Category: Future

The End of the Cinema? – COVID-19 series

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

The crisis for the cinema industry didn’t start when COVID did – it’s been a slow burn problem for a very long time. The current crisis just accelerated the inevitable. The future of cinema sharply changed course recently with announcements of AMC and Universal’s deal that effectively shortens the cinema release window to 17 days and Disney moving its latest tentpole release to their streaming service, but there is much more that needs to be done to keep cinemas and the movie business future proof.

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Pre-Read Bonus: I was on The Project last night discussing the Future of Entertainment here. A fun 6 minute piece where we covered the wide gamut of how we’ll be entertained in the future. 

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Distribution is everything: It’s more important than the product. There is nothing more common than market-leading businesses who don’t have the best product, yet are still more widely distributed. I’d much rather invest in an average product with incredible distribution. Just think of how many poorly distributed movies that didn’t become hits until they were discovered in the after-cinema market. Or how many market-leading products that are nothing more than average. This is the power of getting things out there. Holding back distribution of content in certain markets to keep channel partners happy is a losing strategy. Technology doesn’t care who your trade partners are.

Piracy is nature’s way: It isn’t just pirates who steal other people’s goods and digital content. Nature does it too. Water evaporates, fruit and veggies go bad, warehouses and retail stores face ullage, and things leak. Piracy just ‘is’. Fighting to stop it never works. It’s better to move the goods so quickly to their final destination that the pirates don’t have enough time to make a big impact.  The laws of nature tell us much about piracy and lost revenue. If we don’t distribute the output, it goes bad. The longer we wait to use any resource, the more we lose. Both Netflix and Amazon know this and that is why they’ve chosen not to wait for movie producers to give them their ‘secondhand’ content but instead produce their own.

The internet is a giant fax machine. Whenever we send someone an email, share a photo or watch a video – it’s not the original, but instead a copy. When we send or download or even stream something, we are literally sending  a bunch of computer code to the other computers, which then re-build it at the other end. This means that when we release any digital asset on the internet (like a movie), control of the asset has been compromised, forever. It’s not possible to stop it spreading. There will be leaks. The smart strategy is to embrace the leak as the moment where we are setting a resource free to explore the market.

With that in mind, here are my Four Rules on the Future of Content for those who want to survive in a post-COVID world:

1. Make it easy to buy:  Why not release a movie in cinemas and the home at the same time? Yes. At the same time. The cinema is not about the movie – it’s about going out. I’d happily pay an über premium to be able to watch the latest blockbuster at home on my television, because it’s too hard to go out with young children. This would also allow viewers to purchase the experience using any form of currency or platform they choose.

2. It works on any device: Let me watch it anywhere – my phone, TV, laptop, tablet, VR rig, wherever. Let me watch it wherever I can log in. Don’t judge my purchase based on device.

3. Same-day global release: Content and movie producers can and should have same-day global releases. The internet does not and has never cared about oceans. Delays to access encourage piracy. Time to wake up on this one.

4. Fair price: When people get a raw deal, they seek an alternative. They even cheat. People know the costs of content distribution are minuscule compared to the pre-digital era. This ought be recognised more than it has been in many digital channels. People will pay a fair price when given the opportunity.

 

We are on the fast track to having a channel for everything, for everyone, in every format, on demand, all for a very low aggregate price. It’s already here and working well for those who can access it – like Amazon, Disney+ and Netflix. Content producers can no longer stagger releases dates and control geographic availability, because technology will find the leaks. When it comes to technology, the best strategy has always been and always will be to go with the tide. The ships that fight the tide, are always the ones that end up under the water.

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Keep Thinking,
Steve. 

 

Dealing With Uncertainty – COVID-19 series

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

The toughest decisions to make are when we don’t have all of the information. The COVID crisis we face today is a classic example. Every decision, even policy choices, from our most revered experts need to be made on the fly. Decisions will have to be made in the knowledge that by tomorrow or next week, we’ll learn something new.

This is a great allegory for life.

What we should never do is to judge ourselves, or those trying to help us, for making a mistake on something we could not have possibly known yesterday. The world without a pandemic is filled with ambiguity. What we have now is a magnifier.

What we mustn’t do is wait. We must use what little knowledge we do have and move forward. We can’t wait until we know it all, because in all probability, we never will. New information will always present itself after we needed it. If we are facing a career crisis or business challenges right now, we must still act. Work with what we know and navigate changes, as new information comes to hand.

It’s like walking in a fog.

