Internet Strategy Forum Summit: The Opening Keynote

I've finally had a few moments to compose my notes from the Internet Strategy Forum Summit that took place here in Portland last month. This is the first in a series of translations of my scribbled notes.

Charlene Li, author of Groundswell, was the keynote speaker. My initial impression (without having read the book, unfortunately) is that most of what she said seemed like an extended variation on the themes within the Cluetrain Manifesto, written back in the heyday of the dot.com bubble (1999). Having pointed this out on the twitter backchannel, a colleague added, "yes, but the book tells you what to do next". So, I listened on attentively and collected a few other gems from her presentation.

The first notable one to share from Charlene's slides is the comparison of how different audiences are using the Web today. She classifies users by the five basic behaviors they exhibit online:

• Creators - those that create content (in a very generic sense; content could be bookmarks, blogs, youtube videos, etc.)
• Critics - those that provide commentary on that content.
• Collectors - those that try to amass as much content as possible.
• Joiners - those that associate themselves with content (or their creators or critics).
• Spectators - those that simply watch, listen, and read the Web.

The relationship between these were made clear as well: Over time, Spectators usually became Joiners, and subsequently Collectors, and etc. (Charlene didn't go into specifics about how she comes to these conclusions; my hunch is it's through some self-report survey or the like.) She makes the claim that these are along a continuum, and that with practice and experience, users may "migrate" up the "chain" of behaviors. (Again, here, there's implicit assumptions being made about the relationships, but it does seem reasonable.)

What caught my attention was when she described how the percentage of users in each of these categories varies with age. For the most part, users of a certain age and higher are more likely to be Spectators than any other category. The percentage quickly drops off as you go "up" the chain of behaviors. On the other hand, users of a certain age and lower are much more distributed "up" the chain of behaviors. From the vantage point of the armchair observer, it certainly suggests (and I tend to agree here too) that the younger population is "migrating" upwards, but the older population is not.

I've made a crude facsimile of Charlene's slide and editorialized it slightly, to make the obvious point about the gap enlarging between those teaching and those learning. (Again, the context here is the Web, not necessarily the classroom.) What happens when most teachers aren't relating or interacting with their students in a manner with which they are familiar? What makes this persuasive is the anecdotal data Charlene uses in her presentation to demonstrate what happens when this gap is closed.

Ernst & Young, one of the largest accounting firms in the world routinely recruits recent college graduates to its rank of CPAs, analysis, etc. They've found through surveys, that the top three desirable employers for recent college graduates are Apple, IBM and Google. Ernst & Young, in a good year, ranks 12th. Last year, Ernst & Young setup a Facebook account and began actively promoting itself to recent college graduates, answering questions about the hiring process, benefits, relocation, etc. In this year's survey, Ernst & Young was ranked 4th, the highest ranking it has ever achieved. Could other factors have influenced this? Sure, but the point is compelling nonetheless: Engaging your audience in the same ways as them creates more meaningful relationships.