L&D In Action: Winning Strategies from Learning Leaders - Unknown Future Jobs: Preparing Our Youth for an Unpredictable Generation of Technology

Episode Date: October 3, 2023

Thanks to ChatGPT and its competitors, we may very well be witnessing the first generation of humans who will grow up having ubiquitous access to advanced AI assistants. At the same time, there’s likely a plethora of technologies on the horizon we can’t even begin to fathom just yet. So, how can we be sure our kids are learning effectively for such an unpredictable future, where work will look radically different from what it is today? This week, Martin Holecko joins us to offer some his expert insight from decades working in technology, and organizing educational events for youth.

You're listening to L&D in Action, winning strategies from learning leaders. This podcast, presented by Get Abstract, brings together the brightest minds in learning and development to discuss the best strategies for fostering employee engagement, maximizing potential, and building a culture of learning in your organization. This week, I'm speaking with Martin Holechko. Martin is an entrepreneur with an impressive history in the technology sector. In 1997, he founded Etnetera, an IT services and consulting company that he hopes will one day become the first 100-year-old internet company.

More recently, Martin created Futureport, an organization that creates educational conferences for young students. Based out of Prague, Futureport Youth delivers expert-led presentations to more than 5,000 students at 100 schools representing 20-plus countries each year. A computer engineer by trade, Martin has also founded a virtual reality firm, working closely with companies to develop learning programs that deploy the next generation of technology. Let's dive in. programs that deploy the next generation of technology. Let's dive in. Hello, and welcome to L&D in Action. I'm your host, Tyler Lay, and today I'm speaking with Martin Haleczko. Martin, thank you so much for joining me today.

Thank you for having me. So I went to your website, the Futureport Youth website, and the very front page in big, massive letters and numbers, it says 85% of jobs current students will be doing by the year 2030, which is only seven years away now, don't exist right now. Truly mind-blowing. Although when I think about it, the jobs that I do currently did not exist

when I was even in college. I currently do social media and a podcast, clearly. And I remember there was one guy at my school who was starting a social media marketing agency back then. And everybody was like, that's wild, man. Like, we're not there yet. That's not quite what it is. So this isn't a totally mind-blowing thing to me.

But my question is ultimately, what are these jobs that students are going to be doing in 2030? Well, if anybody knew, then probably they would, you know, they would be making a lot of money preparing people for that. But I just came from a conference and there was a lady talking about these things. And she said, like, you know, it's not so bad because 60% of the jobs that we are doing now were not existing in the 1940s. And I thought like, yeah, but I mean, this is like 80 years ago and 60%. And now we are talking seven years ahead and 85%.

So it's actually a huge, huge difference. And I think it just really reflects the amount of technological progress that is changing everything around us, including jobs, including predictions, what that could be, in the AI direction or, I don't know, sustainability direction, other directions. But in the end, I think it's really hard to say anything about what kind of jobs will be there in 7, 10 years because we don't know how much, especially, for example, AI will change the landscape for what we are doing and how we are living.

Well, I would argue that you might be one of those people who, as you said at the start there, if somebody knew, they'd probably be making some money on it. I mean, you are currently teaching children of the world about what's theoretically coming next. And of course, you're bringing in other experts and everything. And I do want to refer to some predictors. So it's BCG, Boston Consulting Group, that you cite on the cover of the website.

The WEF, the World Economic Forum, has some predictions. And guess what? AI and sustainability are the top two from their 2023 state of jobs or report. They have a report that goes over that sort of thing. And they have 100 different categories of positions. And at the very top, number one is AI specialists. And it's like a categorical difference in the prediction that that will be a net positive change.

Whatever that means, AI specialists, right? Yeah, it's a very broad term, of course, as is sustainability specialist. So I guess that's kind of my next set of questions there. I mean, you've already identified that those are going to be big, but maybe what have you learned from the folks that you bring to your event, Futureport Youth?

What have you learned just in the work that you've done about these jobs that might be coming through, especially in those two categories? Basically, by doing this event, I kind of admit I don't really know much. But as you say, I gather a lot of amazing people from around the world to talk to the kids. I mean, it's actually not kids, it's teenagers and young adults, 16 to 26, about what their vision of the future is like. Because these people are working in some domains where they're trying to push the envelope and they are imagining, they are living in their heads already in the future.

