Now that we’ve got the technology to connect in real time, 24/7 to anyone with an internet connection, more and more organizations are reaching out across the globe to find the very best people they can to get things done. Likewise, people with talent are collaborating with teams remotely and seeking meaningful work across the globe. Technology and the web are giving people and organizations an unprecedented amount of access to ideas, education and each other. The question is…are you ready to embrace these trends and adapt?
The following presentation “The Future Of Work” was shared by Jeff Brenman. It’s designed to be read and offers a quick, visual overview of trends we can expect that are changing how we’ll work and compete for jobs in the coming years. Here are some of the trends -
- Individuals will have more power and freedom than ever before
- Informal education is more available and accessible via the web. Degrees will matter less.
- There’s no longer an excuse to “not know how”. Self-teaching and resourcefulness will be make-or-break skills.
- The future of work is flat – You’ll work with project teams around the world.
- Employers will have on-demand access to a larger and more skilled workforce. Competition for jobs and work will no longer be tied to where you live.
- Transparency in work history and performance feedback will become the new resume.
- Better tools will continue to revolutionize productivity management/measurement.
- Your earning potential will be based on merit, not location.
- To stay employed in the workplace of the future, you’ll have to work hard to stand out.
- No one is going to guarantee you a lifetime career. Accept it and adapt.
I’m having a lot of fun playing two social games right now – Glue and Foursquare. Foursquare connects you and your friends around the places you visit offline (restaurants, shops, movie theaters etc) and Glue connects you and your friends around the popular sites you visit online (like Amazon, Last.fm, Netflix, Yelp and Wikipedia). Both services allow you to share your experiences about your favorite places and stuff you love in real time with your friends, as well as earn rewards, unlock achievements and compete for bragging rights.
I recently found this video series on the theme forest community blog and thought it was so valuable that it was worth sharing with my readers. If you’re like me, you learn a heck of a lot better from being shown than from reading manuals and how-tos. This series of 7 videos put together by Drew from Themeforest.net is a great resource for visual learners looking to get into WordPress design. I just wish I had had it 2 years ago! Hat tip to Drew.
Some fresh Hitwise data posted by Bill Tancer just a few weeks ago indicates that Twitter might have hit a wall and is now on the decline. Just as Twitter secured an additional $100 million in financing, which would place the company’s valuation in the $1 billion range, Bill dug into the data to take a quick look at Twitter’s market share of visits to see if the hype is matched by site traffic. I’ve included 2 of the key graphs here – Marketshare of Visits (U.S.) to Twitter.com and search volume for “Twitter”. In both visits and searches, Twitter appears to have hit a resistance point as of April 2009, which validates the feeling expressed by many heavy users that engagement seems to be falling off of late.
It should be noted that the chart immediately below indicates visits to Twitter’s website, and does not include application and mobile traffic. That being said, even without application and mobile data, visits to the main Twitter domain should have some correlation to new user adoption. If this interests you, please head over to Bill’s post and start a discussion – perhaps he’ll be nice enough to run the reports again as of this week so that we can get a better idea of whether this is just a temporary setback Twitter is experiencing, or not. My guess is that with the addition of Twitter lists, you’ll see a spike this week back to Twitter.com, but that it’ll be a spike, not necessarily the start of an upward trend.
Marketshare Of Visits (U.S.) to Twitter.com
Search Volume (U.S.) for “Twitter”
This weekend I made the decision to switch things up and reboot my Twitter following list. On Sunday night, with a little help from Jesse over at SocialToo, I ran a script that unfollowed almost 12,000 people. This week, for the first time since the summer of 2007, I’m back to following just over 200.
In this post I’ll discuss why I decided to reboot my list and how I’m planning on changing my approach to using Twitter moving forward. I’ll also show you some data, bust a few social media myths and tell you a few things that those “social media gurus” with large Twitter followings don’t want you to know. Ready to rock and roll? Buckle up… Read More
This lecture from Seth Godin is around 2 years old, but the ideas still resonate strongly, especially in the wake of recent discussions about Chris Anderson’s new book Free and the concepts of Freemium and Freeconomics. If you’re currently writing a book, or thinking of writing a book one day, you should get a lot out of this. The core concepts to keep in mind as you’re going through this are:
- Books are souvenirs (give ideas away and people buy)
- Permission is your only asset (relationships matter)
- Conversations are (the best) marketing
- Make words for readers, not readers for words (ideas that spread sell, so get the order right)
- Blogs work (and continue to pay off over time), and
- It’s not about selling books (it’s about spreading ideas)
I get a kick out of this Intel commercial every time I see it. Geeky? Sure. But it’s brilliant. It doesn’t just tell us that Intel values people with innovative ideas, it encourages us all to rethink what kinds of people should be worthy of rockstar status in our organizations.
Of course, this commercial is funny precisely because we don’t expect people to be falling over themselves to get Ajay Bhatt’s autograph, but maybe if more organizations made the effort to celebrate star performers on a regular basis it wouldn’t seem so abnormal…
What does your organization do to celebrate it’s own Rockstars?
