WE NEED TO STAY WITH IT, WILMETTE!

I went to a fantastic Halloween party this past weekend. It definitely lived up to its billing as a fun (and sometimes wild) event.

One thing we love about Wilmette is that we are surrounding ourselves with so many smart, successful, caring and diverse people. (Well, maybe not that diverse.)

One of the things that make us this way, is our ability to keep up on trends, news, issues that effect our everyday lives.

Now, this may seem trivial to some, but something happened at the Halloween party that made me a bit concerned.  My wife and I and a few others dressed up as iPhone apps – black shirts, black pants and fabric from the fabric store cut out and shaped as popular apps and pinned to the shirts.

What was sad about our costumes (mine in particular) was that only about 30 percent of the people who came up to me knew what I was – Pinterest. Granted, Pinterest is relatively new compared to Facebook and Twitter, and a lot of people have used Shazam for music tagging and the Messaging app for texting.

Shazam & Pinterest

Maybe Pinterest was a poor choice of a costume, but, c’mon man. To me it showed a scary lack of knowledge on social media applications that are becoming more and more important in our everyday lives, and the lives of the kids we are raising in this great community.

Back in April of 2012 (6 months ago!) Forbes reported that Pinterest was worth $7+ billion. And Mashable reported that it was the third most popular social media site behind Facebook and Twitter (http://mashable.com/2012/04/06/pinterest-number-3-social-network/).

Now I’m not professing to know every app that is out there, nor do I want to know them all or use them all. But Pinterest seems to me so much in the mainstream now that it was alarming how many people had no clue what it was or what it did.

Bottom line — we need to enhance our social media and technology IQ a bit for the sake of ourselves, our future and our children’s future. Okay, okay – a bit overstated, but my point is that we need to do a better job of getting’ with it so we can keep up with the rest of the world, especially our kids!

So let’s get with it and stay with it, Wilmette!