UW-Platteville students attend SXSW festival and conference

Nine University of Wisconsin-Platteville business students in the Entrepreneurship Field Experience class had the opportunity to attend the South by Southwest Conference and Festival last month in Austin, Texas. SXSW is one of the world's most influential conferences for digital creatives and entrepreneurs to discover innovations, imagine new opportunities and network with other professionals while celebrating the confluence of tech, film, music, culture and more. It offered students opportunities to hear firsthand from and network with industry professionals and entrepreneurs.

In addition to attending conference sessions and the expo hall, students also visited corporate offices and co-working spaces and had meetings with various startup CEOs and business leaders, all of whom were people Maia Donohue, director of the IDEA Hub, worked with during his time in Austin.

"The connections Maia put together for us were very beneficial and more personal which was great," said Isabel Steiner, a senior business management major minoring in entrepreneurship and innovation from East Dubuque, Illinois.

Dr. Marcia Harr Bailey, associate professor of business and entrepreneurship at UW-Platteville, said that she hopes that attending SXSW helps students understand the entrepreneurship mindset so that they can see themselves as entrepreneurs in the future. Harr Bailey said this could mean working for a startup company or being innovative and entrepreneurial within a corporate setting - referred to as "intrapreneurial."

The conference covered a variety of contemporary topics, including AI, cybersecurity, mental health, psychedelics and sports. While the group attended a number of sessions together, students were also given the freedom to choose topics that they were interested in.

"A takeaway from my experience at SXSW was the different perspectives and ideas showcased at the conferences," said Warren Adam, a junior majoring in business management with an entrepreneurship minor from Fennimore, Wisconsin. "It was fun to see all the networking and collaborating people were making to grow their ideas [in order] to turn them into reality."

Several sessions included celebrities. Jewelry entrepreneur Kendra Scott had a powerful message about connecting with customers before transaction.

"I am very happy that I went [to SXSW], because it was a great learning experience. We attended sessions and had conversations with influential people," said Steiner. "One of the most beneficial takeaways for me was the session 'How to Differentiate Yourself as an Entrepreneur' with Kendra Scott. She talked about hustling, making connections before transactions and that the customer is always an entrepreneur's boss."

Steiner and Harr Bailey even had the opportunity to attend a Kendra Scott event to see what that connection before transaction actually looks like firsthand.

Harr Bailey said that the students really enjoyed the student pitch competition, which was a competition among students that were fairly far along in their startups and looking for investments.

"For them to see these more developed ideas that were very innovative was really interesting for them," said Harr Bailey. "All of the topics for those student pitches were really big world problems. They were addressing a problem that was worth solving."

Harr Bailey thought it was good for students to see the quality of the student pitches and how many people were supporting them through the different advisory boards. She said the topics were highly technical, involving wound care, the transportation industry and a mobile app for skin cancer detection. The winner was a firebot, a robot that helps firemen.

"I wanted [the students] to broaden their vision for what their future could be, and that was definitely accomplished," said Harr Bailey. "There was definitely a mindset shift in that time for many of the students and it was really neat to see that."

Students will be sharing presentations on what they learned at SXSW in an event, Seven Days in Austin at SXSW, on Tuesday, April 30 from 4-5 p.m. at the IDEA Hub, 125 W Main Street in Platteville.

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