Technology Revolution: The Future of Now

Buzz 1: "Fasten your seatbelt. It's going to be a bumpy night." (Margo Channing, played by Bette Davis, All About Eve, 1950 drama film) Buzz 2: "What are we gonna do?"…"The question isn't 'What are we going to do?' The question is 'What aren't we going to do?'" (Sloane, played by Mia Sara, and Ferris, played by Matthew Broderick, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, 1986 teen comedy film) Buzz 4: Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming…"(Dory, voiced by Ellen DeGeneres, Finding Nemo, 2003 computer-animated adventure film) Could you have predicted in 1950 that we'd still be quoting Bette Davis in All About Eve, today, 71 years later – or quoting Ferris Bueller 35 years later – or quoting Dory 18 years later? Hmmmm… If you're hoping to gaze into a crystal ball to see what 2022 holds for your company, your industry and the world, we've got the next best thing. On our 7-week 2022 Crystal Ball Predictions Special, we're bringing you insights from 50 thought leaders covering the exciting technologies, strategies, and trends that can help you grow and compete better in 2022 and beyond. Live today, December 15, 2021, we'll hear 9 visionaries' savvy predictions for the Future of Financial Excellence. Pour a cup of Joe, Earl, Bailey, or Dom, and join us for Technology Revolution: The Future of Now – 2022 Crystal Ball Predictions Part 3 live.

The Buzz 1: "Someday, somewhere we'll find a new way of living." ('Somewhere' lyrics, West Side Story, 1957 Broadway play) The Buzz 2: "Anything you want to do, do it, want to change the world, there's nothing to it." ('Pure Imagination' lyrics, 1971 film Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory) The Buzz 3: "You can't start a fire without a spark." (Dancing in the Dark, 1984 lyrics by Bruce Springsteen) Would you have predicted in 1957 that we'd be quoting West Side Story [or re-adapting the play] today, 65 years later – or Willy Wonka 50 years later – or Dancing in the Dark 35+ years later? Hmmmm… If you're hoping to gaze into a crystal ball to see what 2022 holds for your company, your industry and the world, we've got the next best thing. On our 7-week 2022 Crystal Ball Predictions Special, we're bringing you insights from 50 thought leaders covering the exciting technologies, strategies, and trends that can help you grow and compete better in 2022 and beyond. Live on December 8, 2021, we'll hear nine visionaries' savvy predictions for the Future of Mobility and Manufacturing. Pour a cup of Joe, Earl, Bailey, or Dom, and join us for Technology Revolution: The Future of Now 2022 Crystal Ball Predictions – Part 2 live. Working together, let's make 2022 a so-much-better year!

The Buzz: Top five quotes from Back to the Future, 1985–1990 sci-movie trilogy: * "Nobody calls me chicken." * "Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads." * "1.21 Gigawatts!?!" * "I guess you guys aren't ready for that yet. But your kids are gonna love it." * "This Is heavy!" Would you have predicted in 1990 that we'd still be quoting the characters in Back to the Future today, 30+ years later? If you're hoping to gaze into a crystal ball to see what 2022 holds for your company, your industry and the world, we've got the next best thing. Live today, December 1, 2021, we'll hear eight visionaries' savvy predictions for the Future of Digital Engagement on Part 1 of our 2022 Crystal Ball Predictions Special. The Special continues on December 8 and 15, then takes a holiday break and resumes on January 5, 2022, continuing through the end of January. In total, we're bringing you insights from more than 50 thought leaders covering the exciting technologies, strategies, and trends that can help you grow and compete better in 2022 and beyond. Pour a cup of Joe, Earl, or Dom, and join us for Technology Revolution: The Future of Now – 2022 Crystal Ball Predictions – Part 1 live. Working together, let's make 2022 a so-much-better year!

