Tip of The Iceberg

 

The Champlain Four broke for lunch around 7:45pm, then returned to work at 11pm and worked well into the night while the vast majority of conference-goers were busy sleeping.  While the team was working here, their friends back at Champlain College were assisting with coding and other production related tasks.

 

In a sense the Champlain team here represents the tip of the iceberg in terms of the total team.  It is, in some way, much like waging a battle.  You have your people on the ground who are taking on the challenges while, at the same time, their supporters -- their human infrastructure -- stands behind them to assist. 

 

If that were not enough, the Champlain team has their program program leaders on hand to offer some high level guidance when needed.  Ann DeMarle, Hope Wittman Martin, Robin Lane, and Joe Manley are all here to support them in any way they can. 

 

So, I really believe that, if the Champlain Four does succeed, it will be a result of the extended team behind them, assisting at all levels.  This is quite normal, as Elliott Masie has pointed out many times, for very young professionals who have entered the job market or will be entering the job market; they bring their "posse" with them, in a virtual sense.

 

Their posse helps them with tasks, just as they did at the college or grad school level.  But do corporations really want an official employee with several unofficial employees?  Some will, but all must be concerned with the implications of having "unofficial" employees who may be heping solve company problems.  There are security issues, though, with some restrictions, I think the new age of collaboration can work well for any business.

 

I think training will be required for new employees to help them understand why their "posse" can only help to a certain level.  If they have a small piece of Java code they can't get to work, then it might well be fine to let their posse help them solve that problem five times faster than they otherwise would normally have been able to solve it.  But asking friends to scan and troubleshoot an entire corporate app could be grounds for immediate dismissal. 

 

I think young people entering the job market need to understand why companies must protect their intellectual property.  And they must know that everything they produce, on their own or through the support of their posse, belongs to the company which employs them.  So, applications freely created through with the aid of a posse, is not then freely owned.

 

This may just be a radical, even offensive, idea for some young people entering the workforce.  But it is necessary.

 

Nuff said.

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