Generation Y Speaks
You hear a lot about Gen Y, but seldom hear from them. Here’s what the next generation of leaders has to say about themselves, the meetings industry — and you.
From there, other panelists chime in,and then audience members, and it isn't long before a loose consensus emerges: The Gen Y meeting professionals who work in everyone's offices can't pay attention for more than 30 seconds. All they care about is climbing the ladder, and they're not willing to do any grunt work. They think that their college degree in event management trumps years of experience in the field. The future of meetings is doomed to 140 characters, telepresence, and webinars.
And so on, and on, all about Gen Y.But, the thing is, Gen Y-ers themselves rarely seem to get a chance to speak. To remedy that, Convene decided to give them a forum in which they could tell their own story, in their own words. (For the purposes of this article, we've chosen to use the most widely accepted definition of Gen Y, which is the 80 million or so people born between the late-1970s and early-1990s.) What the dozen in-depth interviews that we conducted with young people in the meetings industry revealed was, first and foremost, that they like to talk. About themselves. A lot. But you already knew that. What you might not know is how idealistic and optimistic, how thoughtful and tech-savvy, and how pretty much in love with what they're doing this generation is.
The Kids All Have ADD
Or, a Common Misconception Regarding Generation ... Wait, What Were You Saying?
One common accusation leveled against Gen Y-ers is that they have attention deficit disorder, and are forever texting, e-mailing, or tweeting on their mobile devices, to the detriment of whatever task they should be focused on. In January, Rachel Walsh - a 24-year-old meetings coordinator for the Chicago-based association management company sentergroup - attended the PCMA 2010 Annual Meeting in Dallas. During one educational session, a speaker made a disparaging comment about Gen Y, which someone then tweeted about, and which Walsh, who had been monitoring the #pcma10 Twitter hashtag, picked up on.
Walsh thinks that the ADD argument isn't quite fair. "I don't know if you can group it down to a Gen Y thing," she said. "I see plenty of Gen X-ers and Boomers on their iPhones, on their BlackBerrys, all the time. I really think that everyone is guilty of it. I don't think that you can blame it on a single generation."
Furthermore, "I don't think that this industry could operate without a little bit of ADD," said Walsh, who works with three full-service clients for sentergroup: the American Academy of Esthetic Dentistry, the International Society of Appraisers, and the American Prosthodontic Society. "I mean, I don't think I could get my job done if I couldn't multitask and do a lot of things at once, and couldn't hop around, you know, and be on my BlackBerry, and be e-mailing people and talking on the phone.
"On the other hand, am I a little distracted sometimes?" Walsh asked. "Yes. But I don't think that is something that is just a problem with Gen Y."
Gen Y Will See You Now
Or, a Partially Accurate Indictment of a Generation's Sense of Entitlement
Another common gripe is that Gen Y-ers can seem too entitled, like they expect to be named CEO or senior vice president of meetings right away, without paying their dues - a grave sin in an industry that in many ways is built on the concept of dues-paying.
Nora Johnson, 27, is currently a strategic meetings management program (SMMP) services specialist for Experient, where she previously worked as a meeting and event coordinator. She is also the immediate past chair of the International Association of Exhibitions and Events (IAEE) Young Professionals Committee. "The entitlement to having a solid seat and salary, I think, right off the bat, is something that a lot of people come in with," Johnson said. However, "This gets knocked out of us pretty quickly." What Johnson is fond of telling the younger IAEE members she mentors is, "Put the industry first rather than yourself, and your career will grow."
That advice rings true for Alicia Babcock, 24, conference coordinator for the Chicago-based American Library Association (ALA). "When you're in school and you're finishing up, you're like, ‘I know this stuff, and I am going to be on top of the world, and since I just finished school I know everything,'" Babcock said. "But you come in and realize you don't know a lot."
Babcock - who, like the majority of the Gen Y members interviewed for this article, graduated with a meetings-industry-related degree - has come to see that realization as just another part of the educational process. She said: "You kind of have to learn that you don't know everything."
You're So Vain
Or, Fancy College Book Learnin' and the Hubris It Can Engender in Young Planners
Gen Y members may have plenty to learn from the meeting professionals who have been in the industry a long time - but many of them also see advantages in obtaining a specialized event-management degree. Belinda Keota, CMP, 26, is a meeting manager for the Produce Marketing Association, in Newark, Del. She graduated from the University of Delaware with a bachelor's degree in hotel, restaurant, and institutional management. "I think it's a positive thing for the industry," Keota said. "A lot of people that ... have been in the industry for a while, they kind of fell into it - they were secretaries, or they had a completely different job, and just happened to do the events for their department."
