Mic Mann — Storyteller, Futurist, Entrepreneur, Speaker, Singularity University

And once again, it is what's involved. Special guest with me this time. I always enjoy chatting to him. Who is he? He is the co-CEO of Singularity University, South Africa, which is a mouthful. We just call it Sousa. He is none other than Mick Mann. Hello, Mick. How's it, David? How are you doing? Good, man. It's good to chat to you again. I kind of get the feeling like, you know, time flies so fast these days that it's, you know, it feels like I've just spoken to you a little while ago about the summit. And now we're heading into another summit. But before we jump into all of that, give me a bit of history of Mick Mann and how you ended up at Singularity U.

Well, I've always been a lover of technology. And, you know, when I was four or five years old, I actually had growing pains and I had to be hospitalized for about four months with my legs up in costs. And my mom bought me a little robot helper that I could use a remote control and it had a little tray on it. And this is in '84. So, you know, if you just think about how far back this technology was already available, you would, I could record a message on this robot and then drive it to the nurses and ask for a glass of water. So I've always had this love of technology and innovation and the power that technology would give us. And, you know, we basically have a company called Manmade, which is a brand experience agency that's been running for over 20 years, you know, working with some of the top local and international Fortune 500 companies around how to create, you know, experiences that, you know, win the hearts and minds of their consumers or the community. And we were introduced to Singularity University in 2015 through one of the big banks where they were bringing Singularity out for a custom program for their top clients. And I'd read Ray Kurzweil's book "The Singularity is Near" in 2012, which really is the basis of Singularity University and Ray's predictions of this coming technological Singularity. And I said to my partners, Kevin and Shane, we've got to get involved with this, this is going to change our lives. And we landed up winning that tender to put on that event for this bank, bringing Singularity University out. And we did that event, Singularity University was so impressed with us that they wanted us to be their partner on the ground. Another bank brought them out later that same year in 2015 for another custom program.

And Singularity said, those are the guys we work with. So we started working with them in a deeper level. I then subsequently went to Singularity at the end of 2015 for an executive program, came back, started the chapter in 2016, which is a nonprofit part of Singularity, bought the license to run Singularity University in South Africa. And we've been running it for the last five, six years, you know, putting a proudly South African, putting on some of the best and biggest programs and summits for them globally. You know, when we were doing in-person events, we were rated as the number one summit partner out of, you know, 24 summits globally for three years in a row. And last year, when we had to take the summit online due to the pandemic, the hop-in platform that we are using, that is a fantastic online platform, rated us as one of their top summits out of 40,000 online events they did over the last year. So, you know, we've had a great experience and a great journey. And it's been amazing meeting these incredibly, you know, amazing people that are on the bleeding edge of what's next. You know, I feel like at Singularity University, it's almost like this living, breathing algorithm that's constantly changing and evolving as the time goes by. And as you said, it feels like this pace of change, this time is just going faster. You know, and we believe we haven't seen anything yet. It's only the beginning of this journey. Wow. Well, I got to say, I've managed to go to some of the summits.

And I think probably one of the last in-person ones as well. And I was absolutely blown away, thoroughly enjoyed my time there. And rightfully so that you guys got awarded as the best event, because it was amazing. And then when did we do it last year? I think, yeah, it was last year. It was the online one. And I got to attend that and I thought, oh, I don't know. I don't know if it's going to be cool. And the stuff that you guys had designed was amazing. It was out of this world. And I can only imagine that technology and what you're doing has improved since then. So, when is the summit? Because initially, we were going to have a financial summit. And then the normal one that we know and love. But then again, COVID reared its ugly head. So, what are you guys doing now? Yeah. So, with the last wave and the lockdown, we had to postpone exponential finance, but we are proud to say that it is joining the SUSRA summit from the 12th to the 15th of October, where we're going to host over 200 world-leading local and international speakers. So, we've actually combined the two summits together to make one of the largest innovation technology and thought leadership summits on the continent. And we're going to be addressing a number. We're going to be bringing all those topics and all those sessions from exponential finance around crypto, blockchain, investment, scaling, ESG, 5G, social impact. All of those topics are going to come into the SUSRA summit, which will really focus on our four main themes of exponential technology. So, robotics, AR, blockchain, 3D printing, biotechnology, and we've got some amazing biotechnology speakers. Somebody I was speaking to yesterday, her next invention is going to be a baby DARPA that has some type of mushroom built into it. That when the baby has either poos or peas, the mushrooms actually eat up the excrement and eat up the nappy and it becomes biodegradable. That's brilliant. There's so many exciting things happening in so many directions.

