Van Dusseldorp - Events 2022

Monique van Dusseldorp
Jan 02, 2023
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Overview of events I worked on in 2022. For events, this was a good year - there is so much happening right now. Generative AI, virtual production, Web3, spatial computing, immersive sound, attempts to change the data infrastructure of the web, and lots more. Everything, everywhere, and all at once indeed. It is in years like this that people get together at events to define and develop new ideas of what is happening. Now, what did I work on?

Cross Media Cafe at Beeld & Geluid in Hilversum. Picture MediaPerspectives.

Cross Media Cafe is a Dutch series of events on innovation in the media industry, organized by MediaPerspectives and the Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision, on the Mediapark in Hilversum. We have had over 100 editions so far!

In 2023 I curated and moderated seven sessions (all in Dutch, reports and video available via the links): State of streaming, Web3 en de media: de rol van NFT’s, Metaverse en media, Nieuwsvoorziening van de toekomst, Media-ondernemers, Media CEO’s presenteren Innovatieagenda, Virtual Production. To name a few favorites: my conversation with DJ and NFT artist Don Diablo, with Jan Verwoerd van de 360Fabriek and Nicolaas Westerhoff of Beyond Sports (now acquired by Sony), and the virtual production innovations of Pim de Bilde (Iron Films) en Milo Boer (NEP).

Interviewing David van Weel, Ass Secretary General NATO, and Sir Richard Barrons, former Commander British Forces, at Next Conference in Hamburg. Picture Nextconf.

Nextconf (Hamburg) addresses the key digital trends in design, marketing, and product development, exploring their impact on human behavior.

Next started as a conference and is now a conference, an online show, and a book series. These days it is part of Accenture Song DACH. I curated the conference program and the show and helped find experts for the book series.

For the show, I interviewed people like Ashley Dudarenok on developments in China and Deborah Papiernik of Ubisoft on immersive worlds and games. I also booked guests / prepared interviews for the shows for hosts Ina Feistritzer and David Mattin.

This year at the Next conference (Hamburg, 22-23 September), I did several on-stage interviews with a.o. NATO asst Secr-General David van Weel (NATO is investing 1 billion in dual tech - technology for use both by civil society as well as the armed forces) and Sir Richard Barrons (former Command British forces), Friends with Benefits founder Trevor McFedries (about DAOs as a model for a future media industry) and Robin Rombach, who developed the Stable Diffusion model - which changed the nature of open source AI.

Great talks also by Benedict Evans (about different speeds of tech development, super interesting), Loretta Tioela (on the coming wave of TechBio), Jessica Berlin (on what the present crisis means for all of us), and lots more - you can find the videos here.

(I was very proud of this year’s program of sessions and speakers. Diverse, relevant, cutting-edge, and full of conversations that matter. Have worked with the Next team for over a decade now!)

On stage at VRDays Europe, with Timmy Ghiurau, Innovation Leader, Volvo Cars, Jussi Mäkinen, Varjo, Carlos Calva and Aura Seikkula in Timmy’s Top Selection.

VRDaysEurope/Immersive Tech Week (Rotterdam 27 November-2 December 2022) is a festival exploring the impact and transformative power of immersive technologies in our society.

I worked on themes, sessions, speakers, and formats. In 2022 the event was held for the first time in Rotterdam as a 5-day festival - which included an exhibition, workshops, hackathons, a playground for the general public, theatrical performances, and much more. What I especially liked about the event is that it brought together the industry (Pico, Meta, Varjo, etc.) but at the same time kept a strong focus on creativity and the arts, European policies, and what it all means for society. Over 5.000 people visited!

Apart from my work on the conference program, I also worked with some partners. Videos have not been released yet, but some of my favorite sessions were the ones with composer/theatre director/movie maker Michel van der Aa (whose show Upload is of such beauty you should go see it if you have the chance), creative tech star Babusi Nyoni on his African Metaverse ideas, and ArgoDesign technologist Jared Ficklin. On the last day of the event, I tried a VR experience and fell off the stage. Ok then!

