Collaborative Employees

if this comes off harsh, it is because the Cleveland Indians, my team, just blew it big time...

Most people like to be around other people. They like to be socially active and form bonds. Those bonds get more complicated and form networks. Networks soon spread from within one's area and reach outwards, becoming regional, to national, to international and finally global. Thus, it should be no exception to the rule that work should evolve from being mainly independent (with some exceptions) to collaborative (those exceptions can include musicians and sports teams). Programs as basic as Google Docs, and more complicated such as Basecamp, can allow for collaborative work. In an article titled Working Together...When Apart lists out 10 techniques to NOT violate these group dyanmics. Using Placeware, Microsoft's latest acquisition, Microsoft is attempting to follow suit and set up online meetings. Everything has become about "the greater good", and collaboration. Whether it works or not is up for debate, but what is not, is that it is the future. Another cool collaborative program is Google Calendar which allows you to see other people's calendars. Depending on settings, I'm pretty sure that you can edit them too.

But looking back at the article Working Together...When Apart, all of the 10 online collaboration techniques seem so obvious and like things that should happen in the real world as well as online. Some examples include "Assign tasks that are challenging and interesting"; "Ensure the task is meaningful to the team and the company"; and, "When building a virtual team, solicit volunteers as much as possible."

Individualism is the past and collaboration is the future...there's no way around it and no way to avoid it, for better or worse...

YAY! NOW we are ALL Celebrities

Why is Kevin Federline...excuse me, K-Fed, so famous? Simple: paparazzi. Their infectuous disease is everywhere. Now, that disease has been transferred to MySpace, Facebook, and more or less in general: the Internet. In case I didn't care enough about what Jessica Simpson did in her free time, now I can worry about what I do in my spare time. I have to worry about the internet paparazzi coming back to haunt me down the road. How many people have pictures of illicit drug use? Underage drinking? Anything else that could haunt your career? Either way you are/can be front page news.

And yet, why use Facebook? Why use MySpace? I don't know but i do both. They are almost social norms and necessary, otherwise you are an outcast. We joke amongst my friends that we cannot be friends in real life unless we are friends on Facebook. Yet, I don't want the whole world knowing what I'm doing...or do I? No, I tell myself, I don't. I HATE all of those magazines that are meant to create gossip yet have a high profit margin. Reality check: WHO CARES WHAT CELEBRITIES DO IN THEIR FREE TIME? I DON'T! Guess what? They slip up and make mistakes too!

So, naturally humans have created programs to clean up profiles. One, for instance, is called Reputation Defender. There is a fee associated with the service. While the service sounds nice, Uncle Mike can save you money while not using it (though you do lose the benefits of social networking): DELETE YOUR PROFILE! DELETE YOUR SCREEN NAME! LIVE UNDER A ROCK! I guess I'll just have to learn to live with the fact that my life is always on the line. So much for running for President.

Blogging and social networking are just proof though that your online reputation supercedes your actual reputation. GREAAAAAAT. JUST what I needed.

Stalking 101...Via Mobile Technology...

Upon reading "Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution", I started thinking about "Lovegety and P2P Journalism" and the future of blogging. (Rheingold 165) I must admit that I'm a bit torn between whether or not "inter-personal awareness devices" (IPAD) are creepy or not. IPADs allow one to find people in real-world spaces (though I'm not sure within what radius), are nearby. On one hand, that sounds cool. For instance, with the company Lovegety, I can see when a person of the opposite sex is nearby. The Japanese have been using this product for a while. Let's be honest: someone gets desperate, Lovegety (or the other products like it such as Gaydar, Mobile Cupid Service, and ImaHima) can provide a quick answer. By desperate I mean for a relationship, though I suppose it could be used for a prostitution ring, if one was THAAAAAAT desperate. I suppose it is kind of like a website like e-Harmony, or the dozens of other dating services that "guarentee" results.

On the other hand, that's just plain CREEPY. It is the perfect place to say "HI! I'M A STALKER! YOU WILL NEVER ESCAPE!" Perfect. Facebook/Myspace didn't allow for enough stalkers anyways....

But the whole idea of using mobile devices (such as Lovegety, etc.) is so key to current society. For instance, the usage of cellular phones has improved the news. By improved I mean getting it out faster/easier. For instance, with the terrible tragedy of Virginia Tech earlier this year, one kid had footage on his cell phone and sent it to the news services. It provided a real video stream prior to the video crews being able to get there. In this instance, mobile devices played an important role. It will be interesting to see how mobile devices continue to impact the news.

