Facebook Presentation - Memory Matters,,,,I shall not forget you

    Yesterday, was  bittersweet for me and the Facebook page I have been babysitting for the last month. I am happy to be moving on to a different challenge that might be related to more of my personal interests, but I feel somewhat responsible for all the time and joy I spent working on it.



     I posted my very last attempt for the semester yesterday. It just two short video clips from some filming I have been doing for them recently, but they already seem to be on the way to outperforming any of my posts so far. The first video was a short interview clip with JoEllen, one of our heroic caregivers and has reached 104 in under 24 hours. The second was a one minute segment from a singing session at the memory activity class and has a reach of 97 and most of the views are longer and by original viewers.

This was my most successful post of the semester and it brought the greatest personal satisfaction. The Volunteer Spotlight posts gave me a chance to learn about each of our volunteers and give our Facebook friends an inside look at their hard work. It reached over 200 and continues to climb. Short video clips are the most appealing to our friends. A simple re-post from the national Alzheimer's society of seniors at play has blown all of my posts away and reached over 512.

 

   In the beginning I thought that great pictures would be the simple key to unlocking a treasure trove of likes, but I learned quickly that was not the case. This was one of my earliest posts from an event I was very proud to attend. I thought seeing the founder in action would be attractive to our audience. However, it received some of the lowest viewership of the campaign. The audience was extremely critical with my page and the success or failure of a single posts. Generally, because they are such stressed out and desperate caregivers and people that feel at a loss, all they want is some uplifting inspiration. A high quality quote, on a fabulous picture was bar far the most consistent way to get likes and reach more eyeballs.

Testimonials from clients came in second for total reach. They love reading 

heartfelt words and seeing beautiful things but I have been told it would be better 

with  some people involved in the photos.

    Coming in a distant third were my library spotlight posts. I have to thank my friend Holly Vandre for letting me use her all semester as a model and inspiration for these items. I assumed that quality information like poetry or helpful education would draw likes. This taught me the audience knows what it wants and can generally be predicted if you really know what they are made of. As I took over some of the maintenance of this page from someone else, it has taken me a long time to simply get who I am trying to reach and that is the most important component. I thought I could outline their demographics, but I could never really know them until I better understood their plight and every post needs to be created with their needs in mind. All they want is a little hope.

    It was a short semester and I still feel somewhat unsatisfied I haven't yet come up with the perfect post. As you can see from the pictures above my post reach spiked around the middle of the semester. That high spike is the activity video of just some great seniors having fun with noodles and balloons and it connected with almost everyone bringing in many original viewers. In six weeks, my overall reach as climbed moderately and in the end, the chart looks a little higher that when I began the adventure, though it could have been so much more. Just in the past month we had a reach of 4,263 which is up 67%, our post engagement is up over 55% and nearing 700 and video response is up 299% which was one of our worst categories. This is a trend I pray continues and then perhaps the total page likes will start increasing. I think i would benefit from using ads to boost the posts that have gained the best traction like the videos I posted yesterday. We had an increase of 25 likes and hopefully another volunteer will carry on the fight. Overall, I am most proud of the re-branding of the header for both Facebook and Twitter so they are consistent, fun and demonstrate what their program is about, which is smiles. There were plenty of smiles to go around this semester and I thank you all for joining me on the journey. Don't forget to like MEMORY MATTERS UTAH on Facebook :) Enjoy the rest of your summer everyone!
 

Facebook Ad - Memory Matters Utah

Creating a Facebook ad and not actually purchasing it is a uniquely sick way to torture someone managing a page. Even the small reminder box that periodically pops up to remind you that you should be trying to boost your posts with an ad is such a tease, I can hardly resist pushing it. Especially when you have created an event or a post you are really proud of. I resisted the temptation today, but I think I will definitely have to try one out before the semester ends to see how much of an impact it really does have.

I wanted to make sure I included many of the possible locations for future clients on the locator map. Most of our business is done in St. George, but we do have groups in Cedar City and Mesquite. I also added Kanab because it would be interesting to see if the message is able to reach and work outside our traditional area.

I like that you have many different options for creating the ad. Adding multiple pictures is good way to keep to content fresh without having to create individual posts. I was frustrated with the lack of space available for inputting text. I wanted to include our full mission statement, but unfortunately I had to condense it and still carry the same meaning. For my actual I want to create some new original photographs and be a bit more creative with the text.

