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You can find it here: http://www.carleemallard.com

Thanks For The Advice, But I'm Not Deleting Any Facebook Photos

A young woman in college raised a topic of much debate on NPR this afternoon. She explained that her advisor told her she needed to take down all her pictures on Facebook that she wouldn't want an employer to see. She then complained about how she really didn't want to delete them. The consensus on the show seemed to be that no, you don't have to delete all your pictures, but employers don't have to hire you either.

Why are we still talking about whether potential employers are going to Google you or check out your Facebook profile? Why are we still talking about deleting Facebook photos at all? Whether they're going to check you out or not, you should protect your online identity as if they are. Which is why I'm not deleting all my "incriminating" Facebook photos or censoring my comments. I'm reading the privacy policies and protecting my account to make sure that only my friends can see my photos and details of my account.

Facebook is personal. It's the one social network where I keep in touch with family and friends across space and time. It's the one place I can talk about a messy family drama divorce; learn about my sister's engagement in Italy; commiserate with hungover friends; share and laugh at pictures of our recent beach trip. If I want to know about the intimate details of your life and want you to know about mine, then I'm gonna let you know: with a friend request. If not, don't worry, I might just connect with you somewhere else (email? LinkedIn? Twitter?).

Point being, it's personal. Why would you even let a casual observer such as a potential employer peruse your personal Facebook profile? That's like letting someone you barely know walk around your house uninvited. Put a lock on your front door (a.k.a. go set your profile information & search privacy settings)! Then you silly little college students don't have to get mad because you had to delete all your SBY2K10 photos.

Take what others advise with a grain of salt. Be your own advocate. Do your own research. BE SMART.

Sidenote: Facebook privacy aside, if you're an employer that won't hire a normal 20-something who goes out for drinks with their friends on the weekends or has pictures of themselves at a party, I probably don't want to work for you anyways. No hard feelings :)

Sex Week at The Next Great Generation

I write for a website called The Next Great Generation where Millenials write about everything and anything related to their generation. This past week (February 15th - February 21st) has been "Sex Week", which means all featured articles relate back to Gen Y sex somehow. Although all 21 articles are worth reading, I thought I would share some of my favorites (read: does not mean I agree with all of the authors) and the ones with the most interesting debate in the comments in case you don't have time to read all of them!

For Guys, The First Date Is All About Sex by Armando Samuels

Bisexuality: The Punching Bag Orientation by Lauren Schumacher

Sex, Stigma and STDs by Carlee Mallard - Hey, that's me!(But I really did think it was pretty good)

My Decision To Take A Lover by Alex Pearlman

The Perils of The Perpetually Single Gen Y Female by Valeria Villarroel

And some of the articles that gave me a good chuckle:

The Interview: Elle Magazine's E. Jean Carroll by Gillian Maffeo

Rated Y-17: Gen Y's Top 10 Erotic Gems in Film and Television by David Ricaud

Requirements for a Sex Life Worthy of a Major Motion Picture by Lindsay King

I hope you all enjoy reading them as much as I have this week!

What Is "interesting" Anyways? College Was.

I'm three years out of college now. I find myself looking back at my life and the former college-lives of others around me and can't help but feel like most of us were much more interesting people in college.

I look back at pictures from college:

• Black & white shots with my film SLR in Pittsburgh
• Strangers I met in Rome while studying abroad in Florence
• Me with my Swiss foreign exchange student waiting in line to get into a concert
• Fashion shots of aspiring models printed in my college fashion magazine
• My family and me covered in sulfur mud from a volcano in Colombia, South America
• Heck, it was impressive enough that I even took so many damn photographs (and some were pretty good).

I look back at my resume and notice a laundry list of activities, accomplishments, projects, research interests, and course completions. Tutoring. Mentoring. Ushering. Photographing. Editing. Traveling. Dissecting (pigs). Personal Assisting. Reading. Researching. Writing (like, a lot). Crushing. Loving. Organizing. Leading. Perfecting. Exploring. Freaking (out).

Yea, we do a lot of freaking out in college. We don't know what life is going to look like post-college or how we'll support ourselves (if you haven't been already). So when I got a permanent full-time job I stopped freaking out. I got immediately comfortable with my (relatively) stress-free life. But I look at my life since starting this job 1 year and 7 months ago and life just doesn't seem as interesting. Of course it's mostly all my own fault. I mean, it's my life and it's up to me to make the most of it. But it seems to me that the general population with permanent full-time jobs were much more interesting in college. We get so content just collecting the paycheck every month that we spend our free time going to bars, restaurants, watching TV, and going on the occasional vacation. Is that interesting? Is there more to it?

I find myself wanting to talk to people about my past or my future instead of my present. But am I still that person from college that I think was so interesting? Was I really ever that interesting to begin with? Am I still interesting and I don't know it? What is interesting anyways: popular, exciting, creative, foreign?

Note: After posing this question Sunday night, @ElleLaMode responded with some ideas of her own. You should check out her perspective over here.

It's a Free Market For Spreading Ideas

There are four major idea-sharing events taking place between March 3, 2010 and March 23, 2010 in the Raleigh-Durham (Triangle) area. They're all free. They're all aimed at engaging the local community thought leaders with the rest of the community through presentations. They're all one-night events coordinated by a local (unpaid) team.

But they each have their own origin and consequently a different path for achieving essentially the same goal: sharing great ideas. You may not be familiar with any of these events (in which case you need to start finding a local event in your own community right now) or you may already know about all three (and heck, there's probably even more events I don't know about yet). Either way, each event has a unique brand, so it's inevitable that they're likely more popular in certain circles than others.

