Internship Debacle 1.0

By Matt on February 8th, 2012 / Blog, Rants / Leave a comment

I was offered an internship at a software company in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area recently, an offer I ultimately turned down. I was quite excited about the opportunity to move to the Twin Cities area. This would allow me to be closer to friends, work in a field I love for a company I thought “got it.” But after a few short weeks those hopes came crashing down.

Money shouldn’t be the focus of any job search. It’s about doing what you love. It’s about working day after day on something your passionate about. If you don’t have any passion your long term success and accomplishments will be minimal. The unusual part about this internship is they found me. I received a tweet asking if I was interested in a position, finding out later that someone at my alma mater whom they had spoke to recommended me. I was open to the idea and interviewed with the company within days. Things went fantastic. I felt very good about the entire situation. However, they ended up offering a completely different internship than what I actually applied for. While not outside the realm of my skills, this was a bit disheartening.

I also became discouraged because it was only part-time during the internship phase. The pay they offered me was not enough money to sustain renting a cheap bedroom and paying my bills. Therefore I asked for a little bit more cushion so I could feel comfortable meeting my financial obligations. Not a lot, just a small increase in my monthly pay. My thought was they’d simply up my hours closer to 30 per week. The “counter-offer” wasn’t based on my skills or self-perceived value, but rather the financial realities of relocating and living on my own in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro. The counter-offer was rejected by the company which led to me deciding if wasn’t the right fit for me.

This is where I feel the trains comes of the track for so many companies. If a company is really interested in you as a potential long-term employee, does a few hundred dollars a month come into the equation? I don’t think it should. When you have someone that you can sense a good fit, or a synergy; you go for it full-steam ahead. A companies long-term success is driven by the employees they hire and how they build their team, not by how many hundreds a month they pay their interns.

Using QR Codes On Campus

By Matt on January 17th, 2012 / Blog, Higher Education / Leave a comment

Universities are striving to keep pace with the rapid change of pace in technology. New tools and platforms are becoming available every month. Some grab traction…and some don’t. Universities should not be afraid to experiment with new communication technologies. After all, they are suppose to be institutions of research and innovation. One of these new technologies is Quick Response codes, otherwise known as QR codes.

QR codes have been all the rage in Japan for years. These odd looking square bar codes have been apart of Japanese advertising for many years and their growth is exploding the quickest in Hong Kong and Canada. How can universities here in the United States use these to engage students?

The uses are endless. Many universities place them on printed posters and brochures to allow students to access digital content relating the printed material in front of them. My alma mater used them on posters advertising school trips allowing students to sign up for the trip or get on a mailing list about it by scanning the code and filling out a simple form. Having QR codes on printed materials is great as long as their is convenience and value to the user. Don’t just have the code redirect to your website. Make sure the content it directs to is related to the material they scanned it off of and preferably mobile-formatted.

That’s the simple use of QR codes, I want to get a bit more creative though! The University of Wisconsin-Stout is a wireless campus from top-to-bottom. If you’re standing on-campus you can get a wireless signal. Placing QR codes on campus buildings and then linking to a YouTube video or audio podcast that tells that buildings history and what departments reside there. This could be a “do-it-yourself” tour for new students or prospective students who are tech savvy. It informs and engages them in a way their used to, smartphones, while drawing a sense of closeness with the campus.

Another aspect is Admissions. Your admissions office should consider using QR codes on their booklets they send to high schools whether by mail or on career days. If you’re trying to attract bright, young tech savvy students into programs like computer science, multimedia design and other science related fields, this is a way to reach them. Students outside the tech majors know QR codes, but those who are techies will give your institution huge props for keeping on the cutting edge. Link the QR code to a video about that program including student testimonials in your admissions program booklet.

Don’t think I’ve forgotten about you Athletics. There are huge opportunities for athletics to use QR technology. The first is producing short one minute videos of players and featuring them on your game day programs. Have fans scan the code and up pops a video of their favorite player in a candid, funny interview. Also consider placing a static QR code on your game day program so fans with smartphones can get linked directly to the live statistics for the game. Die hard fans in the stands would love an easy way to get live stats without have to surf and click tiny little links on your website.

These are just a few ideas I have implemented personally and advise other universities to do as well. What has your university done with QR codes, if anything? Are they keeping pace or being left in the dust of technology? Tell me below in the comments!

