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 671: The Cloud

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“Now whenever the cloud lifted from the Tabernacle, the people of Israel would set out on their journey, following it.”

Everywhere you turn, there is talk of “The Cloud”. Amazon made a splash a few years ago when they introduced their cloud services. Salesforce.com is built in the cloud. Box.net markets themselves on the cloud. Apple has put their own name on it with, the “iCloud”. It used to be that clouds meant bad weather, or the things that blocked the sun. We counseled people who had their “head in the cloud”. But today, business is moving into the cloud and it’s the billions of dollar idea. The cloud we are talking about is actually a set of servers that allow for a company or user to not have to have clients and servers to run applications and software. This is a big deal for developers who now don’t have to expend money or resources on running their own hardware. For users it puts many applications anywhere that we couldn’t get to before unless we were at our own PC. We don’t have to understand all of the intricacies of new technology, but it is good that we stay current on where the technology is going and how it can apply in our business. If an organization or business today doesn’t explore cloud computing then they are likely to miss out on some real enhancements.

The Bible is full of accounts of clouds and the metaphors that come with them. From the clouds came the rainbow that is a lasting promise today from God. God’s voice came from the cloud declaring that Jesus was His Son. Jesus left the earth in a cloud as His disciples watched. The people of Israel found their way through the desert by following the cloud that would tell them it was time to move on in their journey. God was in all of these clouds! There a real clouds and there are the metaphors that teach us lessons. As another daily worKING reminder of who has given us this opportunity to bring glory to God, let’s let ourselves be triggered back to think about our Lord when we are hearing about, learning and using our new technology definition of “The Cloud”.

Reference: Exodus 40:35-37 (New Living Testament)