And I bring them to talk about what that future will look like. And through that, I want to inspire and empower the young people to imagine for themselves what their role in such futures would be. So, I mean, that's kind of how the whole event or my activity set up if i should answer to a question it's maybe not so much about specific roles or industries but it's more about usually it's heading more towards the skills that young people will need in the future and that will be like universally needed like you know creativity or ability and love to learn more because the constant learning is something that everybody agrees on that will be just constantly faced with change and have to adapt and therefore if if you don't like learning, you will have a hard time. Also, communication skills becoming increasingly important. Things like grid or entrepreneurial abilities.

These are like general, let's say, skills and abilities. I think we should increasingly focus on also in schools and in the formal education. Because if the young people have those, they are basically able to adapt to whatever is coming and go with the flow of what will the crazy future bring. So I'm seeing a lot of people that are very concerned and calling for really aggressive learning in organizations right now, really preparing for what's coming next technologically and just economically

and societally, since there are so many things changing right now with mass layoffs and just a lot of job insecurity. There's a lot of people that are advocating for more intense organizational learning. And you used to be involved in that sort of thing. You've worked on some products and on some teams that worked in, you know, continued lifelong education

at organizations and sort of with different companies. But ultimately, you chose to work with kids through Futureport Youth. And I'm curious as to why that is. Do you think that, you know, it's more important right now to why that is. Do you think that, you know, it's more important right now to train that next generation in than it is to actually work on, you know, people that are currently in our companies? It's probably not a matter of,

you know, this is more important than that. But what ultimately drove you to work with children or with, you know, teenagers and students? That was actually, the impulse was coming in the COVID time. And before that, from or since 2017, we've been doing this type of events, which were broader and large scale physical events, 5-10,000 people coming over the course of two days from all audiences like entrepreneurs, startups, people from the government, but also students and

just general public trying to learn something about where the future is heading. But during the COVID time, we felt like the need is the most with the young people who were locked up at home, of course, and didn't really have a lot of bright future kind of picture in front of of their faces and we thought why don't we use our you know resources and skills and connections in this in this whole field to to bring some inspiring content people role models people who who see beyond the things we read in the media about how the world is going down or in the wrong direction uh of course there are many many big problems but it's also very much about the attitude that you have and if you see the problems as opportunities to solve i mean i i always quote p Peter Diamandis, the founder of Singularity University, who says always the world's biggest challenges are the world's biggest business opportunities. And if you want to make a million dollars, help a million people.

So if you have that kind of approach and attitude, then that's something we try to also inspire in the young people through these events. Then you see the problem, but you approach them with the spirit, okay, how do we solve it? Or what is the thing I want to be involved in, put my energy into so um that motivation during the the covet time basically led to creating of this spin-off event and focusing on the on the youth and i must say it's also very refreshing to work with with the young people um the companies can be sometimes you know pretty spoiled already. And the young people are just open and eager to, to learn and see. And yeah, so, so it was also, it's been also very rewarding to, to work with the youth

and that's why we are putting more energy into that. And other than that, I think it's super important to put a lot of energy into that and other than that i think it's uh super important to put a lot of energy into learning and development in the companies or within organizations um i see great new ways of multi-angle approach to that you know there used to be trainings then like e-trainings or like maybe something with virtuality etc etc but what i see now is a way i see some great examples of like very holistic approach to let's say a learning path within the company that has all these kind of different little pieces and really takes the person from inspiration to transformation. That's actually one slogan from a company I know here in Prague that does it really

well. And I love that, that it's not just about ticking a box. that it's not just about ticking a box. My people went through this training and that's it. But there's really very much emphasis on the final transformation on the application of what has been taught or trained. I'm glad that you've had success with the students that you're with. And speaking of students and youth, I used to be one of those as well, as I assume you did too. And I hate to say

