Podcast with Four Futurists on the PostCovid Futures of 2021 and Beyond, 04DEC2020

Foreign.

Yes. The future is better than we think. That's kind of my motto for next year. Well, let's say the future can't be worse than what happened in 2020. But anyway, I'm here with a bunch of my friends and fellow futurists. So we have Anton Musgrave from Cape Town, South Africa, Lislota Lingzo from Copenhagen, Denmark, and John Isles from beautiful Waiheke Island, Auckland and New Zealand. And we are all companions and futurists working together as part of the Futures Agency and trying to develop a view on the future. So today we're going to show you how we use this cool app called. Mmm, that's. I know, it's weird, right? Mm hmm. And it's a pretty cool app for basically doing virtual camera stuff and virtual backgrounds and integrating your slides and so on. But it can be done other ways, too. And we're using a platform called Streamyard. And I will show you at the very end what my setup looks like. So you can scream in awe or horror, one of the two. And we're all going to give you a short presentation on what we think about matters most in the immediate future. And of course, needless to say, we are available for doing online events together. And it's been a pleasure having you join us. So let's kick this off. And the first presenter is Anton Musgrave. And he's going to show us his dazzling command of the map. And of course, also the future. Of course.

Right, there we go.

Okay, good.

So good.

Thanks.

Good.

Thanks very much. It's really great to be talking to you about the next future. And I think we all get the sense, really, that the world is kind of reaching somewhat of a tipping point. When you think about society, when you think about business and us as humans, do we have an exciting, relevant future? Certainly lots of things are going through our minds about what that future might hold. But the truth really is that the world is going through an era where there are many collisions taking place between the world that we know and remember fondly. I guess the world that we used to and the world in which we built very successful businesses. And that in many dimensions is colliding with this new world. And all the rules are changing. And of course, when two orbs collide, there's heat and friction, and we're experiencing immense heat and friction right now. And that's because there's so much legacy that the old world is bringing into this shift and transitioning to the new world that it's impeding our ability to Kind of think differently and reimagine the rules of doing business in this new world. And of course, as this transition takes place, we see companies failing, great, successful companies in the last decade or last 20 years, simply disappearing and becoming irrelevant. And the question is, why do they get it so wrong? And Larry Page of Google describes it beautifully and very simply. He says these companies simply miss the future. And so the question is, how do we avoid missing this new future? And I guess it's because of our dominant thinking is vested in all of our career experience, all of our business processes, business models from yesterday. And we think that that's still going to carry us through post Covid into this new world. It's really interesting when you think about some of the fundamental assumptions in your business today that underpin your business model and that we're relying on these assumptions to imagine the business of three, five, and ten years out. Just list down the top ten assumptions underpinning your business model. Fast forward your mind into 2030, imagine what that world might look like, and then tick off which of those assumptions of 2020 still remain valid. And I suspect you'll be shattered to realize that 60 to sometimes 70% of the underpinning assumptions in your 2020 business simply no longer hold true in the future. So, as a futurist, what can I really tell you? As a futurist, and of course, it's all just about understanding these business tsunamis that are unstoppable, these big waves that are crashing on the shores of business and the business landscape and the business context, and of course, the marketplace. And it's really important for us to try and understand how do these tsunamis connect, combine, and what do they deliver to us in terms of customers of the future, how to make money, how to stay relevant and valuable in the future? A futurist should definitely not be telling you that they can predict the future with any level of accuracy. But how do we change our thinking? How do we rewire our brains to think differently about the rules of tomorrow? And so when I think about business surviving this era of these collisions that are taking place, Covid is just one of these collisions, of course, the transition from carbon energy to renewable energy, the technology transition to automation and AI, these are all combining and imposing on us an absolute obligation to rewire how we think. And so I think the way that businesses need to imagine this future is to stop thinking about the future from the lens of today. We need to just blank that out. And then we need to take ourselves into this new future and Imagine what does the context of business look like in 2030? Let's say, what does society? What does technology look like? And from that, we develop a view of the marketplace. In that marketplace, what is scarce and what is abundant? And what will customers really pay us a lot of money for? And once we understand the marketplace within the context of business, we can then begin to imagine our ideal future business again. Remember, we've completely blanked out our view of the business of today. So we design what we call the ideal future of 2030. Why do we have a right to exist? We what is our guiding purpose? What is our North Star as an organization? Why should society celebrate our success with us? And once we've done that successfully, then we can cast our mind back to the present. And we can then say to ourselves, wow, what were the decisions that I took way back in November 2020, if you like, that guided me on this journey to arrive at an exciting future destination? And so it's crucially important for you as leaders, for all of us, as fathers and mothers and families, et cetera, to reimagine Our ideal outcome 5 and 10 years out, build a powerful memory of that context, understand the forces that are shaping that context and the choices we make. And once we frame that really exciting, powerful memory, suddenly the actions we take, the decisions we take, whether it's capital allocation, mergers and acquisitions, new investments, how we reframe our organization's purpose, all of them suddenly change because we now have some clarity, at least on where we think. At least we'd like to go in this new world. So, folks, I guess for me, the issue really is we don't really know what's going to happen on the five and ten year horizon, we know it will be different. Let's not arrive at the destination and be surprised. Let's make choices today that take you and your family and your business to. To this exciting new and I think, very different destination. Good luck and enjoy the journey. Thank you, Gerd.

