Final Exam Reflective Post

Over the course of the last 16 weeks, BIS 315 has been a really unique experience. I really enjoyed working with the CMMA group as we created a social media guide and recommendatinos for this professional organization. It was a great experience to be able to perform this work first hand on an active group's social media strategy. I think that it was a great reality check for student our age to be able to speak with people in different generations about their views and knowledge, or lack their of, of the social media. I plan on following up from a far to see if they make any active changes to their social media streategy within the next couple of months based on the recommendations we have. I also think that they truly understand now how complicated it is to fully implement an activie social media structure.

Going forward, I will be entering the world of student affairs very soon. While my position will not directly involve managing the social media strategy for a university or college, I will directly be working with college students. I do think that it is important to have an understanding of how social media is constantly changing the way young adults communicate, behave, and collaborate. Both professionally in the classroom and socially in the living environment, interactions are changing as a result of the presence of social media. I believe that my experience in BIS 315 has given me a better understanding of how we can utilzie social media as a productive member of the community instead of to cut down others or degrade communication skills.

Social Media in Higher Education

This podcast provides a brief introduction to social media in higher education and student affairs. It is based around case study taken from Central Michigan University, but can be applied to social media strategy across the country. There are many trends within the social media atmosphere that college students ages 17-24 are most likely to follow. This increasing presences is both positively and negatively affecting the collegiate educational and social environment. For more information, consult with your universities communication department. Many universities have already created documents outlining social media strategy.

Social Media Final Presentation

With the end of the semester upon us, I thought it would be a good idea to reflect on my idea for the final presentation that we are doing on our own. First of all, I really like the idea of being able to do a voice over presentation. I believe that there is a good amount of emphasis placed on presenting in person in the CBA. Almost every class requires it to some degree, whether its a big or small subject. However, in business, many presentations are given remotely or using video software. As globalization continues, companies have partners all across the globe and this means the increasingly there is the need to present to these oversees partners. I believe the voice-over Prezi is a great way for us to experience a way in which we might work with distant clients. This is something that we don't get a lot of practice in doing during any other class and I believe it will be extremely beneficial.

The Value of LinkedIn

As we continue to work on the CMMA project, my piece of which focuses on their use of LinkedIn, I continue to wonder more things about the value of LinkedIn. As a college student, I was introduced to LinkedIn during my time in the CBA. However, I have yet to see it used. Only a few places have I been online where you can actually apply to a job with you LinkedIn profile. And, of those few places, most of them are high-tech companies that are more innovative. So, I wonder what this translates to. Does this mean that other companies will follow suit, as technology companies are often leaders in the market? Or are alternatives such as HRIS systems valid for 'automating' the hiring process? Who knows. However, where I think the value lies is connecting and advertising. Companies may not want to go through the trouble of integrating LinkedIn into their HRIS, but they could easily utilize it to contact possible employees. This is the direction we are looking to recommend for the CMMA.

Real Life Examples: Social Media Let Down

Today, while at my job as an IT Tech, I was researching some new technologies for software update implementation across various platforms of OS X, the Apple operating system. In doing so, I stumbled across a video that was put on by Greg Nealge, the Sr. Systems Administrator for Disney Animation. This video was of a presentation that he put on at a MacSysAdmin conference talking about software installation and updating automatically. However, that isn't what I wanted to highlight about it. At the beginning he talks about ways to stay informed about these updates to a company's software. Jokingly, he suggests using Twitter. When Greg brings up the twitter accounts of three commonly used softwares, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Adobe Flash Player, there is no mention of updates on or around the dates of there most recently released updates. You would think that this would be a critical thing that they would share with their consumers. This is an obvious failure of the collaborative community effort at these companies. Most likely their twitter account is run by their marketing department and is not being updated to reflect communication from their product development team.

24 Hrs Idea

I have not yet decided how or when I am going to remove technology from my life for a day. Both of my jobs thrive on my ability to use technology and use it well. I am employed for campus IT. So, in considering this assignment, I think I will have to try an approach where I am only utilizing a computer for work-related purposes. It will be more difficult to be on a computer AND stay off of social media than it will to cut a computer out of my day all together. With all of the internet enabled devices that us millenials are carrying around, this challenge is one that can be very difficult.

