Halloween Costumes: What is too far?

This week as I scrolled through my Twitter timeline, I found one of my followers/"followees"extremely bothered by one of his retweets and out of curiosity I went to check it out. When I went to look at it,  I  instantly caught his irritation. Two of the three people in the picture were representing George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin. The kid who was supposed to be Trayvon Martin is in Blackface with a hoodie with a "blood spot" where his heart is located while his friend wears a hoodie with "Security Watch" in iron letters across the front as he held his hands in the shape of a gun to "Trayvon's" head (the picture above). 

As I looked at the picture, it was hard to breathe because I couldn't gather the thoughts to even begin to understand how that would ever be ok in someone's mind. The level of insensitivity for the family or how this could raise the level of tension from the case didn't seem to be thought about. Along with the picture I also began to see links and statuses about related topics. One post that caught my eye was a chart to tell if your costume was racist (Is Your Costume Racist? Chart) . 

Another picture that was originally posted on Twitter is slowly making its rounds to other social networks and I found it on Facebook. It's two girls  in BlackFace, but this time with a caption using the n-word. All I want to know is when did making a mock of someone's death, whether you agree with circumstances of the trial and/or situation, ever ok and what where are the parents. Seeing things like this and the constant debate of whether using the term "Redskins" as a team name definitely makes one wonder if  racism every really faded away in the first place. 

Whoa I'm turning 21... In Ada?

It's my birthday! Now, I've spent every year for the last 3 years in Ada, but this one is a little more of a milestone than the last two. I'm celebrating my 21st!

So far it's been a little slow with classes and completing homework before the weekend gets started. And the one question I keep getting asked is, "What do you have planned when your done with classes and things?", and the most excitement I have been able to tell people is hanging out with my family and boyfriend. Now, yes I'm extremely grateful that my family made the little over 3 hour drive to spend a cold weekend in "The Village", but at 21 most people are doing something more exciting to ring in this monumental day. 

Enough of being a "Debbie Downer" because my birthday fell on a Friday and I only had two of my three classes today! On top of that one of my groups of friends is planning on doing something with me before we all go out and party tomorrow night. So I hope the football team can get another win to help get some of the campus in a good mood to help the party atmosphere.

Social Media and Business

Real-Time Marketing and PR, Chapter 13: Let Them Communicate Now tells us that social networking is here to stay and one way or another employees are going to find ways to communicate in real time.

Scott starts by saying he understands why companies don't want to give in to letting employees use social media/networks. His gives three reasons on why companies prohibit real-time communications. Those reasons: 

                 1. People may say something inappropriate and harm the company's reputation

                 2. Twitter is just inane chitchat- no serious business happens there

                 3. If people are online, t will take too much of their time 

He then follows that up with the fact that real-time communication is here to stay and companies can either embrace it and grow or stay behind. 

An example of a company that embraced real-time communication is IBM. However, something that helps them try to curb issues is a real-time communication policy. IBM requires that employees be who they are; be thoughtful about how they present themselves in online social networks; respect copyright and fair use laws; protect confidential and proprietary information; add value; don't pick fights; and don't forge your day job. Scott thinks they're most important point is that employees use first word singular for their posts. That's because if "we" is used readers might think that employees are giving a formal corporate announcement, even if they aren't authorized to talk about product launches.

An example on the other end of the spectrum is a local cleaners in my home town. They tried to embrace real-time communication, but employees were more focused on using social networks for purely being social and not helping the business by spreading the word about the business or helping customers in a timely manner. Now, the owner has made it so if you aren't in an upper-level position (ex. one of the two owners or general manager) then you are denied internet access.

Scott developed 8 steps or ways for companies to implement guidelines for real-time communication after discussing IBM.

