Something Digital Conference Brisbane 2019 — What I learned?

This week I was lucky to get an invite to the SomethingDigital conference thanks to the team at AccessHQ (www.accesshq.com).

The conference aims “to celebrate our digital ecosystem and help organisations in Brisbane and South East QLD to strengthen their digital capabilities across various business areas including marketing, business analytics, technology, leadership, customer design and operations”

Below are the learnings I took away from the sessions I saw throughout the day.

How everything you know about artificial intelligence is about to change — Tim Hwang

The barriers for entry for AI are getting lower — with it faster to implement using AIaaS, requiring less skill, and even having cheaper and specific hardware available to increase the speed and reduce the cost of training.

We now see a “shift in competition to those don’t have rich data” — but others can simulate and catch-up.

“AI is no longer the domain of large business”

AI, ML, and Neural Nets are all part of a toolkit that provides many ways to solve human problems. It’s not enough to pick a tool, it’s to pick the right tool for the application:

Some of the many Neural Network structures

We need to be mindful of the ethical use of AI, as it will appear in “more places we won’t always be happy about”. We change not only how we interact, but also how we govern.

Need to ask yourself “what do I want the tech to do & am I positioned to do it?”

How to fly with Dragons: Amplifying your storytelling through emerging tech — Christina Lee Storm

There are no rules in the VR/AR space — with the industry “trying to create the VR/AR language”

Dreamworks VR/AR experience to celebrate the release of “How to Train Your Dragon 3”

You need to ask yourself — “What makes a good immersive experience?”, such as things you can’t typically see in the real world.

The future of storytelling is “connecting worlds and characters to audiences”

The “business model is not there yet — but VR/AR tech is not going away”

The keys to unlocking real digital transformation — Dan Fischer

Alignment & cascade of internal vision is key for driving successful digital transformation.

Five steps to a successful transformation:

1. Be clear on why you need to transform
2. Make sure you have buy-in & belief from the top
3. Train your organization — Design & implement new capability & culture
4. Invest in capability that allows you to be truly customer-centric
5. Nurture true innovation. Solve problems across parts of the customer journey.

Create a culture of safe to fail — setting up vulnerability with the leadership team.

(You need) direction from leadership, but belief in people to get things done

You need to get everyone involved in vision setting to get true buy-in.

Improving urban life by putting people first — Matthew Tobin, Melissa Wiscicki, and Sarah Leach

Data doesn’t give the whole picture of what customers need. When dealing with a diverse range of customers, you need a diverse range of options.

Technology isn’t the answer, it’s a tool — if the tech isn’t engaging & doesn’t make our life better, it fails

The goal for us as innovators is to...

Change the behaviour that technology is driving

Examining the future of work around digital, technology and innovation — Rachel Khoo, Luke Abercrombie, and Brett Wiskar.

We’re no longer in a world where we maximise corporate value by putting junior people on junior work.

Unconditioned people with fresh context are invaluable

Graduates can be given more complex tasks, at a lower cost, and we can afford them to fail, learn, and perform slower. In doing so they will improve quickly.

Work-from-anywhere technology is enabling different business structures and behaviours.

We need to move our companies to a place where insights are available to all — rather than obfuscated & layered with bias.

Keep learning valuable things & stay curious

The future of work is about skills that allow adaptation and utility

The internet is broken — Surveillance capitalism is in — Berit Anderson

For all the benefits we receive in our connected world, the risk of misuse and abuse keeps growing in lock-step.

What the internet giveth, it taketh away

Steps to minimize the impact of misuse of your data:

1. Take back your brain
2. Send your kids outside
3. Become Costa Rica (Climate focused)
4. A creative commons system for personal data
5. Support tech workers organising for change
6. Create a law that creates quarterly self-interest
7. Don’t give in to authoritarian creep

Trust. The next tech horizon — Davey Gibian

We need to move from Cybersecurity to Cybertrust

We are living in the 3rd digital revolution:

1. (2011) Every company has to use tech to compete
2. (2015) Data became the most important asset to companies
3. (2019) Data is being weaponised

The gaps between winners & losers are growing — “There are risks of action, but there are risks of inaction”

We are pushing towards the autonomous edge without considering the risk

We don’t currently have the right tools — not just cybersecurity tools, but those for society and industry.

We need to move from cybersecurity to cybertrust

Our approach to building trusted AI needs to be:

1. Come together to share training data to improve this for all
2. Use it for good
3. Combat the bag
4. Don’t be naive
5. Find the human delta

We need to think of data as an output first, it’s the result of asking a specific question of the world — however we need to consider if that is truly the right question to ask.

Think about data as an output first

Everyone needs to consider the direct human element

We need explainability — to understand how the classification is made, and if it is made on sound reasoning.