The Next Stage podcast by Web Summit

Research shows that news consumption for Gen Z is increasing dramatically - but only on one platform: TikTok. Aside from a small increase in news consumption on Instagram it is dramatically decreasing on all other platforms, says Sara Fischer, media reporter at Axios. What does this mean for the future of news given that TikTok is not only a relatively new platform but has been known to circulate...

They say the average human attention span is now just eight seconds, giving goldfish a run for their money! But at a time when most companies are focused on technology that keeps you glued to a screen, Amazon only wants you to interact with Alexa when you need it.  In this episode of The Next Stage, Alexa head scientist Rohit Prasad explains how a philosophy of 'ambient intelligence' is...

Netflix hit series Drive to Survive brought the thrill of Formula 1 to new audiences. Behind the scenes, technology and real-time analytics are racing at breakneck speed to give teams a competitive edge.  Mercedes AMG Petronas is one of the most successful teams in the history of Formula 1. A difficult season in 2022 has however led to questions about the team. Can technology be the solution? In t...

With Meta recently laying off 13 percent of its staff, some are attributing part of its cost cutting to Mark Zuckerberg’s overly enthusiastic investment in the metaverse. An investment that has yet to pay off. But while tech pundits bet on or against Meta’s fortunes, the company continues to develop its virtual reality tech - both in the form of virtual worlds and VR headsets. In this episode of T...

In a world of dumpster fire social media platforms where people yell angrily at each other and divisive toxic discourse guarantees viral success, it pays to be kind. At least, this is what Jimmy Wales has learned over the years with Wikipedia.  Jimmy - and Fandom founder Perkins Miller - have managed to grow passionate and loyal online communities where disputes rarely occur and when they do, are...

DC’s Batman has been around for a long time. The character debuted in 1939, making him 83 years old. Since then, Bruce Wayne has gone from the printed page to the big screen and video games. Now, a new partnership with WEBTOON sees another iteration – a slice of life webcomic with a POV character, meaning the reader sees the world through the eyes of the central character.  In this episode of The...

Over the past decade, mental health has become somewhat of a global epidemic, says CEO of Woebot Health, Michael Evers. The pandemic has exacerbated this. He goes on to say that globally, on any given day, there are around 60 million people seeking support for mental health issues. The problem, in part, is one of access to such services for reasons including affordability and availability of menta...

2022 has been a whirlwind of political and financial upheaval, supply chain issues and extreme weather patterns on a global scale. We’re living in interesting times. What does this mean for seed stage startups and even Series A companies who are looking to raise money in this turbulent environment? Matt Garratt, general partner with CRV, says that these startups are “partially being jerked around...

Embracing the best practices of working from home, and better connecting with employees and customers, is what is differentiating the top businesses of today from the rest. In this episode of the Next Stage, we gain insight into the state of play in remote working from Joseph Walsh, head of EMEA product marketing at GoTo. GoTo is a software company providing cloud-based remote work tools for colla...

Modern warfare extends beyond physical boundaries to the digital. Nowhere is this more obvious than the war in Ukraine where cyber-attacks have been part of Russia’s arsenal from the beginning.  In this episode of The Next Stage we hear from one of the founding members of the US army's cyber command unit, Josh Lospinoso, who has gone on to found cybersecurity startup Shift5. Josh talks about...

Blockchain technology promises more control over personal data for internet users. Ostensibly, they could sell this data to advertisers, choosing what ads they are exposed to and what companies track their browsing habits while pocketing some cash in the process.  How is this good for the online advertising industry who rely on data harvesting to target potential customers? As Brittany Kaiser, fou...

Are you sick of people hyping the metaverse, talking about buying virtual real estate next to Snoop Dogg’s property with the latest minted crypto? Amy Peck, founder and CEO of Endeavor VR and Dan Burgar, co-founder and CEO of Frontier Collective, get real about the future of virtual worlds. Leaving behind the hype, they look at genuine use cases like augmented reality environments in smart cities...

Times are tougher for startups. Raising money in 2022 is a different beast than early to mid 2021. During the pandemic, people were more eager to make deals and make investments.  Now, startups need to prove that their growth is sustainable and be willing to do this through new metrics like ‘burn multiple’, says Christina Cacioppo, CEO of Vanta, a startup that raised initial seed funding in 2021 a...

