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Hi everyone. Welcome to the 5 Minutes Podcast. Recently I read an article and unfortunately this one is in Portuguese from Jose Eduardo Agualusa in a very popular newspaper in Brazil. And the title of this article was What is Reality? And he tells the history of one thing that happened at the Web Summit. Web summit is one of the, I would say, most prominent events in technology in the world. And it happens every year in Lisbon. And it gets, I would say, maybe 60,000, 70,000 people there from all sorts of areas in tech and a group that is very specialized in pranks. And in this criticism, like art criticism, they just manage to get a spot at Web Summit. And then one was trying to be perceived as a rapper and the other one as a senior executive of Adidas. And then they went on stage and they start talking about their partnership and the Adidas, a new Adidas environment, and where they will implant a SIM card in the body of the workers of Adidas. And this will help to control productivity. It will increase their productivity, and also it will reduce their hunger. So instead of eating three times, they will be very happy eating only once. And then at the end, he ended talking about the relationship between Adidas and the Nazis and the Holocaust and this. And at the end, people clapped and people said, wow, great. You know, people clapped. And what is in this article is what I want to talk to you. We are not talking about clapping about the prank.
All those who clap, they didn't clap for the prank, for the comedy. No, they clapped it because they truly believed that that was a good idea. And this is exactly what I want to talk about here. It's what is reality. When we are managing a project, it's critically important. We need to remember we are on the driving seat of transforming ideas into reality, but we need to make sure that this idea is connected to the core values of society and to the core values of who we are as a society and as citizens. What is happening today? For example, you all know that I'm working a lot with AI and generative AI and doing a lot of stuff in this area, and what I'm seeing is this, like this. Yes, man, as just an analogy, a lot of applications use that. People are just disconnected from reality. You saw a few months ago, a man decided to kill himself, driven by a conversation with a chat bot, a relationship chat bot that I would say in some ways conducted him to make this decision. So, what is reality? What is true reality? When we have technology that is more and more and more elaborated, what would be for us and why? I'm saying this because I'm not talking about the Matrix movie where you have the blue pill and the red pill, but we need to understand that we need to drive projects that are connected to reality and to the core values of what society is because otherwise we may run the risk of someone doing a prank and you are clapping for someone talking about Nazis or someone talking about, okay, I'm finding a way that employees will not eat anymore and they will be productive.
So we need to understand this. And I know that many of you say, what is this direct relationship with projects? It's because all these transformations are done and led by people like us, by people like us. We are the ones helping organizations to get things real. But we need to understand the connection between the ethical and core values of our society and ethics. I was a member of the Institute of Global Ethics, and I love, for example, the PMI code of Ethics ethic. It's not something that is less important. It's something that is at the core and the heart of what we do. What you can do that is in the best interest of your organization and the society. It's not just about how to make money. Or how do I implement that crazy idea that will just create more disruption, more hate, and it will not benefit society? At all. And this is exactly what is our role, because otherwise we will be doing anything but reality. And reality is what really matters is what deliver value to our clients and to the society. Think about that every time. Mostly for those who are working with technology projects, think about that because otherwise it will be just a chaotic future for all of us. I hope you enjoyed this podcast, and see you next week with another 5 Minutes Podcast.
