Category Archives: Futurist

In 'Back To The Future', Marty and Doc travel in time from 1985 to 2015. In the fictional version of 2015 there's hoverboards and self-lacing shoes. While the latter happened IRL in late 2016, a lot of the film's other future predictions were a little off.

Though what's not too far fetched is the idea of robots, or artificial intelligence, working its way into our very real and ordinary lives in the not too distant future. Self-driving cars are already a thing, and that's only the beginning.

"Artificial Intelligence (or AI) is likely to do to white collar jobs like how machines have been doing blue collar work. In other words, just like our brawns have been digitised, so will our brains be," Anders Sorman-Nilsson, global futurist and TEDx speaker told The Huffington Post Australia.

Sorman-Nilsson is the author of Seamless: The Futurephile's Guide To Leading Digital Adaptation And Human Transformation. His book explores how life and business will change in the future and what can be done now to best adapt to that. A futurephile refers to someone who is open and excited about technology in the future, while a futurephobe is someone who is frightened of it.

"What we should more concerned about is not necessarily the exponential change in artificial intelligence or robotics, but about the stagnant response in human intelligence. For example, schools and universities are now preparing students for jobs that will no longer be in existence 10 years from now.

"On the flip side, adaptive, agile and creative humans will figure out how to partner with the machines and new forms of intelligence. For example, we can imagine a near future where Siri stops behaving emotionally unintelligently and instead fully replaces your executive assistant, marketing manager, and sales support," Sorman-Nilsson said.

Sorman-Nilsson says that while artificial intelligence will run the back office of your business, it is unlikely to be the front of your brand.

"Neo-luddites [those who are considered to be anti-technology] who prefer apathy, complacency or nostalgia will try to fight this next evolution of digital disruption, and will likely be left behind. Anything that can be digitised will eventually be digitised, so a key question for anyone seeking to scenario plan their future career to ensure their thinking remains attractive in 2027 is: what thinking skills can never be digitised?"

"Fundamentally human skills like entrepreneurship, strategic thinking, philosophy, team-building, creativity, empathy, emotionally intelligent leadership, counter-intuitive insights, and connected sales(wo)manship will have a premium placed upon them. In other words, less time pushing paper and doing menial stuff, and more time doing meaningful stuff," Sorman-Nilsson said.

"We do a lot of scenario planning with banks, which in many ways are really just technology companies with banking licenses. So, yes, in a cashless, paperless and seamless banking future, a lot of banking jobs will be lost to automation and artificial intelligence," Sorman-Nilsson said.

"What our simulations show is that one aspect to the debate around artificial intelligence that is frequently lost is the fact that AI and digitisation will impact certain activities in our everyday lives, such as marketing automation or robotic advice, but it may not fully remove the 50 percent of jobs that some pundits talk about. In the face of this, as humans we need to be a little paranoid about the exponential changes ahead -- enough so to move us into upgrading our thinking -- but not so much as to be paralysed."

Probing Sorman-Nilsson on if us laypeople should be afraid of this future, he says it all comes down to how we think.

"I see a correlation between what I term 'futurephobes' in my most recent book, who tend to posses a general technophobia which includes deep suspicion of artificial intelligence, and dystopic views of that same future. Disruption is a signal from the future that it is high time to adapt, and that smart investments in the right hardware and software, which includes your own thinking software, have to be made."

"To me it is astounding that in Australia we are so obsessed with bricks and mortar property, but we are less concerned with investments in our own intellectual property, and AI certainly raises the stakes to ensure our thinking remains future-compatible. If you think like a 'futurephile' you will see that AI will free up our time to do meaningful work -- a sales professional, rather than spending 30 to 40 percent of their day doing data-entry, can fit in more meaningful meetings with humans, and a financial adviser can focus on more actively helping their clients' fulfil their financial dreams by outsourcing some regulatory work to RegTech instead," Sorman-Nilsson said.

"While my mum, who is my toughest pro-bono client, tends to think of the future as digitally dehumanised, for a futurephile like myself, the future holds the promise of an even more human era," Sorman-Nilsson said.

