1.  Attention is the new currency. More content has been produced in the last 2 years than in all of recorded history.  Engage. Delight. Intrigue. Inform. Give me utility. If you must interrupt me with an “ad message,” you better reward me.

2.  A new media has never caused the death of an existing one.  PS: Anyone who calls himself a social media “expert” isn’t.  You can’t be an expert in something getting reinvented every day.

3.  Mobile is gonna be huge.  2011 will be “the year of body collision injury” caused by looking at your screen while walking. (“Mobile induced real world attention deficit.” MIRWAD) Virtual worlds, mobile commerce, geo location are today’s AM Radio. Tools will be breathtakingly cool.   People will get rich.

4.  People love stories, the more visual the better.  (He typed as the parrot, perched on his computer monitor, put on a small cowboy hat and sang “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man o’ Mine” while accompanying itself on an 8-inch ukulele.)  That said, it’s less about telling stories and more about building them.

5.  The winner of the social media economy has been announced:  Truth.  Hey companies, fess up to your failures honestly and transparently and in real time, or have a good crisis plan to face the blowback.

6.  What a company does is more important than what a company says.  (See also:  number 5.)  Authenticity rules.

7.  Strategy first. Tactics second.  That will never change.  Yes, there are more shiny toys and tools every day, but if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.

8.  ROI = Risk of Ignoring.

9.  It’s a beta world.   Try. Learn. Repeat.   You have to be willing to fail to achieve more.

10:  Devices that try to predict and fix what I’m typing must stop causing me more work. When I type: “I’m on PTO, I don’t mean “I’m on POT.”

-- Reid Holmes, executive creative director

(Editor’s note: this post first appeared on The Minneapolis Egotist blog, as part of a collection of end-of-the-year thoughts by local creatives.)