Know your audience

I am an early adopter of many technologies. I was one of the first people to start text messaging. Some people really didn’t know what to do with messages I sent them. I remember buying a Nokia phone with a full keyboard to make my text messaging faster. As pointed out by my best man on my wedding day, I was subsequently banned from my mobile provider at the time, Genie, for misusing the ‘unlimited’ text message offer. I loved that fact that it was easy to communicate with people whenever I felt like it, or not bother when I didn’t. I also had friends in different parts of the country I was losing touch with.

I was an ‘early adopter’ of social media. Before Twitter and Facebook I used instant messaging apps like MSN Messenger, but there was a limited audience if you had something amusing to tell the world. When Facebook came along I couldn’t resist putting everything I found funny on there. In fact most of the things I write on social media, except this blog of course, are for fun. We all need some humour when we are bombarded with bad news on all the media channels available today.

I recently started reading The Like Economy: How Businesses Make Money With Facebook which is a must read for anyone who has a business with a marketing function (which is most). It tells the truth about who is on Facebook, how it is designed to be positive (there is no ‘dislike’ button), and how you can engage with your customers and promote your brand. This isn’t as straight forward as it sounds, and he gives some practical advice based on experience. What interested me is the section about how he had to stop ‘goofing’ around on Twitter. He thought that his comedy would ‘break the ice’ and get people talking to generate him contacts and future dealings. In fact, people were put off, thinking that he might not take his job seriously. This is the harsh reality of social media. I would like to be Ben the person who posts silly comments on Facebook and Twitter, but still have people realise I am a knowledgeable and professional person who they would work with. So how do you achieve this?

One of the best aspects of Google+ is the concept of circles. Just as in life, you can choose who sees which sides of your personality. For example you can create a ‘Close friends’ circle and talk about how you are struggling for motivation today (we all get those days), or a ‘Business Associates’ circle for people you are looking to influence in some way, and you only want to see positive messages coming from you. Facebook differs from this core Google+ concept. Facebook is all about sharing as much as you want with as many people as you can. But not long after Google+ was unveiled, a new feature was added to Facebook which allowed you to share your posts with particular groups of friends.

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That just leaves Twitter and LinkedIn, as the other big social media sites. Well nobody is going to start ‘goofing around’ on LinkedIn. Its not that kind of site. Twitter, is too open and if you don’t want everyone to see what you have to say, it’s not a good idea to put it on Twitter. The only option I have here is to create multiple twitter accounts. One for serious, business minded Ben, and one for joking around social Ben.

Learn to Code

There must be a lot of people who would like to change jobs or can’t find any work at the moment. Why not learn to code? All you need is a computer with an Internet connection, there are so many free resources and tools available. Or maybe try this:

Code Year

A Technical College for the Digital Economy?

We hear a lot about how the UK needs to rebuild its economy, with less reliance on the financial sector, and more growth in high value, high tech industry. There has been a lot made of the emergency of the UK ‘Silicon Valley’ emerging in London around the Old Street roundabout which has been dubbed ‘Silicon Roundabout’ (despite having nothing to do with silicon), as well as existing tech centres in Cambridge and the M4 corridor.

One thing which appears to be a potential stumbling block in the growth of this sector, is the lack of young people gaining the sort of skills needed to enter the industry. Numbers of people entering Computer Science degrees have been falling. Who can blame them, with a debt of £30-£40k and the prospect of unemployment at the end of their degree (according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) 17% of IT graduates are unemployed) many would be put off. Combine this with the general trend of outsourcing development work to India and Eastern Europe, the worry of spending a career staring at a computer screen and the geeky anti-social image of I.T. and you have a powerful disincentive.

What these students probably don’t realise are the significant benefits of good salaries, flexible working and, if you are any good and gain useful experience, plenty of work and opportunities to learn throughout their careers. I have focused on I.T. specifically but of course there a range of skills that are needed from design to marketing and business to develop new high tech companies in the UK.

I have often wondered whether it is absolutely necessary to go to university for 3 or 4 years to study a subject which changes so much that some of what is learnt becomes out of date in the space of a few years. For example, on my B.Sc. Computation degree I learnt about ‘E-commerce’ at a time when the Internet was in its infancy, but I wouldn’t say the topics being learnt would translate to the world of Internet shopping we have today. There is some use to learning theory and understanding how networks work at low levels, but I have never had to use this knowledge in practice. I have been thinking about an alternative.

How about creating a college, for students aged 16+ (A-level age) which teaches the kind of skills the I.T. industry needs today. For example, coding Java or PHP, web design, mobile app development, agile team work (with a focus of how important communication is) as well as best practice from entrepreneurs who can act as mentors. Then mix in core subjects such as maths, science and English. What I am proposing sounds a bit like a technical college, but instead of learning how to lay bricks or plumb a bathroom, the students will be encouraged to build interesting websites and develop skills which some will use to become the startup companies of the future. It is kids at this age that know what is ‘cool’ and what kind of app their friends will want to download especially when it comes to social media.

Maybe this is too much to learn in 2 years so why not make it a longer course where students study until they are 19 or 20 and throw in some industrial experience? There has been a big shift in education away from the top down approach to running schools from Government using a rigid syllabus towards academies and ‘free schools’ recently, but it seems some are going backwards in time instead of thinking forwards, by teaching subjects such as Latin. How much use will Latin be in our digital economy?

Is this too young an age to be teaching such subjects? I would argue not. More of my contemporaries began coding aged 10 to 12 (and it seems to be a competition who started to use machine code at the youngest age – sad I know!). We already have highly developed I.T. Training industry, which could be tapped into for teaching resources, so what’s stopping us?