"A future where we can connect more deeply with our loved ones because we are no longer punching spreadsheets. One where our artificially intelligent assistant locks in the most optimal price and payment terms for our family holidays based on our unique psychographics, budgets and interests while we sleep, and where we are freed up to meditate or rejoin the local football club because we are delivered from the stress of pointless paperwork and meaningless visits to the post office to prove our identities."

Sorman-Nilsson says that artificial intelligence will excel in the fields of big data -- like diagnosis, investment advice, personalised medicine, smart buildings, energy management, transport, logistics, engineering and accounting.

"This will mean that your 'left brain' might get some much needed support, while your 'right brain' will be able to flourish. But while the promise of AI is exciting, it will take a really good human sales(wo)man to make us really trust and buy into artificial intelligence."

In his role as a futurist, Sorman-Nilsson is looking forward to what's to come.

"As a global futurist and futurephile, one of the things that excites me about artificial intelligence is the death of procrastination -- anything 'left brained' that we avoided and delayed doing, like taxes, filing, travel expense coding, receipt management, and updating our calendars will be procrastinated on no longer. That in and of itself should sell you on the virtue of AI -- unless you of course derive a lot of pleasure from these activities, in which case I urge you to upgrade and diversify your thinking," Sorman-Nilsson said.

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Will Artificial Intelligence Take Our Jobs? We Asked A Futurist

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Will Artificial Intelligence Take Our Jobs? We Asked A Futurist - Huffington Post Australia

10:05 Monday 13 February 2017

Londons futurist duo The Alpines Bob Matthews and Catherine Pockson describe their music as a meeting in the middle between them.

We have been together since 2010, says Catherine as they head out on a tour which takes them to The Prince Albert, Brighton on February 22. We actually met at a wedding of a mutual friend of ours. Bob was playing in the band at the wedding. He was part of an indie band before we became The Alpines. I was doing a lot of my own stuff at the time, solo stuff, and we wrote some stuff together. We got quite a lot of interest after one or two shows in London, and we got signed quite quickly after that. Its funny how it works out.

As for the name: One of the first trips we did was taking a road trip down to the Alps. We made a lot of CDs and mix tapes and put them in the car and discussed a lot of music and influences. It was quite a formative thing for us. And the Alps are just one of the most beautiful places. We wanted a good name, and Alpines are plants that grow on the higher reaches of mountains and are pretty hardy. We thought it would be a good name. We come from very different musical backgrounds. I come from a more soul, jazz, r n b upbringing, and Bob was more indie, electronic and rock. One of his favourite bands is The Beatles, so our music is like a merging of our quite different backgrounds. I would describe it as intimate and quite soulful, but with quite a wide soundscape. There is width to it. We wanted to make music that was emotional and honest.

Bob agrees: But what I think we both have in common is that we both love pop music and classic song-writing. Thats the foundation of everything we do, and the rest of it just comes through our influences. Mine are more ambient and avant-garde. Hers are more soul and the music of the 90s.

Another River, their second album, came out last October: It went well. We have got a few good reviews, and people felt there was a progression from the first album. We wanted to make sure that we kept moving forwards and did something that was different to the first one. Rather than forcing it, I think we just let it happen. It was more like the shackles coming off. This time we wanted to do the music that we wanted to do and not worry about what other people thought. I think that created its own progression, and we were also two to three years older.

Catherine agrees: Partly also it is confidence. And experience. If you let yourself worry too much about the charts and what is popular, you lose sight of what you are trying to do. I think it is important to remember what you are about. You have got to remember your purpose, and you have got create something new, to push the boundaries. We were really, really pleased with it. We wrote nearly a hundred songs for it. It went back and forth. There are ten on the album.

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Brighton date for London's futurist duo The Alpines - Chichester ... - Chichester Observer

The internet has profoundly changed the way we live, work and play. People are more connected than ever thanks to smartphones, tablets and laptops. These digital devices provide mobility and convenience, and as a result the nature of content consumption has changed.

Studies have shown the average attention span is a mere eight seconds even shorter than goldfish. The proliferation of devices and platforms has also fragmented the playing field for marketeers. Brands are being challenged to connect with their customers through all these devices, on demand, in real-time and seamlessly. Yet many brands have responded by using spray and pray advertising, which results in the incoherent clutter we see today.