Generate Your Own QR Code Easily

Kaywa QR Generator

QR Stuff

How Tablets Are Changing Everything

By Matt on January 11th, 2012 / Blog, Social Networking / Leave a comment

When your surfing the web, your engaged in a particular experience and you know how it feels when you read text or view an image. The Internet as we know it has been around a little over decade. This is why these feelings are some normal for us. We’ve been conditioned to the experience. However, mobile and tablets are changing the game yet again.

When you engage with content on an iPad, iPhone or other smaller devices, the experience is vastly different. It’s more intimate and personal than using a laptop or desktop. Within 10 years desktops might be all but gone in normal households with the majority of surfing taking place on tablets, smartphones and the occasional laptop. Desktops wont disappear, some people still need the processing power, memory and big screen. However, this means that you need to be prepared for this shift. Does your company have an immense amount of content that you’ll need to prepare for things like the iPad, e-magazines, smartphones and other devices that are in the pipeline? You should probably be working on this very thing already if you want to be on top of the shifting trend.

One of the biggest and frankly, neatest shifts has been the use of e-magazines and apps like Flipboard. This app isn’t revolutionary in what it actually does, but rather how it does it. The experience of using Flipboard on an iPad if elegant and effortless. A more personal and intimate experience between the content and the end-user. Check it out here:

This kind of content viewing experience is changing the Internet and how users consume their data. Has your company begun preparing for this shift? Tell me your thoughts on e-books, e-magazines and tablets in the comments. Will they change how people browse their digital content?

The Data Collaboration Dilemma

By Matt on January 3rd, 2012 / Data Archiving / Leave a comment

I used my holiday break to reflect on some provoking ideas with family members about how information will evolve into the future. We are creating so much content every day it’s staggering. We create as much data in two days now as we did from the dawn of man through 2003. How is that for a mind boggler? Eric Schmidt of Google says that’s about 5 exabytes of data every two days.

The problem we’re encountering now is how to manage these massive amounts data and make them easily searchable and filtered. It’s one thing to have a lot of data, but companies need to learn how to manage that data and create value by making it ‘parsable and accessible across many departments and standards.

Here is a infographic that shows the worlds capacity to store information. Is it any surprise that digital has exploded like it has this decade?

Many companies implemented data architecture without understanding the ramifications of their decisions. To illustrate my point, lets create a fictional company named Caldwell Inc.

Caldwell is a corporation of 15,000 employees who embraced the technology revolution in the 1990′s. They are very departmentalized and acted independent of one-another in many ways in the past. Each department bought their own data storage and archival technologies. Early on in computing history it wasn’t important to have easy ways of sharing information internally. However, that’s all changed. Now days the amount of information being generated by companies is immense. There is incredible value and insight if companies can understand how to manage the intelligence and information their company generates. But Caldwell now has a big dilemma on their hands.

Departmentalization and no strategic planning 15 years earlier has left Caldwell in a tough spot. They will need to learn how to bring all their data together in an efficient manner. Now they have data in different formats, in different silos and different standards for archival. Caldwell will have to overcome this obstacle if they want remain a viable company in the future.

Has your company addressed the amount of data they are generating? Have they created a company-wide standard and instituted good practices for back-up? Tell me about your experiences or your company in the comments below.

How Twitter Landed The Contract

By Matt on December 24th, 2011 / Social Networking / Leave a comment

Many people struggle finding value in Twitter. I’m about to tell you how Twitter landed an elderly couple in Wisconsin a multi-thousand dollar contract to provide catering services to a telecomm corporation.

In June of 2011, I started a local food blog where friends and I review local restaurants. The site has grown steadily now receiving hundreds of visits per day from people looking for restaurant information in a metro area of 100,000 residents. We have spent zero dollars on advertising. Our launch strategy was a guerrilla chalking campaign around the city. Today we have over 200 quality followers on our social platforms and many more finding us via Google. As our following and credibility have increased, so have our opportunities to exert real influence.

We received a tweet from an executive of Midwestern telecommunications company. He asked us a simple question:

“We need a company that can provide 500 bratwursts and grill them. Recommendations?”

Being the foodie I am, I knew of a great catering company. Within minutes of receiving the tweet I called up Bob’s Catering and asked if they could accommodate this request. He said yes and I told them to expect a call that day from the customer.

