Made me laugh too

by tony’s pics
G’mornin’:
[Via Eschaton]

This has been cracking me up for days.

Signed,
Not Atrios

A better idea?

Airlines are charging for the wrong bags :
[Via Yahoo News]
Instead of charging for checked bags, which will just lead to people trying to carry on everything they can, he suggests that they should charge for carry ons and give people the choice.

This would be a better idea for families and what not but I don’t see airlines implementing this. Their argument would be that weight has a fuel cost and that checked bags have greater fuel costs than carry ons.

So I figure their next point will be to weigh everyone before boarding and charge an extra fee for those who weigh more than they plan for. If they could find a way to do this that is not discriminatory I bet they would implement it.

Technorati Tags: General, Government

A great vegetable

by Benimoto
After praising German asparagus, Bush gets basketful from Wash. state:
[Via mcclatchydc.com: Homepage]
WASHINGTON - His father doesn’t like broccoli, but President Bush apparently likes asparagus, at least the German variety.

After the president called German asparagus “fabulous” following a dinner with Chancellor Angela Merkel last week, two Washington state lawmakers decided it was time to introduce him to the homegrown variety.

Ten pounds of Washington state asparagus were delivered to the White House on Tuesday courtesy of Democratic Sen. Patty Murray and Republican Rep. Doc Hastings. Well, not exactly the White House. An aide followed protocol and delivered the package to the vice president’s liaison office in the Senate, where staffers were described as “cautiously excited and curious.”

[More]

One of the nice perks with living in the state that produces 40% of the asparagus crop is getting lots of nice, tender asparagus in season. I’m not a big vegetable eater but I love this one.

Technorati Tags: Environment, General

A big day

by Thiru Murugan

My son is graduating HIgh School today. With family from both sides visiting. I probably won’t have much time to post.

But it is going to be a long, hard, wonderful, amazing day watching the guy who came into my life 18 years ago begin the next stage of his life - the one where he leaves us and makes his own way. He is going to do a great job but my wife and I will have to adapt, as so many others have, to an empty house.

He is a pretty special guy.

Technorati Tags: Education, General

Helping people change

[Crossposted at SpreadingScience]

In Pursuit Of Process Change:
[Via A Journey In Social Media]

I was discussing with one of our execs the progress we’d been making on social media proficiency internally.

And he asked a great question that made me think:

“So, has anyone fundamentally changed their work processes because of the platform?”

And I realized this is the next frontier on what’s turning out to be a large-scale social engineering project.

Getting Business Value Out Of Our Social Software

As we make progress in this journey, I’ve got my eye out for different catagories of business value we’re seeing.  I suppose, at the same time, I should also be keeping my eye out for business value we’re NOT seeing yet.

And, as I’ve mentioned before, we’re seeing business value — in many forms — across the board:

People with specific interests are finding other people with similar interests
Rather than searching big content repositories, people are asking other people for help and answers
A pan-organizational “social fabric” has been created that wasn’t really there before
Folks who spend time on the platform are better educated — and more engaged — in EMC’ business

And more And, just to be clear, there’s no shortage of business benefits — I still stand behind the broad assertion that this has been one of the most ROI-positive IT projects I’ve seen in my career.

Interesting “value nugget” of the week: 

EMC runs a healthy program to bring a large number of interns and co-op students into the company.  They started introducing themselves to each other on the platform.

What started with “name, rank, serial number” blossomed into a wonderfully diverse set of conversations about careers, favorite hangouts, what it means to work at EMC, what is everybody doing, and so on.

I would argue that — whatever millions that EMC spends on this intern/coop program — we’ve now made it 10-20% more valuable, simply because we connected people to each other, and connected them all to the broader company. 

At zero incremental cost.

But we want more. Much more.
[More]

Right up front EMC can demonstrate easily how new technologies save money and create new opportunities. The problem comes from actually getting people to use the technologies.

Many companies are process-driven. If the process is working, why change? Of course, buggy whip manufacturers probably had a great process also. But if they did not change, they disappeared.

What is driving the world more and more is the rate at which innovations diffuse through an organization. This is a fascinating subject because there are also some hard data behind it, some of it generated over 70 years ago.

Using the rate of adoption of hybrid corn by farmers in the early 1930s, Ryan and Gross were to derive some very important insights. These two researchers interviewed 345 farmers in Iowa about their use of hybrid corn, when the farmers first heard about it and when they started using it.

