Cyber Bullying

I have, so in my own mind believe, given a few successful presentation on Cyber-Bullying. The "Bible" of the Internet (Wikipedia) has this to say: Cyber-bullying involves the use of information and communication technologies to support deliberate, repeated, and hostile behavior by an individual or group, that is intended to harm others.

It would seem the hotbeds for "communication technologies" would be Facebook, Myspace and AIM (AOL Instant Messenger, for the computer illiterates). Our children our committing suicide to escape the torture and embarrassment that these sites can create. Not being a parent myself, what I find extremely strange is that parents can control the goings on of our youth, the future of our existence. Unfortunately I will long gone when the youth are running this country.

When I was young, my mother knew everything I was doing. Granted there was no Internet or texting in my youth, but she knew everything. I'm not sure what has changed. A Wii in every home, a PC/MAC in every child's bedroom, with door closed can be more dangerous than the hijinks's I found myself getting into a few decades ago. To me it would seem a little more involvement or better yet some parental trickery. Growing up, my mother knew all the catch phrases, the acronyms my friends I created to mean other things. When I told my mother I was going out to go camping, I was assured she had called everyone else's parents to lock up the beer.

Parents in this ultra technology rich society need to educate themselves much more than our parents had to. With both parents working as opposed to one. (My mother had some spare time). I'm old enough to be a parent, and I'm not sure I would have the time to learn all the new fads, new toys, mortgage the house for Hanna Montana tickets AND raise my kids to be pillars of the community, well behaved and prepare them for "life".

As an avid Internet user, I knew what BRB meant and K. When someone texted me TTYL for the first time I got it, it took a while though. Then came the flood gates. I kept seeing <3 everywhere, no clue what it meant (it's an emoticon for a heart). Kids are creative, very creative.

Ever see your child text 9 to someone? What about 99? You probably saw them type 9, but not 99. The number nine is short hand SMS (Short Message Service) for: Parents are Watching, and 99 is for: they are no longer watching. Scary?

I could go on, which I already have. If you have kids, know someone with kids or want to impress the neighbor's kids, check out this website: http://www.netlingo.com/acronyms.php
This website will help you out and you may end a little closer to my mom, The Warden.

Bully Who?

I remember growing up in a very small town, in a very small school- I graduated with about 80 people in my class. My entire school, K-12, was and still is in one building and the student population is less than 2,000. People always ask, would you go back in time and go back to school to change something in your past? Frankly speaking that is the only way I would ever go back to high school. I enjoyed high school, had friends, had my hang-outs had a generally good time. I can't fathom going to school in these times.
The right clothes, the right phone, the right calling plan, what kind of car do you, your mom your dad drive, not a Mercedes, you are not cool. The Internet has exploded into a scary web of social and antisocial media/networking.
When I was in high school, cell phones were the size of a duffel bag and had a screen the size of a pen cap. The Internet consisted of 6 major university libraries you could peruse for dry information, often found in your own textbooks.
Now is ridiculous; texting, sexting, myspace, facebook and the weirdest one of all, Twitter. A legal, if not disturbing, peeping tom into your followings lives- very cult-like.
In school I was neither a bully nor bullied, there were definitely bullies and those that fell victim to being bullied. It was the quintessential "passage of youth" as described by parents and teachers alike. The swirlies, locking people in lockers, wedgies and a sundry of more less creative ways to "pick on people". The child would go home, tell his parents, so-in-so gave me a wedgie and the inevitable happened; Dad came home from work, took you in the garage and taught you how to fight, not dirty fighting, but how to "defend" yourself. How many times growing up did you see the bullied kid actually stand up for himself? For me, I never saw it, and the Christmas Story doesn't count.
Today schools take bullying very seriously. Bullying has resulted in terrible acts like Columbine and suicides. Kids are under a tremendous amount of pressure these days, and to add to all of it, bullying in schools.
Bullying is not a passage of youth. Standing up to a bully is not the correct course of action. Bullies do not have low self-esteems and will back away. So much has been studied and learned about the truth behind bullying.
Students who are considered bullies have high, if not, supreme levels of self esteem. They bully to get a reaction, if the target stands-up, more attention is gained by the student who bullies.
The old practice of the school garnishing the student who bullies actions and privileges is beginning not to be the primary reaction, which is great! Why focus on one person for a mounting problem? Wouldn't it be much easier to focus on the masses? There is a Bullying Prevention model out there called Olweus (Ol-ve-us) and this model is becoming the standard among schools. This model focuses on the rest of the students primarily. If the student who bullies doesn't have an audience to get his kicks from, he is less likely to bully.
Columbine, student suicides, strict FAA rules for flying; it would seem America needs a catastrophic event to happen before putting into practice and into place programs to keep us all safe, healthy and happy. At least we are not ignoring the problems, we are embracing to change them.

