What are you doing for Worlds AIDS DAY this year?

When you think of World AIDS Day, you think of giving back and discover real stories about HIV. This year for World AIDS Day, Im planning a event for a great organization called Artist for Charity (AFC). I have been volunteering for AFC for the past two years and use my expertise in event planning and marketing to show my support by asking artist, friends, family and , the community to donate art work, money, time or spread the word about a great cause.



On December 5th, Artists for Charity is hosting its 3rd Annual holiday benefit at the WVSA’S Gallery in Washington DC. One hundred percent of the sales will go to directly support the Artists for Charity Children’s Home.



Artists for Charity is a nonprofit organization founded on the belief that all people, regardless of place of birth, sex, or current medical condition, are entitled to certain basic rights, especially education and health care. In Ethiopia, Artists for Charity has translated its mission into action by focusing its efforts on the care of HIV positive children who have lost both parents to AIDS.



The Artists for Charity Children’s Home was created to provide care for HIV-positive orphans until the age of 18 or graduation from high school. Because the Children’s Home is intended to care for those children who have no other alternatives, the children that come to the Home are usually those who have been disqualified from entering other institutions by factors such as age, health status, etc. The Children’s Home provides excellent services for these children, including the necessities of life such as shelter, food, and clothing, and also ensures that the children are enrolled in school, have regular doctor visits, take medicine, and engage in other extracurricular activities. The Children’s Home is intentionally small to closely resemble the family unit, and focus is placed on the holistic development of the children (mental and social as well as physical).

Do Restaurants Need StarPower?

Since entering the event planning industry a few years ago, I have been considering to open my own restaurant lounge in the Washington, D.C. with a celebrity partner. After seeing the success and failures of other celebrities and their restaurants such as, P Diddy’s Justin’s Restaurant, Justin Timberlakes’ Southern Hospitality and Eva Longoria’s Beso.

Justin’s restaurant is a mix of Southern soul food and tangy Caribbean cuisine, the menu features delicious dishes such as Grandma Jessie’s sweet barbecue chicken wings, Louisiana seafood gumbo and Puff Daddy’s Seafood Pan Roast. Another reason why the restaurant is so popular is because you can also find some of your favorite celebrities enjoying a nice meal or poppin’ bottles of champagne just like Justin’s owner, P Diddy.  

 

D.C. is a melting pot of cultures, politics and fun events. By opening my own lounge I would be entering a very consintrated market, yet with the proper starpower behind it, I believe the venue has the potential for success. I want people to think of my restaurant if they are looking for a great place to spot a star or just party like one, and with a star like P Diddy or Justin Timberlake people will make sure to stop by the restaurant to indulge in piece of the a celebrity mogul’s lifestyle.
Some celebrities brands can help not only their establishment, but also their city. For instance, Sean “P Diddy” Combs does not only run New York City, he runs Atlanta too. After opening his up-scale restaurant, Justin’s in Atlanta, Georgia. P Diddy brought his life of extravagance to every aspect of his restaurant and the developing metropolitan city. Celebrities have so much influence on the consumer behaviors, that multi-million corporations such as Hp and Pepsi have been willing to pay celebs like Beyonce Knowles and Tiger Woods big buck endorsement deals just to be the face of their products.

These days, many high-profile people feel that by adding their name to a product, service or even restaurant can bring some extra revenue to those company’s and their personal portfolios. And by partnering with one of these many celebs, I believe I will be able to give an added element to my own restaurant.

 

Response #5 Should we be afraid of Google?

People are always afraid of things they don’t know about or don’t know how far will go. That’s why after reading the Economist article, I understand why people might be afraid of Google.

But people also need to understand that there are always companies that grow fast and then all reach their peak and another product, service, tennis shoe or even search engine will come along to take its place.

Yes, what Google has done with all its platforms and specialties like Google earth, Google reader, Google Maps, Google Analytics and the rest of the Google family of products is amazing.

 

But instead of being afraid of Google, people should embrace its business model and company culture for creative and always leaping forward to give the world something innovative.

After reading Search, I began to understand that Battelle’s idea of search as a database of intentions where it was a living artifact of immense power by knowing what people want is true.

