Emile Sherman, the Academy Award-winning producer of ‘The King’s Speech’, is one of the world’s most prolific independent film makers. His other credits include ‘Top Of The Lake’, ‘Tracks’, ‘Shame’, ‘Rabbit Proof Fence’ and ‘Macbeth’. I caught up with Emile in his production office in Sydney, where we talked about the power of storytelling, why some ideas resonate with us at a human level, the impact of technology on the TV and film industry, and what business leaders might be able to learn from successful film directors on getting the most out of a team when under creative pressure.

Chance are, if you have attended a business event anytime in the last ten years, you will have watched someone play the ‘Did You Know?’ video full of astonishing facts about the digital world. The man behind that video, the most viewed social media clip of all time, and a number of bestselling books such as ‘Socialnomics’ and ‘What Happens in Vegas Stays on YouTube’ is Erik Qualman. And it was in Vegas, strangely enough, that Erik and I caught up to chat about managing reputation in a fully transparent world, the importance of investing in human relationships, the future of automated sharing, and mobile voting, whether a Yelp for human beings is a good idea, and the five habits of great digital leaders.

For bestselling author Tim Sanders, the biggest problem with the game of sales today is that it has become less like playing Pong, and more like a round of Halo. Selling in the 21st century is incredibly challenging. Sales professionals face multiple decision makers, layers of product complexity, and cloud based competitors. For Tim, the key to being a true sales driven organisation, is to build on the innovation that deal-focused teamwork can unlock. In his words, a quality sale is a thousand problems solved. Catching up in Las Vegas, we discussed why creative brainstorming doesn’t work, the essential habit of conscious collaboration, and why leaders need to think like designers when it comes to creating emotional experiences for customers, partners and employees.

Technology and science may seem the natural enemies of magic, but for Marco Tempest, who describes himself as a cyber-illusionist, they are his daily tools of trade. Magicians have a long history of deploying advanced technology to be ahead of the reality curve in order to fool their audiences. For Marco, that means experimenting with motion tracking, drones, augmented and virtual reality, projection mapping, gaze tracking, robotics and AI. When I visited him in his New York workshop, we spoke about the art of telling stories about the near future, open source collaboration, sandboxing emerging technologies, engineering interactivity and how the world’s magicians have kept a secret private archive of their tricks and what that might mean for crafting the future of experiences.

I’ve hung out with Jack Myers in a bunch of strange places, from Mexico City to Oslo, and even on the outskirts of Las Vegas. He is one of the most original thinkers in the media space, and for many years, has provided the data and insights that US brands, agencies and content providers based their planning on. Jack is the author of four books including Reconnecting with Customers: Building Brands and Profits in The Relationship Age and Hooked Up Generation. He has been nominated for both an Academy Award and an Emmy Award for the documentary "Hank Aaron: Chasing the Dream." Catching up in New York, we spoke about the changing media patterns, the potential of emotion sensing technology, and his next book, The Future of Men: Masculinity in the Twenty-First Century.