Gah, things are moving so fast! I seem to be really behind the curve on this, at least by my own standards.
OK, I’m still thinking about education, professionalism, and virtuality.
Here I ramble a bit.
As I wrote before, tertiary institutions here in Singapore have a dress code for students that forbids caps, long hair, and so on. This is so that they “look professional”. Personally I don’t agree with this, and during my time at NTU was rarely seen without a baseball cap firmly fixed on my head. Of course, special case: I was an MBA student, and so there’s an element of “if he’s paying that much to be here, if he wants to wear a cap, let him”. I wore it in class, too. There were good reasons – my hair was very, very short then, so the hat kept my head warm in the arctic air-con, plus it shielded my eyes from the harsh lighting. I don’t think any of my professors would say that wearing the cap hindered my participation in class. So the clothes are not really the issue; it’s the attitude – and the context. My feeling is that the concept of “professionalism” these rules are meant to support are out of date, and better suited for producing cubicle-dwellers and low-level managers.
Not all that long ago, I was on the election committee of the first male member of the UK House of Commons to wear an ear-ring in Parliament. He got a bit of press about it at the time, but the story went away quickly because no-one cared. Man wears ear-ring at work, big deal. Happens all the time.
I’ve also worked as a consultant with a number of multinationals, in Singapore and in China. The managers I dealt with there were smart – but they dress colourfully, creatively, and with style. No question about their professionalism, though.
How about a senior manager who has spiky dyed blond hair and wears a kilt to the office? What kind of image does that present? What messages does that send? Is that professional? What kind of company would endorse that?
Well, the answer is: IBM.
And yes, it’s in Second Life. Fast Company has a really interesting article on how IBM is using the virtual world for mentoring and training – not only in the US, but also in China. I alluded to this before; guess the guy who thought that Second Life is for losers really needs to get up to speed on what’s happening!
How does one’s professional online avatar reflect one’s real-life professional image? Should you try to make an avatar that looks like the real you? Does it matter less because it’s online, even though you’re doing your work there just as you would offline?
The times, they are a’changing…
More on IBM and Second Life:
Updated:
Great YouTube clip about this:
