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interview with Randi Zuckerberg, Entrepreneur, December 22, 2014 Her formula: Work. Sleep. Family. Fitness. Friends. Pick three. Also offers a list of technologies that are useful as the parent of two young children, entrepreneur, careerwoman, etc.

Blog post by Lisa Lane in her (Online) Teaching Blog, June 25, 2011 She reviews Pink's book on A Whole New Mind. Excerpt: "Accumulation -> Meaning Pink says the predominance of the baby boomer mentality means that the goal of accumulating meterial goods is changing to the desire to find meaning in life, a kind of "post-materialism"." For each chapter on these aptitudes, Pink provides resources and tips to develop your own brain along the new lines. Thus we go from theory in Chapter 1 to a series of storied examples, then each chapter ends with self-help advice. (It's already pretty light - I find it very funny that there's a "Summarized for Busy People" version available.) But the mental yoga commercial was a distraction from the main idea. What's significant here is that right-brained, big picture, contextual, design-based thinking will likely be increasingly respected in our culture.

Facebook exec on women and leadership, and having it all. Her philosophy is: "believe in yourself, give it your all, and don't doubt your ability to combine work and family and thus edge yourself out of plum assignments before you even have a baby." I will purchase the book and read it!

new book by one of the execs of Facebook (after leaving Google)

A community of adjuncts for adjunct teaching at colleges that uses crowdsourcing to collect data for the field, research issues, and get and give advice. Something like this could be adapted to provide value for other part-time workers be they professional or not, such as baby boomers shifting into retirement (what would such a site or community be called?), contractors, etc.

Fascinating article on Baylor research on how internal social networking sites supported and managed within the workplace helps newcomers (younger people usually) to connect and learn from each other, interact directly with more senior people, and inadvertently cause problems for middle managers who did not want to mentor new hires and who did not necessarily have the social/technology proficiencies to participate in the SNS, Science Daily, 1/29/2013. Their conclusions showed that a "company can improve morale and reduce turnover." Researchers are Hope Koch, Baylor, Dorothy Leidner, Ph.D., Ferguson Professor of Information Systems at Baylor; and Ester Gonzalez from Washington State University. Excerpt: he study centered on a financial institution's efforts to reduce IT employee turnover by starting a social and work-related online networking site. Under the supervision of executives, the IT new hires developed and managed the site's content. Since most new hires had moved hundreds of miles to start their new jobs with the institution, they initially used the social pages as an introduction to the community. After a year or so with the organization, the more senior new hires began using the system to acclimate and mentor incoming new hires. All study respondents worked in the institution's IT department and included new hires, middle managers and executives. With less than three years of experience, most new hires and interns were men between 21 and 27 years old. The middle managers and executives were baby boomers or members of generation X. The internal social networking site helped the new hires build social capital in several ways, according to Koch. "It gave them access to people who could provide useful information and new perspectives and allowed them to meet more senior new hires and executives. These relationships set the new hires at ease during work meetings, helped them understand where to go for help and increased their commitment to the financial

Development of Next Avenue by PBS, a new internet-based forum to engage baby boomers before they become decrepit. Excerpt: Next Avenue, PBS' first venture to begin on the Internet rather than broadcast TV, was conceived and developed at Twin Cities Public Television (TPT) in St. Paul.

Interesting article published 1/6/2014 on Second Acts for baby boomers. Quotes Marc Freedman, Elizabeth Isele (who lived in ME for a long time), and mentions Bevan Rogel. The Boomerworks online service for matching BBs with work opportunities is very interesting--wonder how they are doing? And whether we should try to ally with them? "In 1998, living in Maine, Isele created CyberSeniors, a multilingual nonprofit computer training company that eventually trained more than 28,000 seniors in 24 states. She's led numerous nonprofits over the decades and is now pushing public policy changes and forging connections between organizations to create an "entrepreneur ecosystem." That ecosystem is flourishing in Sarasota. Sarasota's Institute for the Ages, established in 2009 to change the conversation about aging as one of deficit and decline to one about enhancing lives, is a lab for companies and services that want to tap into the needs of older adults. In late 2013, the Institute launched Boomerswork.com, a web-based network to connect freelancers with companies seeking seasoned professionals for project-based work. The program started in Canada and the Institute is the first organization to bring it to the U.S. When the Institute convenes a national convention here in February, entrepreneurship and encore careers will be a large part of the agenda. In addition to a keynote address by Freedman, Isele is leading a workshop on entrepreneurship with Bevon Rogel, who runs a Freedman-related Encore Academy in St. Petersburg to help seniors find meaningful work. For Southwest Florida, which has one of the highest concentrations of seniors in the nation, the idea of an "encore" seems natural. As the rest of the country and world grays, branding this life stage as one that brings years, or potentially decades, more productivity and meaning to life has become an imperative."

