If you want to know what kind of future we're headed for, try talking to young adults. Better still, get in touch with Robert Barnard, a 29-year-old with a strong belief in the power of youth to change organizations and communities. The latest manifestation of this is d-Code, a Toronto-based consulting firm he founded to help public- and private-sector clients get a handle on the needs and desires of 18- to 35-year-olds, that demographic slice popularly known as the Nexus Generation.

There's dawning awareness, he says, that the Nexus generation carries enormous clout. It totals six million people in Canada and 10 times that number in the United States.