September is fast approaching and as the curator of the future work theme, I am busy preparing for my first ever FutureFest.

Building on Nesta’s quiz ‘Will a robot take my job?’, launched at last year’s festival, I’m keen to explore what the human role will be in the future of work.

Technology will support us, taking away or enhancing some of our tasks, and even monitoring us, which some people are ready to embrace – our recent survey showed 50 per cent of the contactless card users we asked would be happy to have microchips implanted under their skin to open doors or log on at work.

But the element of the future of work that we must get right is the people. As a business person myself, I know that people are what make a difference in a company; a person who works efficiently and is happy makes a big difference to the bottom-line.

I want to know:

• Will our future work culture be flexible enough to accommodate the large number of people considering job changing and career hopping?
• How could the introduction of basic income impact our future work?
• And how will we try to change the figures that show that less than 10 per cent of executive directors at FTSE 100 companies in the UK are women?

I’m delighted that leading entrepreneurs Cindy Gallop and Sherry Coutu CBE will be joining us as we explore some of these issues around the future of work. And we’ll be announcing more speakers on the future of work next month.

One of the stats that has stayed with me from my research is the amount of our lifetime we will spend working (90,000 hours on average), which just reiterates to me how important it is that we explore where our work is going, so that we can be prepared and help shape the changes that are coming.

That’s the point of FutureFest. For people to come together to explore and debate the future. The festival’s four themes - work, love, play and thrive - are important to each one of us as we go through life and will provide something of interest for everyone. Join the conversation to help shape our future this September.

FutureFest runs 17-18 September at Tobacco Dock, London. Weekend tickets are now on sale. Find out more about FutureFest.