Conference News: Economist Celebrates Sustainability; IAPP Announcements; Watch Ai4
Growing Sustainably: The anniversary milestone of Economist Impact’s 10th Sustainability Week isn’t the only thing notable about the 2025 event. Running 10-12 March in London, Economist’s UK Sustainability Week has announced it will bring back the Energy Transition Summit for a second time, as well as introduce the inaugural Sustainable Supply Chain Summit, bringing chief procurement and supply chain officers together to focus on sustainable procurement and new regulations. These and the rest of the Sustainability Week programming, including a meeting of the CSO Leaders’ Club, are designed to help businesses become sustainable faster. For those who are U.S.-based, Economist holds a Sustainability Week in New York 11-12 June 2025.
Privacy Org with Public Mission: J. Trevor Hughes IAPP CEO and President made several big announcements about the future of the organization at the PSR24 conference last month. They not only expanded their mission statement to better reflect its broadened membership and the professional community at large, but they also underwent a brand refresh to align with this broadened mission. The IAPP will no longer be known as the “International Association of Privacy Professionals,” but simply the “IAPP.” The updated mission statement reads: “To define, promote and improve the professions of privacy, AI governance and digital responsibility globally.” In addition to these changes, Trevor launched the Cybersecurity Law Center as a place for lawyers, privacy professionals and those responsible for cybersecurity policy “to engage with each other about organizational compliance with the rising tide of requirements and expectations.”
Submission Opportunity: 4YFN (4 Years from Now) will again happen alongside MWC in Barcelona from 3-6 March 2025! This conference will explore groundbreaking innovations in the startup ecosystem through their 2025 theme: AI XL. The new theme, will consider “the innovation underpinning these new technologies and the positive societal and economic transformation they’re driving, through such topics as: Generative AI, Autonomous Innovation, Future of Work, Ethics and Regulation and many others.” If you have a relevant session idea, submit your speaker and topic here before the 30 October deadline.
Lunchtime Learning: Established in 2018, Ai4 Summit was created to offer both business and technical leaders across industries and functions guidance on the latest AI applications and best practices. Its most recent edition took place this past August in Las Vegas and featured sessions on AI use cases, data strategy, ethics, compliance, regulation, research, and policy, as well as workshop trainings. If you couldn’t attend – or even if you were there, but couldn’t get to all the breakouts – the Ai4 event organizers make all of the videos from the summit available online and easy to peruse based on track focus.
Coming Up Next Week: Groceryshop (7-9 October; Las Vegas) addresses the evolution of how consumers buy groceries and CPG products in a digital age. When Grace Hopper Celebration/GHC gets underway 8 October, more than 30,000 women and non-binary people in tech will be in Philly to envision a future where technology is built by and for the people and societies who use it. Mobile World Congress/MWC Las Vegas runs 8-10 October, providing a North American counterpart to Barcelona’s flagship gathering for the enterprise 5G ecosystem. At Fortune Impact Initiative Annual Meeting (8-9 October; Atlanta), global agreements on climate, nature, ESG regulation, and DEI reporting will be top of mind. Would-be attendees must become a member to register for Out & Equal Workplace Summit, held 7-10 October in Las Vegas and focused on breaking down barriers in the work place for LGBTQ+ people and for all. At The Information WTF Summit – where the name describes the intersection of women, tech & finance – expect to hear from senior-level speakers representing Amazon, Autodesk, Airbnb, DoorDash, Instacart, Google, and Salesforce. And when the inaugural Athena Project (10-11 October; New York) gets underway next week to help senior leaders balance growth and risk within their organizations, readers will recognize our own Amy Scarlino amongst the workshop leaders.