cazh1: on Business, Information, and Technology

Three Dimensions of the Conversation - Millenials and Web 2.0

Catching up on some old links - all related to the impact of Web 2.0, and especially the incoming Millennials, on the workplace.

• At internetnews, Kuchinskas has laid out a pretty good summary of concerns about the philosophy of information sharing on the public Internet - this doesn't translate well to many corporate environments (see previously). Most of the article frets about the inevitable introduction of malware to the trusted network, but I think the hidden danger is the possibility of sensitive corporate information getting out. Publicly traded companies especially need to be concerned about this; the distinction between copyrighted artistic expression and corporate intelligence may be lost on those fresh out of college.
• Via Kottke.org, an interesting concept from Kevin Kelly; folks whose professions have been Turing'd (ie. outsourced via computers / technology advances) are generally more open to working with new technologies. This is a bit contrary to my previous post, and it makes sense - they've already been hit by the train once, and are certainly not going to get hit again. Besides, it's fun to extend the list of theories you never thought could be automated (like real-time driving directions) or eliminated (like newspaper classifieds) ...
• ... which leads me to this list (from SEOmoz) of things that the Millennials have never seen. Variations on this theme appear almost every year, the kind of world events or social movements that incoming college freshmen have never experienced. Nice to see one that puts the relative pace of technology change in the same perspective.
• We're finally seeing corporations like IBM and SAP working to add Web 2.0 and mash-up [clown-suit] capabilities into their major products. Another article calls out some research work that IBM is doing with current college students. I thought it was cool because I did some work like that in my senior year on a project sponsored by IBM. We wrote a virtual disk interface for the IBM 370 (yes, I had a PC XT with a mainframe for a floppy disk ...)
• In Computerworld, Thibodeau writes about the introduction of texting into the business world. I have this functionality right now with my Blackberry, and had it in the past running MSN Messenger on the iPAQ - so I know that texting has value to business. However, I don't think you'll get rid of IM for the folks still working at the desktop. I validated this with my teenage daughters - they favor texting because they're not in front of the computer as much as they are walking about with a phone in their pocket. However, I do note that my oldest prefers texting even when she's surfing the web in between social engagements. At best, there will be a nice mix of these styles, and hopefully we'll see e-mail traffic (and useless attachments, Reply All, and unmanageable inboxes) fade away.

There was a recent Q&A thread from LinkedIn Answers on the general topic of managing the Millennials - a representative sample of the three dimensions the topic encompasses:

1. Millennials are new elements in a threat matrix
2. Consumer technology entering the business
3. Communication challenges between the generations

• eMail on Blackberry Changes Definition of Acceptable eMail (September 19, 2005)
  
• Gee, this social network - presence - IM - knowledge management - collaboration stuff really works (September 25, 2005)
  
• My first month with the Blackberry Pearl (February 26, 2007)
  
• Corporate Web 2.0 is Spreading - Here comes the Blog (May 15, 2007)
  
• Consarned whippersnappers (Generational Diversity) (May 20, 2007)
  
• The Right Web2.0 Tool for The Job (July 16, 2007)
  
• The Best Way to get Web 2.0 Into the Enterprise (March 3, 2008)
  
• The Innovation Generation - Communication Styles (April 1, 2008)
  
• Why are those Old Programmers so slow in picking up on the Intarweb? (April 6, 2008)
  
• The Innovation Generation and User Interfaces (April 9, 2008)
  

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posted by James P. MacLennan at 1:43 PM | Permalink | 0 Comments