Monthly Archives: March 2014

Compliance is Dead! Beyond Compliance - protecting reputation - Futurist Speaker
Why compliance is dead as a strategy to protect your brand. We have to go beyond compliance with regulation, because future public opinion may decide that th...

By: Patrick Dixon Futurist Keynote Speaker for Industry Conference

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Compliance is Dead! Beyond Compliance - protecting reputation - Futurist Speaker - Video

A professional futurist is a person who studies the future in order to help people understand, anticipate, prepare for and gain advantage from coming changes. It is not the goal of a futurist to predict what will happen in the future. The futurist uses foresight to describe what could happen in the future and, in some cases, what should happen in the future.

Most people use some sort of foresight all the time - something as simple as listening to the weather forecast to prepare for the next day. A professional futurist uses formal methods to develop descriptions of possible futures. The output of a futures study may include the driving forces, assumptions, evidence or indicators of the futures. A futurist is more likely to say how or why a future could appear rather than to say what the future will be.

One of the founding principles of the field of futures studies is the idea of personal and organizational choice. Although the future is unknown, a person can identify possibilities, select the most favorable outcomes and attempt to influence events to create a desired future.

By considering systems and human agency, futurists help identify choices that affect the future, for ourselves and future generations.

What do futurists do?

Futurists work in large and small businesses, governments and non-profits, as teachers or researchers in education, and as consultants or as permanent staff. Many futurists focus on one topic such as a technology or an industry. Other futurists study broad social changes or global problems. All futurists take a very wide view of the world in both scope and time. Futurists tend to take a much broader perspective, consider longer time horizons, and include many more factors in a study than analysts such as economists, technology specialists, social critics or political commentators.

The foundation of a good futures project is the solid understanding of the present conditions and historical influences. A futurist describes a situation using a deliberate and structured method. This process includes the surface conditions of, for example, an industry, but the futurist also studies the goals and purposes behind the industry.

The second type of scanning looks for anomalies or unusual events that may provide an indication of change or a solid piece of evidence for an emerging trend, called weak signals. Both types of scanning require futurists to be information sponges." Many futurists and organizations use structured methods of sorting and categorizing data to help sort useful information from noise.

Most get information from a wide variety of sources including newspapers, books, periodicals, scientific and trade journals, forecasts, interviews with subject matter experts, electronic media, arts and cultural trends, to name only a few. While most futurists scan broadly for background information, it is most effective when used in combination with a defined, focused framework.

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Association of Professional Futurists - What Is A Futurist?

News Release: Greater Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce

TALLAHASSEE The Greater Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce announces the keynote speaker for its 2014 Annual Chamber Community Conference is nationally-renowned speaker Michael Rogers, a technology pioneer, novelist and journalist whose consultancy, Practical Futurist, helps businesses and organizations worldwide think about the future. Rogers will focus his presentation on how our community can prepare for and take advantage of local, statewide and national issues going forward. The Chamber Conference takes place August 8-10 and is presented by First Commerce Credit Union.

There is so much for our community to be proud of and so many accomplishments weve achieved recently, and Michaels presentation will encourage us to not stand on our laurels, but rather continue the momentum, said Chamber and EDC President/CEO Sue Dick. I look forward to another insightful and impactful Conference, as the attendees gather to help lay the foundation for our communitys future.

In recent years Rogers has worked with companies ranging from FedEx, Boeing and Time-Life to Prudential, Dow Corning, GE and Genentech. He is completing a two-year tenure as futurist-in-residence for The New York Times and also writes the "Practical Futurist" column for MSNBC. For ten years he was vice president of Washington Post Company's new media division, guiding both the newspaper and Newsweek into the new century, as well as serving as editor and general manager of Newsweek.com. After a decade as a writer for Rolling Stone, Rogers co-founded Outside magazine. He then joined Newsweek to create the magazine's technology section, earning numerous journalism awards for his work. Rogers is also a best-selling novelist whose fiction explores the human impact of technology. His five books have been published worldwide, optioned for film and television and chosen by the Book of the Month club.

Rogers is a frequent guest on radio and television and regularly addresses audiences ranging from venture capitalists and corporate executives to educators, and the general public. Rogers studied physics and creative writing at Stanford University with additional training in finance management at Stanford Business School's Executive Program. He lives in New York and is at work on his next book.

The Annual Chamber Community Conference is the highlight of the business calendar each year and allows the Chamber to build on its strategic priorities and overall plan of work as well as those of its affiliate programs, including the Economic Development Council of Tallahassee/Leon County (EDC), Leadership Tallahassee, Access Tallahassee and World Class Schools.

The entire Conference agenda can be found by visiting the Chambers website at talchamber.com or by clicking HERE.

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Tallahassee Chamber Announces Keynote Speaker For Annual Conference