It is now harder for marketers to cut through the distraction and make any lasting impact on consumers. Consumers have a low tolerance for these blasts of information. Faced with an onslaught of competing messages, consumers have become more selective of the content they choose to engage with. They are also more sceptical of branded messaging and celebrity endorsements, instead choosing to believe people like you and me ordinary people who they can relate to and see as peers.

Consumers today are yearning for unique and meaningful experiences with brands. A recent study by Havas found that brands that created meaning for their customers were rewarded with loyalty and increased sales. However, creating meaningful and lasting relationships with customers is synonymous with marketing, and is nothing new. In this digital age, the why of marketing and brand strategy remains unchanged, while the how needs to be overhauled to ensure brands continue to be relevant.

With this new reality in mind, many brands have turned to content marketing to better connect with their audiences.

A paradigm shift

In the past, Shell was perceived as functional and premium, but also distant and cold. To shake off this perception, in 2015 the brand embarked on a three-year transformational programme Welcome to Shell to humanise the brand and redefi ne its purpose.

We found that culturally relevant, human interest stories that inspire, inform or entertain seemed to gain traction among Malaysians. The brand softened its marketing strategy by moving away from product-centric messaging to purpose-led, audience-driven content. We manifested our brand purpose in all content that we published.

In summary

The digital disruption has changed the way we marketeers must respond to consumers, and increasingly brands are moving towards becoming content publishers. In Shells case, we developed audience-first content to help us deliver value and emotional engagement to our customers.

Our primary objective was to attract attention and gain trust, which then allowed us to re-target those customers who had engaged with our content to other aspects of the brand.

However, there is no one-size-fi ts-all approach, and brands will need to fi nd out what strategies work best for them by testing and learning. The good news is there is a wealth of digital tools to help brands understand their audience better, and develop better quality content that suits them. Marketeers can also easily conduct pilot studies on digital platforms to test concepts and tweak campaigns before they go live on a bigger scale.

The key is not about creating a large amount of content, but creating quality content that will create a maximum impact with target audiences, so they keep coming back for more.

The author of this article is Ben Mahmud, head of retail marketing, Shell Malaysia

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The Futurist: Content publishing the new marketing - Marketing Interactive

The average person will probably take about 10 minutes to read this article. During this time, an estimated $25 million would have transacted via e-commerce, 30 million search queries would have been made on Google, 40 million videos would have been uploaded on YouTube and 45 million pieces of content would have gone live on Facebook. Put simply, a lot will happen in the next 10 minutes as you sit comfortably on your sofa (preferably drinking a Nescaf), reading this. The concepts of time and speed have changed.

Not surprisingly, this has also infl uenced consumer behaviour which in turn has impacted the way we do branding. Where we once shouted brand communication, todays socially attuned consumers now demand brand conversations.

Many of us were trained as classical marketers and we would hone our skills in talking to consumers. However, in todays context, we are now required to focus instead of listening. Listening to brand conversations helps us to be more aware of what consumers are engaged in and the choices they make. This has also changed the way businesses identify areas for innovation. At Nestl, innovation has been the core of our growth, and we have long realised the secret to successful brand growth lies with our consumers. People sometimes think old companies are less able to adapt to new trends, but Nestl is stronger than ever after more than 100 years in Malaysia.

Our world today is in a constant state of fl ux. In order to survive, we have realised that we needed to grow, adapt and evolve quickly not just with technology and trends, but more importantly, with our consumers.

In 2011, the Nestl headquarters in Switzerland launched the global digital acceleration team. In March 2014, Malaysia became the fi fth country to launch its own digital acceleration team. We started by identifying strong digital natives within our marketing teams and packing them off for a nine-month mission at our Nestl headquarters. This investment in developing our people allowed us to cultivate a new generation of digital go-getters to build our brands.

Marketing and digital

With so much going on around us, its not unusual to overcomplicate or over intellectualise digital. In fact, I would argue the term digital marketing is obsolete.

