By Laura Lorek
Publisher of Silicon Hills News

Quantum computing, not Artificial Intelligence, is the space race of our generation, said William Hurley, known as Whurley.

Whurley, founder and CEO of Strangeworks, gave the keynote speech Tuesday afternoon at South by Southwest on “The Endless Impossibilities of Quantum Computing.” He pledged to keep the math slides to ten and the overall slideshow to around 110 slides.

“I am on a mission to humanize quantum computing,” he said.

It’s an incredibly complex topic and even though he’s been studying it for years Whurley said he’s no expert on the subject.

“This is very cutting-edge stuff and it’s supercool,” Whurley said.

This is less of a replacement of classical computing and more of an extension of its power, he said.

Overall, the field of quantum computing has seen tremendous growth over the last few years and the U.S. leads all other nations in the number of patents filed in the field with 295 patent applications filed in 2015, according to Whurley.

“When there is more open source of this technology, that’s when it’s going to take off and we will be seeing more of that in the next few years,” Whurley said.

The University of Texas has started a program to teach quantum computing and Texas A&M also has quantum computing experts, Whurley said. Other universities focused on quantum computing include the University of Waterloo, University of Maryland, Tokyo Institute of Technology, University of Oxford, MIT, Yale, Berkley and others.

Companies heavily involved in the quantum computing technology include D:Wave, IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Google and startups like Strangeworks, the company Whurley just launched in Austin. Other startups include Regitti, 1Qbit, QCWare and others.

Whurley said he doesn’t see the other startups as competitors but collaborators. They are all working together, he said.

To explain quantum mechanics to the audience, Whurley gave a brief history of the science including quantum mechanics, computer science and quantum information with an explanation of Schrodinger’s cat, a thought experiment created by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrodinger in 1935.

In one of the only SXSW keynote presentations to delve into algorithms and math, Whurley actually did math calculations on stage and ran through a series of formulas. The next slide read: TL:DR 3X5=15.

Whurley gave the audience of list of books at the end of his presentation to read more about the subject. He has also written a book “Quantum Computing for Babies.” He gave copies of the book to people in the audience who asked the best questions at the end of this presentation.

To celebrate all things Quantum computing and the launch of Strangeworks, Whurley held a party Tuesday night at the Container Bar on Rainey Street and Wu-Tang Clan showed up. During his keynote, Whurley joked that he couldn’t decide between Wu-Tang Clan or Stephen Wolfram, Founder & CEO of Wolfram Research, to do the audio version of his children’s book.

At South by Southwest, some of the globe’s most innovative companies pitch every year to become the winner in their category.

At the 10th annual SXSW Accelerator Pitch event, judges selected ten winners among the 50 finalists and for the first time, they named a “Best in Show” winner, which went to “Nanowear, a New York-based connected-self technology platform for diagnostics and disease management based on proprietary cloth-based nanosensors and analytics.”

The two Austin-based winners included GrubTubs, which won the Hyper-Connected Communities category for its system that recycles food scraps from restaurants and provides them as feedstock to local farms. And ICON 3D won in the Social and Cultural category for its construction-technology that is working to build “the first up-to-code 3D printed home in the United States (using concrete as substrate).”

The other winners included:

Augmented and Virtual Reality
ARwall

Enterprise and Smart Data
DroneSeed

Entertainment and Content
Vochlea Music

Health and Wearables
Nanowear

Payment and FinTech
FutureFuel.io

Security and Privacy
PolyPort

Sports and Performance
Nix

Transportation
GoKid

Leaf also received a “Best Bootstrap” award and Roots Studio received a “Best Speed Pitch” award. Winners received $4,000 each and two badges for next year’s SXSW Interactive conference.

By Laura Lorek
Publisher of Silicon Hills News

It’s the end of an era for smartphones and the rise of cryptocurrencies.

Those are just a few of the trends Amy Webb, founder of the Future Today Institute, sees emerging.

