Twinkies or technology skills: Shelf-life is shorter than you think

All of us, or at least most of us that care about the future of some of America's most beloved snack foods, have been following the sad story of Hostess - the venerable maker of all things wonderful, (Twinkies, Ding Dongs, and my favorite, those orange nuclear-looking cupcakes), that after failing to come to terms with striking workers, appears to be in its death spiral.  If indeed Hostess has to liquidate, it seems likely that some of their most popular and iconic brands like the Twinkie might survive, with a number of potential rival baking companies seemingly eager to purchase (at a fire-sale price), the brand name and recipe for the cake.It might still be good

While a plausible scenario, the Twinkie's future is still uncertain, and in the week or so run-up from the initial announcement of Hostess' intention to pursue liquidation, and the last, failed attempt at a labor settlement, consumers across the country essentially bought out all remaining supplies of Twinkies and other favorite Hostess snacks. The idea being to stock up while you still could, and if you acted quickly and scored a few extra Twinkies boxes, that combination of your stockpile with the Twinkie's legendary decades-long shelf-life, you'd be set to get your Twinkie fix for a really, really long time.

But it turns out, despite the urban legend that the preservative and artificial ingredient-heavy Twinkie being able to last forever, (or near enough), the true shelf-life of a Twinkie is no more than about 25 days, and typically were pulled from store shelves after about 10 days. So bottom-line, Twinkies last for less time than you think, (please let's hope they come back, I finished my stash two days ago).

I thought about the little Twinkie paradox while reading this piece, 'What's the Shelf-life of a Techie? Just 15 years, from the Times of India site.  In the piece, high-ranking technology leaders from the India operations of several well-known global tech firms,  (SAP, Microsoft, Texas Instruments), paint a pretty stark and probably realistic picture of the increasingly rapid deterioration of technology skills and expertise, as the pace of newer, hotter, and more in-demand technologies come to market. There are about half a dozen choice quotes in the piece, but this is the one that really stood out the most:

Mukund Mohan, CEO of Microsoft's startup accelerator programme in India, says the shelf life of certain kinds of developers has shrunk to less than a year. "My daughter developed an app for iPhone 4. Today, she is redeveloping the app to make it smarter for iPhone 5.

Five years ago, developers were talking Symbian (the Nokia operating system). Today, it's not very relevant. You have to look at Android or iOS or may be even Windows 8 to stay relevant."

A pretty telling quote and a bit frightening as well. The iPhone4 is maybe a year old, the iPhone5 less than that, and about to be rendered, 'out of date' in maybe 6 more months. It used to be that hardware, software, and the technical skills needed to make it all work advanced more evenly, regularly, and more importantly, the big firms that make these technologies, and their customers that use them, had much longer time horizons in mind when developing and deploying technology.

In the (recent) past a large, enterprise deployment of an ERP or an accounting system at a big firm could reasonably be expected to be in place more or less unchanged, for a decade, maybe even longer. Lots of IT pros and managers have made long and successful careers essentially by developing a deep understanding of a single technology.

While that was commonplace, and if you chose the 'right' technology, a pretty shrewd approach to career management, if these IT executives are accurate in their assessments, specializing in one technology at the expense of, exposure to, and continual learning about the 'next' technology that will be in demand is the only way to at least have a chance of remaining relevant, (and employable), past a time horizon, like the shelf-life of the Twinkie, is a lot shorter than you think.

Have a great Tuesday!

Paul Revere is Terrible and the Unintended Consequences of Games

I am not really a gamer, but even I took notice of the trailers and TV spots for the latest release in the popular Assassin's Creed video game series.  Titled simply 'Assassin's Creed III', the basic premise has the game's hero/protagonist 'Connor' operating and fighting in the Revolutionary War-era American Colonies, with the fictional Assassin's Creed characters and plotlines interwoven with real historical figures from that era like Benjamin Franklin, Sam Adams, and George Washington.

