When Gen Y is Going to Change the Web

Good article that points adds to what I was talking about earlier.

By nature, I’m a rather social individual.  Perhaps not on a face to face basis all the time but I definitely recognize the fact that I’m a single person trying to solve the world’s problems.  Pardon the analogy, but being a gamer as well, I can see that it takes 25 people and concentrated effort to accomplish goals in World of Warcraft.  That same analogy needs to be applied to Engineering and Policy development.

Current State – It takes one person to design a house and 100 people to build it.

The problem with this statement is that the weakness is not in the 100 people who build an item but in the person who designed it.  A good analogy is when you buy a new house from a company.  They have designed it with certain features in mind and they take the common denominator.  If you want your bathtub on the other side of the wall, they need to redraw everything and charge you 4x the price of the tub.  Not too logical.

Future State – It takes 1person to design, 100 people to modify and 100 people to build.

Now I bet you’re thinking this process takes longer.  In truth the extra time is on the middle man and you definitely need some constraints, otherwise the last 100 will have to learn new skill sets.  So here’s the plan.

• Design a platform.  Using the house analogy, build your walls, windows and doors.
• Design components.  Like lego blocks, all components (sinks for example) fit into pre-defined criteria; size being the major factor. Rooms are components.
• Baseline the installation cost per component (TIME).
• Associate a COST to each component.  No brainer here.  A sink is a sink but a marble sink is not an aluminum sink.
• Associate a COMPLEXITY cost.  This is a little harder.  It should be a percentage of total cost.
• Make the information available to buyers.  This information is hidden from buyers currently.  Sure, you can swap carpet for hardwood but you won’t know the cost until you’re already buying the house.  Clients want to mix and match.
• Make client templates available for other clients.  Wouldn’t this be great?  You wouldn’t need to spend hours tinkering around.  You could take a look at what other people have done and see if it fits your needs.  This is also currently hidden.

A good example of a successful business model is car manufacturer websites.  You can customize from A to Z online and know going in to the vendor what the cost will be.  Our parents here the old tagline, “You can have it in any color you want, as long as it’s black”.  This is simply not an acceptable answer in today’s world.

Makes sense so far doesn’t it?  Now why don’t we apply the same set of rules to engineering and policy.  Instead of having one person decide on what’s best for everyone, let’s have a focal point.  Initiate discussions with clients to get a few ideas on what’s needed for change.

Example, a local printer policy.  Open the floor for opinions.  Some people will want everyone to have one, others think it’s a waste.  The middle layer will need to coordinate with the operations layer to get some numbers as well.   Let’s get some numbers going first; these are approximations.  A local printer costs 200$ to buy.  It costs about 500$ in anual support and is on a 1 to one basis.  A network printer costs about 2000$ to buy.  It costs about 3000$ in annual support and will support a group of people.

So, let’s look at some numbers for a group of 5000 people with a 4 year lifecycle, on a yearly basis

Everyone has a local printer:  Lifecycle cost = 250,000.  Support Cost = 2,500,000

No one has a local printer, network printer supports 50 people: Lifecycle cost = 50,000.  Support Cost = 300,000.

Both are extreme cases but you’re looking at 2.75 million vs 0.35 million dollars, almost 8x less money.  Remember, it’s not support who’s paying for this, it’s the clients.

Fine, so now we have numbers.  Let’s share those numbers with the clients.  Have your engineer moderate and channel the ideas.  Let them come up with a plan where a middle ground can be found.  If the community comes up with a final number where they are ready to accept the cost, then that’s the policy.  Bring it to the people who stamp decisions with the background that process provided.  In the end, your engineer had a role shaping the decision, crossing the Ts and dotting the Is, but it’s the group of people who came up with a decision and they are empowered.

That’s my goal for the next 12 months.  Empower everyone to be involved in decisions that affect everyone.

This list is great. I’ve personally read only a handful of them but everyone should make an effort to check a few out.

Edit: Ok, I wanted to add a bit more to this.  I realize a lot of people don’t read anymore.  That being said, most of you have heard of these books, which is a start.  The web and wikipedia is all fine and dandy but the ability to read or listen or watch a story and grasp the foundational ideas is what’s key.  40 Year Old Virgin is a good example of the sexual pressures put on teenagers.  Last Kiss demonstrates a man’s inability to cope with drastic changes.  Beyond Good and Evil (Neitzsche) demonstrates the vast gap between existentialism and religion when dealing with philosophy.  Great Gastby (Fitzgerald) shows that a single friend is better than many acquaintances.  The Hobbit (Tolkein) exemplifies the significant behavior changes found with dangerous stimuli.

