19 February, 2019

“Don’t adopt technology just because everyone else is”, warns expert

A prominent Aussie tech expert has urged the events industry to view technology as an enabler and better understand how automation can play a role.

Dr Jordan Nguyen (pictured above), founder and CEO of Psykinetic, used his keynote address at the Asia Pacific Incentives and Meetings Event (AIME) in Melbourne on Monday to quell fears around the impact technology will have on the industry.

“Cloud computing, artificial intelligence, virtual reality – these things are here to stay, so we’ve got to start to understand how they might affect our lives and affect our work,” he told AIME attendees.

“Technology is the facilitator and that’s the thing that we have to see it as – it’s an enabler.”

Nguyen said that while the world becomes more automated through technology, people still crave human interactions.

“We’re starting to find from neuroscience is one of the reasons for this is that when we have face-to-face interaction, when our eyes fall into alignment, our brain instantly starts producing new neurons specifically for that person,” he explained.

“So, all we have to do is look into each other’s eyes. It doesn’t happen over technology; it doesn’t happen over a screen.

“We physiologically change each other in each other’s presence, and I think that’s a beautiful thing.”

For the events industry to harness the power of technology to deliver better human experiences, Nguyen believes it comes down to the value of what organisers are looking for.

“As event organisers, you’re looking for a specific type of value, and when it comes to scalability, scalability doesn’t always go hand in hand with the value of what individuals want and need,” he said.

“When you have those personalised experiences – those experiences that do have a very high level of human interaction and human connection – is one of those reasons that you come to an event rather than just watching it over a screen. We want to feel the content that we’re learning about.”

Nguyen warned against adopting technology “just for the sake of it and just because everyone else is”.

“You should understand what is coming our way and how automation can play a role,” he said.

“We shouldn’t just automate our people. No one’s going to come along if the line-up of speakers are all robots.”

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