So a couple of weeks ago I picked up the game for my son who proceeded to enthusiastically dive in to the story, and by extension, into the Assassin's Creed view of the Colonial world and some of the most famous people and heroes of that age. Then, in what can either be described as trusting and empowering parenting, or simply 'bad' parenting, I sort of tuned out while he spent some time over several days playing the game, and navigating through the stylized and idealized versions of Colonial Philadelphia, New York, and Boston.

When I asked him about the game, and specifically how did he like interacting with the historical characters like Franklin and Washington, the conversation went something like this:

Me: How was it playing the game and mixing it up with famous people from American History?

P: They were all cool, with one exception.

Me: Who was that?

P: Paul Revere.

Me: What was bad about Paul Revere?

P: Paul Revere is terrible. He kept yelling at me to get back on my horse. When we had to fight the Redcoats he was worthless, all he did was wave his arms around and ride in a circle. He almost got me killed about five times.

I have to admit it cracked me up, the idea of American Icon and legend Paul Revere reduced to a flailing, ineffective liability out in the field when naturally we think of him as a heroic and legendary figure. After I stopped laughing I did attempt to stick up for Revere and remind P of his place as a true patriot and essential player in our nation's formation. I didn't really think that Assassin's Creed would be an accurate and historically correct take on American History, (nor should it be), but I also did not want to see P walk away with a really incorrect impression of Revere.

Thinking about the conversation further, I could not help but wonder if Assassin's Creed story is one we should take caution from, as we continue to think about and introduce gaming elements and game mechanics to more parts of work, education, and life in general.

In Assassin's Creed, any potential relevant learning and understanding of historical events and figures is only an afterthought to the game itself - its purpose is to entertain and engage the player to accomplish the various missions, none of which are 'Understand the historical significance of Paul Revere'.

I totally get that - running around Boston, scaling walls, dispatching spies and Redcoats with a well-placed musket shot is tremendous fun -  thinking about how onerous taxes levied on colonial merchants and how that led to protest and rebellion is kind of boring - particularly to an 12 year old.

But that is exactly the reason why I think we have to be really careful making everything into some kind of game - it can get really easy to make the game itself so compelling and interesting that we forget why we are even playing in the first place. And it can get even easier to see 'success' as winning the game, with the true goals or purpose - completing some real work or learning something important, becoming only ancillary benefits.

And I checked - Paul Revere is terrible, (at least at Assassin's Creed).

Everyone's a Trainer

In the age of social networking, increased participation of wide segments of the workforce in the social conversation, and the ease with which any employee can share pretty much anything online about work, it has become more widely accepted that some traditionally centralized corporate roles are becoming more dispersed throughout the organization.

Once employees start blogging, tweeting, engaging on LinkedIn or Facebook, whether or not in an 'official' or sanctioned capacity, then in some ways, they all become marketers, communications, Public Relations, and even Recruiting. In the recruiting space specifically, in the last few years a number of software solutions have hit the market, all designed around this new 'every employee is a recruiter' mindset to more effectively tap into the reach and power of employee networks for recruitment marketing and referral generation.

If you are not familiar with these solutions, check out (among others), SelectMinds TalentVine, Jobvite, Work4Labs, MeshHire, or SocialBios. I know there are many more out there, if you care to, please share any additional solutions you like in the comments. But the larger point, beyond specific solutions or manifestations, is that the notion of 'we are all recruiters' seems less exotic and more mainstream all the time.

Switch gears to another traditionally centralized corporate function that could also seemingly benefit from the same kind of 'dispersion of responsibility' we are starting to see in marketing and recruiting, namely the corporate training department. Despite the influence, or potential influence, of the same kinds of factors (better tools, social connectivity, willingness to share information and knowledge), the idea of 'we are all trainers', has not yet really resonated in most organizations.