The Buzz 1: "Entrepreneurship is the last refuge of the troublemaking individual." (Natalie Clifford Barney) The Buzz 2: "You're not in competition with other women. You're in competition with everyone." (Tina Fey) The Buzz 3: "The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it." (Roseanne Barr) The Buzz 4: "Being a successful female entrepreneur is hard work and comes with a unique set of challenges." (Female Entrepreneur's Playbook: Secret Strategies from 20+ Women for Building a Business You Love and Getting Paid for It) We'll ask Cindy Zuelsdorf at Kokoro Marketing, Patricia Wooster at WoosterMedia, Tamra Andress at F.I.T. in Faith Media and Patty Rogers at B2B Digital Assistance, for their take on The Future for Female Entrepreneurs: A New Playing Field? – Part 2.

The Buzz 1: "Smart cities are the intelligent cities of positivity and happy-energy, not the junkyards of technologies but cities of diversity, love, life, beauty, dignity, freedom, tolerance, and equality." (Amit Ray, author: Peace Bliss Beauty and Truth: Living with Positivity) The Buzz 2: "The banning of bullfighting in Catalonia was controversial and hard won and has now been replaced by the vacuous global consumption of the mall. I'm sure that is an advance for the bulls but I'm not sure how well it bodes for the serious business of being a city. (Edwin Heathcote, The Financial Times architecture and design critic) The Buzz 3: "The second mode [to deal with unsafe cities] is to take refuge in vehicles. This is the technique practiced in the big wild-animal reservations of Africa, where tourists are warned to leave their cars under no circumstances until they reach a lodge. It is also the technique practiced in Los Angeles." (Jane Jacobs, author: The Death and Life of Great American Cities) The Buzz 4: "Urbanization has lured more people to bustling metropolises, but precious little thought has been given to what happens when these cities fail…For all the famed cities with thousands of years of continuity – Paris, London, Cairo, Athens, Rome, Istanbul – most cities just stop." (Ben Paynter, Fast Company senior writer) We'll ask Don DeLoach at Rocket Wagon Venture Studios, Brenna Berman at City Tech, John Robbins at Turner & Townsend, and Peter Torrellas at Parsons for their take on The Future of Smarter Cities: People + How Much Technology?

The Buzz 1: "Even without the modern neurological research that proves storytelling is the best way to capture people's attention, bake information into their memories, and forge close, personal bonds, humanity has always inherently known that people crave and seek out great stories almost as much as food and water." (blog.hubspot.com) The Buzz 2: "From fireside folk tales to Netflix dramas, narratives are essential to every society…Scholars specialising in 'literary Darwinism' are asking what exactly makes a good story, and the evolutionary reasons that certain narratives – from Homer's Odyssey to Harry Potter – have such popular appeal." (bbc.com) The Buzz 3: "No story lives unless someone wants to listen. The stories we love best do live in us forever. So whether you come back by page or by the big screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home." (J.K. Rowling, author of Harry Potter fantasy books) The Buzz 4: "You're never going to kill storytelling, because it's built in the human plan. We come with it." '(Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid's Tale) The Buzz 5: "The most amazing thing for me is that every single person who sees a movie, not necessarily one of my movies, brings a whole set of unique experiences, but through careful manipulation and good storytelling, you can get everybody to clap at the same time, to hopefully laugh at the same time, and to be afraid at the same time." (Steven Spielberg, filmmaker) We'll ask Dr. George Viney, Tish Hicks, Rebecca Armstrong and Megan Wells for their take on The Future of Storytelling and Technology: Get Real!

The Buzz 1: "#Hashtags aren't as cool as they once were…A Next Web study found that more than half of consumers don't search for hashtags or use hashtags on their own content.… Spammers and bots are targeting popular hashtags at high rates, even if the hashtag isn't relevant to the content. This adds "noise" to the social sphere." (sellerschoice.digital) The Buzz 2: "It's been 13 years since the founding of the hashtag and marketers are now questioning if hashtags are still relevant…When we asked our community on our Instagram about hashtags, 66% said they're a key part of their social strategies but 34% said they're "over them." (sproutsocial.com) The Buzz 3: "Everyone's like sheep on social media; like, one person starts making noise, and everyone's like, 'Hey, yeah!' and then you got a whole bunch of people making noise at you." (Earl Sweatshirt, American rapper, songwriter, record producer) We'll ask Mike Grehan, Crispin Sheridan, Isabella Wang and Janet E. Johnson for their take on The Future of Social Media Noise: Time to Banish Hashtags?

