Jim Carroll: The Futurist Who Knows Your Industry

The Futurist Who Knows Your Industry. 

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Daily Inspiration: “Stop complaining! Start imaginating! Begin solutionating!”

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“Stop complaining!  Start imaginating! Begin solutionating!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

It’s almost a certainty that a friend of mine who regularly spots my weakness for spelling accuracy will spit out his coffee once he sees that I also invent words. But I’m the futurist, and so I can identify today the words not yet in existence today that might be commonplace tomorrow!

Back to my story : I was out out for a round of golf yesterday, and found the inspiration for a little innovation clip (found at the end of this post) that I filmed later in the day.

I often swear that my next book will be about the ’10 types of human behaviour at the first tee’ – the chronic late arrivals, the exercise minded who have an elaborate swing routine, the overly focused type A.

Yesterday? The chronic complainer.

Our club, like many, is overwhelmed with the number of members signing up for rounds of golf – we are truly setting records as many people, locked down in our pandemic world, find themselves with much more time on their hands. There are more people golfing than might normally do so, with the result that there are fewer prime tee times available for those who like to get out early!

This has been the source of minor grumbling throughout the season, but many of us go with the flow. But one fellow arrived on the tee yesterday morning with a constant stream of complaints about tee time allocation; the inability of the club to fix it; an overview of all of the complaints that he has sent in to the Board; an outline of the many ways in which it is not working; an ongoing indication of just how unhappy he is.

I mean, he just didn’t let up. It’s kind of hard to concentrate on your first tee shot when you encounter this type of thing. But before my tee shot, I asked him, “ok, so how do you suggest we fix it?” He seemed to have none. I did a practice swing, and pressed him. “No, seriously, how would you solve this problem?”

He blurted back an answer : the club could chop 1,000 members off of the roster – and the problem would be solved. Not much of a solution, really! And so, he essentially had none.

I nailed my tee shot, dead straight into the fairway. Maybe I just need a bit of emotional release to let go.

The round settled down after that, but the encounter had me thinking throughout about many of my stage comments I’ve made over the years about innovation and disruptive change. So I filmed a thing!

It also gave me my quote for today, because I was busy inventing a word as I made my way down the fairway.

Oh, and imaginating?

I’ve used it before. So that makes it a word! Because I’m the futurist!

Daily Inspiration: “Imaginating the future is candy for your mind!”

Daily Inspiration: “Time flies when you’re busy imaginating!”

Daily Inspiration: “Learn to learn again!Soak in the knowledge of something new!”

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“Learn to learn again!Soak in the knowledge of something new!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

I went to a virtual conference the other night – not as a speaker, but as an actual participant, an audience member! I was trying to figure out when was the last time I actually did this, and I think it was when I went to the Electronic Mail Association annual conference in New Orleans in 1990! (The association no longer exists; the idea of email back then was new and disruptive. Involved with the technology already for 8 years, , and I was busy building a little business around the concept…..before my next career exploded into reality in 1993.)

The event had to do with the innovations occurring in the virtual meetings and special events industry, and was put on by the Toronto chapter of ILEA – the International Live Events Association. It’s the representative body of another side of the massively devastated industry of which I am part – meeting planners and show producers, catering companies, lighting and AV groups, and even the small little companies that stuff the goodie bags and boxes that you would receive when you went to a conference or event.

There’s not a lot of work, a lot of pain and hurt, and not a lot of good news when it comes to going back to business.

That said, I did not find a virtual room of people bemoaning about the fact that their world has changed – I did find a place of people with ideas, concepts and imagination! The most powerful thing I learned – and I knew that it was true but needed to experience it first hand – is that there are a lot of other people out there like me, from different parts of this industry, who are working hard to reinvent this industry. Refusing to give up, reinventing and transforming, building out new ideas to create a new disruptive industry that provides a critical service to companies and industry.

What did I learn? There are all kinds of ways to structure audience interaction into a virtual event that I knew nothing about. That AV companies are thinking big about how to empower virtual event speakers with equipment to put on a great ‘show’ – any AV companies are working with the idea of a ‘studio in a box’ by which they  send all the necessary equipment to a high profile speaker for an event. I discovered that there is quite a bit of fascinating virtual event technology out there that goes beyond the basic infrastructure provided by platforms like Zoom or GotoMeeting.

I must tell you this – I found it massively inspirational and a breath of fresh air – I needed the kick of inspiration to help me to learn about all the other wonderful things occurring in an industry of which I am part. I knew there were a lot of things going on ‘out there,’ but so far, I’ve been extremely busy on reinventing myself before I set off on the voyage of discovering new lands of transformation.

