Hi Hilary, thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us and for speaking at this year's event! Firstly, please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit more about you and your career to date!

Thanks for having me Joao! My name is Hilary Mine, and I’ve been translating technology into value for more than forty years, starting with digitizing my college newspaper when I was an editor and we were using DEC mini’s.  I fell in love with telecommunications technology because of the value I saw in connecting the planet a long time ago, and have been contributing to building the internet and other comms networks ever since. In a physical sense – not just software. I’ve worked in chips, hardware, software and services and I’ve been fortunate to play many roles over the years – from running P&Ls and managing 22 countries, to being a CMO twice and driving a complete rebrand of a public company, and many years in various strategy roles supporting critical investment and capital allocation decisions at large public companies.  I’ve also been actively engaged in public policy in Europe, the US and Australia, and served on boards of both start ups and industry associations. Most recently I ran strategy and technology for the global sales and marketing organization at Nokia.

What are you looking forward to at European Women in Technology?

The talent and energy of so many wonderful women! I learn from everyone and every encounter, and I know I will learn a lot there as well. I am a firm believer in reverse mentoring. I do a lot of mentoring and coaching as you would expect, but I am equally driven to learn from younger talent and understand the world and technology through their eyes. I am voraciously curious.

What does the Leading the Digital Revolution theme mean to you?

I hope it means we will use this event and others to continue to innovate around how we leverage digitalization for value, bearing in mind that we can no longer separate commercial value from broader economic, social and ecological values.  Sustainability can no longer be a buzzword, but rather the framework within which we evaluate investments, digitalization projects and so forth.  Leading implies driving both thought leadership and execution of the digital revolution – although it’s been going on for decades, the real impacts are still very much to come.  And we are in a stage that is equal parts thrilling and terrifying.  How we drive digitalization for full value as we navigate the tremendous potential of AI, robotics, new
materials, biotech and more is full of wide open questions and demands great leadership and vision.

What can attendees expect from your session?

I’ll be sharing some insights into what’s next in mobile communications technologies – specifically 6G.  Attendees can expect to learn about the timing of both standards and commercialization, as well as the underlying challenges to both of those. We’ll explore some of the new categories of use cases that 6G will bring, including integrated sensing, immersive communications, and zero energy devices. And I hope attendees will walk away with some ideas about how they can engage in the 6G ecosystem or at least leverage and plan for what’s next.

What is your biggest prediction for 2025 for technology?

AI as a general purpose technology is becoming truly mainstream in 2025.  Anyone who is not using it – whether to reduce the cost and improve quality of coding, or to improve your customer interface, listen more effectively to your field force for operational improvements, etc will really start falling behind in 2025.  Early movers are progressing from trials in 2023/4 to full blown investments and broad usage in 2025.  There is still a long way to go, and frankly we need to educate everyone from an early age on how to best use it, but it is going mainstream whether anyone likes it or not.  So we need to adapt and put the hard work in on policy, transparency, bias and fairness testing, energy implications, training and more.

Register for your place to join Hilary for her session, '6G and the Future of Connectivity' at European Women in Technology on 25 - 26 June!