Here is a figure from their classic paper ‘The Diffusion of Hybrid Seed Corn in Two Iowa Communities’. Even though the hybrid corn had many important advantages it took almost 13 years for this innovation to diffuse throughout the entire community. The actual adoption curve (from their 1943 paper) is compared with a normal distribution curve (in black).

If the data are plotted as the cumulative adoption of the innovation, it looked like this:

Both of these types of curves have been seen again and again when the diffusion of innovation is examined. They seem to be derived from basic forces present in human social networks.

Ryan and Gross made several key contributions besides the identification of the S-shaped curve. One was the process by which the innovation diffused. The other was the type of farmer who used the innovation.

They found that there were five stages in the adoption of an innovation by an individual: awareness, interest, evaluation, trial, and adoption. And there were at least 4 different types of farmers, of which the early adopters were the most important.

Early adopters heard about the corn from traveling salesmen and tried small plots to see how well it worked. Later adopters relied on the personal experience of other farmers, usually the early adopters. When there were enough positive reactions from the early adopters, when there were more stories of personal experience, the adoption rate took off.

It was the human social network that was critical for the rate at which the innovation was adopted. The more social connections an early adopter had, the more cosmopolitan they were, the more likely it would be that others would adopt use of the innovation.

Everett Rogers was instrumental in codifying many of the principles of innovation diffusion. Here is his famous rendition of the distribution:

Only 16% of a population is usually made up of the early adopters, the ones that are critical for spreading the innovation to the early majority. The key to the adoption of any innovation is the rate at which early adopters can transmit the knowledge of the benefits to the early majority. In the case of the farmers, it would often take 4 or more years for this to be converted form awareness to adoption.

In many areas of our world today, this is much too slow. Technology is disruptive, meaning that the people who adopt this technology actually deal with the world in entirely different ways than those who do not. It is similar to a paradigm shift, in that those on either side of the shift have a hard time communicating with each other. It is almost as if they inhabit separate worlds.

This can cause some problems because the early adopters are required to communicate with the early majority if an innovation is to diffuse throughout an organization. If they can not, it creates a chasm, which has been described by Geoffrey Moore in his book.

The organization has to take strong action to recognize that this chasm is present and to span it, either with training or, more effectively, with people who have been specially designated as chasm spanners. In many cases using Web 2.0 technologies, they are called online community managers.

Disruptive innovations seem to arrive almost yearly. Without a directed and defined process to increase the rate of diffusion in an organization, if just standard channels of communication are used, innovation will diffuse at too slow a rate for many organizations to remain competitive.

Because there is usually not just one innovation disrupting an organization at a time. Life is not that clean. There can be multiple innovations coursing through different departments, moving early adopters even further away from the rest of the group and expanding the chasm. This only makes communication harder.

So, a key aspect of being able to increase the rate of diffusion is to create a process where early adopters are identified and strong communication channels are created to permit them to pass information to the early majority.

It can no longer be possible to simply let the early adopters go through their 5 stages of adoption and then tell others about it at the water cooler. Designated online community managers, with the training needed to enhance communication channels, will be critical in getting this information dispersed throughout an organization.

Organizations need to take pro-active approaches to span the chasm. Otherwise they will lose out to the organizations that do take such approaches.

Identifying and nurturing the 16% of the organization that are early adopters will be critical for this process. Having community managers who are well embedded in the social structure of the organizations will also be needed to help increase the rates of innovation diffusion.

Powerpoint Karaoke as a Web 2.0 tool

by Clav
SlideShare Blog » Blog Archive » Run your own PowerPoint Karaoke with the open source SlideShare Karaoke randomizer!:
[Via Slideshare Blog]

So you have heard of Karaoke - when you sing along to the soundtrack of pop songs. The idea behind PowerPoint Karaoke is similar. Presenters present, but to other people’s slides. But it’s a little harder than karaoke, because the slides are randomly chosen! Go here for a great writeup of how to run your own ppt karaoke.
[More]

So I used Google to find out more about Powerpoint Karaoke and found this nice link at Slideshare. This site allows people to upload slide decks so they, and others, can access them anytime. Very nice idea.

What they did here was use their API to create a randomizer that picks slide decks based on a topic and randomizes them. Thus it is now very easy to find and create slide decks for Powerpoint Karaoke.

