Two big weeks for technology enthusiasts like us. First, the web in Quebec, then web2day, in Nantes, which we had the chance to attend as part of the French-speaking digital trail. Two events with different conferences that fed our thirst to always know a little more.
WAQ
From Daria Hvizdalova’s
conference on AI and robotics to Vitaly Friedman’s high-octane web design examples, we heard about concepts that are part of our daily lives. But we mostly saw the variations of their concrete applications.
It gave us confidence in the web, more list of albania cell phone numbers beautiful, exciting, enriching, and democratic. It did us good to see all these ideas and projects imagined, shared by our counterparts.
Our observation: human beings do not lack creativity. There is no doubt about that.
Storing information in DNA
Dina Zielinski, Katja Minitsenka choosing an internship: much more than a gateway to the world of work and Daria Hvizdalova have shown us that our intelligence allows us to create and imitate elements of our environment that are fabulous. We only have to think of storing information in storage spaces as small as DNA. If the technology is financially inaccessible, the development of new methods to encode what we want to store in DNA should change the game. According to researcher Dina Zielinski, a few years should be needed to get there. Not hard to believe given the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence and robotics in recent years that Daria Hvizdalova illustrated. Nor surprising when Google and NASA promise to take us ” to” Mars .
We also realized that another important vector of creation is this constant search for a better understanding of our own behaviors. As human beings, we develop tools that allow us to explain our motivations, our emotions, our logic and our inconsistencies. Which brings us to the next point.
Use of data
The data is there, it is everywhere, but conduit china its analysis remains complex. Among the speakers who left their mark on us, Simo Ahava, Tim Wilson and Lea Pica came to share the methods that are changing their daily lives. They showed us how to manipulate this data, get the most out of it and make it understandable and meaningful — to our colleagues, our bosses , our investors.
If, like us, data analysis is an area you want to improve in, Tim Wilson co-hosts the Digital Analytics Power Hour podcast , which we recommend.
Lea Pica explained to us, once we have made our data speak, how to stage them so that they tell their own story. And so that you help your bosses make the right decisions for your company.
There’s no denying that data is an integral part of our work. While it can sometimes seem like analyzing it requires mountains of knowledge, the WAQ speakers proved that with the right resources, it’s all within our reach.
Web2Day
Heading to Nantes, France where a few of us had the chance to attend Web2Day. We took the opportunity to visit companies and incubators, participate in co-creation activities and learn more about the Nantes ecosystem. Oh, we also treated ourselves to 24 hours in Paris, just enough time to play tourists, proof in hand. 😉
Essentialism
We’re preaching a bit to our own parish, but the conference by our colleague Franck, marketing lead at Snipcart, was essential . As entrepreneurs, startups and/or professionals, we get brainwashed: “work hard, work hard, work fast”, “get involved everywhere”, “the first years are made to burn yourself out”. Let’s calm down.
Slowness has been advocated for a long time (it is also one of the 4 values at Spektrum), but this time François brought up an interesting parallel: essentialism.
What is this?
Basically, it’s about doing less, but doing better.
Channel your efforts, maximize your impact on the world, understand that you can’t do everything, eliminate non-essential things, and make good, thoughtful decisions. Without forgetting to repeat to yourself as often as possible: is this essential?
If you are interested in the subject, Franck’s conference was inspired by Essentialism, a book that we highly recommend!
New practices of digital journalism
We mainly attended conferences on digital marketing, but Mathieu’s interest in the media world drew him to a talk on journalism practices in the digital age. It was a very concrete presentation on the different forms that journalism has adopted in recent years thanks to the web: collaborative investigations, podcasts, social or explanatory videos, data journalism and immersive journalism are just a few examples of this panoply of new platforms.
In his conference, Julien Kostreche remained very factual. It was above all an enumeration of these new practices. It would have been interesting to have a critical and analytical opinion on the situation from a man who is at the heart of the field. The foundations of the journalist’s profession are being shaken by these changes and this obviously creates new challenges.
The Nantes entrepreneurial ecosystem
Our stay allowed us to discover the Nantes entrepreneurial ecosystem and to interact with the players who contribute to its life. Although there are several similarities with that of Quebec, we noted some positive and negative points.
What we remember:
The ecosystem was co-built taking into account a logical path for a startup. None of the incubators really compete with each other, because they support startups according to where they are in the entrepreneurial journey.
There are interesting incubator formulas, such as Maia Mater , which offers 4 months of total immersion including accommodation with the other incubatees.