Andrew Zolli Made Me Think

What a great first day of DigitalNow. The educational sessions were exactly as I had hoped - thought provoking and interesting.

Much of what is being discussed is how you can measure return on investment (ROI) for different social media strategies. When you couple social media with your other engagement strategies, how do you know when you're doing the correct thing and creating value? It seems to be the silver bullet of social media - and I'm still waiting to see a definitive system for ranking. Aptify and a couple other groups have some basic solutions, and they were impressive when I saw them in action.

In my opinion, the best speaker today was Andrew Zolli (pictured). He is the Curator and Executive Director of Pop!Tech and a Fellow with the National Geographic Society. He spoke to the group about looking at the future, and how it isn't always the fast, shiny things that change the future, but instead they are the slow moving things that everyone knows are there, but don't acknowledge. To drive this point home, he presented statistics showing that the odds of having your life changed by a terrorist attack are close to winning the lottery. The odds of having your life changed by global climate change - one in six. However, what do you hear more about in the news?*

*Authors Note - I'm just using the examples, so please don't flame me about global climate change.

So, what do you think the largest transformation this country is going to see in the next 20 years? It isn't flashy, and it isn't reported frequently in the news - it's demographics.

As the Boomer generation ages, they are redefining consumption, work, and work life balance.

Boomers are not all retiring (for a variety of reasons) so there is now a glass ceiling of older managers who are not retiring, keeping their kids from ascending to management positions.

Those Boomers who are retiring are leaving a gap in the amount needed to fund social services and education. So, look for an increase in taxes for those people who are working (Gen X'ers and Millennials) and an increase in legal immigration to get people to help pay taxes.

More people over the age of 80 are leaving Florida than ever before...because they are running out of money. One of the fastest growing demographics in American society is married with your parents living with you.

Here's a happy statistic - if you are a woman, and you were born in 1970 or later, odds are you'll take care of your mother (or mother-in-law) for longer that they took care of you when you were a child.

I don't have a happy quip or wrap up to make this information any better. However, it is a snapshot of where we are headed. Is your association ready to deal with both senior members and kids right out of school? Are you going to be able to provide and update the technology necessary to cater to one of the most diverse work forces in years?

I can't wait to see what we talk about tomorrow.