My point in creating this terribly geeky venn diagram (well, honestly I just wanted a reason to make another venn diagram) is to bring all the options to the table, point out their quirks, have other people expand on their unique value (fill in the missing pieces of the venn diagram in the comments people!), and help people discover their niche - where they fit - in the idea sharing event market.

Because if anything, this proves that there's really a free market out there for idea sharing events. There's probably even more popping up out there every day. We're in the information age, and it shows. People want to get together, connect, and share ideas and there's definitely not a monopoly on that.

But this also shouldn't be a competition. The leaders for all events should be supporting each other this month, throughout the year, and for years to come. Don't forget that we're all working towards the same goal.

Have you been to any of these events? What did you like or dislike about each one? If you've helped to organize an event, how have you worked together with other similar events? Do you think it's better to have multiple (smaller) events for the same purpose to should they all combine into one really GREAT BIG event?

To learn more about these events and/or to find an event near you:

TEDx: http://www.ted.com/tedx

Ignite: http://ignite.oreilly.com/

PechaKucha: http://www.pecha-kucha.org/

FizzledDurham: http://www.fizzleddurham.com/

And to register for the events in Raleigh this March:

PechaKucha Night Raleigh

Ignite Raleigh

FizzledDurham

TEDxTriangleNC

February 2010 Monthly Goal Meetup

I learned something about goal-making and goal-keeping this month. People don’t keep their New Year’s resolutions because they aren’t items that you can easily check off your list. They are too broad and too ambitious. Making long-term goals still have their place, but they don’t belong on a monthly goal list.

Therefore, I’m scratching January’s goals for now and starting fresh with February. This doesn’t mean that my January goals don’t apply anymore or that I’m going to forget about them, but I’m just going to move them to some storage area in my head where I can check up on them from time to time.

This goal meet-up is most useful for me when making goals that I think there’s some chance of achieving in a month’s time frame. This is real life practice for making goals and achieving results.

February onwards:

1. Do my taxes! I stole this one from a fellow "goal-meetup-er", but I haven't done it yet and this is definitely something I should get off my plate before making any life changes...
2. Arrange my first tweetup in the Raleigh-Durham area. I'm doing this with Brianne (@bevilliano) and we're both really excited to start meeting our first tweeps.
3. Up the blog frequency. I've already written my first article for The Next Great Generation that should be up around the middle of the month, but I'm aiming for at least 2 posts there per month and about 6 per month over here. I've never really cared about post frequency before, but I have a feeling it could only benefit me to write more frequently (duh)!
4. Take on a part-time job. This will probably be the most difficult one to take on considering the full-time job I already have and everything else going on in my life. But I think this will be really good for me to get out and about with people more often. To learn more about what I love and hate. And to get my mind thinking in another direction.
5. Keep having fun. And by this I'm referring to having fun despite the horrifically cold and snowy winter this southern region has been experiencing. A few things in particular I want to do:
• Watch every episode of LOST. I can only watch it for the first time once!
• Looking forward to the fondue Valentine's day dinner with my girlfriends (we're all single at the same time for the first time ever really. Crazy!!!)
• So excited about "The Art and Culture of the DJ" by DJ Radar performing at UNC-Chapel Hill's Gerrard Hall. My sister works there and she says I'm going to loooove it :)

To participate in the meet-up:
1. Post a list of your career/life related goals for February, along with your checked off January goals if you’d like, on your own blog.
2. Go back to Brazen Careerist and leave a link to your post (*If you don’t have your own blog, feel free to share your list in the comments to join in!)
3. Then, check out everyone else’s lists as they leave comments - click their links, visit their blogs, say hello, meet, greet and support each other because that’s what it’s all about!

Employers & Applicants: Both Sides

There's something I need to get off my chest because I'm not sure what or how to think about it. The issue is weeding out potential employees in not-so-nice ways. Example:

You are hiring 60 temporary employees for an upcoming project. The staffing agency recruits and hires a little more than that (we'll say 70) just in case some people don't accept the position or quit in the middle of the project. Then the training sessions are scheduled. New employees are informed that if they want this job, they will need to come to an 8-hour training session on either Superbowl Sunday or Valentine's Day (both of which are on Sundays). On top of that, if there's inclement weather that day and employees cannot leave their home that day, the training session will not be rescheduled. If they cannot attend the session for any reason, their employment is terminated.

Part of me feels that this is completely justified from a business standpoint. After all is said and done, we only want employees that really want to work for us and have shown us that nothing can stop them from getting this job. We only want the best of the best and since there's such a large applicant pool we can do that.

But I overheard a coworker say something to the effect of "Well, they're all so desperate for a job that they'll come anyways" in regards to new employees coming to a training session during/after a snow storm. It hit me as terribly insensitive. These are real people too. I pride myself in being able to see both sides of a situation and when I looked at it from each side I didn't like what I saw. From the employee's perspective I saw a hard-ass employer who doesn't care about its employees' lives outside of the job (there's no rule stating employers can't be considerate). From the employer's perspective I saw selecting for only the most desperate individuals looking for work.

I really don't think that it's good hiring practice to select only the most desperate applicants. Desperate does not equal the best. Some of my best staff have not been good because they were desperate; they were good because they were interested and they showed me they were interested. There are better ways of selecting the best of the best who really want this job. We should be giving every applicant a fair chance at showing us their stuff. We should be weeding out based on lack of results during or after a training period, not leaving it to circumstance.

What do you all think? Any Hiring Managers out there who deal with these issues? Can we be nice or considerate to applicants and still test their dedication to the job? Would you rather hire someone who is so desperate for the job they'll show up no matter what or someone who you know you'll get results from when they do show up?

