Future Tense

Via Instapundit, an interesting new blog from Corante, Future Tense.  All about the modern work place and how it is evolving and adapting to new trends, technologies and economic factors.

It will be interesting to see how FutureTense deals with an aging work force.

Most stories about our aging population are depressing even as they underscore the need to prepare for an onslaught of boomers or the wealth that can be made in catering to them.

So it was refreshing indeed to see BusinessWeek take an optimistic view in Old. Smart. Productive.  Could it be the graying of the workforce is better news than you think?

A recent analysis by BusinessWeek found that the increased productivity of older Americans and higher labor-force participation could add 9% to gross domestic product by 2045 or more than $3 trillion a year.

Of course, that means changing many of our assumptions about older workers.

If society can tap their talents, employers will benefit, living standards will be higher, and the financing problems of Social Security and Medicare will be easier to solve. The logic is so powerful that it is likely to sweep aside many of the legal barriers and corporate practices that today keep older workers from achieving their full productive potential.

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There's no dispute that America is graying. But the solution to the demographic shift is staring us in the face. As Urban Institute senior fellow C. Eugene Steuerle told the House Ways & Means Committee in May: "People in their late 50s, 60s, and 70s have now become the largest underutilized pool of human resources in the economy." By working longer -- and more productively -- boomers will help the U.S. economy thrive even as their personal odometers keep clicking forward.

Are older Americans our only increasing natural resource?  Mark Freedman thinks so too.  He's also written a book about it called ."Prime Time: How Baby-Boomers Will Revolutionize Retirement and Transform America" (Marc Freedman) 

He argues that boomers  have the life experience, time and a psychological need to leave a legacy, to pass on to future generations what they have learned in life.    With stories, anecdotes and examples, Freedman makes a compelling case that boomers who plan to work at least part-time in their retirement, will transform what retirement is all about.

Don't Follow Dell's example

If there ever was a good example of asymmetrical warfare, of a single blogger fighting a large company and drawing other readers and commentaters to his cause, it's Jeff Jarvis's battle with Dell Computer.

Take a look at Dell hell, neverending.

It's everything a company shouldn't do.

John Erickson on a roll

John Erickson has a Southwest Airlines business model for senior housing aimed directly at the middle market.

Once in the middle-income market, we wanted to be the very best provider there was--with more services, more activities, more involvement at the community level. We took the goal of excellence and delivering value and put those two pieces together and as a result, we got the broadest market share of any company in the country.

The two things that drove that success was the 100% refundable entry deposit, which is very attractive to the middle-income market. The other feature was that if you have a basic service package that covers the way people are currently living--main meal, transportation, utilities, all those things--for the same price or less than the cost of living in their own home and yet, if they need it, there is home health support, assisted living, comprehensive nursing or physical therapy all on the campus, then it becomes a decision that people can make more rationally.

Can you incorporate wellness by design?

His Erickson Retirement Communities certainly try to and can boast  that only 1 in 13 residents will need nursing home care, far better than the average of 1 in 4 Americans.

He and his wife recently gave $5 million to fund the Erickson School for Aging Studies at UMBC (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) that he wants to become a feeder for new hires into the Social Security Administration, Medicare and Medicaid. 

Timing is essential because he thinks we will have a massive crisis on our hands in 15 years when boomers start needing elder services unless there is an "army of qualified people."

John Erickson is on a roll.

Erickson, who is CEO of Baltimore-based Erickson Retirement Communities, has big plans. Currently operating 13 projects, he expects to go on a building spree in the next five years that will raise his total number of developments to 40. Erickson started his private company in 1983, scrambling to finance the first senior project. But in the past several years, he has assembled a collection of finance sources, including banks and investment houses such as Morgan Stanley.

Such sophisticated lenders have become convinced that Erickson will benefit from growing markets. Part of what inspires confidence is that Erickson's veteran projects have waiting lists of customers eager to buy. A development in Baltimore currently boasts a list with 1,300 names. “There is a huge demand for the products that we build,” says Erickson.

Google payment, Google video

Is Google bent on dominating everything?  And I don't mean its $304 stock price.

Bambi Francisco says that Google will launch a payment system that would compete with eBay's Pay Pal. 

Charlene Li at Forrester thinks it's most likely a micro-payment system, a Google Wallet, that would give you a subscription pass to access premium content on multiple sites.

Back to Bambi who says Google would be better off with local classifieds, a fine companion to its local service listings.
When I look at the market, I think Bambi might be right. 

Online classifieds were $1.7 billion in 2004
Newspaper classifieds were $16.6 billion.  Most of them local.

Charlene Li explores some business model options for Google video which began accepting uploads in April.  John Battelle confirms that Google will be launching an online video playback feature based on the open source VLC media player.  Most likely the video player will be integrated with their payment program for those videos that are not free.    Soon, independent video producers will have an "alternate universe" for video distribution and playback.

Unseen Beauty

The totally gratuitous beauty of the submicroscopic world is a source of  humbling wonder to me.    Witness these glorious images from the First Art of Science Competition at Princeton University.

Even the words that describe the science of the image are poetic. 

