The future is bright? The future is digital.

                                                               

Steve Rubel has challenged his digital community again this weekend by stating that by 2014 all tangible media in the US will be in digital form: newspapers, magazines, books, DVDs, etc.

As unbelievable as it sounds, I think he is not that crasy as his post readers’ poll suggests.  When it comes to print news, I’ve been following it’s trends since this spring, both in Norway and internationally. This weekend I arrived at the conclusion that newspapers will not recover after this year’s financial crisis. High drive costs combined with falling revenues both in form of sales and advertising incomes is a very bad combination. It’s creepy to see how in desperate chase after cash, even the most serious editions are degrading in their content, getting more and more inadequately squeezed in between glossy banner ads. There is no way they can survive the digital wave now that the news are not only being broken online, but also collectively analysed in ways impossible for journalists to compete with. Switching from print to digital news will also be a natural transition in our increasingly environmentally-aware culture.

DVDs and mainstream video game industry will vanish because of the rocketing choice of the free software combined with rapidly increasing bandwith: it’s just to take a look at the music industry.

The only truly sad thing about media digitilisation is a gloomy prospect that books too will be replaced with digital Amazon Kindle-like alternaltives. With books being at the very base of our modern civilisation, it is hard to let them go. And I also wonder how future civilisations will survive say next ice age or some other drastic lose of all electricity, with no instructions on how to turn it back on.

Work, sweet work

 

This has been a long month with no blog entries. Apologies to all my readers: starting in a full time job as a digital adviser in one of the most prominent PR agencies in Norway, Dinamo PR, expectantly takes its toll on my free time.  

It’s been a month of ups and downs, excitements and frustrations, and I’ve learned a lot. For example, that work in a demanding industry is not about smart demagogical discussions but quick and concrete solutions. They don’t teach us this at the universities, you know, unless you’re lucky to be supervised by pedagogues like Richard Bailey – thank you for preparing me for real life.

To add value to this post I’d like to pass on some tips and advices to all those of you who are making first steps in their careers.

– Find balance between healthy professional insecurity and courage to step up to the challenge.

– Adopt “Yes we can” attitude. In the beginning it’s about selling yourself, and the best salesmen never turn down their clients. Be realistic but don’t down play your abilities: just because you’ve never done it before doesn’t mean you can’t do it.

– Be visible. Never stop learning, and make sure you share your knowledge with others – it will give you great dividends in the long term.

– Make connections. The world has never been so interconnected as now. Take advantage of densely populated social media sites to connect with interesting and powerful people. Remember that you have to give value to receive value.

– Listen. Even if you feel like you have tons to say – hold back and pay attention to your surroundings. It will help you to understand culture and mentality of your organization, and get to know your colleagues on their premises.

Even if you follow all the mentioned above instructions, there is no guarantee you’ll survive the wave of job cuts following the financial crisis, as gloomy as it sounds. But hopefully you’ll have a couple of handy numbers you can call and offer your services.