Have Deck, Will Travel: Fall 2023

As the holiday slowdown approaches, so does my travel for speaking…barely. After an uncharacteristically quiet spring, I’ve been back on the road this fall at full throttle, melding my latest dispatches on the future of cities with new talks on generative AI, The Metaverse Metropolis, climate change, and more. As the first snow of the season descends on Montréal (where I’m living full-time again following the conclusion of my Cornell Tech fellowship) here’s a quick recap of where I’ve been and a preview of where I’m headed in the waning weeks of 2023:

• The season began in September with a lunch keynote at URMIA — the largest annual gathering of university chief risk officers — to discuss why they shouldn’t throw the renewables baby out with the bathwater when it comes to electric bikes and solar panels (both of which have a worrying tendency to catch fire). From there it was off to Vegas to headline the opening session at BICSI — one of the largest associations of IT professionals — on the promise and perils of AI (highlights from the conference are below). AI was also the theme of my talk to SIOR’s Philadelphia chapter the following week at SteelStacks in Bethlehem, PA , but I made jaunts in between to speak in Washington to ICSC’s Mid-Atlantic chapter on the future of urban retail, followed by a quick visit to Quebec City to help Convention Centres of Canada imagine how their assets can play a role in post-pandemic urban revitalization.

• As October rolled around, I found myself back in NYC for WRLDCTY, joining my friend and colleague Lev Kushner onstage to speak about the post-pandemic “bleisure” travel and how cities need to combine their tourism and economic development strategies to win the war for talent. (Watch us here!) I then spent consecutive Thursdays in Dallas for Realty Resources, Manhattan for a panel on AI at the architecture firm HOK, and Istanbul for GYODER (pictured below), the largest real estate conference in Turkey.

• November began with an overnight jaunt to Dubai for the Dubai Business Forum, followed immediately by a quick trip to Washington for Booz Allen Hamilton’s ”Age of Principled AI.” Next up is an after-dinner talk for Fiera Capital here in Montréal at the end of the month, followed by my last trips of the year: Kokosing Construction in Columbus, OH; the Southern California Association of Governments 14th Annual Economic Summit in LA (pictured below); and the National Association of College & University Food Services in Kansas City.

And from there, we’ll see where 2024 will take me! Please get in touch if you’d like to add me to your itinerary and vice versa.