Mentality and Mindfulness Meanings

Mentality and Mindfulness Meanings Mentality and Mindfulness Meanings Mentality and Mindfulness Meanings By Mark Nichol Mental and its lexical relations, all pertaining to workings of the mind, as well as mind and words and phrases derived from that word, are listed and defined in this post. Mental Mental is descended from the Latin noun mens, meaning â€Å"mind.† It means â€Å"pertaining to the mind,† though it also has a slang connotation of being irrationally agitated, as when somebody is said to be â€Å"going mental.† Demented, likewise, is used both technically, to mean â€Å"mentally impaired,† and informally, to describe someone who is mentally unstable to a dangerous extent; dementia refers to cognitive impairment such as Alzheimer’s disease as well as to insanity. (Demential is a rare adjectival form.) Mentality means â€Å"intelligence,† though it more often refers subjectively to one’s way of thinking, as in the phrase â€Å"small-town mentality.† Mentation, meanwhile, is the process of thinking, and from this word science fiction author Frank Herbert derived Mentat, the name of a class of humans endowed with powerful cognitive abilities who take the place of computers in a future technophobic society. Mentalist is a dated term for a mind reader, someone who claims to be able to detect the thoughts of others. The noun mention can refer to a formal acknowledgment of recognition (as in a special mention or an honorable mention) or can denote calling attention to something; it serves as a verb for both meanings as well. A mentor is a person who provides guidance and advice to a person seeking to develop knowledge and skills. The term mentee was superfluously coined to describe the latter person; protà ©gà © serves that purpose well enough. To comment is to note or remark, or provide an explanation or illustration, or a critique or judgment; as a noun, the word refers to any such communication. (A commentary is a formal comment, usually expressed in speech or writing, though it may also refer metaphorically to a phenomenon that unintentionally speaks judgmentally to a state of affairs, as in â€Å"The unsightly litter is a sad commentary on the decline in the sense of personal responsibility.†) A memento is an object that prompts memories, such as a souvenir. (The Latin phrase â€Å"memento mori† means â€Å"reminder of mortality.†) A reminiscence is a recalled memory of an experience; to bring one to mind is to reminisce. The Latin forebear is seen in the Latin phrase â€Å"mens rea,† meaning â€Å"guilty mind,† and â€Å"mens sana in corpore sano,† which translates to â€Å"a sound mind in a sound body.† â€Å"Compos mentis,† meanwhile, means â€Å"of sound mind†; â€Å"non compos mentis† is a legal and medical term denoting the absence of a capacity to understand a situation. The ubiquitous suffix -ment, referring to a condition or state, an action or a location of an action, or an agent, means, or result of an action, is unrelated. Mind The word mind, from the Old English term gemynd, is cognate with mens as well as a href=http://monere, meaning â€Å"warning† (the source of monitor, admonish, and other words). The noun mind is often considered synonymous with brain, referring in general to an organism’s mental activities and capabilities, but the latter term denotes the organ that controls body functions, prompts physical responses, and facilitates learning; the mind is more accurately described as the part of a person that thinks, reasons, decides, perceives, and feels. Other senses include â€Å"memory† (as in â€Å"Keep that in mind†), â€Å"intention† (â€Å"Have you changed your mind?†), â€Å"opinion† (â€Å"She spoke her mind†), and â€Å"mood† (â€Å"I’m not in a good state of mind right now†). In addition, the word denotes a collective mental quality (as in â€Å"hive mind†) or a person of superior intelligence (â€Å"one of the great minds of our age†). Meanwhile, a minder is someone who attends to or oversees someone or something. To mind is to attend to, notice, or pay attention, or to obey or follow instructions, or to be careful or concerned. A reminder is a note about something to remember or a memory aid; the verb form is remind. The phrase â€Å"never mind† is employed to denote something less likely than something else (as in â€Å"I couldn’t even run a mile right now, never mind a marathon†) and is an idiom meaning â€Å"disregard what I said.† The use of Nevermind as the title of an album by the band Nirvana likely contributed to the frequent erroneous occurrence of the phrase as a closed compound, but any treatment of the term as one word other than in a colloquialism such as â€Å"It don’t make me no nevermind† (meaning â€Å"It doesn’t matter to me†) is an error. To be aware or attuned is to be mindful; the quality is mindfulness. To be mindless is to act without thinking or using critical-thinking skills; mindlessly is the adverbial form. Mind control is the practice of influencing someone’s beliefs, thoughts, and actions through hypnosis, propaganda, or other forms of persuasion or suggestion and, in fiction, manipulation of the person’s brain using some sort of technology. Meanwhile, a mind-set is a way of thinking. (Writers often treat this word as a closed compound, but dictionaries still favor the hyphenated form.) A mastermind is someone responsible for plotting or strategizing a scheme or a plan; the word is often used in the context of illicit or otherwise undesirable activities, as in â€Å"criminal mastermind.† One of limited intelligence or judgment is feebleminded (in the first sense only) or simpleminded. One who is forgetful is absentminded. Adverbial forms of these words are produced by adding the suffix -ly. Something that is astonishing, exciting, inspiring, puzzling, or otherwise stimulating or that has the potential to figuratively or literally alter one’s perception is referred to as mind-bending, mind-blowing, or mind-boggling. Such a phenomenon itself is called a mind-bender, mind-blower, or mind-boggler. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Vocabulary category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Homograph ExamplesConfusing "Passed" with "Past"Using "zeitgeist" Coherently

