Web Summit

So there's like all these things to talk about beyond, you know, which rag environment protocol you choose to program with or something like that.

so yeah i just started getting people together at my studio uh to have this kind of bigger conversation about ai where it's going to look at um you know like also there's plenty of pitch competitions around and that kind of thing and so i was looking more to see like the other different so we've got research labs here that are focused on the creative industries like musicians who can train models on only their music it's never heard a single note of copyrighted stolen intellectual property from the internet it's just trained on my body of work and then not that you would use that to create new albums and sell them to your audience necessarily but maybe you use this AI to generate a choir of backing vocals in your signature style or something like this that then you can then riff off of or do more creative works or something so and we've got all these like innovative components taking place here in British Columbia and I was just trying to create more room for them than you would usually see at the standard like pitch competition kind of web summit, pay to play type stuff,

whatever.

The impression that I get is a bit of an open invitation for people that are maybe interested in learning more that you wouldn't necessarily expect to see.

And so I've long wanted to do like an avant-garde idea business event of the future kind of thing, you know.

And then also alongside that, you've got this moment of emergence around AI and everything that's going on, this community that we've developed.

And then here in Vancouver, you know, we decided to import Web Summit here and do Web Summit Vancouver.

And it's a big event, you know, it's like, more than 10,000 people and there's a lot of hype and it's a lot of fun to get together with everybody like downtown, the convention center and, you know, reflect.

I could use that as a great strength for how we could go and tackle the creator economy together and how, in addition, he could help leverage us to be in the right rooms.

And if I look back over the last twelve years, We've been on main stage at Web Summit.

That's fucking crazy.

That's like 50,000 people sent to stage.

If I mention it to you, I'm going to this kind of like a conference spree in November because it's not only Slush I'm going to.

I'm going to Web Summit as well as a startup alpha.

See you at Web

Summit? Yes.

Dude, you're so right.

I remember I was going to a conference called Web Summit, and it was in Canada.

This was a long time ago.

They have different versions of it.

Some of them are called Collision, although I think they're changed Collision and got rid of that name.

And just now they call them all Web Summit.

And I remember this was a long time ago.

And this is when Gary Vaynerchuk was talking about more about not creating content for the sake of creating content for social, like consider documenting your life and just living your life.

it is awesome they've got some new software basically that allows you to control the ambient levels more so currently When it records it, you then run an enhancer and it drops it down.

We are going to be recording an audio documentary at Web Summit in just a week or so's time now, two weeks' time, where we're going to put this to the test and we're going to be recording with people in places like Time Out Market where you want that buzziness, where you want to bring people into the room And then you can fade it down a little bit more and you can hear the conversation and give people a sense of where we are and the sights, not the sights, obviously, but the sounds of Lisbon.

So I'm quite excited, really.

And so we have a bit of a geeky, the beginning of this interview is a bit of a geeky, look at the products, whatever else.

We have been in a baseball stadium in Toronto.

And genuinely, I think that's if we find anywhere in Lisbon that puts it more to the test than that, I'll be impressed because you can barely even hear each other sitting next to you when you know the big crowd.

announcements go off um and even that was great so yeah it's always really fun i feel like especially like on event floors and stuff obviously yeah out in the city very very cool but if you've ever been to a conference you know kind of what the vibe is especially web summit it's just massive And it's just really great to be able to actually be able to record anywhere is the best part of it, because every time someone comes on to the podcast, they're always looking around for a podcast in your studio and then we work it out and they're like, surely not here.

And we're like, you'd be

And it was so weird because Max and I, this was like 2016.

This was part of a tech conference, some sort of tech conference that was going on, an internet web sort of conference, and the Web Summit.

And we... went to the ethereum meetup because we didn't know where else to go it was like part of the whole conference and you know what we didn't know a single person there it was so weird because we were like we went in if we went into any bitcoin meetup or any bitcoin conference of course we would know everybody and blah blah blah but we didn't know one single person we had some free hamburgers and then left um But that's kind of what we did the opposite of what crypto people do, right? They tend to show up, try to stand next to Bitcoin, look like Bitcoin, confused with Bitcoin, and then don't build anything.

Because, you know, you can look around the world.

i'm

i've got a very quick bit of news for you uh web summit have released their state of industry report will be at web summit lisbon in two weeks time uh that's coming around fast oh my god get this over 65 year olds are the most convinced ai sharpens their thinking engineers are the most worried it's dulling theirs critical thinking critical thought is something that comes up a lot with the conversation around ai i love that it's the boomers who think it sharpens their minds Again, that might lose some listeners.

I don't think we've got many boomers who listen.

I'm sure that there's plenty of people who look at their parents and go, maybe not.