Tech enthusiasts will know what the term ‘unboxing’ means but, for the rest of you it’s:

The Internet trend of showing photos or video from the unpacking of a retail box of some desirable product, such as the latest laptop or portable music player. [Source: Urban Dictionary]

The post ‘An Unboxing You Won’t See on Gizmodo or Engadget‘ by Glyph Lefkowitz is the first time I’ve seen it done for a job offer…but I can totally see why you’d want to. It is, after all, a job offer from Apple.

Read Lefkowitz’s post to see what I mean :)

A couple of weeks ago Scott Arbeitman wrote about the technology gap between the street and the enterprise. Carl Joseph replied to that with one of the most painful technology-related quotes I’ve heard (painful because of how true it is):

“Every day you get to use new technology and are exposed to new, exciting things…then you go to work.”

I’m not sure who actually said that, but if you work for a large corporation, then you’ll know what this feels like.

How do I Deal with Such Restrictions?

At my workplace, in order to keep up with the rest of the Internet world, I not only bring my own personal laptop to work I also bring with me my own personal wireless broadband Internet connection. And, despite the fact that my laptop is ancient and the broadband connection is painfully slow (relative to my workplace’s connection), I still get a better Internet experience on it than I do on my work computer.

Why? Because even though my laptop has half a gigabyte of RAM, a slow 30GB hard drive, no built-in wireless adapter (yes, it’s that old), and Windows XP, I get to run on it the latest versions of Flash, AIR, Silverlight, IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Seesmic Desktop (along with numerous other applications) and I get to access whatever I want to on the Internet.

On my work computer, meanwhile, I am stuck with no AIR or Silverlight, IE6 as my only browser (I do have a version of Firefox on it but that doesn’t run Flash so it might as well not exist), and restrictions on which websites I can access. What makes this harder to live with is that my computer’s hardware is pretty good (it’s a docked laptop with a dual monitor setup) and my Internet connection speed is excellent.

It’s Not All Bad

I have to admit, though, that I am being somewhat unfair to my workplace. Aside from making us run IE6 and blocking parts of the web (including sites like Slideshare because it’s “personal storage”), they do let us access webmail, all the social networking sites (indeed, according to our IT department, Facebook is one of the five most popular sites at work), and most online media sites (like Flickr and YouTube). Compared to other large organizations – particularly government departments – in Australia, that’s pretty awesome.

In fact, they’ve gone a step further and have provided us (the Web Team) with a special media desktop (for converting and editing video) and a special Internet laptop (with all the latest software and applications installed on it). Bits of the Internet are still blocked on these PCs because you’re still going through their proxies, but that’s not such big a deal.

So What’s an Employee to Do?

One way for tech-savvy employees to get around these restrictions is to do what I’m doing: circumvent the IT department entirely by creating a parallel setup for yourself. With recent technology improvements like cheap netbooks, powerful smart phones, and readily available mobile broadband, this is easy and relatively inexpensive to do. I suspect a lot of Gen-Y will take this route.

The other option – the much harder one – is to get your IT department to get rid of these restrictions and, dare I say, modernize itself. Unfortunately, that’s not easy to do. Slate’s Farhad Manjoo makes a good case for it, though, in his recent article, ‘Unchain the Office Computers!’:

…workplace IT wardens are rarely amenable to rational argument. That’s because, in theory, their mission seems reasonable. Computers…can be dangerous things—they can breed viruses and other malware, they can consume enormous resources meant for other tasks, and they’re portals to great expanses of procrastination. So why not lock down workplace computers?

Here’s why: The restrictions infantilize workers—they foster resentment, reduce morale, lock people into inefficient routines, and, worst of all, they kill our incentives to work productively. In the information age, most companies’ success depends entirely on the creativity and drive of their workers. IT restrictions are corrosive to that creativity—they keep everyone under the thumb of people who have no idea which tools we need to do our jobs but who are charged with deciding anyway.

The Role of the IT Department

One of the most important parts of Manjoo’s argument, however, is this:

What’s worse, because they aren’t tasked with understanding how people in different parts of a company do their jobs, IT managers often can’t appreciate how profoundly certain tools can improve how we work.

