I haven’t been updating this blog lately for a variety of reasons. The first (and most important) is that it’s summer, and in the summer it’s important not to spend all your time trying to land on the front page of digg. In the summer; it’s important to relax.

The other big reason is that, with the time I do spend in front of my Macbook, I’d rather be reading insightful posts than trying to craft my own. Reading, I’d say, is about 95% of the reason I use the internet.

Yes, Viriginia, I do enjoy reading on the internet

Which brings me to what I really want to talk about. It’s something I’ve been seeing again and again from so-called ‘business leaders’ (who like to talk about ‘integrated verticals’ which, I think, breaks the record for two words who, together, mean absolutely nothing at all) who fancy themselves exports on the web. They claim that people do not read on the internet.

Not to single anybody out, since I came across this quote as the result of a random search, but take this article from masternewmedia.org titled Online Reading Habits: How much content do web audiences read?:

Though hard to believe for most, a recent research study shows that “on average, users will have time to read 28% of the words if they devote all of their time to reading. More realistically, users will read about 20% of the text on the average page.”

I don’t quibble with the result of the research, but what I do quibble with is the conclusion that’s often reached as a result. It’s the Pro Blogger mantra, calling ‘wordiness’ a sign, and recommending lite content, full of easy-to-digest lists and giant pictures. In essence, it’s calling for an almost-illiterate web.

I’m not an elitist. I like lists. I like pictures. I skim articles when I come across them. But I also, and I am going to bold this, like to read on the internet. I like reading long, interesting articles. I like encountering so-called “walls of text” when I know it’s subject matter written by a talented writer. Never have I encountered a post by Gruber or 37signals and thought “Damn, I wish this content was presented in the form of a Top-10 list.

I like to read on the internet. I like to read paragraphs on the internet. Maybe I’m not a large audience, or even a common audience, but I am an audience, and I hope that the talented writers out there, drowning in a sea of advice calling for short, easily-digestible, content-free writing on the internet, are aware that readers like me exist.

Postscript: What makes a good blog?

Man-about-town Merlin Mann has a post titled What makes a good blog?. It’s really good. The best bit:

Good blog posts are made of paragraphs. Blog posts are written, not defecated. They show some level of craft, thinking, and continuity beyond the word count mandated by the Owner of Your Plantation. If a blog has fixed limits on post minimums and maximums? It’s not a blog: it’s a website that hires writers. Which is fine. But, it’s not really a blog.

Exactly.

As we move through new generations, blogging is going to become a very common tactic for businesses. It works better than the traditional brochure-style website, because a blog creates a strong connection with the reader. It’s more like having a conversation than viewing a commercial. It gives your business personality. And personality on a corporate level is more important than ever. (Look at Apple versus Dell, as an example.)

But if we let blogs descend into a swamp of nothing but links, lists and funny pictures, we’re never going to get anywhere meaningful. To be honest, I’m a little concerned that maybe we’ve already passed that point of no return. But, hell, all I can really think to do that might help is say, proudly and over and over again, that I like to read on the internet.

Photo by rosefirering. Licensed under Creative Commons

Interesting — if slightly familiar-sounding — article from The Guardian this past week: Generation Game. It’s all kind of a cliché at this point (”They are nicknamed the diva generation - high maintenance, out for themselves, lacking in loyalty, thinking only in the short-term and their own place in it.”) but they do touch on a theme I’ve been seeing a lot lately:

Some see the debate as pie in the sky. “The suggestion that Generation Y isn’t just different by degrees, but that this is a disruptive generation, is clearly constructed by someone who doesn’t remember the mods and rockers, the teddy boys, the hippies, the punks and the student revolutions in 1968 Paris,” says Valerie Garrow, associate direct of the Institute for Employment Studies.

I struggle with this idea, because there’s a ring of truth to it. I doubt any young generation in history has conformed easily. What makes Generation Y so different, when every other generation has essentially had to give-in and start playing the same game that’s been going on for years.

The boomers speak loudly about this, because they were quintessentially counter-culture. They were so loud and unwilling to conform that we still make movies about their exploits and adventures in the 60s. But look at them now: they’re Gen Y’s bosses, whining about our lack of ‘work ethic’ and our damned iPods.

