So...What's Next?!?

Managing Expectations

This week I will be launching our first online training class!

I do not want these sessions to be basic presentations that you can hear at conferences and association meetings. I want them to be real opportunities for learning and applying that knowledge to improve the lives and businesses of our students.

So in addition to putting together the training guides and lesson plan, I have been really studying adult learning theories. I found this link: Tips to Improve Interaction Among the Generations.

As I was taking notes, I was thinking about the different people in my life that fit into the stereotypical values and expectations of each generation. What I realized is the generation time clock is not so exact.

For example, because my first job right out of college was an IT recruiter, I fit the exact profile of the Generation Xers such as having the entrepreneurial spirit, perceived lack of loyalty to any one company, independence and creativity, and the need for continuous feedback.

However, these traits did not come from my upbringing. They came from my experience of watching who was getting hired, who wasn't, who was succeeding in their careers and who was staying stagnant. I got a front seat view of the consequences (good and bad) of people's career choices for the first 3 years of my own career.

What I saw was companies not investing in the long-term growth of employees - expecting to churn and  burn their teams. The rule at the time was 1 year was a long term employee - we would like to see someone with a track record of two years - anything over 5 years meant their skills had become stagnant. The team that got the highest pay and status were the contractors and consultants. This was the late 90's - the time when Gen Xers were coming of age.

As I read through the traits of the Baby Boomers, their expectations in life are a lot different. Where they are the same is in that both generations value change and innovation and believe in hard work. However to climb the company ladder, Baby Boomers believe in company loyalty and many still expect to be at their companies long-term.

Now the year you were born does not necessarily subscribe you to the traits and values of that generation. I know many people who were born between 1966-1977 that would like to stay with their company long term and go up the corporate ladder. Those values and ideas would have been passed down from their family. They may not have witnessed the chaos that I witnessed early in my career.

So how will this affect how I teach social media?

I am realizing that when I stress the "need to know" it has to align with multi-generational values. If you are a long-term employee climbing the corporate ladder, you "need to know" how to get recognized and add value to your organization. If you are in this game for your own development in spite of who you work for, you need to keep your skills relevant and in demand.

More importantly, while going through this exercise, I am starting to understand the generation gaps and cultural breakdowns more and more - there are definite bridges between the generations, but there needs to be some prodding to get each group to cross over them. The younger generations do need to look to the older generations more for some core values related to hard work, drive and resilience and the older generation can no longer throw there hands up and claim that these new technologies are for the youth.

This is definitely an area I expect to being exploring more along the way.

Coffee with my favorite skeptic

Sometimes we just need to have coffee.

I was invited by one of my favorite skeptics to meet for coffee this morning. We met at 8:30am and spoke until 11:30am. 3 hours of conversation about how the world is changing, is it for better or for worse, how we need to adapt, and is social media waste of time when we need to be billing for our hours.

My skeptic gave me the best visual ever. He said that as he is reading and attempting to be part of the social media world, every time he hesitates he see me as his "Jiminy Cricket" urging him on.

As we discussed the opportunities to get vital information from a simple tweet on Twitter, he said - "a tweet is a wish your heart makes."

Alright - someone has watched too many Disney movies.

We discussed the importance of learning how to learn. 150 years ago people needed to know how to think on their feet, solve problems and adapt to the wilderness for mere survivor. Today we are dealing with a wilderness of information, and we need to know how to think on our feet, solve problems, and adapt to the wilderness.

Although both of us had work to do, a three hour coffee discussion was just what I needed to refresh my spirit and connect all the reasons why I am so optimistic about the future of the world.

Every topic that came up, from privacy issues to HR concerns we were able to explore the changes that needed to happen in the world and the positives of those changes.

The only dark side in my view of the future is the fear of those who remain ignorant. I fear that information in the wrong hands can be used to influence those who do not take the initiative to be life long learners and skeptics. I fear a world of sheep in an environment where a charismatic person can broadcast a warped message loud and wide.   

I love that information is available to everyone to both find and contribute to. I feel that the participation of the masses is what protects us. I think, somewhere, deep down, that is what compels me to be such an advocate of participation by the masses.

Finally, I think  besides taking the time to participate in online communities, we need to take more time to have 3 hour coffee conversations. Life shouldn't be all about business transactions and networking. Every now and then we need to have the opportunity to connect simply to explore what we do all of this for.