1. Get initial agreement from stakeholders that such guidelines are required.
1. Explain the importance of communicating in real time and the need for comprehensive rules governing what can be done at work.
2. Select a team of about six people to draft the guidelines.
1. Find people who are active communicators from different areas of the company.
3. Study any relevant corporate guidelines already in place.
1. Many of the issues to be addressed may already be covered by the guidelines.
4. In creating guidelines closely study IBM's Social Computing Guidelines and others like it. 
1. Adapt them to fit your regulatory environment, corporate culture, and marketplace. 
5. Share your draft guidelines with stakeholders and get their sign-off.
1. If you started with sufficient up-front buy-in this should go smoothly.
6. Incorporate feedback without getting bogged down by process.
1. You don't want the project to die from endless editing.
7. Publish the guidelines on internal sites, and if you, can externally, the way IBM has.
8. Communicate the guidelines to every in your organization until it becomes second nature. 

Guidelines let employees know they have the freedom to communicate in real-time when they are awarded the opportunity.

Northern and Social Media

This weekend I learned just how helpful Northern, as a whole and individual students,  could be with their use of social media/real-time communication while making my Storify.

During our (Aggie's Social Media Principles Class) live tweet assignment I found it hard to stay focused on tweeting during the game because I LOVE football. Something that was extremely helpful was Ohio Norther Sports Twitter page (@ONUsports) because if I missed a play I could easily quote the tweet before I retweeted and it  allowed me to double check that I was tweeting the right player.

Another page that Northern used that was helpful is the Ohio Northern Sports on Facebook. It help provide pictures for my Storify captions. 

Not only did it meet my needs in that way but ONU's (general) Facebook, even allowed me to catch up on events that I missed out on during the weekend. I was able to look at pictures and comments from events like the Sig Ep Balloon Glow that helped a local Boys and Girls Club and the Hall of Fame induction ceremony. 


Homecoming 2013: ONU v. Marietta (Storify Link)

ONU Homecoming 2013

This weekend the Polar Bears put a win against Marietta with a score of 45-0 after 2 tough losses against Mount Union and Baldwin Wallace.

This game I arrived a lot earlier than usual and had some time to watch the team warm-up. As they warmed up it seemed like all I heard was, "It's a good day to be a Polar Bear," or "Today's our day boys." The guys had no crowds to hype them up or to impress they were just ready to play. They all seemed so focused and on one accord  One visual that was great to see was they chant they do as they do jumping jacks  (clip up above). It then translated very well when the first whistle blew for kick-off. 

Every time the guys had a play that took either line out of the game, those on the side line made sure they all felt the love to get it together. It just stop their either after every big play the celebration was huge. Ryan Reid, Senior Defensive Back, broke up two of Marietta's chances of a touch down and all you hear was "Wooooo" from the end zone as his teammates tackled him in excitement. They weren't they only people excited though. The fans were just as into the game. I sat in front of one player's family and they had a response to every play.  Hopefully with this explosive game the guys can keep it up and win out the rest of the season.

Next game on the schedule: John Carroll at 1:30 pm 

Real-Time Marketing and PR: Chapter 9

Scott spends this Chapter 9 talking about crowdsourcing or outsourcing a task to a group of people.

Everyday examples of this crowdsourcing is audience voting, by text messaging or calling in,  that competition television shows like American Idol or Dancing with the Stars does to find out which contestants are going home. A BIG example is the BrandBowl 2010, an idea was stared by Mullen, an ad agency, and Radian 6, an engagement provider. Together, they used Web-based crowdsourcing techniques, monitoring and measuring opinions, and ranked ads as the game was played.

Brandbowl 2010 collected a little less than 100,000 tweets during the Super Bowl to determine the overall rank of all the ads and the rank was based on a composite score. The score was dependent on volume and sentiment. The opinions of tweets were used to get a net sentiment score to measure if the fans' reactions were positive or negative. To differentiate between positive and negative tweets  Radian6 built a reference library of examples that assigned values to language used in tweets to sort distinctions and colloquial usage. In the end of all the processing Doritos and Google had the top ads after the game rather than giving the results the next day in the paper.  Although this all sounds great, Edward Boches, chief creative officer at Mullen, co-creator of BrandBowl 2010, described crowdsourcing as both a challenge and problem because seeing all the wisdom of your crowd can come back with the results you wanted more quickly or in a way you weren't expecting.