For us, it's about bringing that knowledge to our South African and African audiences to try and brace it. Because if you can embrace these technologies, you will be a leader in the future. Okay. Because that was one of the questions. I mean, Zach, what do you hope to achieve by these summits? I mean, you bring out these fantastic speakers and I've got to tell you, it's an information overload. I mean, I walked out of the last one after a couple of days and I was like, okay, wow. But what are you hoping to achieve for people who now attend this virtual event? Well, for us, it's really about creating that spark, that inspiration, that empowering you with the knowledge and creating the network between the people of like-minded individuals that attend to want to go out and make a difference in the world, to take the knowledge and make an impact. If we can get one person to do that from attending our summit, that's a success in ours. And we've heard multiple stories of people actually attending over the last five years and going out and making real positive change in the world. Just as an example, we're going to have a local South African, Jonathan Lund, who'll be speaking about his project "Happenova" in our company Showcases, where he'll also be talking about space sustainability within a panel with some other people from NASA and some other space agencies.

But Jonathan Lund in 2016 entered our global impact competition with an idea, with a concept about turning rocks into rocket fuel. And we saw this idea and I was one of the judges and I said we had a big debate and eventually he won that competition. We then sent him to Singularity University in 2017 to do the global solutions program, an 11-week program where you get to build out your exponential concept. And I'm proud to say that next year he has got a trip booked to the ISS space station to deliver his project. His rocks have turned into rocket fuel. I'm not exactly sure on the details. It's a real true sense of over the last five years, something of great impact to the world has been created through our various programs. Well, I think that's absolutely brilliant. And as luck would have it, our very next interview that we're going to be having is with Jonathan. So we're going to get all about what he actually does. I can't wait to have a chat to him about that. When we come back though, Mick, I just want to find out a little bit more about the summit itself, some of the people that you've got there. And I see there are some faces that I recognize. So looking forward to that. This is what's involved. When we come back, we'll continue our chat with Mick Mann. And we're back. What's involved that is Mick Mann, the co-CEO of Singularity University, South Africa. So, okay, let's get down to brass tacks because this year is literally the biggest that you guys have ever done. In terms of the technology involved, Mick, what are we going to expect? Because is it going to be very similar to the last year's one where we had the meetings first and we got to go to the virtual BOMA, et cetera, et cetera. How's it going to look this time? So we've really focused on taking it to the next level from last year. We had a lot of learnings and what we could do better. And what I'm excited about this year is that we're building four virtual stages. So we are upping the actual stages that the speakers are speaking on. We've got the Africa arena stage. We're building a Calabash stage. We've got the Ampea theater stage, and we've got the Baobab stage. So we've built these really incredible uniquely South African stages that would normally cost millions of dollars to build in reality. We know with the magic of virtual and online through animation, we're building them in virtual reality. And so I'm really excited about these stages. We're going to be having over 15 round table discussions. So, you know, focusing on key issues that we can really, that will move the dial in South Africa. And these live round tables will be available for all of the community or all of the guests to take part in with some of our speakers to discuss how do we embrace AR? And then we'll have scribes taking notes during those sessions, those round tables, to produce a wallpaper to present back to the foreign and to government to say, this is how we can actually make change in our country based on the discussions from the crowd, using the collective brainpower of the speakers and the delegates that will be attending the summit. We'll also be having workshops where there will be interactive workshops, diving deeper into some of the content. And something that we've done this year that I'm also excited about is that everything will start on the hour or the half hour or the quarter past.