All right, thanks. I don't know. That was great. I love the choice, not chance. You know, this is a big topic that I have all the time with my clients who are feeling like they don't really have any choices. Anybody else want to ask a question or comment or. That was nice. Nicely done. Yeah. John, we can't hear you. I think you're muted. Okay.

Yeah.

Okay. Anton really enjoyed the idea of, you know, rewiring ourselves and the lessons of the past no longer serve for the future. And that actually, you know, by setting intentions about that future we can actually have that future pull us forward. So definitely we're on the same page here.

Let's move on to the next presenter and at the very end we're going to have a debate about all these issues and of course we'll show you our funky technology. I think Lise Lotta is next, right? Is that true? Yeah, you are next. So I'm going to put you on. I'm going to put you on solo. So Liz Lotte is from Copenhagen, Denmark. And you know, this is quite early for us today, but hey, you know, we're doing everything we can to accommodate the, the islander in Waiheke who's obviously blessed with sun and summer, unlike us. Anyway, here we go. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Gerd. And thank you so much for an exciting presentation. Anton, I completely agree with you, but I think we can see the future. We can see a lot of the trade already now. We can see that during COVID 19 we've been really, really aware of, for instance, meat security. So lab grown meat will be pushed forward into this sit. So the big question I think as a future is that you ought to pose yourself. And again, this crisis has been fantastic in polarizing people into going into a freeze situation or a futurist release situation. And of course we would love to have you on the futurist release situation is to see possibilities and to see how is the future actually going to impact on my business. And for that it's really important not just to look at the traditional megatrends, but try to see how can they transform my business, how can they transform our role in this world. So it's really bridging from some of the trends that we can see, making it your own, having your own time horizon into this. So rule number one with working the future is don't go into this free situation, go in and say, interesting, exciting. That's what I love the most about being a futurist. Things are not good, they are not bad, they just are. So. So the first exercise that I would like to do with you is to say interesting, exciting, after me, then you have already passed the futurist test and then bring your arms into it if you really don't feel like it. So for instance, you hear all these news and of course the news always very heavy on the bad news because we are double SC what we're going to lose as opposed to what we're going to gain. So people are automatically focusing on the scary part. And there I think my role as a futurist or our role is really to open your eyes for all the opportunities as well. So for instance, we hear about all these deep fakes coming at a much better quality than ever before. And that can be manipulating me. So I can say anything on the social media and it could ruin my brand or could ruin your. The brand of your business. It could ruin democracy as we know it. But as a futurist, I just told you, then you have to say, interesting, exciting. So what can I get out of this? So immediately you have to find out. So how can I have a tasting of this future? Oh, I should download the app from China. And then you download the app and then you start experimenting with the future. Exactly as Anton said that you can understand how might it influence my business. And I was doing just that. And for instance, this morning meeting when we had guests from New Zealand, you get up very early and I realized, you know, I can film myself in the afternoon when my hair is nice, my makeup is beautiful, and then when I have the morning meetings, I can put up this deep fake face so that can have the conference calls instead of me. That's really cool, isn't it? So just to give you an example of those opportunities, applying for jobs, I could change my gender or I could come as this robot Sophia, who already has a citizenship in Saudi Arabia. I could be a man applying for jobs. So basically you can have all these new scenarios coming into these technologies. So what is really important is to move from the freezing point to the releasing point, saying, this is really exciting, what are the options? And I fell into that trap not long ago because I could see that by 2025 most search engines will be by voice. We won't use Google anymore tapping stuff in. We expect the world to change to voice recognition. So you have all these chatbots talking to you all the time. And I could see data coming in that Amazon was taking over the world because if you ask for batteries, Amazon will send you the batteries, basically because they are in charge of the Voicebot, for instance. But then you have to force yourself to say, interesting, exciting. What is going to happen? And then I spoke to a Versa agency who is based in Australia and they said, oh, but this technology is so fantastic because a lot of Indian people, they don't know how to read and write and suddenly they will have this chatbot and they can ask all sorts of questions and they can basically be empowered to enter university educations like never before. So it's really a tool for democratization. And I think this is really important that the Future holds a lot of different futures. And it's up to you to create this empowerment and to create these actions, creating a better world. Should I give more examples or. I think that. Well done.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

