In my welcome remarks to kick off the 15th annual SXSW EDU Conference & Festival earlier this month, I shared a sentiment that has been a theme for our team throughout the year. For us, it all starts from a place of gratitude when it comes to building, supporting, nurturing, and growing this amazing community of leaders making strides to improve the future of learning. Every year, there are new reflections and takeaways, but the sense of inspiration we get from being with all of you is always there.
One of the things I’m most proud of in our work over the years has been solidly establishing education as the fourth vertical of SXSW alongside music, film & TV, and technology. Part of that has been education’s increasingly prominent role in society. It’s also a reflection of the foundation that education brings to the creative industries and building the next generation of creative leaders. Crossover Day, where the SXSW and SXSW EDU communities come together, has been the culmination of those efforts, with some exciting opportunities ahead for 2026 and beyond.
The day after we wrapped our event, we did a panel at SXSW to share top takeaways from SXSW EDU 2025 with the SX audience. I was honored to have a few long-time speakers, advisory board members, and friends join me in reflecting on this year’s convening – big thanks to Imani Wilson, sam seidel, and Z. Mike Wang. There was too much goodness to bake into the hour-long session and way too much to cover here, but three quick takeaways have stuck with me as emblematic of the conversations at SXSW EDU.
Curiosity > Certainty – Our opening keynote speaker, Anne-Laure Le Cunff, set the tone with her deep dive into tiny experiments. But the strong themes of embracing curiosity, opportunity, and productive failure (as Manu Kapur touched on) resonated throughout the program and signaled the many changes afoot in education.
Human Intelligence – AI continues to be top of mind for many, though everyone is thinking about it in different ways (sam shared a spectrum of AI-ngst → AI-mbivalence → AI-ffection). In conversation with Elisa Villanueva Beard, Dan Porterfield framed it this way: “In an AI-shared future, the name of the game in education will be to develop and deepen a student’s HI (human intelligence) for striving, collaborating, adapting, and connecting.”
Vibes Matter (in Learning Environments) – From creating phone-free spaces to cultivating a culture of learning that motivates students to develop their ‘second brain’ as Mike put it, the experiential piece matters. Imani shared an example from her first teaching job as an apprentice to a professor of music pedagogy where the instructor didn’t speak for the first two weeks, learning from listening to instruments, singing, and the unspoken cues.
As we work through all the unpacking and recapping of this year’s event in the weeks to come, we will soon turn our attention to planning for 2026. For those of you who have been tracking, you likely know already that the Austin Convention Center will soon begin a full rebuild that has us reimagining the experience for 2026. We look forward to sharing more details with you in the months to come.
In the meantime, please keep in touch and catch the SXSW EDU team on the road this spring and summer.
