On Wednesday I’ll be speaking to a group of marketing students at Napier University. They want to discuss how marketing is being done through social media.

In our training workshops we quote a misconception about social media. “A lot of people think it’s another channel for marketing. It isn’t”. And then we explain the importance of “a conversation” and a fundamental shift in the way you interact with customers and get your message across.

It strikes me that as soon as you think of social media as a form of marketing, you’re doing it wrong. Social media at its best is an attitude, an ethos, a way of life right through the core of the company – like the writing through a stick of rock, where you’re engaging with your customers on instinct.

Of course, you have aims and objectives. But good social media keeps these hidden. The consumer should never be able to see your intentions, your marketing fingerprints shouldn’t be visible.

Apple is a great example. They opened a new store at Braehead recently. Most companies would have promoted this heavily and discounted on price. They didn’t. I received an e-mail from Apple telling me the store was opening. The mainstream media covered this. On the day Apple employees at the store held a ceilidh in full view of everyone before the doors opened.

What did they do on social media?

Nothing.

What did the crowds who turned up do on social media?

Everything. They wrote blogs, tweeted, shared pictures and video and discussed the whole experience.

It strikes me that most businesses’ marketing objectives for the opening of a new store would look like this…

i) Get the person to come to the store

ii) Get them to buy something

I reckon Apple’s objective would have been something like this…

i) Get the person to tell someone else about the store opening

Who’s doing the better job of marketing?

Even if the traditional company achieves big footfall and shifts products..at what cost has this been achieved? There’s the costs of the campaign leading up to launch, then the cost of discounting.

The Apple approach doesn’t cost anything. It gets more people into the store and more people paying full price for the products.

The ceilidh and chanting the Apple employees took part in before the opening of their Braehead store wasn’t the intense “team bonding” session I originally through it was. Instead, it’s extremely subtle marketing. It’s not about what they’re doing..it’s carefully designed to make me, as a consumer do something for them. In this case, the blog I wrote and the video I shot of all the staff coming out to meet the customers.

It’s me telling other people about the store opening via social media and I was convinced I was doing this because I wanted to.

Now I realise Apple made me want to.

And I’ve got another piece of insight because of my role as Gadget Guru on STV’s “The Hour”. We’d contacted Apple’s PR team several times over the years asking for product demos we could use on the show – iPods, iPhones, iPads etc. They never played ball. I thought maybe our show wasn’t big enough for them but it turns out they hardly ever let anyone preview their products. I thought they’d forgotten all about us but just before the Apple store opened at Braehead I received an e-mail from their PR team.

Would the STV cameras like to attend the opening of the new store “and speak to the crowds who’ve turned out about why they’ve queued through the night and how excited they are”?

Doesn’t that speak volumes about this company’s approach?! Anyone else would have promised behind the scenes access, an interview with the management, maybe even an exclusive free gift. Not Apple. All they’ll do is let the media speak to some of their biggest fans! And although STV stayed away on the day, several other outlets did turn up and that’s exactly the coverage they got.

Fascinating.

No other business is like Apple. But we can learn from them. And this demonstrates that if a business has got things right at its core, then they’ll have success on social media without typing a single word.

Facebook wants EVERYONE to join. They want INDIVIDUALS and they want BUSINESSES.

And since every BUSINESS consists of one or more INDIVIDUALS, in order to have a Facebook page for your BUSINESS, you must first open an ACCOUNT and create a PROFILE for yourself as an INDIVIDUAL.

Think of it like this…

That coin represents your Facebook account. Your account is the user name/e-mail address and password you sign in with.

You can only ever have one account.

But the coin has 2 sides.

One side for your INDIVIDUAL profile…
 

And one side for your BUSINESS page.

If you’re already on Facebook as an individual, it’s easy to add a BUSINESS PAGE.

Simply log out of your account and you’ll be re-directed to the Facebook.com front page.

And in small print near the bottom of the page you’ll see “Create a page for a celebrity, band or business”.

Click that and follow the instructions.

Facebook will add your new BUSINESS page, to your existing INDIVIDUAL profile and you’ll be able to access both under the one account.

