited about getting back together.”

Colossal Biosciences, the startup focused on bringing back extinct species like woolly mammoths, has raised $60 million in funding.

Thomas Tull and At One Ventures led the Series A round with participation from Untamed Planet, Animoca Brands, Breyer Capital, Animal Capital, Arch Ventures co-founder Robert Nelsen, Paris Hilton, Bold Capital, Boost VC, Jazz Ventures, Builders VC, Green Sands Equity, Draper Associates, Charles Hoskinson, among others.

To date, the five-and-a-half-month-old startup which launched last year has raised $75 million in total funding.

Colossal is focused on using CRISPR gene-editing technology to create a working model to bring animals back from extinction. Its first project focuses on the restoration of the woolly mammoth to the Arctic Tundra.

With the funding, Colossal plans to hire more specialists in computational biology, embryology, stem cell biology, software engineering, advanced biology, medical device hardware, and genomics, said Ben Lamm, Colossal Co-Founder and CEO. Colossal has offices in Dallas, Austin and Boston and 48 employees.

“We’re hiring some of the greatest minds in the world,” Lamm said.

“We’re making the path to de-extinction and species preservation a reality by bringing the planet one step closer to reversing the downward trend of ecosystem degradation and the staggering loss of biodiversity through cutting edge genetic tools,” Lamm said.

Colossal has also added David Haussler, Ph.D., Alexander Titus, Ph.D., Erez Lieberman Aiden, Ph.D. to its scientific advisory board, and Beth Shapiro, Ph.D., who will also act as one of Colossal’s paleogenomics leads.

At SXSW, Lamm and Colossal’s head of biological sciences, Eriona Hysolli will talk about Colossal’s mission with Richard Garriott de Cayeux of The Explorers Club on Friday at 2:30 p.m. at the Austin Convention Center.

S3 Ventures announced this week that it has established a new $250 million fund targeted at investing in Texas Startups.

The Austin-based venture firm, founded in 2005, has $900 million in assets under management. This is the firm’s seventh fund.

To date, S3 Ventures has invested in more than 50 startups and has 25 active portfolio companies and more than 20 exits. Its portfolio companies have raised nearly $2 billion in total funding.

S3 Ventures is backed by one limited partner, a highly philanthropic family with a multibillion-dollar foundation focused on addressing social inequalities.

“In our first 17 years, we have been fortunate to partner with truly visionary founders who have transformed the way we work, live and heal,” S3 Managing Director Brian R. Smith said in a news release. “We look forward to working with many more in the years ahead.”

S3 Ventures makes initial investments from $500,000 to $10 million in seed, series A or series B rounds with the capacity to invest more than $20 million throughout the life of a company.

S3 Ventures exits include Alkami Technology, a Plano-based digital banking fintech company, that went public in 2021, Levelset, a New Orleans-based construction payment company, acquired by Procore Technologies for $500 million. Others include the $160 million acquisition of Acessa Healthy, an Austin-based developer of a minimally invasive treatment for fibroids, acquired by Hologic, and the 2020 acquisition of Live Oak Technology, an Austin-based remote financial transaction platform, by DocuSign.

“We believe that by 2030, Texas could be the second-largest technology ecosystem in the country,” Smith said. “That growth is being driven by long-term demographic shifts and broad-based economic strength of not just Austin, but also Dallas, Houston and San Antonio.”

S3 Ventures’ portfolio includes 36 investments in Austin, four in Dallas, and six in Houston.

The firm’s portfolio focus underscores its vision of the Lone Star State becoming the nation’s No. 2 premier tech hub. To date, S3 has made 36 investments in Austin, four in Dallas, and six in Houston. 

Smith founded the firm with a $20 million first fund 17 years ago. An electrical engineer who began his career at IBM, Smith previously founded Austin-headquartered Crossroads Systems in 1994, leading it as CEO through five rounds of VC funding, an IPO, and beyond. He now leads the firm’s team of eight investment professionals, all based in Austin.

For the third year, LiveOak Venture Partners has spearheaded the LiveOak Gives program to support nonprofit organizations.

This year, LiveOak Gives Program is giving $250,000, the highest in the history of the program, which donated $200,000 in 2020 and $174,000 in 2019.