I do this testing all the time and I think it's very, very important with businesses so they understand how might the impact be on us. And I keep finding new things, new layers of the future. So for me it's really like moving into a new city with your car and then you find out, okay, this is going to look like that here's going to be a road sign, this is going to be a stop go. This is going to be a security issue. But it's almost like using science and art to create this new manifestation of how things might be and then play around with it.

Yeah, we're back to Steve Jobs paradigm, Rest in peace. Right. When he always said that the future is about science and art. Yeah. And it's an interesting angle always coming back to the past. Like I've been quoting a lot of Buckminster Fuller lately in my work. And of course, Anthony, we have talked about this a lot. And when he said that humanity is acquiring all the right technologies for the wrong reasons, and I think that's so true these days, and that was, I know it was 1981 or something like.

This, I find that people are too focused on the actual technologies. They're thinking about flying cars. But if you really look for your own future, the next 10 years, it's very much, how am I going to feel as a human getting up in the morning, how's my relationship going to be with my kids, with my workplace? And how is it going to be, to feel to be human in this? So, so, so try to get the focus over there, I think is crucial and that's why we have to test it with our hearts, our stomachs, as well as with our brain.

And yes, and look, look for opportunity. Sorry, go ahead, go ahead guys.

I think it's really important to get excited about the future with your heart first. And you know, so many business people try and understand the future through an Excel and with high levels of accuracy. And you know, once your heart is excited, you'll find ways to solve for the problems which you will encounter. But without the heart with, you know, if it's only intellectual understanding, you'll never really capture the opportunity of tomorrow.

And exciting. It sounds very primitive, but it's really to get you to move away from this risk averseness which is holding us back like crazy. And which, because people are in the future anyway, but they are in the future of fear rather than the future of opportunity.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I always say, I use this a lot in my speeches when I say, you know, we should not move into the future based on fear, but neither should we be stupid. Yeah, fear is not a good thing. But, you know, to always say, yes, that's probably also not such a good thing. Like, I was watching the neural. Neural link thing, you know, from, from Elon Musk, you know, the brain computer interface connecting. Yeah. And it's like, okay, you know, I think it would be great if you're quadriplegic or so you can, you can walk again. Right. But think about the idea of being able to upload your memory. Right. And he's serious about this. I mean, it's a pretty bizarre story. But anyway, let's go on to John Ielts for his presentation.

Just a short thing about that again, because that's extremely interesting, what you're saying that that's another futurist tool. The moment you have to put things inside your body, like a chip or something, the future arrives slower compared to it just being a clever hat you put on.

So.

So we look a lot on how is the interface machine and person in order to assess when will the future actually arrive. Which is also important to have in your toolbox as a business.

Right.

