High School Never Ends

I’m been thinking a lot lately about people who “lose touch” with one another. In the past year, I’ve been fortunate enough to reconnect with people I’ve known in many different stages of my life – people I have known in high school, university and a variety of different jobs throughout the last several decades.

And, not surprisingly, technology has played a big role in many of those reconnections. Not all have been through Facebook – some have been via LinkedIn, email or people just picking up the ‘phone. But all (at least the ones I know about) have been successful. People who wanted to get hold of me – no matter how long ago it was that I fell out of regular communication with them – have been able to find me. For the most part, the same is true of those that I wanted to find.

The real insight for me in all of this is fairly simple: it’s really hard to lose touch with people anymore, unless they really want to lose touch with you. I honestly believe that’s a really good thing. It means that all of us have the chance to stay connected with people we meet and befriend at many different stages in our lives – and have a better and richer understanding of both ourselves and our friends in the process.

Think about the people you knew at school, in college – in that first summer job. Every one of them saw you growing, learning and becoming the person that you are now. And many of them will remember things about you that you may have either forgotten (or, at least, that you don’t think about too often). For me, all of that came to light last year when I attended a high school re-union. I connected with many people that I hadn’t seen in person in decades. And yet, partially because I had been in touch with many of them through Facebook in the past few years, there wasn’t so much of the awkwardness (at least for me) that might have otherwise permeated the event.

For three days, we talked, laughed, caught up, and reminded one another of our high school selves. And we had a lot of fun. And one of those friends (Glen Schaefer, whom I had actually never lost touch with) reminded me of something about myself – that I had enjoyed acting in high school and college. That reminder re-ignited an acting bug for me that led me, a few weeks later, to start auditioning for local theater productions and eventually performing in back-to-back productions throughout the fall and early winter.

On stage in Audition For Murder, Feb. 25, 2012

I guess the point here is that everyone who knows and cares about you has their own memories and ideas about you – and sometimes those may be things that you’ve forgotten about yourself. The really good news is that it’s now easier than ever to reconnect with people you used to know as either friends of business colleagues. A quick request on LinkedIn or Facebook can do in seconds what it may have otherwise taken you hours, days or weeks to do.

So don’t be shy about reaching out to connect with the people who’ve shaped your life! It’s way less weird and awkward than it ever has been – and I can assure you that the rewards are there for the asking.

Just talk

For years, I made a living trying to predict what might come next in the technology world. I got to play with lots of different gadgets that could be controlled in many different ways - with keyboards of all shapes and sizes, mice, touch pads, touch screens, tracker balls, joysticks and even a strange gimmick that claimed to allow you to control a computer with your "brain waves".

But I always found myself most fascinated by the idea of being able to talk to a computer. You see, my favorite way of communicating is talk - face to face - to another person. I like not only to be able to use words, but also wave my hands around, vary the speed, tone and inflection of my voice - and generally make delivery of the spoken word as rich an experience as I can.

I've also been given opportunities, once in a while, to do a little acting - and, when you're on stage, you've only got your voice and body to do the communication for you. The writer, the director and the other actors can all help, but when the spotlight (literally or figuratively) is on your character - you are on the hook for communicating whatever needs to be communicated. And whether that is a line, a shrug of the shoulders, a meaningful glance - or an intense glare - the audience will understand what you mean if you delivery it properly.

I bet you're wondering where I'm going with all of this. It all started with a recent experience with the Kinect for the Microsoft Xbox 360. Kinect includes a camera and a microphone that allow you to control the Xbox 360 by waving your arms, moving your body and speaking into the microphone from anywhere in the room.

In the interests of full disclosure, I do work at Microsoft, but it doesn't have a whole lot to do with what I want to say right now. The point is that I've been using the Kinect as the only method of controlling my Xbox 360 for the last few weeks (since one of my college-age sons mistakenly walked off with all the conventional controllers when he was home for winter break). I use it to play games, to watch TV shows and movies - and even to get some exercise with one of the sports games.

And when I'm watching a TV show and want to pause it. I just say "Xbox, pause" and the show pauses. If I get a little hoarse from yelling at the Xbox, I can move my hands around so that an on-screen hand points and lingers on an on-screen "play" button. It really is pretty darn cool.

What struck me about all this is that my traditional concept of how voice could and should be used in computing was around "speech to text recognition" - which was focused on allowing people to "dictate" into their computers using voice recognition technology.

Although the technology for that works pretty well now, I don't use it - nor do I know many people who do. I don't know whether it's because people feel stupid dictating things into their computers - or simply because they don't speak the way they write. For me, the latter has always been the stumbling block.

At my best, I like to write the way I talk. But doing things that other way around is not something I've ever been easily able to master. In my world, I suppose I don't really want to talk to my computer, I just want to tell it what to do.

Computer... Off.