The launch of Dion Chang’s new Flux Trends Review, The state We’re In – held at Gingko Food Market in Parkview, Johannesburg – was a fabulous, funky, fascinating do. All of the five senses were stimulated with organic bubbly from a farm that uses ducks and molesnakes rather than pesticides; scrumptious organic vegetarian snacks and vegetable juice shooters from Gingko; aroma and colour therapy candles from Spa-Valous that melt to become massage oils; and sound from the Fatboy, a new docking system from BlackBerry, which joined forces with Chang’s Flux Trends on the night.
The State We’re In is the second Flux Trends book from Pan Macmillan. It comprises a commentary, through the voices of a collection of erudite and respected contributors, on just where we are in the major arenas of human endeavour – sports, business, technology, politics and entertainment – as well as in personal areas like sexual identity and morality.
Chang detailed the book’s structure: each contributor writes a chapter on one of ten “pillar” subjects; this content is then filled out with Flux observations, which are like “ten snacks between the pillars, these are little things that are on the radar, so it really is a 360 degree look at the world.” Many of the contributors were on the social radar at the launch, demarcated by badges with the cover design – designed by Donovan Pugh at Nice Work – ready to pronounce upon the latest trends to many an enquiring mind amongst the guests.
Chang said that in 2009 we had a “global peak experience” – and that “there has been a seismic shift in our value systems” since. He spoke about how the, “global financial crisis was a breaking point… we are facing a new world order as we come to the start of the ‘female century’”. Chang describes this time as the dawning of an “empathetic economy”, key to which is engagement and communication. He said, “we live in a ‘pick and mix’ society and we have an ambient awareness,” where we may be more in touch with a relative through twitter than we are with people in our own city.
Chang asked Mark Stopworth to explain what a social media company does and Stopworth spoke about a “prosumer”, who is a simultaneous producer and consumer. He said that with social networking tools we have narratives from communities that we did not have access to before, and thus, “we are moving from an information age into an attention economy, everyone can be an expert, attention is the new commodity and community is priceless.”
Mondli Makhanya spoke about the state of the nation and said about the 2010 hype that we are doing the right thing to be ready in terms of infrastructure but we might be missing, “that soul thing… it is one of those moments we should not waste.”
Guests did not walk away from the launch empty handed, there was a draw where two gift hampers and the one and only lilac BlackBerry in South Africa, flown in for the event, were given away. At the door there were gift packs with bottles of living water to revitalise guests as they travelled to their next destination.
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