I just read a story by writing instructor and coach Sharon Lippincott entitled “Too Old for Ice Cream,” and it took me back. (I "met" Sharon when she responded to one of my blogs,and I visited her blog at http://heartandcraft.blogspot.com/.)
Her story was about an encounter – or rather, a non-encounter – with a modern-day ice cream truck – a red van with a raised roof, a neighborhood-tempting sound system, numerous big decals and a cooler hung under the window on the passenger side. She was struck by the contrast with the “white, spotlessly clean” ice cream trucks of her youth.
The teenage driver passed her right by without stopping – twice – and Sharon wondered if he thought she looked too old to be buying ice cream. Upon reflection, she happily dismissed this notion, went to her freezer at home, pulled out a Klondike bar and thoroughly enjoyed it. Her pang of nostalgia, it turned out, was about ice cream trucks, not ice cream.
Even though the story was published in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review almost three years ago, it was as fresh for me as a frosty Popsicle. It brought to mind the ice cream vendors when I was a little boy – before the days of ice cream trucks, when “the ice cream man” came by pushing a clunky white box mounted on two bike wheels or pedaling a bike-powered version of the same basic box.
They didn’t have amplified sound systems. They had cowbells hanging on their handlebars. Still, you could hear them half a block away.
The chocolate and vanilla delicacy known today as an Eskimo Pie today was a “Big Boy” to us. There were also Fudgsicles, which were all chocolate with no coating. But Popsicles were Popsicles then, just as they are today. And every now and then, if we were lucky, the ice cream man would have Creamsicles, which was a Popsicle on the outside and ice cream on the inside. Heaven on a stick!
The ice cream man – who more often than not was a teenager – also had something really special at the bottom of his box – dry ice. That’s how they kept the ice cream from melting. If you begged long enough, and the ice cream man was feeling generous, he would break off a tiny piece of dry ice and give it to you.
It was so cold you couldn’t hold it in your hand. You had to toss it back and forth or it would burn you. You would put a penny on the dry ice and it would sizzle – in addition to getting very cold. If you were really brave and cool (no pun intended), you’d put the dry ice in your mouth (making sure you had enough saliva to keep it swishing around) and “blow smoke” by breathing out with your mouth open.
I agree with Sharon that you never get too old for ice cream. Sometimes, in the interest of health, the refreshment option is frozen yogurt. But for genuine goodness and perfect taste, nothing beats old fashioned ice cream.
Except, every now and then, a Creamsicle.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Monday, April 26, 2010
Smile, things may be looking up
There was encouraging news for rebooters in the Sunday (4/25/10) New York Times Business section.
The headline: “Rays of Hope For Job Hunters;” the subhead: “Postings are climbing, and baby boomers are retiring. Can a turnaround be near?”
The article, by Phyllis Korkki, reports on improving signs in the labor market. “Employers are beginning to hire again – or at least think about it,” Korkki reports. “There are now some very positive signs… The shift is most apparent in job postings, which have begun to surge.”
The article quoted Tamara Erickson, an author and work-force consultant, as pointing out an intensifying long-term trend: “a worker shortage caused by the continuing retirement of baby boomers.”
“Suddenly, she said, employers are starting to realize that they don’t have, or won’t have, people with the skills they need. Some are starting to worry, she said, while others ‘have no idea what’s going to hit them.’”
This trend means that people who want to keep working in their later years may have the option of deferring their retirement or staying employed by filling a familiar position on a consulting or part-time basis.
The article is side-by-side with a first-person article by Jeremy Jaech, a serial rebooter who has re-started his career twice after “retiring.” He was co-founder of the Aldus Corporation, which created PageMaker and made him rich enough at age 29 that he didn’t have to work.
After playing golf until it was no longer fun, he went back to work and founded the Visio Corporation, another successful venture that developed software to make flow charts, organization charts, office layouts and other diagrams on a desktop computer.
Again he “retired,” this time in his 40s, and became involved working on nonprofit organizations including the University of Washington in research.
Still, not enough, so back to work. This time he founded Verdiem, which provides software to reduce energy consumption of PC networks. His summation:
“Of course, the money has been great. But the actual pleasure of working, and the real reason I can’t stay retired, is the joy of collaborating with a bright team of people to move an idea forward and watch it grow.”
The headline: “Rays of Hope For Job Hunters;” the subhead: “Postings are climbing, and baby boomers are retiring. Can a turnaround be near?”