Marketing is marketing and digital. While it is an important touch-point in todays context, it is but one of many touch-points within an integrated media plan. A successful marketer today is one who is able to master the complexity of orchestrating an eco-system comprising of a traditional above-the-line creative agency, sometimes a specialised digital creative agency, a media agency, a PR agency, a shopper agency and an events agency.

I believe the key to success is in developing a powerful media-neutral creative idea based on real insights, and then leveraging the power of digital in a meaningful and relevant way. After all, as marketers, we exist to delight consumers.

At Nestl Malaysia, weve even increased our investments into digital and social media in excess of 30%. By doing so, weve been able to create more personalised engagement with consumers, and better cater to their needs. We also set up an online store for our products.

Partnering with two hugely popular e-tailers, we launched our fl agship e-commerce store in October 2016 as a conscious strategy to provide a better experience of products and services, especially to cater to more health conscious consumers on the go.

There truly has never been a more exciting time to be a brand builder, especially in such a vibrant market like Malaysia.

The author of the article is Eugene Chan, director of communications and marketing, Nestle Malaysia.

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The Futurist: Full speed ahead - Marketing Interactive

A TREND analyst and futurist is headed to Toowoomba to speak at a national conference and share his predictions for the future of the region.

Principal of McCrindle Research, Mark McCrindle, has appeared widely on television shows as a media commentator, thought leader and social researcher.

Our approach is to use demographic modelling and data in an area to predict changes from national down to local levels, Mr McCrindle said.

As the workforce ages and the next generation transitions, Gen Y and Gen Z will comprise more than half of the workforce.

Mr McCrindle is one of the speakers at the three-day national Toowoomba Transport and Logistics Symposium where road, rail and air freight capabilities will be highlighted.

The event, hosted by Toowoomba and Surat Basin Enterprise for the second time will see speakers from across Australia assess the challenges and opportunities ahead.

It will be held from February 27 to March 3.

Mr McCrindle said a growing demand for logistics solutions in the region made it ideal to develop as a key infrastructure hub thanks to ambitious projects like the Toowoomba Enterprise Hub.

The TSBE Development Status Report highlights $13billion of investment spend in the region, a strong indicator of future success across industry.

What will drive the logistics and freight industries in the Darling Downs and wider region is demand from population growth as well as the infrastructure development, he said.

The next round of data from the Census is due this year and will absolutely give Australia a sense of where its going. Its the densification of cities and new logistical challenges that are driving opportunity.

Mr McCrindle sighted Toowoomba as one of the lifestyle cities and hub for industry and innovation thanks to its location and connectivity.

The density of capital cities has hit a tipping point where Aussies are looking for alternatives and Toowoomba offers that, he said.

Mr McCrindle said the region was re-inventing itself after the construction phase of mining moved to the operational phase across the Surat Basin, with agriculture pushing the need for freight services and pathways.

The Toowoomba region has the supply-chain businesses and opportunities to value-add to existing industry as well as innovation thanks to the training facilities and university.

Speakers from road, rail and air will share the podium at the symposium to offer advice and industry information for 2017.

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Trend analyst and futurist to share industry predictions - Queensland Country Life

Photo Submitted

Sheryl Connelly.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. Sheryl Connelly, the in-house futurist at Ford Motor Company, will deliver the Winthrop Rockefeller Distinguished Lecture at the University of Arkansas at 7p.m. Friday, March 3 in the Faulkner Performing Arts Center.

The event is free and open to the public; free tickets are available at the door only, and seating is limited.

Connelly is known for her ability to recognize consumer and lifestyle trends, identifying changes in customer attitudes and behavioral patterns that directly impact business strategy.

She was twice named one of the "100 Most Creative People in Business," by Fast Company and was listed among TechWeeks "Top 100 Innovators."

She will speak on how developing a futurist mindset and big picture perspective can help business innovate and remain relevant in a constantly evolving world.

This event is co-sponsored by the University of Arkansas Distinguished Lectures Committee, Office of Student Activities, and the Division of Student Affairs.

