The Tatiana Project for Social Media and Generation Gaps

The power of blogs and commenting. A comment on Beth Kanter's blog last week yielded a couple of new conversations with other bloggers.

Now the Tatiana Senior Project has reached my virtual doorstep via my Facebook mailbox.

Hi, Clara!
How are you?

My name is Tatiana and I am currently a senior at the University of Tampa. You have recently commented on Beth Kanter's blog post that featured my project on the impact of the internet marketing of social media and its users.

You have a very interesting and unique perspective on this issue and I was wondering if your could share it on my blog and contribute to my project.

http://tatianatugbaevafinalproject.blogspot.com/

Tatiana's personal branding strategy is impressive. She has a regular blog and a project that communicate the online phenomenon about individual self-marketing, thoughtful research and writing.

Young people today, like Tatiana, are very cognizant of the web, and you could even say they definitely use it more intelligently than those of us who were weaned off of early AOL IM, chat or even intra net BBS green-type systems with MS DOS commands. I used to think I was of the privileged technology generation, able to code simple HTML on Geocities, but now it's really changing beyond that.

I would even go so far as to say that Tatiana's peers and college students are smarter about using the web than those of us who got used to the web tech in the 90s.

The differences between Gen X, Gen Y and Gen Me
In my peer group, some have heard of wikis, but most think of Wikipedia. Others may have a Facebook profile but avoid it like the plague because of spammy apps. Some use IM to communicate incessantly, but others don't. This is the group most likely to possess "information fatigue," because generically speaking, I've observed that we don't digest information as well as the younger crowd.

Too much internet information doesn't sit well with us, because we did grow up with our parents reading the local brand newspapers and magazines. My dad has stacks of the National Geographic and the San Jose Mercury that he refused to throw away.

We're a little bit harder to reach online. I still have friends who are very active on LiveJournal with very private profiles available to only a select few, while I prefer Facebook or IM. (More on social media hierarchies and usage soon.)

How Internet Media and Professional Profiles has Evolved
Gone are the days when profile surveys are sent in the form of email-chain-letter-forwards between friends. This evolved to LinkedIn professional profiles, then of course there were HR crises on MySpace where your boss finds your drunken pictures (thus giving social networks a bad rep). Now all that has moved outwards where some are pro-actively taking a stand on which pages show up on Google through blogs and the form of online portfolios. Now we've almost made the full circle to Geocities homepages, but instead of focusing on our hobbies or interest, like dogs, or random pictures and animated gifs, the web 2.0 era has a strong interest in aesthetic, design and professional image.

This means we've got a powerful advertising vehicle on our hands that could be tackled...or not. The questions to ask are: Which Audience and Which Type of Media?

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On Writing & Creativity

Unless you want to be a "hack"...
Strong writers and bloggers need cross-training just like good athletes do. In otherwords, non-fiction writers need to know creative writing techniques to keep fit and creative writers have to be versatile. Staying in a comfort zone is an easy way for people to stagnate. Nowadays, change is the name of the game.

There are a few things that can help you get out of a writing rut:

1. Take the pressure off and just write. I write for B2B and if fear creeps in that I won't write something spectacular, it is harder to write anything at all. Have a writing practice aside from your "usual" (be it blog, freelancing or otherwise) and if the writing is full of spelling errors, not the best content, not meant for an audience, then it's OK. The goal is to change habits and innovate. And, an interesting idea might come out of flow-of-consciousness writing.

2. Change your writing style. You may have a really distinctive voice that has been developed over the years. How about changing it? Have fun with simpler words if you like jargon, or write with new vocabulary if you write simply. Try writing a paragraph using only alliteration, only metaphor, etc.

2. Paint a verbal picture with pen and paper. Go outside or someplace new, pick a focal point and get out the old pen & paper. Write what you see in very minute detail. Scribbling furiously on paper will change some of your habits and force you to think differently. Go back to your computer and rewrite what you wrote. You may skip words, details, and you'll notice that you get a different perspective than when you wrote with pen and paper.