We are very much at the end of the beginning for self-driving vehicles, says Gavin Jackson, CEO of autonomous vehicle software company Oxbotica. What does he mean by this? Well, Gavin thinks that an autonomous future is on the horizon but it won’t happen exactly as we imagined. Rather than single occupancy robo-taxis zipping around cities, what will be mainstream first are self-driving industrial...

Part of tackling climate change is educating people about global efforts in this space. But how can the United Nations reach as many people as possible and grab their attention when it comes to the seemingly inaccessible topic of NDCs or Nationally Determined Contributions - these are long term goals various countries agreed to on the back of the Paris Agreement. The answer is mini mobile games. F...

What does Gen Z want from their favourite brands? Not celebrity endorsements or value for money. A younger generation with purchasing power are choosing to spend money on companies that align with their personal values, ranging from racial justice to gun control. Ty Montague and Rosemarie Ryan, co-founders and co-CEOs of CO Collective, talk about how concern for environmental and social justice is...

Talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not. Or so the old adage goes, at least. In an age when it's just as easy to work remotely in Timbuktu as in Toronto, opportunities are similarly limitless for entrepreneurs – no matter where a person lives or what their background may be. Where (and how) can founders catch a break in today's competitive startup landscape? Leading investors – Tech...

People are getting paid in it, and governments are regulating it. Blockchain is officially mainstream. How did that happen and what does it mean? While blockchain enthusiasts have been bullish the past few years, signs of a recent collapse have many re-examining the technology.  Nicolas Cary, co-founder and vice chairman of Blockchain.com, is an early blockchain adopter, having snapped up the bloc...

It might seem like a mystery to gen X and elder millennials that younger social media users have fallen for TikTok, a platform that seems to be more about dance moves and viral challenges than anything else. But TikTok celebrity Josh Richards explains that gen Z prizes TikTok for its focus on authenticity in a world where influencers Facetune, Photoshop and filter their lives for followers. Josh t...

Marketing campaigns can be a successful shot in the dark or a misfired attempt to replicate previously famous campaigns. But when viral works, boy does it work. That’s something Exploding Kittens’ Elan Lee and Eric Lang learned from their experience marketing the unusual card game at games conventions and on Kickstarter. The secret to their success has been, as they put it, a result of cultivating...

Can journalists be too cautious and too prone to protecting vested interests? Where should we draw the line between censorship and what people need to know, and who decides where it’s drawn and how it’s enforced? ProPublica editor-in-chief Stephen Engelberg and  Yahoo News editor-in-chief Daniel Klaidman discuss news censorship in the era of misinformation. Stephen Engelberg, editor-in-chief of Pr...

Designing meaningful and modern brands for a world that demands more and more of our attention every day is undoubtedly a major challenge. Sairah Ashman, CEO of brand consultancy Wolff Olins, explores the roles of brand and experience, unpacking how combining these two elements could have a more conscious impact on businesses and people. Sairah Ashman, CEO of Wolff Olins, presented on the creatiff...

You may have heard of facial recognition technology but what about face recognition for cells in your body? This is one of the many technologies that Recursion Pharmaceuticals uses as part of its industrialisation of drug discovery. Deep learning algorithms can tell the difference between health and diseased human cells and use this to identify new medicines. “The opportunity is to industrialise d...

“We are very bad at predicting the consequences of our inventions,” says Rebecca Parsons, CTO of global tech consultancy company Thoughtworks.  The problem with technologists, she says, is that they look at a problem and how to solve it - but it’s done with a laser focus to the exclusion of other effects it might have, like environmental impact or worsening of economic inequality. In this episode...

Drones have been around for a while now. Why is it that they haven’t become mainstream yet? Skydio’s Martin Brandenburg says the reason is that they are dumb. Cue plenty of YouTube clips of drones doing silly things and getting into many accidents.  So what’s the missing ingredient? Autonomy. Skydio’s drones are completely autonomous, have omnidirectional high resolution vision, nine realtime neur...