What must children make of this phone hacking scandal and all the controversy surrounding News International, the methods some journalists use to get stories and the relationship between the media and politicians?

“First News” is a newspaper aimed at 14 to 17  year olds and it’s covering the story in depth with a profile of Rebekah Brooks “the woman at the heart of the hacking scandal”, details of the resignations from The Met and how all this is making life uncomfortable for the Prime Minister. 

BBC Newsround is also covering the story with its usual excellent journalism and although they might sometimes give the impression they’re only interested in mobile phones and hideous music made with auto-tune you can be sure our young people know exactly what’s going on with this.

When I was that age the fall of communism and the end of apartheid were two of the biggest stories. Me and my friends grew up watching the world become a fairer and more open place with the Berlin Wall coming down and the release of Nelson Mandela having a massive impact. Both these events were considered impossible just a few months before they happened.

As a result my generation grew up taking it for granted that no-one would be discriminated against because of the colour of their skin.  While some parents and grandparents remember a world where certain words and attitudes might have been tolerated or even acceptable, for the vast majority of us, it’s cut and dried and we quite rightly have zero tolerance of racism.

So what do changing attitudes and the current scandal mean for newspapers?

Well, they face a battle to get children to read them in the first place because the whole concept of buying something that contains stories that don’t interest them is entirely alien to young people. But even more than that I believe the adults of tomorrow will place a premium on honesty and take it for granted in the way I take it for granted that no-one should be discriminated against because of the colour of their skin.

This is a generation of people prepared to share everything about themselves on Facebook. They’re growing up expecting everyone to know where they are, what they’re doing, what they’re thinking, even when this ends up causing them embarassment or gets them into trouble.

Yes, some will hit 18 and “clean up” their on-line profiles; in fact there’s evidence some of the recent Facebook profile deletions may be students coming out of their degrees and panicking about what potential employers might discover.

But overall young people are developing an expectation that they themselves, adults, businesses and most certainly the media should be absolutely honest, fair and totally open and transparent at all times. In short, it’s getting harder to lie.

The latest crop of music stars like Jesse J, Rihanna, Adele and The Wanted have their own websites and are highly active in social media which means they communicate direct – and sometimes even one to one – with their fans. This means speculative stories about them in tabloids and magazines are worthless.  Why would a 12 year old Nicki Minaj fan bother reading about a relationship she may or may not have had when they’ve already got the official version of events?

Young people aren’t daft – they’re taking all this in and it’s affecting their view of the world.  No longer is the media a big booming powerful influential voice that tells them what’s going on. Instead, it’s considered something slightly grubby and imperfect that they expect to be able to interact with and shape to suit themselves. They want to make it better.

I think there’s an opportunity here for mainstream media businesses to engage with young people now. Think beyond specific publiations or programmes for “kids” or focus groups trying to anticipate what the future’s going to look like. Ask the people who’re going to be calling the shots. Find a group of responsible teenagers and let them get involved in the production of the newspaper or broadcast news bulletins now. Ask what they think of the stories you run and the methods used to generate them. It would make for a highly engaging school project and give you valuable new ideas. You could change the particular young people involved every couple of months.

Better still – and this applies to all businesses, not just the media – why not consider doing something revolutionary… and put a 16 year old on the board.

If the very thought of that just made you scoff, ask yourself why.

And the answer, I suspect, will lead you to discover what you’re doing wrong.

A visit to my in-laws for Sunday lunch yesterday afternoon culminated in the obligatory look through my father in laws’ photos on his Apple TV.

He’s got it plugged into the  big telly in the living room and played his favourite classical music while the slide show worked its way through years of pictures carefully digitised and stored on his Apple iMac in the study upstairs. The most recent pictures had all been taken in the RAW format and when I looked at the sheer number of pictures along with the massive list of songs available through his Apple TV a question occurred to me.

“How much storage does your iMac have?” I asked. “A terabyte”, he replied.

Suddenly I was transported back to the 3rd year Standard Grade Computing Studies class at school. The teacher was expaining storage. He ran through Bits, Bytes, Kilobytes and Megabytes, and when he got to a thousand Megabytes he said “We would call that a Gigabyte but we’ll never have to worry about them.”

