In a world of peer learning the opportunities flow to talent and those who share

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I recently gave the closing keynote at the Lectora User Conference 2015 in Nashville, Tennessee, which brought together users from around the world of the Lectora e-learning authoring platform.

My keynote on Embracing the Future looked at the broad trends shaping our world, and how they were shaping the world of education in particular. Peer learning is a fundamentally important trend today, describing how people learn increasingly from their peers rather than formal teachers. Indeed, the leading edge of any domain of study is driven by peers who share what they discover on the edges of their discipline.

One of the stories I told in my keynote was how a young Mexican man has been amply rewarded for his talent and his propensity to share, rather than formal education.

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Image: Jordi Muñoz, Chris Anderson and Jon Callaghan of 3D Robotics Credit: Christopher Michel
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The future of events: technology to make presentations interactive and social

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Some events today have innovative formats and strong audience participation. However many conferences still sport essentially the same format as ever, a series of people presenting on a stage in front of a passive audience. It needn’t be this way. Technology eenables us to re-conceive what a presentation is and can be.

I approach this idea as both a speaker and an event organizer. I have been a professional speaker for over 15 years, and have also organized many conferences and events, including our Future of Media Summits, the first cross-continental conferences ever held.

A recent article in Sydney Morning Herald on how the new app Zeetings helps “keep audiences awake” looks at Zeetings, “a presentation app that is both interactive and social, and promises to stop audiences slumbering in their chairs.”

The article describes the background of the app and goes on to quote me:
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Report: The Future of Back-to-School

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I am currently in Toronto to launch a report commissioned by Visa Canada on The Future of Back-to-School.

As noted in the announcement of the report:

In a recent survey conducted by Ipsos Reid on behalf of Visa Canada, 52 per cent of Canadian parents with children aged 5-16 found back-to-school preparations to be stressful for them and their families, second only to the Christmas or winter holiday season. With an eye on the future, Visa also explored how tomorrow’s technologies and innovations may address the challenges presented during the busy back-to-school period. Visa commissioned a report by internationally-renowned futurist Ross Dawson who identified a number of innovative technologies that may exist by 2024 to help ease the stress during this annual time period.

In his report, titled The Future of Back-to-School, Ross Dawson highlights these futuristic innovations through colourful vignettes, such as at-home scanners that measure children’s clothing sizes and systems that automatically allow for purchase and delivery in a timely fashion, or family-focused and streamlined ordering of nutritious groceries, making planning for school lunches a breeze – all purchased using authentication of unique voice patterns.

You can download the full report by clicking on the image of the report cover below.

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