Technology Archives – Unretirement Project

Unretirement Interviews: Benefit Your Community Using Self-Employment Skills

September 11, 2019 by Sharlyn Lauby Leave a Comment

When we first started Unretirement Project, we were very fortunate to interview friend and business leader Joyce Maroney on her unretirement journey. Her story continues to resonate with people. It’s one of our most popular articles. I hope you’ll check it out when you have a chance.

Joyce’s story speaks to many because she works for an organization. So, what happens if you’re self-employed? Well, I’ve been having this off-line conversation with someone who is doing exactly that. Bill Kutik has been a very successful technology analyst and writer for 30 years. He’s well-known for starting in 1998 and still being the chairman emeritus of the HR Technology Conference® & Exposition and the host of the video program Firing Line with Bill Kutik® for the last five years. He’s also beginning his unretirement journey, so I asked Bill if he would share his insights with us. Thankfully, he said “yes”.

Bill, you’ve been very active in our industry for many years. How did you decide to start thinking about unretirement?

[Kutik] If you’re lucky enough to have enough money saved for retirement, which means you probably loved working, your mission after retiring is to find worthy causes that can benefit from the skills that helped make you the money in the first place. Finally, in 2019, I am getting into a working retirement, which to me means taking my talents – honed razor sharp from being self-employed for 30 years – and redirecting them elsewhere to benefit someone other than me! At least that’s my mission, which is starting to bear fruit.

Tell us about the unretirement projects you’re working on these days.

[Kutik] The Aspetuck Land Trust preserves open spaces still left after a century of suburbanization of the farmlands that once comprised Fairfield County, CT, which includes Westport, where I live, Greenwich and Darien. The executive director immediately recognized that a guy who sold $1,500 tickets via direct mail and email for 16 years (while programming all the content and building the HR Technology Conference & Exposition into the largest in the world) might be useful for selling memberships.

Plus, I’m finally getting involved in local politics, which has pulled me for decades. Eight minutes from my home in the next town of Norwalk is a four-screen movie theater, built in 1918 as a vaudeville house, showing foreign and independent films. Imagine a cultural resource like that in the leafy suburbs which exist solely for the raising and schooling of children?!? I’d have to move back to Manhattan if it ever shut down.

Suddenly it looked like a developer was going to do just that, demolishing it for his subsidized apartment house – for parking! Happily, I knew a thing or two about political maneuvering after reading the 5,600 pages of Robert Caro’s four books on LBJ and one on Robert Moses (all the first time in their publication years and a second time in the last few years sitting on the beach during consecutive Junes); my favorite course at Harvard by Prof. Richard Neustadt on “Presidential Power“; plus covering the Board of Selectmen as managing editor of The Provincetown Advocate on Cape Cod.

I’ve been helping opponents turn the town’s Common Council against the plan. We got a reprieve from what was considered the certain death vote in July 2019 with a postponement. I won’t tempt fate to say we’ll have won by the time you read this.

There’s certainly no shortage of worthwhile projects. How did you decide that those projects were the right ones to give your time and talents? I think a lot of people struggle to figure out where to spend their time.

[Kutik] In my case, I was still being selfish. I moved to Westport 21 years ago when the Aspetuck Land Trust was finishing it’s crowning achievement: acquiring 1,000 undeveloped acres 20 minutes from my house and developing it as a wilderness park called Trout Brook Valley. The late Paul Newman, a long-time Westporter, was the public face of that fund-raising effort.

Being brand new, it was so unspoiled, I hiked there every weekend, started giving money to the Trust in lieu of admission, raised the amount as the years went by and I had more, until I finally came to the attention of the executive director who sent a board member to “develop” me as a major donor. Instead I offered my direct marketing services to the executive director.

As I said, I love the Garden Cinemas. When I lived in Manhattan, there was another four-plex opposite Lincoln Center that showed the exact same films! The attempt to tear it down had actually been going on for a year, but since it was in Norwalk, not Westport, I didn’t notice until the Monday morning before the Tuesday evening Common Council vote that would have sealed its fate.

