Future of the Metaverse

The Future of Leadership & Corporate Narratives with Alvaro Cedeno

In this episode, Cathy speaks with long-time friend Alvaro Cedano who is the founder of Perfectible. It’s all about the narrative and you must deliver multiple episodes of the story to tell others about your country which is consistent with the political vision and also awakens engagement in others.

Alvaro Cedeno

The three essential skills to survive in life-threatening circumstances are to stay optimistic, to prioritize and to be creative. They are critical factors of my personal and professional success to constantly move out of comfort zones, as nothing extraordinary has ever come out of one.

My career is a collection of diverse experiences where I have honed adaptive skills to lead with excellence in multiple cultural and thematic environments. Working for ten years as an international volunteer I developed a sharp sense of contextual intelligence. This was in parallel to my entrepreneurial activity as a translator.

As a government official I had the rare opportunity to partake on a diplomatic mission to start-up an Embassy in Beijing, China. Remarkable how much you can learn when you start something anew! As Ambassador to Japan I built –again from scratch- a green growth bilateral agenda. Then, as Ambassador to the WTO in Geneva I launched two coalitions of countries on electronic commerce and on sustainable trade.

My core strengths are: strategic, input, intellection, ideation and connectedness (CliftonStrengths). I am interested in improving as a public speaker designing memorable narratives. An example is a talk I gave at TEDxTokyo (see link below).

In order to transform the most pressing global issues, I believe we must develop public-private partnerships for people, planet and purpose (PPPPPPs). In order to do that, and despite the exponential acceleration of technological revolutions, there are four things which humans do far better than machines to create new value and synergies: creativity, empathy, ethics and lovingkindness.

A couple of years ago I took up triathlon as a hobby. It regenerates my physical and mental health and keeps me two steps ahead of my personal comfort zones. We are reaching the end of the Holocene, or the age of comfort. The Anthropocene will be all about adaptability. So stay optimistic, prioritize, and be creative.

Connect:

Finding Spaces for Belonging with Vanessa Mason

Vanessa Mason discusses the increasing amount of loneliness due to the Covid-19 Pandemic and this has created a growing amount of displacement in the world today. People have less of a sense of belonging and they are less rooted. The Paradox of Choice to determine where you fit in the world going forward & how you are perceived in this world.

FEATURED GUEST:

Vanessa Mason, Research Director for Institute for the Future

Vanessa Mason is the research director at the Institute for the Future, a nonprofit organization that helps individuals, organizations, and communities think systematically about the future. Her future research explores how we can redesign and re-imagine well-being and belonging changing across business, social, and civic spheres.

Her newsletter the Future of Belonging examines how we can redesign technology and other tools and remodel approaches to fulfill the basic human need for belonging over the next decade as loneliness, alienation, and exclusion become more pervasive.

Vanessa has been recognized as a 2018 Aspen Ideas Festival Spotlight Health Scholar, 40 Under 40 Tech Diversity Silicon Valley, 2016 New Leaders Council San Francisco Fellow, [200 Black Women in Tech to Follow on Twitter] (https://hackernoon.com/200-black-women-in-tech-to-follow-on-twitter-e33a27303b4a) and as a 2016 TEDMED Research Scholar. She serves on the American Heart Association's Social Impact Fund Investment Advisory Committee. Vanessa earned her BA in psychology from Yale University and her MPH in global health from Columbia University.

Connect:

Brain-Computer Interface For The Mass Market: Let Your Mind Take Control with NextMind Founder Sid Kouider

NextMind is changing the AI industry through new brain-sensing technology that may push the industry to adapt to neurotechnology. Brain activity is translated into real-world actions, allowing you to control a wide range of digital objects with your mind in real-time. What you think is what you do. 

FEATURED GUEST:

Sid Kouider

Cognitive Neuroscientist and Founder of Nextmind, a company developing the next generation of neural interfaces.

NextMind is a neurotechnology startup developing a groundbreaking, noninvasive, AI-based brain-computer interface for the mass market. Upcoming products will allow users to play games and control electronic and mobile devices, including virtual and augmented reality headsets, in real-time using just their thoughts. NextMind combines new brain-sensing technology with innovative machine-learning algorithms to translate brain waves into direct digital commands, making it easier for end-users to navigate the computer systems they’re using.

