Where were you when you heard about the Challenger?

It'll be 25 years since the space shuttle Challenger disaster. For Boomers, the question is always "Where were you when Kennedy was shot?" For Xers, it's more likely to be "Where were you when you heard about the Challenger explosion?"

I was in 9th grade at the Edsel Ford High School cafeteria when my friend told me. Where were you?

Why I feel sorry for Gen Y

Today I read this post by a Gen Y blogger about why she thinks another blogger (Gen Xer Penelope Trunk) gives bad career advice to Gen Y. While I agree that Penelope can be a little nutty, she does know what she's talking about. I don't feel sorry for Penelope when she gets flack for her writing, because I know she's got the experience behind her and she's well aware of what she's doing when she posts provocative blog entries.

I do, however, feel sorry for a lot of Gen Y bloggers. Because a lot of what you write now is not coming from a place of experience. It's the same crap Gen Xers said 15 years ago, but we were lucky that verbal communication in a F2F setting in 1995 is not on the Internet for eternity.

Now, to be fair, the Gen Y blogger that got me thinking didn't really write anything embarrassing. Seriously, I have seen a lot worse from a few Gen Y Facebook friends who I regularly question - What are you thinking posting that? However, if I had any advice to give to the 25-year-old GenerationXpert, it would be to shut up and listen.

It's true, the Boomers were pains in our asses early on in our careers. And it's true we Xers were right about some things - but not everything. The same is true now. We Xers may be a pain in Gen Y's ass, and they are right about some things. However, ask yourself - How sad would it be if this was the best we got. Today. Right now. Never learned anything new. Never got any smarter. Never learned from our mistakes. In 10 years Gen Z will be bitching about Gen Y. It's not generational. It's growing up.

But we Xers are lucky. The Gen Ys can't go find our musings about how smart we were at 25, because the Internet was in its infancy. But today's young bloggers need to remember - what will your writing say about you when you are 35, 45, or 55?

The results are in!

The results of yesterday's poll are in - it's worse to be fat than old. But not that much worse. I'd be curious if the results were divided among generational lines (My hypothesis is that Boomers would thinking feeling old is worse while Gen Xers and Gen Ys would say feeling fat is worse.)

Take my poll!

Gabrielle Carteris is 50! How's that make you feel?

What does successful networking look like to you?

We hear a lot about the importance of building your network. But in the 21st Century Information Age, what’s more important – your “local” network or your “global” network?

As someone who lives in a smallish town in northern Michigan, I’m definitely going to go with the global network.

For years, I worked at growing my local network. I went to business-after-hours, chamber breakfast meetings, you know the drill. I sat on committees and made chit chat with local dignitaries.

It didn’t get me very far.

But about eight years ago I fell in with the leaders in my field (lifelong learning). It was almost a fluke, but I did get noticed. In a matter of a couple years I went from running a local lifelong learning program to writing for national magazines on lifelong learning to consulting with the world’s largest association on lifelong learning to running the marketing department of the same association. Last year, I traveled all across North America (and Hawaii) making presentations and conducting workshops for the leading lifelong learning program executives in the world.

And not a single golf outing made a difference.

I still go to the occasional “Wild Game Dinner” (in northern Michigan, these kind of events raise a lot of money for local charities), but I have to say, I don’t care if the branch manager at our local bank knows my name. And I don’t care if someone doesn’t think I have a “real” job, because I telecommute.

I’m curious what you all think on this topic. Are you still on the local chamber of commerce circuit?

Gen Xers in Retirement

Thanks to my dad for this one.

An indy entrepreneurial spirit glows in the heart of a former industry town

I live in a smallish town in northern Michigan. The economy is depressed - and the autoworkers have a hard time finding jobs.

However, although the media is constantly reporting how Michigan needs to recruit "high tech manufacturing jobs" to the state, a more interesting thing is happening. The Gen Xers are doing their own thing.

I write a lot about Jeff Gordinier's book X Saves the World - and Gordinier's assertion that Xers are "micro" and "indy" in their approach to work. That's what's happening in my town. Things are supposedly so bad - and yet pretty much everyone I know has a thriving career. I believe it's because most everyone I know is a Gen Xer who never really bought into the Industrial Age model of work (even if we did have to tolerate it for the early part of our careers.)

My husband recently started his own consulting business - and he's got more work than he (almost) can handle. Another guy I know has a thriving design business. Another gal I know does, too. There's also these folks. And these. The Xers have even started their own "business after hours," because the chamber one wasn't really jiving with what the Xers wanted. Even our State Representative is an Xer.

As Xers, we're often not all that great at speaking up. We kind of have this thing where we don't think we can change your mind, so we don't bother trying. And I think it hurts us. So when the media says everything is terrible, we don't bother correcting them. Today, I am correcting them.

The truth is, if you have a 21st Century Information Age mindset, things are probably going okay for you.