We love quick fixes, and after you read this article from Cynthia Rowland’s blog, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without these “25 clever ideas to make life easier.”
Studies show organized people lead more productive lives and reduce stress. Implement these tricks of the trade and you’ll be sure to impress everyone with your imaginative skills!
This Thursday and Friday, June 23 & 24, team members from Resolution Research (including CEO Nina Nichols) will be in Chicago participating in one of the most exclusive social media conferences in the nation. According to the conference web site, the 2011 Social CRM & Online Community Executive Summit sponsored by the World Research Group promises to help attendees learn to “anticipate customer concerns through smarter social media monitoring, accelerate online community growth through better content strategies, attain internal organizational program support and involvement from the top down, articulate the best strategy for scaling programs to meet customer needs, analyze program results to develop effective metrics for success measurement, and achieve greater success in leveraging social media to drive customer loyalty and true brand engagement.” The Resolution team will be joined by execs from top brands like Pepsi, Dell, Verizon, AT&T, Bloomberg, and the Chicago Bulls as they learn these techniques as well as how to best approach the multi-faceted roles that social media and customer experience play in business today.
To read more about the conference, visit WRG’s page here. For more about the ways in which Resolution Research has incorporated social media research and analysis into their vast repertoire, check out the reLogic page here.
First generation web communities (Web 1.0) were anchored around gated communities like AOL. Then they migrated into open communities like GeoCities (which had 38 million user pages before Yahoo! shut it down). Most of those early communities offered chat rooms and some publishing tools. Then blogging and social networks exploded. Perhaps some of these social communities emerged as a result of what was happening on television - specifically Reality TV. With shows like “Big Brother”, which first aired in 1999 and MTV’s “The Real World”, people were looking to get their 15 minutes of fame.
With that phenomenon came a proliferation of “micro-communities”. As keyword searches became better, it was easier to find small micro-communities ranging from beauty care and cosmetics (www.totalbeauty.com) to sneaker communities (www.sneakerplay.com).
So how does one build one’s own online community? First of all, think about what your potential audience might be interested in - relevance. Are they looking for innovative marketing ideas? Or are they interested in editorials about a particular subject? Perhaps they are interested in social media strategies that help build online communities like the people reading this post?
Once you have the “relevance” factor down, then it’s just about the message, the frequency (capturing their mindshare), and getting them engaged in the conversation. Those are the keys to creating an interactive web community. And who knows? Once they trust you, then you can give them a “call to action”. And most likely, they will respond.
There has been a lot of interest circling social media these days. Between Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, MySpace, and iPhone apps, a marketer could be challenged to figure out how best to leverage these channels for business growth solutions and increasing sales revenue. But rather than rush to put up a company page or a company account, create one for yourself and get used to how it all works. Without a well-thought-out strategy, all you’re going to do is have a page out there with little or no results.
By first understanding how companies are using these channels, you will be able to create social media strategies that work for you. And by using it yourself, you’ll understand some of the social norms of these media outlets. If you need some good ideas, check out AdAge.com/digital. They always have interesting articles about how people are successfully using social media.
You can build online communities through social media, but your message frequency has to be there (so people come back often) and your campaigns have to be relevant to the people who are following you.
In addition, you may want to tie in email marketing promotions within your social media strategy and create “calls to action.” Test it, follow what some of the leaders are doing, and then create your own version. At a minimum, you may find you like sharing your company’s new services or products with people who care.
Have you been trying to figure out if this “cloud services” thing is a real revolution or just another gimmick for IT firms to repackage their services?
If you’ve been around long enough you will recall another “IT Revolution” known as Application Service Providers (ASPs) in the late 1990s. They professed that their service bureau could provide businesses with computer-based services and applications over a network. Their “on-demand” software application model soon became known as SaaS or Software-as-a-Service. But their services never got traction. What’s different now?
With the 21st century now in full-swing, you can be sure there will be many new developments on the global horizon. And if the last ten years are any indicator, these changes will be swift and significant. Here is Dr. James Canton’s take on what’s in store for us in the next 20 years.
Roughly half of the world population, some 3 billion people, is under the age of 25.
Approximately a quarter of the world youth population subsists on less than a dollar a day.
