A Different Time
In our Vision statement for the year – the Children of the Cloud Revolution – we threw forward to what the resetting of the tensions that a shared, real-time digital context now exposes in human affairs.
And the opportunities that reset will surely bring for all humanity.
We thought that the change would be over the next few years.
In our Fifth Age of immedia, a complete transformation of the business focus for the fifth major time over our 25-year history, we anticipate and set a course for navigating and harvesting the Over the Top opportunities this technical and social revolution will bring.
The inevitable transition from Analogue to Digital while keeping what it means to be human for the benefit of all humans.
We know the world is unequal. We know some are considered more human than others. We know the economic system offers distorted value to a select elite. We appear more divided than ever before, yet we have never been able to unite faster.
We have preached this for a number of years (arguably all 25 of our years) and why our Fabrik product and our Service teams will be relevant in a new world where human values and purpose will be a currency hard to earn and hard to keep.
To refresh you, rewatch our Vision video for 2020 from December 2019:
And read:
But when change comes, it comes fast. That opportunity that we thought we would ramp into is already here and real. In three months, we have flipped over from the Analogue past to the Digital future and there will be no going back. We compressed five years of change into three months.
It’s real right now. We were more right than we realised.
The Pandemic and Trumpism are global storms through which a different future will be possible. It’s too late to stuff the genie of Hope back into the bottle.
Because we can now dare to hope that a better future is possible.
It’s a global #UsToo moment – Cops don’t just kill Black people in Amerika.
It’s UsToo! All over the world, it’s UsToo.
It’s UsToo in the favelas of Brazil, or the townships of South Africa. It’s UsToo in the ghettoes of Palestine where an occupying force murder humans with little accountability.
A toxic social network accountable to no community spreads hate and bile without consequence for the clicks – not just for Americans, but for UsToo.
It’s UsToo all over the world.
Many things are never going back the way they were. Because people all over the world realise now that they can shape that change. They are finding their common voice.
And the system will buck and fight. Drones will fill the sky, gas will roil the streets, tin soldiers will parade.
Statues fall and empires topple… we know this in our South African history and we understand that change comes in waves, building upon each other when the People unite and the Peoples of the World unite.
This is just such a moment again – not against a system in one country, but a system in all countries.
Digital transformation powered by Cloud is now accelerated. Social transformation powered by digital is now accelerated. Both are exponentially accelerated.
How fortunate are we to be taking on the future with relevant, ethical offerings on both fronts?
Now we must be urgent about responding to opportunity. We have to seize the moment we have been waiting for and work hard to convert these opportunities to sustainability and an ability to contribute to that new future locally in our communities and globally in the big world out there.
These last few months are and the months to come will be a generation defining moment. We need to fight for our rights, our dignity and our opportunities with an urgency that rises to the occasion.
I encourage you to watch the eulogy for George Floyd by the Reverend Al Sharpton (in its entirety).
This is a different time. A different season.
And we are well ready to enter these times. Let us build on OKR work and transformation. Let us remember that iteration (and rapid and agile iteration) is not chaos. Failing is not failure.
Be mindful, be active, be tolerant, be helpful, be kind to each other in this time. We all need it.
The future came quicker than even we thought.
Let’s hustle team.
