How to fail at blogging and not be sorry about it at all 101

I haven’t updated this blog since February 2011 and, you know, I’m not sorry about it.

I’ve been to space, like, a bunch. I’ve been writing, I met a world leader and I’ve been in the news. I’ve been in the daily paper. I’ve been in the monthly magazine. I’ve been creating things, I’ve been teaching things and I started working for the same alt weekly that wrote about my trip to space. Life’s been pretty sweet thus far. Heroes Rising unfortunately suffered.

I’ve been doing things… man.

I know blogging/social media is all about building community, engagement and being consistent but, damn it, I was busy doing that off-line. Which is what brings us to my unabashed, unapologetic attitude.  I am sorry that I’ve been inconsistent. April 2010 brought nearly 10,000 hits and I let that all go.

I also probono helped put on TEDxCharlotte 2011, TEDxCharlotteWomen, and BarCamp CLT 5 and 6.

Worth it.

It’s been a helluva 2011. I hope 2012 is all of that and more for everyone, just in case I don’t update for another nine months.

Helping your Millennial offspring cope with your ultimate passing

Dr. Milton Greenblatt wrote in the 1970′s:

First we are children to our parents,
then parents to our children,
then parents to our parents,
then children to our children.

It’s not a difficult stretch for me to understand that in this era of speedy communications and speedy living that Boomers would, as most humans likely do, wish for a speedy death (when the time comes). Unfortunately for us, life simply isn’t like that all of the time.

From my perspective, it makes sense that Boomers would fear 1) outliving their money and 2) becoming a burden on their impatient Millennial children. It would scare the shit out of me if I thought the person caring for me, should I become enfeebled, was impatient in any way. Caring for someone, at it’s core, requires loving patience, something I don’t see in many of my cohorts currently. I am just as guilty of this. I want what I want and I want it now.

I have been exceptionally lucky in the past few months to have hospital experiences, with my Boomer mom and mother in law both discharged with a clean bill of health in the end, and I gained great insight on the topic. Both of these experiences have been vastly different and have given me some interesting perspective on what to do (and what not to do) when dealing with Millennials when it comes to death, or the potential passing, of a Boomer parent.

1) DON’T HIDE YOUR HEALTH INFORMATION FROM US!!! Be honest and straight forward. We are used to having the internet and it’s expansive world of knowledge at our finger tips. If you aren’t up front and honest with us about what’s going on, we’ll get our information elsewhere and wind up resenting you for, in essence, lying through omission. We feel entitled to this information. You’re our everything, please remember that.

2) Know when to tell us to get OFF the freakin’ medical websites. That same wealth of information we’re used to can actually be detrimental and over-stress a Millennial. #2 is irrellivant if you’re following my advice on #1.

3) Make sure you have things like internet passwords and key codes documented and stored safely, just in case. If your child is still dependent on you, financially or otherwise, this one is especially important. They will need access to YOUR online networks for support if/when things turn sour. I don’t have the addresses of more than half of my extended family but know that via my parent’s profiles online, I can get to them. If you lock us out, how will we be able to alert your friends and extended family that something has happened? The same goes for financial institution logins. If your child doesn’t have this info (if you don’t have a spouse), it’ll make things a lot harder for everyone.

4) Understand that if we’re on our phones a lot, it’s because we’re tapping our support network online, it’s not because we’re pulling away. Many Millennials have friends online who live potentially oceans away that they consider to be support in hard times, even if they’ve never met in person. The power of emotional support from a tight-knit online community is unparalleled.

5) Tell us we are going to be ok, even if you’re not. I personally believe Millennials, because of the delay of adulthood, are closer to their parents than many generations before (note I did NOT say that they love their parents more, simply that they’re closer.) Sometimes a child just needs to hear that they’ll be ok and it’ll mean a lot coming from the person(s) we derive a lot of our hope and optimism from.

End of life topics are always difficult and it’s true that there’s no solid answer that will make anyone feel better when they’re in such a tough situation. I even struggled with writing this post quite a bit because to even type the words just tears me up inside. I do hope this is helpful for someone besides me somewhere…

It’s going to be OK.

update: James of http://www.tomasinoblog.com made this fantastic point in the comments that really needs to be included on this post. Thanks James!

When it comes down to the end, to those difficult final days, it’s not our strength or our social networks that our loved ones need. It’s our presence, full and complete. That means for a lot of us we need to go to a place that’s not comfortable, not supported, downright vulnerable in order to be there for others. Sometimes we need to be unplugged.

As scary as it is for us, and despite what conversations we might be able to have with our seniors, what they see is our faces looking at a little box, not at them. There are so many places and opportunities for education about who we are and why we do what we do, but sometimes it’s way more important to give over, give that self-giving love that says, “you are more important.” That’s the power you feel holding a hand or praying with someone as they pass on. That’s the love.

Happy new year!

We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives… not looking for flaws, but for potential.

~Ellen Goodman

 

Gossiping as Social Power for GenY Women

I pay attention to what people search for when they come across my blog. Usually I just get a kick out of it because people find me by way of searching for “give a shit” with a disturbing frequency (true story!).

Today someone came upon my blog by searching WordPress for “gossiping as a social power for women”.

