15 Minutes a Day

Archive for January, 2010

It really distresses me when experienced entrepreneurs discount the abilities of people with degrees or the value of pursuing a degree. It also bothers me when I hear people refer to professors and academia in general in derogatory terms or call life outside academia “the real world.” I don’t understand these attitudes, unless it’s that people don’t understand the efforts that go into academic pursuits.

Each level of academia (AA/AS, BA/BS, MA/MS, Ph.D/Practical Doctorate) exposes the students to different ideas, levels of thinking, and an array of different personalities. The higher the level of academia, the more reading that is required. Not just reading on one particular topic, but on a great number of subjects that help take your current thinking and turn it on its head. Then, once the reading is done, the students and professors come together to discuss the topics involved and that turns your thinking in a whole new direction.

I leave each class at the end of eight tumultuous weeks a better person than I entered the class. I have a whole new perspective of the class topic, the organization I work for, current events, and have a better idea of how I want to conduct my research for my dissertation project. The whole idea behind getting a higher degree is to help make the world a better place and solving problems that affect life, business, and society.

Writing a dissertation is a Sisyphean Task.

My parents, brother, sister, aunt and uncle, another uncle, and several friends are all entrepreneurs. None of them have any degrees higher than an associate’s degree. I have great respect for what they do and the knowledge they have accumulated through their experiences. However, each of them has expressed gratitude for my expertise and academic experience. That doesn’t make me better than they are. Nor does it make them better than me. We just have different experiences, knowledge, and expertise.

If you know someone that is working to pursue a higher academic degree, please be supportive of their efforts even if you don’t understand what they or doing or why. The higher the degree, the higher the level of commitment. The higher the degree, the deeper the level of thinking, understanding, and work is being put into solving a problem. It doesn’t matter what the problem is. Someone has taken it on because it matters to them. Don’t belittle their efforts or the hoops they have to jump through or the time it takes them to finish. Be supportive of someone pursuing a degree just like you would be of someone starting a new business. Both types of efforts are important. Just in different ways.

Comments from other sources

Twitter:

• @amy0223: @Catherine_Ford I hate having2explain either of my degrees. I have an mm/hrm &a BM in vocal performance. They hardly go together. & TBC.
• @amy0223: @Catherine_Ford Trying2explain why I chose one or the other&convincing an employer that a music degree is just as demanding as an academic 1
• @amy0223: @Catherine_Ford Not sure if I’ll ever get2use my masters which is irritating but I achieved my goal of getting my degree.Most don’t get it.

I saw a quote today that got me thinking… The quote was “A goal is a dream with a deadline.” I love quotes! Sometimes they are cheesy or corny or common, but the ones that stick with you are little bits of wisdom that can permeate the mind and change your perspective.

A little later in the day I read a blog post by one of my favorite Twitter buddies, @CouchSurfingOri, who listed out his goals (- NOT resolutions) for the year and what he was going to do to achieve those goals. Between the quote this morning and Ori’s blog post, I was inspired to set down my 2010 goals here in my blog and start working to achieve them. So, here goes… (by the way, these are in no particular order)

Toastmasters:

• I plan to earn my Advanced Communicator Bronze (ACB). Earning the ACB entails giving a total of ten speeches from two Advanced Communicator Manuals (five from each manual). I have ordered and received two manuals already. The first is the Public Relations manual and the second is Communicating On Television. I chose the Public Relations manual because I am the Vice President of Public Relations for both of my clubs and because being able to get the message out about anything is of key importance to my plans for the future. I chose Communicating on Television because I would like to turn my podcast into a video podcast in 2011 (if not before) and don’t want to look like a fool when I do so.
• I plan to earn my Advanced Leader Bronze (ALB). To earn this award I will need to conduct two programs from the Successful Club Series or the Leadership Excellence Series. I ordered two books from the Successful Club Series: Finding New Members for Your Club and The Toastmasters Educational Program. I decided on these two because both of my clubs are having membership issues. I thought these might be the best two for helping to recruit more members.

