The People's CTO | SXSW Panel Voting · Stop Counting Seats. Start Designing Better Rooms.
Wed, Aug 26
|Online (SXSW Site)
Post the SXSW vote today, on one channel, with a real reason attached. Voting opened today — the window runs August 5 through 23, 2026 — so you have 18 days, and day one is when the page is newest. One post. Not a campaign.
Time & Location
Aug 26, 2026, 12:00 AM – 2:07 PM
Online (SXSW Site)
About the event
Description
In product management, talking to your users isn't optional — it's the foundation of everything that ships. Build without them and you've already failed. But somehow, we've normalized building institutions, policies, and technologies without the people they're designed to serve in the room. We call that a diversity problem. It's not. It's a user research problem. Who are you building for? If the room doesn't reflect the answer, the room has failed — not by moral standards, but by the same professional standards we already hold ourselves to.
Session Takeaways
Takeaway 1: Why "who are you building for" is the only diversity question that actually changes what gets built.
Takeaway 2: How to apply the user research standards you already hold to the rooms where decisions get made.
Takeaway 3: What a room that actually reflects its users looks like — and how to know when yours has failed.