What happened at CREA Digital Day 2020

Every year, CREA Digital Day, co-organized with Emakina, gathers industry professionals, students, marketing experts, media specialists and communication enthusiasts in Geneva to celebrate creativity and technology. We attended the conference to offer you this summary of some of the fascinating presentations that unveiled current and future digital trends affecting our daily lives.

Watch the full CDD20 event on YouTube.

15 speakers took the stage to address topics divided into four categories: “Creation & Innovation”, “AI”, “Blockchain & Crypto”, and “The future is now”. Manuel Diaz (Emakina.FR) and Emakina.CH Arnaud Grobet (Emakina.CH) didn’t disappoint as they delivered yet another great performance as moderators.

Before the presentations, CREA Director Fred Dumonal and his students introduced the CREA Instagram Story School and the skills it taught them. Their interesting interventions between the talks illustrated the relevance of social media content courses.

CREATION & INNOVATION

Illusions vs. the real world

Innovator and entrepreneur Fabrice Leclerc, who worked with L’Oréal, Google and Häagen-Dazs, called out the absurdity of illusions such as cosmetics, gambling, and others. According to him, humility is the first step towards innovation and “regeneration of our ecosystem and mother nature are the basis of innovation. There needs to be a shift from a material mindset to an immaterial one”. He then suggested a few simple steps (or codes) to reprogram our innovation instincts with the objective of improving society, blaming materialism as the main reason we’re not doing that enough.

One of these codes includes leaving our work environment to spend 3 days alone in nature to renew our instincts and find what we’re good at. Once you discover what you’re good at, try and turn it into a business. Find your balance between the world of illusions and things that really matter in life. It can be something as simple as growing a garden.

Everyone can learn to be creative

In a very similar tone, neuroscience expert Marc Turiault dived deep into the amazing plasticity of the human brain. We are wired to identify patterns in chaos – and then stick with them. Everyone can learn how to be creative, and creativity is nurtured by practice: small creative exercises such as singing or drawing which can ultimately lead to creative problem-solving. Turiaut explained that when it comes to creativity, there is no difference between left-brained and right-brained people, and that hereditary genetic predispositions aren’t all that important.

Who’s in control?

According to author and regular Emakina keynote speaker Brian Solis, our brains are being rewired to multitask too much nowadays, which disturbs the attention dedicated to each task. The quantity of things we’re doing simultaneously undermines the quality of our performance. He begs us to question who’s the one in control and the one being controlled, as power slowly shifts to the digital tools that are supposed to serve us, not the contrary. Solis discusses how to cope with all this in his latest book, Lifescale.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

AI designers & SoMe social activism

Digital innovator and TheContillery CEO Arnaud Caplier talked about how data scientists can use AI and computer vision to optimise the choice of campaign visuals to enhance their efficiency. WISeKey founder and CEO Carlos Creus Moreira then explained how we negligently give away the core of our personality and convert it into digital personas that fuel social media platforms that transform our digital personalities into profits, but this is also what can shift the power back to us, the users.

BLOCKCHAIN & CRYPTO

Gold Rush 2.0

MKS Switzerland Head of DLT Projects Chloé Desmonet introduced the new way to manage assets in the 21^st century. Gold has become tokenized and traceable. However, Desmonet questions: “if ownership of gold is tokenized, does it still have to be mined?”.

Metaco Founder and CEO Adrien Treccani then predicted that even though cryptocurrencies were originally designed to bypass the banking system, they will eventually end up as just another type of assets managed by “traditional” banks.

But companies like Wecan are also emerging as “blockchain pure players”, providing their clients with financing and operational support, among other things, via blockchain technology. According to Wecan partners Yves Froppier and Thomas Giacomo, even though Facebook’s cryptocurrency Libra is still facing regulatory setbacks, its success is only a matter of time. Phillipe Lucet, also a Wecan partner, then took the stage to elaborate on how blockchain technology can be used to help companies protect their intellectual property.

THE FUTURE IS NOW

Hydrogen-fuelled trucks

Sabrina Cohen Dunami and Jean-Luc Favre presented GOH! (Generation of Hydrogen!) by The Nomads Foundation. The objective of this project, involving a partnership of several companies, is to design and build a hydrogen-fuelled delivery truck. By combining it with solar energy, hydrogen shows the potential of becoming a sustainable fuel alternative for the automotive industry.

Bye-bye, WiFi: say hi to LiFi

Are the days of WiFi numbered? Ellipz Smart Solutions Board of Advisory member Jean-Baptiste Seillière certainly thinks so, as it is being surpassed by LiFi technology, which uses LED lamps to transmit data at the speed of light. LiFi could also solve some privacy issues as it doesn’t traverse walls and has the advantage of not interfering with medical devices.