when did Orlando last give you flowers?
“Friday August 6th, 2010: culture and the bottom line”, Jenn clicks save on the latest entry to her corporate blog; 30 more minutes of profound (she wishes! Ok, she’ll settle for mildly inspired but infused with zest) musings.
Best friend Carmen, a freelance media consultant, delivers everything by voice, but Jenn still likes to type, even if yolky fingers make the keyboard sticky. Breakfast! Egg with soldiers will never go out fashion.
2010 has been a good year for Jenn; the latest high, promotion to creative accounts manager, will be celebrated in style.
Carmen and Jenn always lunch at the Vista Café on their way to the village. It’s a feel good thing; they’ve been coming for years and love the views down to the Tyne. From here, they’ve surveyed every step in the 5 year transformation of the valley.
Jenn has been promising herself a pair of James D boots for about as long as she can remember. Dragged onto stage by Stella McCartney at the Paris fashion week, local boy James’ studio would normally be ‘strictly window shopping only’. Today though, buoyed by the promotion, Jenn’s plastic is going to take the hit.
As they stroll down through Ouseburn’s maze of cafes, boutiques and galleries, a voice whispers out to her:
“Hey Jenn, how’s it going?"
Orlando Bloom whispers again and catches her eye.
She turns a little red, it might only be a hologram, but that coy smile still makes her giggle. Teased by Carmen, she reaches for the bouquet that Orlando is offering. As she touches the flowers they melt into personalised messages in her hands: a reminder that it is Carmen’s birthday next week; the Blue Funk Café announcing that fresh chocolate and orange brownies are about to emerge from the oven; best of all, although the brownies are famously “to die for”, a promise from James D of a real bouquet if she buys those boots.
Jenn knows about holograms, they’ve been all the rage in the games studios, and in Tokyo they’ll even ‘push’ you onto trains. More importantly, how did the hologram know about Jenn? That Orlando was the man to melt her heart? That she needs, really really needs, those boots?
It’s all RFID tags and biometrics databases. A tag in Jenn’s mobile gives away her identity, a sensor detects her approach, looks up her profile, and hey presto… it has read her wish list, checked her social network of friends, and even discovered her shoe size… the correct pair of boots will be ready and waiting for her to try.
Back in 2005, we’d started to appreciate the consequences of low business numbers in the North East. Start-ups, so often business to business ventures, were frustrated and our economic growth potential was hampered. Concentration on the creation of clusters based on the creative, innovative and digital media industries through 2006 – 2008 had had initial mixed results. The success stories of 2009, though, spawned a whole network of knowledge intensive companies that are generating real wealth.
Where are the business opportunities in this scenario? Will you be setting up the design studio, running the software development houses, or bringing great Mediterranean inspired delights to the cafes? Perhaps you will have started up PerfectDelivery, collecting the purchases, exquisitely gift wrapping them, and ensuring they are waiting at the front door when Jenn returns home? Of course, PerfectDelivery will be high tech too, RFID tags on the purchases will have told you, long before you pick them up, what size wrapping paper you need to prepare, pre-determined the delivery route, taken into account current traffic flow and told your supplier you are running low on gold ribbon. There are other rich pickings here as well; will you be the hotshot lawyer advising on the challenges to personal privacy, or perhaps the planner inspiring further regeneration of the village?
OK, here’s your chance to get published:Identify a future job opportunity in the scenario. Email me your idea, and the most inventive will be published on the future* blog. You will also receive a copy of the “The Visionary’s Handbook” by Taylor & Wacker.
written for the September / October edition of Informnorth (a North East regional magazine targeted at 16-24 year olds)
illustration by aardgoat 2005
Best friend Carmen, a freelance media consultant, delivers everything by voice, but Jenn still likes to type, even if yolky fingers make the keyboard sticky. Breakfast! Egg with soldiers will never go out fashion.
2010 has been a good year for Jenn; the latest high, promotion to creative accounts manager, will be celebrated in style.
Carmen and Jenn always lunch at the Vista Café on their way to the village. It’s a feel good thing; they’ve been coming for years and love the views down to the Tyne. From here, they’ve surveyed every step in the 5 year transformation of the valley.
Jenn has been promising herself a pair of James D boots for about as long as she can remember. Dragged onto stage by Stella McCartney at the Paris fashion week, local boy James’ studio would normally be ‘strictly window shopping only’. Today though, buoyed by the promotion, Jenn’s plastic is going to take the hit.
As they stroll down through Ouseburn’s maze of cafes, boutiques and galleries, a voice whispers out to her:
“Hey Jenn, how’s it going?"
Orlando Bloom whispers again and catches her eye.
She turns a little red, it might only be a hologram, but that coy smile still makes her giggle. Teased by Carmen, she reaches for the bouquet that Orlando is offering. As she touches the flowers they melt into personalised messages in her hands: a reminder that it is Carmen’s birthday next week; the Blue Funk Café announcing that fresh chocolate and orange brownies are about to emerge from the oven; best of all, although the brownies are famously “to die for”, a promise from James D of a real bouquet if she buys those boots.
Jenn knows about holograms, they’ve been all the rage in the games studios, and in Tokyo they’ll even ‘push’ you onto trains. More importantly, how did the hologram know about Jenn? That Orlando was the man to melt her heart? That she needs, really really needs, those boots?
It’s all RFID tags and biometrics databases. A tag in Jenn’s mobile gives away her identity, a sensor detects her approach, looks up her profile, and hey presto… it has read her wish list, checked her social network of friends, and even discovered her shoe size… the correct pair of boots will be ready and waiting for her to try.
Back in 2005, we’d started to appreciate the consequences of low business numbers in the North East. Start-ups, so often business to business ventures, were frustrated and our economic growth potential was hampered. Concentration on the creation of clusters based on the creative, innovative and digital media industries through 2006 – 2008 had had initial mixed results. The success stories of 2009, though, spawned a whole network of knowledge intensive companies that are generating real wealth.
Where are the business opportunities in this scenario? Will you be setting up the design studio, running the software development houses, or bringing great Mediterranean inspired delights to the cafes? Perhaps you will have started up PerfectDelivery, collecting the purchases, exquisitely gift wrapping them, and ensuring they are waiting at the front door when Jenn returns home? Of course, PerfectDelivery will be high tech too, RFID tags on the purchases will have told you, long before you pick them up, what size wrapping paper you need to prepare, pre-determined the delivery route, taken into account current traffic flow and told your supplier you are running low on gold ribbon. There are other rich pickings here as well; will you be the hotshot lawyer advising on the challenges to personal privacy, or perhaps the planner inspiring further regeneration of the village?
OK, here’s your chance to get published:Identify a future job opportunity in the scenario. Email me your idea, and the most inventive will be published on the future* blog. You will also receive a copy of the “The Visionary’s Handbook” by Taylor & Wacker.
written for the September / October edition of Informnorth (a North East regional magazine targeted at 16-24 year olds)
illustration by aardgoat 2005
posted by Roger Coathup at 7:49 AM
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