Keota thinks that the experience born of coming from varied backgrounds into the planner profession is valuable. "But going to school for hospitality, you definitely have a more solid background," she said. "You get to see a lot of the different parts of the industry, and how they are supposed to work."
Astrid Schrier, 23, a meeting coordinator for the Mount Laurel, N.J.-based association management company Association Headquarters, and who graduated from Philadelphia's Temple University with a bachelor's degree in tourism and hospitality management, agrees. "Learning from [experienced meeting professionals] and getting that experience in the way that the industry works now," Schrier said, "on top of that specialized training ... will end up going a long way."
That said, Schrier noted, it's very important that Gen Y-ers don't equate their specialized degree with getting a "free pass," or being given license to disregard the experience of senior colleagues, as some young meeting professionals seem inclined to do. At the PCMA Annual Meeting session that prompted the Twitter conversation Rachel Walsh was following, for example, one of the youngest panel members "was trying to explain why Gen Y-ers have the idea that we deserve so much more ... than maybe someone else did, because we have these specialized degrees." Schrier said: "She was just kind of making it worse. So at the very end, I finally got up and said, ‘You know, we're not all like that.' We do things in college that we hope prepare us better, but we still understand that we are coming into an industry that we still need to start from the bottom and work our way up."
Are We There Yet?
Or, a Generation's (Perhaps Justified) Impatience With Getting Ahead in This Business
But how long should it take to work your way up the meetings industry ladder? Melissa Bell, a 26-year-old global sales manager for Ivey ING Leadership Centre-Toronto, A Dolce Meeting Center, believes the answer might be: too long. "There are a lot of accuracies to what the media portrays Gen Y as," said Bell, who has served as Gen Y adviser for the International Association of Conference Centers (IACC). "I think sometimes there are circumstances when Gen Y is out of line, in terms of what their expectations are.
"But I think there is a misconception from some of the older generations in terms of how long that time commitment needs to be," Bell added. "I think sometimes there's a lack of opportunity for [Gen Y] to have that chance to prove themselves ... where I think the reality is that we really just want to carve out our own success path."
It's the flip side of the impatience that many people detect in Gen Y: ambition. Young people in the meetings industry desire to get ahead not because they think they're necessarily smarter or more capable than their elders. Rather, Gen Y-ers want to climb the ladder because they're ambitious and optimistic, and genuinely excited about participating in and contributing to an industry that many of them made a conscious decision to join when they were in their teens.
In light of this, Bell has a levelheaded piece of advice for her fellow Gen Y members: "Don't lose that ambition and drive. Make that work for you. But recognize that there's going to be circumstances where that ambition and drive might not get you exactly where you want to go."
The Rise of the Machines
Or, How Gen Y Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Their Connectivity
One strength almost universally cited by the young professionals we interviewed was their generation's familiarity and comfort level with technology. "The whole idea that we're a little more technologically savvy I think is true, just because we were brought up having access to computers from a younger age than some of these people who've been in the industry forever," Schrier said. "We're more adapted to the way business is done now."
Lauren Bauer, 28, is a national sales manager for Las Vegas-based Shepard Exposition Services. Before joining Shepard, she worked for the National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCCHC) for eight years - beginning as a meetings assistant at age 19, while she was still in college. When she left NCCHC, she was exhibits and sales manager. (We said Gen Y was ambitious, remember?) Bauer thinks her generation's technological proclivities can sometimes be a handicap, because her fellow Gen Y-ers often aren't very inclined to "pull their noses out of their phones." However, Bauer said, "I think [our] greatest detriment is also a huge plus. The social media, and the way to access things quickly, and learn how to sift through information, and scan through it - we're programmed from a very early age."
As a result, members of Gen Y can operate much more quickly when it comes to accessing online information, whether it's using LinkedIn to connect with a new business contact or even just thinking to download an event venue's floor plan. "That's a huge resource to so many companies right now," Bauer said. "We don't spend hours trying to ... [make] those connections. That gives us time to actually go out and meet with people."
That's been the experience of Jodi Spivak, CMP, 29, a conference planner for the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute. Last September, Spivak used LinkedIn to put together her first "Young Professionals Night," where Toronto-area Gen Y-ers employed in the meetings industry could network - on their own, without having to be on their best behavior around their bosses - with other young colleagues who, Spivak realized, someday would be running the industry.
