I Miss My Galaxy

For all of my friends who may be reading this, I have a confession to make, I did not always have an iPhone. My dad sent me my iPhone a couple weeks ago, telling me that it's from my uncle who no longer wanted his iPhone 4. The Galaxy Express that I had before the iPhone was fairly new, but since my dad insisted on me being on "team iPhone" I threw in the towel and decided to use it anyway.

Mind you, I had an iPhone before, back in high school, but switched to Android shortly after college started for me. Android phone's can act a little slow at times, but everything on my Galaxy was right there, available to me whenever I needed it. It had shortcuts for me from my lock screen, two music players, ton of memory, and everything looked so clear, smooth, and sharp. And don't get me started on the amazing battery life. That phone was amazing in every way shape and form and I am completely head over heels for it.

Now this iPhone, on the other hand, I'm not too fond of. At first I thought I had to readjust to the iPhone life, using emjois, having a pass code, and only using one iTunes for music. But now I'm beginning to think that I am (as the kids today say) not about that iPhone life, though. For the most part it's how my social media is used on the two phones.

On my Galaxy it was simple to use Twitter, if I wanted to switch from my timeline to my interactions I could merely swipe the screen. On the iPhone I have to press the tab buttons at the bottom, which could make me end pressing a random tweet or if I slide it I could accidentally retweet/favorite someones tweet. Facebook is also the slowest thing in the world on my iPhone. When it even opens up, it responds to my every move one second late. Every. Single. Time. My Galaxy at least had the courtesy to force close itself if it was taking too long to open up and when it opened again it would be at it's top speed.

A lot of people with iPhones tell me I'll get use to again, and that it's so much more reliable. Oh yes, it's reliable but, it just manages to tell me what exactly I don't need to know. It's great that it tells me that Bejeweled and Temple Run wants me to play again or that the App Store has updated an app. However, my emails, snap chats, tweets, and (sometimes) texts usually don't come through until it's too late. iFunny doesn't even notify when there is a new feature out, I just have to guess. The Galaxy, though (yes, you guessed it) did all of that.

At this point, I just decided that I'm just going to keep my precious Galaxy as safe as possible and just use this iPhone until it breaks. Let's be real, it's me we're talking about, it's bound to happen.

Up Til Dawn

This past Friday, a couple of brothers and myself participated in the Up Til Dawn event at Kinghorn. At the event we stayed up from midnight until 6:00 am, the approximate time the sun would start to rise, all for awareness of acute lymphoblastic leukemia. While there we did different activities to help us stay awake through out the night.

The first event was zumba, which I was uber (yes, I said uber) excited about because I've always wanted to go to Zeta Zumba during Pink Week, but always had to work. It turned out to be pretty fun, and just like a live version of dancing games from Wii or Kinnect. I also came to the conclusion that women are the target audience for zumba due to the excessive sexy hip movements

Second we played a variety of "Minute to Win it" games in teams, which basically ended up being Sigeps versus Zetas since people started inching away after Zumba. After dominating those games, cosmic bowling (played with 2-liter soda bottles filled with water and glow sticks), cosmic four square, basketball, and an awesome fashion show we watched a presentation that summed up why we were there.

The presentation showed us that the event and all of its proceeds were for the St. Jude Children's Hospital, we learned what the hospital did for children through their research and advocacy. We raised money by receiving pledges and donations from people, which I believed to be another motivation to stay awake. My group, I believe, raised about $50 and even though that isn't much it's more than nothing. 

As my brother Keith frequently said through out the night, "Guys, this is such a good thing we're doing here." and I completely agree. I was going to be up all night anyway, doing God knows what, so why not be up for a good cause? Like I said, that $50 may not be much, but if it could save just one child's life then I did something right.