Connect:

Training Your Brain & Exploring BCI with Alex Castillo & AJ Keller of Neurosity

In this episode of Future Insiders, Cathy dives into training your brain for improved productivity. Her guests Alex Castillo & AJ Keller the co-founders of Neurosity.

Neurosity

Train your mind and free your code. The productivity trainer for your brain.

Notion knows when you are in the zone and keeps you there.

Our app finds the music that hacks your coding mood. Notion connects to your streaming service and selects the music that syncs with your brain and boosts your productivity.

Fewer distractions. Better code. Notion automatically mutes your notifications when you reach your peak brain performance.

Connect with Neurosity:

FEATURED GUESTS:

Alex Castillo

Building neural devices and neural apps to use our thoughts to interact with technology.

Connect with Alex:

AJ Keller

Co-Founder & CEO at Neurosity

Connect with AJ:

LeaderING & Incentivizing Curiosity with Strategic Futurist, Nancy Giordano

This episode takes a deep dive into how to lead in an age of change and how future generations will help to incentivize curiosity and drive strategic sustainability. Nancy helps people, organizations, and audiences build a sustainable path forward as opposed to focusing solely on growth.

NANCY GIORDANO

Strategic Futurist || Global Keynote Speaker || Gatherer || Author of LeaderING: The Ways Visionary Leaders Play Bigger

Nancy is committed to strengthening the organizational capacities and societal structures necessary to leverage significant "Fourth Age" technology advances and ensure a safe and thriving future for us all. As founder of Play Big Inc, she + her PYNKrs ("people you need to know") guide visionary C-suite leaders through this rapidly transforming society. Summarizing all she has learned so far, she will soon be launching her first book titled LeaderING: The Way Visionary Leaders Play Bigger.

With more than $50B worth of experience, Nancy has a rich history of advising and learning with some of the top companies in the world. Recognizing that radical shifts in technology, business and society must be considered simultaneously, she helped shape an Artificial Intelligence software start-up, designed a leadership summit to encourage C-suite execs to confidently explore seven of the most disruptive emergent technologies, and is now working collaboratively with one of the first A.I. services companies: Kungfu.AI.

An activist for a better next, Nancy is championing two bold ideas poised to weave a more human, truly peer-to-peer internet: Holochain + Holo Hosting. And she is helping usher in an era of Partnerism, an economic and social system that successfully builds value by developing human capacity to care for one another and nature — “power with vs power over”— which will be incentivized with a comprehensive measure that moves beyond GDP to the Social Wealth Index (SWI).

Nancy also recently created the Femme Futurist Society to share compelling conversations with leading futurists around the world. And she produced the first Career Fair For the Future during SXSW to help college + high school students more actively and confidently design the future of their work. She has been invited to give over 60 keynote talks around the world these past two years on topics such as:

• The Case for Audacious Leadering

• Navigating the Big Shift

• Just One Percent In...Learning to Navigate the Next Economy

• The Four Pandemic Awakenings Shaping the New Economy

Her consultancy, Play Big Inc, is uniquely good at:

Inspiring + guiding large, often iconic, organizations who are ready to build new transformative, future-forward growth strategies... We encourage leaders to move from a mindset/culture of extraction, to one built on a societal investment. Identifying what each organization is in a unique position to contribute + create, we help leaders shift their organizational framework, posture and approach to better meet the needs + expectations of the future.

Connect:

VR for Good with Cortney Harding & Callie Leone 

They have developed a platform to help you manage your stress & well-being through a pandemic. Eunoe (“you-know”), which means “good mind” in Greek, is an immersive mindset training platform that uses voice-based VR to build intentional self-awareness and self-efficacy.

Our patent-pending platform uses evidence-based practices from psychology, neuroscience, gaming, and narrative storytelling to help athletes, frontline workers,  and people experiencing stress in high performance environments reframe negative thought patterns outside of therapy in deeply personal and measurable ways through voice, visualization, and introspection.

Cortney Harding

+ Global thought leader, published author, and speaker on emerging technology and the role of virtual and augmented reality.

+ Founder and CEO of a transformational VR/AR agency focused on creating innovative, powerful, and effective experiences for training. Clients include Walmart, Verizon, Accenture, Coca-Cola, and the US Air Force.

+ Winner of multiple awards including “Best VR/AR” at Mobile World Congress, SXSW Innovation Award Finalist, and Top HR product by HR Executive.