Managing Knowledge at an NHS Trust Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Managing Knowledge at an NHS Trust - Essay Example For this change to take place, the management needs to follow a change management process and provide incentives to the employees to stick with this change. Hopefully with this change, Reddix hospital can stand back on its feet and shine once again. Reddix Hospital is a trust hospital under national health services (NHS) in the United Kingdom serving over 900,000 patients in the area. It caters to many different medical fields and hence has to cater to an annual 7000 patients in admissions. With only 200 doctors whose expertise includes breast cancer, cardiovascular diseases, musculoskeletal diseases and pediatrics, the hospital finds itself short on employees and due to the recent nurse shortage, it finds itself unable to cater to all the patients are diligently as it like to. Also due to the inefficiencies and conventional systems, the hospital cannot cope up with the demands of the patients and the employees alike. Being a big hospital, Reddix faces many problems in the daily operations which it tries to address. In all its problems the integration between the departments was considered the biggest challenge. Since the hospital has many different departments that provide specialist information to the customers and as well as other departments, it needs to integrate its systems used in each department like Radiology Information Systems (RIS), Patient Administration System (PAS), Laboratory Information Systems (LIS), Clinical Patient Record (CPR), Pharmacy Systems (PS) and Nursing Systems (NS). Without the proper management and collaborative working, these departments can never truly achieve the desired efficiency and therefore effectiveness. Analyzing the situation, it is apparent that the hospital will needs an overhauling of the entire systems and the processes. Therefore a change strategy needs to be used in the scenario to free Reddix out of the crunch situation. It has to interoperate between the departments. In this context, it means that all business units must work in unison to create synergy and lead the organization to achieve operational efficiency. Recommendations The change process described by the psychologist Kurt Lewin in the early 20th century must be followed here. Let's see how this can be done (Lewin & Gold, 1999). 1) The first part of this change process in the unfreezing of the current norms of the organization. This means to change the people's sense of safety and feel a sense of control. The employees at Reddix have become used to the hospital norms and like that norm to remain the way it is. Breaking this norm is the key to success however due to non-commitment and resistance to change, this break though needs a systematic strategy. First of all the employees at the hospital must be made aware of need for change. This involves sending the employees to seminars, or having meetings where the need for change is discussed (Isaac, 2006). When the employees understand the need for change, then the actual changes must be brought along. 2) After the initial education of the employees, the actual changes must be enforced on the employees by giving them goals and objectives (Fred, 2006). According to the report by National Health Services,

Globalistation and business enterprise Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Globalistation and business enterprise - Essay Example This in turn reduced aggregate demand of goods and services (especially luxuries or those with elastic demand) including housing units whereas demand of necessities remained same. In short, the prices of property units plummeted that adversely affected financial position of aforementioned actors. In short, they suffered huge losses and decline in wealth and signed bankruptcies and declared themselves as defaulters. This not only shattered consumer confidence across US but also in many advance economies and thus resulted in negative economic growth. The developing countries that are dependent on developed West for trade also faced the pinch of economic meltdown and contraction in advance economies. (Shah, 2009) Air New Zealand is top quality air travel services provider at affordable prices that also offers related services such air ticketing, customer handling and commercial cargo handling in Australia, New Zealand, North America, Asia Pacific and European nations. The company faces competition with major airlines such as Qantas, Virgin Blue etc. Indeed, it is a state-owned company as government enjoys more than 70% stake in Air New Zealand. (Web: Airnewzealand.co.nz) The airline mainly attracts customers from New Zealand and Australia since it offers innovative and differentiable services that in turn creates clear and unique image in the mind of customers. Quite unequivocally, the airline believes in flexibility and adaptability (McChesney, p.14, 2009) to macro environment changes in order to gain a competitive edge over its rivals. Indeed, the top management has adopted and implemented the principles of new workplace including team-building, continuous learning and experimentation, benchmarking etc. to become the most reliable air travel services provider. Air New Zealand has a fleet of 99 aircrafts, majority of which are purchased from Boeing for passenger services. The company received

Culture shock Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Culture shock - Research Paper Example Even if a student is not aware of the culture shock, he or she is always aware of the differences in culture and social setting. A student in this context is basically a sojourner who stays temporarily in another social setting. So is a worker or the missionaries or armed forces. In order to perform efficiently it is important for these people to adapt to the new culture. This adaptation might be costly to them in terms of both individual and physical health conditions. The United States has been witnessing the largest inflow of foreign students. The exchange of education provides a very useful instance to reflect this phenomenon. In 1955 the number was around 34000 from the overseas and it grew to 450000 in 1996. As a result of the rising levels of migration from the economically backward nations to the wealthier ones, the societies are moving form predominantly mono-cultural to multicultural setting. Societies of US, Britain and Canada are eventually transforming themselves into cu lturally diverse ones. As the ambience of an individual changes or as the person relocates to a different cultural background, he or she needs to build some new perspectives or thoughts along with behaviors in order to fit into the new surroundings. A culture shock is basically a process instead of being a particular event and its impact grows weaker as it recurs in the life of the same person. This is because the individual learns new strategies to adapt to these changes once he faces the new situation. (Pederson, vii) The paper will emphasize upon the culture shock related experiences encountered by students who move abroad to earn a foreign degree and eventually work there or return to their home country. Culture Shock – theoretical frameworks A culture is referred as the collective psychological plan formation of the human mind. While the time one takes his food is decided by his human nature driven by hunger, the way the food is eaten is decided by one’s culture ( using fork or using hands). Again whether an individual is going to choose the fork and knife to eat i an individual decision irrespective of what the cultural programming suggests or what the society infers.