In my post GenY Women in the Workplace I urged women to stop the gossiping. Dare I say there might be social benefit to gossiping I had never considered? I can’t ignore that question!

Apart from the obvious situations like spousal abuse or the like, gossiping does have it’s advantages… sometimes. Note: I am not endorsing all out gossip warfare. For the purposes of this post, let’s assume “gossip” means “watercooler chit-chat”, not bitchy “OMG IDK WTF” malicious gossiping.

What kinds of advantages, you ask?

1) Gen Y ladies are still learning the ropes in life.  Keen Millennials will listen and learn. Who’s doing well? Who’s mid-breakdown and, if they are, why? This type of intel will help reinforce knowledge on what to do and what not to do on someone else’s dime. These aren’t college classes but they are classes on the subject of life lessons. Watch, listen and learn for the cheapest education cost ever: FREE.

2) A heads-up on “the competition” isn’t always a bad thing. Just because the info is out there doesn’t mean it’s always actionable. Having a good perspective into the ‘real world’ matter of competition in life means a having a leg-up is a good thing.

3) Teamwork and trust is reinforced, assuming everyone is trustworthy and what they’re saying is honest. Which leads us to…

4) the importance of social accountability. Water cooler chit-chat gets around. It’s a fact of life. Some people actively avoid it, some don’t. It still remains that gossiping exists to keep other people accountable. I love this quote from “Gossip As A Gauge Of A Religion’s Commitment To Reality” by Luke Ford which pretty much sums it up:

Gossip undoubtedly destroys friendships, marriages, business partnerships and sometimes causes people to kill themselves and others, but much of the time, the damage that is blamed on gossip more rightly belongs on people who have acted badly. Such people often blame gossip for holding them accountable for their behavior.

So what do you think? Am I wrong? Let me know if the comments, please!

 

just LOL

Believe in your work, not in yourself

Being smart is useless.

…

Children who are told they are smart get lazy, while those who work hard know how to get past their blocks. You have to stop believing in yourself, and start believing in your work instead.

via You Get Noticed For What You Do.

All about ME update-a-thon

• Tonight is the Let Love Reign photography exhibit I am doing PR/marketing for at work. I am STOKED! Catalina Kulczar-Marin is the chick behind me in this pic, taken by Armando Bellmas a few months ago. She’s one brave woman to spearhead such a hot topic: gay marriage equality!!!!

• Tomorrow I am co-teaching a class at Mobilize.org’s Target2020 summit for Gen Y/Millennials/soon to be recent grads on using social media to be heard in their community and attain the goals they set for themselves using the social web for amplification. The brilliant Katey Dietz is the other co-teacher. We’re going to rock it. It’s just that simple. Plus, I’ve been wanting to get into teaching far more and this is a great step towards that goal for me. Thanks to Katey for thinking of me! (Seriously, I owe her a lot. She must see something in me I don’t. ) If you’d like to watch us LIVE here is the link to do so: http://mobilize.org/get-involved/upcoming-summits/target-2020-my-education-our-future/

• In a little over 2 weeks (on Nov. 11) I’m speaking on a panel about social media careers at The Geekfest at Central Piedmont Community College! I love their tagline: Geek is chic! I’m the Director of Community for CLT Blog and From the Hip has me doing all kinds of fun social media stuff so it makes sense that they’d want someone who does all of that on their panel.

• The Southern Christmas Show is coming up soon, too! It also starts on Nov 11. This was one of the first things I attended when I moved to NC (My grandma Elaine always had a HUGE Christmas celebration back in Las Vegas, where I’m from) and I’m ready to go again! I like being festive, remembering my family and am really looking forward to it this year.

I’ve been noodling on some really interesting things lately about Millennials and spousal interaction/common ground using technology lately. Watch for a post on that coming up!

<3

Millennials will be the strongest advocates for historic preservation than any generation before

“Historic preservation is the ultimate recycling.”

I saw this quote on a bumper sticker once and, while I don’t generally take life advice from dogmatic sayings on cars, it stuck with me.

I love to find interesting convergences of seemingly unrelated things that somehow make sense in life when they’re jumbled all together at once.

I’ve been watching a lot of the TV show Hoarders. As a general observation I have heard a lot of comments on the show about people who have become hoarders being children of the Great Depression in one way or another. Either they themselves grew up in it or their parents did.

Let me tell you. One day-long binge of nothing but an entire season Hoarders is intense motivation to get rid of all of the shit in your life. That said, this weekend we are having a yard sale. LOL

In picking through everything we own looking for stuff that has no emotional value, little to no physical value (to us) and items that we feel are junkin’ up our bungalow I noticed a theme to many of the items I felt grossly inclined to retain: vintage/old items that were crafted WELL before I was even a thought.

A lot of the stuff we’re getting rid of are newer things, surprisingly. Well, I’m not ALL that surprised. The quality of the items made these days has declined so things that are 40 years old are still at the same, if not better, quality as the things manufactured 5 years ago that have a much shorter lifespan because they aren’t built to last.

Back to hoarding, the Great Depression, bumper stickers and my own fetish of cherishing old stuff.

