Dave Morin

My experience last week at TED was inspiring and humbling on many levels. There were so many incredible talks that it is hard to even put together a highlight post. But, one talk stood out above all of the rest and it looks like the TED Community whole heartedly agreed. Today the TED team posted Elizabeth Gilbert’s “A different way to think about creativity.” This talk is moving beyond words for anyone who lives the creative life every day.

Here it is. Enjoy.

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As I have been having many more extensive conversations on the digital divide between the various currently available generations, I’ve come across some great source material in the last few weeks. But most notably one article from TechWeb: Younger Generation Embracing Technology Like Never Before

Now, this is somethign that we in the technology world have been talking about profusely over the last year or so. But, as I mentioned in a recent post, this is something that many boomers are unaware of, and very important to lend a thought to. The most notable quote from the article being:

Gen Yers spend an average of 12.2 hours online every week, which is 28 percent longer than Gen Xers and almost twice as long as older Boomers, which range from 51 to 61 years old, Forrester said. Gen Yers are 50 percent more likely than Gen Xers to send instant messages, twice as likely to read blogs and three times as likely to use social networking sites.

What this basically means is that choices on communication, collaboration, and media are being taken online by the Digital Generation (as refered to here as Gen Y, can also be called Gen M, or the Hand-Me-Up generation).

The most important underlying fact here is that our generation uses the online world as a social space. Interacting with friends, consuming media, collaborating, and creating for reconsumption back into the internet.

How does this apply to management and work space decisions? When an entire generation is used to essentially “living” part of their waking lives online.

Are 9-5 workdays as important anymore? Should the office/school/home environment be adjusted to suit different collaboration and workflow styles? Should the current social software interface styles be more like those environments? How?

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At the reception for one of my best friend’s wedding this weekend, I had the fortunate opportunity to sit at a table with a family of 4 from Denver. The 13 year old son remained the topic of conversation for most of the dinner as mom had some very real concerns relating to a game that her son has been playing “too much” of, RuneScape. Mom had many concerns about her son’s privacy, quantity of gameplay, and even went so far as to say:

Sometimes I wish he would just stop playing with the thing and watch some TV.

Whoa.

This got me thinking (and talking about) the world of parenting the digital generation. Most of mom’s concerns revolved around the what she perceived to be her son’s need to make friends in the “real” world, not in the online one. Or rather, he should be playing outside with his “real friends.”

Now being that I spend most of my days thinking about (and working in) the online world, I think that I sometimes naively forget that the aggregate “we” (and mostly those currently parenting high school age children) haven’t realized that the convergence between the on and offline worlds has already happened. And, that is especially true for your children.

It used to be that your online friends and your offline friends were different sets of people. In 1999 you had a screen name on AOL with which you cloaked yourself in a veil of false privacy. Because the internet was so vast, and uncharted, that screen name helped you establish an identity online that you were comfortable with. So, you kept two sets of friends. One on, one off.

That’s all changed. The internet’s not the scary place that it used to be (though there will always be shady characters causing headlines). People understand it for the most part, and now, for your kids:

The online world is the new city park.

The games your kids play, the instant messaging that they do, and all of those social network sites they participate in are all social collaboration and learning grounds. So, be careful how much you try to fiercely control that environment. If it was the real world, you’d let your child run down the street, and play with their friends.

Remember, you can use parental controls, privacy policies, and any kind of “closed” type of technology environments on your kids. But, they’ll always find a way to sneak out the window, and go meet up with their friends to play a game of kick-the-can with their friends. Things haven’t changed all that much (they never really do). It’s just an on (and) off line world now.

The skills that they are acquiring with all of that time online are going to help them in the long run. Trust met. At the end of the conversation that night (to illustrate for mom), I turned to a work colleague of mine who manages hundreds of people, and asked him how often he uses instant messaging with his people every day. And, he explained to mom that without it, he’d never be able to get in touch with many of his people.

