cazh1: on Business, Information, and Technology

Three Dimensions of the Conversation - Millenials and Web 2.0

Catching up on some old links - all related to the impact of Web 2.0, and especially the incoming Millennials, on the workplace.

• At internetnews, Kuchinskas has laid out a pretty good summary of concerns about the philosophy of information sharing on the public Internet - this doesn't translate well to many corporate environments (see previously). Most of the article frets about the inevitable introduction of malware to the trusted network, but I think the hidden danger is the possibility of sensitive corporate information getting out. Publicly traded companies especially need to be concerned about this; the distinction between copyrighted artistic expression and corporate intelligence may be lost on those fresh out of college.
• Via Kottke.org, an interesting concept from Kevin Kelly; folks whose professions have been Turing'd (ie. outsourced via computers / technology advances) are generally more open to working with new technologies. This is a bit contrary to my previous post, and it makes sense - they've already been hit by the train once, and are certainly not going to get hit again. Besides, it's fun to extend the list of theories you never thought could be automated (like real-time driving directions) or eliminated (like newspaper classifieds) ...
• ... which leads me to this list (from SEOmoz) of things that the Millennials have never seen. Variations on this theme appear almost every year, the kind of world events or social movements that incoming college freshmen have never experienced. Nice to see one that puts the relative pace of technology change in the same perspective.
• We're finally seeing corporations like IBM and SAP working to add Web 2.0 and mash-up [clown-suit] capabilities into their major products. Another article calls out some research work that IBM is doing with current college students. I thought it was cool because I did some work like that in my senior year on a project sponsored by IBM. We wrote a virtual disk interface for the IBM 370 (yes, I had a PC XT with a mainframe for a floppy disk ...)
• In Computerworld, Thibodeau writes about the introduction of texting into the business world. I have this functionality right now with my Blackberry, and had it in the past running MSN Messenger on the iPAQ - so I know that texting has value to business. However, I don't think you'll get rid of IM for the folks still working at the desktop. I validated this with my teenage daughters - they favor texting because they're not in front of the computer as much as they are walking about with a phone in their pocket. However, I do note that my oldest prefers texting even when she's surfing the web in between social engagements. At best, there will be a nice mix of these styles, and hopefully we'll see e-mail traffic (and useless attachments, Reply All, and unmanageable inboxes) fade away.

There was a recent Q&A thread from LinkedIn Answers on the general topic of managing the Millennials - a representative sample of the three dimensions the topic encompasses:

1. Millennials are new elements in a threat matrix
2. Consumer technology entering the business
3. Communication challenges between the generations

• eMail on Blackberry Changes Definition of Acceptable eMail (September 19, 2005)
  
• Gee, this social network - presence - IM - knowledge management - collaboration stuff really works (September 25, 2005)
  
• My first month with the Blackberry Pearl (February 26, 2007)
  
• Corporate Web 2.0 is Spreading - Here comes the Blog (May 15, 2007)
  
• Consarned whippersnappers (Generational Diversity) (May 20, 2007)
  
• The Right Web2.0 Tool for The Job (July 16, 2007)
  
• The Best Way to get Web 2.0 Into the Enterprise (March 3, 2008)
  
• The Innovation Generation - Communication Styles (April 1, 2008)
  
• Why are those Old Programmers so slow in picking up on the Intarweb? (April 6, 2008)
  
• The Innovation Generation and User Interfaces (April 9, 2008)
  

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posted by James P. MacLennan at 1:43 PM | Permalink | 0 Comments

The Innovation Generation and User Interfaces

I don't intend for all my posts about Millennials joining the workforce to be anti-youth. There are some significantly good things this new generation can bring to established organizations - ways of thinking that foster innovation and forward-progress in how organizations use information.

For example, let's talk about user interfaces (UI). I'm not an old man, but I remember the advent of IBM's Common User Access standard. DOS-based computers and early GUIs introduced UI variety, and the resulting lack of consistency took part of the blame for systems that were hard to learn (and therefore hard to use). CUA promised consistency, greater productivity and information effectiveness.

Fast forward to the modern Internet era, and it's clear that "common user access" is no longer a baseline requirement for effective use of information. Cutting edge web sites pride themselves on their innovative, engaging, and unique front ends. Every website you see is different, yet it doesn't take people much time to figure out how to order a book on Amazon, browse for peripherals at CDW, or bid on stuff on eBay. These are mainstream Internet users I'm talking about; the tech-savvy are just the ones coming up with a new and different clown suits** for the same old services.

**And by 'clown-suit' I mean 'innovative dynamic XMLSocket/AHAH/AJAX-based exploitative web 2.0 social mashup,' of course. (props to findmemp3)

However ... isn't it interesting that those mainstream Internet users, productively surfing at home, are the same folks in your office complaining about difficult-to-use ERP systems? In this world, UI consistency is not an issue (okay, except when an acquisition is folded inelegantly into another framework). The challenge is with system designers and developers that lack an understanding of what makes a user interface effective and engaging - something that most longtime corporate system developers have never really been trained in.