So I just spent Monday on the phone reporting the story, as I had done for years on small town weekly newspapers, The New York Daily Newsand briefly for The New York Times. It only took four interviews to discover that the linchpin to save the theaters was another real estate developer who owned a second parking lot that would do just fine!

So I attached myself to him, acted as his PR advisor, and got him to give his first polite presentation to the Common Council in three years! While they were stunned to hear him apologize for past shenanigans, they actually postponed the vote because a leading opponent started a petition on change.org, got 5,000 signatures in six hours, and now has 15,000! I love this.

Last question. For individuals like you and I, who are consultants, it can be hard during our working years to volunteer or do pro bono work because we’re busy making money (for our unretirement). How do we find time to build relationships with worthy causes and projects?

[Kutik] I’m continuing to work: writing the column and producing the TV show. But since I’m not working nearly so hard developing new business, I have plenty of time to build relationships with the worthy causes. For me, the process is remarkably similar to work.

The Aspetuck Land Trust has an ‘administrator’, one of only two paid employees who basically does everything from maintaining the membership database to writing their direct mails to get new members. How is this different from HR Tech? The marketing department there was burdened with four other shows, and the 24-year-old assistant who didn’t know an HRMS from a mainframe was delighted when I started making her copy better. As was her boss and the administrator at Aspetuck.

At HR Tech after two years, I ended up writing every single marketing word that went out for 14 years, including a 7,000-word brochure, a dozen print ads, 100 direct mail letters and much more. I don’t plan to do that at Aspetuck.

At the Garden, getting tight with the real estate developer who had the answer to the problem was no different than chatting up a prospective client, except there was no money involved. I showed him the value I could add to obtaining his goals, which happily we shared, and just kept in touch. That situation is volatile beyond belief and far from over. We’ll see if in the end Norwalk paves paradise and puts up a parking lot.

I want to extend a huge thanks to Bill for sharing his unretirement story. Whether we work in a corporate environment or as a consultant, I think many of us can relate to the challenge of focusing on our career and thinking about our retirement future at the same time.

How to Become More Media Literate

August 7, 2019 by Sharlyn Lauby Leave a Comment

blueprint drawing man woman shaking hands and media literate

Regardless of your politics, we’ve all been exposed to the concept of “fake news”. It might have been someone who shared an announcement that a celebrity has died, only to find out that it’s either not true or it happened four years ago. Or the news agency that labels an act of violence as terrorism before all the facts are in. Bottom-line: as much as technology and social media have enriched our lives, those tools have also created challenges in being media literate.

So, each of us has been susceptible to misinformation on the internet. My guess is that it won’t be the last time. This isn’t something to be ashamed or embarrassed about. Even professional journalists have had it happen. And the answer isn’t to stop using the internet. It’s to get better about questioning what we read and see.

I recently learned about a digital literacy project called MediaWise. The goal of the project is to teach 1 million teenagers how to sort fact from fiction via a course called “Civic Online Reasoning”. Don’t let the goal of educating teens keep you from being interested in this project. That being said, I’m not going to talk about the “Civic Online Reasoning” course today.

Instead, I want to talk about another course that was actually mentioned casually in a promotional video for MediaWise. CrashCourse Media Literacy is a 12-series program that focuses on how to consume and evaluate the media to become more media literate. After watching the Crash Course Media Literacy program, I would strongly recommend this course to anyone wanting to learn more about how the internet shapes our lives.

The episodes are educational, informative, and sometimes funny. None of the episodes are longer than 10-minutes. I’d like to think that we can afford to take 10-minutes a day to learn more about the internet. And I’m not just talking about fake news. The program does a good job of defining what media is and how we need to think of it as more than Facebook or Instagram. I had several takeaways from this series that I believe will help me be a better media user.

Media literacy isn’t just about what we share. Yes, it’s important that we share only legitimate news. But it’s also important that we don’t assume the all the news we receive is always 100% complete. It’s possible that we’re only hearing a small portion of the news or the facts. And it’s our obligation as a media consumer to research the whole story. We can’t make informed decisions with a fraction of the facts. Granted, there might be times when we don’t get all the facts and we’ll have to decide what to do with that scenario as well. But sometimes, we can find more information if we go looking for it.

