Dominant themes for 2012: transformation and beyond

In December I created a list of 12 themes to frame the year ahead, and then explored the ideas in a number of media interviews. The slides for the 12 themes have been seen almost 50,000 times now, suggesting they struck a chord somewhere. It’s now interesting to reflect on these, especially the response from the media.

I did quite a few media interviews on the 2012 themes, including on both of the national Australian breakfast TV shows, Sunrise and Today. One of the good things about doing breakfast TV is that the programs zoom in on what is of broadest possible interest, which sometimes brings out different perspectives than I have on the themes.

In the Sunrise segment below we talked about transformation, the growing social media divide, personal power, human evolution, and crowd work. It was good to see these big picture themes emerge in the conversation.

On the Today show the frame was primarily about the technology and gadgets we could expect in 2012, so I covered some of the developments that are likely in social media and device interfaces.

For me, the dominant theme of 2012 is of transformation. I tried to bring this to the fore in my interviews, but it was often taken up as a key topic, perhaps not least due to the now-wide popular recognition of the Mayan prophecies.

I realize that in some ways the theme of transformation is a personal perspective. However I also absolutely believe that 2012 is likely to be seen in history as an extraordinary year. I think many of us will experience it as one of transformation. Not everyone will experience this transformation as unmitigatedly positive, but many will, not least because much the change will be of their own doing.

These are exciting times.