Everything About Business Except The Bottom Line: FunnyBusiness

A job for the 21st Century: Enthusiasm Evangelist

In the beginning, Stephanie Quilao started blogging about her struggle with beauty and weight loss.

That was in November 2005.  A year later Quilao was approach by Microsoft to join their team as an Enthusiasm Evangelist.

"The Enthusiast Evangelist role is a newly created position at Microsoft, and there are going to be more folks like me in other regions around the U.S. Our jobs are basically to go out and mingle, bond, and touch influential end users and show them all the cool things that Microsoft has to offer. Now the particular end users that I am to "target" so to speak are mostly consumers and mostly those who are influential in their communities or niches in some way. As an example, Oprah is influential with female consumers. If she puts a product on her O list, it's going to sell millions of units. In your community, there are people whom you trust as authorities in certain areas, and so if they recommend something, you tend to listen to them. My job is to find those influential folks and share with them what Microsoft has to offer."

As expected Quilao, is enthusiastic about the release of VISTA

"The graphics are stunning, and the user experience is easier and more entertaining than Windows XP. As a user, I care very much about  having a simple experience and having something nice to look at. Some of the new features give you the opportunity to do some very cool and artistically beautiful things. I never knew that documents, spreadsheets and presentations could look so cool!"

Quilao is still blogging and except  for these occasional billet doux to Microsoft, the blog is still about a girl who struggles with beauty and weight loss and is interested in celebrity gossip.

While I appreciate the transparency in which Quilao blogs, I cringe every time I see her job title.  Calling someone an Enthusiasm Evangelist sounds like something Samantha Bee would say on John Stewart. Instead of having a positive image of this person, it makes me want to turn and run away as fast as I can. 

 

Chinese Workers Striking in Romania

  " Chinese Workers Striking in Romania. " File this under "You Can't make this stuff up.'

You can click here to watch a video report from France 24. Or, you can read about the job protest on the BBC

"Romania faces a severe shortage of skilled workers in the garment industry, since many of them have sought employment in Western Europe.

Neighbouring Moldova, where most people are Romanian speakers, is also heavily involved in the garment industry.

So to fill vacancies, Romania has had to import skilled workers from China.

The 400 Chinese women arrived in Bacau last year, but since then have been totally isolated.

None of them speak Romanian and only a few can muster basic words in English." 

I will share this: The women went after the shop manager with spoons and forks.

Notes From The Road -Boston

For once, I thought, I will have a positive story to write about Northwest Airlines. For once, I thought, I will share how the airlines went above and beyond to make sure I got on my flight.

But then, I got to the airport in Minneapolis and  my luggage didn't come off the carousel.  I realized my billet doux to Northwest would have to wait until another day.

Thinking the luggage was still in Boston, I stood in line waiting to report my  lost luggage.  Turns out it wasn't lost. It was lounging on carousel 14. Turns out the luggage had evidently decided to catch an earlier flight without me. It  had been left unattended for several hours --no one seemed to notice.

On January 5, Karol Sheinin at Alarming News  had a similar experience.

"So, why were our bags delivered to this terminal?"

"Um, they were on an earlier flight"

"Wait, isn't that completely against the rules? I always understood that the passenger MUST be on the same flight as their baggage...what with the terrorism concerns and all."

"Well, it's ok for us to decide to put your bag on without you, if we feel the bag is secure."

If only they had the same discretion with my lip gloss.  After going through security , I had to be escorted out. I didn't have my Ziploc to house my lip gloss, nail polish ,and hand cream.After spending 35 cents for a single Ziploc bag  I triumphantly returned and waltzed through security without a beep, a wand search, or a need to remove jewelry.

Thinking I would simply put my lip gloss, hand cream and nail polish back into my purse where they originally were, I offered to donate my Ziploc for anyone else who needed one to get through security.

That's when I learned that the complete Ziploc rule.  According to  security at Boston Logan, what goes into the  Ziploc must remain in the Ziploc until you deplane at your destination.

I  always ( that would be  always since the rule was enacted in September,2006)  thought the baggie rule was  like the computer rule. Just something you did to get through security. I don't have to keep my computer out for the entire trip so why wouldn't my sundries be treated the same way?

