Conference News: What I learned this week – January 6
By Any Other Name: The Wall Street Journal relaunched and rebranded its interview series featuring senior WSJ editors in conversation with the leaders who are shaping the future. Previously known as Viewpoints Breakfasts, the new series will be called The Future Of. Check out the speaker lineup including the CEO of Aetna who will discuss “The Future of Healthcare” on 15 February.
New Hackathon Breaks the Mold: MIT’s Breaking the Mold organization has decided to change the format of its annual conference in 2017. On 25 February, they will host the Breaking the Mold Hackathon, instead of a traditional conference with workshops and open discussions. This one-day event will aim to build tools that help tackle unconscious bias across a variety of areas. The impetus for this change came from the organizations determination that “the conversations around unconscious bias were educational and eye-opening, and yet, left them wanting even more.” Find all the details of the Hackathon here.
Designing a New Event: Primer is self-described as the first speculative design conference to happen within the United States. Taking place from 25 – 26 February 2017 in San Francisco, Primer will highlight “a range of speakers and workshops by leading designers, strategists, and educators who are using speculative & critical design and design fiction as a tool to create strategies for addressing the future of our evolving world, emerging technologies and social, cultural, environmental, political and ethical issues that are unfolding within it.” In case this is a new term for you also, speculative design investigates and imagines possible futures through the experiential use of designed artifacts and scenarios, ultimately to make better decisions.
Speaking Opportunity: The Parks Associates’ 21st-annual CONNECTIONS™: The Premier Connected Home Conference will return to San Francisco from 23-25 May 2017. They are currently looking for speakers who can address the market disruptions that are affecting the connected home and the innovations that have resulted. Speaker suggestions will be accepted via their online form through 3 February.
Lunchtime Learning: In early December 2016, MediaPost held its annual Search Insider Summit in Park City, Utah. Between glances at the amazing scenery, attendees discussed the next phase of search and mobile messaging “through chat bots, cross-channel attribution, allocating funds to mobile and search without cannibalizing other media campaigns, tying retail sales to searches, and better understanding the role of artificial intelligence in ecommerce and search.” Sessions are now available for your viewing pleasure online.
Coming Up Next: It’s that time of year again! CES, the behemoth conference that includes all aspects of technology that touches our lives and work (no longer limited to “consumer electronics”), returned to Las Vegas this week. Since we didn’t publish a post last week, it is worth noting here. Suits and Spooks will take place in Washington, D.C. next week, focusing on “identifying the world’s most valuable new technologies, who the threat actors are that are looking to acquire them, and what can be done to stop them.” Also in D.C., Building Innovation – The National Institute of Building Sciences Fifth Annual Conference & Expo begins Monday, 9 January.