Distilling a Year with the Zeitguide 2015
An informative, annual guide to key themes, plus a weekly email that breaks down the world’s most pressing news
There’s a reason we continue to feature the Zeitguide from Grossman & Partners. Each week, founder and CEO Brad Grossman, and his ever-expanding team, cull through over 2,000 pieces of source material on breaking news, global trends and key topics. They scour industry publications and chart courses across the internet—and they have access to experts within all fields. Generally, the knowledge they gain is distilled, contextualized, and imparted upon an array of top-tier clients. However, at the end of each year, they turn their informed insights into a guide made available to everyone. This year’s print edition contains over 100 pages of digestible facts and analysis on everything from digital developments to content consumption habits, health and wellness advancements and even scientific breakthroughs—all of which is coupled with illustrations by artist Kristofer Porter. In an age where every moment is breaking news, the Zeitguide stays on top of it so nothing slips through the cracks for those looking to be informed.
This is Grossman’s fifth year producing the Zeitguide. “So many more things are happening in the world and spread through the various tools available to us,” he shares with CH. Within the digital iteration (which comes with the purchase of the print version), Grossman notes that there are “450 links embedded. You can read the Zeitguide as a narrative, or dig deeper into subjects that compel you.” All of Grossman’s sources are noted, something that reveals the extent of his team’s research. This is a comprehensive investigation, complete with a bibliography, that will guide you through complex issues in 2015. Additionally, purchasing the Zeitguide means receiving a weekly follow-up email. “Each one is a 500-word instruction manual on everything you need to know about a specific subject. One doesn’t have time to read everything and people are bombarded—the newsletter culture is overwhelming. However, we’re scouring the world of content and ideas. We distill all that information into an easy to read narrative. The topics range from Snapchat or Alibaba, or the economic effects of ebola and climate change.”
Grossman insists he himself is not an expert, but a curious individual with vast research capabilities and the power to connect the dots. In a way, however, he is an educational expert. “I love learning. I’ve always been a professional student. What I really like doing is observing and thinking about what it means. I’ve been an educator for my entire career: tutoring high school kids then tutoring a Hollywood mogul, now I teach entire companies and businesses.” As for the important topics of 2015, Grossman observes that the rising power of the American dollar will play a great role, despite the fact that retail sales remained very low at the end of 2014. But what is most interesting to him, “culturally speaking, these video game spectator sports, the virtual reality—Oculus Rift—infatuation, micro-celebrities and all of these tech-driven escape systems in the face of a culture whose taste has shifted toward valuing the artisanal and things that are homey.” There’s all that and more in the Zeitguide 2015.
You can order the Zeitguide online, where the print and digital edition bundle, with the weekly emails, sells for $150. The digital edition alone sells for $50.
Lead images courtesy of Grossman & Partners, illustrations courtesy of Kristofer Porter