It was 1993 and the rest is history.

Then last night I was reading the new Stuff magazine and their feature on Cloud Computing where of course storage is unlimited and in theory ALL  our music, pictures, newspaper articles can be stored forever and accessed at any time, wherever we are, without taking up any space in the physical world.

And then it hit me. Fast forward 40 years from now (hopefully more) when I’m ready to leave this wonderful world. And I hand over to my children and grandchildren the password for my DropBox account.

Then, they’d be able to access every photo I’ve taken, every piece of music I’ve listened to, everything I’ve written, everything I’ve read; in short, the entire digital input and output of my life from now on.

Imagine we’d had that information about our grandparents, many of whom lived at a time when a colour photograph was seen as a precious commodity. How much more would we know about how they lived, their personalities and what went on? And how much richer will our interactions with our own grandchildren be if they’re able to access what made us tick when we were in our prime instead of trying to work us out from hazy memories and what we feel able to share with them.

Will we all live forever in The Cloud?

Don’t ask us how, but we’ve managed to get hold of a standing ticket for the TAKE THAT gig at Hampden Park, Glasgow on the 24th June 2011  (something to do with Colin kelly – but it’s a long story)! 

The TAKE THAT tour is a complete sell out, and these tickets are fetching over £100 on ebay. 

Maybe you’ve got some friends going to the gig, and you didn’t get a ticket – well now’s your chance to join them, and see them back on stage with Robbie Williams, as well as support act the The Petshop Boys.

To be in with a chance of winning, just make a donation to our “Just Giving” page for the 10K run that we’re doing in June for Cancer Research.  ANY donation (n0 matter how small) will enter you, and anybody who has already sponsored us qualifies automatically! 

http://www.runningsponsorme.org/nsdesign

We’ll pick a winner at random on Friday 10th June – remember that any donation value (just giving has a minimum donation of £2)  enters you, and even if you’re not picked as the winner, you’ll be helping out a great cause that makes a difference to the lives of so many people.

Good luck, and thanks for helping!

If I knew the answer do you really think I’d be sitting here?!

But it’s a question I get asked a lot so I feel it’s my duty to speculate on the possible answers!

The truth is none of us really know where technology is going to take us next. Could anyone have predicted the dramatic rise of Facebook and Twitter? 3D’s taken much longer than expected to develop and still hasn’t caught on in a big way, and unless Google or Apple are about to reveal an incredible breakthrough then I am going to have to do something about that pile of ironing sooner or later. I shouldn’t have known not to pin my hopes on that edition of “Tomorrow’s World”!

It’s 15 years since I first ventured on-line and the successes and failures we’ve seen in that time give us some clues as to what might be round the corner.

One golden rule is that just because technology means you CAN do something, it doesn’t mean you SHOULD. A great idea doesn’t always translate into a great web-based business.

For example, motor dealers would save a fortune closing down the forecourts, paying off the sales staff and opening a virtual on-line showroom. A few of these actually exist and you CAN buy cars on-line.

But most customers still want to test drive vehicles, sit in the seats and run their hands over the steering wheel. I can’t see the physical car buying experience changing any time soon and even cheap deals and a heavy marketing shift won’t change human habits.

But on the other hand…there was a time when people said that about mobile phones.

There’s another lesson in the rise and fall of an unfortunate web based business called “Boo.com.”

This should have been a winner – a website where you could buy clothes – it was backed by a huge amount of money (they spent £80 million in 2 years!) and some of the brightest brains in the business. History shows us the concept was right (there are plenty of clothes available on Amazon.com and the like) but Boo bombed in spectacular fashion.

Why? Because they got carried away building an amazing website and forgot most people wouldn’t be able to access it properly.

This was 1998 when broadband wasn’t an option for most of us. A 56K dial up modem where a single picture took 20 seconds to load was considered cutting edge and there was still work to do persuading people that buy goods on-line was safe and secure.

In order to give customers a realistic shopping experience, Boo packed its website with Javascript, D images and Flash. There was even “Ms Boo” a virtual shop assistant who helped you choose what you wanted! I didn’t use it myself but I imagine the experience was something along the lines of this….

