Alistair makes early-stage companies improve their go-to-market strategies, and works with some of the world’s largest firms on business model innovation. He also helps governments understand the impact of technology on society, ethics, and resiliency.
As an entrepreneur, Alistair co-founded Coradiant; the Year One Labs accelerator; and a variety of other startups. He has also launched and chaired some of the world’s leading conferences on emerging technology, including Startupfest, Strata, Cloud Connect, FWD50, Bitnorth, and more.
Alistair is the author of four books on technology and entrepreneurship, including the best-selling Lean Analytics, which has been translated into eight languages and is in its tenth printing in China. He speaks internationally on topics such as data science, innovation, scaling startups, digital government, AI, and applying critical thinking to technology. A graduate of Dalhousie University, he has also been a visiting executive on data science and critical thinking at Harvard Business School.
Sessions
Join your host – FWD50 Co-founder and Chair, Alistair Croll, as he sets the stage for the week to come!
Technology is where policy becomes code. Digital government means embracing the best that the private sector has to offer—and then ensuring it addresses the needs of the margins, not just the profitable middle. Digital identity means delivering tailored services to individuals—while protecting their privacy and identity. Digital analytics means service usage and encouraging transparency and... read more
The global pandemic created an era of digital disruption that required the public sector to break down barriers and rapidly adopt digital approaches to delivering public services. Looking forward, the combined power of Cloud, Data, and Artificial Intelligence will continue to be key in shaping digitally transformed government. Join Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President of Worldwide Public Sector... read more
Host Alistair Croll wraps up the morning’s keynotes and breaks down what you can expect for the afternoon.
Join Alistair as he kicks off day 2 of FWD50!
Join Alistair Croll, co-founder of the FWD50 conference, for a fireside chat with Google Cloud OCTO Group’s Technical Director, Joel Minton, on Rethinking Public Infrastructure: Service Delivery in the Data Age. Minton will draw on his experience transforming traditional businesses, as well as his public sector experience founding Login.gov and building SSO for the US Federal government, to show... read more
Host Alistair Croll wraps up the morning’s keynotes and breaks down what you can expect for the afternoon.
Join Alistair as he kicks off day 3 of FWD50!
A long view of responsibility, technology, and society.
FWD50’s Alistair Croll to discuss today’s industry hot topic, quantum computing, with IBM’s Katie Pizzolato. What is quantum computing? How is it being used, today? Why will it matter in the near future? And how can anyone learn to be an early adopter of this new technology?
Host Alistair Croll wraps up the morning’s keynotes and breaks down what you can expect for the afternoon.
Join Alistair as he kicks off the final day of FWD50!
Bureaucracy isn’t unique to government. You’ll find it in every organization that has grown past a certain size. Some sectors have woven themselves more deeply into a bureaucratic web (older ones, typically) and some are just now figuring out how to do so. Bureaucracy is virtually required by many compliance frameworks, which insist on documented, enforced, auditable rules and signoffs by authorities.
If you feel tech innovation is overwhelming, you’re not alone. Before the pandemic, we were already racing towards possible futures in AI, cryptography, drones, chatbots, genetic editing, and more. A year or more of remote working, global economic disruption, and medical crisis have accelerated some of these changes and given a new spin to others.
Gideon Lichfield is the Global Editorial... read more
Host Alistair Croll wraps up the morning’s keynotes and breaks down what you can expect for the afternoon.
Ever wish there was a competition for great ideas? Like Shark Tank or Dragon’s Den or The Voice, but for the best public service innovations? Governments around the world have policies on everything from how they test ideas, to how they collect feedback, to how they run meetings. But these ideas are often not shared across countries or jurisdictions, despite strong data-backed evidence that... read more
That’s it for FWD50 2021! Join us as we celebrate the wrap party!
