Public Shaming

Social media begins to desensitize from the second you log on and begin to look at what is going on. On the web we become different animals, we for some reason seem to grow about 3 feet and 100 pounds of muscle and think we can take on the world. Behind our screen people become truly arrogant and just flat out mean. Compassion can displace shame very easily if we can all remember one thing before posting or commenting anything. What would I want to hear if I was the one going through whatever the headline says, and then posting an uplifting comment even if that means going against what everyone says. Sadly most people will just decide not to comment what they were going to say and just move along. This does not speed up the process for eliminating shame on the internet. People often times can be found making money while shaming people. Wouldn't it be a nice change if people made money publicly lifting people up and making others feel good??? 

What am i prepared to do about it? When I began thinking about this question I started thinking of all the things that have ever made me feel good or better after hearing or reading them. I began to notice a trend that has kind of gone away since social media has grown so much. How often do you compliment someone in person anymore? Telling someone that you like their shoes, or that shirt looks great, your hair is amazing today, simple gestures such as these can change someones day. It doesn't take much to type the words, Those shoes look fresh, or your smile is amazing on somebody's picture on facebook. One thing you can never have enough of is FRIENDS, in order to make and have a lot of friends you need to be a friend. I think that is what my answer to the last question is going to be.  I am prepared to be a friend to anyone in need and try to uplift them through any situation!

Facebook final

This is the facebook page I have chosen to take over and I will be continuing to run it for the remainder of the semester and maybe even into the summer.      https://www.facebook.com/uthouseofhoops/ 

My main focus is going to be to encourage players and parents to tell their friends about the gym and eventually have room and time for more classes to help these younger basketball players develop their game.  I will also be posting a player of the week award each week, teams schedules ( to help take phone calls away from our head coach every single week when the games for our 25 teams change two nights before the games are to be played), and a section that will be called coaches corner. It is basically going to be advice from our coaches in the gym and the community that will let kids know what kind of things coaches look for in young developing athletes if they are going to recruit them or not. This may also be bounced around with the drill of the week which will be a video clip submitted of a few short drills kids can do at their houses to improve ball handling and control.

Facebook Personas: and the plan!

Mary 41, Mary is a mother of 4 kids from ages 13-7 who works full time and doesn't have the time on her own to coach and help her children develop in the sport of basketball like she would like them to. Her kids love basketball but she is always so busy it is hard to find a gym that will take her kids and allow her to leave and run errands while the kids play and improve on their skills without her having to be present providing adult supervision.

Jameson 17, plays high school basketball for his local high school but has recently found that if he wishes to continue playing the sport he loves he needs to dedicate more time and make it a passion. He struggles to push himself to get better and thinks he would do better in a group environment where other kids would be pushing themselves to get better at the same time they improve individual skills.

George 47, Has been coaching his son and sons friends for the past 3 years but doesn't have the time to keep running practices for them during the week. He wants to still have the ability to coach his son and his sons friends but is only able to find time once a week to coach them, he is looking for someone or somewhere to take his kids and help them develop while he continues doing what he needs to durning the week.

What do parents want their kids to do if they sign them up? (improve, learn, progress)
What does our gym offer that others might not? (Passionate coaches? Do they want to be there or are they doing it for the money?)

Who is the audience? The audience is extremely broad, anyone with children from 1st grade to 11th grade who want their kids improving basketball skills.

Our strategy is simple at the House of Hoops. We are looking to create winners, not only on the court but also off of it. We focus on each kid individually and also look at them in groups to help each player and team succeed. Our coaches want to win as badly as anyone but at the same time we realize that at this point in kids careers it is just as important if not more important that the kids learn to love the game of basketball and not get caught up in winning and losing. In order to make this page compelling to the parents we will need to see some success and some improvement. Whether the success comes form winning games or just as simply as helping kids to have fun and enjoy themselves while being active. (we have had multiple parents tell us their kids love coming to the gym and they have seen big changes in attitudes since joining the gym as well. Always a great thing to hear from some parents)

I will be working towards figuring out whether we get more results from posting words or pictures throughout the first few months and that will help us as a gym to decide if we want to try and cross promote via instagram or twitter.  Right now I am leaning towards instagram mainly because I understand it better but we will see in what ways we will cross promote.

