Category Archives: Future Trends

Michelle Ray – Leadership Expert

Michelle Ray - Workplace Relationships ExpertMICHELLE RAY
What Meeting Planners Expect From Professional Speakers


Leadership expert Michelle Ray helps people and organizations to take the lead, get out of their comfort zones, and develop the willingness to risk. Delivering her powerful message on self-leadership with insight, humour, and passion, Michelle’s engaging, interactive, presentations resonate with a diverse clientele who are seeking to inspire their teams and take personal responsibility for creating their own reality at work, in business and in life. Based on her observations from years of professional speaking, Michelle shares her ideas on what meeting planners need from the professional speakers they hire:

While preparing my presentation set-up for a keynote at a recent conference, the meeting planner ran toward me in a panic, apologizing for being pulled in ten different directions, simultaneously.  She explained that there were several items demanding her immediate attention. Her committee were in a time crunch, trying to locate the whereabouts of one of the panelists due to appear in a morning breakout session. In addition, tensions were building amongst attendees as the registration software was inexplicably malfunctioning, resulting in lengthy line-ups and delays at the welcome booths. Boxes containing sponsors’ promotional materials were missing and presumed lost en route, as the conference facility’s shipping and receiving department and the planner frenetically exchanged text messages. Meanwhile, the banquet manager was waiting for her at the back of the room, needing approval to add seating for the luncheon, in order to accommodate a number of special guests who confirmed their attendance that morning.

As I reflect on the experience, it reminded me of several important factors that contribute to the success of a conference, from the perspective of a meeting planner.  First and foremost, although speakers have the privilege of the performing on the main stage, we are not at the centre of the meeting planner’s universe.  It behooves us to be mindful of their immediate priorities and ultimate objectives.

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How to Think, Talk and Win in the Year of The Horse

MIKE LIPKIN
How to Think, Talk and Win in the Year of The Horse


According to the Chinese Zodiac, the Year of The Horse begins on January 31. Within the Chinese calendar, each year is represented by an animal that carries with it a profound set of principles that forecast how the year will unfold. Here are three that are central to all our wellbeing:

First, there is nothing in the universe that is not subject to constant change and transformation.

Second, there is regularity within change. There is nothing accidental within the system. Change and transformation take place by way of a pattern to the process, not by chance.

Third, The individual is a microcosm of the universe itself. What is inside is also outside.  Peace is found in the harmony between self and society. In the terms of Yin/Yang theory, the secret is to align one’s personal yin and yang with the universal yin and yang.

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Jeff Rubin – Energy & Oil Expert

Jeff Rubin - Author, Economist, Energy Expert & Speaker JEFF RUBIN
Could Northern Gateway Oil Pipeline Give Us Saudi Albertia?


Former CIBC economist Jeff Rubin always looks at the big picture.

When he says that a review panel’s endorsement Thursday (December 19) of Enbridge Inc.’s Northern Gateway oil pipeline is an “important victory” for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, he puts it into a broad perspective.

“For Stephen Harper to fulfill his dream of the country becoming an energy superpower, we’re going to need four or five pipelines like this,” Rubin told the Straight by phone from Toronto.

As Rubin notes in this year’s updated version of his 2012 book The End of Growth, Alberta’s daily oil production of about 1.9 million barrels is projected to double by 2020, reaching five million barrels in 2030.

Combined with other sources, Rubin writes, this projected 2030 production will push Canada’s daily production to about six million barrels, up there with Saudi Arabia and Russia.

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MICHELLE RAY – LEADERSHIP EXPERT

Michelle Ray - Workplace Relationships ExpertMICHELLE RAY
The Constant Fear of Change


“Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time;
what we want is for things to stay the same but get better”—Sydney Harris

Being on the precipice of change and feeling trepidation, determining whether or not the fear is real or self-manufactured is the first step. It may mean doing nothing about our careers, businesses, or a personal matter for now if the timing doesn’t feel right. Or, it may propel us to move in a new direction.

Fear is a natural emotion. We all possess the innate ability to harness the fight or flight response as a means of protecting ourselves from a threat; whether that threat is real or perceived. On the other hand, the fear of change involves a different state that I describe as the “fright” response. We don’t simply retreat from it; we are often so terrified by the prospect of change that we allow the fear to become all-consuming. As a result, we stay stuck…because staying stuck is easier than creating change.

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Richard Worzel – Canada’s Leading Futurist & Visionary

RICHARD WORZEL
The Future of Food: Farming It, Processing It, Packaging It, Selling It, Eating It?

Food is that stuff that comes wrapped in plastic from the store, right? Obviously not, but it’s easy to forget that in the blur of daily routine. In fact, food is immensely complex – and the future of food is even more so. Just about every aspect of human endeavor that is related to food is about to change in radical, yet often invisible, ways. Let’s start with the basics, and work backwards.

Why do we take food? Well, we need it for fuel, to provide energy to act on a conscious level, and energy for our bodies to operate, repair, and defend themselves beneath our awareness. But that’s not all that food is to us; it’s a matter of taste, choice, and enjoyment; it’s a matter of culture, celebration, devotion, and ritual; it defines where we’re from, what kinds of choices we make, and speaks volumes about who we are. That’s food’s present and past.

Why Food Will Change

The future of food is that it’s about fine-tuning our bodies and our health, and allowing us to become more than we are right now – without giving up any of that other stuff.

We’ve known for centuries that certain foods don’t agree with certain people. We’ve known for decades that some people are allergic or have an intolerance to specific foods that can dramatically affect their health and well-being. Examples include peanut allergies, which can lead to anaphylactic shock, and kill by suffocation in minutes, and gluten intolerance, which can lead, over a period of years, to depression, inability to concentrate, loss of energy, loss of weight, a weakened immune system, and ultimately death by malnutrition.

In the future, we will know how each individual’s genome will interact with different foods in unique, individualistic ways, so that the food that nurtures one person can drag down or do active harm to another. We are learning that the old folk saying, “One man’s food is another man’s poison” is literally true, but now we’re going to be in a position to know and specify which particular foods are good for each person, and which are bad. Indeed, I suspect that once the data are crunched, each person will have four lists of foods: foods that are optimal for us, and that we should eat consistently and in quantity; foods that are good for us and that we should eat regularly in reasonable amounts; foods that aren’t particularly good for us, that we should eat sparingly and infrequently; and foods we shouldn’t eat at all. And each person’s lists are going to be different, although with overlap. (I suspect that broccoli, for instance, will be on most people’s “A” lists, and chocolate fudge sundaes on most people’s “C” lists.)

And this knowledge will refashion the food growing, processing, packaging, and retailing industries. It will almost be as if every person on the planet will have a unique set of food allergies, and needs to know and gauge everything they eat. But how in the world will anyone, on either side of the serving table, be able to cope with this level of complexity? Answer: computers.

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