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Byron Reese

Byron Reese

Inventor, Technologist, Author, Entrepreneur, Eternal Optimist

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Price range

  • $25,000 - $30,000
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Expert

  • Agriculture
  • Blockchain
  • Business
  • Food
  • Future
  • Innovation
  • Leadership
  • Technology
  • Trends
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  • About

    Speaking across the globe, Byron brings great enthusiasm and talent for deciphering our common destiny and unlocking business opportunities within it. As a successful entrepreneur and award-winning futurist, Byron employs his perspective as a historian, futurist, and technologist to illuminate how the technology of today can solve some of our most daunting global challenges. 

    As a futurist, he understands the unprecedented technological change upon us and explores the dramatic transformation of society it will bring. As a technologist and entrepreneur, he knows how to manage change and inspire innovation, while still meeting the immediate obligations and realities of operating a business. 

    Byron has spoken around the world to both technical and non-technical audiences, and his keynotes and appearances include SXSW, TEDx Austin, Google, Nvidia, FedEx and Fortune 1000 companies (Dell Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, Oticon, Swisslog) and universities Rice (University of Texas, Queen’s University, TWU) and futurist conferences (TimeMachine, PICNIC Festival in Amsterdam, Wolfram Data Summit, and the IEEE Conference) among others. 

    Byron has enjoyed a wide range of success over 30 years, including two NASDAQ IPOs as well as the sale of three companies he founded. 

    Today Byron is the CEO of JJ Kent, a venture-backed technology company using proprietary AI tools to create new products that delight consumers. Byron has served on numerous public and private boards and presently resides on the board of directors for GigaOm, a technology research and analysis firm focused on helping business leaders understand the implications of emerging technologies and their impacts on business, media, and society. 

    A highly sought-after keynote speaker, enlightening attendees across nations, Byron is an in-demand forward thinker in his field.

  • Video Clips
  • Topics

    Keynote | Educational | Inspirational | Technical | Motivational

    Since the invention of agriculture until about 100 years ago, it took 9 out of 10 of each of us to grow our food.

    Now, in the West, it takes less than one. The percent of our income we spend on food has shown a likewise fall.

    What will the future hold?

    In this new talk futurist Byron Reese, who spent his early years growing up on a farm in East Texas, goes through everything from GMO foods to 3D printing to precision agriculture and all the rest, in each case exploring how technology will transform this industry again. 

    The 80,000 agriculture-related patents issued every year give an indication of the great change that can be expected in this arena. 

    Keynote | Educational | Motivational

    “Daily, the media greets readers with a variant of “THE ROBOTS ARE COMING FOR YOUR JOB!” The logic is simple: Everyday Robots get smarter, learn faster, and they will never ask for a raise. But Byron believes this simplistic reasoning is entirely wrong. “Just as electricity and the assembly line weren’t bad for workers, in spite of shrill predictions otherwise, AI and robots won’t be either,” he says. “In fact, they will create so many new jobs that our bigger problem will be a labor shortage.”

    Sharing insights from his upcoming book, “The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers and the Future of Humanity,” to be released Nov. 2017 by Simon & Schuster, Byron invites his audience to meet him at the start of the Industrial Revolution, to explore from there the many advances leading to today’s technological age, and then to dare to explore the vast possibilities of the future, the coming Fourth Age.

    This talk is structured to be highly customizable to specific industries or can be presented to a general audience. Byron delivers a calm and factual analysis concluding that our best days are certainly ahead of us.

    Keynote OR Breakout | Educational | Motivational

    While audience members once commonly asked, “What should I teach my kids to make sure they have a job in the future,” today, says Byron they ask, ‘What do I need to learn to stay relevant in the future?’ And, ‘How do I keep from falling behind?’ Everyone agrees that technology is changing the world. The question is how should we change in response to it? In this talk, Byron tells the story of technology’s advancement from the invention of language until today. He explores what’s to come in the next decade and examines what we individuals can do to make the most of changing times.

