MJ Petroni

Digital transformation is creating a world where businesses must test new, exponential strategies while maintaining incremental business functions to keep the lights on. How can we manage this balance between old and new? To lead our companies into the future, we need to increase our digital fluency across five pillars: thinking, skills, tools, data and business models. Futurist and Cyborg Anthropologist (It's a real thing, we promise.) MJ Petroni provides the tools to help you get started. He’ll show you how to unlock new potential for yourself and your organization and raise your digital fluency. If you want to lead in a digital world, you need more than catchphrases—you need fluency, or you’ll never be able to cause the “disruptive” movements people talk about.

It can be difficult to sort fast-fading fads from technologies that might spark the next digital revolution. From cutting-edge fields like quantum computing to emerging tech like augmented reality, there's always something new and exciting in the headlines. Knowing the basics of these technologies, how they can be used and their future potential is essential for leaders who need to make smart decisions about which technologies to invest in and how they should be applied. Futurist and Cyborg Anthropologist (It's a real thing, we promise.) MJ Petroni will take you on a lively and easy-to-understand tour of the tech that's getting attention and answer your questions. Even the ones you're too shy to ask your colleagues.

The global COVID-19 pandemic pushed most companies to adopt work-from-home policies and flex schedules, and the growth of the gig economy may be changing the way we think about work altogether. It's clear that most industries need Digital Fluency rather than traditional mental models to ensure productivity, efficiency and collaboration. What's less clear is how these changes will affect workers and employers, and how emerging technologies like machine coworkers, AR/VR and the metaverse will shape how we work in any setting. Join Futurist and Cyborg Anthropologist (It's a real thing, we promise.) MJ Petroni for a lively and interactive discussion about new and future ways to work together and the technologies that will enable them.

Queer people have created and transformed modern technology, from Turing to Apple CEO Tim Cook and former U.S. CTO Megan Smith, into the trailblazing future of Queer metaverses and cyborg gender. Learn Queer strategies to guide sound design & security based on deconstructing and recombining systems, challenging rules, transforming interfaces, and re/creating identity. Read More >

Attendees interested in new ideas and community structures that can inform the more inclusive design and mindful coordination of privacy and security will learn:

• A concept of Queer as a school of thought beyond the demographics of sexual orientation or gender
• The idea of “Queering” something (to deconstruct, assess, and recombine its elements—often in new ways and with startling results)
• The importance of digital fluency in Queer communities—and Queer fluency in tech communities
• What Queer people do with tech and what it can teach designers (about power, [secret] communication, avatars, counter publics, hacktivism, and online worlds)
• Correlation between the density of LGBTQ+ people in geographical innovation hubs—and the hidden risks of relocation of tech to less-LGBTQ welcoming areas
• Queer X Quantum: how the common Queer experience of living beyond or outside of binaries relates to emerging ‘fuzzy’ technologies like machine learning, natural language processing, quantum computing, and ‘cyborg’ extensions of the body

The talk will be presented with rich visuals and clear frameworks; attendees will receive a discussion guide, and an annotated digital collection of ‘sightings from the field’ of LGBTQ tech and cybersecurity case studies, articles, and thought leaders.

Case studies and reference points will include, among other things:

• Correlation of LGBTQ population density to tech-centric states/cities
• How the impact of missing trans stakeholders in Facebook gender rollout caused both PR backlash and real harm to trans people
• Cyber-outing incidents (d0xing of LGBTQ+ people), digital footprint/reputation management, and related hate crime risk

This talk is not primarily about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) strategies (many great voices are working on that) but will necessarily reference those concepts and will undoubtedly inform DE&I discussions. Read Less ^