Consider disruption (NSFW): Good Lord, people, hide the fine china! Lock up your children! Clutch your pearls! It’s all gone NSFW!
Still, I shouldn’t kid.
This assignment is about using social media being as a tool for disruption. I chose to examine the Boston Marathon bombings, and of course, that’s nothing to be flippant about. Further, I selected a completely NSFW (Not Safe For Work) moment during the ordeal.
David Ortiz for the Disruptive Win!
I chose to center my video around Boston Red Sox player David Ortiz taking the microphone during the first game after the bombs went off, and him bellowing into the mic, “This is our f—in’ city!”
There are some people who complained, after the fact, about the obscenity. But the vast, vast majority of viewers took it all in stride.
How Did Social Media Handle All This?
What did Social Media do? How did it disrupt coverage? Well, let’s just put it this way. If the bombing had occurred fifteen years ago, or even five, coverage (and our memories of it) would have been far, far different.
It would have been far less immediate. We would not have seen the carnage in anywhere near as much graphic detail. Jeff Bauman would have maintained some privacy with reference to his grave injuries.
And David Ortiz, if he had dropped the f-bomb live on TV at all, would have been fined, big time, as would have the Red Sox organization.
Instead, we know. We have seen. We have heard. And it’s a lot harder to forget. The news is no longer being sanitized successfully in America.
Welcome to the media treating us like grownups.
Disruption Eight Years Later…
Looking back at this post in last 2022, my first observation is that it’s almost quaint. No one seemed to really care about Ortiz dropping an f-bomb on television. But why?
It’s quite simply because he just said what we were all thinking. And many of us had probably said it in the comfort and privacy of our own homes.
For quite a while now, as I have searched for work, I have been dismayed at not only issues with networking, but also with the need to make myself stand out from the pack. Hence, onward to Quinnipiac.
I believe that education will do this. However, most social media educational opportunities are with what seem to be more like fly by night operations.
When I learned that Quinnipiac University had a graduate and certificate program in social media, I decided to give it a whirl.
Currently, I am taking one class, ICM 522.
ICM 522 In a Nutshell
ICM 522, Social Media Techniques and Practices, 3 graduate credits
Spring 2014, Summer 2014 – 12 weeks
The proliferation of social media in society has created a new communications environment built on platforms that encourage contribution and collaboration through user-created media and interaction. This course explores the underlying theoretical concepts, development and management of social media platforms as well as the creation of effective strategies to facilitate a viable social media presence.
Covered will be:
• Content creation and interactions from semester-long blog postings
† Establishment and maintenance of credible social media presence on multiple platforms
• Demonstration and understanding of platform usage and capabilities
† Written analysis and review of notable social media practitioners or brands
• Overall growth, and effectiveness of student’s semester-long social media presence
What it’s All About
ICM 522 proved to be an excellent introduction to the subject matter. It was also a really great way for me to get into the mindset of taking a class. And studying. And trying to get a good grade!
One thing I was not prepared for was how much I was going to truly love the class.
Spoiler alert: I didn’t just pass. I graduated—in 2016—with a 4.0 GPA.
Oh and PS
Since most of the Quinnipiac posts are old and not getting any readers, I am unpublishing many of them. I get the feeling no one will be looking around for them.
Be aware, there are adult words in here, for very adult events. Turn back if four-letter words bother you more than terrorism. That makes no sense to me. But maybe it does to you.
Stay Strong and Keep Every Sense About You
For all who have been living under rocks, things here in Boston have been astounding over the course of the past week. If it were a film script, it would never be made. Because no one would believe it.
On Monday, April 15th, 2013, the unthinkable happened, when two bombs went off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Three people died, and nearly 180 were wounded, many gravely.
Close call in Brighton – the blue star is more or less where I live
And then, going from Thursday, April 18th at night, into about 24 hours later, Friday, April 19th, at about 8:40 PM, there was a lockdown and a manhunt here.
To give you an idea of how close it all was, check out this map – I can scarcely fathom it.
