I spent last week with some of the nation’s top experts on retirement security at a fellowship program hosted by the National Press Foundation (NPF) and underwritten by Prudential. Our group of 17 journalists heard presentations on Social Security, pensions, health care, annuities, retirement housing and the federal budget deficit. All the sessions were on the record, and I plan to use a good deal of the material soon in Retire Smart columns. In the meantime, NPF has posted audio and Powerpoint presentations on its website. Each of the sessions runs about an hour, but if you’re interested in a five-star briefing on any of these issues, look no farther. Highlights:

Our Fiscal Future. Isabel Sawhill, Senior Fellow and co-director of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution.

Change in the Air. John Rother, Group Executive Officer of Policy and Strategy for AARP.

Retirement in the Private Sector. Dallas Salisbury, President & CEO, Employee Benefit Research Institute.

Future of Retirement Living. Elinor Ginzle, Director, Livable Communities, Office of Social Impact, AARP.

What Americans Know About Retirement. Barbara Bovbjer, Director for Education, Workforce and Income Security Issues at the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

Decumulation. Mary Beth Franklin, Senior editor of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine.

Retirement Planning. Jac Herschler, head of marketing, Prudential Annuities.

The entire roster of speakers is available here.

If you live Southern California or plan to be there May 9th, you’ll want to know about the UCLA Technology & Aging Conference. The one-day event looks at medical and consumer technology aimed at improving life as we age, and how the changes will influence the future of health care. Notables on the program include Gary W. Small MD, director of UCLA’s Center on Aging, and Eric Dishman, who directs Intel’s product research and innovation group. Star power will be supplied via a luncheon address from actor and author Kirk Douglas, who will talk about the emotional and physical challenges of stroke recovery.

Do we really become more set in our ways as we age? Not according to a recent SecurePath by Transamerica survey. The C.U.R.E. Retirement Study (change, uncertainty, risk and retirement education) probed the attitudes of pre-retirees about how they deal with factors outside their control, such as the economy. The survey responses seem to contradict the stereotypes:

• Two-thirds (65 percent) say they’ve gotten better at handling periods of change or uncertainty as they age.
• Half (50 percent) even say they are at their best during times of change and 50 percent find change exciting.
• When asked about their personal philosophy when it comes to finances and money, more than half (58 percent) can relate to the notion of “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” and 48 percent agree with the statement “No risk, no reward”.
• Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of pre-retirees say they will handle the change and uncertainty associated with growing older well and two-thirds (65 percent) are confident that even with the uncertainty associated with retirement, everything will work out.

The findings are based on more than 2,000 interviews with working adults over age 50.

If you’d like to know how your change profile stacks up against the averages, you can take the risk quiz here.

“In the era of an aging population, memory is the new sex.”

–New York Times columnist David Brooks on The Great Forgetting.

The move by AARP into online social networking that I wrote about last October is complete. The site’s Community section is live, and AARP officials at the What’s Next Boomer Business Summit this week in Washington, D.C. say it’s off to a good start. Since I first wrote about this move by AARP, the competitive threat from Eons has eased off, with traffic there falling back sharply. AARP still seems game to make a go of it. Conference-goers at a workshop on social networking seemed generally befuddled about the topic, although a fair number raised their hands when a panelist asked how many are on Facebook (perhaps a sign that Facebook isn’t long for this world?).

The top three topics discussed at What’s Next this year: caregiving, social networking and financing longevity. Author Gail Sheehy gave a preview of the book she is researching on caregiving, which promises to change the national conversation on this topic. Sheehy spoke at length–and will be writing–about her own experience as caregiver for her husband, legendary magazine editor Clay Felker. The narrative-style book she plans to write will be a breakthrough compared with most of the dry stuff available now on caregiving.

What’s Next is a pre-conference for the gigantic Aging in America conference staged by the American Society on Aging and the National Council on Aging. I’m at that event this week and will have lots of posts–including video on this site and over at RetirementRevised over the next couple of weeks.

Happy holidays to you - courtesy of Walt Handelsman, Newsday’s Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and animator.