10 Must-See Sessions at the Marketing AI Conference (MAICON)

The Marketing AI Conference (MAICON), July 16 - 18, 2019, is packed with inspiring workshops and sessions from dozens of top authors, entrepreneurs, AI researchers and marketing executives.

MAICON is designed to help marketing leaders like you truly understand AI, educate your teams, garner executive support, pilot priority AI uses cases, and develop a near-term strategy for successfully scaling AI.

Check out these 10 can’t-miss talks, and visit the full agenda to explore all 40+ sessions and 60+ speakers.

1. Is This AI?

What is artificial intelligence, exactly? The question may seem basic, but the answer can be complicated. In the broadest sense, AI refers to machines that can learn, reason and act for themselves. They can make their own decisions when faced with new situations, in the same way that humans and animals can.

But, what would have been considered AI in the past may not be considered AI today. Because of this, the boundaries of AI can get really confusing, and the term often gets mangled to include any kind of algorithm or computer program. In this presentation, learn how to differentiate whether something is using AI or not by following a series of simple questions. This session will give you the confidence and framework to evaluate AI-powered marketing technologies.

Presented by: Karen Hao, AI Reporter, MIT Technology Review

Karen Hao is the artificial intelligence reporter for MIT Technology Review. She covers the advancements in, ethics of, and social impact of the technology.

2. How AI Will Change Marketing Forever

Every business wants their marketing to be better, faster and cheaper. Yet, study after study tells us the opposite is happening—leading to budget cuts, staff reductions and unrealistic performance demands. What’s the solution? What’s the way out of this situation?

The answer, unsurprisingly, is artificial intelligence. AI promises three things: acceleration, accuracy and automation. In this session, you’ll learn real-world use cases and examples of how companies are using AI to drive costs down and revenue up.

The presentation wraps with a seven-step process to guide you on your AI journey—including whether to build or buy the technology, the people you’ll need on your team, and, most importantly, what you personally need to do to prepare your own career.

Presented by: Christopher S. Penn, Co-Founder and Chief Innovator, Trust Insights

Christopher S. Penn is an authority on analytics, digital marketing, marketing technology and artificial intelligence. A recognized thought leader, best-selling author and keynote speaker, he has shaped four key fields in the marketing industry: Google Analytics adoption, data-driven marketing, modern email marketing and artificial intelligence/machine learning in marketing.

3. Piloting AI: The Inside Story of Grant Thornton's Path to More Intelligent Marketing

We were born for this. The promise for marketers to adopt AI is an opportunity for us to become better marketers by tapping more often into the skills that make us human, like creativity and insightfulness.

But that doesn’t mean piloting AI is always easy. It’s challenging for even advanced organizations to build good AI use cases, evaluate vendors and understand where AI fits into existing tech stacks.

This session delves into Grant Thornton’s journey to more intelligent marketing. You’ll learn how to inspire your team’s marketers to embrace AI and identify AI use cases. We’ll also discuss  how Grant Thornton actually created three AI use cases of its own for sales enablement, competitive intelligence and content optimization.

Fireside Chat Featuring: Sara Hocking, Associate Director, Marketing Innovation, Grant Thornton LLP; Paul Roetzer, Founder & CEO, Marketing AI Institute

Sara Hocking is just a regular person tasked with “trying AI” for marketing. This task fell to her as Associate Director, Marketing Innovation at Grant Thornton LLP under a program she runs, the Marketing Experiential Learning Lab. Ultimately, this put her at the intersection of marketing, technology and culture, navigating innovation for and within Grant Thornton LLP.

4. Hello, Voice.

Learn how voice assistants and smart audio will control technology, change your business and change our lives forever. Welcome to the no touch world. Forget typing (with keyboards, on glass, with fingers and thumbs). We can (and we will) control everything with our voice. Over 250 million smart speakers will be in homes and businesses in the coming year. With these speakers integrated in our lives, close to 30% of users buy things with them. These devices have close to an 85% approval rating from consumers. Right now, Amazon smart speakers (not including Google or Apple) already reach 15% of United States homes. This technology is scaling at a massive pace and the implications for your business are staggering. Understanding voice is as important today as a website and strong search engine placement was 15 years ago (and still is). What is your brand voice? What is your voice strategy? Star Trek for some… a massive business opportunity for all.