In a completely full ballroom on a Sunday morning, Webb took to the stage at South by Southwest to give an overview of tech trends.

In the 11th annual Tech Trends Report, Webb and her team have identified 225 emerging tech trends, 20 weak signals across 20 industries.
Among her predictions, she declares “ICOs are the new IPOs.”

Initial Coin Offerings or cryptocurrencies are the big thing. The chairman of Uber is launching his own cryptocurrency, she said. Even Kodak is launching a cryptocurrency, she said.

Toothbrushes and toilets have built-in artificial intelligence, Webb said.

“The robots are going to come and kill us all but not before they take over all of our jobs,” Webb said.

Robots are not just able to drive cars, they are able to drive trucks, she said.

“The challenge we face in 2018 is how do we distinguish something trendy from a real trend,” Webb said.

Trends share four common characteristics, she said. The first is trends are driven by basic human needs, they are timely but tend to persist over long periods of times, trends evolve as they emerge – they are not static and tech trends have dependencies and appear at first as outliers.

Emerging tech trends are easy to dismiss at first, she said. It’s important to pay attention to trends to avoid the cycle of doom which ultimately can lead to companies going out of business.

Webb and her team look at quantitative data from all kinds of different sources and they look for pattern recognition to spot emerging trends. They also build models for possible, probable and plausible trends for the future.

In her latest report, Webb declared that the first key finding is 2018 is the beginning of the end of smartphones, Webb said.

The demise stems from new technology bubbling up from the horizon like digital assistants, natural user interfaces, faceprints and voice prints, she said. The sales of smartphones are starting to drop off year over year because people are not upgrading their phones as frequently as in the past because they are just seeing incremental benefits.

Wearable devices like smart glasses, combined with earbuds, smart wristbands and watches are where the trend is heading next, Webb said.

By the year 2021, 50 percent of people in developed nations will interact with machines using their voices, Webb said. It will replace what we do with our fingers and some of our gestures, she said.

Machine reading comprehension is a big trend combined with voice prints that are evolving to become smarter.

Passwords will go away, and biometric fingerprint scans will go away in the next decade, Webb said. And they will be replaced with Faceprints, she said. A person’s face can be turned into a 3-D rendering.

Machine learning, data mining and voice prints can also be used to generate fake videos.

Pay close attention to technological developments in China, Webb said. Face++, based in China, is a leader in facial recognition technology, she said. In China, the facial recognition technology is being used for financial transactions.

“In China, you can smile to pay,” she said.

The technology is also used to catch jaywalkers and for public shaming when photos of lawbreakers are posted to social media, Webb said.
Magic Leap is another company to watch, Webb said. The company has a lot of patents and innovative technology, Webb said.

And Artificial Intelligence is not a trend.

“AI is already here,” Webb said. “It turns out we are all using AI every single day.”

People don’t recognition AI technologies as groundbreaking technologies because they are just part of our lives, Webb said. For example, cars with anti-lock brakes, Spotify playlists, airline security systems – all of that is AI, she said.

It’s not just about terrifying smart robots and HBO’s WestWorld, Webb said.

“When it comes to AI there’s a tremendous amount of misplaced optimism and fear and partially that’s because we’ve imposed biological characteristics on the ecosystem,” Webb said. “And the thing is AI is not one of the tech trends itself in our report and it hasn’t been for some time. That’s because AI represents the next era of computing.”

The first era of computing was tabulation, the second was programmable systems, the third, which we are all in the middle of right now, is artificial intelligence, Webb said.

Webb provided a link to download the full report here.

By Laura Lorek
Publisher of Silicon Hills News

As a sophomore at the University of Texas at Austin, Mason Hunt founded a parking mobile app called ParXit designed to let people rent out their driveways to people needing parking.

ParXit officially launched in December of 2015 and gained a lot of traction in the Austin community, Hunt said.