The Steps To Success

For this weeks reading I read the first two chapters of the book Measure What Matters by Katie Delahaye Paine. In the second chapter of the book Paine said, "Before you can achieve success, you have to decide how you’ll know when you get there." When it comes to measuring your success you need measurable objectives so, with that being said, she gave us a step-by-step procedure for choosing and reaching a consensus on measurable objectives:

1. Understand your background                                                                                                              -This ranges from listing out your goals to knowing who your competitors are. 
2. Assemble your team                                                                                                                            -Every single person from every single position is on board.
3. Ask them what they mean when they say, "Damn, we just got our butts kicked"                                    -This shows how they deal with failure. You want to record their responses.
4. Ask them what they mean when they say, "Congratulations, you really kicked butt last week."              -This shows how they deal with success. Record this as well.
5. Ask everyone what their objectives are                                                                                               -Record their answers to this also and keep asking them "Why does that matter?" and recording those answers too until they have a true, measurable objective that relates to the bottom line.
6. Once responses are up, have people vote on the highest priority. 

Those steps lead you to success, if done correctly. Starting with the first step and understanding your background, if you list out your goals, your competition, to demographic and stakeholders it'll make everything easier when you assemble your team. Having the right people on your team makes all the difference as well, that's why it's important to ask them what it means to them to get their "butts kicked" or to "kick butt" and to ask them their goals. I like to believe that's why it's written down, because that way you always have your goal in sight. Voting on the highest priority will make tasks easier by knowing how important it is and how fast it needs to completed. 

This is kind of how Julie and I did our Storify project, we had our goal, talked things out, such as: ideas, weaknesses, and definitely the competition. So we got together and did the best we could on the assignment. We thought of the negative outcomes and all of the positives but, we had our objective and stuck to it because we had an understanding for why it mattered. That's pretty clutch process to success.

My First Storify

After my first live tweeting experience I made a Storify of it! Check it Out!


Also, while I was tweeting I went to ONU's Twitter page to see what they were doing to promote not only Balloon Glow but also the entire Homecoming weekend. On Twitter there were only three tweets concerning Homecoming, including a retweet from a student. Facebook on the other hand had many posts, and pictures of the entire weekend. If figured that most of the alumni that Northern was targeting is on Facebook so they went out of their way on this medium.

Neglecting to use Twitter was a big no-no. Every book that we've read in class says not to do that. You want to expand your brand to all mediums and stay active in the conversation. The retweet they had of the student should've been one of MANY retweets. On my timeline I saw numerous Homecoming tweets ranging from being stressed and just wanting to have fun all the way to their excitement to see all of the alumni wo were returning. However, they did do the right thing by relying on Facebook, since 1 in every 9 people have a Facebook so building that community was probably a lot more likely than Twitter. But at the same time the average age of a Twitter user is 35 years old, which is probably the average age of our almuni.

Twitter is a great way to communicate with journalists, and everyone in my class live tweeting was technically a journalist, not professional but a journalist to say the least. It's the best way to communicate with them because it's talking to them in real time. And with the use of the hash tag, #ONUHC13, it made it easy to find out information about Homecoming and what was going on. Hopefully, ONU starts to use Twitter soon because the best time to get into real time is NOW.

Livin' On a Prayer

Oh we're halfway there, half way through the semester that is, and I am definitely living on a prayer. At the halfway mark, I started thinking about my initial goal for myself at the beginning of the semester and I am both disappointed and proud of myself at the same dang time.

I'm disappointed in myself for obvious reasons, I slacked off a bit (and by a bit I mean a lot). I'm not where I imagined myself being at the beginning of the semester and I don't like it. As much as I want to blame this on the Government shutdown, unfortunately I can't and can only blame myself. However, I see where I went wrong with my goal and here are somethings that I'm planning on doing about it:

• No more negotiating: Telling myself, "If I finish "this" I can go have fun and come back to start "that" later". NO. No more! Because later never comes until a day or two before everything is due. 
• Use my planner: Just because I don't use my book bag anymore doesn't mean I have to stop using my planner too. For this PLAN to work I need to use my PLANNER. (See what I did there)
• Take notes: This one isn't a big issue but I eventually get bored, space out, look at the clock, get mad at the time, then space out some more. That's kind of become a whole thing now and it needs to stop. ASAP.

I could go on forever but I'd eventually probably start to repeat myself. But, I did say that I was proud of myself because I'm not out yet, I'm still in the ball game. Most people who have the realization that they're screwing up when it's too late. The majority people don't realize it until they've already flunked out, and some of those people don't even notice it then. Me, I'm noticing it now therefore, I'm making the change right now. I mean it, I refuse to lose, I'm in to win.... That's all I have.