Default Response - Abortion

    It took a little while for me to want to open this particular can of worms and comment on my blog post about such a deep subject. I do not really like to talk about abortion rights and if anyone is easily offended, I beg you to stop reading now and move on with your beautiful day because this is a really awful topic.

    I suppose the best place to start would be the origins of my default opinion on this highly charged topic. One could make a case I spent my formative years in a liberally minded area of America. Born in Sacramento, California to a single mother and raised in Lake Tahoe, freedom, open-mindedness, self-reliance and the right to make individual decisions were always high on our values list. As you can imagine, life would get difficult at times and I don’t know if it was because Roe v. Wade had just passed the year before my birth and it was fresh on her brain, but her go to comment when angry would be “some days I  just wish I could have a retroactive abortion.” For years I would just blow it off as a harmless joke. Rowe v. who? At that time the facts were of no concern, only the idea repeatedly drilled into my brain that a woman and a mother has supreme control over their bodies and minds and no person should ever have the ability to take that away. Knowing the difficulties a single parent must endure, my automatic response would be to agree without question, every person has the right to decide whether to take on the responsibility of parenthood. However, my personal experiences have drastically shifted any childhood notions on abortion and I have found myself on both sides of this critical debate.

    The recent Supreme Court vote  on abortion has been widely hailed as a victory for abortion rights and has once again thrust the subject into the media forced me to relive painful memories I'd rather not face. The 5-3 decision struck down a Texas law that severely limited access to abortion clinics and caused an undue burden on women seeking advice or action about planned and unplanned pregnancies. Specifically the bill banned abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, required abortion clinics to meet the same standards as hospital-style surgical centers and mandated that a doctor have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the facility where he or she performed the abortion. Critics and ultimate victors in the case stated that some women would have to travel several hours to reach a clinic to serve them and it was a violation of their rights.

   On the surface all of these ideas sound reasonable to me. I would only comment because I have seen how awful the inside of an abortion clinic examination room can be. A lifetime ago, before I permanently moved to Utah and became a parent, I lived in California with a woman with two kids from a previous relationship. I was young, naive and head over heals in love with her and as time progressed, becoming pregnant slowly became less of a concern. Until it did. When it became reality she was facing raising three children with a new man and possible medical complications, her decision to seek out an abortion happened rather quickly. Almost as if it was necessary to expedite it before their was time to think and Planned Parenthood was close and actually more convenient than making photocopies. From the second she mentioned her plan I was deadset against it and for the next few days many fights ensued and ultimately I discovered I had no legal rights in the state to prevent any action. There was screaming and anger and unfortunately, I was still extremely in love and willing to do anything to keep her happy. Even if that meant supporting her in something I could not imagine doing today. After incessant begging and crying for hours, I relented and took her to the appointment for support.

   The appointment was too easy to feel comfortable with from the moment we walked in the door. I remember wondering why more wasn’t being done to council us on other options we might consider and why I hadn’t been to more appointments for pre-counseling on the decision. Unbeknownst to me, it was a life altering decision and yet it was being treated like a casual teeth cleaning or like waiting for your number to be called at the DMV. It didn’t take long before they ushered us into the most uncomfortable dark and shadowy exam rooms in history. It was cold as a refrigerator with a series a plain wood cabinets, three inordinately large glass jars, a hard vinyl covered bench and a saddening set of tubing that snap you to the severity of the moment. And that is where I will stop because what followed was worse that any horror film Hollywood could devise. It is something no human should have to see or endure and that is the information they forget to mention on the way in the door and what they fail to counsel people on after they walk out. It wasn’t difficult for me to fake strength and not think about any of the consequences while we were in the appointment. A person will do anything for love and I honestly believed I was making the right choice for her. It wasn’t until we broke up several months later, after she had grieved and healed that I broke down and dealt with the emotions. It nearly destroyed my life.

     I am not the person to say a person should have the right to an abortion or not but I do think some of the ideas in the Texas law make sense. For example, having the clinics meet the standards of hospital surgery centers seems like a sensible precaution. Anything that takes the health and safety of women seriously should be a requirement and having admitting privileges for doctors at local hospitals would seem like a no brainer. Complications can occur and every step we can take to help this painful process should be done.

