Sustainability. It’s one of the biggest debates today about how the business world is changing. In part, thanks to the creative disruption of digital innovation, today’s business leaders are beginning to make sustainability a true driver of who they are and what they do. From Nike’s amazing zero waste designs to IBM’s ‘Smarter Planet’, some of the world’s most valuable and respected brands are using sustainability to transform their role in the world. The ones that have got this right have got a lot out of it – reputation, trust, employee pride, consumer interest and a path to long term business value.

Questions answered :
Will tech companies be the next to rise to the challenge?

What are the risks?

What are the opportunities?

What role are digital creatives and innovators best positioned to play to make a big sustainability impact?

Enhanced hearing and visual aids, which interpret signals outside the human perceptual range, are a development we might reasonably expect in the near future. These medical technologies could, conceivably be used as tools for human enhancement and may offer new frameworks through which to understand the more traditional ways we choose to interact with Augmented Reality (AR).

AR has formally been concerned with the enhancement of the visual senses by overlaying information rich environments and making them visible through the use of an external device. But often the interface interferes. This presentation will question how new advances in embedded medical technologies offer the possibility of a fully, technologically enhanced, human sensorium.

Cochlear implants (or ‘bionic ears’) are already used by nearly two hundred thousand people worldwide, in addition artificial retinas offer a glimpse at the technologies that could provide new opportunities for designers developing the future interfaces that allow for us to engage with augmented realities.

These technologies offer a range of possibilities for altering human phenomenological awareness to degrees that have been commonly associated with drugs (either medical or recreational). This, naturally, raises some serious moral, ethical and legal challenges.

This fast-paced presentation will summarise some of the ways in which artists have been at the forefront of the debates surrounding these technologies.

Questions Answered:
# How can designers draw inspiration from nature when developing new AR technologies?

This talk on technology trends describes two possible futures – MujiComp and RyanairComp. It considers themes from popular fiction that can help us to think about people’s hopes and concerns around the growing presence of smart technology in their lives.

Questions Answered:
What does popular fiction tell us about peoples’ hopes and fears for the future?
Will the realisation of the Internet of Things match our utopian dreams or our dystopian nightmares?

Afonso, CEO & Co-founder of TUIZZI.com, will explain the many ways to innovate the Outdoor Advertising industry.

Questions Answered:
This session want’s to change people minds about the Outdoor Advertising. Many people think it’s a dying industry when in fact is growing each year.

In this session I’ll aim to show how new technologies, products, platforms and services are creating new ways for us to ‘possess’ or ‘own’ products. I’ll also describe how our behaviour is changing, and could change even more in the future, around what we consider to be ‘ours’.

Questions Answered:
How Technology is Changing Our Perception of Possession?
What emerging technologies, platforms, products and services are creating these changes?

We’ll leap back to the mobile future with an inspirational panel chaired by the fabulous Paps Shaikh of Say Media and comprised of the UK’s leading authorities on cutting edge technology and mobile marketing trends. Attendees will then be divided into groups and using a variety of supplies will be challenged to build the mobile device of the future in 30 minutes. The groups will have the opportunity to present a 1-minute pitch explaining the features of the device and how it will enhance the user experience to the esteemed panel and the winners will be selected. Prizes will be awarded along with glory, and perhaps a patent if the design is picked up!

Questions Answered:
This session will encourage you to think about the ways content is consumed via mobile devices, the environments mobiles are used in, and how these factors will impact future designs.