Futurist Jim Carroll"The more you reach for the past, the more the future escapes you." - Futurist Jim Carroll
It's July 4, and so I am pausing my Megatrends series for the day to give a shoutout to all my American friends..
In that context, it's an 'interesting' time to be a futurist. I find myself, as do many others, in the odd situation of outlining the massive opportunities of tomorrow to a nation and people who seem all too eager to dismiss those opportunities. It's not just 'interesting' - it's just downright weird at times.
As a Canadian, the vast majority of my work over the last 20 years has been throughout the US. I thought I would just spend a moment to catch the idea in today's quote by looking back at some of my keynotes through the years. I truly wonder, at times, what has happened. My thinking is that the result of much of this is that many of the organizations I found myself spending time with now find themselves sliding back instead of moving forward. The more that happens, the tougher it becomes to reverse the direction.
The United Soybean Board had me in to talk to the top 500 soybean farmers in the US in 2015. They wanted me to focus on what they knew to be the massive market opportunity continuing to emerge in China. Oops.
The National Rural Electrical Cooperative booked me multiple times to focus on the dramatic changes occurring with solar, wind, batteries, and microgrid technologies. They're now amid massive funding cutbacks, deployment cancellations, and investment decline
The National Association of Landscape Professionals had me in for a talk on the future trends impacting their industry. They didn't want too much of a focus on workforce issues. They've recently put out a memo about what to do when immigration officials show up on a job or worksite
The Western Growers Association represents most of the western agricultural community in California, Nevada, and Arizona, and had me in for a talk on the future of farming. They too didn't want to mention the workforce issue. Some of their migrant labor is now being chased through the fields.
These are only a few of the specific clients who now find themselves deep in some weird future.
I'll leave it at that.
July 4.
Weird.
All GNU social JP content and data are available under the