A year ago, Hunt merged ParXit with Palo Alto-based Pied Parker, a California app working to become the Airbnb of driveway parking that was also founded in 2015.

“They are bringing Silicon Valley and Silicon Hills together,” said Barbara Kelso, an advisor to Pied Parker.

At South by Southwest, Pied Parker is making a big splash with the debut of its mobile phone app, which launches later this month. It sponsored the popular 11th Annual Entrepreneurs Lounge MeatUp 11 at Fogo de Chão along with J.P. Morgan, Atlassian, Alberta Innovates, Pillsbury, CBRE, Spry and Red Velvet Events. The MeatUp, which took place in the evenings Friday through Monday, is one of the favorite networking spots for Austin and out of town entrepreneurs, Venture Capitalists, innovators, corporate executives, and more during SXSW.

As Chief Marketing Officer for Pied Parker, Hunt saw the Entrepreneurs Lounge as the perfect opportunity to spread the word about the parking app.

“Land is an asset and so is your driveway,” Hunt said.

The Pied Parker mobile app lets landowners and others with driveways and spare parking spaces profit off their assets during events like SXSW, ACL and Texas football games, he said.

Parking at SXSW can cost as much as $80 for 24 hours to park in a dirt lot near the convention center or $100 valet parking at some hotels. And even when big events aren’t going on in Austin, affordable parking in Austin is tough to come by.

“We want to get our name out there,” said Pied Parker’s CEO and Co-Founder Gianni Maxemin. The MeatUp was the perfect opportunity to reach as many high-profile people as possible in one place during the madness of SXSW, he said.

While Pied Parker’s original mission started out as a way for people to rent out their driveways and earn extra cash, its scope has broadened, Maxemin said. Today, Pied Parker is seeking to become the one app people use to find parking anywhere, he said. The app connects people with vacant parking spaces in driveways, assigned office spots, underused parking garages and commercial spaces. The app lets people schedule parking and it has built-in artificial intelligence that can learn from user behavior to automate the parking process, he said.

“The mission of Pied Parker is to bring drivers and space owners together within a virtual marketplace to ease parking demand and promote passive revenue while reducing traffic and pollution,” Maxemin said.

Pied Parker also has 11 patents pending to protect its technology, which is a bit different than some other mobile app startups, Maxemin said. Pied Parker has five employees in Austin and is about to close on its seed round of $1 million.

By Laura Lorek
Publisher with Silicon Hills News

London Mayor Sadiq Khan spoke during the afternoon keynote at South by Southwest on Monday about the need for technological advancements to benefit everyone in society.

There’s an increasing disconnect and disillusionment across London and worldwide stemming from fear of globalization, he said.

Technology is profoundly changing people’s lives, he said.

“Technology is disrupting and shifting the way we do everything,” Khan said.

“How we deal with this transformation will be a defining challenge of the 21st century,” Khan said.

The fourth industrial revolution has created a new era where exponential change can spread across the world quickly.

Today, a handful of tech companies have amassed an enormous amount of power over how information is consumed. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have brought tremendous benefits to society, but there are growing concerns about how some of those companies are impacting our lives, Khan said.

There has already been evidence of elections and referendums being influenced, A rise in online abuse, misogyny and religious hatred. Fake news spreading misinformation. Algorithms blinkering us from different points of view and pushing people to extremists. And terrorists and far-right groups using social media to not only conspire but to radicalize and brainwash others.

“All of this is dividing and polarizing us, rather than uniting us. I know this all too well from personal experience,” Khan said.

Then Khan read half a dozen horrific hated filled Tweets calling him names and making all kinds of threats against his life that he had received as Mayor of London. He didn’t read them to portray himself as a victim or ask for sympathy. He wanted to create awareness that this is the kind of harassment some people routinely face in online platforms.

Tech companies, innovators, must take responsibilities for how their platforms are used, Khan said. He also called on politicians and policymakers to look out for the public and pass regulation when necessary.

