Full Talks from Before the Pandemic
Peter Leyden has given hundreds of keynote talks over the last 25 years but the vast majority are not videoed. Unfortunately most conferences and executive summits do not record their keynote speakers, though that is starting to change.
Below you can find some full keynote talks that were captured in high enough quality video to still be viewed today. They show a range of experiences over time and some date way back to the early days of web video.
Paris for European Business Leaders
For the last 20 years Leyden has given keynote talks in Europe on a regular basis to C-level executives and other business leaders from across the continent. He would often bring what he was learning in Silicon Valley and explain what was coming in the decade ahead.
This talk was given in late 2019 just before the pandemic hit for a high level conference of about 250 senior executives gathered by Capgemni, the French technology and strategy consulting company. Leyden also participated in this highly interactive conference for three days beyond this 30-minute talk.
New York City for National Conference of Planners
This talk was on a big stage in front of an audience of 1,000 urban planners from every state in America gathered for their national conference at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City in 2017.
This talk was a good example of The Reinvention of America talk Leyden was giving at that time. The talk centers on America’s future and makes comparisons to a handful of other times our country has gone through huge transformations.
Brussels for C-Level Executives
This talk on The Future of the Platform Economy was given in Brussels to a conference of very senior business leaders from many different companies from across Europe, organized by Sogeti in 2018.
Leyden had been working closely with the senior leadership of Airbnb in San Francisco for the previous two years through his startup company Reinvent. That project with Airbnb on the future of the sharing economy gave him an excellent understanding of the future of the platform economy in general.
This talk helped these European business leaders understand this inexorable trend. He also drove some smaller breakout conversations on this topic over the course of the 3-day conference.
Las Vegas for Autodesk’s Huge Customer Audience
This video shows an example of Leyden working a big high-tech stage complete with television-style video cameras on mechanical arms swooping in for shots.
This talk was in Las Vegas for Autodesk’s annual gathering of 8,000 of their customers to better understand the inexorable shift to the cloud.
Leyden was on the main stage in front of about 1000 people giving a relatively tight 20-minute talk.
TEDx on California is the Future
This TED talk was on the future of American politics that largely predicted what would happen in the 2018 midterm American elections a year before people went to the polls. Leyden also accurately predicted what would happen in the 2020 Presidential election as well.
Leyden has learned to avoid talking about partisan politics in talks he gives to business audiences or even general audiences in the heartland of America. It can distract people from understanding the many other things that will change about the future in technology, economics and society.
That said, Leyden thinks politics will have a big impact on what happens in the world in the next 25 years and he has many big ideas about what is coming. This talk to an audience in Oakland lays out his thoughts on how California may be the Future of American Politics.
Talk to YouTube Staff in Early Days of Web Video
Leyden spent a four-year election cycle helping those in Washington DC transition politics to the internet, including help pioneer the use of YouTube videos in politics.
This culminated in Barack Obama’s historic 2008 election pioneering the use of new technologies. Leyden served on Obama’s Tech and Media Advisory Committee.
He was asked to give a talk to the YouTube staff in Silicon Valley about American politics in the spring of 2008 well before Obama won the election.
Being YouTube, of course, they videoed it and put it on the web, where it still resides today.
Talk to Apple Staff in Silicon Valley
Leyden came to Silicon Valley in the early days of the digital revolution and the arrival of the internet to work with the founders of WIRED magazine. He has remained in the region ever since and gotten to know many of the top technologists and entrepreneurs driving the tech story since then.
He also has been asked to give talks to the staffs of many of the top tech companies along the way. In this video he was asked by Apple Computer to give a talk that put the rise of Barack Obama in 2008 in the context of American history, which he did.