Facebook Ad

Creating an add for the Facebook!

97,000 people in the projected reach. Only chose three targeting words because I felt like that was enough to get my reach to what it is that I was looking for. 

I chose this picture because it fits the add screen the best out of all of my other pictures that i was thinking about selecting. 

SO HOW DID IT GO?

So that was the main idea of the facebook page from the get go. However things took a change when I wasn't having much success getting people to view the page. One thing I began to notice was that if i added a picture with the posts they would get out to more people. (example from my first post I only had 88 views...

Later in the weeks and months to follow i began to post pictures with short comments and began to see some success and get more reach!

 This photo was posted of a schedule for our 2nd grade bracket tournament. 276 people were reached and I got direct feedback from multiple parents who had children playing for different teams who appreciated the schedule being posted for all to see in such a simple place.
I continued to use the picture method throughout the year with different ideas, from players of the week to championship teams.

As you can see the player of the week jumped the people reached up into the 300's and more. I am satisfied with how many people are being reached on these posts and the facebook page because prior to me taking over the house of hoops page nobody was ever posting on here and it was basically dormant. 

TOP POST

 With 1700 people reached this post blew everything out of the water in terms of expectations. It was awesome to see something i posted get so many views and the House of Hoops get recognized or seen by so many people.

STATS

Here we go with some of the results I was abel to come away with from my insights.

So post reach started out fairly well considering in september through January we were completely inactive. As we moved through the season and began posting schedules and players of the week we noticed a slight bump in the reach and we had one week absolutely spike with the picture from above.

The best time to post according to my data from the insights section turned out to be 8:00 p.m. The day didn't really matter, almost 2000 people were on the Facebook every day that were capable of seeing anything posted.

I alluded to this earlier, but all of my most successful posts came from Pictures. If the post did not have a picture with it very rarely was it reaching more than 80 to 100 people. I believe almost all other photos reached over 100 views.

PEOPLE

So with the people I ran into a big problem. Not so much that 90% of the people are male, but more so that half if not more than half of the followers are followers who thought they were following the House of Hoops Footlocker page... So that kind of throws all of my data for a loop, (not something I could prevent considering the likes and followers were already following before I got started on the page). As you can tell only 95 fans from St. George, the main city... So as I look back over the data it is hard to tell what percentage of views actually came from people in the area and not just people from around the country thinking they were following foot locker.

SUMMARY

When I set out on this mission to make the facebook page active again, my main goal was to surpass the views and reach that it had gotten in the past. One week into this project though I quickly realized that isn't the purpose of a facebook page. I changed my plan of just trying to get views to now trying to get the business out there to as many people as I could. I went about this by trying to get people an insider look at what goes on in the gym. I began to post about all of the teams we had working out, all of their games, their results week by week, and then finally started doing players of the week which also helped out as a coach and got the kids attention a little more during practice and led to them working hard at least for a few days at a time. In conclusion to how I think the campaign went I am not fully convinced it was super successful. There are plenty of things I would change if I were to try this campaign again. Like I said before, one of the most successful ways of doing things and getting views was through pictures. This success has led to the gym getting an Instagram account (which I will advertise as soon as it is finalized). This campaign however did increase the traffic on the facebook page by 100% considering it had been dormant since September 2015. So i was successful in getting people to notice the gym was up and still running but I would do things differently if I were to do this again.

What would I change?

The very first thing I would do if I were to do this facebook campaign again is create a brand new page instead of taking one over. The problem that I had with this page already being started was more than three quarters of the followers only followed thinking this was the Footlocker House of Hoops. So having 2,000 followers and only getting 100 views is frustrating and it messes with your numbers. So what I would do differently is I would create a new page for the House of Hoops and then send the information out to all of our current players and tell their parents all the updates will be on the facebook page so they can look for them on there. Secondly I would take flyers around to all of the high school basketball coaches in the area, both boys and girls that had our facebook page info on it as well as a schedule for the upcoming months. I would also offer a discount for people who could prove they were following the page. This would allow for me to get more accurate ratings and numbers or results from the page itself. And lastly I would try to run a weekly challenge on the page that would require some posting involvement to the page. (example: first person to post a video of them making 10 free throws in a row receives a free t-shirt or 10 dollars off their next month of workouts) Encouraging people to want to comment and use the page for not only their benefit but to get it out there for others to see. 