it, but when I was a student, I was a very good student, but I hated it, man. It's like, I was just not enthusiastic about school. And it was all just kind of like my duty, you know, when I was in grade school and in high school and it mostly those two, I just, I didn't love it. And nobody around me loved it. And this very much could be the demographic of America that I was in, you know, sort of suburban, small town. When I got to college, I started to figure it out. But I suspect there's a lot of students, especially, you know, post-COVID now that are just like less enthusiastic about learning. especially, you know, post COVID now that are just like less enthusiastic about learning,

especially since, you know, a lot of things haven't changed outside of the medium that they're actually learning through now, now that there's more digital learning and that sort of thing. I'm curious as to what you found based on the methodology of your events and how you have worked with kids and students, you know, what really gets them going these days? I mean, does it always come down to the presenter and the person that's presenting to them? Is it the content of the information? Is it the medium through which it's presented? What do you think really makes a difference for youth these days?

I think the youth today is much more demanding on the level of how the content is delivered. It has to have energy. It has to have energy. It has to have, you know, there has to be some juice in how the information is passed over. I think that, you know, we all read about how social media and, know mobile phones and all these devices how they are shortening the attention span of of young people or even of us if we use it in the same way everything is just much more also professional and fleshy and so on so like the moment you uh present some uh present

something in a you know boring frontal way i think people disconnect much faster than uh maybe we used to i mean we maybe hated it but we probably kind of tried to put up with they stay put or something um but so but in general i think in a way it's there's a lot uh similarities it's it boils down to the person usually the the the character of the of the personality of the of the teacher whoever is, or the guide or the mentor or whoever is passing the information on. If that person is passionate about what he's talking about and is a decent speaker, usually the kids are very open to listen. are very open to listen. It's when you start to be over complicated, when you start to be too monotone, then you lose them. So, I mean, at the events, we try to bring in a lot of interactivity and we basically choose the speakers based on two metrics one is of course the if the topic is fitting and we think it's something that will be inspiring but on the second one and as important

is the energy of the person we always look at videos and and other talks to see if that person is actually, yeah, kind of glowing and energetically giving. And then we know it will work. Yeah. I watched a few of the talks from last year's and I want to say it was David Brozik and Arash Zorani, I think was the other one. And they both spoke in some sense about sustainability and the green future and that sort of thing. And energy, yeah. Yeah, energy, the energy crisis. It really got me thinking about what it must be like

to be a student these days and learning about these things. Because I think I was just in front of the generation that has just like ubiquitous internet access. Like I got a computer when I was kind of like early to late, early to mid teens, I guess, which was later than most of my friends. But and then, you know, internet access from there. But pretty much everybody behind me was getting internet access at a very young age. As soon as they could kind of use a device or whatever, they more or less had access to the internet. And since then, everybody's got Google and YouTube. And there's just constant overabundance of information just on the media that we consume. So social media and that sort of thing, especially Gen Z and the younger generations, that also include a lot of the really, really serious stuff. As news media did for me when I was younger and for you, I'm sure as well, but it's, it's very fast paced. It's very, um, eclectic, the sources that it comes from.

And we're just, we're consuming so much from so many different sources that I think what you're doing is very important because you're able to curate things. And it's really critical to find those who are kind of in the space that's pushing the needle and pushing the envelope like one degree farther than where it's at so that kids can see from those people, not just from any source that needs to cover it because that's their job, but they can actually hear from people like David and Arash who are working on the green future and on energy, renewable energy, and they can learn from that.

So do you think that there's a bit of a risk? That's ultimately my question here. Is there a bit of a risk with the way that students are kind of consuming information now that when they become adults in the workforce, that they won't quite have the information that they need to really make the right decisions when it comes to the big questions of energy and equality and all those things? Do you think that they need a more curated system from events like you and just sort of better support what they're learning these higher order concepts? I mean, we, we, we try to be like,

um, um, uh, how do you call it? I can intervention into this constant flow of, this constant flow of of information that you described uh and uh you know to to to bring together a real like a a push of um more in-depth information uh you know condensed into one day that uh that may you know change something in the perception and to open some doors or, um, um, inspire some, like a new, new view on things. You mentioned, uh, Arashi was talking about energy Buddhism. His, his, uh, that's how he calls it is his, uh, vision is that energy should be like, uh, uh, yeah. energy should be like a universal human right to energy and that in the future the energy will be abundant and will be basically free.

