Non-Obvious Experiences
For the past decade, Non-Obvious Company has teamed up with SXSW to turn the festival into a family reunion for curious people. Across Featured Sessions, non-obvious gatherings and even our newly launched Non-Obvious House - SXSW is our favorite event of the year.
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Our Picks
Every year SXSW releases a community voting system called the Panel Picker where you can get an early look at proposed sessions for SXSW and vote for your favorites. This year there are over 3200 sessions proposed and voting is now open. Here’s a chart with some of our “non-obvious” favorites that we highly recommend checking out and voting for:
Sessions From Non-Obvious Friends & Family
| Vote | Session Title | Session Description | Session Speakers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anklets in the Boardroom: Rewrite the Scene | You know bias when you see it. So why do you freeze in the 3 seconds when it's happening? Because you've never practiced. This is a working lab, not a talk. | Sharanya Rao Leela - An Indian Community Theatre, Kevin Smith Picturebox Productions | |
| Are We Automating Our Assumptions? | AI is becoming universal. Perspective never will. As every organization gains access to the same technology, the real differentiator won't be who has… | Mita Mallick Doug Melville Trey Boynton Chief +2 more | |
| Beyond Charity: Creating Infrastructures of Dignity | Investing in human potential goes further when we focus not on changing people, but on changing the systems around them to support their dignity. | Megha Desai Desai Foundation Mariam Ahmed Sunshine Sachs Morgan & Lylis | |
| Brazil Creative Economy Meetup | Brazil has one of the world's most innovative creative economies - shaped by its multicultural roots, versatility and diversity. | Vanessa Mathias White Rabbit vanessa santos White Rabbit Luciana Bazanella White Rabbit | |
| Build Your AND: Designing Your Brand as a Multi-Hyphenate | Social media can fuel comparison and self-doubt, but it can also create career opportunities. | Alisha Gupta Beauty in Balance, Accenture Karan Chachlani YouTube Maitri Mangal Google | |
| Building Teams, Trust + Continuity in Founder-Led Companies | For many independent companies, founders are the business. While that model can fuel early success, sustainable growth requires building… | Heather Willems TwoLine Studios Sara Vindon DiGennaro Communications Sam DiGennaro DiGennaro Communications +2 more | |
| Building Trust in an Age of AI and High-Conflict | How do we build enough trust to shape a better future? In this hybrid session, futurist Matt Carmichael maps the gaps between the futures we want and expect—and how to close them. | Matt Carmichael What The Future Annie Hardy Split Futures Diana Wu David Service Now +1 more | |
| Coaching Real Leaders LIVE: Fix My Tough Work Relationship | Executive coaching typically happens behind closed doors. But not on the Coaching Real Leaders podcast! | Muriel Wilkins Paravis Partners / Harvard Business Review Press Amy Gallo Harvard Business Review | |
| Easy Discipline: Do Hard Work But Feel Easy | We're taught that discipline means grinding through pain. Yet top performers in sports, business, and the arts engineer hard work to feel easier, making achievement a byproduct. | Barbara Henricks Cave Henricks Communications Jia Jiang Rejection Therapy | |
| Fix My Pitch! | For the next few days, everywhere you go, people will ask, "What do you do? What's your business, project, cause, startup, film, talk, book about?"… | Sam Horn The Intrigue Agency | |
| From Foresight to Action: A Choose-Your-Own-Futures Session | Seeing the future is the easy part; deciding how to act is where it gets hard. That's the Decision Gap: not a foresight problem, a decision problem. | Joana Lenkova Futures Forward | |
| Foresight Improv: Futurists take on the topics you choose | Do you wish you could predict the future? Over the last two years at SXSW, audiences have challenged the Foresight Horsemen of the Awakening (Annie… | Matt Carmichael What the Future Ian Beacraft Signal and Cipher Alexandra Whittington Tata Consulting Services +1 more | |
| How Storytelling Can End Bias Against Immigrants | The live storytelling platform, Accent Unmuted, is testing a hypothesis: Can storytelling help end immigrant bias? | Nammy Sirur Accent Unmuted | |
| In Person: Human Infrastructure in the Age of AI | AI can write emails, summarize meetings, and even imitate empathy, but it can't build trust. | Denise Hamilton WatchHerWork | |
| Intelligence in Abundance: Building the Infinite Company | What does it really mean to build a company for an age when intelligence is no longer scarce? | Brian Solis ServiceNow Amy Scarlino Scarlino Speaker Strategies, LLC Dave Wright ServiceNow | |
| Is the Future Still a Thing? | In the 20th century the future was a place we actively daydreamed: the moon, robots, flying cars. That's fading. | Diana Wu David ServiceNow Neil Redding Redding Futures | |
| Louder, Bolder, Braver: Leadership during times of change | Uncertainty is the new normal: l reorgs, AI, flatter teams, delayed promotions. Most people respond by shrinking, putting their head down, hoping good work speaks for itself. It doesn't. | Jenny Wood Open Sail LLC Carlina Daugherty Open Sail LLC | |
| Move Fast. Stay Human | We inherit a false binary: speed sacrifices depth. But thriving organizations rebuild around intentional velocity—speed that's crafted, designed, purposeful. A peregrine falcon at 240 mph. | Diana Wu David ServiceNow | |
| Play is Not a Game: The Science of Your Best Performance | Play isn't the opposite of work. It's the key to high performance. Here's what most people don't realize: you biologically need play. And that means at work too. | Gary Ware Breakthrough Play, Jenn Whitmer Joyosity Works | |
| Prison Life: Ask Me What No One Talks About | What actually happens after the courtroom doors close? Rashmi Airan, a Columbia Law graduate and former attorney who served time in federal prison… | Rashmi Airan Rashmi Airan Speaker | |
| Product Is Dead. Meet the Node: AI’s New Org with New Roles | For decades, product governed a two-sided interface: translating market needs for engineering and shipping software to people. | Esra Kucukciftci Pricing Innovations | |