The Young Professionals Nights are meant to be "casual, no-strings, no-education things," Spivak said - so much so that they don't adhere to a formal schedule; the third one was held this past April 27. Events such as these might seem like nothing more than an excuse to get together for a few drinks, except that Gen Y's relationship-building protocols are decidedly more streamlined and technology-enabled. "You can meet someone once and then follow their Twitter," Spivak said, "or touch base with them via e-mail, and that counts as building a relationship."
Although "the way of doing business for this generation is a bit different," as Spivak noted, older planners will be comforted to know that kids today aren't about to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Gen Y planners still value personal relationships a great deal, and Spivak herself says she finds negotiating contracts "so much easier if it's with someone you know, rather than a mystery person."
They Come in Peace
Or, Generation Y Is Not Here to Replace Face-to-Face With an iPhone App
What should encourage senior planners more than anything else is the degree to which Gen Y professionals honestly seem to love the meetings industry - and to place a high value on "face-to-face." They don't want it to disappear any more than older generations do.
Aryn Derryberry, 29, is a senior account manager for the third-party site-selection firm Hospitality Performance Network, based in Scottsdale, who just completed a term as chair of IACC's Emerging Trends Committee. During her tenure, the committee surveyed Gen Y-ers who work in the conference center industry. What came back was encouraging.
Out of 73 responses, a majority ranked "opportunity for advancement" and "opportunity to get involved" as numbers one and two on a list of what matters most to them. Salary came in at number three. What's more, nearly 60 percent of respondents expressed a belief that, five years from now, people would be meeting in person either more or as often as they do now. When asked how they thought the current economic situation would affect their careers, Derryberry said, "Most [of the respondents] were optimistic. Very few were pessimistic, which is how the Baby Boomers are mostly feeling."
That sense of optimism was shared by most of the people we interviewed. "The meeting mix is here to stay," said Experient's Johnson. "There will be webcasts and there will be virtual meetings, especially as globalization sets in even more. But I don't see [face-to-face meetings] ever going away."
Added ALA's Babcock: "I think we just kind of bring new, fresh ideas to the table. People can just get in a routine, doing what they do all the time, and we come in and say, ‘Why don't we try and mix this up?'"
"In my dream world ... [the meetings industry] is just going to become more streamlined and more effective for everyone," Spivak said. "Hopefully in 20 years ... everyone will just get along and work well together."
And, according to sentergroup's Walsh, the future of meetings is assured, because the industry's youngest practitioners take them so personally. "A lot of people that are older fell into this job, and a lot of people my age - this is our career from here on out," she said. "I think [the meetings industry] is where I'd like to be for a long time. This is what I chose to do."
Hunter R. Slaton is a senior editor of Convene.
Gen Y has a lot to say about itself -
so much that we couldn't find room for everything from everyone we talked to. For more thoughts about Gen Y-ers by Gen Y-ers, look for this icon throughout the article.
Twitter Time Capsule
During the PCMA 2010 Annual Meeting in Dallas this past January, a number of hot meetings
industry topics received a candid airing-out on the #pcma10 hashtag. Here is a time capsule of the Twitter conversation that went on regarding Gen Y.
@brown135: Why are the brkout spkrs picking on members of GenY? There is a misconcep. re: GenY ending face2face mtgs just b/c we tweet & text #PCMA10
@Newton_G: #pcma10 the current generational change is just as dynamic as the baby boomer change. Loyalty won't change but expectations will be higher
@JessicaLevin: Generation Y are not really tweeting. I met some gr8 very engaging students at this event. They can hold strong convos. #pcma10
@kfoldvik: Good Question! RT @JessicaLevin: Everyone likes to mock Gen Y. Aren't they a result of parenting by Boomers? #pcma10
@JessicaLevin: @michellebruno I think the mocking is bc of their insecurity and envy. #PCMA10 #eventprofs #iaee
@PYMLive: @kfoldvik @JessicaLevin Yes on the parenting blame but all generations have been mocked remember the "Slackers"? Now we're SrMgt. #pcma10
@JessicaLevin: @PYMLive I think they still call us (Gen x) slackers. I'm proud to be an Xer. #pcma10
@spelletier: Anyone else find it strange that am gen session on future of ind. had no one representing that future (i.e. non-boomer) on stage? #pcma10
@spelletier: Gen Y may want background stuff ahead of time and b able 2 ask ?? at mtg--so do boomers. We're just too beaten down to ask 4 it. #pcma10
@aakright: @spelletier great point about gen y ... it would have given a more objective view on a gen. that gets put in a box and generalized #pcma10
@JessicaLevin: @spelletier I am annoyed by generalized gen discussions. #pcma10
@jonjenkins: @spelletier I agree. One other thought is that the way Gen Y acts when younger may not be how they always act. Behavior is complex. #pcma10
"We Gen Y-ers don't all expect the corner office, and we don't all think that people of older generations are clueless."
