Generations

The presidential candidates are trying to engage NG's culture of participation through presence on popular online community sites. Here's what's happening with the three major presidential candidates:

A CIO Insight article chides the over half of surveyed execs lacking hands-on experience with Web 2.0 applications, "you aren’t putting enough thought into your job."

"Workers across your company aren’t waiting for you to try these applications, they’re using them already. The incoming generation of Web natives—the young people who will replace the retiring baby boomers by the millions—expects a work environment that reflects their reality. That’s where they’ll be most productive, too."

The author's suggestion - "spend a little time mucking around" - may work for some, but more aggressive approaches include seminars, workshops, executive boot camps, and coaching. Peer-oriented pilot projects can be particularly effective.

Listen to an insightful 10 minutes on the workplace dynamics among Boomer, Gen-X and Gen-Y employees; and how this ties to NG tools like instant messaging and online collaboration, in a podcast interview with Tammy Erickson, author of the Harvard Business' Across the Ages blog.

"In Defense of Gen Y Workers", by a 21-year old editorial assistant at CIO Magazine, provides good insight on how younger works expect to have Internet NG tools to perform their best. As this paragraph illustrates, her tone sometimes borders on the snarky but her points are well taken.

I grew up turning in my homework assignments online and using online chat rooms as study groups with fellow classmates. And it worked for me. It worked real well. I love the Internet, online communication and Facebook because these technologies allow me to do what I do best: multitask. Since I’ve been trained by and with these new technologies, I am—face it—better suited for the new work environment than you old folk. Even you old folk are beginning to realize that collaboration is a better way to leverage information to produce services, products, whatever. But while you think of collaboration theoretically, I live it and breathe it. And, unlike you, change doesn’t bother me. I love it.

This article in Slate e-zine By Chad Lorenz describes the growing generational divide between users hanging on to email and ones migrating towards an IM/social networks mix. Writes the author:

". . . e-mail is looking obsolete. According to a 2005 Pew study, almost half of Web-using teenagers prefer to chat with friends via instant messaging rather than e-mail. Last year, comScore reported that teen e-mail use was down 8 percent, compared with a 6 percent increase in e-mailing for users of all ages. As mobile phones and sites like Twitter and Facebook have become more popular, those old Yahoo! and Hotmail accounts increasingly lie dormant."

Some recent information about Sermo, the US social network boosting over 30,000 physicians, dispels the notion that NG's culture of participation always skew young. Reports the Financial Times:

The Sermoans are medicine in the MySpace age. And it’s not just the younger set fresh from medical school. The attraction of belonging and the ability to publish or broadcast personal professional pursuits to a distinct and interactive online social community and receive feedback is grabbing the older, busiest doctors the most.