Roger Gilbertson

Welcome! Thank you for your visit.
People arrive at a website one-at-a-time.
Most of real life is one-on-one.
Even on the Web there is a virtual sense of one-on-one: but no eye contact.
Humans seem to like one-to-a-few communication: chat rooms.
The Web also allows many-to-one and my reverse - one-to-many.

The many-to-ones are
the unknown folks
who surf through websites with
nary a ripple to mark their passage.
I hope what I say here adds value to the typing and
the clicking that got you to my site today!

Roger Gilbertson . . . in 1998 I completed a career as a 2-star Rear Admiral in the U.S. Naval Reserve. In 2001 I realigned from a second - parallel - career sponsoring and mentoring basic research. Then I did a couple years of professional speaking. I prefer "realign" - not retirement - because for me it is refocusing energy.

Dave Yoho is a professional speaker's - Professional Speaker.
Dave was at a recent Veteran Speakers Retreat and asked some
questions that trigger personal thought.

What are you going to do with the rest of your live?

I need to finish some writing and then start professional speaking again.

You may have dropped in because you have one of my bookmarks - the people I meet are literate . . . so a bookmark persists longer than a business card. It's nice that you followed up!

Keep in mind that I'm now going to be available to make speeches and give seminars - usually around the Washington, DC metro area . . . that's Washington, Baltimore, Northern Virginia.

I can travel - if it makes sense for the audience and for the speaker.

Bookmarks may find infinite life marking a place in a book. My goal is to establish an identity among other like-minded humans - the ancient heritage of being together in gathering and hunting bands (GHBs).

Thanks for stopping by - and giving me this transient forum of your precious time. I appreciate your attention - your being here at all.

Your passage may be brief, elusive, and unmarked . . .
None-the-less . . .

Thanks for the mindspace!

If you are contending with continuous partial attention and need to move on: I understand - "Have a Super Life!"

Still here?

Glad to have you!

I like thinking . . . Mind.

I like writing . . . Pen.

I like talking . . . Voice.

I do act when necessary . . . Do.

As you read on you will learn more about me and my points-of-view . . . and also that my communicaton style works well in speeches - and in seminars.

In the late 1990s I belonged to two superb professional groups -
the National Speakers Association (NSA) and
the American Seminar Leaders Association (ASLA).

While I do need resources to participate in civilization: I find that as my age cascades - money recedes as a priority for me. I like giving speeches - if there is a budget for it - that's fine. If not let's talk about it.

Over my 37 years as a Naval Officer I used my mind, my "pen," and my voice to motivate groups of people to act. My subjects ranged from the complexity of super-high tech . . . to the abstract simplicity of patriotism. I enjoyed talking to groups to help them do: to change to what they felt and reasoned was better.
The head usually follows the heart.

Here are some capstone thoughts on cultural transitions.

Groups need to be motivated to change the way they operate - their culture . . . to answer these issues:

What Group?
What Motivation?
What Change?

If you need a change maker
- I can help you answer these questions
- with concepts that go deep into the nature of humankind
- contact me.
Send me an email now while your thoughts are fresh!

To:
Gilbertson@gmail.com

Which audiences can use what I have to say? I try to talk to the right group, at the right time, on the right topic - about what I know. It's not about giving the speech it's about getting the right audience.

Further on -
It's not about me - it's not about the audience - it's about us.

How do we - together - custom-craft an emotion-tinged - thought-provoked - experience that leaves all of us better than when we started.

The techniques I use are right out of our collective past - what I call "Primalization" - the time before agriculture.

Who am I, anyway?

My quick-look - nutshell - credentials are:

Served 7 Years as a Rear Admiral - Retired with 2-Stars
Thrived in a High Tech/Max Stress Environment
Was the Capstone Leader for Thousands of People
Mentored Dozens of Other Leaders
Inspired With Attention-Grabbing Stories
Corralled Large-dollar Responsibilities
Earned an Eclectic Formal Education:
Alumnus of:
Baltimore Polytechnic Institute
Georgia Tech
Purdue
University of Colorado
George Washington University Law School
American University
Harvard Business School
UCLA
University of Southern California
Industrial College of the Armed Forces
National Defense University
Army War College
Defense Systems Management College
Harvard Kennedy School of Government

My Doctorate is from the University of Southern California - with lots of psychology, philosophy, and anthropology.

Don't get spooked by all the education! I'm really knowledge-happy - not credential-happy. I am a confessed information junkie: a book addict.

I completed many of the programs - some for degrees - and when I had learned what I needed from others . . . I moved on.

I want to know!

So don't jump to any stuffy conclusions about my style and manner. Civilization has tried to tame me . . . and I've resisted. Some primitive wildness - imagination - creativity - remains in me.

I was a "free-range" toddler . . . still a "free-range" elder - still viewing the accelerating world through the eyes of my childhood - and the mind of an elder.