- Serenity Knutson, 25, editor in chief, PlannerWire
All Together Now
When three students and a professor hailing from two different generations jointly planned a real live conference, they learned about more than just meetings management
When Glen C. Ramsborg, Ph.D., CMP, professor at Kendall College's School of Hospitality Management in Chicago, decided to put together a course called Topics in Meetings Management - which would see three students plan an actual meeting, for the Laureate Global Architecture & Design Summit - he knew that the people he chose would be challenged in applying their classroom knowledge to the real world of meeting planning.
What Ramsborg, whose students call him "Dr. Glen," couldn't foresee was that the three students would also have to learn, on the fly, how to collaborate with members of another generation, with two Gen Y-ers - Dareon Woodard, 18, and Megan Laatsch, 21 - working with 46-year-old April Pizzotti Domin. What the three students discovered while planning the two-day event, which was held at San Diego's U.S. Grant Hotel in March, was that it wasn't so difficult working with a mix of older and younger colleagues - as long as each person accepted that the others might have different preferred methods of communication, ample time was made for face-to-face interaction, and everyone maintained a sense of humor about their differences.
"We're just used to a newer age of working," Woodard said, "as opposed to the way April and Dr. Glen did." Often, Woodard and Laatsch would text-message their older colleagues instead of calling or e-mailing. "Sometimes we would wonder, ‘Why aren't Dr. Glen and April answering us?'" Laatsch said. What the two Gen Y members had to realize was that, while they may belong to "the text-messaging generation," as Laatsch put it, Ramsborg and Pizzotti Domin were more used to phone calls and e-mail - and that was okay. "There was no animosity or arguing about it," Laatsch said. "We noticed this difference, and had to work around it."
And, anyway, their differences melted away when they met in person. "There were very few mishaps when we were together," Laatsch said. In this setting, "April was really the calming ... and motherly type," Laatsch said, schooling the younger students in useful truisms such as "Things don't always go your way" and "Take a step back and look at it from a different viewpoint."
But perhaps the most important way in which the multigenerational planning team learned how to work together was by laughing with - not at - each other's lingo. "Dr. Glen called a flash drive a ‘jump drive,' and [Megan and I] always found it funny," Woodard said. "There were a lot of different wordings that we called ‘older lingo' or ‘Glen-isms.'" Pizzotti Domin experienced the same phenomenon from the other end of the spectrum. "Most of my fellow students are the same age as my children," she said. "And that was an advantage for me, as I know the music they listen to, I know their lingo."
One day, though, Pizzotti Domin happened to say to Woodard, "You fly and I'll buy [meaning, ‘you go get it and I'll pay for it']." "And he had no idea what I was talking about," she said. This prompted the students to embrace and celebrate their differences by starting a journal of these kinds of generationally idiosyncratic sayings, from Glen-isms to text-speak. "It really just made the experience even richer," Pizzotti Domin said.
But the team's greatest reward was seeing their event come together. The Laureate Global Architecture & Design Summit had approximately 50 attendees, who represented 14 different countries and 42 different institutions. "It was so powerful and moving to see the event executed and carried out, knowing that all your hard work - every detail you noticed, from the room drops, to the VIP guests, to the educational materials, to all the attendees getting there on time - paid off," Woodard said. "The way we all collaborated together was really something."
"We need to work on our level of professionalism,
like avoiding the use of text-speak in e-mails."
- Alexandria Bennett, 23, meetings and education coordinator, American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery
"I wouldn't say we're ADD; we're just used to shuffling
a lot of things around at the same time."
- Jenn Helton, 31, sponsorship and communications manager,
National Association of Equipment Leasing Brokers
And Gen Y Shall Lead Them All
These PCMA student chapter members have turned the tables on mentoring
When you think of a mentor, you imagine someone with at least a touch of gray at the temples. Not, say, Danielle Ciarlante, president of Penn State's PCMA student chapter (pictured at top right). But last year, Ciarlante and her fellow students decided to become mentors - reverse mentors, that is, whose duty is to disabuse Baby Boomers and Gen X-ers of the "mixed emotions [they have] with our generation in a work setting," Ciarlante said. "Everyone believes that we expect a lot of handouts and immediate satisfaction, a lot of reward."
