Dr. John Vanston Speaks on Minitrends at the Metro Breakfast Club on May 2

May 1, 2012

The Metropolitan Breakfast Club of Austin presents Dr. John H. Vanston speaking on MINITRENDS: How to Discover & Profit From EmergingTrends.

WHEN: Wednesday, May 2, 7:00-8:30am
(Breakfast: 7:00-7:50 am, Presentation: 7:50-8:30 am)

WHERE: UT Club, 6th Floor, Darrell Royal Memorial Stadium
2108 E. Robert Dedman Drive, Austin, TX 78705

In this presentation, Dr. John Vanston introduces a new concept – Minitrends – that offers very attractive possibilities to individuals and businesses that learn its principles and apply those principles in a practical business environment. This concept provides a new approach for finding and taking advantage of emerging trends that will become significant in 2-5 years, but are not yet widely recognized or appreciated.

Free Minitrends Session with Dr. John Vanston, March 27, Austin, TX

March 20, 2012

RISE presents a free session with Dr. John H. Vanston speaking on MINITRENDS: How to Discover & Profit From EmergingTrends.

WHEN: Tuesday, March 27, 2012, from 2:00pm – 3:30pm
WHERE: Lake Creek Office Park Meeting Room, 13740 Research Blvd., Austin, Texas 78750

In this presentation, Dr. John Vanston introduces a new concept – Minitrends – that offers very attractive possibilities to individuals and businesses that learn its principles and apply those principles in a practical business environment. This concept provides a new approach for finding and taking advantage of emerging trends that will become significant in 2-5 years, but are not yet widely recognized or appreciated.

The event is FREE. But please sign up here!

InnoTech Conference Teeming With Emerging Trends

October 25, 2011

I’ve attended the InnoTech Conference and Expo and its associated eMarketing Summit for several years now and always learn a lot. This year I wanted to pass on some comments from experts that I heard yesterday relating to emerging trends that are becoming more and more important:

Sean Lowry, of the very successful InnoTech series, always does a great job of making sure everything runs smoothly. I was even able to steal him for a minute to ask what emerging trends he saw coming. He told me, “I see continued convergence of all the different technologies we are seeing here today. Development of mobile applications and host applications in the cloud are particularly important. There is so much video activity and a lot of it is being hosted in the cloud now.”

I asked Giovanni Galluci, social media expert and Dallas photographer what he thinks the next trend in social media is going to be. He said, “Getting over it. Everyone is burnt out with all the hype and now people are looking for more meaning in social media. Twitter is ridiculous. Those who do marketing are beginning to realize it. Online social media is becoming part of the umbrella of marketing, which is where it belongs. Social media is becoming more commodatized—as in more of a commodity.”

He gave several great hints about Facebook including that Facebook ads are the best way to grow a fan base; Facebook is the 2nd largest search engine, so take advantage of it (including using pictures with metatags, main key words in description, etc.); and put Facebook info on all your printed matter including cards and bills.

I chatted with William Leake, CEO of Apogee Search Marketing, and his take was that “More and more advertising presence is going to be driven by physical location. If you don’t have a physical location strategy, you are going to lose.”

Craig Wax, CEO of Invodo and a video expert, had a lot to say about the future of video marketing. According to Craig, “In the future, no one is going to stand in line anymore. Offline and online is no longer relevant. This is already starting to happen and it is going to become ubiquous.” He added that “QR readers are going to be incorporated into devices and the present obstacles to their use will be chipped away.” (On a side note, Craig was most recently the Senior Vice President and General Manager at Match.com. That had to be an interesting job!)

According to Pat Scherer, Web and Mobile Deployment Manager at The Detail Person,  ”Mobile space is going to be huge. With the explosion of devices, I think it’s going to make a huge impact on the retail industry. Not only for payments, but for creating local-based experiences utilizing mobile social media. I anticipate this leveling the playing field with e-commerce.”

