Category Archives: Futurist

The day when drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), fill the sky is no longer a futurist ideal but an impending reality. Drones have traditionally only been used for military and academic purposes, but within a few years they will be used commercially. Business Insider predicts that 12% of an estimated US$98 billion in global spending on drones over the next decade will be for commercial purposes.

Amazon Prime Air, Google Google Project Wing, Facebook and even NASA are all working on drone technology. Start-ups like Airware are working to provide drone hardware and software to deploy on missions from infrastructure inspection to humanitarian campaigns. Last year, Dominoes Pizza in the U.K. trialed pizza delivery with a drone called the DomiCopter; this year a pizzeria in Mumbai did the same. Now Dronies are the new Selfies, where people use drones with cameras to capture their group shots.

Flirtey Founder and CEO, Matthew Sweeny

Flirtey, a Sydney and Nevada based start-up is aiming to be one of the worlds first UAV delivery companies. The company conducted a world-first drone delivery test back in October 2013 and to date has conducted over a hundred successful test deliveries of textbooks, with its partner Zookal.

Flirtey has struck a partnership with The University of Nevada, Reno, a leading research center for Unmanned Autonomous Systems (UAS). In exchange for equity, the University is providing access to its R&D labs for design, manufacture and research collaboration plus its indoor flight-testing facilities and supply graduate students to work with the company.

Governor Brian Sandoval of Nevada said, I am excited to welcomeFlirteyto the Nevada family. The partnership between Flirteyand the University of Nevada, Reno demonstrates a commitment to our shared vision of building a vibrant and sustainable economy.The collaboration betweenFlirteyand UNR will send a strong message that Nevada is a leader in this emerging industry not only because of our unique environment, but also because we are educating and training the aviation workforce of the future.

Flirteyis pioneering UAV delivery to make receiving packages as simple and as easy as possible, where customers no longer have to wait at home all hours for a delivery, or stand in line at the post office to pick up parcels.Flirteys vision is to provide drone delivery as a service, with its fleet of drones making autonomous deliveries directly to your location. Initially, Flirtey drones will trial deliveries over sparsely populated areas and within line of sight for deliveries that customers want within thirty minutes.

Although Amazon has begun lobbying the Federal Aviation Administration to speed up its approval of the usage of drones for commercial usage, it will likely be a few more years until it really happens. Being in Nevada, Flirtey is well positioned when it does. Until then, Flirtey is taking advantage of New Zealands more liberal UAV regulatory stance. The country has launched Airshare, a hub for UAV information, which will allow commercial operators to log their flights to ensure maximum safety. Flirtey will be among the first to participate in Airshare before it goes live later this year. Flirtey has also started lining up customers including urgent parcels, fast food, online retail, and medical deliveries in New Zealand and is looking for more partners. According toFlirtey, this marks the first use of fully automatedcommercial drones for package delivery in the world.

Deliveries viaFlirteycan be made in as little as two or three minutes, compared to two or three days for traditional shippingmethods. Upon arrival at an outdoor delivery destination,Flirteys drones hover and lower the parcel through a custom deliverymechanism that is attached to a retractable cord. Each drones real-time GPS location can be tracked via theFlirteysmartphone app. Currently Flirtey can carry up to 2kg for 10km, but with more time and investment, Flirtey looks to significantly increase the range and payload capacity.

Naturally, safety is a key concern for Flirtey. To prevent the dangerous scenario of a drone dropping from the sky, Flirteys drone is a hexa-copter that can continue to fly even when one rotor fails. They are also heavily investing in a redundant power supply.

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Drone Startup Flirtey Partners with The University of Nevada, Reno To Push UAV Delivery Forward

News and notes from City Hall, Bernalillo County and local politics

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Albuquerques newly renovated Convention Center has landed a futurist conference scheduled next year.

Mayor Richard Berry and the Albuquerque Convention & Visitors Bureau announced this afternoon that something called the Face the Future Conference will be held Downtown for the next five years. Next years event will be the first, so its not clear how many people it will attract.

The conference has already lined up a host of speakers who will address the future of private space travel, robotics, investment and other topics.

From a meetings and tourism perspective, having a conference of this magnitude here opens the door for future high-level bookings, as well, Dale Lockett of ACVB said in a news release. Plus, the fact that the conference has agreed to let Albuquerque host for at least its first five years will provide a tremendously positive economic.

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Futurists heading to Downtown ABQ next year

Inventing the Future A Futurist #39;s Guide to Anticipating Leading Ch
This Video tutorial will help you ... how to.

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Inventing the Future A Futurist's Guide to Anticipating & Leading Ch - Video

Portland-Vancouver, OR (PRWEB) September 08, 2014

When it comes to the future of energy, futurist Jack Uldrich has plenty to say: "From the outside, the utility industry may appear to slow, cumbersome and resistant to change. These characterizations may or may not be fair, but I do know the industry is poised for extraordinary change in the years ahead and that what has served the industry well in the past wont be sufficient for remaining competitive in the future."