3. The short and long of it: Pick something to write about. Write a bunch of long sentences stringed together. Write short sentences. Write a long sentence and a short sentence. Look at how that changes the tone.

A short sentence: Stop right there!
A long sentence: She stopped when the policeman cut her off in her tracks.

4. Another exercise in succintness for effect: Try writing haikus.
Each line should represent a visual concept. And if you write a line that is too long, that's OK too. The editing process will help to get you to where you want to go.

Roses in sunlight
Dew iced over from morning
It's a new day.

Also, it's better to expect OK writing on first attempts rather than a masterpiece. You don't want to set yourself up for disappointment, and it's the editing (or even deletion in exchange for innovation) process that takes you one step closer to perfection.

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Start-Up 101: Goal Setting and Visioning

Usually, I post about other entrepreneurs but today, I decided it was about time I wrote from my own experience.

I am sure many people have experienced this situation: you wake up in the morning, practice all matters of human morning rituals and then get to work. When you arrive, you are faced with a long to-do list, and all anyone cares about is results.

I will admit that today is not an easy day for me. My to-do list is long and it is easy to forget why these tasks were created in the first place.

On days like this, I remember my goal-setting mantra: "Strive through the narrow gate." It means that if you want to something, anything, you must work to achieve it.

This mantra gets me through my most frustrating moments. Entrepreneurs won't tell you this, but they have these moments too.

Three things a person must do to continue to strive through the narrow gate:

1) Determine the goal you want to set and when you want to accomplish it.
I set a goal to run on the treadmill for 40 minutes (10 minutes more than my usual 30) in addition to 5 minutes for warm up and 5 minutes to cool down.

2) Consider the motivation behind this goal. What will be your reward for your achievement? I decided that if I could run the treadmill for 40 minutes, then I could prove to myself that I was capable of completing any goal that I set. The reward in this case was the accomplishment itself. It may not always be the case, however.

3) And most importantly, celebrate the goals that you accomplish and evaluate the ones that did not have the outcomes you anticipated. Find meaning in yourself as a human being before you commit yourself to accomplishing tasks like a robot.

For me, this is the toughest part of goal setting, because routine was not a part of my life as a child. My parents tended towards the unexpected. But it is also the most important because it sets the stage for consistent, successful goal-setting.

Whenever you feel yourself getting frantic and thinking about the next task when the one in front of you is unfinished, close your eyes and take a deep breath. Try to feel comfortable with yourself as a person in the present. It is difficult to do because it is a human state to be dissatisfied. We worry constantly about what is next on the to-do list.

If you can admire yourself for being who you are, then you won't be worried about job titles or stay with in-the-box thinking. I have found that if I give myself more credit for my accomplishments, I can trust myself well enough to try more daring things. When I set the goal to run on the treadmill for 40 minutes and I succeeded, this event led to a 1 hour rock climbing session and I had no fear of what anyone would think of my rock climbing abilities. I was able to ask more questions and learn more tricks. Because I was open to myself, I was open to others.

Entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship is about "striving through the narrow gate" and staying optimistic. When things get hard, it's best not to get angry, but to step back and look at the opportunities to do things differently.

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Start-Up 101: The Beat of a Different Drum

This may be stepping away from the norm but one of the challenges in the hi-tech world, but it seems necessary to take a different perspective. Social media-ists are really into their social media world and just waiting for creative tools to take off.

We really forget that Silicon Valley isn't made up of just social media-ists or web 2.0 or those who support all these new ventures made possible by the Internet.
True--Silicon Valley is a place for start-ups and it is only here that people are willing to try, financial pros are willing to fund and overall, everyone is prepared for failure, if it happens.

I spoke with a professional drummer with a 20+ year career, Dave Gary, Jr. and asked him what he thought about Silicon Valley. Dave has talent--at age 14, he picked up a drum set for the first time and impressed a teacher.

I couldn't tease much information out of him with the typical interview questions. When asked about his professional goals, he asked in return, "What is the goal in life?"

When asked about his passions other than drumming, he wouldn't answer. "I do what most people do as a hobby, and that's just what I do."

