Want to participate in 2010 Church Productions?

Families and individuals of all ages are needed as volunteer cast members, work crew, and backstage support to participate in LDS Church pageants and other productions during the spring and summer of 2010. Interested in getting involved? Learn more about how to apply.

Email no longer rules?? I think not...

I recently read an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal entitled Why Email No Longer Rules... . The editor references email as being more suited to how people used to use the web when we actually logged on and off and were our own content pipeline managers and cites social networking experiences such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google Wave as more relevant for today's communication preferences. The article makes some excellent points that I would agree with, but I cannot say that I necessarily agree with the foundational argument that email no longer rules.

For one, people are switching to new ways to connect using much more interactive methods such as networking sites, SMS, and instant messaging. But this doesn't necessarily make email any less relevant. Email is used by many organizations both in the private and public sector as the communication method of choice to send messages both internally and externally. One reason for this is that it leaves a digital trail - a way to track who is saying what and an excellent way to pass on information that you simply can't do by way of a text or comment on a social networking site. Email growth last month was 21% while social networking site adoption was closer to 31%, so email is certainly seeing slower growth, but my thinking is that it is still highly relevant if you are talking numbers of users worldwide.

Secondly, email has already passed the spam test. It has been hammered on by spammers for nearly a decade until the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 came about. Social sites have yet to endure the test as spammers are only now finding ways to infiltrate those spaces using fake accounts and bots that ask to add friends automatically. What will happen when people start to get barranged with spam in their social networking sites the way we once will in our inbox? My thinking is that usage will not wane but the adoption rate will be affected.

Finally, there is a benefit to turning off and tuning out. Just because a communication channel encompasses a quicker turnaround time does not necessarily make it better or suited for all types of communication. I know many people who are fine with sending a message and then waiting for a turnaround response. Imagine the thoughtless society we would wither away to if EVERY communication warranted a response within 5 minutes? We certainly wouldn't have time to ask the right people the right questions or put in the amount of thought necessary for an enlightened response.

I am not saying that email is king by a long shot, but that it is still highly relevant in both private and public communications and will continue to be throughout the next decade.

Love your job?

Do you love your job? Would it give you no greater pleasure than to show up to work everyday and perform your job for free, if you could? How much do you need to make in order to provide for yourself and your dependents? If you had that money in the bank what would you spend your time doing? If the answer is something far from what you are currently doing, you're in the wrong business.

I love my job. I work with some pretty awesome and very talented people, and we are working to change people's lives. It's amazing!! It probably doesn't hurt that my career builds upon my media arts degree and is an environment that inspires creativity and growth.

The reason for this post is to tell you that it doesn't have to be this way. I know. I was once working for a small bay area marketing firm and making GREAT money but working crazy hours and absolutely miserable. It got to the point where I wondered if I could ever be happy with my career again. If you find yourself in this boat, please please please make the decision to make a major change today. Go back to school, take some classes, switch career fields - whatever it takes. You'll be so much happier if you are doing what you were created to do.

This is a perfect time to make a change. With the economy the way that it is, many professionals are taking the opportunity to make a change and do something that is more suited to them. Even if this means a reduction in salary - switch out some salary for quality of life if you can swing it. You'll be glad you did! See also ThisBookisGreat.com

Leave a Green Couch behind

So the other day I heard a hilarious approach to getting a project approved with very few details (that you care about) being pulled or rejected. It was in a topic pages meeting and my good friend and collegue Dallas Petersen was speaking. The principle is called Leave A Green Couch Behind, and the impetus came from a set designer who was tired of having a director come in and make serious changes to his set. So one day he dresses his set perfectly, and then adds an ugly green couch to the soundstage. The director comes in, looks around, and says, "love it, love it, love it - well, let's lose the green couch and we're golden!"

The thinking behind this principle is that on every level of management there must be a contribution made, and so in order to save his work from being completely changed around he threw in an obvious change to manage his management, something that he could quickly extract himself if the change wasn't caught. From that day on the designer began looking for something extra he could throw in, the proverbial "green couch" if you will. Not to say that this is the best or even a very effective approach but certainly a fun tidbit worth sharing ;)