Five days at SXSW were a powerful inspiration for choosing the topic of this article. With so much happening in such a short time, so many intelligent people at the convention center sessions, in the corridors, at happy hours, and parties, attending the festival was almost an overdose of insights and provocations.

As expected, artificial intelligences, their pains and pleasures were a recurring theme both on and off the stages. Amy Webb stokes the fire by adding two other technologies that together form what she calls a “supercycle” — interconnected wearable systems and biotechnology. The impact of this alignment of disruptive innovations will transform our lives exponentially.

Up to this point, no big surprises. The real novelty for me, during those days I spent there with my partner Pedro Medicis, was “social intelligence.” The kind we’ve always used, that brought us to this point, and that sets us apart from other species. A type of connection quite different from what happens virtually, involving eye contact, proximity, the unpredictable, hugs, and an abstract energy that’s hard to define. The kind we developed back in the days around campfires, in circles of ancestral drums, where through music, stories, and shared experiences, we created culture and opened spaces to solve challenges in our journey.

In my opinion, the best part of the festival were the exchanges that happened with the real power of the encounter. It sounds funny, but one of the highlights were the long queues for the talks, where we bumped into friends, clients, or simply started talking to some brilliant stranger from the other side of the world.

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Here the exchanges are rich with viewpoints on content mixing, ideas emerging reinforcing relationships that already existed or opening space for new ones. Someone told me they should eliminate the queues using RFIDs on cellphones, and I said “noooo!” The breathing space between content and the special exchanges more than justify this almost prehistoric structure. I also highlight the staff with very analog flags signaling the “end of the line.”

The happy hours, parties, and even the famous Pete’s were also stages for a lot of cool connections. The mix of special people with their guard down, interested in the exchanges, and still with a bit, or a lot, of drink — also always present in ancestral rituals — created the perfect environment for ideas to flow. There were many. From a TV series in a chat with Edu Lyra and KondZilla, to an ambitious idea that matured in a conversation with Wal Flor, Raul Santa Helena, and Renato Haramura, to make use of the collective creative force that the festival gathers to help solve the main challenges we have ahead.

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I even returned with the business card of the CEO of SXSW, Hugh Forrest, who seemed to have enjoyed the possibility and wants to receive it structured by email.

Still on social intelligence, I left with a feeling that often, incredible content, shared by the greatest authorities on the topics, became unattractive, generating yawns in the audience, exactly because of the lack of expressive ingredients that transcend our intellectuality. We cannot disregard the form. As Marshal McLuhan defends, the medium is the message. The way we transmit information shapes our understanding. When a panel is set up with four experts on some incredible topic, but they invested little in the way of sharing their experiences, and moreover, with a charisma-less moderator, it is a great waste of energy. The meeting between those accumulated intelligences on the stage and the audience eager for knowledge does not occur in its fullness.

As Marshal McLuhan argues, the medium is the message. The way we transmit information shapes our understanding. When a panel is assembled with four experts on an incredible topic but who have invested little in the way of sharing their experiences, and moreover, with a charisma-less moderator, it’s a great waste of energy. The meeting between those accumulated intelligences on stage and an audience hungry for knowledge does not fully happen.

The counterpoint was the participation of Kdu dos Anjos from the NGO Lá da Favelinha, who at the end of his presentation at the São Paulo house stood up and recited a rhythmic and powerful poetry that encapsulated in prose everything discussed that morning of “Favela Day,” incidentally one of the festival’s best experiences.

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There, form was part of the content. Dressed entirely in embroidered flowers, he moved the audience to tears and a standing ovation. The message was clear. A compelling message about the reality of the communities, their dreams and ambitions, going straight to our heads, but passing through the heart.

At Tátil, we call it Design Feeling — the technology to ensure emotional connections between content and audiences, always through poetic and aesthetic dimensions. I believe there’s a huge space for Brazil, which had the largest delegation in the audience but was scarcely present on the stages.

We are a people too good at engaging through emotion. We can deliver our messages to the world by mixing our erudition with our unique flair. A tip for everyone who feels the call to apply their content next year. Registration starts in June.

To conclude, it’s worth mentioning the beginning, specifically the festival’s opening lecture where NASA scientist Lori Glaze shared the stage with American poet Ada Limón. A poem by Ada will be engraved on a plaque on the spacecraft that will reach Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons. NASA believes there could be a vast amount of liquid water with organic material and energy there, and perhaps, life. In their conversation, the invitation was precisely to open up our vision of how the future will emerge, considering the balance between the technology that is leading us to explore the universe and the technology that makes us human. Our senses, our ability to imagine, to invent the abstract, to create art and poetry. The head and the heart in harmony as we continue on our evolutionary journey.

Here, Ada Limón’s poem:

Arching under the night sky filled with expansive blackness, we point to the planets we know, we pin quick wishes on stars.

From earth, we read the sky as if it were an infallible book of the universe, seasoned and apparent.

Yet, there are mysteries beneath our sky: the whale’s song, the songbird singing its call on the branch of a tree shaken by the wind.

We are creatures of constant wonder, curious about beauty, about leaves and flowers, about pain and pleasure, about sun and shadow.

And it is not the darkness that unites us, nor the cold distance of space, but the offering of water, every drop of rain, every stream, every pulse, every vein.

Oh second moon, we too are made of water, of vast and inviting seas.

We too are made of wonders, of grand and common loves, of small invisible worlds, of a need to cry out in the darkness.

Ada Limon