For the next six hours I used my daypass to the Northwest World Club to set up an office away from home. I made conference calls. I chatted with clients. I worked.  Thinking my flight was leaving at 6:29, I was just getting ready to grab a bite to eat when my name came thundering over the loudspeaker.  It was the final boarding call. I rushed to the desk at the World Club and begged them to hold the flight. I then ran to the gate. They let me on. I was/am very appreciative of their efforts.

I have a full day starting at 7:00 a.m. Not making it back to Minneapolis last night would have made me very cranky.  It was an act of kindness- something that few people see from Northwest these days.

As I was tearing down the walkway,  there was someone from the baggage area getting ready to remove my unattended luggage from the belly of the plane. He was told his services wouldn't be needed.  Good thing. My bags were already in Minneapolis.

Image Credit: Flickr member James in Germany

Reputation Defender offers to clean up your virtual reputation

  When you think of all the things you have said online, all the pictures that may be lurking there, how many of us have not at some time wished that we could have a virtual clean slate?

An opportunity to start over. An opportunity to block HR executives from seeing what we've posted that we now wish we hadn't. Turns out, you can. Last year a company called Reputation Defender began offering its search and destroy services as they promote on their site,

Chances are there is information about you and your family on the Internet that you don't approve of. It's time you do something about it.

On their website, they quote a study by Purdue University that says 30% of employers now screen job candidates by searching Google, Yahoo!, MSN and other search engines. According to the study, about 11% also check out candidates profiles on MySpace, Facebook and Xanga. IToolbox  blogs calls it one of the coolest start ups ever.

Using both site-scraping robots and good old-fashioned human detective skills, ReputationDefender promises to scour the internet -- particularly social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, Xanga and Flickr -- for materials that could threaten the author's employability once he reaches the professional world and its army of Google-savvy hiring managers.

There is a fee for their services and they do not guarantee results. They also have two other services called MyChild and MyPrivacy. Two years ago on my blog I shared the story of my cousin's son Josh Centor who made the mistake of applying for a scholarship at the NAAS He was notified that he was a semi-finalist and then heard nothing. Curious as to who had won, his dad contacted the organization. He didn't realize it at the time but in contacting the company he violated rule 39--instantly waiving Josh's right to privacy. Google Josh Centor and you will see that he is employed by the NCAA. You will also see a post from the scholarship organization. Here is a small taste of what this site has to say about Josh and all the CENTORS

Consider the facts. As a sign of arrogance, and apparent belief in his super-privileged status, and alleged superior role above all other Americans, Mr. Centor name-dropped the FTC, Department of Justice, USPS, and other American agencies as his personal attack dog. Eventually, a campaign to recruit strangers and reporters who shared both his religion and his ethnicity was initiated. These disreputable non-Christian persons, some even working for distinguished American companies, would eventually participate in his character assassination campaign and parrot his exact same discredited theories. Like Judas Iscariot bartered away Jesus Christ, the CENTORS appear to be similarly endowed with this special trait.

In 2004, Samuel Freedman wrote Apply Here for Scholarship, And Prepare to Be Smeared for The New York Times about the situation. Despite the publicity, the NAAS still has the defamatory information about Josh. If Reputation Defender, a company that was started by a Harvard law graduate and a former presidential speech writer could clean Josh's virtual slate clean, I'm sure he would take them up on the opportunity.

But not everyone is thrilled with this service. When Reputation Defender contacted the  Consumerist  requesting they remove an archived post about one of their clients,A Ronnie Sergev, a concert pianist who was also arrested for harassing Priceline,  the Consumerist said Thanks, but no thanks.

Perhaps Segev should try doing more interesting and newsworthy things that would push down his Priceline story in the Google rankings. Something more newsworthy than hiring a firm to finagle internet censorship and information blackouts.

Clean Slate or Internet censorship? Is there really anything wrong with people hoping that embarassing information about them can be removed so that it won't damage their potential for a job? On the other hand, The Transcendental Wildcard  writes

- This “Reputation Defender” company scares the crap out of me. Firstly, because they make no allowance for the fact that true information is not slanderous / libelous, by definition. Secondly, the net effect of their “service” is to tilt the Internet information-playing-field in favor of people with more money, which is so icky that I’d be in the shower right now if I hadn’t just gotten out. Eeeeew ew ew ew.

