Creativity Squared

Today, my social media agency, Sociality Squared, is celebrating 15 years in business!! Thank you to everyone who’s been and will be part of the journey as we evolve, but never forget our core principles. We’re about people, first and foremost. ?? #ImaginationAge Creativity Squared #CreativitySquared #UpUpAndAway

?? BIG News!! ?? This link just dropped today for SXSW —?"Featured Session: AI, Music & Creativity in the Imagination Age with Holly Herndon"! I couldn't be more excited to join one of the TIME100 Most Influential People in AI on stage for an intimate and profound #SXSW Featured Session. This will be ahead of a 2025 Creativity Squared podcast interview with Holly, too! Join this special session: https://lnkd.in/gmSHzG_C #CreativitySquared #HollyHerndon Hugh Forrest #ImaginationAge ???

LEAKED - Oh no! ???? https://lnkd.in/gm-ZvmNd << Don’t click!!! ?????? ?? I'm in monk mode until SXSW (unless you're interested in sponsoring any of the amazzzzzing International Women's Day events ahead of it in Cincy on March 5 or my Creativity Squared x (unofficial) SXSW #ImaginationAge activations I'm working on! —?#HintHint DM me sponsors and partners ??). ?? For those in Cincy who are interested in going, we have a $200 discount off badges (Thank you to SXSW, #CincyAI, and Cincinnati AI Catalyst). Please email Mindy Bailey, my fab Cincy project manager who owns Spark Up and is another Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses grad! ?? Kendra Ramirez is taking care of CincyAI for Humans (CincyAI) prep and emails while I'm in monk mode. I'll be at the March 3 meetup too and can't wait as I hated missing February's — rsvp now while there are still tickets: https://lnkd.in/g6My9dn6 ??? The "leaked" deck has the key dates. Note: Until I get sponsors for the women's brunch, reception, or dinner, it'll be morning programming with Together Digital and the amazing Amy Vaughan. And then there’ll be an evening underground party at an undisclosed location — this is for an early evening flavor of SXSW for those who want to experience it locally in Cincy! ?? March 7 — My current commercial press jet flight is that morning on Delta. Still hoping to manifest a Delta Air Lines chartered flight or borrow a Procter & Gamble exec's one over at Lunken —?#HintHint ???? #ShamelessIKnow ;) #DeltaMILLIONMiler and this would be the MOST AMAZING birthday present ever (which I turned 41 yesterday and flew on Delta for my bday trip, just say'in! ;). ?? March 8 is Chris Lee, who is one of our amazing local startup CEOs. He owns Airtrek Robotics and will be on stage because he's also a SXSW pitch finalist!! ???? https://lnkd.in/gaBewk7i ?? March 9 is the FIRST time I'll be on stage at #SXSW as part of a FEATURED SESSION (yes, this is true!!! ???)...this isn't online yet, but will be soon. Shhhh —?don't tell Hugh Forrest (forgive me as a SXSW SuperFan for the leak! ;) ?? That night will be the #ImaginationAge private dinner followed by a VIP reception, followed by an invite-only reception, followed by an underground afterparty at an undisclosed location downtown that will go late late night (I will be getting real sleep, don't worry!) and will have extra security...because I take safe spaces seriously. ?? March 10 will be an invite-only dinner centered around Black Excellence and our Columbus king DaVante' Goins who owns Kin — a startup to watch! —?is leading it. The phenomenal Walter Greason, Aasim S., Brent Smith, Jey V., Willonius Hatcher, Michael Coppage, Decora Sandiford, and more guests will be there once I get all the invites out! ;) Continued below b/c running out of characters...I know my emails can be long...some things are worth the full read! ;) Creativity Squared #CreativitySquared

