Research Chefs Association is the leading professional community for food research and development. Its members are the pioneers of the discipline of Culinology – the blending of culinary arts and the science of food. I recently attended their conference on the Future of Food, where I held a speech about Generation Z and their attitudes…
I have been busy with SXSW lately and taken a pretty long break from writing. Unlike so many in the professional and personal blogosphere I’m too overwhelmed with sessions, pitches and expos at SXSW that I can’t really find “the thing” that broke out or defined the mood of the conference. If I had to mention particular…
Ford’s recent report on Generation Z fails to mention the most obvious elephant in the room: Teens don’t care about cars anymore. Statoil recently published three scenarios for energy use in 2040. Not even the most low-carbon scenario envisioned the possibility that fossil fuels could constitute less than 75% of total energy consumption in 25 years. It…
A recent opinion poll from Northwestern University outlines the Generation Z – or 16-19 year olds’ attitudes on various issues. One of the most common mistake I see in generational analysis is when single polls or surveys are used to extrapolate generational character traits. Data that are not collected and compared over time say little…
Last year we made some Generation Z predictions for 2014. How did these hold up? “1. They will bring at least one household item out of obscurity.” While nothing is really holding the same momentum as rubberbands and duct tape did, DIY is still a strong trend. A pretty hot trend these days is the decorating…
Social media has been in flames the last few days over a (now withdrawn) Barbie-book Mattel published in 2010. It started with a blog post on Pamiedotcom’s Tumblr site. Barbie: I Can Be A Computer Engineer is the gift that keeps on giving to blogs and click bait sites that thrive on stroking our growing sense of gender fairness….
If you already know what the internet of things is, keep reading. If you want to learn what the IoT revolution has to do with net neutrality and your children’s quality of life, watch this explanation from Jeremy Rifkin. Then ask yourself if the internet is really just media or public utility of the future. Yesterday President Obama suggested to the…
One of the most important generationally relevant must-reads from last week is this piece from Dr. Profeta . It was republished at slowfamilyliving, a website that goes against the grain of our era’s current tendency to hyperparent. In his Your Kid And My Kid Are Not Playing In The Pros Dr. Profeta weights in on the…
I recently did an opening keynote in Bergen, Norway for an organization called Norwegian Audience Development. I will write more about audience development in light of generational change in subsequent posts. In my presentation I discuss the works of historians William Strauss and Neil Howe and try to put their findings into a Scandinavian context….
45 % of today’s jobs will disappear by 2035. Sure, job titles have come and gone over the centuries as we progress technologically, but this time we’re dealing with an entirely new animal. Computers are starting to replace us in jobs we thought were only human and pressing down the marginal cost in production…
