Trends: Are you a ‘/’ person?

dsumner — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:53:59 GMT

There appears to be trend that shows greater acceptance in the fact people may not only be multi-skilled but also multi-rolled. In the Renaissance period such a concept would have been termed as a polymath. Someone who is good at doing many things, recently the “ jack of all trades” was the common phrase.

The developing term now appears to be a ‘/’ (slash) person. i.e. “meet Dave he is a mechanic-slash- painter- slash- singer.”

In recent years, life-time careers were spent in a single role or at a single company, but the pace at which the global economy has developed since the 1960’s had driven some very large socioeconomic changes. Many of us now have multiple skills and roles.

The Internet is proving to be a great enabler in allowing the individual to capitalize on their ‘/’ talent and expose that to a broader audience. But there is also a downside, many of the online social networking or profiling sites still link you to a single role or worse still amalgamate those those roles into a single profile and potentially divulge skills that you may not wish to share.

We need to see further developments in managing online identities, personas and roles, where we have the ability to control which skills from which roles we wish to share.

The Art of the Possible : trends

Trends: Are you a ‘/’ person?