“What if you could use defiance to create magic.”
-Chris Barton
This is how Chris Barton framed the story of Shazam at Summerfest TechAI last week. A little defiance, a lot of persistence, and “suddenly” 2 billion downloads and a product that literally became a verb.
As we head into the final weekend of Summerfest, the world’s largest music festival in my hometown of Milwaukee, I come back to how far Summerfest TechAI has come. The energy at the venues this year, the collaboration, the ideas flying around, the way Summerfest TechAI now is truly woven into Summerfest itself - it’s become a signature event. It was really cool to see.
Keynotes can be tricky for conferences - the costs, timing and integration. But, this worked well. Meeting the founder of Shazam and hearing his keynote was a perfect way to close it out and connect the tech side with the music side.
It’s exciting to see what’s possible when a festival, a city, and a tech community all decide to go bigger together. Always go big! Always go together!