Attitudinal Responses

     What? No way is that acceptable. Why would anyone think that ..(insert objective subject here).. is acceptable. This is how I thought as i walked into this class room in January. I was very quick to stick to my thoughts and decisions without hearing other sides of the stories. Why was i so quick to stick to my guns and go with my gut all the time? I don't know what made me be so one sided, or so biased in my decision making. One reason i think that i did respond the way I did the first few weeks of class was because it made me feel comfortable just going with what i had already had an opinion on. It was the easy way out or the easy road.
     But my primary certitudes lead me to stick to what i had already learned i was nervous to leave my walls and try to see other peoples points of view. I am no means an expert now at seeing both sides of every story, but i have learned to open up and learn the facts about both sides more than i every did before. Some of my ideas have changed on some subjects and some have remained the same.
     The thoughts and discussions in class that we had during the first month of class didn't really draw my attention. I was slow to react and actually enjoy them for what they were. I feel like the reason that changed was because i stepped outside of my own mental walls and was willing to accept other peoples thoughts for what they were. Opinions or facts it didn't matter to me, I found myself giving ear to both. Some were extremely far fetched ideas that my mind would instantly jump on and say, "yeah right" or, "this is absurd." At the first of the year my mind would have done just that and stayed right there saying they were crazy, but as the first month passed my mind opened up to the thoughts that were different and i didn't push them away at first contact. I believe this has helped me to increase what i have learned and my capability of learning.
     As I have looked back at my OTM's and also my topic writings i have noticed the change in the depth I have reached and also the variety of the sides talked about. I began by writing on subjects from one stand point and never moved my feet to see the other side of the subject, but as the semester went on I noticed a change in the way I looked at everything in this class but not only in this class but I also began to change the way I look at everything I see in life.
     Seeing and noting all of these different sides of peoples stories and their thoughts is actually what has led to me changing the way I think more than anything else so far in this semester or any semester that I have been in college.
     So i have gone from What? No way is that acceptable, why would anyone think that ..(insert objective subject here).. is acceptable. To okay, where are you doing with this... Which by the way is the more productive way of thinking when it comes to learning and expanding ones knowledge.

Facebook Ad

Creating an add for the Facebook!

97,000 people in the projected reach. Only chose three targeting words because i felt like that was enough to get my reach to what it is that i was looking for. 

I chose this picture because it fits the add screen the best out of all of my other pictures that i was thinking about selecting. 