And I have friends, former colleagues, who were even closer, people who heard shots and explosions.
This is reality.
But I want to put in what, to me, is a bit of perspective, I hope.
A Sense of Destruction and Despair
There are plenty of horrible images and I will, mainly, not focus on them.
But this image should tell the tale of Friday. We, like most people, did as requested and stayed in our home.
I took maybe 20 minutes at about lunchtime and sat on my front porch. I saw a guy walking his dog and another getting a smoke. Plus maybe three cars went by.
And that was it.
I firmly believe that staying out of law enforcement’s collective way was vital in not just keeping bystanders from being harmed but also in the swift conclusion to the manhunt. Also, I will not publicize the alleged (yes, alleged; I believe in the right to a fair trial) perp’s name.
A Sense of Hope and Glory
There are a lot of images and words and I cannot possibly cover them all so I will cherry pick a few.
Neil Diamond and Sweet Caroline
So Neil Diamond hopped on a plane yesterday morning at 4:30 AM.
He just showed up, 40 minutes before the Red Sox game was to start, and asked if he could sing “Sweet Caroline“.
Sure thing, Neil.
David Ortiz (who never made more sense than at this very moment)
David Ortiz got on a microphone and dropped the f-bomb on live TV. The FCC shrugged and said the equivalent of, hey, no sweat.
And I am sure most of us agree with him and aren’t about to hold the f-bomb against him. I know I don’t.
People care. And they have also expressed their caring in some amazing and offbeat, quirky ways. These are the ways that make the most sense to them.
Always & Forever
The Always & Forever Tattoo Salon in Watertown has a sidewalk memorial going. Add to it, if you like.
Fundraising
There are multiple fundraisers going on. The big one is the OneFundBoston. This charity was started by Mayor Menino and Governor Patrick and is of course legitimate.
The local running club, the Brighton Bangers, also held a fundraiser.
Sense, Memory, and Healing
I refuse to provide the names of the alleged perps. But I will gladly share the names of the lost and the injured.
Krystle Campbell
This young woman was 29. She was a restaurant manager at Jasper White’s Summer Shack and mainly worked in Hingham and Cambridge, putting in 70- and 80-hour weeks.
I celebrated my 50th birthday at the Cambridge location last September, and may very well have seen her.
Sean Collier
This MIT police officer lost his life in the Thursday night shootout. Boston Police stood at attention with respect as his hearse passed, remembering this young man who gave his all.
Lingzi Lu
This young woman was a graduate statistics student at Boston University, my alma mater.
The wildly generous trustees of Boston University have already raised over half a million dollars for a Lingzi Lu scholarship in her name.
Martin Richard
This eight-year-old child was wiser than most of us, eh? His father, mother and sister were also hurt. So please remember them, also.
Jeff Bauman
This young man‘s image was all over the news, as Carlos Arredondo helped get him to safety and care. Some images were cropped. Others showed the full extent of the awful damage to his legs. This site is a legitimate fundraising site to help pay for his care.
Also, if you want to send him a card, send it to:
In care of Jen Joyce
for Jeff Bauman
117 Tynsboro Rd.
Westford, MA 01886
Celeste and Sydney Corcoran
Sydney and Celeste Corcoran at Boston Medical Center
These women are mother and daughter, and they were both also hurt (Celeste has more extensive injuries). Also, there is a legitimate fund to help with their care.
Dic Donohue
This police officer and Navy veteran was also wounded in the Thursday night gunfight. And so here is a legitimate fundraising site for him.
So he is neighbor to a friend who lives in Stoneham. And this young roofer has already lost one leg, and there is shrapnel in his heart. There is a legitimate fund to help him, too.
In Every Sense, It’s Personal
I have loved Boston ever since I attended BU (I am from the Class of ’83) and am also a runner (but only 5K races – marathons are too long for me). Many of these directly affected people are second and third degree of separation from me.
I cannot begin to describe just how personal it all feels, and I know that my feelings are rather small within the scope of this immense tragedy.
