As 2015 winds down, we prefer to explore the future rather than look back at the year.  We're not alone. The NiemanLab asked “some of the smartest people in journalism and social media what they think is coming in the next 12 months.”

The responses vary across the board from individuals at various news outlets including All Digitocracy, The New York Times R&D, BuzzFeed, Reese New Lab at the University of North Carolina and more.

Any news entrepreneur will find their predictions useful. Here are the headlines and contributors:

“Social Platforms Scale Down Locally,” by John Clark, executive director of the Reese News Lab at the University of North Carolina

 “Engaging Audiences for Better Civic Discourse,” by Jennifer Choi,  a program officer for the McCormick Foundation’s Democracy Program

 “Women Get Treated as Equal Consumers of News,” by Mandy Velez, editorial director of news and identity at Revelist, a site targeting millennial women launching in early 2016

 “The Year We Get Our Ethical Houses in Order,” by Tracie Powell, founder of All Digitocracy and a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford

“Behind Closed Doors: The New Social Media” by  Alexis Lloyd and Matt Boggie,  creative director and executive director, respectively, of The New York Times R&D Lab 

 “Every Message Is a Push Notification,” by Masuma Ahuja, a social apps producer at CNN  

 “The Year of the Story,“ by Swati Sharma, digital foreign editor of The Washington Post    

 “Usability Overtakes Design,” by  Libby Bawcombe, senior visual product designer at NPR 

 “Just Tell A Story,” by Laura E. Davis, an editor on the BuzzFeed mobile news team