Ciarlante and Co. have practiced their reverse mentoring at roundtable talks and panel discussions, most recently this past April, as part of a meeting of the Association of Government Meeting Professionals (AGMP) in Pittsburgh. The goals for the session were to:
- Discuss personal examples and life experiences to identify key stereotypes of Gen Y
- Brainstorm ways to overcome the Gen Y stereotype in order to create a productive working environment for all generations
- Present new ideas within social networking and technology and how it can be used to reach people in every generation. "Basically," Ciarlante said, "we ... educate Boomers about Gen Y and how we are the way we are, how exactly that happened, the different characteristics of Gen Y, how we are educationally, in our personal life, and how we perceive the world."
Thus far, the effort has been a success, Ciarlante said, although not so much in the sense of meeting planners coming into the sessions with negative ideas about Gen Y and leaving with positive ones. Rather, it's been more about creating a dialogue. In a summary of the AGMP event for Convene, several of the student mentors wrote: "Some of the ideas ... presented by both sides got each generation thinking about how they could change the way they think about each other and how they could possibly do things differently to work more efficiently with each other." And, the students added, "the other generations were fascinated by all the ways Gen Y uses Facebook." ROTFL!!! (For the uninitiated, that's "rolling on the floor laughing.")
"We are an influx of a big group of people, who are relatively new to the industry."
- Rachel Walsh, 24, meetings coordinator, sentergroup
"When we're in charge, things will be much more streamlined, with integrated technology."
- Jodi Spivak, CMP, 29,
conference planner, Toronto Rehabilitation Institute
A Hot Breakfast Topic
Fueled by endless cups of coffee, participants at an Experient Breakfast held during the PCMA 2010 Annual Meeting in Dallas in January aired their concerns and shared their success stories. A common thread among the many meetings industry topics discussed? Gen X and Gen Y. Many participants agreed that one way to "keep up" with their Gen X and Gen Y attendees is to use the latest technology and social-media tools - which, of course, present their own challenges.We've sorted through the notes
from those breakfast conversations to offer you these highlights.
Gen X/Gen Y: Challenges and Opportunities
> Keeping all generations happy - One participant shared that her association struggled with how to change a legacy event format to meet economic challenges as well as the needs of younger and newer attendees - without discounting the expectations of long-term attendees. Another participant said that her association had reworked an old legacy event by changing the format from a traditional (and poorly attended) dinner to a brunch, offered to attendees at a much-reduced cost. Attendees were overwhelmingly satisfied with the value of the new event.
> Using interns - Originally introduced as a result of cuts in staffing at one association, interns are now a standard and vital element in the execution of its events. The interns are hired on a project basis for a specified period of time at a nominal salary, to focus on attendee support (such as fielding call-center questions) and administrative tasks. The interns are included in critical planning discussions for the event, exposing them to all aspects of meeting planning, culminating in on-site support to complete their experience.
> Younger members in charge - One association used geocaching - a scavenger hunt using GPS - to engage members. While it was agreed that it was difficult to find time for new technology initiatives such as this, one participant suggested hiring a younger professional who is interested in and more comfortable with this
technology.
> Changing things up - One attendee shared how her group has shifted the theme of its annual event from the traditional "annual convention" to a "career conference," which has resulted in an increase of attendees who need to earn continuing education credits within their professional field.
> Bridging the gap - Some participants are finding that their younger members are more apt to participate in social media than older members. However, older members who have teenage or college-age children seem to be more open to using it.
Technology and Social Media:
Pros and Cons
> Spelling out their expectations - During the registration process, one organization offers an open text field for registrants to submit what they anticipate they will get out of the event. The group employs a staff person to review and compile these for use in validating content design. The group follows up in a post-event survey by asking for specific feedback on these topics.
> Understanding virtual versus in-person - One participant put it this way: Consider the difference between being invited to the White House to attend an address by the President on a topic of national importance and watching the full broadcast of this
address on television.
> Face-to-face meetings offer both an experience and the delivery of information to the attendee with the express purpose of using both to supplement each other. Virtual meetings strictly focus on the delivery of information with no particular concern for the experience. Yet both approaches have value.
> Virtual meetings could be a link to those who cannot attend the live event - for a fee, serving the dual purpose of imparting information and generating revenue. One organization broadcasts keynote addresses to members who can't attend live events. At the very least, virtual events can be a way to keep the conversation going
until the next live event.