So, you know, because there's so much to watch and there's so much to see, we understand that if you jump into a session halfway, it can be kind of distracting. So you will know that if you just jump into a session on the hour, the half hour, you'll always start a new channel, a new track at the beginning. And then also, because we understand our audience doesn't have a lot of time, some of the senior executives to go and research all the different talks and make their schedule, we're creating learning journeys. So you can go very easily onto the agenda, pick your learning journey. So I want to look at self development or I want to learn more on biotechnology or 3D printing or blockchain. You can click on that learning journey and just add all those learning journeys to your calendar. So very easily you will know when those sessions are coming up and which stage to be on to attend. I think that's absolutely fantastic because that was going to be one of my questions. I was going to go, okay, but now let's be honest, there's so many people and when I look at, I just look at your line up and I'm going, okay, I want to go there. I want to go there. I want to go there. I want to go there. We can't watch it all. How do we, I mean, is it a case of, you know, you can't possibly watch it all or are you planning on having rebroadcasts, things like that? So what we're doing this year also just to allow for greater participation is that once you've accessed over 10 hours of the content in the summit, you get access to the relive experience, which will be from the 25th to the 29th of October. So you get a full week to rewatch any of the talks on the app post the summit, but only if you've spent over 10 hours inside the current summit. So, you know, a lot of what I've seen a lot of is that people will want to attend an online event and because they know there's a replay, they'll say, no, I'll just watch all the replay stuff and they'll never get to it. So, you know, we only want people that are really interested in learning and that actually want to take in the content. So only if you've done over 10 hours in the three days, do you get access to the relive experience and that's the beauty of these online platforms. We can access all of that data to see that very, very easily.

This is fantastic because, you know, there is, and I mean, when you say you've got to have access 10 hours, you know, immediately got 10 hours, 10 hours is so easy to do here. I mean, I want to talk to you in a little bit about some of the some of the guests, some of the other guests. But I see you've got Professor Chilidzi Marwale in as well. I've actually the author of a couple of books. I've had a chat to him. He's great to chat to. What a what a wealth of knowledge. But there's a couple of familiar faces from from your faculty. I believe Benji's back Benji Rosman, Adam Pantanovich is back. Who else have we got? Oh, John Sonnet as well. So that's just a couple of them that I know of. What else are we going to be looking for? So take me through the event. Are you going to have like the pre-launch of the event as we did before when we can sort of explore that virtual environment? Because I must tell you, I got lost in exploring that environment. And I want to talk about that as well. Yes, on the 12th of October will be the registration day and induction day where you can go and explore the platform, look at the different digital expo stands. We're also bringing in a thing called perks this year, which is almost like Groupon that you get discounts on products. So there'll be the digital expo area and the perks area that you can go and explore. And also you can plan your schedule on the 12th. Very importantly, get in, make sure that you know which talks and which times you want to attend because as you said, there are there is multiple tracks running. So you have to pick and choose what you really want to watch. So and then that evening we'll be having a welcome ceremony where we'll hear from SUSE leadership, we'll hear from some of our partners. And we've got a really exciting opening performance that I'm not going to mention yet, but it's going to be a combination of dance and poetry, and robotics, to give you a little teaser. And but I don't want to give it away yet. But there'll be a really nice teaser on the opening night on the 12th. Then the event starts on the 13th to the 15th, from one to 6pm will be the main content sessions of the three tracks running, the baobab, the calabash, the amphitheatre and the africarena, sorry, the four stages. And then on day two and day three, the workshops begin. And the workshops will start from 10 in the morning. We've got an AR bias workshop, that's a three hour workshop, where the guests get to build their own algorithm. And then the facilitator Alex Ruppseim will show you how you build bias into your own algorithm to get a really great understanding of AR. There'll be personal development workshops running in the morning. So looking at resilience, looking at stress proof, looking at how to meditate, how to learn how to become a meditator.

And then from one to six will be the content sessions will be ranging from different exponential technologies. You know, we're going to be bringing quite a lot on blockchain and crypto. We've got Brock Pierce, who will be attending who has been helping some of these South American companies get Bitcoin to be legal tender, which we think is such an exciting space for South Africa to look at. Because if you look at these developing nations that have harper inflation, your money becomes weaker every year. Our money in South Africa and in a lot of these countries becoming weaker and weaker as inflation rises. So you know, what we've seen with El Salvador, if you make Bitcoin legal tender, it really changes that inflationary asset. So you know, your money should grow with time instead of actually becoming weaker and cheaper. So Brock Pierce is going to come and speak about that and how embracing Bitcoin can actually help a developing nation. And he's currently in one of these South American countries now discussing it. I think Argentina might follow suit. So it's quite something that we can look at as a country to help develop us. We'll also be bringing a lot of discussions around the future of 5G, which I think is a massive enabler for any country that embraces it because 5G will allow for, you know, so many new applications coming. And we're going to be hearing from Sivash Alamouti on that who's the EVP of Wells Fargo. He's also the chairman of MIMIC. And you know, one of the really great