Will history, in effect, repeat itself?

I can’t answer that definitively. My time machine is mostly useless. But my gut says it won’t. I think some sectors will see more change than others, but I think overall Gen Y will work as a change effect across the board. Primarily, it’s demographics. We’re in a climate where employees are given little alternative but to look closely at Generation Y when hiring for prime positions. (This goes a long way to explain why we’re so often described as cocky and brash, too.)

More than just demographics, though, I think one of our chief qualitative differences is that we, as a generation, find our nonconformist roots not in anything societal or political but rather (mostly) technological. It’s a little less noble, but more laden with potential.

With the 60s, business didn’t have any real need to change to accommodate younger workers. Because they didn’t really need them. And, well, the changes the then younger generation was asking for seemed so out-of-this-world. The boomers asked for change, but it was not specific — it wasn’t backed up with real, tangible solutions.

Technology is the game changer, because technology is change. For better or for worse, all of business is going through change as a result, and now, as a Generation, younger workers have the opportunity to drive that change.

That’s new. That’s different. That’s powerful.

Jonathan M Gitlin at Ars Technica has a good bit about the supposed evils of multitasking on your computer at work:

The complaints against multitasking are the usual; you’re not as focused as you could be if you were just doing one thing at once, switching focus repeatedly actually makes you less productive as each time your brain takes a few moments to reprioritize tasks and so on.

I’m the first to admit that there’s a lot be said for shutting down everything else and focusing on a single task when you just need to power through and get something done, but these days talk of ‘multitasking’ seems to take the form of huffy managers cruising through the office, looking over shoulders and trying to catch a glimpse of someone looking at something “non-work-related”.

This, quite frankly, is a lame thing to do.

Gitlin again:

Employers seek ever-greater productivity from their workers, which means getting more work from them for the same amount of pay. Faced with that situation, it’s hardly surprising the cube-dweller responds by spending 15 minutes an hour looking at LOLCATs. Besides, I’m just old enough to remember the days before you used to be able to multitask; people used to sit at their desks reading the newspaper instead.

Technology has definitely exasperated this issue. It seems entirely acceptable for an employee to spend 10 minutes chatting with co-workers about the movie they saw on the weekend or 5 minutes on a personal phone call, but apparently just a glimpse at Facebook is an instant productivity killer. The message, I guess — and this is coming from those generally clueless about everything online — is that you can’t be working if you’re also on some website.

The real issue I have with this is one of trust. By constantly monitoring your employees’ screens, by installing filters and blocks, by blanket policies forbidding access at work, you’re essentially saying to your employees that you can’t trust them. “Why would you do this stupid work I’ve assigned you when you have fun internet things to look at?”

Could spending a lot of time on Facebook at work cause an employee to miss deadlines or produce sub-quality work? Absolutely. And those employees should face hell because of that. But you’re always smarter to criticize and (if necessary) discipline based on outputs, not process. The process is entirely subjective and unique to each person, whereas the outputs can be objective.

If the work is getting done, does it really matter if the worker is ‘multitasking’ all day, bouncing between windows and tasks like — as Gitlin puts it — a crack-smoking housefly?

Technology has led to a diversification of work styles.¹ There is no ‘right’ way to get things done in the computer age. Trying to establish one-size-fits-all processes, policies or rules — even for something as seemingly frivolous as ‘banning Facebook’ — is a losing battle.

Thanks to Ari Najarian for pointing me to the article.

Photo by Vedlia. Licensed under Creative Commons

1. I’m thinking of things like keyboard users vs. mouse; command line versus GUI; maximized versus juggled windows; open source versus Microsoft, etc etc. [↩]

Being a giant Apple fanboy, I was pretty excited with all the iPhone news announced at Monday’s Worldwide Development Conference (WWDC). In addition to a wealth of new features — and availability in Canada, which I’m ridiculously happy about — the new iPhone also boasts GPS.

