"A car used to be the ultimate symbol of freedom and independence but increasingly consumers view ownership as an expense and a burden. Often considered the gateway to other forms of Collaborative Consumption, Car Sharing is becoming increasingly popular with its...
...promise of personal convenience and social improvement. It is time to explore this new age where access is better than ownership..."
This is a brand-new and very nicely produced video - a big thank-you to Google Australia for making it available so quickly. If you are in the travel business, do make sure to watch this video, and check out the other speakers and their presentations, as well. Enjoy, RT, Google + this :)))
Here is my presentation from the ACTE09 event in Prague, today, where I also had the great pleasure of meeting a very interesting fellow speaker and like-minded 'change agent', Michael Jackson, from South Africa, who served as MC for the whole event.
The topics of my presentation: how mobile and social media trends impact business,
in general, and the corporate travel industry, in particular; how the
social media and mobile Internet explosion is resulting in
unprecedented changes in communications and commerce. The need to
reduce CONTROL to get more SHARE is evident... but how can this be done
within large organizations? How can social media add value, and what
are the risks?
As you may have guessed from my travel schedule (see sidebar) I get a constant stream of new people and companies, conference organizers, existing clients and all kinds of organizations that want me to go somewhere and make a presentation, hold a keynote speech or run a think-tank event; from all over the world, and on many different topics. If I actually accepted each invitation I am quite certain I could literally travel from one speaking engagement to the next, for pretty much the entire year. That would certainly get me Red Carpet status with most of the 8 airlines that I usually travel with, I guess.
There have always been a good many logistical challenges in organizing think-tanks and other events; however, the current financial crisis has definitely resulted in much tighter budgets, pretty much everywhere. Increasing concerns for the environment are also palpable - making countless long-distance trips for the sole purpose of a 90-minute speech and subsequent panel discussion is probably not the best example for the efficient use of energy.
Therefore I have been busy exploring new ways how I can present to - and have real conversations with - interested clients from anywhere on the globe without continuously enriching the likes of Lufthansa, Swiss and Singapore Airlines. Again, I do believe that nothing beats the live performance, the face-to-face meetings and the actual experience in what people have started to call the 'meat-space' (as opposed to cyber-space I guess), but maybe some new ways can be explored that offer a similar, and less costly experience.
I recently found a very interesting platform in the new Present.io offering (a new service by Drop.io), which (for anyone with a browser and good Internet access, no additional software is needed) allows for remote presenting, commenting and chats, as well as sporting integrated conference calling, too; all in-one place, and for free. Well, at least for the basic version - they are banking on the Feels-Like-Free / Freemiummodel, too, and it's working with me already. Good stuff.
The combination of services like Present.io with a live phone call, or Skype / iChat Video, has worked out really well, already, and so going forward, I will start to accept more requests for virtual / remote presentations (some people use the term 'webinars' btw).
I look forward to experimenting with you on what the best formats for this may be; if you have any other ideas for better technical solutions please use the comment box or below or contact me via Twitter or eMail; the same goes for anyone interested in booking a virtual presentation.
Lastly, here is an example of the Present.io / Drop.io widgets:
1) We will soon see the emergence of many different kinds of iPhone-influenced Netbook-like devices; some will be Apple-made but most will not. These devices may be 2-3 times the size of an iPhone and will connect to the Internet in every conceivable way, i.e. 3G/4G, LTE, Wimax, Wifi etc. They will be touchscreen, zoom-interface enabled, cloud-computing, speech-controlled, location-aware, mobile-money equipped, socially hyper-networked, always-everywhere-on, HD-camera equipped and possibly project images and audio or even support basic holography.
In addition to the high-end, fully-loaded and perhaps still rather expensive versions that many of us in the so-called developed countries will gobble up, low cost and more basic editions for the developing markets will be sold in the 100s of millions (think India, China, Indonesia...). These smart gadgets will have very low energy consumption and therefore extremely long battery life, may even sport basic solar-power options, and may ultimately cost less than 30 USD, or even be 'free' (why bother to sell the box if you can make a lot more $ with selling services.... Nokia?).