Not that the newbies (sorry, Millenials) coming in to our IT departments automatically know how to design an effective interface - they are just more open to it, and they understand it better when they see it. Admittedly, "I know it when I see it" is hard to describe and extremely hard to train. However, now I must link to one of the few presentations I've ever been able to get a lot out of without having the presenter present to me ...

| View | Upload your own

Now, I certainly can't explain Kano Modeling and the more theoretical stuff, but it really starts to click on slide 15 when he showed a hierarchy of needs for user interaction. The slides lay out basic ideas that resonate, and terrific examples that you can recognize from your daily travels through the Internet. These applications speak to you, not at you, and make the act of using them a pleasurable experience. Simple stuff like conversational error / warning / guidance messages, effective use of pictures and words, and the value of "less is more".

I think a critical differentiator between an application accessible via the public Internet and the typical internal, corporate application is a fundamental assumption [on the Internet] that you cannot hold your user's hand through the process. The information presented, and the user's experience, has to stand on its own - because it is impossible to know who, when, and where your stuff is going to be used. This raises the bar for usability and scalability, but it's a great model to emulate for internal development in this lean economy.

So how do you make the jump between internally-focused developer and externally-savvy innovator? I'd start with Anderson's presentation - see if it "speaks to you". I think you'll either get it (and your mind will open up), or not (and you need to burn a few hundred hours surfing websites and experiencing the difference).

• Communicating Complex Technical Concepts (March 21, 2005)
  
• Finding shapes in the fog - How to frame a wispy, wandering conversation (September 7, 2005)
  
• A blast from my past - game programming for the TRS-80 (October 5, 2005)
  
• The "Army Rangers" model for IT Professionals (January 2, 2006)
  
• The Law of Large Numbers - or, why Enterprise Wikis are Fundamentally Challenged (September 26, 2006)
  
• Excel vs. RDBMS: Choosing the Technology, Winning the Arguments (March 11, 2007)
  
• Open Source Insights on Enterprise Software Business Models (March 14, 2007)
  
• Lighten Up, Francis - Loosen Up That PowerPoint (April 14, 2007)
  
• Consarned whippersnappers (Generational Diversity) (May 20, 2007)
  
• Butting In to the Conversation: PM Communication Tools (February 26, 2008)
  
• The Best Way to get Web 2.0 Into the Enterprise (March 3, 2008)
  
• The Innovation Generation - Communication Styles (April 1, 2008)
  

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posted by James P. MacLennan at 11:29 PM | Permalink | 0 Comments

Why are those Old Programmers so slow in picking up on the Intarweb?

A significant difference between us old-line IT coders and the new graduates is the variety of our platforms and tools. I'm not talking about the large number of languages and tools learned over the course of a career - we all have a healthy collection of certifications and acronyms peppering the bottoms of our resumes. I'm talking about the amazing array of stuff required to get development done on a single project, "right now".

Over the past few weeks, I've been doing a little development at work. This is my idea of fun - in between the PowerPoints and project status meetings, I try to sneak in a little hack or two. Actually, I'm not doing the heavy lifting on this one; I'm working with one of the guys on my team, and we're putting together some ASP code to generate RSS feeds from the SQL database we use to track our projects. He's done most of the raw research and the base coding, I'm just prettying up the final package.

As a department, we're moving towards Microsoft as a strategic platform, but we're certainly not there yet - so this is definitely a skunkworks-type project. For this "fun stuff", we're using technologies that will plug nicely into our general strategic direction, but at this point there are no standard toolsets or integrated development environments in broad use.

So, to get the job done this afternoon, I've been cycling through the following ...

• In window #1, editing the .ASP file with Crimson; source files are sitting on the development server
• In window #2, testing code using IE ... no integrated debug environment for my ASP syntax, but I manage (just a little trickery - switches flip between RSS and HTML output)
• This is just debugging the basic code - to validate the RSS XML, I View Source from IE (opening window #3) and cut and paste into the W3C validator (window #4)
• For the SQL queries and database hacking, I've got window #5 for Enterprise Manager and #6 for Query Analyzer
• After debugging, I push to the test server manually, using File Explorer in windows #7 and #8
• Everything looks great, so I switch to window #9, which has another chunk of ASP that generates custom URLs for the RSS feed (we've added selectivity, aren't we crafty?)
• For the final test, I have RSS Bandit open in window #10. I create multiple new feed URLs (#9) and add to the Bandit config, to see what I get
• If I made a syntax error in the RSS (missed something between #4 and here), I have to flip back to window #1 to clean it up
• Oops, almost forgot ... like any good coder, I've got TFMs open, but it's not just one manual- window #11 is my multi-tabbed Firefox, Googling all sorts of sites to get references for RSS, ASP, and SQL

Sounds crazy, I know. I could/should go out and get Visual Studio or something. But like I said, we're not fully in production in this Microsoft development environment. We're innovating, right?

