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 853: The Interest Graph

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“I love all who love me. Those who search will surely find me.”

It’s been at least two years ago now when Bill Gurley, a venture capitalist from Benchmark Capital, and Max Levchkin, one of the founders of Pay Pal, sat on a panel together and defined the “next big thing” as the “Interest Graph”. What we have known to date has been the “Social Graph”. This was MySpace and now is Facebook, LinkedIn, Tagged, Google+, etc.; the connection of our “friends” and the ability to share, publish and converse across a network. Certainly this is compelling enough to have created all of the companies above. But what happens when we have connected with everyone who matters and there aren’t any more old high school, college and lost work acquaintances that would be meaningfully additive to our lives if we were to reconnedt? Then what? That’s where we have gotten to and thus the rise of the “interest graph”. Pinterest has successfully blown up because it doesn’t run on the social graph, but cuts across interests. And Pinterest is not alone as we are seeing new interest graph services arriving weekly. We’d be well served to understand and follow this next trend as each of our businesses and services fit into someone’s interest graph and finding the intersection between what we provide and what our consumers are passionate and interested in, opens up an all new way to connect with them.

This is simple, but complex; Jesus rolled together for us in Himself the ultimate search engine, social network and interest graph. Stay with me. He said to us, “Seek first the Kingdom of God”. He said to us, “Go into the world and share the Good News”. He said, “No man comes to the Father but through me”. See! Search/Seek, Share/Social Network, I am the Way/your interest! As believers we have found Him. He then expects us to share His Word and message to all, especially those closest to us as our neighbors. And, he asks us to make Him our first and foremost interest and then to fellowship with those who share the same interest in Him. I am constantly amazed at how we can find all that we work, live and do, right back in the messages and the life of Jesus. Let us finish this week strong knowing that our interest graph is alive, well and aligned!

Reference: Proverbs 8:17 (New Living Testament)