For the most part, even while training, (delivery, timing, methods), has changed significantly over the years, the responsibility for the creation, administration, and communication of 'training' in its various forms still is often the responsibility of a central training and development staff. And certainly this can be explained on one level - sending out a tweet or forwarding a link to an open position to a Facebook friend is not nearly as complex as generating and sharing more robust training material. And the tools for developing really informative and relevant training content are definitely not as easily accessible and as user friendly as public social networks, nor the new breed of social recruiting technologies like the ones listed above.

Simply put, even in this socially connected, sharing inclined, more technically aware environment we operate in, the right tools for the simple and fast creation of organizational training content by people that are not training 'experts' have been few and far between.  Mostly if you had an idea for some training content, or wanted to develop a new course or module, you contacted the training department, let them know what you were after, and left them (the experts), to build or procure what they thought you needed.

But as sure as social sharing and networking is changing recruiting, a new tool called MindFlash is hoping to have a similar, sort of revolutionary effect on corporate training. The basic premise of MindFlash is to provide a simple, cloud-based environment that will allow anyone in the organization the opportunity to sign up for the service, configure a course, and invite their first student in 15 minutes or less.

There are more advanced features like the ability to add quizes, embed video, and track who's taken a course, but the ability to quickly and easily tap into organizational subject matter experts to generate 'courses' at the new speed of business is the compelling feature here.

It seems reasonable to think that with the availability and ease of use of a tool like MindFlash, that early adopters will see training start to bleed out of centralized training departments and become the responsibility of all employees. And 'training' itself will also likely change, from more traditional and long blocks of content (hours, even days), to more targeted, quick hitting, and timely bits of content, shared and developed not necessarily by training 'experts' but by the true subject matter experts.

What do you think? Would making the ability to develop and offer training as a more flexible, rapid, and distributed function help your organization?

Note: MindFlash has a number of licensing options, from a 'Lite' free version, and scaling up to 'Enterprise' levels of up to 1,000 trainees for $999/month. All plans come with a 30-day free trial.

Second Life Enterprise

Recently, the folks at Second Life announced the availability of the beta release of Second Life Enterprise, a fully-functional 'behind the corporate firewall' version of the popular virtual world.

In the past many large organizations such as IBM, Intel, and Northrop Grumman have established and grown a presence in the 'main' Second Life environment for corporate virtual meetings, training, and collaborative projects.  What Second Life Enterprise allows these organizations, and perhaps others that were reluctant to embrace the virtual world,  the ability to install and maintain a private virtual world for the enterprise, but one with all the features and capabilities of the public Second Life environment.

With Second Life Enterprise, the organization installs the solution in its own data center and gets some essential enterprise capabilities; backup and recovery, LDAP integration, and bulk account creation. So instead of users having to use 'fake' names like 'JoJo Stardancer' you can use their real names sourced from the corporate directory.

The enterprise environment also allows the transfer of objects and buildings the organization may have created in the 'main' Second Life into the private enterprise world. 

Second Life has long had some very compelling use cases for large distributed organizations.  Holding virtual meetings supplemented with rich multi-media content, conducting formal training sessions, global project team work sessions, and new employee onboarding are just a few of the many potential opportunities to leverage virtual worlds in the enterprise.

Early in 2010, the Second Life Enterprise solution will be supported by the Second Life Work Marketplace, an application and pre-built solution market that will allow content creators and providers to licence solutions for meetings, training sessions, seminars etc. to the Second Life Enterprise customer community.

This offering though, is clearly targeted at the large enterprise with strong IT resources and more than likely a widely distributed workforce.  Pricing for the solution starts at $55,000 USD.  But for a large organization, that typically brings together large numbers of people from around the world for meetings or annual planning sessions, the price for obtaining, preparing, and utilizing a virtual world for some of these events may well be a cost savings.

Looked at more broadly, this announcement seems to continue a trend of the 'enterprization' of popular public, or consumer social applications. Solutions that started out as pure 'social' tools, (Twitter, Facebook, Second Life) seem to grow and eventually find use cases for the enterprise. For me, if the initial barriers to Second Life use (heavy client, high learning curve) can be overcome by Second Life Enterprise, this may be the most impactful use of a 'social' tool inside large enterprises yet.