This is often the root cause of the problem because most IT departments are divided into roughly three parts:

• IT Operations: the people who keep the systems running
• The Project Management Office (PMO): the people who oversee updates, upgrades, and all the organization’s IT projects
• IT Planning: the people who plan for the future

What is often missing is the fourth part:

• In-house IT Consulting: the people who liaise directly with different parts of the business and use the latest technologies to improve the way those people work

Without that fourth part, IT departments have a hard time keeping up with what people in the organization believe are the most effective and efficient ways of doing their work. They also don’t keep up with the latest technological solutions for various business problems.

Modernizing the IT Department

So, if employees want to take the route of modernizing the way the IT department looks at new tools and technologies, they need to start by modernizing the IT department itself. And, to do that, they have to look at IT as two different groups:

• IT as a service delivery department: the people who provide us with our computers and networks
• IT as a partner in business: the people who proactively help us do our job better

And if they’re lucky enough to get a CIO who thinks that way as well, things should start to change.

The University of Melbourne’s School of Culture and Communications is hosting a global conference called ‘Journalism in the 21st Century: Between Globalization and National Identity’:

Journalism in the 21st century is being rapidly transformed, not only through the globalization of media and new media technologies, but also through the growing ubiquity of the Internet. These ‘transforming’ agents are reshaping newsgathering processes, and redefining the role of national news media in the context of a new transnational news space.

The conference will thus provide a broad platform for the discussion of these emergent issues, issues that are having an effect upon journalistic practice not only in Australia, but in the international context shaped by globalization and the ‘network’ society.

The conference’s plenary speakers include some big names:

• Nick Couldry, Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK
• Philip Seib, USC Annenberg, California
• Sarmila Bose, Oxford University
• Michael Delli Carpini, Annenberg School, Philadelphia
• Malek Triki, Al Jazeera, London
• Christoph Lanz, Deutsche Welle, Berlin
• Christoph Wimmer, SBS, Sydney

Overall, it sounds really exciting and I’m hoping I’ll be able to attend. Further details on the conference (e.g. how to register) will be posted to the website soon. Right now all we know are the conference’s dates (16-17 July), registration cost ($150), and venue (the University of Melbourne’s Parkville campus).

Finally, there’s a study that shows empirically what most of us have known all along: personal Internet usage at work actually boosts employee productivity.

The study was conducted by Dr. Brent Coker from the Department of Management and Marketing at the University of Melbourne and you can read about it here:

• University of Melbourne Media Release – Freedom to surf: workers more productive if allowed to use the internet for leisure
• Ars Technica – Study: surfing the Internet at work boosts productivity
• Michael Specht – Internet usage at work makes you productive 

According to Coker’s research:

“People who do surf the Internet for fun at work – within a reasonable limit of less than 20% of their total time in the office – are more productive by about 9% than those who don’t.”

It’s About More Than Just Productivity

But it’s not just about productivity, as Specht points out, it’s also about trusting and respecting your employees.

I personally dislike companies that prohibit what Coker calls Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing (WILB) with the justification that when you’re at work, you should be doing nothing but work. That’s just silly because it’s a completely unrealistic notion of what work is. Work is a subset of life, not the other way round. So you can’t exactly ignore the rest of your life – or, indeed, the rest of the world – while you’re at work.

[There are, of course, exceptions to this rule. It’s okay to apply principles of Taylorism to, say, when you’re working in the kitchen at McDonalds. It’s just that you shouldn’t extend those principles to when your employees are not doing those specific kinds of tasks.]

The problem with a lot of companies is that, while they understand this basic principle (i.e. that there is life outside of work, even between the hours of 9am and 5pm), they aren’t tech-savvy enough to see that this also applies to using the Internet. Companies will, for example, do things like allow flexible working hours so you can do your banking during your lunch hour or go as far as to provide coffee machines and televisions in their kitchens and lounges so you can take a really good break during the work day. And yet, these same companies will block the use of webmail services, social networking sites, and online video sites which, to people like me, are pretty much the virtual equivalent of the kitchen and lounge (and sometimes the preferred equivalent).

