Musings from ’19 Techfestival
Finally, a Tech summit geared towards humans 😍
Techfestival is not the most widely covered of tech conferences. In fact, I would hazard a guess that a large majority of the global tech community had no idea that it was even happening this month in the delightfully efficient and aesthetically charged Danish capital.
The Nordic based festival drew a diverse crowd, as it should really, with a broad theme of “where human and technology meets”… and on this basis, there was a solid collection of interesting humans down to share industry insights and many many many bars of raw vegan chocolate (tak raw halo) ⭐
I want to share some key takeaways from this week of stimulation, including the inspiring and ambitious ThinkTank that took place over the course of 24 hours — with the mission of creating a Tech Pledge: this would then go live around the world, be shared with builders and leaders in the Tech industry, and act as a catalyst for making tech a force for good in society, instead of something that f**ks the world.
1. More tech summits/festivals should have active, select thinktanks in tandem to the main event:
I was fortunate enough to be invited to be part of the 150 strong Thinktank that gathered to create this year’s Tech Pledge. Stemming from the original 2017 CPH150 (of which I also took part), this year’s focus was firmly on crafting an easily distributable pledge, that tackled the core issues plaguing the tech community.
Aydo, a cofounder of the CPH150 Copenhagen Letter was firm in this year’s mission being to not contain just dead, empty language that could isolate people with its esoteric tone.
In essence, what was created is a powerful pledge that speaks to the fact Tech has fundamentally changed our world and that good or bad intentions around how and what we build can have massive, earth-shattering implications. Accountability is absolutely critical, and we need developers, founders, tech community to take responsibility for what they create and push out to the world of users. The call to not tolerate design for addiction, deception and control became a focal point. To this point, Aza Raskin’s presence at the festival in relation to the past, present and future of UX/UI played in perfectly to the issue around ethics and humanity on the UI front — more on this below. There is no doubt the Thinktank could have been more diversely representative in age, race, backgrounds. (HELLO Gen Z high school / College kids — who are literally the ones building, shaping, consuming and dictating to a large extent the direction our world is heading in…) The end result, after much debate, discussion and weaving together of ideas, is LIVE — and ready to be read, shared, and viralised as fast as possible!
2. Tech Diplomats are a thing. And we may need to rely on the more progressive Scandinavian nations to make this more of a political norm.
Following on from the Thinktank’s trigger to re-interpret “progress” and scrutinize this in the light of tech, the question arose around letting tech innovation run freely or align it with public goals, and public sector collaboration? To dig more into the potential for greater public sector collaboration, we had a chat with Casper Klynge.
The first Tech Ambassador in the world stems from a Danish legislative move. The goal was to appoint someone who would approach Silicon Valley as if it were a global superpower. After Denmark determined that tech behemoths now have as much power as many governments — if not more — Casper Klynge was sent to Silicon Valley. Casper spoke to our Thinktank, and shared illuminating insights about his time traversing the tech roads of the Valley and the core challenge smaller countries struggle with in attempting to influence giant corporations. Compelling stories about the contrasting treatment in the US versus Beijing revealed how European countries can be drastically shafted by Silicon Valley, The jury is out on how effective Tech Ambassadors truly are — and what nations could do to further bridge the horrific gap between political forces and the Tech giant reality — who are dictating the form and function of our daily lives, catapulting humans into new ways of living. As Klyne shared, “these tech giants have moved from being companies with commercial interests to actually becoming de facto foreign policy actors”. If we fail to start openly recognise this fact, we’re really putting our head in the sand in such a way that we’re probably already buried down to our waists, and going deeper by the day. Que: global efforts like the CPH Tech Pledge. These movements are absolutely needed to raise the accountability flag, and wave it squarely in front of those with the influence to make change, and start putting humans before business with an awareness of the critical impact of the #platformsociety in which we are living.
3. More bespoke summits full of community leaders.
I was stoked to be part of this one day Summit organised by the Co-Matter team, a group dedicated to exploring what makes communities thrive. This gathered some bright minds in the community space and ran for day 2 of Tech Festival. While other vertical-specific mini summits were happening, such as the Food Summit, Urban Mobility Summit and Designer Summits, the Community-orientated one caught the attention of folks who are leading, building, scaling communities around the world. Strong representation from government to private sector, to early stage startups and beyond made for good parallels, contrasts and conversations to spin out amongst the group on issues such as the value of a manifesto + how to create one, how ‘community’ can and should be measured, and the perpetual debate around community metrics. As a community leader myself, it’s so refreshing to connect with others who are going through similar conceptual, operational and growth challenges around community building. It really shone the light on how we, the globally fluid and distributed crew of community leaders, could really do with more opportunities to unite, support each other, stress test and consolidate around best practices and methodologies to make the mission we’re on more successful. In the case of developers, the sheer number of conferences and summits is overwhelming. But on the community front, there is a definite lack of chances to converge. Hold this thought…