Lighting Up Awareness

This year at ONU's Homecoming my fraternity, Sigma Phi Epsilon, held our seventh annual Balloon Glow. This year was my third year being apart of the fraternity's biggest philanthropy event of the year but, this year was the first time I ever had to live tweet it. Since this was for the latest assignment in my Social Media class I would've chose any event during Homecoming weekend but, since I was going to be at Balloon Glow anyway (and probably tweeting) I figured I might as well choose this one.

I like to think that I did a pretty good job live tweeting for the first time, but I wouldn't be telling the honest to God truth if I say I didn't find it a little difficult. The obvious things got in the way, being in charge of the music and the difficulties that came with it (i.e. the balloon pilots wanting to hear a song with "a beat"), seeing people I know and being completely distracted, and most of all remembering to press "Tweet". I often do this with text messages, however with so many distractions it was hard to remember to tweet about something and to finish it.

The things that went well, I think, were my pictures (not to toot my own horn but, yeah they're pretty good) and, thanks to Julie, I didn't forget the hash tag "ONUHC13". That was actually my biggest concern since I never use a hash tag, unless I'm bored or mocking sorority girls with Gibby, so I constantly reminded myself "use the hash tag" or "I don't care how cold it is, use that hash tag before you put your phone and hands away". And best of all I got a retweet too!


Overall, the event was a blast, the hot cider was to die for, and this years t-shirt is hands down my favorite of them all. Now I can officially check live tweeting Balloon Glow off of my bucket list.

More about ONU and this event can be seen on my Storify account! Username dsample13

Venting

One thing I love about my brothers is how open we can be with one another. Quite often my brother, Chem, and I hang out, do random shannigans, and just talk. Yesterday I turned to Chem and said to him, "You know, sometimes I just sit and think to myself, 'Man, I am really dumb'". Naturally Chem burst out into laughter for he was not expecting me to say that but, I was actually quite serious. At the end of each day, I think about all of the things that I do and say and think about just how ignorant I am.

Don't believe me? For example, one day Aggie says to us, "I'll need to let you go early because I have a meeting with the president." Let's stop right there, obviously it's President Dibiasio she's talking about but, for some reason in my head there was some confusion. Without thinking, I ask "Wait, Obama or Bibiasio?" Really, Darnell? Really? Who really thinks of that? Why in the world would that make sense at all? It's Ada, Obama probably doesn't even know Ada is in America let alone Ohio.

Here's another example, a few weeks ago, Chem and I are hanging out again, this time on our front porch, where I notice a ladybug. Once again, without thinking, I asked Chem, "Is there a such thing as a man bug?" There aren't enough words to describe the look on Chem's face of how dumbfounded he was by that question. I'm surprised he didn't yell at me for rant that I went on for 10 minutes on how sexest that was.

Those two examples are just the tip of the iceberg. Other not too bright things that range from forgetting to go to class (You know those situations where you just know there's something you had to do but forgot? Yeah it was one of those moments) to asking different people if Mother Goose was real before finally turning to the internet. Now when I think about the things that I do I also ask, "Am I really just not that smart or is this all still a cultural difference. 

Back in Philly, for the most part, everyone thinks like me. When I told a couple of my friends back at home the president story it all made sense to them but, it didn't make much sense to them. I've had friends in high school also forget to go to class and even friends in college, even though that one is rare. However, even though Phily is a big a city we all are pretty close minded individuals. I didn't know other places in the world, besides Philadelphia and Africa, exsisted until I was 5 and went to Delaware for the first time. We're so narrow minded that we view Philly as a state by referring to the tri-state area, Pennsylvania , New Jersey, and Delaware, as the "Philly Tri-state area", replacing Pennsylvania in that list. 

I know I can't blame Philly for my ignorance for ultimately it all falls on me but, I still like to think that it plays some type of role. In honestly I just wanted to vent and get that off my chest. 

Burned Bridges

Recently on Twitter there was a popular twitter account that went by the name "Stuff on a Rabbit" and I immediately started to lose friends and unfollow people. It wasn't because this page some how hacked my account but, because people thought it would be funny to retweet me pictures from this account. Most people would love or find some sort of amusement from that but not me because I have the BIGGEST fear of rabbits. The second someone would retweet something from that page I'd delete it, then unfollow the person and rip them a new one when I see them in person.