(Nunez, Mahdi, and Popma, 5) The theoretical setting of similarity attraction hypothesis is applicable in this circumstance. This hypothesis states that an individual tends to interact, feel comfortable with and trust people with whom they share something common in the cultural settings. This might include religion, values and beliefs apart from interests and other characteristics. Cross cultural communications occur between the people who tend to differ in terms of these essential characteristics. Another theory which might be studied in this respect is the cultural distance hypothesis. In this theoretical setting, the geographical distance plays a major role in understanding the cultural differences. For instance Australia and New Zealand are comparatively more similar in term s of cultural setting compared to India and USA. The more the cultural distance is, the greater is the probability of experiencing cultural shock. In fact empirical evidence can prove that Australian executives are more comfortable working in Auckland than at Taipei (Ward, Bochnan and Furnham, 9). The experience of a student who moves aboard for his studies usually undergoes five stages of culture shock. Peter Alder

An Introduction To Microblogging Information Technology Essay

An Introduction To Microblogging Information Technology Essay Fig 3.1 Microblogging is a shorter version of blogging that  allows  users  to write entries up to 140 characters.   The messages can be viewed by anyone, or users can choose to follow an individual or a company.  While Microblogging is concerned with thoughts from a given source and headlines of present activity, blogging is more related to larger stories, background information and research including Links Pictures. The term  lifestream  or  lifecasting  is  used  in  continuation  of  microblogging.   While Lifestream  presents  all  life  activity,  such  as  changed  IM  status  to: at coffee bar,   Services  like  FriendFeed  provide  this  overall  life   aggregation. Lifecasting  refers  to  micromedia  broadcast  such  as  video,  photos  or  audio  clips   transmitted online. Microblogging Services Providers There are several  web  services  that  provides  microblogging  like: Twitter Tumblr Yammer There are additional services that provides streaming of posts from your followers, like: Twitterrific which is a desktop application that uses to read and post entries to Twitter. Another application is Friendfeed that enables their users to keep up to date on web pages, photos, videos and music that friends and family are sharing. User Behaviour The User behaviour mainly includes posting updates in text possibly combined with links to pictures, videos or websites. The entries they make are usually a combination of their personal thoughts, professional subjects and replies to the users who follow him/her Companies also have accounts for posting company products news, customers feedback and follows users that mention company in their microblogs. As opposed to traditional blogs and newsfeeds, microblogs are far more foreseeable. Microblogging is light information that you can choose to dig into if it has your immediate interest. It ´s also a way to get an overview of what is present in your chosen network. Organizational potential Organisations have aways been a bit apprehensive in using blogs as they have a fear of loosing information. However microblogging involves lower risk as it reveals less information and is therefore more realistic for organisations to use and hence it is a good way to adapt overall blogging. Microblogging can be used in several ways, such as: For posting news related to company. Giving feedback to customers  . Link to other publicity sources. Realtime communication covering various events. Humanize an organization by communicating with individuals. Dialogue with stakeholders. Marketing, Recruiting and Stock updates. Internal knowledge sharing Many companies have made an attempt to adapt traditional blogs for internal knowledge platform. However sharing important information in blogs conflicts the challenge of many organnisations. On the other hand a lot can be said with 140 characters without revealing hidden information. And it is a universal fact that microblogs dont reveal information. It is in the best interest of the company to share knowledge which most of the times results in budget savings. But practically departments are focussed on keeping budgets, resources and assignments that conflict with the desired behaviour of knowledge sharing. Who all can and should Microblog within an Organization Whoever is interested in communicating with their stakeholders on daily basis should microblog. Be it sharing information or having a dialogue. It is more easier to adapt as it doesnt require the same amount of communication that is involved in a blog. Followers reply to their posts if they attract their attention. However what is important is their activity i.e. frequency and quality. Departments that can be benefitted from Microblogging Departments with an outward focus such as: Marketing Human resource Sales Logistics IT How to get started Create a user, company or topic name/account. Select the media or channel to publish from such as mobile phones, instant messenger or web. One should put together the team that is going to publish microblogs, educate them in this communication channel, consider topics, goals, ROI, opportunities and how to get a dialog with the followers. MICROBLOGGING TOOLS Fig 3.2 Micro-blogging is a term described as a form of blogging that allows users to write brief text updates (usually less than 200 characters) and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user. Several start-ups have witnessed phenomenal growth with micro-blogging services, most notably Twitter. In addition, numerous social networks including Facebook and Bebo have integrated similar status update services. The space is hot and its still heating up. So lets take a look at 10 of the key players. Twitter Twitter is the key player in space and the company name is used synonymously with micro-blogging. The free service allows users to post status updates via SMS, e-mail, or web browser. Whats more, Twitter has an open platform allowing third party developers to build on top of it. TwitBin is one such third-party application that allows users to post updates to Twitter directly from their browsers. TwitBin is an extension for the Firefox browser, and like most Firefox extensions, it is free to download and use. Pownce Pownce recently launched a micro-blogging platform with added functionality. On top of messaging, users can quickly and easily share links, files, or events with any or all of his/her contacts. Tumblr Tumblr is a very clean, slick micro-blogging platform. Its focus is on simplicity