Brian Frank, two first names.

Why Would a Twenty-Something Stay in London?

Chantelle Diachina, Gina Farrugia, and Grant Hopcroft discuss the opportunities and challenges for retaining young people in London. Photo: Kevin Van Lierop

Today I was trying to answer this question in a group discussion at AgendaCamp. Most of the time we talked about reasons to not stay in London.

Personally, I moved back to London in 2000 after finishing school to regroup before figuring out what to do with my life… And I stayed in London because I’m still figuring out what to do with my life.

To be honest I don’t think there is an answer to that question (I mean, the question about retaining young people — though I’m increasingly inclined to think the other question doesn’t have an answer either).

There is no reason for a 20-something to stay in London.

But at the same time, there are lots of reasons.

While there’s no magnetic attraction to draw masses of young people, there are also an infinite number of possible niches and opportunities to retain a few of the right individuals who are naturally suited for London’s character and pace.

The answer our group came up with (notes are here and earlier ones here) can be summarized roughly as

London offers opportunities to have an impact than a young person would have in a larger city. Social networks can be more intimate and diverse at the same time, with more access to the kind of dialogs we had today.

[Update: To be clear, credit for that goes to the group but it was Kevin Van Lierop who nailed the "opportunities to have an impact" phrase, building on James Wilkinson's comments and with elaboration mostly my Jodi Simpson. I contributed very little.]

It sort of contradicted a lot of our criticism in that session and others that the older generations’ established power networks are too comfortable (that was expressed by both young and old alike) with the notion that young people, regardless of talent, need to “wait their turn.”

Of course, the most talented tend to chose to go wait in a city that’s a lot more fun in the mean time.

Either way, I think we can best resolve the situation by coming back to the idea articulated by Kevin in the session that it’s about personal impact through genuine human connections, embracing people who are the right fit, sending the right signals to students so they know exactly what kind of city London is, and demonstrating we’re willing to invest in their future — our future.

Any attempt at setting up top-down programs will be inherently difficult — if not completely counterproductive — especially if they are explicitly targeting young people.

Young people don’t want to be targeted. They don’t want to be young people. They want to be whoever they decide they’re going to be, on their own terms.

I remember reading a case study — can’t find it now — explaining that Teen Spirit deodorant failed because teens, in a sense, didn’t think of themselves as teens. Young people aspire to be older. Marketing needs to aim a few years higher if it’s going to be explicit about demographics.

Or we could just keep demographics out of the message and simply start doing more things right. If we want to appeal to young people the first thing we need to do is give them the impression the city is moving forward.

If they see London moving forward more of them will want to be a part of that.

Most of these steps are things that London — and any city — should constantly try to improve anyways: continuing to vitalize the core, becoming more eco-conscious, making sure there’s decent and affordable places to live available in vibrant neighbourhoods, enabling diversity to continue thriving, facilitating healthy lifestyles, and becoming a more digitally connected city (not just in terms of hard wires and wifi but in terms of becoming a lot more digitally active, sophisticated and savvy).

By comparison, if younger generations see the city simply preserving existing structures and mindsets (whether or not that’s the case; what’s important is what people perceive), it will always be an uphill battle trying to attract & retain them.

If London promotes a positive identity (genuinely, not just in the form of platitudes) and people choose to live here for positive and appropriate reasons (not apathetic ones like mine) and they’re are allowed to invest their skills and interests in suitable challenges — to experience a sense of personal growth and belonging — then the rest starts taking care of itself and the strategic outlook becomes more clear.

Growing London’s appeal to young people is going to be won by margins, constantly building individual success upon individual success. To put it simply, we need to retain just enough graduates from this year’s classes so they can send the message to next year’s graduates… and so on.

Progress is going to occur largely on a personal level. It’s going to have to go through the channels young people are already hooked into and where they’ve already invested their trust.

This is just the kind of hyper-connected, hyper-personal world we live in now.

It’s the lesson every marketer has had to learn with the advent of social media. Every decent book on the subject — from Cluetrain to Trust Agents — makes essentially the same case.

