"Predicting the future is easy. It's trying to figure out what's going on now that's hard" (Dressler, 2005)
Harold Jarche hosts a global “coffee club” which meets via Zoom monthly. With membership worldwide, it is always “coffee time” somewhere, and our monthly meetings not only touch on leadership and the gig economy, but provide a more nuanced view of the world than one that is USA-centric. This week, the club had members from… Read more Black Elephants and Academia Next
Yesterday, Goldie Blumenstyk of the Chronicle of Higher Education shared a link in her weekly newsletter to The Future of Work in America, a report from the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI). The future of work has been a topic of interest to me for the past decade, particularly in reference to the doctoral courses in… Read more Opportunities in The Future of Work
Stephen Downes noted this report in his blog post a few days back, noting: “This report has some flaws but it is overall a far better snapshot of the future of learning than many of its contemporaries… five scenarios dominate – education as usual, global giants, regional rising, peer-to-peed, and robo revolution. These aren’t depicted… Read more Oh The Changes We Will See
“As the world becomes more connected, more transparent, and more diverse, businesses need a new type of leadership.” That was the lead sentence in a Forbes article by Bonnie Marcus entitled “What Are the Most Important Leadership Skills for the Future?“. Marcus was citing the 2019 Global Human Capital Trends report by Deloitte. Deloitte researchers… Read more Human Focus in a Tech World
This past week, we started the Winter term of Northeastern’s EDU-6323 – Technology as a Medium for Learning. I have twenty-some students from a mix of K12, higher ed, health education, and corporate training in this Masters level course. In addition to work in our course LMS, we also are tweeting to the hashtag #EDU6323.… Read more Working the Future in EdTech
My wife and I had lunch today with my partner from VCU days – Bud Deihl and his wife, Susan. One of the things that came up in our conversation was the negativism that seems rampant today. Bud asked if I had anything optimistic to bring to the conversation. It was an interesting question, because… Read more An Optimist in a Pessimist World
Thanks to Bryan Alexander’s lead, a bunch of us are reading Kelly and Zach Weinersmith’s interesting and somewhat zany look at the future of technology – Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything. After reading what I would consider to be thoughtful explorations of the future, such as Kevin Kelly’s The Inevitable, Thomas… Read more Reading Soonish
My good friend Enoch Hale asked me a question late last week that I have been contemplating ever since: “What are some good books to read regarding the future of Higher Education?” Good question…and at a deeper level, how do you differentiate between books that have the flawed (at least, I think flawed) assumption that… Read more The Future of Higher Education?
Over the past couple of weeks, I have been exploring the 2017 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends report, which looked at the challenges ahead for businesses and HR professionals. The report is based on analysis of a survey of more than 10,400 business and HR leaders globally, and noted ten trends. Over a series of… Read more An Accelerating Future
Divergent thinking typically comes out of annual SXSW conference. Earlier this month, the conference featured Bruce Sterling, a noted science fiction author, as a keynoter. Bruce used a phrase from his and Jon Lewbowsky’s State of the World 2012 post that he had previously used…and which got a bit of buzz: “The Future Is About… Read more 30 Day Challenge – Day 14 – Competing Fantasies