Conference 2011 >
Plenaries
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| Never predict anything, especially the future | |||||||||||||
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Jonathan Margolis, Journalist and Author | ||||||||||||
 In this entertaining and thought-provoking keynote, Jonathan Margolis questions how well we can ever predict the future course of technology, and weighs up who is best placed to assess its direction. Is it the experts who know the field intimately, or the outsiders who can see the bigger picture? And right now who is saying what about how technology will look in 3, 5 and ten years’ time, and which voices should we listen to? Jonathan compares the visions of the future we all had in past decades with the reality of how futures work out in the real world. He looks back at some of the hilariously wrong predictions in the past of how we would be living today – and also assesses how some uncannily accurate futurologists actually got things (almost) right. |
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| Building skills for tomorrow: learning & development and the next 5 years | |||||||||||||
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Professor Mike Campbell OBE, Director of Research and Policy, UK Commission for Employment and Skills | ||||||||||||
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In the frantic rush of today’s world it’s all too easy to be caught up in the present – to get absorbed in tackling a particular training need, or get obsessed by the latest tool that is supposed to solve all our learning problems. Professor Mike Campbell is responsible for advising government on the policies, strategies and targets required to reach the world class skills ambition and for assessing the UK’s progress towards it, and it is his job to take the longer and bigger view. He looks at how well the UK is developing its skills for the future, at the role that we – the country’s workplace L&D professionals – play in this and at the research showing where we are succeeding and where we are falling behind. In this closing keynote Professor Campbell throws startling light on the importance of skills to both organisations and to the UK. He will draw on research demonstrating the impact of coherent, well thought-out skills building activities, and ask crucial questions about today’s L&D functions. |
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