Half-way Through

Techno-gibberish 
Last week was an interesting week. I tried to do something that I hate, which is dealing with technical gibberish.  Or, I tried to move my domain names from Network Solutions to Blue Host. And before I say anymore, I know that this process has to be secure, but why does it have to be difficult? If I published each company’s directions of what to do to make the transfer — either coming or going — the content couldn’t be more different. And that, by itself, is enough, but I loved the statement toward the end of the conversation that I had with customer service rep,  “If you do everything correct your domain names should transfer between 36-48 hours.  If it doesn’t work, you can try it again or give us a call.” Great.

My issue with technology is often the variance in “verbiage” from manufacturer to manufacturer and from company to company in trying to discern what they want you to do. It’s very frustrating.  And I can’t imagine that they want it that way — and yet it persists.  Just try hooking up a television to Comcast cable.  I can’t deal with that, so recently, when my mom needed one of her additional tv’s to be linked to the system it took my brother nearly an hour to do what was said to be a “simple” procedure.

Segue one: Social Media and Gold Star Moms 
I met this week with a Gold Star Mom, who is a member of the American Gold Star Mother’s Club. Wiki says the following about the club, “It was formed in the United States to provide support for mothers that lost sons or daughters in the war.”  The name came from the custom of families of servicemen hanging a banner called a Service Flag in the window of their homes, and a gold star for each family member in the military who died in service. 

She told me that her local mother’s group stays connected through social media (Facebook), and she is going to speak to me more about how it all works.  She lost her son in Iraq about two years ago, and so it was an emotional meeting.  I have decided that my research on “content” and social media is going to be a continual pursuit. At least it won’t end at the end of my sabbatical period.

 

Segue two: Freeland Guide Update 
And speaking of my sabbatical period, it’s half-way over. I realize that I am probably not going to have the time to finish all that I had proposed.  And that is because the work on the Freelance Guide is taking much more time than I ever suspected.  I nearly spent all of last week typing the new content and original edits.
 

We have more edits to come from the websorting analysis and from content experts, so we think that this is probably not going to be done until right before Thanksgiving. We met this week with Career Services and advised them of our progress. We spoke about finalizing the analysis, and initial edits by next week. We are moving certain sections of the content to other parts of the document and we are asking for all of the department chairs to assist us with missing information. We are also renaming certain sections to be more effective.  The focus for the guide is to help students understand how many different things are involved in the process of “freelancing” without scaring them away.
 

We broke the main sections down into four areas: 

1. Getting Started 
2. Finding Work 
3. Understanding Finances and Legalities 
4. The Resource Center

Once we have the document complete we will be creating a complementary website. We are beginning to “set” content into a template that we have chosen, and if you want to see the process in progress (and it is not going to be pretty) — you can go here to watch.
 

We have also initiated a "Photography Contest" through the Photography Department to help populate the website with interesting photos. More to come about that.


As I said, I am halfway though the sabbatical process  and I am going to re-calculate my proposed list of things to do against my available time and publish that update next week with some realistic hope and potential of getting it all done and still being rested to start next semester.

I will post my weekly summary notes here as soon as I have the time