And when you hear that, it might change something in your long-term perception and then maybe you gain a little bit different perspective to the daily or hourly or monthly inflow of your TikTok drops of information. When you said when I was totally pre-internet in my high school, the internet came when I was actually just starting university. And the way I see it, it's like the kids today, they're living in so much more complex and much more unpredictable world and much more overfilled with information world that I think it's really harder for them to kind of navigate this maze. Their world is filled with all this information. As for us, the way I see it, we had less of the outer information,

more of the information or more of the world we had to create in our own heads. And I don't, of course, one could argue here that one would develop more of an imagination and all that, But not everybody did that as well. So I think it's just a different time and the kids have to deal and use their brain processing power for kind of using this informational matter to form it into something that will make sense for them. Now I'm thinking more about like, where do I go? What do I want to do?

What is, you know, what career I pursue? Do I start my own company or not? And for us, it was more like more like you know sitting somewhere thinking about it and having ideas and you know slowly developing as as now you have like these bombardments i have a i have a 13 year old son and he he comes up every other day with some new business idea because he saw it on a tiktok um yeah like how to make make money here to make money there. And, and, and it's, it could be somehow distressing, but it's also inspiring that there is a pattern, he sees these things. And these are for him

interesting. That means he has something in him that he wants to probably pursue an entrepreneurial kind of career in the future but it's amazing how many get rich fast kind of schemes one gets on the social media nowadays and but it again uh after that it leads into interesting debates we have about values and about uh is this type of approach to business sustainable not in the green sense but in a sense of can you make a business last, which is based on such principles. So in the end, I think it has also a value. It's just a very different time and a very different way of dealing with information.

And of course, it is um i mean the negative uh impacts of this type of consumption of information i think it's today already pretty well known and it increases you know the the chances of hdd and and and um you know depression and yeah the feeling of loneliness, etc. So one has to, of course, address this. But I wouldn't say that one time was better than the other. It's just different. And ours was also very different from the times of our parents. Yeah, of course.

I mean, the biggest thing that I find to be exciting and concerning at the same time is the original question that we talked about here, which is the different jobs that students will be in as little as seven years, which to me is indicative of the, I mean, it's the pace of change of technology primarily, the quantum of change, as a former guest Robin J. Southasan called it once. The quantum of change of technology is so rapid that I suspect that the world will look very, very different as I'm kind of finishing up my career than it did as I was starting it. And what I think of most is the flip side of my previous question, which is students are on their devices, kids are on their devices, they're consuming from the internet pretty much constantly. Are they also going to have a much better hold on the technology

that's coming out than the generations before them? So I have a few friends that were very deep into programming and coding, and they went on to work at Microsoft. They were at my high school, and they went on to work at Microsoft and Facebook and that sort of thing. And they're always kind of like miles ahead of us because they just were really into it. They had computers before the rest of us did. And they were just, you know, they were deep into it. And I'm curious that like, are we going to see some sort of a loose generational divide or a serious one where a new generation of workers comes in and they just all have like a level of technological savvy that my generation and, you know, other generations simply lack because we weren't raised

on AI assistance like chat GPT, you know, we didn't have chat GPT when we were born, but you know, a generation that's being born now will have that. And there will be generations that always have AI tools immediately at their disposal, which theoretically is, you know, information 4.0, industrial revolution 4.0 at their fingertips. So do you see a potential divide in the workforce when those people actually get into the workforce in terms of know-how? I don't see so much the generational divide. I see more like a divide between people who at any given time have or don't have access

to the technology. I think with the technology at the same time, it develops super fast, faster and faster. I mean, people like Ray Kurzweil, they are talking about the law of increasing returns

or basically with whatever technology you have, you create another better technology faster than you could previously. But what I also see, the technology is also becoming more, I don't know if the right word is humane, but at least more user-friendly, adaptive. I mean, my parents, my father, yes, my mother never really started to use computer very well. She was a pharmacist and she didn't need it. And then when it came, it was too late. But she's a very, let's say, avid user of a smartphone. So she kind of skipped this one generation of devices, the person computers.

