We continue our WebSummit dairy where we would like to keep you updated with the latest trends in tech world which come from best speakers on WebSummit 2017. The second day was full of mentions of AI, blockchain, robots and of course creativity, imagination, and people engagement – those things which AI & robots can’t do.
The first speaker was Ben Goertzel, Chief Scientist at Hanson Robotics & CEO in SingularityNET companies. He went on the stage with two robots which were made by Hanson Robotics: Sophia The Robot which (or who) became a Saudi Arabian citizen, the first robot to receive citizenship of a country and Albert Einstein HUBO, the first-ever walking robot with realistic, human-like expressions. These two robots, sometimes with Ben’s help, talked about what AI truly means for those of us who made out of flesh and blood.
Also Ben told about SingularityNET, a platform for the decentralized AI economy, which was made by the best pros of AI and blockchain. Ben believes that AI is the future and everyone in the world will use for some tasks and SingularityNET is the hub for free and open AI technologies, which gives you the tools to coordinate different AI technologies and automate anything. It also gives developers and any other people the ability to acquire or monetize AI services to anyone, at any scale.
However, only people can get the idea how to use machine learning and AI systems to bring benefits for other people, so he finished his speech with these words:
“Imagination is the most positive knowledge. The Robotics can’t do that.”
Between speeches, attendees were pleased with a cup of coffee made by a self-driving and self-serving coffee robot (yes, coffee machines are too drearily in 2017), made by DeltaQ, a lead manufacturer of industrial battery chargers.
Next stage kept several top managers from different big tech companies and talked about corporate culture, leader place in the company and how to build your dream team. Gillian Tans, CEO of booking.com told:
“Create your culture, the culture of empowerment. Be much more open, not loneliness. Creating a team, not to feel that you’re best in everything.“
He asked all businessmen to encourage your team, build entrepreneurial atmosphere in your company where all the team comes up with ideas which can boost your business.
Several advices from Gillian for everyday use:
- Change every day to be innovative.
- Don’t take everything personally.
- Create day2day goals: you need to learn to be an operational and visionary expert in your company. You have a very limited time.
Jose Neves from Farfetch advised to invest in any level of employee, to feel that you’re all together and at the same time form your corporate culture and values that are demonstrated to the team and are kept by all company (chiefs as well!).
Stewart Butterfield from Slack told that to build and, what is more, important keep your team great and productive, receive real-time feedback from people that are getting your ideas to life. Because in the current rapidly changing world if you know the problems on your company further, you can predict the disaster, before it happens.
After another cup of coffee from self-driving robot, several chief managers and journalists took the main stage to discuss marketing trends in 2018 and what all of us should expect in the nearest future.
First, it was actively discussed that now the main marketing problem for both companies and consumers is a huge number of marketing directions. However, all speakers agreed that 2018 will all about creativity, storytelling, and communication. And with the technology evolution, global digitization, and mobile adoption, the main goal of advertisers and marketers not to reach people, but to persuade them.
Talking to people – is a brand need. Telling the story of a brand, like a live story – this is the creative way to build a brand. Combine!
An advertising legend — Susan Credle, Global Chief Creative Officer, FCB Global — spoke on advertising and content marketing differences, outlining a world where advertising practitioners take back advertising and define it for what it really is. “Creating ads is like sharing your fantasies with the audience,” — Susan said, sharing an example of vintage ads collection.
Torben Friehe, an artificial intelligence entrepreneur, raised an important topic identifying the importance of HR and recruiting for startups from 13 employees (not even 20-25). These tasks may be outsourced to an agency for founders and key managers to do their main job. Having a person or company responsible for the recruiting speeds up the process at least because the one will regularly request feedback, eliminate candidates and will not set aside planning another interview with great specialists. Torben shared his vision of personnel hiring steps order:
- Hiring engineers.
- Hiring senior employees
- Remote management.
No one doubts that WebSummit is one of the major tech events nowadays. And Sebastian White, Associate Recruiter at Web Summit, uncovered some details which confirm that the conference is a massive product itself. WebSummit’s team consists of 166 professionals, who work on developing other events in the portfolio (such as RISE (Singapore) and MoneyConf). There are crews working on: events organization (schedule, the mobile app), tickets, data science (analyzing data from 3 past years).
The company is based in Dublin. As the local market is not big enough, they relocate stuff from other countries. It is an issue that many candidates decline offers because of the high prices and the climate.
WebSummit mobile app development is mostly outsourced, though the plan is to hire some additional in-house engineers. The picking process is very scrutinous: from shortlisting, interview with senior and test task to interview with 4-5 stakeholders, including sales. The great attention is paid to personal qualities and the ability to build strong relations with colleagues. Coders who sit in the corner fall out!
“The great attention is paid to personal qualities and the ability to build strong relations with colleagues.”
— Sebastian White
