Everything About Business Except The Bottom Line: FunnyBusiness

I eat Chinese Food on Christmas

It's that time of year when co-workers wish you holiday cheer.  Chances are sometime today someone will ask, "So what you are doing for Christmas?" Which assumes you do celebrate Christmas. For those of us who don't, here's the answer in song.

And for those of you who do celebrate., Have a merry merry.

Episode 2_My American Office_Royce Holladay

NOTE: This episode was originally posted on October 11th. I decided to reissue this vlog because I am now using vblogcentral which greatly enhances the view-ability of vlogs.

Disclosure: Royce is a former client.Earlier this year I consulted with Human Systems Dynamics on brand communications.

Royce Holladay is a consultant, a former teacher, a former education administrator, an artist, a novelist and a blogger. She is a "paper" away from her earning her PhD.

Her office is the basement of her home in Minneapolis.

My American Office _Episode 4_ Paula Kaplan Berger

I met Paula Kaplan in 1969. We were both freshman at the University of Missouri. We both went to "J' school. I went on to be a reporter. Paula went to law school. Today she is a partner with Neal Gerber Eisenberg in Chicago. She practices real estate law.

This is her office.

Episode 3- My American Office

This post has been moved to December 21,2005. The reason for the change When it was originally posted I was not affiliated with vblogcentral-- a great service that enhances the viewing of videos online.

I decided to migrate all of my old videos to new posts so that it would be easier for people to watch each episode.

Thanks!

 

Episode 2- My American Office

This post has moved to December 27th. The move was made because I now use vblogcentral which makes it incredibly easy to view videos--no downloading necessary--if you have cable connection you can start watching the videos almost instantaneously.

Update on Mardi Gras Rosary

On Wednesday September 7th, I posted my first attempt at video logging. The story was about my friend Kim, a bead artist and New Orleans native who creates wonderful jewelry from vintage glass mardi gras beads.

Kim donated three of her pieces to be auctioned on eBay with the 100% of the proceeds going to Habitat For Humanity. Those original items sold within a couple of hours!

Kim decided to make some additional pieces and those auctions are now up.

The funds from these auctions will go to Medical Support Association an organization that aids children and adults in desperate need by providing free medicines essential to survival.

So Go BID.  http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZkswiler1v07QQhtZ-1

Read The User's Manual

Eagerly, I clicked onto the link in my email which gave me a heads up that the technical support team at Cyberlink had an answer to my question.

Their succinct answer:

You can find the answer in the User's Manual. And then they provided another link where I could download the user's manual.

Hello! I read the user's manual at least six times. I didn't get it. That's why I asked my question.Geez.

This is not the first time that I have been exasperated with a software company's total lack of appreciation of different learning styles. They either think everyone learns exactly like they do or worse yet, they don't care.

Not all of us learn by reading a user's manual. Some of us are  auditory or kinesthetic learners. I think I am a combo of auditory/kinesthetic.

In a day of podcasting and videocasting what's with read only user's manuals, anyway?

Am I the only one that finds it a bit ironic that a company producing software to convert videos into "movies" and vlogs only offers their customers a written user's guide and not a step to step video guide demonstrating how to use the software?

Since returning from Blogher in early August I made a promise to myself that I would start vlogging and podcasting. I attended a workshop on using these media, I checked at vlogging sites and everyone said it was really simple.

It probably is once you understand what you need to do. But there are so many assumptions on technical knowledge that it's laughable. Before I could submit my question,which I thought was rather relevant --how do I compress this baby from 290MB to under 10MB?, I had to complete a questionnaire which asked me, among other things, which Intel chip my computer used and what the CPU is.

Are you jokin' me?

If I really wanted to I could find out which Intel Chip my computer has but I didn't feel like sharing that information and I really didn't understand why they needed to know this.

I have no idea what a CPU is and why I should care. What I care about is learning how to use the software and compress it so that people can see it instead of getting error messages that say "your server is missing a compressor."

Reading the manual isn't the issue.  Understanding the manual is a completely different matter, in fact, it's the issue that does matter.

The Story of the Mardi Gras Rosary

This post has been moved to December 23,2005. It was moved to make it easier to watch the video. Since the original post, I am using vblogcentral to upload high quality videos to my blog. Enjoy.