05 A Caffeinated Journey to the Metaverse and Beyond with Paul Doherty

Paul calls himself a “recovering architect,” but that’s underselling it. He’s been quietly shaping the smart city and metaverse discourse for decades, while most of us were still arguing about CAD vs BIM. In this session, we go full-circle: from the DNA of IBM trade show booths in the ’80s… to AI hallucinations, smart contracts, digital twins, and fractional real estate coins tied to building performance.

Core takeaway? Architects have the mindset and training to lead this next chapter — but only if we reclaim our relevance, rethink our tools, and start designing conversations after the certificate of occupancy.

This is the kind of provocative, honest, forward-facing storytelling that defines Café Zai, a series of short, caffeinated conversations at the messy intersection of architecture, AI, infrastructure, and culture.

If you’ve been feeling like the built environment is stuck in 1990, while AI and the rest of the world are moving at warp speed, this one’s for you.

As published by Forbes as “Changing the World”, seen on The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg TV and reported by CNBC as one of America's Business Titans, Paul is an Award-Winning Architect and one of the global Industry's most sought after thought leaders, strategists and integrators of process, technology & business. Paul is the Founder & CEO of The Digit Group, Inc. (TDG), a leading Smart Cities design, build, operate and solutions company, headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee. He is an author, educator, analyst and consultant to Fortune 500 organizations, government leadership, prominent institutions and the most prestigious AEC firms in the world. Paul has spent the past 30+ years in the industry after graduating cum laude from the New York Institute of Technology and graduating from the Career Discovery program at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.
His past successful ventures include Revit (Sold to Autodesk 2002), Buzzsaw (Sold to Autodesk 2001) and TRIRIGA (Sold to IBM 2011). He is a prominent and top rated speaker at industry events each year around the world and has been appointed as a guest lecturer at leading Universities around the world. Paul has been on the Board of Directors/Advisors of numerous organizations, including the International Facility Management Association (IFMA) where he is an IFMA Fellow and he is a Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council. Paul holds both European Union and US Citizenship, and is the co-founder of the AEC Hackathon. Widely quoted in the mass media, Paul is also a contributing author to multiple sections of the AIA Handbook of Professional Practice, the Interior Design Handbook of Practice, the McGraw Hill Graphic Standards of Residential Construction, 3 whitepaper contributions to the McGraw-Hill Financial Global Institute and author/co-author of 7 books and over 1,000 published articles. Paul's 8th book "Smart Cities: Reimagining The Urban Experience" was published by Quality Press in 2023, while Paul's 9th book, "Unlocking the Metaverse: A Guide for the Built Environment", published by Wiley, was released in December 2023 that became #1 New Release and Editors Choice on Amazon.

More about Paul here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-doherty-aia/