A commentator this morning mentioned obvious sovereignty issues with EU countries not faring well under the continental common currency. Duhh!! This should not be a light bulb moment. Currency always has been and always will be a matter of of sovereignty. It signifies culture and place. It doesn’t take grade school level intuition to realize such a simple idea. Attention FOX network. Several European heads of state are perfect candidates for a special diplomatic edition of ‘Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader’. It’s apparent that many of our allies on the other side of the pond are not.
Guess I’m going being forced to move forward on my plans to advise European leaders on what constitute good ideas and absolutely dumb ones before they finish off the world economy once and for all. The European Union is going out of its way to plunge us into a world wide depression. Get ready for World War III to kick off any moment now. The Greeks have long since had enough of everybody pushing them around and the rest of the 17 Euro currency countries are officially at the beck and call of the French and Germans.
Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Nicolas Sarkozy set out rules for a new Europe. Photo: Reuters
President Obama will probably be blamed for the whole mess since, as the world cop, we’re supposed to save everybody’s ass. Show of hands, can we finally leave the Europeans to their own devices and let them duke it out? For once I’m an isolationist. Let’s not help them with a damn thing. Tim Geithner, get your ass back over here right now. Can’t get any worse for us that it already loose so let’s just cut the Old World loose and move on. Yeah, I know it’s not gonna happen but there’s my vote anyway.
See, it’s not just Americans who think every child having a mother and a father is the best for children and society. Even Europe where everything goes has its bulwarks against the insanity of s of families that are proliferating world-wide.
Speaking to London’s Sunday Times recently, Scottish business owner Brian Souter says Scotland is in danger of becoming a “Babylonian-Greek society” where sex is “primarily a recreational activity”. He said: “We are arguing here about what kind of society we want to live in. Are we going to be in a Babylonian-Greek-type of society, where sex is primarily a recreational activity, or are we going to stick with the Judeo-Christian tradition, where procreation is something that we want to put within a marriage context?”
His arguments for the latter are to protect society from “imploding” as he puts it. Couldn’t have said it better myself. His remarks were partly in response to the gay-marriage debates in Europe but he could use Black America as a case study on where the Babylonian-Greek lifestyle in all it’s incarnations will actually take a country.
I haven’t lost hope but as far as I’m concerned the African American community has already imploded with a nearly 73% out-of-wedlock birthrate. THIS IS UNHEARD OF!!! and it is patently unfair for any Black child suffering under such a situation. Souter must be looking at American society really close because Black people have gone way beyond reducing sex to a recreational activity. The ramifications of this fact are on public display with the detrimental behaviors of the progeny of this years-long trend. The obvious illustrations including the tacky dress habits and increasingly vocabulary-limited vulgarity in the music (and that’s just the current crop of young parents I’m talking about, not only their kids) continue to proliferate. Of peculiar interest is observing the natural course of cultural transmission with so many white kids picking up some of the sorry, saggy habits. Particularly disturbing is the growing tendency for young teen and adult females to emulate these things.
The verbal pollution from young people’s mouths has become appalling. Yes, that is also connected to particular family groupings and what is taught as acceptable language and self-respecting behavior. It’s unbelievable that so many young women in this generation allow young men to call them “bitch” and they don’t get offended. In fact it has become the new “nigger”. Some of these girls just take it from a guy like it’s their name and allow the conversation to continue as normal like there’s nothing to it. The girls from my generation would have checked that madness immediately. I’m telling you, the new bad normal is pulling us down collectively.
The backwards trend is backed by any number of statistics. According to the Pew Research Center, “The share of 30- to 44-year-olds living as unmarried couples has more than doubled since the mid-1990s.”so there really is no mystery to the genesis of these particular societal ills.
Despite the ongoing marginalization of those of us who believe in traditional views of proper family structure, I think the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) does a great job in doing what’s in the best interests of children. With more efforts like theirs perhaps we still have a chance. Yeah, more Black kids with a mother and a father raising them without some of society’s deranged cultural activists using our children as social experiments is what’s actually in the best interests of the African American community.
As an “actionist” I try not to whine about a problem but actually do something about it. I am a traditionalist who believes every child deserves a mother and a father who are in fact a man and a woman. That’s not a political statement of social warfare. That’s a fact of our cultural welfare.
I could write extensively about my beliefs on one way of living versus the other but NOM has already done a significant job of that since 2007. Are their particular efforts about gay bashing or intruding upon individual rights? Of course not. Is any of this about hating on single parenthood. Again, certainly not. You’d have to be crazy to make such kindergarten level oversimplifications. It’s about children’s rights and if you like me are tired of Black kids being sociopolitical footballs then do something about it. I’m challenging you to do what I’m doing this week. Contribute to the National Organization for Marriage and show greater support for groups like it to help turn the implosive tide.