Image Credit: Flickr member Toyssavetheday

This is cross posted at Blogher 

What is HP thinking?

  The Sundance Film Festival begins tonight. Along with the celebrities, papparazzi, film makers, and film enthusiasts, the bloggers are out in full force. As the corporate sponsor of the festival, HP has created a blog called Backstage at Sundance.

...this is your backstage pass to share in the creative passion that makes Sundance so special. From films, stars and directors to the HP technology that drives the festival, visit this blog daily to get the Sundance scoop!

 

Could it look less entertaining if it tried? What gives? Film is fun. The Festival is fun. This blog looks like the financial section of their annual report. The design is so stark, so utilitarian that it feels completely devoid of creativity. Isn't that what Sundance is all about?

To make this doubly ironic, HP's big promotion for the festival is their Snapshot Diary Contest -- grand price is a trip to the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. So where are the snapshots?

The idea  for the contest is that you send HP six to eight snapshots with captions and they will make a movie from it.  The company strategically put on  their sample on YOU TUBE ( nice use of popular social media site and linking, HP)

 

A fellow blogher, Susan Getgood who writes Marketing Roadmaps has been retained to do "blogging outreach" for the snapshot contest. She is also blogging at backstage.

Contest begins today January 15, 2007 and ends January 28 2007. You can find all the details and rules at HP’s Sundance site, www.hp.com/go/sundance.  From January 20 to February 20 on the Sundance Channel, you'll also be able to see Snapshot Diaries from eight Sundance Film Festival attendees -- actors, filmmakers, volunteers, agents, publicists -- who will document a day in their life at the Festival using an HP digital camera to create "snapshots." I'm doing blogger outreach for the contest, focusing on parents and film aficionados. Spread the word :-)

Perhaps I'm expecting too much. But it seems to me that when you are sponsoring a film festival your blog should be imbued with the personality of the fesitval and not display a buttoned -up, no time for fun image that HP's backstage blog is currently communicating.

Sock it to me

In the category of You Can't Make This Stuff Up, a bank started declining a yarn store's credit card processing because they became suspicious that the store was selling something other than sock yarn.

The banker's couldn't understand how anyone would spend $200 on sock yarn when you can go to the store and buy socks for under $10.

Had they just picked up the phone and called the store they would have discovered that the $200 fee was to become a member of a Sock Club -- think Fruit of the Month. Flower of the Month. Beer of the Month.

As a result, all of the membership fees were returned to the knitters,  the yarn store had to contract with a new bank, and design  and re-invite knitters to join the Rockin Socks Club.

Blogher Contributing Editor Debra Roby shared the story  of The Big Bad Bank and  Blue Moon Fiber Arts

Steph at YarnHarlot voices the opinion of many:

The ladies at Blue Moon also (and this demonstrates to me the depths of their class) have declined my offer to provide each and every one of you with the address of the bank and the Bank managers email address, so that you (ALL of you) could provide him with an expansive email detailing your feelings about sock yarn, his behaviour and the relationship between the two. I would not have had that amount of class. Knitters...say it with me. Freakin' muggles. They have no idea who they are messing with.

Steph's rant has already gotten over 500 comments...

The Blue Moon Story is getting lots of play on the knitting blogs. Fabric Dragon was so mad she said she could spit knitting needles

so after hundreds of knitters bought year long kits sending them fixes.. uh.. "kits" to knit socks every month from a yarn store. the bank cancelled their credit card servicing contract, and refunded everyones money... and basically royally #$%^& the store..... all because no one would buy a "sock kit of the month"...... and besides, the store is run by girls.... they dont do this crp to "collectable dustmagnet of the month" now do they?

And, as Knitting Psychos shared. The Rockin' Socks Club is back in business.

BLUE MOON FIBER ARTS ROCKIN’ SOCK CLUB - The website is NOW WORKING. If you need to pay for your club registration again, please do so now. According to the BMFA website, places will be held until the end of the month.

