The Global Tiller has turned one! We wrote our first issue on April 1, 2020, thinking that if it doesn’t do well, we could always pass it off as an April Fool’s joke. Luckily, we didn’t need to do that.
You, our readers, let us know early on how much you appreciated our insights and encouraged us to continue to put this together. We can’t believe it’s actually been a whole year and, as our community grows, we are motivated to carry on.
Looking back, it has been a consequential year for all of us but we have come a long way. When we started writing The Global Tiller, we were under strict shelter-in-place orders to protect ourselves from a relatively unknown virus. Today, we are just four days away from getting our second Covid-19 vaccine dose. We wrote about the race for a vaccine in September and were worried about the growing number of 'vaccine hesitants' around the world. Now that widespread vaccine rollout has started, it is encouraging to see so many people lining up for a jab, eager to put this pandemic behind them.
The Covid-19 pandemic brought to the front many underlying issues simmering within our societies. It pushed back many of the gains made towards gender equality and female empowerment, forcing women to take on the bulk of domestic work. It exposed the insecurity of our food supplies, when interrupted supply chains caused gallons of milk and heaps of fresh produce to go to waste. It also made us restless and unable to tolerate structural racism and deep inequalities within our societies when thousands of people across the world marched for Black Lives Matter or when Indian farmers protested against unfair agricultural policies.
Within the context of the ongoing pandemic, we also explored other themes and trends that are shaping our world of tomorrow. We looked at how automation is impacting work, what urban mobility will look like in the future, what are some alternate economic models that show us a sustainable way forward, and even what kinds of families we can be a part of.
For the past year, we, at The Global Tiller, have tried to create a global community of conscious and decisive citizens by exploring issues and coming up with solutions in a global manner, rather than working in our silos, restricted by national borders. At a time when journalism is dominated by the narrative of mainstream media led by large corporations, we believe The Global Tiller offers an alternate and more inclusive perspective on news and trends of the world.
With that goal in mind, we ask you to help us grow our community even bigger this year. Tell us which topics you’d like us to cover. Let us know when you don’t see eye-to-eye with our takes. Give us a shout out if our insights spark ideas in your mind.
If you’d like to give a birthday present 🎁 to The Global Tiller, please do think about asking your family, friends and colleagues to subscribe to the free newsletter. The growth of our subscribers is key to ensuring that we continue to bring you our weekly insights.
It has been a pleasure sharing this past year with you. We hope that the journey has been thought-provoking for you as well.
Until next week, take care!
Hira - Editor - The Global Tiller
If you’d like to read our previous issues, you can access our archives here.
Onwards and upwards
Since I started Pacific Ventury in 2015, my goal was to help organisations and individuals get ready for what’s coming by being more adaptive, more open-minded and more agile. “What’s coming” has come and now the world is quite different.
To quote the World Economic Forum, last year felt like a Great Reset, which implies rethinking our situation. Things are new and different so we can’t just rely on the previous methods to continue to develop.
The idea behind The Global Tiller was to address the great reset — to help you understand the "new", to identify the key trends in the global noise, to find a new perspective that will lead to new insights because the mainstream perspective was no longer relevant.
The year 2020 really challenged our entrepreneurial mindset. We ventured out of our Pacific perspective (no pun intended) and took a leap of faith by trusting our ability to create something that will bring value to the broader global community. We’re still in the humble beginnings of this venture but I’m convinced we’re on the right path and we’ve managed to unlock a potential of opportunities. Now, we need to keep the ball rolling and growing.
Thanks to this initiative we took, we managed to rethink our company. Pacific Ventury has a clear new mission: helping organisations and people understand the world and assist them in developing better interactions to prepare for tomorrow.
This led to a profound reorganisation of the company, which now operates three branches under this shared mission:
Pacific Ventury Business that works with organisations by helping them understand, through customised services, the world and their role in the times to come;
Curious Communities that stimulates our community by sharing insights, questions and curious perspectives through interactive, fun and inclusive events;
Pacific Ventury Media that shares unique perspectives, insights and ideas through our newsletters: The Global Tiller (English) and Te Hoe (French), and our podcasts: Pacific Toks (English), and Pacific Buzz and Pacific Hoe (French).
We’re living in terrible but amazing times. The challenges ahead are immense. We will, as a company, as a community and as a species, be able to rise to the challenges only if we make sure we understand where we are, who we are, where we’re going and why we’re doing all this. This is our mission to help everyone find potential answers to those questions.
We hope to continue sharing with you all as we continue this work. As for now, thank you for your support, your feedback, your comments, and just for taking the time, every week, to spend a few minutes with us.
Navigating in these new times is much like the Polynesian voyagers heading out at sea: looking at the stars for guidance, observing their surroundings to understand where they are and working as a crew to make sure everyone reaches the next shore safely. As we’re heading towards our next shore in these uncertain times, we offer you a tiller to navigate efficiently in this complex world.
Philippe - Founder - Pacific Ventury