ResearchGoddess

I read a post over on Fistful of Talent early this morning, and the basic idea of the post was what our sportsmanship says about our professionalism. I was inspired to leave a comment, however that comment turned into a short dissertation, so I decided to post it here instead!

I’m a University of Florida alumni, and from 2006-2009 when the Gators won a total of 4 national championships, two each in football and men’s basketball, UF was the most hated institution in the country. Florida is currently the only school in NCAA history to hold the men’s basketball and football championships during the same school year.

I have never understood the notion that too much success for any one person/team is bad. If success is being earned honestly, I say let it continue, and let it be an inspiration to others to work hard and achieve their own success. I have a great deal of admiration for Duke’s Coach K because he could leave and be wildly successful in a professional program, but he chooses to stay at Duke because he loves it there. To punish someone, to hate them for no apparent reason other than success, for loving what they do AND BEING GOOD AT IT is just ludicrous.

With that, I see similarities in the coaching styles of Coach K, Coach Billy Donovan, and Coach Urban Meyer. All three men are good family guys and have good morals. They command respect of their teams and demand nothing but the best from them. They are quick to punish inappropriate behavior yet also quick to acknowledge accomplishment. They are all intense and highly dedicated to their work, sometimes with the appearance of insanity to those who don’t understand. And all of them get hated for the success of the teams they have coached. Why? It’s jealousy plain and simple.

My belief is that instead of feeling jealousy toward people like these men and the teams they have coached, people would be better served going out and trying to achieve a similar level of success in their own lives instead of secretly wishing mean-nasties on someone who’s done the work it takes to achieve success. And I think that’s where most miss the boat – they see what they perceive as the finished product (any successful person knows you’ve never “finished” being successful anyhow..) and attribute it to ‘luck’ or ‘special privileges’ and pay no attention to the years or decades preceding that moment where all the work, practice, struggle, failure, and heartache occurred.

One more thing: none of the success achieved by these teams can be attributed to one person. Sure – the coach is at the helm… but you could have all the best players in the country on a team and still not be the best. As Herb Brooks said, ‘I’m not looking for the best players, I’m looking for the right ones.’ Just as in collegiate athletics, in Corporate America too it takes a team to achieve greatness – including being supportive of each other, holding each other accountable, and working together toward the greater good of the whole, and not just the individual. That’s when the team truly wins – when all of the cogs are working in harmony with each other, each carrying his/her own weight and contributing to overall success.

I’ve been reading a lot of posts lately from people who are concerned about the privacy of some of our new social technologies, in particular the geotagging services such as Loopt, Gowalla, Foursquare, Rally Up, and Brightkite. For example:

• On Geek.com, Christian Zibreg says of Twitter’s new geotagging feature, “There’s no doubt geotagging is a privacy advocates’ nightmare, especially for users who have their Twitter timeline set public.”
• On VentureBlog, a commenter wrote, “Many of my young women friends are not comfortable with LBS [location-based services] because of stalkers: it has already happened to some of them, and others are just wary. After all, think of what happened to Kathy Sierra just from blogging.”
• On ZDNet, Jennifer Leggio stated, “Any time you take to a social network you give up some of your privacy. This is especially true when using a social network that’s sole purpose is to tell your friends where you are at any given time.”
• The site PleaseRobMe.com‘s mission statement includes this statement: “The danger is publicly telling people where you are. This is because it leaves one place you’re definitely not… home.”

While I certainly share the same concerns over privacy of one’s whereabouts, I think there is another topic here that hasn’t really been addressed much, and that is the topic of taking personal responsibility for one’s actions…

There are good arguments for privacy surrounding location-based services, however I think it’s important to remember that every single one of these tools is opt-in. You don’t have to use them. In addition to that, once you register for an account you have the option NOT to send updates to Twitter, Facebook, or any other social channels, and you always have the option not to connect to other people and let them know what you’re doing.

People are so quick to point fingers at someone or something else when things don’t go right that they quite often forget that they themselves left the door wide open for misfortune to occur. I don’t think this is limited to geotagging, either. I see people who get upset over things that are posted to their Facebook wall as well. A little common sense goes a long way when establishing what you will and won’t allow to be posted to your Facebook wall – by others as well as by yourself. It’s pretty silly, in my opinion, to blame the creator of the site or service for invasion of privacy when you’ve been given the tools with which to make your profile or communication private. Instead of blindly using a service and not checking out its privacy customizations, take a moment to look at what you’re getting yourself into. Take responsibility for your own actions.

We need to educate people on responsible networking and connecting. These apps are much more personal than LinkedIn and therefore we should not just be accepting connection requests because someone follows us on Twitter. There are consequences to connecting with people and sharing your location. I personally would consider myself to be an over-sharer. (though I haven’t unlocked that badge on Foursquare just yet!) I admittedly check in a lot and readily share my locations with my network. However, I’ll also accept full responsibility for any consequences of my over-sharing. Nothing bad has happened to me yet. (knock on wood)

I think in the end it is really important to keep in mind that our hands are not being forced when it comes to any of these geotagging tools. We always have the option not to connect, not to share, and not to use.

How do you hold yourself personally responsible when you use location-based services? What are your personal policies on privacy when it comes to social media?

These spotlights are opportunities for you to get to know some individuals who were recommended to me for the article I recently wrote for Mashable, 4 Essential Traits for Social Media Success in Your Career. The purpose of my project, detailed here, is to profile some social media professionals to keep an eye on in the coming year.

