Vote for McKinsey’s SXSW Sydney 2023 Session Select ideas!

McKinsey Digital
5 min readMar 31, 2023

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We’re thrilled that South by Southwest (SXSW), the global festival of ideas, is coming to Sydney for the first time in October 2023. There’s nothing quite like SXSW and we’re planning to share perspectives on topics ranging from generative AI to toxic workplace behaviour, future workforces, payments and more. Public voting is an important part of the selection process, so read on and have your say! You can vote once for each session (just sayin’…), before voting closes on 11 April.

ChatGPT’s 1st bday party: what we (and it) learned | Professor Genevieve Bell AO (Australian National University), Dr Aengus Tran (harrison.ai); Distinguished Professor Fang Chen (University of Technology Sydney), and Nicholas Fletcher (McKinsey)

It’s been said that raising a child takes a village. One AI might just require the world.

So what legacy are we marking one year since ChatGPT’s public release?

Bring your party hats and join us for a discussion on how it has popularised and revolutionised our acceptance and concerns of AI.

Nicholas Fletcher, a McKinsey technologist who has charted the development of ChatGPT alongside becoming a first-time dad himself, will lead this conversation of experts to explore: with capabilities that accelerated at breakneck speed, how did business, creative, and legal communities keep pace? What opportunities have we gained, and what was lost? What are the views of pioneers and early adopters of cutting edge AI?

More importantly: how will AI grow and evolve in the years to come?

Tech talent wars: build or conquer your army? | Vu Tran (Go1), Ben Thompson (Employment Hero), Didier Elzinga (Culture Amp), and Helen Mayhew (McKinsey)

The world of tech has always been fast and complex, but it feels moreso every day.

To cope with the speed, complexity, and uncertainty, you need capable and diverse people collaborating at a new level. Done right, teams can not only enhance the output of an organisation, but collectively increase national productivity.

But with a notoriously competitive — and limited — talent pool, how can Australia gain the skills it needs to nurture the next wave of innovation, support smart and ambitious people, and change the world for the better through tech?

This panel of experts and industry leaders will explore why simply hunting down ‘star’ talent is not enough, why recent redundancies might not be the golden opportunity companies may hope for, and how you might already be working with the best people for the job you need — and most importantly, how to unlock their potential.

How tech can make hot air clean for our future | Prashant Murthy (Airtrunk), Jane Hunter (Tritium), Monique Miller (Clean Energy Finance Corporation), and David Dyer (McKinsey)

Startups and high growth companies can play a critical role in helping not just Australia, but the world, achieve its climate ambitions.

What could the future look like and which technologies could power it?

How do we make the adoption of disruptor technologies easy and scalable, to maximise their potential?

More importantly: how do we all move from talk to action, quickly?

What the shift?! A new era of capital and venture | Paul Bassat (Squarepeg), Chris Shaw (Advanced Navigation), Kate Glazebrook (Blackbird), and Gary Pinshaw (McKinsey)

How do investors navigate geopolitical tensions, inflation, health crises, and more when making decisions? What does this mean for Australia’s tech sector and its ability to compete on the world stage?

In this session, experts share their insights, lessons, and secrets for others to succeed.

Can we again show the world a better way (to pay)? | Simon Birch (Commonwealth Bank), Chris Jewell (Zepto), Kirsty Godfrey-Billy (Xero) and Keerthi Iyengar (McKinsey)

Australia and New Zealand punch above their weight in many areas.

One that we have, time and again, set the global standard is in payments. From polymer banknotes, to ‘tap and pay’, and buy-now-pay-later, we’ve ushered in new products, offerings, and behaviours.

So what’s next?

This panel will discuss and debate how local banks and fintechs are again in pole position to lead the world in mass market adoption of innovative payments such as embedded finance and contextual payments — and not just in-app purchase, but fully embedded in our daily lives.

What is the case for collaboration to build this future? Can — or even, should — it be a ‘winner takes all’ approach? Either way, it’s local innovation that can once again drive global change.

The new ‘microscope’ changing our view of humanity | Chris Bradley (McKinsey)

The McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) has used night-time luminosity and other cutting-edge techniques to break 178 countries down to more than 40,000 microregions — providing detail 230x greater than country-level datasets.

This is the first dataset to cover the evolution of health and income over the past two decades globally in such detail, and reveals some surprising insights into human progress.

For example, the people of Mapusa, India, have grown their income three times over the last two decades to the same GDP per capita as Porto, the second largest city in Portugal. This is despite the fact that Portugal has 5x the per capita income of India.

If our picture of the world has been so blurry, what else could a higher resolution reveal?

Why great managers can ruin the workplace | Alistair Carmichael (McKinsey)

McKinsey research shows that toxic workplace behaviour (TWB) is a significant and pervasive problem globally. It leads to higher rates of attrition, and poor mental health — negative outcomes for both organisations, and individuals.

In every organisation, and especially those with high levels of TWB, there are managers that create “an island of calm”. Their teams are happier, more engaged, and typically higher performing.

But within a great storm these paradises can do more harm than realised. Once people leave an “island” to join other teams, they are likely to underperform in the new environment and leave.

So how can these beloved managers and organisations work together for not just the team, but the entire workplace?

Finding and leveraging these islands of calm, and systematically dealing with TWB can not only create a happier workplace, but a higher performing one. It means acting at every level, creating a groundswell of change, and empowering everyone — from
the most senior to the most junior colleagues — to work together.

Only then do you have a chance of turning pockets of islands into an ocean of calm.

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