But really, Dave isn't any different from your VC, entrepreneur or the next CEO. His biggest frustration is "bad musicians that think they're good, and they just don't have any idea what it takes to be good." Not even people with talent cannot take their gifts for granted.

He says that whoever you are, whether a doctor or a businessman, you will always face challenges. "A lot of college kids come out of college thinking they can just get a job. But what about the guy next to you who also has that piece of paper?"

He also sees Silicon Valley as a working beehive and he isn't sure if most people know how to think for themselves. "Most people in Silicon Valley attend (music) shows, but they don't really listen. They hang out because they have money to pour into The Place (whatever is trendy) but they don't really listen. They don't know what to do--they're a bit robotic."

He talks about passion and doing what you love. At age 18, he majored in accounting at university for "almost a semester--I quit right before finals." But when he went to college, he realized fast that an accounting major may please his parents but it wasn't making him money. When he played music, he was making money--at 16, "I made more money than most of my friends playing music than they made working at McDonald's."

But Dave is making money because he is doing what is important to him. He says people in Silicon Valley face a lot of competition and work hard, but it's not enough to just work hard. "Make money or invent something--those without vision perish."

As I spoke to Dave, it was simply clear that it's not enough to just work a 9 to 5 job, not enough to do what everybody else does. And, career paths aren't linear. Without redacting the message, it seemed to me that this was just a man who has done what he is passionate about all his life. It has made his personal life simple and his professional life challenging.

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Getting Things Done

We've all struggled to achieve our goals and look at those who have done it successfully and think "oh, they're naturals--I'm not like that." I'm starting to think about this differently and although I've been aware that there are strategies out there to help achieve goals rather than think of goals to achieve.

Recently, I've been getting in over my head with a ton of projects, because I keep thinking that if I can do it all, then I would be like one of the amazing people that I admire so much. I didn't used to be like this and I didn't use to value perfectionism in this way before, but I think going to B-school can change that quickly, because it's hard to tell what your classmates will do to get ahead.

So I came across this blog article, the "Top 20 Motivation Hacks" and it talks about goal setting, how to stay disciplined, how to focus.

The funny thing about this is that when I first started college, I thought of myself as something Zen and hippy. I wanted to be relaxed and have no set expectations. I was also vegetarian. Ironically, I felt more disciplined, less stressed and got more things done. The vegetarianism set a precedent for my life, because it kept me disciplined and in other areas of my life, I did not let myself go too crazy with my impulses, and made the practice of staying consistent a focus of my daily life.

The Zenhabits blog really reminded me to keep things in perspective. This is the overall message: Try not to achieve perfectionism, but instead, focus on being in the moment, remember that every goal is a way to create something good and be forgiving towards the Self when things don't go as planned. This is the way to allow room for improvement and growth.

There's apparently a book out there which is famous for these ideas called Getting Things Done by David Allen. I think between motivation blogs and reality TV shows like Project Runway, Top Chef and Next Top Model, I might just have a solid recipe for keeping on track. Weird, I know, but those reality shows remind me that people who don't typically work in offices also have to commit to working hard to stay ahead.

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Fashion at Work

There's always an issue with how women should dress at work and what is too revealing and what's just right. An article on WSJ discusses this. Not much to comment on except, you would think that as "highly evolved" human beings in the internet age, we wouldn't be so stuck on appearance. But people create visual cues on a professional's status level based on appearance. This is probably the most frustrating thing about working as a young professional woman, as I do try to uphold personal finance and spend within my limits. While a man can buy a single suit, women can't often wear the same piece of clothing twice and get away with it.

If truth be told, carnal traditions of status, hierarchy and power that have existed for centuries still exist today. For a country that values democracy and equality we can still say those are still values because no man or woman can climb the ranks in rags.

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Value Is as Value Does

Today I've been looking at different companies and trying culminate a few ideas floating around about "value add" and either beating or staying ahead of the competition as well as what it means to work in high-tech where innovation is "a moving target". I read a case study today which Norman R. Augustine wrote about Lockheed Martin's attempt to restructure and survive while thinking about where I would fit into the management mix when I get that first dream job and why a company would need my insights as an employee. Yes, there is a bit of ego in this post, but I figured I needed the extra boost today as part of my introspective research of the day.

