Converge came back full of enthusiasm to inspire thousands of people to learn in one of the most relevant events on innovation and digital transformation.
This year, Converge was completely updated with a 100% virtual format, allowing lecturers and participants from all over the world to consider together innovative forms of collaboration between industries, organizations, and human beings.
This first Converge 2020 session called “New Era of Collaboration” was held on two dates, June 18 in Spanish and June 25 in English. With more than 7500 followers, high expectations were raised regarding the event, mainly due to the high level panel of specialists and leadership of international organizations. We invite you to revive the meeting’s most noteworthy points.
Converge 2020’s Learnings
Martín Migoya, Globant CEO and co-founder, opened the event inviting everyone to think about the legacy this crisis was leaving us. “At Globant, we decided to experiment with new forms of collaboration, focusing on increasing the sense of purpose and teamwork in our distributed workforce.” Regarding the future, Migoya seemed optimistic: “We are at a starting point in this era, the use of collaboration tools like Zoom is just at level 1.0. Augmented Collaboration is the name we gave to what we believe will be the manner to collaborate as human beings in the future.”
Throughout more than two hours, experts in education, technology, and business leadership shared their challenges and learnings as a way to start to create together the field for collaboration between industries. New ways of taking advantage of technology from different angles were discussed to promote innovation and productivity.
The Art of Augmentation
One of the meeting’s most awaited presences was that of Guy Kawasaky, Chief Evangelist at Canva. In his presentation called “The Art of Augmentation,” Guy shared the 10 (+1 bonus) lessons for making organizations larger, stronger, better, and more innovative, or, in the specialist’s words, “augmented organizations.” These lessons are:
- Understand that in order to continue being relevant, a lot of skills are needed.
- Be empathetic and show concern for team members.
- Promote the learning of new skills.
- Be more transparent than ever.
- Share economic benefits with team members.
- Celebrate good news.
- Force Serendipity: encourage people to interact and connect with each other.
- Focus on the results.
- Rethink the onboarding of new talents.
- Do what needs to be done to triumph.
- Offer valuable and unique products or services to customers.
Future of Education: Lessons and Trends.
One of Converge 2020’s core topics addressed the role of technology in the future of education. A panel of specialists composed of Melina Furman, Doctor in Education from Columbia University and Professor at UdeSA, Nano Kigel, Chief Learning Officer at Acámica, and Eduardo Mangarelli, Dean of the School of Engineering at ORT Uruguay, thoroughly debated the opportunities presented by technological innovations, the challenges of distance education, and the trends in teaching and learning.
“Today we are all reinventing ourselves. The pandemic represented a violent shake-up of the education industry and gave us the opportunity to reassess and use many already existing technological tools. This is a new stage, where the time spent has to be more productive. The student will go from being a consumer of knowledge to having a more collaborative and creative role,” explained Melina Furman.
For his part, Eduardo Mangarelli sustained that four pillars are going to remain valid in this transformation process: the importance of the fundamentals and knowledge of each particular discipline; the development of study habits and skills; the generation of practical disciplines; and values education. Recognizing the importance of these pillars allows us to go along with the transformation process that we are experiencing today.
The experts agreed that one of the greatest opportunities of future education is the connection between the human dimension and the digital dimension to obtain the best of each one. “Gamification, machine learning, and other tools will enable us to personalize and better support each student,” asserted Mangarelli. For his part, Nano Kigel warned, “technology does not replace the effort needed to learn, which has not changed, as hard work and consistency are skills that will continue to be important.”
Transformation and Digital Darwinism
Enrique Dans, IE Business School Professor and author of “Living in the Future,” proposes thinking about the post-pandemic environment as a Digital Darwinism phenomenon. The researcher suggests that while having to adapt to working remotely, many organizations can take advantage of digital transformation acceleration to evolve. This means not only going to a 100% remote work model, but also, for example, working on a shared document and going to a higher level of effectiveness, instead of holding meetings.
“In a crisis like this one, unlearning is more important than learning. Companies that are capable of unlearning are the ones Digital Darwinism may work in favor of,” maintained Dans.
Keys to Anticipating the Future
According to Pascal Finette, Co-Founder at be radical and Singularity University’s Chair for Entrepreneurship & Open Innovation, the current COVID-19 context is causing a myriad behavior changes that he calls “weak signals”, for example, changes in traveling habits, contactless payment, and remote work. Today’s weak signals give us clues regarding how the future of industries and markets will be.
“In order to understand weak signals and opportunities, it is necessary to analyze the implications of these changes, and consider the implications of the implications. With all this data, it is necessary to put together a map of the disruptions so that all the information is synthesized and makes sense. Organizations that can understand the changes in a timely fashion are the ones that will win.”
As a kind of balance and closing of the event, Guibert Englebienne, Global CTO and co-founder, explained that “for organizations, this is the persuasion pandemic: the digital transformation had to happen, and now there is no going back.” In addition, Guibert highlighted the importance of being able to reinvent oneself when faced with the changes, “today is the time to self-motivate, learn, unlearn, and accelerate our careers, which will surely have an improving impact on the organization. We have to be able to provide a lot of autonomy and generate trust, so that people can make decisions in a distributed manner.”
The Conversation is Just Starting
For those who still wanted more, we will have more Converge 2020 content. Globant proposes to continue debating ideas in new and dynamic formats. On the one hand, exclusive discussion rounds will be organized where leadership will be able to address strategic topics regarding the new digital and cognitive paradigm required to succeed in business. And, on the other hand, we invite attendees to participate in the next editions.
CONVERGE 2020 Next Editions:
● Technology Enhancing Humanity: available in September 2020
● Cognitive Disruption: available in October/November 2020
You don’t have a lot of time, but would like to know Converge’s main points? Access our report with the event’s highlights.
Do you want to revive Converge and not miss anything? Watch the entire event
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