Finally, I got to chat briefly with siblings Kevin Olsen and Kerri Olsen, Co-Founders of the Austin Grand Prix. Having Formula 1 in Austin exciting!

Cheers,

Carrie Vanston
Media/Marketing Director, Technology Futures, Inc.
Co-Author, MINITRENDS: How Innovators & Entrepreneurs Discover & Profit From Business & Technology Trends

Free Session with Dr. John H. Vanston, March 8

March 4, 2011

RISE presents a free session with Dr. John H. Vanston speaking on MINITRENDS: How to Discover & Profit From EmergingTrends.

WHEN: Tuesday, March 8, 2011, from 2:00pm – 3:30pm
WHERE: Lake Creek Office Park Meeting Room, 13740 Research Blvd., Austin, Texas 78750

In this presentation, Dr. John Vanston introduces a new concept — Minitrends — that offers very attractive possibilities to individuals and businesses that learn its principles and apply those principles in a practical business environment. This concept provides a new approach for finding and taking advantage of emerging trends that will become significant in 2-5 years, but are not yet widely recognized or appreciated.

The event is FREE. But please sign up here!

Happy Thanksgiving from the Minitrends Team

November 25, 2010

We have been blogging about technology trends for two months here on the Minitrends Blog, and we’re very grateful for your readership.

On behalf of all the staff at Minitrends, Technology Futures, Inc., and SixEstate Communications, we would like to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving!

We’ll be back again on Monday with a fresh look at all the trends making the news.

STEVE O’KEEFE
News Editor, Minitrends Blog

Photo by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Northeast Region, used under its Creative Commons license.

Google’s Schmidt: “Bump to Buy” Coming Soon to Mobile Phones

November 18, 2010

Google CEO Eric Schmidt is keen on mobile phones. He says that people don’t realize how powerful these devices are, and claims they are “more powerful” than desktop computers.

Schmidt made these remarks on November 15 at O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, where he was grilled for almost an hour by Tim O’Reilly and John Battelle. Both O’Reilly and Battelle come from the world of publishing. O’Reilly is founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, a well-known publisher of computer books and conference organizer. Battelle was a co-founder of Wired magazine and currently runs Federated Media, an online advertising firm. A video of their conversation with Eric Schmidt is available through the Web 2.0 Summit website.

Early in the interview, Schmidt pulls out a prototype “device” which looks very much like a mobile phone. He explains how this new device, which will appear on the market in the coming weeks, will use a “near field communication” (NFC) chip that you can wave or bump against something to get information about a product, person, or place.

With current 3G smartphones, you can take pictures with your phone and use those pictures to search the Web for information about a product or place. On another blog I write for, the SixEstate blog, online journalism expert Rachelle Matherne describes how smartphones can snap pictures of quick response barcodes (“QR codes”) and get additional information about an advertiser’s products.

The hang-up is that using QR codes requires adding an app to your phone, then taking a picture of the barcode with your phone’s camera. Near field communication eliminates all that fuss. You just bump the item with your phone and instantly retrieve all kinds of information. You can bump a book and discover other books by the same author, or deals offered by multiple vendors on the same product.

The bump gets even better when you attach it to a digital wallet. The new smartphones will enable consumers to “bump to buy,” according to O’Reilly. In his coverage of the Web 2.0 Summit, InformationWeek editorial director, Fritz Nelson, says that “bump to buy” will take time to spread:

This requires an ecosystem of merchants, payment providers and payment processors, and while this ecosystem is starting to form, it’s still evolving. Schmidt later told a gathering of reporters that broader acceptance is probably a year away.

Schmidt, who usually wears a severe demeanor, was positively giddy about the potential of the next generation of mobile phones. He says they are more personal, more secure, and more powerful than desktop computers, and that “mobile first” is his mantra, meaning that the phone will be the focus of Google’s strategy in the coming years.

