I wrote up some brief notes from the Gallery of Modern Art’s recent panel discussion on the future of the 21st century.
Radio National’s Future Tense program subsequently broadcast the discussion and provided a full transcript for those who would like to see more of the content.
One of the many interesting topics of discussion was dealing with information overload. This is an issue that often comes up as a futurist, as people wonder how you keep across everything that’s happening. I’ll write in more detail on this later, but for now here is the transcript from the panel (somewhat mangled from the original) including comments from myself and Tim Longhurst. Some of the key points were:
* The new generation of web tools are enabling us to collaborate to filter massive information overload
* Creating visual frameworks can be a powerful way of making sense of information
* The role of futurists is pattern recognition
* Selective filtering to reinforce our biases is not new
* Most of us will experience more diverse views than before the web
Antony Funnell: Ross Dawson, I’ve given up looking at the technology section in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald because I just can’t keep pace with it – there just seems to be so much change going on. As a futurist, I just wonder how difficult it is to actually keep ahead of all that, to be involved in trying to forecast trends for business or organisations and be on the money, not feel like you’ve suddenly fallen behind the curve.
Read more →
Beijing lecture: The end of newspapers and the future of news
By Ross DawsonWhen I’m in Beijing next week I’ll be doing a guest lecture at Beijing Foreign Studies University, China’s premier international studies university, where many of the country’s foreign ministers have studied.
I will be speaking on The end of newspapers and the future of news. While many are familiar with my Newspaper Extinction Timeline, that is just one aspect of what I consider a far more interesting topic, the future of news.
Here are full details.
Date: May 19, 2011
Time: 4:30pm – 7:00pm
Location: 北京外国语大学东院日本学研究中心三层多功能厅 (Multimedia Hall, 3rd Floor, Japanese Studies Center, East Campus, Beijing Foreign Studies University).
Please do pass on word to people in Beijing who may be interested. I’ll also be doing a Beijing Social Media Meetup at lunch same day – I’m keen to meet interesting folk while I’m in town!
Where news website traffic comes from: Google vs Facebook
By Ross DawsonThe Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism has recently released some very interesting research on Navigating News Online, digging into how people navigate to news sites and what takes them away.
Among the interesting insights was data on how news website traffic comes from Google and Facebook, shown below.
Read more →
5 Driving Forces of Global Professional Services
By Ross DawsonA little while ago I co-authored a White Paper for SAP titled Service Delivery Innovation: Creating Client Value and Enhancing Profitability, focused on large professional services organisations.
Later today I’m running a strategy workshop for a large technology vendor with a significant professional services arm. In the course of preparing for the session I looked back at this paper. While I would probably frame my views somewhat differently now, I thought the section of driving forces was worth sharing.
DRIVING FORCES
Faced with increasingly sophisticated clients, market globalization, and evolving technology, professional services firms must evaluate their business models to ensure they can delivery the greatest value to every client on every project. If firms continue to do business as usual, they will face eroding margins, increased operational complexity and risk, and underleveraged partnerships. Let’s take a moment to look at each of the five fundamental driving forces at work in the professional services marketplace today before we explore how firms can proactively address these trends.
Source: Service Delivery Innovation SAP White Paper
Read more →
Making sense of and filtering information overload
By Ross DawsonI wrote up some brief notes from the Gallery of Modern Art’s recent panel discussion on the future of the 21st century.
Radio National’s Future Tense program subsequently broadcast the discussion and provided a full transcript for those who would like to see more of the content.
