Seven Innovations That Will Make Your Day And Create Global Change Tomorrow

By Laurel Donnellan and Darryl Brown Jr. 

My first SXSW (South by Southwest) Innovation Conference was exhilarating and fascinating; most speakers were superb, even when I felt like an undergrad in a PhD-level course. This conference is part of a forty-year-old festival that started with music and now includes education, film, television, comedy, and business. I attended 9 of the 10 days, conducted 8 interviews as press for Forbes.com, and received an education I would put up against getting an MBA. The event wrapped on March 18, 2026, and as I look back, I was impressed with many innovations I learned about. Here are seven where I credit the inventors that you or your network may find useful, starting today: 

One - Invention, LilyPath; Inventor: Dan Nestle, Co-Founder and Chief Product & Intelligence Officer

I have been a member of LinkedIn for over twenty years and have over 20,000 connections, yet over the last year, I have noticed something challenging. Despite consistently providing helpful content and maintaining an up-to-date profile, my reach and engagement were dwindling. At the conference, I heard a speaker named Sandy Carter, Chief Business Officer and author, who offered both the cause of the problem and the solution in her talk entitled 7 Pattern-Matched Traits of AI Systems That Actually Work.  In June, LinkedIn quietly rolled out a major update. Your authority, perceived by AI, not humans, now outweighs activity — posting every day matters less than being recognized as a credible source based on your online footprint. 

So what does that mean to members? You need a great and complete profile that communicates your expertise and accomplishments quantitatively, accurately, and unabashedly. This is where a new platform called LilyPath comes in to help. For a reasonable fee, they will analyze your LinkedIn profile and provide specific ways to improve it, keeping you in the loop as platform algorithms change.  My report from LilyPath rated my profile a surprising 42 out of 100, and I still have a lot of work to do to become compliant with their many suggestions.  However, even minor, quick changes have made a difference in engagement, and, of course, posting thoughtful, useful content will continue to give anyone a leg up on LinkedIn. 

Two - Invention: Hypershell X Pro; Inventor: Kelvin Sun, Founder

Futurist Amy Webb, CEO of the Future Today Strategy Group and professor at NYU Stern, opened the conference with her lively, inventive and jaw dropping talk entitled 2026 Emerging Tech Trend Report that included introducing so many new ideas and inventions including the memorable Hyperchell X Pro, a wearable device called an exoskeleton for anyone who wants to move more easily, from the elderly who want to dance better to athletes who want to scale mountains with more speed. 

Three - Invention: Angel Protection; Inventors: Lewis Matthews, CEO, and Tim Meek, CTO

I met this dynamic duo at the Innovation Expo, where you can see new ideas from companies around the world. Matthews and Meek are on a noble mission to prevent mass shootings through a shockingly affordable AI/human-powered immersive surveillance system that can be installed in schools, hospitals, and other buildings at risk. Their approach is scientific, and their purpose is soulful: to prevent the senseless loss of life. In the wake of the 2022 Uvalde tragedy, data scientist and father of two, Matthews, embarked on a mission to stop school shootings before they escalate. The system plugs into existing security cameras, scanning each feed twice per second for firearms and instantly routes flagged images to human operators for verification, which slashes the 90-second response delay to under 10 seconds. The company earned a spot as a SXSW Pitch 2026 finalist, putting it a the national spotlight as it works to close the deadly gap between the first shot fired and the first call for help.

Four - Invention: Copilot Cowork; Inventors: Aparna Chennapragada, Chief Product Officer of AI Experiences, and her team at Microsoft

Aparna Chennapragada leads a global team of roughly 500 people building AI products she believes will revolutionize the way we work. Their most recent project, Copilot Cowork, announced on March 9, 2026, is a multi-agent framework that brings together leading AI models to execute complex, multi-level tasks across different platforms. Instead of simply responding to prompts, Cowork allows clients to describe a desired outcome, then grounds the work into their emails, meeting schedules, messages, and files, leaving time for us to “do the meaningful things.”

Five - Invention: Rosebud App; Inventors: Sean Dadashi and Chrys Bader, Co-founders 

At 15, Sean Dadashi was Googling how to end his life. 20 years later, he and his team ar building technology to help save lives. In 2023, Rosebud, an AI-powered journaling app, was launched. It has over 20,000 subscribers, and offers journaling, habit-building, and emotional support all in one place, giving users real-time feedback to deepen self-understanding, personalized action plans and goal-setting, and weekly in-depth reports highlighting a user’s progress. What Dadashi has built with Rosebud is less a product than a philosophy: that the same technology that can pull a lonely teenager into darkness can, with the right intention, pull them back into the light.

Six - Invention: Soundcheck; Inventors: Ben Ikwuagwu and Steven Tran, Co-founders

Ben Ikwuagwu spent fifteen years as a professional musician, which meant he was paid late, booked over text, and managed through spreadsheets, which was a nightmare for anyone, especially him, who also has supply chain and tech expertise. The nightmare ended for him; other musicians and venues with the launch of Soundcheck, the AI-powered event management platform he and his co-founder launched five months ago. It does more than just plan events; it creates a record-keeping system for an industry of handshake agreements and forgotten post-mortems, turning it into one that gives musicians and venues a chance to operate more effectively in a rapidly evolving technological landscape.  Soundcheck is built for musicians, bands, event managers, entertainment professionals, venue coordinators, and anyone involved in the live events industry.

Seven - Invention: The Human Rights Foundation’s AI Toolkit ; Inventor: Thor Halvorssen, Founder of HRF and the Oslo Freedom Forum

The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) is a nonpartisan nonprofit founded in 2005 by Venezuelan-Norwegian activist Thor Halvorssen. Halvorssen began advocating for human rights in 1989 by organizing opposition to South African apartheid, then went on to found both the Oslo Freedom Forum and HRF. He has also produced several films that call attention to the plight experienced under authoritarian regimes and emphasize human rights. Headquartered in New York, HRF targets tyranny affecting an estimated 5.7 billion people by partnering directly with protestors to find practical solutions to end oppression. HRF's AI for Individual Rights program works to document and expose how autocracies use AI to stifle dissent, while also supporting the creation and use of the same AI tools to spy on their citizens. Their AI toolkit provides dissenters and activists with security resources, such as recommended VPN services, to hide IP addresses and safeguard their identities. I was introduced to this amazing organization at the Expo, where team members were demonstrating how to build a citizen website in five minutes. 

You can start planning for next year by buying your discounted SXSW 2027 badge now.  And if you want to meet other outstanding and compassionate innovators, join us on April 20th for the Annual CLC Awards.