Jason Goldberg's Full Closing NRF Keynote
"Commerce Disrupted: Rise of the AI Native Consumer"
This week on the retailgentic podcast, we have an experiment for you. NRF concluded Tuesday Jan 13th and my good friend and podcast partner over at the Jason and Scot show, Jason Goldberg (Chief Digital Commerce Officer at Publicis) was invited to ‘tie the bow’ on the conference in the last keynote: Commerce Disrupted: Rise of the AI Native Consumer.
NRF Goes Agentic!
I’ve been going to the NRF big show for about 20yrs and historically the ecommerce/digital folks were in Level 2 (kind of the Javits basement) in the back corner. We were always there, but the retail/analog/store folks dominated the main stage content, and the topics were all about self-checkout, point-of-sale, digital signage. All admittedly important and part of the technological evolution of stores, but as a marketplace person, not my jam.
Because I took a hiatus from the industry, I missed the post covid-era 2020-2025. To come back in 2026 and have the conference basically kick off with the big Sundar/Ferner (SP?) announcement, the show floor had giant booths screaming Agentic Commerce from Stripe, Shopify, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, PayPal, Ayden, Salesforce, Matercard, Visa, American Express and hundreds I didn’t even get to and then to top it off with Jason’s keynote that does a great job of setting the stage for the Agentic era was a real testament to how much things have changed in 5 short years, and really since Agentic Commerce is a year old, most of it happened in the last piece there.
An Experimental Pod
For this pod, we wanted to try something experimental. What if you couldn’t come to NRF? What if you were there and missed the keynote? What if you’ve never been to a show like this for whatever reason? How do deliver as much of that experience as possible (without AR/VR sadly).
What we did is I sat in the front row and recorded audio and video for the keynote while was on stage.
Because it was recorded so up-close and personal, it was hard to get both Jason and the content in-frame all the time. We also wanted to ‘one shot it’ so there are no cuts. Front to end, no cuts, you get the unedited experience.
Follow-along Presentation
Jason’s slide decks are always awesome, so I’ve provided them here so you can follow-along at home while you watch or listen.
Where to Watch/Listen
Over on our YouTube Channel you can get the audio and video experience here->
Audio-only listeners will be happy to say that the awesome audio team at NRF was able to give us a recording straight off the sound board, so while the video quality isn’t what you’d call ‘NFL level’, the audio being pro-level really enhances the experience.
That experience is available here, (or listen wherever you get your podcasts: Spotify, Apple, etc.)
I hope you enjoy this experiment – feedback is always welcome. If you like this as we go to other shows where we own the content and can deliver this type of experience, we’ll endeavor to do more of this type of content.