Source: Farhan Rehman’s ConsciousComms.co.uk

Usually, when it comes to this time of year, I like to look into a crystal ball, and start thinking about what I think is going to be up and coming in the year to come.

Most times, those posts get stuck as drafts, and become a constant reminder of how there’s never enough time to synthesise my thinking, other times, I end up choosing not to publicly share my views, and opinions (there’s something about having your own personal take on things, which sometimes it’s nice to keep personal

This year, I’ve decided to try a different approach. I want to talk to as many people as possible about what they think has been the big trends of 2011, and where they think 2012 is headed.. In the spirit of collective wisdom being smarter than any one individual, I’m curious to see what a ‘collaborative’ vision of 2012 looks like, and how 2011 looked, through the eyes of peers, and colleagues old and new..

So if you’re interested in sharing your two cents, please feel free to chime in below, in the comments, or to get in touch, if you’d be up for a short 5 minute interview. I want to get a much more granular view of the Social Landscape across Europe, for 2012, as it looks like a much more interesting tapestry of changing user behaviour, than has been in recent years past, so I’ll be reaching out to folks individually, as well as collectively, to piece together a collective vision of what 2011 was, and what 2012 could be, from the eyes of the “Social Media” Professional community.

If you want to get involved, drop me a line on farhan [at] consciouscomms [dot] co [dot] uk.

Hopefully, the effort will produce something that’s of as much value to the community as it is to me Here’s to a fantastic end of 2011, and a great 2012!

I responded to Farhan via email with this:

Two thoughts I have on trends for 2012:

1) Social in enterprise (Google+ for Google Apps)
I reckon Google will drop the final pieces of the + puzzle into place. Already we’ve got Circles in our Gmail, I reckon it’ll take over Sites as we’ve already seen it start to with Blogger; but who cares – the best part will be when it arrives in Google Docs. Imagine being able to set up a project Circle for the team members inside and external to your enterprise, then drop docs into the Circle as the sharing/permissions mechanism.

2) Social events (Twitter)
Spode and I started ThinkWall because we believe that Twitter is the ideal platform for enhancing events. The problem throughout 2011 has been that most event organisers we have spoken to have seen Twitter as something that is bolted-on to their event. It’s a “nice-to-have” feature and often a last minute consideration. My prediction for 2012 here is that Twitter becomes integrated and inbuilt, so that social is the backbone to all marketing efforts – before, during and after the event. This will become so much easier for event organisers to piece together when the event dashboard startups really begin to make an impression.

I look forward to seeing if I was accurate this time next year!