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 1099: Emoji Stickers

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“No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.”

We started with a condensed set of letter and characters that would add on an expression of our feelings to our words.  Even though the typewriter was able to give us an 🙂 we didn’t really adopt these until the age of text messaging when we were either limited by characters because of cost or space.  We became familiar with LOLs.  Today, even the oldest of texters know what a handful of these mean and they use them to add on or clarify their expressions.  But, now we are going even further.  There are apps that we can get entire catalogues of emoticon and animated GIFs.  I’ve even started to see companies add these into their advertising.  What we use these symbols and images to do is to expand our expression and to bring the message home even clearer.  Long before the digital age we knew that a picture was worth a 1000 words.  Nothing has changed while everything has changed.  How we stay on top of this is important in how we relate to those who are communicating and expressing in different ways than words.

As I was thinking about this topic, I was reminded that in the Old Testament, when we expressed ourselves to God it came with requirements of actions and sacrifice with many forms of that expression.  In many cases, God and His prophets were very specific with what those expressions were to be. God was asking us to go beyond our words and what was inside of our minds.  We were to make outward expressions of our commitment to Him.  When Jesus came for us, God said that Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice and He didn’t require or ask for those same type of expressions but He instead delivered God’s love and the Holy Spirit into us for us to be the expressions for Him.  We are like God’s emoji stickers, each day bringing to life His love and grace to others.  In a way we are translating God’s language and expression to others through our lives and examples.  Each day we live it out and then others copy us and take it further.  That is, as you know, a big responsibility and one that should not be taken lightly.  If we were to take stock of what kind of “stickers” we are being for God today, are we sure that we would want them being spread around?  Let’s stop and think about it today.

Reference: 1 John 4:12 (New Living Translation)