GE: Minds + Machines

2017 found Manifold producing the largest Minds + Machines yet, 4000 attendees at the Moscone West Convention Center in Downtown San Francisco. 3 floors of the hall were packed with interactive demos across a 90,000 sq ft expo hall, breakout sessions and a 3000 seat general session featuring everything from chat’s between GE CEO John Flannery and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to a spoken word performance by poet Sekou Andrews.

In a first, a “social studio” was built on the show floor, a live streaming webcast that doubled as a broadcast center. We delivered easily digestible social snippets of audio and video designed for not only spreading through customer facing social channels but also internal corporate channels ensuring the organization as a whole were exposed to the overall show narrative. General session speakers, customers and attendees were the focus of these clips.

Minds + Machines 2016 was hosted in San Francisco’s Pier 48, and its adjacent 130,000 square foot parking lot. To accommodate this year’s event scale, we extended the Pier facility, designing and building an outdoor “village” on AT&T Park’s Lot A, next door, turning a 130,000 Square Foot lot into a venue housing enclosed satellite stages, enclosed hackathon facility, outdoor networking plaza, outdoor theater, and a 15 room enclosed meeting pavilion.  Our design aesthetic carried from the outdoor lot into Pier 48, which housed our Tech Hall and General Session space.

We were asked to create an experiential journey that brings the Digital Transformation Playbook to life, and content that proves the power of GE’s Predix software platform, through explaining and demonstrating digital transformation of big industry. The physical experience included representations of their large industrial assets, along with the IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) transformation and platform story.

We helped GE to bring in a GE Power Waukesha Gas Engine, which was a part of GE’s digital industrial narrative at the event, while also powering the event. This cloud connected gas engine was one of many industrial assets showcased throughout the show.

Our entire venue was designed to showcase the digital industrial internet, enable attendees to experience hands on demonstrations of IIoT products and services, and engage in meaningful content from the 2,000 seat main stage theater and satellite stages.

Manifold first produced GE’s Minds + Machines in 2012, a single day conference in San Francisco convening on the “Industrial Internet” – the open, global network that connects machines, people, and data to transform the way the world builds, powers, moves and cures. The conference was a unique, invitation-only gathering for 300+ business leaders, policy makers, academics and journalists, featuring keynotes and panel discussions from luminaries including Jeff Immelt, CEO and Chairman of the Board, GE; Marc Andreessen, Co-founder and General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz; Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief, WIRED; and others.

With a 22,000 lb. jet engine situated stage right as the guest of honor, attendees were invited in to the industrial venue space of Dogpatch Studios in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood. The one-day Minds + Machines conference brought GE executives, thought leaders, academics, venture capitalists and executives from Fortune 500 companies together to discuss the Industrial Internet.

The first floor was set as the conference main space, where the jet engine sat stage right and was set as the focal point of the staging area. Between conference sessions, attendees were able to walk up and see, touch and examine the engine from all directions.

Manifold has been GE’s creative agency bringing Minds + Machines to life in Chicago, New York, and San Francisco, creating immersive, storytelling environments for GE’s 54,000 lb doube-RAM blowout preventer to its massive GE Locomotive.

in 2014, we transformed New York City’s Pier 59 studios into a space showcasing a scale-size industrial asset – GE’s Tier 4 Locomotive Engine. With projection mapping and high impact animation, we immersed the audience in an active space. Every available surface was mapped and filled with content via projection, giving the illusion of a moving landscape that transitioned through GE’s large-scale industrial assets: Transportation, Oil & Gas, Power & Energy, and Healthcare.

In our fourth year, Manifold produced Minds + Machines at Fort Mason in San Francisco, hosting 1500+ business leaders, policy makers, academics and journalists. Driven by GE Corporate and GE Digital, this year’s show focused on Predix – the cloud-based platform at the intersection of people, machines, big data and analytics.

“This is not a conference on the Internet of Things. This is a conference on the Internet of Really Important Things…about machines that matter.” said Bill Ruh, SVP, GE Digital.