On a foggy night where you can only see 50 feet in front, it’s only after we walk that 50 feet, that the next 50 feet of the journey is revealed. If we need to change direction, we can. But we’ll be further ahead than if we had waited, and we’ll be able to see and know more. Wanting too much knowledge creates inertia and leaves us behind the courageous few who actually did something.

Yes, it’s scary, but sometimes we have to forge ahead through a fog, regardless.

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Keep thinking,

Steve. 

 

Talent Matters – COVID-19 series

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Work hard at anything and you’ll get results. Work hard on things where you have natural talents and your results will be amazing. Here’s the good news: every single one of us has unique talents. Talents that when uncovered, worked on and combined can give us extraordinary outcomes.

But here’s the trick: we need to find a way to combine what seems like a normal human social gift or proclivity into economics. We need to mash up our gifts with something that has demand in the market place. This is possible for almost everything. I’m not talking about passions either – I’m talking about that thing that just comes a bit easier to you.It can be absolutely anything – communication, creativity, manners, eye for design, diligence, detail orientation, being funny, making people feel good about themselves, working creatively with your hands, organising things, planning, project management, selling the dream…literally anything.

For me, it was speaking – it was what I got in trouble for everyday at school! But once I combined my natural proclivity to share ideas verbally about technology and economics, the market rewarded me. Speaking of which (see what I did there?), here’s my latest effort with #SteveFeed episode 2. – I’d love it if you could leave a comment on Youtube and share it wide – I mean, it’s only the future of our entire species depending on it!

In times like these when things are tough and average just won’t do, we need to dig deep. We need to have the courage and patience to find what we know we are good at, extract our gifts and add them to the work we do. Once we do that, we can achieve much more than we ever thought possible.

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Keep Thinking,

Steve. 

Choose your own Adventure #2 – COVID-19 series

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

As we enter our second lockdown here in Melbourne, Australia, I thought I’d do my second Choose Your Own Adventure blog post. Here are five things:

(1) This week I was on Charlie Pickering’s The Weekly, interviewed by the hilarious Judith Lucy on All Things Future in crazy 2020. Many people have said it was the first time they’ve ever seen me lost for words. Click here to watch (4 min video)

(2) As you go into ‘iso’ hiding from the ‘rona’, get ‘woke’ with your future! On ABC radio this week I talked about how technology influences language and how quickly it is changing – and how changing the way you speak could drastically improve your future. Listen here (11 min audio)

(3) Wow, Tik Tok is so damn entertaining – it is seriously lots of fun. It’s also a terrific way for a foreign government to hoover up all manner of information about its users – much more than we think. For those who haven’t read the terms and conditions (and that’s nearly everyone!), I was interviewed on Channel 7 National News discussing security risks and the emerging Technology Cold War. Watch here (3 min video)

(4) One of my fave blog posts: 20 things in 20 years – lessons I’ve learned since school. 

(5) My fave ever chill out song. Give it a try if things are getting tough for you. Click here for secret reveal. 

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Keep thinking,

Steve. 

Mega Trends – COVID-19 series

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

This week you can watch my blog for 5 mins instead of reading it! In the first episode of #SteveFeed – Protein for the mind, I explore the #5 Mega Trends emerging from a Post Covid Economy. The five things every business, brand and individual needs to be aware of as we attempt to navigate our way out of this crisis.

In summary the trends are:

  1. Digital Sovereignty 
  2. Automation At Distance
  3. De-globalisation
  4. Essentialism
  5. Market Recalibration

Some ideas I’ve touched on in recent posts. I’d love for you to make a comment on Youtube and even subscribe to my YT channel here. Join another 10,000 peeps on the Sammatron wagon – safety in numbers I say. Get on it!

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Keep thinking,

Steve. 

The Currency of Language – COVID-19 series

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Speaking more than one language is revered in society. I pride myself on speaking three, but in reality we all speak many languages. More accurately, we all speak many dialects and that has a much bigger impact on our future than we recognise.

Since COVID, a new set of jargon has emerged: iso haircut, Covidiot, Zoombombing, WFH and Blursday, to name a few. It’s a reminder of the importance of language.

Our Best Invention: Language is humanity’s killer app. It puts us firmly on top of the food chain. We are the only species who can spread ideas by passing them down generations, across geography and even through time. The sharing of our thoughts and discoveries allows every generation to build on top of what was known before. Unlike other species, we don’t have to start again every time we procreate. Verbal, written, video and computer code make this possible. All of it is based on language.