In this day in age, I feel like everything in my material life is disposable. It’s JUST.STUFF. But why then, do I love having a Jetson’s looking midcentury Danish modern coffee table that used to be my grandmas? Why do I choose to keep a fugly red-grape velvet chair from the early 1960′s? Because they last longer. The IKEA couch I’m on right now doesn’t stand a chance at lasting 50+ years.

So the statement I’m making is this:

1) Millennials need to watch out that they don’t become hoarders and it needs to be monitored closely. Everything is available and with the pairing of disposable material items and economic hardship similar to the Great Depression, Gen Y is already pre-disposed to being hoardalicious.

2) Gen Y is going to be most inclined to retain functional items over a longer amount of time because of the coinciding elements of over-connectedness to parents (so when they’re gone the kids will hold onto their things) and the desire to be green giving way to an unwillingness to dispose of things if they aren’t 100% perfect or in need of minor repair.

Moral of the story: Pick the things you hoard with care and don’t let it get out of control.

My friend Olga says it best: ”I know exactly what you’re talking about, I did the SAME thing after watching that show! They’re only things! It’s like you end up with so many things that you can’t enjoy your things!”

LOL

Millennial fashion on NYTimes.com

There is plenty of research about the so-called Millennials — people ages 18 to 29 — to suggest you can’t lump them all together. Not only is this group likely to become the most educated generation in American history, according to a Pew Research Center survey this year, it is also the most racially and ethnically diverse. At the same time, this generation’s 37 percent unemployment rate is certain to affect taste. It may explain an underlying conservatism in fall fashion — penny loafers, camel coats, longer hemlines — that goes beyond “Mad Men” hype.

What does unite this generation is the Internet, in particular online shopping and blogs like that of the street photographer Garance Doré and sites like Polyvore.com, where users play editor-slash-stylist and can see what’s for sale on the top sites.

Women like Ms. Byun, or Lauren Wynns, a 27-year-old law student in Washington, who works for a business consulting firm, or Nicky Deam, a 25-year-old publicist in New York, do much of their shopping online. Ms. Wynns, for one, said she now gets most of her fashion information from online retailers like Lagarconne.com, Revolveclothing.com and Shopbop, and from blogs rather than magazines. And because a lot of high-end apparel is hard to find online — compared with the amount shown on runways — it’s not surprising that young women now seem to gauge their interest in a brand not in terms of its prestige or craft but rather in terms of its accessibility. Even if Ms. Wynns could afford their products, she said, “their Web sites aren’t really tailored to a great shopping experience.”

You can understand why brands like Chanel want to limit their Web exposure, but what happens to interest if the immediate outlet is blocked? “This is not a generation that will wait to get a number for admission,” said Candace Corlett, a partner at WSL Strategic Retail in New York, a retail consultant. “They’ll find another way to get what they want.” via Fall Fashion – What Do Young Fashionistas Want? – NYTimes.com.

Gen Y Princess Madeleine is rad, works for Childhood Foundation

Female role models. For Millennial women they’re our mom’s. But what of those ladies worth looking up to that are just beyond our day-to-day nurturing and guidance from momma?

Enter Princess Madeline’s awesome self.

I recently read that she’s working for Childhood Foundation (her mom, Her Majesty Queen Silvia’s org) in New York! I’m jealous! She works with UNICEF also. What an awesome job!

I personally look up to her because she’s heavily engaged in civic duties and, oh look! She looks up to her mom and works with her! LOL

She’s still young and I feel like she’s a great Gen Y role model and still can have fun at halloween and be a total babe:

Women’s lib + Dolly Parton = Gen Y Thankfulness

Last night I was lucky and got 2 tickets to sit in the Blumenthal Performing Art Center’s ‘social seats’ program at Oven’s Auditorium here in Charlotte to live-tweet during the breaks in exchange. Not a bad deal, right?

9 to 5 is Dolly Parton’s women’s empowerment themed musical about three smart, sexy women who daydream, whilst high on pot, of poisoning, hogtying and shooting their sexist, bigoted chauvinist of a boss who’s hurt them each in a different demeaning and belittling way. Happenstance causes the idea to cross into reality but not by conscious action on the part of the ladies. The boss winds up all but shot.

They then pull a Robbin Hood and put childcare, flex work hours and company provided addiction rehab into the company’s operations policies. They redesign & readjust the attitude of the office by forging their boss’ signature to approve these upgrades and hold him hostage long enough to get a case built up against him that proves he’s been  siphoning money from the company for years.

In the end everyone wins and gets off scott free, including the boss, who is unfortunately sent on a big promotion out to open a Borneo office.

Here’s the thing that resonated with me, though: It was emotionally difficult for me to identify with the struggle of the characters and this is a beautiful thing.

Feelings on Brandlessness

Since I’m on the theme of childhood memories with my post on Penny from Inspector Gadget, lately I’ve been noodling on the concept of how brandless my world feels when it comes to TV.

We don’t have cable TV at my house. Not because of any financial matter (though saving ~$70/mo is not to be understated), we don’t have cable because we get everything streaming for the most part.  We use PlayOn to get Justin.TV and Hulu on our XBOX360, where we also use the NetFlicks app to get our movies and whatnot. In the back bedroom we have an HD antenna, just enough to pick up local news if we want to zone out as we doze off. I know that I just namedropped a bunch of brands into a comment about feeling brandless but, if you think about it, there are so very few ads compared to how things were when I was growing up and the only option was to just sit through commercials. No DVR, no Tivo, no 2 mins of commercials so the rest of the show is uninterrupted, nothing.

