On Wednesday night, our hotly-anticipated Top Tech Trends Debate was held at Melbourne Connect with a brilliant lineup of panellists pitching their ideas for 'the next big thing' in emerging tech. Debate from all panellists was spirited and some fantastic emerging trends were identified. 

David Collins advocated for 3D printed body parts being a top tech trend, and brought his own formative printed body part in the form of a general purpose hydrogel mass. 

Jane Bunn spoke about hyper localised precision weather forecasts being critical to the future of agriculture, and productivity of large construction projects, solar and wind power sites and more. 

Rupert Walsh spoke to the convergence of biotech and AI through implantable's, and the many use cases big and small that can be addressed though augmented cognition, prosthetic cognition for mental disabilities and related configurations. Perhaps even unlocking personal telepathy (imagine!)

Nigel Dalton of Thoughtworks ran us through his vision of pervasive personal body cameras not just police and frontline workers. Nigel was wearing is own lapel iEye, and admitted to being an early glasshole, being an early adopter of Google Glasses. 

Dr Nataliya Ilyushina, aka Dr Pink—outlined her vision of a labour market in which employees are semi-corporatised as their own mini-enterprises within the greater enterprise. And bring their own raft of skillsets and custom toolsets to be both complementary and competitive with their peer employees. She illustrated her proposition though its context of recent workplace experience of the great resignation, quiet quitting, the digital nomads phenomenon, and the not so quiet trend of quitting on TikTok. 

Ultimately there could only be one winner, and it was over to the audience to vote, with Rupert Walsh emerging victorious!

The debate was expertly moderated by Gretchen Scott who managed affairs with aplomb and kept presenters to time and topic, while also sprinkling in her own timely interjections throughout! 

The event was made possible by our major event partner Digital Innovation Futures Victoria & Victorian Government. 
With thanks to our event sponsor InnovateGPT and event partners Colin Biggers & Paisley, Kaleida, Nakoudu, Treadstone Government Grants