There really are very few people like me and that is a cliché statement because everyone is unique and there is no one person like the other. But if you were to define the market segment that I would fall under, it would be "Gen Y girl geek* in Silicon Valley who has lived in three other countries outside of the US and has seen how economic development can affect people in third world countries." Take a sample size: Out of 100 students of the class of 2000 at the Hong Kong International School high school, I am 1 in 100 and out of those students who live in Silicon Valley, I am maybe 1 in 5, (based on my connections on Facebook).

Take that number and try to find the number of people in the sample size of 5 people (a non-representative sample at best) that really wants to understand the history of our modern world through the fast-changing, fast-paced landscape of high-tech business and you are down to a sample of one. Which says nothing except that I am 100% me and if every competing entity on the free market has varied strengths and weaknesses giving each a fair competitive advantage, then it's true that I am totally and economically unique.

The question that often comes up these days is what is your value add and can you compete in this fast-paced, non-traditional, non "9 to 5" industry? Can you chase a moving target and hit a bull's eye? Do you understand what innovation means? I like to think that in about five years from now I will be more of an expert with a stronger understanding of the high-tech landscape. Right now, like our friend Linus Caldwell, I have the right skills for my profession and they have to be put into practice. Hopefully, within the next 5 years, I will have the means and experience to give back to the community and empower young people.

But for now, give me a challenging question to try and provide intelligent recommendations for your industry, and I will work with you to come up with some relevant answers. In addition to that (and I say this with tongue-in-cheek), if required I can get other examples in three Romance languages and maybe one or two major Asian languages.

*No "Geek" doesn't mean braces, awkward fashion, bad breath and oversized glasses. Believe it or not, in Silicon Valley, it's become a sub-culture and says Bay Area Girl Geek Dinners, "After all to be geeky is to be intelligent, have passion for a subject and to know that subject in depth."

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Relationship Marketing

I heard the oddest piece of advice yesterday in regards to office politics. The advice was: "Don't worry about it." It was an awfully simple thing to say but perhaps the most true.

There should be a large distinction between using tact in your business relationships and worrying too much about your reputation because the latter can create too much distance and perhaps mar the quality of those relationships. Too often, we think too much about the money at stake and this can create barriers in developing strong, authentic relationships that build for example, your customers' loyalty to you and your brand.

The same goes for networks. If you're at a networking event, it's better to stay positive, exhibit confidence and show interest in both your specialty and shared interests with your counterparts. In other words, be your best self and don't worry so much about what other people think.

I've been thinking a lot about this lately because when I was in Montréal, Quebec, people in general seemed to converse more naturally than we do in Silicon Valley. They are less distracted by Blackberrys and a glass of wine and good food is enough to inspire conversation. Again, I know I am generalizing, but what I've learned from Montrealites is that they don't acknowledge you as a business contact or a social contact but simply they acknowledge you as a person and stay self aware of the subjects of conversation.

Before I start to lose focus on all this, it is food for thought. We have a lot to learn from a traditional culture that still values face-to-face communication and interaction. When things revolve around money and politics, the world gets to be quite odd. So maybe that is why art and humanities exist in the world--so we can remember we are human beings after all.

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Let's Get Together and It'll Be All Right

Whether born-and-raised or adopted, NorCal-ites have to make social connections with all kinds of people because it’s intrinsic to having a productive life here. We may do our networking in jeans, but it’s business as usual in a geekified, non-conventional way. That's what I love about this place. People here really know their stuff.

I have a couple of friends out on the job hunt and the ones who have trouble are reluctant to tap the hidden job market or unaware that it exists. Mostly recent college graduates (grad and undergrad) the conversation usually goes like this:

Me: "Try joining a club or going to an event."
Objection: “I’m not that kind of person who likes to make small talk”
Me: "Yeah, it can be hard to do."