Tribal Council

I see that yet another season of Survivor has begun, they are in South America somewhere. I've always wished they would do a real Survivor, say in Siberia in January, but then again there would be no shots of scantly clad tribe members waltzing around, which I suppose would effect ratings.

There is a book floating around the office by Seth Godin (a great and funny author, try the Purple Cow- easy quick "bathroom read".) This book is called 'Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us'. In this book, Seth Godin refers to tribes as "a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader and connected to an idea." Just like in Survivor, there are two tribes who need to rely on one another, (here's the dysfunction in Survivor), they all are connected to a leader, but everyone on the tribe believes the leader is themselves and they are all connected to an idea: to win a million dollars by backstabbing, lying, mistrusting and bullying their way to the tribe's end. Not quite a typical environment for the rest of us.

In businesses it is very clear in describing the qualifications of a tribe in the office. Co-workers are connected to one another, they are all connected to their boss and in typical businesses, that's where it all stops. As far as be connected to an idea, yes they all have ideas, but are they the same idea across the board? Nope.

Business people who work together seemingly have different goals; some just come in to collect a paycheck, some are just hanging out on that rung til the next rung is available, some a true top performers keeping the company's value and mission close to heart and some are going through the motions. It all depends on what type of person you are. Are you a thermostat or a thermometer: click here to find out.

In Survivor they vote out the perceived weakest link; at work we tolerate and accept the behavior, voting out co-workers or sending them to Exile Island would be great; unfortunately it's not the real world.

Hoping not to have my torch snuffed out,

Jason

Our first leap into blog-dom

I figured I would create a word, blogdom. The definition is along the lines of the entire strange and interesting world of blogging. Adding "dom" to almost any word would create that feeling of grandeur, and is acceptable, at least in Portugal which is affixed to people of dignity. I have been reading as much as I can about the economy, what people are doing, what the trends are and how people are marketing in it. In 80% of the articles the proverbial "they" say to create a blog. I've held out as long as I could, and still not sure if I'm doing this right.

I read an article about marketing in this economy which I really liked. It told the brutal truth about what you have to do, the good, the bad and ugly. One sentence read: "You may also want to consider revisiting your keyword phrases and add phrases that include words like: sale, discount, free shipping on, best price on, cheap, etc. People are more likely to search for products or services combined with these kind of phrases in hopes that they will quickly come across a great deal."

How many of us want to add cheap to our titles? I read it a few times and started to think. Just last night I was window shopping online at Google. I got the search results and immediately changed the view to "least expensive first". We all do it, I do it a lot, I type cheap cider press (because they are not and I really want one). Regardless of the economy we all want to save as much of the green stuff as possible, but when a potential client types in "cheap" before your service or product, do you really want to be listed?

I've always thought (even more nowadays) business is business, I'd rather have a client who received a discount, than no client at all. This same article that I read also sparked a happy feeling, and it is so simple in its thought: "It's true, individuals and businesses are trying to cut costs - but most people and businesses can't stop buying. There are still supplies, inventory, services etc that we need - to function and to run our business." So true and so simple, we all just need to keep our wits and our cool in this shift- 'cause shift happens.

Offering cheap team building,

NorthStar Adventure @ Dutch Springs
(I cringe as I read it)

Quotes from Evan Carmichael's Blog. (http://www.evancarmichael.com)