So if you joined the socks club and got a refund,visit the site soon to rejoin. Your "spot" is being held til the end of the month --after that, it will go to someone on the ever growing wait-list.

 

Do Online Forms reject your name?

Thing is, Fake is not a prank name. As she shares on her blog,

"Fake" is my real name. It was anglicized from the German, "Feick" in the 1500s. Fake acquired its present meaning only in the 19th century, afaik. I still maintain my grandfather had the worst of all possible names: Leverne Mucklow Fake. He was a lawyer who once met in court another lawyer named Abel Crook. He also told tall tales so who knows if this is actually true.

Facebook is not the only place that has rejected Ms. Fake. Turns out Northwest Airlines also deletes her tickets.

For the record, Ms. Fake is an entrepreneur and co-founder of Flickr. When she posted her online rejection, she got a host of responses from others whose names do not pass the specifications of online forms.

That is really bad. I couldn't get an Orkut account because my name contained "profanity". If they only knew what Orkut means in Dutch.... And Flickr for that matter ;-) Ianus Keller |

September 29, 2006 03:02 AM Hey Mark Zuckerberg is a genius and he went to Harvard, and he's worth, what, $300 billion at least I've heard. If he says your name is illegitimate then it must be. Who are we to disagree with him. Jason Liebe |

October 2, 2006 08:50 PM One of my University friends had to carry his passport every where. His name - Julius Caesar! Owen | October 12, 2006 11:16 AM

The issue of online forms rejecting people simply because their name didn't meet the specifications and requirements of a software program made the news recently when a San Francisco man shared his frustration with the local ABC affiliate that Best Buy's Reward Program Form wouldn't accept his two letter name.

Charles Yu: "I feel I'm being singled out just because of my last name and because of that I would have to do something different than other people who could just do it online so I thought that was unfair." When he called Best Buy one customer service agent even suggested he change his name Charles Yu: "I said well, I think that is a little ridiculous - I don't want to change my last name just to sign up for this."

According to the report, BestBuy is "fixing" its form (no timeline given) and have sent Mr. Yu a gift card. While consumers may feel sympathy for the Mr. Yu's, Ms. Fake's, and Julius Caesar's in the world, the folks who discussed this on Reddit  have a different take on the situation.

Just another lame large-company-IT-department. Did they ever test their software? permalink jvance 3 points 17 days ago

Sure they did. They tested it thoroughly and it matched the requirements. Three letter last names were accepted, and two letter last names were rejected. You can see the requirement on Section 4.3.2.7 of the requirements document, which is linked to item 4-35 in the RTM which of course is linked to Scenario 4-35 in the User Acceptance Test. What's the problem?

lemmikins 2 points 17 days ago Or just put a space in: "Y u" -- this is valid as it's not leading or trailing whitespace. It will probably even match credit card lookups as names are usually stripped of all punctuation, so e.g. Mac Manus -> MACMANUS, O'Brien -> OBRIEN, De Toqueville -> DETOQUEVILLE, Baxter-Birney -> BAXTERBIRNEY, etc.

I suspect the Best Buy agent suggested something like this, and that's when Yu started complaining that wanted him to change is last name. If I have a name that's 12392 characters long, do I get to complain each time I must shorten it for a web form?

Mr Yu is a sufferer of victimism. No one was singling him out. No one decided 'lets screw those f*'ers with 2 letter last names'. It was a dumb mistake by the programmers who made a bad assumption. The suggestion to change his last name probably was more like 'enter something with three letters' as a workaround.

Is this a case of right vs. right? Should people expect to enter their given name on an online form even when that name is nonconventional or may meet the criteria of spam and a crank entry?

Shouldn't companies anticipate that people are offended when a computer says their name in not valid?

On the other hand, don't companies have a right to create some requirements or specifications to prevent abuse?

Could the answer simply be to have a real person available in the event a person is having problems entering their name? And, couldn't companies empower those customer service types to override the software to allow exceptional names to be entered on the form? How hard would that be?

This is cross-posted at Blogher

Image Credit: I used Flickr to resize the original graphic used in Ms.Fake's post.

