Johannes Kleske

Decoding and Shaping Futures

My Blog

  • Book a keynote speaker: What matters when planning

    Book a keynote speaker: What matters when planning

    You are planning an event and are looking for a suitable keynote speaker for your program. But what does that actually mean? I often observe a misunderstanding: many people think of a “keynote speaker” as a celebrity who somehow adds glamor, puts on an impressive show, and entertains the audience. That can work. But it

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  • How a keynote is created

    How a keynote is created

    The request came via my contact form at the end of April 2025: BE-terna, one of Europe’s leading providers of business software solutions, is planning its first Digital Summit. Two days in Munich, 150 to 200 participants from various industries: manufacturing, process industry, financial services. The motto: “Redefine Tomorrow.” Could I imagine giving the opening

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  • Highlights and provocations from the Future Days 2025 conference

    Highlights and provocations from the Future Days 2025 conference

    I just came back from Lisbon, where last week the second edition of the Future Days Conference took place. It’s a gathering that brings together the more progressive thinkers and activists in the wide field of futures and intersecting disciplines. This event took place in one of the most impressive conference venues I’ve ever seen,

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  • Questions instead of answers: morning check-in with AI

    Questions instead of answers: morning check-in with AI

    “How are you feeling this morning?” This simple question, asked by an AI language model called Claude, forms the starting point of a daily ritual that has fundamentally changed my working day. While the discussion about language models usually revolves around their ability to generate texts and answer questions, I have discovered another added value:

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  • Hands-on instead of hype cycle: The practical way out of the AI discourse dilemma

    Hands-on instead of hype cycle: The practical way out of the AI discourse dilemma

    How concrete experience creates the basis for productive debates The AI balancing act: between philosophy and practice “How do we protect ourselves from the existential threat posed by AI?” asks an expert at a specialist conference. Meanwhile, millions of people talk to ChatGPT and Claude every day about their mental health (therapy is the top

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  • The 60-Minute Futures Workshop: Rapidly Co-Create Actionable Scenarios

    The 60-Minute Futures Workshop: Rapidly Co-Create Actionable Scenarios

    Ah, that feeling. We’ve all been there, haven’t we? We’ve all found ourselves overwhelmed by the flood of trend reports, sifting through countless slide decks that predict the next “big disruption,” emerging from strategic offsites filled with buzzwords but surprisingly lacking in actual breakthroughs. As someone tasked with trying to make sense of and navigate

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  • From Future Narratives to Actionable Insights: Opening a Learning Journey in Berlin

    From Future Narratives to Actionable Insights: Opening a Learning Journey in Berlin

    This week, I kicked off a three-day Berlin learning expedition for a leadership group from a French finance company. As with any opening keynote, I faced that familiar challenge: How to transform a typical “trend presentation” into something that genuinely empowers participants throughout their entire learning journey?

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