Column
Like it or not, you are a Digital Transformer So fifteen years ago you didn’t need a mobile phone, ‘because you didn’t need to be reachable all the time’? And now you won’t go to the bathroom without it. Do you really think you don’t need a smartwatch? Let’s meet up in a year or two and take a look at your wrist. Yes, even you are a Digital Transformer! Farmers aren’t widely known to be the most progressive of people. Yet even they inspect their crops using drones, manage livestock feeding with NFC chips and milking with the use of robots. Meanwhile, the WTC is still full of supposed ‘early adopters’ who still print out their e-mails and cling to their Rolodexes as if those were their last line of defence against a hostile new world.
The only way to survive the transformation is to get out there and join in. Or, better yet, to lead the way! You are a Digital Transformer. No more stickies on the fridge for you, but instead the Remember the Milk app. This evening you will set up a home intranet for all your family communications and inform your parents that from now on, they can only reach you through Skype, Facetime or Hangouts. At the office, cancel all your meetings and introduce Slack. Broadcast your Friday afternoon drinks live on Periscope, just because you can. When your CEO asks for the week’s sales reports you use WhatsApp to send him a thumbs-up or a sad face, depending on the results. If you are the CEO, answer with a voice message recorded on your smartwatch.
‘The only way to survive the transformation, is to lead the way!’
Like it or not, we will all need to adapt to life in the digital age. You can see things changing fastest in the media. Paper is disappearing, with screens taking its place. Radio and television are turning digital at a rapid rate, while publishers and advertisers struggle to keep up – as if running behind with their trousers round their ankles, caught unawares after locking themselves in the outhouse with their newspapers while the world around them rapidly grew digital.
The youth holds the future. But if you can’t beat them, join them. You too can laugh at the old fossils in the train with their freesheets. After all, you’ve already read all the news that matters on Blendle. If you spot someone reading this paper magazine, give them a confused look and nonchalantly explain that you’re following a MOOC on the history of media use in the second decade of the twenty-first century. The years of the Great Digital Transformation, of which you were at the front. The Good New Days.
Pieter Voogt Managing Partner and co-founder of PauwR Online Marketing, online marketing and media agency in Amsterdam and Tilburg, the Netherlands: www.PauwR.nl
PS. Recognize fewer than five of the ten terms in bold? Leading the transformation might be a bit too ambitious for you. Just try to catch up first!
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