I feel really brandless in the sense that I’m not so hyper-concious of products that aren’t relative to me anymore. I’m so overly acclimated to the ads finding me, just like news does. Thinking about puberty and social pressures, I’m actually hopeful (in some ways) for young ladies growing up right now; Those super young Millennials who were born in 2000 when I was graduating HS.

They won’t have to sit there and be exposed to advertising with the carrot of a tiny bit of TV content waiting just after this commercial break. Those awkward ads on how to talk with your daughter about “feminine odor” won’t find them… unless they want it to. LOL! I also like that there are more options to view the beauty of real, accessible women from which to base self esteem upon (don’t be mad, we all did it when we were pre-pubescent/tweens) instead of overinflated, unattainable beauty standards of Hollywood.

But these days, I don’t know what the jingles are, who’s endorsing what, etc. I used to know all of those things AND they didn’t matter to me! I still to this day remember the Gillette! The best a man can get! jingle. Actually, that’s a perfect example to illustrate my brandlessness point. It’s weird for me to realize that I’ll likely never absorb (through tv or video content) a jingle for a product that is irrelevant to me, like men’s face razors, hardly at all, if not ever again.

I feel like I’m starting to give more weight to brands that find me but the scary converse side to that is the question of why/how these brands are finding me. I know there are algorithms to predict my behavior based on what I click but, my dad is gonna kill me for saying this, there’s some information I gladly give over to “them” because “they” are making my life easier and filtering out all of that irrelevant product placement for me.

Just observations.

@UnderOak tells it like it is

via aluminouscreativeboon.blogspot.com

The harder that institutions try to suppress, the more people find a way to communicate.

So when I read a call to arms for high-school journalism education by Esther Wojcicki, director of Palo Alto [Calif.] High School’s journalism program, this line blew me away:

“Far too many of our future journalists, citizens and leaders unquestioningly accept that school administrators — government officials — should have the authority to dictate what they read, write and talk about. “

She was quoting the Student Press Law Center, talking about the 20-year-old Hazelwood court decision, which allows high schools in some cases to censor student publications.

But the more I thought about my own 20-year-old daughter and others who grew up in those 20 years, I came to a different conclusion. This court ruling and institutional climate of the past 20 years have instead led to an erosion of respect for those institutions that try to stifle free discussion and speech.

Your place of business locks down social media? No problem, use your own phone and perhaps a pseudonym. Your high school locks down computers or confiscates phones? Just hack your way around the firewall or be craftier about the phone use. Even your mom says the phone is OK.

This emerging generation is the one that took cell phones to school because parents wanted to be able to reach them after 9/11. Some of their teachers refused to turn off class TVs that day despite what the main office said. Knowledge and communication bring power, safety and self-preservation.

The idea that communication has been locked down and is becoming more controlled might seem bizarre given the daily overload of information we face. But consider:

• Mecklenburg County officials in February considered taking down the ability to search online by name for property owners;
• Records of real-time 911 calls for service have been removed from the redesigned Charlotte Mecklenburg government website;
• Some large private businesses, especially in a bank town like Charlotte, lock down employee access to social media, and sports stars from Denny Hamlin in NASCAR to Marcus Austin at the University of North Carolina have faced consequences because of their words on social media. In most individual cases, education would serve better than blanket policies.

Still, we’re social creatures and technical problem solvers. Some of our most established institutions have become the technical problems. Institutional obstacles to free communication have taught people to disrespect the institutions and that it’s OK to seek ways around barriers and institutions that impose them. Not all of us know the ways around the barriers, but we reward those who do.

via @UnderOak

…aaaaand I’m back

After an interesting hiatus and a somewhat abrupt but much needed career change, I’m back in the game!

Hey yawl!

Here’s a quick catch-up of what I’ve been up to the last, oh, little bit:

1) @TEDxCHARLOTTE – Sept 24 – HOLY MOLY has this been a heck of an amazing whirlwind! I’ve been doing TEDxCLT’s social media stuff (amongst other things) which has been so exciting and character developing! I seriously can not wait for this event. I thought I had my dress picked out but oh the options!! I’m wearing a red dress but not sure which. Hmm, maybe I’ll post both options and see what you all think.

2) #DNC10 / #CLT2012 hashtag party. I was on tv, in Creative Loafing and in the newspaper. heh. CLT Blog represent!

3) @PKNCLT - Pecha Kucha Night Charlotte v.7 – Oct 1! The Mint Museum is opening and as part of their 24 hour celebration we’ll be participating and it’s MIDNIGHT AT THE MINT!

4) From the Hip Communications – I got a new job! It’s so interesting to notice my own stages of transitioning from a typical office environment to one working predominantly where I choose. “Communications Strategist”. I love that I can go sit at Caribou on East and just get my stuff done. I find that I’m far, far more productive with maximum flexibility like this. What a great, positive change! My boss, Crystal Dempsey, is crazy-amazing and I can’t wait to absorb as much as I can.