The Winthrop Rockefeller Distinguished Lectures program was established in 1972 by friends of Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller. It assists faculty at five campuses of the University of Arkansas System in obtaining outstanding visiting lecturers to communicate ideas that stimulate public discussion, intellectual debate and cultural advancement. Past speakers in the series at the Fayetteville campus include Jonathan Kozol, W.S. Merwin, Billy Collins, Isabel Allende, Buzz Aldrin, Howard Zinn, Daniel Janzen, Lee Lynd, and Rigoberta Menchu.

About the University of Arkansas: The University of Arkansas provides an internationally competitive education for undergraduate and graduate students in more than 200 academic programs. The university contributes new knowledge, economic development, basic and applied research, and creative activity while also providing service to academic and professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the University of Arkansas among only 2 percent of universities in America that have the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the University of Arkansas among its top American public research universities. Founded in 1871, the University of Arkansas comprises 10 colleges and schools and maintains a low student-to-faculty ratio that promotes personal attention and close mentoring.

Editor-selected comments will be published below. No abusive material, personal attacks, profanity, spam or material of a similar nature will be considered for publication.

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Futurist to Give Winthrop Rockefeller Distinguished Lecture at U of A - University of Arkansas Newswire

SANTA BARBARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--QAD Inc. (Nasdaq:QADA) (Nasdaq:QADB), a leading provider of enterprise software and services for global manufacturing companies, today announced that world-renowned inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil will headline the speaker lineup for its annual customer conference,QAD Explore, May 8-11, 2017, at the Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit.

Described as the restless genius byThe Wall Street Journal and the ultimate thinking machine byForbes, Kurzweilis one of the worlds leading inventors, computer scientists, authors, thinkers and futurists.His keynote speech will take place onTuesday, May 9.

Kurzweils inventions include the CCD flatbed scanner, omni-font optical character recognition, and the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind. He has written five New York Times best-selling books, including The Singularity Is Near andHow To Create A Mind. He is co-founder and chancellor of Singularity University.

Kurzweil also invented the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments (Kurzweil Keyboard) for which he received a 2015 Technical GRAMMY Award for outstanding achievement in the field of music technology. A recipient of the National Medal of Technology from President Clinton, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2002. He holds 21 honorary doctorates.

We are incredibly lucky to have Ray Kurzweil delivering a keynote at QAD Explore 2017, said QAD Chief Marketing Officer Carter Lloyds. His insights into the wide-ranging effects that computers, the internet and artificial intelligence have on the world are fascinating. With so many of our customers looking to leverage innovations like machine learning and the internet of things, its the perfect time to make Ray a part of our biggest event.

Explore is QADs largest annual event where customers, partners, sponsors and QAD experts come together for a week of informative sessions, hands-on training, manufacturing industry-specific presentations and networking. Theagendaprovides updates on key trends in manufacturing, strategic developments in the industries QAD serves, and information on new solution developments. Attendees will hear from over75 speakers, including QAD executives, customers and manufacturing authorities.

In addition to over 60 speakers, Explore features more than 40 workshops and hands-on training classes, many of which count toward APICS continuing education credits. The QAD Solutions Expo provides ample opportunities for sponsors and other members of the QAD community to exhibit, demonstrate and solicit feedback on their products and solutions.

Customers can register for the event atexpore.qad.com/register. QAD is offering an early bird registration fee of $1,295 (a $600 discount) for those who sign up byMarch 31. Full-price registration extends through the event. Registration includes access to more than 40 sessions, invitations to the Welcome Reception and the closing night off-site dinner, meals during the event, electronic access to all presentation materials, and access to the Solutions Expo show floor.

For the latest updates on QAD Explore 2017, follow @QAD_Community on Twitter, and look for #QADExplore.

About QAD The Effective Enterprise

QAD Inc. (Nasdaq:QADA) (Nasdaq:QADB) is a leading provider of enterprise software and services designed for global manufacturing companies. For more than 35 years, QAD has provided global manufacturing companies with QAD Enterprise Applications, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that supports operational requirements, including financials, manufacturing, demand and supply chain planning, customer management, business intelligence and business process management. QAD Enterprise Applications is offered in flexible deployment models in the cloud, on-premise or in a blended environment. With QAD, customers and partners in the automotive, consumer products, food and beverage, high technology, industrial products and life sciences industries can better align daily operations with their strategic goals to meet their vision of becoming more Effective Enterprises. For more information about QAD, call +1 805-566-6000, visitwww.qad.com.