Yeah. Well, you know, today is quoting day, so I'm going To quote Marshall McLuhan when he said that every extension of man is also an amputation. And again, that was in the 60s, and I think that's so true when we think about technology, like virtual reality helmets, I think could be an extension of ourselves to work faster and be like Tom Cruise in Minority Report. But I would wonder about what it does to my mind, you know, what, what, what does it amputate? That's what I'm concerned about. I don't know.

It's like, interesting, exciting. I mean, Anton is wearing glasses. I had my eyes operated, and I loved my better vision.

Yeah, well, I do. I do think that's a substantial difference. You know, when you're. It's like, okay, you take a cholesterol pill that's, you know, to reduce the cholesterol or whatever your intention is on that, even though it doesn't really work. But another thing is to say, you know what? I'm going to change my genome so that I will never have any of these things and I'll live to be 150 years old. That's called Programming, right. That is not dealing with a situation like changing your eyes or, you know, even having a nose job or that's.

Actually a gene manipulated vaccine that the world has never seen before, Gerd.

Well, that's true, except for that it doesn't manipulate our genes, you know, it has its own genes. There is a big difference. We'll get back to this discussion in a minute. Obviously we don't agree on everything, which is good, you know, but anyway, let's move to John and then we'll, we'll, at the very end, we'll get back to the issue. So, John, I'll put you right.

Well, thank you, thank you. Listen, and it's like you mentioned, you know, fear. And the thing with fear is that your peripheral vision really starts to narrow a lot and possibility closes in. And what I'd like to talk to you about today is play. And I'd like to talk to you about the importance of play and the importance of play for our future. And when I'm talking about play, I'm talking about play for the sake of play. Not a structured game, but unstructured play that we have as kids. And that has actually brought us to the point where we are now here in this time. And you know, we're all here as a consequence of play, for the pleasure of it. And interestingly, and also probably many of us happy accidents as a consequence of that. And as a result, we've landed in this time and place and it's a virtual space. A hundred years ago, there would have been different institutions, there would have been different cultures and different ways of doing things. We are born into the now, but the now is not fixed. The now is flexible and the future even more so. And when we talk about play in the context that I'm sharing, it's that desire to discover, that desire to test things out. Plato talked about play as the leap. And I want to share with you, you know, this just excitement of experimentation and excitement of looking at how things might be different. Spermatosa, you know, they were found playfully through looking through a microscope. A friend suggested that maybe sperm might be looked at. And these little creatures arrived. For 150 years we thought they swam straight. Now we realize that they play, they play for advantage. They don't swim straight. They actually are counterintuitive and they use asymmetry to become symmetrical. They go backwards in order to come forwards. And they've learned through trial and error how to move into the future and create the future. Now these happy accidents happen all over the place Wilhelm was playing with cathode ray tubes when he saw a little shadow on the wall. And putting his hand out, expecting to cover the light that was emanating, he saw his bones. And this was the beginning of X ray. It was many years later that the negative consequences of radiation became apparent. So using these inquiring minds, curiosity and play just for the sake of it. And I have to say, play is not a doing thing. Being play is not an action. It's a mindset. And if we look at this child here, we can see working with his grandfather. The grandfather, you know, creates a hoop the child throws the ball in, misses, doesn't achieve success. But look at the smile on his face. There's no fear, there's no shame, and tries again. However, we have been brought up to believe that as adults, we should stop playing. We get old because we stop playing. And through the lack of play, we miss all of these possibilities that exist in the area of the unknown. And the area of the unknown is so much huger than the area of the known. So we're missing all of this possibility of discovery through happy accidents. Now, list lot. You spoke about fear, and it's true with play, in order to be really playful, we have to feel safe, and we have to have our basic needs taken care of. And I think for organizations today, this is something. This is a really big thing to learn is how to create spaces that are safe so that people can go from that narrow vision into a pure play space safely. And then the next challenge for the organization is what to do with what results and how to take what results into different directions. Buckmeister Fuller was quoted, and I'm going to quote him again. I think he said that the way to make money in a gold rush is to sell shovels. And it's this looking at sort of tangential connection that is, you know, our way forward really, in order to play the future. So if you're interested in learning more about being play and the play mindset and how to create safe spaces for play and how to create and augment and excel in happy accidents that then move into desired futures, please contact me. So there we are. Gerd, thank you for this opportunity to share with you.

