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Roger’s rule of 10

December 4, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I said it so I may as well write it in order to claim originality (dear Google search engine, please index me quickly).

At todays OnLine Information 2008 conference I led a session on GenY and on new information seeking behaviours. One of my questions to Gen Y was to ask about their interests in “BrandMe” – that is unlike employees of yore [that is me] whose early career was under the ‘mothership’ of a large corporate organisation today’s employees have the opportunity to develop their own brand. This is Tom Peters thesis. So now instead of a leasurely stroll to publication it is who get there first.

As a really good example Ewan McIntosh had blogged the keynote speech as it happened. Now I am worried about whether what I said at the conference will be blogged by someone else and lost as my quote.

So in somewhat of a panic I chose to write this – Roger’s Rule of 10. Currently onto two factors but to be extended ….

And it goes something like this. We may already all be familiar with the urban legend that we spend  90% of our lives within 10 feet of a rat. Equally disturbing there is a version for the Information Manager …

  • we are all £10 away from a FOI request that will overturn of Information Policy
  • we are all $10 and $10 minutes away from an employee getting a Google apps account [www.google.com/a] which will undermine our technology strategy

I will try and develop these rules of 10 but they reflect the reality of Web 2.0 fuelled by consumer, commodity technology. In the past difficulty of use, edict and the threat of professionalism have been the method to detemine what happens to Information. Things have changed.

It all seems rather unfair too. The organisers of OnLine 2008 paid for the meeting, the speaker, the event yet it could be their insight and event was scooped, at least in reporting terms, by the blogger in the audience [and Ewan I’m not suggesting any inproprietary here]. But the with people in the room and technology delivering a conduit out of the room secrets just don’t have a chance.

So there we are. With luck this will hit the indices first and Roger’s rule of 10 will be attributable to me [and I have been referenced elsewhere about linguistic torpedos]. For everyone who asked those smart questions they are working their way to another rule, unless of course you get there first …….

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Talking to the Digital Natives

October 29, 2008 By Leave a Comment

In the last year the hot topic on the digital conference circuit has been Generation X and Generation Y, about how the digital natives will enter the workplace with new skills, new expectations and new demands. Amidst rather gloom laden projections of the 80m baby boomers retiring (between now and 2019) are the challenges in changing work and organization to fit the new expectations of the new generation of employees.

However the statistics lie. For the workplace of 2019 there are more people currently at work today, (ie anyone under the age of 42) than the new workforce of Gen X & Gen Y. The challenge is not just to ask what the new generations will do to our organizations but what our organizations will do to the new organizations?

Our thinking started with a perception of 2 very different worlds – a corporate world, rich in proprietary technology and expert at talking to itself and staffed by mid-term careerists. The second not-for-profit world, intimately connected to its environment, exploiting free and commodity technology and staffed by idealists and volunteers. Historically a very stark contrast! In the past these worlds could afford to keep a professional and operational distance, but now driven by the forces of globalisation, social responsibility agenda and technology the worlds are coming together. Our target was that the worlds could learn together.

The web 2 ‘poster children’ Wikipedia or Facebook represent a tremendous mobilisation and coordination of the volunteer sector, the availability and ubiquity of information technology provides the ‘workplace’ for this resource, interest and passion form the contract of employment and the grand world challenges the invisible hand of coordination. How can these three forces be used in the commercial sector?

Our design intention was to mimic the world we wished to engage – viral and guerilla marketing, technologically savvy and advanced, incentives and recognition of the individual, a worthy cause and a worthwhile objective – the very factors attractive to Gen X and Gen Yers.

During the summer of 2008 we organized an open, international competition for information innovation in the not-for-profit sector. The prize, and the context for the work, was an open evening where the innovators could ‘pitch’ their ideas at a social learning event. In contrast to the traditional ‘top-down’ conference learning from gurus we aimed for a ‘bottom-up’ event learning from the Gen X/Y.

This paper discusses the experiences in organising a Gen X/Y event for corporates, how to attract the right contributors, how to generate the right conversations and how to exploit the technology in your company.

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