The Future of High Speed Rail for Selfish Cities

The Raleigh Department of City Planning hosts a lecture series called "Designing a 21st Century City" every few months. I went to my second lecture presentation last week where John Robert Smith (former Mayor of Meridian, MS and member of Amtrak's board) and James Corless (Director of Transportation for America) spoke about the future of high speed rail in the US and how it will affect our own growing city.

There was a typical talk about how the national transportation policy hasn't changed in over 50 years, how we could have raised enough money for rail transportation just by stockpiling the increase in gas prices or by taxing gas a few extra cents, how Americans are choosing to take public transportation more than ever because of the fuel hike, how the environment and political climate are suffering from the continued use of automobiles. Most people in the field already know all this. None of this is news. But we have a chance to really make high speed rail and light rail in our region a reality with the availability of new federal funds... but there's a catch. OH there is always a catch! They're only awarding transit funds to those states/regions that have their shit together. That means Raleigh will never get transit funds unless the rest of the region has a plan and only if each city in the region works together to create a unified plan.

My biggest fear is that we won't let go of our stubborn inability to compromise and will be left in the dust without any prize money to take home. The Triangle region is known for a lot of things including long-standing university rivalries between NC State (Raleigh), UNC-Chapel Hill, and Duke (Durham), but loving one another is not one of them. Raleigh thinks they're better than Durham and Chapel Hill thinks they're better than Durham & Raleigh and Durham just ignores the rest of the region hoping they don't slip away. I just want to tell all of our fair cities to stop the rivalries and start working together. And then when Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill start working together we can start collaborating with the rest of our region from Greensboro to Charlotte and back to Richmond.

The dream of taking a 110mph high speed rail train from Raleigh to DC is really just too exciting NOT to stop fighting. Don't worry Raleigh, we can still be unique and play nice.

UPDATE(01/28/2010!!): The feds awarded $545 Million to North Carolina today for high speed rail between Charlotte, Raleigh and Richmond. Keep it up! Story here: http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/6903052/ 

I'm A Human Being, Not A Human Doing

I've been meeting a lot of new people recently. Online. At parties. At networking events. On planes. Friends introduce me to their friends. Let's not forget it's high school reunion time, so: reconnecting with people I haven't talked to since high school (and that's like meeting a whole new person!).

There's a lot of people to introduce myself to. No matter what setting you meet someone in, you know the one question that will always come up is, "What do you do (for a living)?" And that's when I start wondering what I should tell them about myself.

For some people the answer comes naturally and simply. They may feel defined by their occupation and quickly answer, "I'm a computer programmer for IBM." They may be passionate and focused on their new venture and say, "Well I just founded a new social marketing measurement company," and continue to talk about it for the next 10 minutes.

There are still others of us out there who don't have such a simple answer. A friend of mine was laid-off from her first job less than a year into it and has since felt uncomfortable having to explain that she's coasting along on unemployment until another job comes along. What about all of the recent and soon-to-be college graduates that are working 2-5 part-time retail/food industry gigs because they can't get a full-time job and to be honest aren't really sure what they would want a full-time job to look like anyways. Then there are people like me: Full-time job that I refuse to let define who I am, a completely unrelated part-time position with my family's small business, a multitude of barely financially-rewarding hobbies, and with career goals in a realm of its own.

While answering, "What do you do?" can be daunting in any of the above cases, I think that it's actually easier to brand yourself one-on-one than in an online realm. In a one-one-one situation you can at least choose what you want to share with that person about yourself. Online though, anyone can Google you to follow you on Twitter, find you on Facebook, read your blog, check out your LinkedIn profile, and see every comment you've ever posted. It's sort of an information overload. It may be a more multi-faceted and multi-talented "you", but sharing all of that with someone one-on-one at once would just confuse them or leave them wondering where your real focus is.

So when I meet someone these days I try to keep some questions in the back of my mind to decide how I should answer the question; whether I should focus on my current endeavors or my aspiring goals; what takes up the majority of my time or what I wish would take up more of my time; my major source of income or my "hobbies"?

1. What do they already know about me?
2. Can I build on that or tell them something they might not already know about me?
3. What do I already know about them?
4. Is there something they should know about me that may be able to help them?
5. What is relevant to the conversation?
6. What is my purpose/environment? Am I networking for my side business?
7. Am I trying to impress someone or try to sound as interesting as possible?

I usually end up focusing on one major aspect of "what I do" for simplicity's sake, but when the conversation is all said and done I can't help but feel so inauthentic. It feels like a cop-out to say "I work at [this company] and that's what I do" and at the same time feels like a sham to say "I'm a [writer/engineer/entrepreneur/photographer]" if I'm not employed or earning a living as that person. Such a dilemma.

If I had to sum myself up in one phrase? I guess I'm still working on that!

Getting Your Dream Job... And Taking A Job Away

One of my best friends just got his dream job as the Program Assistant for Communications and New Media at the Morehead Foundation, working back on the same college campus where he spent his undergrad years writing for The Daily Tar Heel as if it were his full-time job. He really is perfect for the position and he's incredibly happy being back in an academic atmosphere. As happy as he is though, he's incredibly modest and one of those do-gooder givers more so than a receiver.

For nearly two years prior to this dream job he was working at a generic 9-5 law firm. While he obviously left the position there for one which better suited his skills and passions, it was still a perfectly good paying job that many others would have been extremely happy to take. Except nobody had the opportunity to take the job that he left because the company decided not to replace him.

For my friend this was unsettling. He went to pursue a dream job and in the process took another job out of the economy. In his words, "That's one less family to put food on the table."

