DLD Conference

Let’s celebrate 20 years of DLD! 🎉 In 2005, DLD began with a mission: to explore how the internet would change our world. Fast forward to 2025, we’re kicking off an exciting new chapter – this time, with a whole new set of technological realities, be it artificial intelligence, quantum computing, biotechnology, space exploration, autonomous mobility, and many more. Our goal remains the same: to bring together the brightest minds, the most creative innovators, and the most impactful visionaries to inspire, guide, and shape the future. Most importantly, we’re building a community of pragmatic optimists – people who not only imagine a better future but actively create it. Join us for DLD Munich 2025 from January 16-18, and be part of this unique, vibrant community. Together, under our guiding motto Future Positive, we’ll dive into thought-provoking discussions, uncover new possibilities, and chart a path forward with optimism and bold vision. Apply here https://lnkd.in/ewNm9mSm to learn, connect, and ignite your inspiration for the future!

Is there a better way to start the week than by exploring the latest addition to the #DLD25 speaker lineup? With the world facing significant shifts, we’ll need answers to some of the biggest questions – like the importance of privacy in the digital age, Europe’s pursuit of digital, or how to secure energy supplies for the technologies we rely on. These are just a few of the topics our experts will tackle. Want to hear their insights? Apply for a ticket on our website and meet the forward-thinkers shaping our future: https://lnkd.in/ewNm9mSm   Meredith Whittaker is the President of the Signal Technology Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to secure global communication best known for its popular Signal Messenger app. Previously the co-founder of the AI Now Institute, Whittaker has advised many governments and civil society organizations on artificial intelligence, Internet policy, privacy and security.   Yossi Matias is Head of Google Research and the company’s global lead of AI for Health, Climate and Education, and pioneering efforts in Generative AI. Previously he was a member of Google’s Search leadership team for over a decade.   Francesca Bria is an innovation economist working at the intersection of technology, geopolitics, economy, cities and society. She is Honorary Professor in the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at UCL in London and a fellow at Stiftung Mercator GmbH. Klaus Hommels is Founder of Lakestar. As a leading European business angel and venture capitalist, he has been involved in numerous successful Internet investments including QXL/Tradus, Skype, Facebook, Airbnb, King.com, Xing and Spotify.   Award-winning economist Moritz Schularick is President of the Kiel Institut für Weltwirtschaft and Professor of Economics at Sciences Po. His research spans macroeconomics, finance, international economics and economic history and has been published in many economic journals.   Victoria Ossadnik is COO and Member of the Management Board of E.ON. Previously she was CEO of E.ON Energie Deutschland GmbH and Vice President for Microsoft Enterprise Services Delivery, Data & AI. Victoria holds a PhD in Quantum Optics from the Ludwig-Maximilian-University in Munich.   Markus Blume is the Bavarian State Minister for Science and Art. Previously he was Secretary General of the CSU party from 2018 to 2022. Blume has been a member of the Bavarian state parliament since 2008.   Sachin Dev Duggal is Founder and Chief Wizard of Builder.ai. His vision is to make custom software creation as easy as ordering pizza. Under his leadership, Builder.ai has raised over $450 million and grown 9x in just three and a half years, combining AI-powered assembly lines with Lego-like features to revolutionize software development.

Looking for fresh ideas and new perspectives to kick off the new year? There's no better way than attending #DLD! We might be a bit biased, but #DLD25 – happening January 16–18 in Munich – is your chance to explore the latest trends and developments shaping our future, from artificial intelligence and quantum computing to biotech and beyond. Discover our first confirmed speakers for #DLD25, and stay tuned – this is definitely just the beginning! Apply now for tickets: www.dld.co Azeem Azhar is the author of "Exponential: How to Bridge the Gap Between Technology and Society" and the creator of Exponential View, a newsletter on how technology reshapes the economy and society. For DLD25, he will be curating a select series of sessions, focused on themes and ideas he’s currently exploring.   Marietje Schaake is international policy director at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center, as well international policy fellow at the University’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. Between 2009 and 2019, she served as a Member of European Parliament. Mitchell Baker is the co-founder of the Mozilla Project, and has been a driving force in promoting an open, innovative web accessible to all. She represents Mozilla – maker of the Firefox browser and other popular apps – in public, focusing on policy, open source, and community. Mitchell has received numerous awards, including being named one of TIME Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” and receiving the Webby Lifetime Achievement Award. Tim Brown is Chair of the global design and innovation firm IDEO and Vice Chair of the kyu Collective, which brings together strategically curated creative organizations. His bestselling book Change By Design has introduced design thinking to business leaders worldwide. Hans Ulrich Obrist is Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries, London. Prior to this, he was the Curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since 1991 he has curated more than 250 shows. Obrist’s publications include A Brief History of Curating, Project Japan: Metabolism Talks with Rem Koolhaas, Do It: The Compendium, Think Like Clouds and Ai Weiwei Speaks.    Anne Philippi is the founder of The New Health Club, a lifestyle platform for psychedelics, exploring the emerging culture of neural awareness. A former author and reporter at Vanity Fair, GQ and VOGUE, she discovered psychedelic-assisted therapy in 2019 and founded The New Health Club to create a space where people from the new psychedelic ecosystem and business could talk abut the disruptive power of psychedelics. Albert Wenger is Managing Partner at Union Square Ventures. He led the firm’s investments in Etsy, Twilio and MongoDB. Wenger holds a Ph.D. in Information Technology from MIT, is @albertwenger on Twitter, blogs at Continuations and is the author of World After Capital. 