Khan also made a big push for gender equality and has launched the #BehindEveryGreatCity campaign to highlight and support women.

By Susan Lahey
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

In a session Sunday between Evan Smith and Leo Varadkar, Prime Minister of Ireland, Smith lumped the Taoiseach with leaders like Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau: young, progressive people, moving their countries forward in a world where many leaders seem to be peddling hard backward. Varadkar, at 39, is the youngest Prime Minister of Ireland and one of the few openly gay heads of state in the world. Elected only a few years after Ireland became the first country to legalize marriage equality by popular vote, he is facing a future in which relations between Ireland and the U.S. are strained by President Trump’s proposed trade restrictions, and in which Brexit threatens to create tensions again between the Republic of Ireland, and Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom.

Varadkar is a diplomat who believes the problems can only be solved by continuing to talk. Historically the Irish Prime Minister visits the U.S. president on St. Patrick’s Day as a symbol of the relationship between the two countries. Some members of Varadkar’s parliament encouraged him not to visit Trump.

“That’s an extreme view,” said Varadkar. “Those same people would encourage me not to talk to Russia or China either…half the world.”

Smith continually pressed Varadkar to say something controversial about either Trump or British Prime Minister Theresa May, but Varadkar remained restrained, saying he liked May and they had a good relationship…until he finally said, “If it wasn’t for Brexit it would be a great relationship,” and then tipped sideways, laughing as the crowd joined him.

“Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?” Rejoined Smith.

Uniting Not Dividing

Relations between Ireland and England have been strained for hundreds of years, a period of violence known as “The Troubles” until the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 when the two parts of Ireland came together over peace accords. Varadkar noted that while the majority of Northern Irish were in favor of remaining with the EU in the Brexit vote, the fact that Northern Ireland would now no longer be part of the European Union and would thus have different rules about immigration—among other things—might reestablish a more firm border between the two parts of Ireland.

When both countries were part of the EU it eased a lot of the difficulties. But what’s worse than the actual border between them, Varadkar said, was people who are deliberately trying to drive wedges between people of different countries. “There’s no way we can accept that.” His solution is “to ensure that whatever the new relationship is it is so close that we don’t need to have a hard border….”

Asked if he would address President Trump regarding Vice President Pence’s reputed support for conversion therapy for homosexuals, he said he intended to. In Ireland, not only is marriage between gay people legal but transgender citizens can decide what gender they want listed on their state issued documents. During the election for marriage equality, he said, a large number of gay people came out to their friends and family, visiting them especially in the rural areas and “asking them, ‘Will you vote to treat me as an equal citizen in my own country?’” The referendum passed by 62 percent.

In speaking to President Trump, he said, he will point out that the U.S. has always been a world leader for individual freedom, including the LGBT movement and “It’s really tough to see a country built on individual freedom not being a world leader in that space anymore.”

Varadkar also said there would be a referendum in May legalizing abortion in Ireland, which is a constitutionally Catholic country.

This is a different issue than gay marriage, he said, because people “generally consider marriage a good thing, to be celebrated; and I don’t think anyone thinks abortion is a good thing or to be celebrated. But it’s something people need access to sometimes.”

A former doctor, Varadkar also said he hopes to overhaul Ireland’s health care system which, like that of the U.S., consumes an enormous amount of money and still leaves people trapped in crowded waiting rooms or waiting months for operations they need. One of the problems, he said, is that a lot of Irish health care still operates on paper, rather than digitally, which causes costly errors like people missing appointments. He was inspired, he said, by the preponderance of health tech at SXSW.

Varadkar, whose mother is Irish and whose father is Indian, said he was the only person in his neighborhood growing up who had a “perpetual tan and a funny name” but that his heritage taught him that there was a world outside not only Ireland and the UK but outside of Europe. It gave him a broader perspective. In Ireland, he said, 17 percent of the population was born outside of Ireland and “we’re all the better for it. “

Varadkar spoke to a packed audience. He stopped in at SXSW before a scheduled meeting with President Trump on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17.

