Aggregation of Future Exploration blogs: Future Exploration Network blog, Future of Media Summit blog, Enterprise 2.0 Forum blog
Launch of Map of the Decade, ExaTrends of the Decade, and the Zeitgeist for 2011
It is traditional at the turn of the year to look forward at what is to come.
We have crystallized our thinking on the year ahead and the decade of the 2010s in a new 3-page visual landscape.
You can download the pdf of the framework by clicking on any of the images. The full text of the ExaTrends and the Zeitgeist themes is below.
Note on ExaTrends: Given the exponential pace of change of today we are far beyond a world of MegaTrends. Exa is the prefix meaning 10 to the power of 18, following Mega, Giga, Tera, and Peta. As such Exa is Mega cubed.
Visualization of top iPad News apps in Australia
As part of our ongoing research into iPad and media, and also to provide some insights for the audience of the iPad Strategy Workshop we ran at Newspaper Publishers Association, we created a visualization of the top 30 paid and free iPad apps in Australia, as of 24 August 2010.
The chart shows in the left hand column free apps, and on the right hand side paid apps, each ranked from #1 to #30 in order of popularity on iTunes. The following bar shows the price (for paid), the user rating on iTunes, and the size of the download in MB. The horizontal axis for paid apps indicates price.
The color code shows the type of app, bringing to attention a number of interesting features, for example that aggregators are very popular in paid apps, and that broadcast and newspapers dominate in free apps.
Presentation from iPad Strategy Workshop at Newspaper Publishers Association
The iPad Strategy Workshop at Newspaper Publishers Association Future Forum was a big success. In a large room laid out for 120 there was just standing room by the time it started, with great content and a highly engaged audience.
The Twitter stream for #iPadStrat gives a pretty fair overview of proceedings, though there were just a small minority of people on Twitter in a room full of newspaper publishers.
Here are the slides from opening presentation, as promised:
Launch of iPad Media Strategy framework
This morning I ran the iPad Strategy Workshop at Newspaper Publishers Association Future Forum in Sydney. To provide a framework for discussion at the workshop (and also as part of our ongoing research into effective approaches to the iPad for media and news organizations) I created a visual framework of key strategic issues, as below.
I will delve into these strategic issues in later posts.
This is a Beta v1 version, so as always, please give feedback on how to make it more useful, including anything that's missing or things that could be put better.
Infographic: Used mobile phones yield 1000 times more gold than gold ore
A couple of weeks ago I flew to Perth to participate in a scenario planning project for a mining company. As I struck up conversation with the person next to me, it turned out we would both be presenting and contributing to the same workshop. I was kicking off the two-day workshop with a broad presentation on the future of business, while Damien Giurco, Research Director at University of Technology Sydney's Institute for Sustainable Futures, would speak later on 'Cities as the mines of the future'.
Damien showed me their excellent report Peak Minerals in Australia, which provides an in-depth analysis of the state and implications of peak minerals. One of the data points quoted in the report was fascinating: used mobile phones yield 1000 times as much gold as gold ore. I thought it was worth creating an infographic to bring the point home - click on the image to download a large version of the infographic.
In short: make sure you recycle your mobile phone!
Effective strategies for a rapidly changing media industry
When I wrote my recent article Creating the Future of Media: 4 Driving Forces, 4 Strategic Issues, 4 Essential Capabilities for Media Titles magazine, they kindly offered Future Exploration Network a full page ad in the magazine.
The ad provides a nice overview of our current work with media organizations that are having to develop and implement strategies on the fly as the industry landscape shifts.
Click on the ad image for a larger version, or the key offerings are described below. If you're interested in finding out more, some of the strategy tools we think are particularly useful in the current environment are described in our Future of Media: Strategy Tools framework.
Empresa 2.0: Sistema de Implementación - Enterprise 2.0 Implementation Framework in Spanish
We have had a fantastic global uptake of the translations of our Social Media Strategy Framework into 12 languages.
As such, we intend to translate a lot more of the content created by Advanced Human Technologies and Future Exploration Network, starting with our Enterprise 2.0 Implementation Framework, which plays a central role in my book Implementing Enterprise 2.0.
Here is the framework in Spanish.
Click on the image to download the pdf
Please share this with any Spanish speakers who would be interested.
Also be sure to let me know if you can suggest any improvements to the translation.
Creating the Future of Media: 4 Driving Forces, 4 Strategic Issues, 4 Essential Capabilities
I very rarely find the time to write magazine articles, but I was delighted to write the opening feature article for MediaTitles 2010, an annual publication which covers the media and magazine industry.
To see the article in the full splendor of the print version, go to the MediaTitles website, which has the full publication viewable using Realview Technologies (with the article reformatted to take out the lists of four, which I think is a pity). My article is on pages 7-10.
The (original) text of the article is below.
CREATING THE FUTURE OF MEDIA
These are the best of times, these are the worst of times. The global economic crisis, coming on top of a dramatic transformation wrought by the rise of the Internet, is creating the swiftest change in media industry structure ever experienced. Newspapers and magazines are being shut down at an extraordinary pace all over the world, journalists are losing their jobs, and broadcast media are under threat as sliding advertising revenue hit an unmoving cost base. Yet as the world shifts towards what will be truly an all-encompassing media economy, there are extraordinary opportunities ahead for media organisations.
This is a critical juncture to examine the future of media. Magazines have and will continue to be central to how we learn, socialise, entertain ourselves, and make buying decisions. Yet the magazine industry will undoubtedly look very different scant years ahead. It is our role and responsibility to create the future of media, rather than to let it happen to us. To do that, we need to examine the most central driving forces, strategic issues and capabilities in the evolving media landscape.
Four Driving Forces
Business Today: Interview on how business can use social media
Yesterday I was interviewed on the Business Today program on the Australia Network, ABC TV's international network which broadcasts across Asia.
Key points covered in the interview include:
Tech23 showcases the rising tide of outstanding Australian tech
I’m at Tech23, probably the biggest and best showcase so far of Australian upcoming tech companies. After creating the list of Top Web 2.0 Apps in Australia list last year and in 2007 and organizing the associated Web 2.0 in Australia events, I had originally envisaged that we would organize a broad information technology showcase event this year. However this did not manage to fit into our very packed priority list, and as it happens others are taking on the task of bringing attention to the best of emerging Australian tech. Rachel Slattery of SlatteryIT, who has long been running events for Australia’s tech community, has done a great job in creating Tech23.
Frankly, one of the challenges in running tech showcases in Australia is finding a sufficiently deep and broad pool of excellent early-stage companies. Overall I have been very encouraged by the pace at which new companies have emerged over the last two years, though there is still further to go. There were some great companies at Tech23, but I imagine that it would be harder to find another 23 hot emerging companies. By the time this event runs next year, and hopefully other tech showcases emerge, the signs are that the pool will be considerably deeper.
Unfortunately I was not able to spend the whole day at the event, but here are some snapshots of the more interesting companies that I saw present.
