acidlabs

My friend, Nathanael (good little connected Gen Yer that he is), tweeted the following gem this morning:

Why Gen Y Is Going to Change the Web (I ticked all the boxes http://tinyurl.com/57brbb #

The link points to this post on the very excellent ReadWriteWeb.

It’s a good read, discussing many of the attributes we see as common amongst those tagged as Gen Y - digitally native, non-TV watching multimedia consuming, media savvy/anti-advertising, interested in real work-life balance, socially aware. But as someone who is solidly early Gen X (I’m a 1968 baby), I exhibit every one of these traits particularly strongly. So what’s the story?

I attribute this (unscientifically) to much about the way I choose to live my life and the work that I do. I’m an early adopter. I’m technically adept. I work in a job where change is a constant. There’s solid research that suggests the generational divide is at least in part less about age and more about life situation. I agree that as a group taken in aggregate, Gen Y exhibits these traits. And, again as a group they will ultimately be the catalyst for change societally and in business (and I can hardly wait).

Alli has an interesting and insightful post on the same issue.

Here you go… My talk from Interesting South 2008.
Unusually, I was incredibly nervous before and during this talk. I’m dreading seeing the video, as I don’t think it’ll be at all flattering or indicative of my usual style. I guess it was a combination of factors - really wanting to present at this event, being late in the schedule (which ran well over time), there being so many great talks on the night with me being third last and having so many people in the audience that I respect highly and whose opinions I value (thanks for being there - Jodie, James, Mick, Mark, Brad, Annalie, Jed, Kate, Gavin, Hans , Alan, Seth - you made the night for me, despite possibly adding to my terror).

| View | Upload your own

By now, many of you will have seen Clay Shirky’s great Web 2.0 Expo keynote, Gin, Television and Social Surplus. The link is in the slides. If you’ve not seen it, you need to; it’s inspiring, transformative stuff. I’m actually a little cross at Clay. He obviously sent aliens to steal my ideas for this talk.

When Clay speaks about the collective societal bender we’ve been on, he’s talking about us failing to make adequate use of the cognitive surplus we all have and are wasting by failing to participate actively. That said, it’s my view that some of the structure business has imposed upon society’s activities since it took the form it currently has during the Industrial Revolution actively work to make it difficult for groups of people throughout society to come together in a meaningful, productive way.

Bastard children of the Industrial Revolution

As humans, we’re social creatures. Beyond core physical and safety requirements, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is largely about integration into society; love, esteem and self-actualisation. We crave association; a community of some form, with others through family, work, school, sport or other interests. Yet the structures that we’ve built into society post-Industrial Revolution belittle those needs. At work in particular and in groups of all sorts, the needs of people have been bastardised into a corrupt form that meets the supposed needs of the of group at the expense of individuals.

We’re dumped into cube farms, or onto factory lines and told to work as a team. Yet it’s often the case that in working this way, our ability to converse and collaborate effectively with our fellow beings is removed from us. They’re removed through the imposition of bureaucracy, through command-and-control structures we’re forced to navigate and through being given work that fails to engage us.

Often, too, the tools we’re furnished with work as if some Infernal power gleefully watches as we’re forced to work against logic and against the way humans are naturally inclined to function. The storyteller in all of us is subjugated in favor of the need for us to be “productive” and our community stops being smart and becomes another dysfunctional cog in some dark satanic mill. In this situation, getting anything done becomes an issue. Our ability to collaborate and have a useful conversation goes the way of the committee. We get wrapped up in the Hell of email and Word documents as track changes and minutia rule and we suffer the pain of never being able to know which version is the latest, or which decision the group has made. We become massively inefficient. We’ve had it hammered into us by our archaic, Industrial Revolution functional model that the org chart rules and bureaucracy is king.

I am not a number — I am a free man!

Communities, by their very nature, engage in conversation constantly. But community by committee is a death by a thousand cuts. Under this model, your community becomes Desperate Housewives; the cognitive heat-sink where conversation and collaboration go to die. Where innovation is consumed by the Cthulhu that is bureaucracy.

It need not be this way. Your community conversations can be amazingly fruitful if the DNA of your community is lightweight. By introducing a culture that facilitates communication, that flattens hierarchy and breaks down organisational silos so that anyone, anywhere in your organisation or business can easily work with anyone else you can route around the damage inefficient tools and process impose.

By rocking the boat a little culturally, engaging in a little organisational entrepreneurship and using the tools of participatory culture; social networks like Twitter, wikis and blogs for example, you can introduce an environment where individuals can converse, groups can collaborate and an engaged, active and productive community can flourish.

Making the leap

Here’s a really simple example of how this approach can work.

I’ve driven this change this year at my daughter’s school. I was elected to the school board at the end of last year and went through a minor level of Hell as I was inundated with emails and processes that were almost gleeful in their inefficiency. At the first meeting I attended, as the new Secretary, I simply declared my opposition to the inefficient, bureaucratic processes being used and noted I was going to show everyone a new way - using a wiki for documents and communication and using Google calendar for keeping track of school events.

