Last Saturday, together with some Dutch opticians, I attended a private lecture of Tom Klinkowstein in New York. Tom is a professor and teaches “new media design” at University. For more than two decades he is also involved in all kind of “new media” projects. In his lecture he showed us the recent and future developments in technology making absolutely clear that lineair growth has definitely been replaced by exponential growth which means that things do no longer develop like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and so on but with a speed of 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 and so on. In his philosophy people belong to the group of stasists (who like the past and love to preserve the world as it is) and dynamists (who embrace all new developments, like to reinvent themselves and are not afraid at all of the future). He proved us that the developments can’t be stopped and that today many people all over the world work on projects which are already far beyond our imagination. New technology will make the world faster and at the same time help us to keep pace with it. What does it mean now for the retailer? First of all that he has to participate. Old media with pictures (like posters, billboards and advertising) are already more and more replaced by “new media” in which text is far more important (like on facebook, twitter and other social media). It all asks for new strategies as it makes no sense to simply change the “old images” to the “new media” like we see very often. New strategies should develop the relation with the clients and new media are the ideal instruments to do it. Dynamism is important as what is good today, can be “old” tomorrow. Interesting topics which should not be ignored as I just found out myself when I opened my own facebook page only a few weeks ago and since communicate with my, already 1200 “friends”, on a daily basis and obviously very effective. Tom Klinkowstein showed us that all this is only the beginning and encouraged us to use the current technology to learn about this new world and get experienced with “new media”. Experience that all of us will need in the future…..as a real dynamist I love it…
