David Zach, futurist

AIA-NYS speech on Fads, Trends & Principles

Just had a lot of fun as the keynote speaker for the architects of New York state here in Rochester, NY. (Beautiful Wings of Progress art deco building out my hotel window - as great inspiration - see photo below.)  

A variety of handouts can be found here. My book Worth Remembering can be found here. 

Towards the end of the talk, explaining how elegance and eloquence are two of the most important concepts for surviving the so-called Age of Information, shared with them some poetry that kids back in 1903 had to memorize including Rienzi's Address to the Romans. It's sad to understand that if grade schoolers could have once memorized such long poems, why can't they do the same today - and what are the children memorizing today and/or being distracted by today? 

Here's the first slide:

So, to the applause and laughter of the audience, I showed them what tweeting would have done to such poetry limited to 140 characters - no more, no less. Actually, much, much less. 

Take a look through the link to see what has been lost in translation over the past 100 years.And so goes with what is sometimes called progress. 

Conversation among Master Coaches talk

For those from the talk at Conversations among Masters (a gathering of master level executive coaches), here are a number of links/articles referred to in my presentation.

Referencing the value of elegance and eloquence in design and communications, here's the newspaper article on A School Dr. Doolittle Could Love. And here's the article that I had written about it: A School Designed for Children.

And, here's the article on my antique collection: Art Deco Cool.

The FutureQuotes handout.

There are several other articles and handouts at this link.

For the slightly irreverent amongst all of you masters, here's a free eBook of my humor book Zachronyms that I did back in the last century about the various lifestyles and attitudes we're seeing in this century. There's a dead-tree version available through Amazon.

The American Chesterton Society is here and their conference in June in St. Paul will feature a certain so-called futurist speaking on The Question of Progress.

Thanks for being such a great and welcoming audience. The conversations were fascinating. It was an honor to spend the three days with you.