By 2025, two out of every three people on the planet will live in a water-stressed area, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, eastern Asia, and south-eastern Asia.
At the same time, technological innovation and globalization will result in more than a billion millionaires by 2025.
Breakthroughs in genomics and stem-cell therapies will extend the human life- span in the West beyond 150 years, creating new problems.
Prague Couple Herschel and Reba Nichols Celebrate Their
67th Wedding Anniversary
The year was 1944. The United States was at war overseas. Back in Prague, OK, however, love was all around. Herschel Abraham Nichols and Reba Denney (then just 21 and 17, respectively) were married January 22, 1944 at the bride’s parents’ home, nearly five years after Herschel’s love-at-first-sight glimpse of Reba at Garden Grove Missionary Baptist Church. On hand to witness the nuptials were both sets of parents, Reba’s younger siblings, Freda and Bobby, and Reba’s best friend, Juanita Dean. Just three days after their marriage, however, the honeymoon was over. As they prepare to celebrate their 67th wedding anniversary this January, I’d like to share the story of their lives together.
Picture 2: Engagement Photos
On December 27, 1943, Herschel, then still a bachelor, was drafted into the U.S. Army. His tour of duty began in Ft. Sill, OK, where he spent ten days before heading to Camp Hahn near Riverside, CA for six months of grueling training in the desert. (Herschel remembers the stinging scorpions he and his fellow soldiers would have to shake from their sleeping bags each morning before rolling them up.) Upon completion of his six months of training, Herschel was furloughed from Riverside, so he and a couple friends hopped into a convertible and drove the nearly 1,400 miles back to Prague. After some much needed rest and a spin in (then girlfriend) Reba’s Model A, Herschel briefly returned to Camp Hahn before boarding a cross-country train, through the Royal Gorge, bound for Orlando, FL. While there, he made PFC (private first class) after he refused to let a major into the base’s live ammunition storage facility (which he was under strict orders from his captain to protect). The captain, after hearing of Herschel’s denial, took note of his tenacity and refusal to break orders, and Herschel was rewarded with the promotion. After three months in Orlando, the army moved Herschel to Camp Stewart in Georgia. Then, on his final furlough before shipping off overseas, Herschel hopped a train to Prague where he married his love, Reba Denney.
Three short days later, Herschel boarded a train back to Georgia, and from there, to Camp Stoneman near San Francisco, CA where he and about three hundred of his fellow soldiers from the 222nd Searchlight Battalion (amongst hundreds of others) set sail under the Golden Gate Bridge. They sailed without escort, aboard a converted Dutch streamliner ship (complete with on-board swimming pool!). The ship landed in New Guinea thirty-one days later, where Herschel began his duties as a T5 technician corporal and driver and a certified sharp-shooter (carbine 30 caliber rifle).
Meanwhile, back in Prague, Reba began working at Prague National Bank immediately following her graduation from high school in May 1944 (graduation was Friday, she began work on Monday). She and her best friend, Juanita, moved into a Prague apartment together on Broadway and spent many nights typing up and selling war bonds at the public school or Garden Grove Church. They sold these war bonds at “pie suppers”: small gatherings where people would come together to eat pie, drink coffee, and buy bonds. To catch the news, Reba and Juanita, whose husband was in the U.S. military as well, would walk over to the old Prague Theater, where they and the rest of the folks in town would learn about the war goings-on from black and white news reels. The idea of the theater may sound romantic, but when your new husband is on the other side of the planet and you have no idea when or if you’ll ever see him again, the theatre becomes a dark and scary place. Reba took comfort in the occasional, but sporadic, telegraph she received from Herschel, most of which she later burned, being the very private woman that she was and still is. And, on top of everything else, Reba wrote to Herschel “every single night of the world.” While he was off fighting in the war, Reba spent the long months of his absence working and saving for their future.
