I’ve delivered workshop and keynote presentations for organizations throughout Canada for many years. I have a proven track record for providing insightful, dynamic, visual and entertaining keynote presentations. I offer five keynote presentation topic areas. They represent five areas of expertise and experience of mine that I enjoy sharing with audiences of all types. Please have a look at my speaking topic areas and keep in mind that each session is uniquely stylized for each client.
i-leisure: How your leisure is changing the world
Most people don’t know that leisure is the largest economic industry sector in the world and that its driven by the way you see yourself. In the past few decades’ leisure has shifted from activity oriented to consumer based – we now say you buy your identity versus you play out your identity (in your free time?). The shift to i-leisure holds many implications, some obvious such as the common flight to consumerism and many less so in the areas of travel, recreation, urban planning, public recreation and parks and consumer product development. This is a great session to get people thinking about this critical part of the economy and daily life in a different and connective way. This session stream is great for all types of conferences because of its ability to resonate to all of our daily life experiences but various streams will be especially powerful for recreation, tourism, economic development, urban planning, parks, and sustainability conferences.
Travel
It seemed like a good idea at the time!
This session presents stories and images of travel to far flung places around that world. These stories are mostly funny, always insightful, and generally bring a great lesson home to us. This one-hour tour is a great way to get people thinking about travel and the world, to motivate people to pursue something new in their lives or just to give your conference participants a fun and visually stunning escape.
Tourism and Destination Change
Tourism Communities Change: whether you plan for it or not, so…
This stream of sessions take a broad look at how and why tourism communities change (it’s much more than just more tourism) including; what are the key variables, recent trends in community change, and what community leaders can do to manage tourism and amenity migration change. The session is based on considerable research and consulting and it’s well suited to tourism, planning, economic development, social change types of conferences and streams.
Sustainable Tourism
Sustaining Sustainable Tourism: What are prospects for the future?
This has been a passion of mine for the past 20 years and my keynote streams take a wide look at sustainable tourism and ecotourism in North America, Latin America and elsewhere to highlight where we have been and where we are likely to go. The session brings together geopolitical understanding with market intelligence, and human motivation to offer compelling statements of the challenges and opportunities nature and sustainable tourism faces in the next decade. This session works very well with tourism, leisure, recreation, sustainable tourism, economic development, and natural resource based conferences and streams.
Amenity Migration
Where are you going to retire? And is that working for you?
I enjoy highlighting the convergence of leisure and tourism to bring out the nuances of what we call amenity migration – slow urbanization of our smaller recreation communities. I highlight what people who chose to live in amenity migration communities can expect to encounter. This session includes a blend of popular research and a healthy dose of very accessible theory to explain this important part of change in our world. This session works very well with rural tourism, aging, retirement, recreation, tourism, culture, agriculture, and economic development conferences and streams.
Recreation
What is the role of public recreation today?
I have spent much of my time in the past 25 years addressing issues and concerns of public recreation and parks in all forms. An indisputable truth arising from this work is that the biggest problem is the ambiguity most public recreation and park agencies report about where they fit in a fast changing market place. A changing recreation landscape, and public, generally means re-thinking one’s role and public recreation is no different. This session will present the ways in which the landscape has changed for public recreation and what can be done to realize a stronger fit. This session works very well for recreation, urban planning, government, rural development conferences and streams.