Traveling week means just enough time for a quick round of links
Millennials
My dad sent me this article from Business Week titled “The Millennials Invade the Business Schools“, in a follow-up piece, Queen’s University (where I was attending until recently) was ranked #1 for international business schools, but the point here is really how Gen Y is hitting the business schools and the workforce:
members of this so-called Millennial Generation have been praised and derided in equal measure—for their tech knowhow and idealism, their unrealistic career expectations, and their doting “helicopter” parents, who hover over their kids obsessively
I think that’s really interesting stuff. Will schools react to us well enough? I already feel like my home school doesn’t.
Earlier in the year, in Digital Media class, Andre’s group discussed how Twitter could be used as a real-time crisis tool in campuses and/or work places, exactly in situations like a fire where you can send out one tweet and it hits all students via their cell phones. I suppose now that’s only restricted to the US.
This is not meant to be yet another Twitter-bashing post, but instead I just want to highlight how clear it is to me that Twitter never thought about the implications of including all these bells and whistles early on, and since the Twitter Fail events earlier this year, it looks like things are only getting worse, not better.
At the crux of it, things would have been better if Twitter had never introduced SMS worldwide, but slowly rolled it out if and when they were sure it was financially feasible. Once people are used to a service and you take it away, they feel shortchanged.
Personally, I’m not sure what to feel about Twitter these days. On one hand I’m beginning to feel I’ve missed it after being away for a few months, and I’m beginning to re-discover a sense of community on it.
On the other, Twitter is still by no means stable and news like this that suggests a lack of business sensibility behind them (and recent purchase and shut down of I Want Sandy) just makes me feel unsure in investing time and attention on Twitter.
I want to know if you’re still using Twitter and in what way? If you’re out of the US, has the lack of SMS-capabilities annoyed you, or is it something you can live with?
Tonight wrapped up my Film 240 class here at Queen’s University called “Media & Popular Culture”. One question asked was “Do you use RSS?” and the poll came to about 15% saying yes (which is not far off from the recent 11% RSS adoption rate that was researched). [No, I didn't count hands raised. The poll was done using electronic clickers so the percentages are shown instantaneously on screen.]
If these are the numbers for the more functional and popular tools, I’m expecting the figures for other avenues of web2.0 in education (wikis, social bookmarking, blogs, document collaboration) to be much lower.
So my questions tonight to you are:
1) Do you think these numbers are generally reflective, or should they be higher or lower?
2) If you don’t know about these tools, do you wish someone would teach you how to use them?
3) If you do know about these tools and discovered about them yourself, do you wish someone had introduced you to them earlier?
4) What aspects of education would you be most keen to utilise social media tools?
5) Do you even think such Web2.0 tools have a place in education?
6) If you’ve heard of tools like RSS, Twitter, Wikis, etc, what’s stopping you from using them?
I really, really wanna hear from you, so help me out. If you already know the tools, pass this post on to someone who doesn’t, and ask them to answer the questions!
On a personal note, if you’d like to collaborate with me on an SMU project similar to the one Hack College did, drop me a line!
A weekend of travel means less blogging this week, but definitely not less reading!
Blogging
You want to show you know what you’re doing, even if the company you’re in follows prehistoric methods, so that the next person who hires you has a reference point. Joseph Jaffe tells you how in AdWeek – Save Your Career, Start A Blog
John Johansen had a great experience at Best Buy, which is the polar opposite of what some companies are doing in this recessionary period. (Examples to be posted, soon). He also mentions that because it was a special event there was extra help, free drinks etc, but many people also bought something. Do you think they included his blog post (or any other positive ones) while measuring the ROI of that event?
Talking to a lot of people here in Canada, not many can understand the complete indifference we tend to have in Singapore towards politics. I’m one of those indifferent people, but ironically, not when it came to this year’s US presidential election.
Tonight, walking home from a movie, I heard loud cheering from houses along the streets. I peered in and saw the elections on TV, Obama posters on the windows, and knew he won. I made a quick detour to the business school here in Queen’s, and the student lounge was packed with people watching President Obama giving his victory speech. I heard from a friend that earlier in class, laptops all around her were monitoring the presidential ticker counter.
And all this happening in Canada, for a president not even theirs, in a demographic not usually associated with politics.
Seth Godin would say we’ve joined President Obama’s “tribe”, for whatever reason it may be. I will be the first to admit I don’t know a thing about his policies, but I identify with him because he’s involved in politics during a world of change, and is embracing that change. Just look at his efforts in social media.
I don’t think I know any people my age who aren’t part of his tribe during this election. He spoke to us where we were, online. Whether it’s race, support for his policies, embracing the American dream or any other reason, we’ve embraced this change and I truly believe the world is much better off for it.
While walking home the other night, I was hit by the opposing view to my earlier post, “Maybe You Don’t Always Need Social Media?”. That post was written very much from an external point of view, someone traveling/visiting Kingston for the first time. But how about utilising social media within the boundaries of the town?
I think there are two factors going for it here:
1) It’s a university town – that means there are many, many people here of the Gen Y age, who are probably connected to their laptops half the time. Especially while they’re in school.
2) It’s a small town – Everyone knows where everything is, it’s easy for word of mouth to get around.
Let’s think about it for a second. The town has 117,000 people. Majority of them are in either of the universities, would it be a good investment to maybe develop a widget with the latest beer sales for one of the many pubs? How about a video showing the latest fashion arrivals at one of the stores downtown?
There aren’t many shops around here, but there is still competition. What better way to stand out and fight for mindshare than to be online?
Random thought, would love to know what you think, especially considering you’re likely to come from a place very different from Kingston, and very different from Singapore.