   It seems like everybody wants to jump on a bandwagon, especially when they are fighting to make sure they fading careers seem relevant and this topic has been no exception. I read an article here http://www.playboy.com/articles/my-choice-chelsea-handler the other day that drove me insane and kind pushed me into this post.  In her story, Chelsea Handler recounts her experience as a young girl having two abortions and comments “I’m 41 now. I don’t ever look back and think, God, I wish I’d had that baby.” If you gather anything sensible from all my ramblings today, I hope it is clear that when I look back, I would give anything to change my past and find a way to have that baby. Could I have fight harder and taken her to the highest court in the land, as a father, and fought for my rights to be a parent?  You can believe it took two people at night to make the baby and yet, many in our society would claim it only takes one person to choose. I spent half of my lifetime thinking it was about one way of being right and the rest knowing for sure, if there is a right to choose life, it shouldn’t be in the hands of anyone on Earth. I only wish people had more time to think before they walk through Planned Parenthood’s revolving doors and had more resources to pick up the pieces when they inevitably tumble out.

Trusting white coats, blank faces, framed degrees

try to relax, white cloth over bent knees

Shadows like vipers deadly, so black from death repeat

Three stabbing shrieks, blood flows, a creek

My life, my love, my blood encapsulated in glass

Haunting memories of biology class

No value in life, guilty and insane

From nothing to gain, now forever in pain

What was my thought, so unrealistic

For the love of a woman I became a statistic

Sacrifice my beliefs, selfish our needs

Now before God my sinning heart bleeds

No road or path can lead my soul back

A beautiful life the earth does now lack

Mind consumed with grief, blinding confusion

Tears welling deep

My strength an illusion

No forgiveness. Opportunities lost

For the ultimate sin I will pay the almighty cost.

My heart cold and dead, soul dark as night

She would be alive had I only engaged in the fight

blinded by love

so selfish was I..tortured, delivered, I cry

Aryeana goodbye

Privacy 2.0 - The price of knowing everything

     In recent years the media has given a lot of attention to the pitfalls of mass data collection of Americans and even though it has exploded with the emergence of new channels and technological advances, private companies have been compiling data on our society for decades. Since the dawn of the electronic age, information about our interactions within society have been recorded. Items such as billing paying, significant purchases, biographical information and seemingly meaningless data that could paint detailed sketch of any American's existence. The difference in today's society is the sketch has morphed into a 3-dimensional virtual reality clone. Whether you choose to accept data mining and giving up any false sense of security you may have, depends on if the information gathered about the rest of America has become personally important to you.
      It is too late to late to be dated by my posts so I would like to describe a time when such compiled information had a direct impact on my life. I grew up without my biological father around. He left just after I was born and only being able to hear one side of the story, I always longed for some way to discover the truth. Well a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away the internet was an infant and the only avenue for normal Americans to access it was through a dial-up connection and a single web browser application delivered free to everyone's mailbox by AOL. Although extremely slow, it offered several categories of database information that could be searched with ease. It was mostly for entertainment, or shopping, but a single category became very useful in finding information about my long lost father. It was called People Finder, an expansion of the old white pages model the phone company had already used for decades. This went a step further and gave users the ability to match people with their known age, full documented names and known geographical locations based on bills paid to government services. It was a noisy, squeaky connection, but suddenly it was remarkably unchallenging to locate any person in the nation with a few data points and a little persistence. Within hours I was able to end an 18 year long search for answers and finally hear the other side of story. We never became close, but at least I had my answers.
     Fast forward 15 years, and once again I had a personal need to seek out my biological father. I had  become a parent and my son was curious about his heritage and  I thought it might be a good idea to track down "grandpa" again. This search took only seconds using a online website called Spokeo.com. It is hauntingly disturbing how much this company has compiled on basically anyone that has every interacted with society in any small way. Bills you have paid, known associates and finally members, every address you have ever paid a bill at , every employer or business deal recorded and most recently, the addition of Google street view photos and interactive maps to your most recent residence. A whole new era of digital stalking has suddenly given me the ability to basically look inside his living room window in Clearwater, Florida and all from my cell. Even though he is not a member of Facebook, Twitter, or any of the current media platforms, he has still been tracked for decades, and thankfully, I was able to get closure because of it.

    Complete privacy may sound like a like a great idea, but it is an impossible goal to achieve in a technological society and only works so long as you don't need access to information on anyone else or want to be a member of our social universe. There is hardly a place left on earth you can truly go off grid and live data point free as long as any need to connect exists. I read an article recently that said even Mark Zuckerberg takes steps to control his privacy. Apparently, he takes the simply act of putting tape over his laptop webcam to help mitigate the threat of hackers attempting to gain visual access his keystrokes or personal life, I would have thought one of the most powerful members of  the digital universe would be impervious to any privacy concerns with an army of employees to invent any digital protections he could fathom. However, as evidenced by the recent hacking of his personal Twitter account, not a single person using the web can live in an unbreakable bubble of security. All we can do is limit the amount of information flow. The moment we choose to connect and be a part of our digital culture, we sacrifice our rights to prevent any information redirect.