There is also a nice link to a discussion of how to put one of these on. I so want to put together something like this. It will be fun but is also a nice exercise on being flexible and even human during a slide presentation. Plus I feel confidant that I can do a better job with this than making people listen to me sing off key.

So, by using a published API, a new use for Slideshare was created that not only enhances everyone else’s use of the site, but helps enlarge the social network on Slideshare. Nicely done.

Technorati Tags: Entertainment, Social media, Web 2.0

Time for a change

by woodleywonderworks
Government report provides strong evidence U.S. endangered by climate change impacts:
[Via ClimateScienceWatch]

On May 27 the U.S. Government released a report, The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Land Resources, Water Resources, and Biodiversity in The United States, with strong conclusions that ought to suffice to establish an “endangerment” finding under which EPA would regulate carbon dioxide emissions.

First there is this. Then this report a couple of days later.

New climate report counters Bush administration record of denial, disinformation, cover-up and delay:
[Via ClimateScienceWatch]

A report released May 29 by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Scientific Assessment of the Effects of Global Change on the United States, summarizes evidence of global climate disruption, the harmful impacts it is already having on society and the environment, and future projections of potential damages. The report, years overdue under a requirement of law, was produced only in response to an August 2007 federal court order that an assessment be produced by May 31, 2008. After seven years of denial, disinformation, cover-up, and delay, in its waning months, the Bush administration is finally beginning to allow the publication of reports that acknowledge scientific reality on the impacts of climate change.

Leading to this.

Bush administration has run out the clock on climate change assessment and action:
[Via ClimateScienceWatch]

ABC World News reported on May 29: Today, the White House finally released an overdue report on the comprehensive impact of global warming on the United States. It is the first such report from the Bush administration since it took office more than seven years ago. Rick Piltz…and other administration critics charge the White House delayed this report for years and is taking credit for it now while passing any decisions about action to the next president. “Here we have an administration that has one foot out the door. They have run out the clock on taking any really meaningful action on climate change.” Piltz said….Piltz points out that the scientific community has been articulating these findings for years and says that the subsequent action on the report is what will count. “This is something that has been well understood in the scientific community and the government for some time now,” Piltz said. “Even after we lift the hand of censorship off this climate science communication, we still need the political leaders to embrace it and learn from it and act on it.”

No report in 7 years. Great job on the environment. I wonder how many years this administration has put us behind our attempts to fix climate change. I would expect more that 7 years.

Technorati Tags: Environment

Cool Pistols

by ComputerHotline
Science probe for ’space pistols’:
[Via BBC News | Science/Nature | World Edition]

Scientists investigate whether a former US president’s duelling pistols were really made from a meteorite.
[More]

Short answer - not from a meteorite. but wait, they may not be the real pistols and there is a third pistol that could be the one. They just have to find it first.

Or, the pistols could just be made from an unusual allow that looks more expensive that it is, accompanied by a flowery story to impress an American President. it would not be the first time a tall tale was used.

Technorati Tags: Technology

Science 0.5

Biology was a lot more fun in the 70s. From 1971. Narrated by Paul Berg at Stanford. He won the Nobel Prize in 1980 “for his fundamental studies of the biochemistry of nucleic acids, with particular regard to recombinant-DNA.”

I first saw this in 1975 when I was in High School. No fancy animation, just hundreds of people and a fire extinguisher. The world was more innocent then. So was science.

Technorati Tags: Entertainment, Science

Incredible

Amazing Animated Street Art:

[Via chrisbrogan.com]

Found this via Matt Mason’s Pirate’s Dilemma blog. This is street art by Blu. It’s incredible. Think about all that went into making this happen. Something for your right brain today:

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

What a lot of work. Now this is a creative use of street art.

Technorati Tags: Entertainment

A new use for the Post Office

Electronics Recycling by Mail:
[Via Social Design Notes]
On March 18, the U.S. Postal Service announced that the Clover Technologies Group would provide postage paid envelopes to mail them expired inkjet cartridges, PDAs, Blackberries, digital cameras, iPods or MP3 players to be reused, refurbished or recycled. Envelops will be available at U.S. Post Offices at no cost to the public. Only a pilot project for now, but could expand nationally. (via)

This is a nice idea. I wonder what all the energy costs of recycling are, though? It would be nice to know what they are able to recycle and what is just hazardous material they have to dispose of.

