Most of the audience had already used AI tools into their workflows, be it character and script development, storyboarding, presentations, transcription services, or note taking. The most talked about products were ChatGPT (with many paying for version 4.0), Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney. Some were using tools such as D-ID and Synthesia that let you create synthetic humans or avatars with a variety of voices.

We’ve got the session recordings and there are enough AI products talked about to keep you as happy as a kid in a candy shop. We were surprised to see how quickly people are moving from newbies to do-bies, and how palpable the tension was to keep up to speed.

Here are some suggestions for how to keep up. Subscribe to Ben’s Bites, a daily newsletter chock full of AI insights (with a dash of humor) as well as Futurepedia and AI Tools Directory. And if you like yours with a bit more tutorial, try Medium’s Towards AI.

“My metric for measuring the success of an event is goosebumps,” said David Adler in a Zoom call we had last week. “You should get the goosebumps anytime you’re part of a great meeting or event.”

If the events industry has a grand gentleman, it’s David Adler. Meetings are in his blood. From the early days of publishing the “Washington Dossier,” a sort of gossipy who’s who of Washington DC’s elite, to running communications for Robert Maxwell’s (yes, Ghislane’s father) specialty publishing fiefdom, he learned the power of publishing, community and connections. He founded BizBash, now owned by Informa. Lately, you can find him holding court at GatherGeeks, a salon-like podcast for event planners.

Adler admits to being enamored of new tech, but feels as if digital event tech tools don’t do enough to increase collaboration or create the sense of magic and community we have in live meetings. They need to become more masterful but also learn to stay out of the way. “The purpose of tech is to make things easier, not more complex.”

His mission focuses squarely on nurturing the collaborative nature of events and celebrating event creators and their teams. “We want set designers, production crews, rental companies – you name it – to get the recognition they deserve for creating masterful meetups."

“People want collaboration and contact more than gewgaws and swag," he says. Adler is all about creating memorable icebreakers in the Jeffersonian tradition: people conversing in small groups, but with a purpose. A big believer in the neuropsychology behind events, he knows that all of the senses – touch, taste and smell – have as much to contribute to a sense of place as sight and sound. Conducting and orchestrating the disparate parts of events are where the real talent lies, and this relies on great communication.

Based on a career of making meetings memorable and delightful, Adler wants the people who drive events to start getting a little recognition and love. “Chefs are superstars,” he points out. “Event planners should be too.” Harnessing Serendipity contains interviews with personal friends, heroes and rock stars of all ilks. Adler is a lifelong collector of these gems. He interviews actors, dancers, women’s leaders, choral conductors and many others who share the power to create connections amongst people. And Adler is the Pied Piper of magical people. Listen to our conversation to find out more. He’s spectacular!

CBS’s 60 Minutes recently did a yeoman’s job of doing a deep (sometimes dark) look at AI. I especially liked its look at Bard, Google’s rival to ChatGPT. Bard does not look for answers on the Internet in the same way as Google searches. Instead, Bard’s replies are fabricated from a self-contained language model that is self-taught. 60 Minutes put it through its paces, from summarizing the Bible (in Latin, too) to completing poems and novels.
 
Bard has more up-to-date information than ChatGPT3, though ChatGPT Version 4 (which you’ll have to pay for) is more current. Bard also lets you give prompts using your voice. And it offers a “Google It” button so you can check your facts (well, as much as Googling is an actual fact check). And it offers an easier way to do “drafts” of your prompts. By the way, Bing (built on ChatGPT and incorporated into many Microsoft products) is the only one that actually cites its sources. Learn more from Search Engine Journal. Experiment with all of them; trust none of them completely. An easy way to experiment is to use Poe. It sits on top of the other search chatbots and let's you pick the one you want to use.

Blaming Facebook
Patience is a virtue. One that Mark Zuckerberg may or may not have (doubtful), but clearly his shareholders do not. Zuckerberg’s vision for rebranding Facebook to Meta (June 2022) involved wearing Oculus headsets and seeing yourself and colleagues portrayed as legless cartoon avatars sitting at a desk in Horizon World, Meta’s social platform.

Less than one year after anointing the company as the North Star of the metaverse, after hiring and then laying off thousands, and after sinking $13.7 billion (pretty much a billion a month) into the metaverse, the company seems to be pivoting yet again. Word has it that Meta has dropped the term "Metaverse" altogether when they present collaborations to potential partners. And no wonder, since the “if you build it they will come” algorithm appears to have been off, by a lot. AI models and short-form videos now seem to be the topic of conversation on Meta’s campus these days. Will Meta bounce back into the metaverse once it’s shored up its losses and figured out its AI moves? No crystal balls, but a gal can bet that Meta can reinvent itself again, can’t she?

In other event news, TED Talks knocked it out of the park, from cool set designs and experiences, to a solid, but well-differentiated focus on AI in its conference programming. Here’s a good wrap-up of some of the most meaningful AI moments. Also congrats to Monique Ruff Bell, TED's Director of Events, for building a vibe that encouraged collaboration and a sense of place.

Coachella, the trippy desert music fest, seems to be on the other end of the events spectrum. It lost mountains of cash and goodwill when Frank Ocean pulled out of his second show at the 11th hour. Variety reports on his lackluster first show, how he made Coachella dismantle the crazy-expensive ice-rink, and how one prima donna act can really be a downer.

While tech problems plagued the live event, Fortnite worked with Coachella to sponsor the virtual event on Fortnite and YouTube streamed it all and offered Coachella merch at the same time.

At NAB, Adobe showed off its new podcast tool, which is still in beta. It allows you to turn voice input into text and edit it like you’re in a word processor, but the coolest feature is that it uses AI to remove background noise. It was trained on speech voices to understand the difference between speech and noise. (Wish we could cut out unwanted noise IRL.)

Vacation: In-person or Virtual

Planning a summer vacation but want to take a preview tour? Check out DiscoverLive and Wowzitude. Both offer 100% live, interactive, and immersive tours. Both use cadres of expert tour guides from all over the world. Armed with mobile phones and gimbles in hand, these guides walk through the streets of Europe and the temples of India, and they interact with their audience as they guide