Kate O’Neill

The tech humanist future: How business can confront uncertainty & win by making technology better for humanity

It’s not only the future that’s uncertain: even the present can be challenging for leaders to navigate. Kate O’Neill — known as the “Tech Humanist” — delivers a keynote address that offers insights and foresights for leaders to make confident decisions that are good for business and aligned with humanity. In examining a wide range of considerations like the climate, the changing workplace, geopolitical impacts, and more, Kate frames up the challenges as both a responsibility and an opportunity for leaders. She also explores the future of work, jobs, talent, and the workplace with an emphasis on the role of technology in shaping our world.

Along with big picture insights, this keynote includes real-world examples to spark a-ha moments for meaningful takeaways. With its bright energy and inspiring message, this keynote will leave attendees energized and ready to face — and create — the future.

Audience takeaways:

• A transformed view of technology and its impact on human experience and humanity overall.
• A new, more empowered way of thinking about the future.
• Examples of companies and products that are doing human-centric digital transformation well and those that are doing it… not as well.

Strategic optimism for an uncertain future

Optimism gets a bad rap. Instead of being wielded as a tool for envisioning the best outcomes, it is roundly mocked as a folly of the naïve. Or it is scorned for willfully ignoring real harms. But optimism can actually help us acknowledge the whole truth of our circumstances and direct our focus to the best way forward.

In this uplifting and galvanizing keynote, Kate O’Neill puts the future in context as she surveys the ups and downs of the emerging technology and cultural trends landscape and makes the humanity-affirming case for the importance of meaning and meaningful experiences as guiding principles within business strategy and innovation. You’ll come away with a new way of thinking about “human-centric” digital transformation — and perhaps even a brighter view of the future of humanity.

Audience takeaways:

• A more empowered way of thinking about the future and about decision-making.
• A transformed view of technology and its impact on human experience and humanity overall.

AI, automation, & the future of meaningful human experience

AI and intelligent automation are evolving rapidly, but what does it mean for business? For associations and organizations? For us as a society? In this continually-updating keynote address, Kate O’Neill – widely known as the “Tech Humanist” – examines both the implications of adapting business strategy around exponential technologies, and of creating experiences worthy of us as humans. She also offers practical insights on how businesses can harness what is fundamental about data and technology to create innovative experiences that form the basis of more meaningful and profitable relationships with customers – and how they can avoid scaling the unintended consequences of poorly-thought-out designs and technologies.

Audience takeaways:

• A transformed view of technology and its impact on human experience and humanity overall.
• A new, more empowered way of thinking about the future.
• Examples of companies and products that are doing human-centric digital transformation well and those that are doing it… not as well.

Pixels & place: The metaverse, connected experiences & integrated human experience design

Every day our physical surroundings and our digital interactions converge more and more, through data analytics, connected devices and the Internet of Things, wearable technology, geo-tagged and geo-targeted social media, surveillance, sensors and beacons, and so on. In very real ways, our human experiences create a targeted feedback loop, defining our opportunities, our relationships, our knowledge, and, ultimately, our selves.

The most meaningful strategy, then, means thinking beyond the customer context to a holistic human experience that blends online and offline interactions, and builds lifetime value through relevant and respectful use of data.

In this compelling keynote address, leading strategic thinker and author of “Pixels and Place” Kate O’Neill explores the relationship between meaning, intention, data tracking, and human experience, with practical insights on how businesses can harness data and technology to create innovative experiences that form the basis of more meaningful and profitable relationships with customers.

Audience takeaways:

• A new approach to serving people relevant digital interactions while meeting them in the context of their physical surroundings – for more memorable, more meaningful, and more integrated digital and physical experiences.
• A transformed view of technology and its impact on human experience and humanity overall.
• Real-world, current examples from a variety of industries and review action-ready ideas for implementing integrated experiences.

A tech humanist look at the future of work

From AI-enabled recruitment systems to virtual presence robots, even the workplace of the present can seem a little strange. But what do emerging and exponential technologies mean for the future of human jobs?

It no longer sounds alarmist to say that at least some parts of our jobs are probably going to be replaced by automation or by cognitive computing. Depending on which forecast you consult, as many as half of all job categories risk displacement, if not complete replacement, by machines in the years to come. There will certainly be impacts on the economy, on production, on efficiencies of scale, and on innovation.

But beyond the economic impacts, how will this shift our human understanding of meaningful work, of accomplishment, of achievement? And how can companies prepare for workplaces that increasingly blend human and machine contributions?

Audience takeaways:

• A clearer way of thinking about and talking about the future of work and the human considerations of it.
• A transformed view of technology and its impact on human experience and humanity overall.
• A new, more empowered way of thinking about the future.