LiveOak selects nonprofit organizations focused on children, women’s empowerment, the elderly, and others in need and provides support for two years before selecting new organizations, said Venu Shamapant, co-founder and partner in LiveOak Venture Partners.

“We generally have an emphasis on supporting vulnerable populations and locally focused organizations,” said Krishna Srinivasan, co-founder and general partner of LiveOak Venture Partners

The program launched in 2019 and has given away more than $600,000, Shamapant said.

LiveOak Gives Program’s mission is to engage Austin’s tech community, including LiveOak Venture Partners’ portfolio companies, to support nonprofit organizations based in Texas.

LiveOak Venture Partners, founded in 2012, is a venture capital firm that has invested in almost 50 Texas-based companies

This year the major underwriters for the LiveOak Gives campaign include LiveOak Venture Partners, Ben Scott, John Thornton, Kiwi Camara, Tim Heyl, Jim Breyer, Darin Hicks, Andrew Perkins, and Joe Aragona.

The LiveOak Gives Program has selected the following six nonprofit organizations to receive $40,000 each in funding this year:

The Andy Roddick Foundation – which provides learning and enriching opportunities for children especially in underserved neighborhoods to achieve their full potential.

JUST – which provides microloans and job training to women (mostly minority) entrepreneurs in our community and targets the challenges of capital availability, access, and mentoring at a grassroots level.

Meals on Wheels In-Home Care Program – which is focused on supporting the elderly at home with services that have been incredibly challenging to deliver during the pandemic.

CC4C – which enhances the quality of life for rare undiagnosed diseases in children by building support teams for them and their families.

Heart Gift – which provides life-saving heart surgeries to children from around the world where specialized medical treatment is either scarce or nonexistent.

Scholar Shot, which helps at-risk students exit poverty by completing career-ready vocational, associate, or bachelor’s degrees.

Generational wealth is created by people who found companies, said Chris Hyams, CEO of Indeed.

That’s why DivInc, a nonprofit accelerator focused on assisting women and people of color is so important in Austin, said Hyams who serves on the DivInc Board of Directors and as 2022 Honorary Chair for the DivInc Champions of Change Awards.

“When you think about those massive disparities we have in housing, healthcare and education, and the criminal justice system,” Hyams said. “Those are really symptoms of an underlying sickness which is economic inequality.”

It is impossible to imagine making real progress on those issues without addressing the wealth gap, Hyams said.

That is where Austin-based DivInc comes in, Hyams said.

“Our mission at DivInc is to generate social and economic equity through entrepreneurship,” he said. “We support and guide underrepresented founders in building sustainable startups.”

It’s about economic sustainability, he said.

A successful business is an opportunity for creating generational wealth and creating more jobs and impacting more lives and more families and more communities, Hyams said.

“That’s why I’m so proud to support the amazing work at DivInc,” Hyams said.

Indeed, a job search site is a global company with more than 10,000 employees but its headquarters is in Austin.

“Talent is universal, but opportunity is not,” Hyams said. There are bias barriers in hiring that stand in the way of people getting a fair shake, he said. Indeed has people that work every day to break down those barriers, Hyams said. Diversity, inclusion, and equity are at the heart of everything that Indeed does, Hyams said. And even though it’s a global company, Austin is its headquarters, he said. That’s why it is so important that Indeed support the work that DivInc does, he said.

And the DivInc Champions of Change Awards gives the community an opportunity to shine a spotlight on the changemakers for diversity, equity, and inclusion in Austin, Hyams said.

DivInc, founded in 2016, is the premier startup accelerator for people of color and women entrepreneurs. Hyams also pledged to match $30,000 worth of donations to DivInc Thursday night. The organization had a goal of raising $150,000 from the event and was at $120,000 early on in the evening.

Several hundred people turned out Thursday night for DivInc’s fourth annual Champions of Change Awards presented by Notley, held at Fair Market, and an after-party of dancing, drinks, and food hosted by H-E-B Digital. Event organizers required everyone to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID 19 test or required masks for attendees.

In all, 43 people were nominated for awards by a diverse selection committee. The following people received awards:

The Executive of the Year Award went to Pamela Benson Owens, President and CEO of Edge of Your Seat Consulting and Executive Director of Six Square.

