Google’s secret projects, gender bias at SXSW fest
AUSTIN: Music flooded into the streets around Austin’s convention center as South by Southwest’s music festival kicked off and the interactive portion wrapped up. The head of Google’s (X) division talked about testing driverless cars and delivery drones, gender bias in tech was a hot topic and event-goers checked out the latest products and companies on the trade show floor. Here are some highlights as South by Southwest Interactive draws to a close.
Google X
Some of Google’s most secretive projects like Google Glass and driverless cars have come out of its five-year-old (X) division, so attendees flooded in Tuesday to hear Astro Teller, head of the division, talk about how the most ambitious projects require a lot of failure before succeeding. Testing products in the real world is key, he said. The company drives thousands of miles on city streets every day to test how its driverless cars function in every imaginable situation. “Nothing beats going out into the real world and seeing if what a simulator says will work is actually possible,” he said. Working on creating unmanned delivery drones, Teller’s team came up with a type of vehicle that sits upright and launches vertically, but there were some problems with it (Teller didn’t say exactly what). Google co-founder Sergey Brin gave the team five months to be able to make deliveries by drone. They did it successfully in Queensland, Australia, but decided to go in a different direction with the drone project. Still, having the deadline helped the process advance, he said, and predicted there will be news about the drones later this year.
Teller also discussed Google’s most high-profile failure, Google Glass, the wearable device which Google shuttered in January after it received a tepid response from users. The problem with Glass wasn’t the device itself but the way they presented it to the public, he said. “We encouraged too much attention for the program,” he said. “We wanted to say to the world this is an early prototype that we think is really exciting. But we also did things that encouraged people to think of this as a finished product.”
Gender bias in tech
The lack of gender diversity in tech received a jolt of attention after a talk on Monday between Aspen Institute CEO Walter Isaacson, US Chief Technology Officer (and former Googler) Megan Smith and Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt. The subject of the talk was “How Innovation Happens” but topics ranged from immigration policy, getting top tech talent to work in the government, and connectivity deserts, or areas where it’s hard for people to get online. Schmidt talked over Smith several times. During the Q&A conducted via Twitter, a listener pointed out how often Schmidt had interrupted Smith - and the audience applauded. The panel had earlier discussed Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron’s daughter, who wrote the firstever computer algorithm but isn’t well known as one of the founders of technology. (Her story is described in Isaacson’s book “The Innovators”). Smith said it’s crucial to make women aware of women’s role in developing technology. “Diversity makes better products,” said Smith. “It’s debilitating to not know technical women have been part of history from the beginning.”
Tech down south
The two 24-year old founders of Yik Yak, a messaging app wildly popular with college students, are proud to be based in Atlanta. Tyler Droll and Brooks Buffington told an audience on Monday that they have no plans to leave for more wellknown tech hubs like Silicon Valley or New York.
“We’re hometown heroes, we love Atlanta, that’s where our families are from,” Droll said. There’s plenty of tech talent there too, added Buffington. “Not every single engineer comes from California, a lot of them are from the East Coast,” Buffington said. Billionaire investor Steve Case, co-founder of AOL, wants to support tech companies in smaller cities too. On Monday Case said he’ll lead a bus tour across cities including Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina and Atlanta dubbed “The Rise of the Rest” and hold pitch competitions for tech companies. He plans to invest $500,000 in the winners. —AP