Esomar Annual Congress 2024 was hold in Athens, Greece, with the theme Mind, Myth, Machine. Over 4 days, the Global Insight Community gathered Data & Insight experts and business leaders from all around the world to share knowledge, network and expand the relevance and the beauty of our industry. I’ve attended many Esomar Congresses over the last 20 years and I must say that this edition was a great one!

First, the city: Athens, Wwhat a dynamic and joyful city, perfectly embedding traditions and modernity, the past and the future.

I particularly loved how the theme of the event was correlated to our profession. The content was all about the articulation of the Ancient Greek Gods and Goddesses and our mission and values in the Insight Industry: power, ethics, live stories, human behaviours.

Over these days I attended 22 conferences, all on Artificial Intelligence, its impact, its benefits, demonstrating how brands can be empowered by this technology, preserving a good balance with human mind, skills and expertise.

I’ve been deeply involved in our profession as well as in workgroups to design the future of our profession. As Brand and innovation Consultant, what stroke me the most was the ‘Human-AI symbiosis’ paper by David Smith and Adam Riley. In this presentation the speakers emphasized on the human power skills and capabilities to think emotionaly, to invent, to tell stories. This is what make us Human and what makes us different from AI.

In every presentation the human thinking was shown as even more powerful when used with Artifical Intelligence.

AI was also presented as a powerful and bright technology to face the data chaos, a way to enhance what we collect as researchers, offering the ‘Big Picture’ in a very efficient way.

The closing keynote offered us a bright and more philosophic thinking on Trust. According to Philipp Kristian, an international speaker and global leading voice on trust, trust is a core attribute of humanity, trust is a must-have mindest for companies to innovate. His works advocates for greater trust and humanity in our digital environment. He encouraged us to win trust and to find wisdom in complexity.

Data & Insights people love to share wisdom, trust and friendship. As always we could meet our francophone colleagues from France, Canada, Morocco, Lebanon, Ivory Coast and many more, over the traditonal ‘Francophone lunch’. Congress brighly ended up with a gala dinner organized in a lovely place close to the Mediterranean sea.

Thank you Esomar for this event and see you next year in Pragues.