Cogx Team on stage at the end of the event. Picture: CogX.

CogX Festival in London is devoted to the impact of artificial intelligence and other new technologies on society and business. It brings together thousands of people to figure out ‘‘How to get the next 10 years right’’.

In 2022, I worked on the speaker program for three tracks, CreaTech, Research, and Next Generation Infrastructures, and I assisted with some speaker coordination on-site. It was wonderful to be back in London, and we had a wonderful team. The event was held at King’s Cross in London, 13-15 June. Moving to the O2 in September 2023!

Full house at the opening of Emerce Eday. The first time this event was organized? Beurs van Berlage 2001 and I put together the program then as well :-)

Emerce Eday is the flagship event of trade publisher Emerce and explores what is ahead for brand, media, technology, and commerce.

I was a member of the program team and helped select speakers. Great talks by a.o. B. Earl (Marvel Writer and NFT WorldBuilder), Arno Otto (Chief Transformation Officer Talpa Network), Manya Koetse (Founder What's on Weibo), and Elaine Kasket (Author and psychologist, All the Ghosts in the Machine - on the digital afterlife of your personal data) and a wonderful conversation with Janne Spijkervet of TikTok and Hendrik Vincent Koops (RTL and the AI Song Contest) on AI and music - both of them multi-talents with degrees in music and AI.

I also hosted the media track and worked on three short documentaries released after the event - selecting themes and speakers, reaching out and doing interviews, and selecting the right quotes. You can see them after registering on the site (in Dutch):

Tweakers is a Dutch tech website with over 1 million members, a community of developers and tech professionals that gets together a few times during the year.

I curated the speaker program of the Tweakers Developers Summit (23 June), the Tweakers Smart Home Meetup (3 Sept), and the Tweakers Privacy & Security Meetup (November). Let me mention two great talks at the Developers Summit: Prof Felienne Hermans about The Programmer’s Brain and the Hedy programming language, helping kids worldwide understand code. The whole room loved her. And a fantastic closing talk by Dylan Beattie, who combines computers, code, comedy, music, and video.

Dataxis - based out of Mauritius! - organizes events on innovations for broadcasters on all continents. I am a regular moderator, both online and in-person, and love working with them. In 2022, I moderated sessions for NextvEurope/Giga Connect Europe, Berlin, 24-25 May, NextvAD 31 May (online), and the NextvCEOEurope (16-17 November Brussels).

(Here is how that works. Dataxis is a research company. The researchers first interview all speakers and send me a document with an overview of what was discussed as well as the full transcript of the conversation. The researcher calls me to brief me and answer any questions I may have, we discuss possible questions and ideas. They proceed to set up a call for me to talk to the speakers themselves. And only then do I go on stage and run the session).

Basecamp Academy - for this new initiative of Nachtlab Agency, I put together three sessions on regenerative thinking in the fields of design, food, and activism. I hosted the conversations held at D/Dock Amsterdam together with founder Sylvester Lindemulder. The festival that was part of the plans has unfortunately been postponed twice - but will hopefully happen in June 2023 at the Basecamp Eco Resort in Ijmuiden.

Basecamp eco-resort in Ijmuiden will host a festival in June 2023.

Dutch Digital Day is the annual event of the DDA (Dutch Digital Agencies) which connects and represents the best digital agencies in the Netherlands. I curated the speaker program of their annual event, the special 20th-anniversary edition. Amsterdam, 1 July. I got the chance to not just select some wonderful speakers - a.o. Michael Musandu, Bogomir Doringer, Payal Arora - but also to add a few theatrical elements. Jamie Bartlett did a talk based on his book/podcast The Missing Cryptoqueen - about the Bulgarian fraudster Ruja Ignatova - and I got the Bulgarian choir Chubritsa to join him on stage. Actor-dancer-singer Jules Jaden Avery contributed a great performance, and the Smart Phone Orchestra had the audience singing together.

