theCUBE + NYSE Wired: Mixture of Experts Series | Stefan Weitz, HumanX

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Stefan Weitz

Co-Founder and CEO

HumanX

play_circle_outline Maximizing Industry Connections for Professional Growth: An Event Focused on Content, Networking, and Technical Expertise

play_circle_outline Stats on attendees, speakers, diversity, and partnerships

play_circle_outline Networking opportunities such as Solution Bridge, Venture Connect, and HumanX Connect

play_circle_outline Brand promise of highest ROI and actionable insights for attendees

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Stefan Weitz, HumanX

Stefan Weitz

Co-Founder and CEO HumanX

Stefan Weitz, co-founder and CEO of HumanX, joins theCUBE’s John Furrier for an insightful conversation on the upcoming HumanX conference, predicted to be a pivotal event in the Artificial Intelligence landscape. With a powerful lineup scheduled from March 9th to 13th, 2025, at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Vegas, Weitz shares the inspiration and intricacies behind curating such an impactful agenda. TheCUBE's analysts contribute by highlighting the significance of networking and deep industry tracks offered at the event.

The discussion unveils valuable in... Read more

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What was the methodology behind creating the agenda for the conference? add

What are some statistics and details about the upcoming AI conference? add

What are some of the programs offered by Solution Bridge for companies with needs related to AI governance strategy or connecting startups with VCs? add

What is the brand promise to the attendees and participants of the event? add

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Stefan Weitz, HumanX

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>> Hello, welcome to theCUBE Studio here in Palo Alto. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE, a great CUBE conversation here around an upcoming event that's turning out to be probably one of the most important AI conferences of the year. The lineup is looking very strong. Thousands of people attend. Stefan Weitz is the co-founder and CEO of HumanX. Besides a great name, HumanX will be expected to be a smashing conference March 9th through the 13th this year, 2025, at Fontainebleau Hotel in Vegas, which is a new great hotel. Stefan, thanks for coming in on theCUBE and talking about HumanX.

Stefan Weitz

>> Thanks John. Appreciate it. Yeah, happy to be here.

>> I think I just volunteered to do a couple panels. Let's see if it's still open, but looking forward to it. I'll be there. theCUBE will probably be on the ground, not doing a lot of filming, but our team will be there. Great event. So first of all, congratulations on pulling together, one, around curating a great agenda and also creating a lot of excitement and around the community and the industry around this event. It's hard to do events. Everyone knows events. It's extremely difficult to get the attention. You guys have managed to do that, your team. Congratulations on that. What was the catalyst around this? Because it's not just another hand-waving event. It's got a lot of meat on the bone.

Stefan Weitz

>> I hope so. That's the idea. So the catalyst was pretty simple. I've been a nerd since I was a small child, have loved AI since I was a kid. I wanted my C-3PO. I wanted my Kit car from Knight Rider. And really worked in and around the industry. I was at Microsoft for almost 20 years and did a bunch of work there in space. But I think we all had that AI winter for a long time. We made great progress and people way better than I am made even better progress. But at the end of the day, we were not seeing those magical moments that we were promised as kids and so bummed out. And then you saw '17 come, the first transformer, and you started seeing the subsequent releases. And what I got excited about that was not so much that it was AI, because at the end of the day it's mostly applied stats in the early transformers. It was more that it enabled a different type of human-computer ... huge unlock. And I thought, holy smokes, this actually, independent of chain of reasoning, chain of thought, that alone can open up computing to more people and more areas. So I was excited. So I started calling all my buddies who are CXOs of various companies and said, "Hey, what is your strategy for AI?" And I talked to about 110 of them over the course of a few months. And it ranged from, God bless them, but the guys who said, "We have a great strategy," totally lying, guys who said, "We have an okay strategy," and they were probably right. And then a lot of folks just said, "We don't have a strategy at this point. Please tell us what to do." And I thought, oh my gosh, if we are relying on ... this is about 18 months ago now, but if we're relying on big corporates to understand how to make their way through this morass of information that comes out every single day on AI and we're relying on them to deliver the innovations in practice, we've got a problem. And so that's when I said, "What can we do?" My partner is a guy named John Weiner. He's behind Money20/20 and Shoptalk and Health. He understands this community and event space very well. And so we said, "Let's go ahead and put something together which would help these leaders chart their way through AI and create this confidence and conviction for them in their journey." So that was the genesis of the whole thing.