Halfway around the world, Herschel was anxious as a result of the separation from his new bride and his parents, to whom he was extremely close. Then, in August 1945, while sailing to Japan via the Philippines, the ship received word that the atomic bomb had been dropped, the peace treaty signed, and he and his fellow soldiers would not have to go to Japan and fight, as they had originally feared, but would instead be heading home! They sailed for ten days before reaching the coast of California. With the exception of a back injury sustained while building an airplane runway and roads in the jungles of New Guinea, Herschel returned mostly in-tact, albeit very thin, very tan, and very yellow from the Atabrine the soldiers were given daily to protect them from malaria in the jungles. (Reba said that even the whites of his eyes were yellow!) Despite his physical ailments, and even though his adored mother had passed while he was away, Herschel was overjoyed because he was alive and heading back to his bride! After a train ride to Leavenworth, Kansas, where he had his uniform cleaned and pressed while waiting in a local laundromat, and a bus ride to Shawnee, OK, he and Reba were reunited.
Reba, who was ecstatic for the war’s end and her new husband’s imminent return, said she was “thrilled to death” while on her way to the Shawnee bus station to pick up Herschel in her black 1939 Ford V-8. So thrilled, in fact, that when she arrived at the bus station only to find there were no parking spots available, she simply pulled up on the side of the street and got out of the car to meet her husband. Upon seeing her for the first time in eighteen months, Herschel exclaimed, “Oh, Mercy! What a woman!”
Picture 3: 25th Anniversary
The war was over, the couple was finally reunited, and their romance was renewed in full force. They bounced around between Herschel’s dad’s home and Reba’s parents’ home before finally saving up enough money to build and furnish their own home by Reba’s father’s store at Centerview. Shortly thereafter, they purchased eighty acres of land between Prague and Shawnee in the Garden Grove community onto which they moved their newly-built home (quite literally, on a truck). There, they raised cattle and Herschel farmed soy beans, cotton, corn, and peanuts. By this time, Reba had moved over to the Parks Brother’s Hardware store in Prague where she would work for many years before returning to banking. In 1949, just a few years after the war, Reba and Herschel welcomed their first child into the world: a son, Michael Nichols. In the 1960s, when farming got tough, Herschel took a job as a driver for Vanderveer Oil Company in Shawnee delivering oil and gas around the area. In 1964, fourteen years after the birth of their first child, Reba and Herschel welcomed their second child, this time a daughter, Nina. In 1972, Herschel and Reba sold the farm and built a new home, complete with country grocery store and gas station, just a few miles away on Moccasin Trail where they still reside today.
Picture 4: 40th Anniversary
Over the years, Reba and Herschel have shared many fond memories together, including seeing a television for the first time in Prague in the window of Haney’s Variety Store, and have celebrated many anniversaries and special occasions together. On their Silver Anniversary, their 25th, Nina was only five years old. She recalls the anniversary fondly because her mom and dad gave her a new stuffed kitty-cat as a present to accompany all the presents her parents were opening. On Herschel and Reba’s 40th anniversary, their children threw them a surprise anniversary party. It was on a Sunday while Nina was home from OSU for the weekend and when they saw all the cars at their house after church, they assumed Nina’s college friends were over for a visit so it was a true surprise shared with many friends from church and family members who came to celebrate. And on their 50th anniversary the couple celebrated at the Holiday Inn in Shawnee, OK, this time with even more friends and family. This Christmas season, Herschel, now 88, and Reba, now 84, threw a party for all their aides who help them maintain their lives in their home together where they both still reside and plan to do so until death they do part.
Mike and his wife, Donna, live next door to Reba and Herschel. Mike and Donna blessed Herschel and Reba with their only grandson, Sean, who lives with his wife, Sara, in Oklahoma City, OK. Nina lives between her parents’ home in Prague, Denver, CO, and South Africa.
Picture 5: December 2010
As young newlyweds, the couple was very involved with the Garden Grove Missionary Baptist Church where they first met. They’ve actually both been church members there for longer than they’ve been married! Whatever your belief system, you have to agree that it seems like God has blessed their lives! The couple and their friends and family will be celebrating their 67th wedding anniversary this January 23, 2011 at their home on Moccasin Trail in between Prague and Shawnee.
I recently received an e-mail forward about “Things Your Burglar Won’t Tell You.” After reading it, I started thinking about my own home protection and the number of people that travel over the holidays and decided this would be worth sharing. I hope you find some of these helpful. I particularly like tips 21 and 22. They’re so simple; I don’t know why I haven’t heard of them before!
Things Your Burglar Won’t Tell You:
Of course I look familiar. I was here just last week cleaning your carpets, painting your shutters, or delivering your new refrigerator.
