Rotnem

November 26, 2008 | 11 comments | permalink

Somebody once said that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, which is a tad worrying for those of us getting on in years in a trade that values youth and energy at least as much as experience and wisdom. And what with all this new fangled interweb stuff, it is true to say that us dinosaurs do ocassionally feel a little closer to extinction than is comfortable. But never fear, my Chicago colleagues have come up with a new concept designed to extend the life expectancy of us old lags….ROTNEM. Have you guessed? It’s MENTOR spelt backwards and the idea is that social media-literate employees becomes the mentor of older and more, shall we say politely, technically retarded colleagues. Mentoring of course is usually done by the old and wise to the young and inexperienced, but, yet again it would appear, the net has turned this convention on its head, or in this case, back to front.

My ROTNEMs by the way were Stephen Davies and Guillaume DuGardier without whom I would still be using the Yellow Pages and the Enyclopedia Britannica.

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11 comments for this post.

  1. Comment from Leah on November 26th, 2008 :

    I love the ROTNEM program and wish it could be my full-time job sometimes. Just going office to office coaching people about all this newfangled stuff.

    Of course, I’m getting close to my 32nd birthday, so I might need one soon myself! ;-)

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  3. Comment from Mary Metcalf on November 26th, 2008 :

    This is going to be a fun program.

    I have my first session next week…I’m coming up with my plan of applicable things to teach her. Any ideas are very welcome!

  4. Comment from david Brain on November 26th, 2008 :

    Who is the HER?

  5. Comment from Mary Metcalf on November 26th, 2008 :

    Caroline Dettman

  6. Comment from Amanda Mooney on November 26th, 2008 :

    The fact that senior management even cares to enroll in a program like this to understand our perspective as young employees really speaks highly of our team here. It’s an awesome time to be starting out in this space and specifically starting out with our Edelman crew.

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  8. Pingback from How to Use Interns In Your Social Programs « Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang | Social Media, Web Marketing on July 21st, 2009 :

    […] Pair interns with senior management for reverse training: The folks from Edelman have a program called ROTNEM (the opposite of mentor) that started off with the Chicago office pairing young bright interns with slower seasoned management (tip from Edelman’s Erik Wagner) […]

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  10. Pingback from How to Use Interns In Your Social Programs. | GAby Menta on July 22nd, 2009 :

    […] Pair interns with senior management for reverse training: The folks from Edelman have a program called ROTNEM (the opposite of mentor) that started off with the Chicago office pairing young bright interns with slower seasoned management (tip from Edelman’s Erik Wagner) […]

  11. Pingback from How to Use Interns In Your Social Programs » A Day in the Life of Jonathan “Jon” Gillardi… aka “Johnny Montana” on July 26th, 2009 :

    […] Pair interns with senior management for reverse training: The folks from Edelman have a program called ROTNEM (the opposite of mentor) that started off with the Chicago office pairing young bright interns with slower seasoned management (tip from Edelman’s Erik Wagner) […]

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