A classic example of a good idea being ahead of its time. The world wasn’t ready for Boo.com.

Interestingly, Amazon had actually launched and was selling products on-line 3 years BEFORE Boo. Why is it still here? Because Amazon was realistic about its growth potential. Its initial business plan stated there would be no profit for the first 4 or 5 years and its simple website met the needs of the people who were using it. It just worked.

So for something to succeed on-line it needs to be the right idea, at the right time, aimed at the right people and with the right expectations and business model behind it.

That brings us to Groupon.

If you haven’t heard of it yet, you will very soon. It’s a “deal of the day” type website driven by community buying. (“Grou-p” and “Cou-pon” combined!). Analysts reckon it could make a billion dollars in sales quicker than any other company in history and it’s spawned more than a hundred competitors in different parts of the world.

It’s no surprise that Google was interested in taking it over and since no deal was done the internet search giant is getting ready to launch its own competing service called “Google Offers”.

So why is there so much interest right now in giving you discounts at your nail salon?

Something else I expect to be big is Augmented Reality. This is a fusion of the genuine, physical world with the virtual, on-line version of reality.

Imagine you’re on holiday in a foreign city you’ve not been to before. You see a monument but aren’t sure of the story behind it. Using the camera on your smart-phone you could take a picture and access information about it on-line. Or you might take a picture of a second hand car’s registration plate and have an app tell you how much the vehicle is actually worth! I wonder how some of these smooth talking sales men would feel about that?!

I’ve had some fun in shops recently with an app on my phone called “Red Laser”. You scan barcodes with it and it tells you the cheapest price that product is available on-line and you can go straight to the relevant page and purchase it if you want. You can see this could have a big impact on the way we shop.

Before I go, let me make a few predictions for the future and you can dig this out in a few years and remind me of how off the mark I was!

More Filtering!  As more information is available on-line we’ll put more emphasis on tools (or even actual human beings!) that help us wade through all the irrelevant nonsense that gets in our way. www.helloday.tv aims to snatch some visitors away from You Tube who search for songs and find home made cover versions and poor quality videos cluttering up the results. It only hosts high quality, official music videos, filtering out the rubbish.

More Free! Personal recommendations and a large database of customers will become so valuable to companies that they’ll be willing to give more and more of their products away for free. Expect to see more restaurants and hotels offering a “You pay what you think we deserve” type service.

More sharing! Think about the amount of food we throw away every day. Or how many lawnmowers there are in your street and how often they’re all used at once? There’s much more we could do around sharing, reducing waste and working together to solve our problems. I think the websites of the future will help us with this.

Earlier this week “The One Show” ran a feature about a community down south where residents were bulk buying their own heating oil. It was saving them a fortune and the web will make this sort of thing much easier.

More ads? Personally I’d like to see a lot less and there will come a saturation point where we simply can’t take any more. They’ll become more relevant and targeted and might even be useful. As our resistance to them increases companies will have to get more creative in order for them to work. How long till we see a banner ad on the front page of google.com? Never say never. I’ll stick my neck out and say it’ll happen before the Commonwealth Games are in Glasgow.

Now you’ve read some of my ideas about what the future might hold – it’s over to you. What do you reckon is coming next? Share your thoughts in “comments”.

Did anyone notice….?

Some inappropriate Google Ads appearing alongside articles about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan on the Daily Mail’s website?

No-one’s fault of course but it does demonstrate the risks with automated systems looking for key words and perhaps there are certain news stories that should run without adverts on-line.

Come and say hello. You might win an iPhone!

A quick note before this week’s main article – today (Friday 18 March) and tomorrow (Saturday 19 March) the NS Design team are at Scotland’s biggest business exhibition New Start Scotland.

It’s at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston and we’re on stand D17.

If you come and talk to us about mobile websites you’ll be entered into a prize draw where you could win an iPhone!

You’ll be able to find out more about what we do, meet some of the team, and realise I’m even shorter in the flesh than I look on television.

