Food + Future Innovation Team Headed to White House's New South by South Lawn Festival

You may know South by Southwest™, the annual gathering of innovators and thinkers in Austin, Texas, but you may not have heard of SXSL, or South by South Lawn. The newly created White House event—located on the South Lawn of the White House—will bring together creators, innovators and organizers for a one-day event on Oct. 3.

Target will send our own Food + Future team to Washington to participate in the event. Food + Future is a group of entrepreneurs, based in Cambridge, Mass. that is exploring the future of food, solving major food challenges and building food-related businesses. At SXSL, the team—a collaboration between Target, IDEO, and MIT Media Lab—will showcase cutting-edge technologies that are helping people understand more about their food. Our immersive space on the premises, hosted by Target’s chief strategy and innovation officer Casey Carl and entrepreneur-in-residence Greg Shewmaker, will encourage participants to imagine a future where we all have access to more information about our food. Here’s a glimpse at what attendees can expect to see:

A Poly interactive experiment

Poly, which helps kids understand where their food comes from through fun, interactive classroom experiments.

Illuminate tool working on a strawberry

Illuminate, which helps companies and individuals understand exactly what they're selling and buying, and how it will impact people personally.

Open Agriculture tool

Open Agriculture, which helps farmers of all size understand the science of their environment in order to help them create healthier, more sustainable food systems.

The festival will be streamed live on WhiteHouse.gov, Facebook.com/WhiteHouse, and sxsw.com/live. Followers are encouraged to join the conversation by using #SXSL to share ideas about how they’ll make a difference in the world.

Stay tuned for more details from the big day!