4. Zebras Unite — goodbye unicorn mania.
The two woman behind the buzzy @sexandstartups brand, Zebras Unite, are a force to be reckoned with. Jennifer and Mena, are raw, open and inspiring femmes, who dropped some much needed knowledge bombs at the Community Summit, as well as within the Think Tank. The ethos of their brand being all about the #Zebra, really resonated with me — (as someone who strongly identifies with the zebra as a spirit animal). That aside, the Zebras Unite sessions involved a great dissection around the “unicorn” startup success stereotype that we are fed as the idealised company outcome within the tech industry. Many features of the “unicorn’, and the related characteristics of companies that evolve from that mindset and ambition, ought to be questioned. In contrast to the individualistic unicorn, a zebra truly embodies a “community-centric” essence, with a focus on plurality and sustainable prosperity where a win-win outcome is possible, and resources can be shared. One might say nicely echoing a healthy collaborative, open-source ecosystem and a focus on user success rather than user acquisition.
5. Policy to pixels with Aza Raskin
As inventor of the infinite scroll, Aza created a beautiful frictionless CMS experience…as well as a tool to totally hijack our minds. It was empowering to discover Aza is an innately humble human and acutely aware of the monster he’s created, imploring us think about the dual use of tech: that everything can be used for bad and for good. Using the example of the automobile Aza demonstrated the way in which our technological inventions will always have negative externalities and it’s now our duty to plan for potential wicked consequences and ensure tech is not immediately used for bad or as a tool for the most powerful to continue to oppress humankind.
It was positive to hear Aza stressing systems thinking as a mechanism to change the market place and break through the glass ceiling business model. If we really do want to create meaningful tech, we have to be thinking full stack — from policy to pixels. Policy and governance DO have a strong role to play in creating space for the design to growth through from the top. But equally, if there’s nothing new to replace the design that was there when we crack through the top it’s also a failed state.
A final key thing that stuck with me from Aza was the fact every 6.4 minutes we check our phones…we’re confusing our screens for mirrors. So to lessen my attention scarcity, since attending Tech Fest I’ve committed to keeping my phone on airplane mode until after my morning meditation practice.
6. A hub for gosh darn creative problem solving
Over the duration of Tech Fest, Space10 embodied the concept of a third place: drawing in festival goers from the bitingly crisp Danish September breeze with its smiling, effervescent staff, communal tables and project exhibit. The Ikea funded Space10 is a research and design lab diving deep into creative problem solving across a raft of issues from sustainable and affordable housing to food security and deforestation. A key highlight: learning about Space 10’s under-office hydroponic farm which churned out 100 kg of food per month, without any soil or sunlight, with a fraction of the amount of water that’s normally required, and their solution to the problematic but oh-so-trendy avo toast…serving up an innovative alternative by way of beetroot puree. To me, Space 10 embodied what a research and design lab should look like and got me thinking how freakin impactful it would be having an innovation epicentre, like Space10, in each city around the globe.
7. Eating Oysters for the first time with VR
Throughout the festival, Space10 was also home to an installation entailing oysters, VR headsets and headphones, and three chairs with a continual rotation of curious humans eager to satiate their hunger for enriching sea minerals. Equal parts intrigued and confused I participated in the experiment: a collaboration between Makropol and Aalborg University. Indulging in oysters for the first time in combination with a VR experience was a strange yet totally immersive sensory experience. What stood out the most from this virtual taste lab, besides the umami overload, was the fact that technology is likely to become highly integrated in our dining experiences…and the way we interpret our urban landscapes (see #9)…
8. Harnessing human connection at Human Hotel
A serendipitous moment was when we realised the founder of Makoprol, Mads, happened to be our Human Hotel host for the evening. HH founder, Martin, told us of how Human Hotel’s genesis is rooted in human matchmaking in the art community and as a tool to contribute to global climate action: saving monetary and financial resources and connecting like-minded humans who are all doing cool shit to contribute to the Earth in a positive way. In being welcomed into Mads and Maria’s home and the Human Hotel community (best brunch vibes) I felt truly at home in CPH. And! I’ve pledged to banish the AirBnB app from all of my devices in the knowledge Human Hotel offers far greater alternatives for genuine human connection, comfy beds, and a whole lotta hygge.
9. Harnessing tech to elevate urban environments
The final day of #CPHtechfest2019 offered some rad urban insights into the use of tech in shaping urban environments by way of strategic designer and urbanist Dan Hill. Dan stressed the way in which prototyping can be harnessed as an effective urban design initiative (over investigation) to take communities and people with us when we’re designing new urban environments or enacting systemic change. A dope example of this was taking to the streets with the use of Minecraft and VR in a UN Habitat project in Johannesburg offering an opportunity to make the city more malleable and accessible for younger generations in particular who are typically excluded from the urban design/urban renewal project dialogue.
A favourite takeaway (from many) from Dan echoed a sentiment omnipresent throughout Tech Fest in that citizen-centric design is so key…as the survival of citizens over cities offers survival of everyday dignity.
