An apology (of sorts)
And a gift in return.
It’s been nearly 2 months since I last landed in your inboxes.
However, it’s been worth it because in these last 2 months I’ve helped 500+ professionals experience the magic of seeing their half-baked ideas transformed into share-worthy visuals, using AI. And the real value has been in seeing how this transforms people’s perceptions – both around AI (making it non-threatening and even exciting), and also about themselves (shattering the “I’m not creative” myth).
First, a note from our sponsor (me!). Skip this part if you want to get straight to the gift.
Since my last newsletter I’ve delivered 11 keynotes, workshops and breakouts – ranging from a couple of internal all hands sessions for a luxury hospitality design firm and a sustainability-focused comms agency, to a leadership education program with an insurance company, the launch of Azerbaijan’s first corporate innovation lab, and not one but three (!) sessions at IMEX Europe in Frankfurt.
And I’m not done – next week I’m speaking at SXSW London, and also giving keynotes at a US tech company’s EMEA customer conference, then at the Fitness Tech Summit, and the European board meeting of a telco company, and also heading to Malaga, Spain with an investment group, before heading to Chicago for a keynote with Event Leaders Exchange (last year I did four packaging gigs, this year it seems to be events for event people!).
Note: those are just the ones I know about! One undeniable trend in speaking – everything is getting more and more last minute.
🚨 So if you’re lining up your next all hands strategy session, sales kick off, or customer conference – I’d love to help! Learn more at the bottom of this email. 🚨
Now, about that gift.
Some people can speak regularly, and still post a newsletter. I’m not one of them. First, that’s because I’m a terrible multi-tasker. But the biggest reason is that in recent months, my talks have fundamentally changed. They now require me to work a bit harder after leaving the stage 😱
I’ve always customised every talk to the audience, so that part remains the same. But, as regular readers will know, last year I built a ‘multiplayer’, interactive AI-powered creative experience. Yup, all the buzzwords ;)
In a nutshell, instead of talking at the audience, I now work with them during my keynotes. I can ask anywhere from 30 to 500+ people to share their ideas, via quick doodles. And in seconds we transform these doodles into rich, AI-generated images.
But the real magic is when we take all these ideas, and use them to capture insights into what the hive mind of an audience thinks (2-min video explainer here).
For example, last week, I asked 200+ event professionals at IMEX Frankfurt to imagine creative ways they could connect people at their events. As well as having their 200 ideas, I then worked with AI to extract and summarise all the key themes emerging from them, in order to make them more accessible and useful.
Click the image below to check out 25+ of the results across 8 themes, from Gamified Nostalgia to Engineered Dependence and Vulnerability Accelerators:
And while we’re obviously working on automating the process as much as possible, right now it’s still takes anywhere from 2-4 hours to work with a few different AI tools to analyse and curate the audience’s ideas (and tbh, I still feel that I can add some value during this time… for now at least 😅)
But while this extra work makes it challenging to keep this newsletter up to date, it’s also transformed the value I can deliver during my sessions – which is why I’ve never been more excited about the work I’m doing.
Rather than just talking about innovation, I’m now innovating my core product – turning a one-way lecture into a shared creative experience, and creating interesting post-event content that people are positively excited to receive (the IKEA effect!)
Because the drum that I’ll continue to beat relentlessly is that the biggest and perhaps least-talked about implication of AI won’t be automation, but how it unleashes human creativity. And not just on an individual level but within organisations, by empowering frontline employees to quickly turn their half-formed, nascent ideas into something that’s good enough to share with colleagues.
The deck above is a gift to anyone who’s planning an important employee event or meeting in the near future. I’ve given similar gifts to everyone who’s organised the events that I’ve spoken at over the last 2 months (here’s what a client wrote about using it with a smaller group).
But the bigger gift I can offer all readers is to use this as inspiration to ask what will be the question that’s asked by all winning organisations in the future normal:
How are we using AI? And not just to automate the known. How are we using it to unleash the creativity of our team, to lean into the unknown?
There will be people in your team who want to give you the gift of their insight. They will have solutions to your (and your customers’) biggest challenges. Today, they let these ideas go, because realising them takes time. It’s hard.
AI changes this equation. It makes it easier than ever to go from napkin sketch, to a shareable idea that invites discussion. It makes people feel creative. It makes it possible to bring everyone into the conversation about your future.
Now, it’s over to you to spark and facilitate those discussions. Good luck :)
PS/ Hope to see some of you at SXSW London next week!
Next: Inspire your team to thrive in the future normal
In the last 12 months I’ve delivered 30+ sessions, both live and virtually – from Baku to Brazil, Las Vegas to London.
My regular trend & innovation keynotes bring fresh, cross-industry, people-first perspectives to your audience.
VisuAIse Futures takes it one step further, turning a keynote into an interactive, ‘multiplayer’ creative experience that gets your team excited at how they can use AI to accelerate your innovation culture.
Here’s what people are saying about it:
“It was so refreshing to hear how AI can be used to power human imagination, rather than replace it. And then it was even better to actually experience it”
“Fantastic session! Hugely insightful and fun, too!”
“Brilliant. The feeling in the room was positively intense whilst the images were coming through!
Feel the optimistic vibes it will bring to your event in the 2-minute video below (or watch it here).
If you’d like to discuss bringing me to your next meeting or event then please do reach out directly to Renee Strom or check out my speaking site.
Thanks for reading,