OTM- cell phone-Guantanamo north-Meth lab

     In listening to the On the media this week they brought up the phone again and to me it finally clicked at what they were trying to accomplish. The levels of concern need to be at an extreme high! Why are they trying to get into this particular phone? The meta data already suggests that their were no communications internationally from this phone. So why if that is the case is the government still trying to get into this phone and also why is apple standing their ground so strong when they have turned over phones in the past? Is apple trying to step outside of the box and become part of the people? Are they telling us that our privacy and security actually does matter and that we need to be more proud of that? Or are they simply telling the Government and NSA to get bent? They know that if the government wants into that phone they can find a way to do it, they are just looking for someone to be able to place the blame on in the future when this system gets hacked by someone who shouldn't have this much power. "This is about the future" very interesting comment made and then supported in the following comments by the two speakers. Patriot act 3 the revenge, if this is taken to court and they win and are now able to put a law on large companies that states you have to put this back door into all phones what is left with our privacy? If there is a code than it can be hacked by anyone and everyone who is willing to take the time and put forth the effort. I believe this could be a very dangerous decision if it is made and could lead to a lot of trouble. (Fred)
     Closing Guantanamo? Why would we want to close Guantanamo and bring all the prisoners to the mainland? Still have on going pre trial hearings from September 11th incident. There would still be a virtual Guantanamo but they will bring them to military detention inside the US. No charges for these criminals that are being held captive but they have no chance of getting out of custody while we are still at war. They are war prisoners basically. Some men will be held for up to 35 years and never have even been charged. Well yeah you don't want to make a mistake and free someone who can bring forth another terrorist act but at the same time, what if you are holding innocent people captive for 35 years. Guantanamo North is what they are calling the name if they do end up closing down the site in Cuba. Interesting but what is the point? Are we trying to turn the page on this, slide the curtain? I am still unsure about the holding of all these people who we can't even put on trial because we have nothing on them. (Carol) MiamiHerald.com
    It is counter productive because terrorists use Guantanamo as propaganda to recruit even more terrorists. (Insert from Obama)
    Will closing Guantanamo change the recruitment... most likely not going to change much at all. Either way the prisoner will still be held captive whether north or south no difference to me.
    Vigil anteee dude that was filming sounds like he had the most epic job ever! It would be so awesome to be with them but at the same time it would be so sketchy to be there with them. Went from shooting a film about health care to now shooting a mobile meth lab. What an awesome opportunity and how crazy would that be. He worked for 7 months to gain trust and then received the footage he was chasing for so long. AWESOME!!  

Democracy 2.0

What is Democracy?

http://www.whatisdemocracy.net/

There seems to be a lot of confusion about what the word Democracy means. In spite of the fact that at least in some parts of the world one can hear it from the media every day.

Democracy by definition means the government by people. That means that all the people should be able to have their say in one way or another in everything that affects their lives. Dictionaries usually say that this right can either be exercised directly (by all members of a community having the possibility to enter personally, without mediators, their position on a particular issue into the decision making process - modern technology is able to provide this possibility for increasingly larger and larger communities), or through representatives (members of legislative bodies). This second arrangement is then called Representative Democracy.

Representative democracy would be fine if the representatives would really make alltheir decisions only after consulting their constituencies. In the least, after having a clear idea about the views of their constituents on a particular issue, and trying to accommodate these views as best as possible (or postpone the decisions until an overwhelming majority of the constituents would be happy with them).

Unfortunately, a vast majority of countries that call themselves Representative Democracies are not true democracies according to the above definition. Most of them are actually just Elected Dictatorships. People can vote usually only once every four or five years. They do not vote on any issues. They just elect their so called representatives who then until the next elections have no obligations by law and little incentives to base their decisions on individual issues on the wishes on their electorate. They hardly ever bother to consult them on their stands on various issues. Therefore, legislative bodies composed of such "representatives" act in a very dictatorial manner between the elections. The only country that is quite close to the definition of Democracy is Switzerland (more or less since 1291).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuY-DVsU4BY What is democracy explained in a very simple manner.

     In response to the Pia Mancini video I am on board with the idea of democracyos.org. I think that with todays generation if the option was allowed to vote on their phones and not have to take 15 minutes out of their day to go and vote they would do it. I see no reason why more people wouldn’t vote if given the chance to take 5 minutes from the comfort of their own car, classroom, bed room, ect. I also think that by finding candidates that actually vote by the majority of the people then we the people will all have more desire to be involved. How many times do you here someone in Utah say “oh my vote doesn’t matter in Utah because…” every time there is an election that is what you hear. But lets be honest most the people who don’t vote, they don’t vote because they don’t want to take the 15-30 minutes to drive vote and drive home. If we can make it possible through the internet I think we would see a huge leap in amount of votes received each year.

     On the other hand you have to put yourself in the shoes of someone who has dedicated their whole life to this trade and now you are telling them that no matter what they believe is best for society they have to go by the majority vote… Majority vote will most likely be a fair share of uninformed voters as well as those who are informed… I think this has a lot of positives but can also be found to be fairly negative when you get around to it.

    I believe the best way to keep a leader in check is to make sure you are in a democracy where the citizens can and do vote on all issues. If you give one man/woman all the power you are basically throwing in your own white towel and submitting your fate into that persons hands. Is that really a wise decision? NOOO clearly that is a terrible idea.

