Speaking Topics

Gerd offers keynotes, interventions, presentations and talks (30-90 minutes) as well as longer think-tank sessions, workshops and seminars on many different subjects, covering these subject matters (among others):

• The Future of Business
• Media and Publishing
• Radio, TV & Broadcasting
• Entertainment (Film, Video, Games, Music etc)
• Technology
• Telecoms, Wireless and Mobile
• eCommerce and Retailing
• Social Media, Social Networking & Social Commerce
• Online Gaming & Virtual Worlds
• Print,  News and Journalism
• Advertising, Marketing & Branding
• Public Relations & Communications
• Education, Training and Learning
• Cultural Policy
• Copyright and IPR
• Travel & Tourism
• Banking and Financial Services
• Sustainable Business and 'Green Futures'
• Energy and Environment

See what Gerd's clients are saying: download the latest LinkedIn recommendations: LinkedIn

For Gerd's GreenFuturist activities please go here or check out his @agreenfuturist tweets, here.

To find out more about what Gerd offers with his team at TheFuturesAgency please go here. 

If you are interested in booking Gerd for a speaking gig, keynote or presentation, and would like to know which additional or new topics Gerd is prepared to talk about, please contact Gerd's project manager, Gabi Ruttloff, anytime. 

Many of Gerd's recent keynote speeches can be found on Vimeo or GerdTube (his Youtube Channel) 

 

The Future of 'Big Data',  Media, Commerce and Technology: the next 5 years. Data is truly becoming the new oil. So-called Social Media (aka The Networked Society) has led to an incredible explosion in available sources of information for reputation and opinion measuring that is crucial to the commercial decision-making process. New technologies are rapidly enabling companies to track information, themselves, anytime, anywhere. In addition, Internet access is now shifting rapidly to mobile devices - mostly tablets - instead of computers, further turning relevant information into a real-time, real-place flow rather than a download.  Gerd will show the key trends for the next 5 years, and share some foresights and scenarios that will impact the participants’ business in the very near future. 

 

Big data, big mobile, big social... big bucks, big noise, big machines? A general talk about the future of the Internet, technology, commerce and communications. Everybody is now talking about 'data is the new oil' aka big-data, and SoLoMo (social local mobile) is the battle cry of the day. Fully integrated and automated human-machine interfaces are rapidly evolving and may quickly become as commonplace as the mobile phone (think Google Glasses, MSFT Kinect, LeapMotion etc),  artificial intelligence is everywhere, and Futurist Ray Kurzweil says the Singularity is near/here. So how will our world really change in the next 5 years, i.e. how will the way we communicate, get information, create, buy and sell, travel, live and learn, actually evolve? What are the biggest threats and the juiciest opportunities - not just in financial terms, but also in societal and human terms? Futurist Gerd Leonhard will share his foresights and explore the key 'networked society' scenarios.

 

The total Reset of Marketing, Branding and Media - the next 5 years. The SoLoMo (social-local-mobile) Internet is rapidly changing the way we communicate, consume, create and market. This is not merely the result of increasingly powerful and more widely available technologies but of the dramatic individual habit changes that stem from them, and that are driving the key societal, economical and political developments. Marketing is following media and content as the next big arena for change - consider the dramatic changes in the music, film/TV and newspaper industries (with music probably being the worst case as far as change-management is concerned), and it becomes quite tangible what is aboit happen to marketing, branding and advertising in the next 3-5 years. Augmented reality, publicy versus privacy, over-the-top content versus traditional cable or satellite television, the explosive rise of participatory culture and the advent of the reputation economy, and the total reboot of advertising (going from interruption and noise to relevance, participation and meaning)... these are some of the topics that Gerd can touch on.

 

Social media and the future of business, media and communications
Social networks such as Facebook, b2b networks such as LinkedIn, and many-to-many Web 2.0 platforms such as Twitter are very quickly changing the way we communicate, learn, get information, share, consume, buy and sell.  At the same time, Social + Location + Mobile + over-the-top Video are completely rebooting the marketing and advertising industries. New players are entering the TV & broadcasting markets, Facebook may soon be the biggest 'broadcaster' in the world - 'cable-TV  without the cable', and Google, Amazon and Apple are gearing up with some very powerful cloud-based offerings, as well. The traditional cable / TV industries have some very unique -and timely - opportunities but will have to confront some serious challenges such as rapid and global consumer fragmentation, the shift from walled gardens to open networks and the move of advertising budgets towards mobile, games, interactive, social and video. In this talk, Gerd will share some global foresights for the next 3 years, describe some of the key opportunities and show powerful and inspiring examples of how to take full advantage of 'broadband culture'. 

