Speaking at WorldFuture 2010 in Boston

I don't get a chance to do much public speaking with my current job, but I was lucky enough to be asked by a colleague to participate on a panel of corporate foresight experts at the upcoming World Future Society's WorldFuture 2010 conference in Boston on Saturday, July 10th. I'll be part of a four-person panel discussing "Foresight in the Corporate World: Trends and Approaches That Leading Companies Use to Navigate a Fast-Changing World".

I'll mainly be giving an overview of the forward-looking techniques that IBM uses across the company, what challenges we see in the future, and an overview of our Smarter Cities concept. I haven't been to a WFS conference since 2002 in Philadelphia, so I am looking forward to attending. I was in the same city for the 2005 and 2009 conferences (both in Chicago), but I spoke at the Association of Professional Futurists development seminars instead. So, if you are going to be at WFS in Boston, stop by and say hello. I'll provide a full write-up here after the conference.

I also wanted to post a great piece of art that a graphic faciliator created while I was presenting at corporate strategy retreat at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland this past February. Truly a great guy, and I am thankful he took the time to do this. I think it sums up the field of foresight/futures quite nicely, and it shows that we can never take ourselves too seriously...