By Laura Lorek
Publisher of Silicon Hills News

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, visited Capital Factory Sunday evening during a special South by Southwest event.

He called for a “redoubling of efforts” to achieve gender equality.

“It’s still the case in the U.S.A. and the U.K. that if you are born a girl your life chances are less than if you are born a boy,” Khan said.

“If you are a young woman entering a career in any field, your chances of reaching the pinnacle are less than a young man entering that field and that can’t be right,” Khan said.

People need to work together to fight for equality and stand up for what’s right, Khan said.

“Deeds mean more than words,” Khan said. He told people to not just “talk the talk” but “walk the walk.”

“My message to men here we’ve got to be allies in this fight for gender equality,” Khan said. “You know what, if we get gender equality we’ll all benefit. There is no downside. It’s not a zero-sum game.”

London launched a digital tech program to train young girls and those from underserved communities in London to make sure they have the skills for the jobs of tomorrow, Khan said.

“This tech revolution. This fourth industrial revolution is not something you should be scared of,” he said. “We’ve got to surf the wave.”

“This fight for gender equality is a fight that affects you whether you are from Austin, San Francisco, New York, London, Seattle, Delhi, Karachi, Singapore, Hong Kong,” Khan said. “I want to end with the words of one of my heroes and she’s a Nobel Prize winner and she was somebody who risked her life to get an education. She fled her country of origin and came to my country to receive an education, Malala Yousafzai.” …She said “How can all of us succeed if half of us are held back. And my ambition and it’s a priority of my administration for the next 36 years while I’m the Mayor is to make sure, make sure, we win the fight against gender inequality and finally get gender equality.”

The event on Sunday also featured Kerry O’Connor, Austin’s Chief Innovation Officer and a panel of female entrepreneurs from London who talked about their experiences growing their startups. London has launched the #BehindEveryGreatCity campaign to focus on promoting women entrepreneurs.

And the push to diversity has real positive economic consequences.

“Racially diverse teams outperform non-diverse teams by 35 percent, across Canada, Latin America, the UK, and the U.S.,” according to a McKinsey report. “And $12 trillion could be added to global GDP by 2025 by advancing women’s equality.”

On Monday, Khan will give a keynote speech at SXSW. He’s the first British politician to do so. In that speech, he is expected to call on cities and governments globally to do more to harness technology but also to guard against growing and significant risks. He’s expected to tell social media giants that they must take more responsibility for preventing the spread of hate speech and fake news on their platforms. He will also read some of the racist, abusive tweets that he has received since becoming Mayor.

The Mayor will also argue that ‘evolving economies must mean evolving regulation’ – and that requires political intervention when necessary.

The Mayor’s Office also showed this video for the first time spotlighting female entrepreneurs in London.

By Laura Lorek
Publisher with Silicon Hills News

At a breakfast meeting, Sunday at South by Southwest, Austin, and France launched a new website and movement designed to bring the two technology communities closer.

It’s French Tech Austin and is designed to support ties between Austin and France’s tech industry and entrepreneurs and provide opportunities for mentorship.

At the French Tech Breakfast, the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce unveiled the new site along with Christophe Daguet, head of French Tech Austin and director of strategy and innovation at Dell. He has witnessed France become more entrepreneurial with a global focus.

“With Austin winning recognition as one of the best cities, if not the best city, in the U.S. to launch a tech startup, we likewise wanted to coordinate the tremendous resources and supporters in our Austin ecosystem to help French entrepreneurs who want to expand their businesses in the U.S. and show them why Austin is a great choice to locate that U.S. office.,” Daguet said in a news release.

Daguet is also promoting France as a place for Austin entrepreneurs and companies to expand internationally.

