CurrentMom

Yahoo Goes Retro

Truth Thursday

I couldn’t possibly write about being a working mom this week without honing in on Marissa Mayers and her decision to disallow all Yahoo employees from working at home, whether they have a full or part-time telecommuting schedule, or just need a day to be at home to wait for the refrigerator repair guy and could get some work accomplished in the quiet of their kitchen.

I have a lot to say on this matter.

First and foremost, of course, the story didn’t start with this pronouncement. The story started over the summer when Mayers accepted the CEO position at Yahoo and about five minutes later announced she was pregnant with her first child. 

I have no problem with this, in theory. I don’t think women should have to hide their pregnancies in order to job search (or be recruited.) An employee who is good enough to hire is good enough to hire even if she needs a three-month parental leave soon after being hired. Employers who want to recruit and retain top talent should not be eliminating a large portion of their potential employee pool based on gender and age.

And having a top Internet company hire a woman for its top position was exciting. There was much buzz about what Mayers might bring to the table for Yahoo, a flailing operation.

The Power of the Pause - Unplugging in a Plugged-In World

Truth Thursday

Today on my train ride to New York, I sat across the aisle from a man who had out his laptop, his iPad and his iPhone, and he was using all three at once. I wasn’t clear on what he was really doing (it actually sounded like he was on the phone with a tech expert, trying to fix some password on his iPad) but he clearly thought he was being incredibly productive with all his technology at his fingertips on the go.

I, on the other hand, read two paper newspapers cover to cover and the first essay in a (paperback) book of literary essays I’ve been meaning to get to for a while. It was a gorgeous piece, about scent, memory and longing.

I didn’t look at my agendas for my meetings, and I didn’t answer any emails (as I did have my phone with me.) I spent three and a half hours sitting and thinking, reading for pleasure, and preparing myself mentally for a long day of meetings, but without electronics.

It felt both a little slothful and absolutely delightful.

There is a part of me that salivates over having a new gadget. I want an iPad so that I don’t have to schlep my laptop when I travel overseas.  I want a new iPhone since my 3GS is moving pretty slowly after almost two years. I love my iMac – it makes typing on my computer a pleasurable, tactile experience.

But I also fall on the other side of the technology trap. I have tried using an e-reader, but really prefer reading books – I like looking at their covers, feeling their pages, turning down a corner on something I want to remember. I like closing the book after reading the final page and the sense of satisfaction that comes with putting it on the shelf.

List Serve Hysteria

Truth Thursday

Over the past decade, list serves have become a fact of life. Any community to which you belong, any school your children attend, any team on which they play – there’s a list serve for that.

For a long time, I thought it was critical that I follow every list serve. I thought that I might miss some really important information, or a crucial discussion about an issue that was facing my community.

There are really important reasons to pay attention to the list serves. I am grateful that my children’s schools have this mechanism by which to inform and remind parents both about big school events (back to school night, finals, when the sports forms are due) and immediate emergencies (power outages in the school, tornado evacuations, safety issues of all sorts.)

I also am grateful that our schools understand that there is still a digital divide, and that many of our families still don’t have regular access to computers and therefore list serves, and offer up all this information by robo-call as well, even if it does interrupt our dinner on a regular basis.

The school list serves are such an important link to everything that is happening in the schools, in fact, they are divided into two – information and discussion. But this past week, the school discussion list serve got a little out of hand.

The Clipping Service - Or How I Turned Into My Mother Without Really Trying

Truth Thursday

Anyone over, say, about 40, who has worked in the non-profit world remembers the clipping service. It was an off-site newspaper reading service that your organization would pay to scan all the relevant media every morning to see if you or your issue was mentioned. In the early days, the service would literally cut and clip the articles and messenger them over to your office so that you could be as up to date by midday on the issues of the day as possible. 

The communications department would then copy the best articles and circulate them around the staff. Sometimes there would be a cover sheet, and the initials of everyone in your department with a place to check your name after you had read the attached articles and sent them onto your next colleague. 

Of course, the rise of online media turned the clips into links, and everything became much easier. Today, my communications department wakes up at 6:00 in the morning to get the news from Israel, and by the time I get to my computer by 6:30, I have links to any relevant and late-breaking news. The clipping serivce still exists, but everything is electronically delivered.

I am a bit of a Facebook addict, not only for the updates on friends’ lives and comings and goings, but also for the recommended reading. In many ways, Facebook is like a giant clipping service, offering up an array of articles throughout the course of the day that have been vetted by friends and colleagues.

If anything, Twitter is a condensed Facebook in this way, clip after clip after clip, recommended by people I have chosen to follow. And on Twitter, you don’t have to see cousin Elaine’s cute meme of a cat or yet another praiseful prayer of life.

Years ago, long before the ease of hyperlinks, my mother was the original clipping queen. I still have a large cardboard box filled with many of the articles she sent me over the years, from college through to young adulthood and after I married and had kids. The articles she sent me were almost exclusively from the the New York Times, her primary reading material. And even though I was (and am) a pretty loyal Times reader as well, she still managed to send me those things that I had missed, and in which I actually was interested.  

Love you mom - but stay off Facebook

Tech Tuesday

Several times this year, my mom has made the comment that maybe she should get a Facebook page, too. She gets a kick out of seeing our feeds when we leave them up on her computer and was surprised at the number of relatives and past aquaintances she might have access to. 

"I don't know what I'd say", she says. 

Well, mom, you figure that out pretty quickly. I almost took the decision out of her hands entirely and made it for her. After the third or fourth time I heard her clicking away on her computer in our old office, obviously reading the main Yahoo! page before checking her email, and heard her voice float out - 'so-and-so died'. Yeah mom. I read that this morning already. 

You guessed it. On Facebook.

So what's stopped me? Well, let's face it. I'm on Facebook... and I'd have to 'friend' her.