Sushi Conversations.
I had the good fortune to meet Dave and a number of other great people (Tara, Chris, Brittany, Ben, Tantek, John & Malgosia…) at dinner last week in San Francisco. Sushi conversation: raw, spicy and good with beer (or sake.)
Anyhow I guess I’m GenX. And even if I try really hard (what’s the geek equivalent of buying a Ferrari in some sort of mid-life-where-have-the-years-gone-existential-mini-crisis? and don’t say writing a blog…) I’ll never be a native member of the Digital Generation. Now I’m not old by any stretch of the imagination, but when I went to university you had to go to the computer lab (and that was considered normal) if you wanted to work on a computer. Hell the web browser wouldn’t even be invented until after I graduated.
(Shock. Awe. A world without the internet??? Really? You were there? Tell us what it was like! How did you manage?!?)
Anyhow… these guys are a part of it. They are changing the world. Very exciting stuff. Too big to ignore. Read or re-read Perez. Success and survival in business in the coming decades will depend on serving this generation, this community.
You still don’t believe me? Read it here and here. Straight from the horse’s mouth so to speak:
You may think we’re a generation born of entitlement. That we think we deserve great jobs, and great job environments. (In reality, we want to take cubes away for your sake too) The fact of the matter is that if you don’t let us work how you taught us to, we’ll search elsewhere. I just had 3 friends quit Morgan Stanley because they couldn’t send an instant message or personal email during their work day. We’ll leave your company too. I’m fortunate to work at a company that embraces digital culture.
July 1st, 2006 at 3:14 am
[…] Then, later that week, JP wrote this blog after he took a look at one of my earlier posts talking about how to manage our generation (subsequently after Sean had taken a look at this one). And, he is right on the money. The world is evolving so rapidly through technology and the social connections it creates, that many firms and managers can’t keep up. Our generation connects, communicates, and moves about at ridiculously fast speeds. […]