Other than that, all is well in my world! I’m having fun experimenting with QR codes. I can’t wait to implement some of the ones I’ve created in the past few days!  I think it’ll be more and more interesting to see these develop as time goes on. QR codes are an interesting way to bridge the physical to mobile gap so many folks marketing to Millennials are after.

Penny for your thoughts

This weekend I had the invigorating opportunity to show a 92 year old woman Skype video chat wirelessly using my Clear 4g dongle doo-dad on my MacBook Pro.

I also got to show her how we could see her house in Brooklyn via satellite on my iPhone.

She kept saying; “I’ve never SEEN such a thing and I talk to a LOT of people!”.

It was so… cute. She sat there in her baby pink moo-moo and couldn’t believe what she was seeing. I LOVED it.

All I could think of was how similar I felt to a childhood friend of mine on the drive home to NC: Penny from Inspector Gadget. I had my computer book and everything!

Can you imagine the things she’s seen in her day? Wow.

In which I give a stream of conciousness reaction to “Opposite Of Radical: Today’s Youth Trust Uncle Sam” on NPR

It’s a pretty good bet that these young people will begin to care more as they start looking for work in coming years. And ultimately, it may be the economy more than anything else that determines whether or not they continue to trust the government. If the recession ends sooner, young people may give the government the credit — and their eternal trust.

But if the economic downturn persists, their positive attitude most likely will not.

via Opposite Of Radical: Today’s Youth Trust Uncle Sam : NPR.

You know, I can’t help but agree with this. I try not to do a lot of “me too” posts, but… I couldn’t have articulated that better myself. I don’t sense any sort of governmental discontent around my peers… but I feel like some of us are moving past the point of being too young & naive and indeed realize that the potential for failure exists within anything in life.

This part I really agreed with too:

“They don’t define in terms of opposition or trying to smash everything. They don’t have a generation gap, really. They really cite parents as role models or political guides. The current thing is you call your mom on your cell phone to ask what she thinks, which I really don’t think was a ’60s attitude,” Levine says.

I feel like I trust my Boomer parents a lot and feel like I can trust the establishment(s) they’ve created. They gave us the internet! How can you not trust THAT? [/snark]

But seriously. I ask my mom for business advice often. The government, I feel like, is at a maturation point where I feel like my generation is feeling and experiencing the government my parents’ cohorts created. Government is a big thing that takes years to change. I’ve grown up with an empowered mother who’s been dedicated to changing businesses for the better from within so I know for a fact that other women like her paved the way for women like me. I trust, at least enough to matter, in a government that is largely populated by a generation that has women like her in it.

I feel like my dad has always done geeky volunteer things, like dedicate an old computer in the back room, running 24/7, to helping crack encryption bits the government gives to volunteer organizations. They then report back to the government liason if/when they crack the message. This helps the government develop and preserve national security and I’m OK with a government my dad trusts enough to help. He was voted “Grassroots Democrat of the Year” the week before last, even! How could I not trust a government my own dad helps mold without being in the military?

Speaking of the military I also grew up in a home with a stepdad who’s an ex-Marine. He always gave me positive perspective into the people who choose to join the ranks. Not all Boomers were Haight/Ashbury hippies and sometimes I think people need to a reminder of that because Boomers are constantly being portrayed as such in the over simplified & over generalized world of pop culture. Real, normal and rational Boomers trusted the government enough to join it.

To me, the Boomer gen has been working on this government we’re seeing now for a long time now! I feel like we’re at a point in time where we owe the government at least the decency of not painting something all of these types of people have been working so hard on for so long out to be this huge malicious devil that is just inherently evil and that’s why everything in life is terrible. Where’s your optimism, man?!?

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

In the back of my mind though I’m always fully aware, being an only child of divorced parents, that not everything in life turns out like fairy tales do. I somehow got lucky and had the luxury of two dedicated dad/papas but the reality of the situation is that my experience is a-typical in that regard. The guys I grew up with don’t even talk to their mother and I imagine difficult situations like that are a little more common. The divorce rate alone of the Boomer gen is enough to scare me back to reality if I get to ethereal with my hopes.

My generation has also come of age with meth in the world.  What’s been more devastating to American society than that?

Don’t even get me started on the neuroses young, palpable minds can develop with absolutely no filter present whatsoever on the information available to those with the technology to access it and the implications of that!

It’s lessons like these that that I feel keep Millennials down to earth and realistic about managing the expectations we hold of our  government, which we hope to and want to see succeed. In an ideal world where everyone wins, benefit of the doubt is given. GenY is extending that benefit of the doubt we’ve always been given… for now.

Final thought: Oh, but don’t think we’re going to let it continue as is as Milennials come into power in government. OH NO. We’ll change things towards more traditional with our crazy hipster “world views”. Millennials will be a “”corrective generation,” a group that reverses the “negative youth trends that boomers initiated.”" I’m happy and curious to watch things change.

Et tu?

Not so good news about Princess Madeleine

Back in January I wrote about beautiful Gen Y Princess Madeleine who up and moved to NYC from Sweden to go to work for UNICEF. She’s my age so it’s been sad yet interesting to read the headlines about her lately:

Sweden’s Princess Madeleine has broken up with her fiancé Jonas Bergström, Stockholm’s royal court has announced.

