Trend Trackers Tell All (Oooh)
Thursday morning brought together a group of Boba Fetts for the new era with “Global Trends, Newsmaker Brands, and Cool Hunting: Trend Trackers Tell All.” That’s right - cool is the new bounty. See how hip that sounds? But don’t try this at home. Not everyone can be a cool hunter. Leave that to the professionals, especially the bunch on this panel.
Rich LeFurgy of Archer Advisors moderated this esteemed group: Tom Conger, Futurist and Founder, Social Technologies; Michael Tchong, Trend Analyst, UberCool; and Josh Rubin, Editor in Chief, CoolHunting.com. We’ll look at some quick takes, made-up words, catch phrases, and new sites and products.
The best take: Tchong on Web.2.0: “It’s crap… we’re still on 0.8.” He’s concerned that the venture capital’s not going to the right people. Tchong also had a great zinger on simplicity: “Venture capitalists won’t invest in anything with one button to push. Then they always ask where their added value is.”
The session focused on five trends:
1. Place-Shifting
2. Consumer Creation
3. Web 2.0
4. Attention Deficit
5. Simplification
Made-up words said during this session: controlfreakism (Tchong), lifestyle enabler (Tchong - new name for mobile phone): screen sucking (Tchong), logonorrhea (Tchong - for when we forgot our log-on names IDs)
Catch phrases: downtime is the new uptime (Rubin), Blackberry prayer (Tchong, referring to how people look with their heads bowed down over the device), zero-click (Rubin, describing a situation when clicking isn’t necessary)
Websites recommended: Threadlist - community-votes on t-shirt designs (Rubin), GarbageScout - reports on best discarded items left on street in NYC (Tchong), Basecamp - project management (Rubin)
Products recommended: Sonos - home network connections (Rubin), Amigo - from LG on Verizon’s network, a streamlined phone for kids (Rubin), Firefly - a phone just meant to call mom and dad, available at Target (Tchong), Screen3 from Motorola - an RSS reader that puts real-time content on the idle screen of a mobile phone (Rubin)
