Digital Natives Speak from Minnesota Conference, I Twitter, Twitterverse Responds

Digital Natives Panel

Elana Wolowitz, Communications Director/Senior Trainer, Wellstone Action gave me a brief interview.

I had the honor of delivering the keynote this morning at the Message + Medium + Mission Conference in Minnesota.  I talked about the Cute Dog Theory of Social Media Adoption, A Few Tools, and A Story about social media and fundraising.  A few minutes before speaking I remembered a Minnesota story about my early years as a executive director for a small organization and using social networking to get Garrison Keillor as our celebrity for a fundraiser.  This speech also had a big first for me and the reaction was shock, then laughter.

I went to a morning session called "Digital Youth and Analogue Adults" facilitated by Garham Heartley which includes a panel of digital natives talking about what young employees should expect of their nonprofit employer as it relates to technology.  It also covered the differences in technology styles of digital natives  compared to analogue adults or can old dog learn new tricks? It was a fantastic bi-generational question. 

Some  Key Takeaways:

• Learning styles are really important and it isn't just about age/generations, although in general younger people may more fearless. (Twitter Comment)
• Passion is important!  People will forgive. 
• The social media strategy implementation shouldn't just be delegated to the young people or interns in the office. (Twitter Comment)
• Look beyond the technology of a younger age
• Don't dump the role of tech support on the younger more fearless people - especially if it is not in their job description.
• When digital natives are giving tech support, understand how much of the why versus how the person needs and have patience. (Twitter Comment)
• Having job descriptions that have skills like "the ability learn" versus specific technical skills. (Twitter Comment)
• Have a conversation with people about what channels they prefer for communications  (Twitter Comment)
• Digital natives have the capacity to take in more information at a faster pace and "older folks in the workplace" don't understand that (Twitter Comment)

I twittered the whole session and the conversation back from Twitter was pretty amazing.   I asked for Best Practices for working with analogue adults.  RoseVines responded:

Blog post "Embracing My Digital Youth"
Reflections from Aaron Landry and Corporate Babysitter and Blandin Broadband

Comments

[s4xton]

Hey, nice to hear you speak and meet you this morning. You had a great turnout and overall I thought it was a good conference. Wish I could have stayed for the whole thing.

[Kevin]

Hello Beth, I just wanted to thank you for a great presentation and for being part of pushing me into the pool of blogging. I had been thinking about starting one for quite sometime, and between your great works through online mediums and conversations during the conference I decided to take the plunge. Feel free to check out the beginnings at http://techanth.blogspot.com and thanks again!

[Moses]

I joined twitter when I was forced to follow other bloggers after commenting on their blogging posts. Interestingly, the response was phenomenal and I was not alone. Beth was able to use twitter to collaborate responses to discussions on a conference and other users on twitter. This activity can come at price though, when things go wrong. Ray Sims highlights the learning experience from the twittering that has enabled him to offer that knowledge for money. http://twurl.nl/tzvzvs