    What skills are useful to have? Which technologies should we adopt? How will technology affect the workplace, the home, and society in general? In this empowering talk, Byron suggests that the future is not going to be a frightening place where humans become displaced, but rather “one in which the things that make us human become incredibly valuable. We are entering a world of more choice and more opportunity than ever before,” says Bryon, and “the best response is to expand our dreams and expectations, not our fears and concerns.”

    This highly customizable talk can be tailored to specific industries or can be presented to a general audience.

    Keynote OR Breakout | Educational | Motivational

    In this compelling talk, Byron demonstrates how current technological changes will ultimately bring about the end of poverty, disease, hunger, ignorance, and war. Byron explores how these historical problems of humanity are fundamentally problems of technology, and thus will have technological solutions, solutions we will find much sooner than is commonly believed.

    Keynote OR Breakout | Educational | Motivational

    The world has, throughout human history, changed. Almost always, this change is for the better. Through civilization, we have raised life expectancy, the standard of living, access to education, and political liberty. How has this change been brought about? Largely through the actions of individuals driven to change the world. This talk focuses on how that change happens and looks at how virtually any individual can literally have worldwide effect on the history of the planet.

    Keynote OR Breakout | Educational | Motivational

    More data is created every day that was created in the entire 19th Century. And within that data lies to the answers to the vexing problems of life. Automatic computer programs will scour the data for associations that will be turned into algorithms to optimize every decision we have to make in life. And while we may not always choose to do those things, it will effectively make every person on the planet vastly wiser than the wisest person who has ever lived. In the future, no one will ever need to make a mistake again. While this sounds like a technical talk, the wide use of real examples makes it suitable for any audience.

    Keynote OR Breakout | Educational | Motivational

    No matter what industry you are in, you probably have a sense that you are in one of those radical disruptive periods where everything seems to be changing. You might be wondering when it is all going to settle down so you can take a bit of a breather.

    This talk explores how businesses that operate in industries that are undergoing dramatic changes can function and be successful. While traditional futurists seldom bridge the gap between “here is what is going to happen” and “here is how you profit from it,” Byron explores how it is that radical technology advance creates new multi-billion-dollar companies and destroys old ones.

    Keynote OR Breakout | Educational | Motivational

    What would you have foreseen seven years ago? There were no self-driving cars or Apple watches. Would you have seen the transformative effect that tablets and smartphones would have? The next seven years will have much more change than the prior seven years. We know this. And this is the change we need to begin preparing for.

    Keynote OR Breakout | Educational | Motivational

    The University system is a 12th Century French invention that remains to this day largely unchanged from it origins in the Middle Ages. Our K-12 system is a 19th Century German invention designed to produce homogenous factory workers. It too remains unchanged since the late 1800s. Now, we find ourselves in a world that has changed in ways no one expected. Now, the two most important job skills are teaching yourself new skills and working collaboratively with a team, neither of which are taught in our existing framework. How should education change? How will it? What skills will ensure that a person can economically contribute in a world of radical technological change?

  • Testimonials
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    “Byron's talk was spectacular. He took the time to speak with me in advance about our event and crafted a presentation that perfectly fit our theme. He kept the audience engaged throughout the presentation both through the thought-provoking topics he discussed as well as the visual images he included. On top of all this, he was exceptionally easy to work with before, during and after his presentation. He truly made my job easier.”

    Johnson and Johnson
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    “Thank you so much for making all this happen - this group was in awe. I've never seen a more diverse crowd so engaged - and they are obsessed (they'll be talking about this for a long time). It was such a relevant topic, and he is so kind.”

    TALROO
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    “At a time when tech finds itself in a tumultuous period, we were fortunate to have Byron speak to our team about the future of technology. His message was inspiring, hopeful, and optimistic. And he delivered his talk with authenticity and passion. Simply put, he nailed it!”

    Google
Byron's talk was spectacular. He took the time to speak with me in advance about our event and crafted a presentation that perfectly fit our theme. He kept the audience engaged throughout the presentation both through the thought-provoking topics he discussed as well as the visual images he included. On top of all this, he was exceptionally easy to work with before, during and after his presentation. He truly made my job easier.
Johnson and Johnson