Improving Ourselves: Ten SXSW Panels We Hope to Learn From

SXSW panels is upon us! The sessions! The keynotes! The parties! This year we have five members of our team who will be attending many of the sessions, keynotes, and networking events. This year has some truly diverse and entertaining programming that brings keynotes from Cory Booker to a panel with the cast of Veep!

How do you balance the fun of SXSW Panels programming with also finding sessions to teach valuable skills to help your business?

Challenge accepted! We asked each member of our team attending SXSW to come up with two sessions they are excited about that would also be related to what they do here at Rocksauce Studios. The list they came up with is so spectacular; we have decided to share it!

Improving Ourselves: Ten SXSW Panels Picks 

Michael Manning, Chief Relationship Officer

Leading with Love: Future of Emotional Leadership

As a millennial and an executive I know first hand the issues of retaining team members of my generation. One of Rocksauce’ core values is passion which makes me very excited to learn how to coach my employees, fight alongside, and be emotionally present for them. It’s a goal of mine to help keep my team happy at work!

5 Wicked Lies Standing Between You and Diverse Teams

When you run a successful company you are always thinking of growth. I’m looking forward to the SXSW panels discussion explaining the benefits of seeking individuals with cognitive diversity and breaking free of homogeneity.

Jason Bender, Director of Development

DevOps – A Change to Cultures, not Titles

Organizational change is bound to happen. I’m hoping to have some great takeaways from Jason Valentino’s panel that will to help facilitate those changes, go beyond the buzz words, and help us optimize our operations.

Zero Day Software Vulnerabilities: Deal With It

Software bugs; As much as we try to prevent them there is always a bug somewhere. This session should provide some interesting tips how to manage bugs and discover vulnerabilities during an initial software launch.

Ashley Landavazo, Operations Manager

Creating Space for Making in the Workplace

We are always looking to find inspiration for improving our company culture. Nike, Pinterest, and IBM have created areas for “physical making” that has changed their respective workplaces. I hope to learn how to scale this for Rocksauce to help our team unleash some of their creativity.

How to Think Like a Dinosaur Scientist

Sometimes our jobs aren’t the things we’re most interested in. If there is a trick for getting excited about doing unexciting, necessary tasks like Excel, I want to know about it! Maybe thinking like a scientist will turn me into a spreadsheet expert! (Plus I have a soft spot for everything dinosaur!)

Aaron Tribou, Senior Software Engineer

 A New Kind of Programming: For Humans and AIs

This is a paramount topic as AI will change everything, even the way I program. It is time to start preparing for my new role now to get ahead of the curve.

SXSW Panels: Building Offline-First Progressive Web Apps

Native features for the web is accelerating. Could we, or perhaps, should we replicate native apps on the web? I’m hoping to get some answers to those questions and learn more about how poor network connectivity is ruining the user experience.

Sweet John Muehlbauer, Special Projects & Marketing

Brand Building Through Live Video

Live video is the big trend in social media for brands right now, and it has been one of my focuses of recent at Rocksauce. The opportunity to learn from key players using live video about their successes and challenges is something I am looking forward to discovering.

Facebook and Instagram: A Tale of Two Feeds

Two major social media channels for advertisers are Facebook and Instagram. This session should provide strategies that I can use better understand the strengths of each platform and improve how we spend our advertising budget accordingly.

We can’t wait to bring back what we learn to share with our entire team. If you’re attending one of these sessions, please come up and say hello. See you at SXSW 2017!

SXSW Panels Extra Credit

This year Rocksauce Studios is also speaking at a couple of SXSW official sessions. Is it your first time to SXSW panels? Sweet John’s First Time to SXSW Meet Up is a perfect session to get great insider tips on how to make your first year your best as well as making new connections with other first timers.

If you’re in need of some development advice Jason Bender, Director of Development at Rocksauce, is an official SXSW Mentor. Have questions on SCRUM, deploying iOS applications or Objective-C? Sign up for Jason’s mentorship here.