>> And you guys have, first of all, great tracks, so it's very robust. But the thing that's going on, you pointed out, there's a huge thirst for discovery of content. You got experts. There's more papers being written in the past two years than I've ever read in the human lifetime possibly. There's more innovations happening on a daily basis, weekly basis, breakthroughs. So real technical chops happening and then a smart set of industry participants who are leaning in to learn. So it's not so much selling anything. You're bringing people together, industry experts with real practitioners who actually want to, one, how do I use my data first? I'll use AI to do that. And then, two, what do I do with it? Want to net new opportunity. So clearly an explosion. And the focus on the content is very knowledge-based, and you've got the track, cybersecurity, infrastructure, healthcare, marketing, entertainment, policy, enterprise, and then a breakthrough category. Very intentional. Can you give the philosophy around why, one, you agree, if that's happening, and two, the philosophy around that and the tracks, what people can expect?

Stefan Weitz

>> Sure. Sure, sure, sure. Yeah. We actually did a study with Harris at the time, this is about five months ago or six months ago now. It was the largest study of AI in the enterprise that had ever been done. So about 1200 companies participated in this and we asked about 210 questions to each company. So I haven't had time. I have no idea, but thank you very much. And that helped us understand as it relates to AI, so many conferences, as I'm sure you know John, kind of the agenda's based on who they can get to come speak. So let's go ahead and back into it with a research-based approach of what enterprises, large businesses, medium businesses, small businesses, what they're really struggling with, what they're really asking, what's working, what's still unclear or not working altogether, and let's create the agenda to address those specific needs. We have this quarter million data point study, bizarre findings in some areas, but that really helped us design that. And so the agenda was very consciously built around that. The tracks are really there more, you could think of it both as an industry but also as a function. So the marketing track isn't necessarily just for the marketing industry. It's for people who are in the marketing discipline, for example. Same with infrastructure, same with enterprise, that kind of thing. But they really are designed to, again, get you to an answer per se, but at least understand how to ask the question you need to ask to figure out your AI journey. So it's structured pretty simple. There's a main stage or center stage, they call it center stage, and that's where you're going to get kind of your snackable, it's your big announcements, it's Kevin from OpenAI, it's Mike from Anthropic, it's all the folks up there giving these incredibly both inspiring but also practical talks. And I'll be very clear, no one's pitching from stage, no one's up there selling product. We have every one of those people, a very seasoned journalist to go and actually conduct those things. So will not be a softball session. And then it goes to the industry stages, the track stages as you mentioned. And those are longer and those are more like Davos-style events where it's very, very in-depth. And then from there we have about 110 of the speakers, most of the major ones who agreed to do small groups. So after that, if you want to go talk to Kevin Weil at OpenAI or , we have that opportunity to go sit down with those folks and have small group conversations, which is pretty unusual for any event in any time. So it's a really rich tapestry of content that you get to access. And we try to keep it simple and streamlined. I'm not sure how we did in that, but we gave it a shot. -

>> Aligning the tracks with where the business needs are and from a discovery standpoint, it's perfect. We were having an event here this week, CMO Leaders Summit, around the changing role of the CMO, and it's a technical platform side, but it's also a workflow and data conversation around CMO. And every area has this, right? So I love how you're digging in on these tracks to go deeper. And we were joking, you're going to love this. You're an AI conference, you're going to love this. You actually do have a mixture of experts literally on stage. So pun intended.

Stefan Weitz

>> We do.

>> This is what's going on in the communities where the events inspire but also inform deeply, and I think that's one of the things that's unique about HumanX. What's been the reaction so far on stats? Can you share any numbers? Obviously humanx.co is the URL. If you're watching, check it out. You can sign up there. But give us some stats. I know there's some numbers on the page. Give us some latest updates on who's coming or attendance numbers.

