Today, I’m enjoying a round of golf at Eastern Illinois University. Early Sunday morning, I leave with a busload of middle-school youth and other adult leaders of my church for a week of fun and spiritual renewal at a Christian camp near Bemidji, MN.
No PCs at camp, so this blog will be quiet for at least one week.
As I drive south tomorrow to my alma mater in Charleston, Ill., I’ll no doubt enjoy memories of my years spent there as a journalism major.
But 2008 isn’t 1980 (the year I graduated), and I expect to have some frank discussions with former journalism instructors and colleagues (and perhaps, some current students) about the current state of the profession. I haven’t walked into a newsroom in about a decade, but I suspect that many are subdued, because of the decline in print advertising and economic forces that are behind continuing staff reductions in many newspapers across the country. Some long-time professionals have had enough—as evidenced by this July 14 article regarding a resignation at the Chicago Tribune.
The workforce and business environment continue to change, not always for the better. Although my B.A. degree from Eastern Illinois University may not be as high as it once was, it remains indispensable to me. I’ve been committed for many years to the concept of being a “life-long learner.” That led me to earn accreditation through the International Association of Business Communicators, and to hone skills in newer communication methods and technologies, including blogging and podcasting.
My professional and personal life today doesn’t look anything like I would have imagined it turning out when I graduated from EIU. Challenges, disappointments, minor successes and major “growth opportunities” continue to be part of my work and life.
Tomorrow, however, will not be a day to dwell on what life isn’t…it will be a day to enjoy life as it is.
The weeks have gone by without a new post, even though every day I conceive of two or more potential ideas for posts. Creativity has not meshed with opportunity and energy. Same excuse that a lot of nonwriting writers could use.
I’m very busy, however, currently involved in separate program planning and activities through my church youth group and the International Association of Business Communicators’ social responsibility initiative. This Friday, I will drive down to Charleston, Ill. to participate in a charity golf outing organized by the Journalism Department of my alma mater, Eastern Illinois University. I’m looking forward to seeing some former colleagues–even though I’m embarrassed that the slim, dark-haired journalism major they remember has morphed into a Lou Grant look-alike.
Thanks for stopping by.
Just read on Yahoo! that bloggers are in a group of “10 Great Careers You’ve Probably Never Heard of.”
According to the article,
Top bloggers can make six figures, and a handful are said to make millions.
Darn it! Now that everyone knows about the millions we’re making on this, the field is going to get even more crowded.
Time to find the “next big thing.”
I read (and write) warnings about the need to protect future job prospects and professional relationships by being careful about what we write in blogs. Someone interested in hiring me someday will learn a lot about me from the many posts I’ve written over the years.
But today I got a wonderful reminder about another side of blogging. It helps reconnect people separated by time and distance.
I received an email at work that contained the following exchanges:
Former college friend:
janey lou passed this along… keefe has a blog! and gray hair! and he’s suddenly morphed from a hip college dude into a suburban dad interested in family fun and spirituality. who knew?
Former college Journalism advisor:
YIKES!! Live in the present? And here I thought Keefe lived in the FAR OUT!
My reply to both:
Okay, the gray hair is true (better than NO hair), but the “suburban dad interested in family fun and spirituality” is only part of the puzzle. I still keep an eye on the dark side! [I threw in a link to the Big Dominatrix post from yesterday, just to show them how edgy I am these days.] I am thrilled to hear from you both! Please write back or call my cell so that we can catch up. I’m starting to crank up my podcasting as well as blogging, and maybe we can think of something to record together.
I would really enjoy reconnecting with the many great people I met at Eastern Illinois University, especially the daily student newspaper where we learned a lot about communications and life—both good and bad. Thanks to my blog, it looks like that will happen very easily!
I sometimes feel like I’m beating my head against the wall whenever I try to teach my kids lessons on Internet safety and privacy. They’re relatively young (Kevin is 14 and Caitlyn is 12), and they haven’t seen or heard much of the sordid side of online communications.
