FUTURIST GUEST SPEAKER: WHAT’S NEXT FOR AI, THE FUTURE OF WORK AND AUTOMATION

Corporate meeting planners are booking futurist guest speakers with increasing frequency. It only makes sense: As the pace of technological innovation and disruption continues to skyrocket, organizations of all kinds are realizing the importance of understanding future trends and scenarios. The best futurist guest speakers are brought in to help their leadership, employees, and stakeholders prepare for the opportunities and challenges ahead. And so more conference and convention planners will turn to booking futurologists at their conferences, retreats, and events in the coming years.

Trends consultants are experts at studying current trends across science, demographics, geopolitics, economics and more to extrapolate potential scenarios of how the world may evolve 5, 10 or even 20+ years into the future. Top futurist guest speakers combine data and modeling with imagination and intuition to paint vivid pictures of what future worlds may be like—both utopian and dystopian. Unlike traditional analysts who tend to have a myopic focus on single domains, futurists more frequently take a big picture view across disciplines to uncover unseen connections and possibilities.

As the famous quote attributed to hockey legend Wayne Gretzky goes “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” More corporations are realizing they need to adopt future-focused foresight if they want to continue to compete, innovate and thrive through the upcoming decade of accelerating technological revolution and societal transformation.

By booking knowledgeable futurist guest speakers to share emerging trends and potential scenarios in custom keynote addresses and workshops, corporate meeting planners can provide tremendous value to attendees. Participants leave inspired with an expanded mindset, armed with critical insights and forward-looking questions to inform strategies at their organizations. Getting ahead of disruption waves before competitors can make all the difference.

With so much volatility and uncertainty facing most industries due to technical breakthroughs such as artificial intelligence, pervasive sensors, cryptocurrency, autonomous transportation, virtual and augmented reality, genetics, robotics, drones and more—having a futurist guest speakers separate signal from noise so companies can set smart priorities for research, investment and transformation initiatives is becoming imperative. Forward-thinking meeting planners would be wise to book more consultants now to future-proof their events and give their audiences an advantage. The organizations that do so first will have a competitive edge for thriving in the “next normal” for their business.