As the number of millennials in the work force continues to increase and technology becomes more universal, the world is shifting.

That’s according to participants at a Biennial of the Americas symposium about the generation on Tuesday night in Denver.

“This generation and the next generation expects and aspires to great things, but also demands great things,” said Univision anchor León Krauze, who moderated the talk, dubbed Generation NOW! “It is certainly a complex generation, not only in America, but in Latin America, where a remarkable number of young people await opportunities.”

The first generation to approach adulthood with universal access to the Internet, millenials – roughly, those born from the early 1980s to the early 2000s – are “true digital natives,” said Adriana Cisneros, CEO and vice-chairman of Cisneros, a family-owned media and technology company. “It’s an attachment of who they are.”

The panelists agree that the generation’s comfort with technology and innovation is changing how the world operates.

“I think one of the most exciting things about the times we live in, is it’s so easy to start a new business and test your ideas,” said Ibotta CEO Bryan Leach. In addition, people can easily connect to the entire technological world, no matter where they live.

The only way to understand millennials, Cisneros emphasized, is to hire them and attempt to see the world through their eyes.

“It’s a really good time for millennials to be in the U.S.,” she said. “They’re being successful by simply being. Our job is to listen to them and figure out how we can be a part of their success.”

It’s also a diverse generation with tremendous purchasing power, she said. Hispanic millenials living in the United States, she noted, have some $1.3 trillion to spend, and businesses are taking notice. “That’s a very impressive number. You realize, there’s not a single business in America that’s not paying attention to this phenomenon. It’s an interesting convergence.”

Gabriel Sanchez Zinny, CEO of kuepa.com and author of Educación 3.0: The Struggle for Talent in Latin America, said emerging markets in Latin America are providing opportunities for millennials who are seeking to improve their countries.

While it can be harder to raise capital in Latin America, he said, there are many young people starting companies and wanting to make a difference. There are better opportunities in emerging markets than in developed ones, he added.

Square co-founder Jim McKelvey, who has gone on to found the non-profit learning platform LaunchCode, declared that a ubiquitous Internet has flipped the traditional education model. Easy online access allows people around the world to take advantage of institutions and instructions from anywhere. LaunchCode embodies this principle, he noted, providing free lessons in computer programing, which should create jobs and help solve a shortage of talented programmers worldwide.

“You can see the countries whose economies are crashing,” he said, by looking at the number of people signing up for free education programs. People are “routing around” inefficient, state-sponsored structures once they have the tools they learn online, he added.

The explosion of social media is changing the world, panelists agreed, but it isn’t the first time technology has brought humanity closer. Cisneros pointed out that, in their time, newspapers and television also allowed far-flung people access to the same information simultaneously.

“That’s not that different from what’s happening on Twitter,” she said. “Twitter is amplified, there’s billions of channels instead of three, but it’s not that different. We’ve all studied the impact that global mail or newspapers or TV had on humanity, and now we have to study this one.”

On a different note, McKelvey said he’s concerned pervasive social media platforms can lead users to experience their lives differently. “I think that people are very conscious not of what they’re doing, the ‘now,’ but of sort of packaging the now so they can display it later,” he said. “That’s scary to me.”

The displays at the Biennial Pavilion, at 1550 Wewatta St. in Lower Downtown Denver, are free and open to the public through August. There’s also an ongoing exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver featuring work by artists from throughout the Western Hemisphere.

– rachel@coloradostatesman.com