knowledgeable people on 5G, he'll be discussing in a fireside chat with Charles Molopissi from MTN, as well as Andilengaba on how do we embrace this promising future of 5G and what are some of the potential benefits we can derive in Africa and how do we, you know, invest in 5G in Africa more. We'll also be hearing a lot on artificial intelligence. We have a number of artificial intelligence discussions on how to embrace artificial intelligence, the ethics behind AR, how do if you're in finance, we're going to be looking at how do you bring AR financial strategies into your business right away. And we'll be having a number of sessions and workshops around this on how do you have a data strategy inside your organization, or how do you have an AR strategy. We'll be talking about the cities of tomorrow with James Ehrlich, who's the founder of Region Villages, Geshi Kharari Sabina, who's our local faculty. And that will be facilitated and chaired by Lila Palak around really looking at what are the future cities of tomorrow. And how do we prepare for these cities of tomorrow? How do we embrace the right technologies and the right sort of frameworks so that we can be a future city of tomorrow and lead the way, you know, in this future. We're also going to be bringing James Ho, who's the strategic partner at Animoca Brands, to talk about blockchain gaming, which is really becoming, there's a seismic shift happening in the gaming world. Now with this new enablement from the blockchain, you no longer now just buy the skin in Fortnite and Fortnite owns your skin.

Now when you buy the skin in the blockchain game, when you buy the skin in the blockchain game, you own that asset in your own wallet and you can sell it on a secondary market. So this completely changes and shifts the idea of gaming on top of the fact that you can actually earn money from playing these blockchain games. It's called play to earn gaming. And it's becoming a revolutionary concept. And this, we are quite excited about showing this to govern because this could be a real job creator in our country. There's a game called Axie Infinity, where in the Philippines during the pandemic, a lot of people lost their jobs. So they started playing this game. And, you know, people are earning a large, a very high salary for playing a game. That's unbelievable. Over 250,000 people in the Philippines playing this game now. And I've been playing the game since February myself. I'm a big gamer. Yeah. And I've made some decent money from just playing a game. So it's a complete mind shift. If you think you're playing games and just playing them mindlessly, now you can get them to play, play to earn games and actually earn money while they are having their entertainment. That's fantastic. What's the game called again?

It's called Axie Infinity. I'm going to go check that out. Become the number one game on the blockchain. The NFT, when I started playing in February, there were 20,000 players. There's now over 1.2 million daily players in the game. They've hit over a billion, $1.2 billion in revenue. And the game is really flying. And it's really incredible to see something like this coming to the world. And this is just the start of this. But this is what I find so fascinating and what I appreciate so much about what you guys do, because here in South Africa, I mean, you've heard all the stories. I see daily blockchain is going to fail. Bitcoin is this, this, that, the next thing. And then all of the sort of guys who the naysayers or say, Oh, look, it's crashed. You see, I told you, it's a bubble. And then, you know, we talk about 5G and how people are going to, you know, when we have our COVID vaccines, it's going to, you know, it's all linked to. And, you know, that's, that's rubbish. I mean, I had my vaccine, my 5G reception didn't improve at all. I was most disappointed by that. But this is where you guys discuss the facts and, and you bring about the excitement of this technology. I'm just thinking in terms of like just that, that one game, I think it's absolutely fantastic. I want to find out more about some of the technology though, when we come back, this is what's involved. My special guest from Singularity U is McMan. And we're back with my special guest, McMan, Singularity U, the summit coming up in October. Now, let's just go back because I'm still blown away by the technology that you guys are using and that you've developed. The last time there was, there was somewhat of a space theme. Is there, is this, what's the theme this time that we're going to be looking at? We're not going to be exploring space with our backpacks on. So there will be some virtual reality experiences.

