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6/20/2007 Cyber-BullyingThis is an interesting story that portrays the guy as the villain here, while the sweet innocent young lady is the victim. I don't buy it because I think there are a TON of holes in this story and of course, she's fighting back with her own media revenge. Is this a case of three wrongs not making it right? Could this have been cleared up by a simple phone call to his former roommate or did he do that? Should both just cut their losses and move on? I will say this if she's seriously scared of random and likely anonymous threats, she's not that web savvy in the first place. I know I've seen a thread before in the blogosphere about some of the a-listers who have had death threats. Logically, it's like sending a hand-written death threat via snail on your personal stationary....not that threatening. Quote WOODTV.com & WOOD TV8 - Grand Rapids news, weather, sports and video - Man faces cyber-bullying felo 4/6/2006 In the blogger's loungeI'm currently here in the CTIA bloggers lounge and Jake Luddington is interviewing Steve Largent, who is currently the CEO of CTIA. Incidently, he's also an NFL hall of famer who played for the Seattle Seahawks for 14 years. It's kind of cool. His major priority in the wireless industry is helping ensure it's not over-regulated. Given the way the government acts - especially in light of current FCC rulings - I have to say it sounds like an impossible task. Of course never say never.
Jake just touched on a controversial topic in light of recent studies linking cancer to cellular phone usage. Personally studies are really only so reliable and I think this issue could come more to light in say...10 years or more. Makes me think of another major industry that's "responsible" for lung cancer and the fire they continue to come under. I recently read the US News and World Report issue that highlights the possibility of a cancer vaccine. It's a good article with lots of hope for the future, so you should read.
4/4/2006 CTIA 06I'm here in Fabulous Las Vegas :) for the annual CTIA 2006 wireless conference and looking forward to meeting some new people. Tonight Waggener Edstrom is hosting a blogger's lounge and is opening up today with a blogger meetup at 7PM tonight. Jake Luddington from the Chris Pirillo show will be there among others and we'll have some products from our growing list of clients, which is also very cool. Right now I'm hanging out in my room at the Hard Rock Hotel. The place is really cool with all the interesting memorabilia and atmosphere. I especially like the flat tv screen in my room - it's about a 36" so very cool for a very spacious room.
The only thing that sucked is I got up ridiculously early in order to catch an 8AM flight and since I generally don't sleep well and packing is not one of my strong skills, I only managed to catch about three hours of sleep.
Whenever I travel, I end up staying up way to late because I'm not used to having cable. As soon as I turned on the TV upon entering my room the Colbert Report was on and I really wished I was able to watch that on a regular basis. Of course when I go home, I'll forget about it so I try and not get too attached. With the precious little time I have left to myself, I already watch too much tv as it is.
On another note, I've been very random in my blog postings lately - mostly because I've been so busy and my home computer is not cooperating at the moment, which is another story. However, I'm going to refocus my blog and start to have more of a theme. What that is, I'm not sure. But I hope to nail that down soon.
10/27/2005 Breast Implants and Bluetooth TechnologyOh what the future holds.....gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "come in Tokyo." Not sure what else to say about this but if this becomes reality in 10 years, I can hear myself saying I remember when we listened to music on the radio. Or better yet, remember 8 tracks!
Quote OhGizmo! » Breast Implants and Bluetooth Technology 10/19/2005 Media BiasAs a PR professional, assessing biases of the media is a part of the job. Hell, as a human being, assesing biases of people you deal with is just human nature. I don't blame anyone for their biases, I only want to be able to recognize them and be sure to take that into account, put myself in their shoes and take things with a grain of salt.
It's not my job to point out those biases and I don't want to make it so. Even when friends ask me for my opinion, I often get that sneaking suspicion that they really don't want to hear what I have to say. I give them the option but if they push, I"m an honest person and won't comprimise to tell them what they want to hear. What kind of friend would I be if I didn't tell them the truth.
Back the media, they usually don't ask. Mostly because they really don't care what public relations people have to say to them - fair enough. If you are in the media, don't ever think we don't know what your biases are - at least if we are doing our job and especially if we are adept at it. When I read John Dvorak's column this week, I was very pleasantly surprised (shocked may be a better word) that he pointed out that big "pink elephant" of media bias that someone who does PR for Microsoft.