And she's totally fine with the smartphone this also happened in in some places in the world like in some parts of africa where people didn't have phone didn't have computers but then with the coming smartphone revolution they suddenly jumped over all these different generations of devices. And they are totally fine with using that. And with AI, it's becoming even, let's say, more or less requiring to have technical skills like programming or, I mean, the general usage of it. Of course, if you want to start developing large-scale language models yourself,

then probably you need to go deep. But if you want to use AI today, you type into chat GPT your question, and here comes the answer. So this will be and already is basically with voice GPT and other similar technologies becoming just voice operated. And actually what we are essentially working on now in AI and robotics, etc. is basically devices that behave like humans or understand your normal human ways. So you don't have to do this, like, I want to do something, I have to

translate it into a movement of my fingers on a keyboard to, you know, enter some characters that then go into the computer and interpret it somehow, these image generating AI services, you just say what kind of picture you want to have and it generates it. Maybe not exactly as you wanted it, but somehow and you can kind of converse with that and you get the result uh before i mean you would have to learn how to use photoshop how to use you know tools like that and you would have to even have the skills to to paint and so on that level i i see that i think the technology will be be actually more democratic on that level so it will require less specialized skills on the very general level so and i think this uh unless you really go into a tech job the divide should be actually smaller than bigger from that point of view that's a really interesting

development is is the going from the gui to the louis is a conversation that I had probably five years ago on a previous show. The graphic user interface, which is anything where you're clicking or typing and looking at on a screen to the language user interface, which is where you're speaking to something. And it's less of an interface, but just an understanding of what kind of commands

and prompts you can use to work with the machine. And I have an Alexa in my home right now, and I don't use her for that much other than the music and the news that I listen to, but I suspect that people are doing much more. Actually, not really. That's one of the findings that there was, that this is the most, that very few people actually buy through Alexa.

There's, most people use it for yeah music maybe some lights and maybe some reminders or something but actually you said gui and louis and you will go to tui uh in a couple of years like a thinking user interface, you will not even have to say that perhaps if projects like Neuralink or others will be successful. So the direction we are heading is that I think is the animated movie, I think WALL-E or something. Like basically everything happens for us kind of without without you know us needing to do anything so that's one kind of topic utopic and at the same time this topic I

think futures that could lie ahead of us but I'm not I'm not worried so much about the skills divide as you said and also one one more thing to this notion of oh it's seven years there will be 85 percent of jobs that we don't know today if i see young people in in our company today they are usually they come and they are very skilled and they are also very, I would say, independent and kind of know what they want. At the same time, sometimes they don't know what they want, but they think they know what they want. But what I want to say is that they usually actually look for a project for a year or two. And then in their minds, they want to move on anyway. So already now, basically, the young generation, I think, is very much less focused on a long-term career. I mean, we know that already since many years. countries like japan there are no people today who want to finish their university and

find a job in the company and then stay there for 50 years yeah so but but the generation the gen z and the generation like the generations around they really think much more in terms of interesting projects and i go here i do this project i'll get this new skill i learn something and then i move to another interesting project and usually they actually they actually require the learning being a part of that uh of a job like they don't want to do things that they know how to do in a way they they't want to do things that they know how to do in a way. They, they, they want to do things that, uh, challenge the things they, they know, or that they, um, yeah, that, that they learn and acquire new, new skills. I think they are actually, yeah. And that's great because they are like, uh, in a way adopted for way, adapted for what's going to come. But what I wanted to say is that already now,

I think that people have, for them, a job is something that lasts one or two years, and then there's another job, maybe in the more or less same domain, but probably if you're a programmer, because I'm talking about my IT company, okay, you'll probably stay in the it domain but you will probably learn a new language or a new framework or a new approach because now you can use ai to help you program you have a co-pilot programming tools powered by ai so and if that actually stops and you are, for example, working on one project for too long, usually the people are actually unhappy and bored and they want to leave. And so I believe actually it's all right because this is how it's going to be. right because this is how it's going to be and i don't think it's like we will wake up one day and say oh there's like all these new jobs and nobody knows how to do them but it will just evolve

organically and uh with the people of today or young people of today they will just you know like flow with what's needed at that moment. And maybe it will get even shorter and a good job will be something for a month and then you switch to something else. Yeah, that's interesting to think about right now, though, because of all the layoffs that have been happening, especially in big American companies and that sort of thing.

