Gen-X, Net2 and Millennials
About that Net2 Conference ….
Ideas, research and tools could converge into an old way of doing things. And that couldn’t be better for the Web.
The Net2 conference will focus on how non-profits can use online tools to improve their recruiting and fundraising.
Millennials (born from 1978 to 1990; give or take) carry more social capital than most X’ers and many boomers.
This seems to point to an opportunity for the digirati and the self-defined Web 2.0 crowds to go public.
IPO baby! This is our Initial Public Opportunity.
If you choose to buy into anything that Howe and Strauss (”Millennials Rising,” “Millennials go to College,” “13th Gen,” “Generations,” and the new “Millennials and the Pop Culture”) have to say–and I do–then this social Web thing is ripe for the masses, if not mom and dad.
Consider this beta.
We need to get these tools out of the hands of our friends and into the hands of college students. Granted they’re too busy with Facebook right now, but that is just practice for the cooperate world non-profit and government sectors.
This means fewer gmail accounts and more Yahoo! accounts signing up for Ning.
Millennials, it is said, hold similar cultural and social values as the GI generation did/does. And those were the folks that made society as we’ve read about it. They won World War II and put the fez in fun. They are dying. Millennials, like their grandparents, are drawn to a larger purpose and feel a sense of civic duty.
“Generations” said something to the effect that the Lost Generation (those people who came of age in the 1920s) skipped active civic and political life in favor of creating things and the means to create things.
The Lost Generation made an impact not by crafting policy in the hallowed halls of corruption congress, but by influencing the policy makers.
Reading Howe and Strauss’ descriptions of the Lost Generation is like watching Reality Bites or Friends. There are common, obvious themes between Gen-x and the Lost Generation.
This X-er is looking for a way to do what he does best and to help someone else do what they do best. If there’s any truth to the blather above, we need to take these tools that we’re so keen on and pass them onto someone who will use them for good, not evil.
Net2 might be onto something, but the tool du jour never seems to have a purpose beyond flipping or impressing a-list bloggers. Let’s do something about that. How can YASNS improve the real world? Before us navel gazers go the way of My Bloody Valentine?
Where’s the Magic in E-mail?
What is e-mail? Technically? Where’s the magic? (That’s what all us non-programmers call code.)
More specifically, where does it have to be? Can a client hold all the e-mail protocols and such to make e-mail and one-to-one/many-to-many tool? Can we remove the server and embed everything in a client that we all share and that publishes to the Web?
Set up an encrypted Web site (now I really know what I’m talking about) and have the client hit that site for authentication, group awareness, label reading, past history and backup. Needs to be open source so we can all see the magic. Give each client a unique key as a password for one-to-one communication.
Give an option to post to all readers who have similar tags, (would be fun to post to all readers who have antonym tags) or post to just one reader or to the whole world on a public site.
Open up my mail! I don’t need privacy in e-mail. I need communication and wider network. I need more ways to find people.
Engineering Serendipity
Alex Barnett references a Wired article from 1994 by Paul Saffo that discusses the importance of context within an infoglut.
But search engines don’t contribute to context. They present items based within the context of (typically poor) keywords. Serendipitous browsing will always prove more rewarding to readers.
Tagging helps because we have trust in other people like us (as long as that lie can continue). What else is there? Tagging helps because we have trust in other people like us (as long as that lie can continue). What else is there? How do we engineer serendipity?
Is It Time?
- Find the pain. The Web touches so many people that a new beginning can have a pretty broad impact. With this in mind, there has to be a significant reason for an overhaul, because it can take so much time and resources. Has the competition come out with a new site that is blowing yours out of the water? Are you not able to establish and track trends on Web usage? Are your semi-annual usability tests turning up glaring errors for key audiences? Researching what needs to be changed will not only limit the amount of work, but also keep the new site focused on visitors and tracking.
- Get your ducks in a row. A successful overhaul not only requires a new site, but also a new philosophy and new processes across campus. Are you distributing content ownership across campus? Are you restructuring the review process for content changes? Are you looking for a better way to manage images and media? Get the right people on board (authors, image managers, central administration), then develop a process to manage the site long-term. Remember, outline roles, not people.
- Plan to marry technology. As amazing as the Web is, I often see a new module put in place for an institutional Web site that doesn’t talk with any other element on the server. Instead of adding disparate modules, look for ways to centralize data and incorporate features throughout the site. Don’t buy into technology that may only solve one problem. When you start the overhaul, outline all those systems and requirements. You may just find plenty of overlap between services to knock out a few systems and save some money.
Although there is no crystal ball for you, an overhaul should happen every four to eight years. Look for significant design changes every couple years, architecture changes every four years, and technical changes every six years. The key to this cycle is to build a strong foundation the first time, to avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater all the time.
As always, good luck.
Flame on: Live Meeting
I’ve attended my share of webinars many of which were in conference rooms or other offices and required installing Webx or Citrix. Those installations are usually smooth having only a few bumps or delays.
I’ve been trying to figure out Microsoft’s Live Meeting for 30 min. and having finally downloaded the software, I’m told that an error occurred on my c: drive.
The uninstaller better work. Looks like I won’t be attending this webinar.
This is one ‘user’ who refuses to take on the responsibilities that programmers (or urban planners or architects) neglect. I’m a bright boy, but why should I have to determine what to do with LMConsole.msi or setup.exe regardless of how obvious it should be. BTW: setup.exe doesn’t do what experience tells me it should do.
First impressions matter. Windows Live isn’t looking so good to this ‘user’.