| Protecting Brand Trust in the Age of AI Answers | Cultural relevance is no longer enough. The next frontier of brand trust is whether AI understands the value a brand delivers when consumers ask what to buy and believe. | Gina Garrubbo National Public Media Stephanie Agresta Ascendancy Events +1 more | |
| Rewiring the Creator Economy for Humanity | What if the most valuable thing in a half-trillion-dollar industry isn't reach — it's the well-being of the people creating it? | Aaron Strout Reaching Higher Podcast Shira Lazar Creators 4 Mental Health | |
| Six Signals: Why Trends Are Already Too Late | Every company says it wants to innovate. Most are just reacting faster. By the time something is called a trend, the advantage is gone. | Shama Hyder Roster | |
| South Asian Collective: Media, Tech & Beyond | Join founders, investors, creators, executives, technologists, artists, and community builders for an informal meetup celebrating connection, collaboration, and new ideas. | Mohini Todkari American South Asian Network Nitin Bajaj American South Asian Network | |
| Stop Waiting for Normal: How to Monetize Volatility | Leaders are told to manage change and build resilience. But both assume disruption will end—and that we can return to normal. We can’t. | Nadya Zhexembayeva Reinvention Academy | |
| Stories Without Borders: Building Media for Global Audiences | Simi Shah (South Asian Trailblazers) and Raj Shamani (Figuring Out, India's #1 podcast) sit down together as two of the world's biggest podcast… | Simi Shah South Asian Trailblazers Raj Shamani Figuring it Out Media | |
| The Death of Depth: What Wins When Everyone Knows Everything | Nitrogen made Guinness famous: the surge, the dome, the two-minute pour. Decades later, the same technology reappeared as nitro cold brew and built a coffee category. | Lara O'Shea Strategy Latitudes | |
| The Future of Work Is Play: Meta-Mastery at the Speed of AI | Pilots have flight simulators. Surgeons train in VR. Race car drivers run virtual tracks. Not outliers—proof of how humans reach mastery. | Scott Wolfson Centaurian AI Kes Sampanthar Centaurian AI +1 more | |
| The Human Advantage | For decades, organizations built competitive advantage through access to information, expertise and scale. Today, that equation is changing. | Rishad Tobaccowala Rethinking Work Lisa Rosenberg Allison Worldwide Katie Walmsley Microsoft +1 more | |
| The Impossible Human | We're told to "do your own research." That's no longer possible. Every hour, thousands of events, scientific discoveries, political decisions… | Saul Colt Tilt.io Andrew Peek Tilt.io | |
| The Invisible Interface: From Human Intent to AI Action | AI stopped being a tool the moment it started acting on your behalf. It's becoming a personal operating layer: software that knows your context, reasons across it, and acts across your systems. | Harry Glorikian Scientia Ventures Andrea Vuturo Vuturo Group | |
| The Pressure Vaccine: The Antidote to Workplace Pressure | Burnout isn’t just an individual problem—it's the final stage of an outbreak. This eye-opening session reveals a powerful new way to understand workplace pressure as a contagion. | Sabina Nawaz Nawaz Executive Consulting Ltd. | |
| The Uncertainty University: Can AI & Poetry Teach Us Wonder? | When AI can answer anything, what happens to our need for wonder and imagination? Welcome to the Uncertainty University - a… | Lauren Ducrey Independent VANESSA MATHIAS White Rabbit | |
| Trust AI More Than My Boss | That sounds like a joke. It isn’t. The Work AI Index found that 61% of workers say AI helps them more with their day-to-day work than their own… | Erica Dhawan Cotential Rebecca Hinds Glean Kelly Monahan Beyond the Desk +1 more | |
| Warm Blooded: Turning Latina Cultural Power Into Success | You learned early to leave your culture at the door. Warm Blooded is for Latina professionals done cooling themselves down because their relational, collectivist leadership didn’t fit the mold. | Denise Cox DSC LLC | |
| We The People: Rewriting the Rules for the Future of Work | The modern workplace wasn't designed for today's workforce. It was built for a different economy, technologies, expectations, and a narrower definition of who work was designed to serve. | Emily K Graham Omnicom Omnicom Group Omnicom Aba Blankson NAACP +1 more | |
| What Separates Humans From Machines When AI Is Free? | Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing what it means to be knowledgeable, productive, and successful. | Diane Hamilton Tonerra | |
| Who Are You Afraid to Be Online? Break the Filter | The internet gives nearly everyone a platform, but fear often starts editing before we ever hit publish. | Chris Do The Futur Jule Kim Advice Actually | |
| Why No One Believes You Anymore - and How to Fix It | This session unpacks The Signal Gap: the growing space between how trustworthy you actually are and how believable you seem. | Henna Pryor Pryority Group | |
| 6¾ reasons people don’t buy (& the brain science to fix it) | When sales are down, don’t lower your prices. Or add product features. First, adjust your marketing message. Chances are it doesn’t address the 6¾ real reasons people don’t buy. | nancy harhut HBT Marketing | |
| The Workplace Works as Designed. That's the Problem. | We live in a world where application systems reject qualified people based on hidden AI scores, performance reviews reward visibility over impact, and layoffs eliminate entire… | Wesley Faulkner Work Evolution Framework |
Even More Non-Obvious Session Ideas We Love
| Vote | Session Title | Session Description | Session Speakers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Just Don’t Eat Gluten - Is Not a Celiac Care Plan | “Just don’t eat gluten” isn’t a care plan. For people with celiac disease, one crumb can trigger an autoimmune reaction… | Jignesh Shah Gastroenterology Consultants, PA Melissa Craven Unearth & Exhale Healing Therapy Collaborative +3 more | |
| 10 Years of the Transformer: Research Paper to AI Revolution | Join CNBC's Deirdre Bosa and Aidan Gomez, Transformer paper co-author and Cohere co-founder and CEO, as they reflect on 10… | Deirdre Bosa CNBC Aidan Gomez Cohere +1 more | |
| A Guide to the SXSW XR Experience | Back for the third consecutive year, three XR and SXSW veterans pull back the curtain on the SXSW XR Experience, a festival highlight since 2016. | Rodrigo Terra Arvore Gaelle Mourre Fat Red Bird and Pocket Dimension +1 more | |