 

From Ego to Eco: the future of media and content, business and communications - and how this relates to the environment. Our world is becoming increasingly networked, mobile socially as well as politically interdependent. The explosive rise of social media, cheap but powerful mobile devices, technological game-changers such as augmented reality, artifical intelligence and bionics, and the rise of highspeed internet access are driving exponential changes that are redefining how we do business, create, market and communicate.  Tough issues such as increasing income inequality and the global threat of climate-change are in the news every single day, and many pundits agree that no matter where in the world you are it is no longer feasible to merely focus on economic growth and pr ofit-at-all-costs. Business as usual is dead; or at least, it's very sick. 'Eexternalities' that we used to freely capitalize on - be they the creative and artistic output of the masses, or air, water, energy resources, nature etc - are no longer available by default, or have already been depleted. We are and have been borrowing from our own future, and our children, in effect. We have reached the glass ceiling. We must move from 'egosphere'  to biosphere or risk system failure (such as climate bankruptcy).

By hook or by crook, our economy as well as our ecology is now morphing to become more like a 'biosphere' where everything is connected to everything else, and where new opportunities and new rules are being created at this very moment. If we are to include those externalities in how we design our businesses and organizations we will need to rethink almost everything and build sustainability, hyper-collaboration, transparency and interdependence into the core design of our society, be it in media, publishing content, or business, or energy and the environment.  For almost everyone in the media and content industries, for example, this shift represents a huge challenge as it leads us away from the traditional, centralized and monolithic organizations to networked, de-centralized and open models that are based a new kind of relationship with the creators as well as the people-formerly-known-as-consumers, crowdsourcing (and crowdfunding), access over ownership, with-vertising instead of advertising, and new OTT content delivery mechanisms that are likely to replace centralized and exclusively-owned structures.  In this talk, Gerd shares his foresights, depicts some likely future scenarios in media, business and in ecology, and shows how to be part of this global shift from Ego to Eco.

 

Transforming your business for the digital age:  learnings from the music industry.  By pretty much anyone's opinion, the music industry has spectacularly failed to adapt to the drastic lifestyle and media consumption changes ushered in by the Internet. The result is endless friction where there should be new revenues, market confusion and - on a global scale - a severely dysfunctional content ecosystem. The economic consequences are catastrophic, with most the 'people formerly known as the consumers' rejecting the established music industry and their legitimate digital music offerings, and turning their attention to anything else but the authorized music providers. What can be learned from the music industry's (non)-actions, what traps can be avoided, and how can other industries learn from what happened to the music industry during the conversion process to a fully digital business?  (*this is a good topic for the publishing, travel, luxury, financial and marketing industries) 

 

The future of news and digital content: mobile, social, apps, ad-supported - and paid?  We are living in an increasingly networked and inter-connected society that is rapidly changing every single facet of our lives and businesses. New players powered by new technologies and driven by the increasing empowerment of the 'consumer' are disrupting every single business model that is still based on scarcity, control of distribution or physical products or services. Facebook may soon have 1 Billion users, apps already make more money for Apple than music, paid-for iPad apps did not pan out as the new manna from heaven, and 100s new mobile devices will further turn news into a global flow of data, like electricity or water. Now, data is the new oil. Interaction will soon come  before transaction, always. It's not about social media but about the new, social OS (operating system) and the new digital content ecosystem. Cross-media is the new default. The total reinvention of advertising is happening this year. And: content expertship and curation will be more crucial than ever before; and yes, it will make serious money.  In this talk, Futurist Gerd Leonhard shares his foresights for the next 2-5 years, shows examples from a global perspective, and points out the bottom lines for the future of news and 'content'. 

