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At the Canon CIO event I spoke at last week, jazz trumpeter extraordinaire James Morrison and his band played music through the event. James also gave a brief presentation on the event’s theme of the future. He said that not so long ago music was not chosen by consumers, but pushed on us by record
Continue reading The liberation of music for consumers and musicians
Earlier this week I spoke at an excellent event organized by Canon for the CIOs of major organizations. During an extended lunch, a diverse range of ‘celebrities’ including TV personalities, authors, and musicians gave short presentations. I spoke about how the evolving intersection of technology and society is shaping employees’ expectations, particularly in the technology
Continue reading 5 facets of employees’ increasing technology expectations
A nice video titled On the Brink of a Networked Society, shown below, has just been launched by Ericsson. It includes a series of excellent interviews exploring some of the many implications and directions of a connected world, including health, industry structure, how we socialize, and far more. It’s well worth watching. The single quote
The Newspaper Extinction Timeline below was launched one year ago today. It received plenty of attention, getting published in newspapers and other mainstream media in over 30 countries, and being seen well over a million times. Click on image to download full framework Today a commenter on the original post asked me if anything had
Continue reading Revisiting the Newspaper Extinction Timeline on its first anniversary
Today influence ratings service Klout significantly changed its rankings. Last week Klout CEO Joe Fernandez announced there would be changes, saying “a majority of users will see their scores stay the same or go up but some users will see a drop”. It seems that was not correct, and rankings levels have been revised such
As part of News Limited’s launch of its digital subscription plans that I wrote about earlier this week, News has just launched the site Future of Journalism, (subtitle: A Discussion Hosted by News Limited). It includes videos, infographics (very clearly taking a cue from social media here!), and articles. The site says “We have gathered
Continue reading The latest on the future of journalism: where value creation means jobs
Earlier this week I was interviewed on ABC TV about the future of cars, in a program to coincide with the start of World Solar Challenge, the annual solar car race covering the 3,021 km from Darwin to Adelaide. I talked about several facets of the future of cars, including changing energy sources and their
Luxury is “the opposite of vulgarity” said Coco Chanel. It is also in many ways the opposite of poverty. As people in developed countries – and increasing number in developing countries – grow more affluent, luxury defines what their wealth can be spent on once theirbasic needs are assuaged. In a positive sense, this is
Twitter has moved from asking ‘what are you doing now?’ to ‘what’s happening?’, and now describes itself as an ‘information network‘. The Twitter News Network is a manifestation of the global brain, in which we create value for others by contributing to the visibility and availability of high-value information. While many contribute nothing of value
Continue reading The Question: What is the most interesting thing you came across today?
I recently gave the opening keynote at Local Government Association of Tasmania‘s annual conference. On the occasion of their 100th anniversary, they wanted to look forward to the future as well as to their past. Incidentally, the event was just two days after I gave the opening keynote at the Institute of Public Administration NSW’s
My post yesterday about Angry Birds and productivity at work: why distractions can help has generated some good discussion. Ever a source of great information, Arie Goldshlager has now pointed me to additional research that supports the National University of Singapore study I pointed to in the article. In this brief video Dr Brent Coker
Continue reading More research: browsing for fun at work boosts productivity
On Friday a journalist from the Herald Sun called me to ask for my response to an ‘analysis’ suggesting that $1.4 billion of worker productivity is lost to playing Angry Birds. It seems that my answers turned the story around from what could have been yet another populist headline to Is Angry Birds the new
Continue reading Angry Birds and productivity at work: why distractions can help
Research company Nielsen has just released detailed statistics on online activity, focusing on social networks and blogging, which at 22.5% of time spent online dominate Internet usage, with more than twice the next category games, at 9.8% of time spent. Below are a few highlights and comments from the full report. Facebook completely dominates the
Continue reading Detailed stats: Social networks dominate Internet usage, Australia still #1
Tomorrow morning I will give the keynote at Mainstreet Australia conference on the topic of Creating the Future of Business. My slides are below. The usual caveat applies – the slides are designed to accompany my presentation and not to stand alone. Keynote: Creating the Future of Retail Spaces View more presentations from rossdawson While
The distribution of music taste and consumption has shifted dramatically over the decade years, and will continue to evolve significantly in coming years. Back before a dozen years ago, radio and MTV exposed people to a limited range of music from label playlists, and the cost of records and CDs made it hard to experiment
Continue reading The implications of the new broader, flatter distribution of music taste
This month’s Qantas Business Radio has a technology focus, including interviews with Nick Leeder, Managing Director of Google Australia, Simon Hackett, Managing Director of Internode, Peter Williams, CEO of Deloitte Digital, Charis Palmer, Editor of Technology Spectator, Ian Hogg, CEO of FremantleMedia Australia, as well as myself. There are some great insights in the various