The article, by Phyllis Korkki, reports on improving signs in the labor market. “Employers are beginning to hire again – or at least think about it,” Korkki reports. “There are now some very positive signs… The shift is most apparent in job postings, which have begun to surge.”
The article quoted Tamara Erickson, an author and work-force consultant, as pointing out an intensifying long-term trend: “a worker shortage caused by the continuing retirement of baby boomers.”
“Suddenly, she said, employers are starting to realize that they don’t have, or won’t have, people with the skills they need. Some are starting to worry, she said, while others ‘have no idea what’s going to hit them.’”
This trend means that people who want to keep working in their later years may have the option of deferring their retirement or staying employed by filling a familiar position on a consulting or part-time basis.
The article is side-by-side with a first-person article by Jeremy Jaech, a serial rebooter who has re-started his career twice after “retiring.” He was co-founder of the Aldus Corporation, which created PageMaker and made him rich enough at age 29 that he didn’t have to work.
After playing golf until it was no longer fun, he went back to work and founded the Visio Corporation, another successful venture that developed software to make flow charts, organization charts, office layouts and other diagrams on a desktop computer.
Again he “retired,” this time in his 40s, and became involved working on nonprofit organizations including the University of Washington in research.
Still, not enough, so back to work. This time he founded Verdiem, which provides software to reduce energy consumption of PC networks. His summation:
“Of course, the money has been great. But the actual pleasure of working, and the real reason I can’t stay retired, is the joy of collaborating with a bright team of people to move an idea forward and watch it grow.”
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Eating some of my own dog food
There is a phrase heard in businesses that build credibility with customers by using their own products: “Eating our own dog food.”
I haven’t been eating much of my own dog food lately. I’m asking people to join in a conversation about reinvention and rebooting on this blog and I’ve been missing in action.
OK, an honest confession is good for the soul. Consider this my confession. Today I’m back and I intend to be more diligent and regular about posting my thoughts. Maybe some of them will actually be interesting.
One of my original ideas in starting RebootYou.com was that there was going to be a flood of Baby Boomers retiring and looking to reinvent themselves, and that my website was where they were going to come to find resources and tell their stories. (I also wanted to reach people of any age who needed or wanted to reboot – and still do – but for now let’s just talk about retirees.)
RebootYou.com seemed like a good idea, until the Great Recession came along and sent the unemployment rate above 10%. There was a flood of people, all right, but they were the young and middle aged folks who lost their jobs when the economy tanked. For a retiree seeking a paying job in perhaps another field, or thinking about becoming a consultant in her or his career field, there was suddenly a crowd of people also looking for that same job. They were younger, hungrier, perhaps more talented or more current on the latest technology, more desperate to find gainful employment to feed their families and pay their bills. In other words, tough competition.
At the same time, the number of jobs shrank. Companies going bankrupt or falling on hard times did what they always do – they cut staff, eliminated positions, retrenched.
So the picture changed. Fewer jobs available for the potential rebooter, more people vying for those jobs.
I’ve thought about the whole arena of retiree reinvention a lot in the last couple of years and asked myself, what can be done? Is there a course of action the average retiree can take if he or she wants to keep working after retirement?
The main thing I’ve come up with is going back to school. Twice in my lifetime I’ve rebooted by going back to school. It worked both times. So I am going to do some research to find out if there has been any discernible uptick in retirees going back to school to upgrade their knowledge and skills since the recession came down on us like the proverbial ton of bricks.
If you’ve done this, know of someone who has, or (I wish) had any information or statistics on the subject, please post a response. I look forward to hearing from you.
I haven’t been eating much of my own dog food lately. I’m asking people to join in a conversation about reinvention and rebooting on this blog and I’ve been missing in action.
OK, an honest confession is good for the soul. Consider this my confession. Today I’m back and I intend to be more diligent and regular about posting my thoughts. Maybe some of them will actually be interesting.
One of my original ideas in starting RebootYou.com was that there was going to be a flood of Baby Boomers retiring and looking to reinvent themselves, and that my website was where they were going to come to find resources and tell their stories. (I also wanted to reach people of any age who needed or wanted to reboot – and still do – but for now let’s just talk about retirees.)
RebootYou.com seemed like a good idea, until the Great Recession came along and sent the unemployment rate above 10%. There was a flood of people, all right, but they were the young and middle aged folks who lost their jobs when the economy tanked. For a retiree seeking a paying job in perhaps another field, or thinking about becoming a consultant in her or his career field, there was suddenly a crowd of people also looking for that same job. They were younger, hungrier, perhaps more talented or more current on the latest technology, more desperate to find gainful employment to feed their families and pay their bills. In other words, tough competition.