 

Mobile Marketing Futures: the next 3-5 years. The art and/or business of marketing is facing a wave of disruption by digital technologies just like the media and content industries have, during the past decade. Data is indeed   becoming the new oil, and mobile devices is where most data will both come from as well as head towards - as much as 75% of all Internet traffic will take place on mobile devices, within 5 years, and over 50 Billion devices will be connected to each other. Mobile devices are about radical user (fka consumer) empowerment and increased personal involvement; the faster the networks and the cheaper the access-to-the-cloud the more we will see significant cultural shifts that will dramatically redefine how and what we buy, what we share and with whom, how we pay and what we like or don't like.

In addition, social networks are quickly becoming the de-facto new broadcasters, combining their many-to-many strenghts with the traditional one-to-many mode of the traditional networks - and mobile devices will deliver cable-like content, too - but without the cable. As a result, 30-50% of all advertising budgets will shift to So-Lo-Mo (social, local, mobile) and video, ushering us into the era of TeleMedia convergence. Telecom companies, mobile network operators, device makers, content creators and media companies, social networks and Internet giants are already starting to form a new ecosystem that will completely reshape what marketing is, to begin with - and all within 5 years.   in this talk, Gerd presents a larger view on what is coming in the next 3-5 years, sharing his foresights from global perspective and pinpointing the key opportunities. 

 

21st century content economics - Getting ready for the new content economy. Because of the Internet, all content industries (music, film/video, TV, news and print, games, publishing, software etc) are in different stages of total disruption; many of them urgently need to develop a new, web-native business logic in order to survive, or better yet, prosper in the future. Technological content protection measures (DRM, TPM) have by and large not been successful. Instead, any future 'protection' will need to come from the business model, and topics such as free / freemium / feels-like-free are going to be crucially important. How will content be monetized, in the near future, and what new revenue streams or generatives should be investigated? How will this new ecosystem of interdependence function, and how do we transition from old to new?

 

The Networked Society and the Future of Content: foresights, conflicts and possible solutions. For creators, the Internet may seem to be both a blessing and a curse: while we may gain potentially large, engaged and global audiences we also have to face the fact that everything we do can now be easily re-distributed, copied, remixed or simply ‘consumed’ without much thought to remuneration. More than 4 Billion people will soon have unfettered access to a global ‘cloud’ of music, films, books, magazines and TV shows – but how will creativity be actually remunerated, going forward, and who will pay what, when, where and how?  In this talk, Gerd shows the key trends, shares foresights and learnings from around the globe, and shows a way forward that may be fruitful to both creators and users – and the industries that serve them.

 

Telecom 2.0: New opportunities in the new developing tele-media ecosystem. Telecoms, operators and ISPs around the world are facing the increasing threat of declining ARPU's in both the voice as well the data sectors; and real-time mobile apps like Twitter may end up eating into the cash-cow SMS business soon, as well. It has been suggested that the next big opportunity is to move up the food-chain, go 'Telco2.0' and become a content, service and experience platform. If  that is true, why, when and how is digital (i.e mobile...!) content the next big opportunity for telecoms, where exactly are the key opportunities (and in what region), and what needs to be done to start exploiting them, now? 

 

The Future of Media: 10 predictions and fore-sights. 15 years after the Netscape IPO and the beginning of the Internet era, severe disruption and confusion is effecting the media sectors, everywhere. Many tried-and-true assumptions have proven useless on the web, core value systems are questioned and dismantled, and many trusted old business traditions are no longer suitable. What will the media landscape look like, in 3-5 years; who will lose and who will gain? Where are the biggest opportunities (and in what location), and how will the big incumbents need to adapt to stay in the game? An overview of the key trends, immediate future scenarios and select predictions. 

 

The Future of Business: From egosystem to ecosystem. Further amplified by the current economic crisis, the Internet has forever changed the way we do business. Everything is seemingly connected, transparency rules, control is much harder to maintain - and as a consequence, it can no longer be all just about maximizing profits. The "I win - you lose"  mindset is toast. How will firms and brands talk to and interact with their business partners, clients and those pesky people formerly known as consumers, in the near future? How will companies build new revenue streams when they can't control all pieces of the puzzle, and how will strong profits be possible in an open network? Scenarios and wild-cards are used to explain a new, interdependent business ecosystem. 

