Chaper 8- Guide From the Middle

In chapter 8 of the Social Organization, the author brings up several key points about the management of "transparency" and inward-out communication. He says in this chapter that you should focus on results as an organization and community, and not the means of achieving them. An effective and collaborative community/organization will believe in itself and therefore achieve the results desired by figuring out their own timeline, and way that people work best together. This is where being effective communicators comes in handy because they can choose their own environment, create their own culture, and let their people make choices. The chapter said that "allowing engineers control over their own tools led to a 25% increase in overall productivity". This solidifies that organizations should structure their goals for their workers, but let it be just that, structure. This point builds off of last chapter. Having just the right amount of it is the best thing possible for any organization.

Chapter 7 "Launching the Community"

This chapter discusses how to get the community involved in your organization and use the community as a resource for your success. You need to find the right way to collaborate with various groups and segments within the community. With my organization, Dog Central, they are looking into possibly getting a few hot dog carts so they can do business at the football games in the future. This is something that would get their name out there for people who have no clue what they are, and gets them out in the middle of the community where a majority of students attend games.

The chapter also says that in order to have a collaborative environment, you need the right amount of structure. It says "Too little structure can be as limiting as too much". This is very true in the sense that we need to have goals, deadlines, and specified design of some sort in order to receive a desired outcome. If there is no supervision, things will not get done. If there is too much controlling and a manager is breathing down your neck, you are less likely to achieve the greatest result. Having the right amount of structure could definitely benefit all organizations, and could be why 35-45% of all new businesses wind up failing.

Chapter 2, Who Owns the Future

As we move into a changing and more challenging generation, we are becoming ever more reliant on "the internet of things". This term reminds me of this book because we really don't know who owns the future. The theory on the internet of things is that in our lifetime, things will be able to speak with one another. Our coffee pot will communicate with our alarm clock and start brewing before we wake up. Things will get to this point at some point in our generation. We need to remind ourselves how to accomplish daily tasks and take our phones and computers away for a little while. I am personally worried that some people cant do anything without their phone, laptop, iPad, etc. If we cant do the basic things in life without being distracted by technology, do we really want them to be ones who "own the future"??

Chapter 5 and 6 - Social Organization

In chapter 5, the author brings up "The Importance of Purpose". This is something I think we could all learn more about. We spend so much of our time wandering the internet, playing games, and have no clue what the purpose of it is. We could be spending this time doing something productive,  but we are instead mindlessly wandering and searching for unknowns. People need to have a purpose, and need to have a cause to be able to get things done. A good way to put it is how the author did on page 67, "Without a purpose that people find compelling and that provides specific organizational benefits, business value will be left to chance and, worse, the community may even create unnecessary risk for the organization". This shows us what effect having a purpose could cause not only for us, but for the organizations we work for, or people around us.

Chapter 6 identifies that we should create purpose roadmaps. They provide a context for who participates, what motivates those people, how they interact, and how these purposes could effect later decisions. Doing this would get people thinking harder about what they wanted to do and the goals they may set moving forward.

Is my Organizaton Meshy?

While studying my organization "Dog Central" I have found that they are not necessarily a "meshy" business. Mesh is referring to the sharing and interconnecting of businesses and as Lisa Gansky says in her video, it could be the future of business. Dog central is trying to be more interactive but they are a new business and are just trying to gain customers by being their own independent store. They do things their own way and adapt to students needs (being open 11-4 am on Friday and Saturday). The video brings up a good point about us beginning to trust more local businesses that we may not have before. Great ideas get started by taking an idea like the owner of Dog Central did and running with it. Sometimes stepping away from the crowd and going your own direction is a good thing. They are not a typical restaurant, they only sell hot dogs and fries. They could expand, but that isn't what they want to do.

The World We Live In

As we read these books about our society and how dependent we are on technology, you can't help but to wonder what it would be like without it. We have so many things going on at once, and have a self created mass panic if technology is not used at all times. If people can't log onto facebook they are so frustrated they can't see straight. Why is it like this all of a sudden? The internet wasn't even around until the 90's. We need to get back to how we used to be and learn how to do things the old fashioned way. I agree that technology is great to help us keep in touch with all of our friends and family that we may not always see. But now you can get a degree without ever stepping foot into the classroom, and people are relying more and more on things they shouldn't be.

My Company and Mass Collaboraton

The company I have chosen to follow is Dog Central, because I am interested in their marketing techniques and will be doing research on them throughout the semester for my marketing 310 class. They use mass collaboration by having transparency, participation, independence, emergence.

They have transparency because they have created an identity for themselves, the late night hot dog place for college students. There is no confusion as they do not sell a lot of other food, and a lot of people know what this place is and what they make.

They use participation by having a facebook and being available for people to look up at any time.

Dog Central has independence because you do not have to be a member to access their site, you can log on, look at the menu, and use the user friendly website at any time for free.

They also use emergence as mass collaboration because as more and more people talk about them, the better their business gets. They get a lot of marketing by word of mouth.

In Lanier's "Who owns the future" we read about the future of technology and how it has taken over our society. It is interesting how we words some of his ideas and his thoughts about privacy being taken away from us. Who owns the future is it us? Is it the government and are they slowly taking our privacy from us without us knowing? Websites like google plant cookies onto your computer so they know what to advertise to us, is this fair? I personally do not like that something is keeping track of what websites I go to. It is an interesting idea, but as we move into the future it will slowly continue to increase as a problem for us. When does the line get crossed and when do these things stop happening. Technology has changed the way all of us think and act, and now we need to be more careful than ever with what we post or decide to put online because we do not know who could be watching.

The New Digital Age Chaper 1

In the introduction and Chapter 1 of The New Digital Age, the authors are explaining how much more reliant we are becoming as a society to technology. It explains how many people are connected to the internet, on social media sites, and how we will continue to move further and further along with our constant innovation and mind blowing ideas. The world is not what it used to be 20 years ago. There are now kids with cell phones, everyone with a facebook page, and completely hooked on technology. The New Digital Age is an attempt to explain these changes for those who have seen this overwhelming change develop, and have been left behind.

You are Not a Gadget's take on these issues is how much it changes people. It has effected people so much that it changes lifestyles, communication skills, and almost lose their "human" side at times. It really makes you open your eyes about where our society is headed, if people are so concerned with technology right now, what about in 5,10,15 years? Where will it be and more importantly, where will we be?

I believe that these issues are more serious than we think. Children in school now use iPads, and technology will be the only thing they know by they time they are in college, and who knows where it will be by then. It is a very intriguing topic to think about.

Blog Post #1, Organization and Social Media

The organization I chose to look at was Dog Central. I thought it would be perfect because I am doing a project in Marketing Communications class about them also, on how they could improve their social media presence and gain more customers. This relates to the organizations in The Social Organization because they are trying to look at the pros and cons of social media. Does it really cause that many problems with productivity? And how can it be used as a catalyst to gain more "followers" of the organization. New businesses like Dog Central which is a new restaurant downtown have unique products that not a lot of people know about. Social media is a way to blast this information out to everyone and let them know what makes their product unique from the other 500 restaurants in Mt. Pleasant. Each business needs to look at how social media could help them develop, even if they have been successful in business for more than 50 years. Competitors come along, and businesses have to adapt and find new ways to reach their target market.