With #COP29 starting in Baiku today, you’ll hear a lot about mitigating the effects of #ClimateChange. The urgency to act is clear – but it won’t be enough phase out fossil fuels, switch to e-mobility or eat less meat. Equally important will be protecting #nature and restoring degraded ecosystems, as leading climate scientist Johan Rockström made clear at our recent DLD Nature conference. “Even if we phase out coal, oil and gas, if we do everything right, we will still fail unless we do right by nature”, he said. Why? Because “just #biodiversity loss alone can take us over 2 degrees Celsius” of global warming, the Director of the PIK - Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research emphasized. “So, nature is fundamentally a prerequisite to deliver on the Paris Agreement.” There are many ways to heal the planet and benefit from it, too – financially and socially. Think regenerative agriculture, biodiversity monitoring with AI, resource independence, and nature credits as a new asset class. For details, please take a look at our DLD Nature recap article… https://lnkd.in/gM8E8DMc …and our DLD Nature conference page, which has #videos of all talks, along with filter options for speakers and topics: https://lnkd.in/euFPm3P9 We’ll leave you with one memorable quote from our co-host Dr. med. Eckart von Hirschhausen: “The most expensive thing we can do is to do nothing.” Because whether it’s biodiversity loss or responding to the effects of global warming, things won’t get any better unless we act NOW. https://lnkd.in/eBXfZhKQ

Last Friday, we brought a taste of #Bavaria to Palo Alto with our traditional DLD Brunch, accompanied by the lively sounds of Tegernseer Tanzlmusi. It was a pleasure to welcome innovators and change-makers from around the world. Andreas Urschitz from Infineon Technologies, along with Steffi & Yossi, and our guests, shared valuable insights on how we can collectively advance the green and digital transformation. Connecting thought leaders is essential for building a more sustainable, digital future – and together, we’re ready to make an impact!

Can #AI still wow you? Let’s see. Please meet Art and Isabel, our new #podcast hosts (pictured below). We asked them to produce a nice little audio summary of our recent #DLDNature conference about #biodiversity, #technology and #investing in a healthy planet. If, while listening, you find yourself thinking “Is this for real?”, then Google managed to give you another AI wow moment, thanks to the new Deep Dive feature in its #NotebookLM service. NotebookLM, currently labeled as an “experiment” and free to use, is meant to be an AI assistant, similar to Microsoft’s Copilot. What’s making headlines now is the system’s new ability to auto-generate “audio overviews” that sound like professionally produced podcasts. All we had to do for our DLD Nature summary was copy and paste a link to the recap #article we recently published: https://lnkd.in/gM8E8DMc Writing the article still took a lot of – human – labor, but generating the AI podcast was a matter of a couple of clicks. Within a few minutes, the audio file was ready. Granted, there are some limitations. At this point, you cannot change the voices or influence the outcome. The AI chooses, in typical “black box” fashion, which aspects it finds interesting and how it wants to present them. But it’s easy to see how podcasting could soon become #promptcasting, with a few technical improvements here and there that allow users to tweak the results to their liking. How did we give Art and Isabel, our podcasters, a face? Similarly easy: We asked You.com to generate several pictures for us, and then we chose the one we liked best. When You.com founder Richard Socher spoke at #DLD23 about #ChatGPT and generative AI, he was still focused on building an alternative search engine. By now, You.com has become more of a #productivity engine, with various AI features and large language models under one roof.   The pace of progress in AI is truly breathtaking, and we’ll discuss it in-depth at #DLD25 in Munich, from January 16-18. Perhaps we’ll ask Art and Isabel to give you a preview as we’re getting closer. Stay tuned!