It is these mass-market yet very smart and networked devices, together with cheap or free wireless broadband that will really revolutionize reading, newspapers, books and education; not to mention our music, TV and film consumption habits. Content commerce will be completely redefined as a consequence. As BTO told us a loooong time ago: "You ain't seen nothin' yet"
2) Very cheap or free wireless broadband - at fairly high speeds, i.e. at least 2MB / sec - will be available in most places, particularly in the booming new economies of Asia, India, Russia and South-America, and a bit later, in Africa. Funded by the likes of Google and by the future 'telemedia' conglomerates, governments, cities and states, wireless broadband will probably reach 3-4 out of 5 people on the globe within 5-8 years. User-generated & derived content (UGDC for those of you that must have an acronym ;), virtual co-production, mobile editing and instant network sharing will explode by a factor of 1000, making control of distribution a very distant concept of the past. UGC or UGDC may make up to 50% of the global content consumption by 2015. Consumers will be (co)-creators, marketers, sellers and buyers, and come in a hundred variations, from totally passive to totally active. Then, indeed, filtering, culling and curation will be the key to success.
3) Collective blanket licenses that legalize and unlock legitimate access to basic content services via any digital network will emerge, and are likely to take over as the primary way of content consumption, around the world (but in Asia, first). Just like water or electricity which is readily available when moving into a new home, the basic access to content will be bundled into access to digital networks, i.e. via ISPs, operators, telecoms, portals etc. This shift is starting with music (as already done by TDC in Denmark, and Google in China), and will be quickly followed by films, TV, books and newspapers. Access may often - but in local variations - 'feel like free' to the user but will in fact generate 10s of Billions of $$ via blanket licensing fees (yes... those pools of money), next-generation advertising and branding, data-mining & sharing, up-selling, re-packaging and many other new generatives. This topic will, btw, be the gist of my RSA presentation tomorrow - if you can't be there in person, you may want to listen to the live audio, via this link.
I think that governments around the world will call for and / or support the implementation of collective content licenses that wil finally legalize content usage on the Internet, similar to how governments pushed for the radio and broadcasting licenses approx. 100 years ago. Whether these blanket licenses will be voluntary or compulsory remains to be seen - in any case the only alternative is to perpetuate a severely dysfunctional telemedia ecosystem that criminalizes almost all users and stifles innovation while generating virtually zero new revenues for the creators.
4) Fuel-cells and other next-generation mobile energy sources are a certainty. A serious increase in mobile device power (and therefore, its use) will be achieved by employing next-generation technologies such as fuel cells that could provide for up to 500x the usage time that we have today. This is likely to become a reality in 3-5 years and will revolutionize how we use - and how much we rely on - our mobile devices, especially in countries where there the fixed-line power infrastructure is much less developed or non-existent.
5) Completely targeted and personalized advertising, delivered largely on totally customized mobile computing & communication devices, will turn the the $ 1 Trillion USD advertising and marketing services economy upside down. Behavioral targeting and user-controlled advertising will, of course, become an even hotter potato and a much discussed challenge, but the good old deal of 'I give you attention & personal data and you give me value e.g. content' will be even more pronounced on the Net. In fact, advertising as we knew it is already more or less outmoded and will, during the next 2-3 years, be completely reinvented. Privacy and Trust are the #1 issues here.
The implication is that if your data (within your specific sets of permissions and opt-ins) is used to bring you perfectly synchronized advertising, than advertising really becomes more like content, too. Watch this play out in the mobile advertising space, starting this year, and quite possible boost the global value of advertising-content by more than 100% by 2015. Google will be the main driver here, plus Facebook, Nokia and yes... Twitter (soon to be = Google).
6) We will witness the more or less complete decline of most forms of physical media within 7-10 years. The very definition - and thus the core economic business models - of newspapers, magazines, CDs, DVDs and books will be completely re-written, and new forms of content packaging will rapidly emerge. We can already see a preview of how this may work in the current mobile applications boom: content as part of software packages; paying for the packaging, the curation, the bundling, the personalization - not just for the zeros and ones that are 'the copy'. This trend is important not just because it will reflect the users' (or better... followers') new consumption habits but also because because of the increasing need to save energy and material costs - and moving from content products to content services will certainly go a long way in this regard. The total decline of printing in people's homes, and for personal use, will commence, as well.
