Spring Break #4 - The Art of Video Games

This is the final Spring Break 2012 dispatch and I wanted to share what I thought was one of the coolest things I saw this week in Washington, DC, the Art of Video Games exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

As the exhibit's website describes -

Video games are a prevalent and increasingly expressive medium within modern society. In the forty years since the introduction of the first home video game, the field has attracted exceptional artistic talent. An amalgam of traditional art forms—painting, writing, sculpture, music, storytelling, cinematography—video games offer artists a previously unprecedented method of communicating with and engaging audiences.

The Art of Video Games is one of the first exhibitions to explore the forty-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking visual effects and the creative use of new technologies. It features some of the most influential artists and designers during five eras of game technology, from early pioneers to contemporary designers. The exhibition focuses on the interplay of graphics, technology and storytelling through some of the best games for twenty gaming systems ranging from the Atari VCS to the PlayStation 3.

And thinking beyond the artistic and technological breakthroughs in video game design and development, it probably is also worth considering the medium's impact on a generation (or two), of gamers. We have already seen several elements of video gaming work their way into more corporate or mainstream practices - interactive candidate assessments, sophisticated video game-like training programs that are commonly used in military or other technical arenas, and of course the entire 'gamification' industry that if you believe the hype, might turn almost every workplace action into some kind of contest with badges, leaderboards, or prizes.

Some reports claim that worldwide as many as half a billion people a day spend time playing video games, and that 99% of boys under 18 and 94% of girls under 18 report playing video games regularly. Whether or not those statistics are precise doesn't really matter, the larger point worth considering for those of us interested in creating great workplaces and attracting great talent is that chances are quite high that the talent you will be recruiting and working with today and in the future has grown up in the video game culture.

Does that matter at all? Do you care as a HR or Talent pro? Should you?

I guess it is hard to say, I'd love for you to offer your take if you have thought about some of these larger trends in your work in HR and Talent Management.

Regardless, the Art of Video Games exhibit was quite cool and I do recommend stopping in the next time you find yourself in Washington.

Have a great weekend!

Spring Break #3 - Should all applications be mobile?

Note: It is Spring Break week here in Western New York, (for the school-age kids anyway), and while I will still be working and traveling to Washington D.C. for a conference, this week will be busier than most. So this week on the blog I'll be mostly sharing some quick hits and short takes on things I spotted or found interesting. Actually, come to think of it, that is pretty much every week.  Anyway, if you are on Spring Break this week, I hope you have a great little vacation!

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Earlier this week I offered a quick (and not really orginal or novel) take on the Facebook-Instagram deal, where I pointed out that the really interesting part of the purchase was not the extraordinary purchase price, ($1B), for a company with no revenue and no real plans to create revenue, but rather that Instagram was able to build a user base of over 30 million with only about a dozen employees.  Sure, Instagram is a really simple, single-function type application, but to have that many users that quickly with an incredibly small team is really remarkable.

So today's Spring Break series take is the second interesting angle on the deal, and that is the question of the diminishing importance of 'traditional', (i.e. sit down at a desktop or laptop, fire up an application or browser to use), type applications at all? If Instagram could build a $1B business completely on the iPhone, (I know they have an Android app now, but that was a very recent development), why would aspiring developeneurs think that building for anything but the iOS/Android platforms was a solid decision? 

At least on the consumer side certainly, mobile platforms seem to increasingly be all that matters, Facebook itself acknowledged their risk and exposure to mobile by both their admission that they have not been able to monetize mobile access to Facebook, as well as with their Instagram buy. Recently Facebook head of mobile developer relations James Pearce said "Mobile is the epitome" of social. If Facebook were built today, it would be a mobile app."The numbers? Facebook currently has 425 million mobile users (compared to 825 million total users).

So in a climate where the most popular social applications and networks are predominantly mobile-based, and in a time where these consumer-oriented applications continue to become tools used for business and enterprise purposes, I think it might be time to wonder if the next big breakthrough in enterprise or workforce technology won't be from creating fancy iPhone versions of the same old tools that employees are tired of using, but rather from the creation of something entirely new, built as a mobile application, with not one shred of concern about 'users working in the office on PCs', and none of the baggage that often accompanies creating 'mobile-friendly' versions of what we have always known.

We have talked for years about the next 'Facebook for the enterprise', is it time to start talking about the next 'Instagram for the enterprise?'

Happy Thursday!

Spring Break #2 - I don't know anything about Instagram

Of course by now you've heard, read, or more likely seen a Facebook status update from someone with the news that social networking colossus Facebook has announced their intention to buy social photo-sharing service Instagram for a cool $1 Billion. That's with a 'B'. I have never used Instagram and don't know much more than what I picked up from the few pieces I read about the acquisition. But since this is a blog, I won't let that stop me from commenting.Artsy, right?