This isn’t a new feature for smart phones. Blackberry has it, as do some of the Windows Mobile models. But with the iPhone and Apple’s focus on entering the business market in a big way, I think we’re posed to see a real explosion of GPS-enabled employee smart phones across large businesses.

This is cool, of course, but it’s also kind of alarming for one big reason. Something that Steve Jobs himself mentioned in his keynote introduction of the GPS abilities: tracking.

Here’s Steve talking GPS:

The Big Brother Effect

Forgive me for getting a bit paranoid here. I’m not railing against the feature itself. It’s definitely not going to keep me from embracing the technology. But given that:

• The iPhone is being heavily marketed to large corporate users
• The iPhone has GPS that can do ‘live tracking’
• Companies can write proprietary applications and ‘push’ them out to their employee’s iPhones
• Those proprietary applications can use the iPhone SDK’s location services to access real-time GPS data

…doesn’t it seem possible that a company could rather easily create something that would allow them to see where all their employees are at any given time, assuming the employee had their phone on and was within satellite range?

Is this necessarily a bad thing?

If I were a person obsessed with privacy, this might bother me. But I tend to take a more open view on privacy matters in this age of facebook and social networking. Still, though, it has to be said that a situation where it would be rather trivial to create a real-time ‘employee’ tracker has far-reaching implications for how we model ‘work’ in the twenty-first century. Suddenly the boss can know if, say, Bob went directly to the meeting or — god forbid! — stopped for a long lunch, or if Joanne, who was supposedly ’stuck in traffic’, actually just overslept.

Technology brings with it changes, some obvious and some more surprising. The iPhone and other smartphones are likely to bring with them a lot of positives, but there are some potential negatives. After all, how would you feel about your employer literally being able to ‘track’ you during work hours? Is that something you, as an employee, could feel comfortable with?

I spent a day this past week attending sessions on Generation Y in the workplace presented by Max Valiquette and Giselle Kovary. I’ve seen both speakers before, but they’re both entertaining and continue to evolve their presentations to include interesting points, so I was glad to spend the time to hear their messages again. Plus, all-day workshop are a very welcome respite from the day-to-day work sometimes.

Listening this time, though, I was struck with something that’s actually been rolling around in my head for a while. Whenever anybody talks about Generation Y these days, they mention technology.¹ According to conventional wisdom, Generation Y loves technology. We love video games and cell phones and the internet and every gizmo, gadget or doowhacky under the sun. It is undoubtedly a very very ironclad part of our overall generational identity.

It’s not hard to find evidence. The Financial Post ran an article about the Ryerson Facebook incident (which I touched upon here) this week, and included a standard technology-is-everything piece in their explanation of Generation Y:

Confident, global -thinking and impatient, this generation of workers — approximately everyone born between 1982 and 1990 –does not know life without computers. It takes technology for granted, turning to e-mail, blogs and social-networking sites 24/7 to gather information and interact with colleagues and friends.

I’m not meaning to appear as contrary to this, because it totally does describe me. I’ve been a lifelong nerd, accessing the internet well before my teens and living a life largely based in three-letter acronyms for over a decade now (ICQ, IRC, AIM, WWW, FTP, HTML, CSS, JPG, BRB, LOL, ETC.) And the connectivity and virtual communication piece seems obvious: look at the explosion of popularity in any kind of online service that connects people with their friends.

But the paradox part of is that, for the last few years, I’ve spent a significant amount of time interviewing, hiring and working with other, younger members of Generation Y and throughout that time my questions to them about computers have yielded a fairly consistent statement:

“I’m not very good with computers”

This kills me, because it just seems so unbelievably wrong. We’re the COMPUTER GENERATION! How can you not be good with them? That’d be like a Gen Xer not being good at wearing flannel! Or a baby boomer not being great at complaining about everything! Or a traditionalist not being great at making babies!²

Plus, generally the same people making the claim that they’re not good with computers are the same people who spend their evening with seventeen instant messenger windows open while downloading tracks from Limewire and working on a term paper: “I’m not very good with computers, but often I use them for ten hours straight to do any number of tasks simultaneously.”

