Millennial, Metrics and the New Media – John Della Volpe (@dellavolpe)

Millenials are a Big Deal

• Millenials = 13 to 30 year olds, they are the largest generation in human history and they have a significant impact on the economy
• This generation has trust issues – especially with traditional media and old institutions and they are not afraid to let you know it.
• They trust a recommendation from a friend 4x as much as TV and email.
• Connecting online was not a fluke, millennial’ brains are wired differently.
• Gen X (latch key kids) – first generation where both parents are working. TV was the primary entertainer
• Millennial (also latch key kids) – now the internet is the primary entertainer and they interact socially on the web
• if not for Millennials, Hilary Clinton would be the president of the USA and not Barak Obama (e.g. Millenials voted for Obama 57% to 11% in Iowa) – Obama campaign targeted Millenials, Clinton did not

What are Millenials Thinking about today

• Politics and Government (latest Harvard IOP Survey)
  • Obama’s job performance stable
  • Republicans eyeing midterm elections
  • US Military most trusted institutions surveyed
• Economy
  • economic anxiety is palpable
  • majority concerned about keeping head above water
  • half of students concerned about staying in college
• Service
  • millennials remain committed to community service

Stats on concern about keeping head above water 45% stay in college, 46% ability to live in the city they want, 56% afford health care, 58% affort a place to liver, 60% ability to pay bills

“The Facebook” and Social Media

• Facebook is the 3rd largest country by population, China, India, Facebook, USA …
• by next Jan 2011, there will be more people 50+ yo on facebook than <30 yo
• http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/facebook.com for stats
• Facebook is mainstream while Twitter skews younger

Mapping Your SocialSphere

• ORBIT Map http://socialsphere.com
• 4 categories of sites on the Internet – General News (traditional), Industry News, Social Frameworks (Networks), Blogs and Communities – target type graphic for College Applicants and their interaction with the 4 types

What has Changed in the Last 18 Months  Read more...

• College Confidential, College Prowler, Zinch – social ranking sites
• YouTube is starting to become more relevant and influential – video is really taking off
• good Facebook site are becoming the ‘state of practice”

This morning Jon Ayre (@EnterprisingA) tweeted:

#EAMantra (11) Failing to deliver perfection is not a crime. Failing to deliver is.

Something I totally agree with, especially if you have been following my blog and the theme of building an EA practice that delivers value using a virtual team.

Tyler Gooch (@tylergooch) then sent a response (Thank you Tyler!!) about The Cult of the Done by Bre Pettis and Kio Stark.  This is very cool stuff!  Here are the 13 statements:

The Cult of Done Manifesto

1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you’re done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more.

Brilliant stuff! I will be sharing this with my applications team tomorrow.

Todd Biske asked this on Twitter “What are your EA services? In other words, what are the major functions your EA term performs and/or markets to the rest of the enterprise?”  He followed up with the following Ideas for EA Services:

1. Architecture Review Service (could be on-demand, could be required)
2. Project consulting (i.e. act as, or assist, project/solution architect)
3. Strategic Architecture Services (to-be architecture)
4. Architectural Reference Services (development of reference artifacts)
5. Architectural Standards Services (official standards, similar, but more official/specific to Reference Services)
6. Architectural Research Services

He ended with “What else should be on the list, or what items should be changed?”

We publish a Core Service Catalogue to articulate what our IT Services Department delivers to BCIT. We talk about this as our default service level agreement to the Institute. We currently are on Version 4 of the catalogue.

In the Core Service Catalogue, we included an Enterprise Architecture key core service to help our clients in the BCIT community understand what EA activites are available.

Here is the list of EA activities we defined:

• Developing, documenting and publishing the Enterprise Architecture for business and technology at BCIT by:
  • continuously aligning technology with changing goals and objectives of the institution
  • providing common language to understand the value IT solutions can bring
  • allowing IT Services to more strategically and effectively support the institution with an agile IT architecture
• Providing Enterprise Architecture approval as part of project management methodology
• Providing Enterprise Architecture approval as part of the change management process
• Providing early guidance to departments by conducting concept reviews
• Providing consulting and recommendations for delivering technology or process to support business services
• Establish, implement and publish Architectural Standards
• Advocating the value proposition of Enterprise Architecture

Now that I have seen Todd’s list and we are hitting the review date for our EA Key Core Service, I will be leading a review of our Core Service Catalogue entry.  I will publish the new version once it goes to production. Thanks Todd for helping us grow the maturity of our EA Services.