Personally, I think it's a good idea to use crowdsourcing because of some of the things Scott mentioned. One of the things that it allows is brainstorming, but it allows companies or people to ask the public to participate. An example of this was Mark Levy's use of it for coming up with a title for his book, Accidental Genius: Using Writing to Generate Your Best Ideas, Insight, and Content. Levy said, "For me, crowdsourcing was interesting in unexpected ways... crowdsourcing backed up something I had suspected, and it gave people a forum to help me construct (a subtitle), I wouldn't have gotten without their input."

Endia Beal's "Can I Touch it?" Photo Blog

In the past few days as I logged into Facebook, I had been seeing a lot of people post and share an article titled, "Can I Touch It?", by Endia Beal on my newsfeed. Curious to see what it was about I clicked on it and began to read. 

Beal did this photo blog to open up discussion topics such as race, gender, and differences between generations as a part of a five week residency for the Center of Photography at Woodstock. For this she chose white women in their 40's but was hoping to get mostly baby boomers and gave them "Black hairstyles" that would be worn in a profession portrait even if they ladies did not like them.  Most of the ladies thought they'd be sporting braids or cornrows, but to their surprise Endia chose finger roles and not the type worn in the 20's.

The idea came to Beal while she was an intern in Yale's IT department where she stood out among her colleagues. Beal was the tall black female who wore a huge red afro as she towered over her shorter white male counterparts while in the office. As time went on, someone told her that their was a rumor going around that some of the men wanted to touch her hair and her response was for them not to simply touch it but pull it.  She later posted a video, Beal Office Scene Excerpt, to describe the experience.


Endia knew her hairstyle might cause some issues in corporate America, but she did not feel like it should be up to just her to fix them and that's the reason for the project. During the experience the women, some from Woodstock, NY and others from North Carolina, were excited to learn about the products and styles being done and used on their hair. Many of the women also were taking and posting pictures to Facebook and they seemed to take to Beal after the experience was over.  Beal is considering having the women, the ones based out of North Carolina, wear their styles to work and make video about their experience.

*Endia Beal's website will be up on November 1st (endiabeal.com)*
Center for Photography at Woodstock
Facebook Story
Photo Blog

Real-Time Marketing and PR: Bigger Companies and Organizations Have To Work

David Meerman Scott, author of Real-Time Marketing and PR, takes the time to discuss "real time" and the demand for it in today's society. One topic he spends some time on is large organizations/businesses and how real time can be incorporated.


Chapter four, briefly mentions that the more people an organization has the more difficult it is to communicate in real time. In what Scott calls a command-and-control environment nothing can be done without someone with authority giving it the okay. He goes on to say that the challenge is to get a balance that allows employees initiative and offers real-time guidance when it is needed. There also needs to be a leader that is going to make it happen. Someone has to spread the mind-set of real-to,e communication throughout the organization.

Chapter five goes more into the idea of big businesses using real-time. An example that shows large organizations can do this is Todd Blecher, communications director at Boeing, who responded to a tweet of an irritated father. Harry Windor's, an eight year old, father was not to happy with the response his son's picture of a plane received from the company and tweeted that they needed to work on how they responded to children. Blecher responded that they could do better when it came to children and he personally did something about it. Todd called Harry and took the time to talk to him about the drawing. The quick response shows that big businesses can succeed at real-time communication.Things companies should keep in mind while trying to integrate this mind set is to build a team, monitor what's being said about the company (like the Boeing), develop guidelines and train staff and engage with the market.