The DEI-Leader of the Year Award went to Gloria Gonzales-Dholakia, Ph.D., Executive Director of Jolt Action and Jolt Initiative.

The Startup Investor of The Year Award went to Ethan Monreal-Jackson, founder and general partner of Newtype Ventures.

The Startup Leader of the Year Award went to Harold Hughes, Founder and CEO of Bandwagon.

The Rising Star Award went to Antony Jackson, Founder and CEO of We Can Now, a nonprofit organization.

The Student of the Year Award went to Jeffrey Clemmons, vice president of the NAACP Youth and College of Texas.

The Nonprofit Leader of the Year Award went to Ebonie Trice, CEO, and Founder of Mission Accomplished.

The Champion of the Year Award went to Jereka Thomas-Hockaday, Co-Founder of the Central Texas Allied Health Institute.

The People’s Choice Award went to Sharon Vigil, Chief Operations and Equity Officer of Communities in Schools of Central Texas.

The First-Ever Dr. Colette Pierce Burnette Legacy Award went to Colette Pierce Burnette, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Huston Tillotson University.

Colette Pierce Burnette, President and Chief Executive Officer of Huston-Tillotson University received the first-ever legacy award at DivInc’s fourth annual Champions of Change Awards presented by Notley.

Burnette came to Austin in 2015 as Huston-Tillotson’s first black female president.

During her time in Austin, Burnette has blazed a trail for diversity, equity, and inclusion throughout the city, said Preston James, co-founder of DivInc. Her work earned her the honor of the Austin Chamber of Commerce naming Burnette as the 2021 Austinite of the year.

At Huston-Tillotson, Burnette has grown the endowment by 55 percent for the Historically Black University in East Austin. She also partnered with Apple to create the African American Male Teacher Initiative and has collaborated with Tesla on a manufacturing engineering curriculum and a career progression internship for undergraduates.

Burnette also served as co-chair for the Mayor’s Task Force on Institutional Racism and Systemic Inequities.

The Austin Chamber will honor Burnette at an event on Wednesday at the Austin Marriott.

Burnette has announced her plans to retire from Huston-Tillotson University in June.

James with DivInc said whether Burnette stays in Austin or not, she has already made an out-sized impact on the city and the DivInc Legacy Award will forever be known as the Dr. Colette Pierce Burnette Legacy Award.

Founded in 2016, DivInc is the premier startup accelerator for people of color and women entrepreneurs. The nonprofit organization is based in Austin, and it opened a second location in Houston in the Spring of 2021.

Xebec, a company that launched during the pandemic, has made the list of Innovation finalists at South by Southwest.

The Austin-based company’s product, Xebec Tri-Screen 2, is a finalist in the Speculative Design category. Other finalists include Biometric Ignited mobile self-defense, Flash Freeze Premium Ice Cream on Demand, Katalyst Training System and The First Ever Waste-Based 3D Filament.

Altogether SXSW selected 60 finalists for the 2022 Innovation Awards in 13 categories. The winners will be announced on the evening of Monday, March 14.

“The Innovation Awards are such a huge part of what we do at SXSW – the title of this competition reflects one of the pillar tenants of the event. And for this year, the quality of entries we received was absolutely off-the-charts,” Hugh Forrest, Chief Programming Officer of SXSW said in a news release. “Each 2022 finalist is pushing the envelope with the new ideas, new technologies, and new processes that they are bringing to the table. I can’t wait until the Innovation Awards Ceremony on March 14 to see which of these finalists emerge as the best of the best of the best!”

“We are honored,” said Alex Levine, CEO and founder of Xebec. “We think it’s a really cool opportunity for us.”

Founded in 2018, Xebec’s flagship product is the Xebec Tri-Screen, a laptop attachment that adds two additional screens to any laptop to create an instant office set up anywhere.

Xebec has faced many challenges since it launched. It was planning on debuting its product at SXSW in 2020 but the festival was canceled that year. And Xebec’s plant in Shenzhen, China was shut down.  The plant eventually did ship Xebec’s products which were in big demand because so many people were working remotely because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Levine said.

Xebec now has 14 employees, and it has moved into an office at Fifth and San Marcos on Austin’s East Side. It’s even hosting the Xebec House SXSW Kickoff Party on Friday, March 11^th.