How important are Schmidt’s remarks to driving the industry? Of the 25 videos posted from the Web 2.0 Summit as of this writing, Schmidt’s interview has been viewed over 120,000 times. Compare that to Zynga’s Mark Pincus — and most of the other well-known speakers — whose videos have been watched only a few hundred times, and you can see that Google is still the engine of innovation driving the new economy.

STEVE O’KEEFE
News Editor, Minitrends Blog

Source: “Web 2.0 Summit 2010: A Conversation with Eric Schmidt,” OReillyMedia, 11/15/10
Source: “Google CEO Schmidt Says NFC To Extend Android Acceptance,” InformationWeek, 11/15/10
Source: “QR Codes and the New Journalism,” SixEstate Blog, 11/09/10
Photo: Screen capture from “A Conversation with Eric Schmidt,” courtesy OreillyMedia.

Nonprofits Take Social Networking to New Heights

November 12, 2010

Social networking is a megatrend that has been gaining momentum since bulletin boards first made it possible for people to schmooze online in the 1980s. Out of this megatrend have come numerous Minitrends that investors have profitably mined over the past five years, including social bookmarking, tagging, and location-based networks such as Foursquare.

Steve Monfort, a writer for NASDAQ.com, recently reported on the growing trend of small businesses hiring more people to handle social media:

A recent American Express survey shows that 40 percent of small businesses are using social networking to promote their offerings, up from 10 percent a year ago.

While small businesses are just warming-up to social networking, nonprofit organizations were among the earliest to embrace the trend. By now, everyone has heard about “text-to-give,” which was used by the American Red Cross to collect $30 million from cellphone users for earthquake relief in Haiti last year. According to nonprofit tech guru Tonia Zampieri, sales and marketing manager for LoyaltyClicks, a division of Smart Online, text-to-give is so 2009.

Smart Online recently conducted a survey into technology trends for nonprofit organizations. The results were reported on NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network, just a few days ago. They indicate that over 90% of nonprofits actively use social networking (compared with only 40% of small businesses, according to American Express). The breakdown: 91% use Facebook, 63% use Twitter, 45% use YouTube, and 35% use LinkedIn.

You would think that level of penetration would be cheered by the nonprofit experts at LoyaltyClicks. But Zampieri has found a weakness in charity tech: mobile myopia. She writes:

[O]nly 16% of the surveyed nonprofits plan on having mobile websites in 2011, while 19% plan on having smartphone applications.

Zampieri cites a Nielson study that almost one-quarter of the time people are online is spent using social networks — and that half of that social networking is done with mobile devices. Then she provides “compelling reasons why a mobile website or a mobile application might work better for your organization” than, for example, old-fashioned text-to-give:

• donations aren’t limited to $5 or $10
• donations are received immediately
• you capture and control crucial data about your donors
• any size charity can use this technology, not just giants
• it’s a permanent tool, not just a one-shot appeal

For inspiring examples about the way nonprofit organizations are innovating with social networking, we recommend a recent Mashable story on “5 Must-Follow Non-Profits Making a Difference With Social Media.” The article is a run-up to the annual Mashable Awards which will be held January 6, 2011, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

I was particularly impressed by the way the Brooklyn Museum has made use of a wide variety of social networking Minitrends to engage visitors and benefactors both online and in person. The museum has a dedicated mobile site (LoyaltyClicks would approve) that allows browsers to tag the museum’s 94,000 piece collection, making it easier for visitors to locate must-see art based on other patrons’ comments. They also use Foursquare to provide restaurant suggestions and other ideas to fill out a trip to the museum.

If you have any other examples of nonprofits who are making innovative uses of social networking applications, we’d like to hear about them. And so would Mashable! The Mashable Awards are open for nomination until November 29.

