Day one was a wonderful mishmash of some of my favourite people, topics and things. Human behaviour, human-centric design, content models, tacos, asking better questions, AI, Neil Gaiman, better coffee than expected, distribution models, walking, strategy and Texas hospitality.
Way more than I have time to write about in full – but I wanted to share a few highlights while I’m darting between sessions.
Author and all-around legend, Brené Brown delivered a fantastic opening talk outlining four elements she sees as fundamental to human belonging.
One of the biggest outtakes for me was, in the context of belonging, the need to bring your authentic self to situations. If you augment who you are to fit with group norms and expectations, then chances are you won’t have an experience of feeling accepted. After all, people aren’t accepting ‘You’ in that situation, but the moderated and filtered version of you. We could get all existential here about the nature of self, but I’ll spare you that here.
Brené’s four points.
* People are hard to hate close up. Move in – When you see part of your own story in someone else’s eyes.
* Speak truth to bullshit. Be civil – It’s essential that we disagree well.
* Hold hand with stranges – We are all connected. We just sometimes forget that.
* Strong back. Soft front. Wild heart – What is the emotional impact of turning up and unapologetically not complying?
In the context of the current social climate, this is a message some desperately need to hear.
Next, a panel of folk from Google, Microsoft, Slack and Daimler discussed the challenges of human-centric design incorporating AI. Some of my key takeaways…
* There is no ‘not having a personality’ for products and services. This is also known as the ‘Keanu Reeves Rule’, “If you don’t have a personality, you’ll be assigned one.”
* Personality’s don’t have to be irreverent. A connected kitchen with a perpetually cheerful toaster would be a nightmare hell-world I really don’t want to live in. Think of personality here as a persona that influences the experience you take away.
* The big challenge is to make personalities, the information they supply and how and when they supply it, contextually relevant. What input signals should we pay attention to, and what are the implications for data collection and privacy? When should things such as our moods be reflected back and when should an appliance simply be an appliance? How will we weave in user choice to the equation rather than having generic personalities, (Siri, anyone?).
* We need to allow AI to make mistakes and we need to be comfortable teaching them. That, after all, is the way humans learn the all-important nuance of ‘how’ to skilfully interact with others.
* Social appropriateness is another vector – should an AI say something when other people are around? Does that change depending on who it is? How does it know who is around and do those other individuals need to opt-in to the system?
Lastly, for today, the founders of Quibi talk about their views on media consumption and their plans to create a platform to serve snackable, (under ten minutes) premium content.
While it’s evident that short-form content, consumed primarily on mobile devices, represents a significant portion of the viewing pie, I’m not sure I’m entirely convinced by their hypothesis that by ploughing the same kind of budgets the likes of HBO and Netflix put into production of high quality, mobile optimised ‘bites’, that they will catch fire. I think the reason we’ve seen a resurgence in TV is not primarily the production quality, but hunger for incredibly complex, multi-layered narratives, which have been democratised by the medium, (the same could be said for serialised podcasts).
I think they are betting on the wrong horse and will burn through a ton of cash doing so. But I’m happy to be proven wrong.
Now I’m off for that margarita.