In an era where many enterprise VR/AR creators lean on outmoded ideas and churn out non-interactive, unrealistic, bland content, I push the medium forward by fusing some of the first voice-activated virtual reality interactivity with highly engaging, cinematic content from acclaimed directors who specialize in the medium. I have experience building teams with best-in-class Unity and Unreal devs and producers.

My agency Friends with Holograms created “AvenueS” for Accenture, an immersive experience that places child welfare workers in training in a realistic, traumatic environment and then confronts them with an extremely challenging decision - whether to remove a child from their home and family. The interactive piece is now in use by the largest child welfare agency in the US and is being expanded into multiple chapters of content. People have often reported highly emotional responses in tests of the experience, including crying.

Callie Leone

Callie is the founder of Eunoe LLC and creator of the Eunoe platform which is being tested in the proposed RCT. Eunoe is an immersive mental wellness studio. Their patent-pending platform (being tested in this trial) has the power to combine emerging technologies VR, AI, and biofeedback with genuine human connection. Eunoe is developing personalized and adaptive programs that incorporate evidence-based practices from psychology, neuroscience, gaming, and narrative storytelling to help users become the best version of themselves in every aspect of wellbeing: work/school, social, community, financial, physical and emotional health.

Connect:

Callie

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/callieleone/

Twitter: @callieleone

Cortney

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cortneyharding/

Twitter: @cortneyharding

Friendswithholograms.com

Website: https://www.eunoehealth.com/

Twitter @eunoehealth

The ARt of Teaching AR Marketing with Prof. Joachim Scholz

This episode dives into what students are learning in Prof. Scholz AR Marketing class at Brock University.

Prof. Scholz discusses how they are breaking new ground in AR Marketing. He’s teaching what is AR and how to maximize engagement, but the core of what the students work on is an AR brand label for a winery & the customer experience.

The focus is on how customers respond to their AR experience. How do we encourage customers to experience these new worlds & explore AR?

Joachim Scholz is a marketing professor at Brock University who specializes in augmented reality marketing, social media controversies, and branding in digitally-infused and hyper-connected societies. He published the first-ever conceptual article on augmented reality marketing in 2016, which won Business Horizons’ Best Article of the Year award.

Connect:

EX is Becoming as Important As CX and VR AR Hold the Key With Tom Symonds & Justin Parry

Cathy dives deep with the co-founders of Immerse.io which is a perfect tool for the job & is in-part a blend of technologies that can deliver the very best in employee experience. In this episode, you will learn more about how Immerse helps customers like Shell onboard employees in a new & exciting way, especially during a pandemic.

About Immerse.io

Create, Scale & Measure Virtual Reality Training

Built for enterprise from the ground up, the Immerse Platform helps companies create, scale and deploy VR training and maximize their ROI.

GUESTS BIO:

Tom Symonds, CEO

Tom has gained a reputation for innovation and the creation of disruptive business models following 8 years at GE Capital and 12 years at leading internet businesses. He led Sky through the dot-com fallout, establishing it as one of the major internet players in the UK.

Tom has since worked with start-up businesses within the field of e-Learning, using his extensive expertise to leverage technology in order to address key business needs.

Justin Parry, COO

Justin has 20 years of experience creating and growing B2C and B2B products for start-ups and global organizations. He has developed and launched online platforms, websites, and mobile products across the world and joined Immerse from his role as Global Director of Internet Yellow Pages for Yell Group.

Justin is Chief Operating Officer and leads the Product strategy for Immerse. As a founder, he designed and led product development of the Immerse platform from scratch. He now oversees the delivery of all technology and VR content across the organization.

Connect:

Sound is a critical piece of the immersion puzzle! In this episode, Cathy talks with Guy Etgar and Nick Sciorra of Insoundz about the future of sound and audio. Insoundz uses patented technology to capture and understand sound from everyone and everything – everywhere – changing the fundamentals of audio production and enabling new experiences. During this episode, they talk about the importance of audio for immersion and even the future of podcasts. 

In this episode, Cathy is joined by her fellow futurist and friend, Nikolas Badminton. Cathy and Nik talk about all things future including the redefinition of platforms and algorithms, the transcendence of social media into a true lifestyle business, the rise of true power to the people, emerging theatres of geopolitical turmoil, and so much more. If you want to hear two futurists having a deep and future-focused conversation that is sure to be thought-provoking this is the episode!