Most of the reaction to this announcement has fallen into three distinct buckets:

1. Wow, $1B for a new(ish) company with no revenue and no plan to actually earn any revenue? The DotCom bubble is back!

2. (from loyal Instagram users) - Wow, I hope big, bad Facebook doesn't screw up Instagram. I may have to delete my account. Editor's Note: No one cares, you big crybabies.

3. Smart move by Facebook. Photo sharing is the most popular feature on Facebook, and Instagram was becoming a real threat to Facebook's dominance in the space. Their mobile solution is miles ahead of Facebook's, and making the acquisition just killed their main competitor in the space.

All reasonable takes and fairly expected I suppose. But I'd like to offer a fourth take, one not about what a $1B valuation says for a company with $0 revenue - the revenue or lack thereof was not important to Facebook, the 30 million users were.  But rather what the $1B valuation for a company of a grand total of 14 employees says about technology, the labor market, and the new rules of the digital economy.

In some not-too-distant past, building a billion-dollar company would take years of toil, pain, sacrifice, risk, and ingenuity no doubt, but it would also typically take people, usually hundreds, maybe even thousands.  Instagram (and others like them, just not quite as valuable), are showing that not only is the need to build up and sustain a revenue and profit model not necessarily important in achieving a massive payday, but also that the traditional process of slowly building and growing a larger and larger staff of employees to manage and drive that growth may not be needed as well. In these digital businesses, plugging in to additional outsourced computing resources and programmatically rolling out a new feature or change to many thousands of servers and many millions of users is a job that can often be managed by just a couple of staff.  

The interesting metric to me in the Instagram deal isn't $1B for $0 revenue, it's 30 million users for 14 employees.

And that's a lot of sepia-wash pictures of your dog.

Happy Tuesday!

Spring Break #1 - The Plain Writing Act

Note: It is Spring Break week here in Western New York, (for the school-age kids anyway), and while I will still be working and traveling to Washington D.C. for a conference, this week will be busier than most. So this week on the blog I'll be mostly sharing some quick hits and short takes on things I spotted or found interesting. Actually, come to think of it, that is pretty much every week.  Anyway, if you are on Spring Break this week, I hope you have a great little vacation!

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This piece from the Washington Post online caught my attention over the weekend - 'Advocates of the Plain Writing Act prod Federal Agencies to Keep it Simple', a review and summary of the 2010 'Plain Writing Act', a law that requires United States Federal agencies to "train agency employees in "plain writing" (defined as writing that is clear, concise, well-organized, and follows other best practices appropriate to the subject or field and intended audience."Yes it is a Sonny & Cher pic. It came up when I searched for 'Plain Language' pics.

The Act proscribes some specific steps for agencies to demonstrate compliance to the new 'Plain Writing' requirements - official agency communications must now use the active voice, avoid double negatives and use personal pronouns. “Addressees” must now become, simply, “you.” Clunky and made-up words and expressions like “incentivizing” (first known usage 1970) are discouraged. The use of internal jargon and acronyms should be limited, etc.

The Act also mandates that Fedeal agencies "designate one or more senior officials within the agency to oversee the agency's implementation of this Act", essentially naming a kind of 'Chief of Plain Writing' within each agency. According to the Post piece, at least some of these appointees are running into some difficulty converting agency communications to meet the 'Plain Writing' guidelines:

“Part of this is we have a change in culture,” said Ed Burbol, the Defense Department’s plain-language coordinator, who oversees two full-time staff members assigned to promoting clearer communication. “We’re going to encounter resistance.”

It might seem kind of odd, or in a cynical 'look at the government, they have no clue as usual' way that an internal Federal agency culture would be at odds with an idea like Plain Writing, which is a concept and a goal that is kind of hard to argue against. But if you think a little bit deeper, and perhaps a little more honestly about organizations that you have worked in, functions you have been responsible for, or even in the current role you possess - can you honestly say you haven't been a little guilty of the same kinds of communication problems or failures that the Plain Writing Act is at least attempting to address?

I know I'd raise my hand to admit that - in fact I am not totally sure this blog post would meet the new criteria. I set out for about 200 words on a simple subject, and on and on it goes. If you have made it this far, congratulations!

And now I ask you close your browser, find a piece of copy on your website, or some HR form instructions, or the 'All Hands' email you are working on and see if it could use some editing, some simplifying, or some 'Plain Writing'.

Have a fantastic Monday!