Dear Diary: Life as a Working Woman

  What are you doing on Tuesday, March 27th? If Joni Cole has her way, you will be keeping a day diary that could be featured in the next This Day In The Life book.

"Your day diary will cover the 24-hour period from 12:00 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday, March 27, 2007. In essence, a day diary is part itinerary: what you did and when you did it; and part journal: what is going through your head and heart throughout that day.

Because the theme of this book is working women, we ask that you make sure to clarify your job duties when on the job, so that readers get a real sense of what it’s like to work as an administrative assistant, or a waitress, or an at-home mom, or a movie star. Of course, a complete day diary of any working woman also encompasses all those other job-related activities, thoughts, and feelings that occur throughout any given day, whether you are multitasking on the way to daycare, celebrating at lunch with a coworker about her positive review, or tossing and turning at night over recent layoffs.

By creating a day diary and allowing us to share it with our readers, you will be contributing to the book’s power to reveal the reality of women’s working lives across the country."

    This will be the third in the series of This Day In A Life books. Unlike the previous two books,  this one is specifically targeted to working women. "We want to feature an unfiltered view of working women whether it comes with a paycheck or not," said Joni.

For transparency purposes, Joni is a personal friend whom I have the highest respect and trust. As bloggers,we share a great deal about our lives and work everyday.  Having someone take our  day diary and edit the entry for a book is a different issue.

I can only say that Joni is a writer's writer, If you decide to participate you will have the opportunity to work with one of the most special people you will ever meet. To be part of this writing project, you'll need to complete a confirmation form saying you plan to keep a day diary.

Joni says in the last book 600 people committed and 500 submitted their diaries. The book featured 34 complete entries and excerpts from more than 200 other diaries.

Just click here to get your confirmation material. Have fun.

This is cross-posted at Blogher
 

Extreme Workers vs. The Workaholic

  Forget about the negatively imbued term once used to describe people who work too much and neglect their family -- Workaholic is now relegated to join such linguistic has-beens as "I shall","To Whom It May Concern," "nimgimmer," and ""bouffage."

Today, when you want to describe someone who works more than 60 hours a week,has face-paced deadlines, unpredictable workflow and responsiiblity for a P&L, think EXTREME. That's right the workaholic of yore now has an EXTREME JOB.

Watch the headlines, read the magazines,and listen to the talking heads on cable. Chances are you'll start hearing Extreme Jobs a lot more than you hear workaholic.

From Extreme Makeover to Extreme Makeover Home Edition - the viewing public has a positive attitude toward the term, "extreme." For those who are not repulsed by people having head to toe plastic surgery, the extreme makeover gives people who have major issues with their appearance the opportunity to appear differently.

In Extreme Makeover Home Edition, who doesn't cry at the final reveal when the deserving family sees how the show has transformed their inadequate lodging into a dream home? If that isn't enough to give you the warm and fuzzies and remind you of people's basic humanity, you definitely become a believer in the good of humankind when the contractors end the show saying they are paying for the mortgage.

Hallelujah and amen.

The phrase "Extreme Jobs" was coined by Sylvia Ann Hewlett who headed up  Hidden Brain Drain Task Force of the Center for Work-Life Policy. Hewlett wrote about the trend --which is on the rise--in the December Issue of the Harvard Business Review. You can also listen to the HBR podcast with Hewlett. In that interview Hewlett says that women make up 20% of all Extreme Workers. She also says that 80% of all women who have extreme jobs have one foot out the door. To Hewlett,the trend towards extreme jobs is creating yet another barrier for women who want to succeed in corporate america. As FC Now blogged,

Not surprisingly, there’s a gender issue here. Among the extreme jobbers in the U.S., less than a fifth are women. While women are well represented in jobs that require high performance (fast pace with tight deadlines, 24/7 client demands, etc.), once those jobs require more than 60 hours a week, there’s a huge fall off in women’s participation. Women, it seems, are more sensitive to the “opportunity costs” of long hour jobs, particularly as they relate to the well-being of their children. “We’ve moved the goal posts to a place women can’t go,” says Hewlett. The inevitable result? Fewer women in the pool from which an organization’s top leaders are recruited.