I can personally say I have seen some of those in action with how Apple deals with customers. This summer I had a few issues with my phone because I decided to spend my summer in a small town of Tiffin, Ohio. Apple told me that the lack of signal was causing me to miss calls and texts. But, the biggest problem came when when they did a data transfer from my old laptop to my new one. I lost all of my contacts and every time I tried to sync them from the Cloud the disappeared right after. So after my first 2 hour conversation with them and a very mean survey, Apple put me in contact with one of their top tech people the following morning. The person I talked to not only fixed my problem, but saw the other issues I had and gave me his direct line and email in case of any further problems. Apple has a team of people set up to deal with customer issues as they happen, they have a way to keep track of past issues and they (try) to train their staff to fix problems quickly.

A Twitter Death That's Real?

On Friday morning, word spread quickly that Adrian Peterson's, Minnesota Vikings' running back , two-year old son died. Which NFL fans later found out was the personal reason Peterson missed practice on Thursday. The child, whose name has not been released to the public, was rushed to the hospital on Wednesday night after being found unresponsive and later determined to be in critical condition. He was under the care of his mother's boyfriend,  Joseph Patterson. Patterson ended up with two counts of aggravated battery of an infant and aggravated domestic assault according to ESPN. Even with this situation on his mind, Adrian played today in the loss against the Carolina Panthers with a total of 83 yards on the day which is a quiet day at the office for him. However, he had the support of many fellow athletes and fans on Twitter the day his son went in the hospital and the day he passed.

Many fans and athletes from other leagues also posted supportive tweets over the weekend. Some of the common hashtags that I saw were  #AP, #PrayingForAP and #SickForAP. Adrian did not let the attention on his tough time go unnoticed. He addressed the condolences, asked for fans and fellow athletes to be respectful and not post pictures on social networks and the son that he had living with him, Adrian Peterson Jr., was healthy.

The pictures that were being posted were of Adrian Peterson and Adrian Peterson Jr. While I understand that fans, who I'm assuming posted the pictures, where just trying to show support, did not know which son they were posting, but I have only seen two pictures of Peterson and a young child during the time the story has unfolded. However, the two pictures that were floating around Twitter did have quite a few retweets and favorites because they showed how much care there was for the child in them, but it also showed you how quickly things can move over social networks and who all has access to them. Peterson's tweets showed us that celebrity status does not make you any less human. Fans' tweets showed that we can keep a story going even before and after we get all the details. But, in all seriousness my thoughts and prayers go out to Adrian Peterson.


ESPN article #1
ESPN Article #2

Cultural Conversation: Shoot First, Ask Questions Later

Yesterday morning, Multicultural Development had its monthly Cultural Conversation. These conversations usually last about an hour and discuss relevant issues of today. This month's conversation was titled, "Shoot First, Ask Questions Later", and took a look at the Stand Your Ground Laws and the Trayvon Martin Case. Dr. Antoinette "Toni"Clarke, an ONU Law Professor, began the conversation with discussing what the Stand Your Ground Laws mean and how they related to the case of Trayvon Martin with mention of a few less known cases. 


After going over the basics of what the laws meant and how they related to Martin's case the floor was open to conversation. Once the conversation is opened those who come are allowed to ask questions and/or make comments about how they feel about the situation. One that stood to me was a comment of an older gentleman who believed that the decision to acquit George Zimmerman, was more rooted in the South's history of racism more so than the laws. He believed this to be so because majority of the jury was white, the judge was white, and so was the prosecuting attorney. Another thing that stood out to me is the reason Dr. Clarke chose to be apart of this conversation. 


Dr. Clarke chose to lead the conversation yesterday because a friend of hers had mentioned to her that she was worried for her young (black) sons to grow up in this country after the case. She said because of that she wanted to educate the young people she came in contact with on laws like these so that they know how to protect themselves. However, that was not what stuck in mind through the whole conversation. 


The main thought I had was about my cousin who was shot this summer and although it was a different situation than Trayvon's, both were teenagers at the time of their deaths. My cousin, Cameron (CJ), was shot and killed by someone he believed he was his friend over a "He said, She said" conversation. He died two days before his 19th birthday. CJ missed out on the birth of his daughter, Cameryn, who was born in early September. In either case, they both did not get to a chance to finish out their teenage years and a parent should never have to bury their child. 


