Students don't expect their tutor to see Facebook

During a drink last night with a friend who is a noted academic at London University, we talked a bit about social networking. I was interested in the extent to which university students were using Web 2.0 facilities in general as part of their studies. My friend did not seem to have deeply integrated these tools into her teaching methods, but she did remark that she had run a quick search of Facebook and found twelve of her students on there. The interesting thing was the reaction of these twelve on being told that she had done so - deep shock. She emphasised to me that her motives were strictly honorable - no dirt-digging was involved. In fact, she had been thinking of using Facebook as an internal forum for her student group, and that was the reason for checking who was on there. Despite this the reaction of the twelve could not have been stronger if she'd just told them they had all flunked their course.

This came as a surprise to me. I'd assumed that young Facebook users simply didn't care who saw what they were posting. Apparently not. If this group is representative of the whole - and, although it's a small sample, I see no real reason why not - it seems more as if they assume anyone over, say 40, either hasn't heard of Facebook or can't do a search.

Projecting this situation into a corporate context, I'm again having to revise an assumption. This was that young joiners, social networking users to a man (or woman), and of the 'let-it-all-hang-out' style to boot, would pressurise companies to change their culture, and that this in turn might accelerate the adoption of Enterprise 2.0. I now wonder if it isn't more likely that social networking will be a leisure-related medium only, as that's the way 20-somethings want it.

What do you think?

Trovus seminar at IBM

I went along to the seminar on Web 2.0 hosted by Trovus at IBM's South Bank offices today. I'm glad I did. Being aimed at companies that have heard the term, know thay need to find out more but are otherwise new to the subject, much of the content was familiar to me. Ed Charvet of Trovus had kindly invited me along to observe and hopefully make some sensible comments afterwards. I was impressed by Caspar Craven's and Jon Mell's presentations. Brendan Tutt of IBM also gave an engaging overview of IBM's Connections suite, and Chris Gabriel of Logicalis gave a great presentation too.

I've tended to focus in this blog on the potential of Web 2.0 tools for knowledge sharing within organisations - "KM 2.0", if you like. Trovus look at the bigger picture, encouraging organisations to examine how they could interact better not only within an organisation but between it and its customers, prospects, suppliers and so on. Their starting point is often the organisation's existing website, and the extent to which this is currently succeeding or failing to help them achieve their aims. I think this is a good starting point, overcoming as it does the usual difficulty in explaining in layman's terms what the potential benefits of Web 2.0 (horrible term, but we can't stop using it now, can we?) actually are.

Trovus also like to raise the issue of demographics. I've talked before on here about the younger generation expecting companies to provide social software tools, but the point was also made that the 'baby boomers' are about to leave in droves - through retirement. They will take their knowledge with them. This made me think that there are two powerful drivers here: you need to have Web 2.0 tools to keep the youngsters ('Generations X & Y') happy (and productive); but you also need to transfer tacit knowledge from the older workers to maintain corporate memory. And, provided that you can get them to use Web 2.0 tools, and you make sure you accumulate a repository, you can do both at the same time.

Finally, I realise I must take instant messenger more seriously. At IBM it's considered more mission critical than email. And how about this statistic: a survey of prospective university entrants found that for 42% of them, IM availability would influence their choice of uni. That really is a wake up call.

Enterprise 2.0 - the big and broad picture

This interview with Don Tapscott, well-known guru and seer in the world of technology and business, is interesting for the way it paints the Enterprise 2.0 future as being a major revolution. Don also covers a range of topics, from the importance of the expectations and behaviour of the younger 'net generation' as they enter the workforce - a point referred to in my previous posts - to changing business models. He thinks it's going to be big - massive - which may be true as he's a bit imprecise about timescales. Worth a read.

'Great minds' thinking alike

During a very interesting discussion with Nick Chapman of Thrupeople this week, the topic of young graduate entrants to companies came up. Nick agreed with me that this group is significant when it comes to take-up of Enterprise 2.0. We found ourselves agreeing that the culture of many organisations is in all probability incompatible with the expectations of this group. We kicked around some ideas for addressing the issue with a social networking approach. Nick suggested I might do some research among a sample of graduates to see what those expectations and aspirations might actually be. I might well do so, especially since I missed this ITT.

After the meeting with Nick, having already formed the view that there were a number of minds, great or otherwise, thinking alike on this topic, I picked up the March 2007 issue of Information Age, and read this:

...a generation of IT-savvy graduates - all of whom have whiled away their university years in 'chat rooms' and on social networking sites - now entering the workforce. "This generation has different values from the baby-boomers...tending to be more transparent, willing to share information, used to getting things more immediately, and wanting to interact quickly."

Increasingly, employers have had to become receptive to to the expectations of what Forrester Research has dubbed the 'Millenials' - those born between 1980 and 2000 - making collaboration a key recruitment issue....For many of these people, going into a company which says, 'No, we do it this way', is going to seem really antiquated...

Do you get the impression, as I do, that we have a strong driver for social software take-up here, and possibly for organisational culture change? Could such changes be a prerequisite for attracting the younger generation into the workforce, and a real differentiator between successful and unsuccessful organisations?