 

The next 3 years in media and advertising: digital-out-of-home meets SoLoMo (social, mobile, location). Advertising as we knew it is changing dramatically as media consumption and communication is forever altered by digital technologies and the resulting behavior shifts.  Interruption is out and engagement is in, analog 'watering cans' must make room for 'digital sprinklers', data is becoming the new oil, and the concept of advertising as content i.e. as experience is exploding, globally. The Internet is no longer relegated to computers, wires and offices, but is a becoming a part of our 'mobile and outside' life like water or electricity. Convergence is finally real, and it looks like we are on our way to 'publicy' rather than back to privacy. In this talk, Gerd will share some essential foresights about where things are going, how digital, online and outdoor advertising is bound to change and grow, what some interesting social-mobile-location-based ideas may look like, and where the immediate opportunities will be in the next few years. Based on a global view, Gerd will also explore some related issues such as new currencies, social commerce, privacy and future retailing scenarios. 

 

Why Data is the new Oil, and why paying with attention is the future of media. When it comes to paying for content, it has always been a combination of 'I pay' and 'they pay', i.e. a combination of advertising and bundles with subscriptions and individual purchases. In a networked society of, soon, over 4 Billion inter-connected (aka social) and mobile users, the ways of monetizing content will be even more fragmented but also much more powerful, immediate and liquid. The users themselves are becoming so valuable that a lot of content will be paid for by 3rd parties who want to reach them, and the data that billions of users will generate by their mere usage, comments, rates, likes and recommends will become a solid currency, in itself. This bodes well for the future of content: adding more value than you take (as Tim O'Reilly puts it) will become the key to success.  In this talk, Futurist Gerd Leonhard will show examples and share some key foresights what the future of media will look like. 

 

Music 2.0: Re-setting the music business. The music industry (both recorded music and publishing) is experiencing a tidal wave of disruption, and a total reset is in the making: Music 2.0 is around the corner. Selling copies is over, and selling access is next. Preventing the illegitimate use of music is turning out to be impossible, while allowing i.e. licensing any and all types of new platforms is the future. The old, comfortable and lucrative monopoly of attention (and distribution as well as production!) is quickly becoming utterly unfeasible; now, engagement, conversation, community and selling-by-attraction is the future. What will the music industry look like in 3-5 years, where are the big opportunities, and where is that 'new money'? How to move forward and take advantage of the global trends in how people use (fka consume) music?

 

The mobility revolution: Content, context, communications and...culture.
The computer is no longer the most popular way that people around the globe access the web. Mobile devices are taking over at blinding pace, and the implications are vast. Once 1, 2 or or even 4 Billion people are actually connected to the Internet - and therefore, also to each other - which emerging cultural and business trends will be most crucial? How will the global shift to mobile impact specific industries, such as News, Publishing, Education or Travel? And how long will it be until this happens? 

 

Mobile marketing & advertising futures: A view from around the world.
Very soon, mobile devices will become the primary way that users (fka consumers) will access the Internet. All kinds of screens and user-interfaces will be used for many different tasks, and the Web 1.0 experience (i.e. 'going online' on a big computer with many wires coming in and out) will quickly fade in the read mirrors of Billions of mobile Internet users. Marketing, advertising, and the very definition of 'selling' are changing forever. What are key trends in mobile marketing and advertising, around the world, how will this market develop and what are the most important realizations we can derive from previewing the next 2-3 years? 

 

From getting impressions to gaining followers: The future of advertising & marketing.  Advertising as interruption is over. Marketing as yelling and 'pushing stuff' is history. The web has enabled users to tune out anything that is not actually wanted, meaningful and timely. Brands and advertisers must now strive to attract and engage rather than to force their message down the consumer's throat. Now it's all about 'finding products for your customers not customers for your products' (as Clay Shirky has observed). What will Advertising & Marketing 2.0 look like, in the future, which trends can be seen and where the exact opportunities? 

 

Where attention flows money follows: Understanding the attention economy. In an always-on, hyper-networked and therefore eventually tribe-based digital economy, getting (and keeping!) attention will increasingly need come before any chance of remuneration can emerge. Now more than ever before, without an audience, without listeners, viewers, readers, followers and 'friends' there is no business. So how does one get attention these days, be it for a brand, a person, a service or product, and how (if at all) can attention actually be converted to income? This presentation will feature examples and scenarios that can be useful for individuals, organizations or companies, alike. 

