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Explore the driving forces behind the next era of technological innovation, unpacking the challenges and opportunities of the metaverse, data sovereignty, AI, VR, gamification, and UX and UI design.
The event will offer more than just actionable insights into new technologies through the application of a humanistic lens to the subject matter to better understand how it applies to, and respects, people and the planet.
Additional topics will include diversity in digital representation, accessibility, AI biases, digital human rights, low-impact and climate-positive technology, next-generation psychology, and building mental and creative resilience.
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At three stripes, Alexandra and her team are responsible for rewiring the adidas digital landscape to delight consumers with predictive and intuitive digital experiences while inspiring them through the stories of brand’s truly legendary heritage.
Alexandra’s passion is to celebrate the possibilities of digital and connect people to sport. Outside of her daily job Alexandra is dedicated to bringing young people and those less advantaged closer to their dream jobs through mentorship and coaching.

Constantine is an experienced design leader with a 20-year track record of delivering impactful business results in the face of evolving human behaviour, technological advancements, and economic pressures.
Originally from Kyiv, Ukraine, Constantine has spent the last 15 years in Amsterdam heading product design at a leading video game developer, before working with top apparel brands such as Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, and now adidas. As a passionate advocate for user experience and mindful technology, he believes that designers and product leaders hold a responsibility to shape the future of their brands and customers.

Mark is a serial entrepreneur and award-winning global thought leader, sitting at the intersection of technology, entertainment, and brand building. He has worked directly with A-list celebs to C-suite to drive brand growth and transformation and is now Senior Vice President and Head of Innovation at VICE Media Group, which has come from humble beginnings as a print magazine to become a multi-billion-dollar youth media empire with offices in 40 countries.
He’s driven by the mission to democratise his knowledge and digitally upskill 10 million people by 2025 and has travelled to over 100 countries so far in pursuit of this cause. Mark's sessions are a raw, honest, and often hilarious look at the state of marketing, creativity, and innovation in the modern age.

Danielle is a trailblazing force in empathic design with two decades of work grounded equally in science and soul, having transformed some of the largest organisations and tech companies in the world.
At Google, Danielle founded Google Empathy Lab, working with teams from AI and BARD to ATAP, Devices, Inclusion and Crisis Response. Her skill of braiding together scientists, artists, poets, writers, ecologists, Indigenous leaders, human rights and land activists led to the company’s most radical collaborations. Prior to the Lab, Danielle ran special projects for Google X, Alphabet’s moonshot factory, and was previously the youngest senior executive on Apple’s graphic design team, working on the top product launches of all time, from the Intel Mac and MacBook Pro to the global introductions of iPhone and iPad.

Mikaela Jade is a Cabrogal woman of the Dharug-speaking Nation of Sydney. Through the Indigenous edu-tech company that she founded, Indigital, Mikaela seeks to develop innovative ways to digitise and translate knowledge and culture from remote and ancient communities. Her aim is for Indigital to help create meaningful pathways for Indigenous people into the digital economy and the creation of future technologies.
Mikaela's visionary work and achievements have been widely recognised. In 2022 she was announced as one of 15 leaders to be awarded the Schwab Foundation Social Innovators of the Year Prize, was nominated for the ACT Australian of the Year Award, and was named ANU Indigenous Alumna of the Year. Mikaela has spoken at the United Nations in New York to demonstrate the impact of new technologies in Indigenous communities, is a member of the WEF Metaverse Governance Steering Group, and a delegate on the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous issues.

Sam is most recently the creator of The Uncertainty Experts, a unique hybrid of online learning, interactive documentary, and psychological intervention, and the author of the international best-seller Be More Pirate.
He was co-founder of Livity, the multi-award-winning social enterprise and youth-led creative Network, co-founder of Digify Africa, providing transformational digital skills to thousands of young Africans, and co-founder of Don’t Panic, the original activist and Bafta-winning content studio. Sam has won Entrepreneur of the Year, Agency of the Year, The Queens Award, and many others. He is a consultant to brands from Rolex to Red Bull, and a mentor to many entrepreneurs and innovators around the world.

Dr Jonnie Penn, FRSA, is a professor of AI Ethics and Society at the University of Cambridge. He is a historian of technology, a #1 New York Times bestselling author, and sought-after public speaker.
Jonnie is an Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University, a Fellow at St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge and an Associate Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. He was formerly a MIT Media Lab Assembly Fellow, Google Technology Policy Fellow, Fellow of the British National Academy of Writing and popular broadcaster.

Jack Tame is a journalist and broadcaster who’s been a regular on New Zealand airwaves for more than fifteen years. As the host of Q+A on TVNZ1 and Saturday Mornings on Newstalk ZB, Jack interviews politicians and thought leaders about politics, policy, and economics. His career has taken him around the World and more elections than he can count. Jack loves new ideas, and in his spare time he enjoys reading and test cricket. Jack will serve as the co-host of the Future State: Festival of Radical Innovation.

