2022 SXSW Conference & Festival: Check some insights!
Here, you will find insights about the no-code approach, how to be resilient, and how to measure collective impact. I joined three panels of South by Southwest in person to show you how ateliware is already following the path of tomorrow.
Being part of an epic reunion of creatives from around the world, eager to share new ideas and get moving on solutions?
I was in Austin/TX to join enlightening and inspiring sessions, film screenings, music showcases, exhibitions, tacos, networking, art installations, competitions, awards, and beyond.
In this post, you will find insights I got from some amazing meetings about how one is already understanding cutting-edge transformations. At ateliware we do not wait to change for the better. Every lesson we have learned will be extended to you, your digital products, and your company.
More than a partner who understands technology, ateliware helps transform and streamline businesses to foster innovation and unlock growth. Keep it in mind!
No code, no worries
The future of no-code tech
“Think of the progression. Code is code. The vast majority of software is built with code. Low code is an approach to coding, where you try to abstract parts of the things that you can automate into something like an interface, but there is still a lot of code. No code is the approach that takes one step further and tries to do pretty much everything in a completely visual or declarative way, which means that the users or the customers that can use something like that are a lot closer to everyone”, Vlad Magdalin, Co-founder and CEO at Webflow, explained. He also said no code’s power comes from the accessibility it offers, since “you do not need to reinvent the wheel”.
According to Wade Foster, Co-founder and CEO at Zapier, a company that offers an automation tool based on it, no code benefit all sorts of industries and all sorts of backgrounds. “It is definitely becoming super popular. You can build your business on the back of tools like these. The point of no code is that you do not code if you do not have to”, he added.
In his turn, Kenan Saleh shared a lesson he learned from using no coding solutions by describing his previous venture at startup challenges with Halo Cars (acquired by Lyft, one of the biggest ride-hailing companies): “All of the things on which we could have spent a lot of time we decided to do all in Zapier instead, and it allowed us to move on more quickly. It worked very well for us.”
“It is just inevitable that, as these tools mature, as you are able to do more and more, solving the problem that the tools solve by using them and then leaving the code to where visual tools or declarative tools have not caught up yet is just going to become the obvious way”, Saleh said. Gartner predicts that by 2030 the global low-code/no-code market is expected to produce $187 billion in revenue, and it will account for more than 65% of application development by 2024.
“The concept of ‘no code’ could have a parallel with something like ‘serverless’ to AWS being the absence of an ‘on-premise’ server, so it can be allocated in the cloud. In other words, ‘no-code’ logic is permeated by the facilitation and optimization of everything that is usually repeated in different software construction scenarios”, Pedrão explained. “There are layers of abstraction overlapping, from Assembly to Python, and now to no code tools (while ‘under the hood’ there is still a lot of processing based on programming code and machine language).”
“To put it simply: you do not need to build a chatbot, for example, since there are a lot of good options that are ‘just’ plug-and-play ones… Focus your software engineering efforts on what really matters”, he claimed.
Pedrão also told us how ateliware is already keeping up with these trends: “Speaking of no code and low-code approaches, ateliware co-created and accelerated a digital product in 500 Startups with them: Pipefy. It is perfect for organization, automation of work processes, and creation of smart intelligence flows, and its users do not have to write any line of code to accomplish these tasks. Besides, we were able to create low code integrations with over 500 applications.”
Resilience tech report 2022
The hazard zoography
“We are in the 4th industrial revolution. We are in this mobile altered reality where the cloud exists, super complex. And it is kind of amazing. Everything changes very quickly. It changes at an exponential speed, not a linear speed. It is completely unnatural. Abnormal, in fact, is in place. That is why design changed so much. It has changed from being physically based to organizationally based, to computationally based”, John Maeda, CTO at Everbridge, said during his speech at SXSW 2022.
According to Maeda, an experienced designer, when change happens, one may follow at least three directions: face it like a good thing, be shocked, or face it like a bad thing. He asked: when adversity comes, can you bounce back? Such a capacity is related to resilience, he emphasized, which provides us the ability to transform, fight back, not run away from issues. “You do not become resilient unless you encounter adversity”, the speaker added.
Since changes happen, learning how to manage both good and bad situations is the key to adaptation (which considers novelties and familiarities). Given today’s rising challenges in the world, being resilient is a matter of vital strength. At ateliware, we know that. We understand that innovation and digital transformation require flexibility and agility to walk hand in hand with the speed with which changes in the world occur. For this reason, we always start product creation with the discovery stage, which is where we can look at the big picture through the lens of design thinking (market, businesses, users, and technologies).
Pedrão stated: “In this sense, I can establish a direct relationship with the antifragile approach of mathematician Nassim Taleb, explaining that shaping an organization of people, in any sphere of activity, involves making them stronger with each ‘attack’. The author argues that the opposite of being fragile is not being robust or resilient, but someone who overcomes uncertainty, without being destroyed by it. Hence the direct connection between what I was hearing and seeing live at the convention center in Austin.”
“In Taleb’s view, the ideal is to be antifragile, that is, to take advantage of the chaos to evolve. In this way, uncertainty becomes desirable and necessary. In addition to evolution, an antifragile person would be immune to prediction errors and protected from adverse events. And it was precisely this kind of asynchronous connection between references that I was looking for at SXSW. After all, references are the sparks that fueled the fire of human neural reconfigurations as generators of transformative plans and projects.”
Digital Infrastructure
For collective impact
How do we more effectively build digital infrastructure and mobilize knowledge, capital, and people at the necessary scale and speed to really start addressing the challenges of our time? Interoperability, data sovereignty, decentralization, and opportunities for collaboration, cooperation, and coordination, according to the Digital Infrastructure for Collective Impact panel. Even though technologies and abilities matter, participatory approaches are essential.
“If we look across networks of organizations trying to create change in the world, there is always this tension of ‘how do we work collectively towards this collective good?’, ‘how do we do that in a way that is relevant for each individual organization and their individual community of users, stakeholders and people who are affected by their work?’”, Alicia Mwena Richins, Partnerships And Standards Lead at Common Approach to Impact Measurement, explained.
Richins said that measurement-based equivalences are not really helpful in balancing flexibility and uniformity, but construct-based equivalences are a powerful tool to discover how an impact may be measured from a general and flexible analysis of a concept.
This is why at ateliware we are motivated to become a part of our client’s business so that we can develop the ideal digital product together. We are guided by our purposes and values, and that’s why we are constantly improving our processes to always reach our best potential. The transparent way we work makes our customers great partners.
“We were in Austin to see the ‘exhibition hall’ where people with unique and interesting ideas could share their thoughts with the whole world. Sure, I wished to bring everything home to my colleagues and fellow clients. Mission accomplished. Ateliware went there, enjoyed, absorbed a lot, and now we will "connect the dots" in an unusual way, all to make it different while making a difference wherever you are and whatever you work with. Together we go. Forward!”, Pedrão finished.
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Originally published at https://ateliware.com/blog/2022-sxsw-conference-festival-ateliware
This piece was put together by Reinaldo Zaruvni.
