The last day for general ticket holders and another full schedule for me. Starting in the IBM Lab with Leon Gouletsas’ talk “Cognitive Chatbots – Building a Conversational Robot”. Lots of notes, lots more questions and considerations before starting the process of creating a virtual assistant. Not the least of which “is a chat bot the best option” to achieve the business goal? I had to leave early to head to my booked workshop with Peter Engelhardt of Creative Brew on “The Art of Transforming a Business into a Brand”. His years in the industry of design and corporate branding and the nature of the small setting made this a fabulous workshop with many key takeaways. Peter introduced us to the Seven Step Framework he created by reverse engineering the elements around some of the worlds largest brands. The key takeaway being strategy out plays tactics every time. The Global Stage hosted “Brands of Tomorrow” with Sarah Owen of WGSN.
Brands of tomorrow are considering the 4 E’s Engagement | Experience | Exclusivity | Emotion
A race over to the Local Hero stage to hear from Local Hero Simon Griffiths founder of Who Gives a Crap “5 Lessons From Running A Purpose-Led Business”. I love the switch from not-for-profit to the term for-purpose. I feel that gives the public something more meaningful to relate to and get behind. His 5 lessons learned were hard-won, but his success is strong and the brand loyalty is inspiring.
Ride the wave
Back to the Global Stage to hear insights from Grant Petty of Blackmagic Design on “How the Ideology of Business Destroys Creativity”
Problems are good, without problems there is no creative energy.
And the best slide…
“I don’t care what color, religion or orientation you are. I only care about your wonderful brain.”
Well said! David Spinks from CMX Media introduced us to “Tactical Frameworks for Building Community”. And no, social media management is NOT community building! Again the stats of the growth in loneliness and the increase in teen suicide risk with heavy device use. Is our tech making us more lonely?
The future of business is community.
Shallow connections are not how human brains evolved, and they are keeping us lonely and disconnected. Followed by Lesley Miley on “Weaponized Social Media – How Lack of Inclusion Energized the Populist Movement”. Lesley has been around, holding engineering roles at Slack, Twitter, Apple & Google. AI/ML will influence our lives in ways we don’t even begin to understand. Fake news manipulates us without us even being aware…we have been warned!
I stuck around for the panel discussion “New Ways of Thinking for Impact” with the awesome lineup of Wesley from Thankyou, Mindy from B Lab, Simon from Who Gives a Crap & Jane from Smiling Mind. Some ideas to think about including the consideration of your SROI (social return on investment). I noticed a little too late that I was also missing “How to Make AI Your Best Marketing Tool” and raced over to the IBM stage to catch the last part of Alexander Mahr’s presentation. I can’t help feeling FOMO, but I have some resources to explore and it was great to have a conversation with him after – to both apologise for running in so late, and discuss what I had missed.
And then it was over! 3 days of ideas and creative inspiration. Looking forward to creating action items – if you don’t schedule it, it won’t happen – and making use of the expansive ideas I was so thrilled by.