I’m just back from a TTI\Vangard conference discussing the implication of Digital Natives entering the workplace.  There has been alot of discussion recently on  how this new generation will have major disruptive impact on businesses mainly due to their atitude to workplace practices and technology.

The nice thing about the format of this conferences is that after a 10 minute head start, anyone on  the floor is free to ask questions (we each had a microphone), sort of professional heckling, which led to some excellent open discussions. As long as you don’t expect the presenter to complete their slide decks, its a great experience.

If your new to the subject I can recommend a couple of books – Generation Blend by Rob Salkowitz and Wikinomics by Don Tapscott.

Some interesting viewpoints were put forward on the subject that I hadn’t heard before -

There’s some evidence that the behaviours of digital natives are age-related rather than specifically to do with their upbringing in the digital age. Some firms are reporting that as they mature through the work force, this generations habits are changing and becoming more corporate. Maybe getting responsibilities (wife, kids, job) is actually modifying their behaviours, or maybe is pressure to conform to do well in a work environment. This might be good news for corporate IT department who are scared of the degree of openness and security naivety expressed by this generation, but is also bad if it means stifling the creative and collaborative working practices that are a defining characteristic of this group.

Some argues that the definition of the digital native was very much a middle-class, educated, north-American perspective on growing up, and that in the vast majority of the world, these behaviours were limited to an elite few with access to the technology and a level of education to match.Even amongst the privileged group, use of what we would consider core web2.0 technologies is patchy. For instance given a questionaire on what common web2.0 sites were used, many digital natives did not know about or use for example Wikipaedia or Flickr, or understand what an RSS feed is.

Another insight was that being a digital native did not necessarily mean a good understanding of the technology – quite the opposite in fact – from them technology is a commodity and they know no more about how it operates than about how their car works. This can mean that we technocrats who maybe have a similar level of use of technology, but a much deeper understanding of its working, can make assumptions about what digital natives understand that is completely wrong. For example, many digital natives did not understand the implications of the difference between http and https. This level of naivety has implications when these people enter the workforce.

A highlight of the conference was meeting many ‘digital natives’ who are active in creating and running web2.0 sites such as Reddit, Skribbit and Jooce. The dynamism and creativty of these young people is a great source of hope for the future of the web. But as one digital native said whay had we come to a conference run by adults to learn about what kids were doing online today?

All in all a very though provoking and enjoyable conference.