ABOUT THE CONFERENCE
Business to Buttons 2016 was held in Stockholm from 14:th to 16:th of April. The conference is for those who work with User Experience, Service Design and Sustainability. This year sustainability has been given extra space in the program. Me and my colleague Joakim Astbrant were User Experience designers representing Jayway at the conference. The blog-post summarizes Al Gores speech who was the main speaker at the conference this year.
“All of us who are working to develop digital solutions have enormous potential to make a difference. We can make everyday life easier and more enjoyable for people, we can do the activities we work more profitable and we can use our knowledge to make the community and world we live in a little better. Al Gore is one of the main leaders in these areas, and we are extremely happy to have him as our guest” says Johan Berndtsson, founder and vice president of inUse.
VP AL GORE
Al Gore is a Nobel Peace Prize winner and former US Vice President. He is also the founder and current chairman of The Climate Reality Project. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of Apple Inc., a senior adviser to Google and chairman of Generation Investment Management. Al Gore discusses technological advancement and the potential of user involvement. He identifies key opportunities and challenges, charting a new digital society. It was a pleasure to listen to such a great leader within technology and sustainability, how he talked with passion about his vision of future.
SUMMARY
Summarizing from one of his recent books, The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change (2013), Al Gore was talking about the “Global Mind.” The ”Global Mind” is the development of worldwide digital communications that reshape the ways in which billions of people communicates with each other and connects intelligent machines, robots, ubiquitous sensors, and databases. He has also been talking about the increasing economic globalization that have brought on “Earth, Inc.,” an integrated holistic entity that represents new relationships to capital, labour, consumer markets, and national governments.
Dedicated with a glow Al raises his voice and talks about positive promises for our future, visibly energized. He speaks about that we have an opportunity today to use technology and policy to solve the world’s global warming problems and create wealth and jobs. Many of us may feel concern about the world crisis we have today but Al pointed out that it presented both danger and opportunity. He compared our generation to the “Greatest Generation” with possibilities to create greater wealth and stability all around!
MY THOUGHTS
Al Gores speech has been rewarding and also very relevant to me due to my big interests in social design. To explain the term social design in short – it is often used for creating a better and more sustainable world or for a human well-being. And what separates social design from traditional design is that social design is dependent on the activity of social actors. My latest projects at Jayway has touched the topic of social design, and Al Gore’s speech has made me realize what impact we have as designers and what a great power it is.
