Keynote SpeakerMatt Dickinson

Matt Dickinson is an adventure and expedition film-maker & author, specialising in the wild places and people of the world.

In a dazzling audio-visual presentation which has impressed and enlightened business audiences as diverse as Microsoft and Volvo Trucks, film adventure specialist Matt Dickinson, analyses the performance of teams over his ten years of death defying film making with the world’s top expedition practitioners and asks “what is it that separates those who achieve their goals from those who will inevitably fail?”

His presentations are relevant for any organisation seeking to meet new challenges in a rapidly changing world. In May 1996 Matt Dickinson made a successful ascent of the North face of Mt Everest and became one of only five British climbers to do so. He also became the first British film-maker to have filmed on the summit and return alive. Drawing on his experiences at the hard end of adventure filming for the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, he explores and reveals the human factors that separate those who succeed from those who fail.

In a dramatic season in which 12 climbers died in the worst weather conditions on record, Matt Dickinson and professional climber Alan Hinkes summitted Everest by technically the most difficult North face, beating hurricane force winds and temperatures of minus 70 degrees below freezing. Matt’s film of these dramatic events “Summit Fever” has already been seen by more than 20 million people worldwide. It is widely acclaimed as one of the most compelling stories of human triumph and disaster ever told.

Using dramatic and sometimes humorous examples of success and failure, he distils the vital factors that have enabled leaders to plan effective strategies, so they can cope with setbacks and changing conditions. Discover how to build teams ready and equipped for success to achieve peak performance against overwhelming odds. Matt explores the determinant reasons why twelve lives were lost and demonstrates how with more effective leadership, better communication, and more cohesive and adaptable teams they could have avoided one of the worst mountaineering tragedies ever.

Matt Dickinson is a film-maker and writer who specialises in the wild places and the wild people of the world. Trained at the BBC (which he joined in 1984, and from where he worked as a researcher and production manager on programmes as diverse as Wogan, Jim’ll Fix It and Ever Decreasing Circles), he left in 1988 to pursue a freelance career as a producer-director.

Specialising in adventure documentaries, Matt Dickinson’s credits include ITV’s Voyager, BBC’s Classic Adventure, and several hour-long films such as Channel 4’s Encounters, Equinox and ITV’s Network First. He has also produced films for National Geographic Television in the USA. His programmes have been broadcast in more than thirty-five countries and have won more than 20 international film festival awards.

Matt Dickinson’s recent journeys have included a sea voyage by yacht to Antarctica, the first descent of the perilous rapids of the Brahmaputra River, the world hang gliding altitude record at over 40,000ft, the first hang glider flight from Cotopaxi Volcano, and a walk across the inhospitable Namib Desert.
Based upon his first-hand experiences, Matt Dickinson wrote “The Death Zone”, an account of the two Britons’ amazing expedition, published by Hutchinson in October 1997, it is an extraordinary story of human triumph, folly and disaster.

Matt Dickinson’s new series Mortal Chaos was commissioned by Oxford University Press in November 2010 and the first book in the series was published in January 2012.