Google's Self Driving Car

Dan Burden, co-founder of Walkable and Livable Communities Institute spoke recently at a local TEDx Phoenix event about the aging Baby Boomers population and their massive numbers. One point he made to the audience is that most of  us will likely live 15 years or more beyond our physical ability to drive a car.

Dan Burden educates cities on how to design livable sustainable communities and neighborhoods so that they are able to support an aging baby boomer population. As we look around, we can see that there is a lot of work we need to do.

Dan Burden is the Executive Director of the Walkable And Liveable Communities institute. The WALC Institute inspires, teaches, connects and supports communities in their efforts to improve health and well-being through better built environments.

Walkable Communities are Liveable Communities for Baby Boomers.

The Baby Boomer is the first generational group to grow up with the belief that an automobile is an extension of themselves. Baby Boomers created two car families, the vacation home and the Sunday road trip as a right that they had. Baby Boomers may see giving up this mobility as a loss of personal freedom.

It is obvious that our communities will need to be redesigned and that walking paths, aging in place, memory care units and speed bumps may be in all of our futures. And for many boomers, the urge to get away, to visit and see something that is outside of their community will continue to exist. For Baby Boomers a portion of their identity comes from their cars and there will be resistance to having this avenue to mobility closed down.

There is no single solution for our aging populations. Neighborhoods designed with gardens, safe walking paths, easy access shopping, urban living accommodations and other commercial outlets are some of the good things we need do now. While help with some of the psychological trauma that sometimes comes with the loss of the ability to drive and aging may be on its way, check out the Google’s’ “Self Driving Automobile” which is here now. It  may help extend our physical abilities. Ford motors and others are addressing the issue of aging directly as they look at making cars “smarter” and safer to drive. Bill Ford on TED 2011

Related articles

• Few US cities prepared for aging baby boomers – The Associated Press (drugstoresource.wordpress.com)
• Fifty is the new thirty (sethgodin.typepad.com)
• Diversity: You may not like it but know it. (positivelypowerful.com)
• What city is prepared for an influx of aging baby boomers? (boomercafe.com)
• Few US cities prepared for aging baby boomers (sfgate.com)

Black History Month Presentation Slide Dr. Joel P Martin

This Asante proverb was an inspiration to me as I wrote the text of my recent keynote speech for a global corporation’s African American Professional Forum’s Black History month celebration. I asked my audience to be mindful that the demographics and psychographics of the African American and Black populations have been defined by history and asked them to take a journey with me. Even though none of our generations can even begin to imagine what it would be like to live in the part of Black history that I would open with, I asked that they do their best to empathetically understand – to feel – what a true reason we have for honoring the journey of the African American and Black people to the 1.2 trillion dollar spending power they have today. I had one hour to make this difference with my audience. Here are a few of the highlights. I welcome your comments.

The denial of freedom through Slavery accounted for the transportation of a staggering 20 million Africans brought by force and unable to retain a link with family, homeland or language; brought to the Caribbean and Brazil for the big money in sugar and to North America for tobacco and cotton. Half didn’t complete the journey from the African coast dying along the way. Ex-slaves and Black freed people joined by White Abolitionists protested slavery and assisted slaves to freedom using safe houses and the Underground Railroad: Harriet Tubman, an ex-slave and humanitarian, Fredrick Douglas, also an ex-slave, a great speaker and writer, a living rebuttal to slaveholders’ arguments that slaves did not have great intellectual capacity and William Lloyd Garrison, a good friend of Fredrick Douglas. We are the legacy of those who survived the journey over, the illness, the cruelty, the loss of family, status, and position. the loss of life. How would you feel, what would you do it this happened to you?

The denial of the right to Access through the Jim Crow laws passed in 1908. These laws mandated that Black people use separate facilities for travel, lodging, eating and drinking, schooling, worship, housing, and other aspects of social and economic life. However, while after World War I, the Supreme Court declared the Jim Crow laws unconstitutional, the practices too often continued. There was advertising not to Black people; but about them with harsh, negative and stereotypical Black characterizations. YET, despite insults to their humanity. Despite being socially, culturally and environmentally displaced. Despite the physical and mental forms of enslavement, lives lost around them, their cultural patterns persisted– some were reinterpreted, others adapted to fit the new environment. What adaptations would you/do you find necessary to survive, to exist, to heal?

Frederick Douglas said, “Men are not valued in this country, or in any country, for what they are, they are valued for what they do.” And BECAUSE THEY HAD TO THEY DID. Not being allowed access, Black people created Black industries for example, Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican publisher, speaker and advocate of the Black Nationalist and Pan African movements and Madam C.J. Walker, the first female millionaire, who invented and produced Black hair care products and a school. Black Churches were founded and they created Historically Black Colleges and universities. Black media was established. In time Black-owned ad agencies and PR firms were created to present the Black image in a positive portrayal. In Greenwood, Oklahoma there was Black Wall Street ultimately destroyed by vigilante racist white mobs. Other products, artists, and Black-oriented enterprises flourished. Because they were driven, the legacy of these Black entrepreneurs continues today. Dr. Maya Angleou said, “We did what we could with what we knew — and when we knew better we did better.”

