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Posts tagged ‘TEDxToronto’

Jan 27

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Robot-Proofing the Jobs of the Future

A couple of articles in The Economist and The Atlantic this week have me thinking about peak jobs again. Especially since The Economist article pulls in the thoughts of anthropologist David Graeber, as my last blog post on the topic did. As a reminder, the concept of peak jobs refers to a point at which technology’s destruction of jobs (through automation or innovation) meets or exceeds its capacity to create jobs (through demand for technological goods and services).  As I’ve written about previously, anxiety related to peak jobs has amplified in recent years as the type of jobs being automated has shifted from the most menial roles to jobs that we previously viewed as safe. This, combined with a broad hollowing out of middle management jobs in many sectors (jobs we still tend to agree are safe from automation), has left a larger group of us watching our backs for the encroaching robot workforce. Read more

Nov 11

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Hipsters, Tomatoes, and Employee Engagement

In recent years, retro approaches to food have come back into fashion in a big way. I’ve seen several food shops in my city offering canning and preserving classes, and keep coming across articles telling me that Aunt Mabel was totally on to something with her pickled onions. At TEDxToronto this year, I will admit that I was mystified when the audience’s biggest wave of anticipatory applause rose as Joel MacCharles of Well Preserved took the stage to talk fervently about his love of preserving and canning.

I blame hipsters. Their earnest nostalgia and revivalist zeal seems to have infected a broad swath of young urbanites with the desire to can food. Luckily the ‘lumberjack beard’ strain does not seem to be airborne…yet. But at TEDxToronto, as I sat in Koerner Hall, surrounded by many young urbanites dreamily imagining themselves tying on an apron and getting down to some good old fashioned pickling, all I could think was “Oh really?”.

I keep a long list of things that sound great, but in practice require a surprising amount of hard, messy work. Two things that I place on that list are canning food, and employee engagement. Read more

Nov 3

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What HR Can Learn from TEDxToronto

Last Friday I was fortunate enough to attend TEDxToronto – an independently organized TED event, which took as its theme: Alchemy, the seemingly magical process of taking ordinary elements, usually of little value, and combining them to make something extraordinary of great value.

TEDxToronto was thought-provoking. I’m definitely still contemplating some of the messages and speakers. But here are two key insights that I left with, which struck me as impactful for the future of HR:

1.     The technology innovators of the future are not learning their skills at school

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