Marcus Barber on 774 ABC Melbourne Conversation Hour discussing Australia 2020 Futurists Summit

Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber was well and truly forced to justify the existence of his profession when venturing along to Jon Faine’s Conversation Hour last week. Co-hosted by Cath Pope the discussion looked at the role of Futurists, the Australia 2020 Futurists Summit and Jon’s scepticism around the role of futurists..

Along with Janoel Liddy, the second guest and one of the founders of ‘Slow Day’ the focus of the Conversation Hour in essence discussed the idea of how people use time, and the choices we make.  There’s no doubt that Jon Faine has experienced the low quality vested interest approach of predictive futures, (as he explains) and Marcus did what he could to assure him of the difference between the purveyors of trends and how quality futures work is conducted.  You can listen to the podcast here

Assessing the Opposition’s Alternative NBN plan

Apr 17, 2013

The link below will take you to the audio of the discussion I had with Annie Gaffney on ABC Radio Sunshine Coast the day after the Opposition released its Broadband policy. There’s been much discussion about the perceived value or otherwise, and I flag my bias here upfront: As a small business owner likely to…

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Higher Ed is still playing catch-up – will it ever be on par?

Apr 9, 2013

In the article I link to below, Diana G Oblinger, the President of EDUCAUSE offers the Higher Ed community some insights such as this one: we’ve moved on from the Information Age and are now in the Connected Age. Such a statement will come as quite a shock for many Higher Education Institutions and policy…

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Jobs of the Future and What Parents can do to help their kids

Apr 7, 2013

In case you haven’t heard, technology is making so many jobs redundant, that only the adaptable will survive. And when I say ‘jobs redundant’ I mean across EVERY conceivable industry and level of specialisation. Robotic surgery is now so good that not only can it be done remotely, it can be done without human intervention.…

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Coca Cola Versus the Public – container recycling as a branding challenge

Apr 4, 2013

Coca Cola, Lion Nathan and Schweppes have successfully challenged the Northern territory’s compulsory container deposit recycling scheme in the Federal Court. The scheme had seen recycling rates jump by 30% in just a few months and was widely applauded by the public as the right thing to do. Despite the overwhelming public support, Coca Cola…

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Advanced Strategic Organisational Management course in Manila

Mar 25, 2013

If you’re looking for an accelerated course in Strategic Planning and Advanced Management techniques in the Philippines in July, then TruEventUs has a two day session coming up on the 4th and 5th of June. Marcus Barber, founder of The Australian Strategic Planning Institute will facilitate this intensive program. For full details   You can…

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Is your Personal Bio-Waste Stream a source of Potential Income?

Mar 14, 2013

Without putting too fine a point on it, most of us pay little attention to what we ‘deposit’ in our toilets each time the body needs to exit our bodily waste. And yet with a looming phosphate shortage around the world (along with other useful components) our personal waste streams are worth billions of dollars…

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The Future of Retail has landed.

Mar 6, 2013

As co presenter of the ‘Future Matters’ series with the National Geographic Channel back in 2004, I discussed the idea of Rapid Prototyping or 3D Printing. At that stage, 3D printers were like very large office photocopiers and the better ones had starting prices of around $150,000. I stated that in the near future, people…

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In the Ins of the Outs of Crowdsourcing

Feb 27, 2013

In tracking shifts across the world and across industries, the rise of Crowdsourcing continues to unleash some amazing innovations in products and services. Importantly it is exposing the capability gaps that even large organisations have. Simply put, the ‘crowd’ is always going to be bigger than your business or organisation. But to tap that latent…

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Can the Northern Territory beat the Drink ‘Bully Boys’?

Feb 19, 2013

Allow me to flag my bias from the outset – I’m tinged green. My shade of green recognises that my actions can contribute to a cleaner or more polluted world and that overall, I’d prefer the cleaner version. There’s a huge amount of data that shows that as a species we haven’t been looking after…

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The Future of Manufacturing is Upon us

Jan 31, 2013

The burgeoning shift in the manufacturing sector has been coming for a touch over a decade and has, I would suggest, now reached your front gate. A whole confluence of factors that include 3D printing, Crowdsourcing, home engineering and freescale Idea Generation leveraging social funding approaches means that EVERY single aspect of manufacturing as we…

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