| A Second Life for Everyday Plastics | What does it take to give everyday plastics a second life? Creating a circular economy requires building complex… | Roman Blahoski Republic Services Pete Keller Republic Services +1 more | |
| A Very Human Conversation About Agentic AI | Would you trust an AI agent to select and book a flight for your next trip? What about sending an email on your behalf, or talking to your doctor’s office? | Will Carter Google Kevin Frazier University of Texas School of Law +3 more | |
| AI Isn't Breaking the C-Suite. It's Exposing It. | AI was supposed to help leaders make better decisions. Instead, it is exposing how little alignment existed in the first place. | Michael Domanic Section Katy Boos Remix Communications +3 more | |
| AI Pilots to Enterprise Transformation: What Actually Scales | AI pilots are easy. Enterprise transformation is hard. In this session, Dr. Michael Schlosser, Chief Transformation Officer… | Katherine Kendrick HCA Healthcare Dr. Michael Schlosser HCA Healthcare | |
| AI Won't Get You Replaced. Ego Might. | The biggest threat AI poses isn't to your job. It's to your ego. AI is forcing us to confront something far more personal… | Greg Shove Section Katy Boos Remix Communications | |
| Archetypes of Responsible AI: Guardians, Gardeners, Griots | You have more power to shape AI’s future than you think. Meet the Responsible AI (RAI) archetypes redefining who gets to… | ruth Kikin-Gil Microsoft Lee Moreau Other Tomorrows LLC +2 more | |
| Are We Optimizing Ourselves Into Extinction? | Organizations have spent decades pursuing efficiency. Today, AI, automation, analytics, and performance systems promise to… | Dr. Mitchell Levy THiNKaha | |
| Beige Insights? The Debate Around AI-Powered Research | From synthetic respondents to agentic workflows, AI promises to cut the cost and time of consumer research, giving smaller… | Jen OBrien American Marketing Association Nichole Brackett Walters ICR Holdings Limited +3 more | |
| Beyond Accessibility: A Human-Centered Approach to Inclusion | Too often, accessibility becomes a last-minute fix rather than a founding principle, creating avoidable barriers and missed opportunities. | Heather Taylor Freelancer Sarah Taylor Suite One Productions Inc. +1 more | |
| Beyond GLP-1: How Our Relationship With Food is Changing | The rise of GLP-1 medications is doing more than changing what people eat. It’s accelerating a broader shift in how… | JP Frossard Rabobank Heather Anfang Land O'Lakes, Inc. +2 more | |
| Beyond UX: The Psychology of AI Product Design | AI has changed how we design digital products. Traditional UX focused on usability and task completion. | Manuel Garcia Garcia Ipsos Manuel Garcia-Garcia Ipsos +1 more | |
| Beyond the Frame: Women Trans and Non Binary Filmmakers | Join Film Fatales for a social networking gathering during SXSW in support of filmmakers of all marginalized genders and… | Leah Meyerhoff Film Fatales Lee Meyerhoff Film Fatales +1 more | |
| Beyond the Graph: Turning Performance Into Animation | Animation did not begin in a graph editor. It began with people watching life, acting things out, drawing over footage, and exaggerating what they saw until it felt alive. | Patrick Flaherty Microsoft | |
| Beyond the Noise: Mastering Your Brand’s Digital Footprint | Building a brand (whether a global enterprise, startup or personal biz) is more complex than ever. You must disrupt yourself before you are disrupted. | Lara Balazs Adobe Almaz M SSML +1 more | |
| Boredom by Design: The New Luxury in the Age of AI | Between AI optimization, infinite content, and hyper-productivity, opportunities for boredom are increasingly rare. | Ann Mack Bored Silly | |
| Boys & men, rural America, and lessons that can save us all | Across the US and throughout rural America, boys & men are struggling. In education, the workforce, relationships, and community. 80% of US suicides are male. | Richard Reeves American Institute for Boys & Men Dan Smith Vermont Community Foundation +1 more | |
| Brain Defenders: How to Protect Your Brain for Life | What if we've been looking in the wrong place to understand brain disease? At the center of Brain Defenders is a… | David Perlmutter Brain Defenders Kylan Gould Stanton & Company | |
| Breaking the Ice: How Hockey Is Winning Culture and Fans | There’s no denying it: hockey is having its Hollywood moment, and the world is falling hard for the sport. | Jillian Salas AEG Kate Sheets AEG Global Partnerships, AEG +3 more | |
| Building Brands Around Belonging | Nirupa Konijeti built Bazaar NYC by inviting 18 strangers into her Brooklyn apartment for a monthly supper club built on conversation, hospitality, and shared experience. | Brad Hoos The Outloud Geoup Daniela Quesada Reverve Agency +2 more | |
| Building Family Connection Across Generations | Families are reconnecting through shared discovery—finding meaningful moments together vs. competing for attention. An anime-loving dad collects Pokémon with his son. | Kate Beyer Target Cara Sylvester Target | |
| Building the Modern Sports Experience | How physical design and digital storytelling bring fans closer to the action and deeper into the story. | Kristin Glushon Nexus Studios Matt Mullen PGA TOUR +3 more | |
| Built to Breathe: Rethinking High-Performance Leadership | What if burnout isn't a personal failure but a leadership design flaw? In this reading from Built to Breathe, founder and… | Katy Boos Remix Communications Paige McPheely Base | |
| Can AI Have Taste? | Shopping is not just search. It is taste, timing, trust, and a thousand tiny signals about what people want. | Annalycia Escobar Glean Fiona Tan Wayfair +3 more | |
| Can Brands Save Live Music? | Live music is at a crossroads. Fans are paying more than ever to attend shows, artists are facing increasing pressure to… | Talia Spera Superfly Maura Gaudio Visa +2 more | |
| Can Your Brand Survive Without the Feed? | As content becomes limitless and algorithms make everything discoverable, visibility is losing its value. | Sabrina Caluori Chief Katherine Chan Duolingo +2 more | |
| Can a Machine Nail the Brief? A 24-Hour AI Music Experiment | We ran the experiment the industry keeps arguing about. Thirteen professional composers scored a real TV commercial using… | Theresa Notartomaso VML Ian Jeffreys TEMPEST Original Music & Sound +1 more | |