Technorati Tags: Environment, Non-Profit, Sustainability

Peak Oil and hospitals

by Frenkieb

Rising Energy Costs and the Future of Hospital Work:
[Via The Oil Drum - Discussions about Energy and Our Future]

This is a talk given by Dan Bednarz to a group of nurses. The talk was given at the House of Delegates Meeting of the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses & Allied Professionals (Pasnap) in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on April 29, 2008.

Dan is a healthcare consultant who tries to get people in healthcare (including public health) to start thinking about peak oil and climate change issues and how to address them. In Dan’s words, he is “a healthcare consultant building a consortium among public health and health care stakeholders and actors to address peak oil, climate change and related environmental issues”. Dan posts on TOD under the name Danb.

Hello, it’s nice to be with you today. My intent is to give you a realistic take on the future of your profession by explaining why healthcare and nursing will be transformed by rising energy costs. Is there danger ahead? You bet. It’s going to be difficult, probably life-changing for all Americans. Here’s why: the scale of our energy predicament is enormous, unprecedented and grossly misunderstood by institutional leaders and most of the media.

I know some of you may be wondering, Energy scarcity? That’s someone else’s problem; put this guy in touch with geologists and politicians.

So let’s step back for the big picture.
[break]
Overview

A few numbers to set the context:

•The amount of crude oil pumped out of the ground has been on a bumpy plateau since May of 2005. Until then oil production was steadily increasing about 2% a year-–with periodic declines–and the world had a daily surplus, or emergency cushion. That surplus is gone, everything produced, supply, is immediately purchased, demand. Whether or not the world has reached “peak oil”-–the point at which yearly total worldwide extraction cannot be increased–this 3 year plateau indicates that the era of cheap energy is over.

•Oil is now over $100.00 a barrel. It was $10.00 a barrel in November 1998.

•Oil powers 90% of all transportation and it is essential to food production and distribution; it is the primary ingredient in many products-–think plastics, petrochemicals, and clothing. It is fair to say that all our institutions, especially medicine, are dependent upon oil, the lynchpin resource that keeps the economy humming and allows it to grow.

•And it’s not just oil that’s getting scarce. Natural gas in Pittsburgh went up 30% on April 1st, to $12.50 per MCF (thousand cubic feet); it was $2.50 in 2001. Typically, the cost of natural gas drops after the winter but here we are facing higher prices during the summer.

•Coal is becoming scarce in many countries and more expensive here; its price has about doubled in the past year. It is our main source of electricity. In about 15 years the world may hit a peak in its production, and this combined with the fact that natural gas-–the secondary source of electricity generation–simultaneously will be at or past its peak, poses a threat to our supply of electricity.

•To put a human face on this, a polling agency found in December 2007 that 12% of Americans planned to put their winter energy bills on their credit card-–no wonder Christmas spending was down. An article in this past Saturday’s New York Times details the rising number of people unable to pay their winter utility bills and now facing service cutoffs. Many hospitals in California are on the verge of bankruptcy; rising energy costs-–in tandem with other increasing costs–could be a breaking point for them. Further, we are merely at the beginning of what some of you recognize as Jim Kunstler’s poetic phrase “The Long Emergency.”

•The total amount of energy the world gets from fossil fuels is predicted to peak in 2010, so we’ve probably got about two years before systemic disruptions and breakdowns become commonplace and then worsen. Even now we see the airlines struggling, food prices soaring, and we have a fiscal/financial crisis of unknown scope that is connected to the price of oil in numerous ways I cannot delve into today.

Energy usage in hospitals is increasing 4-8 fold each year. How in the world are we going to be able to afford medical costs when the price of energy increases also? This is a really difficult problem. And oil is not only important for energy. Almost everything used in a hospital includes plastics made from fossil fuels. These have also increased in price.

He concludes with these statement. It is critically important to understand how the cost of energy not only the cars we drive but the medicine we expect. This is also heading towards a crisis point unless we change our energy policies.

1.I feel safe observing that the vast majority of insurance companies, medical associations, HMOs and other hospital associations will resist facing the stark consequences of peak oil because they are benefiting from the status quo. On the other hand, those hospitals with a mission for stewardship of the earth and charitable activity are likely to be among the first to recognize the need for radical change in medical care.

