The Lectern: Young people and technology at the Government Leadership Summit

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The Lectern:

The Lectern: Young people and technology at the Government Leadership Summit

Published on June 4, 2008 - 02:35 PM

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I had the opportunity to chair the last panel at the two-day Government Leadership Summit sponsored by 1105 Government Information Group in Williamsburg, Va. It was a wise decision to have the panel last, because the audience seemed energized by the band of youthful participants, and there were still a lot of hands up in the audience when we ended the session a few minutes late. The participants were a 28-year-old GSA employee working on the USA.gov portal, a 23 year-old employee at the Office of Technology in Virginia, a 23-year-old senior at William and Mary, and FCW's 28-year-old reporter Ben Bain. Although we talked a bit about collaboration tools and about blogs, most of the energy, including from the audience, was around social-networking sites such as Facebook. We talked mostly about how the participants themselves used technology, a little about how their agencies did so.

I give the exact ages of the participants because one of the most interesting things to come out of the panel is that there are big differences among different micro age-groups of young people (although to older folks they may seem like an undifferentiated mass). When you think about this, it should hardly be surprising, given how fast technologies are changing.

Both 28-year-olds agreed that they were uneasy about the Facebook world, hesitant to open up as much private information about themselves as that world encourages. One of the two did not even put his picture on his Facebook entry; the other was not on Facebook at all. For the 23-year-olds Facebook was an important part of life, but it was also interesting that they (particularly the college senior who hadn't started working yet) saw it strictly as an entertainment, college kid phenomenon, and had real difficulty associating it at all with the work world -- he was very surprised to learn that any older people, or government/industry folks, were on Facebook themselves. The student working for the Commonwealth of Virginia said she didn't use Facebook as a way to socialize with people at work, either in her agency or other agencies. It will be interesting to see whether that changes as the work world starts getting inhabited by people very used to social networking. The 28-year-old GSA employee noted that people who are friends on social-networking sites are likely to have an easier time collaborating with each other. (Based on my own psychological reactions to being Facebook friends with people, I agree.) He also noted that social-networking sites take on increasing importance for teleworking employees.

The 23-year-olds in turn noted that their younger siblings used technology in different ways from them. They are even bigger multitaskers than their older siblings (and than Blackberry-toting government managers). They use IM for collaborating on homework, while the 23-year-olds use it only for socializing.

All the participants said they read some blogs, but didn't use them as a main news source. (They seemed to be online newspaper readers.) They were aware that Wikipedia might not always be a trustworthy source of information. The two government employees said that collaborative technologies were still only modestly used in their organization, mostly instant messaging.

The initiator of this panel was FCW Editor-in-Chief Chris Dorobek saying to me a number of times, "Kids use technology differently. They don't use e-mail." The panel, however, reported that in their world e-mail was alive and well. The college senior, sounding like many of us, sighed, "I wish e-mail was less a part of my life. I often get so many e-mails that it takes days to respond to them."

After breakfast this morning, one person I was sitting with friended me and another person at the same table on Facebook. After the panel, I friended the graduating senior. As the world turns… .

Editor's note: A participant on the panel recorded the session on her laptop and posted the session. The sound isn't that great, but you can see it below.

Webcast powered by Ustream.TV

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People between 20 and 30 use technology so differently is incredible. I'm 25 and I consider myself a moderate user of facebook, blogs, and other Web 2.0 technologies. Whereas my friends who are under 23 seem to be heavy users of these technologies, and friends over 26 are much lighter users. This is pretty consistent and can probably be attributed to the fact that people under 23 were never without the Internet--ever. Additionally, Myspace and Facebook exploded during their late teens and college years. I do think email is on its way out- well at least email those long multiple-person email chains. It just doesn't make sense for 5 people to comment on a document through email when they can collaborate on a document or idea using collaboration and knowledge management technologies like MS Sharepoint. Remember when you used to get excited when you received an email? Remember when you got excited when you saw your voicemail light up or a fax come across the wire? Yeah, email will be gone soon.

Posted by jswhetsell on June 4, 2008 - 09:06 PM

The micro-demographics of social networking raised here are very interesting. The technology will all shake out in a few years, but certainly privacy and protecting professional integrity is something younger people need to consider. Security clearances, seeking future public office positions, and appearances of conflicts of interest (especially for procurement professionals) may all be affected by who and what is on your social network.

Posted by 3rdCareer on June 5, 2008 - 09:35 AM

Looking at the utilization of technology today, and comparing and contrasting it to how it has been used in the past - Email is not on the way out, infact quite the opposite.

There have been many camps of users, use of technology and its respective adoption. From my perspective I haven't seen anything really new or innovative in a very long time.

Blogging! Online collaboration! Instant Messaging! - Yes, nothing new here, just old ideas rehashed, but expanded into a larger medium.

Before widespread Internet adoption, there was a fairly widespread "BBS" adoption, and in that context, all of the same things you see going on today are and were happening. They had IM, they had Email, they had BBS's and Message forums, social aspects where you can view, peruse profile information, and even chat (depending upon the implementation).

Things today are becoming more available (higher internet proliferation, and mobility), however outside of a few rare 'new' things, it is more of the same. Could email become a thing of the past at some point? Unlikely but possible. Even if you go the route of "Video Mail" or "Voicemail" it will be now and forever in an electronic form, thus still being E-Mail, it is just a matter of the venue, mechanism, delivery - yet all semantics.

I'm an active user of Facebook, LinkedIn, and a number of social networks, I've been blogging well over 15 years (Yet it wasn't called blogging then!) And still, there hasn't been anything majorly innovative which has distinctly differed yet.

The real differentiators are out there, something new and unlike anything ever done before; but it hasn't come yet. Just more of the same but in a slightly different way.

If history has shown anything, you have to do minor shifts, because people don't like things that are drastically different - Unless the major shift is that much more revolutionary.

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