Experience Manifesto

Its Great to Be a Grandparent

A very good friend of the Lab (FOB's, as we like to call them!), Andy Edelman, is working on a great new personal project called It's Great to be a Grandparent and he's looking for grandparent stories. For example, I'll be sending him several, including this one:

My father passed away when Sydney was just over 3 years old. My folks lived in Florida, so we didn't see them all the time, but Sydney spoke to my folks on the phone all the time and she has some remarkably strong memories of him. My Dad was sick for about a year before he passed away, but his death was pretty quick & unexpected when it happened. We went down for the funeral and it was Sydney's first time dealing with death, so we tried to keep her calm as much as possible. After the funeral, Sydney & I went for a walk through their neighborhood, just the 2 of us. Near the end of our walk, she looked up at some clouds and said "That cloud looks like Grandpa watching down on us." She paused and then added "Or maybe it's a goat."

When we got back to my parents house, I told my Mom what Sydney said and we all had our first laugh of the day.

Another thing from my Dad was that we never, and I mean never, passed a cemetery without my Dad saying "You know, people are just dying to get in there." And it's really fun for me that today whenever we pass a cemetery, it's Sydney who says that!

So gather your grandparent stories and send them off to Andy! It'll be really nice to see the stories and help our children connect with the heritage of their families. I'm sorry that Sydney didn't get to spend more time with her grandfather before he died, but she has lots of stories to remember him buy. And it's great fun to see all of my Dad's mannerisms in Sydney, knowing that I helped pass a bit of him along to her.

For several years now (10 to be exact) I have talked about writing down all the various names grandparents are called.

Some names we, as Grandparents, get to choose for ourselves, some are chosen by family or friends and some are just great names that our grandchildren, the geniuses they all are, decide to anoint us with.

I am called “G” by my 3 grandchildren. The name came from one of my nephews who said I should be the “G-man” , a crime fighter protecting children from monsters, etc, and, well, you get the rest of the story. My Mother was Emah. Although Emah is the Hebrew word for Mother, the name actually was a child’s mispronunciation of grandma.

I’ve heard great stories and names like Mema, Maga, Mimi, Momma, Mom-Mom, Main Mom-Mom, Grammy, Granny and Gigi Then Nana, Nanny and Nonny. Don’t forget Grampa, Gramps, Grampy or Gumpy. POP-POP. Poppy and Papa. Foreign names like Zada, Opie, Da, Pappous or Bubby, Oma. Ma-mair, Abuela and Yaya. Some are just Mike, Billy and Beau. Not to mention Bingo, Binga and just Ga, all names for the same person by 3 different grandchildren.

You get the idea.

We all have wonderful stories and reminisces about our grandparents. On a personal note a favorite story of mine involves my Nanny and Mike. Each year they would take us to Radio City Music Hall in NYC. Every year we would get there and the line would be around a city block. Miracles of miracles, my Nanny always found someone at the front of the line that she knew just as the doors were opening. She would start to catch up with them, always speaking in Yiddish (even if the sometimes the person she was speaking to seemed oblivious to the language) and in a matter of moments, along with her new and somewhat confused friend, we all walked into the theatre together avoiding an hour’s wait on the cold line.

We all have these wonderful and personal stories and I am reaching out to friends, relatives and business associates that cross a multicultural, multiethnic and geographic spectrum.

I want to share them and include them in “Its Great to Be a Grandparent” (a working title for now).

If you would like to share a name, a story or an experience either as a grandparent or about one, please send it on to me. I will give proper editorial credit to each and everyone one who contributes. I would also welcome any photos that can accompany a name or story.

In addiditon, please know that I intend to donate proceeds (if there are any) to various charities, still to be determined, that work with children.

