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Don’t let your college be blindsided by the future.

Have the events of the past couple years taught us anything?  What long-term trends for colleges can we extrapolate from the recession, and how will the post-recession economy react to all of the changes being made?

If you are struggling to answer these questions you’re not alone. Don’t let the tragically uninformed ruin your university. Your competitive edge is only a futurist away.

KEYNOTE – FUTURE OF colleges & Universities

FUTURIST THOMAS FREY

Google’s Top Rated Futurist Speaker
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE DAVINCI INSTITUTE

“The greatest value in understanding the future comes from spotting the major cultural, demographic, societal, and economic shifts early and translating them into viable business strategies,” says Tom.

As the Executive Director and Senior Futurist at the DaVinci Institute, he works closely with his Board of Visionaries to develop original research studies, which enables him to speak on unusual topics, translating trends into unique opportunities.

As part of the celebrity speaking circuit, Tom continually pushes the envelope of understanding, creating fascinating images of the world to come. His keynote talks on futurist topics have captivated people ranging from high level government officials to executives in Fortune 500 companies including NASA, IBM, AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, Lucent Technologies, First Data, Boeing, Capital One, Bell Canada, Visa, Ford Motor Company, Qwest, Allied Signal, Hunter Douglas, Direct TV, International Council of Shopping Centers, National Association of Federal Credit Unions, Times of India, and many more.

Because of his work inspiring inventors and other revolutionary thinkers, the Boulder Daily Camera has referred to him as the “Father of Invention”. The Denver Post and Seattle Post Intelligencer have referred to him as the “Dean of Futurists”.
futurist-thomas-frey-speaking-at-event1

Before launching the DaVinci Institute, Tom spent 15 years at IBM as an engineer and designer where he received over 270 awards, more than any other IBM engineer. He is also a past member of the Triple Nine Society (High I.Q. society over 99.9 percentile).

Tom has been a columnist for the Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, and Boulder County Business Report, and is the author of the 1998 book “Inventions of Impact”. He currently writes a newsletter entitled “News from the Future” and has written numerous articles on a wide range of futurist topics. He has also been a contributing writer for The Futurist Magazine and is the Editor of the Impact Lab, an online emerging technology blog which was recently rated by Popular Science Magazine as one of the “top five science blogs in the known universe”.

Other photos of Tom.

On the set of CNN in Mexico City with News Anchor Carmen Aristegul

Popular ‘Future of Colleges’ Speaking Topics

Over the past decade, Thomas Frey has built an enormous following around the world based on his ability to develop accurate visions of the future and describe the opportunities ahead. As a serial entrepreneur well versed in the frictions between dreams and reality, the understanding he brings to his audiences is a rare blend of pragmatic thinking coupled with a clear-headed visualization of the world ahead.

Predicting the future has little value without understanding the driving forces behind the trends, subtle nuances that can be leveraged, and implications for both the people directly affected in the industry as well as others farther down the educational food change.

But his work is not just restricted to advances in technology. Rather, he takes a much larger view of the playing field including shifts in governance, system changes, evolving attitudes, human conditions, and much more.

Each year his talks touch the lives of tens of thousands of people. Here are some of his most popular topics, but don’t feel restricted by this list. Every year he designs dozens of custom presentation based specifically around the needs of a particular audience.

thomas-frey-futurist-speaker-future-of-money-summit-7s1.) The Future of Colleges & Universities – As the disruptive forces of the Internet bear down on colleges and universities, everyone is beginning to feel the leading winds of this impending storm, but few have a clear view of the changes to come. Newspapers, travel agencies, yellow pages, and record labels are all industries that have been greatly affected by the Internet, and each foretell a different version of what may lie ahead.

College 2.0 will witness a massive peeling apart process. Learning will become separated from the classroom. Courses will be created organically and formed around an on-demand, any-time, any-place delivery models. Professors will declare their independence and work for multiple institutions rather than just one specific college. Accreditation will shift from the Institution to the course and to the individual. And textbooks, the ink-on-paper version that we know today, will all but disappear.

However, unlike most doom and gloom forecasts, this talk is as much about helping colleges survive as it is about predicting the forces that are intent on unraveling them. – Keynote

2.) The Future of Libraries – Ten years ago, many of the tech elite were predicting the demise of the public library. Little did they understand that libraries are living, breathing organisms. Much like plants that flourish with good dirt, water and sunshine, libraries have begun to thrive in our information-rich environment. Libraries are going through an age of rebirth, with cities investing heavily in their central libraries as the crown jewel of their community. Opulent multi-story glass buildings have been erected, attracting many new categories of library users. But the question remains – Where do libraries go from here?

This talk can be tailored to either community or academic libraries and is designed to help develop systems to expand their influence among their constituency. The perfect compliment to long range planning, strategic visioning, library development, facility modeling, and architectural design efforts. – Keynote

3.) The Coming Data Tsunami – Today’s data clouds are swirling violently on the leading edge of a modern-day storm front that is on the verge of exploding around us with cluster bomb-like data grenades bursting their way onto the scene. While many are still reeling from the past decade of exponential information growth, the coming years will see billion and trillion fold increases, the likes of which are destined to overload every system currently on the drawing board.

At the heart of the coming data tsunami are a number of organic business models with real-time data collection systems driven by our need for precision, awareness, and instantaneousness.

But the problems ahead are many. We are facing increasingly complex problems associated with data storage, data transmission, data processing, and even data acquisition. However, the opportunities are just as great as the problems with every obstacle representing a problem-solving challenge upon which great business enterprises will be formed. – Keynote

THE THOMAS FREY EXPERIENCE

 

When hiring a professional speaker, one of the key differentiators is the audience experience. Thomas not only comes to each talk loaded with provocative knowledge, but with just the right amount of humor, motivation, and tantalizing information bits that people can immediately put to use and gain a competitive edge.

Thomas Frey’s Life-Changing Audience Experience:

  • Journey into the Future: The future is not a destination. It doesn’t end when we get there. Rather, each talk is a journey into the future that can best be described as a series of great stories told from resting points along the way.
  • Engaging Delivery: The kind of thought-provoking dialog that Thomas brings to the stage requires an intense delivery that enables the audience to become immersed in the revelations, grasp the possibilities, and feel the salient touch points.
  • Cutting Edge Thinking: While some speakers offer creative insight into the world around us, Thomas pushes far beyond the limits of conventional wisdom, often talking about extreme futures, building intriguing “what if” scenarios as a tool for discussing far reaching implications.
  • Positive and Uplifting: It’s easy to wallow in the underbelly of life, finding all the things that can and will go wrong. But that is not the Thomas Frey Experience. Every problem creates an opportunity, and every opportunity is the dark cloud’s silver lining that can lead to a better future ahead.
  • Energizing: New ideas have a way of infusing audiences with energy. He has an uncanny ability to find people’s raw nerve endings and teasing them with positron sparks designed to energize their minds.
  • Challenging Assumptions: Too often our thinking gets stuck because it’s anchored in the stale old thinking of the past. Our ability to craft a better future stems from our capacity to break through these barriers and focus on the opportunities that lie ahead.
  • Personable: We live in a world where, in spite of all our advanced communication technologies, people remain dreadfully detached from one another. So it is refreshing to find a speaker who cares about the people around him and enjoys their company.
  • Custom Tailored: All talks are custom tailored to mesh well with the goals of the conference organizers as well as those who are attending.

“The future is truly a magical place. I have been there and would love to have you join me on my next journey.” –– Thomas Frey