and elegance. Similar to Pownce, users can share a variety of things, including text, photos, quotes, links, chats, or even videos. Jaiku Jaiku is considered by many to be Twitters closest competitor. Most features and functions are similar. It will be interesting to see how the company plans to emerge from the shadow of its main rival. MySay MySay is what it says. Instead of text updates, users call MySay and say how they are doing today. Then, friends or family can listen via phone, e-mail, or the web. Hictu Hictu is a service for video micro bloggers. A webcam and a mouse-click are all that is needed to create a video post. This streamlined solution saves time and effort for traditional vloggers. Moodmill Moodmill is a way to express your mood or current state of being. A sliding scale facilitates this process, while a quick text update completes the personalized service. Frazr Frazr is also very similar to Twitter. The main difference is one of language. Frazr is focused primarily on the French and German markets. I Rate My Day I Rate My Day allows you the ability to (yes, you guessed it) rate your day on a scale of Worst to Great. Users can also provide a short text update to accompany the rating. Emotionr Emotionr is a way to gauge your happiness on a scale of 1-10 (decimals included). As the name touts, it is a way to express and share your emotions and feelings with those around you. Conclusion Micro-blogging isnt a short-term trend it is here to stay. The evolution of blogging has spawned this new mini version of blogging and many are latching on. The simplicity and the ability to post frequently is what attracts the people most to this concept. We expect much faster adoption and mainstream penetration than blogging in general. MICROBLOGGING SERVICES IN INDIA Fig 3.3 Microblogging is a new form of blogging that has ramped up quickly and created various offshoots uses of itself apart from a common use of updating/publishing thoughts in form of text (usually less than 200 characters),evenmore, microblogging is said to be used as tool in communication, productivity, e-commerce, brand exposure and in many cases a serious business tool because of its instant information retrieval nature, thus nearly a real time info exchange. When Twitter was launched first, it was criticized by many bloggers as a useless startup, but Twitter was revolutionary, after launch of Twitter many similar services got launched. While on global scale brands like Twitter (need no intro) and Jaiku are main players along with Pownce (from Digg), India is also deliberately paving way in Microblogging, though Twitter remain the key player in India too, a lot of Micro blogging platforms were introduced in past few months in India. Below are major microblogging platforms in India; A web app from Indian mobile technology company Webaroo, Sms gupshup is major Indian micro blogging platform. It provide users to send/free free text SMS to any mobile device. Unlike to Twitter, it provides its users to create and join groups to send and recieve SMSs to and from users in these groups respectively. Sending and receiving SMS via mobile and online site usage seems to have 1:5 ratio thus the site doesnt appeal much sleek in User Interface. Vakow-It is the next major micro blogging and SMS based site in India after SMSGupShup, in terms of usage and site traffic. Vakow too provide SMS message from web to mobile devices plus other features such as tagging, to tag the messages and group them based on these tags to send Pictures from web to mobile devices although a light weight, low resolution black white pictures only. Moroever, Vakow has worked out a way, through Twitter API, so that one can send updates from their mobile devices to twitter via Vakow, reason being Vakow cost less twitter, when it comes to sending message from any mobile devices in India to twitter servers. Shockles is one another such service, its a mobile message board, in short functionality are similar to that of Twitter along with features it carry. The application however is different in product marketing in way that it provide Enterprise shockles which is a product in the social software for business category and as per the website amongst the worlds first on-demand and mobile enterprise solution for business social networking and collaboration. Kwippy is one of the most famous nanoblogging service including twitter in india, reason being you can post message from Gmail or GTalk directly to kwippy or integrate Gtalk and Yahoo messenger status, share links. Kwippy is thus a micro/nanoblogging webapp + IM status logger + social network. (A) In kwippy, the whole focus is on the Instant Messenger, right now Gmail address book(Gtalk) and Yahoo only. The friends list on the instant messenger is the most intimate friends list you can find, of all social networks as per Kwippy blog. The microblog app presently is in private beta, but one would get invite soon in a day or two. Rest is much similar to Twitter such as lingo like followers,following and tweets being Kwips here Scope of microblogging in India Microblogging is no longer unfamiliar to Indias young netizens . Twitter undoubtedly remains the most popular microblogging service, and theres more to come! So why are so many young Indians interested in micro blogging? The answers its easy ant its simple. But dig a little deeper and the following reasons the 5 Cs seem to be why microblogging appeals so much to the Indian youth. Communication: Microblogging allows you to communicate with thousands of people scattered all over the globe. The youth loves to stay connected and microblogging is just another way for them to stay in touch (apart from texting, emails, IMs, and social networking sites). Ever since the Bollywood brigade has taken to Tweeting, the allure of microblogging has only increased. Connectivity: Connectivity without restrictions of time and space is a great deal that technology has offered the bloggers. You can also use cell phone to connect to the microbloggers tweeting out there, Hence it is practically a mobile and internet combo pack! So there you are blogging from any corner of the world that too even without a computer, sharing the experiences there and then and staying connected to the blogging universe all the time. Content creation: Seeing your own content being read by wide audience is a great feeling which does prompt many bloggers to enter the blogosphere. Though the content many a times remains very basic and does not really have much of a literary value, one has to accept the fact that new media such as Twitter allows people to create their own content and share it proudly with the world. Crisp: The lengthy sagas on regular blogs have no place in microblogging universe. Microblogs are supposed to be less than 200 characters, that is why they are micro. Twitter allows maximum of 140 characters, and this