Another case study recently whipped across my desk—but I don’t think I can share it with my kids yet. Maybe in a few years. Here’s the background. Tell me what you think.
I was reading an issue of Automotive News, a trade magazine geared toward the automotive industry. I was beginning to get a little punch-drunk from the usual collection of bland articles, when an article on page 46 hit me right between the eyes.
“Racy scandal for race exec” was the headline on an article that reported that Max Mosley, president of Federation Internationale de l’Automobile, the sanctioning body for Formula One and other international racing circuits, was caught on video recently with his pants down. Actually, with his pants, and every other stitch of clothing, removed from his 67-year-old body.
The video, which was posted on the British News of the World website, started a sort of media flogging of Mosley. According to the Automotive News story, in the video, the naked Mosley administered lashes to one of five prostitutes, counting the strokes in “vigorous German” and adding, in German-accented English, “She needs more of ze punishment!” Later, he gets punished by a dominatrix for being a bad boy.
Mosley is fighting off calls that he resign, lashing out at his critics, saying that the video was of a private matter that was “harmless and completely legal.” (I checked…prostitution among consenting adults is legal in London, where the video was made. Side-note: prostitution is not legal in Monaco, where Mosley lives with his wife.)
You may be thinking at this point, “So what is the lesson that you want to share with your kids, Tom? Tell us before we have to pull it out of you!”
In what, to Max Mosley, must have been a painfully twisted idea, the S&M sex video was filmed with a camera hidden in the brassiere of one of the participants (not Max, I’m assuming). That’s it; that’s the point that I want my kids to understand.
The world in which we live is closer than anyone would have thought to the “Big Brother” world written about by George Orwell. Only it is even more insidious than Orwell imagined, because rather than an evil government conspiring to remove our privacy, we are doing it to ourselves. Through our brassieres, through our camera phones, through our lack of respect for privacy.
My kids need to know this, before they start adding videos of their own (hopefully much more family-friendly than Max’s) to their MySpace, or Facebook, or whatever place they will consider to be “private,” “safe” and “boss” in the future. Because it isn’t only Big Brother we need to fear today; it’s Big Dominatrix with the Little Video Camera…or our best friend who doesn’t have the sense to yell “Cut.”
“max+mosley” prostitution video privacy commakazispeek
I decided tonight to upgrade to the latest stable release of the WordPress blogging software, version 2.5, and completed the upgrade easily and relatively quickly. You probably don’t notice anything different yet, because I had a clean site with few plugins and no widgets.
That may change when I get a chance to sort through some of the newer offerings from WordPress developers.
On my drive to work earlier this week, I heard the familiar voice of a writer colleague on the radio. I soon became uncomfortable listening to my colleague, for reasons that I’ll share shortly. The experience reminded me about the absolutely different skills required of a speaker and a writer.
I’m not going to name the writer because my post isn’t an attack on him; it’s an appeal to every person who may be interviewed or stand before an audience at a conference or other speaking engagement. Practice speaking, and consider getting training and experience in public speaking through associations or organizations such as Toastmasters, International.
A few months ago, after seeing some weaknesses in my speaking style, I joined a Toastmasters club that had just formed at work. Although I’ve only completed a few talks, I already see and hear the improvement in my structured and off-the-cuff talks. Club members actually gloat now when they catch me saying “um” or “err.” It doesn’t happen often!
My work within the Toastmasters program is what made me more aware of the conversation that my colleague had earlier this week with the host of a major Chicago-based radio station. The colleague was being interviewed regarding an article he had written that appears in the most recent issue of a consumer magazine.
As the colleague answered question after question from the radio host, my emotions changed from excitement, to bemusement, to unbelief, and finally to sadness. This colleague is a solid communicator—of the written word. He has strong journalistic senses and churns out a massive amount of well-written online and print articles and opinion pieces.