2.In the same vein, it’s obvious that nursing is not prospering even though it is in some ways the backbone of the system. Your profession’s main themes for reforming the healthcare system should center-–I hate to use the word “should”–around radical resource conservation and efficiency, and the elimination of wasteful and environmentally harmful practices. In other words, reduce, reuse, recycle, and repair.

3.Simultaneously, there will be a political struggle for the soul of healthcare: We will look to other nations with decent health systems where three core values predominate: 1) no one goes bankrupt due to medical status; 2) no one is denied treatment for any reason, and 3) preventive and treatment medicine are integrated. This means one response to energy downturn leads to healthcare for all. The alternative to this is medicine becoming something for the wealthy few, with the rest of society receiving what amounts to triage-–or, alternatively, home care or “folk medicine.” In some respects these alternatives represent the familiar themes of the Jeffersonian/egalitarian and Hamiltonian/elitist traditions.

4.By forming a coalition with public health and even some of the growing number of doctors who favor a “single-payer” system, nursing can shape the transformation of our healthcare system.

Technorati Tags: Environment

Complete with live links

MY NEW LIFE ….:
[Via Amygdala]

MY NEW LIFE.

Okay, it just feels a little like that. But it feels good so far.

Neat actual story, though.

Maker Faire is a celebration of the community of people who like to pull stuff apart and put stuff together, but it’s also a draw for those who like to teach. So it was not surprising to find a team from the University of California, Santa Cruz in the Dark Room pavilion, a set-up where you could find a harp whose “strings” were laser beams, bicycle wheels fitted with programmable light-emitting diodes that drew shapes as the wheels spun, and people wrapped in glowing fiber-optic lines. The folks from Santa Cruz (university mascot: the banana slug) had brought their giant Tesla coil.

Maker Faire looks pretty cool. And John Schwartz is my kind of guy.

[...] The crowd applauded like mad. Professor Schalk stuck a microphone in my face and asked, “Do you have anything to say?”

“Klaatu Barada Nikto,” I said.

I’d never insert links in something I was quoting, of course, so I also note that it’s neat that the NY Times has taken to inserting appropriate links in some stories just like any other blogger.
[More]

I mentioned a few days ago about live links in news articles. The NYT does it as evidenced in this article. Not only does it save the author from the need to explain his phrase, it helps provide greater information to a large group of people in ways that would not be strictly appropriate for a newspaper.

This is a nice example of how the medium of the Internet changes the news media. It provides a personal insight into some interesting experiments. And, instead of portraying the enthusiasts as some really weird kind of microbe.

No, this was someone who had bought stuff from the Edmund Scientific Catalog when he was young, something many incipient scientists did when we were young. In fact, I clicked on his link just to be amazed that Edmund was still around. (They have a Trebuchet Kit on the front page. Cool!) This writer is not afraid of writing about his inner geek.

And his last line struck a chord, since I use those words all the time for geeky things. They are the words used to prevent Gort from destroying Earth after the death of the envoy Klaatu. I would have linked to another article than the IMDB page but no real matter.

The movie, an allegory of Christ mashed up with a science fiction plot, was much deeper and interesting than any other movies of its time. It still holds up pretty well, over 50 years later. I still appreciate the last speech that the alien Klaatu makes:

I am leaving soon, and you will forgive me if I speak bluntly. The universe grows smaller every day, and the threat of aggression by any group, anywhere, can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all, or no one is secure. Now, this does not mean giving up any freedom, except the freedom to act irresponsibly. Your ancestors knew this when they made laws to govern themselves and hired policemen to enforce them. We, of the other planets, have long accepted this principle. We have an organization for the mutual protection of all planets and for the complete elimination of aggression. The test of any such higher authority is, of course, the police force that supports it. For our policemen, we created a race of robots. Their function is to patrol the planets in spaceships like this one and preserve the peace. In matters of aggression, we have given them absolute power over us. This power cannot be revoked. At the first sign of violence, they act automatically against the aggressor. The penalty for provoking their action is too terrible to risk. The result is, we live in peace, without arms or armies, secure in the knowledge that we are free from aggression and war. Free to pursue more… profitable enterprises. Now, we do not pretend to have achieved perfection, but we do have a system, and it works. I came here to give you these facts. It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet, but if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer. The decision rests with you.

Now I’m not sure I would create some super-powerful robots to act as policemen but it seemed to work for them. And it was a message that was clearly different from many other movies that utilized giant ants to create drama.

