This May I will be delivering the undergraduate commencement speech for Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering at the University of Florida, my undergraduate alma mater of nearly 20 years ago. The commencement will be live streamed starting at 2 PM on Friday May 5.
Today, the college has more than 10,000 enrolled students, curriculum that spans 10 departments, 15 degree programs and more than 20 centers and institutes.
To say that this is an incredible honor to me is an understatement; I was floored by the invitation and, recognizing the responsibility that comes with such an invitation, have put significant thought into my remarks to the graduates, family and faculty that will be in attendance. I focus on two primary themes: the importance of meaningful relationships, and the opportunity before you to change the possible, both on and off this planet.
I am posting my remarks here for posterity’s sake and to allow them to be shared or commented on after the event itself. Congrats to the new graduates, and Go Gators!!
As my 2018-19 DigitalHKS fellowship with the Harvard Kennedy School focused on the Future of Work comes to a formal close this week I wanted to take a moment to share a consolidated list of the resulting products publicly released to date.
In late November 2018, I delivered the opening keynote at the Future of Work 2018 Conference hosted by the University of Melbourne Center for Workplace Leadership[1], where I described how to keep people at the center of the future of work discussion. After my talk (which I will post after a public link is available), I was interviewed for a short video segment to share the highlights. In preparing for the interview, I found the questions to explore a thoughtful, comprehensive look at the scope of the discussion on the future of work, and thus I wanted to share my answers.
I am interested in your reactions. Do you agree with my thoughts? Disagree? Why?
It is clear there is not a consensus on what the overall job loss or creation impact of emerging technologies could be with wide ranging estimates of across sectors. Further, while predictions for job loss like these abound, there are far fewer organizations working on envisioning the future of work and the jobs of the future that will employ the workforce of the future as current jobs are changed by automation and other emerging technologies.
This is where I’ve focused my research with my digitalHKS research fellowship. Since January 2018 I’ve been collaborating with Bill Eggers and Amrita Datar from the Deloitte Center for Government insights to humanize the future of work and visualize the impact of technology on jobs to empower organizations, employees, and individuals to create a more positive future.
Yesterday, in conjunction with the 6th White House Science Fair, the White House announced that the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has partnered with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (WWICS), a Trust instrumentality of the U.S. Government, to launch CitizenScience.gov as the new hub for citizen science and crowdsourcing initiatives in the public sector.
The 5th White House Science Fair, the gave the Obama Administration and a broader community of companies, non-profits, and others an opportunity to announce new steps to increase the ability of students and members of the public to participate in the scientific process through citizen science. One of these commitments came from the White House itself, showing that anyone, anywhere can participate in citizen science!
