Beyond the Frontier

We’d realized that we didn’t have a moderator, and for the benefit of the audience perhaps we ought to quickly scaffold a conversational life raft to cling to, before being thrown in the deep end with heavy microphones. Try as we might, with the scant time we had our plans weren’t quite cohering. And yet we were laughing together. In fact our little group was almost shaping into a band of merry rebels. I may have even compared our assembly just outside the garage-like presentation area to that of misfit teens smoking in the high school parking lot. We didn’t know exactly what we were going to say, but the vibe was good—and that was enormously helpful to me as I am secretly anxious over speaking in front of people. (This is despite often presenting lectures and participating on panels; a glutton for that particular discomfort, I suppose.)

Away we go

Before I knew it, we were seated in front of the audience; a dark slide projected onto the screen behind us with our names and corresponding organizations. In some ways, Amy became our de facto moderator by shaping the first questions and giving gentle (and wise) steering to the conversation. Sam politely downplayed his influence at Harvard, and yet the details of his responses betrayed his stature as a heavy hitter. Tiya, our true star, was unflappable in her focus on actively combating climate change through her startup It’s Electric.

For my own part, I recently co-founded the Advanced Projects Group, and so far our work (and client list) has been mostly confidential. (It’s not unusual for project work to be confidential, but we’ve found that by also limiting any mention of our clients, we’re able to speak more freely on panels such as this one without concern for reputations transferring influence one way or the other.) This inability to speak to what we’re up to seems to captivate folks in a particular way. Amy made a tangential comment about me being dressed in all black—and that I “arrived here in a black helicopter” as well. (This made all of us laugh.) Our panel was off to a good start.

My two questions

As we all rattled on, I did begin to notice the audience slipping away. I’m empathetic to what it feels like to be in those seats, rapidly losing interest and trying not to yawn visibly. I wanted to quickly inject some emotional weight into the discourse; to pluck at a thread that had started to come up in our quick prep talk before taking the stage. My fellow panelists were interesting people, and I suspected that peeling off a layer of professional veneer could help illuminate that for our listeners. I wanted our audience to lean in. So I grabbed the microphone:

Can I pose a psychological question to the panel? It’s a two-parter: When did you realize that you didn’t fit in? [Long pause.] And when did you realize that was a feature, not a bug?

And to further reel our listeners back in, I turned to the blur of seated folks and asked “Do those questions resonate with anyone else here?” Thankfully, I garnered a few nods of affirmation.

My fellow panelists gave thoughtful, off the cuff answers—often dove-tailing into how they arrived in their current roles. I began to forget that I was on stage with them; began to feel more like an audience member hanging on their words and enjoying the conversational journey between them. I’d forgotten about the non-zero probability that someone might pose my own questions back at me. Had I given this any thought, I would have been absolutely terrified.

That time I hacked SXSW

Eventually an audience member—and I believe it was Ashley Roberts of Herb—did hold me to account on this. I honestly had no direct answer, and a sudden rising panic prevented me from reaching for a properly relevant one; to instead grab any roughly adjacent anecdote. I reached for something that might play into the notion of “not fitting in.” Something about transposing that loneliness and frustration into some kind of action that extended beyond what might be considered “normal.” (And if it was humorous in its absurdity, all the better.)

I launched into a brief recounting of the time I hacked SXSW’s attendee registration form. Back in 2019 I was slated to speak on a SX panel about virtual reality. Speaker, attendee… Everyone has to register for admission through the same web form. And that form has a multitude of un-skippable, required fields. As I filled out my own registration form I became terribly frustrated by their required, yet severely limited fields for things like job title, industry category, and area of expertise. None of the answer options in the form’s spectacularly unimaginative dropdown list of terms seemed to fit my particular circumstances or identity.

Rather than yield to the steamroller of standardization, I took inspiration from the 1980s classic film WarGames and rewired the dropdown lists to include new options, such as “Global Thermonuclear War”, and so on. I coaxed the registration server to accept my custom entries and eventually these appeared in the official SXSW event app used by all attendees—much to my delight.

Sharing this dark-humored, but light-hearted and harmless prank seemed to elicit a few chuckles. It’s a concise tale of how frustrating it is to be boxed into category labels that feel demeaning and limiting—and you can read my original writeup here. The addendum that I sadly didn’t think to deliver in the moment is this: If my snarky story of rebelling against a dropdown list of job titles that didn’t reflect my identity gave you any ounce of entertainment, spare a thought for non-binary, transgender, or otherwise marginalized folks whose identities are routinely diced up, misrepresented, or even intentionally erased. My story is silly. Their stories carry actual weight.

That shirt rip

At some point during our panel I had mentioned quantum computing. I can’t help it. I think quantum physics, and harnessing quantum properties for computation, is really cool. (It just is.) Near the end of our segment, an audience member—possibly Toni Thai Sterrett, founder of Bad Grrls Creative Club—asked me “why do we all need to learn about quantum?” After reflecting on this for a moment, I responded with “I don’t think everyone needs to learn about quantum… Quantum computing is just my own personal obsession. But I do think some folks need to learn more ... geography.” And with that I ripped open my black snap-button outer layer to reveal a blue t-shirt with white “Gulf of MEXICO” lettering. This ridiculous surprise was reasonably received.

Gulf of context

For those unaware, this “Gulf of MEXICO” slogan is a reference to (and toothless rebuke of) President Trump’s imperialist attempt at renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. On a certain level I don’t much care what we call this body of water. Just about every name on a modern map is a moniker conjured by conquerers and colonizers, and there’s no correct way to navigate around that. But this particular renaming was done with contemporary racist malice; a dog whistle to Trump’s base here and now in 2025. For more of my thoughts on Republican racism, see my blog post titled “Fearing the Future.”

Yes, I planned it

After the brief laughter died down, I think it was Dr. Eric Solomon who asked “How long were you planning that?” Not knowing how to respond, I just went with the nonsensical: “My entire life.” The truth is I had tried this schtick one time previously, during a recent video presentation of my design work. While that did involve a similar reveal, it was a slow-motion one that lacked the punch of snap buttons unclasping in rapid succession. (When I present work or participate in a panel, I worry about delivering for the audience. When there are eyes on me, I ought to have a message or at least a laugh handy. A platform of attention ought to be used for something.)

This particular something was inspired by Kim Gordon’s performance on Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney earlier this year, during which she wore a long-sleeve white shirt with red “GULF OF MEXICO” lettering. I’d wanted my own shirt to more closely resemble the geographic map motif of the slides I had created, so I chose a blank blue shirt and ironed on the white letters myself. (Kerning iron-on letters is a difficult task, I assure you.) My first use of the shirt was a dud as far as I could tell. But this second effort was more rewarding, and I am happily retiring this twice-used amusement.

Had I planned to tie the phrase “learn geography” to my shirt rip and reveal? Not at all. As I began to answer that question about “learning quantum”, I realized our panel segment must be reaching its allotted time, that I had the mic and therefore the floor, and it seemed like a now-or-never opportunity. So I grabbed it. Simple as that.

Thank you, BTF

A big thank you to the “Beyond the Frontier” organizers Armando Matijevich (SplitX), Dan Burgar (Frontier Collective), and their respective teams for making this event possible. (And for inviting me to speak at it.) Thanks also to my lovely fellow panelists, Amy Peck, Sam Hunter Magee and Tiya Gordon. I met a lot of intriguing folks and hopefully put a smile on some faces.