Thanks, John. That was a really important point. Somehow we lost your picture. You have to fade yourself back in there. It's just.

He was busy playing. He really enjoyed himself.

It became kind of a mystery as you were talking.

John, I have to smile at your use of spermatozoa. And it's a lovely sort of metaphor, because they do dot and play and experiment. But you also have to remember, as the spermatozoa realizes, there can only be one winner, right?

Well, yes, I suppose it depends what you're. You know, some will just go for a swim and enjoy it. So I suppose it depends what success looks like, really.

That's a long topic. I love the topic of play. You know, this is something I've recently started using in my talks, and it's incredibly hard. I mean, I'm a musician originally, of course. Right. So for me, playing and improvising is basically what I do. And, you know, in all the bands that I had, I think the most successful things happened when we were just kind of letting loose and playing together and saying, wow, what a great song. We made a song, you know, and this is, of course, what you learn being a musician.

Jeff Bezos recently said that, you know, many of his best decisions were made through, you know, kind of wandering aimlessly and taking a playful approach.

I think this point in time, we have to find out, because some people are stressing down completely by being locked down. On the other hand, some people are rediscovering nature, rediscovering that they can be far more productive leaving their desks. We are getting this hybrid workforce, and we are just in the very beginning of understanding how to get the best, not the most, out of people. Not pressing us like lemons, like we used to do. But I think we will be actually, as you're talking about Anson in 2030, and we're going to look back at 2020 thinking, God, can't believe we treated people like that in the past. What were we doing? Thank goodness that everybody was sent home and had a thought about what could be a better way of creating life. And I think that also brings us to another point, which is we don't only look at the trends in our agency, we look at taboos as well. Taboos are very often what is holding us back. The taboo of giving up play as an adult. The taboo of saying, hey, I'm not going to sit in the cantina having lunch with everybody. I'm going to go for a run in my lunch break. Here in Denmark, we had this crazy situation where there was long waiting list to get operations on your bones, your discus prolapse, your knee. And then during lockdown, they couldn't keep the treatment guarantee, so that was put out of place. And while everybody has been at home, half of the waiting list has disappeared organically because people have started training their own bodies. So I think it's just a sample of something that we wouldn't have put in there as a possible future, but which is now emerging from new experience, from play.

Yeah, yeah. Well, as you can tell the audience, you know, we can talk about these things forever. And in fact, we do. So if you don't cut us off, we'll still be streaming next week, but I'm gonna wrap this up. Please cut us off.

I need a coffee.