And it was wonderful – so much so, that I’ve already signed up for a 3-day virtual industry event later in October!

Learn to learn again – don’t get stuck! It’s when we stop learning that we stop innovating, start stagnating, and become stuck in that proverbial rut!

Daily Inspiration: “You are best defined by the barriers you overcome, not by the failure they might impose on you!”

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“You are best defined by the barriers you overcome, not by the failure they might impose on you!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

Who would have thought 6 months ago that I’d have a full fledged city skyline view from my basement – but here we are! The home studio is just cooking along.

Failure teaches you, informs you, thrills you, scares you, embarrasses you – but it also shows you the path forward. Failure is the drug that never stops giving – it can be a wonderful thing if you inhale it deeply!

The fact is, there’s not a lot of great success which comes by without wonderful failure. It is the oxygen that fuels your future.

Enough metaphorical waxing. Great failures lead to great opportunity!

Google Glass! Almost a joke – but just the other day, we had the implant of an actual bionic eye in Australia. Implantable enhanced vision technology is coming at us at staggering speed, and we will see the marriage of bionic eyesight with heads-up display information as seen with Google Glass.

The FitBit? But a momentary failure in our history of sports tracking technology – a fad, the Pet Rock of wearables! But today, millions track their health, activities and more through their Apple watches and smartphones.

The Apple Newton? iPhones! Apple Lisa? iMac!

The list goes on – history is littered with the wreckage of spectacularly successful failure.

The point of this is this – if you aren’t failing enough, you aren’t trying hard to enough to succeed!

 

Daily Inspiration: “The future always tells you what to do!” | “You’ll always know when it’s time to double down on your destiny!”

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“The future always tells you what to do!” | “You’ll always know when it’s time to double down on your destiny!” – – Futurist Jim Carroll

Speakers who travel the planet live and die by their ‘highlight reel’… a short video clip that demonstrates their style and content on the stage. In the era of collapsed attention spans, people might watch but 30 seconds of video – and from that make a decision on whether to bring you in for their event. They might also glance at a few of your client logos, read your ‘brand positioning,’ and then decide whether they’re prepared to fly you to the other side of the world, paying handsomely you for your 30 minutes or 1 hour of insight.

The result? A highlight reel – and thet path to discover it – needs to be concise and to the point. With that, a ‘landing page’ – the home page of your Web site – needs to be concise, tightly focused and specifically branded. Just over a year and a half ago, I had the folks at Studio1Design in Melbourne, Australia, redesign my Web site to try to achieve this goal – the previous design was over ten years old and was showing its age. They did a brilliant job!

But that home page branded me as a ‘stage’ speaker, appearing ‘live’ at events. It ‘screamed’ on stage, in person, in a room. It didn’t get across the fantastic work and investment I’ve put into mastering this new digital, virtual format…

Of course, the world of on-stage performances is long gone – and will likely not be back in any substantive fashion for years to come. It’s disappointing, because my goal was to ride into retirement with great global events, massive stages, adventurous opportunities – one of my last events was for the World Bank in Morocco. But, on the flip side, so far, I’m alive and healthy.

How long before I might get back to the stage? I probably won’t, in all honesty. Since this global crisis began, I’ve been following quite a few notable pandemic experts and other professionals to try to get a real sense as to how our world might now unfold.

My thinking for quite some time has been that a) we don’t quickly get a vaccines and things go back to where they were and b) the timing is longer than people think – in the absence of negligent political homicide, we won’t see a vaccine until well into 2021, if that.

Not only that, but a vaccine is not a magic cure. The scientists are clearly indicating that it’s a long, long path out. My latest interpretation, hardened as an opinion based on a recent article out of The Lancet, tells me we won’t be out of this (or into any sense of normalcy) until 2022 or 2023 – or even further. If you care to, read this article, highlighted.

The upshot of this is that my stage life is gone, for years, and my virtual life is my new home. That change could very well be permanent. Accepting your reality is the first step;…

With that in mind, I had my Web design team come up with a bold new look for my home page, as well as creating the same type of branding for my ‘virtual events’ page. I’m thrilled with the results!

And as an aside, it looks a far bit better than my original Web page design of 1994, which I put together myself with some clip art! I’m going to work on a retrospective later today!

When the future changes, the future tells you what to do!

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THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO ARE FAST features the best of the insight from Jim Carroll’s blog, in which he
covers issues related to creativity, innovation and future trends.

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Definitions: Core • Deep Dive I • Deep Dive II
Series: 2026 • Megatrends • Forward • Tomorrow