10 Top Moments From NYK Chicago 2019, For Those With FOMO

1. The applause(s) during our product roadmap session

The highlight for many of the clients we’ve spoken to has been our product roadmap, and the spontaneous applause throughout made for a lot of proud Brandwatchers.

You can check out all of our announcements right here.

2. NASA’s Nagin Cox made people cry (in a good way)

Nagin’s keynote speech on space exploration and discovery beyond Earth got our attendees emotional.

3. The live, on-stage Qriously demo

Qriously CEO Chris Kahler took to the stage to show off the latest addition to the Brandwatch family.

He took a question from the crowd – “Who will kill Cersei in Game of Thrones” – and set the survey in action. Little yellow dots appeared all over the map of the US as people’s answers came in, and it seems Jaime is the favorite!

The demo gained so much traction that there was an ongoing line to chat with him throughout the conference.

4. Visitors from all over the world

We’ve met so many of our brilliant clients over the last couple of days, and some have truly gone to extra mile to make it here.

In a quick shout out session we learned that our clients have come from as far afield as Panama, India, and (the furthest distance) the Maldives.

5. Steven Johnson’s presentation on “slow hunches”

“Chance favors the connected mind” was a quote from Steven Johnson that echoed throughout the conference, making it all the way through to CMO Will McInnes’s closing remarks.

6. Playing with image recognition at the Labs pod

The incredible Labs team set up a camera at their pod and had a screen showing everyone walking past. The cool thing was that words also appeared on the screen, showing what the machine thought was in the picture. It could predict gender and age, as well as naming things appearing in the picture.

I had great fun until it said I looked like a dude which I wasn’t best pleased with, but it’s very cool tech nonetheless.

8. Marcus Collins’ presentation on culture

Marcus Collins, whose many achievements include working on Beyoncé’s digital strategy, gave an epic presentation on culture on Tuesday  just before lunch.

He turned a hungry audience into a bunch of raving tweeters, causing the biggest #NYKConf spike of the two days.

7. The magician

In between the fascinating talks was a magician who wowed and worried the audience by pulling a dollar bill out of an orange and seemingly eating razor blades…

He’s still alive, in case you were worried.

He also got in this giant balloon and found someone’s card while hopping around inside it… Mad times.

9. A whole bunch of amazing roundtables

Our clients led chats on all kinds topics, from crisis communications through to competitive intelligence.

10. Party time

NYK wouldn’t be complete without some partying, and we did it in style at the beautifully colorful Ace Bounce.

Thanks to all who have come to enjoy NYK Chicago this year – we can’t wait to share more next time!