So you’re thinking, “so what?”.  That’s a good question I suppose.  If you live for today, have no aspirations, don’t feel the need to grow as a person, that’s your bottle (Atlast Shrugged deals with this).  For those of you who have personal questions, those who have ideas about why we are who we are, those who want to try something new and aren’t certain, read people!  There are so many good ideas out there, so much reference and character building reference available, we shouldn’t be leaving it in the library to dust.  /rant off 🙂

http://www.summit2008.ca/

I was able to attend days 2 and 3.  The keynote speakers were very entertaining.  Day 2 dealt mostly with new technologies and how they impact our work and play.  Day 3 was more about the cultural shifts required for future growth.

As some may know, I’m a geek;  I am not a techie by any means.  I love using the tools and learning new ways of doing things.  I am also an avid gamer but not for the button mashing reasons.  As I mentioned previously about GTA4, it’s the tiny details that seem to revolutionize experiences.  It’s not like there’s a switch and everyone is doing it the new way, it’s a gradual thing.  Looking back though, just the past 5 years have seen more advancement in information sharing than in the past 100 years.  Someone with a computer can learn about ANYTHING now.  It kind of puts the whole school experience into a new light (more in another topic).

Ok, so back to DPI.  Day 2 started well.  First keynote was a young guy who sold mydesktop.com for a chunk of cash and was in near the beginning of peer collaboration.  Good notes about how there is a definite stigma about online activities being seen as anti-social when in fact, they are the complete opposite.  This is more so due to VoIP, where I can play a game, talk to other people and achieve a goal with 12 more.  Think about a 15 year old who just spent 4 hours with 12 people, finding the solution and pattern to some challenge.  Then they go to school the next day and have to listen how differentials are imortant in life.  How can you compete?

The seminar I wanted to attend, WIFI, was cancelled and I decided to try a communication workshop.  Worst event I have ever attended.  Everything said by the speaker was contradictive and contrived.  When the midpoint arrived I left for another seminar, as did half of the group.  She’s also a “career coach”.  I forsee her losing a lot of business because I would never want that attitude in my career.

Next up, Leadership and Change.  2 very interesting men with enough material to fill up 2 weeks and only 50 minutes to talk.  What a shame.

Lunch.  Met some new people, including an IT architect.  Good food.

Next session was Jean Ricard, an Everest climber.  Not the best speaker but his content was great.  To see the trials he had to go through to even attempt the climb, amazing.  The level of commitment is more than most people will have in their entire life.  Really a beacon of what is humanly possible.

Last keynote of day 2 was David Eaves, a young member of Canada25.  It was supposed to be about Public Sector renewal but actually touched more on the inability for the public sector to adapt to current pressures and needs.  Everything needs to move at breakneck speeds and many people just can’t catch up.  He also touched on the community experience.  People used to sit in a cafeteria to talk.  Well, when you’re 50 people, that’s an option.  We’re tens of thousands in the NCR alone, we need a virtual cafeteria to grow further.

Day 3.  First keynote was Linda Duxbury.  Crazy lady or crazy ideas?  Neither.  One of the most coherent analyses of the government workforce.  Dealing mostly with the generational gap and the huge communication and motivational gaps thereing, it was an eye-opening note for most.  If it only helps 10% of the people there, they’ll talk about it to others and the word will spread.  The way the government works today is wrong.  It’s archaic, conformative, throttling and non-rewarding.  The downside is, it doesn’t have to change for 10 years, because that’s when the last of the brass leaves.  The good side is that the young people coming in from the bottom are forcing change on management.  They just won’t take no for an answer and they will just get up and leave if it doesn’t make sense.

Session 1 was about harnessing collaborative tools.  I live in this world, so there really wasn’t anything new for me.  It was an eye-opener for many though.  This was the perfect time to give a tech demo of how the tools work.   Why this isn’t done on a large scale…I have no idea.

Session 2 was about Change Management.  Great speaker.  Touched on what doesn’t work and what you need to do to make it work.  I think the latter part was what really got me going.  She used real world relateable examples as well, making the concepts much easier to grasp.  I think I’ll be using many of the ideas discussed in the future.

I missed out on the last keynote though.

Overall, a good experience.  It’s unfortunate that such an event happens on a yearly basis.  If this session proved anything, we need to get together in some fashion more frequently.  The world evolves at a breakneck speed and an annual meeting is just not effective.  Maybe a sharepoint site  ? 🙂