Continue reading Qantas Business Radio: why crowdsourcing will drive the future of organizations
How much value do you get from the web? A lot more than you pay for it. We may quibble about the cost of bandwidth and online services, and in some cases we should, but the reality is the value we get from connectivity and web-based services is massive. Earlier this year McKinsey & Co
Continue reading The extraordinary personal value of the web: $140 billion is the tip of the iceberg
The Smithsonian Institute and Pew Research Center recently did a survey of Americans on what they thought would happen by the year 2050. Good created a nice infographic, below, summarizing some of the data. Click on the image for the full size version. Image source: Good The Smithsonian magazine has also created a nice animation
Continuing our series of conversations with Gerd Leonhard of The Futures Agency, and myself, here is the one we kicked off with: what is the role of a futurist? Here are a few of the topics we discuss:
The vast majority of my work over the years has been in the business sector, however I am increasingly being pulled into government and the public sector. As I spend more time in the government space, it is becoming increasingly evident to me that the public sector can lead fundamental positive structural shifts in society
Continue reading Launch of the Transformation of Government framework
Tomorrow morning I am giving the opening keynote at the annual conference of Institute of Public Affairs New South Wales, on the topic of The Transformation of Government. Originally I was scheduled to follow the recently elected NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell, but he has had to travel to Beijing, so he will present at the
Continue reading Keynote slides on The Transformation of Government
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: http://bit.ly/AHTGpBizModel In my keynotes on social media and success in a connected world I tell the
Continue reading Changing your Twitter profile = creating a new identity
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.
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
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
Continue reading New Framework: The Transformation of Business
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
Continue reading Making sense of and filtering information overload
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
Continue reading Launch of Future of Sex: why we’re doing it
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
Continue reading The Future of Customer Relationships: notes on where they are going
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.
Continue reading Blogging is fragmenting into multi-platform content creation – long live blogging!
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/
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
The launch last week in San Francisco of Tibbr, the social enterprise computing platform from TIBCO, attracted an immense amount of attention from the leading commentators in the space. The offering is not directly comparable to any existing enterprise social software suites, and draws on TIBCO’s strong integration heritage to create an offering that works
Continue reading Review of Tibbr social enterprise platform – keynote at Sydney launch on February 8
Search is not getting better, or it certainly seems that way. In the evolutionary battle between search engines and search engine marketers, the search engines are not keeping ahead, and crap content is finding its way into the top of search results. This makes search users unhappy, opens the way for alternatives to the dominant
Continue reading The evolution of search will refine the spectrum of quality in media
Excerpt from the list of ExaTrends of the 2010s: GLOBAL TALENT Talent is everywhere. As organizations shift to networks, transcending workplaces, success will be driven by how well they can attract the most talented, those who can choose where, how, and why they work. Real-time translation software will enable true multi-cultural teams. Wealth will flow
I just did an interview on the industries that will grow and shrink this decade – I’ll provide a link to the story when it comes out if the magazine puts it online, or if not write it up as a blog post later. It made me remember an interview I did a couple of
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About the Blog author
Ross Dawson is globally recognized as a leading futurist, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, strategy advisor, and bestselling author. He is Founding Chairman of AHT Group, which consists of 3 companies: consulting, publishing, and ventures firm Advanced Human Technologies, future and strategy firm Future Exploration Network, and events company The Insight Exchange.
Ross is author most recently of Implementing Enterprise 2.0, the prescient Living Networks, which anticipated the social network revolution, and the Amazon.com bestseller Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships (click on the links for free chapter downloads). He is based in Sydney and San Francisco with his wife jewellery designer Victoria Buckley and two beautiful young daughters.
Books By Ross Dawson (Incl. Free Chapters)
Articles and Reports
Future of Media Report 2008
Future of Media Report 2007
Future of Media Report 2006
Executive Insights into Enterprise Social Network Strategy
Future of the Media Lifecycle
Future of Media: Strategy Tools
Executive Insights into Enterprise 2.0
Web 2.0 Framework
Trend map 2007+
Extinction Timeline
SAP White Paper: Service Delivery Innovation
White Paper: The Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services
CNET/ University of Virginia White Paper: How Technology Purchasing Decisions Are Really Made
PM Network magazine's lead article on virtual teamwork (440KB), featuring Ross Dawson on the cover
Microsoft Strategic White Paper: How To Lock-in Your Clients (1.1MB)
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