At the same time, the number of jobs shrank. Companies going bankrupt or falling on hard times did what they always do – they cut staff, eliminated positions, retrenched.
So the picture changed. Fewer jobs available for the potential rebooter, more people vying for those jobs.
I’ve thought about the whole arena of retiree reinvention a lot in the last couple of years and asked myself, what can be done? Is there a course of action the average retiree can take if he or she wants to keep working after retirement?
The main thing I’ve come up with is going back to school. Twice in my lifetime I’ve rebooted by going back to school. It worked both times. So I am going to do some research to find out if there has been any discernible uptick in retirees going back to school to upgrade their knowledge and skills since the recession came down on us like the proverbial ton of bricks.
If you’ve done this, know of someone who has, or (I wish) had any information or statistics on the subject, please post a response. I look forward to hearing from you.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Mr. Considerate
Today I came across a scene that stopped me in my tracks.
A motorcycle was parked on the sidewalk outside Whole Foods in Redwood City. It was unusual that it was on the sidewalk, but that was not the most unusual part.
Beside the motorcycle, partly under the engine, lay a small blue towel, folded neatly. On the towel was a small plastic bowl. In the bowl was a quantity of motor oil, which I assume had leaked out of the motorcycle engine.
This was amazing! The owner of this motorcycle was so considerate of his fellow citizens that he had placed a little container under his engine to catch the dripping oil and keep it off the sidewalk. And he had it on a towel as further insurance!
Think about that. Can you imagine a more civic-minded, caring act? Seriously!
You know this guy has to be the most polite, courteous and thoughtful person in town – maybe on the whole planet.
Upon reflection, I figured the motorcycle was probably owned by one of the employees in the store. There was quite a bit of oil in the container, and if the bike belonged to a shopper, it couldn’t have leaked that much oil in a short time.
But this possibility did not take away from the charity and thoughtfulness of the owner. Just completely cool.
It reminded me of what my wife and I saw on a visit to Japan. In Tokyo, a businessman walking down the street – suit, tie and briefcase – stopped to pick up a stray piece of paper on the sidewalk and deposit it in a nearby trash can.
Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a few more people like this in the world? OK, I know we’ll never convert everybody, maybe not even a lot of people. But how about just a few more thoughtful and considerate people to take the edge off the brutish rudeness that is so pervasive today?
Mr. Motorcycle Driver, I salute you. The world could sure use more people like you.
A motorcycle was parked on the sidewalk outside Whole Foods in Redwood City. It was unusual that it was on the sidewalk, but that was not the most unusual part.
Beside the motorcycle, partly under the engine, lay a small blue towel, folded neatly. On the towel was a small plastic bowl. In the bowl was a quantity of motor oil, which I assume had leaked out of the motorcycle engine.
This was amazing! The owner of this motorcycle was so considerate of his fellow citizens that he had placed a little container under his engine to catch the dripping oil and keep it off the sidewalk. And he had it on a towel as further insurance!
Think about that. Can you imagine a more civic-minded, caring act? Seriously!
You know this guy has to be the most polite, courteous and thoughtful person in town – maybe on the whole planet.
Upon reflection, I figured the motorcycle was probably owned by one of the employees in the store. There was quite a bit of oil in the container, and if the bike belonged to a shopper, it couldn’t have leaked that much oil in a short time.
But this possibility did not take away from the charity and thoughtfulness of the owner. Just completely cool.
It reminded me of what my wife and I saw on a visit to Japan. In Tokyo, a businessman walking down the street – suit, tie and briefcase – stopped to pick up a stray piece of paper on the sidewalk and deposit it in a nearby trash can.
Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a few more people like this in the world? OK, I know we’ll never convert everybody, maybe not even a lot of people. But how about just a few more thoughtful and considerate people to take the edge off the brutish rudeness that is so pervasive today?
Mr. Motorcycle Driver, I salute you. The world could sure use more people like you.
Friday, November 27, 2009
On being an optimist
I was asked the other day what it takes to be a rebooter. I think the single most important requirement is optimism.
An optimist has a strong sense that whatever path he or she takes, it’s going to work out fine. Part of the reason, I believe, is that an optimistic person works harder at making things turn out right than a pessimist. When you are sure things are going to hell, they usually do. I don’t know what the actual correlation is, but my instinct tells me it’s a strong one.