Trying to make sense of all of this

I’ve been trying to figure out why this disconnect exists, and I’ve come up with some potential explanations:

• Pure Semantics: Refer to the idea of a Digital Native and think about cars for a second. I would never describe myself as “good with cars” but that has absolutely nothing to do with my ability actually operate a vehicle. I’ve got no real idea where the fuel lines are or even how to change a tire but I still do pretty good at driving to work a few times a week.
  

  Similarly, I think a lot of Gen Yers see themselves as “not good with computers” because they don’t know how to install RAM or put in a hard drive, but that doesn’t mean they’re not adept at using software and performing creative/administrative/organizational tasks on a computer.

  As so-called “digital natives”, we tend to speak and think differently about computers — more compartmentalized, specific to software, hardware and even individual programs — but Gen Y needs to be aware that, by and large, this isn’t how the older generations (read: the ones hiring you) think.

• Confidence: Gen Y lacks a lot of confidence when it comes to some of their skills, particularly their computer skills. Again, if you think about it in terms of being a digital native, it’s easier to understand why this is.
  

  If you asked a native English speaker if they were “good at English” they’d likely reply that they weren’t, especially if they struggled with Shakespeare and hated James Joyce. On the flip side, though, if you asked a native English speaker if they were “good at Spanish”, they might answer in the affirmative even if all they know is how to ask where the bathroom is or how to get back to the cruise ship.

  One of the more difficult things you need to do when selling yourself to a potential employer is frame your skills in relation to their expectations, not yours. This goes beyond computers, but it is perhaps most important within the technology sphere. Just because you don’t feel like an expert at Photoshop, for example, because you don’t know how to work with Lab colours and multi-layer documents, doesn’t mean your potential employer won’t see you as “Photoshop expert” because you know how to do rudimentary tasks. It’s all context.

• Education: This is a big one — almost too big to go into here — but to sum it up: everything they currently teach about computers and the internet in high schools is terrible and does more harm than good. The track in high schools has been, until very recently, to separate “computers” into its own once (or maybe twice) a week ghetto, where you learn how to type and not much else.
  

  As a result, I think a lot of people come to understand “computer skills” as separate from math skills, writing skills, artistic skills, communication skills, business skills, etc. When, in reality, a computer should be thought of has nothing more than a tool through which you exercise and develop these primary skills.

  As a first step toward providing real, valuable and much-needed education that fits into the ‘digital native’ sphere, schools NEED to start blending computer-use into every class, in a way that makes sense and isn’t just window dressing. (Letting the kids who finish their math problems first play on the computer is not, for example, a good way to handle this.)

But, then, I don’t know

I think there’s even more to this that I fully understand at this point, so I pose the questions back to the readers: have you ever claimed that you’re “not good with computers.” Why? How do you justify that to yourself? And is Generation Y’s much ballyhooed technological expertise a myth?

Photo by practicalowl. Licensed under Creative Commons

1. In fact, I recently attended a session where a presenter summed Generation Y up thusly: Love technology, difficult to manage. Which, you know, I won’t dispute, but there’s a little more to it than that. [↩]
2. I’m kidding. Don’t get mad. [↩]

I’ve been reading a fair bit recently about privacy on Facebook. This has always been a hot topic, whether it’s because campus security at certain high-minded universities have used the service to keep tabs on student parties (and bust the rowdy-looking ones preemptively) or because employers are, more and more, checking out potential employee’s profiles before making job offers.

Some people find these kinds of things vaguely unsettling in a “Big Brother” sort of way. Local T.O blog Torontoist recently weighed in, after a pseudo-scandal where a university student was brought up on charges of cheating because he was running a study group through facebook:

As we’ve seen demonstrated, the whole frenzy isn’t about fairness. It’s that the rules have changed; Facebook is no longer the domain of the student alone, and students have good reason to be wary of newly watchful universities. With the medium’s shift away from “hot” or “cool” to a lukewarm blend of both, people like Chris Avenir [the student who got in trouble] or anyone else in the business of operating under the radar—for whatever reason—should probably think twice before all but advertising their activities.

“Be careful” seems to be the standard advice when it comes to social networking sites like Facebook and more ‘legitimate’ enterprises like getting a job. I’m not so sure it’s the right advice.

