Futurist Speaker
Futurist speaker Tom Cheesewright is one of the UK’s leading commentators on technology and tomorrow.
Tom has worked with a huge range of organisations across a variety of markets, to help them to see a clear vision of tomorrow, share that vision and respond with agility.
Tom draws on his experience to create original, compelling talks that are keyed to the experience of the audience but which surprise and shock with unexpected facts and examples.
What can children's television tell you about your business?
Why should your organisation be like Lego bricks not a die-cast car?
Tom will tell you.
Tom helps audiences understand the forces that are shaping the future right now. And he points them to clues that they can use to help them see their own futures, personally and for their organisations.
Tom is a frequent presence on TV & Radio
Your audience may know Tom already. He appears weekly across the BBC from the Breakfast sofa to Newsround and World Business Report, and as a regular contributor to 5live and Radio 4. He has shared his thoughts on the future with Channel 4′s Sunday Brunch, Channel 5’s Saturday Breakfast, Sky News, the Guardian, Evening Standard, Entrepreneur Magazine, Stuff and MSN. And he has consulted on TV shows for Channel 4, including In The Future, and Phil Spencer’s Home Hero. In total he has more than 2,000 appearances on mainstream broadcast media.
“Having external insight certainly added a huge amount of value
and provided a great platform for our sessions and from the questions in the room, the audience were clearly very engaged too.”
Ian Stuart, CEO, HSBC UK
Futurist Speaker:
Biography
Tom Cheesewright is the Applied Futurist, helping people and organisations around the world to see the future more clearly, share their vision, and respond with innovation. Tom will help you and your audience to connect tomorrow’s world to today’s experience, and make sense of what’s happening next, and why.
Tom is a frequent presence in the media, his face, voice, and unusual name recognisable from weekly appearances on TV and radio including BBC Breakfast, Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch, 5live, Radio 4, and TalkRadio, and in The Guardian, The Times, and The Evening Standard.
Tom’s first book, High Frequency Change, was published in 2019 by LID Publishing and shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2020 in the ‘Leadership for the Future’ category.
Tom’s next book, Future-Proof Your Business, will be published by Penguin in Summer 2020.
What topics can Tom cover?
Tom produces bespoke talks and presentations for each client. Using his bespoke Intersections methodology he can identify themes, threats and opportunities with high relevance to any audience, allowing him to add value to any event. Using this approach he has addressed every topic from supermarkets to superyachts!
Some broad topics have become particularly popular over the years, leading Tom to build up a particular knowledge set and client base. Some of these are listed below.
Future City
Tom Cheesewright has written and spoken extensively about tomorrow’s places, where we live and work, and how we travel. Topics include:
- Smart cities
- Future of public transport
- Future energy
- The future car
- Future home
- Future of retail
Future of Humanity
What will it mean to be human in the future? Futurist speaker Tom has covered various aspects of this subject, including
- Bionics and human augmentation
- The future of work
- Education, learning and skills
- Culture and media
- The future of sport
- The future of food
Future Business
How will business be affected by this age of High Frequency Change? What are the business models of the future? Tom addresses multiple aspects of future business in his work:
- Future of finance
- Future of retail
- Future banking
- The future of money
- Building a future-ready organisation
- Future of recruitment
What do you get when you book Tom Cheesewright, Futurist Speaker?
Tom is an experienced speaker with an audience of his own who is happy to work with you to help you promote your event. This can include pre-event videos, PR campaigns, contributed articles, social media promotion and more.
PR and media
Tom has experience of thousands of media interviews for broadcast, print and digital. He’s happy to do joint interviews with other speakers or event spokespeople, or speak direct to the media in advance of or at the event to help you with promotion.
Pre-event video
Tom is an experienced broadcaster and very comfortable in interview or direct to camera formats. He can work with you to produce promotional videos for his keynote and the conference to be shared in email campaigns or via social media.
Contributed articles
Tom can provide a taster of his upcoming keynote in a blog post or article for you to share via your promotional channels, or share a write-up of the full talk to be distributed after the event as a follow-up.
If you’re interested in his writing, clients can volume purchase Tom’s book, ‘High Frequency Change‘ to share with delegates as part of a goody bag, giveaway, or competition prize.
Promotion on social media
Tom will use his social media presence to amplify your campaigns and point people towards booking pages. Tom has over 14,500 followers on Twitter and 4,500 contacts on LinkedIn with a high proportion of business and thought leaders.
Hosting & interviewing
Tom is most commonly asked to keynote but he is happy to chair panels or interview other speakers on stage, while he is at the event.
Remote Speaking and Training
“If your event, launch, strategy session or training has been cancelled or postponed, why not do things digitally? I can deliver talks and training remotely, using a variety of tools. With 14 years of broadcasting experience, I’m as used to speaking to a camera or a microphone as I am to a room full of people.
My initial experiences of transferring live events to streaming sessions have been really positive: great turnout and great engagement.
If you would like to organise a digital talk or training, just get in touch.”
Tom is equipped to deliver talks and training remotely:
- Fast fibre connection with plenty of upstream bandwidth
- High definition camera
- High quality microphone
Tom is experienced with a range of streaming and online training platforms, including:
Here are Tom’s tips for making a success of streamed speaking and training events:
- Keep the length down if possible. Short, sharp hits of under 30 minutes seem to work well.
- If you want to run something longer, make sure the agenda is really clear and has a mixture of information and interaction. I aim for 10 minutes of interaction for every 20 minutes of information.
- Make sure the agenda is laid out up front and that people know what is going to be asked of them from an interaction perspective. Will it be questions or polls? What is the feedback channel? When and how should they interact?
- Make sure your speaker is prepared for the feedback channel. It can be disconcerting seeing in text what is usually in the audience’s heads! How should they respond to what they see? Should they interrupt the flow of their talk to respond or group responses at the end of their talk?
- Make sure the speaker has the right equipment. A good microphone, and a high definition camera make all the difference. If they can, ensure their connection to their router is wired, not wireless. And that their broadband package provides good bandwidth both upstream (for the video feed from their house) and down. Lots of home broadband has a fast connection to the home but poor speeds out from it.
- Do a rehearsal. Of course it will always be different on the day, but try to get as close as possible to the live event. Check audio and video, bandwidth, slides, and any poll or chat functionality you plan to use.
Case Study: Kent County Council
Tom Cheesewright worked with Kent County Council to deliver a leadership session via interactive live stream when the coronavirus pandemic forced the cancellation of a planned event at short notice. The live stream engaged more people than were expected to attend the physical event, and the feedback was incredible. Read the full case study here.
Get In Touch
Tom is available for speaking opportunities, media campaigns, content creation and consultancy.
For information on rates and availability, please get in touch by filling out the form. We will get back to you as soon as possible.