A warm welcome awaits, so if you’re at New Start Scotland come to stand D17 and say hi.

Don’t Design By Committee!

(A horse designed by committee)

When they’re having a website built some businesses get their priorities all wrong.

And instead of approaching the project from the point of view of what their customers want, they get bogged down with their own internal politics and obsessing over what they themselves on the inside think it should look like.

This puts the web designers they’ve hired to do the work in an almost impossible position.

These highly skilled people instinctively know what visitors to websites want and how to get good results on-line. They’ve built dozens, if not hundreds of sites in the past (more than likely for other businesses in your sector) and are right on top of the latest techniques and software. These men and women are experts and you’d be mad not to take their advice!

Some companies end up in an embarrassing, endless loop of to-ing and fro-ing back and forward with tweaks and changes and meetings and embarrassing “I’m sorry, but the Managing Director’s not really sure he likes that” type phone calls.

Pleasing the client will always be a good web designer’s priority but they also want to create a site that does a good job and works for you so although you’ll never sense their frustration when you call with ANOTHER set of changes I do wonder how many sit squashing stress relief balls in their hands while they’re on the phone!

The good news is, these problems can be eliminated with a little bit of planning in advance.

Here’s how…

All this reminds me of a radio station I heard about once where the presenter got a call from the furious station owner while doing his show one night.

“I don’t want to hear that Dire Straits song EVER again!” he yelled. “Why did you play it?”

“Er, because it was on the playlist the Programme Controller gave me” the presenter explained.

“Well it’ll be coming off the playlist straight away…my mother hates it”.

Fair enough…but this radio station was aimed at men in their 40s!

This kind of thinking holds businesses back and plays havoc with web design projects.

I think it comes about because bosses (just like the rest of us!) are extremely busy.

So when the idea for a new website is mooted they’re happy to delegate and take a backseat.

But as the project moves along they find some time and become interested and CAN’T RESIST a bit of tinkering here and there! Then after having their say they get caught up in something else and, well, you can see that stress ball getting squashed a bit harder in the web design office!

Here’s another way some of these problems can be avoided…

Something else that can often go wrong and it brings down the whole quality of a website is when the client tries to make it do too much.

You end up with massive clutter and it’s a horrible experience for the end user.

A good example is in the media where you have half the business focussed on content, and the other half dedicated to selling advertising space. Increasingly, there’s a third area they all want and that’s interaction with users.

Some businesses and some web designers manage to integrate everything really well.

Others struggle.

Here’s two websites from organisations with big fan bases. They want to increase their number of Twitter followers. Which of the two makes it easiest?

http://www.wtks.com or http://www.glasgowrocks.co.uk

I’m sure you’ll agree the Scottish Rocks site is far easier to navigate and an all round better experience. That Twitter link is easy to find. Real Radio 104.1’s site (despite almost certainly costing much more money) is full of clutter and the Twitter link is buried deep in a sub menu. I’m sure everything’s there for a reason and is important to the station but the content gets suffocated and trying to find anything of value is a horrible experience.

Inside the company, everyone at Real Radio 104.1 will be happy because THEIR BIT is on the website. But what do the listeners think? “This radio station isn’t sure what it’s about, and I haven’t got a clue where to start”.

At the Glasgow Rocks site, decisions were made about what to put in and what to leave out; people compromised and considered what the user wanted from the site. And the end result is a smart site, where it’s easy to buy tickets, get the latest results and find out more about the team. And because it’s not swamped with adverts, you actually notice the couple that are there.

Whatever you want your website to do, better to pick a few things and do them really well, than try to force it to do absolutely everything.

Get your internal politics straight, get the big boss in the briefing and then let the experts get on with creating the on-line equivalent of a beautiful, sleek horse, instead of a camel that just gives everyone the hump.

Have you experienced a case of “design by committee”?  Share your comments below!

I celebrated 3 years on Twitter last week.

I say “celebrated”. What I mean is I kept it to myself apart from a brief self congratulatory moment of “wow, has it really been that long!” and “wasn’t I smart getting into it before so many other people.” That’s why I’m @colinkelly and not @gothereLateandMissedNameiWanted which would have been my second choice.