 

Thriving on the link economy: How to harness the power of social networks. With the dawn of the real-time web, and the explosion in social networking, the practice of linking to, forwarding and sharing content is becoming even more important. Many users are starting to trust 'people like me' and the opinion of a peer (whether known in person or not) more than the message of a CEO or a paid-for ad, requiring us to integrate our marketing directly into a product or service. How do we effect links and mentions across the web, how do we efficiently participate in the link-economy, and how do we build a buzz authentically? 

 

Social networks and ambient awareness: Understanding the power of Social Media.  Social media is exploding, and the noise is deafening. How does one communicate to 1000s of friends, followers and subscribers all over the world, without risking constant overload, and where is the true power, and potential, of social media? 

 

A new cultural economy, and what it may mean for you. Technology is constantly and irreversibly changing our culture and habits, yet with very different levels of impact in different regions around the globe, and at very different speed. Spotting and understanding emerging cultural trends can often result in recognizing latent opportunities, much sooner, as well, which can lead to a drastically increased scope of innovation - both in terms of business as well as in terms of society and culture. This talk addresses topics such as the changing definition of 'consumers' versus 'creators', the shift from sole and exclusive ownership to open licenses, the concepts of crowd-sourcing and 'proudly found elsewhere', and the Wealth of Networks (as inspired by Yochai Benkler, Joi Ito and others). 

 

The future of creativity and the creative industries. Some recent developments may seem worrisome for content producers and creators: everyone seems to expect high quality content to be instantly available, online (and now, on the mobile, as well!), for free or for a lot less than it used to cost, and many media or content companies around the world are facing declining or stagnating income. In the age of Billions of newly empowered, networked, co-creating, remixing and sharing users, what is the outlook for 'the creators' i.e. the artists, creators, producers, writers, performers, and how will they prosper in the future? How will they market themselves, and what are challenges and opportunities? 

Broadband Culture 1: Understanding the 'people formerly known as consumers'. Today's connected 'consumers' no longer fit the bill: at any given moment, they may in fact be users, followers, friends, co-creators, prosumers, co-producers or crowd-sourced collaborators, all-in-one. The digital natives and their immigrant followers no longer just sit back and take-in what's coming from the top. The 'kids' are running the show now; and they are very quickly influencing the older generations, too. Control is shifting from the providers (the 'networks', studios, publishers labels and broadcasting conglomerates) to the users, from the firm to the individual, from "The Network" to "The Networked" What does mean for you and / or your business, and what will it take to be successful in the future, whether you are a startup or an established incumbent? 

 

Broadband Culture 2: The future of "free". Free or 'feels like free' is fast becoming the keyword for many online marketing activities. The closely related freemium concept (i.e. free basic servicea for everyone plus many ways to up-sell as many others as possible) has been successfully used by 100s of companies incl. Flickr, Skype, Spotify, Amazon and of course - the undisputed master of making things 'free' - Google. But where is the future of 'free' or freemium - how will cultures and economies develop based on free goods, services, products and content, and what will happen to people that create all these 'free' goods? How will pay who for what - or will the everything-anytime-for-free trend reverse in the near future?

 

Broadband Culture 3: The opportunities and challenges of openness. Open platforms are starting to dominate, from software to web services to mobile networks and hardware. Witness the success of open source software, or the dismantling of walled gardens in telecommunications and the exploding use of APIs. Open systems, fully compatible devices, software, networks and platforms seem to be where the future is taking us. What does this mean for your business, going forward? Where are the opportunities and successful scenarios, and what are the myths we should bust and throw away? How, why and where is openness a strategic advantage?

 

Broadband Culture 4: The future of storytelling. Anyone can now publish anything on the web - but are the stories compelling? The river of content runs faster and gets deeper every second, with more and more new creeks of user-generated content swelling the waters. Do faster and cheaper means of production, publishing and distribution also result in more good stories? How will storytelling develop in a future where nobody seems to have enough attention span left for anything that's not short and sweet? Will the micro-chunking and content-snacking trends lead to a poor and unsatisfying storytelling environment, and how, if at all, will new forms develop? How will good yet more demanding stories be heard in a world of ubiquitous noise and mental fast-food? 

 

Paying with Attention - is there real money in 'Free'? 'Free' is becoming a key component of any marketing effort, these days. More often that not, free things are supported with 'buying and selling attention' aka advertising. If this remains one of the main ways of paying for content and creativity online, how exactly will the users' attention turn into money, going forward, and what are some of those new ways this is already happening, around the world? 