Religion 3.0

Religion

            Talk about an absolutely broad topic. In the US alone there are over 310 different religions or denominations. Just 55 shy of being able to be part of a different denomination or religious group every day of the year.  (Stat found here) http://undergod.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000068

            Lets be honest though, the only time people ever want to bring up religion is when a presidential candidate tells us what religion he or she is or when something controversial is taking place in a religion and people have to suddenly make it their business. First things first, if you aren’t part of the religion does it matter what they are doing inside of their rules or guidelines for members?  No they don’t matter, yet often times we find ourselves so concerned with what each religion is doing that we involve ourselves just to feel involved. One that really jumps out to me because we are from Utah was when the LDS Church came out with their standards on marriage after not allowing gay marriage in their temples. The organization that we all refer to as Mormons have never allowed gay marriage in their temples, but people only became irate about it after gay marriage was passed in a few of the states. Once again I say to all  of the people why do we begin to care what a certain religion says or does if it doesn’t pertain to us? If you are a member of the church I am sure they teach that marriage is or should be between a man and a woman no wavering. I am just amused that people get so worked up over things that don’t change anything about them.
      On the other hand i see why so many people get worked up about this topic. Both sides of the story obviously exist and want to have their voice heard. I do not think that any religion should push their beliefs upon others to the extent where it becomes no longer a choice and they basically have to do these things just to get you off of their back. Religion should never push anyone to make personal decisions that they aren't ready to make.

            One thing I found very interesting as well were the amount of articles or journal entries one could find that would try to disprove each religion. Rarely did you find articles trying to portray the truth of each religion. Instead what you get again were people who spent more time trying to prove each religion wrong rather than finding out if any of them were or are true.

            Does religion effect schooling and or chances of being recruited or given a scholarship? “Many religious organizations are well-known for their active place in giving back to their community and helping those in need. Religion is also a big part of many students’ lives — whether they’re Christian, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, or Buddhist. So, it’s no surprise that many churches, religious groups, and colleges offer scholarships based on religious affiliation or spirituality.” https://www.unigo.com/scholarships/by-type/religious-scholarships

I find it to be very interesting at the scholarships that some religions are willing to award. I think it is a great thing of any religion, business, or person for that matter to offer kids the chance to further their education by helping them pay for it. To all of those religious groups I applaud you for your efforts in helping students stay in school and achieve great things.

            In conclusion on the topic of religion I just want to make it clear where I stand when it comes to religions. I do not nor will I judge someone who is of another faith. I will not un-friend someone because they do not believe the same things I do. I will not harm someone because my beliefs are different from theirs. Yes I agree that people do these kinds of things all the time and honestly it is sad. Who are we to judge other human beings? Are you perfect?

Don’t judge me because I sin differently than you.

On the Media Ebola again...?

Psychologically after hearing the recent news about Zika, I have finally found out that it is actually happening. Psychologically people are now going to be more concerned and start to worry about every single mosquito bite. I am not a person who is a big worrier, but people who worry about multiple things may be super concerned. I am going to have to agree with the first man interviewed (Jonathon) when he said the average American should not freak out about it, but we need to prepare for it. Even if it doesn’t happen to you at least you were prepared.

Socially you don’t need to hide from people who may have the virus, after all it is very unlikely that you will be bit by a mosquito that bites the infected person and then sucks the virus and then flies over to you and bites you is almost impossible. Malaria is one of those cultural things as well when they discussed why nobody was overly concerned with the number of mosquitos that exist they said it was because malaria usually takes place where there isn’t power and in third world countries. That is why people don’t usually make a big deal about it.

Once again I do not think that zika is going to bother me at all. I don’t imagine I will have any run ins with it and I am not going to go out of my way to do anything different than I normally would do when I am anywhere that mosquitos are. I will still wear my repellant and cover up but I am not going to be stressing every single bug bite. They said it could affect 4 MILLION people… whoa scary… it is a big hype and I think it is going to do the exact same thing Ebola did. We will probably make such a big deal about it and at the same time the government will pass something important under the rug and we will all go on living in fear of mosquitos. That is just my take on it.