| Change Is an Inside Job: Driving Impact From Within | High performers and internal advocates are often the most powerful people in an organization, yet their influence is frequently overlooked. | Ed Essey Microsoft | |
| Code Red: Tech's Answer to America's Quiet Epidemic | Road crashes are the leading cause of death for Americans age 16 to 24, and they cost the country over a trillion dollars a… | Christine Rashman Pierpont Communications Dr. Anil Makam UCSF Health +3 more | |
| Coming to a Store Near You: Everyone’s Favorite Robot | The digital world is becoming increasingly physical. As robotics moves into everyday spaces – from shopping aisles to… | Deborah Weinswig Coresight Research Joel McLiney HomeBase USA +3 more | |
| Community Isn’t Claimed, It’s Earned | Every brand claims to have “community,” but few have truly earned it. Real community is built on trust, not transactions… | Liza Herlands Sixteenth Lynda Chen Waymo +1 more | |
| Creators Raised the Bar: How Brands Adapt Without Imitating | People now spend hours with personalized, entertaining, creator-driven content. That's changed the standard for brand… | Sarah Corbin Sarah Corbin Public Relations LLC Renee Rodan Galconomist Magazine +2 more | |
| Cultural Velocity: Building Meaning After the Algorithm | Algorithms didn't just change what we consume;they changed how culture forms. As subcultures become aesthetics and trends… | Stef Stamatiou Stamatiou Ally Mann Tik Tok +3 more | |
| Culture is Capital: The Future of Business Looks Like Fandom | Sports have become the blueprint for how organizations build trust, foster belonging, strengthen community, and create lasting consumer relationships. | Amina Colter Jones Edelman Jarrett Nobles Monumental Sports & Entertainment +2 more | |
| Datavis in the Age of AI: Principles For Keeping it Human | Working with AI can often feel intimidating and opaque, but thoughtful UX can change that. While the technology has changed, the core design process remains the same. | Kent Eisenhuth Waymo, Google | |
| Death of the Homepage: For Humans | At SXSW 2026, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince predicted AI bot traffic would exceed human traffic by 2027. It happened just three months later. Homepages are changing audiences. | Jonathan Roberts People Inc. Stephanie Cohen Cloudflare +2 more | |
| Designing For A UI-Less Future | AI is redefining how we interact with technology. From autonomous systems to ambient experiences, we are shifting toward a… | Erin Essex Youtube | |
| Designing Play: Theme Parks, Games, Media, and Museums Merge | Play is no longer contained to a single medium. A streaming series becomes a themed attraction; a museum exhibit borrows game mechanics; a documentary inspires a game. | Jarrett Lantz Netflix Margaret Kerrison MCK Creative LLC +1 more | |
| Don Diablo: The Future Belongs to World-Builders | Artist, DJ and producer Don Diablo has spent two decades expanding his practice beyond music, into digital art, fashion and immersive work. | Monique van Dusseldorp Independent / New Dutch Wave Don Diablo HEXAGON | |
| Don't Fake the Fandom: How Brands Earn Cultural Credibility | Music has become one of the most powerful ways for brands to connect with consumers, but fandom can't be manufactured. | Layal Brown Hustle&Co Patrick O’Keefe e.l.f. Beauty +3 more | |
| Everyone Can Build. Almost Nobody Can Build a Product. | For decades, the biggest barrier to building software was knowing how to code. Today, AI has dramatically lowered that barrier. | Addy De La Cruz Google | |
| Fans & Followers: The Athlete-Creator Crossover | Athletes are building audiences that rival established influencers. Social media has become a powerful tool in recruitment… | Sarah Starks NETWORK David Freeman KYNETIC Media Ventures +3 more | |
| Fight for Friction Versus Immediate Gratification | If you teared up over the finale of Hacks – and its homage to human creativity – you know we’re facing a serious problem in the real world. | Quinn Sheridan Lupine Creative Kate Wolff Lupine Creative +3 more | |
| Frankenstein Yourself into the perfect monster designer | How do you create the perfect designer for the Agentic era? The answer is in the movies! Join us for "What Frankenstein… | Phil Golub Infosys/Wong Doody Tiffany Barsaleau Merkle +3 more | |
| From Lab to Patient: The Science of Cellular Rejuvenation | The future of aging is being written. For decades, cellular rejuvenation belonged in science fiction. Today, it’s moving into the clinic. | Alice Park TIME Jane Grogan +6 more | |
| Frontier Firms: The end of one-size-fits-all learning | AI is changing the world of work faster than job descriptions can keep up. While organizations deploy new technology… | Kimberly Cottrell Microsoft Madlyn Jacobi New Moon Ideas for Microsoft | |
| Future of Personalized Medicine | AI, biomarkers, EHRs and real-world data are unlocking a new era of medicine. For years, patient data was the bottleneck, locked in disparate sources and fragmented systems. | Amy Abernethy Highlander Health Stephanie Agresta Ascendancy Events +3 more | |
| Hacked on a Feeling: How Virtual Tech Triggers Emotions | By 2027, spatial computing has conquered the visual. The next frontier is visceral—how do we code feelings into a digital experiential canvas? | Chris Pfaff Chris Pfaff Tech/Media LLC Alison Guidry Gates Vuori Clothing +2 more | |
| Hacking Luck in the Age of AI: New Rules for Work | According to the Pew Research Center, over half (52%) of U.S. workers are anxious about the impacts of AI in the workplace… | Stephanie Melodia Bloom Nir Eyal NirAndFar.com | |
| Half the World Bleeds: Redefining the Period Conversation | Half the world's population menstruates, yet periods remain one of the most misunderstood and stigmatized aspects of health. | Sydney Wess Sydney Wess LLC Tanika Gray Valbrun The White Dress Project +2 more | |
| Harnessing satellite data to transform energy analytics | From siting new infrastructure to tracking global commercial activity, satellite Earth observations offer high-value intelligence for global energy analytics. | Zack Colman Politico Tracey Holloway University of Wisconsin–Madison +2 more | |
| Health is Hot but Healthcare Is Not. Now What? | Health is a $6 trillion obsession. It dominates feeds, shapes identities, and has become a new status symbol. | Patrick White Leo New York Hayden Hane Publicis Creative +1 more | |
