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 2596: Voice Activation

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“Meanwhile, the boy Samuel served the Lord by assisting Eli. Now in those days messages from the Lord were very rare, and visions were quite uncommon.”

When voice recognition first came on the scene, it was cool.  But, when voice activation arrived it felt like magic and it will feel more and more so in the future.  “Alexa”, “Siri” and “Okay Google” are all listening, just waiting to be activated to serve our requests and answer our questions. It’s just the earliest of the first inning and we won’t be able to even imagine what can be voice activated in the future.  I’m pretty sure the car will start and take us where we want to be, all by voice activation.  And I’m pretty sure we will compute in real-time by voice by just telling our spreadsheets with what we are looking to be calculated.  And yes, all appliances will listen to us for the words they need to cook our meals.  The same is going to come into our companies so the sooner we start to experiment and try new ways to accept voice activation, then the more we will be ahead of the curve as the technology advances….likely faster than we can say it.

Last month, our church had a day long conference for our Kid’s Ministry volunteers.  It was great and one of the best parts was our Pastor, Terry Brisbane, teaching about Eli and Samuel and how Kid’s Ministry volunteers can learn from their account.  One of the things he pointed out that it was uncommon at the time of Samuel and Eli for God to be speaking audibly.  That had happened before but we learned that in those days it was rare to hear from God in this way. Kind of like now. So, when Samuel heard the voice of God, not only did he not know who it was, he didn’t know how to react.  Eli taught him both.  What’s cool also in this story is that yes, we are in a place and time when God doesn’t speak audibly often, but that doesn’t mean He is isn’t there always listening, always waiting to be activated. If we think Alexa, Siri and Okay Google are cool, then we should be amazed and in awe that God listens more closely and with greater care, love and commitment to answer our prayers, whenever or wherever we call upon His name.

Reference: 1 Samuel 3:1 (New Living Translation)