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  Black History Month Celebration - Entrepreneurs

The Assertion of Rights in response to segregation came with World War II when Black male and female soldiers returned to America. What would you do? They demanded an end to discrimination. Willa Beatrice Brown was the first African-American woman to hold a commercial pilot’s license in the United States and the first African-American female officer in the Civil Air Patrol. She was responsible for Congress’ forming the renowned Tuskegee Airmen squadron, leading to the integration of the U.S. military service in 1948. (See Red Tail.) After A. Philip Randolph threatened a March on Washington, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued the Executive Order stating that there should be “no discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or Government because of race, creed, color, or national origin.” In 1941. EEO for the military was born.

The passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 prohibited discrimination in public places, provided for the integration of schools and other public facilities, and made employment discrimination illegal. This document was the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. Rosa Parks, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and people of all nationalities, cultures and races made this possible. The world hasn’t been the same since.

We had to go there to get here.

There are 23.9 million active African American internet users. They are early adopters and more likely to watch video online and to access online content via smart phones and other alternative platforms. Some of the brilliant African Americans I’ve come to find out about are Aprille Ericsson-Jackson — the first Black woman to receive a PhD in Engineering at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Philip Emeagwali who developed the fastest supercomputer software in the world. His IQ is too high to be measured by conventional standards, and he’s won a Gordon Bell Prize, which is like the Nobel Prize for computer science. Mark Dean without whom there may not have been a PC. He holds three of IBM’s original nine PC patents and led the teams that developed the first one-gigahertz chip. And Baratunde Thurston, Director of Digital, The Onion.

African American and Black people are aware of their racial identity. This is evident in their sense of pride and their awareness of discrimination issues – a majority say that discrimination is still a part of most African Americans’ day-to-day lives. Black and African American people are more than likely to say they know how to stand up for themselves…because most have had to. We all know what it is to feel unwelcome in a store regardless of how much or how little one earns. How do you feel when you are stereotyped and discriminated against. Would you stand up for yourself?

This is the pause for the cause of celebration…we all also know what it feels like to have an organization and brand show support and appreciate of African American and Black peoples’ contributions and to celebrate with them their history.

In his book “Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority “ Tom Burrell reminded us

“One of the greatest propaganda campaigns of all time was the masterful marketing of the myth of Black inferiority to justify slavery within a democracy.” The last several centuries still haunt us, and hinder our advancement and achievement.”

We’ve still got a long way to go. Meritocracy is a dream. Stereotypes those fearful of the growing majority minority coexists with champions of diversity and change agents who are visionary leaders. We’re moving in the direction of diversity with inclusion and the measurement of different evidences of power along with the purchasing power of other people of color. But that’s a blog post for another day.

We do because we have to. I am because we are…  Powerful. The ability to create the future without being limited by the past. To make the seemingly impossible possible through action. Power is knowing with all certainty that our success is dependent on our ability to create meaningful relationships in our lives. Like those connections our African and Black fore-fathers and fore-mothers have made possible for us. Power is having faith that “A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed.” (Proverbs 11: 25) And with that it transforms into empowerment. There is consumer power, love power, community power and green power.

We have many faces. We are many things. We come from many places. We contribute. We spend. We love. We influence. And… We are not all the same.

Note: The Selig Center for Economic Growth annually produces a comprehensive The Multicultural Economy of consumer buying power in the United States. Buying power is defined as disposable income that is available for spending after taxes.

Related articles

• Should We Cancel Black History Month? (bigthink.com)
• Museums highlight Black History Month (thegrio.com)

Skrillex in Concert - Photo by Vincent Mo

One of the diversity challenges many people are dealing with today are the four or five generations we have in the workplace. (If you don’t have different generations in your organization you might be missing out on a competitive advantage.) I’m one of the Baby Boomers who fit the research findings in refusing to retire quietly and ride into the sunset. I delight in learning about trends, music, art, people, cultures and the like so when I happened upon this article in the NYT I was totally engaged and listened in. Perhaps you will be too.

Manic Peter Pan Rules Dance Clubs. Consider the numbers: He’s a DJ (a title that minimizes his creativity as far as I’m concerned), nominated for five 2012 Grammy Awards. “In 18 months he has gone from being an obscure D.J. in the Los Angeles club world who played parties for 500 people to selling out 5,000-seat clubs across the country. At a show in Puerto Rico this month he drew 12,000 people.“ He’s gone viral with more than 59 million people listening to his most popular single, “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites,” on YouTube.

Click here to view the embedded video.

He is a Gen Y Millennial, a generation that for the most part is tech savvy, diverse, demanding equal treatment for those who are different and unique, possessing great multitasking abilities, confident and hopeful. (Source: Global Consortium LLC).