It takes more courage to be an optimist when the going is tough. I was moved to look up some quotes on optimism. Here are the best ones I’ve found so far:
For myself I am an optimist - it does not seem to be much use being anything else. – Winston Churchill.
Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence. –Helen Keller.
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. Winston Churchill.
I’m not suggesting that being an optimist will land you a job. But I would suggest that pessimism is a less effective option!
An optimist has a strong sense that whatever path he or she takes, it’s going to work out fine. Part of the reason, I believe, is that an optimistic person works harder at making things turn out right than a pessimist. When you are sure things are going to hell, they usually do. I don’t know what the actual correlation is, but my instinct tells me it’s a strong one.
It takes more courage to be an optimist when the going is tough. I was moved to look up some quotes on optimism. Here are the best ones I’ve found so far:
For myself I am an optimist - it does not seem to be much use being anything else. – Winston Churchill.
Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence. –Helen Keller.
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. Winston Churchill.
I’m not suggesting that being an optimist will land you a job. But I would suggest that pessimism is a less effective option!
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Reinvention of self -- again
Three years ago I did a collateral reinvention when I started teaching an online course in Crisis Communications at the University of Maryland University College.
This has turned out to be a very satisfying reboot. I’d always harbored a desire to teach, and UMUC is a great place to realize this goal. While I would still like to try the classroom in-person mode, teaching online has quite a few advantages that in-person classes do not have. Asynchronous teaching and learning can be very convenient for both the teacher and the student.
This fall I’m branching out yet again, adding a new subject to teach in addition to Crisis Communications. The new subject is Intercultural Communications and Leadership. The material looks very interesting and challenging, and I’m looking forward to engaging with a new set of students in a different academic discipline.
Nancy J. Adler, author of International Dimensions of Organizational Behavior, one of the textbooks we’ll be using, frames the teaching task this way in her first chapter:
“Focusing on global strategies and management approaches from the perspective of people and culture allows us to understand the influence of national and ethnic cultures on organizational functioning. Rather than becoming trapped within the commonly asked (and unfortunately misleading) question of whether organizational dynamics are universal or culturally specific, this book focuses on the crucially important questions of when and how to be sensitive to culture.”
The company I spent most of my corporate career working for – Pacific Gas & Electric – had only minimal international operations, but my consulting career has carried me into several large organizations that operate around the world. I get a firsthand look at the interplay of communications and culture almost every day. The world is now the business arena. As Adler puts it:
Managing the global enterprise and modern business management have become come synonymous. The terms international, multinational, transnational, and global can no longer be relegated to a subset of organizations or to a division within the organization. Definitions of success now transcend national boundaries. In fact, the very concept of domestic business may have become anachronistic. Today “the modern business enterprise has no place to hide. It has no place to go but everywhere.”
I feel certain that the teacher in this course is going to learn as much as the students. Considering who the teacher is, probably a lot more.
This has turned out to be a very satisfying reboot. I’d always harbored a desire to teach, and UMUC is a great place to realize this goal. While I would still like to try the classroom in-person mode, teaching online has quite a few advantages that in-person classes do not have. Asynchronous teaching and learning can be very convenient for both the teacher and the student.
This fall I’m branching out yet again, adding a new subject to teach in addition to Crisis Communications. The new subject is Intercultural Communications and Leadership. The material looks very interesting and challenging, and I’m looking forward to engaging with a new set of students in a different academic discipline.
Nancy J. Adler, author of International Dimensions of Organizational Behavior, one of the textbooks we’ll be using, frames the teaching task this way in her first chapter:
“Focusing on global strategies and management approaches from the perspective of people and culture allows us to understand the influence of national and ethnic cultures on organizational functioning. Rather than becoming trapped within the commonly asked (and unfortunately misleading) question of whether organizational dynamics are universal or culturally specific, this book focuses on the crucially important questions of when and how to be sensitive to culture.”
The company I spent most of my corporate career working for – Pacific Gas & Electric – had only minimal international operations, but my consulting career has carried me into several large organizations that operate around the world. I get a firsthand look at the interplay of communications and culture almost every day. The world is now the business arena. As Adler puts it:
Managing the global enterprise and modern business management have become come synonymous. The terms international, multinational, transnational, and global can no longer be relegated to a subset of organizations or to a division within the organization. Definitions of success now transcend national boundaries. In fact, the very concept of domestic business may have become anachronistic. Today “the modern business enterprise has no place to hide. It has no place to go but everywhere.”