Strange Crystal where beauty describes how mathematics using the "golden mean" can express the seeding of a crystal of a five-fold form rarely seen in nature.

First prize Plasma Table with a dust cloud of silicon micro-spheres

Worm window.  A microscopic nematode looks like the rose window of St. John the Divine.

The Rock Blooms. A slow-moving chemical reaction unfolds in petals.

Mooney Faces. How little information is needed to experience a face.

Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny. In the eight weeks after fertilization, a single human embryo traces our entire evolutionary past.

Gouania lupoloides. a cluster of membracid nymphs sucking juice from the plant while ant-attended.

Variety Bloom

J.D. Lasica posts a very interesting summary of Chris Anderson's talk at Supernova. 

Anderson who coined the term "long tail" is now writing a book about the phenomenon.

Chris: The Long Tail is basically about a variety bloom. We've had a variety bloom for decades in this country, centered on products. Today, there's also an explosion of information about products. So you don't just have variety but you have information about that variety.

Three forces that make for a Long Tail market: (1) the tools of production have been democratized, we've made it easier and easier to make stuff; (2) the Internet has lowered transaction costs so it's easier to buy stuff; (3) finally, there are new ways to connect consumers -- word of mouth, recommendations, search, techniques that drive demand.
"Filters are the most powerful new opportunity in the Long Tail."
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We've had filters in the past, but they've been pre-filters. Now it's about post-filters.
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Pre-filters include Editors, A&R guys, studio execs, buyers. In the post-filter word, it's the marketplace that decides. Post-filters include peers, recommendations, word of mouth, sites like CD Baby, collaborative filtering, mp3 blogs, viral videos.

Boys Lost

"Denial,"  David Wolfe says

Does anyone else have a better explanation why only a reported 10% of marketing dollars go toward 50-plus markets despite the fact that these markets are larger than the 25-49-year-old market and represent two-thirds of all private wealth?

Or maybe they are themselves the Boys Lost in a dream of yesteryear.  Or is the figure of 10% not accurate?

The US Brain Belt.

Boston and San Francisco have more to worry about then India. 

Young people are moving to where they can raise families, afford a house and maybe even a stay- at-home spouse.  That's why there's a burgeoning- US Brain Belt in the mountain, plain and southwest states.  Via American Digest.

The Japanese have a word for this uniquely American strength—sokojikara. This is their term for our resiliency and ability to recover in new and often unexpected ways. They view it as resting on three pillars—our vast natural resources, our deep human resources thanks to our large population and continuing stream of immigrants, and our wide-open economy which is constantly reinventing itself. With these assets and its pioneering spirit, America is often alone among the great advanced industrial powers in possessing an ability to constantly remake itself afresh.
In the latest example of this, America has experienced a form of geography-based renewal over the last several decades. Population and entrepreneurial energy has shifted away from the old centers of the Northeast and upper Midwest to burgeoning new centers in the South, West, and Southwest. This has changed the map of American innovation, and it has transformed the world.
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The remarkable success of places like Silicon Valley, Seattle, and Austin in generating new jobs and opportunities over the last generation is well known. But today the ability of these places to keep expanding is severely limited by rising housing costs, growing congestion, and often strong anti-business political environments. The resulting seismic re-ordering became noticeable after the collapse of the dotcom bubble. Since 2001, San Jose (Silicon Valley) has experienced a 23 percent drop in information jobs—the loss of some 200,000 positions. Boston’s information sector has shrunk by 22 percent, San Francisco’s by 17 percent, Austin’s by 13 percent.
------Census figures tell us some of the story. Last year, North Dakota—which has been losing population for decades— gained people. Massachusetts, the original hotbed of America’s technological revolution, suffered population loss.
On the education front as well, the Brain Belt is gaining ground. State universities in the hinterlands, like the University of Nevada, Brigham Young, and Utah State, are growing at a furious pace. Enrollment at North Dakota State in Fargo has jumped over 30 percent since 1999. The graduating classes in New England, meanwhile, are stagnant and in Massachusetts they are declining.
None of this suggests that MIT and Harvard are about to be outshone by Boise State, or that Silicon Valley is about to become a branch office of the Red River Valley. But something very important, and promising, is happening as economic invigoration stretches through the great American heartland.

CyberAngel

Coming soon Lojack for your laptop

Our new banner

It began with my search for an image that could represent the whole of a human life which I wrote about in Ship of Pearl, Coils of Time over at Legacy Matters. 

I wanted the image to show different stages of life spiraling into increasing states of consciousness.  I wanted it to represent entelechy  - that vital force that directs an organism toward full realization of its potential, a force that drives us all.  I wanted both the acorn and the oak.

The first image I used was a neutron radiography by W.Fecych which I found at the MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory.  The new images come from From Earth to Sky, a gallery featuring the watercolor works by physician artist Zen Chuang.

I was so impressed with his watercolors and his story that I wrote about him at the Business of Life in Fill Our Lives with Beauty.  Zen lives an integral life, combining art and medicine, science and humanism.  He's an example of someone who's found his purpose and meaning in life and is living his legacy.   

