The future of creative innovation is changing – rapidly. In our new hybrid world, we need to be thinking about how to integrate digital and physical experiences effectively, as well as what customers actually want today, and in the future, too. These are some of the big questions that AREA 15 is trying to solve – and judging from the rave reviews they’ve been getting, it’s safe to say that they’re succeeding. Touted as “an immersive playground, all rolled into a vast and vibrant space,” AREA 15 is a tech wonderland just a stone’s throw from the infamous Las Vegas Strip. 

Host Ed McNamara sits down with Michael Beneville, the Chief Creative Officer at AREA15. They discuss the major paradigm shift unfolding in the guest experience space: one that’s striving to give consumers more agency. They’ll also shed a guiding light on what not just mere spectatorship, but true tech-driven participation can look like.    

Featuring guest Michael Beneville, Chief Creative Officer at AREA15 and Founder and CEO of Beneville Studios. 

This episode of Innovation Heroes is sponsored by the new SHI. Visit SHI.com/newlight to learn more. 

It's a new year, but we’re still facing a lot of our old 2021 problems: the global climate is changing fast, we continue to run low on chips thanks to supply chain shortages, and the population of the planet continues to boom, making for more hungry mouths to feed. It might just be time to look to the stars for some solutions – and by the stars, we mean low-cost, on-demand, designed-to-fly-daily rockets. Creating sustainable and commercialized space flight could not only solve our short-term problems of how to get satellites into orbit more cheaply and efficiently – they could completely change our lives here on Earth.   

Host Ed McNamara sits down with Andy Lapsa, Co-Founder of STOKE Space Technologies Inc. Andy’s spent the last decade working at Blue Origin, where he directed the BE-3 and BE-3U Engines projects and served as development test lead for the BE-4. Now, he’s starting his own space flight venture with the mission of making a completely reusable second stage rocket. Andy says the next 5-10 years of space tech development is going to have huge implications for our future; so, it’s going to be crucially important that we make the final frontier accessible, affordable, and sustainable – and that we figure out how to do it as soon as possible. 

Featuring guest Andy Lapsa, Co-Founder at STOKE Space Technologies, Inc.  

This episode of Innovation Heroes is brought to you by Autodesk. Visit SHI.com/Autodesk to learn more. 

The Internet can be a hotbed for some of the worst aspects of digital society, but there’s lessons to be learned from the data we create in these unsavoury interactions. Network Visualization is an advanced analytic technique that can be used to turn the vast, intimidating mountain of our social data into stunning pictures of online communities. This kind of analysis can help us do a better job of parsing out the truth from the rest of the background noise, and maybe even show us the tools we need to help make the Internet a more hopeful place again. 

Host Ed McNamara sits down with Alexandra Pavliuc, a doctoral researcher who’s using this kind of network visualization to make sense of the bigger picture. Examining everything from tweets by state-run political accounts to targeted sexism propagated by trolls, she says that this kind of analysis could be the first step in figuring out how to make the Internet a safer and more equitable place for all - and how to help both individual users and the leaders of these networks figure out what it means to do their part.   

Featuring guest Alexandra Pavliuc, Doctoral Researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute.  

This episode of Innovation Heroes is brought to you by Women in SHI. Visit SHI.com/WiSH to learn more. 

The team running Rutgers University’s supercomputer cluster has been busier than ever since the start of the pandemic. Today, they’re supporting the advanced computing needs for over 350 projects for hundreds of users all around the globe. From Dentistry to Astronomy, the work they support is truly changing the world – and sheds light on the real potential of today’s most powerful computing machines. But the real heroes are the IT staff, who not only maneuvered through the massive boom of pandemic demands, but continue to help make high resource computing accessible – and equitable – for a vibrant and varied research community. 

Host Ed McNamara sits down for the last episode of 2021 with an expert from the Office of Advanced Research Computing, who’s fighting to give credit to the unsung heroes behind this amazing tech – because innovation is nothing without communication and a focus on equality.  

Featuring guest Barr von Oehsen, Associate Vice President of the Office of Advanced Research Computing at Rutgers University. 

This episode of Innovation Heroes is brought to you by the Samsung Galaxy Book. Visit SHI.com/SamsungMobility to learn more. 

