CreateTech 2019 Agenda

8:00  - 9:00 AM

Registration & Breakfast

9:00 AM – 11:40 AM

General Session

9:00–9:05
Welcome and Opening Remarks
Marla Kaplowitz, President & CEO, 4A’s

9:05–9:20
Framing the Day: A Word From CreateTech Emcees
Tim Leake, SVP, Innovation/Chief Marketing Officer , RPA
Charlie Oliver, CEO, Tech2025

9:20 - 9:50
Opening Keynote: The Innovation Imperative for Creative Business
Dr. Kumar Mehta, founder of an innovation think tank and author of The Innovation Biome, shares the foundational elements that drive innovation, and a framework to manage and scale it. Directly counter to long-held academic views about “the innovator’s dilemma,” Mehta demonstrates that legacy organizations can foster sustained innovation: good news for agencies and clients transforming their business in an age of accelerated change—and will help give you tools for your innovation program.

Kumar Mehta
Founder, Bridges Insight
Senior Research Fellow, Center for the Digital Future, USC
Author, The Innovation Biome

9:50 - 10:20
Change Management: Innovation in Action
We all live in a constant loop of adapting to change. For people individually and businesses as organizations, change management is both a global and a local priority, aimed at forecasting the future, presenting ideas and proposing new ways of working. In this session, industry leaders discuss how they manage change across clients, companies, and teams, and in their own lives.

Moderator: Tim Leake, SVP, Innovation/Chief Marketing Officer , RPA
Melissa Lentz, Global CEO, MAGNET Global Network and founder, M.Hatter Consulting LLC
Philip Rackin, VP, Business Transformation, R/GA
Michael Lebowitz, Founder & CEO, Big Spaceship 

10:20 - 10:40
CreateTech Masters
New for CreateTech 2019: a series of lightning talks threaded throughout the program, taking attendees behind the creators’ studio with some of the industry’s leading technologists. Co-curated and emceed by Alexander Rea, this series looks at great work and how it came to be—as explained by the masters who made it.

Introduction: Alexander Rea, Technology & Experiential-Focused Executive Creative Director

CreateTech Masters Talk I
Ashley Baccus-Clark, Director of Research, Hyphen-Labs

10:40 - 11:10
Networking Break

11:10 - 11:40
Stop Mistaking Innovation for Futurism
The world's most forward-thinking businesses anticipate the future—and they create that future. But following these trailblazers mistakes innovation for futurism, keeping creators from finding their own paths. This session explores why futurism in the advertising industry should be a compass for innovation in creative technology, and it offers strategy on making room for futurism, in culture and budgets—and bringing talent and partners along for the ride.

Moderator: Mauricio Ruiz, Creative Technology, Director, Grey
Jared Weiner, Executive Vice President, The Future Hunters
Alexis Lloyd, Head of Design Innovation, Automattic
Neil Redding

11:40 – 12:40 PM

Workshops (concurrent)

Three concurrent breakout sessions give attendees the opportunity to dive deeper
into the pressing industry topics most relevant to their interests.

11:40 - 12:40
Workshop 1: A Voice in the Wilderness: Getting Hands-On with Voice Technology

“Alexa: What’s my voice strategy for 2019?” If only it were that easy. Voice-activated digital assistants are rapidly reshaping the way consumers interact with technology, leading us toward untold changes for brands and marketers. But many marketers are still trying to figure out how to use this new technology without understanding how it works. In this session, attendees will learn about the tools they need to create their own “skills”: voice-powered apps that let smart speakers check the weather or update shopping lists. We’ll look at the state of the voice market, experiment with key platforms and tools in voice programming, and explore the incredible power (and fundamental limitations) of today’s digital assistants.
Layne Harris, Vice President, Head of Innovation Technology, 360i

Workshop 2: Creative AI 101, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Neural Network
Artificial intelligence isn’t in the toolset of the typical creative technologist. Not yet, anyway. And for those of us who consider math something to avoid at all costs, getting into AI can seem pretty daunting. In this workshop, Husani Oakley walks through an AI-driven creative project created specifically for this talk to show how your code—and how you think about your code—can include artificial intelligence without melting your brain…or blowing your schedule.
Husani Oakley, SVP, Director of Technology, Great Machine, Deutsch’s AI Innovation Studio

  
11:40 - 12:40
Workshop 3: Creative Dim Sum : Creative Concepts Made Easy
Creative Dim Sum is a collaborative methodology developed by Technology, Humans and Taste (THAT) that forces collaborative conceptual thinking that results in new ideas. Based on actual science and extensive research into collaborative methods across industries, this workshop will give you an overview of their Creative Dim Sum process and the Dim Sum Club they hold every Friday at 4PM. So far Dim Sum Club has resulted in an open-source library of over 1000 concepts created by a collection of artists, technologist, thinkers, makers, experts from related and unrelated fields.
Nathan Phillips, Co-Founder, Managing Partner, Technology, Humans and Taste

Curious?

We welcome questions of all types. Connect Now

Logistics: Melissa Belfiore at mbelfiore@4As.org 
Partnerships: Reema Elghossain at  relghossain@4As.org 
Speaker Submission Form: Speaker submissions