Looking at the bigger picture, these principles are good in themselves. Making our civic life more open & engaging has all kinds of benefits in terms of quality, sustainability, and effectiveness of governance going beyond talent retention.

It’s something we need to be working on, like, today.

Oh right — we are…

Tune in to tomorrow night’s episode of the TVO’s The Agenda, live from UWO. Today was a great experience and I can’t wait to see what fruit it might bear — not just tomorrow but through the course of the year and beyond, keeping the momentum up with similar events.

P.S. Jobs certainly don’t hurt either.

Update: Photo by Kevin Van Lierop via Flickr.

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iPad: Setting the Table for Tablets

Did anyone really think Apple wants us replace our iPhones or MacBooks?

I actually think it hits my sweet spot better than either its bigger or smaller cousins. It won’t replace my other stuff, but I definitely picture this as my primary device.

Apart from a couple of hours I spend writing every day, most of my technology use is for reading or otherwise consuming content, and I’d be a lot better & happier doing that on one of these babies. I definitely welcome, with open arms, something that blends the different reading & viewing experiences into one continuous spectrum — if only because I enjoy seeing old assumptions get plowed under.

I felt my thinking about digital publishing shift immediately while I watched the demo.

I’ve been trying to imagine the full potential of e-books for a few years, without getting a solid grip on any breakthrough hypotheticals, suddenly we have the heuristic we need to realize what the potential is and make real progress towards it.

As someone in the process of looking at publishing formats, I was struck with the sense of, “Here’s what I’ve been looking for.”

Note: it’s the exact same feeling I had when I first saw Google Wave and real-time FriendFeed (and the original, for that matter). We know how those have turned out. Resisted at first, not massively successful, but strongly indicative of where things are going.

As of last night the whole field of possibilities has faded into the background behind the question, “how can I optimize my content for the iPad”?

I can imagine slapping a label on my premium stuff saying “Best viewed on an iPad.”

Don’t underestimate the power of interacting directly with content (at least when it’s good content, and the device is actually usable). It’s very seductive. Non-touch displays seem broken after I’ve been using touch for a few minutes.

Seductive and useful, especially for richer learning experiences (always my rule-of-thumb for where the web is going):

Textbooks are different animals than e-book novels and business books, in ways that current e-readers can’t handle. For starters, you don’t read a textbook’s pages serially from first to last. You need to be able to jump around, skip, skim, and flip back and forth between chapter review and chapter content. A textbook’s content should ideally be dynamic from year to year, not frozen in time like a novel.

As for the tradeoffs — no camera, no Flash, not a lot of memory, no background apps — we’ll get over those, at least until the next generation. Personally I don’t need that stuff. Most “normal” people don’t either, and 95% of the population probably isn’t conscious of half of them.

Apple really impressed me here on their willingness to eliminate features we’ve come to take for granted. They’ve emphasized a specific set of needs and a unique experience where other companies would have tried to please everyone with a recognizable laundry list of gewgaws.

Remember this is the company that changed the game with a music device that appeared to have only one button.

It’s important to eliminate some aspects in order to affect the way people perceive and approach something new — so they don’t bring along too much baggage from other devices, creating barriers to fleshing out the unique value of the new thing.

On a more speculative note, I see the iPad ushering “interoperability” into the conversation as a big buzzword (on the same level that “real-time” and “location-based” are now).

Syncing has gone from being a useful feature to become an essential feature and is moving towards eventually becoming one of the top two or three priorities a device has to really get right.

Beyond syncing messages and contacts, sometimes I’ll want my tablet to know what’s on my TV, so when I’m watching news or sports I’ll have stats and background stories cued up for me within arms-reach. And I’ll want my TV to know I’m using my tablet so the screen won’t be cluttered with infographics.

And there will be uses most of us can’t even imagine yet until we get our greasy fingers on these things…

That’s just my 2¢ for now, as a guy who’s normally pretty apathetic about new gadgets (it fits BrianFrank.ca insofar as it’s about changing mindsets and exploring new opportunities — which it very much is about).

