I took part in a panel discussion at Internet World last week organised by Huddle with blogger Chris Alexander and Huddle’s Director of Customer Engagement Jon Landau. The topic up for debate was what happens when the MySpace generation heads to work?

The current generation of university graduates have grown up with social application and the collaborative tools of web 2.0. What happens when they enter the workplace and find themselves shackled by more traditional ways of working and constrained by the corporate IT department?

My pal and opposite number at Speed Steve Earl, has blogged at length about the challenges that Gen Y faces in the workplace.

Here are some of the issues we covered during the discussion.

• Organisations that are using social platforms within the enterprise are benefiting from competitive advantage
• If you’re not talking about your brand online, your competitors and customers almost certainly will be
• If you don’t trust your staff online why are they working for you and how can you expect them to feel motivated
• Management needs to take the lead in the understanding of the MySpace generation and harnessing its talents. It has a responsibility to understand social networks, set policy, educate and empower its staff
• That Internet World took place next door to InfoSecurity, a show of equal size, tells you everything you need to know about corporate attitudes to the internet
• Personal and corporate social identities should be kept separate
• Locking down corporate networks is not the solution to managing social network usage. Gen Y will switch to mobile networks
• The UK needs better internet networks, both fixed line and wireless. We’re lagging the rest of the world

Photo by @the_anke (thanks!).