This concept is what scares people about google. Its impact on society as a whole can help people find out information that could prevent bad things from happening or help people cause destruction. The same place where people can learn how to start a non-profit is the same place where someone can learn how to build a bomb.

But instead of pointing the finger at Google, people should think about the actual authors of the content that is on the Internet that might be radical, dangerous or even harmful. Even though it seems like Google owns the Internet since it has its hands in almost everything, it doesn’t!

Google might own some products on the Internet; it still tries to make itself know as just the messenger or database where all the information is stored. They are just doing their part in allowing people use their Constitutional freedoms. There are many other search engines like Yahoo, Msn, Ask, etc. but they are still trailing behind since they aren’t as marketable or aggressive as Google. They might be able to do similar commands and have creative ideas, but they still have trouble contenting with the new generations who have set their mind on using Google.

Response #4 Don’t Be Tardy to The Party!

I’m an event planner and co-owner of the site www.talkofdc.com, a popular site for the DMV’s best parties, events and gossip. Since my job involves so much entertainment and nightlife, I love to meet people and make sure they have a good time at one of my events. When I search for popular events and meetings in the DC Metropolitan area, similar sites Im a user to come up.

Inorder to have my events well attended, I do a lot of marketing and advertising on many social networking sites in the events field. Some sites I like are Meetup.com, where people find a Meetup Group near themselves to join and be apart of discussions, events, etc.; Eventful, where people post events, festivals, and share with other members who might be in that city visiting; lastly there is going.com; the site which gives you things to do, places to go and people to see. All three are web services that aim to help users search for, track, and share information about events, but each does it in a different way.

I believe in this area most people have been using Meetup more often since its one of the oldest ones and easier to hear about the latest events from members of your group. But I feel that if your not in a specific group or “Meetup” you don’t get the special information and are left out.

 

 

Going.com is personally my favorite new and up and coming event site because its much more interactive and has more features. It’s also geared more to my demographic target of young professionals and party- goers who are looking to have a good night out. With not even a year behind going.com, it has managed to conduct heavy marketing campaigns and partnerships in 30 cities. The site also makes it easy to post events and send to your friends with facebook, which is a great tool for people who still are heavily connected to facebook, but don’t want to terminate their accounts in order to use another site.

While reading the Long Tail, I was beginning to understand that even though people like to know what is the “hit” or “trend” at the moment they still like going away from it to find an alternative choice. I find myself looking for other choices, like, going.com just to say Im not always following the pack of people who join popular social networking sites for events like, facebook, twitter, myspace.com, etc.

Thanks to all these special interest sites, they are helping me spread the word and create buzz about my events, fundraisers, charities and community programs. It would be very difficult to reach the same amount of people in the same short time frame in the pre-web era. In order to spread the information, it would cost more time and money and would probably force me out of the industry due to the difficulty in gathering all the important elements I am able to by just using the internet.

Response #3: Do we need a Bill of Rights for the social web?

Similar to the United States of America, The World Wide Web is a place where we, as citizens, feel we have rights and freedoms for everyone to abide by inorder to keep order. Like the U.S. Bill of Rights, a Bill of Rights for the social web is here to protect web citizen’s, also know as user’s, certain liberties, which are stated below:

Bill of Rights for the social web

1. Ownership of our own personal information.


2. Control of whether and how such personal information is used.


3. Freedom to grant persistent access to our personal info.

Even though they all are very simple, this Bill of Rights allows users to understand they are in control of the level of privacy they wish to have when using the social web. And under these rights, users have the liberty to have similar rights as the U.S. Bill of Right’s 1^st amendment: Freedom of speech, press, religion and assembly; right to petition, but of course all on the web.

The reason why we have the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution is so that government will enforce and protect the basic principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all citizens. If there were no rules enforced to look out for the people of this democratic country, there would be no order in the universe or the social web.

After reading some of the comments from the Open Social Web Blog, I see that in today’s society there are some users who feel they need rights based on one’s self interest and to protect themselves from users who try to misuse content of others. I believe in an age where millions of people are making incomes through the Internet it is contributed to our economy. The Internet has become similar to our democracy, there is virtually no one government controlling all the users, but there is a need to have some type of rules or principles in place so there can be set guidelines of usage just like the U.S. Bill of Rights.