It’s American Thanksgiving tomorrow... a time to reflect on everything that’s happened in the last year. For the Innovation Heroes podcast team, that means thinking about the semiconductor shortage that’s been generating headlines – and with good reason. These little chips are in pretty much every electronic device you can think of, and there’s just not enough of them to go around. But COVID-19 isn’t the only reason we’re experiencing shortages; really, it’s just the last domino to fall in a cascade that’s spanned the last decade of technological development. But regardless of the true cause of the shortages, we need answers as to how exactly we’re going to get ourselves out of this mess. Host Ed McNamara sits down with two experts who say we have to start making the best of what we have, and finding ways to make sustainable maintenance make economic sense. Because the fate of not just the supply chain, but the world as we know it, depends on it. Featuring guests Sumit Puri, CEO & Co-Founder at Liqid, and Camberley Bates, Managing Director & Analyst at Evaluator Group.

This episode of Innovation Heroes is brought to you by Intel’s Evo vPro platform. Visit SHI.com/Intel to learn more.

Hitchhiking robots were just the beginning. Ed meets with Dr. Frauke Zeller and Lauren Dwyer, two leading social robotics scientists at X University in Toronto. Together, they go over the inspiring and viral story of hitchBot and all the amazing work Dr. Zeller and her team have been up to ever since. They discuss the latest and near-term use cases of robots in society and uncover a series of fascinating insights. From building the perfect robo-companion, to fundamentally altering our industries and what it means to be human, you will never look at your Roomba the same way again. 

Featuring: Dr. Frauke Zeller, Associate Professor and Director of The Creative School Catalyst & CCK at X University and Lauren Dwyer, Doctoral Candidate in Communication and Culture, Technology in Practice at X University.  

This episode of Innovation Heroes is brought to you by HP Inc Notebooks on the Intel Evo platform. Visit SHI.com/HP to learn more.   

Intel’s Stacey Shulman returns to talk about the one thing every innovation hero needs right now: More passion! After more than a year of the pandemic blues, Stacey talks with Ed about the projects she’s working on and explores the power of making tech more fun, meaningful, and human. From healthcare to retail, not only will it lead to better outcomes for the people you work with – it actually creates more profits, too. Stacey is Intel’s Vice President Internet of Things Group and GM Health, Life Sciences and Emerging Technologies.  

This episode of Innovation Heroes is brought to you by Lenovo Intelligent Computing. Learn more at SHI.com/Lenovo.  

It’s the spookiest time of the year – Cybersecurity Awareness Month! For the Season 3 premier, host Ed McNamara explores the rising threat of ransomware supply chain attacks, the future of security and what conversations you need to be having, right now, to avoid being the next target. Featuring resident security expert, Michael Wilcox, the field Chief Information Security Officer at Stratascale. Discover more research and thought leadership from Michael and Stratascale at Stratascale.com/Insights. 

This episode of Innovation Heroes is brought to you by Windows Autopilot. Unbox, log in, and take off with Window’s Autopilot today. Visit SHI.com/WindowsAutopilot for more info. 

SHI's Innovation Heroes is back for a third season of exploring the people and businesses giving us hope in a drastically disrupted world. With new host Ed McNamara at the helm, we’re breaking ground - and stories - in even more unprecedented ways. In the last year of the show, we’ve explored huge innovations that are helping us to stay afloat and start down the road to recovery: technology to transition us to the hybrid working world, AI that developed the COVID-19 vaccines, how the father of VR, Jaron Lanier, is making virtual meetings more human...and that’s just to name a few. 

This season, we’re looking forward with hope and finding the hero stories that will define our industries and society in the years to come. Featuring amazing returning guests like Stratascale’s Michael Wilcox and Intel’s Stacey Shulman, as well as new voices from universities, businesses, and maybe even some robots, Season 3 premieres October 14th with new episodes every two weeks after that. Be our hero – like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You won’t want to miss it! 

Innovation Heroes is an original podcast from SHI and Pilgrim Content. 

For more on SHI, visit SHI.com. 

Peter is joined by Costa Kladianos. Costa is the Vice President, Innovation and Technology at Canlan Sports and an expert on NFTs (Non-fungible tokens). NFTs have been causing a buzz in mainstream media recently. Peter and Costa discuss how they are fundamentally transforming the Internet in terms of creative ownership and distribution, from art to baseball cards and music. Are NFTs just for the avant-garde, or will they become the economic foundation of the Internet’s next generation?  

This episode is brought to you by The Hub, the new central resource for insight, thought leadership, and news from SHI. Visit blog.shi.com to learn more.