We're going to be launching multiple metaversus this year where they'll be really excited about. Two of them are South African. I'm not going to talk about it yet, but there will be these metaversus launched at the summit. That's really exciting. And we will be having a virtual reality bush experience. So each evening, you'll be able to get a special login to a virtual reality bush experience that you can access via your headset if you have a headset or via your laptop or mobile device. And you can go and enjoy some reflection time. And you can actually chat to other guests as one of the big five animal avatars. And you get to either go to the boma, the watering hole, and you can have a lot of social discussion in a 3D environment each evening. And there'll be some entertainment and some fun games that people can play in the bush. There will be a lot of space talks. We're going to be having a talk around the space race, looking at all these different private companies that are racing to be the first into space and to sort of own the landscape that's worth trillions of dollar industry coming our way. So we're going to be hosting some interesting space talks. So there will be some space theming. However, our main theme is around how do we future proof Africa? How do we bring South Africans to the watering hole so that they can take the plunge and really go out and make a difference in the world? And if you think about Jonathan Lund, who we mentioned earlier, who would have ever thought that South Africa could make a dent in the space world? And here we have somebody that came with an idea six years ago that is now really making a dent in the space world from South Africa. So we really believe anything's possible. It's just how bad do we want it? And how do we see the world and how do we use our mindset to go after creating a better world for all and leading the way in the next five years?

Look, I think it's phenomenal. I'm a huge fan of the summit. Huge fan. If I get a chance, I'm there. But I now have to go so far as to actually block out my days because there's no ways I get any productive work done on those days because I'm just summiting like a sponge. Speaking of that though, Mick, you're looking at how many people attending this year? So we're looking between 3,000 and 5,000 people attending this year. And we're doing it on the hop in platform, which can easily accommodate the numbers. So I think it's going to be a really, really interesting summit. There's something for everybody. We're doing a lot on digital marketing. There's going to be Facebook workshops and there's going to be SEO workshops and online advertising. We're bringing some very strong e-commerce speakers, Sharon Guy, to talk about the bleeding edge of e-commerce where that's all going. So I think there's something for everybody to really learn. And like you say, don't think that you should... I wouldn't suggest planning meetings around the summit because if you want to really get the most out of it, block out your day, take the time to learn and really upskill yourself. If we think about Bill Gates, I watched that Netflix documentary on Bill Gates, and he takes learning weeks where he'll lock himself up in a cabin and literally spend a week learning, reading as many books as he can.

So if you think of somebody like that can really carve out that time and make that time important for himself, we should all try, think, how do we make this time important for ourselves? Because if you're going to spend the money, buy a ticket, you want to get the most out of it. And getting the most out of it is really engaging and diving deep into some of the concepts and the learning that you'll experience. Yeah, I must say, I'm so excited about this. I actually cannot wait. Onto the next part though is tickets. Let's start off at the beginning. What is a ticket cost? Because if I'm not mistaken, it's going to cost us a little bit less than what it would have before because it's not in person. Am I correct in that assumption? Yes, it's cost a lot less than it would, less than half than it would before. And we currently in the early mover category at 7, 7, 5, 0, including that, there will be a price increase at midnight on the 28th of August, where it will go move into standard pricing for 8,500. Thereafter, it will move into just in time pricing on the 26th of September, about three and a half weeks later into 9,700 rand for the just-in-time pricing. And then we'll move into a late mover pricing for the last couple of days at 10,625 rand. So, you know, we've tried to make it affordable and for the amount of learning that you're getting and the types of people that we're bringing, somebody I'm really excited about, is that we're bringing Joseph Lubin, who's the co-founder of Ethereum. And he's also, he owns ConsenSys, which is the, they make this crypto wallet called MetaMask, which has over 5 million daily active users. And it's, you know, the leading crypto wallet in the space, really, you know, something amazing that's really changing the way we buy, sell, trade and operate in this Web3 decentralized world. I'm really excited about that one. He's going to be a fantastic discussion on the future of wallets and money. That is going to be exciting because I happen to own a small amount of Ethereum and, yeah. Do you have a MetaMask account?