Someone once said that the purpose of life is to live a life of purpose.  Living a life of meaning and purpose, living a legacy and making your legacy a gift to the world is what Estate Legacy Vaults is all about.  Organizing your vital information and documents in ESOL is the first step, freeing you to focus on your purpose in life and the legacy you will leave.

I am so pleased Zen Chuang has kindly given us permission to use his images in our banner. 

Taking Care of Personal Business

The best small and medium companies make it easy for their employees to take care of more than business.

Those companies understand how complex our lives are.  We do some of a personal business at work and we work at home.  They treat people like the human assets they are, trust them to meet corporate goals and make it easier for them to do so, by making their personal lives easier.

The result much happier employees, far less turnover and employees working at their highest level.

Hats off to the 50 top small and medium companies to work for.

Online Anthropology

"We look at the blogosphere as a focus group with 15 million people going on 24/7 that you can tap into without going behind a one-way mirror," says Rick Murray, executive vice president of Edelman, a Chicago public-relations firm

Marketers Scan Blogs for Brand Insights in today's Wall Street Journal.

New technology like Intelliseek's Blogpulse, free online services like Technorati and Yahoo's Buzz together with improved methodology and more expensive technologies such as "natural language processing" help marketers decode what's happening among different demographic groups.

Blog-monitoring services charge big companies $30,000-$100,000/year

Empowering the Bottom

What blogging and other social media look like to the world of main street media.  Chaos at the Door by Terry Heaton
So, let's take a moment to examine what's happening at street level, where the personal media revolution is taking place. Web and politics pioneer, Joe Trippi, made an important observation about it last year:

If information is power, then the Internet, which distributes information democratically to anyone who has access to it, is no longer distributing just information — it's distributing power.

And in a top-down society, it's empowering the bottom. Put more simply—in America, it's empowering the American people.

And the paradox of power is that discontent increases with opportunities for acting on it. The more the bottom is given the tools to make and distribute their own media, the greater their power; the greater their power, the greater their discontent and, along with it, the opportunity for acting on that discontent. This bubbling caldron of energy is profoundly anti-elitist and anti-institution, because the more the bottom surveys the landscape these days, the more they realize that our culture has failed them, and this energy is palpable in the halls of power.

Demographer Hazel Reinhardt presented the Ball State group with evidence of what she calls a "Perfect Storm" of demographic and technological changes impacting the culture. Four demographic shifts will have a profound influence on the media.

• The aging of the population
• Growing racial and ethnic diversity
• The continuing and growing gap between the rich and poor
• Metropolitanization/Regionalization

Dear Mastercard

Loren Steffy has written what we all would like to - Open Letter to my Dearest Creditor  in the Houston Chronicle

Dear Mastercard

This is to inform you of a change in our credit agreement. It has come to my attention that you are unable to keep my credit and debit card information safe.
You recently revealed that data on more than 40 million accounts may have been exposed to fraud because of a security breach at a payment processing company. Information in about 200,000 accounts is known to have been stolen.
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What are we, as consumers, to do? I spent a lot of time over the past few days wrestling with this question, and then the answer came in the mail.  It came in the form of a notice from one of my credit card companies (not you, this time) that had decided to change the terms of the credit agreement and tell me about it after the fact.

It's funny how you guys can't keep track of our account information, but you have no trouble keeping track of the sundry fees you levy against us.You probably see where I'm going with this. What's sauce for us consumer geese is sauce for you, the credit card gander.

Revised agreement

So here goes:

Effective May 1, 2005, any compromise of my data will result in a $50 liability for you, the card issuer, owed to me, the card holder.

Cashing the payment check I sent you last month (which you did) shall constitute your acceptance of this agreement. Subsequent security breaches will compound the fee.

I will spell out the terms of just how much these fees and related costs will escalate as soon as I find a typeface that is small enough.

Failure to comply with these changes will result in finance charges, compounded monthly and based on the average daily balance of the amount lost to fraud.

By the way, I recently incorporated myself in South Dakota, which means I can now engage in usury as much as you can. Therefore, I have selected an annual percentage rate of 28.7 percent. However, failure to make payments will force me to raise this rate to 73.9 percent, just because I can.

And one more thing. I expect my payment to be on my desk by 12:37 p.m. on the day it's due. I'm usually at lunch at that time, so I will consider it late if it's not there by 11:24 a.m. After that, all the previously listed finance charges will apply. The date the payment is mailed is irrelevant.

Also, given the widespread nature of the security problems, I am going to share information with my fellow consumers. If I determine you failed to secure their private account information, I may be forced to enact the terms specified in this agreement even though you did not violate the agreement with me. Call it universal default in reverse.

One more thing

Before I close, let me take a minute to tell you about an exciting new offer: security breach insurance.

For the low, low price of just $45 a month, I will agree to waive the fees described in my new fraud prevention agreement. Finance charges will still apply. I also require a $30 processing fee.  It's a small price for piece of mind. Just think, no longer will you have to worry about the cost of your incompetence. Just think of the savings!

I believe that these changes will greatly enhance our mutual credit experience. I look forward to the benefits of our new and improved relationship.

Fondly,
Your loyal customer.