Alone Together

How do some people do it? They leave their phones alone when people are trying to get ahold of them. Sherry Turkle is describing that exact sensation. She talks about the idea that people cannot actually resist the sensation that people get from knowing that people are trying to get ahold of them. She discusses the behaviors that surround the intrinsic attraction to the phone as being a more stimulating device. It allows us to keep ourselves connected in small times of relaxation. Our minds have the thought that we can always go back to our phone, Twitter, Facebook, game, etc on our phone. This isn't something we just see in the younger generation. Business people are expected to reply to contact more quickly and to always be available.

Networking and Finances

It is really interesting to ready the chapter of the new digital age that discusses distributions of wealth and their relations to bell curvature. At first, I was a little bit skeptical about how this played into social networking. However, after reading the chapter, I found it very interesting. The concept that technological jobs and distribution create different kinds of curves in different social classes is very unique. I never realized how much of an effect it can have. I do agree with the idea that before the advent of technology there was a different kind of bell curve distribution.

CMMA Visit

This week our group had the chance to visit the Morbark factory in Winn, MI. I believe that this trip was very rewarding for multiple reasons. While I was not able to see the factory portion of the visit, we did receive a presentation on Morbark prior to actually going into the facility. I believe that this presentation gave me a better appreciation for having a BSBA degree. Many of the concepts that we had learned about in different classes as part of our various core competencies were brought together by Morbark in their value and supply chain. I am currently taking the strategic management class as well and found it particularly interesting to apply those current concepts. I don't believe that any of my other group mates are completing degrees on the BSBA track, so I'm not sure that this was exciting to them. But, for me, I found a significant amount of value in the history and operations section that Mr. Shoemaker presented to us.

CMMA Group Experience

I believe that thus far this experience has been helpful. It has been nice to connect with an organization that isn't one you might think of in the traditional sense as needing social media. Also, many of the stakeholders in the CMMA, particularly the board, are a bit older and do not have experience working with social media. I am excited to present this information to them as well as learn about their message. After they described it to us, it was something that I had never though of, but made total sense. I believe as a group we have a unique challenge because their social media map looks significantly different than most organizations. I hope that the information that we are able to obtain allows us to be successful.

Money in Technology

In Chapter 3 of Who Owns the Future, the author discusses money in relation to advances in technology. I think that it is really interesting to analyze this concept over time. If you look as recent as the last couple decades, we have moved off of a money backed system, the gold standard, and are now utilizing no standard to hold the value of our money. Also, think about the revelations in banking technology over the last several years. Most major banks allow you to complete almost every transaction via the web, app, or ATM. The necessity over making your way to a bank is almost gone. Debit cards and credit cards have even advanced with contactless capable technology. Going forward, several economics have discussed the realistic possibility of using NFC technology or biometrics to facilitate the transfer of funds, eliminating the necessity for paper money all together. Governments argue that this could keep better track of financial transactions.

Social Media Segmentation: How much is too much?

Social media has been a hot topic in organizations as a marketing effort and a way to communicate with interested parties in a way that they already utilize on a daily basis. Obviously, we have proven that this is something that can be done both well and disastrously. An example case is right under our noses here at CMU. Many departments have social media presences on Twitter and Facebook. However, it is difficult to know who does and who doesn't. There is not common directory nor naming scheme. One effort that the university has tried is to make the links to their overarching official social media pages available via the website. However, because of the presence of all of these various pages, communications are actually being missed. People can connect with so many pages they feel like how could they possibly have missed one, when in reality, they may be missing several communications. It also could allow for organizational mission segmentation. When you have over thirty people posting on various social medias, how can you ensure that the message is the same.

Education of Social Media

Social media is something that we find all over the place now a days. Many organizations have not taken the appropriate planning steps to present a social media strategy to everyone involved. This does not just include those in the organization who are responsible for posts and replies to the social media sites. It is important to provide clear justification on differences between using social media individually and how it can help an organization work to achieve their goals. It is critical that this education takes place after good social media strategy for community collaboration has been created. Ultimately, this will help filter out what is not relevant in the saturated market.

Destructive Social Media

Yesterday I attended the drag queen bingo that was presented by LGBTQ services for coming out week. One addition they had this year that was different was TweetFall. This program allows users to live-tweet an event by hash-tagging their post. For example, yesterday's event hashtag was #SabinCMU. If the user's tweets are not private, then they will be displayed from most recent at the top. This was a really cool thing to see. However, I noticed one major pitfall. Some people in the room became destructive with their social media. Tweets were becoming inappropriate or conversational between friends. This detracted attention away from the proper meaning of the program. It was not being utilized at this even for people to make inappropriate comments. Rather they were expected to ask questions of Sabin. I think this is a prime example of how quickly a collaborative community can stray away from the actual purpose.