So I'm gonna wrap this up with a couple thoughts that I have on the future. So first I want to say, you know, right now it's really quite clear that we're facing a situation where many of us are a little bit, yeah, you could say shocked, right. We're in future lockdown and this is becoming a really hard thing. I think many of us are in this kind of. I call this a Corona coaster situation. So it's like emotional up and down like crazy, right? And it seems like it's working, but then all of a sudden it's no longer working and, you know, it's so the Corona coast. I think I got this from the Economist feature about three months ago. That means we really have to stand by each other and help each other to reinvent, and that's partly what we're doing here. So I'm quite happy about the opportunity and the possibility of doing this. I also think that we have got rid of this thought of we're going to go back to normal. Yesterday I listened to Bill Fauci and Bill Gates doing a talk show and they said basically Bill Gates said, we're not going back to what was before Corona because even if there is a vaccine, it's not 100%, not everybody will have it. It will take years for those things to go back to normal. And we're reinventing a new world. We're flipping the vuca, right? So now it's all about unorthodoxy co creation, not looking to go back to the normal. I think the worst thing that we can do is to go back to the pre pandemic mindset, you know, of saying, okay, yeah, now we go back to travel just like we used to and, and do all these things. I mean, that's quite clearly a flawed. I think we're going to be in a situation where it's much more about this, you know, the resilience, you know, finding a new way forward, finding new possibilities, finding new water, so to speak, new horizons. And also looking at everything in this context, it's really quite clear that we are literally in a fork in a road situation. But I think my app is kind of frozen, which this is a good live demo effect because now. Oh, here we are. I'm back. Okay, good. So I think we're in a fork in the road. We are at the place to where we have to make principal decisions about the future. Are we going to a bright future? Are we going to a darker future? And as Anton said and everybody else, you know, we are at the decision making point of this. Many things that used to work don't work anymore. They've become sort of empty landscapes like fossil fuel industry. Like the traditional thought of working where we work and how we work. And we really have to look for new things. And we're at the time of pivoting. This is one of my favorite images we made the other day. You can see in the top right, there's four things that are kind of threatening us. So it means we have to change. Inequality, the future of capitalism, climate change. And of course Covid. And everybody's looking for new ways out. So the next decade will be radical change. I think in the next decade we're going to change more than in the previous 100 years. And it's kind of decision making point, point here. Of course, clearly America, right, America is in this pivoting moment. It may turn the ship around if we're lucky to become a global citizen once again. That's at least the hope that I have on the pivoting in America. And clearly we are in a situation where we have to consider all of the options that are happening. And some of the options are darker than others. But clearly one of them is the change of capitalism. Having more of a diverse background rather than just having one thing that's important. There's going to be four things I think emerging this year. People, planet, purpose and prosperity. A kind of a sustainable capitalism. That's my wish for next year. And I think we're clearly moving into a world where we're going to also have this kind of priorities. Not just technology, you know, exponential convergence, but also human priorities. Holistic business models, circular economy, the human purpose and all that. That is going to be the motto I think for the next decade. And quite clearly a situation where we're going to be looking at what we can do. We have to rehumanize society. We talked about that earlier. This is part of playing. If we're going to rehumanize, we can experiment. And I think we're moving into what I call human renaissance. And this is of Course, digging into the sort of Da Vinci 1500s, you know, the Vitruvian Man. And now I call this the Neoluvian man, the Neoluvian woman surrounded by technology. And that's kind of our destination where we're going for the next decade. So I want to show you briefly what my setup looks like, because I get this question all the time. This is the actual live shot I took yesterday in my room. You know, it's a complete mess. You can tell. But anyway, that's what you're up against when you're trying to figure out how to get online and do all these things. So it's been a pleasure talking to you. Let's go back here and put myself back with everyone. Good. All right.

Gad, I love the look of your studio. It's just such a great example of play in action, you know, and you've pivoted through play. You've tested things out. I mean, we had some trial and error happening before we started today, but we're all smiling, you know, we're all happy about it, and we've. We've moved forward. So there was one.

Rather than sitting by yourself, feeling really, really bad at what you do, another thing. Thank you for the fantastic presentation. Don't you think we are starting to democratize future studies? Don't you find that goes for all of us? But that's basically a key requirement for entering. If things are changing so fast, it's not about just asking futurists for support. You need to train that muscle yourself. And I think that's a big change as well. It's not a nice to have anymore. It's really a need to have ability in order to navigate.

Lisa Lotto, I wanted to say to you that one of the most powerful conversations I've had with clients is to challenge them to share the stories about their own children around the supper table, but with their work colleagues. And when you. When you ask them to interpret what their kids do through the lens of their own company or business, they suddenly, shocked. They say, wow, you know, I never thought of my kids as futurists. And my message is, look at your kids. Listen to them. Understand what they're doing and saying and expecting and bring that into your business because they see their future not the same as the way we see it. And so that playfulness to engage with our kids, but take it seriously as well and think what it really means has been fascinating.

Yeah. Anton is a very good point. And, you know, the seeds of the future, many of them are here Aren't they? And some will grow and some will die and some will be, you know, promoted.

Yeah, absolutely.

My theory has been for a long time that basically every businessman has to be. Or woman. Every. Every business person has to be a bit of a futurist and grow into the future mindset. Right. And I use the symbol of the ears, you know, this radar guy who has his large ears. I've been using that for years. But, you know, basically to see what's coming. And if you would not believe, I mean, I do this basically every day, and people are now waking up to this, that to see things coming is important. Especially in Europe, where we're so concerned about just dealing with what is. And of course, our history.

Right.

So we look back and we look here, you know, but we do have to know what's coming. That can be trained. It's a mindset. Right, Good.