 

Personal branding on the Internet: thoughts, experiences, possibilities and examples. Pull not Push: sharing his own experiences during the past 5 years, Gerd Leonhard talks about what it takes to build your own, personal brand on the Internet. Shedding light on often confusing topics such as what to share, when, why, with whom and how, and how to use 'sharing' as the key driver of reputation, Gerd will show how he uses Twitter, Facebook, Google, Youtube and many other tools in order to show up on the right people's radar screens. There are no recipes (sorry) but there can be insightful shared experiences! 

 

The rise of the API Culture, Sharism and Open Platforms. Open Application Program Interfaces (APIs) are driving many of today's most successful companies, incl. Google, Amazon, Twitter and Facebook. 'Use our stuff to build your' is not only the mantra of BBC Backstage, but has become the operating paradigm for 100s of the hottest WebX.0 companies. When everything is open and freely available, how are recurring revenues being generated? Where is this business model taking us, and where are the opportunities?

 

Review my my favorite memes and topics (also available as think-tank topic). 

Take a look at what I think about virtual or remote presentations

[Picture: courtesy of Markus Nigl / Siemens, taken at the 2009 Siemens Media SummIT in Rome]

Here are some examples of the topics Gerd has covered in the past:

The Future of Telecom

Open is King - The Future of Media beyond Control

Social Media - Engage or be Tivo'ed?

Mobility and Mobile Content

The Future of Travel and Tourism (Impact of Social Media)

Media Mega-Trends - 1, 2, 5, and 10 years out: what will these trends mean for business, culture, media and society, and where will the big opportunities be?

The Future of Advertising and Branding (redefining advertising)

PR2.0 and the Future of Public Relations

The Future of Telecoms & Communications (EU, US, ASIA)

The Future of Copyright and Intellectual Property on the Internet - pay per copy, or pay for access? (related: the future of content creation)and : Copyright versus Technology - if merely seeing or hearing 'content' becomes 'getting', how will content be monetized?

Media X.0: Friction is Fiction

The Net-Generation and the "Digital Natives" and how they are changing media, culture, law, and business

Social networking: the future of Radio and TV?

Innovation and Change Management

Future Scenarios and Predictions: Media, Advertising and Branding in 2010, 2013, 2018 (can be narrowed down to one particular industry)

Where is the new money in the Future of Media & Entertainment: unit sales, access-controlled / ppv, Ad-supported, Feels Like Free - or just plain Free?

Music2.0 and the Future of the Music Industry (defining the music company of tomorrow)

The Web & TV convergence and the Future of Television

The Future of Radio and Broadcasting (public and / or commercial) - is the Internet the New Radio?

The Future of Publishing, Books, and Journalism

The Future of Marketing: The big switch from Push to Pull, what it really means, and how to take advantage of it

Media and the concept of the Longtail: ideas, visions and realities for the content industries

The Future of User-Generated Content, and the radical transformation of "The
People formerly known as Consumers"

The Future of Retail: 0s and 1s versus hard goods

The Future of creation, talent and ideas - a good look at 'distributed selection', UGC and the 'wisdom of masses' (where and how will talent emerge in the Future)

Web2.0 / Webwhatever.0: what it really means, and where it's going

Local and global media trends, and how they overlap (or not)

Mobility and the Future of Media - why mobile media will dwarf anything we have seen so far

The Future of Telecom: networked content, new roles, new revenue streams, new challenges

The next generation media company: from The Network to 'Networked'

The Blogosphere & understanding the world of blogging: how it works and what it can('t) do for you

Commercial versus Shared Culture: what's business, and what's culture?

Music Like Water / Media Like Water (the flat rate debate)

The Attention Economy in Media: why attention is the new distribution

A Change of Control: how technology is transforming media, and how losing control creates new revenues

The impact of Technology on Culture

The Future of Creators: new models for the monetization of content creation (is technology empowering the creators or simply making them a commodity?). Generating income in a world of ubiquitous (and often, free) content

Benefits and challenges of the so-called democratization of production

Fueling the fire: Investment opportunities in next-generation media

The future of education in a world of ubiquitous media and endless resources

Some of Gerd's past presentations can be downloaded here, Gerd's FutureTalk videos can be viewed and downloaded here (also featuring fellow futurist Glen Hiemstra).

 

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