Now I would predict that this is happening fairly often these days. Employers have employees that they may not want to lay off necessarily, but if the employee leaves on their own accord, the employer feels financial pressure not to refill the position. So every time someone leaves for another position or leaves to freelance, they are ultimately taking jobs out of the economy.

Now I'm not an economist by any means, but it would seem that if employers would just start replacing those who leave, things would start to look up again.


Have you left a position that your employer didn't end up refilling? Do you think your employer would need to replace your position if you left (hypothetically)? Knowing that young entry-level Gen-Y's are so unsatisfied with their current jobs and having heard that many Gen-Y's left their jobs recently, do you think Gen-Y is partly responsible for the lack of entry-level positions?

Your Mailing List is Not a Place to Grieve

Because only CNN gets away with breaking the news about death. And even then it makes me want to sensor them so that I'm not constantly flooded with depressing news. It was my decision to sign up for CNN breaking news alerts to my phone or via twitter, though. I knew that they were a breaking news source-- and heck, that might include death. I was aware of what I was getting myself into.

Let's take another example of something that we all sign up for on the internet: newsletters with "valuable information" right to your inbox. We stumble upon a website, like what we see, or want that "free book chapter" (or something of the sort) and go ahead and sign up for the newsletter. Now we don't always know what we're getting ourselves into but we hope that the content we just signed up to receive will provide some semblance of value similar to what we already know about this website, business or individual.

Imagine you met someone in person working for an internet marketing company. You thought they might have some valuable content to share with you and they asked you for your email to add you to the mailing list. Sure, she seems genuine enough and you already got some great advice from her. So you sign up expecting to get e-newsletters related to internet marketing in some way. Over the course of two months you get a total of two emails completely unrelated to internet marketing: the first is a Happy Thanksgiving email; the second is subject: "he passed away :-("

What? Yes your internet marketing newsletter has sent you an email with an obituary of a close friend of hers that has died. Full with links to legacy pages and repeating text urging you to watch a video of said friend. You don't know this person.

What now? You find the unsubscribe link. Because only CNN gets away with breaking the news about the death of someone you don't know.

Just because you gather bundles of email addresses does not give you the right to write about whatever you please unless that's what your readers are expecting. Let this be a lesson in content you should not write about in your e-newsletter. Write about what you promise to deliver. Otherwise your subscribers will disappear.

Have you ever been surprised (in a bad way) by the content  you subscribed to? How often do you unsubscribe because the content you're sent doesn't match the content you were promised? Did you feel taken advantage of, naive, or just appalled?

January 2010 Monthly Goal Meetup

I did much better in November with 3 weeks than in December with 4 weeks. December is one of those months that just falls into a black hole. Family comes in to town and somehow you're mind is warped into believing that a regular routine and goals are so passé. Let's give the review a whirl anyways:


1. Do all the "easy" stuff that I just never seem to make time for. Finally got my car checked out. Made a dentist appointment, went to original appointment, and knocked out 3 additional appointments all before December 29th (although these were not fun appointments, sadly). I'd say most of December was about doing the easy stuff; after all, I didn't do a whole lot of thinking the last half of the month :)

2. Do something I've never done before. ...yea, CHECK.

3. Read a fiction novel. Yes I did. It was horrible though, so I joined this site, LibraryThing.com that's giving me much better book recommendations and I'm going to read a bunch more this month!

4. Include more of my photos on the blog. Seeing as how I didn't really blog much this month, I can't really check this off at all. I should have made this more of a 6-month long goal. That's what I'll do now.

5. Go to a free yoga class on campus at least 2 times. For the most part I did as much as I could. I went to this restorative yoga class during lunch one day and nearly fell asleep-- it was that good. Unfortunately I had forgotten that all the fitness classes were canceled for the last 2 weeks of December... so I went for a nice relaxing & stretching type of walk around the lake instead.

6. Work & work hard. Mini-goal A: create a database of client case studies. Mini-goal B: Send out the e-newsletter by December 16th. Not sure why I thought I would work hard during the holidays since I never do. I did send out our newsletter & created my first web survey. I did make headway on the website and brainstormed on the framework for the content. I did not however get anywhere near to launching the site by January 1. In fact, there is still lots of work to be done. Ah, FAIL. Complete letdown.

For January, to start off the new year:

• Take more photos with the Nikon SLR. (Just got the replacement lens in, so it's back in action!)
• Read a book I like gosh darn-it!
• Pay attention to me: sleep cycle, mental alertness, mood, physical shape
• Make a 6-month work goal plan.

To participate in the meet-up:
1. Post a list of your career/life related goals for January, along with your checked off December goals if you’d like, on your own blog.
2. Go back to Brazen Careerist and leave a link to your post (*If you don’t have your own blog, feel free to share your list in the comments to join in!)
3. Then, check out everyone else’s lists as they leave comments - click their links, visit their blogs, say hello, meet, greet and support each other because that’s what it’s all about! 

The End of Education

I wrote the following essay for my college composition class freshman year (so please forgive the poor/formal writing style!) about Richard Rodriguez’s autobiographical exploration about the end of his education. I was reading over it the other day and realized that some of the main ideas in this paper would be interesting to revisit now that I’ve graduated college and am trying to find ways to continue learning in a post-formal-education life.

I discovered while reading Richard Rodriguez’s “The Achievement of Desire” that there is a stark difference between what I believe he refers to as the “end of education” and what I believe the “end of education” to truly be. Rodriguez’s education is not life-long learning, but rather an education ending with the end of formal education.