Much like it was back in the day, this is a way for promising local startups to connect with people who want to help them get business financing. And… just maybe get capital from others. It does not seem to be a place to connect with venture capital firms.
But I admit that I could certainly be wrong about that.
Startups and Money
I have written about this before, but it sure as hell bears repeating.
1. The best gift that anyone can offer startups is money. Advice and expertise are great, and they are helpful, but it all pales in the face of do re mi.
And while startup competitions may not want (or, truly, be able) to part with too much of it, it is money that is most needed because, to truly succeed, someone has to quit their day job.
Someone has to take a flying leap into outer space – but that person still needs to be able to afford ramen and a futon.
2. Speaking of ramen and futons, the startup game is, often, played by the young. This is not to say that those of us who were born during the Kennedy Administration have naught to offer.
Rather, it is that we have mortgages. We may have children. We have lives that often require more than minimal Connector-style health insurance. Or we may have aging parents, credit card debt or any number of things that make living off ramen, on a futon, nigh impossible.
Startups and Those of Us Who Are No Longer in Our Twenties
Or thirties, forties, or fifties. Or more.
Ouch.
The world of startups most definitely has two settings. Either you are a go-for-broke, you don’t know what you’re doing but you’re getting there fast company (Neuron!).
Or, you have a decided plan and a purpose, and you are getting into it with some measure of gravity and patience.
Guess which kind of business is more likely to succeed?
And guess which kind of business is more likely to be founded by engineers?
Can you see the disconnect there?
Engineering + Business FTW
What do startups need? Money. And what do business majors and new graduates need? A place to tout.
So, why not introduce the folks at engineering schools like WPI, Wentworth, or MIT to the business folks at Harvard, BU, and Tufts?
And then maybe everybody could go home happy. Or at least with a better chance of actually succeeding.
Here it is, about twelve and a half years later, and I realize now that I never actually said what the event is.
So, here goes.
TED Talks has an offshoot called TEDx. After the x is always the name of a city or school. Essentially, this is the venue. For here, of course, it is TEDxBoston.
However, these events are more of a grass roots nature versus regular old TED Talks.
What’s the Difference Versus TED Talks?
Well, for one, it’s the level of fame for the person talking.
Real TED Talks (the original kind, that is) are the kinds of stuff that Bill Gates does. You invite Jane Goodall to do a TED Talk, or maybe, heh, Ted Turner. But TEDx Talks are more local.
In a way, you can think of them as the difference between a regular old Google search and Google’s local search functionality. For a recipe to make pizza, you use the former. And, it’s huge! But for a local pizza delivery place, you use the latter. And now, there are a lot fewer hits. But they are right on target.
And it’s a Meme, Too!
Seriously. And a lot of that has to do with a bit of perceived snootiness.
But it is also due to the phrase, “Thank you (or thanks) for coming to my TED Talk,” being a great way to end an announcement or a statement.
So, it’s a little bit like quod erat demonstratum. Just without the fancy-shmancy Latin.
And when it comes to talking about my blog—you guessed it!
I suppose this would be true about anyone’s first hosted event.
I am a tad nervous.
My company is sponsoring an event tonight. It is a Meetup for Tech Crunch, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in Harvard Square. The venue is John Harvard’s Brew House on 33 Dunster Street. Grab a map, in case you want to follow along.
I have clothes picked out. And I have packed the camera. I hope the batteries work. I even saved up a bunch of calories.
Because I want very much for this to go well.
Eek!
At 8 PM, I will be taking a deep breath and plunging in. Big smile, business cards at the ready, DyIO ready to rock and roll. Only a few butterflies.
Over Twelve Years Later…
Well, things have changed considerably from my first hosted event. For one thing, Neuron Robotics is no more. But such is the way of the universe.
It is with this kind of a latter day perspective where I can see the holes in the company.
But not the holes in our strategy. Because, truly, it was—strategy? What strategy?
Yeah, we were that green.