Dr Michelle Dickinson (MNZM) is a Nanotechnologist and Materials Engineer. She has spent the last two decades contributing to cutting-edge technologies, researching solutions for medical and technology applications for clients who range from small start-ups to large corporates. Having set up and run New Zealand’s only nanomechanical testing laboratory that specialises in making and breaking tiny things (nano and micro), Michelle spends her time helping companies with board advisory around science and technology commercialization, including technical consulting for investors and VC’s looking for ROI advice for high-tech start-ups. Her experience spans academia, government labs and large-scale R&D departments.
Michelle’s success comes from her hard work and lots of lucky opportunities, allowing her to break the poverty cycle she grew up in through education. This experience led her to co-found Nanogirl Labs, a socially conscious business designed to create beautiful and engaging content to help everyone build confidence around STEM. Nanogirl Labs is both an in-person and a digital platform that highlights positive, diverse role models with fun and engaging storylines and kinaesthetic based learning helping everyone to see that they can be a creator not just a consumer.
Michelle has been recognised for her many services to New Zealand for her work in STEM, including becoming a Member of New Zealand Order of Merit for services to science in the 2015 Queen’s Birthday Honours, awarded the Sir Peter Blake Leadership award in 2015, was the winner of the Women of Influence award for science and innovation in 2016, winner of the Prime Minister’s Science Media Communication Prize and the New Zealand Association of Scientists Science Communicators Award in 2014.
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Registration
08:00
Doors Open
Welcome to the inaugural Future State event. Check in. Grab a coffee. Take your seat. And buckle in for day full of radical and innovative ideas.
Session 1
09:00
Welcome & Introduction
Following a cultural welcome, our hosts will outline the subject matter ahead and introduce the day’s first speakers to the stage.
09:20
How to be the Luckiest Brand On Planet Earth
In his seminal book Christensen Clayton described innovation as competing against luck. What are the unseen driving forces behind the innovations that become iconic, versus those that are seen as incremental or ignored? In this session, Mark Adams will outline the invisible insights that drive the most successful and iconic innovations, pulling these examples apart to show you that it's what you can't see that defines the success of each of these dramatic leaps in technology. The principles unpacked in this session will change your luck forever and help you create and develop brand strategy that strikes the right cord with the right audience at the right moment.
10:00
Designing for People: The Future of e-Commerce
In this detailed look at the state of e-commerce in 2023 and beyond, Alexandra and Constantine will share insights into adidas’s development and use of digital tools including predictive shopping, invisible, mobile, and biometric payments, one-hour delivery, image recognition and mapping, advanced language processing, AI, and other technological advancements that constitute the golden age of online shopping. Through these case studies, they’ll also explore the potential downsides of innovation, especially those built with the sole purpose of driving conversion, and discuss some of adidas’s initiatives that serve to build authentic customer credibility, such as membership and loyalty programs, direct-to-consumer sales, co-creation, NFT collectibles, and content personalisation.
10:40
Morning Break
11:20
Session Introduction
11:30
Decolonising the Digital: First Nations in the Metaverse
The founder of Australia’s first Indigenous edu-tech company, Indigital, seeks to develop innovative ways to digitise and translate knowledge and culture from remote and ancient communities, including Māori. Her aim is for Indigital to help create meaningful pathways for Indigenous people into the digital economy, and at Future State, Mikaela will discuss the intersection of cultural knowledge and digital technology and how it applies to the future of business through the metaverse and Web3.
12:10
Panel Discussion — Building Community in the Digital Sphere
New technologies are reshaping the way that brands and organisations communicate with and grow audience, but as we become increasingly reliant on these tools, so too does the need for building culture and authenticity. From digital DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) and deconstructing AI biases, to growing trust through membership programs and co-creation initiatives, this session will explore the importance of respecting people and planet despite, and in tandem with, technological change.
12:40
Lunch Break
Session 2
13:40
Session Introduction
13:50
Rest Engineering: A Blueprint for AI’s Next Chapter
Artificial intelligence has regularly been regarded as a cognitive revolution, one where the machines can mimic life, but according to the New York Times best-selling author and professor of AI Ethics and Society, Jonnie Penn, what we’ll experience in the decades ahead is a social revolution. In this engaging and highly personal presentation, Jonnie will look at the recent dominance of Large Language Models — responsible for the incredible rise of ChatGPT — and the challenges, ramifications and opportunities that stem from these innovations, calling into question established norms about what behaviour counts as human, and what being human will mean in the future.
14:30
Machine Learning — This Time with Feeling
What do pecan trees, Hawaiian moon phases, octopuses, heptopods, psychedelics, and the sciences of awe and mindset have to do with the future of AI? Everything. Join Danielle Krettek Cobb, the founder of Google’s Empathy Lab and now Grandmother AI, for an inspiring ride at the forefront of emerging intelligence. Danielle will share her experimental perspectives on training models like ChatGPT-3 and LaMDA, and why applying the ways of seeing and being connected to our deepest human and ecological traditions is essential for us as we feel our way towards a more hopeful future
15:10
Afternoon Break
15:50
Session Introduction
16:00
Mastering Uncertainty: Transforming a Negative to a Positive
Technology is changing at an increasingly rapid pace, transforming not just the global business landscape but also the ways in which we live and interact as a society. How do we cope with such constant change and build resilience within ourselves and our teams so that we’re prepared for the curveballs of the world’s fourth industrial revolution? Based on insights and outcomes from a groundbreaking interdisciplinary experiment, Sam’s talk will demonstrate how to increase ‘uncertainty tolerance’, and prove why it’s a key skill for writing the future. Backed by Netflix, built with UCL, and beta-tested by firms such as Apple, Lego and Google, this talk will give you the chance to discover your own uncertainty tolerance level and provide practical takeaways for improving collaboration, connection, problem-solving and more.
16:40
Panel Discussion — What Happens When the Machines Can Mimic Life?
The next era of the internet known as Web 3.0 will introduce an array of new technologies, frameworks and principles that will define how we behave and relate to each other — both online and off. At the centre of the shift is technology that leverages decentralisation, machine learning, artificial intelligence and blockchain against new ways to communicate, create and process information. In this concluding session of Future State, our esteemed speakers will discuss and debate the challenges and opportunities of what comes next.