On the media - Class in America

 This has been election season full of surprises and every day I wake wondering just what is going to happen next. Many political pundits have commented on the rise of Trump and have taken the position that he is a  candidate like we have never seen before. I admit that he does have a unique style and look. I honestly thought he wouldn't make it a month with all the jokes about that amazingly freaky haircut. However, his tactics are something we have seen before in the history of politics and can be successful. He has tapped in to an electorate of disaffected people, working class, "white trash," and as author Nancy Isenberg points out, the poorest of Americans.
    Love him or hate him, he conquered the entire GOP field in less than a year by going with his gut instincts and somehow gaining the ear and attention of many in our society that make it function. He has reached the factory workers, farmers, air conditioning installers and the steel workers that constructed the buildings we attend class in every day. He made a deliberate choice to abandon the language of a privileged elitist  who golf's at Doral or has their name plastered in gold and adopted a tone that has resonated with the very people who built all he owns.
    My best friend and his wife have never voted in an election. In fact, I am often the one that brings up current events because the news has never been there thing. It was almost like pulling teeth to try and get them a satellite box, but this year, both are somehow keenly aware of the candidates on the news and are avid supporters of  Trump. His reasoning may seem shocking to a political scholar. It is not based on his policies, plans, or economic position, but it is simply because as he puts it, "Trump sounds like me."
    There is no denying the power of this kind of rhetoric as can be seen in the photo above. If you are a Trump supporter, you are completely in love with him. Some have likened his rise to a revolution and like the early colonists sent to our country as disposable workers hundreds of years before, it can be the lowest class that have immense power to rally against the system. The winner this November will be the candidate that convinces voters they have stripped off class and are in fact one of the people. Whether it is true or not.
   

On the media - The challenge of fighting terrorism online

     What does a terrorist look like? Is it the person standing right next to me or someone just down the block? Do they have a specific skin color, income level, mannerism or style in how they dress? Honestly, I wouldn't have a clue and not being able to identify the enemy is one of the biggest challenges in the global fight against radical extremism.

    Since the horrific tragedy in Orlando this past weekend, people are crying out all over the nation, asking again how this could have happened and what signs are we not fixating on enough. Just in class yesterday we were discussing the use of social media to promote terrorist activities and unfortunately, they have found a new way to step up the game. A few weeks ago, Facebook began implementing the use of live video events as part of a new interaction plan with users. At first it seemed like a harmless fun way to include family and friends in current events. My first thought was to use it for weddings when your family is far away on a  Hawaiian beach, but a terrorist has just used the service to broadcast a live murder of a couple in Paris. It seems crazy to me a person can be radicalized enough to get to this level of atrocity on Facebook's service and hadn't already been flagged as a person of severe interest and been constantly surveyed to prevent any actions.

     In this weeks podcast, the discussion was raised again whether a computer algorithm could be specifically tailored to identify potential suspects and give authorities a helping hand in the global fight. It would need to identify risk factors in people and signal in on key words to see if someone is intending on creating destruction or pursuing another terrorist act. Perhaps, if we could find out people's tendencies, we could seek to get them professional help or even push media that might sway their direction in life. Even Hillary Clinton has called for industries in Silicon Valley to step up and come up with a feasible method to collect data points and utilize the material. But as far as we know, the government has yet to implement such a procedure.

     Not everyone agrees that simply identifying a person's interest in materials or online propaganda is an automatic red flag for a person to commit destruction. John Horgan, professor of psychology at Georgia State University, said just because a person has radical views, does not mean they always have the intent to act. He made some interesting comparisons to terrorist groups of the past and one in particular, the I.R.A., is a good example of a very large group, with only a small segment of violent psychotics willing to inflict pain and mass damage. Many in the southern Ireland share the anger, and the distrust of their British neighbors to the North. In fact, you may hear them wailing about the injustices in song at the local pub, especially in the wee hours, but only a select few feel destruction is the path toward reaching their goals. The question remains whether investigating online patterns or social media use can provide the answers the government needs to keep us safe. As someone whose Facebook feed is hardly representative of the things  I actually do or am willing to try, I would have to disagree that you can find my intent from simply what I post or engage in. Sometimes I just re-post things only to inspire a reaction or get someone's goat. If we are really serious about identifying the threat, I think the answer will be found in our local communities. Using our eyes, ears and the courage to call someone out when we realize suspicious activities.

