I have become of the age to be a "Friend." I grew up watching the show through college (and then some, as it seemed to run forever, just like its syndication) and though we all complained that  we had the transient, coffee-shop-waitress kinds of jobs Rachel did, but couldn't afford an apartment like hers, we still loved the show.

I'm in that mid-30s age bracket now where professional life is moving ahead as scheduled and social life has become richer, less, er...party-centered.

I run with a well-connected crowd--blackberries, phone texting, emails, internet networking, even e-cards for birthdays and events. Digital pictures distributed through friends, snapfish, or MySpace and mp3 players and downloaded songs shared among all. We all talk of whether we TiVo'd those new episodes and email links to great images on YouTube. We communicate with one another not only through these technologies, but also with the language of these technologies.

For most of my friends and I, our professional work life has gone electronic as well, rarely do we even fax anymore--primarily, work scanned into a pdf is sent via email attachment. Even my academic friends are publishing in online journals, rather than the stodgy, old bound paper kind.

This past week, however, I have learned one important consideration workers of my generation must attend to: we aren't the only generation working and not everyone has developed the techno habits we have. We must have the skills to negotiate how we negotiate with those of a different generation.

Though the work place is changing dramatically, not all workers are. Just last week, I had the opportunity to connect with the president of an organization I'm coordinating with. I noticed I frequently got calls from her and the programming director on my cell phone while I was at work. It befuddled me because though I had given them this private number (like many, I do not have a land line), I couldn't understand why anyone was calling it--just email me during work hours!

True to my contemporary habits, I scanned the call.  I let the unknown number ring and waited for the voicemail. I realized it was the women of the organization calling and couldn't return the call until the work day had ended. By then, however, each had emailed, though it was clear they didn't want to. Both emails had instructions for me to call, not respond via email.

Later in the week, coordinating information with a retired man working with the VFW, I casually asked if he could email me the information I was looking for and he laughed. "I don't do all that, I'm an old guy... I can fax, I think." And fax he did. When I tried calling back to thank him, I waited and waited for the phone voicemail to pick up and when it didn't after many rings, I was quickly reminded I was probably calling a land line, not a cell phone.

When I tried to call back the women in the group, I got a busy signal and thought something must be wrong with the phone. I tried again and again, suddenly reliving the frustration of my teen years where call waiting was waiting to be invented.

 Surely age or past professional habits alone are not the only factor that divides us technologically. We often talk of the digital divide when it comes to folks with less economic advantage in technology than many. But we spend less time referencing generational habits as an impediment to great technological communication.

As we speed ahead, networking, enhancing professional skills, bringing groups, ideas and projects together, it is very important to remember that though we have grown up digital and adapted quite quickly to the habits of an e-life, many of the former professionals who paved our way have not and to accommodate them, we must remember home phones, faxes, and good ol' face to face communication or we will lose much of the genius they have to share with our generation.