I feel certain that the teacher in this course is going to learn as much as the students. Considering who the teacher is, probably a lot more.
Friday, September 4, 2009
Tag, you're out!
A while back, I wrote somewhere (I thought it was in this blog, but I can’t find it) that the creation of RebootYou.com was a rebooting for me, and I needed to learn how to manage a website.
Well, this summer I decided that the time had come to quit procrastinating and learn HTML and XHTML so I could do my own tinkering with http://www.rebootyou.com/. People told me, “Sure, you can learn it. I learned it, so surely you can.”
So I enrolled in “Publish on Web Using HTML/XHTML” at Foothill College. It was an online course, a delivery method with which I’m familiar because I teach an online course at the University of Maryland University College. I was excited about learning something new, and about being on the student end of an online course.
I got into it, and early on I discovered that the people who invented the web were smarter than I thought. Way smarter. These languages are not simple. And they are mercilessly unforgiving. Make one mistake in an opening or closing tag (don’t ask) and HTML simply refuses to perform. It just sits there, lines and lines of code on your computer, and because you left out one punctuation mark or got some tiny part of the syntax wrong, it does nothing.
Talk about user unfriendly. I felt it was user hostile!
To make a long story short, when I bombed the mid-term I realized that I had bitten off more than I had time to chew at this particular moment, so I withdrew from the course. Licking my wounds, I left the field of combat and said, “OK, I’ll come back another day.”
A month or so later, in a completely unrelated development, I was participating in a virtual meeting with a person who is an expert in HTML and XHTML, and we were discussing modifications to a work-related website. I could see his computer screen on my laptop. At a certain point he began writing new code to change the look of the page.
There, before my very eyes, I saw a person writing HTML as fluently and easily as I am writing English in this post. More than that, he was thinking in HTML, the way fluent translators can think in second and third languages. It rolled across the screen, all the tags and colons and semicolons and quotation marks and styles, marching across the virtual page in perfect order and form. He clicked “publish” and voila! There was the web page, looking exactly how he had told it to look.
It was a beautiful thing to see (OK, beautiful to me). To watch someone do so easily and so effortlessly what I had struggled with so mightily was both amazing and humbling.
Bottom line: I have a whole new appreciation for the people who do web design and creation. A huge appreciation. I learned my limitations. I learned that not every rebooting enterprise is a good idea. In truth, I can’t do everything.
Some things are better left to the experts. And HTML and XHTML are two of them!
Well, this summer I decided that the time had come to quit procrastinating and learn HTML and XHTML so I could do my own tinkering with http://www.rebootyou.com/. People told me, “Sure, you can learn it. I learned it, so surely you can.”
So I enrolled in “Publish on Web Using HTML/XHTML” at Foothill College. It was an online course, a delivery method with which I’m familiar because I teach an online course at the University of Maryland University College. I was excited about learning something new, and about being on the student end of an online course.
I got into it, and early on I discovered that the people who invented the web were smarter than I thought. Way smarter. These languages are not simple. And they are mercilessly unforgiving. Make one mistake in an opening or closing tag (don’t ask) and HTML simply refuses to perform. It just sits there, lines and lines of code on your computer, and because you left out one punctuation mark or got some tiny part of the syntax wrong, it does nothing.
Talk about user unfriendly. I felt it was user hostile!
To make a long story short, when I bombed the mid-term I realized that I had bitten off more than I had time to chew at this particular moment, so I withdrew from the course. Licking my wounds, I left the field of combat and said, “OK, I’ll come back another day.”
A month or so later, in a completely unrelated development, I was participating in a virtual meeting with a person who is an expert in HTML and XHTML, and we were discussing modifications to a work-related website. I could see his computer screen on my laptop. At a certain point he began writing new code to change the look of the page.
There, before my very eyes, I saw a person writing HTML as fluently and easily as I am writing English in this post. More than that, he was thinking in HTML, the way fluent translators can think in second and third languages. It rolled across the screen, all the tags and colons and semicolons and quotation marks and styles, marching across the virtual page in perfect order and form. He clicked “publish” and voila! There was the web page, looking exactly how he had told it to look.
It was a beautiful thing to see (OK, beautiful to me). To watch someone do so easily and so effortlessly what I had struggled with so mightily was both amazing and humbling.
Bottom line: I have a whole new appreciation for the people who do web design and creation. A huge appreciation. I learned my limitations. I learned that not every rebooting enterprise is a good idea. In truth, I can’t do everything.
Some things are better left to the experts. And HTML and XHTML are two of them!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
