For Wise, the most memorable part of the company's SXSW LifeLab was watching the 3M scientists who staffed the LifeLab connect with the crowd. (The company has more than 8,000 scientists and researchers worldwide.) "We have some amazing young scientists, and they loved participating in the event," says Wise. "It was inspiring to see them engaged with the audience explaining different technologies, creating aha moments for many festivalgoers."
The whole event gave 3M a chance "to geek out a little bit with our fellow geeks," says Wise. "And hopefully, we got people interested in science who might not otherwise have been interested in material science, which is definitely different from the bits and bytes of software.