In 1989 Will Smith sang. “Parent’s Just Don’t Understand”.  Certainly not a new sentiment among teenagers and parents.  After all, us old (yes, I now have to put myself in this category) people simply don’t get the younger generation of today.  To some degree this is true, and we just have to deal with it.  My daughter is in the seventh grade and wants a cell phone.  I could argue with her that I did just fine without a cell phone, or I can try and understand how integral the cell phone has become to daily life of teenagers.

On occasion though, us older people go a little too far in trying to use modern technology.  The perfect example of this was the launch of the new Today Show set on Monday morning.  Along with the set they introduced the “Orange Room”, hosted by Carson Daly. By the way, Carson Daly is 40, and had his last “hip” gig in 1988 as host of TRL.

 

The orange room is supposed to integrate social media with traditional media to bring the viewers into the Today Show living room.  I will give them one thing, that is getting the color orange correct.  For some unknown reason, this is today’s popular color.

 

So far, everything else they have gotten wrong.  On day one they used their hip, new, cool room to ……. bring a viewer in on Skype.  They proceeded to ask the viewer about his living room, compared to their (the Today Show) living room.  Well, at least they got a little closer this time, Skype premiered in 2003, so they are only about 10 years off.  Still, I can not imagine that anyone (other than the North Pond Hermit: http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/maine/2013/05/25/north-pond-hermit-discovered-arrested-after-years-maine-woods/xSXsUlDOQVhqUMb8nkslxN/story.html) saw this segment and thought, “wow, I gotta look into this Skype thing”.

 

Later in the segment they moved onto Twitter.  OK, we are getting somewhere now, Twitter debuted in 2006 and has continued to grow since then.  But then they tried to stuff new media, into a traditional newscast, kind of.   They read 3 or 4 tweets about the Colorado floods and showed a picture from Twitter.  The odd thing was they did not try and fit this into a story on the floods, which would add some personal touch.  Many newscasts have successfully tried this approach.  Rather, the “story” was about Twitter and the floods.  In the end there was no story, and even Carson Daly stood there looking as though he realized this thing was flopping.

 

I guess we will have to watch and find out whether a bunch of older producers, newscasters and technical directors can figure out how to adapt to new media.  I am not sure I have recommendations for them.  After all, I like my Twitter and my “real” news separate because I am an “old guy”.  I think my only piece of advice would be to get a bunch of college interns in there and let them run loose for a few weeks and come up with some ideas.

 

How does all of this apply to AV?  Well, I think we need to apply these lessons to ourselves.  We need to be quicker to adapt and pay attention to trends with much younger children.  A good example of this?  In 2009 we installed a building wide sound system in a major building on campus.  A design firm did the design work for us.  What did the main rack contain?  Three (yes 3) 5-disc CD changers.  What did the rack not contain?  A stereo mini input for an MP3 player.  This was 8 years after the first iPod was introduced and two years after the iPhone was introduced.  What did we do about 6 months after this major install?  Took out all of the CD players and replaced them with a single stereo mini input.

 

What are your thoughts?  How do we (people who probably average 40 years old) deal with new technologies, and always be aware of what is coming?  What are your strategies to avoid standing in an Orange Room, looking like you don’t really understand what is going on?

 

I look forward to hearing from you.