Jun 18, 2008 3
“Baby Boomers, meet Generation Y…”
I have been pretty busy, mostly productive though, during my first weeks of summer. I have experienced some new things and met some very influential and interesting people so far. Just recently, I was invited to serve on a Generation Y expert panel by P.K. Agarwal, the Director of DTS for the State of California.
PK also gives speeches and seminars about current trends, and this years trend was understanding the next generation coming into the workforce; Generation Y. He educates people around the country about Generation Y and the tools we use (Web 2.0, social networking, etc), and how it will drastically change the workforce. It was a fun experience and pretty interesting, and plus, free food is always a bonus!
At the presentation, I served on a panel which was asked questions by the audience following PK’s speech and power point. For this specific event, the audience consisted mostly of IT Managers and employees of th State of California. The majority of the audience were Baby Boomers as well as a few Generation X. Most of the questions were directed at the differences between the mindsets and attitudes of Baby Boomers, Gen X, and Gen Y, and the possible conflicts that could arise in the workplace. Glenn at Globalized observes this in his recent post here.
Some specific questions or possible conflicts that the audience seemed to be most interested in were about Collaboration in the workplace and online, Gen Y and flexibility in the workplace, Feedback from Managers, and the how positive and negative qualities of Baby Boomers will collide with positive and negative qualities of Gen Y. Over the course of this week and next, I will present the questions asked and my answers to them.