1. Civic Innovation powers ahead – The Smart Cities Council launched the Guidance Note for Civic Innovation which defines civic innovation for the first time, and defines 5 principles for good practice.
2. Measuring up – Evaluation and measurement will continue to grow, as our profession gets more comfortable with reporting on measurement and ROI.
3. Video everything – Let’s be honest, we’re busy people and not everyone has time to read. We’ll see lots of more videoing of content.
4. Animation will grow – We’ll thankfully lose those fake hands that draw images – 5 years ago they were edgy. Now they cause a dreadful grinding and nashing of teeth.
5. Codesigning solutions with community members – We’re seeing a real embracing of codesign and coproduction principles to drive sustainable change.
6. Data and Beyond – Data will continue to be empowering, but we’re witnessing a maturity in thinking about what data we need to collect and how it will be used. We’ll see a link from data to behaviour change and more. And yes, that includes the human dimension.
7. Immersing yourself – Significant falls in production costs will lead to a rapid growth in immersion into the future. From Augmented Reality to Virtual Reality, immersive panoramas and holograms, content will be much easier to relate to.
8. Automation and AI – Chat bots will start to become more accepted, and automation of low value tasks will transform how we operate.
9. Employee engagement – Using the skills and knowledge of your employees to better understand business needs and make more informed strategic decisions. This could range from finding solutions for complex business challenges to strategic business planning.
