16 May Vested Summit

Wow! I had an amazing time in Guana (Egypt) over the past four days serving as a mentor, workshop leader, and speaker at Vested Summit (May 9-12, 2018)! It was an honor to get to know the conscious tech community—a diverse group of startups, investors, designers, and developers working together to make conscious choices, conduct business responsibly, find an inner drive, and build happiness.

“The future is already here—it’s just not very evenly distributed.” ~William Gibson

As part of these activities, I was an invited speaker within the Global Exposure track of the summit. This theme focused on technology and solutions ranging from virtual and augmented reality to artificial intelligence, drones, robotics, autonomous tech, smart cities, the blockchain, cryptocurrencies, payments, and infrastructure. These inspirational talks and debates involved 30 global and regional speakers to a crowd of 300 attendees.

Our panel discussion explored the topic of “Changing Human Behaviors through Tech” and included Mark Nelson (Co-director, Peace Innovation Lab at Stanford University), Gino Yu (Director of Digital Entertainment & Game Development at Hong Kong PolyU), Cameron Burgess (Founder of Uncompromise), Liza Lichtinger (Owner of Future Design Station), and our moderator Mohamed Shebab El Din.

I also had a blast leading the workshop “What is your Design Power?” on the last day of the summit. This workshop was an opportunity for Vested Summit attendees to navigate the path to self-discovery and collaborative teamwork by identifying their personal “Design Power.”

Created in collaboration with Basma Hamdy—a Design Power is a design personality profile based on what motivates individuals to conceive, produce, and engage in innovation. Designers, engineers, hackers, and developers worked together to uncover their creative motivations and personality traits—to support the facilitation of balanced start-up teams. Thank you to the Vested Team for the opportunity to share this collaborative research.

I am proud to say that I left El Gouna not only with new friends but, with a family of innovators and dreamers dedicated to making the world a better place!