Predictions for media industry in 2011

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On December 30 Gulf News published a compilation of local and worldwide media personalities’ forecasts for the media industry in 2011. Contributors including Bertrand Pecquerie, Director of the World Editors Forum, Kris Viesselman, President and Creative Director of San Diego Union Tribune, and Gilles Demptos, Director of Publications at WAN-IFRA.

This was my contribution:

Ross Dawson
Future Exploration Network, Chairman
I firmly believe that the future of the media industry as a whole is extraordinarily bright. We are discovering quite how media-hungry humans are, and we can now see that business will revolve around the flow of information and ideas. Yet a segment of the media industry — notably some of the newspapers and broadcast TV companies in developed countries — are experiencing severe challenges, not least because they have failed so far to dramatically change themselves to adapt to a new world. My fervent hope is that these organisations take the often radical steps required to transform themselves and grasp the massive opportunities available today to dynamic media participants. Some of these troubled organizations will successfully make the transition. The reality is that more will not. Those media companies that are already thriving, together with a flurry of new start-ups, will participate in creating an entirely new media space, and taking their share of the value from that. Social news curation, crowd sourced journalism, multi-platform distribution, personalized advertising and tablet media will be just some of the key trends shaping the year ahead.

What is the difference between Social Business and Enterprise 2.0?

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There is an interesting Quora discussion going on What are the distinctions between Social Business and Enterprise 2.0? As in most Quora discussions some of the top people in the field have weighed in.

I had to chip in myself – here is my comment.

Business terms have a life of their own, just as the meaning of words evolve depending on social usage. Each of these terms has a different meaning to what they did just a year ago.

I find it interesting that many people seems to think that Enterprise 2.0 is more about technology than business. My standard definition of Enterprise 2.0 has two parts:

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Zeitgeist 2011: anxiety, mobility, blending, indulgence, immersion, wrath, nudity and more

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As you no doubt know, the delightful word “Zeitgeist” comes from the German, meaning ‘spirit of the times’. And in these extraordinary times it is useful to distill the spirits of the day.

As such we have re-created our Zeitgeist for 2011 as a slideshow, as it’s an easier way to digest the 11 themes we put forward.

See the Map and ExaTrends of the Decade for a longer timeframe view forward, as well as the original Zeitgeist document.

The 11 themes of the Zeitgeist for 2011

View more presentations from rossdawson.

What do you think? What will define the Zeitgeist for the year ahead?

What are the jobs of the future?

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I just did an interview on the industries that will grow and shrink this decade – I’ll provide a link to the story when it comes out if the magazine puts it online, or if not write it up as a blog post later.

It made me remember an interview I did a couple of years for an article on the jobs of the future. They just took a brief quote from my interview:

Futurist Ross Dawson of the Future Exploration Network says that when social networks burst onto the scene, roles as community managers or social network managers became a necessity.

Such roles are still new, he says, but companies and celebrities alike are advertising for professionals to help them manage their consumer and fan online chat.

“You can have thousands of friends on Facebook and MySpace,” Dawson says. “A celebrity will have people that help them manage their MySpace site as they have a lot of people to interact with and not enough time.”

Here is the list of jobs of the future that I told the journalist about:
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Why is the technology world so obsessed with fruit?

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This is a classic. The One Ronnie show on BBC has an awesome skit playing on how current technology is so often described by fruit.

I laughed until I cried.

Random thoughts on changing web platforms and blogging

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I’m back writing on my blog after 2 1/2 weeks break. For the first time ever for my personal blog, I’m using a WordPress interface.

I’ve used several platforms for my blog since I launched in 2002, with the last three years on an increasingly dated version of Movable Type.

So over the holirday period I bit the bullet on technology on several fronts:
* We moved my blog, including over 1,000 posts since 2002, onto WordPress. We currently have 4 Movable Type and 8 or so Worsdpress sites, and are starting to shift to to WordPress only.
* We migrated all the blog comments from Movable Type to Disqus which will be the commenting platform from now.
* We shifted my web host from Media Temple to Rackspace, moving 20 or so websites including blogs, companies, books, events, forums and more.
* We moved all our email over to Google Apps.
* We are about to start using Zoho Projects, having paid for and barely used Basecamp for two years.

I’ll hope to get back later to say a bit more about the reasons for all this. But for now I though I’d share just a few prominent thoughts about the experience.

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Holiday time!

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That’s it – work done for the year.

We’re heading off to Melbourne for Christmas with Victoria’s family, then up to a cabin in the rainforests of the Dandenongs for a week.

I’m back to work on January 10, and looking forward to a fabulous 2011!

I’ll be occasionally checking email or you can always speak to Julie at the office if anything urgent.

ExaTrend of the 2010s: Everything Media

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Excerpt from the list of ExaTrends of the 2010s:

EVERYTHING MEDIA

What we knew as media has exploded far beyond its traditional boundaries to encompass most social activity, how organizations function, and indeed the creation of almost all economic value. Even as newspaper extinction proceeds apace, the best media operators will thrive..

See the full 3 page framework including the Map of the Decade, full descriptions of the ExaTrends of the Decade, and the 11 themes of the Zeitgeist of 2011 by clicking on the image:

ExaTrends of the Decade and Zeitgeist for 2011:

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MySpace’s new strategy: building a new and valuable space in social content

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I just caught up for a coffee with Nick Love, head of MySpace and IGN Australia. I haven’t been following MySpace closely for a while, so it was interesting to hear how it has repositioned. Here are a few thoughts and pointers from public information.

As it happens AllThingsD yesterday put up an interesting article Trying Out a Revamped Myspace which includes this brief video review – well worth watching:

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Top 10 posts of the year on social media

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Continuing my sequence of top posts from this year, today I have selected the 10 most popular and interesting posts on social media I’ve written this year.

1. We are fast learning how to create “enhanced serendipity”

Reflections on the meaning of serendipity and why it essential we strive to enhance it.

“Serendipity is one of the most beautiful words in the English language. It originates from the story of “the Three Princes of Serendip”, which tells the tale of three princes who had the faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries (see more on the story here).”

2. Some thoughts on why Australians are #1 globally on social media usage (from a slow start)

Following news that Australians are ranked #1 in the world in their usage of social networks, 6 reasons why Australians have caught up on social media.

Socialnetworkstime_0110.jpg

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