The Year is 2031

This article first appeared in the Metal Toad newsletter. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here to stay up-to-date on the latest cloud insights for the Media & Entertainment industry from Metal Toad.

Like many people, I woke up on January 1, 2021 ready for a reset. 2020 was a doozy, and I was ready to turn the page and get back to normal. Now almost a month into the year, the events in recent days—not only here in the U.S.A. but also in many parts of the world—have made me sit back and reflect on what my expectations should be for the year 2021 and even farther into the future.

In a recent conversation with our CTO, Tony Rost, he pointed out that many of the things we see now were predicted:

• the collapse of retail
• an increase in remote work
• a move to stream more media content in the home
• broad distribution of MRNA vaccines

All of this was predicted...only set ten years in the future. For me, this was an epiphany. We did not wake up on January 1st in the year 2021. It is the year 2031.

Please let that sink in.

For me personally, this has been a hard thing to wrap my head around. I would love to return to the way the world was back in 2019, and I keep hearing people in the news talking about a return to normality. The definition of normal might be:

• meeting a certain threshold of vaccine distributions
• reopening of businesses (restaurants, salons, etc.)
• not needing to wear masks in public places
• an easing of international travel
• a return to physical schools for kids
• it being ok to hug a loved one
• all the above

No matter what the measure, that day of returning to normal is always set some place out in the future, just around the corner, and it has been for the past ten months. While I think things can improve, I no longer believe that things will ever be the same as they once were. Further, if we wait for things to change back, we will miss the opportunity to make the present moment — the new normal — the best that it can be. 

So if the lives we are living today are the new normal, how can we create great experiences for ourselves, our teams, our customers, and our communities?

• How can we create amazing work from home experiences?
• How can we help support study-from-home parenting scenarios?
• What does a premium client work-from-home experience feel like?
• How tied are we to our present geography?

At Metal Toad, we’ve been thinking about this a lot, and we’d love to know your thoughts and questions. On this day in 2021, we realize that the world has changed faster than anyone expected, but we are excited to be entering the future with our eyes wide open together.

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