Technology Revolution: The Future of Now

The Buzz 1: Women in technical roles are less likely than men to win promotions early in their careers, and many are exiting the field. Only 86 women are promoted to manager for every 100 men at the same level…in technical roles, only 52 women per 100 men. Diversity is crucial to help de-bias the technologies in our modern life. [McKinsey's Women in the Workplace 2021 report, coauthored with LeanIn.org] The Buzz 2: The label 'woman in tech' seems redundant…how many women would refer to themselves as 'a female engineer' or 'the company's female CTO'? However, there still exists a disparity in the pay scales and ability to climb the career ladder between men and women in the technology sector. [codemotion.com] The Buzz 3: At current rates, it will take 100 years for women in technical and non-technical roles to reach parity with men at the C-level [Anita Borg Institute, 'Advancing Women Technologists into Positions of Leadership'. [content.techgig.com] We'll ask Lisa Dalesandro DiChristofer, Kylie Woods, Debbie Scott and Lori Rosano for their take on The Future of Women in Tech Careers: Should I Stay or Should I Go?

The Buzz 1: "What will be the most coveted skill of the future?…Creativity…A computer lacks imagination or creativity to dream up a vision for the future.…the emotional competence a human being has… We must embrace and develop our creativity, and then use technology creatively to solve problems of the world." [forbes.com/sites/annapowers] The Buzz 2: "When you think about old masters of art such as Pablo Picasso, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, you can clearly understand why their paintings are valued at a high premium: because of their inherent innovation and creativity…Leonardo Da Vinci's painting Salvador Mundi sold for $450M – buying a trace of Da Vinci's genius, his vision, his creativity through the painting." [ibid] The Buzz 3: "During the global pandemic, creativity has arguably never been so rich, whether it is advertisers producing innovative ways to reach their consumers, to businesses finding ways to operate under unprecedented circumstances, to people looking for ways to communicate, entertain and feel close to their loved ones. Sir John Hegarty: "Creativity can change the way we feel about something and will stay with us for eternity." [thefutureofcreativity.co.uk] The Buzz 4: "Employers from all domains make their way to creative colleges to hire people who can bring innovation and design thinking into their organisations.…sit up, take note and make the required shifts to ensure they are ready to be leaders in the Future Economy." [medium.com] We'll ask Meg, Hafdahl, D. C. Gomez, Charles Breakfield and Mark L. Lefebvre for their take on The Future of Creativity: Is Technology Helping or Hindering?

The Buzz 1: "NFTs are not just for digital art—and their popularity is growing. Now The Economist is experimenting with an NFT, to raise money for a good cause. – One candidate for the Oxford English Dictionary's "Word of the Year" for 2021 will surely be "NFT". Non-fungible tokens—cryptocurrency chits which represent digital images or videos—have been around since 2014, but took off in popularity in March [2021] when Christie's, a British auction house, sold an NFT of "Everydays—The First 5,000 Days", art by Mike Winkelmann, for a cool $69m.…On October 25, The Economist will auction off the cover of our issue from September 18: Alice in Wonderland embarking on a journey into the world of decentralised finance (DeFi)—in which NFTs form part of the foundation of the digital economy." [economist.com] The Buzz 2: "Like it or not, the music industry has embraced NFTs …In March 2021, the album heralded as the first to be released as a non-fungible token was Kings of Leon's barrel-scraping When You See Yourself—and people who bought the shiny new digital widget got their actual copies of the record as old-fashioned MP3s and vinyl records. Snoop Dogg announced his newly acquired Death Row Records, a hip-hop brand venerable enough for the Super Bowl halftime show, would become the first NFT label. [pitchfork.com] The Buzz 3: "Sotheby's offers a curated array of NFT's from Digital Art, Luxury, Collectibles, Sports and Pop Culture…In 2021, records were broken: the most expensive Bored Ape Yacht Club ever sold in October 2021 for $3.4M…the second most expensive Cryptopunk ever sold achieved $11.7M." [sothebys.com] Within the next couple of years, some of our favorite establishments or even community groups might start to implement this technology to better interact with us. What kinds of new possibilities will be created with NFTs for both the creator and us, the consumer? We'll ask Connor Borrego, Amina Touati and James Shannon for their take on The Future of Your Digital Identity: All About The NFTs?

