Gen Y Cartoon
Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 |Why is Generation Y called Generation Y you might ask. Here’s a perspective provided by French Canadian cartoonist Marc Beaudet, published at Journal de Québec on January 22, 2008.
Archive for the ‘Generations’ Category
Critical Responsibility For Next Generations
Monday, March 3rd, 2008 |Gloria Dean Randle Scott is credited with saying, “The critical responsibility for the generation you’re in is to help provide the shoulders, the direction, and the support for those generations who come behind.”
Gloria has certainly lived that out in her life. Born 70 years ago in Texas, she was the first African American woman to graduate with a degree in zoology from Indiana University. She was the first African-American to head the Girl Scouts of the USA (1975-1978). She was the president of Bennett College, a Historically Black College for women, in Greensboro, North Carolina, from 1987-2001.
Manchester Students on Gen Y
Friday, February 22nd, 2008 |This 10 minute video was put together one autumn afternoon in 2007 at the University of Manchester. The concept of ‘Generation Y’ was put forward to a class of over 100 MSc Students. The opinions expressed extend across Business, IS and Computer Science disciplines. Thanks to Martin Cahill for hosting the video.
Music is Young Folks, by Peter Bjorn and John.
Gen Y Conversation Skills
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 |In response to surveys showing a lack of conversational skills stemming from an over-reliance on video games, text messaging and TiVo, a number of American mainline churches have begun to offer classes in fellowship and social conversation with Generation Y’ers.
“We feel this is meeting a real need in our congregations,” said Jerod P.Ainsworth, youth director at Loma Linda Presbyterian Church (LLPC), a leader in what some observers have called the “small-talk education movement.”
“This is causing a real rift in congregations that is breaking fellowship between the generations,” Ainsworth said.
The classes offered at LLPC include “Me and My Friends Alone: Clique Talk in the Foyer,” “Endless Conversations about One’s Children,” “Endless Conversations About One’s Grandchildren,” and “Biblical-Seeming Gossip.”
“These young people seem so immersed in their own world, they just cannot seem to share in this centuries-old tradition,” said Forbes McGintley, head of a commission designated by mainline churches to study the problem.
Suggestions offered by the authors break the problem into four distinct areas of instruction for the parents of Gen Y’ers:
1. How to talk about one’s children and family (and others’ families exactly like it) to the exclusion of all other topics.
2. How to network and bring up one’s job and/or profession in subtle yet profitable ways.
3. Exclusive vacation spots, including activities like skiing, para-sailing,kayaking, bicycling, and (of course) golf.
4. Talk about God-given possessions like cars, jet skis, pools and spas and “most importantly, improvements on the house.”
Howard Bowman, Wittenburg Door, January 30, 2008
Read the full article, How to De-Program a Gen Yer, at Wittenburg Door.
[SATIRE WARNING]
Willimon on Reaching Young Adults
Monday, November 26th, 2007 |William Willimon has recently posted on reaching what he calls The Abandoned Generation.
He begins by reflecting on the growth of binge drinking on university campuses, the increasing rate of violent crimes and suicide among young people. Despite these factors, however, Willimon observes that this generation is open to listening to the voices of older generations, in a way that would have been unthinkable in the 1960s.
I have found that today’s “Abandoned Generation” brings a new curiosity and openness to the gospel as well as a willingness to hear what their elders have to say, if we will speak directly to them. Therefore leaders of the church need to revise some of our conventional wisdom about the imperviousness of young adult hearts to the gospel.
Thomas G. Long is quoted:
“There is a growing recognition that it is not enough for the community of faith to wait around for the “boomers” to drift back. ….Conventional wisdom holds that there are three broad phases in religious commitment: There is childhood, a pliable and receptive age religious instruction can and should be given; there is mature adulthood, when people, given the right incentives, can be persuaded to take on the responsibilities of institutional church life. In between childhood and adulthood, there is the vast wasteland of adolescence and young adulthood, a time when most people wander, or run away from their religious roots. The most that a community of faith can do in this middle period is to wait patiently, to leave people alone in their season of rebellion, smiling with the knowledge that, by the time these rebels arrive at their thirties, they will probably be back in the pews and may well be heading up the Christian education committee. This conventional wisdom is wrong….”
Willimon asks if we can see the needs and problems of this generation of young adults as an invitation to proclaim the gospel with boldness, to beckon them toward a new world named the Kingdom of God? “If we can, we shall discover this generation as a marvelous opportunity for gospel proclamation.”
I agree that young adults are open to the voices of many people. However this is not the openness of naivety. There’s a sense of discernment and exploration of what it actually means to join the messenger in the development of a future with meaning. Younger generations will not listen long if it is obvious that the older generation is involved in one way communication. This generation has a marvelous opportunity to be proclaimers of the gospel.
Coaching on Alternative Worship Blogging and Generational Change
Friday, July 20th, 2007 |I’m currently in the middle of a year-long course on coaching, with Coachnet. See my previous post on the Coachnet process.
I’m making myself available as a coach in the following two areas:
Alternative worship - using multi-sensory approaches to learning, music and prayer
Blogging - developing niche, blogging patterns, search engine optimisation
Generational change - developing responses to generational change in environments including work, church, family, not-for-profit organisations.
Coaching can happen face to face (easiest if you’re living in the South East corner of Queensland), by telephone, by voice over internet protocol (e.g. Skype, GoogleTalk), and by instant messaging (e.g. Skype, GoogleTalk, MSNMessenger).
