“The reason I’m so outspoken about being an Indigenous entrepreneur is because…if I’m not out there being loud and proud, who else is going to be?” Bobbie Racette asks the mesh conference audience.
The second day of mesh opened with a tech founder that inspired everyone in the audience (some to the point of tears), and closed with the crowd posing ethical questions to an AI that fields any question in just about any language.
Here are just some of the highlights from the jam-packed second day of the conference.
(And if you missed it, read about day one right here.)
Bobbie Racette keeps her ‘why’ and culture central to the growth of Virtual Gurus
As Bobbie Racette’s Virtual Gurus scales up, she’s mindful of protecting the ‘why’ at the heart of the business that enabled the scaling to begin with – and the culture she’s built around it.
“Protecting culture has been the hardest thing for me,” said Racette, in the Keynote Fireside Conversation that opened day two. “The one thing that I’ve realized is that I have to not put myself first. When I walk into the room, I do not expect the team to ask me how I’m doing or how my day is. It’s me asking them. I put my stuff in my office, [and] do what I call the ‘lion hunt.’ I walk around and I say hi to every single employee whether they’re a customer service rep, salesperson, or someone [in the C-suite]. I treat them all the same.”
The Virtual Gurus origin story has been well publicized by now. Racette built the company to provide meaningful work to underrepresented people who have been traditionally told no, as she once was.
And as she scales, her ‘why’ isn’t just an attractor for talent in her business but clients as well – especially at the enterprise level.
“While we’re still going to take SMBs (small and medium size businesses), we’re really focusing on enterprise accounts,” said Racette. “The reason they want to use our service is because they can hit their ESG numbers by using a platform like ours and by choosing a company that’s done all the vetting of the people. A large client could come in and if they want 400 virtual assistants – that could [positively] impact their carbon footprint and DEI numbers.”
Racette’s story of founding her company as a queer, Indigenous woman — the first Indigenous woman in Canadian tech to close a Series A round – inspired many in her community and, at mesh, in the audience.
During the Q&A portion of the keynote, one executive in the audience, in lieu of a question, told Racette that, at age 45, after years of feeling like she couldn’t be ‘out’ in the workplace in Alberta, read Racette’s story. She said it gave her the courage to walk into her company and say ‘this is who I am.’
In two days filled with powerful, provocative discussions, this was perhaps the signature moment of the conference.
Who would win a fight between Batman and Superman?
This question from the audience in the conference-closing keynote session “Intelligence Augmentation: The Ethical Implications of Human-AI Teaming” was directed not to a person but to Maria Bot Digital, an AI-powered strategic avatar who teaches alongside Dr. William Barry. Barry is an adjunct faculty member and Executive GovCon SME for Emerging Technologies at the US Army War College.
But, what’s a strategic avatar, you may be asking? Barry coined the term to describe a decision-support digital assistant that uses conversational AI and intelligence augmentation (IA) technologies to enhance a human being’s decision-making process by integrating data analytics, AI capabilities, and human insights.
During the session, audience members threw live questions at Maria Bot Digital covering everything from how to rid the planet of nuclear weapons to how to stop the war in Ukraine to the best flight route from Calgary to Toronto. She provided unscripted answers and follow-ups when pressed for details. Even more impressive, she can field questions in up to 100 languages and Barry often directs her to read ‘every book ever written’ on one topic or another.
Clearly the future is coming faster than we all think.
And as to the Batman vs. Superman question? The utilitarian-ethics of Maria Bot Digital led her to hedge her bets just a bit, but ultimately she argued that Batman’s tendency towards vigilantism was less valuable than Superman’s willingness to protect all people with his great power.
Advantage: Superman.
Three ways to help you create an ‘innovator’s mindset’
On a panel focused on tapping into the innovator’s mindset, Sabrina Sullivan (FORD/SAIT), Mary Jane Dykeman (INQ Law), Christine Gillies (Blackline Safety), and Deborah Yedlin (Calgary Chamber of Commerce) shared productive ways to think about innovation.
Here are three that stood out, paraphrased:
- Sullivan: Think about the future and visualize what it might be, in order to plan for potential scenarios that are five years down the road.”
- Gillies: For companies behind in digital transformation, adopting technology from innovators in the space can help them catch up, compete, and become more innovative themselves.
- Dykeman: In a data-rich but data-siloed space like healthcare, the needed mindset shift may need to come from patients and staff who have to agree to enable tech innovators to use their data as a resource.
Virtual reality, ChatGPT, and marketing in the age of distraction
With so many valuable insights zooming back and forth between mesh presenters and attendees, everyone was sure to leave all the more galvanized and ready to inspire transformation in their own organizations.
And sometimes the best pieces of wisdom come in small nuggets.
Here are three takeaways from mesh day two, that can fit in your back pocket:
On Virtual Reality
“Virtual Reality is just the next step in our development of media,” said Dr. Andreas Fraunberger, the Managing Director and XR Producer at Junge Romer, on an exclusive livestream conversation from Vienna, Austria. “Think back to the first photographs, for instance, and look how far we’ve come.”
“We’re probably the last generation that will differentiate between real and virtual,” said Amy Peck of EndeavourXR as part of that same conversation. “VR is just an extension of our human attraction to storytelling and the evolution of our reality.”
On AI & ChatGPT
For people concerned about generative AI taking human jobs, it’s simply an incredibly advanced tool according to Iman Bashir of Craftly.AI.
“It won’t replace you, but a person using Chat GPT will replace you.”
On Marketing & Sales
In a panel discussion called ‘Marketing and Sales in The Age of Distraction,’ Amrita Gurney, the Head of Marketing at Float, offered up a useful insight on the value of sharing your point of view, not just your product, in the B2B sales process.
“With B2B marketing, often you’re selling something that is more complex than B2C. The decision to buy is often a multi-month process. So, sharing not just information about your product, but your insight as a brand, can make all the difference.”