It has always been the idea in my mind that you never stop learning until you die. My grandfather has been the prime example in my life. He has been educating himself (teaching himself how to captain a ship and living on a boat for years, starting his own business, learning to speak Italian fluently, always reading a book about a topic of interest to him, taking up woodworking, and becoming an expert on ancient Egyptian culture including the language, art, and music) for as long as I can remember up until the present day. Out of passion comes a desire to surround yourself by everything that is the cause of that passion. If you are passionate about life, you will strive to surround yourself by everything that life has to offer.

In Mary Louise Pratt’s essay, “Arts of the Contact Zone,” she describes a new Cultures, Ideas, Values class: “It was the most exciting teaching we had ever done, and also the hardest… (who can forget Atahuallpa throwing down the Bible because it would not speak to him?)…Along with rage, incomprehension, and pain, there were exhilarating moments of wonder and revelation, mutual understanding, and new wisdom—the joys of the contact zone.” Without any passion in education, a contact zone would ultimately fail. Without passion, nobody in the classroom would speak strongly about anything (given they speak at all), and would therefore not become a place of sharing of ideas, and certainly nothing of the sort of classroom experience Pratt describes. A contact zone classroom is often a difficult place to be, but the way in which Pratt speaks of her situation, it also sounds like a wonderfully passionate place to be and to share with others.

The most passion comes from sharing my ideas with others who are interested in the same things as me. Since Rodriguez read and studied alone in the library, he rarely shared his ideas by talking to others. In fact, he “began to wonder: Who, besides my dissertation director and a few faculty members, would ever read what I wrote?” Following that thought he yearns for a more passionate life. If he were able to share what he wrote with the world, maybe he would have found passion somewhere in his thoughtfulness.

Rodriguez just never truly loved anything he studied but himself. His autobiographical essay did not show any passion about that which he studied, researched, or wrote about. Instead, his passion appears just through writing his own story about his own life. He has underestimated the role life-long learning has played in his own life. Although his autobiography mediates on how he has reached the end of his education, without even knowing it, Rodriguez managed to learn a great deal about himself and the world around him just by simply writing his own story. We can see this by the way his own perspectives have changed throughout the course of his life story. Rodriguez just needed to find his passion.

          

In the end, it is only fair to say that each individual has their own goal, or end, of education. As my grandfather has said, we will be of more service to our community as well-rounded individuals in life than as an individual with nothing more than a formal education degree. We all give our own meaning to life, but in order to have a life, you have to continue to explore life, and do so passionately.

A lot of us are out of school or about to be out of school. Do you feel like your education is over or that instead it has just begun? How has sharing and conversing about ideas (whether through a blog/twitter, an interest group, over a beer, etc.) helped you to continue learning post-college? And how do YOU explore life passionately?

December Monthly Goal Meetup

Oh yes, I definitely made those scrumptious looking cheese & ham puffs, and that was one of my goals for November! Now on to a recap of my November goals with my new December goals to follow:

1. Get out all of my holiday cards before Thanksgiving. They were all in the mail the day before Thanksgiving, but honestly I would have been really disappointed in myself if I didn't make this happen considering I'm in the business of marketing and urged all of my clients to get their own holiday cards out early this year, too!

2. Create a sitemap for the new www.promotionplus.com website in Wordpress. Umm I think so? I got the designer enough information to create a preliminary design, but I'm still learning what all needs to be done. I'm not sure I know what a sitemap is anymore. Watch out-- Learning in progress.

3. Identify my company’s niche markets. Errr confusion. Fail. To my credit, I didn't have the full month to ponder this one. I did however have an unexpected Starbucks meeting towards the end of the month with Ron Baron, a leader in the promotional products industry, who I sat next to on a plane a month ago on his way back home to Utah. We had exchanged cards on the plane and called me up the day before he was flying back to Raleigh for some other business and asked to get together and chat. He was really helpful in hashing out some of the ideas I've had and sent me off in a good direction.

4. In the spirit of GenYGivesThanks (Sharalyn Hartwell’s brainchild), share with my family how I am thankful this Thanksgiving. Duh: see previous "Thanks" post.

5. Make a real dish for turkey day. See photo above! Well actually those ham & cheese puff pastries don't count because I actually bought those from Trader Joe's. But I did make an experimental baked cabbage dish I found on CNN. Oh, and a pumpkin pie.

6. Return the 2 books to the library that I borrowed back in July. Being held accountable definitely helped. My friend was just a little surprised when she came to pick me up one night and I brought 2 huge books with me and asked her to stop by the library on our way to our night on the town!

7. Clean my room! There's a difference I realized between cleaning and decorating. I did however hang my paintings, photographs, and lamps and reorganized my desk so that at least it feels more tidy and homey in here.

So November overall was a pretty good month. I hope it has prepared me for December because this month is going to be a whopper of a roller coaster. I'll start with the "easy" stuff and move to the more ambitious of my endeavors.

1. Do all the "easy" stuff that I just never seem to make time for. Does it ever take you a month to make an appointment or run your dreaded errands even though it would only take 5 minutes if you took a moment to pause, and JUST DO IT? I need to make a dentist appointment. It's taken me almost 2 years to just do it. I think it will help now that the new dentist's office opening down the street is offering a free teeth-whitening if I make an appointment this week. Merry Christmas to me!

2. Do something I've never done before. It doesn't have to be anything crazy like jumping out of an airplane. Something simple. Just to keep life interesting :)

3. Read a fiction novel. I've been reading a lot more than usual lately. However, it's all been non-fiction and at a computer screen for the most part. I miss getting lost in a book and looking forward to reading another chapter at my next free moment. Last year I read 3 novels in 2 weeks but that was because I was a) traveling oversees on long plane rides and b) landed in a foreign country with no internet access for 2 weeks. I'll settle for 1 good read this month.