On the one hand my 3 year Twitter anniversary seemed like a milestone, on the other I knew I’d receive a withering response from my wife if I made an issue of it.

ME: “It’s my 3 year Twitter anniversary today”.

EMMA: “God, you’re sad”.

That’s probably how it would have gone.

The truth is, Twitter, and social media in general, has been good to me.

I’ve had fun, made friends, discovered great content for my radio shows, raised my profile, had some exchanges with celebrities (including a row with Paul Daniels which made the Daily Record) and I’ve even generated some business and ultimately made money out of it.

Having started my own business in the last 3 months getting a concrete return from social media has become more important and maybe the reason it’s working out for me is because my intentions were pure at the beginning.

It was something new and I was just trying it out. Selling or promoting myself on it wasn’t on my radar so I was honestly able to engage with people in a friendly way and build things up. I encountered the protocol and etiquette as they were being created and learnt from mistakes – either my own or other users.

The end result of all this is that myself and Gary Ennis from @nsdesign (who was one of my first followers by the way) have amassed a huge amount of knowledge and experience we can share.

And we’re doing that in a series of workshops called The Social Media Masterclass.

If your business isn’t using Twitter, Facebook and the rest you might feel a bit daunted about joining in now. But there’s great news. 95% of social media users think businesses should have a presence there too. And 85% want them to go further and instead of just being there, want them to actively engage and interact.
Isn’t that incredible. Your customers, potential customers, and next generation of staff actually want you to be part of it. And they accept that SOME of what you do will involve promoting your services.

What an incredible opportunity.

And with the power of Facebook increasing all the time (do you know about Groups, and Events and how to use targeted ads?) and so many clever and creative uses for it I think it’s worth investing a little money and time in developing skills to get the most from social media.

What we’ve done is create a series of 3 fully interactive workshops. They’ll take you from beginner level all the way until you form a social media strategy for your business.

Read the course descriptions to find out more. You can choose the master class you want or sign up for all 3 and get the biggest discounts.

I’m involved in Master class 1: “It’s All About The Conversation” where you’ll discover what Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and the rest can do for your business. There’ll be group work, discussions, video clips, and bang up to date, relevant case studies. Maybe you “kind of understand it” or you’ve “dipped your toe in”. We’ll work together to help you decide how you’re going to use social media for your business and by the end of this workshop, it’ll all make sense.

Master class 2 “Getting Hands On With Twitter and Facebook” is a practical session led by NS Design’s main man Gary Ennis. He’ll help put those ideas into practice and get to grips with the nuts and bolts of Facebook and Twitter. How to set them up, bespoke customisation, how to build a following, find sales leads and other tips and tricks. Wi-fi enabled laptops are welcome – as someone who “learnt as they went along” take it from me that attending this master class could save you HOURS down the line.

Employment lawyer David Hoey from law firm BTO is on board for Master class 3: “Building The Social Strategy”. David will examine social media from an employment law perspective. What are the legal issues? To what extent can (or should) employers control employee use of such sites? How can your Disciplinary and Grievance Policy help? Gary Ennis will help you incorporate all this into a wider social media strategy, tailored to your business and explain how to monitor and evaluate it so you get the greatest return possible.

I’m really excited to be involved in this. I attended one of Gary’s original “Embrace The Space” presentations a few months ago and went in thinking I pretty much knew it all. I came out amazed at how much I’d learned. I’m certain these master classes will be just as useful for you.

Click to find out more and for booking information. Or why not come and talk to us about it at New Start Scotland. Drop by the NS Design stand (D17) on Friday 18th March or Saturday 19th March. It’s at Royal Highland Showground, Ingliston and admission is free.

So a thin but energetic Steve Jobs came off his sick bed on Wednesday to launch Apple’s “blockbuster” new product iPad 2.

The up-graded but thinner and lighter version of the device now sports 2 cameras, a faster processor and comes in a choice of white or black. If you pay extra you can add a clever looking cover which doubles as a stand.

I was invited on BBC Radio 5 Live to discuss it (click here to listen) and as is the case EVERY time I mention the iPad someone responds with “I’m not sure I see the point in it”.