The Possibilities of Mass Collaboration

I attended the Georgia Technology Summit today. So far I found a few blogs, some tweets, and Amani Channels video from the session. I am sure there are more to come. I will be saving the reactions here.

The keynote Speaker was Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics - the 2007 management book of the year.

I was very excited that this group would be introduced to his message, but I am a little concerned that it did not resonate with many.

Just follow some of the tweets;

StephenFleming:                

#gts2008 Seeing a lot of eyes glazed over here. I hope it's soaking in to some people.                  

jhaynie:                

#gts2008 -  *more people need* to read wikinomics in this room                

I actually saw someone dozing off!

Tapscott started with the 2007 Time Magazine person of the year as being “You.”

He discussed the growth of Facebook and MySpace that is happening all over the world and that there is a new blog created every second of everyday…

And then he dropped the "All this news is so 2006."

Today it is about a new way of productions. How we create goods and services and how companies communicate all over the world.

What was so timely about this message was the post on BusinessWeek

Social Media Will Change Your Business
Look past the yakkers, hobbyists, and political mobs. Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up…or catch you later

I would like to repeat...I saw people falling asleep this morning!!!

Tapscott also discussed how the new web is accessed throughout various “things” from chips in the door key for his hotel to smart houses.

He talked about how the physical world is becoming smart and interconnected bringing up;

Broadband Mobility

Geo-Spatiality (GPS Tour Guide)  and IntelliOne

He also discussed the idea of True Multimedia – You get to have a movie and be in the movie as well. Think of the next generation of game play with cinema.

I would say it is practically here with machinima.

Tapscott discussed the rise of web services and how the new web is based on XML – computation…..where every time you interact with the computer you are programming the global platform and the need to integrate internal systems to the global platform (AJAX)

He announced that people who keep thinking about the Internet as it used to be are making a big mistake.

Our kids, the ones coming into the workforce, known as the net generation, have no “fear” of technology because it is like air to them.

I hated computers in the 10th grade. Todays 10th graders do not know a world without computers.

How much of an accelerated change is this?...Tapscott showed the growth trend of this generation in regards to the population growth

Generations – Boom, Bust (Gen X) and then the  Echo (net gen) which is louder than the original boom.

For this generation time online is taking away from television. These kids watch less TV and they are multi-taking while interacting with all their digital devices.

62% of the time heavy Internet users bleep out TV ads. That means when they are watching television, they are watching it on their own terms.

Tapscott noted that this is the first time in history when children are the authority on something really important.

Tapscott highlighted the attitudes of the net gen based on  a panel with some kids awhile back.

"Why would I read a newspaper no links and only comes out once a day…"

"News is called an RSS feed and I can start my own newspaper."

"The Daily Show is not funny unless you know the news."

Kids expect to be engaged. As Tapscott pointed out;

Self organization has been around for the ages. Language is a function of self organization. But what used to take place over a millennia or centuries now can happen in a week or even a single day.

Tapscott noted that the average age of people who watch the nightly news is 62!

He also made a good case that the Internet is a platform for collaborations and that companies should not have websites anymore, they should be building communities.

Best question of the day...If you have employees wasting time on social networks…..is that a technology problem?

Sharing is Capitalism at it’s best because it is collaboration for innovation.

My Question – First I noted that there is a generation gap - from my spot in the room I thought I was the only one with a laptop trying to live blog (the wireless was not accessible) as opposed to all the bloggers we have at the SoCon events. But as you see a few others blogged the event -some of the "usual suspects" :)

Then I asked how the participants  of today's summit can find the balance of responding and managing these shifts as well as strategies to embrace and take advantage of these trends. Tapscott nailed the answer - just start contributing.

Overall it was a great event and I got to see a lot of people I know and meet a few new people.

Tonights closing quote;

We could go over the cliff. You would hope not. You would hope that people see what needs to be done. It's not rocket science. It's not difficult. It's not even all that costly. It's actually about the way you think about the world.

Tim Flannery

Down the path of accelerated change

I spoke at UGA again tonight - this time for the student chapter of International Association of Business Communicators. As I was walking to the Student Learning Center with one of the students she made the comment about how we all grew up on Word.

Now, I am not old, never do I feel old, but I had to pause at that moment and remind her that I did not grow up on Word. In fact when I started college in 1990 I had to write my papers on a typewriter which did have spell check, but unfortunately also had a correction ribbon of which I could not find where to buy the replacement. So every time I heard, beep beep, I would have to stop, backspace, get the whiteout and dab a little on the paper, blow on it and then start typing.

