This morning's keynote was on “Three Keys to Engaging Dital Natives” and was made by Michelle Manafy from Free Pint Limited, author of Dancing with Digital Natives.
Digital Native refers to today's youth who have grown up with ubiquitous digital technologies. Everyone else using digital technologies are digital immigrants. (The term was coined by Marc Prensky author of Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants) Those who turn 15 in 2016 will spend between 1200 and 1500 hours a day on digital technologies.
Ms. Manafy described in detail three characteristics of digital natives.
They are all about public opinion, not private lives. Andy Warhol's 15 minutes of fame has changed to 15 people to whom you are famous. Example: IJustMadeLove.com. Police monitor Twitter & Facebook for gang activity, because they actually post stuff they are doing there. The use of social sign-on (using an existing social network login to sign into a new site) is something that appeals to the digital native. By the nature of this activity the digital native can be one of your greatest advocates.
Digital natives are about knowledge sharing, not knowledge hoarding. Crowdsourcing is a good example of this attitude. Haul videos, where people provide details of shopping sprees, is likewise an example. Quirky.com is a place for social product development. You submit your proposed invention to the site and people can comment on it, and then products which have been voted on are brought to market. It provides real-time market feedback. Local Motors uses this system to make cars. ProPublica does this for reporting. DigitalKoot does this to improve digitization projects with games. Proctor & Gamble's developer site, P&G connect, collaborates with outside innovators for packaging, products & business models. IBM has a collaborative development site. It's founder says that he used to think that “knowledge is power” but now believes that “knowledge shared is power.” This is a generation that wants to be involved in product creation and are more likely to buy products with which they played a role in creation.
Digital natives are interested in interactions, not transactions. If you don't provide a constructive forum to express dissatisfaction, they will find one that you will not control. United Airlines has suffered from negative press for high prices for bicycle transport and damaging guitars. Their Twitter feed has a picture of a plane, not people, unlike American Express's Twitter feed. Threadless t-shirts has a business model similar to those above (user submitted, voted designs). PBS digital nation project posted rough cuts from the project. Users submitted editing suggestions as well as pictures and comments about how digital technologies have changed people's lives. Australia's State Library of Victoria has done a lot of interesting things. They have thousands of book lists in their kids section of the website and many have comments. The Library of Birmingham in the U.K. has beenbeen doing a lot of innovative things. Using QR codes, GPS navigation, and virtual imaging to help people find things with their phones.
To survive we will need to learn to think more like the digital native, which means that we'll probably have to do some scary things.
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