INDUSTRY TRENDS

The Future of Communicating

If you could peek into the future, what would communication look like? We asked a few professionals to venture a guess. 

Sarah DaVanzo (@culturecartog), chief cultural strategy officer, Sparks & Honey

• One very important skill for the future will be the focus quotient (FQ): Technology with empathy, even without having eye contact.
• Tracking and analyzing users’ mood will become more important. We will add mood context to our communications and anticipate moods with algorithms.
• We will be speaking and thinking in visuals, via emojis and symbols. Fast Company has already appointed an emoji editor. Learn the alphabet! Visual analytics will become very sophisticated. Brush up on your Photoshop skills! Video staging will become more important and so will holograming and teleconferencing. We will use graphic resumes in our job search, with infographics and short video clips.

Dana Points, editor-in-chief of Parents and American Baby and content director for the Meredith Parents Network

• The tendency will grow to “borrow someone else’s funny” — relying on other people’s originality, creativity and wit to be part of the conversation. There will be “a high price tag attached for being the original, since very few people create the original content that the majority shares.” At some point, good content will have to be paid for.

Lisa Stone (@LisaStone), co-founder & CEO, BlogHer, Inc.

• Even in the future, there will be a need for great etiquette when interacting with other people while using your devices or communicating on social media. Share by relying on trusted behavior: quote the original source, giving due to the author. The more we change with the technologies, the more the basic standards — excellent writing, respect for the reader and trust — could erode.

— Tekla Szymanski