Communities

Communities are an interesting concept when it relates to social media. For the most part people think of communities as groups of people that connect on social media. Facebook groups are a prime example of this. However, the real question is productivity. Are these groups being used and viewed as productive by the members. The alternative is finding more collaborative solutions, such as wiki pages, or other internal solutions. I have utilized these in organizations that I work in and found them to be significantly more productive.

Application of Social Media Strategy

After working with the CMMA today, I know feel as though these concepts can be applied to an organization. The CMMA has virtually no social media or electronic presence which makes it nice to be able to truly start this process from scratch. I am a bit nervous about there reasoning behind utilizing social media. They are trying to combat a stereotype rather than share information. A lot of the information they want to convey is to a group of people who don't necessarily thrive on social media, for example school counselors and young junior high-school students. I think the best bet for them will be to perfect their website since it requires the least amount of updating and already exists. They already have someone familiar with web editing and wouldn't have to get someone new to take over other platforms of social media. I am excited to get back their social media map to see what they want us to focus on.

Mapping the Journey through Social Meida

This selection from the reading talks about the process of mapping social media strategies in organizations. Working with the CMMA, I find this information to be very helpful. This process map helps people, especially those who aren't familiar with social media, map out the most important parts of the social media experience and how to design it for your users. Following the parts of this map is critical in order to make sure that the social media strategy accomplishes the goals that it seeks to achieve. As we begin to work closely with the CMMA, I believe it will be critical to give them a detailed structure as to how and why people work with social media. As a group and organization, we don't want to waste time developing a strategy when it might not have the right environment or provide users with the correct experience.

Micro Money

As we read in Chapter 2 of Who Owns the Future? Lanier discusses the idea of some sort of micro transaction of money for usage of information on the web. This is such an interesting concept that I had never thought of. The realization that there are people who have and are still providing this information to web sites free of charge is something that had never occurred to me. Our society is set on providing royalties to artists, production companies, and actors for usage of their materials that they hire lawyers to seek out anyone who is violating these copyright laws. However, normal citizens, ones that may be loosing their jobs directly or indirectly as a result of the advances in technology, are not even thought of for internet compensation. Think about how many times a day you utilize Google or another search engine to answer your questions, help with your homework, read an article? These companies are brining things to us in ways that are free and in the past were jobs people held to generate revenue and make an income. Could it be that robots will not be the only type of technology driving people out of the workforce?

Social Censorship

In reading the selection from The Social Organization I came across an example of a reason that a firm limited the use of social media in the workforce. It discussed how male employees were trying to find dates with female employees on social media. Like this example, I have heard of several organizations that implement a similar policy. Some do it for this reason, others because they feel that it will distract from workplace productivity. In extreme cases they don't limit it to just traditional social media, they block all websites that are, by the organization's definition, irrelevant to work and probable to impact productivity negatively.

However, this could be detrimental. While there could be a lack of productivity, an organizations should do something else to ensure that these employees are no longer an issue. The ability to connect with collaborative websites and groups is essential to any groups success. I think that quite a few organizations find themselves in the "no stage" where people fear the implementation of social media. I think this censorship can be a result of this.

Social Media: The new Social Security Number.

In the opening part of the chapter 2 of The New Digital Age the authors bring up the topic of online profiles and the complexity that could soon arise. As it stands currently, individuals have multiple social media profiles and logins on different websites. What the authors propose is that there will be some form of cloud-centralized service. Much like now where organizations have single-sign on for their organizations. When the idea of these social media profiles started, there was no intention for everyone to have one of these.

The author suggests that instead, these cloud-profiles will serve as a single-sign on for everything. Undoubtedly a program of this nature would have to be administered by the government. I wonder if this could flourish in use like social security numbers did. They were never intended to serve in so many capacities as these numbers do now. I fear that we could see the same thing happen if the government started issuing online profiles to this. However, there could be benefits to this. It would be nice to only fill out things like this one in only one centralized locations. Online transactions could be streamlined and our efficiency when working online.

Buy-In

As I continue to read into The Social Organization, I am continuing to re-evaluate some of the policies that I know about social media at CMU. The one thing that they have going for them is that for a majority of their constituency, learning a new collaborative technology isn’t an issue. Many students and staff at the university are very familiar with the use of social media sites and other collaboratives. For example, Blackboard, as I discussed in a previous post, has a good adaptation rate on campus. However, this is much more dictated and controlled.

