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 1213: Siren Servers

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“Here’s the lesson: Use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends. Then, when your earthly possessions are gone, they will welcome you to an eternal home.”

Jaron Lanier, the Author of “Who Owns the Future” and “You Are Not a Gadget” calls out the “Siren Server” as the evil of technology that is corrupting civilization.  In an interview with San Francisco Magazine he said this about the Siren Server: “It’s the biggest and best computer on a particular network.  They almost always have evil consequences, even though they’re rarely designed with evil intent. A great San Francisco example is Craiglist. Craig is genuinely a sweet guy (something I can personally attest to as well), but even so, Craigslist is destroying newspaper revenues and harming local journalism. The most damaging siren servers are the ones that deal with money.  When you cross a siren server with finance, as happened in the housing bubble, you get the meltdown of the market, “too big to fail,” austerity, and jobless recovery.”  Lanier’s definition of a Siren Server does not have to be just applied to the large-scale.  As each of us become more aware and able to use big-data to disrupt and upend one thing, let’s remember that there is a law of unintended consequences that will create reactions that without long thought, could be more damaging than good.

We must all watch out for the “Siren Servers” in our own lives.  We all have them.  They are the stored up possessions, desires, and longings that are of this world, but not of the Kingdom. On the surface, they are not bad, but when they become the priority, they too can turn into areas of our lives that distance us from Christ and our relationship with Him.  Today, we head back to work after the long weekend.  As we look at “why” we do what we do, then let’s be sure that we have sirens in check and not taking control or overly influencing who we are what we do.

Reference: Luke 16:9 (New Living Translation)