One last look back at SXSW 2024

With SXSW in our Austin studio backyard, argo always finds a way to join in the festivities, be it a happy hour on our patio, a panel discussion onstage, or a joint appearance with a client. This year, we decided to do all three. Before we start planning for the next one, here are some highlights from one of our best SXSW conferences ever.

Help for Humans: A Film Screening and Salon
It’s not often you have a five-time Oscar winner in the house. Sir Richard Taylor, founder of Weta Workshop, joined his collaborator Rony Abovitz, founder of Magic Leap, to talk about the future of AI-assisted filmmaking.

Along with the film screening and fascinating discussion, we also had Apollo, the humanoid robot we helped design for Apptronik, in the building. Seeing our work in the real world was a surreal and exciting moment for all of us at argo. Here it is with our founder Mark Rolston.

Designing Apollo
On Monday, we sat down with Apptronik on the SXSW stage to dig into the details of its creation. Apptronik CTO Nick Paine, argo Principal Designer Pat Marsh, and moderator Carla Cook discussed the thinking and research that went into designing one of the world’s first humanoid robots.

One of our favorite quotes came from Nick: “There’s nothing like building a robot to make you appreciate the beauty of nature.” This was a great session with a lot of thoughtful questions from the audience. Full audio of their talk is available here.

On the Main Stage
The conversation that started at argo’s salon continued on Monday afternoon in a featured session with Rony, Richard, argo chief creative technologist Jared Ficklin, and VRAI Pictures Jessica Brillhart. The full session can be viewed here.

Last but not least, Jared wrapped up an epic week with his talk on the Real-time Internet, which he was thrilled to discover had a line down the hall to get in. Audio recording available here.

Thank you to everyone who came to our Help for Humans event or attended one of our panels. What were some of your favorite moments from this year’s conference?