Author Archives: Rusty Rueff

About Rusty Rueff

Rusty Rueff, author of purposed worKING. Rusty Rueff is the former Chairman Emeritus of The GRAMMY Foundation in Los Angeles. He most recently completed the successful 16 month leadership role as Coordinating National Co-Chair for Technology for Obama (T4O) for the reelection of President Obama and ten-years of Board service and President of the Board of Trustees of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Corporately, most recently Rueff was the Chief Executive Officer at SNOCAP, Inc. until the acquisition of the company by imeem, Inc. in April 2008. Before joining SNOCAP in 2005, he was Executive Vice President of Human Resources at Electronic Arts (EA) from 1998 until 2005. He was also with the PepsiCo companies for more than ten years, with the Pratt & Whitney division of United Technologies for two years, and in commercial radio as an on-air personality for six years. Rusty holds an M.S. in counseling and a B.A. in radio and television from Purdue University. In 2003 he was named a distinguished Purdue alumnus, and he and his wife, Patti, are the named benefactors of Purdue’s Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Visual and Performing Arts. He is a corporate director of Glassdoor.com and runcoach. He is the co-founder and Executive Committee Member of T4A.org, serves on the Founding Circle of The Centrist Project and a founding Board Member of The GRAMMY Music Education Coalition. He is also the co-author of the book Talent Force: A New Manifesto for the Human Side of Business. Rusty and his wife, Patti, reside in Hillsborough, CA and Charlestown, R.I.

day 2257: White Space

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“Before daybreak the next morning, Jesus got up and went out to an isolated place to pray.”

Today, Microsoft will make an announcement that they are entering into the business of providing internet wi-fi to those rural areas where there isn’t access and to homes and structures where current wi-fi technology fails because of wall density or material blockages like steel and appliances. I am all too familiar with the latter and have just completed installation of new mesh technology to try and alleviate these issues.  What Microsoft (MSFT) wants to do is utilize spectrum of unused television broadcast bands to carry wi-fi signals.  This part of the spectrum is called “White Space” and many have tried to figure out how to turn this part of unused frequencies into something productive.  White Space has just been sitting there, waiting to be captured, so why not for this use?  Might be something to it and MSFT may be the ones to benefit.  This should make us consider what yet not thought of opportunities there might be for the “white spaces” in our businesses and organizations? Assets not fully utilized are like airplanes that are sitting on the ground.  Not a lot of value in that.

We each also have “white space” in our lives. I recently bought a Best Self Journal that encourages you to plan and schedule every waking moment.  At first this seems a daunting task but after a while you get the hang of it.  The theory about the scheduling is to capitalize on the “white space” that before might have been wasted just because there was no plan for what to do with those extra hours or minutes.  God asks each day to consider what we will do with our “white space” for Him?  Take a quick look at your calendar today and consider what you can do with the unscheduled time to draw closer to Him! There is a lot of value in that!

Reference: Mark 1:35 (New Living Translation)