Year of the Data Breach

It's up to 50 million now.  Fifty million accounts that have been exposed to the possibility of identity fraud in this year of the data breach.

Jonathan Krim explores why in the Washington Post, Ubiquitous Technology, Bad Practices Drive Up Data Theft. 

There's a great graph as well, just click for a large image.

A One Minute Vacation

Don't have time to take a vacation? Click on over to One Minute Vacation and experience 60 seconds to be somewhere else or someone else.

The Quiet American recommends listening with earphones, preferably lying down in a dark room which may be hard unless you work at home.

He has wonderful moments over at his field recordings from Vietnam.

Successful Baboons

As boomers grow older, we can expect more research and information on successful aging and  The Wall Street Journal has already begun with its Journal Report on The Secrets of Successful Aging.

It may surprise you to learn that aging is about a body that doesn't deal well with stress anymore says Robert Sapolsky, a Stanford University neuroendrocrinologist and leading stress researcher.

How well we deal with stress is one of the most significant factors for predicting how well we age.  People who deal well with stress tend to have a lot of social support.

Successful agers are not loners. People who age well tend to be close to extended family and have a strong network of friends and social relationships. Marriage in particular protects men from the perils of aging. (Among women, it doesn't seem to matter if they are married or not, as long as they have other close relationships.)
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In primate studies, relationships also make a difference in the quality of old age. "One of the crappiest positions you can get late in life is to be an old baboon in a troupe where you were once a young baboon," says Dr. Sapolsky of Stanford. The reason: Baboons, particularly high-ranking ones, spend their lives terrorizing those with lower rankings. But rankings slide. Powerful baboons get old, and the young baboons they once terrorized eventually end up in a position to get revenge.

But there is one subset of male baboons that escapes the stress of old age. These are the animals that spent their middle age establishing close relationships with the females in the troupe. Late in life, these baboons get harassed just as much as any other baboon, but they stick around anyway, because they've got a network of nice, female baboons that keep them company, groom them and generally act as a buffer against what would otherwise be a miserable life.

"Connectedness in old age is enormously important," Dr. Sapolsky says.

In sum, be nice to the women in your life and blog.  No better way to stay connected and grow old successfully.

Meeting customer needs

From Tom Brown's Bankstocks  - Gallup on Banking: how Wachovia's focus on meeting customer needs is producing sharply better returns for stockholders.

DUH.

Consumer Power

Steve Rubel  quotes Scott Rafer on how blogs are giving consumers unprecedented power

Blogging itself is the leading indicator of what customer interaction will be like in an always-on internet world, where customers must be listened to because they are easily able to listen to each other. It is easier to find out what individual shippers think of UPS compared to FedEx than it is for me to find the official UPS position on the topic. Treating the broadband-connected customer as a consumer of information, viewer of keywords and clicker of links will be a market-share losing strategy in two or three years.

If you are not thinking about how to make your customer relationships collaborative ones, you're going to miss the boat, the train and the plane.

Over at Tom Peters, Steve Yastrow asks 

How many of your customers would regularly talk about themselves and you as "We," as opposed to "Us" and "Them?"

If you're blogging for your company or small business, I bet you'd get far more "we's" than your competitors.  It's time to get on the same side as your customers.

Case on Revolution

Steve Case, who by simplifying the online experience with AOL made the Internet first accessible to millions of people, is now taking on the health care industry with $500 million of his own money

He aims at nothing less than Revolution, the name of his name of his new company.  Steve Case's New Act: You've Got Revolution.  He did when the Internet was "chaotic and disorganized and, most of all, intimidating" to the average consumer.  Health care in 2005 looks the same to him -chaotic and disorganized and intimidating.

He wants to make money by building and buying businesses in the health care industry that help people take care of themselves. 

Revolution has bought majority stakes in three companies that touch or are intended to touch consumers: Wisdom Media, whose cable and radio networks are devoted to, in the words of the company's Web site, "personal growth, spirituality and purposeful living, health and wellness and sustainability of the earth"; Miraval, a spa and resort north of Tucson that Mr. Case believes could one day be the " Nike of wellness" (the brand, not the goddess of victory); and Exclusive Resorts, a sort of time-share business that calls itself a "luxury residence club."

Six more health care deals are in the offing.

Naked Conversation and Interview

Transparency is one of the things I love most about blogs.  You learn about the writer, what he or she cares about, whether they correct mistakes, how they respond to feedback, those little things which are everything when it comes to building trust.

Shel Israel  is one of those people I've come to trust without ever having met him, simply through his blog and emails.  Since I'm going to the  the Blogher conference at the end of July, I'm looking forward to meeting both him and Scobel, who will be attending and easy to spot in a room full of  women.

I first came across the Red Couch, now named Naked Conversations, when he and Robert Scobel posted chapter one, Blog or Die, in their new book, now title Naked Conversations, how blogs are changing the way businesses talk to customers.    The book itself is being posted chapter by chapter online for feedback in a remarkably transparent, real time experiment in publishing with each chapter only whetting my appetite for the whole thing.  Feedback, conversation and promotion all at the same time.  There you go, another reason for blogs.