School

• Complete my dissertation proposal. I have two classes scheduled with my dissertation mentor to do just this. I plan to submit my proposal in the Fall and start working on the project in January once the proposal has been approved. My mentor assures me that this is a reasonable timeline that  will not cause me undue stress. I told my mentor that I wanted to get through the dissertation process with my health, my sanity, and my marriage intact. My husband says he agrees and approves of the priority listing.

Work

• Teach 12 Video Webinars this year. I enjoy doing webinars for my coworkers on new or better ways to use Microsoft SharePoint 2007 to create and maintain our corporate intranet. To achieve this goal I will:
  • Schedule dedicated time to work on and prepare these webinars
  • Conduct a survey of my customers to find out what topics they most want to have covered
  • Advertise these webinars in advance of each one so that we get good attendance at each one.
• Start an educational blog. I plan to post weekly articles that will answer questions and give tips and tricks to help our site administrators maintain their sites in an efficient and effective manner. To achieve this goal I will:
  • Schedule time to research & write articles each week
  • Survey my site administrators to find out what questions they have so that I can write articles that address these issues
  • Advertise each posting with our site administrators so that they are aware of this new resource

Life

• Meeting health-related challenges. I have had some recent medical challenges that need to be met and overcome. This includes issues with my blood sugar levels dropping dangerously low due largely to a poor diet following gastric bypass surgery. To meet this goal I will:
  • Consult with an endocrinologist to try to regulate my insulin secretions
  • Consult with a nutritionist to start eating healthier food and developing better eating habits
  • Schedule time to exercise regularly
• Spending quality time with my husband and dogs. I need to make sure that I am spending quality time on my relationships and the most important relationships I have right now are with my husband and dogs. They all rely on me for love and nurturing and I need to make sure they are taken care of. To achieve this goal I will:
  • Schedule a date night with my husband so we can have some quality time alone together doing fun, relaxing, or adventurous activities
  • Spend time playing with my dogs every day and when possible, take them with me when I exercise.
• Turn StudentTech into a weekly audio podcast. Last year I did three episodes of this podcast but did not lay out a schedule of time or topics for further episodes. To achieve this goal I will:
  • Set up a list of topics to cover each week using Google Wave
  • Schedule time to write and record a podcast each week
  • Try to find people who want to be guests on podcasts in order to change things up a bit

That’s all that comes to mind right now. Do you have any suggestions for other goals I could add to the list? How about ideas for methods to achieve the goals I listed above? Please comment or connect with me on Twitter.

Image Credits:

The Goals poster was found on Drop and Give Me 20 … Pages! using Google Images.

The Chapter One image was found on A Plethora of Positive Energy using Google Images.

The Healthy Food photo was found on Mom-Going-Organic-Sensibly.com using Google Images.

“When the iPhone 3G came out I could not wait to get one. I watched the demo video over and over again and could not believe what that little phone was capable of doing. My HP iPAQ was acting up and I was looking forward to getting the next coolest toy – the iPhone. Once I got my hands on it, I was IN LOVE with the iPhone! Thousands of apps available at my fingertips along with email, the web, and eventually all of my Google contacts and calendar. What was there NOT to love about this incredible piece of technology? Oh. Yeah. The company that made it.

Apple is one of the most restrictive companies I have ever purchased a piece of technology from. I can’t believe how many times I have heard Apple-lovers like Leo LaPorte and Cali Lewis extol the virtues of the Mac and other Apple products but then later add that they wish this or that worked with their Apple product, “…but Apple won’t allow that.” That phrase just irritates me to the bone!