🎉 A big congratulations to Demis Hassabis, co-founder & CEO of Google DeepMind, for winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry! 🏅 Demis joined us at #DLD17, where he shared his visionary thoughts on AI and its potential. Today, his groundbreaking work on #AlphaFold is transforming science by solving one of biology’s greatest challenges: predicting how proteins fold. This breakthrough accelerates drug discovery, helps in understanding diseases, and opens up new possibilities in bioengineering. By accurately mapping protein structures, AlphaFold is changing how researchers approach everything from developing new treatments to creating sustainable solutions in chemistry and beyond. We're proud to have been part of his journey and celebrate this remarkable achievement. Well deserved! You can re-watch Demis' DLD session here: https://lnkd.in/eiDjTS5Y

Looking to explore how AI is revolutionizing leadership, work, and collaboration? Then you shouldn’t miss the AI@WORK conference on October 10, 2024, in Munich. Hosted by Isabell Welpe (TUM Chair for Strategy and Organization) and Gunther Friedl (TUM School of Management), this one-day event will feature insights from global experts and innovators. 📅 When? October 10, 2024, from 9:00 AM to 6:30 PM CEST  📍 Where? TUM Audimax, Arcisstraße 21, Munich  💡 Costs? Free, but spaces are limited – register early! Why attend? - Hear from leading speakers from academia, business, and politics, including experts from Stanford, NYU, Microsoft, Google, Allianz and more. - Network with industry leaders and top talents driving the future of AI. - Explore cutting-edge technologies shaping tomorrow’s workplace. This is a must-attend for anyone interested in the intersection of AI, leadership, and collaboration. 🔗 Register now: https://lnkd.in/dS5gzDj4 Let’s explore the future of work together! #AI #Leadership #FutureOfWork #AIatWork #Networking #Innovation #TUM

Just. Wow! 🌿   We’re still amazed by the overwhelming positive feedback from #DLDNature! Over the course of two inspiring days, we delved deep into what it truly means to assess the value of nature from a variety of crucial angles: economic, technological, philosophical, and societal. 🌍💡   We were privileged to welcome extraordinary guests like Ursula von der Leyen, Johan Rockström, Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Dr. Markus Söder, Maja Göpel, Felix Neureuther, and so many more. Their insights fueled powerful discussions and left our heads buzzing with fresh ideas and visions for action. 🌱   The message was clear: biodiversity loss isn't just an environmental issue – it’s a critical challenge that touches every aspect of our lives. We dug deep into solutions that blend innovation and collaboration, with a focus on actionable strategies that can help us protect the planet and secure a sustainable future.   This is just the beginning. Let’s build on the momentum and take these ideas forward, working hand in hand to combat biodiversity loss and protect what’s most valuable – our planet and its future. 🌳🌾 A big thank you also to our incredible co-hosts: Maria Furtwängler (MaLisa Stiftung), Dr. med. Eckart von Hirschhausen, Helmut Schoenenberger, Prof. Dr. Martin R. Stuchtey, Jan-Gisbert Schultze, and Auguste von Bayern. Your support and vision made this conference possible! 🙏   Tell us in the comments below: What was your most insightful moment during the conference? What idea or perspective surprised you the most? We’d love to hear your thoughts! 👇   #DLDNature #Biodiversity #ClimateAction #Sustainability  

Wouldn’t it be fantastic if we could understand what #birds tell each other, how #elephants communicate, and what a #whale song is about? Artificial intelligence is now putting this dream of many #nature lovers within our reach. “AI has progressed to the stage where it can learn human languages”, says Jane Lawton, Director of Impact at the Earth Species Project, a non-profit that is developing #AI models specifically trained on the sounds of different animal species. The goal is to build an “animal GPT” – a kind of universal translator that’s able to decipher the communication of various types of #animals. “If we can translate human languages without dictionaries, then essentially the model can start to learn any kind of language with the right training data”, Jane told us in an interview ahead of  #DLDNature  – our #biodiversity and #innovation conference which begins tomorrow in Munich: https://lnkd.in/euFPm3P9 This isn't just about scientific curiosity, Jane makes clear – it's also about protecting endangered species and #ecosystems. “Understanding the language of other animals”, she says, opens the window “into the sophistication and wonder of the natural world. There can be real, immediate benefits for #conservation.” Make sure to read our #interview to find out more about the #technology, how it can even help decode #spider communication (hint: they dance) – and why it might not necessarily be a good thing if we could actually talk to wild animals, as opposed to simply understanding their needs. Altogether fascinating. Click here to find out more: https://lnkd.in/gCXRpyvH If you want to join us for DLD Nature and missed the ticket application deadline, no worries – we’ll have a #livestream on our website on both days, tomorrow and Friday. See you soon!