If there’s anything else you’d like to focus on in a coaching relationship, and you think I could help you, let me know.
Contact me via email (postkiwi at gmail.com), Skype (postkiwi), GoogleTalk (postkiwi at gmail.com) or use the phone: 0439 828 718.
Recruitment Perspective on Generation Y
Tuesday, July 17th, 2007 |With unemployment rates at an all time low, employers are coming under increasing pressure to attract, recruit and retain appropriate staff - enter the optimistic, confident and ambitious Generation Y.
Generation Y are career focused and know what they ideally want to achieve, in fact, a recent survey found that career was rated as the most important thing for the future, prioritised over health and other factors in their lives.
Candidates often receive more than one job offer when hunting for employment, making the competition for staff much stronger and leaving employers with a challenge to fill vacancies.
Managing Director of recruitment specialist Walker Technical Consultants, David Walker said that the skills shortage dominating the employment market calls for the need to understand tomorrow’s generation in order to take advantage of their developing skills.
“Generation Y know about the skills shortage development and realise that they have more options in the job market, giving them increased leverage in terms of benefits and work environment.”
“They will research your company and form their own opinions, so it is crucial that the messages you are sending out are positive,” Mr Walker said.
Statistics have shown that 72% of Generation Y will not apply for a role within an organisation if they do not believe in what it stands for and 42% would not accept a job if it did not provide perks.
“Recruitment agencies are as busy as ever working for both candidates and employers in order to match up the perfect employee with the perfect job and ultimately satisfy all parties involved,” he said.
Walker Technical Consultants hold alliances with accredited training programs to ensure the mentoring and development of candidates and address the skills shortage in the employment market.
Gen Y leaving MySpace
Friday, July 13th, 2007 |Melbourne-based marketing group Lifelounge says that Gen Y are leaving MySpace and other social networks because of the intrusion of corporate brands. The researchers’ annual Urban Marketing report, which measures the attitudes and trends of the young adult market in Australia, aged predominantly between 16 and 30 years, says that while 53.7% of young adults are still using MySpace to connect to their peers, the intrusion of corporate brands is sending them elsewhere.
Dion Appel, Lifelounge CEO, said while MySpace is still achieving phenomenal success as a social networking community, the style-surfers in the urban market are heading elsewhere.
“They are the first to get a whiff of corporate intrusion and will look at other destinations,” he said. “Our market is looking to the next thing already.”
Dean Hoge on Catholic Young Adults in Brisbane
Monday, October 23rd, 2006 |On Friday afternoon I was part of a panel responding to Dean Hoge’s lecture on young adults in the Catholic Church.
Dean’s a Presbyterian who’s been lecturing in sociology of religion at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC for thirty years. He was part of the team that published the 1994 book, “Vanishing Boundaries: The Religion of Mainline Protestant Baby Boomers”. On Friday Dean was presenting research on Catholic young adults in the United States, to an audience consisting mostly of Catholic educators and youth ministry staff from Brisbane.
To read my reflection on the afternoon, and a few of my responses given as part of the panel, see Dean Hoge on Catholic Young Adult Identity at Generations in Conversation.
Dean Hoge is pictured below (left) with my fellow panel members Selina Harris (Sunnybank Catholic Parish) and Paul Mergard, (right) photographer and Salvation Army church planter in West End, Brisbane.
Tourism Australia TV advertising campaign aimed at Baby Boomers
Saturday, March 4th, 2006 |MzzD posted this week at Australia and Melting Pot Politics on the Tourism Australia advertising campaign, “Where the Bloody Hell Are You?“, suggesting that it’s working on the nostalgic yearnings of Baby Boomers.
“So retro-ozculture here we come. Just when the lucky country was almost escaped its ocker image,. The latest television advertising campaign to entice Australians to come to Australia features the final line of a young gorgeous girl on the beach asking Where the bloody hell are ya?. Sounds like a comment Shazza the stoned Ocker from local SBS comedy Pizza fame might be screaming at her equally ockerfied stoner boyfriend . It just doesn’t sound credible coming from the sweet young thing circa 1990s dispensing the line probably unbeknownst to most Yanks. It is more of a line to cheer the heart of the baby-boomer Aussie remembering the good old days when Australia was full of real Aussies, you know the type Tony Abbot likes, ones who don’t have foreign names or accents. Peter Costello, Tony Abbot and their like all seem to be suffering form of identity crisis and need to return to an outdated , outmoded era. Where are the these old antipodeans heading for, what are they trying to achieve?
This retrospective ockerism has recently been invading television advertising and is making a return to Australian popular culture it seems. It takes me back to the simpler life we led as kids in the seventies north of Brisbane or even further back to my sixty something mother’s youth. I am happy to leave the past where it belongs in the past. Women were still relatively powerless; a house quarter acre block was affordable in most parts of Australia; the dollar was stable; protectionism isolated Australia from the vagaries of the world economy; the white Australia policy had not long been dismantled; education had become accessible to all; multi-culturalism just rumour in federal parliament and Skippy ruled. It was an ideal time if that is what you are used to.”
There is something disturbing about the advertising campaign. The scene featuring the Aboriginal dancers features a spokeswoman who looks more Italian/Greek than Aborigine.
I’d be curious to see how other Gen Xers and younger are responding to the ad. MzzD’s cynicism is tied up with a disillusionment with a swing to conservative values in Australian politics. Surely there are Baby Boomers who are likewise disturbed by such trends.