restriction does make the post short and crisp. Any microblogger tries to make the post maximum interesting in minimum amount of words, just what the readers expect it to be. Just like their other choices, the youth likes it short, crisp and to the point. (Even though sometimes the post itself has no point altogether!) Cult: microblogging has become a cult. Just like Yahoo chat and Orkut were. There might be many of your peers who type away every little thing they do; and have 500 followers. And then there is our media who treats this new medium with equal enthusiasm. So you glance through newspapers, or just watch an entertainment channel and know that Shah Rukh Khan has got tons of followers within few days, and what did Priyanka Chopra write to her tweeple even if you do not know what exactly Twitter is. Of course, the movie stars or politicians many a times do it for their own promotion, but that just adds an it factor to microblogs. It makes the youth go after it more. That has suddenly become the aspirational and the thing to do you see. Microblogging is redefining what a conversation is all about, blurring the line between SMSing and blogging, and between the private and public. Blogging on the phone has no extra baggage that blogging on a computer carries: you dont have to be grammatically correct and your blog post could be just any stray thought. In Mumbai, Twitter inspired a tweetup, when Gaurav Mishra, a marketing professional and an early adopter of technology, wrote out a post saying Blog meets are so passà ©. I want a Mumbai Twitter meet. Webaroo Inc, which launched the free microblogging service SMSGupShup in India last April, claims to be growing at nearly 4 per cent every day purely through word-of-mouth publicity. they expect users in excess of 20 million before the end this year. Costs are recovered by placing contextual ads at the end of the SMS. MyToday MOBS, a microblogging service from Netcore Solutions that took off last July, sees nearly 25,000 people publishing on a daily basis again, with zero advertising and marketing costs.India has the worlds third-largest mobile base. If you create services leveraging the mobile as a platform . Its not even just text anymore phone companies are ringing in an era in which pictures, video and audio can be blogged instantaneously. Nokia Nseries introduced its M-Blog last year. When blogging began in the 90s, the only way to blog was to get to a computer and upload images, text and video. But not any more. Reliance has seen a four-fold increase in its m-blog usage since it started advertising the features. In Japan, five out of ten of last years best-selling novels were originally written out on cellphones . Microblogging is helping people release a lot of creative energy free of cost. They could be inspired to compile the microblogs as books eventually and this trend is quickly catching up in india.. Microblogging is definitely here to stay. Blog-camps and virtual get-togethers are already happening with bloggers all across the globe. Microblogging could surely reach lot more number of people. It will evolve more with the convergence of technology, and become a regular part of our lives, both real and virtual. Issues with MicroBlogging Threat   Web surfing is no longer a solo affair.  Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks have quickly become an integral part of the online culture, and with them come a whole new array of potential security threats. In this article, well identify some of the key dangers of  social networking/microblogging Concerns about Micro blogging The main concerns with micro blogging, as with other forms of social media, are privacy, security and integration. In the race to take the first mover advantage(in case of businesses) or just to be among the first to use of these new technologies many users do not consider the potential risks or the shortcomings of these upcoming technology. Nearly all the micro blogging sites gather information about users and some of them consider the personal information provided on account profiles to be their property. These services are reserved with the right to use personal information and to transfer it to third parties. Which are generally mentioned in terms and conditions. (Did you check the Terms of Agreement before you signed on?).Following are the three main key issues:- Privacy   concerns of broadcasting social or work information to everyone who follows your feed Security   concerns of the public seeing possible sensitive work information Integration   how to adapt micro blogging into the corporate culture. Privacy  is a major issue, because the users sometimes broadcast sensitive personal information, which can be viewed by anyone who views their public feed. Micro blog platform providers can also cause privacy issues, through changing or presetting users privacy options. An example would be  Googles Buzz platform, which incited controversy in 2010 by automatically publicizing users email contacts as followers. Google  later amended these settings. Security concerns have been voiced within the business world, since there is potential risk of sensitive work information to be published on micro blogging sites such as  Twitter.   Integration could be the hardest issue to overcome, since it can be argued that  corporate culture  must change to accommodate micro blogging. It helps to share information with potential clients in the most concise manner. They feel that employees might be distracted which might affect their productivity at work. One more issue is that business is not able to decide upon which website which they should use depending on the popularity in different areas A major issue for an organisation is the concern that employees might broadcast sensitive work information. Micro blog posts (unless sent as private direct messages) are searchable by other users and websites. An organisation will never want the public seeing possible sensitive work information on the public micro blogging sites. Just because people are using new means of communication does not mean that an organisation has any obligation or should really sanction or implement these upcoming technologies. However, micro blogging has become a popular and useful communication tool, which can be used to benefit some organisations. If an organisation allows the use of various public micro blogging service by employees, then there is a need to implement a policy with clear guidelines on appropriate usage. If, on the other hand, an organisation decides to integrate micro blogging into the corporate culture, they should investigate enterprise solutions and find one that will be easy to inte grate with their existing platforms. Define privacy Marrying privacy and social networking/micro blogging may seem unreal to some. How can you be social and open and yet protect your privacy? Well, just because you are