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

As expected, artificial intelligence, its pains and delights, was the recurring theme both on and off the stages. Amy Webb adds fuel to the fire by including 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 exponentially transform our lives.

So far, no great surprise. The real novelty, for me, during the days I spent there with my partner Pedro Medicis, was "social intelligence." The kind we've always used, the kind that brought us this far and that differentiates us from other species. A capacity for connection quite different from what happens virtually, which has to do with eye contact, with proximity and the unpredictable, with hugs and an abstract energy difficult to define. The kind we developed long ago around campfires, in ancestral drum circles, where through music, stories, and shared experiences, we created culture and opened up space to solve the challenges of our journey.

In my opinion, the best part of the festival was the exchanges that took place with the real power of encounter. It sounds like a joke, but one of the highlights was the long lines for the lectures. where we would bump into friends, clients, or simply start chatting with a brilliant stranger who came from the other side of the world.

Credit: Reproduction/Instagram
Here, the exchanges are rich, with points of view on content mixing, ideas emerging, reinforcing existing relationships or opening space for new ones. Someone told me they should eliminate queues by using RFID tags on cell phones, and I said "noooo"! The breathing time between content and the special exchanges more than justify this almost prehistoric structure. I also highlight the employees with super analog flags signaling the "end of the line".

The happy hours and parties, and even the famous Pete's, were also the stage for many cool connections. The mix of special people with their guard down, interested in the exchanges and with a little, or a lot, of alcohol, also always present in ancestral rituals, created the perfect environment for ideas to flow. There were many. From a TV series to a chat with Edu Lyra and KondZilla, ...even 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 brings together to help solve the main challenges we face.

Hugh Forrest (Credit: SXSW)
I even came back with the business card of the CEO of SXSW, Hugh Forrest, who seemed to like the possibility and wants to receive it structured by email.

Still on the subject of social intelligence, I left with the feeling that many times, incredible content, shared by the greatest authorities on the topics, was unattractive, generating yawns in the audience, precisely because of the lack of expressive ingredients that transcend our intellect. The form cannot be disregarded. As Marshall McLuhan argues, the medium is the message. The way we transmit information shapes our understanding. When a panel is set up with four experts on an incredible subject, but who have invested little in how they share their experiences and, on top of that, with a moderator lacking charisma, it's a great waste. of energy. The encounter between those accumulated intelligences on stage and the audience eager for knowledge does not happen in its fullness.

The counterpoint was the participation of Kdu dos Anjos, from the NGO Lá da Favelinha, who at the end of his presentation at Casa São Paulo stood up and recited a rhythmic and powerful poem that translated into prose everything that was discussed that morning of "Favela Day," incidentally one of the best experiences of the festival.

Casa São Paulo at SXSW (Credit: São Paulo State Secretariat of Culture)
There, form was part of the content. He, all dressed in embroidered flowers, moved the audience and made them applaud standing. The message was given. A powerful 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 Design Feeling the technology of ensuring emotional connections between content and audiences, always passing through poetic and aesthetic dimensions. I even think there is a huge space for Brazil, which had The largest delegation in the audience, yet the least present on stage.

We are a people too skilled at engaging through emotion. We can deliver our messages to the world by blending our erudition with our charm. Here's a tip for everyone who feels the calling: apply your content next year. Registration begins in June.

To conclude, it's worth mentioning the beginning, more precisely 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 arrive at Europa, one of Jupiter's moons. NASA believes that there may be a huge amount of liquid water with organic material and energy there, and perhaps even life. In their conversation, the invitation was precisely for us to open up space in 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 capacity to imagine, to invent the abstract, to create art and poetry. The mind. ...and our hearts in tune as we continue on our evolutionary journey.

Here is a poem by Ada Limón:

Arching beneath the night sky filled with black expansiveness, we point to the planets we know, we cast swift wishes upon stars.

From Earth, we read the sky as if it were an infallible book of the universe, experienced and evident.

Yet, mysteries lie beneath our sky: the whale's song, the songbird singing its call on a tree branch 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 darkness that unites us, nor the cold distance of space, but the offering of water, each drop of rain, each stream, each pulse, each 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, From a need to cry out in the darkness.

Ada Limon