I've done open source development on my own in the past, and it's much the same thing - multiple different platforms, tools, and languages. For example, when working on my own site, I'm fixing configuration files and writing code in HTML, CSS, PHP, and mySQL. To get things working, I'm dealing with the configuration files for Apache, Eclipse, PHP, and mySQL. Edits in Eclipse and Crimson, pushing around source with FTP, fighting firewalls and routers, developing in Windows while production is in Unix.

This madhouse of multiple tools, languages, and platforms probably sounds quite normal - if you've been working heavy with open source and/or Web 2.0 for a few years. But imagine presenting this to legacy IT folks, working in their version controlled, standardized environments. The typical "road to the future" brings five new technologies, three new IDEs, and one or two basic system architectures that are all very different from tried and true.

Does this mean you can't teach an old dog new tricks? Not at all - most are quite anxious to learn, and have done so continuously over the years. However, this is all starting to feel like the first time we switched from procedural languages (COBOL, RPG, Pascal, Fortran) to OO and event-driven stuff (Visual Basic, PowerBuilder, SQLWindows). We went from offense to defense, from being controlling and orchestrating to reacting and trapping. Not that it was bad or wrong - just different.

Does this mean the experienced coder is washed up, and has nothing to contribute? Ask the folks in Big Pharma, having dealt with the FDA and validated systems. Ask the folks working with Finance in public companies, having dealt with SarbOx. Healthcare and HIPAA. Retail and RFID. Not to mention having to debug a lot of other people's code, and knowing when to step through or just refactor.

Running to the future, juggling multiple multilingual windows, and demonstrated facility with the newest tools is all good, but it's just one of many attributes that determine who on your team is worth 50 others. Have a little patience ...

• Things for the DIY programmer to consider (March 14, 2005)
  
• Tracking patent submissions via RSS (June 1, 2005)
  
• Turning a new page, and working on that home development environment (July 27, 2005)
  
• My Favorite Paradox (August 13, 2005)
  
• Analog and Report Magic Log File Formats (September 10, 2005)
  
• Fighting with MS Access and version incompatibility (September 26, 2005)
  
• Digging into open source for a New Big Project leads to Yak Shaving (November 4, 2005)
  
• Code Mover / Transport: Managing source, environments, and deep-diving into multiple technologies (November 6, 2005)
  
• The "Army Rangers" model for IT Professionals (January 2, 2006)
  
• SQL Hack for Reporting Project Phase and Status (December 19, 2007)
  

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posted by James P. MacLennan at 12:13 AM | Permalink | 0 Comments

The Innovation Generation - Communication Styles

There've been many articles in recent weeks about the tech-savvy Millennials and their impact on future work. I concede, even welcome the changes that business will need to introduce in response to these new expectations, but I don't see the massive change that some writers seem to think is inevitable. The world will not change to accommodate the Millennials, but relevant and effective new working styles will definitely be adopted where they make business sense.

I will certainly agree that communication styles will change. For example, there will be a greater reliance on (and expectations of) instant and ubiquitous connections - with people, information and technology. IM is already on the way out, and texting is the way to go; my high-school-aged daughters think nothing of racking up thousands of text mails every month.

Unfortunately, this kind of freewheeling message content is going to run headlong into the litigious real-world. Many companies are still struggling over records retention standards and expectations. Public companies will need to maintain some control over messages that could contain proprietary or inside information. Corporate survival and protection from liability are clearly not on the minds of students as they post embarrassing pictures on Facebook pages, and even adults get trapped by unfortunate text messages that come back to haunt them.

Don't get me wrong - I'm a huge believer in alternative messaging styles and flexible collaboration. I've managed and/or participated on multiple "collaborative" teams - people from different companies, zip codes, time zones and countries. Separation by time and space has been a business challenge for years, but you could set up a shared FTP folder, or swap e-mails about projects, as long as I've been working. The teams that succeeded understood the differences between working across the hall and working across town, and moderated their communication styles accordingly, using the best tools available.

The value the Millennials bring is a de facto openness to collaboration tools. To them it's not something new that they need to learn; they expect the rest of us to already be there. Their rude awakening will come when they need to invest some change management time getting us "old folks" to catch up to their fast twitch messaging style; they won't be able to pass us by because we've got the organizational and process knowledge. (that's why we're on the team, right?)

• CIO Mag - Decision Evolution (October 11, 2004)
  
• Fast ticket to getting left behind (February 15, 2005)
  
• International Meetings - Pick a Convenient Time (April 1, 2005)
  
• War Stories from the Change Management front (August 21, 2006)
  
• Consarned whippersnappers (Generational Diversity) (May 20, 2007)
  
• Innovation That Matters - Substance Over Style (January 12, 2008)
  
• The Best Way to get Web 2.0 Into the Enterprise (March 3, 2008)
  

Technorati Tags: collaboration, design, generational diversity, innovation, Knowledge Management, millenials, people management, productivity, Social Networks, tech management, Web 2.0

Labels: collaboration, design, generational diversity, innovation, Knowledge Management, millenials, people management, productivity, Social Networks, tech management, Web 2.0

posted by James P. MacLennan at 9:38 PM | Permalink | 0 Comments