Look what arrived in the mail!!! ????? “Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst: All Media is Training Data,” written and edited by Eva J?ger and Caroline Busta, stands out as a beautiful and thought-provoking immersion into this creative power duo’s approach to machine learning and art. Congrats to all involved in this important contribution to helping shape the #ImaginationAge! ???London friends, don’t miss their solo exhibition at Serpentine —?there are only two weeks left to see ‘The Call’ — stop by Serpentine North before the exhibition closes on February 2! ? ??Art & A.I. friends, sign up for beta access of their Public Diffusion, a truly open foundation model that centers artists: Http://https://lnkd.in/gvKAx-2g ? ??? Curious how this fits into the #ImaginationAge conversation? I gush over it in my 1819 Innovation Hub interview: https://lnkd.in/gKGzXw8S? ? ?? Fun fact: Holly covered Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” with A.I. and all three of us —?Holly, Dolly, and I —?have been digitally cloned, Dolly holographically back in 2013. Not only that: We’re all from East Tennessee! (Dolly and I are from Sevier County and Holly, Johnson City!) Creativity Squared #CreativitySquared #ImaginationAge ??? ? Mathew D. Eva J?ger Serpentine Francesca Bria Benjamin H. Bratton Caroline Busta Eric Hu Primavera De Filippi Liz Pelly #ImaginationLibrary #AdultImaginationLibrary 1819 Innovation Hub UC Digital Futures University of Cincinnati Cincinnati Innovation District #ucdigitalfutures #solvingproblemsthatmatter #nextliveshere?#universityofcincinnati #digitalfutures #1819InnovationHub #OhioX #ResponsibleAI #AI #AIart #NewMedia

Apologies to Sam Altman and his OpenAI PR team, but I'm sticking to my guns on the #ImaginationAge —?and I suspect Einstein would agree! Also, the Imagination Age sounds a lot more fun than an Intelligence Age, IMHO. ????? Creativity Squared #CreativitySquared

"It's also a platform (like many others) that struggles with cultures of excessive editing and the alluring presentation of warped realities." —?And doesn't know what to do with sex. Or sexuality. Case in point: Just the other day, I tried to share a PG-rated IG Story supporting Cindy Gallop's MakeLoveNotPorn — this is one of the safest spaces on the internet. But I was blocked from publishing it! (More on this later). Strong foundations are key to lasting success. But what are the foundations of social media? — Do you feel like they're strong enough? Or solid enough? To unleash the most powerful A.I. creator tools into kids' hands to play with? Or are we dropping people in the middle of Burning Man, unprepared. Adam Mosseri — slow down, cowboy! ???? From my pov, there's certainly a lot of potential... But tbh, it feels like the ??s who are building the tools, are having a lot of fun without their parents', families’, or community's input — or oversight! Comments on posts that listening tools analyze don’t count, in my book, as a real conversation — especially when so many get blocked from even entering the discussion! ?? Juuuust maybe we need just a wee bit more of the collective’s perspective before letting these fun, new toys leave beta/research mode...or their safe playpens and sandboxes... …so we can all feel good playing in the playground of possibility, safely, too. ?? #ImaginationAge ???

