THE ADNEWS NGEN BLOG: Find the creative technologist in all of us

I was fortunate enough to attend a recent session titled 'Creative Technologists: Help or Hindrance organised by the International Advertising Association Australia Chapter, Young Professionals'.

Nic Hodges opened the session with an overwhelming figure that Google showed a 700% increase in search enquiries for the term creative technologist since January 2010. However when you dig deeper into Australia specifically, you will find that Google Trends will just return the search with the note "Not enough search volume to show graphs".

This brings me to the question, is Australia really ready for creative technologists? Even more alarming does Australia need creative technologists?

I'm not saying the position is redundant; there is significant value that it delivers for both agencies and clients. Wonderful campaigns like the Nike Chalk bot would not exist and the amazingness of Google Glasses would only be a dream.

The communications industry would be so much bleaker without people who understand how technology can solve communication problems. I believe the role of understanding how technology impacts communications, consumer behaviour and culture should be innately built into the job descriptions of everyone and not one person. The onus should be on everyone in the agency to up-skill to understand the potential of technology and how it can be used.

Having an opinion on how technology affects the consumer journey in retail for example or what the convergence of screens means for information flow and CRM systems will dramatically change the industry and our day-to-day jobs.

The reality is, everything is a channel now and we need to understand everyone should have the creative freedom to think up ideas and create things. Just like how a TV buyer is bound by the parameters within TV, a creative technologist is bound by their knowledge of the limitations of both technology and coding.

It is only when we disregard the limitations that we can push those boundaries and create new things as innovation knows no boundaries. 

I pledge for people to find the inner tech geek in all of us and combine that with our communication smarts because we all should be creative technologists.

Mimi Lu
Account Executive
PHD