Rheingold, Howard. Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. 1st Ed. Cambridge, MA: Basic Books, 2002.

Scoble, Robert, and Shel Israel. Naked Conversations. 1st Ed. Hoboken, NJ: Jon Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2006

How To Save Money From Paying Rent: Store ALL Your Junk On Second Life

When I first heard of Second Life, I thought that humanity had been set back. For instance, take a quick read of the article "Even In A Virtual World 'Stuff' Matters". In the article the woman mentions how she has 31,540 items that she owns. Virtual world or not, who needs all that junk? Seriously. And here I was and thought I had enough garbage in my room. But to clog servers?

That sounds PERFECT! Think about it for 10 seconds and pretend I'm being serious...how cool would that be? I could save so much money and live in a box! My other box will store all my stuff. Or maybe, I could even create an alter-ego and pretend to be innocent? Or I could pretend to be a creepy stalker? Or I could be nice (no pretending here)?

The more I think about it, it really does seem kind of neat, regardless of how cynical I come off as. The pretend Anshe Chung won the money I should have, and became the first Second Life millionaire. (An article describing what should have been me can be found at "Second Life's First Millionaire") Well, that seems pretty slick.

Second Life provides a means for being something your not. Basically, think of Facebook/Myspace on steroids. You create a 3D animated character to play yourself and then you run around doing things you would normally in life: lie, cheat and deceit. And shop. There is plenty of shopping. It does have a cool interface with Web 2.0 integration and video plugins. My favorite point: you need to build up your street credibility. Street credibility is translated into spending time on the website, which means that CLEARLY you can do one of my favorite things in the world: PROCRASTINATE!

All things aside, procrastination is the perfect tool in my book for making it through school. Another "nice" feature that intellectuals tell me about is that thing that I rarely do...."learning" I think it is? Well, "learning" aside, Second Life's grade? A-! Remember the whole "I'm a college student" part? Yah, $10/month is kind of expensive...still though, it does seem kind of cool and if I had someone funding me I'd "consider" joining...If it was FREE, then I'd give SL an A+...anyone want to fund me?


Boss, Shira. "Even in a Virtual World, ‘Stuff’ Matters." New York Times 09 Sept 2007 27 Sept 2007

Hamilton, Chuck. "Fast Talk: Getting A [Second] Life." Fast Talk: Getting A [Second] Life. Feb 2007. Fast Company.com. 27 Sep 2007 .

Hof, Rob. "Second Life's First Millionaire." Business Week 26 Nov 2006 27 Sept 2007 .

"Second Life In 3600 Seconds." Second Life In 3600 Seconds. April 2007. 27 Sep 2007 .

Technorati Profile

this is so that I can be registered on Technorati

The Mouth's Word

In a world where advertisers (according to a recent study) are considered to be only one notch above used car salesman, advertisers are looking (as well as marketers) for a new way to reach consumers. As Shel Israel/Robert Scoble's book "Naked Conversations" mentioned, Interruption Marketing was simply obnoxious. One of the resultants was viral marketing (which word of mouth falls under). The reason for word of mouth's success is the layer of truth and understanding. The most powerful word of mouth (WOM) comes from people you trust, namely friends and family. That is not to understate the power of WOM through blogs: they are a powerful marketer's tool.

Blogs create a one-to-many relationship, which provides for a good way to get your message out to the public. Blogs also allow one to comment on prior posts/comments. This is important because as jackie Huba states, "...Two-way marketing is essential to evangelism. Word-of-mouth tactics may backfire if they are one-directional." (Scoble and Israel 38)

Another key function for marketers/advertisers is the ability to advertise on blogs. For instance, on an ESPN blog, one advertisement could be for Cleveland Indians playoff tickets or for a related product. This way, WOM is working in conjunction with interstitals, blog ads, etc.

A quick example of WOM at work is the video that has been long circulating (by today's circumstances) is The Landlord. My friend sent it to me and so I knew I had to check it out. Through WOM this video has had an obscene number of hits.

The only thing I can predict that will come next is taking blogging and Google's YouTube and Google Video (among other services) to become video blogs. WOM would be an excellent choice for promotion because it is so easy and cheap.

Scoble, Robert, and Shel Israel. Naked Conversations. 1st Ed. Hoboken, NJ: Jon Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2006.

My Blog Circle

Here are the people in my Blog Group...

Ale's Blog
Colleen's Blog
Khaled's Blog
Seppo Joe's Blog
Tim's Blog