I was pleased, honored and delighted to take part in an interview for the book when Shel contacted me.  I'm even more honored  and pleased that he's posted the interview even though it's not going to fit in the planned structure of the book. 

You will learn a lot more about me and what I'm doing and what I think about blogs, if you read the  Interview: Jill Fallon.    If you get the sense that I'd rather talk about other people than myself, you're right, so that's why you should read the interview.

cross-posted at Legacy Matters, Business of Life and Estate Legacy Vaults.

Rubel's 10 Commandments

Steve Rubel, he of micropersuasion fame, lists his 10 commandments for PR professionals in what he calls the Golden Era of Participation.

1) Thou shall listen – Utilize every avenue available to you to listen actively to what your publics have to say and feed it back to the right parties.
2) Remember that all creatures great and small are holy – It doesn't matter if it's the New York Times calling on you or an individual blogger, both have power. Take them all seriously.
3) Honor thy customer – Create programs that celebrate customers and they will celebrate you.
4) Thou shall not be fake – Keep it real; don't hide behind characters and phony IDs.
5) Covet thy customers – Don’t sue your fans. You will alienate them.
6) Thou shall be open and engaging – Involve your customers in the PR process. Invite them to help you develop winning ideas and become your spokespeople.
7) Thou shall embrace blogging – It’s not a fad, it’s here to stay. Be part of it.
8) Thou shall banish corporate speak – People want to hear from you in a human voice. Don’t hind behind corporate speak. It will soon sound like ye olde English.
9) Thou shall tell the truth – If you don’t tell the truth, it will come out anyway.
10) Thou shall thinketh in 360 degrees – Ask not what you can do for your customer, but also what your customer can do for you.

Good rules for every blogger no matter what your persuasion.

Graying Boomers

I must confess that I don't often read the editorials in the Boston Globe, this one, however, caught my eye. 

While baby boomers can be insufferable in many ways, don't expect them to grow older quietly.  When narcissism becomes self-actualization, when meaning and purpose become their lodestars, then we will see their potential realized.    Until then, they are a ripe, rich market.

Graying of America

GET READY for the golden age of the baby boomers. It probably won't be a nostalgia-drenched era of elders patiently accepting the increasing limitations of old age. It's much more likely to be a high-concept, high-tech revolution pushed by people who are staying healthier and living longer -- and getting used to new-fangled products that make logistics easier and lives fuller.

It's a world that governments and businesses have to start preparing for now.

Governor Romney recently hosted a conference on aging that offered a glimpse of this bustling future, including a look at new housing ideas.  One example is the ''naturally occurring retirement community," the phenomenon of people aging in their homes along with other aging neighbors. Community organizations have responded by delivering services to people in these communities, often in apartment buildings where it's easy to place nurses, lawyers, and financial advisers, and easy to use word of mouth to let people know what's available.
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Baby-boomer demands could also mean that one-size-fits-all homes may slip slowly into the past. MIT's architecture department is experimenting with ways to revolutionize home design...... Instead of watching rats in a maze, researchers watch volunteers living in a one-bedroom condominium called PlaceLab. A key question, according to the project website: ''Can technology and architectural design motivate life-extending behavior changes?"

Researchers are looking at how to enhance quality of life to discourage sedentary living, keep people on their medication schedules, and detect health problems quickly by tracking and responding to changes in behavior.

Through its OPEN Prototype House Initiative, MIT is also looking for ways to quickly manufacture affordable prefabricated homes with flexible interiors that can be tailored to meet residents' needs, turning an experiment into a practical idea as quickly as possible.

It's a considerable shift from hoping for sunny, pleasant housing to expecting cutting edge, life-enhancing innovations in services, design, and home construction. These trends dovetail with many people's profound desire to age at home instead of a nursing care facility. Such sweeping change could be part of the baby boomer legacy, good for their ranks and for the spinoffs that could benefit everyone else.

Blogging rules

Via the Big Blog Company comes this comes this handy summary of the common patterns in publicly available corporate blogging policies.

Fredrik Wacka, a Swedish blogger, did the work and has a deeper analysis at his Corporate Blogging Blog.

The Core; all companies

• You’re personally responsible
• Abide by existing rules
• Keep secrets
• Be nice

The Common; approximately half of them

• Add value
• Respect copyright
• Follow the law
• Cite and link
• Discuss with your manager

The Unusual; only one or two companies mention

• You can write on company time
• Our goal
• You may disagree with the boss
• Stop blogging if we say so
• Contact PR

Legal Guide for Bloggers

In what promises to be a great resource for bloggers, a "basic roadmap" to the legal issues we may confront, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has published an online Legal Guide for Bloggers that you will want to bookmark.

HT  Jeff Jarvis at Buzzmachine who says "Bravo"...."Long-needed."

Chasing What's Inside of Myself

" Women often discover their business talent after kids are raised" is the piece by Carol Hymowitz in today's Wall St. Journal.

Here are some highlights.