| Hope Wins the Algorithm | Dhar Mann Studios positive storytelling resonates across cultures and generations, with 3 out of 4 viewers saying the… | Shannon Hansen Metro Public Relations Dhar Mann Dhar Mann Studios +1 more | |
| How Creators Become Multi-Hyphenate Brands | Per the IAB, over 200 million people worldwide now identify as content creators, yet very few ever transcend the platform that made them famous. | Vikrant Mathur Future Today Katelyn Tumino KCSA +2 more | |
| How Women Fans and Artists Are Redefining Touring | Recent data shows us that women artists are concentrating revenue at the top of the touring market, and women fans are driving volume and premium spend. | Cristina Baxter THE·TEAM Thayer Lavielle The Collective +3 more | |
| How a 100-Year-Old Studio Innovates: Inside WBD | Technically Creative goes inside one of the most-watched companies in entertainment, Warner Bros. | Shilpa Bisaria Warner Bros Discovery Orlando Wood KoobrikLabs | |
| How to get press without a PR agency | Product launch coming up? Want to announce your $5M seed round? We got you. We're Press Club, and we help founders land press. | Kathy Wang Press Club | |
| Human vs. Machine: AI Ethics Debate - Roles Reversed | Experience a live experiment: three AI systems take on three leading AI experts in a fast-paced, school-style debate. | David Liberman Humanism & Product Science Inc. Dr. Joy Buolamwini The Algorithmic Justice League +3 more | |
| I Didn't Hire a Team. I Built One. | After 12 years as a government CIO, and an AI Strategist at Salesforce, I built an AI Adoption business without hiring anyone. | Nadia HANSEN Salesforce | |
| If We Could Talk to Whales, What Would They Tell Us? | Do whales sing lullabies to each other? Do they chatter about giving birth or avoiding ships? Do they gossip or grieve? | Nathan Lump National Geographic Katie O'Connell BECK Media and Marketing +1 more | |
| Innovation Is a Communication Problem | We assume great ideas succeed because they're better. They don't. Most innovations fail because they aren't communicated in… | Paul Osterhout Osterhout Creative | |
| Inside the Music Supervisor's Mind: Future of Sync Licensing | Sync licensing is evolving rapidly as AI, streaming, creator-led media, and shifting production models reshape how music is discovered, evaluated, and licensed. | Marcus Manderson Da Fingaz Justin Kamps Monster Sector +2 more | |
| Is Data Making Brands Dumber? | When data becomes the end-all, risk is miscalculated and curiosity dies. Marketers are drowning in dashboards, chasing clear-cut, tidy metrics vs. | Kishawna Peck Woven Erez Levin Emet Advisory / Hold the Line Substack +3 more | |
| It Takes a Village: Who Will AI Trust to Buy on Your Behalf? | AI agents can shop, negotiate, and transact on our behalf, but can you trust them? As agentic commerce moves from concept to reality, the need for trust is vital. | Ava Kendrena Westbound Communications Kathleen Peters Experian +1 more | |
| Let Me Help You Tell Your Story! | I speak to audiences about what happens when we stop editing ourselves and start leading from a place of clarity — owning… | Jason Miller Jason Waid Miller | |
| Lights.Camera.Waymo: How AVs Are Driving Modern Storytelling | From sci-fi screens to city streets, autonomous vehicles (AVs) are rapidly becoming our reality. | Andrew Freund TV Host TBC . TBC +1 more | |
| Live from SXSW, it's the Creator Economy Live podcast! | Your favorite creator economy podcast is coming to you live from Austin during SXSW! Keith Bendes and Brendan Gahan will be… | Brendan Gahan Creator Authority Keith Bendes Linqia +2 more | |
| Lived Experience Beyond the Dataset | AI can analyze data, recognize patterns, and generate ideas at remarkable speed. What it cannot do is draw from lived… | Michael Horn Omnicom Jennifer Gomes Goodby Silverstein & Partners +1 more | |
| Longevity for the Rest of Us: What Actually Works | Online, longevity looks like an elite sport: ice baths, $100 supplements, influencers promising to reverse aging. | Dr. Matt Kaeberlein Free Agent Dr. Steph Habif Google +2 more | |
| Making Coca-Cola, More Coca-Cola: Don’t Redesign, Amplify | We get it. Reinvention is exciting. It's what gets people talking. But some of the strongest branding decisions are actually… | Tosh Hall JKR Laura Lyman JKR +1 more | |
| Making the Unsexy Irresistible: How TurboTax Hacked Culture | Taxes aren't sexy — but culture doesn't care about your category. In this candid conversation, TurboTax and Digitas break… | Shaina Cooper Digitas Nazir Akil Intuit +1 more | |
| Marketing Across Generations: How CMOs Lead Differently | Marketing is increasingly being shaped by multiple generations working side-by-side, each bringing a distinct perspective on how brands grow, connect, and stay relevant. | isha kam Mark Allen & Co. Edmond Handwerker APR +2 more | |
| Marketing Can Take Personal Travel Further | People post a lot about their "journeys," and sometimes that's literal. As people explore new places, brands can take willing travelers to new destinations. | Shane Dwyer Lyft Olivia Young Noble People +3 more | |
| Marketing Reinvented: AI Transformation at Scale | For AI to scale at the enterprise level, leaders must rethink the future of work. Accenture studies have shown enterprise AI… | Kristin Burton Accenture Amy Lynn LeDuc Adobe +3 more | |
| Media Became the Sport. Meet the New Athletes. | Fans now consume more content about the game than the game itself, which means the media operation behind a league, a club… | Will Leivenberg Code and Theory Ehren Hozumi Adobe +2 more | |
| My AI Chatbot Knows Me Better Than My Therapist | Millions of people are turning to AI chatbots for emotional support, advice, and companionship. | Tricia Dutton Allison Worldwide Rebecca Ruiz Mashable +2 more | |
| One Goal, 90 Days: A No BS System | Most people don't miss their goals from lack of effort — they miss them because they start from zero when they don't have to. | Monica Para University of Chicago Aimen Moten Google | |
| RIP Rigid Brands: Why Strategy Has to Flex | Consistency used to be the whole job: same voice, same visuals, same message, everywhere, because who wears the same outfit to every party? | George Velky Powell Communications Jordan Lalor The Coca-Cola Company +1 more | |