But he seemed ill-prepared and very unsure of himself during the radio interview. He stumbled over himself and strung out disjointed answers to the host’s relatively straightforward questions about the background for the article and some general questions about the people who are featured prominently in the article.
It sounded like the radio host had awakened my colleague from a deep sleep in the middle of night. But the reality must have been that the interview was prearranged, giving my colleague time to prepare.
I’m more convinced than ever of the very different skills involved in writing and speaking. Of course, both require organization and an understanding of how to communicate with an audience. But a writer cannot just “wing it” in front of an audience (or a radio host) without a different kind of preparation. When he tries, the lack of preparation comes through loudly and clearly.
My headline is long, and the explanation for the question it raises could be much longer. I’ll try to keep it short, and explain how I plan to change the focus of this blog…sort of.
When I first started blogging, I was focused on communications issues, primarily filtering my comments through the more than 25 years of experience I have gained as a journalist, trade magazine senior editor, public relations specialist, and corporate communications coordinator–among other positions.
In some of my posts, I was able to take the position of a knowledgeable outsider–someone who understood the communications situation or issue, and whose perspective wasn’t colored by any emotion or agenda that might exist if I were an active participant in the situation or issue.
But over time, I’ve grown frustrated over my lack of freedom to share any thoughts or opinions about communications situations and issues that involve me directly. I’ve said it before: The main reason that you don’t see more blogging by internal communications professionals outside of their internal networks is that it is career hindering.
“Loose cannons” don’t get promoted in most organizations, and it is difficult to effect real change when you are not placed highly in an organization. I don’t want to be perceived as a loose cannon to my employer, and I want to build bridges between the subsidiary for which I work and the parent company.
The many conversations and situations gathered over my career that I don’t feel free to share here would be poignant in a novel. And that has been my novel idea for a while!
In the meantime, I’ll write here about matters that are important to me, but the topics will be as broad as my interests–which cover a much larger space than internal communications. Whatever I write, I’ll pick topics that I can speak about unencumbered by any real or imagined restraints–other than good taste.
During a much-needed and unplanned sabbatical from podcasting and blogging, I thought about my plans for this site. CommaKazi Speek began as an extension of my desire to delve into the world of social media. First, I blogged. Then I created podcasts.
Both ventures provided me with practical experience and a better perspective of this portion of the social media space. They helped me to connect with other bloggers and podcasters. They let me stretch my professional skill set while having fun.
Like a lot of people, I have plans for my life–both professionally and personally. Those plans change at times, due to circumstances or opportunities. I wondered whether my blog and podcast could help me launch into a different phase of my career. They didn’t. They remain a hobby without reward, other than personal satisfaction.
That only goes so far, when I have to balance other commitments and responsibilities. So I’m planning to shut down my CommaKazi Speek podcast site as soon as I ready this blog to handle podcasts. Why pay Libsyn to store my old shows, when I can’t be sure when I will have new content ready to post? I’ll be downloading PodPress and then using it to distribute any podcasts that I choose to create in the future.
At the same time, I’ll be changing the focus of this blog…sort of. In June 2005 I launched the predecessor of this blog on Blogger.com. My purpose for launching the site was to prepare me to blog as a volunteer at the 2005 IABC International Conference. I believed that blogging at the IABC conference would:
My final reason given at the time was that Warren Bickford, 2005 IABC Chair, had asked for volunteers, and “it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Those initial posts on the IABC Cafe opened the door for me to continue posting there for a couple of years, while I moved this blog to its current home.
Because I started blogging at an international conference for communicators on its blog, the focus of my blog posts up to now primarily has been on communications issues. About what else was I going to write?
As time passed, although I was careful to keep a self-imposed wall between my work as a corporate communicator and my opinions expressed on the two blogs (mine and the IABC Cafe), that wall negatively impacted my ability to write meaningful posts regarding communication trends and experiences. The bottom-line point for this post is that I plan to move away from communication issues…sort of.
I’ll write more about this tomorrow.
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