The Buzz 1: "The science of social selling actually originated from academia. In a 2009 paper…'The Persuasive Role of Incidental Similarity on Attitudes and Purchase Intentions in a Sales Context,' researchers concluded that a purchase is more likely to take place when the buyer and seller happen to share things in common…sales practitioners began putting the science into practice and thus became the 'social selling' approach." [Tony Restell, social-hire.com] The Buzz 2: "To stand out today, you must be original…add your own story to your content. There is only one you." [Mark Schaefer, Schaefer Marketing Solutions] The Buzz 3: "Success on social media platforms, including LinkedIn, relies on your ability to make true connections… build relationships." [Kim Garst, KG Enterprises] The Buzz 4: "It's a dialogue, not a monologue, and some people don't understand that. Social media is more like a telephone than a television." [Amy Jo Martin, Author: Renegades Write the Rules] We'll ask Steve Watt, DeJuan Brown, Ashley Coghill and Darren McKee for their take on The Future of Business Social Selling: Crickets or Ca-Ching?

The Buzz 1: In 1440 – 600 years after The Diamond Sutra, the world's oldest printed book – Gutenberg invented the wooden mass-printing press. In 1845 Richard Hoe invented the rotary press and first paperback. In 1993, Peter James published the thriller Host on 2 floppy disks – the first electronic novel – and BiblioBooks launched a website to sell eBooks. Along came the 2gb Kindle, able to hold 1,100 books. Today, print books still make up 65+% of sales in the $113Bn annual book market. To be competitive, some print books have covers with gold gilded edges, metal and transparent overlays, and some eBooks let you choose adventure story lines and have animated and interactive covers. [adazing.com] The Buzz 2: "When people ask me about the future of publishing, my answer always starts with: There's no such thing as a single future of publishing … traditional publishers release fewer nonfiction books…total number of nonfiction books is going way up because more Authors are self-publishing." [scribemedia.com Tucker Max is co-founder of Scribe] We'll ask publisher/writer Patricia Wooster, novelists Matt Cost and BJ Magnani, and publisher Eddie Vincent for their take on The Future of Publishing and Technology: Read All About It!

The in-person experience of car buying has always been alluring, letting you inhale the new car scent, examine the shiny power under the hood, literally kick the tires, ask questions of a human salesperson, and feel the road in a test drive. Now online car sales are offering a new experience: click it, order it, pick it up, keep-or-return it – and the automotive industry mostly isn't ready. The Buzz 1: Nearly 30% of U.S. new car sales in 2020 were completed online, compared to 2% of vehicles pre-pandemic. The overall car shopping experience took less time and was more efficient…the number of dealerships visited dropped. [abcnews ] The Buzz 2: 53% of car buyers would consider buying a car online. [Accenture report in Readers Digest Mar. 16, 2022] The Buzz 3: Prospective buyers, especially age 55–70, are less inclined to want to interact with sellers at car dealerships. [mckinsey] The Buzz 4: Swedish electric performance car brand Polestar, 50% owned by Volvo, is focusing on a digital-first retail model, with company-owned stores in city centers selling directly to consumers. Volvo's electric C40 Recharge compact SUV will only be available online. Online car retailer Carvana sold 244,111 cars in 2020, a 37% jump from 2019. We'll ask Daniel Grimm at SAP, Guenter Lasser at proaxia, Christos Maglousidis at OneDealer and Moncombu Raju at SAP for their take on The Future of Automotive Retail and Tech: How Will YOU Buy A Car Tomorrow?

The Buzz 1: "Privacy and security are those things you give up when you show the world what makes you extraordinary." [Margaret Cho, comedian] The Buzz 2: "Millions of people are unaware of and uninformed about how their personal information is being used, collected or shared in our digital society." [staysafeonline.org/data-privacy-week] The Buzz 3: "Digital freedom stops where that of users begins... Privacy is not for sale, it's a valuable asset to protect." (Stephane Nappo, Société Générale International Banking) The Buzz 4: "The fact the number of data breach events in Q1 represents a double-digit increase (14%) over the same time last year is another indicator that data compromises will continue to rise in 2022 after setting a new all-time high in 2021." [Eva Velasquez, President and CEO, Identity Theft Resource Center, consumeraffairs.com] We'll ask Shane Faria, Mike Audi, Eric Simone and Eli Herrick for their take on Data Data Everywhere: Is Data Privacy In Your Future? – Part 2.