If I Had it to Do All Over Again (the First Hosted Event and More)
I don’t think the first hosted event was the real problem. Rather, it was that the rest of how we ran the startup was.
No plan. And no one even coming up with one. It was a lot of throwing jello against a wall. And, very little of that ever stuck.
Also, there was no money person. Because even a startup with a shoestring bootstrap budget needed someone to wield a checkbook. Or, at least, to turn out their pockets and tell everyone that there was no more cash to be had.
In short, someone had to be the adult in the room.
And in retrospect, it probably should have been me.
So, my knowledge of the subject spanned R2D2, Lost in Space, Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Star Trek.
In short, I was about as over my head as anyone could possibly ever be.
What the Hell
But the event was free, and I figured, well, everybody needs social media marketing, right? So I decided to go anyway.
I got a haircut that morning (completely unrelated, I swear!) and prepared for the event by printing up business cards and generally doing pretty much everything but think about it. Yet onto the bus I went.
The space is interesting. It is a two-level area, where there is a huge staircase in the middle, splitting up the lower level. Being that in a former life I was an insurance defense attorney, I always look at that big, beautiful staircase and think: someone is gonna trip.
But I digress.
I walk in, and I am easily a good 20 – 25 years older than everyone in the room who is not an employer. Also, I am one of very few females. And most of the job seekers are in corners or staring at their shoes.
There are two skateboards in the room (fortunately, they are not being used — see tripping hazard, above).
God knows I do not belong.
I do not belong. Cough, wheeze.
Mild Panic Attack Ensues
But seriously, folks.
I do not belong.
Taking the Plunge Which I Did Not Expect Would Become a Job at Neuron Robotics
And that is all I can think of, but I plunge in anyway, and I talk to some people but, frankly, I can only reel off about five words before I am done. I drop cards wherever I think I can.
And then I retreated to the sidelines, to an area where there was a large wall that showed information on all of the companies attending. I stare at the names, and I am having an existential crisis.
I do not belong.
Oh, I do not belong. Panic, slight panic, big panic.
But let’s face it.
I do not belong.
Gawd, this is not good. I look up and I see this guy standing nearby. He is, perhaps, thinking some of the same things I am; I cannot tell of course (it turned out, he more or less was). He looks at me, I look at him, and perhaps there was a flash of recognition or sympathy or commiseration because he smiles, says, “What the hell!” and sticks out his hand.
Thank God!! And, Suddenly, a Job at Neuron Robotics
So, we chat, and I find myself becoming animated again. It is a free and easy discussion, on topic and off, and it is, above all else, easy. Hallelujah, saved from despair.
We part ways in order to mingle and network, but keep circling back. We are not there together, of course, but keep circling back anyway, you know like you do when you are at a party with a friend and comparing notes or taking a breather.
The evening ends and the next morning, I send a note. But I hear nothing, and chalk it up to experience. I continue, as always, to go to networking events.
In late April, I get my reply. So, we start emailing, and agree to meet on May 10th. Coffee okay? Sure.
I get in early, and the coffee shop is playing The Smiths. This I consider to be auspicious. Bob arrives and we again chat easily. Finally it comes down to brass tacks. Do you want to help us out? Do you want a job at Neuron Robotics?
Sure. Details are discussed over the next few weeks, and I meet the rest of the team, and we hit it off, too. We agree on a shmancy title: Director of Social Media and Public Relations.
And I think to myself:
I belong.
I belong.
… and …
I belong. And egad, I suddenly had a job at Neuron Robotics.
A Quick Look Back at My Old Job at Neuron Robotics
A bad scan of my Neuron Robotics business card! If you met me then, you could have gotten a much nicer one.
We used to make stuff. Or, at least, that was the plan. The company, apparently, was sold or taken over or got its own taste of reinvention. Helfino.
Did it help me? I cannot honestly say. I came away from it with some fun stories. As in, running through the streets of Cambridge, barefoot, hunting for a place to buy batteries (my shoes were off because I was in killer heels).
