I’ve been doing this every year since 2019 - which means tonight is my 8th rodeo.

Previous Years

📅 2019 - Uncertain | Less | Different

📅 2020 - Believe | Move | Ascend

📅 2021 - Transform | Transition | Transcend

📅 2022 - Clear | Closer | Choice

📅 2023 - Focus | Flexible | Fabulous

📅 2024 - Transform | Transition | Transcend (sic - see 2021)

📅 2025 - Intentional | Inspired | Impactful

Everything can change on a new years day
Everything can change on a new years day
Everything can change on a new years day
And everything changed on a New Year’s Day

💬 Rage Against The Machine

🔗📼 Rage Against The Machine

🔗 😂 2025 Roundup of Marketoons

I particularly liked the one on Channel Attribution …

Jevons paradox is coming to knowledge work. By making it far cheaper to take on any type of task that we can possibly imagine, we’re ultimately going to be doing far more. The vast majority of AI tokens in the future will be used on things we don’t even do today as workers: they will be used on the software projects that wouldn’t have been started, the contracts that wouldn’t have been reviewed, the medical research that wouldn’t have been discovered, and the marketing campaign that wouldn’t have been launched otherwise.

💬 Aaron Levie

via 🔗Simon Willison

🔗 Two Nights Playing With Fire At Patrick Mahomes And Travis Kelce’s Steakhouse

Ending with … (my bold)

This is the way of things at 1587, which is ostensibly a mashup of jersey numbers but also a credible restaurant tab. Complaining about the prices at 1587 Prime is like complaining about the wind on Mount Everest: predictable, but hardly the worst part of the experience. All the same, there is no need for anything this mediocre to cost this much.

🔗 The Future of Software Development is Software Developers

The hard part has always been – and likely will continue to be for many years to come – knowing exactly what to ask for.

Not My Words - but those of ‘The 🔗Jax’ - over on 🔗 LinkedIN

(Lightly edited to make sense in a blog post.)

“We should all do the right thing by and for our children - they are our future and deserve to be protected.”

💬 Jax Harrison

Keeping #CHILDREN - babies literally safe online should be #EVERYONE ’s priority. Sadly this causes so much damage - and I am so sad for the loss of this young boy 13 year old -Levi and for the family who lost him.

Maybe Australia has it right.

Children don’t have the wisdom or knowledge to know what is real and what isnt - or how to cope when things go wrong…

Parents are not sure how to explain it or talk to their children about it - the dangers of hashtag#chatbots and #sexbots and #sextortion to a child of 13years old. And not only that - because it is supposed to be safe for them to use the Apps. Is it awkward to tell your 13yr old these things? Yes, but now a more than necessary and urgent conversation to have.

Why? It is because of the consequences of lack of hashtag#safety parameters of private companies - who are larger than many nations - who are deciding the fate of our #CHILDREN and their futures - without the appropriate intervention and guidance from lawmakers and governments or even counsellors. Without full disclosure of what they are allowing.

Do you really think if there was a warning label like on a pack of cigarettes - every time you or your child logged in to the App - if there was a flashing for 30 seconds a warning ‼️ “Use of this app may expose children and others to harmful sextortion, potentially harmful relationship bots, cutting and self harm groups and challenges, radicalisation, bullying, and may cause severe anxiety, self harm and suicidal thoughts … everyone would be so keen on it - NO. Of course not - parents and teens would think twice.

And that’s the smallest step the companies could do. It would cost them nothing … just less children on their platform.

Instead they just take the risk and do nothing to make it better because it doesn’t cost that much to them.

The value of collecting our children’s data is worth more than that. Think about it. Read that again.

Somehow as a human society we are abdicating responsibility of the protection of our …

#childrensrights
#childrensminds
#mentalhealth
#hearts

… to private companies who have #profit first and #safeguarding second.

We cannot trust them to do the right thing - because “when a leopard shows you its spots you should believe them”.

Their actions tell you who they are.

#OnlineSafety prevents hashtag#OfflineHarms and companies like hashtag#Instagram hashtag#Meta can and should do better.

“We should all do the right thing by and for our children - they are our future and deserve to be protected.”

Governance and regulatory accountability and actions don’t hinder innovation they #savelives - our children’s lives.

#thefuturefound
#onlinesafety
#AI
#governance
#regulation
#policy
#children
#stopchildtraffic
#socialmedia

Me: “Thanks, man. That was awesome. My powers as a driver are pretty limited to dealing with unruly passengers, so that was great.”

Tank Man: “Meh. I work three years as Walmart cashier. This nothing.”

🔗 Source

🔗 Building blocks of marketing

That 🖇️ trust thing keeps popping up.

If ‘the future’ is trust.

Who/what - do you trust?

I mean really really trust?

And why?

How many such entities are there?

Now you meet someone outside that 🔗📼 Circle of Trust.

How do you include them in your circle of trust? What are the qualifiers?

If not include them completely - at least for a single transaction?

How many ‘circles of trust’ does the average person need?

You are boarding a plane. How much trust do you need in ‘the system’ that ensures that the pilot is qualified, that there is nobody going to be on board plotting a nefarious action, that nobody has broken into the supply chain for (say) water and poisoned the supply - and so many more things that can go wrong. How many circles of trust do you need to be confident that you can fly safely between two points without an incident?

I definitely trust Jax - but not even she can make those kind of ‘trust guarantees’. I have to trust people that I do not know, that they know something and that something is more reliable than average. Ideally - a LOT more reliable.

Now now flip it - with those considerations in mind - consider a single airline - put yourself in their shoes and ask if they’re going to let you on the plane with your ‘self sovereign identity’ that has been ‘authorised’ by an identity that they have never heard of - much less trust.

So - in order that one of their planes doesn’t suffer an incident - who do they trust and why?

Should they?

This all coming to mind as I read a couple of posts over the holidays that were totally unrelated and yet totally connected.

Separately - still waiting to see how self sovereign identity is going to work. The idealism being concocted in NZ, the UK et al will almost certainly fail (or at best be redefined to suit the outcome).

Phil’s connection to ’Visa thinking’ makes sense - but at some point - somewhere - validation with somebody / something need to be made with a ‘trusted authority’ that is bigger than you - and even 🔗 The Principality of Sealand and other similar places.

That is distributed trust - across a network - not centralised - distributed. But we know where the dominant distributed nodes are on the internet? Don’t we. We know that when we say that TCP/IP is by design decentralised. But we also know that despite this - the internet is in practise increasingly centralised.

• Through Access Points
• Through DNS
• Through Platforms
• Through Hosting

Not sure there is going to be that much of a change with DIDs - given the current reality - and even then - careful what you wish for.

There is room for an alternative that demonstrably works. It just doesn’t fit into the model that everybody is talking about which is anyway really only about trusting devices - not people.

I’ve been doing this every year since 2019.

My 8th for 2026 will be out in a few days time and looking like another alliterative year when reviewing my draft.

🔗📅 2025 - Intentional | Inspired | Impactful

🔗📅 2024 - Transform | Transition | Transcend (sic)

🔗📅 2023 - Focus | Flexible | Fabulous

🔗📅 2022 - Clear | Closer | Choice

🔗📅 2021 - Transform | Transition | Transcend

🔗📅 2020 - Believe | Move | Ascend

🔗📅 2019 - Uncertain | Less | Different