The Many Languages We Speak: If you pay attention to how you communicate, you’ll notice you use different dialects when speaking with different people. We speak a certain way with our family – our own special shorthand. When communicating with young children, we often modify our words and simplify our ideas. With friends, we use another dialect and particularly with childhood friends, the language has an historical context to it – the language is retrofitted. I grew up in a working class suburb and I learned to adapt my vocabulary and speech so I could grow in my career. This wasn’t an accident and it didn’t happen by osmosis. The language I employed was contextual, as just having the qualifications wasn’t going to be enough.

It’s obvious in hindsight that these dialects are far more important than we imagine.

Language Evolves: We also need to remember that language is a living organism. It changes its shape over time. Words come and go, meanings shift, spelling changes and what was acceptable parlance yesterday may be offensive tomorrow. Language is the living representation of our culture and its evolution. We can see this in pop culture, where keeping up with the lingua franca of teenagers is a full time job for outsiders. Commenting on someone’s headwear as ‘that’s the biggest cap ever’ may now earn you a WTF? as ‘that’s the biggest cap ever’, now means ‘the biggest lie ever’.

It is also evident in the socio political arena. As society becomes more progressive and inclusive, sentiment isn’t enough. Today we all need to be vigilant as the onus is on the communicator not cause offence. In an era of callout culture, we all need to pay attention to the language we use.

Language and Your Career: Now let’s take this idea to the context of work, technology and your own future. Assuming most people in your firm or industry are competent, then what elevates you to the top will be your mastery of contextual languages and dialects. It’s a process that requires us to change gears all day long depending on the context. We need to know our industry jargon. Increasingly, we also need to understand the verbiage emerging from the technology sector as it permeates every industry. Knowing this dialect increases our relevance.

When you meet someone new, always pay attention to their vernacular and tone, so you can start speaking in their dialect. All of a sudden, they see you as one of them – you’re an insider and you’ve immediately overcome the biggest hurdle in any new relationship.

I unashamedly use this technique everywhere I go. I speak very differently when I’m on the ABC to when I’m on more commercial media channels. When I’m in the boardroom of a large corporation, I use financial speak: PE ratios, market caps, RPU, et al. When I hang with tech nerds, I double down on geek speak. Not only does it work, it’s fun and you only improve when you start paying attention to it. The cool thing is that it helps everyone go forward. We are far more confident about doing anything new when surrounded by people who also speak our ‘language’.

If we become more proficient in a range of dialects, we can become a translator of sorts and someone who can comfortably bridge two different cohorts. An example might be cultivating a cultural link between a startup and a large corporate. Translators are among our most valuable resources in times of rapid change like today.

Not only is language our killer app, it’s something we should be constantly hacking and paying attention to. If we evolve with it, we can be sure that we are in tune with society and invent a future for ourselves beyond our own expectations.

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Keep thinking,

Steve. 

Houses of the Future – COVID-19 series

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

If you’re like me, you’re probably thrilled to start seeing something other than the four walls of your own home. The Covid-19 crisis will be a long overdue start to influencing changes to the buildings we spend our time in.

The Merger – Now that information work has finally reached its mobility phase, houses and offices will start to change shape. The major change is that spaces for work and living will start to replicate each other, with differences in size and scale. We can already see it in the home. Technology that used to solely reside in offices has begun to spring up in our homes. The technology we now have in the home is usually as good and often better than what we have at work. Offices are starting to look less like cubicle farms with the arrival of lounge spaces, entertainment zones, eating areas – somewhat replicating what we see in boutique hotels. What’s ironic is that this is how things used to be pre-industrialisation. We lived where we worked. Craftsmen had workshops out the back of houses. Bakers lived on top of their shop front. Now that many of us are becoming modern day digital craftspeople, we are going back to that model.

The first part of the process was the delineation of working and leisure hours evaporated. Now it’s about to happen to our spaces and they’re starting to replicate each other.

Caves with Widgets – We’ve been living in caves for a very long time, albeit these days they come with modern day comforts. It is valuable to remind ourselves of how we got to now by looking at how long some of the current technologies in our homes have been around:

  • Letterboxes – Mail services started encouraging their installation in houses for deliveries in the mid-1800s.
  • Indoor plumbing – In the 1860s, only 5% of American houses had running water. Flush toilets were still uncommon until the mid 1900s.
  • Driveways – Only became a standard inclusion fewer than 80 years old ago.
  • Electricity – Uncommon in suburban homes until the 1930s.
  • White goods (electricity needed) – Rare in modern economies until post WWII.
  • Televisions – In 1956 in Australia
  • VCRs – Early 1980s
  • Home Computers – Mid-1980s
  • Internet – Mid-1990s

So what’s coming?

