Just remember the SMAC

I attended a talk last night, 27 May 2014 in the Irish Times Training Building, where  Tim Hynes the Director Business Relationship Management for Microsoft IT was interviewed by Irish Times Senior Business Correspondent, Tom Lyons, about his leadership insights and industry trends.

It was very interesting to hear how Tim started his career in the 1980’s after the last big recession. He told a very funny story about finishing his leaving cert on a Wednesday, taking a day off on the Thursday and signing on at the Labour Exchange (local unemployment office) on the Friday. However on the same day he got a job and when he went back to the unemployment office to sign off everyone cheered. It was a bleak time in the 1980’s and someone getting a job was a great achievement.

The main things I took away from his interview were:

• the mega trends in technology need SMAC
• you need a don’t give up attitude
• you need a learner mind set
• a good manager designs tasks for the learner not themselves

The SMAC acronym stands for Social media, Mobile devices, Analytics and Cloud computing. Social media is not new and does not need further discussion. Mobile devices are not just your smartphone or tablet but includes the internet of things. Analytic is how large organisations, i.e. Google – Amazon – Government, use the data they collect about you. This needs a lens to filter the info and we covered it on the Trends in eLearning Module. Cloud computer is the way of the future, Tim stated if a business is not on a cloud they are doomed. Start ups are using clouds as the initial capital, for buildings – distribution – suppliers, is now far less as these are already on the cloud.

An interesting discussion ensued about voice recognition and how Cortana and Siri will soon be our assistants. This interested me as I did an assignment on the Virtual Assistant for the Trends module. I concluded in that my believe is that it is not imminent even though the Horizon Report and Gartner believe it is possible in less that five years. I asked Tim the question and he answered that the technology is capable, however people do not trust the storage of personal information in the cloud to allow the device to know their personal preferences. When people trust the cloud this will be possible. I found this very interesting and can only agree with his assertion.

The not giving up attitude speaks for itself but he emphasised that you don’t just accept others opinions you need to fight your own corner if you believe you are correct. Having a learner mind set is basically always being open to new experiences, when you think you know it all then it is time to give up and move on to something new. When you are developing anything, i.e. persons role – training – sales campaign etc., you need to design it for the other person not yourself. This was a key principle in the Instructional Design module as well.

I found the talk very interesting and it was good to see the link to my Trends module, Analytics – Internet of things – Virtual assistant, and the Instructional Design module, designing for the customer. I particularly liked the SMAC acronym that I had never seen before.

This was the first in the Irish Times Training TimeToTalk – In-camera Series and I look forward to future events.