Being careful versus being smart

‘Be careful’ doesn’t quite make sense, especially if that advice comes with recommendations to use Facebook’s own privacy controls, because here’s the thing: privacy is dying. It implies that people have an expectation — maybe even a right — to not have people they don’t know check out their Facebook profile. But all the ideas behind social networking (communication, interaction, expansion of network, new friends, sharing) are contrary to any ideals of privacy. You cannot have both and, as a society, we’ve chosen: we like social networking.

It’s not about being careful. It’s about being smart. You should ABSOLUTELY have a Facebook account¹, and a LinkedIn account, and any sort of account that connects you with people in the industry you want to involve yourself in. These online platforms are rapidly becoming the online gateway to people and, in fact, for making introductions and strengthening connections they beat the snot out of old-fashioned conferences and trade show meet and greets.

With your accounts, you should operate under the assumption that everything you post is potentially viewable by anyone. Your boss, your parents, your teacher, and any and all deities you choose to associate yourself with — they can see it all: your party pictures, your favourite films, that quiz you filled out that told you that, out of all The Office characters, you’re most like Stanley — everything.

But that shouldn’t be seen as a bad thing, nor should you censor yourself significantly online. In fact, I’d urge people to be as honest as they can with their profiles: present your likes, dislikes, opinions, goals, your humour (hugely important). Use the online space to show the world who you are.

Concerns about privacy in the sense that maybe a potential employer will see it, and be offended and not hire you or whatever, are entirely outdated and almost insulting. You need to ask yourself if you’d ever really want to start a career with someone who just can’t handle the fact that you like to drink alcohol on weekends. Or if someone who can’t handle the fact that you occasionally use a certain f-word is really the kind of person you see yourself spending 40 hours a week with.

Selling You

It’s best to think of your online profiles as analogous to the clothes you wear everyday. Sure, you could wear a suit every day and look very presentable in the eyes of a bunch of stuffy older people, but you’ll get really uncomfortable before long (and the summers will be a chore). Or you could go all-out and wear a leather vest and 1993 grunge-era Levis, but people are going to judge you for that too. Best to split the difference, and wear something casual but presentable and at the same time uniquely you — something appropriate for both work and play.

A tortured analogy, maybe, but here we are, and the bottom line is this: your Facebook account is out there, and, just like with the clothes on your back, the only way to avoid being seen is to not show up at all. Generation Y should leverage social media as a way to find opportunities, welcome interactions from all people, but never censor their own true selves in the process.

Privacy is overrated anyway.

Photo by robleto. Licensed under Creative Commons.

1. I should say that, yes, I have some concerns about the long-term viability of Facebook. I like to ask people if they really think they’ll be using Facebook in five years. Odds are, we won’t be. But there will probably be something else that takes its place. [↩]

I’ve already written a bit about electronic books and the notion of a paperless world, but Todd Shultz got me thinking about the topic again in a different light.

If you haven’t noticed already, all mediums are starting to shift towards the internet. People are actually spending more time on the internet than watching TV. (I know I do) The internet is too great a location for advertisers to ignore. I am inclined to believe that print media will suffer a lot in the coming years. Who needs a newspaper when you can go on to CNN.com? Perezhilton.com has all of the tabloid lovers. Anything you can find on the newstands, you can probably find on a blog or a website.

This is pretty much impossible to dispute. Circulation on magazines is way down and book sales have been mostly flat. I guess it makes sense, then, that the question everyone is asking is this: is print dead?

The Difference Between Death and Irrelevance

Erin and I have had lots of conversation about this topic (we both tend to side with the “yes, dying or dead” camp, for what it’s worth) but lately I’ve been thinking about the idea of print as an industry in a whole new light. The battle lines have been drawn as print-versus-technology but that’s not really apt, when you get right down to it. Because consumers aren’t buying the material — the paper, the ink, the glass, the microchips, the whatever — they’re buying the stories.

Products should be defined based on why the user buys or needs them, not based on the physical materials that make up the product. An example: We don’t (or, more accurately, didn’t) buy audio CDs because we liked the shiny colourful back surface or the way it spun in the player. We bought audio CDs because we wanted to hear music.

