Atoms and bits: San Francisco event brings digital and physical together

Taking place on 22 September 2023 at Visa’s 900 Metro Centre Boulevard HQ, the latest WORKTECH San Francisco event will discuss how to bring together ‘atoms and bits’, how rituals can help create connection in the workplace, and how San Francisco can reinvent itself in a post-pandemic world.

Take a closer look at some of these sessions:

Lives in parallel

In this fireside chat, Lisa Hsiao, Senior Director of JLL Consulting and Ariel Berstein, Head of Research and Storytelling at Accenture, will discuss a new report from Accenture which employs the ‘When Atoms meet Bits’ idea at its core. This idea follows the principle that we live two lives – a digital life and a physical life, and that lots of the conflict that we experience in our working lives relates to the conflict that comes between these two realms meeting. However, new technologies such as spatial computing and generative AI offer opportunities to integrate these elements of our lives more seamlessly and remove conflict – offering the best of both worlds to everybody.

Return on investment

In this session, Michael Goulty, Head of Customer and Partner Success at Butlr is joined by Michael Ippolito, Senior Manager of Facilities Planning at Qualcomm, to discuss the ROI of data collection and which technologies offer the best bang for your buck. We all want to understand our workspaces better and have heard about the data that sensors in the workplace can collect. But how can this information be transformed into cost savings? By helping us develop more flexible and agile environments, data can help us boost wellbeing while also cutting costs.

The future of San Francisco

In this discussion, moderated by Simon Elliot, Partner and Co-founder of 4xi, experts such as Lisa Hsiao, Senior Director of JLL, will address the post-pandemic slump that San Francisco has experienced as working from home has become the norm. This session will reimagine the urban space for new needs. With a very low level of office occupancy, it’s no secret that San Francisco has been struggling even more than other major cities to get people into the office. However, a new approach that embraces flex and makes the workplace more magnetic might do the trick – more so than company mandates.

Rituals equal connection

How much of your day-to-day behaviour feels ritualistic? On first glance, not a lot, but when you start to dig down you might find that all your routines from getting up to having breakfast to meeting your friend at the pub after work have elements of ritualistic behaviour to them. And that’s not surprising as rituals have been a critical part of human life since we were primates. But where do rituals come to the fore at the workplace? In this talk by Mirit Cohen, Senior Manager of Global Workplace Experience Programs at Adobe, the question up for debate is: how do we foster better connection at work? Adobe’s approach is innovative, with its teams trialling a variety of new approaches to creating connection, based around interdisciplinary work relating to modern-day gathering and rituals. Find out how rituals can feature within your workplace here.

Book tickets and find out more about WORKTECH San Francisco here.