How to stop scanning and turning your sight off for novelty while on vacations? The answer is simple: It's impossible.

Scanning for weak signals is something that is inherent of certain types of personality (always seek for what's new) or if you are someone, like me, who contributes to networks to share signals, you simply can't stop.

After discussing with other trend and foresight expert it seemed to be a contagious wound that curious mind simply continue to be curious even tho they are clocked out.

Unless I am wrong and you figured out a way to turn your scanning brain off during vacay. In that case, I would love to know your secret recipe, send me a note.

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Scanning on vacation

To remedy to the situation and perhaps to do some scanning for signal in a more intuitive and vacay way, I want to offer different journey and different sources of information you can consult.

🗺️ CitybyCity Toronto Guide : I think I've never shared this work, end of 2022 I helped WGSN compiled a list of up and coming inspiring creative spots around the city. (subscribers only)

🗺️ Montreal Creative Journey: Review this pretty cool trendsetter from a summer ago sharing sweet spots in Montreal where to be creative and inspired.

🗺️ Els-where around the world: Els Dragt (writer of How to research trends) have a folder of different trend field map: Paris, Montréal, Rotterdam, Nottingham compiled with the help of contributors.

Vacation source

To change the routine, we ditch online research and newsletters during the summertime and start looking for new things elsewhere:

• People Watching: In the street, while walking in busy places, it is possible to do people watching and spot emerging behaviors
• Onboard Mag: Plane, train in waiting areas. You will find new sources of information
• Sports & activities: Who says vacation often says outdoor. Is there a new offer for tourists, a poster in the local newspaper that catches your eye? Note it.
• Destination monitoring: It is also interesting to ask yourself the question: what are the new destinations that seem to have the wind in their sails? What are the new routes available and why do you think they are available at this time. The dashboards of train stations and airports are good places to collect this information.
• Talk to professionals: Vacations also rhyme with other types of travel: taxi, Uber, car rentals, customer service of all kinds. Take the opportunity to ask these employees how their days change / What are the new cases that they seem to have more and more.

Bike Valet Signal spotted in Vancouver, BC during a summer trip in 2022 ​

Spontaneous carpooling Signal spotted in Brome-Missisquoi on the way back from summer 2023 camping

& to log scans while on vacation: The word to stick to is: easy-peasy. Remember you are on vacations? I know some foresight practitioners have very elaborate systems to log signals, but while on vacay might be easier to just simply:

📸Take a snap (see picture above of bike valet)

📝Or write the idea on a piece of paper

📱Or take a quick digital note on your favorite app

And the heavy lifting of spelling out the description for the signal or tagging it can wait for your hometown return, but you will have a trace of it to not forget!
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Extra news

• ​List of newsletter to keep scanning, even when you change email (like me) - on Linkedin
• Started to repair a bunch of objects, if you want to follow along the repair saga switch to my instagram profile (in French only)

This will be the last trendsletter in this format, the next one will deep dive into a project I have been keeping secret. Super excited to share next month!

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Talk soon