The Day the Earth Stood Still is one of my favorite SF movies. I was thunderstruck then to see that they are are doing a remake due out for Christmas. Starring Keanu Reeves! I am not hopeful. Michael Rennie has an aura about him that was unworldly, in a detached sort of way you could get the Christ allegory without too much prodding (calling him Mr. Carpenter was about a strong a hint as needed). I do not expect Keanu to maintain the same sort of dignity and fully expect that if they keep the allegory it will be made much more explicit.

Well, maybe I’ll be surprised. I certainly was with one of my favorite comic book characters, Iron Man, and the movie they made for him. Now if they could just to the same for Doc. Strange.

Technorati Tags: Open Access, Entertainment, Web 2.0

Weird legal stuff

by the_kid_cl
Man jailed when daughter fails to get diploma:
[Via The Seattle Times]

A man ordered by a judge to make sure his daughter hit the books has found himself in jail because she failed to earn a high school equivalency diploma.
[More]

I’d like to hear more about this. The daughter is almost 19, has a fiance, an 18-month old child, lives with her mother, yet the father is the one going to jail for 6 months because the daughter did not get a GED. I thought that after 16, you could not be compelled to attend school. And how does a non-custoidial parent become responsible for an adult?

Lots of questions. Judges are not usually quite this stupid without some sort of legal reasoning. I wonder what the original charges were and why they were brought. There is really only one side of this story here. But it is a really weird side. Who gets 6 months in jail anyway? Just weird.

Technorati Tags: General, Government

RenGen?

by aussiegall
How to reach and engage the renaissance generation | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle:
[Via Shannon Buggs/Houston Chronicle]

The revolution will not be televised because the revolution is live and direct on the Internet.

A paraphrase of Gil Scott-Heron’s classic spoken-word anthem describes Patricia Martin’s message to community arts and business leaders.

Martin, a cultural marketing consultant based in Chicago, is documenting a “cultural metamorphosis” that is part of “the disruption that occurs when the dominant civilization loses its relevance and another rises to replace it.”

And what comes next is the renaissance generation, RenGen for short, an era dominated by people who are “smart, self-expressive, idealistic and cynical all at once,” she predicts.
[More]

Neologisms are tricky. And consultants are always coming up with ones that only they see. RenGen - short for renaissance generation - is not one of my favorites. I don’t really see how it is different from Generation Y or millennials, except that Ms. Martin coined it. Yet the first two are in Wikipedia while Rengen is not (unless you are looking for a lake between Sweden and Norway).

Anyway, look at what she has to say and let’s not worry about jargon too much.

• Establish a Facebook group and a MySpace page.
• Understand why your core customer is turning to you.
• Identify your potential nonprofit and for-profit collaborators.
• Brag about everything you do. Fake it ’til you make it.
• Get out of the house and join the chamber of commerce.
• Rethink the ancient patronage model.
• Forge marketing deals that mimic sports marketing deals.
• Be open source by allowing people to enter your game and morph and fuse with it without lowering your standards.

I’m not sure many of these are really useful to many charitable organizations. But, they do point out the need for a different model to reach out to this generation, a generation that will have substantial impact over the next few years.These people want to be part of the action, not just be a passive part of an organization. They want to get things done and to be a part of that.

They want to take it out for a spin. If they can’t, then they will go someplace where they can. the collaborative, participatory aspects of this generation has been discussed before.

This group is almost as big in the US as the Baby Boomers (75 million vs 80 million). Generation X is only 40 million. Not only are they highly social and collaborative, they also believe in reverse accumulation of knowledge - that is the younger you are, the more you know. But the Deloitte article has some very encouraging words, particularly for non-profits.

Millennials:

• Work well with friends and on teams
• Collaborative, resourceful, innovative thinkers
• Love a challenge
• Seek to make a difference
• Want to produce something worthwhile
• Desire to be a hero
• Impatient
• Comfortable with speed and change
• Thrive on flexibility and space to explore
• Partner well with mentors
• Value guidance
• Expect respect

Matching a non-profit’s goals towards this generation using new online tools could be tricky. Collaboration will be key. They should make good volunteers, perhaps in setting up the charity’s Facebook page. I’m sure we all can find some good ideas. But these are the people who need to get connected now.

Technorati Tags: Knowledge Creation, Non-Profit, Social media