There’s clearly demand for tablets – more than 15 million iPads have been sold since April – and Motorola, HP, Blackberry and Samsung are all launching rival products with Sony rumoured to be planning its debut before the end of the year.

But many consumers can’t justify the expense or don’t know what they’d use it for. I’ll be honest with you, that’s how I feel. I haven’t discovered that killer application that would turn the device from something I admire (and sometimes even lust after a little bit!) to something essential that I’m prepared to buy.

It’s been interesting to read the recent press coverage about Cedars School of Excellence in Greenock, which has given an iPad to every pupil.

Tabloid coverage has stirred things up and suggests an embarrassment of riches in this privately funded school at a time when the public sector is making painful cuts. Opinion is divided. Some people are appalled, they see iPads as glorified toys, think the pupils are spoiled and claim education’s gone mad.

Others look enviously while moaning about woeful IT provison in state run schools and ask if you can afford to send your child to a school with better equipment, then why not?

For an in depth account of how it’s being used used at Cedars School this article  is worth a read.

I’ve got two problems with all this.

First, in my opinion, the iPad is the wrong tool to be giving out in classrooms.

I can see the value in teachers not having to worry about handouts and books and pupils being able to e-mail homework so it can be marked while the teacher nips up to Glasgow on the train in the evening (although I can’t imagine my wife EVER doing that if her pupils had iPads!).

I’m against them being handed out to every pupil because I think they actually LIMIT children’s imaginations.

Watch the video to find out what I mean…

There is a huge debate to be had about IT provision in schools (actually I’d prefer action rather than more talking) but focussing on whether pupils should have iPads won’t help.

There’s a massive job to be done with infrastructure. Better broadband speed is essential. Crippling security controls that means English teachers can’t show scenes of Romeo and Juliet on YouTube is another issue. The GLOW system which gives every pupil and teacher an e-mail address and allows for on-line sharing of resources is great but lacks storage capacity, gets clogged up and grinds to a halt if it’s being run on PCs that only scraped through the Millennium Bug compliance test.

There’s a lack of joined up thinking and that’s causing increasing frustration. There are many people within education who see IT as an expensive nuisance. I believe there’s a risk technology could get squeezed out of the curriculum, just at the time Scotland desperately needs to develop these skills.

Literacy, Health and Well Being and Numeracy are the 3 big areas the new Curriculum for Excellence revolves around. Are technology and creative industries going to have to make do with a wobbly table at a careers fair once a year?

Scotland has a vibrant digital sector which is doing well against the odds. To get to the next level we need young people to come out of high school buzzing with ideas and excitement. Companies like NS Design and many others are ready and willing to get involved and work with local authorities who want to increase what their schools offer in this area and make best use of the resources available.

My message to young people today would be this: Forget about the iPad. Develop your imagination and concentrate on how technology can solve people’s problems.

And to parents, teachers, politicians and everyone in the industry, I’d say “Give them all the encouragement and support you can”.

Isn’t it a great feeling when you thought you might be mad and then realised thousands of other people are exactly the same?!

I had that happy revelation this week when I discovered I qualify (by the skin of my teeth) as a member of “Generation Y”.

I’m not a fan of giving people labels and that one sounds like a frightening bacteria you might discover in a pot of yoghurt that’s past it’s sell by date. But Generation Y is the name experts use to describe everyone who born in the period 1977 to 1994. (I arrived in ’78). They’re people who’ve grown up taking the computer for granted. They’ve had them at home, at school and at work. Many will have clicked a mouse before learning joined up writing and some have no concept of a world without mobile phones and the internet.

In the last 10 years this generation has come out of education and entered employment. In the next 10 years they’ll make up the biggest chunk of the country’s workforce.

Yet some people including many company bosses and members of the older generation see this group as a problem. They’re regarded as shallow, brash, spoiled, demanding, disruptive and lazy. But ask one member of Generation Y to describe another and they’ll use words like “talented, go getting and ambitious”. Ask a company like Google where it would be without a workforce largely made up of Generation Ys and their response would probably be “sunk”.

