Yesterday I attended the June edition of CreativeMornings with Emma Gannon as the June guest of note!
Emma Gannon (@Emmagannon), says she can’t describe what she does in one sentence and in her words ‘that’s kind of the point’. Emma’s a blogger, a daughter, an instagrammer, a novelist, a podcaster, a marketer, a coffee-lover…you get the point. Emma is many things. “Why tick a box that says I’m this one thing when I can tick all of the boxes and be all of the things” (I paraphrase, a bit).
We’re movers & shakers, doers and think-laters, judgmental and heavily – opinionated. We are frustrated by a system or an expectation, rather, that tells us we must be one thing and one alone. As goes the age-old question, ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?‘ – we could be here for a while, the voice of Emma echoes.
We want it all and we want it now. We’re creators, adapters, constantly shifting from one platform to the next without blinking. But, there is one thing we fear most – becoming irrelevant.
This led the topic of Emma’s discussion and rightly so.
As a generation growing up in a time of constant change we are the epitome of adapt or die. In 2017, if you don’t have a voice online, you don’t have a voice.
Maybe Instagram is your thing or perhaps you’re a lover of the opinionated ‘ole tweet or perchance, you’re like me, and you still think LinkedIn is the bee’s knees.
We all, whether we have consciously acknowledged it or not, represent ourselves online in one way or another. For all of us, there is at least one (maybe more) online space where we show off who we are, what we’re about and what we do.
Whatever it is, it’s how people – people who don’t yet know us well – perceive us, which is why we put so much time and care into curating this content. It’s an expression of ourselves, this is our creativity – at least one form of it anyway.
Getting back to Emma’s talk – she spoke about her time as a Manager in a marketing agency, of which hiring staff was part of her role. “As an employer now, what’s the first thing you do when you get a CV? Toss it to one side and start stalking the applicant online!”.
In my opinion (there goes the millennial again), CVs are kind of rubbish. In a society where everyone (!!) has Facebook the ancient tradition (my word, not Emma’s) of writing a CV is outdated, unhelpful and generally disheartening to both parties – god forbid, you were only in your last role for 10 months (god damn, why didn’t I stay for a year?!). As a twenty- something writing a CV is possibly one of the most frustrating ways to spend your time… okay so on paper I have technically only had one ‘job’ (in the prehistoric sense of a 9-5 job) but I also manage three Facebook pages, run multiple events throughout the year, contribute to the local newspaper, am co-founder of start-up, and occasionally decide that sleeping has become necessary… yep, that is the life of the 2017 twenty-something.
We’ve constantly got 101 things going on and it’s bloody brilliant. We love it, we’re all about it but when it comes to putting pen to paper (who am I kidding, people don’t do that anymore) writing a CV is somewhat challenging.
So, what do we do?! We blog, tweet, snap, share, comment, like, create, curate, post, vlog and…upload.
Final note – according to Emma, 84% of the jobs Gen Z (born 1995 – 2009) will do have not yet been created…how incredible is that?!
Emma’s written a book called ‘Ctlr, Alt; Delete: How I Grew Up Online’ – after yesterday’s talk it’s definitely one I’m adding to my reading list.
Thanks for reading!
In your twenties 