Be sure you keep these thoughts at the top of your mind with a cool new beat from Speech. Share it with your friends and lets all turn this thing around.
Hi there college students. Welcome home for summer break. Hope your semesters/quarters/trimesters were fruitful and that you learned a lot. So what are you doing with yourselves until next fall? Hanging out? Traveling? Looking for work?
Now is the perfect time to create your professional online persona on LinkedIn. More than just an online resume it is the first place recruiters go to search for talent. Human resource departments are using paper resumes less and less every day. You can keep it updated for those that still request a traditional resume but definitely transfer it to this online portal. This is important because there’s always a chance that an employer will find you online first during a time when they’re not visiting your campus for interviews. So who knows? Its possible that you could even bypass your campus’ career development department for an opportunity.
In addition, your LinkedIn profile gives an overall impression of you as a person, which is really what an employer is hiring. It’s not just your unique talents or the newest academic theories that you can contribute to a company but also your extended knowledge of the world. Remember everything you have ever heard about being a “well rounded person”? This is easily reflected in your activities, organizations, personal interests and the books you read. Can’t fit all of that on a resume but LinkedIn is customized to do that and much more. Not to mention the value of the recommendations that employers, professors and others can leave on your profile.
And speaking of your campus career center more of them are recommending, maybe even requiring you to create a LinkedIn profile. They are the people who deal with human resources professionals around the country and around the world so take their advice and begin editing yours. The summer is the perfect time to do so. This way when you return to campus for the fall term you can schedule a traditional resume and LinkedIn profile review with the career specialists.
So take a couple of weeks early on this summer to work on your profile. Here’s an approach I would suggest.
Take a few hours each day the first week to begin piecing the basics together. Keep your traditional resume open on your computer and work back and forth between each of them filling in updated information on both.
Then the second week focus on connecting with as many other LinkedIn profiles as possible. You could grow your connections by the hundreds if you really push it. Connect with me. I’d be happy to share my list with you and give you tips.
Also during the second week join the maximum of fifty (5o) groups related to your future profession and personal interests. This will expose you to thousands more professionals and you can interact with them directly within those groups and make more connections, etc., etc., etc.
Whether you have a summer gig or not, take advantage of your time by focusing creating and revising your professional online presence. You’ll reap enormous personal and professional benefits for the effort.
Our final project assignment for my DC489 “The Big Picture” class was to interview a person in the field of entertainment. I organized my project by prospecting my LinkedIn connections list for potential interview candidates. I specifically researched some of the artists that I have reached out to via social media and found a couple of candidates with interesting profiles whose careers I wanted to know more about. Senior Art director Keisha Jordan of Common Ground Marketing was one of those who responded.
A couple of things stood out about Keisha. First, her artsy profile picture caught my attention. Instead of a head shot she uses a hand sketch of her face as her profile picture on LinkedIn. That instantly made her stand out from pretty much everyone else on my list (See why you should never leave your profile picture space blank?). It was proof enough to me that she was a serious artist so she was an immediate candidate. The other factor was that we could talk shop about the digital tools we use for our different artistic pursuits. Here’s the interview. Take a look and I’ll continue on the other side.
I mention the effectiveness of a good profile picture for a particular reason. In the case of scheduling Keisha for filming we agreed to meet at the Harold Washington Library. If you’ll take a close look at her sketch, it looks just like the lady in video. I knew exactly who she was as she stepped off the escalator and we headed to our meeting room. If you have any artistic leanings I recommend you use her idea as inspiration if you want to try something a little different for your profile.
As far as project logistics flowed, we rearranged chairs in the meeting room to stage her against one of the walls. I asked more questions than included in the final cut because I had a fifteen minute time limit for the class presentation so you’re hearing about 1/3 to 1/2 of them here. I used my SONY Handycam for filming and had Keisha reposition her chair so I could include a couple of different perspective views of her in the final cut of the film.
For post production I imported three clips of film into Adobe Premier Pro. I typically use After Effects just because I’m used to it but it’s not really a complete film editing program. It’s specifically designed for effects and animation and happens to have some good basic film making features. Premier Pro though is Adobe’s full fledged editing package (all the cutting, audio, color correction and other features of Final Cut Pro for you Mac people) so I made the choice to jump in and use it full tilt for the first time.