"Being a leader requires dedication and a single-minded focus, which women often aren't able to have until later in life," says Laura ---Liswood, a senior adviser to Goldman Sachs and the general secretary of the Council of Women World Leaders.
------
In addition, it often takes women longer to believe in themselves enough to seek jobs in which they wield power. "By their 40s and 50s, after observing a few male bosses, women finally begin to say to themselves, 'These guys aren't any smarter than I am."
----
A lot of middle-age women have found their own solution: launching their own businesses. There are 10.6 million women-owned businesses in the U.S., employing 19.1 million people, and two out of three of the new businesses being launched are women-owned. "A lot of these women have worked for big corporations, but at 40 or so when a lot are still stuck in middle management they start thinking, 'I can have more influence and a bigger piece of the pie doing it on my own,' " says Marsha Firestone, founder of the Women Presidents' Organization. The average age of the group's members is 49.

But by far the best quote is from Bonni Lonsbury, founder of Touch Today, a  Denver-based marketing firm.

She focused on raising two sons in her 20s and early 30s. She worked, too, but her husband's sales career required the family to move five times in 14 years. When she applied for a joint law and M.B.A. program, she says, she worried "I wasn't bright enough to get in." But she was among the top in her class and quickly landed a clerkship.
Ms. Lonnsburry decided not to pursue a law career. "I did it to have something to say at cocktail parties," she says. Then, in her late 30s, she suffered a string of losses: Both her parents died, her marriage dissolved and, for a time, her sons went to live with their father.
"I had no money, no job, no family," she says. "But I started confronting everything about myself, and I decided I can't feel afraid anymore, I'm going to feel joy, I'm going to feel prosperous and I'm not wasting another minute."
---
What she enjoys most is creating useful products for customers. "When I was young, I felt I had to be perfect in every way," she says. "But I'm no longer chasing after what others might want of me. I'm chasing what's inside of myself."

"Chasing what's inside of myself" is what middle-aged women do to find new meaning and purpose in their lives.  Companies who want to go after the richest market in America - middle-aged women - must pay attention to what women want.

More Internet delights

30 Things You Didn't Know You Could Do on the Internet.

Like go back in time. The internet archive via the Wayback Machine

Or search the future.  Enter a search term on any bubbling new trend or anything else for that matter at  PubSub

Or travel by kayak.    Aggregating from 100 different travel sites, acting like " in-house travel agency," you toggle and filter until you find just what you want.

Don't know how good they are, but I like the idea of a virtual office manager at smartonline.

Microsoft bans "democracy" in China

Microsoft has agreed to ban the words "democracy" and "freedom" in its new Chinese internet portal, a joint venture  with Shanghai MSN Network Communications Technology.

That portal of course offers free blogging tools with MSN spaces. 

Shameful.  This is worse than censorship. 

HT Roger Simon

I'm betting Mark Steyn is right

The 21st century will be an Anglosphere century, with America, India and Australia leading the way.

India's the place, not China.

Party Poker very rich

All that spam - comment spam and track back spam that drives bloggers mad is making some people very rich. 

Party Poker,  - you certainly know the name as the leading site for online poker - I refuse to link to it - is a Gilbratar-based company that didn't exist 5 years ago.   

Today they announced there going public in the London stock exchange, "planning a flotation amounting from eight to ten BILLION dollars.  Link to press release on PR Web. 

Can't some lawyer dream up a cause of action for all the time party poker has taken from our lives in deleting their commercial spam and  start a class action on behalf of us bloggers?   

Calling Kevin and  Larry  Surely you know of a firm willing to take this on.

Senior Boomer Communes

The Boomer Project is passionate about educating marketers and companies in understanding the new "mature market"

Jerry Seinfeld is over 50. So is Christie Brinkley. Howard Stern. Oprah.

You wouldn't call them "senior citizens," would you? How about 50+? Mature Market?

This year half of all the Baby Boomers, those born between 1946 and 1964, will be 50 or older. Over the next ten years all 78 million Baby Boomers will turn 50. They are responsible for over $2 trillion in consumption and there’s no let up in sight. Most marketers have spent the last 30 years targeting this group, typically called the "18-49 year old" segment. But they are 49 no more. And marketers cannot afford to ignore them.

If you want to keep up with the latest news, you should subscribe to their monthly newsletter.  I know, they really need a blog.  Still, there are great insights that add depth to what we boomers are talking about.  Like this.

Cohabitating to Cohousing
The Return of the Commune  (Sort of)

Over the next 30 years all 76 million Baby Boomers will reach 70 and older. As reported in this newsletter and other places, it is likely Boomers will "age-in-place" and not relocate to Florida or Arizona.

But not all of them will be able to afford independent living, private assisted living or nursing facilities. And just like Boomers aren't anticipating Social Security to cover their nut in the later years, they also doubt Medicare will foot the bill for much in terms of late- life housing and care.

So where will all these Boomer Seniors live? And who will take care of them?

One answer already in the works in a concept imported from Denmark called "cohousing." Cohousing is a small community with 10 to 30 homes, clustered close together, with easy accessible walkways connecting them, and a large community building where some medical facilities are available, as well as a communal dining area.

The residents own their own homes, in most cases, and also have an equal voice in community affairs and decisions. The entire community breaks bread as often as two or three times a week at the community dining hall and everyone is expected to contribute hours monthly to community service.

