This is the trade organization that represents all that good stuff you are supposed to eat – veggies! They invited me in for a 2nd day keynote for their annual conference, to take a look at the trends which would provide for growth and opportunity in the future. I covered a wide range of topics, including faster food fashion, the acceleration of snacking as the 4th meal of the day, intelligent connected packaging, retail store format changes, and disruptive shopping trends – can you say Amazon?
PPG, Pittsburgh : Aligning to the Reality of the World of Edge-Driven R&D
What’s the future of research & development? That’s what the global paints, coatings and materials firm PPG brought me in for as they assembled their global R&D team for an offsite event at the famed Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh – what a site for an event! My keynote, designed to kick off their two day event and set the proper tone for their meeting of minds, took a look at how to compete in the high velocity economy when the nature R&D is changing. Edge based innovation, open innovation concepts, grand challenges such as the Prize – I helped them to understand how the phrase “the future isn’t invented here anymore” is no longer just a phrase, but an opportunity!
Utah League of Cities & Towns, Salt Lake City : Driving the Future of Economic Development
What do you get when you bring 700 mayors and elected officials for small, medium and large sized towns from the State of Utah into a room for a talk about the future? My main theory in action: some people see the the future and see a threat; other people see the same future and see an opportunity! My keynote took a look at the future drivers of economic development: from advanced manufacturing, disruptive business models, knowledge accelerators and the nomadic workforce.
Consumers Electronic Association CEO Summit, Ojai, CA : Brand Innovation At the Speed of Twitter!
Life is weird when *you* are asked to keynote one of the worlds’ largest technology organizations – they sponsor the annual CES show in Las Vegas – and are in front of CEO’s of many of the worlds largest tech companies. They asked me to come in and speak to the new world of branding, marketing, consumer change in the era of social media, collapsing attention spans, new brand influencers and more. Not only that, but I talked about how, as every product becomes intelligent and connected – the era of hyper-connectivity – the very nature of what they would sell would forever change. In that way, I was advising them about IOT long before IOT became central to everything they do!
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Ingram Micro
What do world class innovators do that others don’t do? When I delivered that topic for Deloitte South Africa, it soon caught the attention of Ingram Micro, one of the world’s largest distributors of hi-tech gear and solutions. They were holding their major key customer and client event, and wanted an eye-popping keynote from a ‘thought leader’ to kick it off. They thought of me, and I provided some thought leadership that set the pace and theme for the overall success of their event!
US Air Force & Navy Child Youth Programs, Dallas: Aligning To The Future of Counselling & Recreation
Michelle Obama believed that a big challenge existed with military families, and specifically, that not enough was being done to help social counsellors and recreation staff on military bases align to the realty of the new generation of hyper-wired, online connected kids. So she somehow got a conference going to bring together 1,000 folks who work on those issues on base to talk about what could be done. And because of my keynote for the National Recreation and Parks Association, I was found, and booked as the keynote speaker. What an event – and what a unique topic! I spoke about many issues: the new form of online “social grief” emerging on platforms like Facebook and how this could be a power for both good and bad; how to engage kids in sport through interactive technology; how to align to the online world of Mom3.0 to accelerate innovative ideas.
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