Jamie Bartlett on stage with the Bulgarian choir Chubritsa. Picture: DDD

Moderator/host / fireside chats / on-stage interviews

Here is a list of events where I acted as a host/moderator in 2022. Doing on-stage interviews with creative people, technologists, and entrepreneurs is something I truly enjoy. So feel free to drop me a line if you are looking for a moderator!

  • Launch of the Monitor Creatieve Industrie, (The Hague, 24 Jan)

  • Open Coffee Publieksdata, (The Hague 25 Jan)

  • Metaverse session for Netwerk Mediawijsheid, (Online, 28 Jan). One of the few online events I did this year - with a very lively discussion in the chat.

  • Making Media - University of Amsterdam - guest in this series by Prof Mark Deuze, see also Deuzevlog (Online 2 Feb). Also helped Mark to get a few other interesting people to participate in the series and share their ideas about the media industry with his international students.

  • MediaPerspectives interview Ralf van Vegten, Hilversum 5 April

  • In Duplo Data en Samenleving, Erasmus University, Rotterdam 12 May.

  • NextTVEurope, Berlin 24-25 May

  • NextTVAd Europe, online 30 May

  • Thingscon annual event, Rotterdam, 10 June. The Thingscon community of builders, inventors, and tinkerers with everything IoT always is a delight. They started with a session on how to build funky robots and had lots of other workshops. Great talks by Justyna Zubrycka on designing IoT interaction and Kris van Herle on developing hardware for citizens. I hosted the main stage talks.

  • Metaverse Summit, Paris, 16-17 July. This event brought together builders, entrepreneurs, investors, and experts, with a strong focus on Web3 and NFTs. This is the kind of event that works well when things are just starting - the program consisted mostly of panels selected from speaker applications. I moderated a few sessions and enjoyed them a lot.

  • Masterclass Tommy Pallotta (Dutch Film Festival, Utrecht 24 Sept). This was a wonderful show-and-tell/interview with cinematographer Tommy Pallotta - who showed work from the start of his career to more recent examples on movies and series like A Scanner Darkly, Undone, and Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood. Creators often create the tools they need - this was also the case for the rotoscoping technology he helped bring to perfection together with the team of Submarine.

  • Navigate to the Future (Noordwijk 26 Sept). This was a Space Week 2022 Special to discover how space data impacts society and creates new business for organizations in every sector. Super interesting topic! GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) is the default standard service for Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) applications - used in autonomous transport, the electrical power grid, international money transfers, and more. I worked with the team to develop an interactive format, and I hosted discussions with GNSS Center of Excellence and the EU Agency for the Space Program.

  • Dutch Media Week, 3-7 October Hilversum. An annual event hosted on the Dutch Mediapark, in Dutch. I curated and moderated four talk shows: Responsible AI (moderator), How will remote work change the media industry? (curator and moderator), Subscription models for video (curator and moderator), Games for good (curator).

  • NextTVSports Europe, Berlin, 11 October

  • Data Week / Data Diner, Den Bosch 18 October. Partner event in Den Bosch City Hall, moderator and format developer.

  • Blend Realities at Amsterdam Dance Event, Amsterdam & online, 19-20 Oct. For this event, I interviewed Blake Lemoine, who worked for LaMDA, a family of conversational neural language models developed by Google. He is convinced Google has built the first sentient AI machine, showing human-like consciousness (and got fired when he shared this with the world). I also interviewed Thomas Wolf, the co-founder of Hugging Face, a platform to build, train and deploy state-of-the-art AI models as well as voice artist and technologist Harry Jeff, aka Reeps100, who is a leader in a new wave of voice technology-focused experimentation. Fantastic line-up.

  • TBX, Utrecht 1-2 Nov. A new event about emerging technologies - and how they disrupt and transform markets. I moderated panels on the impact of Web3, IT ethics, cyber resilience, and the future of work.

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