john erik metcalf - Latest Comments in Leadership Austin - AH! Baby Boomers

Re: Leadership Austin - AH! Baby Boomers

John Erik — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:55:39 -0000

julie, i think youpeople.com should be a faceroll - you should take photos of all the people you meet and know. a random face will appear with every refresh. you could even have a one liner under their photo about why you love that person.

jon, the kind of questions that can be answered by cross referencing Pew's various results are beautiful. i love data like this. austin could extract and apply this knowledge to their "boomers" efforts. who is using this data and what are they doing with it. hmmmm

thanks so much for your comments and opinions, folks. YOU ROCK

Re: Leadership Austin - AH! Baby Boomers

Jon Lebkowsky — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 10:39:57 -0000

One of my colleagues, Susannah Fox, is with the Pew Internet and American Life project. She wrote a report in 2005 that's relevant:
http://www.pewinternet.org/ppt/Fox_Aging_2005.pdf

Most recent Pew demographics are here:
http://www.pewinternet.org/trends/User_Demo_2.1...

Those are high-level numbers, but the show 72% adoption in the 50-64 age group - boomers - and 37% adoption of 65 - those born before the baby boom. Pretty high rate of adoption by boomers.

If you look at the figures for income, you have 61% adoption at the lowest level and it scales up from there. The digital divide is still there, and it's a complex issue to address. I spent a lot of time working with community networks, and there's all kinds of issues that keep people offline. Some of them just don't want to go there... but they'll do it if they have a compelling reason. Otherwise, why should they? So one important question to consider is whether people don't have access actually want it.

People with more income have more access, but I think you have to be nuanced in the assumptions you make about those figures.

The next Bootstrap Web isn't programmed yet. Maybe we should make it a discussion of digital divide and adoption.

Re: Leadership Austin - AH! Baby Boomers

Julie Gomoll — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 09:17:38 -0000

Thanks for the improved picture :)

While it's true that, as a rule, older = less tech savvy, assuming a whole generation (or two) needs different tools isn't a very useful assumption. The differential isn't age, it's whether people are online or offline. So a more relevant question is "how can we help people who aren't online connect?"

Someone did a Twitter poll recently asking everyone's age - I believe the median age was 37. Not scientific, and not boomers, but it certainly shows it's more than a "kid thing".

re: the "these people" thing... there's not a doubt in my mind you were trying to be helpful. Turn that into "you people" though - What do You People [blacks, women, gays, liberals... the list goes on] want? It's a way to classify a big group of people as something other than the norm, which of course is straight, white, and male.

I've owned the domain youpeople.com for years. Perhaps I should bring it online and have this discussion there :)

Re: Leadership Austin - AH! Baby Boomers

John Erik — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 14:44:28 -0000

@jonl i can agree that boomers are connecting online more and more - but i'd like to see numbers. i'd also like to see the income distribution of the people. i'd bet it's the upper middle class on up that are connecting. ...really it's the other groups that need to connect

Re: Leadership Austin - AH! Baby Boomers

John Erik — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 13:15:09 -0000

oh man. yall are totally right about the picture and "these people"

the picture is the second google image result when you search for "baby boomers" -- it seemed to work bc the conversation was so focused on what boomers will want from austin when they reach their 70's ... the panel was trying to determine this (future desires/needs) by looking at their past and present. ...and thus i was thinking "people in their 70's"

i apologize for saying "they" "these people" etc to classify. what is a better way for making these references?

Re: Leadership Austin - AH! Baby Boomers

Julie Gomoll — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 10:54:32 -0000

John, John, John. Those folks in the picture? They are not boomers. They are parents of boomers. I'm 45 - at the tail end, technically, of the boomer generation.

"There needs to be a way to connect these people"? Hello! We're perfectly capable of using the same tools you are. (And really... "these people?")

Half the people at the last Jelly I attended were boomers. Your friends at LaunchPad Coworking, and notanmba, and geekaustin - we're all boomers.

Re: Leadership Austin - AH! Baby Boomers

Jon Lebkowsky — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 09:59:59 -0000

Comments on your comments (speaking as a boomer as well as a social web guy)...

Of course, you can't really guess at a time line for the major life-events, but you can figure out what the events are, and you can create a context for sort of journaling how you might respond. OTOH nothing could have prepared me for some of the changes in my life, especially the death of parents and the 2000 Internet crash (which slammed my life pretty hard). But I could have done a much better job of preparing, especially financially. If you want to talk more about this, you know where to find me.
You seem to assume that boomers aren't connecting online, and I'm not sure that's a valid assumption. They're connecting like crazy... and they're not necessarily going to want to hang out with other boomers as a matter of course. Maybe it's better to forget age, forget retirement, and if anything create usable resources for people of any age who want to learn more about the Internet.
Might be something the Pew Internet and American Life project has tackled or will tackle. I have a friend there, I'll check.