Resources for the other 77%

A survey of HR Executives by Ball State University revealed a telling statistic:

93% of HR Execs consider skills in 'New Media' to 'somewhat important' to 'important' for staff, but 77% of these organizations offer little or no training in these same skills. Flickr - Matt Hamm

The HR Cafe blog pointed this out today, and correctly questioned why would HR Execs admit these skills are important, and express the likelihood that they would pay a premium for new staff with these skills, but at the same time (largely) fail to provide training in these skills to their existing employees. 

So why the HR Cafe correctly questions the wisdom of these HR Execs, I will take a different approach. 

What might be some of the reasons why this type of training is not offered more frequently?  Could it be simple ignorance of the vast quantity of information that is readily available on these tools? There are numerous resources to help staff (particularly HR staff) learn more about 'New Media', or as it is more commonly referred to 'Social Media'.

Basics

First, start out by checking out the awesome series of 'in Plain English' videos from Commoncraft. They have fantastic, simple video explanations of all the popular social media tools that you are likely familiar with, (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, wikis, blogs, RSS, etc.), but may have never really understood.

Blogs

Another great beginner's resource is the blogosphere.  Countless posts have been written about 'getting started' with all the major social media platforms.  I will link to a few of them here, but truly this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Twitter - from ProBlogger - Twitter for Beginners

From Paul Bradshaw an excellent 'Twitter for Beginners' slide deck

An interesting take from the NY Times from a relatively new Twitterer

I could go on and on with these, Google 'Twitter for beginners' and you get 1,360,000 results.  You get the idea I think.

LinkedIn - my friend, and fellow Liverpool supporter, Andy Headworth offers 'LinkedIn for Beginners'

An explanatory Video podcast from Business Week on using LinkedIn

The book 'I'm on LinkedIn, Now What??? - by Jason Alba

Facebook - As basic as it gets, how to get started with Facebook from Angela Siefer

How to setup your business presence on Facebook - check out one of 100's of posts on Inside Facebook

From the Matrix Files - some simple instructions for setting up a Facebook Business page

Ning - If you are not familiar with Ning, it is a site that allows you to create private social networks centered around shared interests, geographies, company or school affiliations. A Ning network for your company might be an easy way to 'get people talking' and build community.

The Ning for Dummies network - an actual Ning network set up to help people learn Ning

From Digital Inspiration - Start your own Social Network in Minutes

For a great example of a Ning Network in action - check out HRM Today

Webcasts

Finally, many organizations offer free educational webcasts on how to learn about and apply these social media tools in your organization.  Here is a random selection of currently scheduled free webcasts on these subjects:

HCI - Grassroots Networking - the Pros and Cons of growing your Social Network

HCI - Optimizing the Social Web for Hiring

Social Media Today - Social Media for Corporations Webinar

Taleo - What the Social Tech Groundswell means for Attracting and Retaining Talent

Closing Thoughts

I am not a 'social media expert'.  Believe me, they are easy to find.  Do a search of Twitter profiles and I am sure you will find a few thousand of those experts.  This little post is not meant to be any kind of definitive guide to helping you or your staffs understand social media.

But if the Ball State survey results are to be believed, then almost all HR Execs think this stuff is important.  And the vast majority don't have anything formal in place to help their organizations gain these skills.

The thing is, you don't really need anything 'formal' in place to get started. I compiled the 10 or so sources on this post in about an hour or so.  It is not that hard to find boatloads of information on this stuff. If you really feel this is an important topic, and you are not providing information to you organization and employees, then really you are simply not trying very hard.

Better still, just grab one or two of your newest employees, the Millennials you just hired, and have them put on a 'social media overview' for your company.  They know all about this stuff, chances are they have been using it for years.