I was at a dinner with 60 people the other night at the Port Gardner Bay Winery in Everett. The dinner guests ranged in age from mid-20s to 70s. A majority were in their 30s, 40s and 50s.
All of them are folks who carry lots of responsibilities at their work. Many of them didn’t know each oth
er, and I wanted to have a way for everyone to be introduced. I asked everyone to share their name, where they work and their favorite app.
For the uninitiated, an app is a small program that does a certain task, and you can have them on a web-enabled phone, a computer or iPad. Apps can be as ordinary as Microsoft Word and they can help you get driving directions, bus schedules, games and music. The possibilities are endless.
My favorite app is Mahjong Towers. I play this game when I have session breaks between clients in my therapy office. I’m also fond of my pinball app.
I expected the older folks to provide much humor to the younger folks at the dinner. I thought introductions by way of apps would have been hard for the older guests. I was very surprised. Our older guests had an app throw-down. Those people knew their apps.
The younger people had us nearly wetting our pants. Some stood and confessed they were using flip phones, not wasting money on those crazy expensive smartphones. Who were the “smart” ones now? The young people weren’t throwing down a fortune every month so they could play Angry Birds.
The introduction ceremony turned into myth-busting. I can’t tell you how many times people in their 50s and older, like myself, are bombarded with information that implies in order to work well with the younger generation, we must be more tech savvy and stay up on things related to technology.
Like all good baby boomers, we take everything to heart and then “overdo” it. I believe baby boomers are not the “just do it” generation, the phrase coined by Nike, we are the “overdo it” generation.
While us older folks are crowding up Facebook with pictures of our grandchildren, flower gardens and reunions, downloading apps and obsessively competing to collect points and real estate in Farmville, the younger generation is wondering what all the fuss is about.
I learned at dinner that the younger folks are not as into all the apps as we may have imagined. It’s all kind of ho-hum and certainly not something they want to spend lots of money on.
Go ahead marketing gurus, flood my inbox with all the research you want on younger people, insist on telling me they are now using apps to brush their teeth. I won’t believe you. I saw it with my own eyes.
It will take more than apps to impress them.
I honestly feel a little duped. I could see at dinner that this younger generation is far more thoughtful about technology, slower to spend their hard-earned dollars on the novelty, and more discerning then I have been led to believe.
There is no app for this, I figured it out the old-fashioned way, one person at a time, one conversation at a time.
Sarri Gilman is a freelance writer living on Whidbey Island and director of Leadership Snohomish County. Her column on living with meaning and purpose runs every other Tuesday in The Herald. You can email her at features@heraldnet.com.
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