“Don’t avoid taking risks – instead consider the consequences of not taking them” – Futurist Jim Carroll
Keynote: The Jetsons Have Arrived 50 Years Early: What Are YOU Going to Do About It?
Here’s some fun – a client had me write up a new topic description and topic focus that would take a look at the trends around us today that are taking us to tomorrow faster.
As we spoke, I had them watch the Spock video on my Web site (below) and they loved it! That got us talking further around the issue of accelerating change and how they needed to prepare their association members for that fact. Which, of course, led to a discussion of the broad range of trends, technologies, ideas and scientific advances that are bringing the world of the Jetsons – that 1960’s cartoon TV show, set in the year 2016 — to our world sooner than people thought!
And we settled on a really cool keynote title.
So here it is! Have at it, and consider it for your own association or leadership event.
Keynote: The Jetsons Have Arrived 50 Years Early: What Are YOU Going to Do About It
We have a new vocabulary! Self-driving cars, 3d printing, crowdfunding, the sharing economy, blockchains, personal drones, swarmbots, smart dust, vertical farms, Internet of Things, cognitive computing, smart factories, bi0-connectivity, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, bio-engineered body parts, quantum computing, intelligent farms, smart clothing, hyperconnected drugs, active packaging.
What seemed to be science fiction just a few short years ago has become a reality today, as time compresses and the future accelerates. George Jetson lived in the future, but the future is here now.
Take a voyage with Futurist Jim Carroll into the world of tomorrow, today, as he outlines the key trends, technologies, ideas and initiatives that are transforming our world around us at hypersonic speed. A world in which the medical tri-corder of the 23rd century is available today, the idea of Rosie the Robot is no longer a figment of our imagination but an emerging reality, and the flying car of the future will quickly morph into reality from today’s fast moving drone industry.
In just a few short years, it will the year 2025, and the world of tomorrow will be your reality of today.
Are you ready for what comes next?
Things I’ve Learned from Golfing with a Grade 5 Teacher!
I spend a lot of time in conversation with CEOs, leading researchers, scientists, and others as I prepare for my keynotes and leadership meetings. I undertake a lot of detailed research, often reading sets of hundreds of articles on a very specific subject as I prepare for a talk. My mind is a sponge, absorbing and ingestion insight and information at a furious pace.
But I’ve also learned that you can often learn from the most unexpected sources. Such as a grade 5 teacher who, by virtue of serendipity, becomes a member of your home golf course, and ends up becoming a regular buddy on the links.
I don’t know how many times he has started a conversation with the phrase, “Let me tell you about Finland...” but that caught my attention today as the article above floated into my Facebook feed this morning.
It’s one of the trends that has been telling me about by virtue of his experience in the classroom. You can learn a lot about an industry — say, the future of education, where I do a lot of keynotes — but listening to folks in the trenches. Such as a grade 5 teacher. Here are some of his observations:
- kids learn differently today than they did even just 5 years ago, and it will be even more different just 5 years from now. He caught my attention with that observation – what is happening in the classroom in terms of the ingestion of knowledge is happening faster than we think. It’s all based on interactivity, video, and tablets. Today’s 10 year old has grown up in the technology tsunami and simply acquires knowledge differently. Tomorrow’s grade 5 will be fundamentally different from the grade 5 kid of today. Change is relentless.
- the ingestion of knowledge is all about video. Youtube and other sources are more relevant today than any sort of textbook. This echoes my own experience with my sons, now 21 and 23. I spoke about this during a keynote for the Institute for Credentialing Excellence in Phoenix a few years ago. Check the video in my post The Future of Education: Rethinking Opportunity in the Era of Knowledge Velocity. The son referred to in that video has a golf handicap of 1. He’s scratch. He changed his golf grip, not by working with a golf pro, but by watching YouTube videos.
- it’s about short, sharp shocks of knowledge. The education system today talks about curriculum and pedagogy and phrases and methodology that were cool in the 1960s. The methodology is barely relevant today, at all. Everyone knows that. No one really knows how to fix it, so those in the classroom figure out how to fix it on their own. Disruption is occurring, one grade 5 teacher at a time.
- the structure is irrelevant to them. Their minds are so busy, flitting from one concept to another, and the education system in North America hasn’t changed to deal with that reality. Finland has. Change needs to come, and it needs to come fast!
- they are more world aware than we think. We might often think that the mind of a 10-year-old isn’t very connected. This generation is global, aware, in a way that no other generation in the history of mankind has ever been. He indicated that one of his most painful days as a teacher was yesterday as some of the kids asked and talked about the rise of Donald Trump — with all of his moral failings on public display. How do you deal with that? We’re in uncharted territory here…
- even their parents are different and expect so much more. The parents of today’s 10 year old are the world’s first post MSDOS generation. When they began using computers, Mac and Windows were already the interfaces of choice. The Internet was a part of their lives for as long as they’ve had busy, inquiring minds. They are technology-immersed too and carry none of the technology hangups of their baby-boomer predecessors too. They too expect change, technology, and interactivity to drive the education system. They are not getting it at an official level.