You should know what happens with your data. I’m not anti-marketing. I think it’s fantastic that marketing companies have access to consumer data that helps them make good business decisions. That being said, as a consumer, you do need to know what data you’re sharing with companies and what they have permission to do with it. I must admit, I was surprised that CrashCourse included a section on user data, targeting ads, and terms of service agreements. It made me realize that part of my responsibility in being media literate is understanding what happens with my data.

Media consumers might find it helpful to understand the business of media. Another aspect of the program that I thought was interesting was the conversation about who owns what media and how media ownership can impact what information we see (or don’t see). The program also spent some time talking about which media entities are regulated by the government, which ones aren’t, and why we might want to know that information. Finally, it discussed about how media companies partner with the businesses that make our phones, computers, and televisions to form bundles and exclusive agreements, which may or may not benefit us the consumer.

The purpose of this article isn’t to scare anyone. It’s not to imply that anyone should close all their social media accounts. And it’s certainly not to say that marketing and media companies are doing anything wrong. The purpose of today’s article is to encourage people to become more aware about their relationship with media. The more aware we are about media, the more internet and media literate we can become.

I am so pleased that I went down the rabbit hole of the internet and found CrashCourse’s Media Literacy program. I spend a lot of time on the internet. We write content that other people consume. It’s important that we’re responsible media publishers. And as individuals, we must learn how to be responsible media consumers.

Image from the Sharlyn Lauby book Essential Meeting Blueprints for Managers

Manage Your Digital Life with These Three Tools

July 24, 2019 by Sharlyn Lauby Leave a Comment

Out of Print Sign digital life and technology

We recently published a list of cybersecurity resources from TechCrunch and Google. If you haven’t seen them, it’s worth checking out.

As technology continues to fill our lives, we need to find ways to manage it. I’m not talking about taking digital vacations, although establishing boundaries is a good idea. When we use technology, we open ourselves up to risk. Even when we do all the right things, it’s possible we will have personal information exposed. Today, it could make sense to evaluate whether or not you need some helpful tools to manage your digital life. Here are three tools that we’ve added to make our digital life more secure.

Password Managers

Consumer Reports published this informative article on “Everything You Need to Know About Password Managers”. And this article from CNET will give you some suggestions for “The Best Password Managers of 2019”. Personally, Keith and have been using LastPass with good results. They offer a family plan so you can make sure that a designated person can access your information in case of an emergency.

While it’s not a exactly a password manager, I also recently purchased a Google Titan Security Key. This device provides a super-duper level of two-factor authentication to your accounts. I must admit, I’m still trying to figure it out, but I believe it is worth experimenting with. Oh, and if you saw those recent articles about a flaw in the Titan Key, Google is replacing them. Just contact them.

Identity Theft Protection Services

It’s sad to say that in today’s world we must think about this…but we have to think about this. Identity Theft is an issue. A big issue. According to a study published on ZDNet, around 15 million people in the U.S. have been impacted by fraud. To safeguard yourself, you have two options: you can do this yourself OR you can subscribe to a service. A third option would be waiting for a company to provide you with the service for free after your information has been compromised. (Please detect the cynicism in my last sentence.) I found this article on Nerdwallet that could help you decide “Do You Need Identity Theft Protection Services?”.

CNET also put together a directory of ID monitoring services in their article “The Best identity Theft Monitoring Services for 2019”.

Virtual Private Network

A virtual private network (VPN) is designed to protect your private web traffic from being snooped by outside entities. The purpose isn’t because someone is doing something sinister. But let’s be real, it’s kinda creepy to know that somebody could be snooping around in my web traffic even if it’s nothing more than cute lemur pictures, shoe sales, and Randy Rainbow videos.

If using a VPN interests you, this article from CNET on the “Best VPN Services of 2019” might be helpful.

I really don’t like being cynical about the use of technology, but I do think it’s important to be realistic. Technology isn’t going away any time soon. We must be responsible technology users which means finding tools to help us manage our digital lives.

Do you need to do these things? Maybe not. Personally, I’m finding this is one of those topics where I regularly ask myself, “Can I do it? Yep. Is this the best use of my time? Not really.” Maybe I need to find some tools to help.