Hi, I'm Lyn Jeffery. I'm the Director of Foresight Training at the Institute for the Future. I've been here for 18 years and I am an ethnographer of the future. So let me unpack that a little bit. Ethnographers are like investigative journalists of human behavior. We try to understand how people live, why they're making the choices they're making, what they hope for, what they value, what they're worried about, and ethnographers of the future are trying to understand the human signals of change, the new behaviors that are actually building the future. So some signals of change might be a technology but as an ethnographer, I would look at how people are using a new technology and what they're doing with it in it that's different and how it's actually changing their lives. So in this video, I'm going to teach you how to identify leading edge-behaviors. That's all the new amazing crazy things that people are doing that are building the future. It could be something a kid is doing, a grandparent, it could be a developer who's building a new technology who's actually using it themselves to do something different. But these are the leading edge-behaviors that are making the way for a new future. I'm going to give you my five top tips for going out and finding the people who are doing these things. Let's say that your futures topic is the future of work. Today, you can already see that more and more people are finding their jobs and working almost entirely through an app or online platform like Uber or Airbnb or Twitch. You're trying to imagine a future where everyone does work that way. What if teachers found their work that way? What if doctors did that? What if there was an Uber for police? Or police somehow were working via Twitch streams? Well, you can start to explore that future and gather evidence from the leading edge-behaviors of people who are already doing it today. So my first tip for exploring this leading edge-behavior would be participate. Do it yourself, try the behavior yourself, try the new technology yourself. So in the example of the future of work, try out driving Uber for a day or try out your own Twitch stream and see what that's like, or hire someone for five dollars on fiber. But try it out, participate, and see what it's like. Tip number 2, look for people who are starting to get attention for doing amazing things. Who's being invited to speak at conferences, who's being interviewed in blogs and on podcasts, who's being celebrated by the community? So if I were trying to understand people who are making a living on Twitch, I would look at who's being invited to Twitch Con, the annual conference where they celebrate people who are doing really new and unusual things on Twitch. Tip number 3, compare people doing the same leading edge-behavior in different places or different contexts. So again, I'm trying to understand the future of work on apps and online platforms. I would look at something new that's happening on a familiar platform. For example, Airbnb just launched in Arabic in the United Arab Emirates. So I would want to understand who are the first people to be renting out their homes in the UAE. What's different about the way that they're describing their homes, or the kinds of places that they're renting compared to other places. You can try to find English speakers who are on the platform and reach out to them or you could use an online translation app to try to read some of the Arabic. Tip number 4, go where the people are, look for meet-ups, conferences, networking groups, online forums, anywhere that you can meet and talk to real people about what they're doing. So for example, if I were trying to understand the world of social media influencers and the future of work, I might go onto meetup.com, the website and look for people in London for example, who are working in the social media influencer space. If I did, I would find at least five groups, meet-ups alone where people are meeting in real time, in real places, and you can go and meet them and talk to them. You could do that for any city in the world. Tip number 5, look for the new experts and the new coaches. Who's sharing? Who's selling their knowledge? Who's helping people get better at this leading edge-behavior? For example, I like to look on YouTube and find these super specific YouTube channels where someone is teaching you how to have a really great Twitch stream or how to succeed on Fiverr. There are all kinds of very deep experts from people who are a little bit under the radar unless you're really inside the community. So go look for those new experts. When you find these people, don't be shy, you should reach out to them directly. In my experience, if you tell someone, "I've identified you as someone who's making the future in an amazing way." They're going to be excited to talk to you. If you're able to, it's always nice to give back in some way, a donation or a gift card if you're able. You can set up a video chat with them, you could send them questions over e-mail, you could have a conversation on social media. There's lots of different ways to make it easy for that person to talk to you. What should you ask them? Well, you can check out my five favorite questions for asking someone about a leading edge-behavior. This has been the mini masterclass in how to be an ethnographer of the future.