ONU Cultural Conversation on Local News

ONU vs. Mount Union

The fat lady has sung ladies and gentlemen. The Polar Bears are 0-3 against Mount Union since I've been here.

For this game the stakes were high just like in the past partly because we have been their one of their very few loses. But, today there seemed like there might have been more to it. A friend of mine said someone who transferred from ONU to Mount was out for blood this game because of something said to him by a coach before he left. His statement truly showed on the hit he gave to Matt Craven late in the game. The hit was so hard that it knocked not only Craven's helmet off, but also moved his mouth piece from his mouth. Devon Price, sophomore wide receiver, that played with the defensive player was ready to fight as a reaction to the hit. Now, I'm not a fan for fighting, but I'm glad to see that our team has their teammates backs.

That's a huge difference I've seen with this year's team. Through the ups and downs of the season, I've seen retweets of excitement for games each week or tweets of encouragement when someone is down on themselves about their performance. I also see them egging on each other to do their best every game. Yesterday, was the best example as I was giving my boyfriend and a few others a ride after practice. They were all teasing my boyfriend about if he got over 100 yards that even if they lost his performance would keep the team's spirits up because that is not the easiest thing for teams to do on Mount.  The unity of this team is the biggest win I've seen from this team in the season so far.

See you guys at the next game! ---> Kaila

Miley:The Movement

Lately we've been hearing and seeing a lot of Miley Cyrus. This week she had a documentary on MTV titled Miley: The Movement. The documentary takes a look at her point of view on her current lifestyle.

Viewers are given an inside view on things they may or may not have known about Miley. We learned things like she is a huge Brittany Spears' fan. Brittany was and is someone she looked up to in the music industry. She finally got to work with Brittany on her up coming album.We also learned that Miley's preferred social network is Twitter. In one segment of the show, Miley spends a day at Twitter and she spends some of her time promoting her single, We Can't Stop, to get it to number one on iTunes. She also spent some time talking to different departments of the company

As far as the change we've seen it Miley it all began with her living in Philadelphia by herself and taking a train riding to New York for her stylist to cut and dye her hair. She said it was time for her to be the "bad bitch" that she is and right after that comment Pharrell Williams said she's a 20 year old trying to evolve into herself and this was just the beginning. Miley felt like the person she has become is the person she was meant to be all along. We also were given some insight into the VMA's. Cyrus says we all may have thought it was a hot mess, but it was all apart of a plan. It was about what would separate her from all the other performers. She feels like all the negative attention from her performance is funny and in the past because she has already moved on to what is next for her. She sees these changes as just the beginning.

"This (her new album) will redefine everything you think about Miley Cyrus." ---> Will. I. AM

Time Shaker: A New Social Media Site/App

Time Shaker appears to be an online time capsule where users can document family history, events that interest them, or even sports history and schedules. It also allows users to compare their library of photos against the historical library made available through the site.

Personally, outside the use of the historical library I don't really see what is so thrilling about this idea. I looked through a number of the examples and thought back to ways I have already used these ideas elsewhere. For example, They have a football team's "Time View" up and the timeline allows you to click on each game of the schedule with a map and start time. Most school websites give you game times and directions or map for the opposing team when games are away. One of the questions that I had was outside of some elderly people, how often would the map be used. Most of us just need the address so it can be plugged in the GPS of our phones or cars.

I also don't see how the timeline of photos is all that different from Facebook outside the fact that you can match it up with historical events and the format is different. That might only be interesting if you were interested in history and/or interested in seeing what happened historically on important days of your life. I feel like either way you can look that up without a site, although the site can save you time if you knew what you were doing.

However when I asked someone older what they thought about the site he disagreed with me. He said, "I would not have a problem using it to store and portray events that I feel are personally significant. Preserving events and memories electronically would enable me to share them with friends and family for many years."So, as they say everything isn't for everybody.