The future is here 🚀 it’s just unevenly distributed 💥

And cue fireworks.

January beckons, named for the Roman god of beginnings, transitions and endings.

Janus, with his two faces, looks forwards and backwards. After a spectacular silly season, my New Year is traditionally the time for doing just that. 2017 was a freak of a year for me: very good and very bad. Bangkok was fun to start the year. SXSW in March was a blast and Cannes for both the film festival and the Lions in June was just what I needed to get over a failed love affair in LA.

Then just after I got back from Berlin, my mum suffered a nervous breakdown. At 83 that’s no joke, especially with a 93-year-old father completing the picture. That brought months of backwards and forwards to doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, acupuncturists, energetic healers and lawyers to get lasting power of attorney for both parents. It was like the Battle of Thermopylae. Still… the pain you feel today is the strength you feel tomorrow. It was a relief to have it all finally sorted: a care package in place for both my mother, social workers checking in and a nurse and psychiatrist visiting regularly. It feels good to do your duty.

In other news, I’ve swollen my personal network to close to 10,000 directors, producers, creators and designers who are generally making the world a more beautiful and thought-provoking place. The result is a growing multi-platform portfolio for Ghost Global: storytelling, insights and ideas that win more work.

Over the past six years, I’ve committed to a practice that enables me to exercise a specific muscle: create sustainable competitive advantage for my clients. I’ve started a Facebook group so go on – give it a like. I want to inspire a tribe of directors and producers to help each other win more pitches, do better work and make more money. There’s industry gossip, all my latest blog posts and even some vids of me showing off of my close combat defence thanks to my epic Krav Maga personal trainer David Amroon.

I’ve always believed a market is simply a conversation. And that marketing is finding your addicts. As I get older, the future seems to be arriving at an ever-faster rate. Happily I’m convinced that we’re living in the greatest time in history for creative and entrepreneurial growth. It’s never been easier to develop a platform for your talent. Gary V is right – it’s now faster, simpler and cheaper to showcase your talent than any time in history. Especially as we are all getting glimpse of how artificial intelligence, virtual and mixed reality, will shape our world in the coming years. Quite when – and how – is hard to determine. In 2018, augmented reality is about to go mainstream, voice is the new interface and transparency is king.

In that spirit, I’ve spent the last few days pondering my purpose. Everyone on earth has a purpose. Quite what Kanye’s is, is anyone’s guess. But there is something we all do better than anyone else on the planet. Mine is to make ideas sexy. Not my ideas anymore, but yours.

So to close, here are some of the more wonderful ideas I found on social media this year:

And may 2018 be rad!