Jerry Michalski
A long-time futurist, strategist, technologist and (amateur) social anthropologist, Jerry offers unique context that can help your organization thrive in the Day After Tomorrow. Jerry helps organizations understand trust and become more trustworthy, by exploring their language, their processes and their intentions. Over the years, he has advised and consulted to organizations small and large, from IBM, Target, Suncorp and the Wharton School to Blogger (now part of Google) and eGroups (which became YahooGroups).
About
Jerry Michalski
Past speaking engagemens
In the middle of that journey, Jerry realized that the word “consumer” made him squirm. He paid attention to it, and the word opened up a useful critical perspective that we have “consumerized” most human activities, to our detriment (and amusement). Then “consumer” led him to the concept of trust. Now Jerry helps organizations rethink their approach to trust, leading to new product and service ideas, as well as larger strategic insights.
Separately, one of the 4,000 startups that briefed Jerry during his time as a tech analyst had mind-mapping software called TheBrain. Jerry started using it in 1998, then later started publishing his Brain freely online at JerrysBrain.com. When appropriate, Jerry presents using his Brain as a backdrop, a unique experience that shifts conversations. Curating a single mind map for over two decades has taught him important lessons about memory and knowledge management. He uses that context to inform insight and strategy sessions.
Jerry Michalski
loves to inspire you on...
How to Design from Trust
Have you ever used Wikipedia? Remember the day you realized how it works? That any fool on the planet can change a page in our collective encyclopedia? Did you have the thought: well, that’ll never work! Congratulations, you’ve used a system Designed from Trust. Same thing applies if you’ve ever used a ride-sharing system, or done any crowdfunding or microlending.
All those systems begin with this premise: assume good intent. The reason so many of them feel like they shouldn’t work at all is that most of our present systems were designed from mistrust, and we’ve normalized that mistrust in humans; we’ve internalized it.
The Future of the Consumer
In the Day After Tomorrow, “consumer” will only be an insult. How we see matters. For many years now, we have been seeing our fellow citizens as mere consumers. While this has accelerated the growth of consumer society, creating the appearance of plenty while endangering our existence (and opening plenty of controversy), it has also broken trust between “consumers” and companies.
Just as importantly, treating people as mere consumers has stunted companies’ ability to innovate. Seeing people as mere consumers limits our thinking of the kinds of interactions, we might have with them, the roles they might play, the needs they may have, and more.
Will AI Save or Kill Us?
Software has become quite smart. So smart, that some people imagine a world in which software runs most things and people can sit back in the life of leisure they were promised years ago. Others are not so optimistic. They imagine a world in which software is far less friendly and far more lethal. During his talk, Jerry shows that both visions are coming true at the same time.
How Not to Drown in the Info-Flood
Information overwhelm: an all-too-common disease of the times. We’re all trying to keep our noses above water in the modern info-flood. Some of us opt out, shutting down news services, social media and anything else that threatens us. But then we’re also giving up the flows of information that build relationships and inform our strategies. Others cope as best we can, but our software tools betray us. Everything we install or subscribe to seems to add to the torrent, not tame it. There goes our attention, our time, our capacity to think.
Help me find a speaker