choosing to share some of your personal/private information with a selected group of people does not necessarily mean that you want to share all of your information, or that you want this information to be visible to all. Facebook in particular has suffered from a number of issues related to privacy concerns. If you have used Facebook for a while, you may have noticed ads with your friends names or photos associated with them. Facebook does provide privacy controls for you to customize what types of information should be available to third-party applications. If you look at the Facebook Ads tab of the privacy controls, though, youll notice that it offers no way for you to opt out of the internal Facebook Ads. It merely states that Facebook strives to create relevant and interesting advertisements to you and your friends. Enterprise Microblogging Security Security:  This will probably be of paramount concern at least initially in most businesses. All businesses want to make sure that they keep internal communications safe from intrusive outside eyes. An enterprise microblogging solution must provide for fine-grained authorization and trustworthy security of communications. Management, through the IT department will try and want to restrict who can see certain posts and who cannot. Remember who your friends are When you write a Twitter tweet or post a Facebook status update, you have to keep people who will be able to see your post in mind. More and more these days, we hear stories of people who have forgotten that their boss is part of their network and have said things online that have gotten them reprimanded, even  fired. The consequences of inappropriate online comments have become so common that they have earned an entry in the Urban Dictionary:  Facebook fired. Saying something as obvious and seemingly innocent as Im tiredor things such asAny better paying job?Im available in a status update during work hours can have dire consequences if the wrong people see it.Or even posting some jokes about other community or religion can have some serious consequences. MICROBLOG VS EMAIL Google CEO Eric Schmidt had this to say about the microblogging service Twitter: Speaking as a computer scientist, I view all of these as sort of poor mans email systems. In other words, they have aspects of an email system, but they dont have a full offering. The question about companies like Twitter is: Do they fundamentally evolve as sort of a note phenomenon, or do they fundamentally evolve to have revocation, identity, storage and all the other aspects that traditional email systems have? Or do mail systems broaden what they do to take on some of that characteristic themselves? At first sight, it seemed like an example of Google not getting it when it comes to Twitter. But actually it is a new way of not only posting notes about what ones doing, but it also has a lot of communications usage via @replies and direct messages (DMs). Reflecting on Schmidts statement, it can be inferred that microblogging is slowly replacing a lot of email activity. As more companies are taking up microblogging with services like Yammer, Socialcast, Present.ly and SocialText Signals, employee communications amongst employees is both increasing and getting diverted away from email. Something like this: Fig 3.4 Socialcasts Tim Young had this to say about email: Email is dead. If your company is relying on email for communication and collaboration, your company is walking dead in this new economy. Being the CEO of Socialcast, it is not a very surprising statement. The shift described applies regardless of the microblogging application used. Features present in Social Networking sites Microblogging does not replace email. But these guys are advancing their product, and are rising up the performance axis. Here is what Yammer or any other social networking site now offers: Behind the firewall installation Public notes @replies DMs Groups Private groups File attachments Favorites (a form of bookmarking) Tagging Conversation threading Unlimited character length (i.e. not limited to 140 characters) Search Look at that list. When you think about your own internal email usage, whats missing? Folders or the Gmail equivalent of tags seem to be something for the down the road. Thus, Microblogging still has the insurgent, disruptor profile relative to corporate email. But dont underestimate that. Theres what IT knows is needed behind the scenes. and then theres what the users actually do when given the different applications. Expanding Communications, Marginalizing Email Microbloggings premise is that public proclamations of what youre doing and information that you find are a new activity for people, and they have value. Information is shared much more easily and in-the-flow of what were all doing anyway. This use case is what promises to dramatically increase communications among employees. As were seeing with Twitters explosive growth, it takes time for people to know why they should microblog. But once they get it, it takes off. So services like Yammer/Twitter etc. have your attention as you post updates and read what others post. In reaction to someone posts, you hit the Reply button. Youre having a conversation that others can see, and join as well if they want. You can decide to have separate conversation with someone in that context. Which starts the marginalization of corporate email. Why? Because a lot of whats going to generate interactions is occurring right on that microblogging app youre looking at. Its the most natural thing to act in-the-flow and use that application in lieu of email. Well-designed microblogging applications are also quite seductive in terms of ease-of-use. The logical end use cases of emails are: Notifications External communications This isnt something thats imminent. Email is quite entrenched in daily workflow, older generations arent likely to stop using it and internal microblogging is still nascent. COMMUNOTE AT COMMUNARDO ENTERPRISE MICROBLOGGING CASE STUDY Company information and case study background Communardo Software GmbH in Dresden, Germany offers software solutions and consultancy in the context of knowledge management and team collaboration. The company has been growing in robust during recent years .It has got an employee strength of 160+. For the most part the employees work in negeriads.com knowledge-intensive project contexts with one to one communication network. The internal IT environment contains group-supporting applications like an intranet wiki, blogs and project spaces. As Communardo itself is a consultancy firm in the area of Web 2.0 its employees are affiliated with the early adopters of new web services. Some of the employees tried Twitter and realised its potential to improve their collaboration at work and the quality of their input in the office. In 2008 they suggested using Twitter or a Twitter-like tool