One Day Blog Silence

A coordinated One Day Blog of Silence is scheduled to be held today on April 30, 2007 in honor of the victims of Virginia Tech. Instead of leaving comments, please post this picture on your blog to uphold the silence and solemn remembrance. Please use this day to meditate and pray for the victims, families, and effected area surrounding the horrible incident that took place at Virginia Tech earlier this week. Thank you.

Golfing at Hanes Point

American University offers a Golf Class to students. Last week our teacher Bill took us to Haines Point or East Potomac Blue Golf Course in Washington, DC to play a few holes. It was a lot of fun even with the heat.






Afterwards a group of us went to the driving range to hit balls. The class was a lot of fun and it was good to learn something new and useful in college. What are some of your favorite college classes?

VA Tech Day of Silence

A coordinated One Day Blog of Silence will be held on April 30, 2007 in honor of the victims of Virginia Tech. This picture will be posted on this web on April 30th and instead of leaving comments post this picture on your blog to uphold the silence and solemn remembrance. Please use this day to meditate and pray for the victims, families, and effected area surrounding the horrible incident that took place at Virginia Tech earlier this week. Thank you.

Innovative Job Recruiting Styles

I read some interesting articles focusing on innovative Job Recruiting Styles. This interested me since I will be doing a presentation tomorrow morning at American University on Blogging and Recruiting.

I contacted a respected blogger, Trey Reeme, at OpenSourceCU and asked him some of his thoughts on this subject. Mr. Reeme pointed out the following article called The See-Through CEO which states, “There's a whole class of CEOs who can hardly write an email. In this new digital world, there are haves & have-nots, & people who can't write convincingly - they're leaving themselves defenseless. The people who clearly enjoy writing & blogging are like CEOs 2.0 - they have competitive advantage over other CEOs.” Clearly Mr. Reeme feels strongly that writing ability which can be expressed through blogging can be a saving grace in managing a CEOs reputation.


Blogging is a great way for companies and their vital employees to reach outside of themselves into the world. How then could a company transform this power into their Human Resources division to recruit top employees?

i agree. blogs aren't all that - but they do have their place is an article about how companies should not bother with blogging to recruit employees. That instead they should focus on their current recruiting methodologies and let the website designers bother with the blogging. This may be true in general for now, but it certainly works with some of the techie companies like Microsoft, T-Mobile, and Skype. In time, like other technologies, blogging may reach a larger audience other then the IT industry.

The youth are more open to innovative recruiting methods. That's why the controversial online social network site Facebook has teamed up with Jobster which can be found in the article Facebook, Jobster To Launch A Site For Young Job Seekers. It is hyping Facebook which used to be focused only towards college students now open to the public to further be opened up with college recruiting. The irony here is that Facebook has been keeping students from getting jobs from using the website leading parents to investing in the company Reputation Defender to clean up their child's reputation. I blogged on this topic earlier in February 2007.

It will be interesting to watch the different innovative ways that companies will begin changing their mode of operations. The recruiting practices of the Human Resources department will be most telling in the new directions we take through where they feel they can implement new techniques via youth, techies, or other groups.

VA Tech Massacre Chillingly Like Columbine

Today, April 16, 2007, there was a terrible tragedy at Virginia Tech in Blackburn, VA located between Washington, DC and Richmond, VA. A shooting, a senseless massacre of 32 students, plus gunman totaling 33.

This incident outrages me as a civilian and a parent. Eight years ago on April 20, 1999, I lived in Colorado and happened to be 10 miles from a Columbine High School where 12 students, a teacher, and the two gunmen were killed. As a parent I work hard to raise my children - I have sacrificed more than could be written - it is cruel to take them away in such a stupid killing spree for someone's attempts to set their name in a blaze of bloody gore!

I cannot erase from my memory the haunting of that terrible and tragic day near Littleton, Colorado. Ironically a few weeks ago I had to give a speech to my college class at American University in which I was calming my employees at a bank branch and what I would have to say to them during that horrible event.

