There’s a clear preference for remote work among the next generation of office workers. And while working from home certainly saves commute time and other indignities (like showering), it comes with a price. One of the biggest downsides is loneliness. And one of the remedies stepping in to fill the gap between the solitude of toiling alone and the joy of sharing ideas are events and conferences. People are gathering together to share, learn, and feel more connected. That means that events and conferences need to adjust from being unidirectional (you sit in the audience and pay attention) to being bidirectional (you feel heard and seen). So many of the new conference formats put the spotlight on discourse and dialog.

Sure, you need a keynote and some inspirational main-stage events to spark the conversation, but it’s time to start thinking of conferences and events as the new office. A place where experiences are shared, ideas are exchanged, and consensus is collaborative. How are you going to change your events, or our behavior toward them, to realize this?

The Liveness Test and Trust

Another reason that live events are having a resurgence is that they pass the liveness test. Most of us no longer can tell if we’re watching a deepfake, being fed misinformation, or are the byproduct of an algorithm that thinks it knows what we want. Gathering in person is the gold standard for detecting “liveness.” I may disagree with you or not trust you, but at least I can be sure that it’s you in the flesh.

AI and the Future of Journalism

I addressed the changing world of journalism at the AI for Good Summit in Geneva, Switzerland, last week. My bottom line? About 30–40% of stories that get reported will be almost totally generated by AI in the next two years. These stories will include “basic” reportorial journalism, including things like quarterly earnings reports, weather, sports, and many other routine events. Journalists looking to succeed and have satisfying careers will become more investigative, synthesizing information from various AIs and other sources, and then adding insight. For more on this, download my presentation. Also, check out Google's robust set of tools for journalists. 

Also consider that in the past, a good reporter kept themselves out of the story. (Just the facts, ma’am.) Increasingly, reporters will need to put themselves into the story, if for no other reason than to describe how the story unfolded. (Journalistic) “Independence,” wrote A.G. Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times, in an essay published in the Columbia Journalism Review, “is the increasingly contested journalistic commitment to following facts wherever they lead. It places the truth—and the search for it with an open yet skeptical mind—above all else.” I’ll argue that to do that well, a journalist needs to document their journey.

Scariest Predication I Read All Week?

Feeling a bit of personal foreboding, I stumbled on a great “foreboder” that astronomer  Carl Sagan published in 1996:

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…

 

“The dumbing down of Americans is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), the lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.”

― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Where Have All the Speakers Gone?

A survey of more than 500 planners from Community Brands reads mostly as you’d imagine, with a few exceptions. Planners are having trouble getting abstract submissions for event sessions (30% versus projected 43%) and the number of speakers (39% versus projected 46%). Why? Expensive travel? Too much time spent traveling? Too little ROI for a speaker’s time and effort? Planners will adjust by having fewer speakers and more networking opportunities. Download the full report for details.