Thursday, May 17, 2012
A Letter To My Most Influential Teacher
Posted by Chris J the Genius at 11:21 AM 0 comments
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Me, 2.0: 4 Steps To Building Your Future
First, let me start by saying out of the couple of book options I had originally posted, I can certainly see why this book was chosen as my assignment. It incorporates nearly everything we've talked about in class in the framework of personal branding. The author, Dan Schawbel, has a natural talent for personal branding, marketing, and brand development and he utilized those to determine that he has a passion for all of the above. In his book, he details the steps toward crafting one's very own personal brand.
This seems to mainly incorporate planning and deliberate, strategic moves both online and offline. Schawbel suggests that your brand has already begun developing, as the emotions and traits expressed with the brands that you select and endorse help to define you and how you come across. Thus, you must choose your brands and products carefully, and make sure they are consistent with what you want to say. From there, he talks about developing a strategic plan for yourself, complete with short-term and long-term objectives and a personal brand statement. From these, one knows just how to market himself or herself. Next, it's time to get busy on the Web - specifically Web 2.0. Social networking is very important here, and should be consistent with the personal brand statement from status updates to pictures, to friends. Schawbel also recommends blogging, learning HTML, and networking - including personal e-mails to bloggers and journalists who write articles important to your field of study or interest. Keywords, search engine optimization, social networking, and the more traditional things such as appropriate attire, interviewing, and communication/interpersonal skills all culminate in developing a powerful personal brand.
Chapter 6 is all about actually creating your brand. Specifically, it speaks of online brand presence, from how to create a resume, video resumes and podcasts, and digital portfolios to distinguish your online presence from the countless others out there searching for jobs or networking online. Further, it suggests that everyone learn HTML programming or use basic tools to create a website, and suggests that websites will soon take the place of resumes. After this, the chapter delves heavily into blogging; what it is, why it's important, how to do it, and how to get the most out of it. Again, specifically he says to e-mail bloggers personally with compliments on an article you found useful. He also suggests posting interviews with your favorite bloggers (by e-mailing them questions). It is also important to evaluate the competition in order to find a niche as well as to emulate key features or aspects of the successful blogs in hopes of repeating their success. After that, he talks a bit about social networking profiles and how Avatars are important, as are real names. He suggests personalizing these things as much as possible and making them professional and consistent (i.e. your LinkedIn page should have the same picture as your Facebook page and they should have the same name), making you easier to find. Finally, Schawbel says that it is important to be consistent with one's online persona during offline interactions.
I don't disagree with much that the author said here, except that he talks about using a real name in place of a username in order to gain marketing leverage. It seems that a username that contains elements of one's given name but also shows personality or highlights a certain strength can make one stand out even more and may be even more distinguishing than using an actual name, especially if the name is a fairly common one. Beyond that, the author seems fairly redundant throughout the book, coming back to a lot of the same themes and saying some of the same things in different ways.
If I were not using an established site for my project, I'd be able to use a lot more of this information to help with it. I think I could use a lot more eye-catching and attention-grabbing graphics and words to get my points across and show some Internet credibility. Also, due to the use of Google sites, my use of Web 2.0 to distinguish the site and product idea are limited. That means that the Google site used for this project will likely only serve as a template for my product, which I actually do intend to attempt to develop and pitch in the near future.
Building my blog into a public speaking platform which allows me to do events and talks around the country is a dream that I have had since coming to college. Because of the detailed list of steps and methods for building a blog in this book (and especially the press kit tip), I think I may be able to succeed to some degree in making this dream a reality.
Posted by Chris J the Genius at 9:46 PM 0 comments
Friday, March 30, 2012
Programming
Reading the article about Codeacademy and then beginning to use it made me very glad that I signed up for this course! These are things that I always wanted to learn, but honestly thought I needed to be formally trained in (say, for instance, by taking a college course or receiving some sort of certification) before I could properly use them with confidence. There are so many things that I'd like to take a stab at with this information that I will probably dedicate a great deal of my summer to learning as much about programming - developing code which allows one to execute commands. The Codeacademy is a free web service that teaches anyone who wants to register and learn about programming, from the basics all the way up to the tough stuff. Because I am a procrastinator extraordinaire, I have not had enough time to complete the JavaScript lessons yet, but I think I have just found my new favorite site!
Posted by Chris J the Genius at 9:25 PM 0 comments
iNet
As far as the Internet goes, all I had ever heard of was the APRANet which I believe is dated at 1969 by most accounts. The most important piece of the process of transmitting and receiving data is the protocol, or rules, that the Internet uses. These include TCP/IP and multiple other acronyms that allow our computers to send data to each other that is readily interchangeable and transferable. I never thought so much about how interdependent and universal online data must be in order to get our information from point A to point B so quickly and seamlessly. Both videos as well as the lecture did a good job of covering the importance of protocol and packets, smaller sequences of data that the larger information parcels we consume are broken down into. One thing which was left out of the lecture that I would've included is the Dot-com bubble and its subsequent burst. Before this point, a lot of people speculated in websites without true business models (or at least without good ones). After the bubble burst, the Internet was able to progress and to become better than ever because of clever problem-solving and useful products and services which were better for people to understand and consume. Going forward, the most important developments will be those which optimize smartphone and tablet browsing and apps, making the Internet even more efficient and useful on the go.
Posted by Chris J the Genius at 9:16 PM 0 comments