| Real Talk: Story-Sharing™ Team Connection Workshop | Most team-culture work asks people to fill out a survey. This workshop asks them to shares a story, and shows what happens in real time. | Naomi Crellin Storycraft LAB Betsy Rives Google | |
| Rebuild the Story of Work | We measured what most leaders feel but cannot name. In a national study of 3,000+ workers, the shared story of work has come apart. 56% say they are struggling or suffering. | Jonathan Lewis McKee Wallwork James Hodgins McKee Wallwork | |
| Rethinking Fuel: SAF and the Future of Fuel Resilience | As global fuel markets face growing disruption, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) offers a real-world example of how new… | Alison Graab The Sustainable Aviation Fuel Coalition and Alpine Group Kristin Lewnes Clear Strategy Partners representing the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Coalition +2 more | |
| Rethinking Membership Experience in the Age of Agentic AI | When it comes to membership value, experience matters more than access to benefits themselves. | Madison Vance Vested Sachin Devand American Express | |
| Rooms That React: Smarter IRL Spaces, Deeper Connection | Experiential is the only channel that can’t prove itself. Brands under-optimize their physical spaces and activations, and most still rely on POS, headcount, and vibes. | James Chester WVN Renée Hampton Electrosonic, Inc. +3 more | |
| Same Model, Different World: Global Founders & Future of AI | The AI narrative is dominated by US enterprise use cases. But the real signal comes from founders building in constrained… | Ruchita Agrawal Google | |
| Say What You Mean: The New Rules of Executive Communications | The rules for leadership communications have changed, and the stakes are higher than ever. | Danielle Kristine Toussaint Purple Haus Kerrie Ann Nauseda Good Coterie | |
| Scam Me if You Can: Inside the Fight to Keep You Safe Online | Online scams are a multi-billion dollar global crisis, but you don't have to navigate the web in fear. | Jake LaRochelle Google Vivin Kurian Google +1 more | |
| Science Has the Answers. Is Anyone Listening? | Science has never been more capable or more ignored. As public trust erodes and the attention economy rewards provocation… | Penny Gordon-Larsen UNC Chapel Hill Amanda Miller Renaissance Computing Institute aka RENCI at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill +3 more | |
| Solving For Sameness | In an era of infinite content and AI models converging toward sameness, how can brands and creators break through the noise? | Adobe Corp Adobe Hannah Elsakr Adobe | |
| Startup Founders: Design the Job Only You Can Do | Nobody hands founders a job description, so most build one by default, shaped by fires, expectations, and habit. | Sara Altuna Base Katy Boos Remix Communications | |
| Stop Spreadsheet-ing Culture. Start Speaking It. | Global brands are failing because they prioritize rigid KPIs over cultural fluency. This panel exposes why data-driven… | Ericka Hatfield Onsite! Media Mina Seetharaman IDEO +3 more | |
| Stories as Power: Advocacy in the AI & Digital Age | Millions of people can't afford the mental and physical care they need. Rising costs, medical debt, and hospital closures are deepening the crisis. | Lizette Escobedo Alta Med Jasmine Burton Community Catalyst +3 more | |
| The 100-Year Life: How Brands Win in the Age of Longevity | As the 100-year life becomes more of a reality, longevity is reshaping how people define success across every stage of life. | Nadja Bellan-White M+C Saatchi North America Tamara Francois The XP Agency +3 more | |
| The AI-Enabled Manager: The Job We Cannot Automate | AI will not replace managers. But managers who only assign tasks, run meetings, and track output may be replaced by better systems. | Angela Byers Microsoft | |
| The Agentic AI Advantage: Tools, Tips & Tactics for Creators | You've heard the hype around agentic AI and AI agents, and you're curious how to choose -- and trust -- the agentic right… | Reena Jana Google Inc. | |
| The Algorithm Can't Scrub In | AI is reshaping every industry — but the operating room has always run on a set of principles no algorithm can replicate… | JaBaris Swain Johnson & Johnson | |
| The Attention Gap: Making Social Impact Stories Stick | Every day we're asked to care about something—a cause, a crisis, a brand, or a movement. Yet in a world of infinite content… | Hilary Smith NBCUniversal Phillip Haid Public Inc. +1 more | |
| The Authenticity Paradox: Scaling Creators w/o Losing Soul | Consumers trust authentic voices over polished campaigns, while brands need creators that deliver measurable business impact. | Iris Leung Ketchum Sarah Travis Target Corporation | |
| The Authority Layer: Getting Women Seen in the Age of AI | One night, a room of powerful women asked AI to show what it thought they looked like. Not one image looked like them. That wasn't a glitch. | Kristin Thomas Marble Collective Erica Rooney HER Collective | |
| The Citation Economy | A new economy of trust and visibility is emerging as AI tools become a primary way people discover information and citations are becoming a new signal of authority. | Gregory Galant Muck Rack Alex Aziz Muck Rack +2 more | |
| The Creative Reckoning: Moving Beyond AI Slop | The flood of AI-generated content or “AI slop” isn't just a quality problem. It reveals what makes creative work valuable in the first place. | Brooklyn Popp Adobe David Wadhwani Adobe +1 more | |
| The Day the Internet Went Dark | What happens when the global internet fails? This isn't about a temporary outage. It's a three-act thought experiment. | Rohit Thawani Special US | |
| The Future Is Live: How Community Is Reshaping Commerce | Live shopping is reshaping commerce as consumers seek authentic, community-driven experiences over traditional retail. | Dalen McMillon Junk Wax Vintage Leah Levin Edelman +1 more | |
| The Hidden Leadership Crisis: Menopause, Technology & Talent | Menopause remains a workplace taboo, costing Fortune 500 companies $26.6 billion annually in healthcare and lost… | Hugh Jedwill HealthEXP Gillian Goddard Park Avenue Endocrinology +2 more | |
| The Human Premium: What Becomes More Valuable Because of AI | AI is making information, automation, and efficiency abundant, but in doing so, it is making human experience increasingly scarce. | Jacqueline Nunley Salesforce | |