Presented by: Mitch Joel, President, Six Pixels Group

Mitch Joel is Founder of Six Pixels Group, an advisory, investing and content producing company that is focused on commerce and innovation. His first book, Six Pixels of Separation, named after his successful blog and podcast is a business and marketing bestseller. His second book, CTRL ALT Delete, was named one of the best business books of 2013 by Amazon.

5. Advancing Humanity and Business with Robotics

It took 450 years for technology to advance from the printing press to the personal computer. Today, similarly scaled leaps in technology are happening in a single year. Robotics and artificial intelligence are destined to completely change the nature of the workplace, the workforce, the customer experience and education. This session talks about the risks of introducing so much change so quickly, how we can mitigate those risks, and how robotics and AI will ultimately benefit businesses and our personal lives.

Fireside Chat Featuring: Collin Sebastian, Head of Product and Engineering, Softbank Robotics; Kass Dawson, Head of Marketing and Communications, Softbank Robotics

Collin Sebastian is the Head of Software Products and Engineering at SoftBank Robotics America (SBRA). He joined in 2018, bringing 15 years of experience developing advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence platforms, as well as a decade of experience as a senior executive leading four different startups to profitable exits.

Kass Dawson is the Global Head of Marketing Communications at SoftBank Robotics, managing the development and execution of all strategic and tactical plans for external and internal communications.

6. Augmented Intelligence: The Exponential Marketer

As Marshall McLuhan said, “First we build the tools, and then the tools build us.” This keynote provides a kaleidoscopic snapshot of exponential change in marketing technology through artificial intelligence, and how brands and agencies can achieve predictive fluency in a cognitive world:

• How digital transformation impacts business at a cosmological scale

• How to build an infrastructure for AI-powered customer experiences

• Deconstructing and differentiating predictive AI for brands and agencies

• How to create value in a world of real time interaction and dynamic intelligence

• How to be a marketing technology rock star in a cognitive and connected era

• How to think exponentially to create unparalleled competitive advantage for your company

Presented by: Nikos Acuña, Chief Visionary, Sizmek

Nikos Acuña is an award-winning author, producer, speaker, investor and futurist. As Chief Visionary at Sizmek, a company that creates advertising solutions of the future, Nikos uncovers the hidden connections between brands and audiences, and encapsulates his findings in the daring video series, Symbiosis. Nikos is also a Partner at Van Wagoner Ventures, a venture capital firm specializing in building the smart grid of the future through interconnected mobility, sustainable energy and alternative fuels.

7. Team Human: It’s Time to Remake Society Together as the Team We Are

To Douglas Rushkoff, Team Human is a manifesto—a fiery distillation of his most urgent thoughts on civilization and human nature. In this new talk, drawn from his book of the same name, Douglas argues that we are essentially social creatures, and that we achieve our greatest aspirations when we work together—not as individuals.

Yet today society is threatened by a vast antihuman infrastructure that undermines our ability to connect. Money, once a means of exchange, is now a means of exploitation; education, conceived as a way to elevate the working class, has become another assembly line; and the Internet has only further divided us into increasingly atomized and radicalized groups.

This talk is Douglas’ impassioned call to arms—to recognize that being human is a team sport. In Douglas’ own words: “Being social may be the whole point.” Harnessing wide-ranging research on human evolution, biology and psychology, Douglas will show your audience that when we work together, we realize greater happiness, productivity and peace. If we can understand this fundamental truth and reassert our humanity—together—we can make the world a better place to be human.

Presented by: Douglas Rushkoff, Author, Team Human

Named one of the “world’s ten most influential intellectuals” by MIT, Douglas Rushkoff is an author and documentarian who studies human autonomy in a digital age. His twenty books include the upcoming Team Human, based on his podcast, as well as the bestsellers Present Shock, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, Program or Be Programmed, Life Inc. and Media Virus. His commentaries have aired on CBS Sunday Morning and NPR’s All Things Considered, and have appeared in publications from The New York Times to Time magazine.