for the companys project teams. Until then broad email conversations or the usage of the wikis discussion pages were common and lead to a large number of unmanageable masses of information. The anticipation of the benefits of microblog- ging was that it would reconnect different parts of the company which were separated during its growth and that it would be the best tool for representing the flow of information in the project teams. The initial decision of the top level management was against using a public microblogging service like Twitter for internal use. The reasons for this were the perceived functional deficits (e.g. no rights management, few possibilities for search and filtering) and strategic reasons (data protection, security of investment and reliability). Since there were no solutions for enterprise microblogging available, the only fast and easy way to set up a microblogging-type communication system was the use of the blogging software WordPress enhanced with a special theme called Prologue. This setting was tested in a project team. The approach in general was found very useful in Indonesia Furniture Handicraft Wholesale Marketplace, and hence it was adopted company-wide. However, the modified WordPress could not meet functional expectations. Conceptualisation and Implementation Communardo formulated the following requisites for its internal microblogging tool: Topic-centred content structuring and rights management should be available. Various integration scenarios(LDAP, RSS, portlets, mobile client, XMPP, corporate identity) should be supported. Information management should be possible through tagging and filtering. Security features (like encryption, user management and robust software design) should be included. The first requirement showed a remarkable difference from the example of Twitter. It was argued that the so-called noise postings should be minimised. Noise postings are not relevant for the user but because of their quantity hide important ones. A topic-centred structuring was also seen as the condition for effective rights management. The assumption behind this was that each person acts in different roles, such as project manager. So it should be conceivable that project-relevant postings by each person would be accessible only to co- workers involved and are part of the same project. The possibility of establishing rights settings for every single posting, however, was rejected in favour of simplicity. Thus, the solution was the conceptualisation of multiple microblogs where single users could be added and then those users could follow that microblog. The approach was implemented in a non-functional user interface prototype. In this early stage of the project special usability consultants were asked to test the prototype including different versions of tagging. The aim of these tests was to find out if the handling would be intuitive. The findings were used to rework the first concept. After the conceptualisation phase Communardos top management decided to move on and started the implementation phase. The technological planning took place parallel to the screen design. The project team kept the iterative proceeding and published the resulting tool as quickly as was possible. This is what we are going to describe in the next paragraphs. The resulting software artefact The resulting software is a browser-based microblogging system which uses Web 2.0- typical technology (i.e. Ajax). Communardo chose the name Communote- a combination of the companys name and the word note. At first look Communote looks similar to Twitter. In fact the key elements are the same: like the posting stream is the major part of the system and a panel with filtering and navigation options is situated on the right. A major difference is the drop-down list on the top. This UI element is used to choose the microblog in which to post. The first page shows a combined view of all postings from one users microblogs. To post a message the user has to either choose a single microblog using the drop-down list or reply to an existing message. The panel on the right contains a dynamic tag mass and additional filtering possibilities. Filters are available for tags, free search, authors, microblogs and time periods. They could also be

The Butcher Shop Essay examples -- Personal Narrative, Descriptive, Ob

Around noon on Thursday, my roommate and I walked drearily to the local slaughterhouse, or abattoir, where we would see a pig slaughter. The building we arrived at looked eerie on the school’s campus. The abattoir stood alone, next to the bullpen and at the end of a dirt road. We walked in and a female student greeted us and told us to put on an apron, a hairnet, and a hardhat. The room smelled of warm blood. There were five people in yellow aprons and white hardhats amiably working together butchering a pig, which was currently hanging by its feet, bleeding from its neck. I felt disappointed when I realized we were late, and had missed the pig’s death. I felt my stomach jump into my throat as my visual and nasal senses were overcome with blood. Having been bled, the pig was lowered into a large basin full of water heated to 140 degrees Fahrenheit. Unconscious, the pig didn’t scream or move as it was lowered into the scalding water. The boiling bath loosens up the pig’s hair and nails, which are removed before the pig is butchered. After the bath, two butchers used levers to heave the pig from the water onto the â€Å"Cincinnation.† Resting on the wedge above a giant egg-beater on its side, the pig upon the Cincinnation was the most surreal part of the process. The pig spun around awkwardly and violently while the amiable foreman sprayed it with a high pressure hose causing chunks of pig hair to fly through the air. Stepping away from the jettisoning hair clumps, yet not taking our eyes off of the spinning pig, the whole room seemed to shrink as our focus did upon the pig. My stomach’s queasiness was slowly subsiding as the pig was taken off of the menacing Cincinnation and ont... ...he pig. After passing inspection, the workers in yellow aprons moved the carcass into a huge refrigerator. Inside an amiable man told us all about Cal Poly meat. The meat produced on campus is choice meat, sold at a good price right here in a building next to campus market. The animals on campus are all used for butcher, sale, or research. He had more work to do, but told us he could talk about their work all day. Having witnessed what goes on to provide us our meat, I felt even more comfortable with what I eat. The camaraderie amongst the butchers extended towards all inside the room . Seeing people work on something that means so much to them with such passion was as much of a rare experience as seeing pigs slaughtered. The butchers’ confidence and excitement made for an unforgettable spectacle, visually stimulating and oddly heart-warming.