?? It's FINALLY here... Discover the magic of manifesting in a Creativity Squared exclusive interview from the ONLY comedian (and one of two artists!) who’s a Time100 AI 2024 honoree in the Innovators category: King Willonius. ?? His real name is Willonius Hatcher (his first name is pronounced “Will-OWN-ee-us,” and he also goes by Will). 2024 has been a breakout year for Will after his “BBL Drizzy” comedy song went viral —?the first A.I. collaborated song that became a cultural phenomenon, transcending genres and mediums! What do Burning Man, Dune 2, and the Frost Planetarium have to do with his story? Check out our *75th* episode ?? — and last one for 2024! — to find out: https://lnkd.in/gVBMXwbu ? I had the privilege of interviewing Will live at the FilmGate Miami Interactive Festival XI, one of the top ten immersive festivals in the world! You’ll hear why it’s so special from the festival’s Head Curator, Co-Founder, and Executive Producer, Diliana Alexander.? On opening night, the FilmGate audience got a preview of the “BBL Drizzy Musical Dome Experience”. Next year, Creativity Squared will be back to see the full production and host another time capsule conversation with Will. Once you hear the interview, you’ll know that Will is just scratching the surface of what’s possible —?he’s ahead of the entertainment industries, and is definitely one to follow!? Why did he make the Time100 AI 2024 Innovators list? See what I see, from the seat that I sit, in this episode's dedicated blog post I wrote (and the main reason this is getting out so late today! ??): https://lnkd.in/gVBMXwbu Our 2025 podcast season will kick off again in April, but we’ll keep the newsletter going between now and then, aside from the holidays. Here’s to playing in the playground of possibility and manifesting more magic in the new year —?Enjoy! ??? ______ Easter egg: Do you see the episode cover image's Content Credentials from the Adobe-led Content Authenticity Initiative here on LinkedIn? Included in my write-up are Jey V., Laura Lorena Barbosa, Diliana Alexander, Hugh Forrest, Joanna Popper, Michael Coppage, Michael Thompson, Esther Perel, Shira Lazar, Alecia Kintner, and Baratunde Thurston. Many thanks to the whole team at FilmGate Miami, Jose Jacho, Segundo Correas, PLAY Audio Agency, Ann Driscoll, Drew Marcum, Mariana Ianovska, Edward Gibbons-Brown, Daniel Wallace, Megan Botti, and guest editor: my Mom! ?? #CreativitySquared #ImaginationAge #BBLDrizzy #FilmGateMiami #ArtBasel #MiamiArtWeek #AI #FilmGateFestival #ArtsWave #SXSW #CincyArts #BurningMan #BlackRockCity #Manifest #Manifesting ArtsWave SXSW

Rest in peace, Suchir Balaji —?one of our young, brave, and brilliant internet guardians. ?? Einstein's timeless words come to mind. He wrote this as a letter of condolence in 1950: “A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

Cincinnati champions Responsible A.I., and it was such an honor to have CincyAI for Humans (CincyAI) be the first-ever community-led meetup for the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI). The CAI is an Adobe-led community of over 4,000 media and technology partners working to create an open-source industry standard for digital media provenance. We kicked off the special programming with this video from Santiago Lyon, the Head of Advocacy & Education for the CAI. Then we saw fantastic presentations and demos from Nick Gatz, Adobe Sr. Manager, State, and Local Government, followed by Tim Murphy and Erin Oberhauser, co-founders of Pixelstream, a Content Credentials-based authentic media platform started in 2021. Our PACKED house (our largest meetup to date!) learned the benefits of Content Credentials, the importance of signing A.I. images on creation and photography at capture, how Durable Content Credentials implementation looks in action, and so much more! I’d be remiss if I also didn’t thank Andy Parsons and Coleen Jose for all their support — together, we’re growing the Content Authenticity community in the Midwest and restoring trust and transparency in the age of GenAI. You can become a CAI member today (I'm a proud member!): https://lnkd.in/gqG8PR9F There were way more questions than we had time allotted, so Kendra Ramirez and I are working on the follow-up with the amazing CAI humans — stay tuned for more on this front! #CincyAI #ContentAuthenticity #ContentCredentials #UCDigitalFutures #ResponsibleAI

For the second year in a row, Creativity Squared is proud to partner with ArtsWave to amplify the phenomenal artists selected for their Black and Brown Artist Program, elevating underrepresented voices and bridging cultural divides through art. Don't miss our special three-part series highlighting the 2024 grant recipients on their interpretation of this year's theme, "Truth & Innovation": ?? Part 1 with the visual artists: https://lnkd.in/gp3v6JpE ?? Part 2 with the filmmakers: https://lnkd.in/gZJbPszr ?? Part 3 with the live performance artists: https://lnkd.in/gtR_n3uQ The intention of these interviews is to give these talented artists another platform to share their art and the truth expressed through it, as you never know what ripples will turn into waves. If you’re interested in working with, featuring, or supporting these artists, please don’t be shy about it! #CreativitySquared #CincyArts #ArtsWave