Take hold of your future! How to make radical changes. Future of Work. Salt in the Blood: new book co-author Sheila Dixon. Our 11,000 mile adventure, sailing the Med, across Atlantic, working virtually, re-inventing our global business.Lessons for Leaders

Futurist Keynote Speaker: Posts, Slides, Videos - Future of Work, Workplace, HR, WFH - Keynotes

ALL OF LIFE is a voyage to the future, carrying us beyond distant horizons, blown by the prevailing wind to which we set our sails.

"Many people will relate to this narrative....I commend this book."  Yachting Monthly

6 page feature published in Yachting World

You can read an extract on Google

Life Beyond COVID - millions of people are rethinking their own personal futures, what is important to them, careers, relationships and so on.

Seven years ago, as a pair of empty-nesters, Sheila and I embarked on a somewhat impulsive sailing odyssey, after more than three decades living in the same part of London. I was working at a frenetic pace, flying all over the world, advising global corporations on future trends, while Sheila was running our company, working as a magistrate, supporting a range of community projects, and holding everything else together. We were both very fulfilled, but exhausted.

We were looking to slow down a bit, develop new skills together, kickstart new business ideas, re-invent our future, broaden our minds, see if we could live more simply, and be rejuvenated. We hoped that what we learned at sea might help us sail better through life. But could we really take off into the sunset without wrecking our bank balances, neglecting family, weakening wider relationships, damaging our business, and risking many other things that really matter......?

Seize the day – or your future will take hold of you.

Read more: Take hold of your future! How to make radical changes. Future of Work. Salt in the Blood: new book co-author Sheila Dixon. Our 11,000 mile adventure, sailing the Med, across Atlantic, working virtually, re-inventing our global business.Lessons for Leaders

Future of Telcos - phone companies, next-generation telecommunications, winners and losers in post COVID global shakeout, mega-mergers, controlling the world's bandwidth and smartphone platforms, e-commerce and mobile payments - keynote speaker

Futurist Keynote Speaker: Posts, Slides, Videos - Future of Telcos Keynotes, Smartphones,Omnichannel

Telcos had a massive boost from the COVID pandemic.  I work with many of the world's largest telcos. They all benefitted hugely from instant shift towards virtual work, virtual social life, virtual entertainment and virtual leisure. Huge increase in spending on personal bandwidth, increased use of personal devices. Huge increase in corporate spending on enterprise wide virtual working tools, upgrades of video conferencing equipment, upgrades in bandwidth with increased dependence on video

If we ever realised our total dependence on high bandwidth, it was at the moment that the world plunged into lockdown. Internet access or speed was no longer the issue, rather continuous, uninterrupted high bandwidth to allow high quality video links. However, the telco industry faced fundamental issues before COVID, and these issues remain.

Over 90% of all web traffic is now video in many developed nations - COVID just accelerated a long trend.  It is already the case in the UK that BBC iPlayer, NetFlix and YouTube alone account for more than 60% of the nation’s web traffic. A single 2-hour video is equivalent to a hundred million emails, or days of voice calls. So forget charging for voice or anything else – costs are dwarfed by streaming video. Data on mobiles will increase 1000 fold in the next 5 years, on 50 billion mobile devices connected to 5G, running at 10gps or higher. That means an entire high-definition movie will download in less than 3 seconds.  So telcos will be forced to focus on new kinds of business, for example cloud services for larger companies.

* "How AI Will Change your life - A Futurist's Guide to a Super-Smart World" - Patrick Dixon's latest book on AI is published in September 2024 by Profile Books.  It contains 38 chapters on the impact of AI across different industries, government and our wider world.

Read more: Future of Telcos - phone companies, next-generation telecommunications, winners and losers in post COVID global shakeout, mega-mergers, controlling the world's bandwidth and smartphone platforms, e-commerce and mobile payments - keynote speaker

Future Health Care - medical Tourism - $40 billion a year industry, over 11 million people travelling to other nations for lower cost hospital treatments, dentistry or cosmetic surgery. Organ trafficking. Medical tourism will grow to $130bn by 2025.

Futurist Keynote Speaker: Posts, Slides, Videos - Future Health Care and Pharma Keynote Speaker

A major trend in the future of health care is the boom in medical tourism. One way to reduce future health costs for individuals, insurers or government is to move patients abroad for treatment, and we will see a lot more of this in a world beyond COVID.

‘Medical tourism’ is already a $40bn industry, growing 20% a year, with over 11 million people annually travelling to another country for private treatment, and possibly convalescence in a nice hotel.  The market could be worth over $130bn by 2025. 

The savings in all types of medical tourism can be huge: private health care in Brazil is only 25% of the cost in America, India 73%, Mexico 50%, Thailand 65%, Turkey 60%. Within the EU itself there are also major cost differences – for example, dental treatment in Hungary is far cheaper than in Paris.

* "How AI Will Change your life - A Futurist's Guide to a Super-Smart World" - Patrick Dixon's latest book on AI is published in September 2024 by Profile Books.  It contains 38 chapters on the impact of AI across different industries, government and our wider world, including impact of AI on the future of of health care.

Read more: Future Health Care - medical Tourism - $40 billion a year industry, over 11 million people travelling to other nations for lower cost hospital treatments, dentistry or cosmetic surgery. Organ trafficking. Medical tourism will grow to $130bn by 2025.

Future of Education in 2030. Impact of AI / Artificial Intelligence on schools and colleges for the next 30 years. Trends in High School education, Colleges, Universities, Business Schools and Post-Graduate Education. Keynote speaker

Futurist Keynote Speaker: Posts, Slides, Videos - Future of Education, Universities, Keynote Speaker

School and college is all about preparing a new generation for their own future, but most teaching is locked into the past.

In many cases, we need to be educating for jobs that have yet to be invented, instead of training for tasks that no longer exist or are about to be eliminated due to tools such as AI / Artificial Intelligence.

The COVID pandemic forced major changes in education, some of which will endure.  Over the next three decades, education will start younger in many nations than today.  Education outside the home for 3-5 year olds increased by 10% to 85% in OECD nations in the last decade.  This will be driven by two-career parents, and by research showing how important early learning is to later success.

Take examinations: how absurd to force young people to scribe indelible symbols onto pieces of paper, and to lock them into rooms without access to their digital brains. Cambridge University is considering allowing students to write exam papers on laptops, partly because examiners can’t read their terrible handwriting. Many other Universities have already started giving permission to write exams answers on computers if people have a disability which means that writing is difficult or impossible.  Yet handwriting in exams will still be the dominant mechanism for proving student knowledge by the year 2030 in almost every part of the world. Work means using keyboards, not pen and ink.

And all that was before the rapid growth of AI.  Artificial Intelligence destroyed the purpose of course work in 2022-2023 because from that point on it was so easy for students to get AI to write the course work for them. So at every level, education in most countries, whether school or university or post-grad, is locked into a last century time warp.

* "How AI Will Change your life - A Futurist's Guide to a Super-Smart World" - Patrick Dixon's latest book on AI is published in September 2024 by Profile Books.  It contains 38 chapters on the impact of AI across different industries, government and our wider world, including future impact of AI on education, schools and colleges.

Read more: Future of Education in 2030. Impact of AI / Artificial Intelligence on schools and colleges for the next 30 years. Trends in High School education, Colleges, Universities, Business Schools and Post-Graduate Education. Keynote speaker