4. Include more of my photos on the blog. I was telling someone about my new blog and explaining how I used to be so involved in photography and I've lost my groove. Her advice: "You should put some photography on your blog". Could it have been any more obvious? I think I will, thank you.


5. Go to a free yoga class on campus at least 2 times. Where I work [during the day] there is a gym and fitness classes throughout the day. I used to go every Friday at lunch to pilates, but for one reason or another haven't been in months. Since it's free and only a short walk from my desk there really should be no excuse not to go, right? Except that morning classes begin before I wake up and evening classes start when my stomach starts growling, too. Anyone have some advice on scheduling fitness?

6. Work & work hard. I have a lot to get done this month with the family business. We're launching the new website this month (goal is Dec 18th, but I'd be happy with anything in 2009). That means lots of mini-goals to reach the big goal. Mini-goal A: create a database of client case studies. Mini-goal B: Send out the e-newsletter by December 16th.

I know, I didn't include any family/friends/holiday goals this time, but I'm pretty sure I don't need any reminding or nudging seeing as how everything is going pretty smoothly on that front. Next time we revisit goals it will be 2010 - scary?! Good luck everyone on making the most of your last month in 2009!


To participate in the meet-up:
1. Post a list of your career/life related goals for December, along with your checked off November goals if you’d like, on your own blog.
2. Go back to modite.com and leave a link to your post in the comments (*If you don’t have your own blog, feel free to share your list in the comments to join in!)
3. Then, check out everyone else’s lists as they leave comments - click their links, visit their blogs, say hello, meet, greet and support each other because that’s what it’s all about!

Thanks to people, options, and technology!

1. Thankful to have such an awesome team at work. They ROCK. And I told them that today as we all sent out our PTO/work-from-home emails to each other. I couldn't pick my small team of me + 3. I was hired and thrown into this team, and really, they couldn't be better people to work with. Such attention to detail, so responsive, open to change (flexible), team players, really.

2. Thankful for options and choice. It seems simple, but some people have fewer options than I do. I had plenty of options of cars to buy this year. I have the option of where I want to work (even if my options scare me). I have options when it comes to the grocery store I prefer to shop at (team Harris Teeter!!), the clothes I want to present myself in, the people I want to spend my time with, the relationships I choose to form, the roof I call home, how I spend my free time, and what I spend my money on. There are so many options in life. You probably make more choices in a day than you'd like to think about. Remember that it's your life. Don't let someone else choose for you!

3. Thankful for my grandmother's health. My life would be very different without her here. She really doesn't even know how important she is to me. I think a lot of elderly focus so much on their impending death. And I don't mean in a bad way. They talk about dying as if it were the best thing to happen to them. Like they will finally be able to get rid of this old body and trade in their now boring life with a more exciting one. But I'm glad grandma is still with me. She cooks me dinner every night, but also teaches me. She keeps me company and listens to my problems when nobody else has time or wants to listen. She is my business mentor and gives me crucial business know-how each day. I know I can't take these things for granted, which is why I'm very thankful that she is still in GOOD HEALTH.

4. THANK YOU mom for finally separating from dad. I'm thankful that our family has turned a traditionally horrible experience (divorce) into a lesson in personal happiness. When we are each happier as individuals, we are happier as a family. Yes, there may be some awkward moments every now and then, but who cares? We're HAPPY! :)

5. And the last one (although I could go on all day about what I'm thankful for). Apple. My iPhone. The inventor of the internet. All of the computer & software engineers out there changing the world on a daily basis. I firmly believe that I was born into the correct decade, because I am genuinely thankful for all the technologies we have today that make my life easier but also more interesting and challenging. Some may find this superficial... but I would disagree. How many times have you said "Thank god for the internet!!"?

And now I will depart my work team to make pies and listen to pandora holiday music with my sister, mom, and grandma. Happy Thanksgiving everyone! :)

You're stuck in a room with... no computer!

So you're stuck in a conference room. For an hour. With no computer! OH NO! What do you do?

I was in this situation the other day and I got really anxious. I'm one of those people who needs to be doing something at all hours of the day. I even have trouble sleeping (well, I have trouble getting to sleep, but also waking up from sleep!). So when I found myself practically locked in a room for an hour with just a bunch of chairs, a table, a pad of paper and pen, and my iPhone, I began to anxiously contemplate what productive things I could spend the next hour doing.

Some things that I did, or thought about doing:
1. Check the twitterverse.What is everyone else doing? What news is being posted? Maybe I should ask twitter what I should do with my hour.
2. Stare at all the empty chairs until the hour passes (I tried that for about 30 seconds and started tapping my feet... moving on...)
3. Call my mom to plan dinner. Well... I did that, but it doesn't take a lot of time.
4. Brainstorm new blog posts. Does anyone else find it really hard to hand-write articles these days? It's good for jotting down ideas as they come to me, but I go off on so many tangents and can barely read my handwriting as it gets closer to the end of the page. Letters start blending together as my mind moves faster than my fingers. The keyboard was a great invention!
5. Use the pen & paper to plan out work goals, business ideas, or sales techniques, etc. The problem I found with this is that I hate to be interrupted in the middle of something like this. And hour seems like a long time, but often times not long enough.

So I'm curious to know what my other Gen Y counterparts do in their "free-time" alone & sans computer. Do you try get work done in all your spare time between meetings and calls or do you find yourself trying to take a breather, relax, do some yoga, or what?

Please share!

November Monthly Goal Meet-Up

I discovered the “Monthly Goal Meet-Up” group on Brazencareerist.com and at first assumed it was an actual meet-up in person in the flesh thing and felt so left out! Silly me; this is an online community after all.