It's rooted in science.

Right.

I mean, quantum physics is the mere art or mere act of observing something changes its state. So the mere act of observing a future, having a conversation with your teams about it, merely doing that will change some of the way you see things, and that will translate back into what decisions you take. And so whatever the future was immediately prior to the conversation in your world will be a little bit different.

So, for instance, I was observing our conversation and Gerd, you were saying, oh, it doesn't matter that we disagree. No, it doesn't matter. Disagreement is the key of the future. It's a key of making success scenarios. It's a key of looking at it from this side, from the other side, changing the perspective all the time. So already there we have a kind of. In a lot of businesses, it's very important to agree all the time. But maybe we should embrace, you know, the playfulness of disagreeing in order to look at it from all kinds of angles. So it's a great perspective, Anthony. Yes. If you look at things from new perspectives, they change. And I think that's why it's quite cool to have the four of us rather than just one speaker telling the truth. The thing I love about this new point in time is that we can have all kinds of questions in the chat. Every presentation is different because you get all these questions and ideas. You have a completely different kind of interaction, as opposed to the traditional conferences where you had one person always sitting to the left talking his own presentation as a question, and that was it. Now we have these. You know, sometimes it's more interesting to download the chat than actually to see the actual Presentation. That's so cool.

And now we have this great feedback mechanisms, you know, that we're using. I mean, this works on many apps. But now we can say, okay, we agree. This would of course be a center adjourn, right? So we have that. And then, you know, if we don't agree, then we say, no, no, no, I hate this idea.

Now I'm getting really excited here.

If we feel techy, then of course it's big blue, right? And all that stuff. So, yeah, it's. And this is when we feel like, you know, party time, like, you know, the pink outfit. Anyway, enough of that. So I'm using this app with this PlayStation 4. It takes a bit of getting used to, but if you were a bit of a gamer. I never really was, but Anton is using it as well. And you have one, John. Not yet, huh?

I just got Playdoh.

Play Doh is a good start. You could put Play Doh on your computer and see what happens.

But anyway, this was designed as a wallpaper cleaner. It was a wallpaper cleaner originally and then fires went out of fashion. People didn't need to clean their wallpaper anymore. And it became a toy and a plaything and has been used to create many new scenarios.

The most amazing things. Every time you squeeze it, John, your face changes colors. It's really fancy.

It must be the latest upgrade I did.

All right, guys, let's tell the audience where you can find out more about what we're doing. Of course, the FuturesAgency.com is where we all have our profile and stuff, but we all have individual businesses and companies. So let's start with Lisellotte. Where can people find out more about you?

Well, at your place and then of course, @futurenavigator.com, which is my business in Copenhagen, John.

And for me, if you go to www.johnisles.com, it'll actually take you to my LinkedIn page. But from there you can make contact with me and you can see more things around me. So that's me, Anton.

I'm a futurist and a business strategist with the Futures Agency. And I have my own business called Futureworld, which you can find at www.futureworld.org.

Great. And of course, I think, you know, we can find me just Google, Gerd, Gerd. And the first thing you find is the gastrointestinal reflux disease. That. That's not me. So you skip that and then you get to my website, featurewithsgurt.com but I think the most powerful place to find out about my work is Gertube, my YouTube channel, grdtube.com that's a shortcut, obviously, but you can watch that stuff there. So as futurists, we have another 40 or so colleagues that do different things for different topics, but we're collaborating to figure out how we can add value to whatever it is that you're doing. And this is one of our attempts.

If you have an experiment, which is cool, for instance, a lot of young kids that need to be futurists, you know, I'll come for free with these guys, won't we? Just to test, just to do an experiment. If it's for doing really good, we would like to donate our time because we have to practice this new platform anyway.

Yeah, if you have a good reason, then we'll think about donating our time. United nations or the Interstellar Council or, you know. So anyway, it's been a pleasure talking to all of you and it's been a pleasure for the audience to have the audience there. And so that's it for now and hope to see you down the road. I'm going to end the broadcast now and stick around for a second, please. The attendees thank you and see you down the road.

Thanks, folks.

Sam.