COFES 2012: Social Software and Gen-Z

by Oleg on April 17, 2012 · 14 comments

One of the roundtables I attended during last week COFES 2012 was about social software and cloud. The session was moderated by Jim Brown of Tech-Clarity. “Social topic” was much less in focus of COFES 2012 compared to 2010 and 2011. I’ve been intrigued by the combination of social and cloud under the same hood.

How are the Cloud and Social Computing Changing Business for the Next Generation? The Cloud and Social Computing have already begun to change the way business works and poses many new challenges. It has also opened the door to entirely new business models and opportunities. The first waves of digital natives hit the shores of businesses about 10 years ago and are rising up the corporate ladder. What happens when the next wave—cloud and social computing natives—start impacting business. How is your business likely to evolve?

The core of the discussion (and I unfortunately had to leave a bit before the conclusion) was mostly about usage of different social tools in the business. Below, you can see few twitter messages that were flying around this discussion.

The age of people in the room made a clear reflection in their opinions. In that context, the interesting message was made on twitter about average age of attendees – 103. It is clearly a joke, but what stroke me is a huge difference in response and level of acceptance of social tools among different generations. Boomers and Gen-X are very concerned about security. Gen-Y and later are considering tools like Twitter and Facebook as a natural part of their environment. Below you can see few pictures from this roundtable.

Gen-Z and social software

Social is now at the place where email was 20 years ago. It was a time when email messages were type-written by special assistant. Today, it sounds ridiculous. The same is about social networking and communication tools. The new-generation type – Gen-Z is coming. Navigate to the following link in wikipedia to read more. Here is my favorite passage:

Generation Z is highly connected, as many of this generation have had lifelong use of communications and media technologies such as the World Wide Web, instant messaging,text messaging, MP3 players, smartphone, Tablet Computer technologies, Social networking,[25][26] earning them the nickname “digital natives”.[27] No longer limited to the home computer, access to the Internet is now increasingly carried in their pockets on mobile Internet devices such as mobile phones.

What is my conclusion? In my view, social software is unstoppable. The same was true for all great inventions of the previous century. The most interesting will happen when Gen-Y and later Gen-Z will come to work places. They will bring a new culture and a different way to communicate. Vendors must take a note. The 5-year implementation cycle of enterprise software tradition is going to be dismissed faster than we can think about that. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Picture credit renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Tagged as: COFES 2012, Jim Brown, Roundtables, Social and Cloud

  • http://card.ly/cdn cdn

    What is described as future here, already is!  GenY started integrating the workplace a few years ago already… They influence culture as we speak and and some people/companies are suffering (and make the digital natives suffer! ;-)

    If you're a GenX, adapt right now!  I embraced this new culture from day 1.  I love it (but be critical – I don't necesarily love everything about it, and I am not on facebook).  Note: I am 51… 

    @cdn:twitter 

  • http://twitter.com/GfxSpeakRSN Randall S. Newton

    I am a 2nd half boomer, and I am more of a digital native than some teenagers I know. Definitely more than many adults. Age is not the only sorting criteria for this stuff.

  • http://virtualvector.com burhop

    I'm sorry I missed this one. I have a few opinions here that would have been fun to debate.

    I do agree with Randall.  Age is not the issue unless you are looking at statistical information on large groups of people. In our industry, I bet we would find more significant differences in other groupings. How about small company engineers versus large company engineers?

    Mark (thinking of asking my mom to start following you on twitter :-)  

  • http://www.removalsandstorage.com/page-storage-company-selection.html Storage Company

    Social software and social networks develop so rapidly that it really is
    an unstoppable process. They the communication channels for the whole
    new generation and definitely would change our world.