STEVE O’KEEFE
News Editor, Minitrends Blog

Source: “Job growth anticipated in cloud computing, apps, social media,” NASDAQ.com News, 10/15/10
Source: “Technology Trends for Nonprofits in 2011,” NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network, 11/08/10
Source: “5 Must-Follow Non-Profits Making a Difference With Social Media,” Mashable, 11/06/10
Image courtesy of Lisa Brewster, used under its Creative Commons license.

Electrotechnology Group Announces Lord Kelvin Awards

October 26, 2010

Next time you plug in an appliance, take a good look at that plug. Why is it shaped like it is? Who came up with this design? Why doesn’t it start a fire when you plug it in?

The answer is the IEC, the International Electrotechnical Commission, the worldwide organization responsible for setting standards for electronic and electrical technologies. Last week, the IEC held its General Meeting in Seattle, Washington. Nearly 3,000 scientists from over 80 countries attended the gathering to learn about new trends and celebrate achievements.

The IEC covers the broad turf of “electrotechnology.” Its meeting included presentations on wind energy, nuclear energy, solar energy, wave energy, the smart grid, and electronic transportation. Attending conferences such as the IEC General Meeting is a great way to learn about Minitrends first-hand, from the scientists pioneering solutions to current problems. Even if you can’t attend, conference proceedings, speaker lists, and awards announcements offer many insights into Minitrends.

This year, the IEC awarded three Lord Kelvin medals for achievements in electrotechnology. Control Engineering magazine provided a list of this year’s winners:

Jerome E. Dennis from the US. Dennis is an expert in the area of radiation safety and laser safety and is active in the development of regulatory policies for radiation safety.

Bernard Dumortier from France. Dumortier has made contributions to the IEC in the field of industrial automation. He was instrumental in achieving agreement on internationally relevant rules and specifications for Fieldbus, the digital protocol for process automation.

Gösta Fredriksson from Sweden. Fredriksson has been instrumental in expanding the influence and importance of IECEE, which insures Conformity Testing and Certification for Electrotechnical Equipment and Components. The system enables companies to have a product tested in one country and all members will accept the resulting test certificate and report without duplicating any of the completed tests.

Earlier this year, the IEC announced its annual Edison Awards, which recognize people working within the IEC system to establish international standards. This is another fertile ground for Minitrend exploration. For example, we learn that Ron Peterson won an Edison Award for his work assessing the impact of electric, magnetic and electromagnetic fields on human beings.

If you were creating garments to protect human beings from these fields, the work of Ron Peterson’s committee might be very important to you. If you drill down far enough into the IEC website, you’ll find personal contact information for hundreds of researchers who might be able to assist with your Minitrends Adventure.

STEVE O’KEEFE
News Editor, Minitrends Blog

Source: “IEC Announces Lord Kelvin Award Winners,” Control Engineering, 10/19/10
Source: “Thomas A. Edison Award Laureates,” International Electrotechnical Commission, 09/02/10
Image from IEC 2010 Conference Program (PDF), used under Fair Use: Commentary.

Intelligence Economy Has Arrived, Says Gartner Guru Sondergaard

October 21, 2010

Peter Sondergaard, head of research for consulting giant, Gartner, Inc., in his opening remarks at the Gartner Symposium in Orlando, Florida, on October 18, forecast that “we are on our way to an IT-driven intelligence society,” according to Michael J. Miller on PC Magazine‘s Forward Thinking blog.

Miller is the former Chief Content Officer for Ziff Davis Media and the editor of Forward Thinking. His coverage of Sondergaard’s remarks is extensive and compelling. He quotes Gartner guru Sondergaard as saying:

By 2012, the Internet will be 75 times larger than it was in 2002.

Gartner’s Symposium doubles as an Information Technology (IT) expo. Ten days ago, Gartner released its much-hyped Hype Cycle, boosting visibility in advance of the big event. We criticized the “emerging technology” Hype Cycle here for excluding social networking.

According to Miller, Sondergaard included “social computing” in his list of the top four trends driving IT in his opening remarks. The other three are context-aware computing, pattern-based strategy, and cloud computing, which Gartner’s own HypeCycle says is “past its peak.”

