Women Have Value!!

To all the guys in this class that may decide to read my blog for this week, I would like to apologize in advance. I am taking some time to talk about “women issues” this week, so if you feel like being enlightened, please, read on!

Today I had the pleasure of eating lunch with over 400 women from Cass and Clay Counties. No, that is not a typo; I actually did eat lunch at the Ramada Plaza & Suites with over 400 women. We were all there for the Women’s Leadership Council (a division of United Way) Luncheon. This was the ninth annual luncheon that the WLC has done, and by far the largest turnout they have ever had.

I arrived shortly before the opening speaker grabbed the microphone, so I ended up at one of the side tables near the back. From there I was able to observe those hundreds of women interacting with one another, sharing stories, laughter, groans of frustration, and squeals of excitement. The energy in the room was so palpable that I couldn’t help but feel energized and ready to take on whatever challenge the keynote speaker would give us.

The keynote this year was Victoria Rowell, better known to some of us as Drucilla from the daytime soap The Young and the Restless. Her challenge to all the women in the room was to give of ourselves, whether that be through volunteering, giving a financial gift, being a foster parent (she was a foster child and credits much of her success to her foster mother and the system), or any other way that you can help another human being.

Too often I think women undervalue or devalue the power of what they are capable of doing for the people in their lives. I know that I am sometimes guilty of thinking that the little that I could do wouldn’t be enough to make a difference, so I just don’t do anything. Listening to Victoria Rowell today helped me realize that the little things are sometimes the most important. Your gift of yourself doesn’t have to come in a $10,000 package, it can just be you in a pair of faded jeans, ready to volunteer your time and your enthusiasm to make someone’s life better.

After I got back to the office this afternoon, I typed the phrase “do women value themselves” into my search engine. One of the links that popped up was for a woman that does life coaching for other women. This really struck me because I cannot imagine a man receiving life coaching from another individual, regardless of sex.

Why is it that women have to be coached to believe that their life has value? Why isn’t our value self-evident to us in all of the small and large things we do for our employers, our families, and our friends every day? I made a pledged to myself today to start placing more of a value on the things that I do for all the people in my life. No, I’m not going to start charging people for things, but I am going to take the time to pat myself on the back more often for what I do to make life easier for the people around me.

I encourage all of my female classmates to really think about the good things that you are capable of doing for those in your inner circle and those within your community. Take a page from Sarah Palin’s book and take a risk. Stand up for something that you truly believe in; give a project your all because you know it will make a difference; and just believe in yourself and your value!

I know my post didn’t really address any current events, but it was something I was compelled to write. Thank you to anyone that read my post, and thank you in advance for the great things that I know you will go out and do, both in the near future and throughout your lifetimes!

Trash or News? The Line Gets Blurrier Every Day!

As I sat down to peruse the online newspapers for fodder for my week nine blog, I realized that my head was not in the right place to be working on homework. There were hundreds of different snippets racing through my head, and not one of them (okay maybe just one or two) had to do with homework.

This past Sunday my sister came to stay with me because Monday was fall break at Jamestown College. She is currently lying on the couch across from me with a mask covering her mouth and nose. You see, I didn’t think she looked well on Sunday so I took her to the walk-clinic. We found out she has pneumonia!

The last couple of weeks at work have been sheer hell. Everyone has decided that my assistance is their one true desire, and projects have been heaped upon my desk and just today upon the floor of my office.

I am the district’s United Way campaign chairperson and I realized that last year at this time we were finishing up with our yearly campaign. This year I haven’t even written my first letter to our staff!

As I look around my house I see laundry that needs to be done and surfaces that need to be dusted, vacuumed, or swept. In a nutshell, I have a lot of stuff going on, and I’m sure a lot of you guys do too!