Please send all stories to Andy Edelman at: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>

Extraordinary Deceptions: A Magic Show

Michael Gutenplan is a graduate of CMU and a very good friend of BEL and doing a great magic show this week in NYC. We're taking Sydney to see this week and wanted to encourage all of you to attend if you're in NYC as well! Here's a word from Michael:

Extraordinary Deceptions, my fantastic magic show is about to complete one week at Theatre Row. With the theater filling up every night I am proud to say that this show is my best yet. With lots of confetti, mind reading and general fun this show is soooo much fun!

I encourage you all, if you can, to come see the show before we end on 12/30. More information can be found at www.bigapplemagic.com or on www.ticketcentral.com.

Other exciting news is that the show is being reviewed by Backstage- an industry newspaper and some others... I'll keep you up to date... we're keeping our fingers crossed that the Times runs a nice blurb next week in the listings section... and if rumor has it--- with a picture!

I hope to see you at a show and if not- happy holidays!

Link: Extraordinary Deceptions: A Magic Show .

Kristen's Cakes

Sorry for a little family self promotion, but my wife has been getting into the cake making business and she just did a couple of great cakes! She's only doing special orders now, but if you ever need a cool cake, feel free to give me a holler!

Link: Kristen's Cakes.

Get Back in the Box

I've been reading the manuscript of the latest book from Doug Rushkoff and it's one that I will recommend to all of our clients to read when it comes out later this year. It's been one of those books that I've almost read in one sitting and there's lots of great examples there! I'll be posting more later this week, so check back to learn more about what Doug has to say. It's a great topic and very timely indeed!

On a landscape that seems to be transforming itself with every new technology, marketing tactic, or investment strategy, businesses rush to embrace change by trading in their competencies or shifting their focus, altogether. All in the name of innovation.

But this endless worrying, wriggling, and trend-watching only alienates companies from whatever it is they really do best. In the midst of the headlong rush to think “outside the box,” the full engagement responsible for true innovation is lost. New consultants, new packaging, new marketing schemes or even new CEO’s are no substitute for the evolution of our own expertise, as individuals and as businesses.

Indeed, for all their talk about innovation, most companies today are still scared to death of it.

To Douglas Rushkoff, this disconnect is not only predictable, but welcome. It marks the happy end of a business cycle that began as long ago as the Renaissance, and ended with the renaissance in creativity and collaboration we’re going through today.

The age of mass production, mass media, and mass marketing may be over, but so, too, is the alienation it engendered between producers and consumers, managers and employees, executives and shareholders and, worst of all, businesses and their own core values and competencies.

American enterprise, in particular, is at a crossroads. Having for too long replaced innovation with acquisitions, tactics, efficiencies, and ad campaigns, many businesses have dangerously lost touch with the process – and fun - of discovery.

”American companies are obsessed with window dressing,” Rushkoff writes, “because they're reluctant, no, afraid to look at whatever it is they really do and evaluate it from the inside out. When things are down, CEO's look to consultants and marketers to rethink, re-brand or repackage whatever it is they are selling, when they should be getting back on the factory floor, into the stores, or out to the research labs where their product is actually made, sold, or conceived.”

Rushkoff backs up his arguments with a myriad of intriguing historical examples as well as familiar gut checks - from the dumbwaiter and open source to Volkswagen and The Gap - in this accessible, thought-provoking, and immediately applicable set of insights. Here’s all the help innovators of this era need to reconnect with their own core competencies as well as the passion fueling them.

Link: Get Back in the Box.

Now Playing!

Here's a great article about the work being done at one of our university partners, the Entertainment Technology Center at CMU.

Carnegie Mellon University has established the world’s first and only master of entertainment technology degree at its Entertainment Technology Center (ETC), housed on the top floor of the university’s research building in the Pittsburgh Technology Center complex. A total of 65 students pursue the degree under the direction and collaboration of a team of faculty advisors, and backed by an impressive list of corporate and community sponsors.

Blending logic and art, extending and expanding the dramatic form into completely original virtual worlds, the students of the ETC indeed continue to blend technology to produce something the world wants more of.

Now Playing!