A sabbatical from doctoral work started in 1961 when I was target-recruited into the Navy - went to Officers Candidate School - and was commissioned as an Ensign . . . in 1988 I finished my doctorate.

A 27 year sabbatical!

A score and 7!

Rather than being damaged by what could be consider over-education - some might call it "educated incompetence" - I feel more empowered than hindered.

I've sculpted my education from narrow specialization toward broad generalization - whether in the costume of formal education or the transparency of lessons-learned experience. From engineering student in high school in 1950 to action-philosopher and cultural-interpreter now.

Another metaphor would be from thinking in the left brain to action from the whole brain - with the right brain as a mosaic middle - centered - moderator.

I have lived a lifetime's worth of childlike curiosity. Over my life cylce - since my 1936 birthyear - I have observed the world with a mind that remembers.

The adventure of being alive and being able to understand - and to do - to act - is full of wonder!

If you have heard me speak you can probably imagine me saying that - in your mind. Trust that little quiet-voiced internal dialogue with the self. Self-talk is usually accurate. You know it's flattery-free.

During most of my formal education I worked at the same time - I'm used to doing tasks in parallel: multi-tasking. I am a multiple specialist with intersecting and cascading levels.

The American dream - the American system - has changed a lot over the last half century - in attitudes toward higher education, toward experience, toward self-sufficiency.

I have had a presence on the World Wide Web since the early days. It puts ideas "out there" to be found - you were looking. So your mind is behind the eyes reading this. Your inner voice continues self-dialoguing about what you see and read. It is possible to have a vast audience - or none - in the WWW World. An attracted audience often depends on hype or spin.

If you found me through a search engine, that's great. You probably had to dig deep - unless you already knew what you were after.

I think of myself as an explorer who makes cascading incrementally informed personal speculations on many topics. I don't like labels - all of us have such complex civilized lives - a simple classifying phrase seems inappropriate. Yet I do like the ideas that sprout when I think of myself as: Action-Philosopher and Cultural Interpreter.

In the "developed" world we each have a unique personal micro-culture that is truly ours alone. Much of our time is spent navigating among the micro-cultures of the comparitive strangers we meet - every day.

As a speaker my primary task is to create a temporary gathering hunting band - that can cheerfully adopt a message worth knowing.

I am a self-defined generalist in a world of specialists-by-default. Still I, too, have had specialties - in an economy that values connoisseur performance of specialized tasks - that is how we get the larger culture to pay us . . . for our survival.

Thankfully, I have adjusted by becoming a generalist through multi-specialty.

So -
I'm a Jack of All Trades
Master of SOME

A specialist skews toward the thinking tools that fence the edges of that specialty. Our human broad survival thinking skills can shrink and atrophy through neglect - in the specialty-inoculated mind - and become dormant. I've spent a life-time trying to retain, to maintain, and to hone my generalist skills.

My name, Roger Gilbertson, defines me as a unique person. It is my "brand." That is why in the early years of webmania I bought my name as a domain - www.RogerGilbertson.com. That is where you are here and now . . .
Sunday, December 22, 2024.

I suspect humans use their own experiences, education, and thoughts to speculate on themselves as metaphors for the entire human race. That may be the authentic solid-core you.

For me - every human has the same, equal value - infinite to the self. People are fundamentally equal . . .
-. young and old
-.. female and male
-... any color
-.... any religion
-..... any nationality
-...... educated or illiterate
-...... sophisticated or naive
-..... short or tall
-.... lean or chunky
-... poor or rich
-.. any class
-. living or dead.

Hierarchies try to change that equality - to classify us in ways relative to the values, the mission, the goals . . . of an enfolding, extending, expanding organization - country - culture. I have navigated well enough among the many hierarchies of American culture to be successful - self-defined.

I suspect each of us wants to be:

Equal
Active

Unique

The real - natural - difference between any two of us humans is much less than the virtual - cultivated - difference.

My study of the human race informs me that the fundamental survival skill is cooperation - sharing in most things . . . crafted in slow-motion across million-year tectonic time. Yet in modern civilization we have done fast-motion change - across 500 generations - 10,000 years - since we started agriculture - of here-and-now decisions.

Today we seem to value competition against most strangers: rather than sharing with each other. That may be a natural instinct - with surrounded by so many strangers.

My instinctive personal response is to cooperate - yet compete I do. The surrounding culture demands thoughtful compromise - and principled negotiation - to continue with simple survival.

Can I help you?

Prefered speech topic for now:

From Chief to Chief Executive Officer:
A Journey To Discover Leadership

Here is a chart that shows the number of days I have lived - along the horizontal axis - and the years when I lived them - shown on the vertical axis. That's a lifetime from 1936 into the Third Millennium. The benchmarks show a selected mosaic overview of the ascending cascade of some events in my life.

Here is more biography.