Actually come to think of it, this may be the root cause of all the typos I am cursed with today. As a defense mechanism, perhaps I stopped paying attention to the beep beep and the errors....

Windows did not come out until 1995 - at which time had I stayed on course I would have graduated college by then. Fortunately I did not stay on course and actually returned for my last two years of college in 1996 when in my first marketing class my professor started by writing email addresses and websites on the board. By 1998 I was questioning that same professor as to why there was not an course offered in Internet marketing and he encouraged me to write my own directed individual study.

Fast forward 10 years and I am standing in front of about 20-30 students explaining how the Internet has evolved and what that means to the business world. At the end of the presentation the students expressed to me that they felt like they were behind and needed to catch up.

We started talking more about acceleration referring to  8 tracks to albums, to CDs to mp3s - I mean we live it, but do most people stop to really reflect on how fast our lives and the way we do things change?

I started thinking about this more on the drive home - how there are so many people who are comfortable communicating and doing business the same old way that they will not change until they are made to feel uncomfortable. That might have worked in the past, but with the pace of acceleration, perhaps we will skip over the uncomfortable phase and into the irrelevant stage.

Perhaps that gets a little over dramatic. But honestly I am not sure. People adopt to new things really quick. Second Life and blogging was "weird' a little over a year ago to the exact same people who now claim to be experts in it!

So to break this down a bit...people can collaborate without time or geographic restraints to share ideas and create new tools that disrupt the status quo (Wikinomics), the barrier to entry in the marketplace is pretty low - especially since the cost to create and distribute is so low now (The Long Tail), Adoption through the Peer to Peer network accelerates at an ever increasing speed (Spider and the Starfish / Tipping Point) and people change their habits leaving others who have not adapted wondering what happened.

I really do not think I am being overly dramatic. I think we are seeing the most accelerated  changes and disruptions to our culture than we have ever experienced in the history of mankind. Even those with their head in the sand can't ignore these earth shaking vibrations.

"Next one may wonder what has to happen to an inactive object in rest-motion to      cause it to become active? Acceleration is the answer. If an accelerative force         (Newton's LAW I) is impressed upon the object, the object will immediately experience a change in its speed, direction, rate of rotation, or as many as all three at once. An      accelerating object is an active object. An object in rest-motion is an inactive object. Therefore, rest-motion is the opposite of acceleration which, conversely, is the opposite of rest-motion." (Article II: The Equality of Rest and Uniform Motion, paragraph 11)

Mindblogging BlogSavannah - GPSing & Geocaching

GPS is being used in tourism quite a bit.

More and more multimedia can be integrated into the GPS devices - example being shown, in Savannah when you are close to an attraction, such as the Olde Pink House - you can click on the link and learn more about that attraction and make the decision if you want to stop.

The devices are getting more engaging - not just to get a person from one destination to another but to enrich a person's travel and help them experience a destination.

Flickr has the ability to geo-tag your pictures (personally I have tried this manually and did not find it user-friendly yet).

If a user is using geo tagging you can see where their pictures were taken on a map.

These maps/pictures can then be put up on blog sites - enhancing the distribution and  allowing for people to share their experiences with their readers and peers.

GEEK SPEAK ALERT!

Track logs are in the GPS and in the camera which can help take the geo-code in the metadata so that Flickr can use the image to get an accurate account of where and when a picture was taken.

I have my thoughts of some applications for this such as tracking our environmental changes, news stories, and such, but I am struggling to know what an everyday person would use this for...however there was a time people did not know why an everyday person would want a computer...this will be interesting to watch as it evolves.

Google Maps for mobile. What if you do not have GPS - and you do not know where you are and need to find your way using your Mobile phone? Google has that covered.

The video that is being shown is convincing us that Google is not tracking us...it is not a big brother issue. They are just speaking with the phone from the cell tower. I just find it fun that they have to spend 30-40% of the informational video claiming they are not gathering data on us...um...yes they are...and that is how they are customizing searches. I have more thoughts on this...but that would get this off tracked.

Geocaching - www.geocacher-u.com

The ability to use this content to find information and attractions that most people are not aware of.

What kind of people are geo-cachers?  All kinds - it is not just extremist.