So there’s conflict and misunderstanding but also opportunities for anyone who understands this new generation of workers and is able to accommodate their flaws and reap the benefits of their strengths.

And if you don’t “get” Generation Y then what’s coming next is going to change things even more. Watch the video to find out why…

This is all important for businesses because in the next few years you’re going to have to employ these people. And if they’re not already, they’re going to become your customers too.

So how do you deal with them? And how do you get the best out of them? As a self proclaimed elder statesmen of Generation Y I am happy to share 12 of our workplace secrets…

1. We have an expectation that things will be fair. And we’d rather work for a small, ethical company than a big nasty one. This applies to how staff are treated but also what the business does in the wider world. Even Generation Y has it’s share of greedy people but I do think petroleum companies and banks will have to change or they’ll struggle to recruit.

2. We owe you nothing and will leave whenever it suits us. But if we believe in you we’ll work extremely long hours, defend you to the hilt and give you everything we’ve got. We’re available 24/7 for the right project. This applies to companies we work for but also brands we buy and services we use. Already people are loyal to Sky TV or Virgin Media or the Orange mobile phone network.

3. You will NEVER stop us using Facebook or e-mail for personal use at work. If you block it on the computer we’ll use our phones. If you understood us you’d realise your idea of “wasting time on-line” could actually benefit your business.

4. We don’t expect a lunch break or Bank Holidays. We never use our full holiday entitlement.

5. Our life is an open book and privacy is something only The Queen worries about. We’ll happily show you pictures of everything we got up to last Friday night and don’t expect you to hold it against us.

6. Most of us are riddled with debt after higher education so the promise of a pension 40 years from now isn’t much of a selling point.

7. We want constant change, feedback and development. We expect you to take an interest in us as individuals rather than just the tasks we’re paid to do.

8. If a manager says “my door is always open” we will take that at face value and share our thoughts because we’re passionate about making things better.

9. It really doesn’t matter where you’re from. All forms of discrimination aren’t just “off limits” they’re regarded as incredibly old fashioned and embarrassing. “Everyone is equal” isn’t an aim, it’s a fact.

10. Being bored is something we can’t tolerate. We’ll go to almost any lengths NOT to be bored. This can cause problems at work but if this refusal to be bored is harnessed correctly it could lead to new ideas and innovations and people being willing to fill skills gaps in other areas of the business.

11. We pity those who spend their time in meetings.

12. Why would anybody ever wear a tie? But if you’re over 50 and we’ve seen you wear one, you can’t stop now.

This is a generation who take ownership of what we do and wants to control its own destiny. We’ve been brought up thinking we really can have it all and the idealism which older generations might have left behind still burns inside us. We genuinely believe we can build our perfect world around us and we’re willing to work incredibly hard to make that happen. Clinging to a dead end job in a dying industry is utterly beyond us. One example is my brother, who’s just turning 30. He grew up mad about cars and wanted to work in automotive engineering. He did this and then felt the effects of the manufacturing industry in decline. Now he’s happy working for a rapidly expanding company that makes wind turbines.

But what’s the single most important thing you need to know about Generation Y?

Watch the video to find out.

There have been some excellent studies into Generation Y and the difficulties certain business sectors have with them. These include Gillian Maxwell and Susan M Ogden’s work at Glasgow Caledonian University and I’d also recommend this for some further reading. 

Generation Y are a cynical bunch and make instant judgements about people and businesses. This matters when you’re creating a website or using social media. If you’re seen as open, forthright and interesting Generation Y will engage with you and go to great lengths to spread your message, with some even becoming unofficial “ambassadors” for your brand. A great example of this is @sodastreamUK on Twitter.

But if your website is difficult to navigate, your social media use just shameless self promotion, and your customer service fails to deliver you’ll lose them and never get them back for a second visit.

Do you agree with my 12 Generation Y workplace secrets?  Have you got some of your own to share? Please do so in “comments” and let me know what you think. Understand Generation Y and work with them and they’ll serve your business incredibly well, taking you to heights you never thought possible. Get them wrong and work against them and you’ll feel the sting of their secret weapon…complete indifference.