Imagineers: Uber’s engineering manager Conrad Whelan on the future of transport

What do you call people who are stretching the limits of their imaginations to engineer a new future? At The Next Web, we went with imagineers.

We want to offer our favourite entrepreneurs and pioneers a platform to share the visions and insights that will shape our future, which is why, each week, we’ll present you with an exclusive episode of Imagineers.

Produced in partnership with the City of Amsterdam, each episode captures one person’s thought-provoking talk against the backdrop of TNW’s beloved home city, where rich history and culture go hand-in-hand with innovation and progression – just the right place for TNW Conference.

In this seventh episode, Uber’s engineering manager Conrad Whelan tells us the reason for choosing Amsterdam for building his product development team, and why he sees Uber as “the business case study of the 21st century”.

But that’s not all – self-driving cars, and how the future of travel can be compared to social networks, are all thoughts expressed by Uber’s first engineer (and employee number two) in this thought-provoking video.

If you like this video, you’ll love our line-up for TNW Conference in May, which includes Uber advisor & former Booking.com CEO Kees Koolen, BlaBlaCar co-founder & COO Nicolas Brusson, and Hyperloop CEO Dirk Ahlborn. Click here for more info.

Watch next: Advertiser extraordinaire Blake Harrop on what will shape our future