Connectography

Connectography

I would be amazed if you had ever heard of Connectography. Well I hadn’t nor had I heard of Parag Khanna, the author, until today. It’s rare in my experience to go to a conference and hear something that is truly new and mind opening. Interesting - yes, amusing – often, worth taking notes – surely.

But last week, at The Marketing Society Global Conference Parag talked about globalization in a way I had never heard or thought of before. He used facts/stats, history of the human race, the geography of the planet and a whole bunch of big themes to expound that globalization was not just about trade treaties, and big container ships or invisible earnings but an unstoppable result of the human condition.

We are hardwired now to globalize and there is nothing that Mr. Trump or anyone can do to stop it – slow perhaps, cause upset probably but not stop.

I haven’t got the deck in front of me ( I think I’m supposed to buy the book!) but his thesis included the drive towards urbanization with all sorts of stats about city sizes and the % of the population now living in cities; the incredible telecommunications infrastructure that has been built to connect the world which isn’t going to go away anytime soon; the migration of people (and I’m not talking about refugees trying to get to Europe) so that 300 million people – 1 in 16 of the world’s population – are living in a different country from where they were born; the treaties already in existence or near completion in Africa and Asia that will allow visa free travel; the new “Silk Road” of roads, railways and pipelines connecting Asia through the Middle East to Europe which will continue to globalize us; and finally the different attitude towards life in general from those born after 1980 (I’m not using the M word ever).

He showed amazing charts that plotted all of these trends without which I can’t do justice to the presentation, but I’m in awe.

The theme of the conference was about ‘Digital at our Core “. And this was digital at the core of everything .


Gareth Simpson works at Leo Burnett Worldwide and he reviewed our Global Conference 2016.

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