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The Problem With Protest Rallies

First I’m going to straight-up admit I don’t have the disposition for them. I just don’t like sitting or standing in any audience or crowd. But I have reasons as well.

In a way, the bigger the crowd, the less social it becomes. Of course it’s social in a really basic way, but there isn’t much genuine interaction.

Everyone’s attention is fixed on one figure at a time who’s front and centre. They tend to degenerate into recitations of the most simplistic slogans. Ideas are made blunt, words are rendered almost meaningless in order to reverberate and hold everyone’s attention. There’s very little openness or freedom to converse or break off and reorganize around emerging themes. Planned speakers say what they more or less planned to say. Everyone is subtly or not-so-subtly pressured to agree — if they didn’t already. Everyone goes home having reinforced the same ideas they went in with.

These anti-prorogation rallies around Canada will probably accomplish something, but they’ll also perpetuate the same old problem of politics-as-theatre that prevents genuine conversation and collaboration from occurring.

There are times when protests are very helpful, there are times when protests are necessary (though I’m not sure where exactly to draw the line), but they are never sufficient and I worry they distract people’s energy away from doing other stuff that might be more effective — even if less noticeable.

The web is a great tool for bringing people together, but that’s just the beginning. The web can do much more than bring crowds together to complain. Where the web is really maturing as a medium is in its ability to bring people together to learn and create something new.

We can and should use the web as a platform for collaboration, to share information and improve our ideas, to suggest problems to solve, attracting participants and identifying experts, deliberating and assigning tasks, signaling intent, cultivating mutual trust, facilitating ongoing feedback and discussion, and aggregating everyone’s progress with different aspects of complex projects.

This is what I meant when I wrote about reseting the agenda for democracy. We haven’t nearly explored the full potential yet. We have a long way to go.

We have more than just a voice, we have imagination; let’s start using it.

*** Update @ 3:35 ***

Attended the #noprorogue rally here in London — primarily to observe, but also to see if I could meet a few like-minded people and promote a more collaborative approach (unfortunately I was reminded I am not a natural activist, nor politician; I ended up mainly observing).

I was hesitant to go because the list of speakers made it look like an NDP event. That ended up being more or less accurate (apart from a speech by one Green candidate and some remarks from Glen Pearson, read on his behalf). Someone was handing out NDP signs that were made for the occasion, and a number of union flags flew above the crowd.

Most of the rhetoric was straight-up anti-Harper and anti-Conservative. Not much in the way of non-partisanism or trying to build anything. Tim Carrie from the CAW even brought up the damn gun registry, before starting in on pensions and putting people back to work in manufacturing. There were more than a few corny inflammatory jokes — the same kind that conservatives make about left-wing politicians — to which the mostly left-wing crowd responded with the same sneering exaggerated laughter you’d see at any party’s own convention.

But there was at least some diversity in the crowd, albeit queit for the most part.

When Cory Morningstar from the Council of Canadians went on for 10 minutes about climate change, saying Harper is turning the planet a “living hell” (giving a speech that may have been prepared for another occasion, at one point saying “this is the third year I stand in front of you” about this issue) a small pocket vocally reminded her the rally was for Canadian democracy. The majority encouraged her to continue, which she did.

So far, politics as usual.

I hope during the time off we’ll have more discussion about a) cutting the rhetoric, and b) brainstorming and trying a few blue-sky ideas of what democracy can be, beyond what it is now.

I don’t want to see this merely become an opportunity for other parties to gain points in the same old game.

We can do better. We deserve better. We need to do better to address the issues that otherwise risk tearing the country apart.

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Learning as a Craft

Read The Craftsman by Richard Sennett — one of my favourite thinkers. This book gets right to the heart of things. From the publisher’s description:

Defining craftsmanship far more broadly than “skilled manual labor,” Richard Sennett maintains that the computer programmer, the doctor, the artist, and even the parent and citizen engage in a craftsman’s work. Craftsmanship names the basic human impulse to do a job well for its own sake, says the author, and good craftsmanship involves developing skills and focusing on the work rather than ourselves. In this thought-provoking book, one of our most distinguished public intellectuals explores the work of craftsmen past and present, identifies deep connections between material consciousness and ethical values, and challenges received ideas about what constitutes good work in today’s world.

