Editor in chief
TERESA HANSEN
I always told myself I would grow old gracefully. I want to stay current, but I don’t want to be the woman who robs her teenage daughter’s closet and gets hair and makeup tips from Seventeen magazine. There is more to growing old gracefully, I’m finding, than looking age-appropriate and not ridiculous. Now I’m facing the social media dilemma.
If I listen to my daughters, which I’ve done so far, LinkedIn is the only form of social media I should consider. People my age with a Facebook account are “creepy” and have no business encroaching on teenage and young adult territory, according to my daughter in high school. My daughter in college is a little more tactful, but underneath she agrees. As for Twitter, neither gets the point. They’re too busy texting their friends—who might be in the same room with them—to consider Twitter’s possible benefits.
In this case, my daughters are behind the times in assuming that anyone older than 30 can’t benefit from social networking. Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn have become much more than a way for teenagers to keep up with their friends and make weekend plans. They have a place in today’s business environment, allowing busy people almost anywhere to access information quickly via BlackBerries and iPhones.
That’s why we officially launched DistribuTECH on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Now you can keep up with the event’s latest speaker and content updates, exhibitors, registration and hotel deadlines and a lot of other information. We’ll also use these social networks during DistribuTECH so you won’t miss anything. In addition, we’ll push important magazine and general industry news to you via these networks.
If you haven’t embraced the social media craze—maybe because of kids like mine or some other reason—this could be a good reason to give it a try. Visit the DistribuTECH Web site, http://distributech.com, click on the “DistribuTECH” icon and join one or all of these social networks. They’re age-appropriate for anyone who wants to be informed.