Instant messaging a tool he uses every day. And, he’s a boomer. A progressive one at that. Remember, I repeat, those skills your child is learning are going to be vastly important in the world that they are growing into.

Written from North Beach – San Francisco, California

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Last week I was having a lot of conversations around the changing habits of my generation in relation to email. One of those conversations proved fruitful with a college friend of mine who said:

I get all of my work done through facebook and myspace. I don’t even use email anymore.

Now, this friend wasn’t talking about “hanging out” online. This friend does marketing on college campuses.

The very next day, I came across this article, discussing the demise of email in generation m. My favorite quote, is the last paragraph from a Ms. Kirah up at Microsoft:

For that reason, she says bosses should go right ahead and use their e-mail — and should not feel threatened by IM.

“Like parents, they try to control their children,” she says. “But companies really need to respond to the way people work and communicate.”

The focus, she says, should be the outcome.
“Nine to 5 has been replaced with ‘Give me a deadline and I will meet your deadline,’ ” Ms. Kirah says of young people’s work habits. “They’re saying ‘I might work until 2 a.m. that night. But I will do it all on my terms.’ “

And, I can’t agree more. This drives down one of my earlier posts talking about the changing perception of time. Our generation grew up with the internet, using it as a knowledge tool throughout our entire lives. Instant messaging enables fast collaboration, worldwide. Social networking sites ensure you can always find collaboration partners no matter where they are. Thus, having to “know” an email address (which may change due to a wedding, new job, etc) is becoming a thing of the past.

Managing digital natives is as easy as saying: here’s your deadline, get it done. We’ll take off on a worldwide information tour gathering the best feedback for the project, quickly and effeciently. Because, due to tools like Facebook, not only do we know where to find each other, but we know what jobs everyone is doing and what skills they have aquired.

We’ll get the best answers and solutions to the problem or project. Then, see you in the presentation

(A quick early morning follow up: JP Rangaswami did a great follow up from London last night check it out)

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I sat at sushi last week with some great friends from the world of web 2.0 and open source; exuberant and brilliant people like Chris and Tara, John and his wonderful wife Malgosia. And, some new ones; Ben, Tantek, Sean, and JP. The conversation proved a fascinating one, filled with thoughts on social software, open source, and even the future of market models.

And I thought to myself, hmm…the future of digital markets. This is being driven by my generation.

We don’t accept the status quo.

We weren’t taught to.

Markets are going to change.

What a fascinating topic. And, fundamentally exactly why I chose Economics as my major back at the University of Colorado.

Then, later that week, JP wrote this blog after he took a look at one of my earlier posts talking about how to manage our generation. And, he is right on the money. The world is evolving so rapidly through technology and the social connections it creates, that many firms and managers can’t keep up. Our generation connects, communicates, and moves about at ridiculously fast speeds.

As we move into the work force, more and more of us will look for the best small teams, the most interesting projects, and open technology and collaboration systems.

From you, boomers, we’ll look for open networks and communication vehicles. We’ll want to communicate as rapidly as we have for our entire lives. In this respect, your closed communication networks just won’t do. We can’t handle not using email, or IM at work. You built those networks for us outside of work, and we grew up on them.

So if they don’t exist inside the walls, we’ll build ways to do it outside of your closed and arbitrary networks (like Facebook). And, this isn’t to say we’re being negative about it, it’s just to say, we want to communicate and do the best work possible in the ways that we were taught to. We’ll build these tools, and hand them up to you. Because, that’s the way you taught us to. That’s what the Web 2.0 movement is about. Open source, open systems, open people, and open work.

How will you begin to think about managing that? A generation that can learn any job, any function, and any piece of technology at an insanely rapid speed. A generation that feels free to communicate openly about themselves and amongst themselves on the largest network in human history.

Now, this is also the reason I’ve started work on a book, and the culmination of much of the work that I have done over the last couple of years in the education sector looking at how students use technology and interact in digital learning environments.

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