I think I need to, I think. You need to get a MetaMask wallet. You can go in the Chrome browser extension store and get a MetaMask wallet. And then transfer from my existing wallet might not be a bad idea at all. When we come back, we're going to be wrapping it up with McMahon and just giving you some final details, et cetera, et cetera. This is what's involved. It's so good to have you along with us. And we're back with McMahon, co-CEO of Singularity U South Africa, talking about the summit coming up in October. If you can, just get in there, get some tickets. In terms of like corporate logic, the largest sort of companies, can they buy tickets for their staff? How is that? Because I know you guys always have something special on offer then, particularly for those who may not be able to afford that price, which is to my mind for the amount of Ethereum getting a very reasonable price. Yeah, sorry. Can you just repeat that? You broke up about that? Sorry about that. I was just saying in terms of companies, they can buy tickets for their staff. Anything being done for people who really can't afford that ticket? Yeah, so we do have student tickets that are available, which are majorly discounted for various students. And we get a bunch of universities and schools taking up student tickets for their students. There's also corporate packages for bulk bookings.

So if you buy in bulk, there are some discounts available. And then we also invite a number of schools that are previously disadvantaged. We actually invite them on our

own accord to come and attend and learn at the summit. Yeah, that's one of the things I've found is absolutely amazing about you guys and about man-made is that you do, you always go out of your way to give back. So Mick, before I let you go, where do we go to find out who the speakers are? Get the tickets. I believe there's some teasers as well available. Where do we go for that? So usually the best place is to go to the website, singularity, use South Africa summit.org or susasummit.org, susasummit, S-U-S-A summit.org. And you can go and look up all the speakers that will be attending. We excited we'll be announcing the agenda on Thursday for this year's upcoming summit. And so you can go look at the agenda, you can look at your learning journeys, and you can look at the different speakers on the website. Obviously, on all of our social channels, we are posting constantly some of the various topics, themes, and discussions that will be held at the summit on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. But the best place is probably the website to get any information.

Wonderful stuff. Now, last question, and then I'll let you get back to the very busy work I know you have. In terms of manmade and singularity, what's next for you?

So we're so excited. There are so many opportunities presenting themselves to us. We're actually not sure which one to take up. But, you know, a community is growing incredibly as a singularity. And as manmade, we have been, you know, the pandemic has been a blessing and disguise for manmade because of our production capabilities. We've done, you know, I think over 90 or 100 online events already in 2021. So manmade is really thriving in terms of creating online experiences for our customers. And then in Singularity South Africa, we are really excited about the community we are building and the various opportunities that are presenting themselves to us on an ongoing basis. It almost feels like every day there's a new amazing opportunity to look at in robotics or 3D printing or artificial intelligence or, you know, solar technology. A company that we invested in a few years ago in solar has really gone exponential, you know, from 20,000 units to 100,000 units already. So we, you know, there's just so many opportunities we are bursting at the seams with excitement. It's just really about being open to those ideas. And, you know, looking at how can these ideas positively impact the world? Very important for us. Yeah. And I'm telling you now, if you've never seen a summit or been to a summit do yourself a favor, okay, because it will literally blow your mind, you know, and the old saying your mind is like a parachute. It works best when it's open. This will open your mind right up. Once again, Nick, how many sort of guest speakers are we looking at in total?

We're looking at over 200. We've already confirmed about 140 speakers. So, and we're in talks and negotiations with quite a number of more. So it's going to probably be over 200 speakers this year, which is really exciting. So if you work that out, I mean, your ticket is, it's well worth it. Well, well worth it. Mick, thank you so much for taking the time out and having a chat to us today. I would love to say we can chat to you. I'd love to chat to you again closer to the time, but I know that closer to the time, things get incredibly manic around you. But maybe if we can squeeze something in, if you've got some time, I'd love to chat to you again. Yeah, absolutely. We'd love to. Wonderful stuff. There we go. That was my special guest, Mick Mann, co-CEO of Singularity You, South Africa, as well as one of the founders of ManMade. Wraps it up for us. It was great chatting to Mick. Go do yourself a favor. Go check it out. Just have a look at some of the speakers. They are mind blowing. Okay. Singularity You, South Africa summit.org. So Singularity You, South Africa summit, all one word.org. Go check it out. Also all over social media. The guys will be there to each and every one of you. Look after yourselves, take care, and thank you for listening.