So What’s the Problem?

Part of the problem, as has been pointed out in the past, is the generational disconnect between the Baby Boomers, Gen-X, and Gen-Y. That is, there exist numerous members of older generations who don’t understand that, for some members of the younger generation, a good work break could be eight minutes of e-mailing and checking on your social networks, four minutes of going through photos of your newborn niece, and three minutes of watching the latest viral video that’s making the rounds. And this disconnect is understandable. However it is then the job of middle managers to convince senior managers that this kind of personal Internet usage is actually okay.

Another part of the problem are the reports written by generally Internet-clueless analysts on how much companies are “losing” by letting employees access social media or online video sites during work hours. What tends to happen is this calculation:

• Think of an average employee who earns 50k a year; that’s $25 an hour.
• If this person spends, on average, 30 minutes a day on Facebook and Gmail. That translates to $12.50 per day “lost”.
• So, for the 250 days a year that this person works, the company is “losing” $3,125.
• If this company had 400 employees, the company would be losing 1.25 million dollars per year on employees accessing webmail and social networking sites.

Company executives look at this calculation and exclaim: “What?! We’re paying our employees $1.25m to access Facebook and Gmail! Block both those sites!”

The problem, of course, is that while the calculation is essentially correct, the reasoning behind it is flawed. The reasoning being that you are paying your average employee exactly 41.6c per minute to work for you and that every minute this employee does something other than work your money is being wasted. Now if this person was working on an assembly line, your loss-per-minute-not-worked calculation would be valid. But for every other employee, it’s not.

Why is it not valid? Because your employee is human – who has human wants and needs – and it is unreasonable to treat this person like a work-producing automaton upon whom you can do this kind of dehumanising calculation.

To Conclude

My point, then, is that studies like Coker’s are really useful because they empirically demonstrate that you can’t blindly apply principles of scientific management (i.e. Taylorism) across an entire organization.

And because these studies come from a business department of a large and well-respected university – and they use terms that businesses understand (specifically, ‘productivity’) – they will probably do some good.

If nothing else, reports like this tend to make their way into business magazines and give executives something to think about. This particular study may not get companies to unblock access to webmail services and social media sites, but it’s a start.

- – - – - – - – - –

P.S. What’s almost funny are the companies that are so completely disconnected for what’s going on online that they don’t even know what Facebook is and therefore don’t have a policy on whether they should block it or not!

The BBC has just announced plans to launch a new weekly show, called Your World News, that will feature the best of user-submitted news content (mainly photos and videos):

Thousands of videos, pictures and emails are sent in to the BBC every week and we are now choosing the best ones to make it onto a new show called Your World News.

So what do you have to do to make it on the programme? Quite simply, get out there and send us what’s happening in your world.

I hope that, like CNN’s iReport, they also make this content available on the web once the show has been broadcast.

This new initiative sounds really exciting and here’s hoping it’s a big success.

In 2007, photographer James Nachtwey won the TED Prize which awarded him $100,000 and “one wish to change the world”. His wish was:

I’m working on a story that the world needs to know about. I wish for you to help me break it in a way that provides spectacular proof of the power of news photography in the digital age.

On 3 October, Nachtwey’s story will break — both online and around the world. Melburnians can view his story at Federation Square while the rest of you should check the TED Prize Event Location page to see if it’s being shown at your location (it’s on in 16 countries). If not, you can always view it online:

For more:

• Nachtwey’s TED talk
• Nachtwey on Wikipedia
• JamesNachtwey.com

Thanks to the Deloitte Leadership Academy, all passengers flying aboard Qantas’ Airbus A380s will have free access to business courses — ranging from five-minute videos to 40-minute lectures — supplied by Melbourne Business School, Harvard Business School (including Harvard Business Review articles), Stanford Graduate School of Business, Macquarie Graduate School of Management, and the University of New South Wales.

Awesome.