Also, as a person who has worked in a startup, it gives me some street cred around not only startups but also fast-paced work and modern work.
I made friends. I still keep up with the guys. And I did a ton of networking, but that is only semi-helpful as it is not in the field where I want to be these days.
In retrospect, it filled what would have been a rather large gap in my work history. And, if nothing else, I made like Socrates and learned just what I did not know. So, I went to Quinnipiac and got my Masters degree!
I think of just how long I’m (hopefully) going to be living. And can I ever really be happy? But now I feel I’ve found my bliss — social media.
All I needed was to make the leap into doing it professionally. Every day I would run up, hard, to the gate. Eventually, I made the jump and landed in a few places.
There was robotics, where we competed for money at the WPI Venture Forum. Or I would go to lectures that were sometimes kinda gimmicky. Okay, very gimmicky.
So, over 10 years later, it felt like I had finally landed somewhere. And then…. things changed.
Careers and Ambitions
Careers are tricky things, aren’t they? We ask people about their ambitions all the time. In fact, for children, it can even be an occurrence that happens more than once per week.
What do you want to be when you grow up?
Raise your hand if you ever said, “I don’t know.”
Because that is totally okay.
Time Keeps On Going; If You Don’t Look Around, You Just Might Miss It
But that’s all right. Because, you see, time slipping away has made careers like mine possible in the first place.
Say what?
Seriously.
Invention and Reinvention
So, I graduated from high school in June of 1979. There were no smart phones. There was no internet. Yet there I was, a kid who kinda, sorta understood communications.
Oh yeah, computers were the size of a room. And the popular fiction of the time showed them as unhinged menaces, lurking and ready to get us.
I’m looking at you, 2001.
And you, Star Trek TOS.
I graduated from college in 1983. Computers were a little smaller. But their cost was still comparable to a car. I had taken one programming class, hated it, and had dropped out before I could get a failing grade.
But I had liked fooling around on the computer. I just didn’t want to program in DOS.
And then…
I graduated law school in 1986. I had used LexisNexis. But then I went to work for a large firm where there was still a typing pool. And IBM Selectric typewriters. No lie. Two secretaries had word processors.
But at least the managing partner had a computer which he was trying (miserably) to teach himself how to use.
So, I left after 6 months and was at a firm where we had dumb terminals with some actual information in them. We did scheduling this way – although the clerk still used a huge book.
When I left a few years later (and left the practice of law altogether), things had not changed much.
Plus…
I taught paralegals. And I adjusted claims. Everywhere I went, it seemed computers were used less and less. In 1995, I started as a litigation auditor. I did not know how to turn on the Apple PowerBook 170 they gave me.
According to Wikipedia, it was vintage 1991. I 100% believe that. And so, ever since then, I have hated Apple products. Sorry, not sorry.
So I taught myself how to use it, and how to get faster. Slowly, we were switched to better computers. In my last 3 months or so (late 1999), we were finally given internet access.
Because I knew databases, and it was the dot-com boom, I found another job fast. 9/11 happened, and it stole my job, along with a lot of other peoples’. I drifted.
Slowly, I was getting away from databases. In 2004, I worked at Dictaphone, and I did three separate stints at Fidelity Investments.
And I was at that third Fidelity job when I first wrote something like 73 words for this, my first-ever blog post.
Life Has Changed and Along With it I Have Changed Careers
From there to here, I wanted out. So I went to grad school and I blogged – here! Plus I made whatever contacts I could.
In 2014, I became a published fiction author. And in 2017, I was offered a job managing content for a business credit company. Now, I don’t even do that anymore. The future looks blurry. The current administration makes it even blurrier.
And AI? Ha, you must mean the stuff that’s falling all over itself to make people like me obsolete.
What a long, strange trip it’s been. I have never regretted changing my life this way. Careers, I have learned, are for bending and changing. Because you will never know if there might be a better choice out there than you’ve got right now.
Careers are for reinvention. Never, ever set yours in stone.
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