But wait, there’s more! Lots to learn! Lots more golf is yet to come!
We all know that the education system is massively stuck in an innovation rut, unable to deal with the reality of change that swirls around it. And so many questions are raised by the reality on the ground. Such as: what the heck is the world of human resources going to do as today’s 10 year old becomes a part of the workforce in just 10 years?
What can you learn from this? Certainly this: seek to learn from unconventional sources. Just as today’s grade 5 student learns in different ways that are not part of the education system.
I certainly intend to, and as the golfing season draws to a close, think I need to commit to going into his classroom and doing another presentation for his class, as I did last year. Not to present my views — but really, to try to listen to theirs!
Here’s a video I filmed with his kids in his class last year. Invigorating stuff! Here’s a promo clip I filmed for my opening keynote for EdNet 2016 in Dallas a few months ago. When we think about the future of education, we need to think about the careers that the kids of today will be working in. Many of those careers don’t exist. Here’s what the kids think about that!
A Keynote for 4,000 – The First 3 Minutes!
What’s it like to walk on stage in front of 4,000 people? It’s like this! I’ve got just a few minutes to grab their attention, bend their minds, and align them to the future!
10 Reasons Why I Still Believe In The Future
This is a really hard post to write. As much of the world reels with the early stages of the seven stages of election grief, I think its important to think about the realities of the future.
Here’s a slide I used on stage one time, talking about the challenges people have with shock elections:
Lots of people are struggling today, and are on various places on the curve.
As a futurist, here’s what I know. I expect I will be writing and speaking about these issues a lot more in the future. For now, lets leave it at this:
- Science still exponentiates
- Knowledge still accelerates
- The global idea machine still reverberates
- Big thinkers still think of how to solve big challenges
- Hyper-connectivity still provides for a reimagined future
- Inventors still invent
- Dreamers still dream
- Innovators still innovate
- Doers still do
- Teachers still teach
- Change agents can still effect positive change
- Optimism can always overcome pessimism
- No barrier to the future is insurmountable with the right determination
- At the end of the day, the majority of people are still decent
I started working on a list of 10 things.
I got to 14.
Let’s take that as a good sign.
A Word about Customization: What’s my Secret Sauce?
So … in an exploratory conference call with a client today, who is looking at me to keynote an upcoming professional services conference, the question was stated:
“We’ve spoken to quite a few futurists and speakers, and all of them say they customize. And you said that too. So how do we know you’re the right guy?”
I love this type of question, because it gives me a real opportunity to speak to the passion that I bring to my work.
And that is, when you bring me in for a keynote, leadership or customer event, you are getting real insight based on 25 years as a trend observer. As well, if you look at my client list, you’ll understand that I get to talk with a lot of CEO’s, senior executives, associations leaders and thought leaders. I’ve had the opportunity to study up close what real organizations are doing to deal with real challenges. That type of unique insight comes into the room….
But wait, there’s more! Let’s not to forget my secret sauce: detailed, specific, real, specific, concrete research, based on real information. That sort of matters!
Wait, you say, doesn’t every speaker or topic expert do that? No comment….
What’s the source of much of my material? It’s this : I use a pretty intensive information research service that allows me to hit the right articles, industry reports, scientific publications, research journals and other information sources that help me zoom in on important trends, issues, statistics and observations. With that, I’m bringing information into the room. It’s a well-honed skill – I’ve been doing this for a long time — 30 years, in fact. (Indeed, for a time in the early 1990’s, before the Internet came along, I was already doing what was known as “competitive intelligence research” utilizing similar online research databases. I go back with that industry to about 1986…..)
When you engage me on a very customized topic area, I take delight in taking on the challenge of finding out what’s going on with the issues, trends and topic areas that you worry about.
Here are some examples: take some time to read through what I read. They are all in PDF format. A few hundred articles… which I carefully read, analyzed, and extracted the relevant bits, and boiled down into concise keynotes and trend reports for my keynotes. (Not all of the articles are represented in the subset below) Then tead the blog post which resulted after my keynote, some of which was covered in my talk.
- 2016smartclothing research material and subsequent blog post
- 2015firefighters research material and subsequent blog post
- 2015physicianrecruitment research material and blog post
Some speakers will give you a really cool future-oriented talk based on really cool future trends, but not much more.
And not to be rude, but they will probably deliver the same talk for your group that they did for an entirely different industry and audience the week before. Which, at the end of the day, leaves you with a really fun and exciting keynote. But no real depth of insight.
Interested in real insight? Give me a call. I pick up the phone!
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