Last week just before I flew to China I did an interview on SkyNews Tech Report about the future of today’s technology.
Topics we discussed in the interview include:
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Much ink and many pixels had already been shed on Britain’s super injunction laws before the last week, but the Ryan Giggs case has pushed this into the stratosphere.
In case you’ve been hiding in a closet, Manchester United star Ryan Giggs was awarded a “super injunction” from British courts, forbidding the press to report that he was alleged to have had an affair with Big Brother contestant Imogen Thomas, or even that they had been forbidden to report on it. Some 75,000 tweets and 1 use of parliamentary privilege later, everyone knows anyway.
This is one of those seemingly small incidents on which major social turning points hinge. So many fundamental issues of society, media, and our future are tied into this that it is difficult to disentangle. Here are a few compact thoughts and critical issues on what is at the heart of this extraordinary situation.
– The current super injunction law was created to respond to excesses of the press
The British tabloids have a tradition as world-leaders in muck-racking and invasion of privacy. Their excesses led to what were probably at the time reasonable laws to limit negative social impact from their activities. However the media landscape of today is barely recognizable from when these laws were enacted in 1990.
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Yesterday I was interviewed by fellow futurist Eric Garland for a podcast series which was also featured on the World Future Society website. You can listen to the podcast on those sites or below (note that I have had some problems with the plug-in).
Our discussion ranged across global demographics, shifts in manufacturing, robotics, and far more. What I thought was worth pulling out of the conversation were my comments on the role of futurists and futures thinking.
The first point is that I am completely comfortable with the term futurist, even if some perceive it as lacking credibility. I’ve long been meaning to write about my views on the word ‘futurist’. I’ll be back soon on that point.
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I am at the annual conference of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, held this year in Beijing. It is fantastic that Australian company directors are choosing to meet here rather than at home, broadening vistas and opportunities. The Grand Ballroom at China World Hotel is full, with around 500 people here.
While I don’t have access to Twitter from my iPad (I haven’t had time to try to set up a VPN on my laptop yet) I can at least blog, so I might be doing more of that while I am in Beijing this week.
For now, here are my presentation slides for my keynote on How Technology is Transforming Business this morning. These are just a slightly different version of the presentation I shared last week. You can also find a pdf version of the Transformation of Business framework on which the presentation is based.
I saw Connected: The Film by Tiffany Shlain last night at its Australian premiere, organized by Annalie Killian.
The first thing I have to say is that the film is absolutely fantastic. It nails how we as humans live an intensely interdependent world, and how our recognition of and response to that will determine our future. I think the more people that see it the better, so I dearly hope it will get a healthy – or even massive – audience.
I have to say I am not an independent reviewer, and that in itself is a highly relevant story.
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The Australian Chambers Business Congress on 1-2 June is shaping up to be one of the top business conferences of the year in Australia, with an awesome speaker line-up. The Congress is organized by the Australian Chamber Alliance, a consortium of all the major business chambers across Australia.
Speakers include Malcolm Gladwell, Michael Porter, Steve Wozniak, Tony Abbott, Anna Bligh plus an array of some of most interesting people in business in Australia and worldwide.
I will be speaking at the Congress on Friday 3rd about Crowdsourcing.
I will do my best to pack in as many practical insights as I can on how to grow your business using crowdsourcing tools. This topic will be a major focus for me for the rest of the year, so stand by for plenty of content on how to get results from crowdsourcing – the scoop will be at the Congress!
The opportunity for television is to become a truly participative media.
Over the last year or so my views on the future of TV have significantly shifted, to be far more optimistic for the media. Last year I gave the opening keynote at the Regional TV Marketing conference, and subsequently wrote how The Future of TV is community. In my keynote I reflected on how the power of big screen will remain truly compelling. However TV must transcend the classic broadcast mentality that implies a passive audience. It needs to create participative experiences, from which comes real community. Which, incidentally, will lead to the most powerful business models for the future of television, as I mentioned in some thoughts on TV in 10 years from now.
After a very slow start, TV channels appear to be getting the message and getting on board. The latest is What’s Trending, a “new kind of news show” from CBS News. Here is the trailer.
I’m in Beijing next week to do the keynote at the AICD conference on How Technology is Transforming Business and guest lecture at Beijing Foreign Studies University on The End of Newspapers and Future of News.
While I’m in Beijing I’m keen to catch up with any local folks on Twitter/ Weibo/ social media and those interested in the future of media. As such I’ve set up a Beijing Future of Media/ Social Media meetup on Eventbrite. Please register on the page if you can join us.
Date: May 19
Time: 12pm – 2pm
Location: Union Bar and Grille
S6-31, 3/F, Bldg 6, Sanlitun Village South, 19 Sanlitun Lu, Chaoyang District
朝阳区三里屯路19号三里屯Village南区6号楼3层S6-31
If you’re in Beijing next week would be great to see you there, or if you think there are people who might like to come along, please pass on word.
Thanks to @beijingboyce and @benjaminjoffe for the pointers and support!!
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.
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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