I see it and I feel it myself as sort of a later Gen Z member. I've been fortunate enough to have careers that more or less resemble that very intentionally. And I guess my question, my follow-up question is on the entrepreneurship end of things, do you think that future generations are going to be more entrepreneurial? Do you think that they're going to have more opportunity to be entrepreneurial just because of the access to information? And because, for instance, like your son, you know, seeing ads about something that was kind of, you know, a money making opportunity, what whether that was, you know, maybe a bit of a scam, or if it was real, but, you know, just in

general access to more data, more information, and more tools to do things more efficiently, do you think that will increase the level of sort of entrepreneurial spirit? Or is that really a matter of spirit that you have to just teach entrepreneurship as a concept and as an endeavor and as an attitude? Is it more so something that's taught into people than given to them through the resources they have? Well, I believe they're going to be more. I believe there are going to be more. I'm just wondering if our understanding of entrepreneurship is the same for them as for us.

I think one of the important things for my generation in being an entrepreneur is the ability is the grit is the ability to you know pull through hard times uh because it's really uh intoxicating at the beginning when you have the idea and you start to you know imagine everything and you inspire some people to jump in with you and so on but But the day will come sooner than later that also the difficulties come. And you find out that not all the people who you employ are actually as dedicated to what you're doing or have different motives than you have. And you don't understand that as a first-time entrepreneur and you have to deal with going through that. I believe maybe in regard to what we said before, if the world is changing so much and are changing and it's more like project kind of driven future then maybe also

this skill will not be as important as some kind of or it will be but in a different sense it will not be about starting a company and building something for 20 years. But maybe it will be more like a kind of a gig company style for one, two years, a project. Oh, I see this opportunity. It's amazing. You know, I can build these NFT collections and da, da, da. And, you know, and you do it, you acquire some skills. It's actually a company.

You sell some things, but then this trend starts to fade out and you just move over to something else. And you will need the grit to start again and again. But which is a bit different than like, you know, building a company and having more and more people and so on. I think also this will be very different with the AI being basically useful in many different ways and fields and roles. It might be not so much about building a company with thousands of people or hundreds or even dozens, but you might be very well off as a freelancer with, you know,

two, three helpers and a lot of, um, yeah, AI based, uh, support, uh,

on all levels of, of the company. So I think it will be a little bit more like fragmented and, you know, less solid, more like fluid, less solid. Now here's a company and it will stay here until, you know, in my company, we started in 1997, a long time ago. And actually 26 years ago.

And we actually have in our kind of a motto inside of the company, we say we are building the first 100-year-old internet company. And because we are in the software, custom software development for the internet, for clients. And the reason why we made it our motto was to kind of indicate that we are doing something we believe in. We don't want to just get, you know, rich quickly and then get rid of the company. We want to build long-term relationships with clients, etc. We want to build long-term relationships with clients, etc.

But basically, I think starting something today, it's a pretty ridiculous thought maybe to look at it this way. So you've had some really cool experience with technology, working with VR and working with companies, as I said before, kind of in learning and all of that. I just want to ask a few more questions about your experience there. So were you working closely enough with companies and the people in the organizations to kind of understand how the technology that you were developing was interacting with them? And if so, do you have any statements

on kind of what you found about how people were reacting to and learning from cutting edge technology like virtual reality for instance i think virtual reality um is a is like um yeah it's something i'm i'm interested in or even passionate about at times um for a long time and in my recent kind of project we started two years ago actually showing companies how they can already easily today work and cooperate in the metaverse or with virtual reality that you can actually bring people from different locations into one virtual space and they they their avatars look more or less like us so you can recognize the people and it has all kinds of um interesting properties like people start to as opposed to like a zoom call people start to just chit chat

because they like you know see each other next to each other and they just start to naturally talk about things that on a zoom call like that they wouldn't uh start that's a totally different feeling but um i must say the vr itself it's uh um the the first effect was always wow and people you know mind blown but that's it there was like very few people who would then come back to it or like say okay let's now implement it in the company it will change change everything. And I think it will one day, but it's still not there. I think we've been for a couple of past years saying, yeah, once Apple starts, then it will change like with the iPhone. So now Apple is launching next year.