I got a few knowing nods, a few “so show me’s” and three or four “what’s a wiki”. I asked for a week to show everyone and got agreement. In two days, they had full meeting notes - every member of the board had logged on, most had added comments or notes and in subsequent months, we’re down from 20 to two emails a month - a “thanks for coming to the meeting last night” from Mark, the Chairman and another from him the day before the next meeting reminding us to turn up.

By changing the tools and focus of the group, we’ve now got near-instant conversation. Much easier collaboration and a stronger community. The staff and board members are so excited by the opportunities this simple change has wrought that they are now seriously talking about expanding wiki use into the classroom and between teacher groups for professional development. This from a group of people who previously largely used computers for email, document writing and web browsing. Now, everyone’s involved and participating.

The Desperate Housewives heat-sink is being militated against by the introduction of a tool set that makes it easy for people to have a conversation; even though we all work in different places we can access it from the Internet. We can collaborate on action items and ideas and we have a stronger community as a result. And were making a difference for the school.

It’s just as easy to do this for the communities you’re involved in; whether they’re at work or somewhere else. Imagine the gains in productivity and engagement, in knowledge sharing and distribution and in the ability to work together effectively without bureaucracy if you did this.

The sooner you do it, the better off you’ll be.

Interesting post at the Ragan blog about what amounts to bad manners when you’re in the audience. Here’s my take.

If you’re in the audience at a seminar I’m giving or at a conference I’m presenting at, I’d prefer it if you were paying attention. I guess I figure you’re wasting someone’s money if you’re not. That said, these days, many people are getting very good at continuous partial attention, and what might look to some as not paying attention at all, could be quite the opposite. I know I can pay attention to a speaker, tweet, read related material on the web and do email at the same time.

Being a node in the conversation is just as important as listening to the conversation. If not more so. The value is in the participation - exactly what Clay Shirky describes in his Web 2.0 Expo talk.

I do my fair share of presenting, and pretty much expect people will be live blogging, or tweeting, or whatevering what I say. Equally, I often live blog or tweet others’ presentations. So, I absolutely don’t agree with the Ragan folks on live blogging. Please live blog what I’m talking about, good or bad. I want you to take part and I want to know what you think.

With Blackberry use - people could be live blogging. I’d want to check. Situation and context is important here. It’s likely to be bad manners in a class or seminar. It’s probably okay at a conference as long as you’re not bothering your neighbors in the audience. If it’s critical, excuse yourself and step out. At least then, nobody’s going to bitch about you.

As for mobile phones… If you’re so important that you can’t shut your phone off for the half-hour I’m talking, you’re probably not interested in what I’m saying anyway. For the rest of you, I absolutely agree with the Ragan people on the issue of answering and making calls. If you’re in a conference or class, shut your bloody phone off or I’ll publicly point you out in the audience when it rings and you answer it. If you talk on the phone during my talk, watch out! There are breaks in seminars and conferences at regular intervals. Get your messages and make your calls in the breaks.

That said, by all means interrupt me with your cogent and insightful questions and challenges. I’m a big boy and relish any of my assumptions being challenged.

Your thoughts?

Insightory , a newish social tool for “sharing management insights” contacted me a little while back to ask if they could use me as a “Featured Expert”. It’s something they renew every few days and which they use to highlight the work of someone they consider has:

1. Deep experience in a particular field of management
2. Done interesting or innovative work
3. Displayed consistent thought leadership (speaking, writing, blogging or similar “thought leadership” role)

Naturally, I was flattered to be asked. Since they’d already featured my friend, Scott Gavin, who wouldn’t put his name to something dodgy, I agreed.

Anyway, I’m now up as the Featured Expert for the next couple of days. A little bonus to ice the CIO mag article cake.

A while back now, journalist Sue Bushell interviewed me on the subject of Enterprise 2.0. We talked a couple of times over a few days and now, her major article has been published in the Australian version of CIO magazine.

Most exciting for me is that Sue has used me as the lead interview in the piece! Here’s the opening couple of paragraphs:

Canberra-based knowledge economy and social computing evangelist Stephen Collins heard a quote earlier this year that perfectly describes the Enterprise 2.0 dilemma: “If you want to find out what tools your staff are finding most useful at the moment, just go and see what your IT department is blocking.”

All too true, and not nearly as funny as it sounds at first glance, Collins declares. With Australia apparently several steps behind the US and Europe in Enterprise 2.0/Web 2.0/social media uptake, and corporate efforts at adoption thwarted by lack of real understanding, Collins is frustrated, calling this blocking attitude “frankly criminal”.

It’s a really good, in-depth piece that takes a look at all the factors - culture, hype, risk, security, the need to connect you organisation interanally and across the wall and the very real fact that work is changing. This is not your father’s business world.

You should definitely bookmark the article. It’s an ideal one to toss on your manager’s desk.