He is Skrillex, an artist who is fantastic in producing electronic tracks. Listen for his lyric, “You don’t need to hide my friend ‘cause I’m just like you.” If that’s not a comment endorsing diversity and inclusiveness, I don’t know what is. Let’s learn more, listen to each other, appreciate our differences and dance to the music.

If you have a comment on the differences between generations. Please post. And if you would more information or I can assist you in crossing the generational divide, let me know.

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• [NEWS] Skrillex wins three Grammys (electrifymag.com)

How are you doing separating the personal from the professional? Let me know if I can support you in being heard and getting people to respond in the way that you would like. Coach J.

1. “All the News that’s Fit to Print” , (New York Times)
2. “ It takes a licking and keeps on ticking” (Timex)
3. “Where vision gets built”. (Lehman Brothers)

Wait! Time and time again? Times have changed. You can now read the NY Times online, “print” hmmm not. Our watches are digital or on our phone. “Ticking” if you have the app. And Lehman Brothers is gone having declared bankruptcy.

If a company has an entrenched hierarchy, an HR director without vision and a passion for their people (Only “20% of workers are passionate about their jobs”… The Deloitte Center for the Edge: The Shift Index”), you can bet in time they’ll be experiencing  high turnover of good management talent, a loss of intellectual capital  a loss in consumer/client trust and a brand image that is passe.

In the past it took fifty years or more to get to this point in an organization’s life cycle, now it is taking less then ten years for companies to find out that they are no longer relevant, that their products or services are not answering the needs of the public, and that their brand slogans no longer create the progressive images intended.

Somewhere along the road to becoming a less innovative customer adverse organization, companies stuck with their top down directives rather than adapt “interactive communication” as pointed out by Stephen Denning in “Radical Management. Often the answer to how an organization can manage the future and changing times is an employee “sitting in the room”, not being listen to and asked about what they see. Why? Generational differences, non-inclusive staid corporate culture, lack of engagement, lack of leadership and vision. And maybe the complaint “I just don’t have the time.”

In today’s environment buying in to the plan falls well short of owning plan. Owning the plan can only occur when there is totally openness and everyone has the opportunity to contribute.

The opportunities I advocate to and with leaders include creating an aligned, engaged and empowered workforce for current and future generations, welcoming diversity and inclusion, mastering new technologies, being a mentor and accepting reverse-mentoring.

On diversity – all leaders know The Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” A newer rule that I include in trainings is The Platinum Rule, “Do unto others as they would have you do unto them”. With cultural competency, communication assessments and plain old “mother wit”  comes the recognition that everyone does not think alike. Older companies that aren’t diverse and if they are diverse aren’t inclusive, stand to lose some valuable opportunities. Like failing to attract the best of the best candidates who are women and people of color. And if they attract them as employees, have the challenge of retaining them.

Top-down and bottom-up communication and strategic thinking on the future. Assure a continuance of the company. Protect your assets and intellectual capital. Use technology to face the challenges. We either meet the challenges or are beaten by them.

This is Neil’s life’s work: Male Involvement Coordinator, Child Crisis Center, Mesa Arizona at Native American Fatherhood & Families Association, Male Involvement Coordinator at Child Crisis Center Director at Fathers’ Resource Center. (“If you have fire in your belly, you are ready to fight with energy and determination for what you believe is right.”)

For too long the stereotype existed that only the woman took care of the children, that dads were “bringing home the bacon”, that children automatically went with mom, that community programs having to do with children were for women only….not so any longer. Both parents are important. I was honored to have had this brief opportunity to speak with a man who is doing something about it.

I met Neil when I interviewed him on a program to be aired on Scottsdale’s Ch. 11 TV station. He’s going to be speaking at the City of Scottsdale’s Cross Cultural Communication Series produced by the City’s Human Relations Commission. His event (one of 5) will be on Oct. 6th at Noon and again at 6PM.  The Commission was established to recommend ways to encourage mutual respect and understanding among people, discourage prejudice and discrimination and work towards cultural awareness and unity. For more info click here. “Father’s matter too” as Neil says. He’s got the commitment, tools and organizational backing to make sure they everyone gets the message and the education to make it so.

Every new piece of information we receive is begging for us to make a decision, an up or down vote, as to what our next step should be. We used to be able to follow a plan, or a strategy linking our decisions to those that followed our planning, you know “staying course”. This is nearly impossible now for individuals and at best difficult for organizations. We’ve always known that plans are flawed (planned for what can be “control”) and we are beginning to understand that we don’t control much of anything. I’m not at all suggesting that we are unable to make a difference in world, in fact each of us has our version of the iPod  embedded in us with a playlist ready to inspire us to make the most positive difference we can. The issue is how do we do this now as individuals and more importantly as communities? Just saying ” it’s not what I want or expected” is not enough. How do we together (all of us) create what we do want,What’s next for us?