Hey, thanks for letting me use the bathroom when I was working in your yard last week. While I was in there, I unlatched the back window to make my return a little easier.
Love those flowers. That tells me you have taste…and taste means there are nice things inside. Those yard toys your kids leave out always make me wonder what type of gaming system they have.
Yes, I really do look for newspapers piled up on the driveway. And I might leave a pizza flyer in your front door to see how long it takes you to remove it.
If it snows while you’re out of town, get a neighbor to create car and foot tracks into the house. Virgin drifts in the driveway are a dead giveaway.
If decorative glass is part of your front entrance, don’t let your alarm company install the control pad where I can see if it’s set. That makes it too easy.
A good security company alarms the window over the sink and the windows on the second floor, which often access the master bedroom – and your jewelry. It’s not a bad idea to put motion detectors up there too.
It’s raining, you’re fumbling with your umbrella, and you forget to lock your door – understandable. But understand this: I don’t take a day off because of bad weather.
I always knock first. If you answer, I’ll ask for directions somewhere or offer to clean your gutters. (Don’t take me up on it.)
Do you really think I won’t look in your sock drawer? I always check dresser drawers, the bedside table, and the medicine cabinet.
Here’s a helpful hint: I almost never go into kids’ rooms.
You’re right: I won’t have enough time to break into that safe where you keep your valuables. But if it’s not bolted down, I’ll take it with me.
A loud TV or radio can be a better deterrent than the best alarm system. If you’re reluctant to leave your TV on while you’re out of town, you can buy a $35 device that works on a timer and simulates the flickering glow of a real television. You can find it at http://www.faketv.com/
Sometimes I carry a clipboard. Sometimes, I dress like a lawn guy and carry a rake. I do my best to never, ever look like a crook.
The two things I hate the most: loud dogs and nosy neighbors.
I’ll break a window to get in, even if it makes a little noise. If your neighbor hears one loud sound, he’ll stop what he’s doing and wait to hear it again. If he doesn’t hear it again, he’ll just go back to what he was doing. It’s human nature.
I’m not complaining, but why would you pay all that money for a fancy alarm system and leave your house without setting it?
I love looking in your windows. I’m looking for signs that you’re home, and for flat screen TVs or gaming systems I’d like. I’ll drive or walk through your neighborhood at night, before you close the blinds, just to pick my targets.
Avoid announcing your vacation on your Facebook page. It’s easier than you think to look up your address.
To you, leaving that window open just a crack during the day is a way to let in a little fresh air. To me, it’s an invitation.
If you don’t have a gun, here’s a more humane way to wreck someone’s evil plans for you: wasp spray.
Put your car keys by your bed at night. If you think you hear someone breaking in, just press the panic button for your car. If the alarm doesn’t scare us off, after a few seconds all the neighbors will be looking out their windows to see who’s outside and what’s going on.
* Sources: Convicted burglars in North Carolina, Oregon, California, and Kentucky; security consultant Chris McGoey, who runs http://www.crimedoctor.com and Richard T. Wright, a criminology professor at the University of Missouri-St.Louis, who interviewed 105 burglars for his book “Burglars on the Job.”
I have the extreme privilege of being invited for a distinguished visitor overnight embark aboard this amazing Navy aircraft carrier, the USS Vinson, for a rare first-hand look at life aboard the carrier! We are departing from San Diego North Island and flying by C-2A to the ship. I will be observing flights operations, during the day & night, and touring spaces above & below the hangar bay, and dining with the ship’s crew. We must climb 10 stories of stairs to reach the Bridge and be prepared for 12” steel doorways. No heels on this tour of duty! I am so excited to learn about carrier aviation and be a part of this wonderful experience. About 3000 sailors live on board! A special thank you to my friend and associate, Jessica Barry, Public Affairs with the Navy, who made the introduction possible. Yes, I am taking lots of lots of pictures! Salute! Now, I don’t have to buy myself a Christmas present — this is it!! I will write a proper blog with photos upon my return.
Closing with a very special thank you to our American military & veterans, including my father who fought in WWII, for their service to America.
Nina Nichols, President
Have you been trying to figure out if this “cloud services” thing is a real revolution or just another gimmick for IT firms to repackage their services?