QAD is a registered trademark of QAD Inc. All other products or company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Note to Investors: This press release contains certain forward-looking statements made under the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including, but not limited to, statements regarding projections of revenue, income and loss, capital expenditures, plans and objectives of management regarding the Companys business, future economic performance or any of the assumptions underlying or relating to any of the foregoing. Forward-looking statements are based on the companys current expectations. Words such as expects, believes, anticipates, could, will likely result, estimates, intends, may, projects, should, would, might, plan and variations of these words and similar expressions are intended to identify these forward-looking statements. A number of risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. These risks include, but are not limited to: risks associated with our cloud service offerings, such as defects and disruptions in our services, our ability to properly manage our cloud service offerings, our reliance on third-party hosting and other service providers, and our exposure to liability and loss from security breaches; demand for the company's products, including cloud service, licenses, services and maintenance; pressure to make concessions on our pricing and changes in our pricing models; protection of our intellectual property; dependence on third-party suppliers and other third-party relationships, such as sales, services and marketing channels; changes in our revenue, earnings, operating expenses and margins; the reliability of our financial forecasts and estimates of the costs and benefits of transactions; the ability to leverage changes in technology; defects in our software products and services; third-party opinions about the company; competition in our industry; the ability to recruit and retain key personnel; delays in sales; timely and effective integration of newly acquired businesses; economic conditions in our vertical markets and worldwide; exchange rate fluctuations; and the global political environment. For a more detailed description of the risk factors associated with the company and factors that may affect our forward-looking statements, please refer to the company's latest Annual Report on Form 10-K and, in particular, the section entitled Risk Factors therein, and in other periodic reports the company files with the Securities and Exchange Commission thereafter. Management does not undertake to update these forward-looking statements except as required by law.

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World-Renowned Inventor, Author and Futurist Ray Kurzweil ... - Business Wire (press release)

Advertising and marketing have been consistently evolving, innovating and improving. New ideas, strategies, tools and choices of media are consistently being bloomed at a rapid pace especially when it comes to digital. Gone are the days where mere impressions or social media likes determine the very success of a digital campaign. In other words, popularity and awareness does not translate to revenue actual conversion does.

Very often, digital has been misperceived as an entirely new platform that generates magical instant results and is much superior compared with traditional media (thats up for debate). Many marketers neglected marketing fundamentals entirely by adopting irrelevant digital trends and clichs, just because competitors and other brands seemed successful doing it. At the end of the day, digital is just another media, but a rather modern and advanced one which consists of tools that traditional media would like to have but it is still media.

By neglecting marketing fundamentals, along with the core value of what their respective brand represents, mimicking winning trends just to drive unprofi table responses will only dilute the overall brand experience in the long run and obviously, it will only contribute to low sales conversion rates. Instead, starting off with the right mindset is a great start to realise actual goals and identify specifi c responsibility for each digital media to refl ect the overall integrated marketing mix.

Regardless of the traditional push strategy or search marketings direct response pull strategy, each media must be pathed to be consistent and seamless across the entire consumer journey. The biggest mistake would be implementing standalone digital campaigns that are not consistent with offl ine campaigns, just to target audiences within the digital market share. This is a misconception that the digital target audiences much differs with the offline audiences. There are over 21 million internet users in Malaysia, 81% of which access the internet via smartphones daily these are the very same audiences that access both offl ine and online media. In other words, they are the same group of people!

We all call it the digital era, but I call it the transparent era. In digital, every possible customer interaction, response and conversion are well recorded. For internet marketing agencies like us? There is nowhere to hide data and fi gures will never lie. With the adoption of a data-driven focus, it enhances marketers commitment in delivering fi gures-based performances which translates to tangible results revenue.