After filming, Keisha provide me a few PDF’s of some of her digital ad work and some personal paintings which I faded into the film at different points to demonstrate her skills. The white walls of the meeting room made for a lot of glare in the film so I was able to use color correction to ramp it down. In my first rough cut of the film I created a QuickTime and imported it into After Effects to create opening and closing credits on either end of it (again, because I was used to doing that in After Effects). Fortunately I got bumped to another class day on the presentation rotation and my copy of Adobe Premier Pro CS4, Classroom In a Book arrived in the mail so I learned how to use the title feature within the package to create the credits. So this is my first fully contained Premier Pro production.
I enjoyed this project because I was able to expand my technical skill which as always the objective but also I had the opportunity to network with another professional in the field which was our professor Dan Pal‘s objective. So what do you think of one of Chicago’s art directors on the rise?
Here’s a new security update for my fellow WordPress bloggers. Version 3.1.3 is available with assorted improvements. Check out the change log for more details on how they go about making various tweaks to the platform.
Do you need a simple way to include your favorite YouTube clips in a blog post or to share on social media? Easy. Just “Subscribe” to your favorite YouTube movie maker’s channel. You can stay abreast of their latest creations and use the “Embed” code to include their video in your posts.
More specifically, the Embed code is used to post the operable video on your blog site. If you’re a member of a Ning social media site or other similarly styled custom social media groups you can typically embed the entire video there as well.
You’ll use the regular web URL to share on sites like Facebook and Twitter.
Multimedia producers and digital artists. Need to convert your MP3′s to a specific format required by a particular piece of software? Give Media.IO a try.
I had to convert a MP3 to a WAV file to finish a short animation in Autodesk Maya and it was quick and simple. Great converter for a wide variety of audio options.
Know an easy way to expand your web video presence? Create a branded YouTube channel to compliment your FB page, Twitter page, blog site and web page. Then you’ll have no less than five venues to share your expertise. I built my channel a few weeks ago. Subscribe now to Aqueduct Media Corp.’s YouTube channel and be prepared to receive the feeds of my video projects over the last year or so.
WordPress recently upated to 3.1.2 so if you’re behind on the revision be sure to download it today. According to WordPress.org “This release addresses a vulnerability that allowed Contributor-level users to improperly publish posts.”
If you ever get the opportunity to attend anything sponsored by the Wright Leadership Institute don’t ask questions just go and take plenty of cards with you. I went to the Connect to Success with LinkedIn Networks and Training Event at their headquarters in downtown Chicago on Thursday May 5th and received a wealth of information.
The evening began with about a half hour of networking before the presentations. Mine actually started in the elevator bay on the way up to the event. I met a good handful of interesting people in that time and in fact that was one of the questions we were asked when the formal meeting began. How many of you met a few new people in the back of the room before the presentations started? That was the key to building our network “hubness”.
Dean DeLisle is well known in the social media realm especially on LinkedIn and he gave the first presentation. He is also the social media coach for the Wright Institute. Dean gave great pointers on how to maximize our LinkedIn profiles. His keys points for me were:
When prioritizing which social media platforms to use LinkedIn should be your first focus. Here’s why. It’s the one that most fully rounded profile of you as a person and professional. From there you can cut and paste details to Facebook, Twitter and any others you belong to. That makes your social media presence consistent throughout.
Also search your name online to verify the thoroughness of your profiles. Your social media profiles are always the first to appear on search lists.
Use LinkedIn for the 2nd and 3rd degrees of separation. It’s not just 6 degrees of separation as in the popular literature but only 3 the LinkedIn way. Any updates to your profile (information edits, blog post feeds, updates you type in under your profile picture, connections) go to the feeds of your 1st, 2nd and 3rd level connections
On average 4% of your network (Those 1st, 2nd and 3rds mentioned above) sees what you post so the more connections you make the more people will see and will potentially want to connect with you.
Here’s an example of LinkedIn hubness showing the primary connections and 2nd and 3rd degree connections that extend from them. Still don’t think it’s important to have a LinkedIn profile? Fill in the gaps in yours and grow your indirect connections (4% of 13 million is 1,690,000) by millions.
Dr. Bob Wright , cofounder of the Wright Leadership Institute gave the second half of the presentation. Cranes Chicago calls him a top executive coach so these tips come from a guy who knows what he’s doing.
Some of Bob’s major pointers for me were:
One of the New Laws of Networks is that You Must Give to Get. In other words you must be a net giver. Give more than you want. It’s known as the “host strategy”.
One of the keys to ultimate success is knowing Network Science. You want to go from being a Node (individual) to a Hub (a major connection source). LinkedIn can help improve your “hubness”.
Here’s a question to ask your clients. “What are your five major challenges?” If you want to know how to help them just ask.
There were lots of other good pointers but you’re going to have to check out their upcoming free events and determine what value you can apply from the experience.
