Are we having fun yet?

It’s sometimes difficult to fathom out just how much the world has changed in the last 10 years.  The web is ubiquitous.  Our computers are no longer a beige box hidden away in the corner, they’re in our hands, our pockets, and our TV sets.  Everything is on demand: technologies are shifting so quickly and evolving so quickly that there is no longer impossible.  There are ideas in the morning that are fully fledged businesses by evening.

The frameworks for developing ideas, sharing concepts, and building are there for everyone.

We’ve translated the app mentality into our lives, looking at micro ideas that can serve a single need.  We’ve created a world where learning can be measured in points scored and level reached.  We’ve built platforms that make things easier, redefined what a business can be, and what an organisational structure needs to reflect.

We don’t need monolithic buildings and big business when we can have loose self organising teams that build applications and businesses in an ad hoc way without geographic constraints.  We need ideas, creativity, excitement, and the freedom to execute and complete.  We can work without annual release cycles and incremental upgrades because the web allows us to change things instantly.  We can pivot, twist, re-imagine and redefine the world around us and use technology to make it easier to understand, interact with, and ultimately enjoy.

And that’s the point, working in digital in 2012, you have the opportunity to be at the cutting edge of industry.  You have the opportunity to define how businesses communicate with their customers and how tomorrow’s commerce will work.

Little Earthquakes

The closer you are to an earthquake, the less you feel.  You need to step back from the epicentre to see how much the earth is moving.  It’s increasingly easy not to be amazed by stuff that’s really cool, because sometimes, change is just business as usual.  If you’re lucky enough to work in digital media, it should be challenging, it should open your eyes, and it should inspire you. If you’re working in digital media, whether search, display, email, design, or development, you owe it to yourself to enjoy the industry that you’re in.  You also owe it to yourself to challenge expectations from your clients (or your boss).

Sometimes, we fall into the trap of being led by old ideas.  Sometimes they’re right.  But if we don’t challenge them, we can’t change them.  If we don’t ask questions, we don’t get answers, and if we don’t let ourselves, we don’t have fun.

Are we having fun yet?