For the social web, the rules are focused on a users personal information because on these multiple platforms like facebook, twitter, youtube, etc. users are publicizing their information through conversations, images, links, etc. to the virtual unknown.

These conservations are the building blocks of social media, yet can also mislead users to think that the information shared is only between the members of the individual chat, forum, or website. But unfortunately the Internet has ways of not erasing data and having information searchable and spread around for a long time. I remember the first day of Social Media class, my Professor Mike stated, “once something is released on the internet you cant take it back”. With that in mind, its even more apparent that social web users know what Bill of Rights for the social web they have when dealing on a specific site or platform.

Google Wave Preview

After learning that Google has once again tried to buy another thing in the universe, I thought that many people still are unaware of what Google Wave is. Below is a short video and some more information on what it’s all about.

http://wave.google.com/help/wave/closed.html

What is a wave?

A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

The Rules of Blogging by Nick Carr

My new homework for Social media!!!

Seven rules for corporate blogging

By: Nick Carr

March 27, 2006

Microsoft’s Robert Scoble, who cowrote a book on corporate blogging called Naked Conversations, now seems intent on turning himself into a case study for why companies shouldn’t blog. The posts on his company-sponsored blog, Scobleizer, have become increasingly shrill and antagonistic of late. He recently implied that bloggers who run AdSense ads are incapable of writing objectively about Google, and last week he launched an ad hominem attack on journalists he disapproves of – using terms like “100% incompetent” and “jerk” – and pedantically lectured the blogosphere on how to tell “credible journalism” from “non-credible journalism.”

Microsoft has spent the last couple of years trying hard to rid itself of its image as a corporate bully. Now, it has a bully in the blogosphere. That’s not good.

With the Scoble case in mind, let me offer seven simple and unfashionable rules for corporate blogging. I don’t know how credible they are, since they reflect my own personal opinions, but I’ll let you make that judgment.

Don’t do it. If you have no compelling business reason to get involved in the blogosphere, then don’t. While there’s no evidence, beyond a few anecdotes, that corporate blogging leads to better business results, there are clearly risks. If you give bloggers too much freedom, they may “go native” and tarnish your reputation by writing something stupid. If you try to rein them in, you’ll be attacked for being a dinosaur. That’s a lose-lose situation – the kind companies should avoid if at all possible. And don’t buy that nonsense about needing to have “conversations” with the marketplace. That’s an ideology, not a strategy.

Use blogs to advance your business interests. OK, you’ve decided to ignore my first rule. Fine. But don’t get carried away. For companies, blogging should be treated as another channel for corporate communications, with its own strengths and weaknesses. You should use that channel to get your message out, not to give employees a sand pile for self-expression. Yes, corporate bloggers should write with honesty and personality, but they should never forget – nor let their readers forget – that they’re speaking on behalf of their employer. If a corporate blogger is embarrassed to be promoting his company’s interests in public, he shouldn’t be a corporate blogger.

Stick to your goals. Maybe the goal of your blogging program is to help customers use your products more effectively. Maybe it’s to make your company more attractive to potential recruits. Maybe it’s to influence the public or lawmakers. The important thing is to be clear about your objectives, to stick to them and, as with any corporate program, to routinely evaluate how well you’re meeting them. If blogging isn’t working, then change what you’re doing (or who’s doing it). If it still isn’t working, then stop it.

Choose your bloggers wisely. Blogging is a hot medium. The people who blog for your company should be ones who can keep their cool – and who aren’t likely to fall in love with their own words. Often, the people who most want to be allowed to blog are precisely the ones who shouldn’t be allowed to blog.

Assign blogging buddies. You need to trust your bloggers, not censor them. On the other hand, blogging makes publishing so simple that having some kind of circuit breaker can make a lot of sense. Think about requiring each of your corporate bloggers to have a blogging buddy – a colleague who reads each post before it’s published. All boggers have had the experience of hitting the “publish” button too soon – and then regretting it. A second set of eyes will solve most problems before they even happen. And your bloggers will thank you for that (after, perhaps, some initial whining).