Now that I’ve laid that groundwork, I would like to discuss an article that was the front page of MSN today. This article is about Carrie Prejean, the former Miss California who lost her title because of a failure to fulfill her commitments, a violation of her contract. Prejean was also in the news when she responded to a question about same sex marriage by stating that she believed marriage should be between a man and a woman.

Now, Prejean is back in America’s spotlight. She is being sued by the competition director for the money they spent on her breast implants! Is there anything to say here besides “wow!”? I personally couldn’t of anything for a few minutes. After the shock wore off, though, I came up with a couple of things…

First, I cannot believe that MSN is wasting their time talking about this. It is reminiscent of some of the trash that the Fargo Forum prints because they have nothing better to talk about. I would love for someone to point out to me where it became a rule that trash was better than no news at all.

Second, the pageant’s lawyers brought the Bible into their lawsuit, quoting the Gospel of John. I don’t care how many people say that religion is everywhere and belongs everywhere; this is one place where the Bible does not belong: in a lawsuit about money for breast implants!

Now that I have wasted five minutes of everyone else’s day with this ridiculousness, I am going to go see a man about a vacuum!

PR -- Through the Good Times & the Bad

The first time I read the name Najla Amundson, it was on the agenda for my 35 Under 35 Women’s Leadership Group. She had been chosen to speak to our group about working with the media. As the Media Relations Director for NDSU, I figured she probably knew a thing or two about working with the media.

I was excited to meet Najla and pick her brain about best practices and must-have policies. Obviously, I was not disappointed. As a former journalist, Najla offered great insight into the mind of the reporter, as well as practical tips for forming a relationship with a reporter. The only letdown I had came after that meeting when I started looking for her on television or in the paper and never saw her face or name.

But now, Najla’s name has blown back into the local media with the force of a tidal wave. NDSU and President Joseph Chapman have been in the newspaper for the last couple of months for various issues, the majority of which have involved money and the fiscal responsibility associated with managing that money. All of those issues culminated today in what has become the fastest spreading news in the metro area in a long time.

As one of the “Daily Updates” on the Fargo Forum website today, President Chapman’s resignation was announced. Chapman attributed his sudden decision to recent controversies that have made it difficult for him to provide NDSU with the leadership he feels it deserves. To say that the last couple of months have been rocky for Chapman is an understatement.

First, the house NDSU is building for him went over budget by $900,000. Then, it was revealed that Chapman’s wife Gale received a salary of $50,000 per year to serve on the Foundation’s Board. In today’s paper, NDSU Development Foundation documents showed that President Chapman spent $22,000 to go to the Presidential inauguration in January with his family.

Najla’s role in these articles appears to be as the defender of the President’s actions. While she was not interviewed for the stories about the house, she was quoted in both the article about Gale Chapman’s salary and the inaugural trip.

In the article about Mrs. Chapman’s salary from the Development Foundation, Najla discusses the over 2,000 events that Mrs. Chapman attended last year as a representative of NDSU. If you think that each of those events was on average 2 hours long, that means that she worked 4,000 hours for $50,000. The average worker puts in right around 2,100 hours each year for an average salary of perhaps $30,000.

In the article about the trip, she effectively justified the two major expenditures that the newspaper wanted to pick apart. The Chapmans would have taken the NDSU plane, but it needed maintenance and a part had not arrived in time for them to utilize the plane. With an event like the inauguration, hotels place restrictions on the number of nights a reservation must be, and the amount of money their clerks must receive for a room. Thus, the majority of their expenditures for this trip were simply unavoidable.

These two brief examples should prove to any doubters left in this class how valuable a communications department or a media relations specialist is to an organization. When the sh*t hits the fan, it is so very useful to have that person or department whose expertise lies in dealing with the media.

H1N1 & the Misinformation Age

As we all know, the spread of H1N1 is currently making its way across the states of North Dakota and Minnesota. With any hot-button issue, we all know the amount of misinformation that is reported and the bad decisions that are made in the heat of the moment exponentially increase. This pandemic is no exception.