7) Paying for privacy will become a distinct option. Today we pay to go online and connect; in the future we may end up paying for the luxury to go offline, disconnect, enjoy the quiet, and give our brain some rest. Maybe if we don't want to share our click-trails and usage data, we will be able to make cash payments instead - and the more you pay, the more private you can be..?
8) Travel 2.0: alternatives to 'actually going there' will explode: immersive, 3D video, virtual rooms, holography. This is a key development that will nurture new forms of entrepreneurship, education and group working.
Image via WikipediaIn my work on the future of media, technology and content I often run across related areas such as tourism, banking, energy and transportation; and I have recently ventured into some of those sectors, as well (in particular, tourism - more on that, soon).
So here is a short burst I want to share from the world of transportation: I think the Cars of the Future will become more like Social Objects. Of course, this will vary drastically from country to country (and cultures) but I think that an increasingly large percentage of cars will cease to be owned, maintained, paid and used by one party only. Instead, groups of people will have fractional ownership (as the brilliant Kevin Kelly calls it), i.e. use, share or access the car when and where they need it, and thereby using motor vehicles much more efficiently.
This will be true for plain-old functional cars ('just get me from A to B') as well as for fun, sports and other special-purpose cars. The obvious advantage of enormous cost and energy savings will make this concept pretty much irresistible - the only thing that keeps most of us from doing this now, already, is our reliance on the car as a status symbol and (indeed) as some weird guarantor of 'personal freedom' (yes...I am guilty, too). I believe that this will turn around within the next 3-5 years: if you DO own a car, just for yourself and your own enjoyment, people may well consider you hopelessly old-fashioned; and not much admiration will come your way any longer.
I also reckon that within the next 2-3 years many Europeans will not really enjoy individual driving that much any more, with lower and lower speed limits becoming a constant headache, mega-traffic jams and congestion charges and significantly increased chances of delays. This will lead to a much increased demand for high-quality public and semi-public (i.e. first and luxury class) transportation, which will be even further boosted by the fact that people will of course be fully connected anywhere and anytime they travel - and since they won't be busy driving they can take full advantage of this.
We will see steep increases in car-sharing services of all kinds (e.g. Zipcar in the U.S.), and the concept of self-driving electric cars will probably become a reality much sooner than we think - just click the icon on your mobile and the next available car will show up on your doorstep; hop-in and be driven to your destination without lifting a finger.
Driving yourself will increasingly become an exception rather than the default. Talk about change: 100s of Billions of $$, and Trillions of brain-cycles freed up. Think about what we can do with all that time we used to spend on driving. Tele-learning, networking, co-creation, crowdsourcing... here we come!
Dopplr rocks! The free service allows you to publish and share your travels with others, get input from people who have also been there (hotels, restaurants etc) and maybe meet with people in your network that are also be close-by. I have been using it for some time now (albeit not nearly enough) and it is become very valuable, indeed. I have met some very nice people this way, while reconnecting with others that are in my network but have been 'dormant'.
So today, the Dopplr people topped it all by sending me a free report with some very juicy morsels of information about my travel habits and history (see some excerpts below). These numbers are even scarier than I thought since I did not even share all trips with Dopplr, during 2008, but still - great intel to have. Keep it up, guys!
An interesting feature in the IHT describes how hotel owners are starting to think about using the power of the Net in selling more rooms, more efficiently, themselves, rather than ceding that advantage to brokers such as Expedia (which I like a lot, btw), who often buy rooms at bulk rates and make as much as 30% in margins on reselling them to their customers. Often, the prices you can get at Expedia, may be much cheaper than the prices the hotels would quote on their own websites. But of course, even if the hotels offered cheaper 'specials' themselves, on their own sites, they will never have the kind of traffic that Expedia gets, so they will still sell less rooms, and have more beds left empty - so I don't really see what their complaints would be. I would just offer to match the prices of any online reseller, via my own site, so that the customer would book thru my site, if he wants to, and I could cultivate the brand...
Keynote Speaker, Think-Tank Leader, Futurist, Author & Strategist, Idea Curator, some say Iconoclast | Heretic, CEO TheFuturesAgency, Visiting Prof FDC Brazil, Green Futurist
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