Just what will keep the energy industry ahead of the game is precisely the content of Uldrich's keynote to the Western Energy Institute's Annual Meeting on September 8th in Kelowna, British Columbia.

Western Energy Institute (WEI) is a regional association serving the electric and gas industries, both public and private, throughout the Western United States and Canada. Based in Portland, Oregon, WEI was formed in October 2000 from two longstanding industry associations - the Western Electric Power Institute (WEPI) founded in 1908, and the Pacific Coast Gas Association (PCGA) founded in 1893.

WEIs membership is comprised of 70 energy companies, including gas pipeline, electric and gas distribution, electric generation, power marketers and over 175 industry service providers. WEI offers a member-driven, open learning environment to develop effective leaders and ensure well-trained employees.

WEI has chosen Uldrich, a highly acclaimed futurist and public speaker whose aim is to help them and their member companies thrive in increasingly competitive energy markets. Uldrich has worked with a number of companies and dozens of trade associations in the utility industry including Southern Company, SDG&E, SMUD, Eaton, BP, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, Missouri River Energy, Northwest Energy, Idaho Power and the Northeast and Northwest Public Power Associations.

Uldrich's presentations have been described as "inspiring, thought provoking, motivational, and practical all at oncewith a huge dose of practicality intricately added to the mix." All of which is needed for the future of the energy industry. Following his keynote for WEI, Uldrich will be addressing leaders in finance at AgBank in Minneapolis, the PMMI in Chicago, as well as the The National Council for Continuing Education & Training in Denver, among others.

Parties interested in learning more about him, his books, his daily blog or his speaking availability are encouraged to visit his website. Media wishing to know more about either the event or interviewing Jack as a futurist or trend expert can contact Amy Tomczyk at (651) 343.0660.

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Futurist Jack Uldrich to Speak on Future Trends in Energy at the Western Energy Institute in British Columbia

Emerging Future: Technology Issues and Trends MOOC Module 3 - Think Like a Futurist
Emerging Future: Technology Issues and Trends Introduction to Module 3 - Think Like a Futurist. METIS Trailer.

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Emerging Future: Technology Issues and Trends MOOC Module 3 - Think Like a Futurist - Video

Politicians are often accused of failing to look past the next election. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx wants to look past the next fifteen.

Foxx is leading a DOT effort to create a 30-year outlook for the state of transportation in the U.S., an ambitious effort he hopes will shift the country out of its stubborn, single-track focus on the short-term needs of keeping solvent the Highway Trust Fund. Instead, he wants to take a broader look at how the country plans on moving an additional 100 million people by 2050 and all the goods those Americans will buy.

In a sit-down interview with POLITICO on Friday, Foxx was blunt.

Were having the wrong conversation about transportation in this country, he said. There are a host of factors that are colliding, that are changing the ground underneath us. But yet our policies, not to mention our funding, arent keeping up. I think its very important for us to have a new reset.

Foxx ticked off those factors: technological innovation, a population moving into denser metro areas and demographic shifts.

Lots of forces are converging to create a very disruptive set of conditions, he said. We need to lay out what we think policymakers are going to be facing over the next 30 years. Because right now were having conversations about transportation funding that are really disconnected from the conversations about policy we need to be having.

Foxx is frustrated with the narrow focus on finding money for the trust fund which Congress patched yet again before leaving for the August recess and he expressed the need to focus more on how federal transportation dollars are spent.

My hope is that people will take a look at this, and some of the unexamined assumptions weve had about transportation in the last couple of decades will start to be examined, and policymakers hopefully will understand we cant just concern ourselves with the funding side of the equation, that how that funding is actually deployed is a key piece of how we move forward, he said.

If Congress had succeeded in getting the Highway Trust Fund stabilized, many people in Washington would have considered that as accomplishing the mission, he said. And thats just not the case.

Foxx wants to reveal a report by the end of the year and promises a robust outreach effort before then. He will host five webinars to gather feedback from transportation groups and government bodies, and DOT staff will also regularly solicit feedback. While he emphasized the plan wouldnt promote specific policy ideas, he did drop a few hints about the areas DOT could focus on.

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Foxx takes a futurist turn at DOT

Futurist Series: David Rowan, editor of WIRED
Book this keynote speaker through Leading Authorities - http://response.leadingauthorities.com/CheckAvailability-YouTube David Rowan is the editor-in-chief o...

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Futurist Series: Salim Ismail, director of Singularity University
Book this awe-inspiring speaker with Leading Authorities - http://response.leadingauthorities.com/CheckAvailability-YouTube Salim Ismail is the director of S...

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Futurist Dance- Sherazad Co. Ltd
Four days of rehearsal and this is our hard work :). Please like and share 🙂

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Futurist Dance- Sherazad & Co. Ltd - Video

Geologist, Historian, Humorist, Futurist | Richard Gibson | TEDxButtePublicLibrary
This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. Hear the ideas of using the future to present the value of preserving the past AND using the past to...

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