WTF: A journey into the future

I am pleased to be able to report that WTF is being watched all over the world, but as a Canadian it is always the most exciting, the most nerve-wracking, the most thrilling to be seen in Canada. We are extremely proud to be airing on the Travel + Escape channel, and I hope more than anything that my fellow Canadians watching Travel + Escape will enjoy what we have done – and appreciate where we have been.

This has been a very personal journey for me and I urge you please to get in touch with me on TravelandEscape.ca to let me know what you think about the show. I will be blogging here regularly so come and say hi, and let me know what you loved and what you hated, what inspired you and whether my outfits made me look fat – anything at all.

And so onto the show.

So, where on earth do you start on a journey to discover just how unexpected the future will be? Do you go to where the youngest people are? The richest? The most educated? Do you chase down the latest technologies? The newest smart phone app? The coolest social media startup?

These are all valid starting points in their own way, but I thought that if I really wanted to track down “The future you couldn’t imagine,” I would have to start in “The places you would never expect.” And that’s exactly what I did. I started in the place that, if you believe the mainstream media, is coming almost stone last in the international race for development. A place where the problems are so large and so varied that the world appears to have given up all hope of ever seeing real change there. A place where it seems the desperation of charity has completely overrun the confidence of industry. A place filled with violence, poverty, disease and corruption. I went to the place you would never expect, and you know what? It worked. I glimpsed a future you just couldn’t imagine.

I went to Africa.

I went to Africa and yes, I did find all those terrible things I had been led to expect. But I also found some of the most extraordinary and inspiring people I have ever met. I found ingenious ideas, passionate entrepreneurs and technologies I had never seen. I found vision, commitment and passion. Among the people I met and talked with I found a flexibility and a resilience I have seen nowhere else. In short I found a future. A vibrant, urgent and positive future waiting to come true

It was an incredible trip and the ideal beginning for the larger journey of WTF. I returned bursting with motivation and righteous anger that the ‘whole story’ of Africa has not been told anywhere really. I know this is bandied about all over the place these days but this has been a life changing experience for me. I hope that you watch every episode and if we have done our job right you should come away with at least a part of the wonder and enthusiasm I did.

Thanks for watching,

- Warren Kimmel

What The Future (WTF) premieres on Travel+Escape channel Thursday, Nov. 3 at 10:30pm ET.