Building Brands

The following paper provides detail insight into the different concepts regarding branding. It starts off by defining the brand and the importance of brands I the market. It then continues on to elaborate on the brand building process, the conceptual framework and the customer relationship building process for a brand. The paper also highlights the characteristics of leading and successful brands in the market. The problems and risks associated with branding are discussed and solutions for overcoming the specific problems related to brand imitation and been devised.The paper also follows the work of brand theorists and researchers in order to establish the barding concept and discuss the new branding strategies comparative to the traditional brand building strategies. An in-depth analysis of three major brands of today is conducted using the case study method. The case studies for Ebay, Emirates Airlines and Ferrari are performed in order to identify their unique brand proposition an d their brand building strategies in the different sectors and industries of the economy. 1. OverviewThe following paper provides in depth information and commentary about the importance of brands and the characteristics of the brands. The process of building a brand has been discussed and the case studies have been analyzed in correlation of their brand building efforts. The paper also depicts how brands can be successful in building convincing and long term profitable brands. 1. 1. Objective The objectives of this paper are listed down as: †¢ Define the nature of the brand †¢ Discuss the importance of the brands in an industry and how they effect consumer purchase decision†¢ Proving a comprehensive resource on the strategies for brand building and long term profitability †¢ Discuss the risks associated with branding †¢ To discuss the prominent brands in the market of diverse natures, and to explain the brand building efforts taken up by these brands 1. 2. Methodology The nature of this paper is that of a research paper. No practical or experimental research has been carried out. Instead the research is supported by literature review and key trends in the market.The brand building operations discussed in the paper have been supported by real life examples of brand building operation and their effects on the industry and the market. the literature review is also supported by the works of brand building theorists like David Aaker and the Ries’. The paper takes into account there case studies where the history, business operations and the brand building strategy of three diverse and well known brands and been depicted. The brands which have been discusses, analyzed and compared in the case studies are the following†¢ A web/ internet brand, Ebay. †¢ An international brand, Emirates. †¢ A popular international sports automobile brand, Ferrari. All three brands taken into account for the purpose of case study analysis are brand leaders and the pioneers in their industry of operation. 1. 3. Structure The paper has been structured in such a manner that the components of the research have been divided among 4 categories. The first category discusses the nature and basics of the brands. It depicts what the brand actually is and what are the different layers of the brand.The different types of brands are discussed here and the importance of brands according to customers is also depicted here. The value based bands are also discussed in this section and the specific values the brands have for the company as well as the customers are explored. The second category covers the brand building strategy. In this the brand building process and the development and frame work of a brand have been discussed in detail. The supporting action of relationship building for brand building operations is also discussed here.This section is closed by discussing the different characteristics of successful brands and the ri sks that are attached with branding The third section covers the three case studies of the prominent brand leaders in the market. rtheir value proposition id s depicted in this section and their brand building strategy is identified here. The research is supported by the SWOT analysis of these brands and the comparative analysis of these brands relative to other in the same market. The reasons for their leadership in their specific industries have also been realized here.The last section comments on the nature of the research, and the conclusion gained from the research. Further opportunities of research on the topic have also been identified. 2. Basics of a Brand: 2. 1. What is a brand? A brand is essentially an entity which has certain visual, rational, emotional, as well as a cultural image which is associated with the brand. The brand does not exist solely to sell the product to the people. It creates a bond and an associative relationship between the customer and the company.Th e brand can be a product or a service or even simply the name of the company which manufactures or provides the product of service. Branding gears to evict a response from the users via the advertising tools of targeting the audience through positive reinforcement based on cumulative impressions of the brand. Through branding the target audience is forced to remember the brand and have positive associations because its helps the consumers in making decision at the point of purchase about the selection of brands they want to buy and consume.The value and the satisfaction that the consumer derives from the product or service is also enhanced by existence of the brand Simply put a brand is a promise made by the company to its customers regarding the quality of the products. The quality of the product/ service is central to the brand and helps in differentiating it from others in the market whereby reducing competition. As said before the brand can be an image, a logo, a slogan and even the brand name. â€Å"If you want to build a successful brand, you have to understand divergence.You have to look for opportunities to create new categories by divergence of existing categories. And then you have to become the first brand in this emerging new category. In the great tree of brands, a successful brand is one that dominates an emerging branch ad then becomes increasingly successful as the band expands to block the sunlight from nearby branches. †(Ries & Ries, 2004) Branding however is the process by which the company communicates its mission and objectives to its target audience.â€Å"Branding is a rather new concept: a single, seemingly innocuous idea conceived by the strategists Al Ries and his wife, Laura Al Ries in the mid-1980s. They believed that successful companies produced brands instead of products, that is, brands were intangible and existed only in the minds of the consumers† (2007, Brand Wagon). The branding process is initiated as well as s tructured and proposed by the founders of the brands, or the key people in the company who have come up with the concept of the brand. Branding can also be defined as the process by which the business builds its activities around the promotion of its products.It deals with creating a unique idea, or mindset in the minds of the consumer relative to the brand which helps the target market differentiate it from, the competition in the market. People often make mistakes while branding their products. These mistakes mostly relate to not thinking rationally or logically when building the brand, not maintaining the brand or keeping up with the environmental, technological and cultural changes in the market and trying to appease everyone. Problems can also arise if the company itself is unaware of what the brand actually stands for and who they actually are targeting.When the company employees are not fully committed to branding then this can also lead to a failed brand. Similarly not havin g a dedicated marketing plan set out or using too much technical jargon in the communication process leads to creating inconsistency in the resultant brand. The biggest pitfall in branding however is trying to hard to be different and differentiating the product or service from the competition. This can lead to a loss of visions for the brand. The following diagram depicts the Brand Hexagon which shows the integration of brand equity and brand identity which forms the brand