Painting the battle as print-versus-technology is akin to vinyl-versus-CD or, hell, buying coke in a plastic bottle versus a glass bottle. In either case, the product is the same. Schultz points that out perfectly in his post: the stuff on the internet is the same product as the stuff on the newsstand (or on TV).

No funeral march for ink and paper

The technology isn’t there yet, so we’re still a ways away from the true shift from print to purely tech-based content. But it’s looming, and anyone who claims otherwise is probably burying their head in the sand. And this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Like with any shift, the only people who will be hurt or left behind by the shift are those who refuse to see it coming.

The market still wants the product — they want news and gossip, comedy and drama, fiction and non-fiction, art and pornography — but now it will be beamed to them, through devices that sit on a desk or fit in a hand (some of these devices might look just like paper). And, yes, this draws all sorts of questions about monetizing and content customization and the dynamics of publishing-as-business but the bottom line is simply this: people still want what publishers are selling. You’ll be okay.

What Gen Y should do

One of the most changed dynamics will be the ‘opening up’ of the content creation process. Whereas in the past writing went through a sort of ‘funnel’ through editors, publishers and printers before making it to the public, we’re at a place now where any business can make themselves visible instantly. For most organizations, then, a good, solid, web-savvy writer is going to be nothing short of a weapon. Remember that as you build your skills for your career.

Photo by oskay. Licensed under Creative Commons

Listen, young office young workers, odds are that as the youthful, tech-savvy person in your workspace, someone’s going to ask you to create a PowerPoint for them. And if your experience is anything like mine, your coworker is going to ask you to put A LOT of text on each slide. Like so much text that nineteenth century Russian novelists would be intimidated.

There’s a serious disconnect between what people WANT to see on the screen when they’re listening to a presentation and what they, in turn, SHOW people when it’s their turn at the podium. Everyone seems to nod their head in steadfast agreement when I talk about how much I hate dense, wordy PowerPoint slides. But then they turn around and create the same sorts of slides themselves. (Or, as the young, tech-savvy person in my workspace, they ask me to do it.)

It’s time to fight back. The next time someone asks you to create a PowerPoint presentation for them, ignore what they tell you and follow these rules instead. While it may get you in hot water initially, the universe will ultimately reward you. I promise.

Rule #1: THESE ARE NOT YOUR PRESENTATION NOTES

Seriously. This one kills me. If you need notes during your presentation (and, sure, most presenters do) then try HOLDING THE NOTES IN YOUR HANDS. Projecting the points you want to cover on a big screen is OVERKILL. And it has the not-so-lovely side effect of ensuring that everyone has read ahead of what you’re planning to say before you’ve even said. Presenters NEED to remember that, unless your audience is a room full of infants or hamsters, people can READ faster than you can talk.

And, no, having each bullet appear sequentially as you talk about each one is not an effective way around this problem. Really.

Rule #2: YOUR POWERPOINT IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE YOU

While it may be tempting to be really comprehensive with your slides, tying everything you want to say into a nice little package that can be sent as a ppt file via email to anyone who asks, this kind of thinking ALWAYS leads to a bad presentation. There is absolutely no way you can effectively lay out everything you want to talk about in a presentation on PowerPoint slides and still keep your audience entertained.

When in doubt, remember this: You are NOT presenting a PowerPoint presentation to an audience. You are presenting YOUR IDEAS to an audience. The PowerPoint is a mere enhancement.

Rule #3: LEARN THE PROGRAM BEFORE YOU DIVE IN

PowerPoint is not a complicated program, but that doesn’t mean you should just dive in and start creating your presentation without doing a little bit of learning first. Here’s a little test to let you know if you’re ready: Do you know what a Master Slide is and how to use it? If not, then learn THAT before you start. The Gen Y employee you get to help you later on will thank you for it.

Also, Times New Roman? No. Comic Sans? Double No. (Even if it is such a ‘fun font!’) Animation? Triple No. Your title zooming across the screen one-letter-at-a-time accompanied by machine gun noises? No No No No No.

