🗣️Memia speaking and media appearances roundup Jan-Jun 2023

All you can eat from "New Zealand’s Leading Futurist”(™🤣)

Kia ora folks,

Apologies I’ve had a lot of things going on in the last week and my workload has finally caught up with me… I’ve had to skip this week’s scheduled ⏩Fast Forward Aotearoa newsletter and instalment. Normal service will be resumed next week…

However, one of the things I’ve been meaning to do for a while is to pull together all of the speaking and media appearances I’ve done so far this year into one place. It’s felt like a pretty busy time… and looking back it was!

(Backlog task: add all of these to the Memia Podcasts channel)

In reverse order…

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Business of Tech Podcast, 29th June

🔮In what could be described as a clear case of the blind leading the blind, last week Aotearoa news outlet BusinessDesk labelled me “New Zealand’s Leading Futurist”(™🤣) when I was interviewed on the latest Business Of Tech podcast: What's in store for Aotearoa, with Kiwi futurist Ben Reid.

(That’s very flattering, I’ll take it.🤭)

The podcast was recorded the previous Friday just before the NZ Hi-Tech Awards when I sat down with the excellent Peter Griffin in Ōtautahi and we had a long conversation about emerging technologies and their implications for Aotearoa's future. A really free-flowing and wide-ranging discussion, take a listen. (And I highly recommend the whole Business Of Tech podcast series, Peter and colleague Ben Moore are doing superb work since they started just a couple of months ago.💯)

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The Future Ōtautahi of as an Innovation Hub Node - 27th June

Great to be invited to present a pitch on The future of Ōtautahi as an Innovation Hub last week. The event featured pitches by Kaila Colbin, Roger Dennis, Ben Kepes, and myself and was generously hosted by Al Duncan, Webtools Chief Growth Officer, and introduced by Raf Manji, Leader of The Opportunities Party. Great discussions… let them continue!

Download my slides here:

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Kerridge & Partners AI Briefing: Leveraging AI to drive innovation and growth in New Zealand's business landscape - 8th June

It was a privilege to be invited by Aotearoa Leadership Consultancy Kerridge & Partners to speak to a diverse audience of board members and Chairs representing leading organisations from both the public and private sector: writeup here.

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RNZ The Detail interview: This election year, we need to brace ourselves for AI - 31st May

I was interviewed at length on RNZ’s The Detail discussing the use of generative AI in Aotearoa New Zealand politics: This election year, we need to brace ourselves for AI.

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Boma fireside chat with Kaila Colbin - The future with generative AI - 30th May

I had a really enjoyable and far-ranging fireside discussion with my good friend Kaila Colbin, founder of Boma, on the topic of Generative AI and going off in all directions!

Here’s a clip in which I’m also talking about the misinformation risks to Aotearoa in election year: a “denial of service attack on the truth”. (You can watch the whole session here).

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The Hoon Podcast - 6th May

I was also a guest on Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale’s “The Hoon” podcast on Aotearoa New Zealand politics and current affairs on a Friday in which I talked Geoff Hinton's resignation from Google, AI safety, regulation and even a bit on new brain reading tech.

The hoon: Railmageddons; climate politics, tax and drone strikes

TMG23 Keynote: Generative AI and the Future of Marketing - 3rd May

I returned for the third year in a row to present the opening “resident futurist” keynote at this year’s Tech Marketers Group conference, covering (you’ve guessed it) Generative AI. Thanks to my good friend Justin Flitter (who has just become a Dad - congratulations!) and the whole team at TMG for hosting me again. Really relaxed and focused vibe every year.

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RNZ Jesse Mulligan interview: A future where all music is AI-generated - 20th April

I had a quick chat with RNZ’s Jesse Mulligan discussing the new “AI Drake” song which popped up and the broader implications for the music industry.

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University of Canterbury MBA thought leadership series: Leading with Artificial Intelligence - 30th March

I took part in a panel discussion featuring Woolworths NZ GM Data & Analytics Kari Jones, Westland Milk Head of Digital Improvement Gareth Mitchell and myself, moderated by UC MBA Programme Director Elsamari Botha.

We had a 90-minute(!) thought-provoking discussion on the vast topic of AI just 2 weeks after OpenAI released GPT-4, focusing on the latest developments in generative AI such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, MidJourney, Dall-E, Stable Diffusion and many more... and in particular their impacts for Aotearoa New Zealand businesses and the economy.

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Memia Hive Mind with Sam Ragnarsson: Human + AI productivity tools 10 March 2022

An occasional webinar with my friend Sam Ragnarsson to showcase the latest Human+AI tools, including note-taking and productivity tool Roam Research, Roam-AI, ChatGPT and a smorgasbord of AI drawing tools for creating art, 3D worlds, generating videos… all with minimal input required.

We also discussed the potential for AI tools to improve human-human communication skills, AI safety concerns and the philosophical question about the role of biological humans in an AI-rich future.

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Melbourne Southern FM’s Sandra Spencer Tech Load show - 25th January

Finally, way back in January I kicked off the year with a lighthearted interview with Sandra Spencer on the latest emerging technology news to how it affects our lives in the future:

A busy year (…so far!)

ngā mihi nui

Ben