Dvorak said what I've felt before but no one - especially the media - cares what I have to say about the coverage they give Apple. I think Apple is a great company, well at least that's what the media has led me to believe. I don't have any personal experience with them except that my husband, who studied graphic design, loves the Mac. The iPod is marketing genius and I've heard many people gush about their iPod - not me, I like Creative Labs Zen Touch - listening to it right now. I was determined to not get sucked into the iPod frenzy and researched immensely until I found the perfect product for my needs. If that product was going to be an iPod, then so be it. It wasn't.
The flip side of media bias is sometimes you can't get built up so much by the media that you end up breaking that golden rule for customer service and you overpromise and undeliver. The media doesn't care and they evetnually flock to your aid but the people that really count get hurt - your customers.
Being in high-tech PR for years, I've noted the Apple-biased media but there are SO many more biases out that that the general public fail to recognize. The worst and most damaging are political biases. At the end of the day, do you really think that reporter really thinks about whether his/her personal views are shaping a story? As a reporter, are you that naive to think your personal biases aren't represented in your coverage?
Thanks, John, for bringing up this topic. I'll be watching to see how folks react. 9/19/2005 Global PR blog week?I noticed that this marks global pr blog week, where PR professionals from all over the world "will be discussing how new technology advances will be changing the way public relations and business communicates."
According to some press release, which I'm not really interested in reading. Here's my first question:
in the wake of PR blog week, who made the decision to actually write a press release?
I'm thinking they missed the target market for this. Why? Because we have an agency full of very savvy blog individuals, but I saw nothing about PR blog week that would encourage me to participate. Who started this and why and what will I get out of it? Who knows but I'm definitely not interested in reading a press relaese about it.
Perhaps I'll find something interesting to post here about it during the week.
p.s. don't hold your breath.
I almost forgot to mention - in major good news my roller derby team, Throttle Rockets, are on our way to the Championship match on October 15th where we will face off with our friends and fiercest competitors the Derby Liberation Front.
If you haven't been to a game yet, do not miss this one. All the marbles are on the line for this one so the gloves are off!
9/8/2005 Talking to Bill GatesI'll admit I'm a geek, but not the coding kind of geek but rather one who loves technology and embraces new ideas and loves to dive into the technical bits - regardless of whether I truly understand it or not. I think in a former life, I was meant to be a developer but my path steered me elsewhere for whatever reason. I do remember in grade school, I used to write simple programs on a commodore 64 while I waited for my Dad to get done and we drove home together.
Back to my point, I like technology and out of all the people I've had the opportunity to meet or not, Bill Gates has always been a fascinating person to me. I did see him in the hall one time in the Fall of 2000 on campus - I was hosting a Visual Studio Reviewers Workshop and he graced us with his presence there but I never got to talk to him. Nor would I really know what to say.
Robert Scoble just posted an interview on Channel 9 with Mr. Gates and it's really interesting. It's preempting next week's Professional Developers Conference but he also asked some interesting questions. I particularly liked his response to whether the reign of the geek was over. Bill, obviously, said no but qualified the statement that there is so much more to be solved with software and geeks are the ones who get to solve these things. I don't have to mention how rapidly technology has impacted our everyday lives over just the past ten years, but I think the next ten years will definitely see a LOT more.
A few other rememberable parts: (answers are my summary of course)
How do you want to be remembered? He didn't think it was important but it was a matter of deciding what he wanted to do. He wants to motivate people and impact change with long-term goals for the software industry.
With Robert's prompting (of course!) Bill also talked about Robert and Channel 9's role in the blogosphere and how great a job they were doing in putting that human face on Microsoft and having people feel like they are a part of it.
I found this to be such an accurate description of blogging - having people feel like they are a part of it - whatever "it" is.
Bravo Robert - although I will add that you did sound a little bit nervous but it's completely understandable.
One last thought - I noticed that Bill Gates fidgets almost as much as I do! I would like to think that it's just creative genious, given that we share the same traits :) What else could it be? (don't answer that please) 8/31/2005 blogday and the fat cyclistBlogDay is apparently today according to a clever individual. His goal is to have people talk about 5 of your favorite (and mostly unread) blogs. There are a lot of blogs out there people and the day is waning quickly....