From a performance marketing point of view, marketers that are able to identify actual cost per-lead (CPL) and cost-per-acquisition (CPA) have the edge to signifi cantly reduce marketing costs and realigned investments into profi table marketing efforts conversion optimisation (CRO). The right critical marketing decisions will result in effi ciency and effectiveness, and it will subside the overall dependency of cost reductions in other internal departments manufacturing, R&D, HR, logistics, etc. In a holistic sense, it will greatly position the importance and impact of marketing.

As we progress towards 2017, we tend to hunger for the latest digital offerings to stay competitive, and in the hope that implementing new innovations will bring drastic improvements. With such a constant shift of digital objectives, are we really meeting our goals? Its best to take a wider view of past campaigns and optimise it to its fullest potential.

Digital rarely does mistakes, but humans do who knows what we have missed? After all, digital is not a sprint, its an effort-driven marathon just like traditional marketing.

The author of this article is Joseph Ting, CEO, Locus-T Online.

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The Futurist: The right mindset for digital marketing - Marketing Interactive

Harry Hamlin is an Emmy-nominated actor, loving husband and father, and as we just learned on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,he's a master in the kitchen, cooking up some mean meat and taking on Cindy Crawford in a pie-making competition. So Erika Girardi was correct to ponder if there's anything that Harry can't do.

And now we have undeniable proof that Harry can, in fact, do everything. The RHOBH husband spoke at TEDx LA in December. The talk wasn't about acting, his meat, or about how amazing his wife is, all of which he is an expert in, but about how anyone can be a futurist, even PEOPLE's Sexiest Man Alive.

During the talk, Harry spoke about how he came to actively think about the future, especially when it came to finding sources of renewable energy. He shared how, though he is not a rocket scientist (but his father, Chauncey Jerome Hamlin Jr., actually was), being in the right place at the right time, keeping an open mind, and remaining curious led to him eventually co-founding the private fusion company Tri Alpha Energy in 1998. "I think most important is to listen, to pay attention to the sites and sounds in the present moment because they always give us the clue to the story of our future," Harry said during the talk. "Obviously, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to be a futurist. If I can do it, anybody can."

Harry's TED Talk is also filled with kracken jokes as a nod to his iconic role in Clash of the Titans. So yeah, it's pretty amazing.

Of course, Harry's wife, Lisa Rinna, gave Harry's TED Talk some major love on Twitter, echoing the sentiment that no, there really isn't much that he can't do.

Get even more Harry, below.

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Harry Hamlin Just Gave a TED Talk (Yes, *That* Harry Hamlin) - Bravo (blog)

The Futurist is the debut studio album by American actor Robert Downey Jr., produced by Jonathan Elias and Mark Hudson, and released on November 23, 2004 through Sony Classical. The album debuted at number 121 on the Billboard 200 chart, selling 16,000 copies in its first week.[1][2]

The album received mixed reviews, but Downey stated in 2006 that he probably will not do another album, as he felt that the energy he put into doing the album was not compensated. He explained that he did not want to spend whatever time he had at home in the studio, but rather with his family. "Broken" plays during the end credits to Downey's 2005 film Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

The Futurist consists of eight pop ballads written by Downey, as well as two cover songs: "Smile", a Charlie Chaplin composition; and "Your Move", the first half of the song "I've Seen All Good People" by Yes.[3] The song "Hannah" is an allusion to Downey's 2000 film Wonder Boys.[4]

The album was produced by Jonathan Elias and Mark Hudson, with Downey playing on the piano on some of the tracks.

AllMusic's Matt Collar rated the album 3.5/5, and called Downey's lyrics "obtuse". However, he praised his interpretations of other musicians' work, such as "Your Move" by Yes and Charlie Chaplin's "Smile", and called the album "unpredictably moving as the best of Downey's film work."[5]

Elysa Gardner of USA Today wrote that the vibe on Downey's album "can seem pretentious or simply dull after a while, but there is a moody musicality to tracks such as 'Man Like Me' and 'Details'."[6]

Credits adapted from AllMusic.[7]

In the 2016 Marvel Studios film, Captain America: Civil War, Clint Barton mockingly refers to Tony Stark (played by Downey) as "The Futurist".

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The Futurist (Robert Downey Jr. album) - Wikipedia