Writing about the issue at JobBank USA, Hewlett says,

Here's the story. Over the last 40 years, highly credentialed women have flooded into the professional labor market. In at least some sectors they started to make serious progress, rising up the ranks, snapping at the heels of men. Then what happened? High-level, high-impact jobs got redefined to become even more time consuming, even more pressurizing. Indeed they have become so vast in scope that they are now undoable by individuals who cannot conjure up a 60- to 80-hour workweek on a steady basis. These top jobs increasingly exclude women who have serious family responsibilities -- about two-thirds of the highly qualified female labor pool.

Hewlett has her detractors. Penelope Trunk at the Brazen Careerist is one of them.

Hewlett and Luce try to get us alarmed that the trend toward extreme jobs is increasing, but most people who are in extreme jobs are baby boomers, and Sharon Jayson, wirting in USA Today, shows that most young people don’t want extreme jobs. And young people are adept at finding work that fits regardless of what companies are offering. I am tired of the baby boomers thinking all their research about themselves applies to everyone. I am also tired of every researcher jumping on the battle-cry-for-women bandwagon. Hewlett and Luce spend a lot of time writing about how moms cannot do extreme jobs. But who cares? If people who don’t have kids want to work tons of hours, let them. If men want to marry stay-at-home moms to take care of their kids, let them. What is the big deal here? There is plenty of work in this world for people who don’t want extreme jobs. There are plenty of men to marry who will do their part with the kids.  The real problem here is that two parents with extreme jobs are neglecting their kids. What about that? Baby boomers have been doing it for decades, and it’s terrible for kids, and people need to start admitting that. For starters, Hewlett and Luce could come out and say this, since their research supports it.

To paraphase Gordon Gekko, Extreme is good.  Extreme is right. Extreme works. Extreme clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms -- extreme for life, for money, for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind.

Image Credit: The Women Road Warrior \


  This is cross-posted at Blogher.

Funny Business seeking new name

That would be the blog "Funny Business "written by blogger and cartoonist Brad Shorr.

Here is his post announcing they would be changing their name.

"Yesterday I had the pleasure of talking to Elana Centor, who has been blogging since 2004 at her brilliantly named blog--Funny Business.  It's an excellent read--informative and well-researched  commentary on business culture.   

Elena and I felt our two blogs having the same name had become confusing.  For example, we're both honored to be on the Squidoo Z List, but people may not know which Funny Business they're voting for. (If you're so inclined, please log in to Squidoo and vote up both Funny Business blogs and our Word Sell blog--thanks!)

The solution?  This Funny Business blog is going to change its name!   For a number of reasons, we thought this made the most sense.

If you'd like to suggest a new name--fire away!  We'd love to get some fresh ideas!"

We were not the first bloggers to go bump in the night. In  June, AmberStar ,who has a philosophy based podcast called  Zencast ,discovered  that there was a band called Zencast with a podcast. She asked the the podcast discussion group on the Podcast Alley Forum for their thoughts.

Jeffoest offered:

You are missing a key data point (I think) that could help you with the decision and that is the fact that we DON'T know how popular or how prolific that other podcast is going to be as they are also brand new with only one podcast under their belt. It would be a shame to take on your 'second choice' name only to find out that that band just puts out one or two podcasts, for example. On the other hand, if the band podcast is very popular and prolific, confusion about finding your podcast gets heightened. (think google searches for 'zencast').

Thus I can't give you the right decision for you, only factors that I would consider in making the decision.... (wishy washy, eh??!)

In 2005, The Trademark Blog asked the question : Can Similar Blog Names Co-exist? Should Blogs Obtain Trademark Protection?

As to whether two blogs could co-exist with the same name, without speaking to the precise example given above, the analysis would be the same as to whether any other goods or services could co-exist under similar, namely the multi-factorial likelihood of confusion test.  The three most important factors would be similarity of the marks; similarity of the goods/services and similarity of the channels of trade.

That brings me back to Brad Shorr. Check out his blog.Help him come up with a new name.for a blog he says is about"office humor,  corporate cartoons,satire and occasional insight."

Image Credit: Brad Shorr. You can purchase his cartoons on mugs, mousepads, etc.