The Shortest Keynote Never Given: Partnership, collaboration and work in the 2030s and beyond

A few weeks ago, some friends invited me to give a keynote address at a meeting they were planning, one that would focus around the future of partnership and collaboration in the Advanced Bioeconomy. I was glad to accept, and to take some time to think about how collaboration will change and how technology will shape its evolution over the next 20 years.

You can see it here:

It’s a smart topic my friends suggested. Bioconversion plants being built today are expected to last 20 years. Careers being launched today will only be halfway over in 20 years. Some basic science breakthroughs of today will have been only just transformed into breakthrough applied science and disruptive companies, in 20 years.

For a variety of reasons, my friends needed to postpone the meeting. Which leaves us with the Shortest Keynote Never Given. In the spirit of a time-compressed future, I decided to create a 10-minute keynote and leave 20 minutes for collaborative conversation about the issues raised in my look ahead.

Technology shift and the impact on jobs, partnerships and you

I’ve been giving presentations about the future of the internet and the implications of technological shift for almost 20 years. I met my wife giving one in 1999. And I wrote a book on the topic some 15 years ago. Back then, we talked about the implications of advances in search technology, the shift from text to voice and video, the demise of network TV and the national conversation, and and the rise of what we now call social media and the person-to-person conversation. So much has changed that, now, we have to look at a completely different collaborative environment.

The outline of what the world will look, so soon, like may startle you a little. We talk about dramatic climate shift arriving by 2050, but transformative cultural and communications shift will arrive well before that. The world may face rising tides very soon, but it is already struggling to resolve signal out of all the noise.

Change will arrive to address this. Most of the changes are well underway, if you think carefully about examples in everyday life, which are presented in this keynote. Here you’ll see a world in extremis, why that is, what we are shifting towards and how we might collaborate and connect in the future.

Back to the Future all over again

Our digital progress has moved so fast that it seems almost cute and funny that a central premise of the Back to the Future movies is that a guy goes 30 years into the future, to 2015, and in order to return to 1985 with the means of achieving world domination, buys a paperback almanac for the purpose of sports betting. We may not have developed the flux capacitor, but we have moved light-years beyond a market for a paper-based book of facts. Hardly anyone buys those anymore.

Lesson in that? Transportation innovation has lagged significantly compared to our assumptions of 30 years ago, but digital communications has been impacted by a Moore’s Law environment. Things are moving fast, and fast is getting faster.

I hope you enjoy “The Shortest Keynote Never Given: Partnership, collaboration and work in the 2020s and 2030s” You can play it here, or visit this link here for a larger screen.