Week one – the start

The beginning

This week I began my journey into the Masters of Technological Futures learning programme.  The course programme for the first two days expertly guided us through connecting with the other learners in the cohort, what would be expected of us over the next 18 months and the introduction to some of the emerging technologies we will be discovering.

There are two key takeaways from this weeks blog that I would love you to explore

1. Thought leadership: The why
2. Disruptive technologies: Experimenting with Copilot 365 for generating podcast audio summaries (listen to the audio above)

The why

Excercising ‘the why’ is the start of reflective practice and I would encourage all of us to practice this everyday. Why do i feel like this, why am i doing this, and keep asking why until the root cause is revealed, then you can act.

One of the exercises we did this week was to explain why we were embarking on this journey. This was actually more difficult for me to answer than I thought it would be.  We worked through the five whys to get to the bottom of what the real motivation was. Quite a few of my colleagues asked me the same question, why do you want to do this Masters, surely as a Chief Technology Officer you don’t need the qualification to obtain a better position?  They are right, I am not doing this programme for a title or a role, I’m not even doing this programme because I am a life long learner (although I am one), so working through the five why’s really helped me to get to the bottom of the reason.

Why are you doing this course?

– Because I am a life long learner and love learning

But why do you love learning?

– Because it helps me to explain what I am seeing happen around me and makes me better prepared to respond

But why do you need to be better prepared to respond?

– So I can be a more effective technology leader benefitting the organization I work for and my own personal contribution

But why is your contribution as a technology leader so important to you?

– Because in my role as a technology leader I have observed what technology can achieve both good and bad. In our rapidly accelerating technology global capabilities we have the potential to both increase our quality of life, help save our environment, solve child poverty but also to accelerate destroying our environment, increase the divide between rich and poor and lose our humanity. And it worries me that if I don’t try to understand enough to influence the right path then I am a part of creating our path to destruction.

But why is your part to play in this important to you?

– Because I think change starts with one person, and that person has to be you and I want to be a part of leaving a better place for my child, or at least one that is no worse.  So I am going to put in the work to see what part I can play, and that starts with awareness (learning).

Getting to the heart of why I am doing this course is moving towards what research project I will choose…….but I am keeping an open and curious mind while I explore all the possibilities.

The feeling

I am feeling nervous and excited.  Nervous because I don’t know if I can fit in everything I want to achieve and also be great at my job, my family and friendships.  But I am committing 100% to get there.  Excited because just the first introductions to extended reality, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, IoT networks and the convergence of all these technologies that is creating this acceleration is so interesting and has opened my world to possibilities I hadn’t even thought about too deeply.  So I will be riding this tension between nervousness and excitement for the whole 18 months I think.

I am writing this blog to record my learning as a reflection for me to cement knowledge, to share anything I am going through or learning on my journey in case its useful and to experiment with technologies though this blog channel.