Commencement speeches at different colleges, June 15, 2014 Harvey Mudd College Beth Shapiro, evolutionary biologist "Your unique education has prepared you for careers at the cutting edge of innovation. This is both good news and bad news. It's good news because you're probably going to find a job, it will pay well, and it will be intellectually fulfilling. It's bad news because whatever you thought you were training for when you started this exercise might not actually exist anymore. Five years ago, when you guys were deciding where to go to college, there were very few mobile-app developers or big-data architects, and there certainly weren't any chief listening officers for social media outlets. It's hard to imagine where the next five years will go, but it's kind of fun to do so. ... Who knows, but you guys are going to be among the people that are actually making it happen. And it'll be awesome, as long as you're willing to take some risks and step outside of your comfort zone. When an opportunity arises, take it." UNC at Chapel Hill Atul Gawande, doctor and writer "Ultimately, it turns out we all have an intrinsic need to pursue purposes larger than ourselves, purposes worth making sacrifices for. People often say, 'Find your passion.' But there's more to it than that. Not all passions are enough. Just existing for your desires feels empty and insufficient, because our desires are fleeting and insatiable. You need a loyalty. The only way life is not meaningless is to see yourself as part of something greater: a family, a community, a society. ... the search for purpose is really a search for a place, not an idea. It is a search for a location in the world where you want to be part of making things better for others in your own small way. It could be a classroom where you teach, a business where you work, a neighborhood where you live. The key is, if you find yourself in a place where you stop caring - where your greatest conce

Interesting article by Megan Hughes, March 23, 2015 on how inventers are racing to meet the needs of baby boomers with personal behavior tracking/assessment devices (Fitbit and others) to help boomers enjoy good health for as long as possible. Boomers are afraid of losing their independence according to market assessments that drive new tech development for this age group.

Intuit report from 2010 that speaks to demographic trends ( including digitally savvy kids with global grid; baby boomers gray to go into unretirement); she-economy; social trends (social networks via web and mobile platforms, localism, individuals shoulder the risk); economic trends (including "work shifts from full-time to free agent employment" and niche markets); ubiquity of technology (working in the cloud; data criticality; "social and mobile computing connect and change the world").

Mary Meeker's annual report on trends. Slides 109-112 on millennials work behavior and expectations and what they value are very interesting--training and development, flexible work hours, cash bonuses. Buy personal technology and use it in the workplace. Millennials much more likely to be on demand workers (4$%) than gen x, baby boomers, or mature workers. Slide 126 is on freelancer categories. Slide 127 is on how quickly freelancers can get work from internet. Slide 128 shows internet enabling commerce such as ebay Etsy, airbnb, upwork, uber, thumbtack, soundcloud, and stripe.

Great short YouTube video via twitter on the joy of trying something new, the joy of failure, and the joy of practice = learning. Mike Wesch does a handstand for his students to show he is learning how to do them, then shows his young son George learning to climb down a stair step. Fun, yet gets the point across that failure is a big part of learning, as is practice.

Margaret Manning interviews John Tarnoff, reinvention guy who writes for Huffington Post Reinvention each week. Our initial challenge is our mindset and finding out who we are now after 55 or 50 years of living. Then reframing who we are to avoid or discard stereotypes of old-aging ideas.

blog by Rachel Toor, February 2, 2015. Exactly how it is with blogging sometimes (which I should be writing even as I write this instead)

new study on impact of millennials in workforce--want to use technology for connecting, communicating, and collaborating in much greater numbers than baby boomers do

summary of main findings from just released CompTIA study on millennials' expectations of technology, telecommuting in the workplace, etc. 

nice post by Lauren Levine on her progression in life to her 60+ years to realize a "greater and richer understanding" of things that matter.

announcement on peer support groups on Facebook for Nonprofit staff members and EDs of nonprofits

A client of mine is closing in on his 61st birthday - He's a baby boomer. He's also embarking on an amazing journey, leaving a sort-of safe corporate job to jump back into the start-up pool. Risky? You bet. But informing his decision is the knowledge that he is a [...]

drop in boomer age group for volunteering, they are wanting to use their career skills. BEST in Hollywood, FL is working to create a focused engagement: 50 boomer volunteers to train 500 unemployed and underemployed people and run a job fair within 18 months