• by Pascal Joseph , March 17, 2015

I'm always surprised when I attend this kind of festival or event in the U.S.; I have the same feeling, the same perception: Everything is possible!

Everyone talks about ideation, new ideas, new projects. It appears to me that this is an open-minded country. This “go-getter” attitude is very strong here. It's so amazing, for me, a little French guy, to discover this type of energy -- it's fantastic, and there is a feeling of hope. 

Creating a new brand like Lincoln did with BlackLabel, organizing sessions like "Wearable Drones: High-Flying Fashion," “Would You Torture A Robot?", "Just Did It: The Art of Making Crazy Ideas Happen,“ or "How Sci-Fi Drives Marketing In the Exponential Age." But also, taking a risk when you create your own company; fail, wake up and do it again, again and again! Grab the microphone during a Q&A session in front of two hundred people and explain to the speaker: "I have a problem in my company I just created, and I don’t have any solution, do you have an idea? Could you help me?"

Although the mentality is changing, the notion of risk in France (to me at least) is completely different.

But for all of these reasons, SXSW is one of the best places to storm your brain, discover a new state of mind, take a few days and think completely out of the box. New ideas, new projects, new companies could be born at SXSW. A discussion between two people, a slide in a keynote, a question from a Q&A session -- everything could be the flip of a light switch in each of the 50,000 brains here; it's magic. 

And this go-getter attitude is unique; you find it here and only here! 

Perhaps one day there can be a SXSW in France…. perhaps!