TREND #2: ULTRA-DIVERSIFICATION

With previously offline events — and even entire industries — going online, many people have access to opportunities and experiences that they couldn’t participate in before.

That means work and business is going even more global and audiences are becoming more diversified.

While our year long Momentum program has always had a global participant base with students from England, France, Germany, Australia and Japan, we now have students participating from further flung countries like Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Macedonia.

The internet has always promised a global audience, but that promise is being realized in a way that has never been done before. Local options are largely disappearing and customers are going online to find new options. That means that new global markets are opening up and expanding our customer bases.

That also means there’s an opportunity for greater specialization — for new players to step into vacancies in the market and serve audiences better (or differently) than they were currently being served.

For example, Momentum student, Candas Ifama Barnes was asked by Deaf Access Solutions to deliver a virtual workshop on “Voice Interpreting in a Virtual Setting” and a full 45% of the participants filled out an interest form to take the next steps with her after.

And she posted this on Facebook: “I’m excited because this workshop confirmed for me an extra special sauce I bring to what I’m teaching. Over 90% of the certified members of my profession are white and most are women. Black, Latina/o/x, Asian and Indigenous interpreters have been routinely disregarded, disrespected and dishonoured. The treatment is not unlike what we know has happened to people who are not white in basically every profession.

After many years of being sick and tired of hearing excuses about why it’s been this way, I set out on a conscious mission to make a difference and it’s happening. We have a long way to go but I am more convinced than ever.

Today I got further confirmation about why we must increase the numbers of qualified and excellent Interpreters of Colour. It MUST happen so Deaf and hard of hearing people of colour can tell their stories and have unfettered access to whatever they desire.”

This is an example of Ultra-Diversification at work. It’s long been said that the internet is the great equalizer, but now that the established order is giving way, there are more and more opportunities for new voices to emerge and people to choose exactly who they want to do business with.

Circumstances are causing many people to lose their livelihood and become online entrepreneurs for the first time, there’s a HUGE need (and opportunity) to niche down, specialize, differentiate, claim your “one thing” and turn up the dial on your self-expression so you can be heard above the noise of billions of people clamouring to be heard online.

No matter who you are and what you do, there’s an audience for you.

But — and this is a HUGE BUT — in many ways, it’s becoming more challenging to find that audience.