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

Nathan Phillips, the co-founder & Chief Creative Officer let us write down a problem and a truth on a paper, thinking a cooperator meanwhile then exchange the stickers of the problem and the truth with the people sitting by. He required us coming up with a solution for the problem connecting the cooperator we had thought in our mind. By using this creative thinking method, there are some many fanciful ideas collided out. It gives a new way of composing ideas.


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.

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