The Buzz 1: "There is such a thing as a glass ceiling…the invisible barrier which prevents women from advancement in their profession. Do we have an unacknowledged barrier that is an obstacle for women in Tech who are indeed skilled and experienced but can't get a promotion?" [huddle.eurostarsoftwaretesting.com] The Buzz 2: "The label 'woman in tech' seems redundant these days – how many women would refer to themselves as 'a female engineer' or 'the company's female CTO'? However, there still exists a disparity in the pay scales and ability to climb the career ladder between men and women working in the technology sector. [codemotion.com] The Buzz 3: In 2015, the National Center for Women & Information Technology found women hold only a quarter of computing jobs, even though they make up about half of the total workforce. Unfortunately, statistics like these remain unsurprising and slow to change. [datacenterdynamics.com] The Buzz 4: "Due to gender discrimination, men tend to advance in their career merely on the 'potential' they exhibit whereas actual 'performance' determines how far women in technology proceed in their respective careers.…At current advancement rates, it will take 100 years for women in technical and non-technical roles to reach parity with men at the C-level. [content.techgig.com/leadership] We'll ask Lisa Dalesandro DiChristofer, Lori Rosano, Debbie Scott and Kylie Woods for their take on The Future of Women in Tech: Time to Smash the Glass Ceiling?

The Buzz 1: While the majority of solo parents are single mothers, up to 2.6 million families in the US are headed by single dads…The research on single fathers is limited. [healthline dot com] The Buzz 2: As a single dad, keeping a strong relationship between you and your child after a divorce is essential for your child's wellbeing.…children are less likely to engage in delinquent behavior if their father is actively engaged in their upbringing. [Licensed psychologist Robert Goldman, pittsburghparent dot com] The Buzz 3: "I've experienced all the different roles you have to play when there's nobody else around: a parent, a dad, a father, a stand-in mum, a confidant, always a butler or maid, a teacher and, most crucially, a friend." [The Single Dad's Guide to the Galaxy by Roger McEwan] The Buzz 4: Support solutions specifically designed for single fathers are scarce. ACM research uses the Human-centered design methodology to engage single fathers in multiple research activities to gain insight into their support needs to inform potential designs for support interventions. [dl.acm dot org] The Buzz 4: In today's digitally connected world, parents have to manage their own relationship with the internet and mobile devices, along with managing their children's use of and exposure to the same technology. [pewresearch dot org] We'll ask Karen Gibson, Dustin Droen, Jason Blount, and Reggie Waterman for their take on The Future of Single Dads & Technology: Family Ties?

The Buzz 1: "85% of the women I interviewed make money in ways that really aren't any different from how women made money in 1980: a third have jobs that pay salaries and bonuses, perhaps with a bit of a twist; about a quarter make money off of direct drive sales (a business model I remember well from selling photocopiers for Xerox in 1986!) and another quarter provide some sort of fee for service. A mere 15% have the "many sources" model for money making.…" (Barbara Stewart, Rich Thinking® global research papers http://barbarastewart.ca) The Buzz 2: "Approximately $30 trillion in wealth is set to change hands in the next decade and women are poised to inherit a sizable share, according to research by McKinsey & Company published in 2020." (investopedia.com) The Buzz 3: "According to Consultancy group Boston Consulting Group (BCG), women hold nowadays an average of 40% of global wealth, and this could rise at a compound annual growth rate of 7.2% by 2023, outpacing the 5.2% compound annual growth rate projected for men." (juliusbaer.com) The Buzz 4: "In many ultra-high-net-worth families, the roles of women are still hindered by long-standing conventions and complex intergenerational dynamics. Although these women control a significant percentage of the world's wealth ($10.9+ trillion in assets in the U.S.), serve as CEOs…and play an increasing role in shaping the philosophies and priorities of future generations, their contributions are often overlooked." (nasdaq.com) We'll ask Barbara Stewart, Eva Grønbjerg Christensen, Iris ten Teije and April Rudin for their take on The Future of Women's Wealth & Technology: Innovators, Investors and Influencers.