Juan Senor is somewhat of an international man of mystery. We met in Guayaquil in Ecuador, but it was in the more salubrious settings of the Oxford and Cambridge Club in London that we re-connected most recently. A former foreign affairs reporter and business program host, conversant in six languages, and a partner in a consulting firm that helps newspapers reinvent themselves, Juan had just returned from an expedition in Antartica to study climate change. An appropriate context, perhaps, for our discussion about what the ailing print media industry might do to also save itself.

Nikolaj Nyholm is one of the most prolific European entrepreneurs and investors. When I first met him many years ago, he was on the verge of selling his pioneering image recognition company, Polar Rose, to Apple. Previously, he also founded Speednames/Ascio (acquired by Group NBT) and Imity (acquired by Zyb/Vodafone). Nikolaj’s new passion is gaming. His latest venture is RFRSH, an esports marketing and media rights company working with a growing number of the best player-owned esports teams including Astralis, Godsent, Heroic, and Norse. I caught up with Nikolaj at his brand new elite, training facility in Copenhagen to talk about the future of professional gaming, digital branding and the art of avoiding tilting. 

Memory has also fascinated me - from the stories of the memory palaces of famous classical orators and artists, to the vast armada of 21st century tools that allow us to capture, process and share moments in our lives. In London for a few days, I met up with Dr Julia Shaw, who is a senior lecturer and researcher in the Department of Law and Social Sciences at London South Bank University. Author of "The Memory Illusion”, and a frequent speaker at technology conferences including a tedX event at Burning Man this year - she is more curiously known as a ‘memory hacker’. Julia’s research focuses on false memories, and in 2015 she published a study with Stephen Porter in which she succeeded to get 70% of the participants to falsely remember a crime from their past. Over a cup of tea in the lobby of the Edition Hotel, she explained the art of manipulating memory, how the way we remember things is shaped by modern technology and algorithms, and why AI designers are so interested in the imperfect nature of human cognition.

Andy Stalman is an expert in launching and nurturing brands in Latin America. Author of “Brandoffon. Branding the Future” and CEO of Cato Partners Europe & LatAm, he also lectures as a visiting professor at a number of business schools and companies worldwide. We have spoken and shared meals together a number of times, from Bogota to Madrid, and I was keen to get his views on the challenges of engaging Hispanic consumers, as well as the secrets behind successful Spanish companies like Zara and Santander.

Bryan Kramer is one of the most social people around - not only in person, but with over 300,000 fans and followers, a maven in the personal branding and marketing space. His latest book, “Shareology: How Sharing is Powering the Human Economy”, explores the history, art and science of sharing, and illustrates why sharing is what gives us a unique competitive advantage as individuals and brands. In a unique sharing experiment conducted in his recent TED Talk @ IBM titled “Why Sharing is Reimagining Our Future”, Bryan witnessed the true power of sharing when inspiration combined itself with reach and technology. The results were stunning – 21 million impressions in just 4 hours, spanning the globe to over 10 countries. We caught up to chat about why remembering human values is so important for brands and leaders, as they try and design authentic communications.