Be wary of allowing comments. Most people who comment on other people’s blogs are smart and insightful. But “most” isn’t “all.” In addition to being a spam-magnet, blog comments can be nasty, obscene, and offensive. This can lead to another lose-lose situation: If you don’t censor comments, you’ll end up with stuff that can embarrass your company. If you do censor them, you’ll be accused of, well, censorship. In most cases, it’s best just to turn off the comment feature from the get-go. That may annoy the true believers, but they’re a tiny minority anyway.

Call in the lawyers. I hate to say it, but if you’re allowing your employees to blog on your dime, you’re liable for what they write. Better safe than sued.

To sum up: People blogging on behalf of their employers don’t need to wear suits, but they should wear clothes. Independent bloggers can afford to blog “naked.” Corporate bloggers can’t.

Response #2: Examining the Role of Grassroots Communication in helping Philippines Cope with Disaster

In the recent years, global disasters, specifically floods have inflicted much damage and suffering to those living around the world. Not since 2005, in the United States with Hurricane Katrina, have so many people seemed so helpless and in need of support than this weekend in the Philippines after Typhoon Ketsana.

The Washington Post reported that the government of Philippines has appealed for international help to deal with the aftermath of the devastating floods that have killed 240 and left hundreds of thousands of people homeless.

In an article posted by the New York Times, it states, “although the storm cut power, telephone and water supply in many areas, Internet connections were generally not affected. On Facebook and Twitter, many Filipinos called out for help and shared their grief. The social networks proved helpful as the hotlines of the government’s disaster agencies were swamped with calls.”

This power of social media networks, describes how people who were facing death and or are in need of serious help relied on forms of internet communications such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube to give details and create buzz of the disaster and the extent of the damage. After analyzing how fast news of the disaster was disseminated through the examples above, I began to think how a properly executed grassroots campaign could be implemented for the government of Philippines in order to raise funds to rebuild the broken lives of their citizens and move on from this catastrophe.

For thousands of years, humans have had to rely on governments, non-profit organizations and large summed donations from single parties for disaster relief efforts, if lucky enough to get aid. Now thanks to the Internet and social media applications, anyone who feels connected to an issue or wants to become a fan of an organization on Facebook can easily make an in-kind donation by touch of a button. Never before have people been so viral with news, video, and commentary from millions around the world on one platform, than Facebook.

Response #1: How Many Theses in The Cluetrain Manifesto?

Christopher Locke states, “This book tells a story. Four times. Many times. It is the story of how these things have happened — and some powerful hints about what could happen from here on out.”

This statement began my quest on finding the main goal of the book, which the author wanted readers to leave with since it’s repeated many times. And how this main theses will help mold our future in years to come.

With the creation of the Internet, people seemed to get information faster than ever before. Humans were used to finding news from television, radio, the community, friends, family, etc. But once the Internet was introduced it allowed there to be a new dialogue between 2 or more individuals where people were not afraid to ask questions and probe for more until eventually finding it.

This search for more knowledge affected more and more people due to the connection via the World Wide Web. This unique platform allowed multiple persons to search, read, write, and create subjects of interest all while on the Internet. Even though this new platform involved less face-to-face interaction, conversations between users grew and It seemed everyone had an opinion on something that allowed markets to grow as well.

After understanding the importance of the 1^st theses “Markets are conversations”, I believe it is the one thesis in this book. The book touches on many different topics, but everything eventually goes back to that one statement. It’s the main voice of the book. The author reminds you that without a conversation nothing can be started and to start something you need a conversation between two human beings.

In history, markets were said to be the meeting grounds of all industries, so if there were no conversations among the traders, the farmers, the everyday person, then none of all the great ideas which were created would have been implemented. And we wouldn’t be able to build upon those to create new ways of thinking. I leave you with another quote that can better explain why my argument is true, stated by Christopher Locke, “The power of conversation goes well beyond its ability to affect consumers, business, and products. Market conversations can make — and unmake and remake — entire industries. We’re seeing it happen now. In fact, the Internet itself is an example of an industry built by pure conversation.”

The Kid Behind the $170 Million Website

I can begin how jealous I am right now…..

Aaron Patzer launched Mint.com as a user-friendly alternative to Quicken and other personal-finance software out there. Little did he know that just two years later, Intuit, which makes Quicken, would fork over $170 million for his website. So how’d he do it? Find out here