A statement on the royal family’s website said the pair had taken a joint decision to separate after “mature consideration”. The couple had reached the conclusion that it was best for both of them to move forward with separate lives, the statement said.

The decision to split follows weeks of media speculation that the couple’s relationship was in trouble, including reports that Bergström had enjoyed a brief dalliance with a Norwegian handball star while on a skiing holiday.

The Princess and Bergström asked the media to show them respect and consideration following the decision.

“They need peace and quiet in this difficult situation,” the court said. It added that recent intense media coverage had not made the situation easier. The statement said that no further statement would be made.

One thing I’m watching out for now that early wave Millennials are old enough to marry (and divorce) is if we’ll take the lead from our Boomer parents and marry/divorce more. Since we’re already waiting later in life to make these kind of choices, the pendulum could swing either way at this point.  I do have a sneaking suspicion that we’ll have a lower divorce rate after a much longer dating period.

I’m glad Princess Madeleine broke up with this guy. She, just like everyone, doesn’t deserve that!

Social Media Blackout Experiment

 

For TNGG I documented my 2 days without Social Media experiment in diary form (found below). The best content is from my first 2 hours of withdrawl, imho. I really began to question social media’s presence in my life. I feel as if it’s prevalence in my daily function has crept up on me but the more I think on it the more I realize it’s always been there, just as I have. Nothing is new about it, it just has a name now and a vehicle in which to thrive: mobile.

I did a lot of thinking this weekend during my social media blackout, a lot of it pertaining to how technology and this ‘new’ social way of living is changing our social, economic and even physiological way of being. I thought a lot about how Millennials are chronic multi-taskers and how social media is one big multi-tasking way of life. I feel like social media is viewed as a huge distraction for GenY. It makes sense to me that other generations would evaluate us on how well we are able to think in a linear fashion completely forgetting to take into account the way our transliterate capabilities might be a good thing and how social media is but an extension of said transliteracy.

I thought a lot also about the impatient, coalition based decision making practices I and my cohorts use and how social media exemplefies this. We’re in the digital age of instant curiosity gratification. Having the body of knowledge of an entire society at one’s fingertips, while scary to some, I find is reassuring. Instant information gratification has propelled economics in a whole new way in the form of increased transparency. With this transparency of economic data, and the availability of it to boot, Millennials are making decisions unlike any other generation. My only fear for this type of decision making comes when the data we collectively access is wrong. There’s a lot of trust put into what we find online and I think it’d be beneficial for GenY to be reminded of the old adage: Don’t believe everything you read or see on tv/the internet/etc. I think our individual critical thinking abilities are on the decline but our group-think style of critical thinking is on the rise and for the better. Ie – strength in numbers for the greater good.

Finally, I thought about the mutual understanding Millennials have when it comes to social media. In any social group of GenY’ers I’ve ever been in recently, there’s an agreement that if someone is ‘checked out’ and on their phone, it’s not rude nor a source of contention. It is what it is and we move on. I can only hope that more people adopt this mentality.

Anyhow, onto my diary/log:

 

6:00pm Saturday – START

6:07pm: I’m beginning to question the amount of attention social media gets in my life as my husband sits here and begins to rattle off funny tweets as we regularly do back and fourth. The interconnectedness between us and social media is mildly distubing and the realization of this is unsettling.

6:29pm: I snuck and read my @ replies & DMs. They say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. I *might have a problem.

6:37pm: I just considered writing my tweets down so I could publish them later. Am I a social media douchebag???

6:41pm: I wrote down a tweet. I’m also finding it interesting that I’m documenting this in small, tweet-like snippets. The way Millennials communicate IS different, we even think to OUSELVES differently I suspect.

7:26pm: Reluctantly had to login to facebook because hubby’s phone was dead & FaceBook had his friend’s phone number, whom we were trying to meet up with.

7:36pm: Kinda mad I’m missing out on foursquare points, we never come to this Ethiopian restaurant. Took pics to post later. JFC i *do have a problem.

7:41pm: At dinner, hubby sits across from me talking about facebook happenings today. *sigh He gets on me about being on social media so much, I don’t think he realizes how even the way he and I interact is perpetuating the activities he hassles me about.

Here’s the link to post I’m mentioned in!: http://www.thenextgreatgeneration.com/2010/04/26/tngg-blackout-days-socialless/

Millennial Employees & The Back Channel

I heard a really great word the other day at the SharePoint user group I attend monthly. It’s “folksonomy”. If taxonomy is communication from the top down, folksonomy is communication from the bottom up. At the bottom is generally where you will find your Millennials, just because of where we’re at in life right now. Gen Y has a lot of social power currently but that’s about it; a LOT of this can be attributed to social media. We’ve formed ourselves into formidable members of the collective consciousness via the web; contributing and taking from it what we need in a way that is just as second nature to us as breathing.

Since we’re slotted to outnumber the Baby Boomers this year this says to me that the way the world is set to communicate is set to change drastically. Being knowledgeable on the topic of how GenY communicates is something a lot of marketers seem to be interested in lately. There are brands chomping at the bit to get some of the Millennial purchasing power, especially now that some of us are getting older, becoming early careerists, getting jobs and finally having disposable income.

From my perspective, Gen Y is the most social and interconnected generation in history.