| The Loyalty Delusion: How Brands Lose Their Best Customers | For decades, loyalty could be earned solely through providing points programs and incentives. Not anymore. | Jacs Wyatt American Airlines Dan Yesenosky Razorfish +2 more | |
| The Micro Ambassador Effect: Customers are the New Team | People trust a friend over an ad every time. Coca-Cola proved it, a Sprite campaign built on everyday customers hit 46… | Adam Dornbusch EnTribe Inc. Nicholas Hamlett The Coca Cola Company | |
| The Modern Drinker: Lessons From a $1.7B Beverage Exit | Consumers want less sugar, more transparency, and better-for-you options, and the alcohol industry is just catching up. | Natalie Carter Trailblaze Ben Weiss Crook & Marker | |
| The New Healthspan Economy: Who Gets to Define Health? | For generations, healthcare has measured success by treating disease. Today, people are no longer waiting to become patients. | Jessica Shepherd Hers (of Hims & Hers) Anant Vinjamoori Next Generation Medicine, Hims (of Hims and Hers) +2 more | |
| The New Hollywood: Why the Future of Filmmaking Is Global | As production costs rise, AI and virtual production evolve, and countries compete through tax incentives, the future of filmmaking is becoming increasingly global. | Jamie Neale Mirak Studio Nicola Pearcey Facilities by ADF +3 more | |
| The New Human: AI, Identity, and the Future We're Building | AI is no longer just a tool. It is becoming a mirror, a collaborator, and in some cases a version of us: virtual humans… | Abran Maldonado Create Labs Ventures Raja Rajamannar Mastercard +3 more | |
| The Next Course: AI's Recipe for Better Food Systems | Artificial intelligence is transforming one of the world's oldest industries: food. From reducing supply chain… | Olivia Dunning Bracewell, LLP Celebrity Restaurant Owner TBD +3 more | |
| The Next Era of Commerce: How AI Agents Are Rewriting Retail | The customer journey used to end at your website. Now it may never start there. AI agents are browsing, comparing, and… | Jason Del Rey The Aisle Nitzan Mekel eBay +3 more | |
| The Overlooked Organ System That Determines How We Age | We've become remarkably good at extending lifespan. Yet too many people are living longer while losing their independence. | Ashley Beenen Stanton & Company Vonda Wright VMD Global Media | |
| The Serious Business of Play: Building the Future Workforce | They came to play. Now they’re building the future workforce. A diverse panel of women—including two Urban Arts game design… | Amy Patterson Urban Arts Mabel Inoa Mejía Salesforce +2 more | |
| The Silent Engines Powering AI | AI dominates today's headlines, but the companies making it possible often aren't household names. | Pradeep Shenoy Texas Instruments Sarah Fairchild Texas Instruments | |
| The Software/Services Divide Is Done. Meet the New Model | For decades, companies bought software from one place and services from another. AI just collapsed that model. The future doesn’t separate the two. It binds them. | Will Leivenberg Code and Theory Mike Treff Code and Theory +1 more | |
| The Trillion Dollar Human: Why I Bet on Domain Expertise | The most valuable asset in the global economy is not compute. Not data. Not capital. It is domain expertise — and most professionals are mispricing it catastrophically. | Valerie Workman Empower Pharmacy Valerie Capers Workman Empower Pharmacy +1 more | |
| The Unlearning Tax: Why Adapting Is So Hard | This moment in history wants us to act fast while we can see ahead less than ever before. And that’s not the only thing making everything feel hard. | Becca Anzalone Google Caleb Gatlin Google | |
| Think like a Google PM: Building Age Appropriate Experiences | Ever wondered what it takes to be a Product Manager at Google? This interactive workshop lets you hear from Google leaders… | Griffin Hunt Google Arden Haselmann Google +1 more | |
| Total Search: The Future of AI and Consumer Discovery | The playbook that defined digital discovery for the last two decades is breaking down. Consumers no longer search in one… | Tory Pachis Amica Mutual Aprajita Jain Google +3 more | |
| Trust by Design: AI for Society’s Hardest Conversations | As more people turn to AI chat for trustworthy answers, brands need to meet them there. But what happens when the topic is deeply sensitive? | Laurie Keith The Ad Council Nathalie Krup Microsoft +3 more | |
| Veterans Meet Up | Veterans are everywhere at SXSW, founding startups, creating businesses, hosting podcasts, writing books, and leading communities ... but we rarely find each other. | Jill Schulman Breakthrough Leadership Group, LLC SEUNG PAIK LEADERNOMICS | |
| Vibes Don't Ship: Why AI Evals Belong to UX Research | Every AI team measures quality three ways. Benchmarks tell you what a model can do. Annotations try to operationalize "vibes" into numbers at scale. | Giuliano Morse Meta Jess Holbrook Microsoft +1 more | |
| Video Podcasting: 10 Myths That Need to Die | Video podcasting has become one of the most talked-about shifts in audio, but the conversation is still full of bad assumptions. | Steve McLendon YouTube Joni Deutsch The Podglomerate +1 more | |
| Wanderlust: Who Decides We Can't Talk About Depression? | Who decides we can't talk about depression? The stigma around it silences and shuns talk of suicide and mental health, online and off. | Erin Relford Google | |
| We Are the Music Makers: The Science of Sticky Ads | Some ads stick around for years; others vanish by the time we scroll. The reason why may have more to do with what we hear. What’s more, not all music works the same way. | Lourdes Duque Press Kitchen Andrew Sherman BUTTER Music and Sound +3 more | |
| We Summarized the Humanity Right Out of It | Most product research biases toward the general population. Recruiting tools, affinity maps, and personas quietly erase people at the margins and the edges. | Allison Hwang Nationwide Shara Coutourier [Withheld] +2 more | |
| We're Not Optimizing for LLMs, We're Arguing With Them | Search rewarded ranking. AI rewards belief. Yet, brands are still optimizing like it’s 1999: chasing citations, treating models like a smarter search box. | Hayden Hane Publicis Creative Rob Davis MSL +1 more | |
