EMAIL INTERVIEW – Tania Gonzalez and Ken Sinclair

Tania Gonzalez, Senior Events Coordinator, Unwired

Tania graduated with a double degree in media and journalism from Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid and has an extensive background managing teams for large internal and commercial events. She has notable knowledge of operations, implementing marketing campaigns, developing PR strategies and events and media sales.

Sinclair:  Tell us a bit about yourself.

Gonzalez:  UNWIRED is the Knowledge Brand of UnGroup. Through publications, events, Think Tanks and research it provides foresight and expertise on the impact that emerging technologies will have on work and the workplace, the retail sector, and the property sector.

UNWIRED organises cutting-edge conferences, executive briefings, symposia, and exhibitions. The first of our highly successful series of WORKTECH conferences was produced in 2004 in collaboration with the Royal College of Art.

Since then, we have held WORKTECHs in Amsterdam, London, Manchester, New York, San Francisco, Toronto, Melbourne, Sydney, Madrid, Helsinki, Berlin, Dubai, Shanghai, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Sao Paulo, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Sinclair:  How did the idea for the SMART BUILDINGS 17 Conference emerge?

Gonzalez:  SMART BUILDINGS builds on the success of the WORKTECH series of conferences. In more than 15 leading cities around the world, WORKTECH focuses on the Future of Work exploring aspects of the workplace, people, technology, and innovation. In recent years, with a significant rise in interest in smart buildings, wearable technology, big data, the Internet of Things, we will partner with British Land to create a bespoke event on this subject.

Hosted at British Land’s new development, 4 Kingdom St, Paddington Central, London, the event will focus on Smart Buildings and Connected Urban Environment and will attract 150 senior professionals from CRE, IT, FM, HR, Architecture and Design.

Sinclair:  What are the themes for this year’s edition?

Gonzalez:  We explore a spectrum of topics from Creating a Smart Building - The Developers’ Perspective to Enabling a Smart Building and the Tenants’ Perspective and hear from the Technology suppliers and how we can best utilise our assets to make space work smarter and optimise the future of the workplace. We will discover how Smart Offices could create a better workplace and challenge productivity and wellbeing.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]Sinclair:  Can you give us a sneak peek of the agenda?

Gonzalez:  Matthew Claudel, Product Manager, Beco and Ph.D. Researcher, MIT will share insights on Data, Design, and Action: Innovation for the Built Environment. Living, working, connecting, consuming – today, we inhabit a continuum, tied together by digital/physical experiences. Presenting his research with MIT DesignX (a new accelerator for urban innovation), and spatial analytics with Beco, Matthew Claudel will demonstrate transformations in the built environment, from workplaces to cities. This presentation evidences trends at the cutting edge of urban innovation, architecture design, and commercial real estate.

Microsoft will share brand new thinking on how using the cloud, machine learning, analytics, and sociometric data across its global portfolio has revealed new information on workplace utilisation. Claiming 'space per head' is dead, they will reveal how new cloud-based technologies can offer what organisations have been missing.  They will share how precise and accurate attendance knowledge can help businesses be smarter about space design; how understanding people using space enables greater accuracy for programming the right workspaces for both employees’ needs and the business’s future; and how we can use this to shift real estate thinking and investment to a more strategic plane.