Hyper-Multi-Youth: Trioro at the Millennials Conference

Last week, we took a trip around the corner to attend the Millennials conference kicking off Canadian Music Week here in Toronto.

Here are a few of my notes from that day...

What is a Millennial?
Generally speaking, we're talking about people born leading up to and around the year 2000. To be honest - I'm still not sure what the exact definition is. What was obvious was that every description seemed to be prefaced by the term "multi".

• Multi-taskers
• Multi-media
• Multi-cultural
• Multi-facetted
• you get the point

I rolled my eyes a bit when one speaker halfway through the day came up to the stage to declare that "multi" was the wrong word and that we really should be using "hyper". Okay sure, trying to prove a point, that's fine, but really!?

In my mind, the best definition came from Ted Cohen about halfway through the day:
"1 in 2 people in the room don't do it the way we're describing: multi-threading, not-multi-tasking is making a lot of this possible."

The statistics and research being done to conclude that millennials are multi-taskers are concluding that this generation is packing 26 hours of activity into a 24 hour day. Huh? Well, if you have the radio on while you're studying with instant messaging open on your computer... that's being counted as 3 activities at once. Is this really different from any other generation? Are older generations really that archaic that they are incapable of walking and breathing? What if I fall asleep with the TV on!?

I digress...
The traits are obviously still applicable and yes, millennials are using technology to increase productivity and connectivity while having fun at the same time. The truth is, they are multi-threading. Several processes operating at once with cycle time being swapped quickly from one individual task to another. (Yes, I just compared a millennial to a computer processor... kinda seemed fitting.)

What else can describe a Millennial?
From Dr. Mike Atkinson:

• Double income "cherished" generation.
• Used to a lot and and expect a lot.
• Driven by fun and high energy.
• Strong community spirit.
• Very family oriented.
  
• Confident.

These themes were certainly reiterated throughout the day. People growing up now are certainly citizens of the global village. Millennials respond to global causes, environmental activism and feel a sense of self that is larger than the individual.

A bit more on the environmental note can be found over here.

Before I close out, I'll mention a couple of comments offered by Alan Cross:

• 50% of all millennials have never set foot in a record store and never will
• Today's rebellion songs are more about peace and global issues

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