After Dinner Speakers: Howard Stableford, The Sisters of Mercy, Alistair Little

Howard joined the BBC’s flagship science and technology programme Tomorrow’s World in 1985. Highlights included winning the Grand Prix at the Quebec International Science Film Festival for a documentary on the Chernobyl nuclear reactor and working with HRH The Prince of Wales on his annual awards for innovation. He also won another prestigious award for his TV work - a “Gotcha Oscar” from Noel Edmonds! In recent years his broadcast credits include Predators and Changing Places for BBC Radio 4, Open Saturday for the Open University, The Leisure Hour and Animal Zone for BBC2, Motor Week, and Bonnets and Hoods for Granada Motors channel. He also travelled the planet filming extreme weather for Granada TV and was particularly delighted to discover that the wettest place on earth is in Hawaii! In 1995 he set up Edge TV in Moscow, which provided BBC programmes to regional stations right across Russia until “the Mafia” tried to get involved. Faced with a choice of pushing off or pushing up daisies he sensibly opted for the former. Now based in the United States he has been working as technology correspondent for NBC in Denver whilst answering consistent invitations by multi national corporations in Europe to speak at major conferences. With visual aids and a blow torch, his seriously thought provoking and witty keynote presentation “Help yourself to the Future” looks at four scenarios for tomorrow’s world based on current trends in society, economics and world events. The future is a certainty, but can you and your business ensure certain success? His keynote presentation “Help Yourself to the Future” examines what it will take to be successful in a tomorrow’s world very different from today. There are four themes, Star Trek, where technology solves all problems and global abundance is assured, Mad Max, where the march of technology turns out to be a Faustian contract with nature, Big Brother a future in which governments reign in the operating freedoms of big companies and The Good Life where the welfare of the planet comes first and everyone’s called Tom and Barbara.