Conference News: What I learned this week – June 7, 2019
Party’s Over: For the past ten years, the Northside Festival brought hundreds of bands and thousands of “creative and cultural trendsetters” to Brooklyn in June to jam out and reveal their ideas on the future of music, innovation and content. Last year’s innovation track featured speakers such as Author & Former Vice Chair of GE Beth Comstock; Creative Director WeWork Devin Vermeulen; CMO of Casper, Jeff Brooks; Chief Analytics Officer Legendary Entertainment, Matthew Marolda; and Nicholas Johnston Editor-in-Chief Axios. Apparently, the festival’s founder has not applied for permits to host this year’s event after damning allegations emerged about his management of the previous fest. Sounds like the party is over.
New Name, Same Game: After Greenlit Content (GameDaily’s parent company) acquired Casual Connect last year, the organization has merged its two offerings and announced that its conferences will be rebranded to reflect this new identity. Therefore, the show formerly known as Casual Connect US will be called, GameDaily Connect USA, when it happens in August. According to the conference organizers, their goal is to “create a stronger, more united global games industry by connecting game developers and industry leaders in an authentic, conversation-driven setting.” GameDaily will continue to host localized events in the USA, Europe, Middle East / North Africa and China.
Speaking Opportunity: The Connected Cities Privacy Summit (5 December 2019 in Washington DC) is a new one-day event that was created by the team that organized last year’s Connected Cities Conference. The summit with gather approximately 150 technology providers, policy makers and city CIO/CTOs/city officials to discuss new developments in policy, standards, technology, market conditions and citizen requirements that are driving privacy policy and smart city innovation. The conference is currently seeking “sessions that are technical and educational while providing examples for recent application strategies driving privacy policy and technological growth in the Smart City.” The deadline to submit is 21 June.
Lunchtime Learning: A Democratic presidential candidate, an IBM technologist, a director/writer/producer, and an MIT Media Lab researcher walk into a room. No, it’s not the set up for a complicated joke. It’s what happened over the course of four days at this year’s Wall Street Journal (WSJ) Future of Everything Festival. They joined dozens of other speakers at the top of their game who addressed what’s to come in culture, tech, health, money, and style. Check out videos from the program here (paywall). Consider it an investment in your “future.”
Coming Up Next Week: The Banff World Media Festival celebrates 40 years as media moguls and creators gather in the Canadian Rockies to weigh the state of the industry (9-12 June; Banff). In San Jose, the Women In Technology International (WITI) Summit attracts business executives from the IT, software, telecommunications, and finance sectors. WITI runs 9-11 June under the tagline “Innovation, Inspiration, Inclusion.” Re/code’s Code Conference has been the invite-only home of tech visionaries Kara Swisher and Peter Kafka since 2014, and this year’s event (10-12 June; Scottsdale) is shaping up to offer more memorable conversations with industry disruptors. Shanghai will host this year’s CES Asia (11-13 June). Unlike CES in Las Vegas, CES Asia focuses nearly exclusively on B2B technology. NYT New Rules Summit will run 12-13 June in Brooklyn, “calling on diverse leaders from across business, politics and culture to create a boldly inclusive vision of the workplace.” The behemoth E3 gets underway 11 June in Los Angeles for the global gaming industry.