This morning I attended a meeting held by Fargo Cass Public Health for local health care officials, school leaders, and employee service centers. In the two hours that we met, almost 45 minutes was spent dispelling rumors and setting the record straight. My notebook is filled with scratched out notes and new notes scribbled into the margins to replace the “bad” information.

Tonight on the news, an announcement was made that Fort Yates, a reservation school that straddles the North and South Dakota borders, has closed for the remainder of the week due to high absentee rates. However, this decision is not one that has been recommended by local, state, or national agencies. In fact, it goes against the current recommendation that states that schools should stay open as long as possible even with confirmed cases of H1N1.

The meeting this morning and the announcement from Fort Yates makes me wonder when public health officials are going to start being more proactive and visible about recommendations and expectations of all organizations as the pandemic intensifies.

Perhaps a Twitter account, like the one VCSU had during the flood, would be a good way to communicate the ever-changing information to everyone that needs to know. A blog or podcast would also be a great step to take. However, those may be more time consuming to update, and with the daily change of information, this may not be a feasible option.

Something we talked about during our morning meeting was having the state open a telephone hotline where all calls, no matter where they originated, would be transferred for information about H1N1. This could help alleviate the amount of misinformation that the metro area is currently dealing with.

If dealing with a pandemic isn’t stressful enough, it has become impossible to trust any of the information you hear from people or sources you typically trust. Unless I see it on the FCPH or the CDC website, I have started to doubt everything I’ve heard.

One little tidbit to leave you with...get in to get your seasonal flu shot as soon as you can; don’t wait until the H1N1 vaccine is available. Who knows when there will be enough of the vaccine to give to us “common folk?” Remember, they have to vaccinate the high risk groups first!!

The Fine Line of Social Media Dependence

This last week, something amazing happened to me at work. Someone came to my office building and tried to tell me something. Yes, I know that may not be amazing to most people, but hear me out; I bet you’ll see the “amazingness” by the end of my post!

First, my office building is smack-dab in the middle of the Main Avenue road construction in West Fargo. There is now only one way to get to our building, and that way looks a lot like a dead end or an alley to the untrained eye. You have to be pretty darned determined to find the building, and really competitive if you want to get a parking spot in the lot itself.

Second, the person that came to visit me was from the Ramada Plaza and Suites, one of the largest hotels in the Fargo-Moorhead area. She was the Director of Sales, and she was in my office to talk to me about the $3 million renovations they are starting in November, their new catering menu, and their new corporate member’s club.

After the initial shock wore off, I really listened to her spiel. She was a great salesperson; if their prices weren’t so high and I hadn’t already signed a contract with another hotel, I may have given her my employer’s business. In fact, I would have given her our business for the sheer fact that she came out and saw me. No other hotel in the area has ever sent someone to see me, and we are one of the largest employers in the area!

As we all have discussed over the past five weeks, and longer for some of us, the era of face to face conversations and telephone calls is dying. When I was looking for a hotel for our conferences, I had to go out and practically beg for someone to give me information. No one was waiting on my doorstep, or even on their doorstep, to win my business.

I have seen a lot of retail businesses going the way of social media tools as a way to advertise their product. For businesses that provide services, like hotels and convention facilities, I think the social media tools, websites and brochures are all well and good, but the personal touch cannot die. Before you sign over thousands of dollars, it’s rather comforting to know the person that you’re paying.

So, for any of you that are thinking of going into a service industry, think about my blog. Do you agree that the personal touch will always be needed? Or do you think I’m stuck in the old ways?

Students + Computers + Educational Environment = Global Success

In the Fargo Forum today, one article in particular caught my eye. It was about students at Fargo’s Madison Elementary School and their new pilot program. This pilot program will put five mini-laptops in every classroom at Madison Elementary School, giving a rough student to computer ratio of four to one.

I found this interesting because a big focus of this class is technology and the different ways it is available to different types of people. I think these mini-laptops are a great way to introduce children to technologies and their associated responsibilities on a scale that they will be comfortable with.