For more:

• ‘Business school in all A380 classes‘ — Australian IT news item
• ‘Deloitte Leadership Academy and MBS‘ — Melbourne Business School news item
• ‘Would on-plane training appeal to you?‘ — Lifehacker Australia discussion

Very, very, very rarely do I wish that I had stuck with web programming for a little bit longer. This is one of those times. As posted on MyCareer.com:

Executive Producer (M5)

I’m looking for a Senior Project manager / Senior Producer to work with my outstanding client who is a well known and highly regarded organisation pioneering some of the most innovative and in-depth communications strategies in Australia.

Due to massive success the Production team requires the services of a Senior Producer to support the production team in online, print, marketing and digital media initiatives.

O’rly you say?

Ya’rly!

If you are a 733t project manager or senior producer, with mad skills (over 9000!) from the delivery of flawless web projects, as well as the Real Ultimate Power of performing under pressure and delivering spectacular results then this is the role for you.

For this senior level role you will be involved in:

• Supporting and guiding business strategies
• Manage Producers, Designers and Developers on significant projects
• Deliver agreed outcomes throughout the Project lifecycle
• Implement new developments throughout the business portfolio and ensure business agenda’s are met
• Engage with all facets of the production process.

You will demonstrate:

• Experience working within the internet, media and print industries
• Exposure to formal Project Management and methodologies such as Agile and or Prince2
• Articulate, concise communication skills with the ability to assert a point with empathy
• The ability to work from both a strategic angle and a creative one
• Good technical understanding of web design and development as well as print production and media environment skills and knowledge
• Strong time management skills

Communication and interpersonal skills will be just as important as having the following experience and education:

• Tertiary qualifications
• An absolute minimum of 5 years experience in a Project Management or producers role in a web based environment utilising Flash, .Net, ActionScript and Adobe products. Seriously, save the Internet some bandwidth by not applying if you don’t have a significant web background.
• Previous experience managing the code grinders and the colouring in types.
• Strong scope management
• Excellent judgement on best action to take
• Excellent documentation skills
• Best practise knowledge in Project Management practices
• Excellent time management skills

Put on your robe and wizard hat if you have knowledge of:

• Developing solutions in .NET and 3D modelling
• Games development
• Managing Production Shoots

A passion for the web is essential, my client represents the best in Melbourne and we are only looking for the crème de la crème of the marketplace. You MUST attach a compelling cover letter to your application for this role. 

*sigh*

I don’t usually do link posts but I’ve been so busy these last couple of weeks I haven’t had time to write about the following useful links in any detail:

1. Samuel Dean from Web Worker Daily wrote a post called ‘VTC: Killer Online Tutorials, Mostly Free‘
2. HR World wrote about the ‘The Top 100 Management and Leadership Blogs That All Managers Should Bookmark‘ [via Trevor Cook]
3. Jeremiah Owyang presented ‘A Complete List of the Many Forms of Web Marketing for 2008‘
4. Ross Dawson, writing in BRW Magazine, listed the ‘Top 100 Australian Web 2.0 Applications‘

If you’ve been following what’s been going on in the world of technology, politics, and international travel over the last few years you’ll know that, if you want to enter the US, border patrol agents are allowed to search your laptop, mobile phone, or MP3 player without limitation and without telling you why. Meanwhile, if you want to enter the UK and you have some encrypted stuff on your hard drive, the UK government can demand that you hand over your encryption keys or face jail time.

In light of all this, both CNET and the EFF have come up with ways in which you can keep your data both safe and private when crossing the border. Before reading that, though, check out Computerworld’s Jaikumar Vijayan’s article on Five Things to Know About U.S. Border Laptop Searches.

Then read these:

• For a quick overview of how to secure your data, read CNET’s Chris Soghoian’s article Keep Your Data Safe at the Border.
• For a much more in-depth discussion, read CNET’s Declan McCullagh’s Security Guide to Customs-Proofing Your Laptop.
• And, for a more legal perspective, read EFF’s Jennifer Granick’s article on Protecting Yourself From Suspicionless Searches While Travelling.

Most important of all: be careful. Your really don’t want to suffer Maher Arar’s fate.