No other technology product I have ever owned has been as restricted by the company that created it as the two Apple products I have purchased in my lifetime – the iPhone 3G and the iPod Shuffle. Here are some examples of those restrictions:

iPhone 3G

• Other makers allow tethering of smartphones to laptops for Internet access, but not the iPhone. Some blame this on AT&T, but I don’t buy that. When I had my HP iPAQ (on AT&T by the way) I was able to tether it to my laptop. Granted I got dial-up speeds, but that’s better than what I’m able to do with my iPhone.
• Applications (called apps for short) created for the iPhone are blocked by Apple for strange or non-existent or shifting reasons. I can understand blocking apps that don’t work correctly or contain viruses, but any other reason is just bogus.
• The battery is inaccessible to the customer. This was done by design and means that a customer on the go cannot swap out a drained battery for a fully charged one.
• No turn-by-turn vocal directions. I had a problem with my car’s GPS one day. It could not find the state park I wanted to visit. My iPhone’s Maps program was able to locate the park, but I had to keep looking at the phone and scrolling down the directions in order to get there because there is no vocal directions capability on the iPhone. I did not feel comfortable driving while trying to read my phone, but really had no other choice at that point.

iPod Shuffle

• I cannot listen to audio books on this device. I know most people listen to their music on shuffle and that’s why the iPod Shuffle was created. There is no screen so you just listen to whatever comes up. However, there is a switch on mine that allows me to turn off the shuffle function and just listen to things in order. However, when I unload all of the music and try to load on one section of one audio book, the iPod Shuffle does not recognize the format. It cannot play the book. All other iPods and the iPhone can, but not the Shuffle. This is my only real complaint about this product.

Now, if the functions I have listed above were outlandish or unusual I could understand Apple’s position about not making them available. However, lesser capable phones and other devices have this capability. Why not the Apple products? Simple. Apple and its leadership want to have total control over the user experience – as they think it should be. Forget about what the user thinks their experience should be. Steve Jobs and his minions know best, right? I don’t think so!

Here is what Apple will have to do to possibly get my business in the future:

• Quit limiting what its products can do. If the capability is out there in other products, then build it into yours.
• Bring prices down to compare with similar products. I know plenty of people (including myself) who make purchases based not only on what a product can do, but also on how much it costs. If I can find a PC or other product that can do the same functions as an Apple product and cost significantly less, I’ll go with that other product.
• Quit being snooty to your programming community. Protect your customers from malicious or ill-programmed apps, but otherwise do NOT restrict what goes into your app store. Let the customers decide what they put on their phone.
• Build as much flexibility into your products as possible. Restricting access to the battery, making customers buy unique power cables instead of industry standard cables, and not allowing your programs to be installed on non-Apple products is massively restricting your profits. Now, I say that knowing that Apple is a highly profitable company. However, they are less than 10% of the market right now. They could have so much more if they would stop restricting everything about their products. Your customers might get new editions of popular programs more quickly if you had a larger share of the market. Right now Linux users get new programs faster than Apple customers do. Whose fault is that? Apple’s.

I didn’t arrive at these conclusions overnight. I am coming up on the end of a two-year iPhone/AT&T contract and have had an iPod Shuffle slightly longer than that. I don’t know what my next cell phone will be yet, but I’ve already bought a Windows 7 netbook to replace my iPhone’s other capabilities. When my AT&T contract is up I will probably move over to Verizon and either get a MiFi card and a basic cell phone or I will get an Android-based phone that has the ability to tether to my netbook and laptop. Whose fault is it that my husband and I have made this decision? Apple’s.

Image Credit:

The Bad Apple image was found at The non conformer’s Canadian Weblog using Google Images.

The Rock vs. iPhone image was found at Amit Bhawani: Latest Tech Updates using Google Images.

The Lenovo S-10 photo was found at ComputerWorld Blogs using Google Images.

Comments posted on Facebook or Twitter:

• Daniel Antion commented on FaceBook on January 2, 2010:
  “I do wish I could tehter my iPhone but I think that is AT&T’s problem, not Apple’s. They (AT&T) keep saying it’s coming soon but they are also trying to reduce our data usage. I see another $19.95 in my future.

  My other complaint is lack of Flash – Now, I just need to figure out if that’s Bad Apple or Bad Adobe.”

• @BuckDaddy commented on Twitter on January 2, 2010
  @Catherine_Ford interesting, i know that about them and i am okay with it,

LOL! Very creative! This photo was sent to me via email by my husband…

Hundreds show up to protest global warming…