“France has launched many programs and incentives to attract entrepreneurs,” Daguet said. “Americans and Texas companies, in particular, should take advantage of them to diversify and strengthen their business operations.”

The French Tech Breakfast was packed to capacity with standing room only. It was filled with French and U.S. entrepreneurs and their supporters.

At the breakfast, Christophe Lavigne, an Austin-based French entrepreneur who received funding from Austin Ventures and eventually sold his medical device company for $1.1 billion, spoke about his successful experience.

In addition to the website, France also has a large exhibit at the SXSW tradeshow that opened on Sunday showcasing “La French Tech.”

William Hurley, known as Whurley, is one of the best-known tech entrepreneurs in Austin.

And he is always hatching up something new every year for South by Southwest. One year, Chaotic Moon, the company he co-founded and sold to Accenture, commanded a drone to taser an intern. Three years ago, Whurley launched Honest Dollar at SXSW and won many pitch competitions. A year later, Honest Dollar sold it to Goldman Sachs.

This year, Whurley is back with a new startup, Strangeworks focused on quantum computing. He’s officially launching the startup during his SXSW Convergence Keynote address Tuesday at 2 p.m. in the Austin Convention Center Ballroom. Here’s some background on Whurley’s new startup, but stay tuned because he’s expected to make some more big announcements during his talk.

1. How did you come up with the idea for Strangeworks?

A. That’s a long story, but the short version is I’ve been watching and participating in the quantum computing community for a while now. After traveling the world for events, and speaking to a lot of potential clients, I realized that there’s not enough focus on the developers that will end up bearing the brunt of making this new technology a reality. So I wanted to build a company that would design and deliver developer tools and a systems management platform that would enable people to take advantage of this amazing technology.

2. How much money have you raised and who are your investors?

A. We raised $4 million in a seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.

3. Do you have any role with Goldman Sachs any longer or have you left the company completely?

A. I love GS, and had an amazing time working there, but yes I am full time on Strangeworks.

4. You had several successful startups and exits. Why did you want to do another startup?

A. Chaotic Moon was like a startup for fun and profit. We had an amazing time and then an amazing exit to Accenture. But it left me feeling a little hollow. Honest Dollar was my first attempt at a startup that would do some good in the world. It worked and was acquired by Goldman Sachs. But it also made me realize that if I really want to change the world it can’t be in a model where there’s a dependency on me. Strangeworks is my latest attempt to balance my entrepreneurial ambitions with my ambitions to make a positive impact on the world. With Strangeworks I’ve removed myself from the dependency slot. So instead of me being the person to change the world, I am creating tools that thousands, tens of thousands, or hopefully millions of other people who want to change the world can do so; all powered by the upcoming quantum computing revolution.

5. Who are your customers?

A. We’re not releasing the names of the PoCs we have in process, but I can tell you that we are focused on four industry verticals. Aerospace, Energy, Finance, and Pharmaceutical.

6. Who is on your team?

A. We have a small team consisting of mostly developers and a physicist who can code.

7. Why are you the ones to do this startup?

A. Because we are developers. Because we want to deliver to market tools for developers by developers. Pragmatic, realistic tools that help enable quantum computing for the masses.

8. What challenges do you face bringing your startup into the marketplace?

A. Quantum computing is still somewhat in its infancy. The technology is changing on a daily/weekly basis, so it’s unlike any other startup I have attempted.

9. How do you acquire customers?

A. We have this black bag and a rented panel van. It’s extremely effective.

10. What is the business model?

A. We sell a subscription service to our developer tools and system management platform.

11. What is your long-term vision?

A. To create a sustainable business that could grow the size of a Tivoli, or a Dell. Something that can become one of the “big” deals that came out of Austin.

By Susan Lahey
Reporter with Silicon Hills News

It started out as one of those tired debates about whether Austin—being a city where people want to live and not work 22 hours a day—could ever be another Silicon Valley. But then it got interesting.