  • dorasmith

    Would have loved this convo too! One of the things I’ve always found interesting about engineers is that most have this innate curiosity. Most took things apart as a kid just to figure out how they went together. I have to admit I’ve been surprised how many currently in the workforce don’t bring the same sense of curiosity to social media.
    Today I heard a high school teacher talk about the great social media work his student journalists are doing. Mainly because they have no fear. They’ve taught him so much about the space – but his role is to teach them about the fundamentals of communication and how not to get sued ;-) .
    I’d like to see some cross respect in our industry for both digital natives and immigrants. There is so much each can teach and learn from each other. Christian is right some change is already happening. But I think the next few years will speed that up – and as you note Oleg, shorten those traditionally long cycles.
    - Dora

  • http://virtualvector.com burhop

    Dora, I still remember as a kid sticking a magnet in a outlet on the wall and almost causing a fire. You do stuff like that a few (dozen) times growing up and you eventually learn to be cautious with dangerous technologies like social media.  :)

  • -C

    As a firm “GenY” er with some “GenX” tendencies and a habit of following design trends, I have thought a lot about social.  Starting in College (as a millennial graduate), my engineering curriculum revolved entirely around Group Projects as a response to the Industry request.  That was a change at the time.

    Industry in the late 90’s clearly saw that design was moving towards a more collaborative environment, and they wanted graduates who could work that way.  Of course the resounding allegorical experience was that a few of the students got together and did all of the “real work”.   Even back in college I remember how people would dread the required “group meetings”.  On the other hand, they consistently formed factions and smaller working partnerships to go out and solve problems or build things together.  Those working sessions were always perceived as useful and fulfilling both to the project and the individual sense of accomplishment.  

    However, industry is slow to change, and my college buddies today are still saying “If I didn’t spend so much time in meetings I could get some Real Work done.”  When they say that, they don’t mean they want to go back to their cave and put their headphones on, they mean they want to come away and address the design challenges as they see them using the relationships and resources that they have developed as individuals.  

    The problem with implementing social technology in the design and manufacturing environment (and yes, I have tried multiple times) is that Everybody on the team needs to buy in.  It needs to come from the Baby Boomer at the top.  As simple and intuitive as social technologies are to use, it is a big change in an industry that moves like molasses and it would require a lot of hand holding.  

    My GenY associates say “Down with email!”, but there isn’t a mature and accepted replacement at this point.   I think I can speak for a lot of people who are grateful for the adoption of Instant Messenger applications as a time saving example.  

    I agree that social technology is an inevitability, but deployment gets tricky.   Maybe next year we can talk about it at COFES again.

  • beyondplm

    Christian, Thanks for the comment. Despite the fact, all are talking about Gens, I believe it is more like you feel and not specifically about your age. To me, it was a long way from 2006 to start to adopt blogging until I finally started to blog in 2008. Best, Oleg

  • beyondplm

    Randall, agree completely! It is like you feel about that. Not about the age. Thanks for your comment. Oleg

  • beyondplm

    Mark, You've been missed during this conversation. I think you've made a very important point about grouping and company cultures. It creates a lot of difference these days. Thanks for commenting! Best, oleg

  • beyondplm

    Dora, thanks for your insight. People behavior is going to change, and I see it is coming. Our industry is very slow in adoption of new stuff. Even so, digital natives can change it -agree. Best, Oleg

  • beyondplm

    -C, I like your thoughts. It is provoking me to ask- why you need to buy in? You can just start using it for you – to solve your problem. Then few more people will join. I think, it was a way Yammer spread out in many organizations. The problem of content is more critical. Unfortunately, engineering work requires an appropriate content to be available. And this is hard… I'm looking forward to how this place will be democratized in coming years. The initiative like BYOD is just a beginning. Best, Oleg

  • -C

    You need sponsorship for several reasons.  Grass roots implementation isn't likely to work in organizations that are highly committed to reporting.  To reduce duplicated work, people will be more likely to check the appropriate boxes in the approved system (or spreadsheet as is more typical). 

    Management feels threatened by systems that they are not a part of.  They will likely call it “a security concern”.  Then there is the issue that someone needs to pay for it.As for the term “Democratized”… I'm not sure democracy belongs among the fundamental design principles.  Collaborative work environments yes, but democratic design leads to things like, um… the Pontiac Aztek (not to point fingers, because I though the platform had a lot of great ideas).

  • beyondplm

    Oh.. We are in agreement about “designing by groups” is probably far from ideal. However, if I'm looking on BYOD trend, can it potential lead to the same trend in BYOS(Software). I'm dreaming, of course, now :) . 

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