On 4 November 2010 in Basel, I showed a slide from the future: computers had become invisible. This is my stage archive. Old photos, early topics and what the audience had to say at the time.
London, 3 November 2011, IAB Engage. Nick Sohnemann and I take around 600 marketers to the year 2021, and the Twitter feed follows along. The order comes from the search I saved at the time.
„I've seen him, before prepare to be amazed!“
The announcement came from the organizer itself. Talk about pressure.
IAB UK on Twitter, just before the startMoments later, 600 marketers are standing in the room, hand in hand.
IAB UK and TrendONE on TwitterThat is Steven Ray's wry summary. When 2021 actually came around, nobody would have tried this exercise.
Steven Ray on TwitterAyesha de Silva writes that I shook the room awake. Skive finds the opening corny, but says it works. Both are true.
Ayesha de Silva and Skive on TwitterWe point facial recognition at the audience, eleven years before ChatGPT. The feed is impressed.
Sean Singleton on TwitterThe verdicts come in real time: superb, gripping, completely crazy and inspiring all at once.
Sean Clark, Ben Tatlow and Tim Elkington on TwitterMy laptop goes dark, right there on stage. At least that is what the feed says. Apparently my time was up.
Steven Ray on TwitterBefore the feed, there was the stage. A few stops from the photo archive.
A school festival at Georg-Büchner-Gymnasium in Bad Vilbel, with me on stage as student council president. In 2015 I came back to Bad Vilbel for a keynote titled “Bringing Silicon Valley to Bad Vilbel”.
The first keynote on my list dates from February 2008, and in October I headed to Florida for Bayer Digital. The topics back then: Media 4.0 and what comes after the mobile phone. My Twitter handle, fittingly, was docFutura.
“Shytech” was one of my keynotes in 2010: technology that fades out of sight. The CRT monitor at MLove in Halle did not survive the talk. In Switzerland, the face analysis put me at 54, give or take eleven years.
The busiest year on my list, from Warnemünde to Santiago de Chile. The recurring theme was “The World in 2021”. And at IAB Conecta, the conference of IAB Mexico, the stage itself lit up.
In San Francisco I build Twyxt, a messenger for couples. SafeRoom and DarkRoom follow later. Since then I have not just talked about innovation. I know its setbacks too.
The last year on my old list. It ends in June 2016, the stages do not. For what came next, see the homepage.
That is how many entries my old CVs list from 2008 to June 2016 alone. 14 of them have 2021 in the title. The list is not complete.
Much of what once sat on slides as science fiction is now a keynote topic with real applications.
| Year | On stage back then | Today |
|---|---|---|
| 2008 | The 5th screen – What comes after the mobile phone | Ambient Computing |
| 2010 | Live face analysis on the big screen | Artificial Intelligence |
| 2010 | Welcome to the Outernet – The new ubiquitous media | AIoT |
| 2015 | Get it running. How to turn innovations into reality. Fast! | Innovation |
| 2016 | Why innovations start in Silicon Valley | Silicon Valley |
All voices paraphrased from public tweets and feedback at the time.
