The Nextsensing Project is today launching a new, free magazine designed just for you. Let me start by introducing the person who made it possible. Kyle Pierson has just joined our NextSensor team [link], and she brings an interesting resumé. She has a background in health care publishing, writing and editing, college teaching, and, most recently, assessing architecture. Based in St. Petersburg, Florida, Kyle has been on a two-year quest to take the concept of “iconic” and try to make it measurable. Her new website, iconicornot.com [link], shows a great deal of promise for anyone interested in the direction and flow of modern architecture. That’s one reason why I thought she would be a great NextSensor.
And Kyle is, literally, racing out of the starting gate. She has put together a new Flipboard journal designed to expand the outreach of The Nextsensing Project. That free journal is accessible now, and Kyle will guide you how best to get started. I wrote about the promise of Flipboard when it first came out [link]. Little did I know then that one day we would have a member of our project team editing a journal tied to the question that drives all of us: “What’s next?” That day is here.
Disruptions and Diversions — the words suggest change is afoot.
It is.
Change upsets established practices, challenges norms, rocks marketplaces, and shakes up societies.
And no one said change is comfortable. Let’s face it; routine is comforting. I try to avoid disruptions as much as anyone. But when confronted with disruptive ambiguity, the kind of uncertainty that can bring down careers if not entire organisations, the best chance of salvation is rarely found in returning to the past. That’s why most of us in such a situation try to build a bridge to the future.
There are now 27 people (worldwide) who are part of The Nextsensing Project. They are leading the field in finding the best way to help people answer for themselves, What’s next? NextSensors tend to see change in a positive light, and they even find value in considering ideas that, in the end, may be diversions from the best way to confront major disruptions.
I proposed that The Nextsensing Project publish a new Flipboard journal because moving from disruptive ambiguity to new, potentially constructive ideas is, at heart, a journey. Consider Disruptions and Diversions a bridge to help you start that journey. This journal may not have concrete solutions to what’s challenging you today, but it just might have the seeds of thinking that could help you begin to find possible solutions, to help you begin a process of new thinking.
You can call me a curator. At Flipboard, magazine curators have a passion for a subject. I have a passion for innovative thinkers (in any field) who are not afraid to cross the bridge of new thinking and have faith that they will arrive at a better place. As I build this magazine, I am looking for articles about and by innovators who believe in new ideas and new ways to solve problems.
When I select articles to share with you, I will try to cover the gamut — the arts, business and economy, society and communities, science, technology, engineering and health care, education, and personal welfare. In the future, you may see an article about physics back to back with one about psychology: it all depends where my research leads me, and what articles you suggest I add to our journal.
While prototyping the journal, I have been developing a sharp eye for articles covering a new way to approach an old problem. The first issue — which you can access right now — includes 53 recent stories picked from many fields and from a wide variety of sources. For instance, you can find cinemagraphs illustrating what routine looks like (and perhaps why it should be broken now and then), news about sugar batteries, a fold-up electric bike, how one country is finding leadership via works of art, a “smartphone sidewalk” in China — and many more!
Flipboard has made the collation of such material into a neat, quick, easy-to-read package. It’s brilliant. That may be one reason why the July 2014 issue of Entrepreneur [link] profiled its success with a great background story on the two people who came up with the concept, Mike McCue and Evan Doll:
Four years after hitting Apple’s App Store, Flipboard boasts more than 100 million active readers and adds 250,000 to 300,000 users every day. The company touts direct partnerships with more than 8,000 publishers. … Flipboard is now available for other Apple devices, as well as products running Google’s Android, Windows 8 and BlackBerry; there are versions of the app optimised for Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble’s Nook. Along the way, the firm has inked content deals with media giants like Oprah Winfrey’s OWN, Time , Condé Nast, ESPN, Hearst and The New York Times Company.
How To Subscribe
The easiest way to access our new magazine is to download the Flipboard application onto your tablet from your normal app provider or go to Flipboard directly [link]. Once on your tablet, open the app and search for the title “Disruptions and Diversions”, then click the “Follow” button. One difference between a print magazine and a Flipboard is that stories aren’t listed in a table of contents. Turn the pages with a flick of the finger and discover something new (and potentially valuable) on every page.
If you are not yet into tablets, you can also read the publication via any browser [link].
Disruptions & Diversions articles will be gleaned from a variety of sources and curated throughout each month. The newest articles appear first and older articles are then automatically archived. Dots on the bottom of Flipboard pages represent a timeline starting at the creation date. The dots denote quick links to the most recent additions. The journal will grow much larger over time, but the fresh material will always be up front.
I hope you’ll enjoy reading our new online journal. If you have a special request or a suggestion for a great article (or just your thoughts and reactions to what I’m publishing), please email me at flipboard@nextsensing.com [link]. Meet you on the bridge.