Keynotes

Pinnacle Performance: Turn Everyday Struggles Into Everyday Greatness

Few people consider adversity synonymous with great achievement. But according to research by author and adversity expert Paul Stoltz, people with what he calls the highest "adversity quotients" are some of the highest achievers. Whether they are driving a new business model, forging an exceptional team, or simply finding ways to accelerate their own development, they consciously use adversity to achieve their goals.

Opening keynote speaker Erik Weihenmayer is one of those people. Despite losing his sight at age 13, this author and athlete has reached the "seven summits"—the highest peaks on every continent.

Weihenmayer believes that inside each of us is a light that feeds on adversity. He says, "The greater the challenge, the brighter that light burns. It can make us more focused, more driven, more creative, and can even transcend our own limitations and give our lives power." Sharing principles from his latest book, The Adversity Advantage: Turning Everyday Struggles Into Everyday Greatness, Weihenmayer will provide you with his best terrain-tested wisdom and insights to help you fundamentally rethink and retool your relationship with adversity.

Relentlessly pursuing a life or building an organization rich in purpose can be tough. The weather on the mountain is rough—and intensifying. That's why quitters abandon the ascent and campers hunker down. Only climbers take on the immensely gratifying challenge of learning, striving, improving, and contributing until their final breath. Weihenmayer will help put you in touch with your inner climber.

Weihenmayer's keynote is sponsored by World Wide Specialty Programs Inc.

Don't Be Invisible: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable

Being remarkable in the marketplace is more than a goal for staffing firms—it's a necessity for survival. Old marketing practices simply don't work anymore. Clients, bombarded with marketing messages from all directions, are tuning out. If you want to have any effect in the marketplace at all, forget what you know about marketing and do something exceptional.

Best-selling author Seth Godin has changed the way people think about marketing, change, and work. "Good marketers tell a story," Godin says. "People all over the world, and of every income level, respond to marketing that promises and delivers basic human wants. People care about things that happen, that move, that change. They care about experiences and events and the way things make us feel."

Godin will show you five things that help people and companies succeed, from finding, hiring, and managing extraordinary people to embracing a changing world while effectively prioritizing tasks.

Godin's latest book, Small Is the New Big and 183 Other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas, contains entries from his popular blog, offering insight on the nature of the 21st century business environment. Other books include Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable and All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World.

Godin's keynote is sponsored by Capital TempFunds.

Give Your Company a New Brain: Move From the Information Age to the Conceptual Age

In this provocative presentation, Dan Pink, the best-selling author of Free Agent Nation, will explore and explain why the widespread search for meaning is perhaps the greatest recruiting challenge—and the largest business opportunity—of our times.

The change wrought by technology and globalization is enormous and affects the way we live, work, and imagine our world. As the information age gives way to the conceptual age, organizations that make the transition first will have a decided advantage over the rest.

Pink will survey new evidence from three continents to provide a snapshot of the new world of work where "right-brain" thinking trumps "left-brain" thinking and a host of profound new rules and strategies apply.

Based on the research from his newest book, A Whole New Mind, in which he explores the logic of employment in the conceptual age, Pink will tell you what leading companies are doing to position themselves for the future. You will learn about six essential "high concept, high touch" aptitudes on which professional success and personal fulfillment now depend.

A contributing editor to Wired, Pink's articles and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, and Fast Company. He is a consultant to companies large and small on human resources, communications, and innovation. After reading Pink's book A Whole New Mind, business guru Tom Peters wrote, "A few years ago, Peter Drucker wondered whether the modern economy would ever find its Copernicus. With this remarkable book, we just may have discovered our Copernicus for the brave new age that's accelerating into being."