So now I’m really quite relieved that I can join this already strong monthly goal group and I don’t have to start one myself. See, I’ve been telling myself for a few weeks now that I need just take a few minutes to write down my goals. I took the time to write 1 goal. And it was lofty. A “this is where I want to be in 1 year” kind of goal. That’s all fine and dandy, but I really need a place to share my goals so that someone will keep me accountable for them (whether it’s just the act of making my goals public or someone actually hounding me to get off my butt and do something about them, either one is great motivation). Proof that this might actually work: as soon as I joined the group and starting reading others’ goals at Rebecca Thorman’s blog, I scribbled 7 quick goals on my steno book and thought, “holy cow, I’ve got the goal-writing down so well that I think I need to focus on fewer goals.”

So here goes, my goals for November (albeit, a little late in the game):

1. Get out all of my holiday cards before Thanksgiving. Usually this slips my mind until a few days before Christmas and then my friends, family, and company’s clients are getting holiday cards after New Years. This is really ineffective, so I’m going to do it the right way this year!

2. Create a sitemap for the new www.promotionplus.com website in Wordpress. I have a web designer already, but she really needs me to give her some direction on what the site needs and how everything should flow. This is my first foray into Wordpress or any website creation, so this could be difficult. Wordpress.org and all of the wordpress bloggers groups are really overwhelming, so I’ll take any advice that comes my way 

3. Identify my company’s niche markets. Promotion Plus has historically worked with banks, schools, public government offices/services, and small business entrepreneurs. Now that I’m transitioning into the company I want to find the niche markets that I’m most familiar with. Hmm beer might be a good place to start ;)

4. In the spirit of GenYGivesThanks (Sharalyn Hartwell’s brainchild), share with my family how I am thankful this Thanksgiving. I am a true Gen Y and forget to thank people far too often. In fact when I was 5 I was embarrassed to say “thank you” in public and it took me many years to finally get over that and start saying “thank you” in public. This year I want Thanksgiving to mean something special.

5. Make a real dish for turkey day. Speaking of Thanksgiving… Usually I just get a can of cranberry sauce, put it in a pretty dish, and plop it on the table. I’m not a great cook, but this year with the new family dynamics (if you know me personally, you know what I’m talking about) I really want to try to be a part of every step and contribute to the feast--that I am so excited about!

6. Return the 2 books to the library that I borrowed back in July. Shameful, I know. I give in… I admit that I will never read them. I guess I’ll be donating a hefty amount to the Wake Country Public Library system this holiday season!

7. Clean my room! I start with lofty goals and slowly move to the more mundane activities of my life. The state of the cleanliness of my room reflects my attention to detail in other areas of my life, though, and I think this is important. Finally I will hang the lamp and photo organizer that I got for my birthday. Happy birthday month to me!

Alright. 1-2-3- GO!

Nurture your relationships - even when you're not "getting anything out of it"

Something strange happened today. I created a Facebook page for my business that offers marketing, branding, and promotion solutions using promotional products a few weeks ago. To date I only had about 20 fans and I decided that today I would go ahead and send suggestions to the rest of my facebook friends to become a fan of the page. Now I sent this to just about all of my facebook friends not just for self-promotion. Yes, I am promoting the company in hopes, but not just to garner facebook fans. Fans are useless if they're not interested in what I have to offer. I have over 500 facebook friends and that's 500 people who are doing 500 different things in their work and/or personal life right now. I couldn't possibly know everything that everyone is doing. Someone could be planning their wedding and looking for a nice gift to send their guests off with. Someone else might need to keep themselves at the top of their customers/clients minds this holiday season with holiday cards or one of those awesome meat/cheese packages. Yet someone else just might be throwing a holiday party soon and will need decorations or a way to promote their event. I have no idea.

All I hope is that those who think they might need a gift, cards, or any other promotional product in the near future will join the page and be aware of this new resource for them.

Alright so back to the original statement. Strange day. I sent off the suggestion to all my friends and 10 minutes later I get an email from an acquaintance that I had a sort of personal falling out with (but we're trying to remain cordial acquaintances), reading:

"I would like to keep our relationship professional. Could you please not send me this sort of thing? Thanks!"

I can only assume that he had not looked at the actual content of the page that I sent to him. I certainly can't expect everyone to even take the time to look at the page. Clearly he had not, so I responded with the following email:

"I'm sorry you misunderstood. This is my business's fan page on Facebook. I joined [the business] about a month ago and I would like my contacts to know about my new venture. However, you should not feel pressured in any way to connect professionally with my business on facebook."

Simple enough, I thought. He only misunderstood the content of my suggestion. Until he responded with the following:

"I guess what I meant by professional is that I would rather just hear from you when it benefits me professionally in some way.

Thanks for understanding"

It's hard to interpret this in any other way. If my contacts with him do not benefit him directly professionally, he would rather not have contact with me. I completely understand that he's busy and does not want to be bothered with communication from a business that he does not want communication from. I don't opt in to get emails from every website that I land on unless I think the content will benefit me in some way.

However, I know this person personally (whether we want to continue a personal relationship or not) and professionally. I would say that he is in my "network". We have worked together on multiple projects and events together in the past year and have many contacts in common. I view everyone in my network as having a symbiotic relationship with someone. The entire purpose of expanding one's network is to expand the network of people whom you can help and who can help you. It only works if it's a symbiotic relationship. If I were to cut out of my network all of the people who do not provide a direct benefit to my professional life at this moment in my life, I would be cutting out a lot of people. You have to nurture relationships; all relationships. Someone may not provide direct professional benefit to me now, but if we only communicated when someone was benefiting the other there would be no basis for a relationship. I believe that everyone should be treated as if they have the potential to provide you with a professional benefit at some point in time.

