Keynote Leonard Brody: 600,000 Miles Per Year

600,000 miles a year in the air.  And if that nugget of information didn’t get your attention, then there were probably quite a few other statements made by Keynote Leonard Brody during General Session I that would have given you reason to listen closely to what he had to say. 

Not only did Brody share “a decade’s worth of research in 50 minutes,” he let everyone see a bit of what makes him tick, what inspires him and what changes he thinks the airport industry should be making – though there were a few that differed on those comments.

One of Brody’s recurring points was the value of “human currency” and the changes there. “The big story is the changes in human beings,” he said. Businesses will fail if they don’t pay attention to change. Technology has “enslaved” us, to a degree, and there is a disconnect going on. “The houses we built don’t fit the people who live here anymore.” The disconnect is between “the people we have become, the tech tools available to us and the failure of our institutions to keep pace,” he said.

Behaviors of people have changed too. Our virtual selves are dominant, as two-thirds of our day is spent in a virtual world and only a third in the physical one. And people behave differently as a virtual self than in a physical one, he said. Interestingly, he said people are four times more trusting of virtual form than physical.  Also, these virtual worlds, such as virtual performances, are already infiltrating the music scene and “the people walking through your airport doors are part virtual and part physical.”

As a person who travels extensively by plane, he has deduced that there are two demographics in airports: people who travel a lot and people who don’t. It is a comparison of “the value of time versus the necessity of the passing of time” when looking at the two. The goal is to create experiences for both.

And just as innovation never ceases, neither do experiences. "Life continually evolves. We don’t control that….Things evolve and we have to look at the path of that evolution.”