Most of the 80 existing cohousing communities in the United States today are multi-generational, but Elder Cohousing is the next trend.

You should expect Elder Cohousing to boom as Boomers start considering how they will have to care for themselves during the later stages of life. The idea of being in a community with shared values, shared care, shared meals, shared transportation, and even shared (multi-family) homes has tremendous appeal to older Boomers, who remember the 1950's. And the commune-trying Boomers of the Sixties will embrace the cohousing concept.

Elder cohousing communities will even be retrofitted from exiting neighborhoods, enabling literal "aging-in-place." This may require local jurisdictions to allow multi-family housing in traditional single family home neighborhoods. The point, as the Cohousing Organization points out, isn't to build new buildings, but to create real communities.

Because, as we will all come to learn, it takes a village to care for older Boomers.

Take a look at their latest  issue  and sign up for a subscription.  After all, who doesn't want to make money off the boomers?

Get small. Think Big.

Seth Godin's Small is the new big is so good that I'm excerpting large parts.  Don't miss the whole thing

Big used to matter. Big meant economies of scale. (You never hear about “economies of tiny” do you?) People, usually guys, often ex-Marines, wanted to be CEO of a big company. The Fortune 500 is where people went to make… a fortune.

There was a good reason for this. Value was added in ways that big organizations were good at. Value was added with efficient manufacturing, widespread distribution and very large R&D staffs. Value came from hundreds of operators standing by and from nine-figure TV ad budgets. Value came from a huge sales force.
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And then small happened.

Enron (big) got audited by Andersen (big) and failed (big.) The World Trade Center was a target. TV advertising is collapsing so fast you can hear it. American Airlines (big) is getting creamed by Jet Blue (think small). BoingBoing (four people) has a readership growing a hundred times faster than the New Yorker (hundreds of people).
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Today, little companies often make more money than big companies. Little churches grow faster than worldwide ones. Little jets are way faster (door to door) than big ones.

Today, Craigslist (18 employees) is the fourth most visited site according to some measures. They are partly owned by eBay (more than 4,000 employees) which hopes to stay in the same league, traffic-wise. They’re certainly not growing nearly as fast.

Small means the founder makes a far greater percentage of the customer interactions. Small means the founder is close to the decisions that matter and can make them, quickly.

Small is the new big because small gives you the flexibility to change the business model when your competition changes theirs.

Small means you can tell the truth on your blog.

Small means that you can answer email from your customers.

Small means that you will outsource the boring, low-impact stuff like manufacturing and shipping and billing and packing to others, while you keep the power because you invent the remarkable and tell stories to people who want to hear them.

A small law firm or accounting firm or ad agency is succeeding because they’re good, not because they’re big. So smart small companies are happy to hire them.

A small restaurant has an owner who greets you by name.

A small venture fund doesn’t have to fund big bad ideas in order to get capital doing work. They can make small investments in tiny companies with good (big) ideas.

A small church has a minister with the time to visit you in the hospital when you’re sick.

Is it better to be the head of Craigslist or the head of UPS?

Small is the new big only when the person running the small thinks big.

Don’t wait. Get small. Think big.

Words that should be

In a follow-up to Woot, here are 10 Words that don't exist, but should.  If you have any more, let me know and I'll publish them as a public service for those of us who are too often speechless because we can't find the right word.

1. AQUADEXTROUS (ak wa deks' trus) adj. Possessing the ability to turn the bathtub faucet on and off with your toes.

2. CARPERPETUATION (kar' pur pet u a shun) n. The act, when vacuuming, of running over a string or a piece of lint at least a dozen times, reaching over and picking it up, examining it, then putting it back down to give the vacuum one more chance.

3. DISCONFECT (dis kon fekt') v. To sterilize the piece of candy you dropped on the floor by blowing on it, assuming this will somehow 'remove' all the germs.

4. ELBONICS (el bon' iks) n. The actions of two people maneuvering for one armrest in a movie theater.

5. FRUST (frust) n. The small line of debris that refuses to be swept onto the dust pan and keeps backing a person across the room until he finally decides to give up and sweep it under the rug.

6. LACTOMANGULATION (lak' to man gyu lay' shun) n. Manhandling the "open here" spout on a milk container so badly that one has to resort to the 'illegal' side.

7. PEPPIER (pehp ee ay') n. The waiter at a fancy restaurant whose sole purpose seems to be walking around asking diners if they want ground pepper.

8. PHONESIA (fo nee' zhuh) n. The affliction of dialing a phone number and forgetting whom you were calling just as they answer.

9. PUPKUS (pup' kus) n. The moist residue left on a window after a dog presses its nose to it.

10. TELECRASTINATION (tel e kras tin ay' shun) n. The act of always letting the phone ring at least twice before you pick it up, even when you're only six inches away.

Thanks Phineas Manbottle

Boomers online

You don't have to pay $695 for the emarket report on today's senior market online.  Just read the story

There are 33.2 million people online between the ages of 50 and 64, roughly the same 66% percentage as younger adults.