Miller quotes Sondergaard:

Information will be the oil of the 21st century.

In their book, MINITRENDS, John H. Vanston and Carrie Vanston cover the Minitrend of  Increasing Use of Electricity in Industrial Processes, where they discuss the concept that the value of goods increases with the amount of information contained in them:

Manufacturing can be defined as the transformation of materials from one form to another more valuable form using energy and information. In general, the greater the information content of the process, the greater the efficiency, the smaller the waste of material and energy, and the smaller the pollution-producing side streams will be. For example, sand can be used as filler for asphalt, as a component of fine china, or as a ingredient in an electronic computer chip. The basic difference between these uses is the amount of information embedded in the silicon (sand) during the production process. Electrical processes can be used to materially increase information content to material.

That mindbending little excerpt comes courtesy of the Edison Electric Institute. It’s one of the interesting trends John and Carrie have uncovered in this book.

If you are looking for a Minitrend Adventure, think about how you can increase the information content in the things around you — before someone else does.

STEVE O’KEEFE
News Editor, Minitrends Blog

Source: “Four Big Trends Changing Computing, Gartner Says,” PCMagazine, Forward Thinking Blog, 10/18/10
Source: Gartner Symposium Live Blog (SymLive), 10/17/10 – 10/21/10.
Image of the Gartner Symposium 2010 logo is used under Fair Use: Reporting.

Minitrends Resources: Nanotechnology Trends

September 29, 2010

There are many ways to discover Minitrends, and one of the best is by attending trade conferences where companies looking for capital boast about their breakthroughs. Next Monday and Tuesday, September 27-28, NanoBusiness 2010 will take place at Chicago’s McCormick Place. This is the ninth annual NanoBusiness conference and trade show.

The show is stocked with over a dozen keynote speakers, mostly leaders of nanotechnology businesses including:

• Fabien Cousteau, Explorer & Aquatic Environmentalist
• William Moffitt, President & CEO of Nanosphere
• Sean Murdock, CEO & Founder of Nanosonix
• George Thompson, Government Programs Manager, Intel
• George M. Scalise, President, Semiconductor Industry Association
• Mark LeChevallier, Ph.D., Director, Innovation & Environmental Stewards, American Water
• Dr. Michael H. Shapiro, Deputy Assistant Administrator, U.S. EPA’s Office of Water

The guest list reflects one of the focal points of this year’s conference: water treatment. Water filtration is a major growth area for nanotechnology, especially desalination (filtering salt water to make it drinkable). Nanotechnology and Development News, a publication from the Meridian Institute, reports that “nano-engineered and bio-mimetic membranes are the best hope for bringing down the price of desalinated water.”

Water treatment offers many emerging Minitrends for astute investors and entrepreneurs. Global desalination capacity is expected to double in the next six years. While improvements in technology have been lowering costs, stricter environmental concerns have increased costs of building plants. Christopher Gasson, the editor of a newly-released forecast and analysis of global desalination projects published by Global Water Intelligence, is upbeat about the trend:

In the longer term the price of desalination will continue to fall: there has been an acceleration in the rate of investment in new technologies.

Nanotechnology and Development News is only one of many great resources available from the Meridian Institute for those interested in unearthing Minitrends in nanotechnology. The Institute’s website offers reports on international nanotechnology meetings and contains contact information for many influential players in nanotech. While organizations such as the Global Water Intelligence charge thousands of dollars to access their reports, Meridian makes much of its content available free of charge.

by Steve O’Keefe
News Editor, Minitrends Blog

Source: “Environmental Concerns Set New Price Challenge For Desalination,” Nanotechnology and Development News, 09/14/10
Source: “Program,” NanoBusiness Conference 2010, 09/10
Source: “Nanotechnology Resources,” Meridian Institute
Image by Greg Riegler, used under Creative Commons License.