Learning 2.0 - Education in the digital age

         The learning revolution must begin now if we are to successfully adapt to the digital age, according to Sir Ken Robinson, English author and education advisor. As I began researching what it means to be educated in this new era I came across this brilliant TED talk that discusses several issues with the modern paradigm for learning across the globe. 

    I wanted to share this talk because Robinson is a fabulous public speaker and he lays out his case against the system with a quick wit and intelligence that was fun to watch. He said we need a revolution in current education that separates people from their talents and shuffles them into a line of conformity and linear learning that is creating a great mass in the public unable to think for themselves.

     As I inch closer to graduation, I have been thinking a lot about what I have accomplished and learned during my time at Dixie. My journey started 26 years ago and although we have moved to a digital age, many of the classes I have taken have been the same package with a different bow. Read, memorize, test, repeat...read, memorize, test, repeat and on and on. I have led my college career as what many would call a GPA chaser and have done well, but as each semester finished, I often said what the heck did I learn. I would spend endless hours studying and cramming for a full schedule of exams only to overload my brain and actually not learn much at all. The best classes have always been those that pushed me towards critical thinking and seeking out my own answers and solutions. The textbook has been my greatest enemy and after purchasing and carrying hundreds of pounds of pages for decades, I can barely remember a word.

     Human beings are so different they need individual opportunities to experience and to be challenged. Whether it is developing personalized lesson plans for the region we live in, or embracing the advances in technology and disposing of the standard methods of learning that have demonstrated little success. Robinson made a great point that we need to go from an industrial model of teaching to an agricultural model. A shift from the one size fits all to a unique environment, like on a farm, that simply creates the conditions for the product to flourish and lets nature go to work. He said we do not need an evolution of our system, we need a revolution and like any major change in our past, the process will undoubtedly be a little painful. However, it is necessary to challenge the status quo, or we shall end up with a new generation of students wondering why going to class makes any sense.

     The current system of public education has not worked in many ways and  I have been a good example of why. High school was a troubling time in education for me. My mind has never worked along normal patterns and I had difficulty adapting to standard methods of teaching at Sacramento High School. Math was absolutely my worst subject. I earned a D in freshman algebra, an F in sophomore geometry and summed up my junior year with another F in Algebra II. It was a tale of two students on my transcript with straight A's in television, theater arts, marching band and English and constant failing grades in math and science classes. I just couldn't get excited and interested in classes that folded me into a box and ordered to conform. It was all about the testing and it made no sense and eventually drove me to graduate a year early. After that I lived under the assumption I was just stupid for math and even my Dixie Act scores reflected as much. I received 99 in English, 97 in reading and not surprising, a 67 in math studies. 

    I avoided math classes for years and when it finally came time for finish up my degree I found the method of teaching had transformed  again to  the digital age and everyone's campus favorite Mathlab computer programs. Once again I felt like a deer in headlights, struggling even to make sense of the first week of lessons, but unlike high school, I didn't have the choice to bail out and still get my diploma. I had to make it work and while many in the class saw the disadvantage of computer assisted learning and testing, I  used it as a rallying cry to figure things out for myself. It was sites like Youtube and peer run blogs that saved my chances and gave me the opportunity to seek out learning on my own.  Instead of accepting the reality promoted by educators that I didn't have a chance to understand, I located the resources on my own that worked and ended up with my first A ever for a math class. I then repeated the same for my science classes, standardized testing scores be damned. Sugata Mitra's method to learning of introducing the subject and letting the students explore and figure out what each means would have been my saving grace in younger years. These are the classes where I have found success and also left feeling like my mind has been challenged and actually became a better person. Last summer I was lucky enough to take a class from Jennifer Kohler called Voice and Civility in Public Discourse that similar to this class, was a good example of making you think for yourself. Each week had a couple of topics and it was up to the students to experience and bring information to the learning pool. It was a massive amount of work to consume everyone's ideas, but I  left feeling I had accomplished something and learned more than I could have expected. This is the future of education. Instead of an instructor barking out education from the front of a room or a computer screen to a herd of sheep, a working co-operative where teachers, students and peers work together to better our minds. Not every student can be a cog in the machine and the sooner America grasps this concept, the better chances we have to develop programs that work.