Stefan Weitz

>> Yeah, I mean, yeah, of course. I think we have 310 confirmed speakers now, and if you look at the list, it's 80-ish percent CEO/founder level, which is exciting to see. So it's the biggest, not biggest, but just the people who are running these AI companies across the planet, so that's exciting. 32% female, which also is pretty interesting given the tech space.

>> That's double the industry standard actually.

Stefan Weitz

>> Yeah, yeah, definitely . But honestly, in AI, it's really encouraging to see the diversity of all sorts of things in leadership positions. It's different than general tech I found, which is, I'm not quite sure why, but it's a fascinating distinction. So that, we're at 226, we'll be at 250 press by the time we hit the ground in three weeks. People like you and big majors out there as well will be there, which is fun. 150 or so different people selling products. So it is at its core, there's also a trade show component, and that's design, because, as I mentioned, people are looking for partners, they're looking for solutions, and so we're actually curating some pretty good people there to help the companies get through. A few thousand attendees, TBD what it actually ends up at. People for some reason book very late. I don't understand that. There you go. Yeah. So -

>> It's hot and so everyone has to go because it's hot now, but you guys have been hot for a while. I like the expo hall because I'm a big believer personally into capitalism side of things. If you create a good content program, like you've done intentionally, that will draw the best people, that will draw the best content, and that's an opportunity to sidecar some marketing and/or education or biz dev. So that, totally cool on that. What I'm really interested in is how you're viewing the networking opportunities because, as you know, AI is also a digital community as well. There's trust built into the program and the relationship. Totally cool. What's the networking opportunities for folks who come? What do you have planned? Can you share a little bit about what you're thinking and what you expect the networking to look like? Because people want to meet each other. There's all kinds of marketplace kind of transactions, finding jobs, finding biz dev, doing deals. It's a great event.

Stefan Weitz

>> Finding a partner or finding a vendor or finding your next job, finding a commiserator to talk about how crappy your boss is. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's ... there's a few different things. So I'll be brief, but one's called Solution Bridge. That's a program where we actually take companies that have needs, like, "I'm a large company, I need to figure out my governance strategy for AI," and then we actually pair them up with vendors who can meet those needs. They have like a speed dating session so you can knock out a vendor review in an afternoon. So that's pretty cool. We have Venture Connect for startups and VCs, obviously that is speed dating between VCs and startups. And then those are curated programs. But then there's other things like HumanX Connect, which is just basically an easy way to book a table in the app with someone else you want to meet with and have a place to go and have a conversation. You don't have to sit on the floor, you don't have to go to a Starbucks. We have that there for you as part of our service, which is fun. There's great events happening all around the event. So we have 45 partners doing really cool things, ranging from Goodwin who's running an entire half day on law and AI. It's like $50,000 worth of attorneys in one room for you. It's free. There's some other ones coming up I can't talk about yet, but they're really cool as well. So there's really a lot there. And then of course, just the events themselves. We have a great opening night at the reception. We've got a bunch of receptions happening across the event every day and then we have our closing night reception as well, which is a really cool artist who we'll announce on Tuesday as well. But yeah, so there's really no end. And then the app itself is a really good app. You fill out your profile, you tell us about yourself and we can actually recommend people you should meet. You can easily hit them in the app, schedule a meeting right there, go talk to them. It's all designed to be, at the end of the day. One kind of fun too, one last plug, is that everyone's badge has a cool smart beacon on it, and so if you meet someone and you want to exchange information, you just both click your little badge and there you go.

>> Awesome. And you mentioned that, what was it that you can get a table? Is that Peer Exchange?

Stefan Weitz

>> HumanX Connect.

>> HumanX Connect?

Stefan Weitz

>> No, no, I'm sorry. Peer Exchange. That's the new name. I beg your pardon. Peer Exchange, that's correct.

>> Okay. I was checking out the website.

Stefan Weitz

>> Marketing changed that last week and I forgot.

>> moving so fast. This is like-

Stefan Weitz

>> It's moving so fast, man. Yeah.

>> How many tokens were burned to do that? Okay. It's a good opportunity.

Stefan Weitz

>> Exactly.

>> Share for the folks watching if there's any last-minute sponsor opportunities, because I'm sure as you start to get more and more momentum up to the time, last-minute sponsorships, opportunities, anything available still?