West Fargo Public Schools actually ordered 200 of the mini-laptops this summer for our new STEM Center that opened this fall. Each student that attends the STEM Center is issued a laptop at the same time they are issued textbooks. It is their responsibility throughout the year, and if it is not returned in the way it was issued, the student and their parents are responsible for replacing it, just like a textbook.

Thus the mini-laptops are used to teach the whole student 21st century skills. For anyone involved in the education industry, you know that 21st century skills and 21st century learning are becoming topics of mass discussion and debate across the country. Everyone wants good things and new things for their kids. The only thing we seem to disagree on is how we get it to them.

Yes, the mini-laptops are a fairly new tool, but they will not remain the newest tool for very long. The question plaguing school districts is when should they pull the trigger and become a technologically savvy district? Should they do it now with mini-laptops, or should they wait for the next technology wave that brings phone-sized devices with laptop-sized capabilities? Most districts will not be capable of upgrading from one technology to another every time a new one hits the market.

Thankfully, a lot of big corporations and organizations see the benefits of 21st century learning, and many have created partnerships or grants that are awarded to schools to do things like what Fargo and West Fargo are doing. Without the financial, and often technological, expertise of people like this, school districts would be left behind.

If we want our students to participate and excel in the global market, doing things like West Fargo’s STEM Center and Madison Elementary’s pilot program are critical. Supporting those initiatives is also crucial. They are the foundation for getting technology into the hands of children at an early age.

Social Media is like a Weed - Popping up Everywhere!

If you have ever purchased a new vehicle, have you ever experienced that feeling that everyone in your community either drives the same vehicle as you do or has one the same color? Have you ever purchased a really neat gadget, thinking you were so on top of things, and then realized that everyone you see has the same gadget?

Well, that is how I have been feeling lately in regard to social media tools. Before this class started, social media tools were not in the forefront of my mind. I did not spend hours each day on Facebook or Twitter or BlogSpot; I knew they existed, but was not an avid user or consumer. Now, it seems that everywhere I turn I see or hear references to one tool or another.

Very early this morning (Tuesday), a student from Shanley High School was found dead in his home, perhaps from a “big hit” he sustained during a high school football last night. Friends of mine have a son that knew Nick from summer football camps, and he told me that I would not believe the number of hits Nick’s Facebook page had received by the end of school today. Not only do students use their pages as a way to keep friends updated, they also use them as a sort of virtual memorial to a lost friend. Although wrapped in sadness, the concept is extremely cool, especially for when the family is ready to view the page.

This afternoon, some students at West Fargo High School discovered a low level threat written on the bathroom wall. Almost before district administration could be notified, students had texted, e-mailed, or tweeted to people outside the building about what had been found. If the threat had been more serious, parents would probably have been on the scene before administration arrived from the district office! This ability of students to inform their parents and other outside people with the tapping of a few keys makes work tough for school officials. If discussing this type of message wasn’t hard enough, they now have to do it ASAP, so as not to be beaten by a text from a student.

The women’s group that I am a part of met last week to discuss how we want to keep our group together over the years, and the unanimous choice was by creating a Facebook group. I was one of two people that had to make the announcement of shame that I did not have a Facebook account, but would promise to get one so we can make good on this group. I am still unsure why we had to move away from e-mailing; it seemed to work just fine for the last ten months, but apparently e-mail is so last season :)

Finally, I received an e-mail notification of a sale at one of my favorite clothing stores, Ann Taylor Loft. At the bottom of the e-mail, underneath the photographs of the sale items, was a little box that said “Find Us on Facebook!” Holy cow! When did clothing stores get Facebook accounts, and what the heck do they use them for?!

All in all, social media tools are popping up all over the place, sometimes where you least expect them to. Look out world; even if you’re not ready for social media, it’s ready and knocking down the door for us!