4A’s 2019 CreateTech Conference
As the world becomes a more technology driven place, what a better time to participate in a tech conference than now? On Tuesday, February 5th, along with a few other BICsters, I attended the 2019 4A’s CreateTech Conference at Convene in Lower Manhattan. Having recently started a job doing communications in the IT department, I thought it would be interesting to attend - both for professional and academic reasons.
The overarching theme for the day was innovation, with Marla Kaplowitz, President and CEO of the 4A’s, noting that “Innovation is critical for survival. Period.” This statement stood out to me because without innovation, we would not be where we are today in the digital and technical landscape. Companies are constantly working on how to better use technology to their advantage, in ways that will enable them to create better products and experiences for consumers.
The overarching theme for the day was innovation, with Marla Kaplowitz, President and CEO of the 4A’s, noting that “Innovation is critical for survival. Period.” This statement stood out to me because without innovation, we would not be where we are today in the digital and technical landscape. Companies are constantly working on how to better use technology to their advantage, in ways that will enable them to create better products and experiences for consumers.
On the flip side, however, no one really likes change - as was evidenced during the quick exercise emcees Tim Leake and Charlie Oliver had everyone in the room participate in: "I want you to get up and change your seats." No one in the room was excited to switch their seats, but for the most part everyone participated. Change, though, often leads to great, new ideas.
A great example of this was shown during the CreateTech Masters: The Brain Game session by Ashley Baccus-Clark, Director of Research at Hyphen-Labs. Baccus-Clark spoke about her decision to use change to do something innovative and create meaningful, emotional ways of looking at design. Coming from a background in molecular biology, Baccus-Clark used her existing skills and combined them with marketing skills to create interesting brain entrainment experiences. With brain entrainment, you train your brain to do something. One product of this that I really loved was a scarf her and the team at Hyphen-Labs created, which featured multiple faces on it that would confuse phone algorithms (similar to Snapchat) into thinking everything it viewed was a human face. I thought it was very unique and engaging to create this kind of scarf, especially now when everyone is constantly on their phones and trying out the latest photo filters. I felt it really spoke to society’s current state.
For the breakout session, I chose to attend the “A Voice in the Wilderness: Getting Hands-On with Voice Technology” session given by Layne Harris, the VP and Head of Innovation Technology at 360i. This session initially piqued my interest due to the current craze around Alexa and Google Home. I have been somewhat on the fence about whether I should purchase one, so sitting in on this session was eye opening into some of the things available with these smart speakers.
Harris spoke about Bravo Tango Brain Training, which is a Google Action for veterans that allows them to talk about the challenges they face returning to civilian life, including trouble sleeping and anxiety. As a veteran himself, Harris noted that working on this was especially important to him because it was something he related to and understood the plight of the veterans that would be using this. I found this to be very interesting because I hadn’t thought of Google Assistant being used for something that could be considered almost therapeutic. Using technology and innovation for the better good is something that I really appreciated and hope other smart speaker companies continue to do.
He then went through the fun steps of how to create an Alexa skill, which immediately made me want to buy an Alexa so I could create some and play around with. Creating a skill for Alexa was surprisingly easier than I thought it would be, as I had imagined it would have to involve years of coding expertise (which I do not have!). In this, he also noted the importance of making sure that the responses programmed into the skill are realistic and will appeal to the information given by the data. “It’s hard to win people over in voice intelligence a second time if you don’t get them the first time.”
Coincidentally, a few days after attending CreateTech a friend of mine unexpectedly gifted me an Alexa Echo Dot - very excited to begin putting my new skills to use!
