David Zach, futurist

Rockford Chamber: Keynote Speech by David Zach Futurist

Just found this PDF publication from the Rockford 100th anniversary event where I spoke. (It's on page 9 and copied below) This was from an interview done after the event and summarizes some of my comments about how does a city like Rockford take ownership of their future — and hold on to the best of their past. 

If you want to see the actual talk, here's a link of the video nicely edited by the fine folks at Engine Studio. (the link to my talk is temporary, btw) 

1. What do you hope Chamber members received from your Annual Dinner presentation?

I hope you walked away with a sense of ownership for your future — for Rockford, your families, your neighborhood. I hope I’ve given you ways to think about the choices and opportunities that will undoubtedly occur in the next 10 years. If you are planning on being alive 10 years from now, you should be thinking out that far.

2. How do you view the difference between a fad, a trend and a principle?

A fad is about flavor, fashion, fun — a way to enjoy the moment in life. Too many people get caught up in fads, when they should just play with them or just use them. Don’t embrace them. If you have no fads in your life, you’re probably boring. If you have too many of them, you’re probably irrelevant.

A trend is about change over time. It changes the things around you. Trends can be about tech- nology, demographics, or even the growth in obsessions over fads. While you can safely ignore fads, you really need to respond to trends — to fight them or sup- port them.

A principle transcends time. It doesn’t depend upon the season for whether it’s true or not. In that sense, it’s independent of popu- larity. They’re standards by which we can judge things, be they fads, trends and all of the choices we make. If you were to begin a sentence with the words, “We hold these truths to be self-evi- dent ...” principles are the sorts of things that you could use to finish that sentence.

I like to say, “Play with Fads, Work with Trends, Live by Principles.” This is often easier said than done, because we are often seduced by fads, ignorant of trends and resistant to principles.

3. How can you tell the difference?

Stop giving so much of your attention to fads, which are here today, only to quickly fade away. Look for trends that affect both your bottom line and your hori- zon. Pay attention to the things that affect your work and life that are true — whether you ignore them or deny them.

Lastly, stop worshiping at your computer. Limit e-mail, surfing. Use computers as essential busi- ness tools, but learn to turn them off. Walk away and get a life.

4. What do you see as trends for 2010 and beyond for our country, the Midwest?

The combination of technology and design thinking is revolution- izing products, productivity and

lifestyle. As much as we can be impressed with all of the innova- tions from the past 20 years, I think we’re launching into an explosion of innovation.

Now would be a really good time to consider what shouldn’t change — because the pressure to change and leave things behind will never be greater. But as the writer GK Chesterton once suggested, progress isn’t just leaving things behind us, it’s much more about leaving things inside of us.

Another pivot point in this whole innovation revolution, with major connections to Rockford, is the advancement of logistics — the movement of people, things and ideas. As Rockford is a hub of logistics for the movement of things, you should pay more attention to the movement of people and ideas.

It used to be location, location, location. It’s now location, ameni- ties, access. Think about where people want to live, especially if they’re freed from having to always work in an office. What holds peo- ple to a place, if work no longer requires it? What are the quality of life issues that make Rockford more than convenient, but a great place to live, work and play?

5. What advice would you give to entrepreneurs and business leaders in coming out of the recession successfully?

Start close to the ground, pay attention to what people really want and need, and streamline operations as much as possible. Automate as much as possible and practical. Ask yourself, what do you do best? For all other tasks: either innovate, automate, emigrate or eliminate.

Be attentive, but wary of the pundits and prognosticators (including me, by the way). Whenever you hear a forecast about the future, ask, “Is there a profit motive behind the prophet motive?” If we do what they say, do they get rich or gain power and influence?

Look around and try to see what you’re not seeing — what are you missing that someone else looking in the same place would say is obvious. It’s not just thinking outside the box. It’s about connecting and combining your thinking with others to form great ideas. A great amount of the innovation coming has more to do with connecting disparate ideas than in inventing new ones.

