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 2381: Who Will Have The Last Word?

purposed worKING No Comments

“These tablets were God’s work; the words on them were written by God himself.”

Farhad Manjoo of the New York Times doesn’t predict such great things for this blog.  He says, “”Reading prose on a screen is going out of fashion.”  You know what?  As much as hate to admit it, he’s probably right.  Come October of this year, purposed worKING will be 10 years old.  At the time when I started this blog, blogging was something not everyone did.  We’d only had an iPhone for a few months and it was still years away from anything that was voice activated.  And according to Manjoo, over 70 million Americans listen to podcasts, we spend 2 hours a day watching online video, 800 million people have Instagram accounts and hang on it for more than 30 minutes a day and over $9 Billion will be spent on original audio and video content. And finally, he predicts that 2020 is the year that over 50% of our online searches will be done by voice.  So, what does this tell us?  Well, it tells me that it’s time to be thinking hard about how we must reshape ourselves if we want to reach our subscribers, consumers and customers. I don’t think we will evolve into a people who won’t read, but since the beginning of time we have liked to see and hear and then tell others about what we have experienced and technology is going to make that easier and easier to happen. The more it does, the more we are all going to have to adopt and adapt.  Otherwise, and not so positively in this case, we might end up with the last word.

What does this mean for us who spend time in God’s Word daily as part of our walk with Him?  I am Bible reader, but there are those who know the Bible as well, or better than me, who hide His word within their hearts because they listened and learned through an audio (or maybe a video) version of The Bible.  How we consume God’s Word(s) will change, but His Word will always be a constant.  If we are struggling with the changes around us and wondering where to look or listen next, we can be comforted that His lasting Word is a place to always return.

Reference:  Exodus 32:16 (New Living Translation)