The Selling of Introverts during a Social Time

 

Introverts or Extrovert? 

 

 

As an aspiring entrepreneur and a college student I always considered  being an extrovert to being successful in building a business, a brand, a startup. Since business is all who you know and making new connections with people to build customers and new clients. However up until recently the mass majority of blogs, articles and the media have been selling the idea or the fact that introverts are the actual successful people, the one’s who lead others, the ones who make a true difference. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I can’t make out- the sense- in this because I can, more than most people would think; my problem is that I don’t understand how this selling of this method known as introversion can work during a time of hyper-social activity.

From Facebook, to Twitter, to this actual site I am using WordPress, we are selling and/or communicating online and whether we know it or not we are making online connections with people who we already know and getting new ones along the way from those people’s connections. My point is that is seems that we are living in a social bubble of socializing and make connections for business or simply for means of friendship.

How can we be told to tap into our inner introvert when the whole world is tapping into their inner/outer extrovert?

Socializing is even more than the norm especially with help of startups such as Twitter Instagram, Facebook and Meetups.com. It seems that although we are being told to become introverts the whole world is thinking and acting like an extrovert; talking, engaging, making noise both online and in the real world. It’s important to moderate what we are told to do, what we should do and what we want to do whether we are introverts, extroverts or just ourselves.

Hurrican Sandy and the flow of information that followed

Hurricane Sandy hustled through NYC last night and so the destruction followed. However starting Sunday night through Monday evening, the flow of information that was shared through Twitter and Facebook about Hurricane Sandy was pretty much the same information. I was surprised to see not only the same blog posts and articles shared and resurfacing over and over again but the same publications were utilized to learn more about the Hurricane. 

It made me think if their is some sort of hierarchy of publication that gets more press or gets more readers which in turn gets more people to share within their social networks. I mean what hope do some of us individual bloggers get for sharing our opinions and thoughts if the “big publications” are going to takeover  and move us to the side. 

Just as we are told to be diverse in our viewing of media outlets, I think we should also be diverse in what we read and what we share. 

Amazing October Events for Aspiring College Entrepreneurs

There’s amazing Ocotober Events for current or aspiring college entrepreneurs. Check these out. 

1) From the Center for Communication the first is Pt.1 Startup City if You can Make it Here and the

Pt.II Tales from the Alley . *remember to register for both of these. 

2) Art.sy Genome Project tour the offices of Art.sy and get a presentation of the tech-minded off course. It’s not free but only twenty bucks. 

3) NYC Tech Talent Draft:Startup Career Panel & Networking at Cornell great event sponsored by the (NYCEDC)

 

 

#waywire from my perspective

#waywire is the new startup from the savviest social media using major from the northeast Major Corey Booker(NJ). The social network is video network that allows it’s (anticipated market~millenials) to discover, create and share what matters to them. Major Booker along with two other Silicon Valley veterens created this site for millenials to have a place on this huge onlinesphere for their interests, their experiences and news that matter to us!

I was excited to see this afternoon, I received an email invite from them to check out the Alpha version of the social network. Signing up was easy, all I did was sign up using info from Twitter (although FB/LinkedIn and GooglePlus are included as well) and then I requested a username(which was weird but hey they’re new so whatever) and I linked my profile with the available social networks, included info such as name, country, city, picture and hashtags that are equivalent to the short bio that Twitter allows you to include in your profile.

Overall the social network, definietly has star potential on their side. Most of us are constantly sharing videos we find interesting, funny, weird or historic. The beauty of it is you can also include videos that you yourself have created. I think the future includes #waywire as follows: Facebook~we post & it includes what we like and/or loathe; Twitter~we tweet, what we find interesting, blog posts, articles; and #waywire includes the videos that make us who we are.

happy wiring! (below are screenshots of the alpha version sneak)

What happens when people are waiting for long periods of time?

This morning I had jury duty and while most people were bored and well looking for some form of distraction, I started to study their habits (yes I was bored to and this was what chose to do, sue me :/).

- People obviously get bored waiting for their name to be called thus they started to:

1) Walk or roam around the area they are they designed to stay in 

2) People slept

3)People start to read

4)People start calling others using their cellphones

5)People start playing with their cellphones, going on the internet, texting,

6)People start longing to communicate with one another but rarely do they do so

It amazed me how people were more prevalent to respect one another’s personal space and time thus not conversing with one another. Instead of talking to one another to make the time go by faster. I believe it speaks much to our society or rather of living in a city (NYC) that makes us the people we are. 