Reading list ASHRAE & APCO talks & Rockford IL Chamber event

At my recent talks (and conversations in the hallways) in Orlando to ASHRAE & APCO and to the Rockford IL Chamber, I discussed a number of books - and there were quite a few requests for a repeat of the books recommended. So here they are:

The Pirate's Dilemma by Matt Mason

How youth culture is changing the nature of capitalism. What I like about it is pointing out that a lot of young adults are approaching the marketplace with a new sense of how it works. As I put it in my talks, they understand the three part notion of economics today: Attention, Experience & Attitude.

The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman

Change by Design by Tim Brown

Design Thinking by Thomas Lockwood, editor

These three books are a good introduction to the rise of design and how design thinking is a counterpoint to more traditional MBA thinking. Design determines value. As we get better at understanding the potential of design thinking, we dramatically increase our ability to create & organize value.

The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

I recall reading an article which said that a survey of high-tech executives believed that Neal Stephenson probably is the science fiction writer who best describes how the future will actually happen. I would tentatively agree because I keep thinking no matter what we imagine, increasingly it appears we'll be wrong.

Distracted by Maggie Jackson

My favorite read of 2009. Subtitled "The erosion of attention and the coming dark age." Yeah, it's that optimistic. I just don't understand how we can fritter away our most valuable resource and expect that the outcome will be what we've been hoping for.

Rapt by Winifred Gallagher

I've not finished this book but I do like that it's sort of the opposite of Distracted - a few instructions on how to pay attention to one thing at a time - over time. I would finish it, if I could pay attention to it long enough ...

Last Child Left in the Woods by James Louv

This book begins with the quotation: "I like playing indoors because that's where all the electrical outlets are." The fact that we are denaturing our children has profound implications. I worry over the loss of understanding of natural cycles and a sense of the slowness of nature. We have replaced cycles and seasons with fads and trends. To slightly misquote Peter Pan, "Oh, the cleverness of us!"

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

Modern economics and the fact of one damn thing leads to another.

Hip: A History by John Leland

A history of what's been cool, and how it got there. This is essentially a history of fads, but more than that, it's also a sense of the trend of importance of being hip and how that captures our attention in modern times.

The True Believer by Eric Hoffer

How people get caught up in cults of personality and mass movements. A great book for the early years of the 21st century. I find Hoffer and Chesterton to have been essential in the formation of my world view. Go here for more on Hoffer and here to find some of his great quotations.

In case you haven't gone to my website, it's www.davidzach.com

And, in the category, now why didn't I think of this right away, here are my books!

Worth Remembering: the future value of old ideas by David Zach

Before we look forward, we should first look back to see what has been said and thought before. Don't try to invent ALL of the future, borrow the best from the past upon which you can build the hopes and dreams of today.

Zachronyms: funny words for funny times by David Zach

Back in the ancient days of the late 20th century, I worked at Northwestern Mutual as a trend analyst, and did a lot of reports on demographics. To spice up those talks and reports I would often pepper them with some of the funny lifestyle acronyms that had been popular at the time. Not just YUPPIES: Young, urban professionals, but how about PUPPIES: Pregnant urban professions, or better yet, SPORES: Stupid People On Rented Equipment. This book is full of it, acryonomicially speaking.

I also quoted GK Chesterton a fair amount. Go here to visit the American Chesterton Society.

(I'm on the board and will be speaking at their annual convention on August 5th, just outside of Washington, DC.)

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. 

Futurist Gets You Thinking article, South Bend Tribune

Nice article in the South Bend Tribune about a recent talk I gave in Elkhart, IN for local business, industry and labor attendees. With an 18.8% unemployment rate there, the future looms a lot closer than it might in other areas of the country. 

Quoting one attendee: "This was the first futurist I've heard that actually talked about a reliance on a tradition or the past." 

Instead of everyone in these economically depressed areas being recruited into the agency of change, we might just need a few of them to be agents of tradition - helping to safeguard the treasures of the past, be they communities, values or perhaps just even little bits of common sense.  

If we treat the past more like a toolbox instead of an outdated anchor, we might build better futures. 