The Buzz 1: "What do you need to start a business? Three simple things: know your product better than anyone, know your customer, and have a burning desire to succeed." (Dave Thomas, Wendy's founder) The Buzz 2: "The best startups generally come from somebody needing to scratch an itch." (Michael Arrington, TechCrunch founder and co-editor) The Buzz 3: "Don't let others convince you that the idea is good when your gut tells you it's bad." (Kevin Rose, Digg co-founder) The Buzz 4: "Ignore the hype of the startups that you see in the press. Mostly, it's a pack of lies. Half of these startups will be dead in a year. So, focus on building your business so you can be the one left standing." (Jules Pieri, The Grommet co-founder and CEO) We'll ask entrepreneurship experts Don DeLoach at Rocket Wagon Venture Studios, Professor Robert N. Eberhart at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, Jim Gagnard at Industrial IoT Studio, and Bob Mazer at Smart City Works for their insights on The Future of Entrepreneurship: Why Will Startups Keep Failing?

The Buzz 1: The future promised by self-driving car companies — in which the streets would be filled with autonomous vehicles — has yet to arrive. In May 2021, The New York Times reported that the cars are still unable to manage the multitude of scenarios they may encounter while driving…if it's drizzling, all the cameras are so strong that they can capture the tiniest water drop in the atmosphere. In a category called atmospherics, workers may be asked to label each individual drop of water so the cars don't mistake them for obstacles. (nytimes.com) The Buzz 2: "Mounting technical problems proved more difficult than designers expected, including the challenge of teaching cars to interpret the gazillion different types of everyday objects and data that real life presents, from passing birds to a moon that looks like a yellow traffic light to hand gestures from other drivers. (vice.com/en/) The Buzz 3: Training self-driving cars for $1 an hour: To master the roads, autonomous vehicles need lots of data. Workers everywhere from Kenya to Venezuela are providing it. (restofworld.org) The Buzz 4: Self-Taught, Self-Driving Cars? Boston University engineer Eshed Ohn-Bar is developing a new way for autonomous vehicles to learn safe driving techniques—by watching other cars on the road, predicting how they will respond to their environment, and using that information to make their own driving decisions.…Researchers had autonomous cars navigate two virtual towns—one with straightforward turns and obstacles similar to their training environment, and another with unexpected twists, like 5-way intersections…with just one hour of driving data to train the machine learning algorithm, the autonomous vehicles arrived safely at their destinations 92 percent of the time." (bu.edu) We'll ask automotive and AI visionaries Tom Madonna, Patrick Maroney and Praveen Ramamurthy for their take on The Future of Self-Driving Cars: Who Will Teach Them to Drive?

The Buzz 1: "The book is better" – you hear often when it comes to adaptations of books for the screen…plenty of TV adaptations are as good as the books they're based on, and some are even better…Book adaptations have become must-see TV, from Game of Thrones to The Handmaid's Tale and beyond. (www.stylist.co.uk) The Buzz 2: Some of the most talked-about TV series of the past few years are all based on novels and other published works…books, comic books, and graphic novels in development as TV or streaming series have the potential to become the next big Certified Fresh thing…Alex Cross, All The King's Men… (editorial.rottentomatoes.com) The Buzz 3: TV series based on crime novels: A Touch of Frost (1992–2010) based on the Inspector Frost series by R. D. Wingfield. Above Suspicion (2009–2012) based on the Anna Travis Mystery series by Lynda La Plante. DCI Banks (2010–2016) based on the Inspector Banks series by Peter Robinson. (imdb.com/list/ls050959758) We'll ask Dale T. Phillips, Joanna Schaffhausen, Connie Johnson Hambley and Clea Simon for their take on The Future of Crime Novels: Must-See TV Adaptation Required?