Enter the Future Friendly Manifesto. In order to become more future-friendly, we must:

1. Acknowledge and embrace unpredictability.
2. Think and behave in a future-friendly way.
3. Help others do the same.

I want to expound on what I think it means to be future-friendly and why you need to care.

Provide Real Worth

People’s capacity for bullshit is rapidly diminishing. As technology becomes more ubiquitous, people are getting used to the idea of interacting solely with things they want to interact with whenever they damn well please.

For companies and creators who have long enjoyed force-feeding their own flavor of bullshit to the masses, this is a very scary thing. However, this doesn’t need to be the case. The opportunity exists for creators to reach people, however it can’t be in the insincere methods of the past. Instead, we must deliver real worth.

Content Like Water

In order to provide real worth, we must deliver strong, purposeful content to people wherever they may be. Currently, this includes a plethora of mobile devices, tablets, e-readers and more, but this is just the beginning.

Instead of chasing down the latest and greatest device of the month, focus your efforts on creating worthwhile content that is properly structured to go anywhere. Because it will be going everywhere.

“We need to build smarter content, not smarter containers.” — Stephanie Rieger

Beyond the Desktop

One small step for man. One giant step in the right direction. I’m in the web world and I think it’s amazing that 50% of web designers still don’t consider mobile. I hate to break it to you, but people aren’t lining up around the block to get the latest Dell tower. It’s time to acknowledge the diversity of connected devices and prepare for even more diversity. We don’t know what the future holds, but we need to be ready. Take that first step in the right direction and begin designing for diversity.

Pragmatic Idealism

No one has the answers. In fact, we all have a hell of a lot more questions. We know that we can’t predict the future and that things can’t change overnight. But we can move in a more future-friendly direction. And that’s going to take all of us. It’s going to require rethinking how we work, the tools we use and most importantly the things that we make. Let’s advocate for better tools: CMSes, browsers, design tools and better interplay between devices.

Into the Great Wide Open

Let’s embrace the unpredictability of the future. Let’s create meaningful content for people and encourage others to do the same. The future is ours to make —friendly.

Thank you

I had the surreal opportunity to spend several days tucked away in a remote house outside of Nashville with a group of amazing people. It’s one thing to get to meet your heroes. It’s another to collaborate with them. I want to thank my fellow mobinauts that have forever changed the way I think:

• Josh Clark
• Luke Wroblewski
• Lyza Danger Gardner
• Jason Grigsby
• Scott Jehl
• Scott Jenson
• Jeremy Keith
• Bryan Rieger
• Stephanie Rieger

Check it out on Flickr.

Wednesday #3

This is the third installment of my “weekly” design series. I guess I should have been more realistic in regards to how consistent I would be with this project, but thankfully only a week slipped by.

Blue, orange and concentric circles are in full effect here. These are a few of my favorite things.

Monday #1

This is the beginning of (hopefully) a weekly occurrence. In an effort to set aside some quality time for creativity, I’m going to attempt to update the same PSD every week on Monday. I will add, edit, subtract, whatever to the same document and post the results. The idea is over time it will grow into something completely different than what it is today. It should be fun to watch the evolution as it grows, like one of those dinosaurs you soke in water and they get huge as they soak up the water (genius).

This is getting ambitious, but hopefully I can force myself to do this enough to want to do more pieces like this in a series and eventually have at least a couple in strong rotation.

Check back next Monday or subscribe to my RSS feed for the first revision to the above document. Comments and criticism welcome.