Another point the chapter made was in regards to having everyone participate in the purposes that it works for. However, I don’t believe the university has capitalized on this. The most centralized location of things needing to be communicated with students is the CMU website. However, a majority of students avoid using the website unless its necessary for academic work. For example, our senior officers are not found on social media. Instead, messages from the communications division addressing well-known events are displayed. This does not fall in line with the organizational principle of transparency. Social media could be better utilized to allow quick suggestions from stakeholders at the university. The questions is, how exactly should they decide what should be shared with the constituency.

InstaJobLoss

I already like the path that Jaron Lanier’s “Who Owns the Future?” is taking. In the introduction alone, Lanier brought up a great point about technology: how it plays a role in our economy. Something that people often overlook as they are getting excited about new technologies and innovation is their long-term affects. Lanier touches on an excellent point about Instagram and what impact its popularity might have had on companies such as Kodak. While it has become incredibly convenient and popular for people to utilize cameras on a cell phone as their primary photography device, how do the people who are now out of a job feel?

I am personally an avid fan of any and all technologies that make collaboration easier or make our lives easier. However, as a businessperson, I think that to some degree it is important to make sure that we are being fair to our employees when bringing new technology onboard. While being able to remove 100 jobs might save a corporation a significant amount of money in the immediate term, there is going to be much higher costs for the business. It will not reflect well in the eyes of current employees or the public, which could cause further damage. Ultimately, it is critical for top leaders to find a way to tow the line in balance when it comes to integrating technology into their businesses.

Mass Collaboration: CMU Style

Successfully using social media to enable mass collaboration is a very difficult for concept for many businesses or organizations. Many do not understand the idea of working towards being a successful unit. Most organizations are simply finding a way to inject themselves in places where people are spending a lot of their time, such as Facebook, and for some, Twitter.

For example, I will look at Central Michigan University. As a student, employee, and leader on campus, I feel as though I am very well-connected to the pace of the university from multiple different perspectives. Until just recently, it was pretty obvious that mass collaboration was not the goal of CMU. Since the launch of the new website, they have links to their social media accounts, Facebook and Twitter being the most active of the two. 

Participation has become much more evident in that they now ask followers of the university questions. However, I think it would get more attention if they utilized this for giveaways or other special occasions. However, CMU does not have a collective for people who are not engaged in academics. The nice thing for students, is that they are automatically enrolled in the Blackboard collaborative tool that has small collaborative by class, or course type in some cases. However, the utilization of this collaborative is at the mercy of the professor.

There is a fair amount of independence within the system. However, I believe that for university-hosted collaborative efforts such as the websites, blackboard, and email, stability improvements are vital. The university community has lost faith in this process on multiple fronts. As a senior, I have seen four different websites and three different email services in five years. That makes it hard for people to collaborate when they have to keep familiarizing themselves with the tools. It could come to the point where they no longer have a vested interest.

Chapter 2: You are Not a Gadget

So in reading this chapter, I am a little confused as to exactly what the author is getting at. However, I think what he is getting at is how integral some parts of human life are and how they cannot be replaced by technology. There is a part where he talks about how important culture is and no computer can ever mimic that interaction. I can see how this relates to social media because there is an entirely new part of our culture now that relates to how we interact in non-verbal text-based communication. Things such as text messaging, Facebook, and twitter are shaping the way that people interact. As an RA, I would see the affects of these things in roommates not wanting to confront one another on issues and other problems.

Chapter 1: You Are Not a Gadget

In Chapter 1, one of the most interesting topics that I thought was addressed was the concept of Lock-In. As someone who works in the technology field, this is something that I witness on a daily basis and can see how it can plague companies. One of the most evident examples is Microsoft Office running on Apple computers. For years, many people would steer away from using an Apple computers because of the lack of compatibility with MS Office. However, Microsoft release a Mac version of the product in 2004, 2008, and 2011. They are scheduled to release another updated version in 2014. However, I frequently encounter friends and colleagues who still believe that there is "no office for apple." Even if this was true, the iWork suite allows documents to be saved in the format of their equivalent in the office suite.

Another example is when we look at operating systems. Many business get stuck having to utilize Microsoft Windows because they run programs that are proprietary to Windows database structures, such as MySQL. It is also difficult to find professionals who have experience working with enterprise solutions produced by Apple that are the equivalents to their Microsoft counterpart. Many people believe that since Microsoft has been the popular thing, it is the best. However, after working in two different shops, one that utilized each, there are significant advantages to Apple products, but we are locked in to PCs for many softwares. Even in our current department, we are stuck running virtual machines.