Changing your Twitter profile = creating a new identity

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Yesterday I updated my Twitter profile after not having changed it for well over a year. The image and words are now:

Futurist/ Entrepreneur/ Keynote Speaker/ Author and contributor to global brain. A visual slice of my neural activity: https://bit.ly/AHTGpBizModel

In my keynotes on social media and success in a connected world I tell the audience that how you are seen online IS your identity. In our social media profiles we can select just an image and a few words that many will use to form their views of you.
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Scoop: Corporate directors understand change and embrace governance for transformation

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I gave my keynote on How Technology is Transforming Business for Australian Institute of Company Directors this morning here in Beijing.

Based on the responses of the 500+ company directors in the audience, they absolutely understand the need for change. Here are their answers on audience response units to questions I posed during my presentation.


One of my key messages was that social and technological change are inextricable – they drive each other and cannot be understood separately. What is interesting is that directors felt that social drivers are more important than technology drivers. Certainly I believe that social change is moving at least as fast as technological change, and responding to this is fundamental to the success of organizations.
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New Prezi: The Transformation of Business

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I am always trying to get better at using visuals to support my keynotes and presentations. I use many videos, and we have created quite a few Flash animations that I embed into Powerpoint to make them more dynamic. I have been aware of Prezi as a dynamic presentation tool for some time now, though have never yet taken the leap to move my entire presentation into this format.

The launch of our Transformation of Business framework has provided a great opportunity to use Prezi. The entire story is laid out on a page, and Prezi enables me to zoom in, pan across, and illustrate they key points in the framework. I first used this on Tuesday for an executive team strategy session, and will be using it in a number of other presentations and keynotes over the next week.

As usual my disclaimer is that the slides are designed to accompany my presentation and not to stand alone, however they might be of interest and value even if you haven’t attended one of my keynotes.

Transformation of Business 1 on Prezi

New Framework: The Transformation of Business

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Our latest visual framework is The Transformation of Business.

Many of my keynotes and client workshops at the moment are to high-level business audiences such as boards of directors and top executive teams who need to understand the essence of how the business landscape is changing and the implications. While you can never capture the rich diversity of change on a single page, this framework seeks to distill the issues in a meaningful way.


Click on the image for full-size pdf

[NOTE:] Also see the presentation in Prezi format for more detail.

I’ll soon provide some more detailed commentary on the framework, particularly on the vital point that this framework leads to: Governance for Transformation.

Here is the content in text format:
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Making sense of and filtering information overload

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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.
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Launch of Future of Sex: why we’re doing it

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My company Advanced Human Technologies has recently launched the website Future of Sex (futureofsex.net), which explores the intersection of technology and human sexuality.

A few people have been surprised to see us launch this site, as it is a little different from the topics we usually cover. Here is the background and reasons why we’ve launched the site.
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The Future of Customer Relationships: notes on where they are going

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I’ve just finished a teleconference on The Future of Customer Relationships (follow the link for an overview), hosted by Focus.com and Brian Vellmure.

The panellists were:
Ross Dawson
Dr. Graham Hill
Dr. Michael Wu
Denis Pombriant

Our discussion will be available shortly as an mp3. For now, here are a few quick notes I took from the discussion. We certainly didn’t have the time to cover the full scope of the future of customer relationships in our 45 minute discussion, but we did get across some very interesting issues.

We started by talking about the big picture, where I covered a few of the themes from my map of the ExaTrends of the Decade.

MapoftheDecade_500w.jpg

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Blogging is fragmenting into multi-platform content creation – long live blogging!

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Drawing on a new Pew Internet report on Social Media & Mobile Internet Use Among Teens and Young Adults, The New York Times headline is: Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter.

It’s a misleading headline, so let’s unpack it.

First, blogs are not waning. All the major blogging platforms are growing. As noted in the article, Blogger’s visitors were up 9% last year, while WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg on his blog notes that WordPress is up 80 million views in the same period.

Second, while it is true that younger adults are moving away from blogging in its traditional sense, older adults are blogging more than they used to.

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Living Networks – Chapter 10: Liberating Individuals – Network Strategy for Free Agents

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Download Chapter 10 of Living Networks on Liberating Individuals

Every chapter of Living Networks is being released on this blog as a free download, together with commentary and updated perspectives since its original publication in 2002.

For the full Table of Contents and free chapter downloads see the Living Networks website or the Book Launch/ Preface to the Anniversary Edition.

Living Networks – Chapter 10: Liberating Individuals

Network Strategy for Free Agents

OVERVIEW:As the rise of the connected economy blurs organizational boundaries, the individual is increasingly becoming the center of value creation. Workers—whether they are employed or free agents—must develop and implement effective career strategies. They need to position themselves effectively in the evolving networks, and ensure they extract value from the intellectual property they create.

Chapter 10 of Living Networks – Commentary and updated perspectives

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ExaTrend of the 2010s: Haves and Have Nots

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Excerpt from the list of ExaTrends of the 2010s:

HAVES AND HAVE NOTS

Across communities, nations, and the world, there is a keen risk of increasing separation between those who have access to technology, tools, and basic needs, and those who do not. This is not inevitable. However it will require concerted action around the world to avoid an increasing schism between us.

See the full 3 page framework including the Map of the Decade, full descriptions of the ExaTrends of the Decade, and the 11 themes of the Zeitgeist of 2011 by clicking on the image:

ExaTrends of the Decade and Zeitgeist for 2011:

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