Teens, tech and entrepreneurs

Last week I attended an event organized by SDForum, called Next Generation Tech: Teens Plugged In. I must commend the organizers for pulling together a very interesting event. Instead of the usual talking heads, they had (separate) panels of high-schoolers and college kids who pretty much held court for most of the morning. It was a most refreshing change.

The purpose was to hear teens' views on technology (and also entrepreneurship). The teens were certainly fully plugged in, all inseparable from their cell phones and iPods, and incredulous that folks grew up without the Internet. But what was most telling is that they consider all of the above as merely tools, a way for them to do what they've always wanted to do: hang out with friends, listen to music or get their work done faster and easier - just what teenagers have done for ages. In fact, even the young man who fessed up to using the above-mentioned devices to help in a test was just updating the hoary cheat sheet. And as always, there are the kids that keep to the rules and those that break them and like to keep pushing the envelope. Technology hasn't fundamentally changed their behavior or values, but it has vastly increased the scope and impact.

It was also interesting to see what a difference a few years made - the college kids were more serious about technology, even when discussing the same topic of cell phones as the teens. It may be because more than half seemed to be CS majors - and I was disappointed that there were no women in the college panel, unlike the well balanced high school panel.

There were a couple of high school and college entrepreneurs there too. Most interesting was Ben Casnocha, who kicked off the session. He's still a teenager though his company is 6 years old, and he was asked to comment on the differences between the young and not-so-young entrepreneurs. His take was there was too much hyper-ventilation on the subject; the reality is that it all comes down how well you work with people, and age is not the determining factor. He spoke very perceptively on this and other subjects; seems like those six years packed a lot of experience.

This event was doubly interesting to me as just the previous week I'd heard a bunch of teenagers pitching their business plans (see post). The previous one featured at-risk kids from dodgy neighborhoods, and their mentors used entrepreneurship to help them finish high school and motivate them to aspire to college. At the SDForum teen tech event the kids were from top suburban schools, where entrepreneurship is often a passion, and a ticket to the Ivies. Until we see the under-resourced teens start pitching business ideas based on technology, like the ones in the tech event are pursuing, we know we still have the 'digital divide' in our country, and it needs attention, especially from those of us in tech arena.