Dave Morin

Flickr’d by davemorin.

It’s days like this that remind me why I’ll always leave a part of my heart in San Francisco. Check out my six picture “SF Glow” set on Flickr.

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

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)

Flickr’d by davemorin.

One of my favorite parts of a summer in Helena, Montana is the Montana Summer Symphony. Usually, I head home for what usually turns into a fantastic night of music and a ridiculous sunset.

This year I instead went to a wedding for one of my greatest friends in Denver, Colorado. But, thought I would post this fantastic picture my mother sent in anyway.

Montana really is the last best place.

Little geek humor to start your day courtesy of The Daily Show…