Updates from the bleeding edge: What to expect at Pause Fest 2016 held at Fed Square, Melbourne

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PauseFest-BrookJames-Small-72 (1).jpgPause Fest started off six years ago with a few hundred attendees discussing ideas on creativity, technology and business. When it opens its doors in 2016, it’s expecting a crowd in excess of 12,000 people who have come from every state around Australia, as well as overseas.

Pause Fest’s growth has been organic, and it has been determined by a sense of exploration. Instead of asking ‘what if’, it asks ‘why not’. By consistently listening to its audiences, Pause is reflecting and inventing tech culture all at once.

PauseFest-BrookJames-Small-196 (1).jpgSome of the world’s latest and greatest technological developments are heading to Pause Fest in 2016. It will be a chance for the audience to see them up close and have the opportunity to talk with the people who work on them.

This year at the festival there will be some truly innovative technology that will be seen in areas as diverse as health tech, mobile VR, smart cities and AI website design.

Here are some of the most notable speakers amongst seventy key influencers:

GMG – Understanding the psychology of the online shopper

Beyond user journeys, cookies and optimising checkouts, do you really understand the frame of mind of the online shopper?

Fjord & Telstra – Looking from the inside-out – Lessons from Telstra’s digital transformation

The team will share and discuss specific examples, challenges, insights and honest stories of service design methodologies as the basis for business transformation.

Girls in Tech – Building Your Own, Authentic Brand

Whether or not you have purposefully cultivated your personal brand through social media, it exists nonetheless.

Google – The dependent relationship between technology and creative

Technology and creative have never been closer, yet it can still be difficult to find the balance between idea and execution.

The Grid – How to design for 50,000 websites at once

We will uncover the hidden formulas that can be applied to speed up any design production. See how a shift in approach can cast a ripple of improvements that help thousands of peoples websites.

The General Store  – Irrational Retail and the Science of Buying

Through interactive experiments with the audience, Matt will demonstrate the art of persuasion and the science that guides us as consumers through this process.

Ingenuity Studio – Pro-tips for Mobile VR Production Workflows

Mobile virtual reality has officially hit the mainstream. Platforms are quickly evolving, with many production teams learning as they go.

DT – My Idea! – Ego, authorship and collaboration in the pursuit of great work

This keynote draws inspiration from early pioneers John Cage, The Anti-Composer, and Bell Telephone Labs’ E.A.T. – Experiments in Art and Technology.

Saffron – Wally was wrong

In the world we find ourselves living in today, the traditional rules of branding no longer work. This is a world of brands in constant beta, needing to evolve and adapt in anticipation of a future that cannot be known.

While all from different industries, these new innovations will eventually change people’s lives. The big question people must ask themselves though is, should we be afraid when Internet of Things becomes smart and does all the work in the background for us?

When a time comes that our medical reporting is fully automated and GPs lose their jobs, or when we are using VR headsets to escape reality either for pleasure, a gaming experience, or relaxation – if machines and technology are doing everything we do for ourselves at the moment, what does the future ‘us’ even look like?

The thought is overwhelming, but the discussion and debate around this concept is sure to be an exciting one.

At Pause Fest 2016, yourself and over 12,000 other attendees will have the opportunity to immerse yourselves in conversations like this and help create the future.

Pause Fest 2016 will take place at Federation Square on the 8th – 14th of February 2016.