• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, January 10, 2024

To kick off the year, I decided to make a wish list of habits and resolutions I hope the modern world would be forced to adopt.  Some are light-hearted and some are not.

For brands and marketers: When you attend an event, please stick around after your session.  The event industry has done an impressive job recovering from the nightmare that was the pandemic, and has put together some incredible events these last two years.  Universally these events are intended to create networking opportunities between brands and vendors, platforms, and technology.

Make some time to network, take meetings and engage.  Events companies spend lots of money catering to your needs, and when you leave early, it’s a diss to the hard-working folks who did all of this for you and the industry as a whole.

For society as a whole: Start looking up.  I don’t mean that figuratively, but literally.  Have you been out in public and watched the people around you who are milling about?  Go to a mall.  Go to the grocery store.  Everybody’s looking down, staring into the mirrored abyss of their phones.  Nobody looks around and observes anything anymore.

As Yogi Berra once said, “You can observe a lot just by watching.” However, we are raising a generation of people who will never observe anything because they feel compelled to fill every waking minute with engagement with their phones.

I fear for the implications of this trend.  Less observation means less social interaction, missed opportunities for growth, and less of those “can you believe what just happened” experiences that shape us for who we can become.  I love digital media as much as the next person, but maybe society can adopt some updated norms that make it less accepting to be staring endlessly downward. 

And most importantly, as we enter a politically charged year that will feature an election of great magnitude: Please stop hating.  Hate is a powerful word, one  we should abandon in modern times. 

I know that’s asking a lot.  We overuse the term:  “I hate this weather.” But hate is not healthy.  It is not helpful.  It is an ugly emotion and only leads to negative outcomes.

Stop hating people because they are different.  Stop hating people because they don’t agree with you or your views.  Let’s just simply stop hating for any reason.  It is OK to “not like” something or someone and yet be open to engaging in a discourse.  Maybe things will more decent and positive as we head into what is likely to be a very contentious year.

With that, I bid you a happy, profitable, and enjoyable new year!