I have to put a shout out to The Fat Cyclist, especially for his post today. He's asking for sponsorship for an upcoming ride to support Multiple Sclerosis called the MS150. Go check out today's post and donate if you like - he's also putting his wife through hell for donations of $50 but the big money donations also let you choose which color he'll paint himself or a message he'll write on his body! It could be fun.... anyone want to go in on a donation.
Lynann's Blog is also a favorite read of mine. She is a SVP at Waggener Edstrom and super sharp. I love her obvservations on life.
Obviously, Chris Pirillo is another favorite of mine, but I can hardly classify that as mostly unread ;-).
Another little gem of celebrity gossip, is Stacy's blog, Little C. Yeah, I could read gawker, but Stacy's has a better overview of interesting things that doesn't make me cringe like gawker sometimes does. Keep it up, Stacy!
There are so many other blogs that I read daily and many of them are a part of my job. I run across little gems all the time but I don't have the time nor the mental capacity to soak them all in. Heck I can't even provide an accurate blog list on here. One of my recent "big" blogs that I really enjoy reading is OhGizmo! If you like tech gadgets, or design - or ideally BOTH, you will definitely like this site. I think it provides something very unique over Gizmodo and Engadget, plus I like the name better.
Darren Barefoot, in my opinion, has one of the best written blogs around - well at least that I read. It's very insightful and not incredibly long or too short. Basically, he's got a great formula that works for me.
8/4/2005 IE7, Molly and being a womanBottom line: It's really an amazing discussion that is going on right now. From bug fixes in IE7, to WaSP losing it's stinger (and being very angry about it) to a female web developer being (shudder the thought) a woman. I've digested a lot of it and I can't help but think it has to be a good thing if Microsoft and WaSP are working together?
Additionally, I've worked on several MS beta products. Not from Molly's perspective, but from a PR perspective. I'm not in a position to say HEY that's why its called beta, but I'm glad Molly did. I'm not here to advocate MS or anyone besides myself for that matter but the debate/conversation is compelling.
Although I'm not a developer or considered a "woman in the high-tech industry," but I have extensive experience in a mostly male dominated environment. My first experience involved me working at a major bank in Cincinnati, OH. I worked behind the scenes doing data entry in operations. We were the second class citizens but did a very important job - I was in charge of our payroll operations so keyed in the hours of over 500 companies that outsourced their payroll operations to the bank. Most of the management was male and I started out there working part time until I graduated from college and then went full-time. It was NEVER my career aspiration but I just fell into it and was comfortable. However, what didn't make me comfortable was the fact that I knew my job VERY well and was damn good at it. I was efficient and had some seniority there as well, so when a supervisor position came open and I was the OBVIOUS choice I applied.
What happened? Well they picked a guy from first shift because he was "management" material (i.e. he was a man) and said no thanks to me. I will add that the guy who told me this was an incredible manager and I had a great deal of respect for him and I knew this decision was unfortunately not his too make. Here's the kicker, this guy who took the position was WORHTLESS. Not only did he look to me for how to run the department, but he expected me to be the bad guy in ensuring everyone on the team clocked in/out on time, especially for lunch and breaks. Did I mention this was a very conservative bank... And to top it off, I had to correct his mistakes and politely tell him he really shouldn't be flirting with the cute new employee under him.
Well, he finally screwed up for the last time so they decided to give him a lateral move to another department during the day where he would have more opportunity and they gave the position to me. The reason I finally got it was I know because of the influence of the manager I mentioned above. That was over 10 years ago and I was young. I've learned a great deal since then, and because of then.
On a happy note, I tried desperately to get a job within the bank in their PR department. That's what I went to school for and that's what I really wanted to do. I had an in and actually got an interview when a position was available. However, I later found out that the interview was just a curiosity to the individual who asked for the favor but they had no intention of hiring someone from operations. That was the last straw for me, so I decided I needed a huge life change and get my life on track because the way I was going I would never get out of Kentucky (right across the river from Cincy). I'll continue this story later.... :)
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5/31/2005 e-mail publishinge-mail publishing I’ve turned on the settings for my blog that allows you to instantly publish via emails you send to your blog. I did this despite the recommendation to save as a draft, first. Ultimately it’s a time-saver and enables me to post thoughts throughout the day without dealing with small hang-ups like logging on etc. etc. Who could argue with that, plus I get to post more (whether that’s good or bad, I frankly don’t care). |
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