Stefan Weitz

>> Yeah, there's still a couple of spots on the floor. Not many, but there's some good spots on the floor. There's still branding opportunities in many places. There's still I think the grab and go cafe on the main floor which is still open. So there's lots of places you can be. But even if a lot of folks just wanted to curate special dinners or special events for their communities as well, so we have a lot of partners bringing their people along. But yeah, there's still, I wouldn't say lots, but there's still definitely things that people can hop in with and sponsor.

>> Awesome. So I got to ask you, how does it feel with all this work gone in, obviously your partner has a pedigree of events, Money, Money's well known, his events are solid. How are you feeling? Then, two, was there any tweak to the event formula that you felt would be aligned with the AI vibe and the AI momentum as kind of we're in a new generational shift. Events are back certainly this year. I mean, I know theCUBE, we're seeing events at higher levels than ever before and digital's popping like crazy. What was some of the tweaks you've made and how're you feeling?

Stefan Weitz

>> I'm feeling really good. I'm feeling really good on most things. There are a couple things that are always dangling and you're like, no, I wish I could tie that thing down. Hopefully by the end of the day I can. We'll see if it's going to work. But no, I feel good. The tweaks we made from John's previous events, which again, if you've been to them, you kind of know they're more of a festival than a trade show in most cases. The tweaks we made, the biggest one is this is Health, Money20/20, and Shoptalk were really focused on particular verticals, for lack of a better word. Health is on healthcare peer providers, Shoptalk's e-commerce, and Money20/20 on FinTech. And so AI is different. AI touches so many parts of the organization and so it wasn't as easy as I think we all thought to necessarily talk about what we were, because if you're Money20/20, it's like if you're in FinTech, you got to go. Just the way it is. If you're a supply chain manager at a closet rod manufacturer who wants to figure out how AI can help for business, would you necessarily see HumanX as a place you had to be? You need to, but it's a harder message to get out because you can't just target those people as easy as you can at FinTechs. That was the one tweak, was really recognizing we're more a horizontal conference. And also along those same lines, just making sure that across programs, such that the things that verticals will talk about, so healthcare or operations, whatnot, were still relevant to other disciplines and industries and tracks, and so we're trying to make sure that the content is specific enough for those who are in the space, but also applicable enough for those who are not in the space to take those ideas into their own particular company.

>> Well, I'm super excited to see how it all plays out. Looking good right now, as they say, middle of the fairway in golf. And should be a great event. Final question for you. What's the brand promise for HumanX as a theme, as you look at it's coming down the pipe, certainly there should be a lot of afterglow and follow on? I'm sure that'll continue. I'm expecting to be a big success. What's the brand promise to the attendees and the participants?

Stefan Weitz

>> Yeah, I mean at the highest level, I've said this since day one, this has to be the highest ROI event that a person will spend three days at for the entire year. It has to be that. You have to be able to leave this saying, "I have more confidence, I have more conviction in what I need to do for my company, my organization, my government, and AI." So everything we've done is tuned around delivering that ROI promise. So that's probably the biggest thing I can say that you'll leave there with action, not just great content, which is great too, but you need more than that.

>> Well, Stefan, thank you and your co-founder for doing this. Again, enthusiasm is great. Confidence moves the needle. Appreciate you taking the time to come on theCUBE and we're looking forward to seeing you. I'll put a post on LinkedIn, it's humanx.co is the URL, check it out. There's still tickets. They have some sponsorship opportunities, limited, but give Stefan and team a call. This is theCUBE. We'll be there on the ground. Everyone's going to be there. Should be a great event, like a festival.

Stefan Weitz

>> Thanks John, really appreciate it. Lot of fun.

>> Appreciate it, Stefan. Thank you so much. Okay. I'm John Furrier here in the Palo Alto Studios between Palo Alto and Wall Street. Our new studio at the NYSC, we've got Silicon Valley and Wall Street connected, and of course we have our Boston studio. Of course, we go to all the events in the enterprise, emerging tech. Check out all the coverage on siliconangle.com, thecube.net, and thecuberesearch.com. A research-led conference, HumanX should be great, it should be the most important AI conference of the year. Thanks for watching.