The SXSW panel with Brent Bellm, CEO of Big Commerce, Tina Weyand, Chief Product Officer of HomeAway, and Blake Garrett, founder of Aceable, with moderator Lori Hawkins, technology reporter with the Austin American-Statesman, started out by putting Austin’s role in the national tech landscape in perspective. Panelists showed a chart reflecting that Austin is not creeping up on Silicon Valley but is, in fact, 10th in the nation in terms of startup ecosystems.

The number of startups per capita is impressive, he noted, but the dollar amount of investments and exits doesn’t even register. The largest exit of record so far, for example was Home Away with just over $500 million, whereas companies in Seattle are in the billions. Even companies in Salt Lake City, Utah are experiencing exits in the billions.

In other places, Bellm said, people build great companies that provide jobs, stability, the opportunity for people to buy homes, start families have a future. Austin companies either fail or sell at very low dollar amounts. Founders do not hang in there and grow a business for the future.

Initially, Bellm blamed the culture. At 9 a.m., he said, he would see a lot of empty desks in Austin, because people hadn’t shown up for work yet. At 5 p.m., they were empty again.

“They live their lives here, they don’t work that hard. I had to do some very heavy lifting..”

Weyand argued that when people are passionately interested in their work and feel they’re making a significant contribution, they do stay at their desks.

But Bellm also called Austin “a backwater when it comes to business development.” He pointed out that Mayor Steve Adler’s communication to Amazon, which is thinking about locating its second headquarters in Austin, lacked all the things Bellm felt it should have: An appeal to Amazon to come, a pitch about all the advantages, a list of things Austin would do if Amazon came. Instead, he said, Adler pointed out all the problems he didn’t know how to solve that he hoped Amazon would help him solve.

Austin, he said, just isn’t very grown up, and certainly not ready to take a place next to other world-class cities like San Fransisco and Boston. They might want to maintain their culture of little companies and let someone like Amazon be the “adult” company providing steady jobs.

The Turning Point

But then Hawkins turned the question to whether Austin really wanted Amazon. According to reports, the Amazon culture is the polar opposite of Austin’s in that it’s dog-eat-dog whereas Austin is collaborative and generous.

A lot of big companies like Amazon and Google build campuses that are not integrated into the city and actually do not help the local economy all that much.

Moreover, it’s because Austin people do leave work and go to museums and music shows that the city still has such a vibrant culture.

Weyand, who moved to Austin from the Bay Area, noted how great it was to be able to go to a coffee shop and not everything was talking about the same thing. In the Bay Area, the artist all fled tech-infested San Fransisco for Oakland.

The more panelists talked about it, the more they realized they didn’t really want Austin to become a third coast. And a quick show of hands among locals in the audience showed many of them weren’t too excited about Amazon.

Ultimately, Bellm said, having lived around the world he and his wife felt they were in Austin to stay. “The keep it weird ethos of the city rocks.”

Instead, Garrett said, the city needed its own clear vision for where it wanted to go and how it wants to grow and it needs to consistently service that vision.

“What is the vision that the majority of Austin wants for the city?” he asked. With so much turnover in the city, it’s crucial that the outline for the future is clear. “When I look at Steve Adler’s website, all the values he lays out, I don’t think Amazon helps us to achieve those.”

Toward the end of the session, an audience member from California stood up and expressed disappointment to learn that Austin’s tech community wasn’t that vibrant and said, “Who cares what the city wants? What does the tech community want? Who cares about all this keep it weird stuff?”

The tone changed as if he’d insulted their mothers. Each panelist rushed to contradict him and assure him that Austin is a very vibrant tech community—though none tried to explain the importance of keeping it weird or the cultural reality that if you don’t care what Austin wants, you belong in some other city. But the conclusion, if there was one, is that while Austin may complain about the lack of funding and unicorns, it’s not really interested in being a Third Coast or a Second Silicon Valley. The only thing we haven’t entirely landed on is what we do want to be when we grow up.