A couple weekends ago I was visiting a friend’s parent’s when her mom informed us that her company frowns on personal email, lunch hours spent surfing the net, etc. The changes were a result of her company recently being purchased by a larger company in the same space. Now, one would think that a bigger company with more resources would be more progressive and provide an enviornment that encourages collaboration, innovation and free thinking. It only makes sense to the brain, correct? What she heard was no-no-no.
In the midst of our conversation, I started thinking about the two, very long years I spent at Sara Lee. I had to escape the 1980’s technology while in 21st century. Seriously, I found assistants who wrote emails for executives, customer’s websites blocked internally (???) and communication relied on paper memos. Do memo’s even exist anymore?
Out of curiosity, I recently visited Sara Lee’s website. What really struck me was the lack of interaction that I could have on the site. No RSS feed. No interaction with the visitor. Other than learning what brands they owned and what their dismal stock price was, all I kept hearing in my head was no-no-no.
Today, I was reading my colleague Chris Kelley’s blog about slides from ReadWriteWeb. They give a very clear view into Web 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0. And then, in a matter of 3 hours, another colleague posted a tweet about Forester slide share on social media. Now, I just finished reading CNN’s article about the SXSW conference and how Twitter gave the power to the people because they want to be heard.
Talk about a 180 degree turn around from what my friend’s mom is experiencing. All of this is screaming YES-YES-YES to me. Unfortunately, for her and me, we are still surrounded by 99% people that are saying no-no-no.
Filed under: Technology | Tagged: Technology