I tweeted back to this executive within 15 minutes:

“Bob’s Catering in Hatley. Great food and great pricing. Highly recommend.”

I called Bob, said they could handle it. Told him to expect your call. Bobscatering.net

Within a couple hours I get another tweet stating they booked Bob’s Catering while thanking me for the recommendation. This is a perfect example of how business is changing today.

Bob’s Catering didn’t spend thousands on billboards, newspaper ads or radio time. They rely on word of mouth and their reputation builds with each customer they provide superior service to. Bob’s cook some mean food and provide old-school service like their parents taught them to do. The owners of Bob’s Catering is an elderly couple in their 70′s. They never even heard of Twitter in all likelihood, yet that’s what brought them in a large contract in the off-season.

Companies and individuals are relying more on user recommendations and online reviews more than costly mass-advertising campaigns. This story is a perfect example.

Is your company monitoring bloggers, review sites or Twitter? Being active in the online communities that matter to your business a must these days.

What .XXX Domains Have Shown Us

By Matt on December 11th, 2011 / SEO / Leave a comment

It’s Not About The Porn

ICANN has done all they can to try and wrangle the pornography industry as of late, but what this really has done is illustrate the importance of your virtual presence. Kingpins were expected to rush into buying all the major .xxx domains with obvious sexual references. While this did happen, what is more important is what institutions like the University of Kansas did with .xxx domains.

Kansas University snapped up domains like KUgirls.xxx and others that centered around their brand. They didn’t want students or others snapping up domains and using them in an inappropriate manner that could negatively reflect on KU. This is the bigger story of the week. Fortune 500 companies, colleges and even private individuals purchased domains just to protect themselves rather than to try and capitalize on the new domain extensions.

This showcases the importance of branding on the Internet. You have to be proactive at monitoring your brand and protecting it. The couple thousand dollars companies are spending snapping up .xxx domains is money well spent. The cost of dealing with a public relations nightmare in terms of of paying your crisis management team, not to mention the almost irreversible damage to your brand, is much greater than the $2000-$3000 spent on being proactive instead of reactive.

Are you being proactive with your companies brand? Are you grabbing domain variations? Snapping up usernames on new platforms even if you don’t plan on being active on that platform? These are the things you must do to insulate your brand from the Internet’s copious amounts of trolls. If you’re not, start now!

Student 2012: In Focus

By Matt on December 5th, 2011 / Higher Education / Leave a comment

Universities are scrambling to under the changes to today’s students compared to the past. The last two generations have gone under radical transformations compared to previous generations. They have changed and widened the gap on differences faster than any other time in history. Universities. They’ve been around for centuries. How do they cope with these new expectations and warp speed technology has pushed us into.

Bricks and mortar universities are historically large, bureaucratic institutions where innovation comes slow and there is resistance to major change. We now live in the era of change. Not only do we live in the era of change, the changes are coming faster than they ever have in modern history. Schools attach to flashy Facebook badges and saying they are on Twitter. Students only find RSS driven dribble that no students cares about. There is no caring or backing to their online presence.

What is the definition of insanity? It’s doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Education as an institution cannot afford to abide to the definition of insanity. It’s a new dawn and the sun is shining brightly. Never has there been so much information readily accessible to anyone with a telephone line or fiber optic cable.

This is only the beginning. The amount of data being consumed is only accelerating. Information is the business that universities are engaged in. I ask myself why universities aren’t more engaged in this information revolution. The first step is being more agile and creating a culture that fosters change and encourages creativity. Without the proper culture, no real change can occur. This is something that must be created over years, not months.

So what happens when educational institutions ignore this cultural shift? They will be irrelevant. Universities cannot afford to ignore this shift in our younger generations. If they ignore what is happening right in front of them, they may only have a few decades left of being a sought after educational institution. Some have already recognized the shift and are jumping to the forefront, while others may not find out till it’s too late.

What side of the fence will your Alma mater be on?

Blog

Internship Debacle 1.0

Using QR Codes On Campus

Generate Your Own QR Code Easily

The Data Collaboration Dilemma

What .XXX Domains Have Shown Us

It’s Not About The Porn

Student 2012: In Focus

Latest Blogs

Twitter

Flickr

Tech News

Latest Posts

Where I’m Located

Flickr