The Next Stage podcast by Web Summit

Marketing campaigns can be a successful shot in the dark or a misfired attempt to replicate previously famous campaigns. But when viral works, boy does it work. That’s something Exploding Kittens’ Elan Lee and Eric Lang learned from their experience marketing the unusual card game at games conventions and on Kickstarter.

The secret to their success has been, as they put it, a result of cultivating surprise and joy – not only for their audience, but also for themselves. A case in point is the eight-foot high fuzzy vending machine they exhibited at several conventions.

The machine dispensed random items while, in the background, staff were busy creating weird and wonderful gifts for the hordes of curious attendees. When someone dressed as Game of Thrones’ Daenerys Targaryen got in line, they swiftly bedazzled a watermelon, creating a magic moment for Exploding Kittens fans that soon went viral online.

Exploding Kittens CEO Elan Lee and game designer Eric Lang were on the creatiff stage at Collision 2022.

Image: Diarmuid Greene/Web Summit (CC BY 2.0)

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Can journalists be too cautious and too prone to protecting vested interests? Where should we draw the line between censorship and what people need to know, and who decides where it’s drawn and how it’s enforced? ProPublica editor-in-chief Stephen Engelberg and  Yahoo News editor-in-chief Daniel Klaidman discuss news censorship in the era of misinformation.

Stephen Engelberg, editor-in-chief of ProPublica, and Daniel Klaidman, Yahoo News editor-in-chief, were speaking on the Fourth Estate stage at Collision 2022.

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Image: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Web Summit (CC BY 2.0)

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Designing meaningful and modern brands for a world that demands more and more of our attention every day is undoubtedly a major challenge. Sairah Ashman, CEO of brand consultancy Wolff Olins, explores the roles of brand and experience, unpacking how combining these two elements could have a more conscious impact on businesses and people.

Sairah Ashman, CEO of Wolff Olins, presented on the creatiff stage at Collision 2022.

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Image: Seb Daly/Web Summit (CC BY 2.0)

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You may have heard of facial recognition technology but what about face recognition for cells in your body? This is one of the many technologies that Recursion Pharmaceuticals uses as part of its industrialisation of drug discovery. Deep learning algorithms can tell the difference between health and diseased human cells and use this to identify new medicines.

“The opportunity is to industrialise drug discovery,” says  Recursion Pharmaceuticals’ president Tina Larson. “The best of the tech industry and the best of all of these tools - like CRISPR - that are in the life science industry now, to really change the way we discover medicine.”

Tina Larson, President, Recursion Pharmaceuticals was in conversation with Ashley McKimm, Editor-in-chief of BMJ Innovations at the British Medical Journal on the HealthConf stage at Web Summit 2021. 

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“We are very bad at predicting the consequences of our inventions,” says Rebecca Parsons, CTO of global tech consultancy company Thoughtworks. 

The problem with technologists, she says, is that they look at a problem and how to solve it - but it’s done with a laser focus to the exclusion of other effects it might have, like environmental impact or worsening of economic inequality.

In this episode we explore the notion of responsible tech, and how it can prevent a dystopian future complete with killer robots and a planet damaged beyond repair.

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Drones have been around for a while now. Why is it that they haven’t become mainstream yet? Skydio’s Martin Brandenburg says the reason is that they are dumb. Cue plenty of YouTube clips of drones doing silly things and getting into many accidents. 

So what’s the missing ingredient? Autonomy. Skydio’s drones are completely autonomous, have omnidirectional high resolution vision, nine realtime neural networks, and will figure out how to get to a destination on their own. Just tell them where you want them to go. Is this the future ordering takeaway, capturing video of family holidays, collecting your dry cleaning?

Martin Brandenburg, VP of international business development at Skydio, gave a speech on the Auto/Tech  stage at Web Summit 2021.

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FaZe Clan COO Jaci Hays shares how focusing on three critical pillars in order to reach today's youth made the esports organisation a cultural phenomenon. 

Jaci answers two big questions: Why is Gen Z different than any generation before it, and what does it take to build authentic connections?

Jaci Hays, COO at FaZe Clan, delivered a keynote speech on ContentMakers at Web Summit 2021.

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The appetite for content has never been bigger, says Shutterstock CEO Stan Pavlovsky. In fact, we spend seven hours a day consuming online media, according to research firm DoubleVerify. It’s never been a better time to be a content creator but trying to find the right image or video can be difficult with millions of assets to wade through.

Stan says this has shifted Shutterstock’s strategy to include content discovery using artificial intelligence. Tune into this episode of the Next Stage to hear more about current trends in content creation including an explosion in interest around 3D imagery.

Stan Pavlovsky, CEO of Shutterstock, was in conversation with Alexandros Ntolgkov, partnership manager at BeinCrypto, on the Creatiff stage at Web Summit 2021.

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As more data emerges about the potentially grim fate of our planet, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that we need new solutions to the climate change crisis. How is AI facilitating the advancement of sustainability? What innovations and systems look set to change the energy landscape? 

We hear from Dan Jeavons of Shell, Hege Skryseth of Kongsberg and Junta Nakai of Databricks about how AI can be a gamechanger.

Shell VP of computational science and digital innovation Dan Jeavons, Kongsberg chief digital officer Hege Skryseth, and Databricks VP of sustainability and financial services Junta Nakai, were in conversation with Xinhua News Agency business correspondent Martina Fuchs at Web Summit 2021.

Web Summit – the event Bloomberg calls “one of the top world tech conferences” – is returning to Lisbon in November. Our Early Bird tickets are going on sale on June 30. Save money by pre-registering for your ticket now.

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Unicorn founders Florian Otto and Michele Romanow share their insights on how to address pressing issues in our society. What does it take to drive a paradigm shift, and what are the key learnings these founders have grown from – collectively and individually?

Cedar co-founder and CEO Florian Otto and Clearco co-founder and CEO Michele Romanow were in conversation with Grit Daily executive editor Jordan French on Startup University at Web Summit 2021. 

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