January 5, 2019

Greetings everyone, and Happy New Year!

It’s been almost 17 years that I started giving talks and presentations on the future, and it’s been an amazing adventure – one that I plan to turn into a new book in 2019 (stay tuned via Twitter)

I’ve done more than 1700 engagements (keynotes, talks, seminars, workshops and advisory sessions) in over 50 countries. My YouTube channel is now nearing 20K subscribers, with the total watch-time of my 556 videos exceeding 15 Million minutes.  My total audience has grown to an estimated 2.5 million people, globally.

So first, a huge THANK YOU to all my clients, all the speaking bureaus that have booked me, and all the amazing people I was so fortunate to meet and speak with, on-the-road: you have taught me so much!

I have been very fortunate that my 2016 book ‘Technology vs. Humanity’ has been successful beyond my wildest dreams – it’s now available  in 10+ languages and many memes from the book (such as #DigitalEthics and of #techvshuman) have now been widely adopted across the Internet. Almost 75% of all my recent talks  have already been on this topic!

Now, it’s time to talk about what really matters: the future of humanity.

It’s time to go beyond the focus on more-or-less business issues such as digital transformation and ‘the Megashifts’ to the topics that are truly existential and crucial for the future of humanity.  It’s also time to acknowledge my strongest passions. During the past 2-3 years I have come to realise that I feel most passionate about human and societal issues that often encompass technological future scenarios. I also have discovered that I have a some-what unique ability to fuse content and ideas from science and technology, business and economics as well as from philosophy, culture, society and humanity in my talks.

Here are my updated mission statements:

1. To be a force for the good of humanity by making meaningful contributions that help to foster human flourishing 
2. To speak honestly, openly, engagingly and with total integrity with and to my audiences
3. To present passionate and visionary yet balanced and realistic views that are neither techno-utopian nor neo-luddite
4. To influence, inspire and advise local, national and global decision makers when it comes to the key technological future topics that are impacting humanity

In this, I will take guidance from the UN’s ‘People, Planet, Prosperity’ principles that I believe will underpin a new economic system in the future: everything I do must have a human benefit, it must respect the planet at all times and it must allow for sustainable prosperity (both mine as well as that of my clients)

Going forward, I will focus on these 5 speaking topics, below. Details will be available on my new topics page within the next 10 days – in the meantime you can download this PDF if you need more information: 2019 topics preview gerd leonhard.pdf

I will still consider other engagements (such as on my legacy topics); however all engagement requests on my 2019 core topics will receive priority. Many of my traditional business topics can also be covered by my esteemed and accomplished colleagues at The Futures Agency.

In 2019, will also present a lot of new content on #digitalethics, together with a new collaborator that will be announced on January 15 2019. This will include a brand-new newsletter, a new podcast, a series of blogposts and opinion pieces, and some new short films and animations. 

Download this announcement as PDF: Gerd Leonhard Futurist 2019 Announcement

HUMANITY AND TECHNOLOGY – THE NEXT 10 YEARS