Thursday, April 9, 2009

What's retirement? Several writers like to worry about a coming shortage of engineers with the retirement of our generation. Here is a podcast interview on Technation with Dr. Moira Gunn who interviews psychologist and author Dr. Ken Dychtwald, about re-writing the script for aging, especially in these economic times. His studies over the past 35 years are revealing about what retirement is and could be all about. Most people find that they can't retire and just play golf. I bet there is a role for all those engineers to continue to use their expertise and knowledge for many years in a part-time, consultative basis. This could also be a way to train the next generation of engineers. 10:24:49 AM    comment []

Marketing ideas I've recently run across a couple of interesting things for marketers and PR people. First is an IT Conversations podcast interview from Jon Udell's Interviews with Innovators featuring business analytics guru Seth Grimes. "Seth Grimes is a business intelligence expert with a special interest in text analytics. In this conversation with host Jon Udell, he discusses how a new breed of tools is enabling companies to build 'voice of the customer' applications that extract useful signals from the noisy chatter that's erupting everywhere online." Second is a blog post from Robert Scoble with pointers for PR people in his usual combative style. But some good points. I wish PR people who don't have a clue would read this blog (knowing that most of the PR people who do have a clue are the readers). Anyway, I've used some of these ideas before, such as knowing your editors, making friends by being helpful and not a pest, and cluing them in to what's important to their readers, not just trying to get any mention anywhere at any time. 10:18:20 AM    comment []

Road Warrior Tips Travel a lot? I do, in fact I have two trips coming up yet this month. Jeremiah has some tips for travelers. Two cool ones--text yourself your car location in the airport parking lot. A commenter added--use your camera in your phone to take a picture of where it is, and also of your rental car. That's a good one. Last trip I thought I had a red car--it was white. Red was the week before. <sheesh> 10:12:00 AM    comment []