The new Know: innovation powered by analytics is the book he wrote, must be great fun to read.
Thornton May If you can see him speak, do it. If you want to learn how to become a great and highly demand keynote speaker…. Definitely go and listen to him!!! He pushes the boundaries of keynote speaking and puts relevant stuff in as well. He wears a bow tie, is gray haired, wears a classic suite, but is indeed engaging. An American speaker.
He describes himself as a futurist. He looks at …. The future, and he is an enormously engaging speaker, filled with humor.
MP3 this is the mp3 of much of his talk, it is fun
He is an empirical futurist.
He could not sell water to a man on fire, he says.
Because we live in a web2.0 life, we are all in this together, so this will not be a lecture, we will share. Because what happens to many people at technology lectures (sleeping learner slide).
He rebuilds his keynote into an interactive workspace. By asking 7 questions to the whole of the audience.
First question: which historical moment is closely resembles the situation we find ourselves in today:
Change behavior, the energy of the room went up after getting this question.
“Ever since the times of Socrates, no hiding in the back of the class.” He runs up and down the room, pushes his energy on the responders he chooses to give answers to the questions he poses, and gets the room animated.
What patterns can be seen in all of the responses, or do you perceive in all the responses? The humans drove these revolutions, and society. It eventually effected everyone, but the revolutions mentioned did not happen overnight.
Everyone struggles between now and next, learning and tech learning… we need to come together. He mentions the Darwinian inflection point. Or the Swedish say we are in a liminal point.
The trend here is: there are tribes, and they think insight the tribe. Thornton says, I am a mental models guy. These models must be monitored, in many cases upgraded. They are important.
He asks to put two axes, a stakeholder analysis. (nice bit on who matters). As an educator you must know the blockers, and what to do with them (they cannot be moved – easily). They are inert,
Are we of “one mind” (shows a Borg cube).
He lists what the CEO’s thinks about. Competition, revenues, changing landscape, franchises execution, risk.
Three ways you think the world is going to be different from the world we live in today.
New way of working, learning, and more sensitive of device needs for learners.
Multi channel citizenship!
The tribe is growing, media are speeding up, so we should move to earth learning.
The one monster pattern is… that change is happening.
Thornton May was a student of Al Toffler. Change is changed. Catching up is a major anxiety maker.... every five years in the meso-information age, knowledge reboot. Every 5 years, new behaviors, new change, .... we are accelerating because the pace of change is accelerating.
The highest challenge is to see the disconnects in this change, desynchronization. We - as educators - should look into this, and counter it. DARPA (not sure of name), pixel to tutor ratio (? also not sure). We are moving towards a transparent environment for learning.
Cumulative impact: every molecule on this planet will be IP addressable in 15 years.
Information overload is a feature, what is the real walk-away finding? There is nothing we cannot know !!!