I worry that some people (ahem!) are so focused on networking for the sake of finding a job or finding the one person who will "benefit them" that they're not nurturing the rest of their relationships that they're seemingly "not getting anything out of". In the end I think those people will end up losing everything.

Is management censoring you?

I was fired today. “Thanks, again, to everyone for your past service in this capacity.”

Let me start from the beginning. I’ve been working at this job for almost a year and a half now. Everyone has always stressed how important being involved in multiple ways has been: join a committee, go to events outside of work hours, say hi in the hallway, take as many classes as you can, ask to work on new projects, etc. A few months ago I decided to get more involved with the Social Committee at work that budgets, plans, and organizes the various social events for our entire department throughout the year. A group of us meet every now and then to talk about ideas for upcoming events like the Thanksgiving lunch, Christmas party, chili cook-off, a summer picnic, little afternoon snack breaks throughout the year, the costume contest for Halloween last week, and (so we assumed) any other ideas that committee members bring to the table to discuss.

Today I received the following email from the Vice President of the department (edited for anonymity):

First, let me thank all of you for volunteering to serve on the social committee this past year. I have been truly impressed with the number, diversity, and quality of events that were planned and carried out within the limited budget we have allocated for such things. And, in my opinion, this past year was the best so far.

However, as we begin the new fiscal year, I would like to constrain the size of this committee, which currently lists a total of 14 members, so that it might operate even more efficiently and effectively. For example, a smaller committee should find it easier to find time to meet and make decisions, whereas it’s almost impossible to find a convenient meeting time for a committee of 14 staff and, frankly, I don’t see how you cold hope to arrive at consensus with a group that size.

So, for this year, I am asking that _________ serve, again, as the Committee Chairperson, and that the following staff also serve as members: [head admin], [one of the former committee members], [another admin], and [the 3rd admin]. Of course, this is voluntary service, so please don’t hesitate to let me or the chairperson know if you cannot (or simply choose not to) serve on the committee for any reason.

Thanks, again, to everyone for your past service in this capacity.

-- [VP of Division]


Let me see if I read this correctly. “You did a great job last year. In fact it was the best year ever. But it’s clearly not working, so let’s cut out all the inefficient people. In fact, let’s just keep the chairperson and the admins, and I’ll throw in one of the members to make it look like I didn’t get rid of everyone. Thanks everyone else, you’re fired”.

I have many gripes with this email.

1) How is it that I can be removed from a voluntary committee that I do not charge time to the company for? If I want to provide input in an email or in passing in the hallway to the social committee for their next event or bake cookies for my coworkers or help negotiate with a charity for the holiday season, what is stopping me? Essentially this email is only telling me that I am being removed from the list-serve so that I will no longer have any information about what is going on.

2) It is common sense not to fix something that is not broken. If everything worked really well in past years, why would you change the system? (To me this suggests that other factors were in play, ie bureaucracy)

3) If there is a problem with finding a meeting room or arriving at a group consensus, I believe that other fixes should be attempted first before just removing over 60% of the committee. We are smart people. If the problem was ever brought to the group’s attention we could have thought of a solution. Break down the group into smaller sub-groups for certain activities. Plan monthly meetings ahead of time in a conference room that will fit at least 14 people. Reorganize into a chairperson, co-chair, secretary, etc and have the secretary send out an email to the rest of the group so that we could at least vote on which activities we support or ask us for our input via email. There are limitless solutions to a problem.

4) The remaining members of the committee do not and simply cannot represent my opinions at large. The remaining members are all fairly conservative, over 30, and rarely brought new ideas to the table. Every single employee under the age of 30 was cut from the committee (that’s at LEAST 4 of us). Every single “out-spoken” employee who suggested any sort of crazy or otherwise unconventional idea to the group was removed from the committee. Management, why would you remove all the young and creative staff from a committee that will only thrive on the success of fun? Young people know fun.

5) Most importantly, I am upset because management has set a tone. A tone that individual opinions are not accepted. A tone that anyone who dissents or rocks the boat will be cut. A tone that is unfair. Anyone in the department should be free to express their concerns or suggestions for social events because we all participate in them. I wanted to have an opinion, so I joined the committee (and let’s not forget that I was told that I needed to get more involved and be more social) and now I’ve been fired. Great.

My question is what was the VP trying to accomplish by sending this email? By attempting to control a more “efficient and effective” social committee, he has instead angered at least 10 of his employees, if not more.

Now I’m stuck in a catch-22. I want to make it clear that we are very upset at this move, but I know that if I say anything or rock the boat it will not be received well. It seems appropriate at this point to boycott the events that I am told I have no opinion in forming. What do you think about management getting rid of Gen Y? Have you had similar experiences?

The efficiency of water-waving toilets

Now we all want to save money, time, and resources. So someone out there created this great invention-- a 2-way toilet flusher. Normally these flushers work as they should. Pull up for #1 (less water) or push down for #2 (I suppose that would be a "normal" flush).

But the whole point of this little device is to save water. To flush less water down the drain. So this only works if people only have to flush the toilet once! It doesn't work if the flush is so weak that you have to push the handle down 2 or 3 times. And then when someone else comes into the bathroom they approach the toilet and have to flush it once more before they do their duty.

People don't want to leave remnants in the toilet no matter how water-saving it is. Does maintenance just expect that this little water-saving handle will actually be more efficient in the long range? I don't think so. You know what's really efficient: just don't flush the toilet at all. Just let it sit all day like a Port-a-Potty and do one giant flush at the end of the day. Oh, or even better, why don't we just invest in the toilets of the developing world: holes in the ground. That sure will save a lot of water, huh?