I am often asked why an almost 21 year old man is afraid of rabbits and there are three reasons for that. The first reason is before I made my first trip to Delaware for the first time, when I was five, I had never seen a rabbit before, so you can imagine my surprise the first I layed eyes on it. The first thing I thought was "Is that a mutant squirrel?!" Needless to say, I freaked out immediately. 

My second reason is thanks to Disney Channel, the original one not the one that kids suffer through now. This was around Halloween time and this commercial comes on with, what appears to be, just a normal rabbit morphs into the creepiest demon thing I ever seen in my entire life. That set the tone for my fear for the rest of my life. The third reason, however, is still quite the mystery to me. The Easter Bunny and myself have been mortal enemies for as long as I can remember. I remember being a baby running from him in the mall, screaming my head off in fear. The reactions to this day have not changed to this day. 

Some say that my is irrational which makes sense since leporiphobia, the fear of rabbits, is the abnormal, debilitating, and often paralyzing fear of evil mutant bunny rabbits. I truly believe that rabbits were placed on this Earth by the Devil himself. Anyone who finds them cute can not be trust, they're under the spell. Even showing me a picture of a rabbit will send me into a panic attack. I refuse to go into my friend Julie's room because, her roommate has a picture with the demonic little creature. I get anxiety just thinking about it. 

Thanks to holidays like Easter bunnies are all over the place and falsely loved since the thing has nothing to do with Easter. And with social media we can't escape thanks to advertisements and Twitter pages. Everyone thinks we're all going to die from a zombie appocolypse but, no. Mark my words, it will be because of rabbits and if you think I'm crazy then you can not take refuge in my anti- rabbit home with me when the day comes.  

Never Say Never

Last year when the app Snapchat came out everyone constantly told me, "You have to download Snapchat" but I always refused. The reason why is, contrary to popular belief, I'm not much of a people person 90 percent of the time. I usually go out of my way to not talk to people, which is why I always have headphones on and take very complex routes to go to the simplest of places. So I always thought to myself, "If I don't want to talk to talk to most people, why would I want to see how many weird faces you can make?" But, it wasn't until Gibby persuaded me to download it over the summer did I slowly but surely get addicted. 

Before I downloaded Snapchat I was perfectly content with "stealing" people's phones and snapchatting from there. Now I am often caught snapchatting myself. 

My new goal in life is to make sure my two best and oldest friends in the world, Ricky and Shanice, get in my best friends section. I just need my current ones to stop snapchatting me as much. 

Pinkies up!

Last week I made a post about a handshake that I started called "sprinkles". Now that people know what sprinkles is, people want to know when it's appropriate to use sprinkles. With that being said I give the dos and donts of sprinkles.

When it comes to using sprinkles there isn't much etiquette, for the most part, it's much like anytime you would use it as if it were a high five or a fist bump. Sprinkles is primarily used for greetings and goodbyes however, here are some situations you would use sprinkles and how to use it:

While walking:

- If you're walking and someone you know is approaching you it doesn't matter if you're the top or bottom sprinkle. Verbal communication isn't necessary nor do you stop walking. 

- If you're walking and the person you see is across the street be sure the person sees you before initiating sprinkles. (There's nothing more embarrassing than a one person sprinkle)

- If you're walking and the person you see is driving, same rules apply. 

- When walking and you see someone you know sitting you're automatically top sprinkle. 

While sitting:

- If you're in class sitting down and you're friend walks, whether they sit near your or not, sprinkles is called for (long distance sprinkles is the best sprinkles). The person to initiate is the bottom sprinkle. 

- If you're sitting down and you're buddy is walking by, since you're sitting down you're bottom sprinkle. Basically the opposite of when walking. 

In a Group:

- The person who initiates sprinkles must be bottom sprinkle. Those in the group respond with the standard top sprinkle. 

- If just three people the bottom sprinkle uses both hands as initiation and the responders sprinkles back with just one hand. 

Random situations:

- If you're friend rips someone a new one, says something funny, or has a good  comeback sprinkles is necessary. Initiate with bottom sprinkles. 

- When someone says something that you completely agree with (you're picking up what they're putting down) you initiate as the top sprinkles. 