For many Baby Boomers, the Internet is an essential part of life. As Boomers age, they will force change upon the companies that do business online, just as they have changed other industries at earlier stages of their lives. Financial services, health care and real estate are just a few of the categories that will undergo massive change as Boomers demand online access to information.

"While today's seniors are a cautious bunch online, the next generation of seniors is not," says Ms. Williamson. "They use the Internet at home and at work, and they will carry those usage patterns over into the next phase of their lives."

Even those over 65, the 34% online, the "silver surfers" according the BBC, who never had to use a computer during the working lives are now finding that the Internet is vital.   

Blogs as Filters

One of the things I love about blogs is the good ones, the ones I like, point me to interesting sites and information I most likely would not have found on my own.  Because someone else whose intelligence and "take" I like reads a lot and points to the good stuff, I'm confident that it won't be a waste of time.

Take Tom Peters and his terrific new aggregator called the TP Wire Service

Here are a few gems  I found through it - on blogging, the Internet  and women.

Eight Ways to be a Good Customer.  Good customers make better companies

Yahoo Serious About Employee Blogging  - Posts blogging guidelines

Miami bombshells.  Soon the Red Hats vs.the Bombshells.
We’ve captured the full breadth of what it means to be a woman in the 21st century, and we are exhausted. But – now we’re exhausted together!.  ....Start your own bombshell circle - a gathering of overworked, under-appreciated, guilt- ridden, stressed out women ready to unleash the wild woman inside our souls.

Web-driven entrepreneurs now comprise 25% of all small businesses.  Thank eBay and Google.

Women "better investors than men"  We knew that here, and it's true in the UK as well.  "They take a more balanced and considered view and time and again, it pays dividends."

A Woman's Web

From eMarketer via Yvonne at Lipsticking.

While the ratio of females to males in the general population is expected to hold steady through 2009, that won't be the case on the Internet," says Ms. Williamson. "Cultural, societal and Internet business trends are combining to shift the balance toward women. Because of these factors, eMarketer projects that the female majority online will become more pronounced over the next five years — and that will have a transformative effect on content, commerce and marketing."

"The Internet allows women to get more done in a shorter time; shop, plan trips, look for homes. And it also gives them another way to communicate besides the phone," says Mary Hunt, New Media Catalyst, Interpret-Her. "The Internet allows women to be social and pro-active at the same time."

Ms. Williamson adds, "The rising influence of females online is something that can't be ignored".

As the female influence grows across the Internet, companies will need to use techniques that appeal to females, including word of mouth marketing, e-mail and relationship-building.

Cyborg Jill

Get your own cyborg name.  I love mine.

The Talmud and the Internet

Thanks to David Boxenhorn, I found this startling metaphor - The Talmud and the Internet - that works astonishingly well.  He quotes from the Industrial Standard Review and so shall I.

The Talmud is a sprawling text that addresses every aspect of Jewish life: from dietary laws to animal husbandry to what God and Moses really talked about on Mount Sinai. It began as an oral tradition and was first transcribed during the Roman era, but the rabbis continued inserting commentary through medieval times. In the process, God was transplanted from a stationary home of bricks and blood sacrifices - the Temple - to a portable, "virtual" home with a shifting architecture of words, thought and prayer - the Talmud.

The Internet has numerous parallels to the Talmud. Both are the products of countless contributors, both aspire to be perfectly encyclopedic and both express their wisdom in an ad hoc web of references to other authorities (the Hebrew word for a passage from the Talmud means "webbing"). They even use similar visual strategies to represent the simultaneity of their voices. A page of the Talmud resembles a Web page, explains Rosen, in that "nothing is whole in itself. ... Icons and text boxes are doorways through which visitors pass into an infinity of cross-referenced texts and conversations." Rabbis who lived centuries apart appear on the same page, conversing across time, commingling with Biblical excerpts, parables and bits of history.

The Talmud, like the Internet, "talk[s] about God one moment, sex the next and commerce the third."

Far from "a broken-down state of affairs," this strikes Rosen as "astonishingly human and therefore astonishingly whole." By relating absolutely every idea from all possible angles, without passing final judgment on correct or incorrect, relevant or irrelevant, the Internet and the Talmud each invest their shattered, centerless cultures with a kind of mosaic unity. The Internet, like the Talmud, becomes "not merely a mirror of the disruptions of a broken world," but something that "offers a kind of disjointed harmony." No matter how ridiculous or vulgar the parts, the whole cannot help but make sense.

From the Amazon review by Michael Joseph Gross. 

The Talmud and the Internet by Jonathan Rosen is a small, wise, ingenious meditation on faith, technology, literature, and love. .. Rosen finds a real parallel to the Talmud, "a place where everything exists, if only one knows how and where to look." The literary resemblance has a cultural resonance, too. Rosen observes that "the Talmud offered a virtual home for an uprooted culture, and grew out of the Jewish need to pack civilization into words and wander out into the world." And the Internet suggests to Rosen "a similar sense of Diaspora, a feeling of being everywhere and nowhere. Where else but in the middle of Diaspora do you need a homepage?" In Rosen's analysis, the Internet and the Talmud signal and salve social and spiritual isolation -