Trending the year on a high

3rd Dec 2009 A passion and truth by Jeremy

We had our monthly trends briefing at WAA on Tuesday and as usual it left my head spinning with the wonderment of the age we’re living in. Tom’s excellent presentation has become a monthly highlight for me (and indeed everyone else from what I can tell), never failing to spark my imagination and think about how we can apply these lessons in the work we do.

Perhaps as you would expect, the majority of the trends coming through are a direct consequence of the internet boom and the changes this has bought to how we conduct our personal and professional lives. I’m pretty tuned in to living life on- and off- line, so not everything was new to me. In fact, I’m apparently already living some of the trends that are yet to go mainstream (queue smug smile and puffed up chest).

But what continues to astound me is the sheer pace of change. It is, quite frankly, mind-boggling, and it’s no wonder some are struggling to comprehend it all.

In pondering all of this, I’ve found myself thinking about my Dad (bare with me here folks). He’s 75, which means the internet arrived in his life after he’d retired. So it's understandable that he tends to find our converging world a bit baffling at times (not that he admits it of course). Despite that, I’m proud to say, he’s now a fully-fledged silver surfer; perhaps not the slickest keyboard navigator, but he’s living the digital life far more than he realises (and could run virtual rings round some people I know several decades his junior).

But I sometimes still struggle to explain to him why his dabble with Facebook has left him baffled, why his beloved Daily Telegraph keeps referring to a website called Twitter, why I don’t need a bank with branches on the high street, why I’ve binned my DVD player, or why media studies degrees aren’t a waste of time.

Without the context behind all of these trends, it’s not an easy case to reason, and like every good boss, he requires much more than a ‘because’.

So I’ve pointed him at a couple of the many video presentations available online which do a very good job of articulating this as back up for the conversation that will follow. And because my Dad isn’t the only one grappling with these questions (and he’s not even got a marketing budget to spend wisely!), hopefully others in the same boat will find them useful too.

Social Media Revolution is aimed at those of you still wondering if all of this is just a fad. If you like this, you’ll also find What the F*** is Social Media? worth 10 minutes of your time, so long as you don’t mind the odd asterisk.

And if you’ve not watched it already, Did You Know is essential viewing in my humble opinion. Originally a presentation prepared by a teacher to start a conversation with his students about what skills they need to work in the 21st century, it’s now in its fourth iteration and been viewed online over 20 million times (which alone makes a compelling case study as to the power of the internet to share and unite). There’s a nice bit of background to this story here on The Guardian website.

Of course, none of the presentations available can tell you how to make best use of this insight - working that out is the fun bit that follows! But understanding the context of this brave new world is a key part of the process.

If you want to read more on this topic, then I also recommend you dip into, and subscribe to, updates from econsultancy, Mashable and trendwatching. Or get in touch for a presentation from Tom and a chat with the team here.

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