It's Apple Vision. it's a provision and I believe it's a beginning of like a serious adaptation of the technology but until then and also what Meta is now doing

with their third iteration of the MetaQuest it will also i think be a something that will push us forward i mean there are and again it's it's it's been discussed for many years they're like amazing opportunities for learning with vr and of course you can use it today as well i mean you can use it for soft skills, hard skills, training, very much in the companies. But I think its time will only come in a couple of years

when the devices get more easy to use and the ecosystems become more robust. And I believe that the little screens we are carrying in our pockets will become cool shades at one point. But it's not yet, I think, for the mass adoption. The AI, though, I think there's quite a few ideas that will be developed. There are whole governments, I think the South Korean government, they have an initiative that I think by 2025 or 2026,

every student will have his or her own AI kind of tutor. They want to fight inequalities in education with that. And of course, there are amazing implications if you can already through internet today access basically the knowledge of the best universities, even in the parts of the world where there are no universities. universities, even in the parts of the world where there are no universities. But still, it's different than if you have your own personalized AI tutor that's kind of curating what you need to be learning. So one last question related to this.

If you can give any advice as to how companies can assess and test and experiment with new technologies that might be sort of novel or just something that they haven't experienced before. So getting the budget for something like implementing VR or even AI tools in your company can be a difficult process because you have to go through and say, okay, this is why this is going to help the company, even though there's probably not a ton of use cases yet. This is why it's going to be relevant to our specific departments and why it's going to help our product or whatever. And then you have to go through an actual testing process and experimentation to see

how it really works. Do you have any just general advice for how to go about safely and efficiently adopting a new technology? Well, I think that this like playful experimentation is the best approach. I mean, what we do, we run different challenges in the company. We ask people to form little teams in between departments, and it runs for five, six weeks. They get a little budget.

And then we actually ask for the most like exciting usage of that particular technology to try out. So it's not about the most, you know, useful or most value added bringing. useful or most value added bringing uh but the most like exciting in a way also can be crazy like just to to to uh just to experiment just to put your hands on that technology and and think about it. And if you put it in such a like low pressure, playful kind of setup, a lot of creativity comes out and fun things come out. And of course, many of them are like nonsense in their real life, but they show some way of using technology and we i remember when iot was kind of this big wave of iot we were we thought okay our people should know about this technology they should they should also play with it acquire some some skills and we we did one of these challenges and you know i think one of the most popular experiments that was run.

And then at the end, we ranked them and we give them some prizes and so on. So I think one of the most praised one was a little sensor that would detect how the toilets are occupied or not occupied. So you don't have to, you know, go from your desk to the bathrooms and they find out they are occupied and come back. And there was even a timer that if someone was sitting too long, then you should also leave some time before visiting that cabin. So, I mean, like silly things like that.

But it basically shows, okay, you can use sensors, you can use, you know, gather data, you can make some decisions. And that's, I think, if you do something yeah as i said low pressure and creative like that i think that's the best way how to experiment with technologies of course that's a first step but uh and then you have to go further with that but and there are real experts on the internal innovation process. But I will not pretend I am one of them. But I always brought some inspiration into the company through such experiments. And the moment it's fun, people just engage and they put in their own time and their own energy and both benefit both the company and both themselves.

They learn something new and the company has some new ideas too. Yeah, I love that approach. A little bit of freedom, a little bit of fun. I think there's no better way to learn what something is capable of than giving people autonomy and the ability to just play around. So I think that's a great approach. Before we finish up, can you just let our audience know where they can learn more about you and your work and also the events that you do?

Probably LinkedIn is a good way to start. And the event I'm currently preparing, you mentioned Futureport Youth. So futureportyouth.com is um yeah the easiest way i think to find more about that event and if you find me on linkedin under martin holechko i think there are not many people of that name then you'll see all my projects and yeah easy easy to find me i'm not a big social media guy myself, so don't look for me on Facebook. Okay, great. Well, thank you so much once more for joining me today. And for everybody listening at home, thank you for joining. We will catch you on the next episode. Cheers.

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