Spotlight:

What David had to say about Dave: “Dave’s star is already on the rise. As a P&G brand manager he’s helped evangelize social media within the organization and become sort of an unofficial spokesperson. His writing on related topics is insightful and he balances personal with corporate brand effectively (no easy task).”

Dave Knox is a Brand Manager, Digital Innovation for P&G Productions, a new role for him in the past few months. Prior to that, he was a brand manager for digital business strategy with P&G Corporate Marketing. Dave attended college at Miami University of Ohio in Oxford, OH where he studied marketing and entrepreneurship. He joined P&G right out of college and has worked his way up in the company ever since. Dave writes a blog called Hard Knox Life where he discusses a brand manager’s point of view at the crossroads of marketing, media and technology. In addition, he has been been named by AdAge as “1 of 25 Media People You Should Follow on Twitter” and a “2010 Social Media Superstar” by Media Industry News.   Dave is also active in the marketing industry, serving on the National Council of Pi Sigma Epsilon, the Advisory Board for Brandweek’s “Cincinnati’s Agenda 360 Consumer Marketing Steering Committee”, and as a speaker at conferences such as the Web 2.0 Summit, SXSW Interactive and IEG Sponsorship.

How Dave got interested in blogging: Dave said that social media gives him the opportunity to to remain connected within the marketing communication world. When he worked with P&G’s WalMart customer team several years ago, he was yearning for connection with the marketing community and feeling part of the discussion with the team. He started blogging to fill this void and found that he was able to connect with great minds in Chicago, Austin, San Francisco, and New York without actually having to go to these places.

Some of Dave’s thoughts on how social media is changing things: Dave looks forward to continuing to establish himself at forefront of how the world of marketing is changing because of social media. He enjoys driving change for the industry and leveraging technology in the right ways that benefit both brands and consumers. He says that what is going on right now is similar to what occurred in the early 90s with internet revolution, and that this revolution is not just beneficial for brands, but for people as well. When asked what the coolest project was that he’s worked on, he said it’s where he’s at right now. Dave says that P&G gives him the opportunity to think about a company that’s been around for a long time and how it can migrate its business strategies to digital environments. However, he says that social media was not meant to be a “career path” – but that digital is an enabler. He believes that the world is going to be digital within the next ten years, and that social media will be a driver for this to occur.

Tomorrow, Blogwell will be in Cincinnati, and as per Dave’s blog post, there will be a tweetup this evening on Wednesday following the conference hosted by Cincinnati Social Media. In addition, Cincinnati Social Media members who wish to attend the conference will receive a special discount for Blogwell.

Connect with Dave on:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Blog

No, it’s not a joke Today officially marks one year that I’ve been working as a Talent Attraction Manager with AT&T. Why am I writing a blog post about it? Because it’s my blog and I can, that’s why… no seriously, it’s because I couldn’t think of a better place for me to be right now – except perhaps sipping a frosty beverage in a chaise lounge chair on a tropical beach somewhere. *hint hint to my manager*

I started doing internet research almost 8 years ago. The progression of my career to this point, in my opinion, couldn’t really be any more perfect. Each step along the way helped prepare me for the next phase. I began at an MRI franchise office in Cincinnati, where I spent the first four years of my professional career learning the business of recruiting. I learned almost all there is to know about all parts of the recruiting process from my time spent at that company. I also learned a lot about my own role as an internet researcher as well as the beginnings of social networking…

When we parted ways after four years, I joined a recruiting franchisor, for which I worked remotely, that was based in Cleveland. From this experience I learned self-discipline (working from home isn’t as easy as some people may think!) and how to work well with clients. My role at this company was one of researcher, database administrator, and trainer. I trained all of our recruitment franchise owners on how to use their ATS, how to do some basic internet research, and on the beginning basics of social networking. Some franchise owners (my clients) were easier to train than others, so I had to learn patience and client relations in this position in addition to the art and science of putting together coherent presentations.

After a year with this company I joined the corporate side of recruiting and took a position with a public relations agency. This role was, again, remote, but it was quite different from my previous two in that I was now sourcing for just one company – the one that employed me. From this experience, I fell head over heels in love with social technology as well as communications. I enjoyed being a part of the employment branding strategy and contributed quite a bit to the company’s online presence. This experience taught me the importance of consistent messaging, having a good online image, and gave me a new experience of working with an in-house recruiting team.

Which brings me to AT&T! I’m so excited about the fact that my job came from a long-term friendship and a Twitter DM – social technology meets old-fashioned relationship-building. Being offered this opportunity also provided me a chance to prove the things I had been teaching others for years about the importance of networking before you need it. And most importantly, it has given me the privilege of working with Chris Hoyt, someone who had been on my radar ever since I first started blogging. This last year has really opened my eyes to the potential of mobile recruiting, including things like geotagging and running SMS recruiting campaigns. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed being the go-to sourcing expert for our Campus Recruiting team as well and being part of our strategic social and employment branding efforts. My AT&T recruiting colleagues are such smart and friendly people who love what they do and it shows. For such an incredibly big organization, it feels like family to me and I’m so pleased to be able to celebrate a year here.

So here’s hoping for many more awesome years with this fun and innovative bunch – thanks for this opportunity. It’s the perfect place for me!