The news has not yet released the name of the gunman. I hope they never release it after living through the aftermath of Columbine. I refuse to list here the name of the horrible young men that shot the innocent high school children and place their names in history which is exactly what they wanted. I make a plea here to all journalists not to release the name of the gunman - erase him/her from history!

This is a shameful, senseless death and these gunman should be forgotten and wiped out of history's memory as if they never even existed. We will not forget the victims or the senseless tragedy. The names of the victims should be reported, not the gunmen.

Fenty Gets A Black Eye With DC Parents

Washington DC's young new mayor has yet to impress the residents of DC with children that attend the city's public schools! On January 6, 2007, Fenty brought DC some excitement with his Inaugural Ball that seemed to take in all of Washington.

I attended along with my friend Josette.

We met lots of politicians.

I thought the best part was the art! (Those are tennis rackets!!)

Now the honeymoon is over! As a DC parent I am outraged to hear that my children's school (one of the few functional elementary schools in DC despite major budget cuts) has had its budget slashed yet again. The budget cuts are no surprise to DC parents as we know that the schools and the children of this city take a backseat to everything else in DC including the potholes.

FYI - a few years ago every DC child was allocated $10,000 to the school, but only $6,000 made it to the child's school. The remaining $4,000 evaporated somewhere in "administrative costs" before it touched the school. That was in the better years?!

With Fenty new in office, DC parents were hoping for a change! We got one alright. We were just told that our budget will be cut so drastically that our school that has been "downsizing annually" will have to let 2 teachers go!!

Without children, DC does not have a future. I certainly hope that Fenty will turn around his administration before his reputation is ruined in letting down the hopes of the parents behind him to revitalize DC Public Schools. Perhaps again the best part of this administration will be the art without substance.

Seriously - Businesses Advertising on MySpace?

An article with CIO Today called Salesforce.com Launches MySpace for Businesses addressing security risks for businesses and their customers through hackers. It seems that many businesses are already on MySpace as it is. I wondered why businesses would pay to get put onto MySpace anymore when there are now even better social networking sites. After comparing MySpace to Facebook they are as different as day and night leading a preference of users to Facebook for more privacy and more interaction with friends. I also know that when I visit Facebook I wont get bombarded with ads or friend requests from people I've never met. Businesses should look at other places to launch their websites besides MySpace where people are specifically seeking business services. There are several business focused social networks such as SecondLife and more to come. MySpace needs to do more clean up work with it's annoying advertisements before a business could seriously set up shop there.

~REFLECTIONS~: If Only We Were Colorblind...

~REFLECTIONS~: If Only We Were Colorblind...
This was posted by an AU student which let into a discussion about the 1960s version of Planet of the Apes.

Basecamp Slows Me Down!!

This weeks reading covered collaborative software, but I decided to comment on the software that I have personally used which is called Basecamp. In the article Teamwork, Supercharged by BusinessWeek it is touted the latest online program that will change the way people do business including getting rid of e-mail. The article claims that, "'It's 300% more work' for his firm and clients to manage projects without the new technologies".

I have tried Basecamp and disagree with this article. I had to use Basecamp for a project to conference since we were unable to meet in person. What should have been an hour meeting in person became a 3-hour on-line meeting in which I was tied to my computer.

People wanted to sound intelligent and would ask questions just to ask them, so I would end up typing the same answer 3 different times throughout the session. Also not everyone was as responsive as they should have been and I had the sneaking suspicion that they were not fully engaged in the meeting and thought they could get away with it since we could not see him. Incorporating phone calls into the conference is helpful as many businesses are more likely to use this method.

I still feel that phone calls, e-mail, and in-person meetings are the better way to go for the future over an online only format of communication. Companies should set the standard that they put people first instead of opting to use this cold, slow collaborative network. People need contact with other people and the exceptions to this rule are strange indeed and I feel sorry for them.