Zero Energy Buildings: The ZEB movement is a system where a building generates all of the energy it requires. In the near future, the walls and roof of every new or retrofitted building will be capable of generating power. This will be primarily through solar and micro wind turbines, as well as piezoelectric technology that converts kinetic energy generated by raindrops hitting a building to electricity – yes, this already exists. The energy rating of buildings in the future won’t just be about efficient use of energy – it will be about creating an excess, more than it needs. It will become the new normal.

Houses that Change Shape: Walls will be moveable in most apartments to maximise space usage across different hours of the day, like hotels often do in its meeting spaces. They’ll become modular. Houses of the future will be designed with non-permanent room sizes, allowing us to get more from less. Kitchens and eating spaces will be able to expand and converted back into lounge rooms or even cinema rooms.

Delivery Boxes Replace Letterboxes: The letterbox is sorely in need of an upgrade. Our houses now are the recipients of packages, not letters. You’d think e-commerce hadn’t happened yet! In the future, letterboxes will have three sections: dry, fridge and frozen, so it could take all kinds of deliveries. Letterboxes will likely be as big as a fridge and possibly underground, with a button for the courier to press, so it could rise up to take the delivery. When a delivery arrives, the recipient is notified and can view live video footage, to verify the delivery person’s identity. Using a smartphone, the recipient could open the delivery unit and check that the delivery is as ordered, using near field communication readers (RFID) and image recognition cameras. The delivery unit would be secure as a safe for delivery of high value items and be powered under a ZEB doctrine.

Upgraded Home Office and Virtual Reality Room: We can expect the home office to receive a massive upgrade. High-end home offices will be as common as gourmet kitchens, given their importance in generating income for many households. We’ll have virtual reality meeting rooms with travelator floors to make us feel that we are in the same room as someone else on the other side of the world. These spaces will lead us to question why we need to go to the office at all. These video studios will be capable of creating content to make even the most advanced YouTuber salivate. We’ll also use our VR rig, including haptic gloves and suits, to shop online for things we want to touch and experience before purchasing. We’ll also use it to exercise and browse holiday accommodation and experiences, using a treadmill to keep us stationary while we seemingly explore other places.

A.I. Enabled: Automation utilising voice and gesturing will replace traditional interactions and buttons to manage re-ordering of household items. We’ll literally be talking to the walls! This is a battleground Amazon, Google and Apple are already deeply ensconced in. Convenience will be high, but privacy and security concerns will need to be overcome for mass adoption.

Drone delivery and landing pads: Our growing parcel deliveries need to land somewhere. Apartment buildings are already being designed with landing pads on rooftops and your house will be no different. Maybe it will have an automatic opening lid that closes over after the drop off has been made or the package might go straight into a delivery box. We can also expect new houses to have rooftop landing pads for Vertical Take Off and Landing (VTOL) vehicles that will become common within 20 years. In fact, ‘flying cars’ have a high probability of beating autonomous vehicles to deep market penetration, given they don’t have to work around existing infrastructure and pedestrian safety issues.

Smart Toilet: I’ve written about this before. We can expect it to be our health partner in life and since Alphabet had a patent approved on the smart bathroom last year, this is one of those realities which will surprise with its speed of arrival.

Smart shower: One that takes a photo of you every day… not to invade your privacy, but to ensure it knows you have a dangerous sun spot long before you do.

Glass = Screen: If you’ve always wanted a house with a view, it’s about to become a lot cheaper than anyone expects. All the glass in our homes will become web-enabled screens. The resolution of our windows will be indistinguishable from an actual view into the real world. All of a sudden, anyone can have a real-time harbour view that changes perspective on different windows in the house to deliver a very lifelike experience. Maybe owners of actual harbour mansions will monetise their views via a live feed cam? Or maybe nimble entrepreneurs can set up HD webcams in places of great beauty? Live feeds of idyllic vineyards in the Loire Valley, anyone?

Charging Stations in All Driveways: Our driving future is all electric, as is our entire economy. Expect that every place cars stop will have a charging facility on hand. If they ever stop – I’ll probably send mine out to work for me when I’m not using it.

So, if you are wondering how buildings will change, wonder no more. The exciting part is that there’s many more changes we could add to this list. In a changing world, this is where tomorrow’s jobs and industries will emerge. The opportunities created are equal for existing companies and startups. The technology for all of these ideas already exists. It’s not a question of if – it’s a matter of who and when.

I had a fun radio interview on this topic you can listen to here.

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Keep thinking.

Steve.