In this solo episode of Talking Tech with Creatives, host Stella Oni delves into the podcast's mission and her unique journey as a crime fiction author with a career in technology. She explores the impact of AI on creative industries. She outlines the podcast's goals: educating creatives on emerging tech trends, highlighting success stories through interviews, and offering interactive masterclasses. Stella also shares insights from industry events and emphasises the importance of ethical tech practices and human connection in creative work. This episode sets the stage for the podcast's future direction.
ISSN 2978-8307
[00:00:13] Hi everyone, welcome to Talking Tech With Creative Podcast. My name is Stella Oni and I'm the host of the podcast. I decided to do a solo episode today to actually talk about the podcast, what it's about and talk about myself. So I'm a crime fiction author. My debut crime fiction was published in 2020, Deadly Sacrifice, let me show that to you. It came out in 2020 and I'm writing
[00:00:43] book two. I write short stories as well and I've actually started a new series that is in progress. By day, I've got a job in technology and understand the industry very well. I like technology very much, which is quite a mix because I'm both a creative and a technologist. We know that there's a lot of trend going on. There's a lot of things going on at the moment in technology with AI.
[00:01:13] AI, which is exploding and quite becoming more exponential in development. So that's going on in terms of AI. I wanted to talk about the podcast itself, what it's about. Talking Tech With Creative Podcast is going to be what the goal that we have is to...
[00:01:32] I've actually done quite a lot of interviews already, spoken to people in different industries. I've spoken to people in tourism, finance, luxury, digital, like self-publishing.
[00:01:45] Yeah, quite a lot of interviews. I did Alex Bainbridge and Arak. I did augmented reality. So in the short time that we've been airing, I've actually covered a few industries in terms of what people are doing and the development in those industries and how it affects creativity.
[00:02:05] So for future episodes, I'm looking at the goal for future episodes is to educate creatives on tech trends and tools, to look at success stories, which is the interviews, interviewing people, to look at emerging trends, what is going on out there and how that is disrupting the different industries.
[00:02:28] I'm going to be looking at problem solving. I'm going to be doing some interactive masterclasses as well. I've actually started a Patreon. I'm starting a Patreon, not completely ready, which I, what I've decided to do was to actually help people to understand what they are doing, what their brand is in terms of their business and how they can harness technology to
[00:02:58] improve their work, to improve their processes and to understand how they can save using those technologies as well. And then my job is to go out there and actually see what is out there and put it together.
[00:03:14] So it's almost like I will have, are we curating different aspects and teaching those so that my, the members who come in will be able to get what they need from the platform and learn what they have to learn. And I'll be doing weekly webinars to, to get them to understand the trends. So that's a plan for the podcast.
[00:03:39] Last year, just to highlight the progress in some industries, I like to attend different events. So I've got quite a bit of knowledge in just looking at different spaces. And one of the ones I attended in November, I attend every November now is the World Travel Market, WTM, which takes place in London, in Excel Exhibition Center in London.
[00:04:04] And it was quite mind blowing to see how tourism technology is being used within tourism. I attended the, um, minister summit on WTM and the ministers were all talking about some ministers were quite interested in how they will use AI. And when I talk about that, there were quite a lot of representatives from different countries, including South Africa.
[00:04:30] South Africa was there, Saudi Arabia, can't even remember all the countries, but quite a few countries were, were represented at the summit. And AI was one of the agendas that was on there about, and one of the things that I was quite impressed with was a question that was asked, which is how, if you're using AI, how does that work with the local indigens? Would that, would that affect the people there?
[00:04:58] And what the idea was that whatever technology was going to be introduced, it's going to make sure that it works within the local community, that people are trained, people are educated with what they have to do. So that jobs, even if they're job losses, that people would now, new jobs would be created because that was the idea.
[00:05:18] And with AI, especially like generative AI, we know how the, it's broadly known how the large language models, the technology behind the, these tools, how they were created by using, scraping a lot of information from the internet. And the AI tool is able to put together things very quickly. It doesn't mean that the human, our humanity is still important.
[00:05:45] How we are, how we respond to machines, no matter how good they are, could never be able to respond as humans are. So what I just say to creatives is create your, make sure that you have a community, make sure that you're in touch with your community. As a human being, not behind machine, because now at some point people are going to be craving that connection with the creators, no matter which industry you're at, people will create that connection with you.
[00:06:14] So be ready and be present for your customers or listeners or audience or readers, whichever industry you're in. Because those tools will not replace that, but the tools are going to develop in such a way that you can have a tool.
[00:06:35] So in generative AI, you have the agents in, for example, AI agents that might be able to just do, be able to process a, do a complete process of an area that might speed up things very quickly. Even when I attended the London Book Fair, I attended London Book Fair last April and I'll be attending this year. I spoke to quite a few people in technology and I spoke to quite a few publishers as well.
[00:07:04] And the publishers were still in a, trying to see how they're going to introduce the AI processes into their organization without alienating their staff. And at the same time, they want to save a bit of time and they want to save a bit of money, but they have to do it in a way that makes sure that people are protected. But I say this and I had a discussion with Alex that whatever happens, there's still going to be job losses.
[00:07:34] But even with job losses, new roles will be created. So it is important, vital, I say very much that you don't bury your head in the sand. Learn the tools. Quite a lot of the tools are available for free. There's free parts of it so you can actually start practicing and using them, using the tools now, understanding the tools because the tools are developing. So you don't want to be where you have not even started using any of the tools at all.
[00:08:03] And so when I talk about generative AI, for example, I do not use generative AI to write my original work. I write my words myself. But when it comes to areas like marketing aspects of things, I'm very much for it because it's very good with the copyright and writing the blogs and different kind of marketing things. It's very good with helping you a bit with social media.
[00:08:31] So that doesn't mean that it's going to write the original thing, but it will help towards some of those things or to make quite a few things. So yes, use it, but use it in a way that is with ethic as well. And if you're someone, because quite a lot of AI generated books I hear is out there. If that is how you want to use it, that is in your hands. That's up to you.
[00:08:54] But what I'm saying broadly to everybody or as many people as possible is use or practice with these tools so that you're not left behind because the tools, a lot of industries, a lot of technology industry that offer services are all adopting and adapting these technologies. So that's what I have to say today.
[00:09:23] Talking to creative postcards is we've got our dedicated websites. So you can, you can go on our website and it's, you've got access to all the different platforms on there. There's going to be, I'm going to be blogging regularly. God help me with that because I'm always writing and whatnot. But I want to do more in terms of just putting information out. And I really thank those that have been listening to me and following me on my journey.
[00:09:51] It's a podcasting is not for the faint hearted, but it's something that I feel very strongly about continuing. So I hope to continue. And I hope that as many of you as possible will follow me on, will join me on Patreon so that we can start that exciting journey of really digging into this technology and seeing what we can do with it and teaching you different things.
[00:10:19] I'm going to really break a lot of things down, step-by-step processes so that you can go in and actually just learn at your own pace. I really look forward. I love teaching. I love connecting with people. I didn't know that. I didn't even know that. But I do actually love teaching. So I hope you follow me on my journey. Thank you so much for listening to me talk on. Thank you. And have a lovely day. Thank you.