One communication vehicle used by the ‘folks’ is the back channel. The Back Channel is gossip in it’s simplest form but it’s also so much more, especially if you’re a business. It provides a host of benefits, IF you are able to harness it.

The “back channel,” in a business capacity, is a term attributed to the communication happening off of corporate channels. In fact, the back channel functions in almost exactly the opposite way traditional communication does. Gen Y is all over the back channel. It’s the way we get things done: we band together to form a coalition. Ever heard of FaceBook? Of course you have and that’s a prime example.

Understanding and speaking/contributing to the back channel means understanding and speaking to Millennials effectively.

The biggest pitfall the back channel creates for organizations is leadership vulnerability at the levels which have been effectively bypassed. It’s not much of a stretch to understand how a coalition of younger employees bypassing leadership altogether to get things done can result in massive organizational strife.

So, how do you harness it if you need to communicate to the ‘folks’ using this style of communication?

Let’s start with a story.

The IT department of Company X wants to release a new tool to their internationally located end-user population but struggles with communicating that the tool being rolled out will positively impact the way the end-user engages with Company X’s systems(something that can be quantified if needed). In the past the IT department has always used the (proven to be ineffective) standard “trickle down” communication style and has found itself completely isolated in an organizational silo. The message is not being quickly adopted, has little resonance with the end-users and change management is an ongoing struggle.

So, what is the IT department to do? Here are my suggestions, take them how you will:

1. Come to grips with the fact that your Gen Y employees might be communicating with a group larger than your entire department, or maybe even larger than the entire company’s population, every single day. – Just because your employees are younger doesn’t mean they don’t know a thing or two about how to communicate to their peers. I know I personally communicate to a group at least quadruple the size of my entire global department at work on a daily basis.

2. Incorporate contributing to the back channel in all communications plans. – Just like everything, having any plan is better than having no plan. Any intentions to contribute to the back channel need to be incorporated into the formal communications plan. You know what they say about the road to hell being paved with the best intentions! If you are going to do it, do it on purpose and with an idea of why you are doing it. Build processes to support engagement with the back channel.

3. With a well-informed, well empowered, and well-placed evangelist to speak to the back channel (hint: it is NOT anyone in management), the message is augmented exponentially. It is important to equip those who speak to the back channel with the proper message to convey, obviously. It is equally as important to empower them with the knowledge that you trust them to get your message out there in a way that will build relationships and not veer from the intended outcome of the message in a damaging way. It’s extremely important that this function is not micro-managed. You can never, ever control the back channel, only contribute to and monitor/respond to it.

4. Listen. Because of the highly responsive and fast rate of return on feedback the back channel provides, just putting a message out there isn’t enough – Listening to AND taking into account the feedback offered will prove beneficial. The IT department mentioned should put processes in place that give guidance on how to respond to a number of potential back channel feedback situations and follow this, not completely re-work the message so it re-fits back into the (ineffective) model “everyone is used to”. 

5. Make language accessible and not so full of ‘corporate speak’. – The back channel operates in such a way that is void of most corporate mumbo-jumbo and really uses a communication style that encourages camaraderie and discussion.  It’s extremely important that this function is not micro-managed as well. If IT’s end-users have to have a degree in corporate linguistics to decipher what the benefits are of this new tool, 100% of their message is absolutely going to be lost. Another way to debilitate a message is to over-simplify it, removing ‘extraneous’ words in hopes of making it accessible but instead making it sterile. People chit-chat and the back channel is really just the gossip channel. The trick is to focus in on the actionable and ‘tune out’ the chit-chat that also occupies the back channel’s space. Your message shouldn’t stand out as anything different than the daily chit-chat but with a helpful message. Think billboards vs. tweets. Which one is going to give you the most real-time feedback?

Example:

Traditional channel, posted on the intranet: MEMO: New tool XYZ available via the company portal will require less concurrent applications running.

Back channel, via email: “Have you seen IT’s new tool yet? It’s so much easier! I don’t have to have anything installed on my computer. Everything is online!”

6. The back channel provides the ideal type two-way communication many companies salivate over. -  Yes, it’s ideal and novel to think that a feedback form is considered two-way communication, but really it’s more of a practice in getting people to adopt a survey, not the message behind it. I’m not saying surveys aren’t effective but relying on it as the primary mode of “two-way communication” is simple naïveté and is wholly ineffective standing alone.

7. Blend the traditional corporate message with the informal dialogue-style speech the back channel is accustomed to. There’s an appropriate place for a carefully crafted, hyper-formal communication to employees. Where these kinds of communications are NOT appropriate is on the back channel. The back channel isn’t about YOU. It’s about THEM. If the IT department wants their message to resonate, it’s important that, at least on the back channel, their messages are pro-user and NOT pro-corporate IT.

So, there you have it. If you want to tap into the knowledge base of your collective intelligence junkies known as Millennials/Gen Y generation, good luck! I’d love to hear what works and what doesn’t in the comments!

Hipster ramblings about hipsters in general

I’ve been thinking a lot lately on the whole “Hipster”… thing. I posted an article that I thought was really interesting then my mind just keep going. I slipped in discussions about hipsters to a bunch of different people so I could get some perspective.