> Low adoption rate - While one association is looking for ways to drive social media as an effective conference communication tool, the adoption rate by attendees is low. The group is convinced this soon will change, and so it's continuing to pursue social-media strategies.
> Measuring results - Most participants believe social media is a good avenue for promoting attendance and even membership. However, they're not exactly sure how to measure the results accurately. Integrating social media into the registration process was agreed to be a positive step for conference promotion during a time when registration and housing projections are down. For the most part, participants currently manage social media within their media/press budget. There is no one person dedicated to it, but several who share the responsibility.
> Exposure risks - The concern was voiced that negative feedback may be posted on the organization's social-media channels. One possible solution offered was that each organization should implement participation guidelines: All users are required to agree to the terms before they can gain access to the site.
Some participants feel security is a strong concern when confidential information can be shared on a social-media platform before it is ready for public consumption - even to the point of ruining patent potential.
> Using Twitter - One group used Twitter so much at its event that it assigned staff members to monitor tweets. One monitored for logistics (e.g., room-temp concerns, bathroom cleanliness) and one for content
feedback.
> Moving the needle - Most Experient Breakfast participants agreed that employing social media to increase attendance works. One association is offering prizes to people who are fans on its Facebook page. Another offered a registration discount to Twitter followers.
One organization was having trouble getting people to book at the headquarters hotel, as the last time the meeting was held in that city, the hotel was tired. But since then, the hotel has undergone a renovation. To prove that point, the organization posted new photos and more recent, positive reviews of the hotel on its Facebook page.
> Continuing the conversation - At one meeting, attendees said that they would have loved to talk to poster-session authors at greater length, but there was no time to do so on site. Creating an online forum for discussion is a great way for people to do just that.
- Michelle Russell
PCMA Education Foundation Gen Y Study
Sometime soon, the PCMA Education Foundation - with the help of professors at Oklahoma State University, the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, and East Carolina University - may know a lot more about "what makes the ‘Millennial' generation ‘tick,'" including how they feel about meetings and conventions.
As the research team for a new PCMA Education Foundation study - led by George G. Fenich, Ph.D., professor of meetings and events at East Carolina University - put it in their grant proposal: "If many of the current as well as future attendees of our events are going to be the Millennial generation, what do we need to do to attract them, communicate with them, and promote their participation in meetings and events?"
Scheduled to begin within the next few months, the study will ask four questions of 450 to 2,000 Millennial (aka Gen Y) respondents:
1. What do Millennials value in meetings/events conventions?
2. What drives Millennials to participate or not participate in meetings/events/
conventions?
3. How do Millennials wish to see technology used in their
meetings/events/conventions?
4. What channels of communication do Millennials prefer A)
before the event, B) during the event, and C) after the event?
Results of the study will be published in Convene and presented at a future PCMA Annual Meeting.
Technology for Community's Sake
For a series of reports exploring the attitudes and behaviors of teens and twentysomethings, the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C., asked Millennials the open-ended question "What defines you?" The most frequent response is likely to surprise no one - nearly a quarter of participants said technology.
Likewise, a recent study by the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR) analyzing generational differences between trade-show attendees ages 18 to 27 and ages 28 to 39 also put technology at the center of the lives of the younger generation. More than 88 percent of Gen Y-ers use social-media sites - significantly more than Generation X.
But technology isn't an end to itself for Gen Y. In the world of exhibitions and trade shows, CEIR reported, "social media is increasingly becoming more important as a complement to the face-to-face experience." That finding was echoed by Neil Howe, co-author of the book Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation, when he spoke at Pew's "Millennials: A Portrait of Generation Next" conference in February. Howe noted that people often ask, "How does technology shape a generation?" But a better, more fruitful, question, he said, is, "How does a generation shape a technology?"
The Baby Boomers and Gen X wrested technology away from shared, mainframe computers and put it onto desktop and then laptop computers. Now, Howe said, Millennials are "moving technology back into the community." They "came of age when the media of their youth constantly connected them ‘live' to other human beings," according to the CEIR report. "The nation's classrooms have even increased their use of group projects with Millennials - as a group, they automatically think ‘we' and ‘us' and ‘team' and ‘group.'"
Thus, CEIR concluded, "It is critically important that both organizers and event marketers have a comprehensive online strategy." The best way to stay current in all things digital? Include Millennials in the planning, design, and execution of your events.
- Barbara Palmer
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