Rule #4: REMEMBER THAT POWERPOINT IS VISUAL

As often as I’m annoyed by what people include in their PowerPoint presentations (see #1), I’m also generally dismayed at the stuff people leave out. PowerPoint is at its best when it’s used for visual information. So if you’re talking about the increase in sales over the last quarter, don’t just list those numbers in a table — make a chart! Trying to create a feeling of collaboration or innovation? A picture works wonders. These should be the bread and butter of your slides — if there isn’t any way to convey what you’re talking about visually, then you likely don’t need a slide for it.

And, as stupid as it sounds, don’t forget the obvious stuff. Include a slide with your name on it. People will appreciate it not only because it helps them remember, but also because it lets them know the proper spelling. Ditto your phone number and e-mail. And any sources, whether they be books, URLs, movies, or whatever, should be shown on screen, so people can be sure to record them accurately if they want to look them up later.

Rule #5: CONSIDER THAT YOU MAY NOT NEED A POWERPOINT

In a lot of circumstances, PowerPoint can serve as an effective visual aid during your presentation. But there is no rule that says EVERY presentation need its own PowerPoint presentation. In fact, some presenters might find themselves stronger without it. If you find yourself thinking more about the upcoming slide than you are the core idea you want to convey to your audience, removing the PowerPoint may prove beneficial to both you and your audience.

After all, Lincoln never had PowerPoint, and the Gettysburg Address still turned out okay. (With PowerPoint, it might have turned out like this)

Photo by fling93. Licensed under Creative Commons.

John Gruber linked to this interview with David Allen a while back. I’m just getting to reading it now. Allen is the mind behind GTD (or “Getting Things Done”), which is something I don’t know much about. (I’m interested, though. I plan to pick up the book.)

Anyway, in the interview Allen says this:

One of the problems that’s endemic with the younger generation people who have grown up with computers and with email they make the assumption that email is a fine medium for communicating anything and everything.

Which, for some reason, provoked a really strong emotional reaction in me as I read it. “He’s wrong!” I thought, imaginary daggers in my eyes. “He’s wrong wrong wrong.”

Thankfully, commenter Joost laid it down before I had to:

Please. One of the problems that’s endemic with the older generation is that they make the assumption that email is only appropriate for communicating a small narrowly defined subset of human communication.

Why do we have e-mail?

When I first started work, I’d write long, detail-heavy e-mails to my co-workers. My rationale was that it was better to cover all the bases all at once than risk the finer points being missed. My e-mails were (at least in my opinion) well-written, friendly and easy to understand.

Unfortunately, nobody read them.

A lot of my issue was just that I overestimated the amount of time people have for reading e-mail. A lot of older people regard it primarily as a nuisance, and like to spend as little time reading (skimming, really) e-mail as possible. And that’s okay. That much makes sense to me.

What NEVER made sense to me was the people who picked up the phone or waited until they saw me to communicate a message. Or, instead of sending a response, booked a meeting to discuss what I had e-mailed. If that’s how work is going to get done, I thought, why even HAVE e-mail?

Trusting technology

One of the really impressive things Generation Y does is communicate widespread messages effortlessly. If you’ve ever watched an event come together on facebook (or through another evite app) you know what I’m talking about. It’s simple: five minutes of work and a few clicks can result in a packed house the next night.

We trust that the app — the technology — is going to work. It’s going to effectively communicate the message.

The older generation seems to have trouble with this.

Image by m-c. Licensed under Creative Commons

This blog post got me thinking about something that’s been around, according to wikipedia at least, since 1975: the paperless office.

Generation Y has, by and large, earned their digital stripes. We’re technology savvy and, coincidentally, we’re also environmentally conscious. Add those two together and you get a generation of employees that might finally push to make the paperless office a reality.

That said, my two years of experience in the workplace have shown me that there are still a number of barriers to the paperless office that have absolutely nothing to do with the readiness of the technology. Unfortunately — or, I guess, fortunately, if you’re one of those people who loves their printer — paper is pretty culturally and politically ingrained into office life.

Here’s a list of a just a few of barriers I’ve noticed standing in the way of a paperless utopia.
Read more »