Modern Times Poster Handout

Here's a small poster for one of my concluding themes, that of the future is most real when you're holding it in your arms. Children are the message we send to the future. What are we trying to say?

(I'm planning to add a second page to this handout that explains the specifics of the Modern Times list of the messages that children take in today, but the poster was requested by audience members from the New York Social Services audience. Here you go!)

Download Modern Times Poster pdf

Leadership Tulsa Speech

Spoke with Leadership Tulsa yesterday (after an impressive art deco tour of Tulsa - this really is a beautiful town for architecture) and got the question from an attendee regarding a quote from G. K. Chesterton about the importance of amateur, everyday people being able to the most important things in life – and that when things are done too perfectly, it means that the average person is no longer involved ...

Well, as the Memphis Airport is shut down and I'm here for an extra five hours, here's a marvelous source for Chesterton quotes: http://www.chesterton.org/discover/quotations.html

On the topic, GKC said that Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.

He also said that: It is a good sign in a nation when things are done badly. It shows that all the people are doing them. And it is bad sign in a nation when such things are done very well, for it shows that only a few experts and eccentrics are doing them, and that the nation is merely looking on." Patriotism and Sport, All Things Considered

And from The Apostle of Common Sense by Dale Ahlquist:

Freedom is glorious, but freedom is enjoyed only within the rules. We are defined by out limits, like the frame around a picture. You can free a tiger from his bars, but you cannot free him from his stripes.

Freedom gives us the privilege to govern ourselves, which is the essense, of course, of democracy. And Chesterton is a great believer in democracy.

He says that there may be some things that we do not want a man to do unless he does them well: discover the North Pole, play the church organ, write poetry. But the exercise of democracy is not one of those things. Democracy means writing your own love letters and blowing your own nose. Democracy means "that the most terribly important things must be left to ordinary men themselves–the mating of the sexes, the rearing of the young", and the making of laws. [Chesterton also mentions that 12 ordinary citizens are the best group to decide a court case and that someone once founded Christianity by the same means, 12 ordinary men ...]

Now Chesterton extends this defense of democracy in a surprising direction: into the past. He connects democracy with tradition. Tradition means giving the votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.

And, regarding being stuck in the airport because of Memphis not having electricity, I stood in line and listened to a gentleman behind me who was calling everyone (and of course, speaking at full volume) on his list to complain about about his delayed fate ... and I was reminded of Chesterton's notions of gratitude. This guy takes too much for granted, whether that is air flight, cell phones or just life itself. The fact that we can fly through the air and live to tell about it is not to be taken for granted. It is a miraculous thing no matter how often one has flown. We should still marvel at it, even through the delays and cancelations. I would prefer not to be delayed, but I also prefer to be alive and wonder at that startling occurrence.

Chesterton said that, We should be startled by the sun, not by the eclipse; we should wonder less at the earthquake, and wonder more at the earth. He also said that the test of all happiness is gratitude. And, The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.

Executive Director of Leadership Tulsa, Wendy Thomas wrote up the talk here.

The Tulsa World newspaper reports on the talk.

Fads, Trends & Principles Handout

Here's the two page handout defining the notion of Fads, Trends & Principles. The basic mantra here is that we should play with fads, work with trends and live by principles. This is easier said that done because what you will mostly find out there is that we are seduced by fads, ignorant of trends and resistant to principles.

Download Fads, Trends & Principles pdf

How to Think Like a Futurist

And here's the one so that you too can be a futurist in the privacy of your own home. (Don't try this in public.)
Download Think Like a Futurist pdf

The Future Value of Old Ideas Handout

Download Future Quotes pdf

Here's the two page handout of quotations about the future, including most of the quotations that I typically use in my talks. If all goes well, my book, Worth Remembering: the future value of old ideas will be coming out in June. Stay tuned.

G. K. Chesterton Handout

Download Chesterton Quotes pdf

The first of a series of new handouts. This one is a collection of quotations from G. K. Chesterton. For more on Chesterton (if you haven't spotted them on my blog already ... ) visit the American Chesterton Society and to the Chesterton Society blog.