It was a full house for our latest BIMA Breakfast Briefing at The Club at The Ivy on 28 November. Joining the BIMA members and the panel of industry experts for a whistle-stop tour of some of the key tech trends for 2018 were hundreds of people watching the live feed on Facebook. View here.
Ben Titchmarsh, Head of Media and Marketing at Propeller Group, launched the “wtf talk” (the wtf standing for ‘wow, the future!’) before Luciana Carvalho Se, Business Development & Partnerships at REWIND, examined the direction of travel and barriers to adoption for virtual environments in 2018. She explored the ‘spectrum’ of VR, the possibilities for AR in the wake of Pokémon Go, the fledgling MR (mixed reality) and the growing body of evidence showing the effect immersion in virtual environments can have.
Guy Armitage, CEO and founder of Zealous, spoke about the realities (and the limitations) of the state of AI:
“90% of the time, if someone says it’s AI it probably isn’t”.
Matt Bush, Director of Agencies, Google UK discussed intelligent voice assistance and the progress of Google Home. He explored the shift in computer intuition that’s enabling new technology to actively assist our lives, and the potential for it to do so much more:
“I’d be pretty devastated if any assistant device was only used for shopping.”
Karen Boswell, Head of Innovation at the Adam and Eve agency gave her predictions for 2018, which included greater take-up of AR and VR, the growth of voice and visual search (and how brands will need to adapt their marketing accordingly), and the effects of vastly increased processing power that devices will be able to take advantage of next year.
As ever, our audience had plenty to contribute, with questions and discussions including:
1. The issue of avoiding innovation for innovation’s sake
2. The challenge of households split between Apple and Android
3. Security risks of connected tech and how to address them
4. How AR and VR may affect our ‘addiction’ to tech and how we might adapt
If you missed it, you can catch up here on our Facebook page. And remember to book you place now for the BIMA Members’ Lunch on 31 Jan. Spaces are limited and going fast.