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The last 3 years I've had the honor to give a guest lecture to a group of around 30 students. They are in their 2nd year of college. The class they are taking is about ‘consultancy’ and I was asked to share my consultancy experiences in the intranet and enterprise 2.0 field. I really enjoy lecturing for and discussing with them. They hardly have any feeling for working in mid-sized or larger organizations. They really keep you grounded by their straight-forward approach to projects and problems. This year I used a case from one of my clients, described the case and asked them to ‘solve’ it. How would they address the client’s assignment? I thought it was a lot of fun and we had a lively discussion about it. Trends in social media use But what I wanted to share with you is which social media they use and how they use it. The previous years I also shared these numbers with you . I think it gives an interesting insight into social media usage patterns. The group is quite small ...

Recently I had the privilege to give a guest lecture at the Hogeschool Arnhem & Nijmegen (college-level) about Enterprise 2.0. Just like  last year  I asked the students which social media tools they use and why. I like asking them this question, because it gives me some insight in adoption rates of tools and usage patterns. Last years results can be found here . I'll share this year's results below. Of the 24 students I had in my classes: 24 have a Twitter account, 6 actively use it and 2 others only consume tweets. 24 have a Hyves account (Dutch social network, comparable to Facebook), 1 uses it actively and some go there every now-and-then. Facebook is clearly taking over Hyves, with 20 accounts in the classes and they use it actively. 14 only consume Facebook updates. Only 2 have a Foursquare account and use it actively. 6 have a Google+ account and none of them use it. LinkedIn: 16 have an account, 5 use it actively. They all have to blog for these class...

Are millennial really that different? Do they play, learn, communicate, work and create differently than their parents? Are they smarter or dumber? More or less social? And if so, what should we know about them? More importantly, what should management and companies know about them, because they are the future. Lots has been written about the so called millennials or Generation Y. I've been following the news and research on them. When Don Tapscott wrote a book about being 'grown up digital ' I thought I'd read it. At that time I was becoming more skeptical about the stories about Gen Y. In daily practice I was seeing older colleagues quickly picking up new ways of working, while young colleagues were very reluctant to use new media. Technically I'm not a millennial. I don't belong to the 'Net Generation'. The generation that has been "bathed in bits". According to Tapscott someone's part of the Net Generation when you're born bet...

Charles Hull leads the company Archrival . They connect brands to youth culture. And study how young adults think, process and consume. His talk is about millennials. Some numbers: Gen X: 40 milion in US Gen Y: 70 million in US Millennial themes: life tracking: millennials leverage technology to collect, categorize and diagram personal stats to better understand themselves. E.g. patientslikeme.com, mint.com. mon.thly.info. Middle class of fame: the 15 minutes of fame ideology has gone from an aspiration to an expectation. Digidentity: Youth use their social channels to establish their identities and demonstrate their social currency. Tech-eyed view: Millenials see the world through a social media lens making every moment sharable. Just to show how different millennials are, take a look at what they answered to the following question.What would you rather give up? Give up internet or sex? 33% would rather give up sex than the internet... The implications What are the opportunties for m...

BusinessWeek recently published an interesting issues dedicated to "Business@work" . All kinds of work-related topics are discussed. Like: work-life balance , dealing with toxic bosses , how to go from good-to-great in the workplace, tips from experienced office workers , measuring productivity, staying creative in the workplace , working with Generation X and Y employees, etc. I'd advise you to go and read all the articles. But to get you to do just that I'll give you some highlights from the articles: - Jim Collins says : don't only make a todo list, but also a stop-doing-list. And define "white spaces" in your agenda to think. Keep asking questions. - Managers (and employees) should openly write down "how I work" to help others collaborate with you. For instance, your colleagues should know how you react under pressure and why you do or don't give much feedback. - Really nice article on "combating bureaucracy" . I like ste...