The same day I finished it I participated in a panel on do-it-yourself approaches to education conducted by a group in the online journalism class at UWO (the edupunk episode will be part of a series that launched last week at Rabble.ca and The Tyee).

On the way there I started feeling a connection between the book and the discussion to come.

Education is itself a craft — over and above (or underlying) everything else.

Learning is something a lot of us have an “impulse to do well for its own sake.” Some of us have the same impulse for teaching too.

Yet institutionalized education is premised on the idea that students don’t or won’t learn unless they’re lured and prodded through a network of corrals. It messes with our natural motivations», and actually gets in the way» of learning.

That premise is self-perpetuating. If you teach people in a way that assumes they don’t want to learn, then they’ll learn to not want to learn, they’ll learn to wait to be prodded and pulled…

During the discussion Jim Groom brought up The Wire — an amazing show that depicts cops (among its many characters) trying to fight crime for the sake of fighting crime, but find themselves up against institutional dysfunction (and individual corruption) at every turn.

“Real police” like Jimmy McNulty and Lester Freamon damaged their careers by investigating crimes too well, rather than letting criminals slip through for the sake of artificially inflating the department’s statistics.

Likewise, in learning, by discovering or creating something new you create more work for everyone else. Institutional “zombies” (to use David Hall’s word) tend to mobilize against initiatives; they’re there to meet whatever institutional metrics have been imposed for the sake of a paycheck.

There’s a scene in season 4 of The Wire in which one of the characters has been paid to round up truant students and take them back to class. He thinks he’s doing it for the sake of the kids’ education until someone explains they only need those students for a couple of days to get funding; after that the school lets them go back to work on the street corners.

Every kind of organization has problems like this. New people come along and say “we can do better” and people start moaning. It isn’t just more work people are afraid of, people are also afraid of failing and looking stupid.

Institutional rules and guidelines serve to deflect criticism — promoting the wrong kind of responsibility»:

People working for failed companies might say “I was just doing my job” (i.e. “carrying out my responsibilities”), but that doesn’t excuse them from Responsibility. Likewise, “I was just following orders” doesn’t necessarily excuse soldiers from Responsibility for inhumane acts.

It’s time to relearn the best kind of responsibility — responsibility for rules and conventions, not merely responsibility to them (i.e. a willingness to stand up to them and change them).

It’s time to relearn the love of learning» for its own sake — the same kind of love we had as kids when we learned to walk and talk and make things.

Nobody had to force you to learn that stuff. It’s no mystery; the motivation for it is no mystery, just humanity. The real mystery is why we turned things around and got so good at squelching it.

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Stuff I’ve Been Reading

15.01.2010

» … besides news about Haiti, Google, #teamconan (awesome!), prorogation…
» How Fiction Works, James Wood — not so much a how-to as a brilliantly curated conversation across time between some of the greatest authors about subtleties I’d never noticed, e.g. how characters are efficiently “got in,” etc.
» The Design of Business, Roger Martin … who has been busy:

“The [...]

Hashtag Debate in London

13.01.2010

• Don’t take it too seriously. There will never be consensus. Ultimately everything is decided by what people use. Debate about what we should use will just go on and on forever.
• Sometimes the stupidest ideas (sometimes starting as jokes and accidents) turn out to be the most popular and effective. Think of LOLcats (and [...]

More Aspects of Google’s New Approach to China

13.01.2010

Other people will have a lot more insight into this than I do, but since everyone is talking about Google’s announcement [excerpted]…
We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we [...]

Focusing on Opportunities

11.01.2010

I’ve learned not to care as much when other people are being stupid.
It’s their problem.
Last year I did more blogging in the spirit of “someone’s wrong on the internet,” but lately I’ve learned to lay off and let people screw up.
(I’m so kind.)
When I started writing about media it was because I was interested in [...]

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