- In competitive situations it's a free for all. You can do sprinkles from the bottom, top, left, right, diagonally, a 22 degree acute angle, a 126 degree obtuse angle, close up, long distance, or you can even do a combination of handshakes and fist bumps, as long as it ends with sprinkles. 

That is the gist of the etiquette of sprinkles. Hopefully it makes sense to everyone. If not just follow my lead if you ever see me doing it. It'll come to make sense real soon. 

Expect the Unexpected

In this weeks reading of the Real Time the author spoke stressed how no matter how great your crisis team may be, no organization or company can be prepared for the unexpected. This made me think of my fraternity's annual homecoming, Balloon Glow. Year after year we prepare for the event by setting up tables at mac, selling t-shirts, and sending out flyers to local companies.We also think about back up plans for in case the unexpected happens.

To ensure we have a successful event, we work together in a swift and diligent fashion. Our philanthropy chair and his volunteers form our main team for the event who assign people certain tasks. Some of the include sitting at the Mac, to sell t-shirts and get information about the event and cause out, and sending out the flyers to local businesses with more information. This ensures that the information gets out quickly, and it also shows that we the know the facts of our cause which can set the tone of the event.

Having a philanthropy chair gives us a spokesperson for the event, or a "face" if you will. This way people know who to contact for any questions and know whose in charge. People can contact him through his e-mail or cell number that is provided on the flyers or on the Facebook event page. This makes things easier because, everyone is on Facebook and it makes it easier to provide updates. This way if the event is cancelled, we can let everyone know from there.

This process usually works for us but, since we can not control things such as weather or power outages, we can only hope for the best. Just like companies and their crisis teams.

Real Time Real Fast

In the reading of Real Time Marketing & PR the book's author, David Meerman Scott, expressed the importance of real time PR and responding in real time. I kind of had a feel for real time PR from the last book we read in class, Share This!, which told us that modern day PR is the same, just faster so organizations no longer have hours or days on end to respond to customers. Customers want their responses as soon as possible, so PR now uses social media as a tool to respond to customers and get feedback. Based off of the "Do's and Dont's" list, also from Share This, a real important do is to correct any mistakes in a swift and open fashion. And that is one thing this book focused on as well.

In the reading, Scott wrote about the incident that happened with United Airlines. Songwriter, Dave Carroll, was on an United Airlines flight when he noticed the baggage handlers carelessly throw his guitar case which resulted in his Taylor guitar breaking. Nearly a year went by and after all of the hassle and back and forth nonsense, Carroll still received no proper compensation for his damages. Due to the airlines blatant unconcerned interest in the matter, Carroll went on to make three songs on the issue, including the song that went viral "United Breaks Guitars". After becoming an Internet sensation, Taylor Guitars, and Calton Cases owners hopped on his bandwagon to work with him, United Airlines finally met with Carroll ten weeks after the success of "United Breaks Guitars".

That demonstrates how to not respond with your customers. The damage control for this issue had to be more than hell for their public relations department but, it all could've been avoided with responding to their issues from customers in real time. Weather it's over the phone, through email, or social media, United Airlines could've resolved the situation quickly and painlessly.

SPRINKLES

Some people like to high five, others like to fist bump, I for one like to do what I call, sprinkles. Sprinkles is a hand motion that looks a little something like this:

To reciprocate this hand motion, you merely do this:

This can be done with someone who is right next to you, across the room, or even in a group all while not even having to touch the other person. It's perfect for flu season, trust me. I started using this in my senior year of high school, after seeing the movie Do The Right Thing but, I didn't start doing it heavily until I came to ONU. The initial response I got from it was positive, everyone was willing to do it and is always more than prepared to either initiate it or to do it back.

There is no cooler feeling in the world than to be walking down the street and the car driving by has their hand out of the window giving me the sprinkles. This took off more than I thought it actually would. I see people give the sprinkles to each other when I'm not around, which makes me so proud. I feel like the Steve Jobs of handshakes, because this handshake is revolutionary. My friend Ian frequently tells me how him and his buddies now do it in Canton.

Imagine if I could successfully have all of Ada to do sprinkles, then there's no doubt that I can get all of, if not majority, of Ohio to do it too. It may be wishful thinking but, I've come this far I might as well keep trying.