One of the many interesting topics of discussion was dealing with information overload. This is an issue that often comes up as a futurist, as people wonder how you keep across everything that’s happening. I’ll write in more detail on this later, but for now here is the transcript from the panel (somewhat mangled from the original) including comments from myself and Tim Longhurst. Some of the key points were:
* The new generation of web tools are enabling us to collaborate to filter massive information overload
* Creating visual frameworks can be a powerful way of making sense of information
* The role of futurists is pattern recognition
* Selective filtering to reinforce our biases is not new
* Most of us will experience more diverse views than before the web
Antony Funnell: Ross Dawson, I’ve given up looking at the technology section in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald because I just can’t keep pace with it – there just seems to be so much change going on. As a futurist, I just wonder how difficult it is to actually keep ahead of all that, to be involved in trying to forecast trends for business or organisations and be on the money, not feel like you’ve suddenly fallen behind the curve.
Read more →
How tablets are changing how we use tech
By Ross DawsonNielsen has come out with some interesting research on tablet usage in the US and associated changes in the use of other devices.
Source: Nielsen
It seems that some of the data may simply reflect changes in usage rather than the direct impact of the use of tablets.
For example, Nielsen highlights the fact that 25% of people are using their portable gaming consoles less after having bought a tablet. However they neglect to note that 26% say they are using them MORE after having bought a tablet.
Read more →
6 uncertainties that will shape the future of mobile operating systems
By Ross DawsonYesterday I completed co-presenting the three-part Ketchum webinar series on Tapping the Power of Mobile. The feedback was excellent, with record audiences of Ketchum clients and staff for the series. Here is an overview of the content we covered over the three webinars.
The final session was on Where Mobile is Going, which looked at the mobile industry landscape, as well as the implications of emerging technologies such as 4G and LTE, next generation augmented reality, NFC and mobile payments, new interfaces such as video glasses and pico projectors, mobile sensors, and far more.
I began by looking at the mobile operating system landscape, showing the forecasts recently made by Gartner, as below.
Read more →
What would you do if you could solve a major world problem with technology and innovation?
By Ross DawsonThe Imagine Cup is an initiative by Microsoft in which students from around the world to come up with technology solutions to solve the world’s biggest problems.
This morning at an event at the Powerhouse Museum it was announced that Sydney will host the global 2012 Imagine Cup. They showed a video, as below, of a number of people saying what world problem they would solve.
In the video I said that I would apply technology to learning, to ensure that all children around the world could learn to their fullest capability and fulfil their potential.
It is a great question to ask, because from questions, answers often come. What world problem would you solve with technology and innovation?
3 major shifts in the nature of trust in business relationships
By Ross DawsonWhile the subtitle of my book Living Networks referred to the ‘hyperconnected’ economy, the reality is that living networks are built primarily on human relationships based on mutual knowledge and trust. Here is a brief excerpt from the book about what is changing in the world of trust.
Trust is a business perennial—from the days when chickens were traded for cowrie shells until we start trading with extraterrestrial races, trust has been and always will be the central factor in business relationships. However in the networked world there are three vital shifts in the nature and role of trust.
Read more →
Keynote on Success in a Connected World at Think Business next week
By Ross DawsonMay is going to be a very busy month. I have 10 speaking engagements in Australia and China over the next five weeks, as well as several ongoing consulting projects, and an ever-increasing array of active web projects on our plate.
Next week my one public event will be a breakfast keynote on Friday 13 for Business Enterprise Centre (BEC) St George and Sutherland Shire, at Doltone House Sylvania Waters.
See here for full details and registration (just $33). My topic is:
Success in a Connected World
Read more →
Telling the story of how the Osama news came out on Twitter first
By Ross DawsonThis definitely counts as big news. Osama Bin Laden is dead after over a decade of trying.
Interestingly, in many news outlets the fact that the news leaked on Twitter before President Obama’s announcement to the nation almost rivals the news itself. Just in following my own Twitter stream I knew the news (or at least the rumor) well before it appeared in the mainstream media.
ABC News has compiled a stream of the Twitter messages and mainstream media responses as they came out, as below. They used Storify, a service that just came out of beta last week. Burt Herman, co-founder of Storify, spoke at our Future of Crowdsourcing Summit last year to talk about how it provides a platform for people to collectively tell stories.
Read more →