We were all waiting for our names to be called and we were all pretty bored and longing to get back to our busy lives but not to many people conversed with each other. Does this mean we don’t believe in one another? We are afraid of one another? or maybe we simply don’t know how to start talking to one another, I mean what should we talk about? 

 

 

My problem with online classes

This morning, I read a post on the Huffington Post about the MOOCs classes or massive open online classes, available to students worldwide from major education institutions such as Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and many others; the free classes they are offering are being hailed as classes that would transform higher education at a time,” when colleges and universities are grappling with shrinking budgets, rising costs and protests over soaring tuition and student debt.”Theses classes would be taught by world renowned scholars and scientists. However here’s the catch?

They offer no college credit! We are living in a world where service economies are growing, spreading their services across the world while manufacturing decreases exponentially and economic inequality increases among those economies. And education plays a big role in that, according to Steven Strauss, Advancement Leadership Fellow, “Indeed, America is in some ways two different countries economically, segregated by educational achievement.”

An education is not only crucial to your advancement in our society, where service everyday outweighs industrialization but a college education includes you in the high earning income level that many Americans want to be a part of. It’s no secret that “the higher the education level, the higher the income.”

The free classes that are being offered by these major institutions are very well educational, amazing and will fuel the minds of curious students and budding intellectuals all over the world but they won’t be offered credit. The many supporters of these on-line classes say these classes could “lower teaching costs, improve learning online and on campus, and significantly expand access to higher education, which could fuel technological innovation and economic growth.” However takes as many classes as you can won’t offer you a job in the end.

I believe these many institutions should work with students to make these classes be a sort of stepping stone for those interested in attending the physical educational institution after the completion of several of the free online classes the institution offers. Thus this gives the students an incentive in that completeing the class, they might be offered a seat at the university that offers the course thus lowering the cost of education because the student will already have completed a couple semesters or so of the university, online.

I know that online education is in it’s infancy as a medium/platform for education however we should start things right and not wait for predicaments to arise in order to fix those problems leaving the foundation of  at the risk of collapsing.

This post does not mean I won’t take a couple of the offered courses, this post is a mere opinion of a predicament that I see arising.

How to Build Community-Lessons From Charity:Water

 

501 Tech NYC: Connect. Learn. (about via eventbrite page)

Change the world!

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

5:45 p.m. – 6:15 p.m. Socializing

6:15 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. Discussion

 

Paull Young, Director of Digital, charity: water, will share his biggest lessons learned from his work with charity:water since 2010. Over the past two years,  charity: water has seen massive growth in a declining sector, with the organization’s revenue growing over 80% – with over 75% of that revenue coming in through digital channels. Widely recognized as one of the leading non-profits in digital innovation, Paull will share what makes charity: water so successful.

 

Featured presenter: 

Paull Young is a member of the executive leadership team at charity: water, a non-profit providing clean and safe drinking water to people in the developing world. As Director of Digital, Paull is responsible for online fundraising, digital marketing and partnerships.

 

Prior to charity: water Paull served as a Senior Account Director for New York based social media agency Converseon. Paull led major projects and organization-wide social media strategy with brands such as Telstra, Newell Rubbermaid, Graco Children’s Products, Citrix, Cisco, New York Times and Showtime’s Smithsonian Channel. Paull was an integral part of projects that have received awards from Forrester Groundswell, WOMMA, PRSA, the Webbys, PR News and OMMA. In 2011 Paull was named an industry ‘Rising Star’ by the Direct Marketing Educational Foundation.

Paull’s blog ‘Young PR’ (now PaullYoung.com) has been ranked by AdAge amongst the world’s top 150 marketing blogs and by B&T Magazine as Australia’s third most influential marketing blog. Paull’s thought leadership extends to regular speaking engagements and media appearances including the Fox Business Channel, Fox News, Wall St Journal and the Sydney Morning Herald. He tweets @paullyoung.

Learn who @MarissaMayer is from her past interviews

I’ve searched for past vids that feature Marissa Mayer, new CEO of Yahoo! so we can all learn about her past with Google and with tech.