The most interesting conversation I had was with an anonymous Louisiana born Boomer whom I sat with on an airplane on my way out to San Fransisco for MacWorld 2010.  She said something really interesting that really resonated with me. She said she felt like hipsters don’t stand for anything and she felt like that was weird. She said if “if you don’t stand for somethin’, you don’t stand for nothin’”.

What I want to rant know about is, what’s with Hipsters denying they’re Hipster? I know it’s hipster to be ironic but COME ON. Is it that hipsters are so overwhelmingly paranoid/insecure about their lack of authenticity like many claim? I don’t know because I find hipsters to be authentic.

I AM a hipster by definition and from my perspective I feel like I know a lot of unbelieveably well rounded, well traveled, well spoken and well educated (hipster) people. I completely disagree with the airplane Louisianian’s notion that being about everything means you’re ultimately about nothing. I think the world has just never seen the rise of such a global society member so they don’t know how to react to and classify them.

 

Hipsters are the original bi-product of the first, in my opinion, truly global economy. We’re the first TRULY global generation and it’s in large part due to the rise of technology happening while we were being raised. There’s no other generation that’s been able to be so interconnected, so networked and so enabled to be this way. To me it seems every generation feels like there’s no generation like it that came before it but this time I feel it’s truly more the case, at least if we’re talking in terms of global reality communications leaving deep societal impressions on the youth.

I know it’s corny to quote the dictionary but I found this GREAT definition of a hipster that most encompasses any description of hipsters I’ve ever seen over at Urban Dictionary:

Hipsters are a subculture of men and women typically in their 20′s and 30′s that value independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive politics, an appreciation of art and indie-rock, creativity, intelligence, and witty banter. The greatest concentrations of hipsters can be found living in the Williamsburg, Wicker Park, and Mission District neighborhoods of major cosmopolitan centers such as New York, Chicago, and San Francisco respectively. Although “hipsterism” is really a state of mind,it is also often intertwined with distinct fashion sensibilities. Hipsters reject the culturally-ignorant attitudes of mainstream consumers, and are often be seen wearing vintage and thrift store inspired fashions, tight-fitting jeans, old-school sneakers, and sometimes thick rimmed glasses. Both hipster men and women sport similar androgynous hair styles that include combinations of messy shag cuts and asymmetric side-swept bangs. Such styles are often associated with the work of creative stylists at urban salons, and are usually too “edgy” for the culturally-sheltered mainstream consumer. The “effortless cool” urban bohemian look of a hipster is exemplified in Urban Outfitters and American Apparel ads which cater towards the hipster demographic. Despite misconceptions based on their aesthetic tastes, hipsters tend to be well educated and often have liberal arts degrees, or degrees in maths and sciences, which also require certain creative analytical thinking abilities. Consequently many hipsters tend to have jobs in the music, art, and fashion industries. It is a myth that most hipsters are unemployed and live off of their parent’s trust funds.
Hipsters shun mainstream societal conventions that apply to dating preferences and traditional “rules” of physical attraction. It is part of the hipster central dogma not to be influenced by mainsream advertising and media, which tends to only promote ethnocentric ideals of beauty. The concepts of androgyny and feminism have influenced hipster culture, where hipster men are often as thin as the women they date. The muscular and athletic all-American male ideal is not seen as attractive by confident and culturally-empowered hipster women who instead view them as symbols of male oppression, sexism, and misogyny. Likewise, culturally-vapid sorority-type girls with fake blond hair, overly tanned skin, and “Britney Spears tube-tops” are not seen as attractive by cultured hipster males who instead see them as symbols of female insecurity, low self-esteem, and lack of cultural intelligence and independent thinking. Hipsters are also very racially open-minded, and the greatest number of interracial couples in any urban environment are typically found within the hipster subculture.

Although hipsters are technically conformists within their own subculture, in comparison to the much larger mainstream mass, they are pioneers and leaders of the latest cultural trends and ideals. For example, the surge of jeans made to look old and worn (i.e. “distressed”), that have become prevalent at stores such as The Gap, American Eagle, Abercrombie and Fitch, and Hollister, were originally paraded by hipsters who shopped in thrift stores years before such clothing items were mass produced and sold to the mainstream consumer. The true irony here is that many of the detractors of hipster culture are in fact unknowingly following a path that hipsters have carved out years before them. This phenomena also applies to music as well, as many bands have become successful and known to mainstream audiences only because hipsters first found and listened to them as early-adopters of new culture. Once certain concepts of fashion and music have reached mainstream audiences, hipsters move on to something new and improved.

Because of the rise of various online photo-blog and social networking sites, insights into urban hipster culture is reaching sheltered suburban audiences at an exponential rate. Cultural “norms” have been deconstructed by hipster culture as a whole. Hipsterism is often dismissed as just an image thing by some, but the culture as a whole is effecting changes in society, leading to feelings of insecurity and resentment in people who are no longer a part of the cultural ruling class. For example, a lot of anti-hipster sentiment evidently comes from culturally-clueless suburban frat boy types who feel that the more sensitive, intelligent, and culturally aware hipster ideal threatens their insecure sense of masculinity. Anti-hipster sentiment often comes from people who simply can’t keep up with social change and are envious of those who can.”

So, there’s that. I kind of just wanted to share.