And I do understand this sentiment it's easy for people to stay in their comfort zones and I'm certainly no expert when it comes to being a socialite. The way I think about it though is that it is no less frightening than the various times I had to start a new school as a "corporate brat" moving from country to country. I'm an extroverted introvert, so my homebody self is not accustomed to crowds. Even so, I’ve earned the reputation of being the crowd cheerleader, because I like to get people together and watch the sparks fly.

The moral of the story is if there are so-called "monsters in the closet", if you go and meet them, they could turn out to be your advocates in life and you’ll root for those who inspire you as well.

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Time and ROI

I was in a cafe today, where the people watching was good, and a guy from the East coast was going on about business relationships, how to cultivate them and how it's different on the West Coast. I didn't catch most of what he said, and just tuned in to Pandora radio shortly after, but there was a snippet in his conversation that I could identify: A lot of business can be developed through conversations and building relationships--Californians don't do enough of that here in California because they only care about making a profit.

I don't know if what he says is true about Californians and relationship building. Maybe we don't want to lose our "coolness factor" by acting too interested but from an economic perspective, it looks business is important here and many people are benefiting from the opportunities made possible through start-ups and more mature companies. If it wasn't important here, then a number of the best 100 businesses to work for wouldn't be here. The question is, is it true what he says about Californians? Do we take the time to cultivate our relationships for mutual business benefit and show good will towards others?

How much time do you spend in your relationships for mutual benefit and staying dynamic versus trying to solicit immediate profit via hard sales? Is relationship ROI always a measurable number like how many people you are connected to on LinkedIn or is it more actionable where you see a few quality business relationships bring you steady business and more opportunities?

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First Movers: Strive through the narrow gate

Early last week, Amazon.com announced the release of the Kindle, the latest device for e-books, thus taking over the market space once occupied by the Sony Reader, which I've seen a couple of times at Borders in Palo Alto.

It's hard to say just which e-reader is going to win out in the battle, but it's not the first time that Sony has come out with a "first-mover" product to be later taken over by competitors with better resources and positioning.

Also true for the Blu-ray, which is in fierce battle now with the HD-DVD. The last I heard, Blu-ray was in the lead and then HD-DVD was winning, mostly measured by number of units sold. Does anyone know where this is now? There is a fair amount of noise around this subject.

I'm definitely not making any eye-opening comments here but I dare say that Sony has had to struggle really hard to keep their brand on the forefront, which confirms that first-mover advantage doesn't always mean that you've won the game.

Even though Sony revolutionized the music market with the Walkman roughly about 20 years ago Apple came and trumped them with the trendy, life-style icon, the iPod and didn't just stop there.

It just seems that whenever Sony comes up with something, no matter which market, somebody else always seems to come up with something better.

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Politicking

The world of business is not without politics.

As a young and amateur businessperson, the subject of communicating, politicking and ethics hasn't become intuitive yet. When I say that it hasn't become intuitive, I mean that it is still easy to see the world through rose-colored glasses.

My definition of "politicking" is this: when people start to do things that others are not aware about and make decisions for their own benefit. So basically, there isn't honesty and there isn't accountability for one's actions.

In Devil Wears Prada, Meryl Streep points out to her assistant that she had to step on some people to get to where she was. Is this really the truth about business? Economically, we talk a lot about how we do things to ensure that everyone receives value in what they invest in. Ideally, business should be about fair exchange.

I do believe that it is possible to do business honestly. The question is when do you know where the line is between honest and dishonest "business-doing"?

There have been several situations involving Enron, Apple, and other companies where issues that initially seem very small become huge issues of miscommunication, mismanagement or what have you.

One of the books that I read on communications emphasized that all members of an organization maintain open and honest communication with each other. In one situation, two partners in a business had such bad relations with each other that it was ruining the company. The consultant comes in and improves their business relationship and the company is saved.

Sounds ideal, right? The truth is that it is not so easy to do, it takes time, and the truth is that miscommunications happen very easily even with all good intentions involved.

These are just some initial thoughts and my hope is they will become more well-informed thoughts as I start to pay more attention to these sorts of issues.

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