Day 3 SXSW Sydney recap. Conference time warp has fully set in. It feels like that period between Christmas and New Years.
First up was Tackling the Employee AI Trust Gap, with: Aliza Knox, Helen Mayhew, Netta Efron and Mary-Anne Williams AAAI (Fellow) FTSE FACS
We were reminded, new tech ain't a new phenomenon, and people have been afraid of other emerging technologies in the past.
We explored the good applications and the bad, including my favourite dooms-day scenario from Netta: that AI might predict disengagement before it emerges — good because it makes it actionable.
But if companies (looking at you, US) decide to, maybe they'll say buh-bye when they predict you're about to fall off the wagon. Glum.
Another rarely discussed aspect is what happens to all the capacity we get back from AI?
• Does it go to the bottom line (i.e. redundancies or lumping more work on people), or
• Does it go back to people to have more time to themselves (a-la 4-day work week).
Dovetailed with a previous session on AI taking away all the mindless tasks, leaving people with the more complex ones = compounding burnout 😬
Second session was Embracing Healthy Conflict with @amyegallow
Amy ran through a bunch of practical tactics to help any team do healthy conflict.
Probably most insightful for me was depersonalising conflict by naming it. Giving it a label (like speed vs quality) and discuss the conflict on those terms instead of personalising it by saying "Jenny wants to f*ck the project by ignoring quality", or that "Timmy can't ship because he's actually a sloth".
Lastly was: Don't Sleep on Sleep.
Here we heard from Matteo Franceschetti, Olympian Shayna Jack OLY, and my new favourite scientist Dr Jemma King PhD, who was like a cool Aussie version of Andrew Huberman (in all the most positive ways).
Full disclosure, I'm a happy EightSleep customer.
I've known sleep was important for a while (see above, eight sleep owner), but it was cool hearing more of the science behind it.
Sleep deprivation has undergone a real brand change from being a macho thing, to now CEO's opting out of making critical decisions on days they know they've had a bad sleep. A good shift.
Science shows that sleep deprivation is like being drunk. Not great for high stress environments where you're required to make critical decisions.
A lot of the rest of the session was spent focusing on tips around preparing for sleep and driving great sleep outcomes, such as diet (minimal carbs/protein before bed), to the practice of cognitive shuffling (google it).
Glad I packed comfy shoes because I'm hitting my steps. Proof attached for the non-believers.
I need jaw pedometer to count the 5,000% uptick in words spoken.