I've met with Penelope Trunk recently and reviewed her book, Brazen Careerist (same as the name of her blog); the book is excellent and I thought of it often, especially when I traveled to Paris, France earlier this month as I shared a room with Thomas, an 18 year old who'd be Generation Y, according to Penelope.  I also was around several Generation X people and several Baby Boomers (mostly retiring or retired - they could spend all Summer in France and Italy, and some are doing that).

But the Gen Y, Gen X thing got me thinking - since a lot of what Penelope writes about seemed as true in the 1970's as it is in the Twenty First Century.  Maybe the idea of classifying people (and giving them advice, based on their generation  - when they were born - needs to be rethought out - and that's what Penelope Trunk did with her latest post on What Generation are you are part of, really? Take this Test.

"…Here’s an idea: We should determine our generation not by our age but by how we use media. This comes from Margaret Weigel, who has worked at Harvard and MIT doing research on digital media engagement:* “We should not judge people rigidly by the years they were born,” she says,  ”If we want to define people by categories, it should be by behaviors because this is something each of us chooses.”

Here's the test Penelope Trunk put together to test what generation you are part of:

• Do you have your own web page? (1 point)
• Have you made a web page for someone else? (2 points)
• Do you IM your friends? (1 point)
• Do you text your friends? (2 points)
• Do you watch videos on YouTube? (1 point)
• Do you remix video files from the Internet?  (2 points)
• Have you paid for and downloaded music from the Internet? (1 point)
• Do you know where to download free (illegal) music from the Internet? (2 points)
• Do you blog for professional reasons?  (1 point)
• Do you blog as a way to keep an online diary? (2 points)
• Have you visited MySpace at least five times? (1 point)
• Do you communicate with friends on Facebook? (2 points)
• Do you use email to communicate with your parents? (1 point)
• Did you text to communicate with your parents? (2 points)
• Do you take photos with your phone? (1 point)
• Do you share your photos from your phone with your friends? (2 points)

I scored a 12 on this test (of 24 points) which makes me a Gen Y (hmm..I like that!)