| Weather at Work: The Public Health Risk We Can’t Ignore | Extreme weather has escalated into a continuous workforce health emergency, one that directly compromises employees, their… | Ashley Ruiz 5WPR James Belanger The Weather Company +2 more | |
| What Comedy Reveals About The Future of Marketing | Comedy isn't just having a moment, it's rewriting the rules of audience engagement. Streaming, podcasts & social media have… | Mike Anderson Trixstar Julie Mathis The Crooks Group +1 more | |
| What Gen Z & Alpha Say They Want From Brands Right Now | We surveyed 100 Gen Z/Alpha consumers (ages 14-26) on how they spend money, time, and attention in 2026 — and the findings challenge how brands think about engagement. | Abbey Slobodin The Elume Group Arturo Siguenza Waymo +2 more | |
| Who Counts? Measuring AANHPI Creative Labor | AANHPI creative work is chronically undercounted, and not just in dollars. Austin's Lunar Foundation partnered with… | PJ Raval Unraval Pictures Jeff Yang Pop Culture Collaborative +3 more | |
| Who Will Write America's Next Great Story? | For decades, stories about rural America have been told by people outside of it. As entertainment companies seek fresh… | Adam Mizel US United Inc. Mikayla Miller We. Communications +3 more | |
| Why Great Designers Aren't Getting Hired | Mid-career designers are facing a new reality: companies are hiring for experience that doesn't exist yet. | Katy Boos Remix Communications Samantha Warren Adobe | |
| Work-Life Balance Is BS: Lead at Work and at Home | Work-life balance is BS for people with big ambitions. High achievers should not have to choose between meaningful work and deeply connected families. | Kevin Rice CEOs and ABCs Podcast Jennifer Kattula Microsoft | |
| Workers Are Ready. Their Companies Aren’t. | Your best people are already using AI to do things they couldn’t a year ago. Your company probably isn’t built to capture it. | Matthew Duncan Microsoft | |
| World Travel Meetup | Best meal abroad? Favorite layover? Trip you're still not over? Come trade stories with other travelers at SXSW. | Bridget FitzGibbons Lonely Planet Deepa Lakshmin Lonely Planet | |
| Would You Trust an AI With Your Health? | AI can interpret conversations, biomarkers, images, and daily behavior at a scale no clinician can—but access to more data… | Daniel Kraft NextMed Health, Chair, XPRIZE Health Emily Passer Noom +2 more | |
| Your Brand Doesn't Belong in Culture | Brands arrive late by design. Approvals and risk tolerance mean you show up after a moment is proven, and nobody's convinced… | Tyson Ritter PlayHouse + The All-American Rejects Rob Markman Genius +2 more |
From The Archive
More than a decade of SXSW keynotes and interviews, from the first featured session to the latest.
Considering SXSW 2027?
Featured Speaker and long-time SXSW attendee Rohit Bhargava shares his best tips on how to navigate SXSW: how to register for sessions, get into the best talks, where to go for free, how to RSVP for the best parties, the can’t-miss events, how to meet celebrities and speakers, and lots more.
2026 Appearances
Every event we participated in from the full SXSW 2026 schedule, March 12 through 16 in Austin.
| Thursday, March 12 | |||
| 7:00 PM onwards | Non-Obvious Pajama Party | By Invitation Only | Private Location |
| Friday, March 13 | |||
| 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM | ASAN South Asian Advantage - Startup/Founder Panel | The Paseo | 80 Rainey St (48th Floor) |
| 2:30 PM - 3:30 PM | Rohit Bhargava: Featured Session | Hilton Austin Downtown - Salon H-K | 500 East Fourth Street |
| 3:45 PM - 4:00 PM | Book Signing - Non-Obvious Thinking | SXSW Bookstore - Hilton | 500 East Fourth Street |
| 5:30 PM - 6:30 PM | The OFFICIAL Non-Obvious 7 Minute Meetup | Innovation Clubhouse (Brazos Hall) | 204 E 4th St |
| 9:00 PM - 11:30 PM | Soundvilla South Asian Music Showcase | Flamingo Cantina | 515 E 6th St |
| Saturday, March 14 | |||
| 9:00 AM - 9:30 AM | Red Thread X House Book Signing | LINE Hotel - Level 6 | 111 E Cesar Chavez St |
| 11:30 AM - 2:30 PM | Non-Obvious VIP Lunch | By Invitation Only | Private Location |
| 2:30 PM - 3:30 PM | Monica Nassif: I Bottled My Mother: The Mrs. Meyer’s Story | Hilton Austin Downtown - Salon A | 500 East Fourth Street |
| 2:45 PM - 4:15 PM | Unboxing The Future: Live Talk Show | SPEAKEASY - German Haus | 412 Congress Ave |
| 11:00 PM onwards | Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar - Brazil Party | Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar | 421 E 6th St |
| Sunday, March 15 | |||
| 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Foresight Improv Session | Casa Minas - Brasil House | 88 Rainey St |
| 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM | Non-Obvious 7 Minute Book Giveaway | Innovation Clubhouse (Brazos Hall) | 204 E 4th St |
| 2:30 PM - 3:30 PM | Superhuman Panel - Rohit: The Taste Economy | Antone’s Nightclub | 305 E 5th St |
| 5:00 PM | Red Thread X House - 7 Minute Meetup | LINE Hotel - Level 6 | 111 E Cesar Chavez St |
| 7:00 PM onwards | South Asian Afterparty Meetup | JW Marriott - Edge Rooftop Bar | 110 E 2nd St |
| Monday, March 16 | |||
| 8:30 AM - 9:30 AM | Non-Obvious House: Non-Obvious Female Founders Meetup | LINE Hotel - Level 6 | 111 E Cesar Chavez St |
| 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM | Non-Obvious House: Non-Obvious Futurist Lunch (with TCS Consulting) | LINE Hotel - Level 6 | 111 E Cesar Chavez St |
| 2:30 PM - 3:30 PM | Non-Obvious House: Agentic AI Panel (Featuring Cognitive Kin Book Launch) | LINE Hotel - Level 6 | 111 E Cesar Chavez St |
| 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM | Non-Obvious Show Podcast Interview - Kevin Plank (Under Armour) | Hilton Salon C | 500 East Fourth Street |
| 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM | Non-Obvious House: Event Planner Happy Hour (w/ Club Ichi) | LINE Hotel - Level 6 | 111 E Cesar Chavez St |
| 9:00 PM onwards | Non-Obvious House Afterparty | LINE Hotel - Level 6 | 111 E Cesar Chavez St |
As Featured In SXSWorld Magazine
SXSW’s own magazine profiled Rohit and the story behind the Non-Obvious approach to spotting what others miss.
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Beyond The Festival
The keynotes, meetups and giveaways we run at SXSW all travel. Invite Rohit to speak at your event, then pick the experience that fits.
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