8. A No-Nonsense Guide to Implementing AI 

You've just been put in charge of your team's first big AI project—where do you get started? You might be tempted to dive headfirst into the technology, playing around with algorithms and data before setting a clear strategy for what success looks like. Unfortunately, this is the fastest way to turn an AI implementation into a costly, time-consuming failure—and it's all too common within organizations that are just getting started with AI and machine learning. In this session, Susannah Shattuck, a product manager at IBM Watson, will walk you through the right way to start using AI and the most common pitfalls to avoid along the way. You'll learn how to scope, staff, manage and measure an AI implementation, based on Susannah's firsthand experience helping hundreds of organizations break ground on their first AI projects.

Presented by: Susannah Shattuck Product Manager, IBM Watson OpenScale, IBM

Shattuck is a Product Manager for Watson OpenScale, an IBM solution that brings transparency to AI applications in production. Her focus is on algorithmic fairness and explainability, building tools that help organizations understand machine learning bias and “black box” AI predictions. In previous roles at IBM, she was responsible for educating clients from every industry about AI and Watson technology, and helping them envision how AI can transform their businesses. She has helped Fortune 500 companies develop strategies for leveraging AI to help with everything from customer care to back-office innovation. She has a passion for talking and thinking about the intersection of technology, ethics and public policy, and she holds a BA from Yale University.

9. AI-Powered Digital Transformation: Creating a Competitive Advantage for Your Business

AI offers an unprecedented opportunity to scale, accelerate and differentiate, giving brands a potentially insurmountable competitive advantage.

But how you seize this competitive advantage is critical. Firms must overcome key challenges presented by AI-powered digital transformation before they can drive growth with the technology. Only then can you use AI to improve the customer experience, make your organization more agile and drive growth.

In this presentation, you’ll learn how to get your company ready for AI-powered digital transformation—from someone who has been here before. Rashed Haq has helped companies build competitive advantages with technologies like AI for the last 20 years. The global AI lead at Publicis Sapient, Rashed will teach you how to frame your organization’s greatest needs for AI, prioritize transformation initiatives, and prepare your data, talent and teams for the transition.

Fireside Chat Featuring Rashed Haq, Global Lead for Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Data, Publicis Sapient; James Kotecki, Director of Marketing and Communications, Infinia ML

Over the last 20 years, Rashed Haq has helped companies transform and create sustained competitive advantage through innovative applications of artificial intelligence, dynamic optimization, advanced analytics and data engineering. Prior to joining Sapient, Rashed did research in theoretical physics at the Los Alamos National Lab and the Institute for Theoretical Science. His seminal research in electromagnetically induced transparency led to the emerging technology of quantum cloaking.

James Kotecki is the Director of Marketing and Communications at Infinia ML, a machine learning company serving industries from manufacturing and healthcare to marketing and human resources. He is the co-author of the upcoming book Machine Learning in Practice: How Business Leaders Use Data to Reduce Costs, Increase Efficiency, and Achieve Breakthroughs. James previously served as the Head of Communications for Automated Insights, where he explained natural language generation to a global audience.

10. A Look Beyond: The Next Frontier in Marketing

Now what?

In the conference’s closing keynote, MAICON creator Paul Roetzer is joined on stage by David Meerman Scott, bestselling author and world-renowned speaker, to explore what we’ve learned and where we go from here. As artificial intelligence enables professionals across all marketing categories to solve problems and achieve goals more efficiently, making marketing more intelligent, it also has the potential to make brands more human. In the intelligently automated future, marketers will need to focus increasing time and energy on listening, relationship building, empathy, creativity, culture and community.

AI can make us better people, professionals, and brands. This session gives marketers a roadmap for how we get there.

Fireside Chat Featuring: David Meerman Scott, Bestselling Author; Paul Roetzer, Founder & CEO, Marketing AI Institute

No one knows more about using the new real-time tools and strategies to spread ideas, influence minds and build business than David Meerman Scott. He’s a sales and marketing strategist who has spoken on all seven continents and in more than 40 countries to audiences of the most respected firms, organizations and associations.

Scott is the author of ten books—three are international bestsellers—and is best known for The New Rules of Marketing & PR, now in its 6th edition, which has been translated into 29 languages and is a modern business classic with more than 400,000 copies sold so far.  

Visit www.MAICON.ai for event details!