The best time to build a touchable future－4A's CreateTech
4A's CreateTech conference recap
February 5,2019
It’s such a pleasure to attend
4A’s Create Tech conference that was held by the American Association of
Advertising Agencies on Feb 5th in Financial District, New York. “ To foster,
strengthen and improve the advertising agency business, to advance the cause of
advertising as a whole; and to aid member agencies in operating more
efficiently and profitably by aiding member agencies with industry expertise..”
is always the goal of 4A’s. The conference aims to bring information and
conversation about the creative possibilities of advanced digital technologies
and platforms. Creative technologists and leaders in advertising, marketers and
other accomplished creative minds brought an in-depth discussion of a new imperative
revolution of innovation.
The conference divided into three
sections and officially started with the opening speech of 4A’s CEO and
President Maria Kaplowitz at 9 am. In the first section, Dr. Kumar Mehta, the
Author of The innovation Biome made a clear view of how the innovation
imperative works for creative business and why it is critical. He mentioned
that there is an innovation biome that is a corporate environment that can let
innovation flourish. In the Create Tech Master section, those leading creative
technologists gave very lightning talks about exploring great work and how it
came to be and who made it behind the creators’ studio. In The Brain Game,
Ashley Baccus-Clark, the director of research in Hyphen-Labs where her
speculative work became real by using visual reality this new tool creating a
customized service in a human-center design orientation. The technology &
experiential- focused Executive Creative Director-Alexander Rae said “design
has to build functionalities,” which I strongly agree.
The Brain Game, Ashley Baccus-Clark
The most significant benefit that technology
brings to people is convenience; if the creative crews can building
functionalities into their original work by leveraging technology, which could
let the public get involved quickly and pleasantly. Mauricio Ruiz the Creative
Technology Director of Grey New York, Alexis Lloyd the head of Design
Innovation of Automattic, Neil Redding, the Executive Technologist of Digital
Futures strategist and Jared Weiner the EVP & Chief Strategy Officer of The
Future Hunters, brought a topic-' Stop mistaking innovation for futurism.' They
indicated that the future is about discipline, we should focus on why things
will happen instead of what will happen in the future. The stability of
building futurism has to use technology that helps brands building transparency
and value system, and product revolution and innovation contributes to creating
the version of the future. Cooperators have to generate relevance with the
product development process switching imagination to the invention. Future is
now!
In the second workshop sections,
I chose to join the "Creative Dim Sum," which is a collaborative
methodology developed by technology, humans, and taste that forces
collaborative conceptual thinking that results in new ideas. Base on the actual
science and extensive research into collaborative methods across industries,
this workshop offered an overview of their creative dim sum process.
Creative Dim Sum-Nathan Phillips
After a lovely lunchtime, here
comes my favorite part, "Becoming a TechnoWizard," by Sam Snider-
Held, a real-time VR/AR Creative Technologist of MediaMonks.He uses the term
“techno-wizard” to describe the work that he does: “It’s like being a wizard,
but instead of using magical stones and spell books, my tools are VR, AR,
programming and machine learning.” In his playful talk “Becoming a Techno-Wizard,”
Snider-Held expressed how a personal, creative goal can propel anyone “through
learning all the hard, technical stuff” in their way. In essence, creative
technologists should have fun.
“Becoming a Techno-Wizard,” Sam Snider-Held
For Snider-Held, that goal is
“technologically-driven lucid dreaming,” or translating environments from
imagination to virtual space with as little friction as possible using machine
learning. This nod to imagination and play highlights how ingenuity shouldn’t
be lost in working with tech. Snider-Held may be right that the closest thing
we have to magic is technology, but how does a techno-muggle become a
techno-wizard? The answer lies in committing to a constant willingness to learn
and expand your (or your team’s) skillset bit-by-bit through an iterative process.
Later on, other relevant topics
discussed, such as Innovation and Creativity; Women leading innovation across
major brands; and so on. I also had a VR experience with Fallon’s in-house
innovation that uses a Russian Rock & Roll band storytelling arousing at a
global scale, which it's very impressive.
Sam Snider- Held said,
"don't think what is or what is not possible, agencies and brands should
work on building on the credibility for communities.", which I couldn't
agree more.