1) Marissa Mayer on Women in Tech-CNET News from the CES 2012 panel 

2) Marissa Mayer Yahoo’s “Surprise” New CEO: Who is She? 

3)Computer History Museum:An evening with Marissa Mayer

4)Marissa Mayer: Women in Tech 

5)“Women with Vision”:Google”s Marissa Mayer

Let me know what you learned on the comments.

Marissa Mayer’s Message to Youth !

“Passion is really gender-neutralizing” -Marissa Mayer

Marissa Mayer, is the new CEO of Yahoo! just yesterday it was released and everyone has been excited for her new role. It seems that she is being looked upon as the one who could possibly change things for Yahoo.

Marissa was interviewed by Martha Stewart in the “Women with Vision” show, last year. Stewart pointed out that she is part of a team of people at Google who have changed the world, her reponse was “I’m really proud of the way we have touched people’s lives, when I think about what used to take an hour of research or half an hour of research, can now be just a few seconds…(later Martha asked what advice she would you give to a young woman looking for a job?), her reponse came almost as a revelation to me, she responded “really find something your passionate about, passion is almost gender-neutralizing”; and being in college, with two years left to graduate, this really resonates with me.

Although major publications with blogs are stating that Mayer is someone who young women will look up to in the future, I can agree that she is someone anyone can look up to. As a young male, I more than comprehend the importance of her being named CEO; being one of the most powerful women in Silicon Valley when there aren’t that many women in tech, thus her position and her gender greatly amplify her new position and make those of us who are a rarity in Silicon Valley (and tech) someone to look up to. However she can also serve as role model to passion-seekers everywhere.

Often times in college. I see students including myself who aren’t sure that their chosen major or career path is the one for them, from a lucrative standpoint to the “I hope I fit in”- company culture standoint us youth are the future of not only America but the future of ourselves; it is necessary we find our passions. What we love to do. what we find ourselves doing most often; how we vision our future and our lives can help us reach that goal.

Belinda Marr from Huffington Post, wrote a blog post titled “The Appointment of Marissa Mayer Is a Milestone for Women in“. She says Lady Geeks everywhere should rejoice for Mayer and for Sheryl Sandberg from Facebook. She goes along with saying, “We shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves — there’s still a long, long way to go and the number of women in top tech jobs is still depressingly tiny. But there’s no doubt that a banner appointment like this is a huge step in the right direction when it comes to encouraging the next generation of women to follow in their footsteps.”

Here’s to everyone finding what they are passionate about and diversity in Tech!

Also, congrats to Marissa who is currently expecting her first baby.

Reality TV turning us into entrepreneurs

I have recently been watching and kinda researching reality TV and I have noticed that it seems we are currently living in the age of “Wannabe stars turning to entrepreneurship”. From the likes of Jersey Shore’s Snooki’s slippers to the Basketball Wives Evelyn Lozada’s nail lines; these people who are placed in front of cameras to ridicule themselves and somehow entertain us, are making money from these businesses that, from my understanding are-lucrative? Many of these newly become reality-tv stars, are trying to make their “fifteen minutes of fame, last longer”.

However will those minutes really need to last?

From the likes of many of these shows, no. Bravo’s hit franchise the “Real Housewives”, has now been on aire for more than 8 years, and the ratings keep on rising. MTV’s, hit Jersey Shore has been their highest rated series since the network’s beginning; just recently last year their third season premiered to 8.4 million viewers. The availablity of camera-time on major networks allows these “stars” to develop their own brands and followings.If that doesn’t promote your brand/business I don’t know what does.

However my question is does that amount of viewership have any influence on its viewers to start their own businesses. I guess what I am trying to say is, does reality-tv serve as a vehicle to promote entrepreneurship to the Americans that watch.

A few weeks ago, Bethenny Frankel’s day-time talk show aired titled “Bethenny”, in one of the episodes she had a guest to she had inspired. The guest, who you guessed it was a woman, she spoke about how watching Bethenny, had inspired her to start her own business.

Women entrepreneurs have increased by 54 percent over the past fifteen years according to Diary of a Blue Suit Mom and the number of women hooked to reality television is ever-increasing. Women between the ages of 18-49, any given night account for two million to eight million viewers of the real housewives shows. Maybe future research will show if watching reality television will turn you into an entrepreneur or a psychopath who argues with everyone?