The Orange Chair

Creators of videos on YouTube will get alot more value with a new feature just announced. According to the New York Times,

“YouTube formally announced late Wednesday that it had added a free feature that will show video creators when and where viewers are watching their videos. With this, the company hopes to turn YouTube from an online video site into a place where marketers can test their messages, Tracy Chan, YouTube product manager, said.”

This can become a very powerful feature for people wanted to capture valuable metrics regarding the videos posted there. I expect it will drive even greater usage of YouTube. See the article YouTube Feature Tells Video Creators When and Where a Clip Is Being Watched on the New York Times for more on this exciting new feature.

Gary Brown e-mailed me this insightful manifesto from Michael Lee Stallard, an expert on client and employee engagement. In it, Michael describes the key ingredients of a connection culture: vision, value, and voice. More and more companies are focusing on developing deep, rich connections between their employees and their customers, and this document has a number of good examples of the benefits of this approach. Check it out at ChangeThis :: The Connection Culture: A New Source of Competitive Advantage.

Even if your answer to the article, So You Want to Be a Blogging Star? – New York Times is “no”, you can still gain some good insights from some of the blogging stars features in this article, which is about…

“…what a number of successful bloggers with successful nonblogging careers say are the ways to think about getting into the business of blogging.”

Well worth a look.

If you’ve seen any presentations in the last 5 years talking about the multiple generations composing today’s workforce, chances are that you’ve already seen the following table, or one of its multiple variations, all somehow influenced by the book "When Generations Collide: Who They Are. Why They Clash. How to Solve the Generational Puzzle at Work", by Lancaster and Stillman:

If you are wondering where you fall in this division, here are the boundaries:

• Traditionalists, born between 1900 and 1945;
• Baby Boomers, born 1946 to 1964;
• Gen-Xers, 1965-1980;
• Millennials, or NetGens, born after 1980

I liked the way the table above summarized the generational differences the first time I saw it, to the point I asked a colleague to re-use it in my current engagement. But when I proposed to add this table to the material I’m developing – part of a collaboration strategy for a very large government agency – I had an enlightening conversation with the folks I’m working with, both of them boomers and brilliant.

I don’t buy this. When I was 18, I was very much like the NetGen described in this table. The behaviours described here have a lot to do with personal traits and lifecycle. Today’s NetGens, once they get married, start a family and get a mortgage, may become more settled and act pretty much like a boomer. Besides, there are young folks today that are uncomfortable with change, thrive under hierarchical structures and prefer things to be run the "conventional" way.

Disclaimer: The above is my recollection of what 2 people said, which can be very different from what they actually said, so take it with a grain of salt.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I’m inclined now to think that the table above is VERY ageist, and it’s not helping us to actually understand the differences between people.

Our brain likes generalizations. It helps us to create a simple model of how life works and simplifies our decision making. But generalizations are typically based on perceived averages. And there is no such a thing as the average person, the average Asian, or the average woman. You probably have seen one of the multiple incarnations of "if the world were a village of 100 people" (see here & here for more details). The hypothetical average human being would be Asian, adult, heterosexual, Christian, always hungry and with no TV at home. I would bet that the vast majority of the human population does not fit that full profile, even though those are the dominant attributes in each category. Those attributes are independent variables, they don’t come in bundles.

There’s a Brazilian song that says something along the lines of "looking from a close range, nobody is normal" ("de perto ninguém é normal", Vaca Profana, Caetano Veloso, if you need to know). That’s so much true! Just imagine the table above trying to do the same with gender, race, or sexual preferences. You would probably think that to be very inappropriate or stereotypical. One of the things that make humanity fascinating is exactly how complex and different we are. Nobody is "one in a million". There was never a person like you, and there will never be. We are all truly unique, each one of us a long tail of our own. So please don’t tell me that you are too old to blog or that you "get" technology just because you are supposed to be a NetGen. There’s nothing like living in exponential times: the only thing you are supposed to be is yourself.

Business Week has a string of podcasts it put together monthly on “innovations impacting top execs”. Lots of good material here, including many on Web 2.0. There’s something on widgets, corporate wikis, vblogs (video blogs)…and more. See here:

O’Reilly’s Guide to Web 2.0

One interesting aspect of the campaign for president of the United States is the use of social computing. The Obama campaign in particular seems to be adept at using the technology to suit their purposes. For example, there is a story here about how they are…

“…using software from business intranet provider Central Desktop to manage “precinct captains” — volunteers who get out the vote and spread the campaign message in specific precincts across the state. The campaign started using the software during the run up to an earlier nominating contest in California — the nation’s most populous state. “The Web-based collaboration platform combined with a strong organized grass-roots effort, created unprecedented public involvement that is revitalizing politics in America,” said Patrick DeTemple, the California Data & Systems Manager for the Obama campaign. “Not since Bobby Kennedy has there been such an extensive Precinct Captain operation for a presidential candidate in California.”

Central Desktop is a wiki-based collaboration tool … the Obama campaign is using it to power a public facing wiki to organize information for precinct captains in Texas. According to Garcia, the campaign is using the software on their own without much input beyond basic support from Central Desktop ” ‘

Even if you don’t agree with everything Patrick DeTemple stated, it is clear that political parties in the U.S. and elsewhere are taking advantage of Web 2.0 technology and approaches to be more effective. For more on this, see:
How the Barack Obama Campaign Uses Wikis to Organize Volunteers – ReadWriteWeb

Over at businessweek.com is an article (mis)titled: Why Widgets Don’t Work

I say that because I think the real title should be: Why Widgets Aren’t Magic. As the author states at the end of the article:

Widgets can be a useful extension of your brand, but only if included in a broader portfolio of Internet outreach. The days of having a single Web site are gone, because people are spending much of their time in “doing” mode. Widgets, blogs, online video, public relations, and microsites are all ways to extend your reach online. But you can’t rely on a single application, especially since there are now more than 14,000 competing widgets on Facebook alone.

That’s closer to the truth. Widgets should be part of your overall toolset to extend your reach online. If that is the approach you take, I think you will find the Widgets Do Work (for you).