Lessons From the Lemonade Stand

Lemonade stands are a great way for kids to make a little bit of cash on the side, have some fun with the neighbors, and stay out of your hair for the afternoon. There’s nothing like building the entrepreneurial spirit when they’re young. So, what can we learn from our kids? Rhonda Abrams has some ideas.

You’ve Been Left Behind

You know, after I wrote this flowery message last week defending Christian business owners, some knucklehead had to prove me wrong. From various pages on their web site:

You’ve Been Left Behind gives you one last opportunity to reach your lost family and friends For Christ. Imagine being in the presence of the Lord and hearing all of heaven rejoice over the salvation of your loved ones. It is our prayer that this site makes it happen.

We all have family and friends who have failed to receive the Good News of the Gospel. The unsaved will be ‘left behind’ on earth to go through the “tribulation period” after the “Rapture”. You remember how, for a short time, after (9/11/01) people were open to spiritual things and answers. (We are still singing “God Bless America” at baseball’s seventh inning stretch.) Imagine how taken back they will be by the millions of missing Christians and devastation at the rapture. They will know it was true and that they have blown it. There will be a small window of time where they might be reached for the Kingdom of God.

We have made it possible for you to send them a letter of love and a plea to receive Christ one last time. You can also send information based on scripture as to what will happen next. Each fulfilled prophecy will cause your letter and plea to be remembered and a decision to be made. “WHY” is one last chance to bring them to Christ and snatch them from the flames!

We have set up a system to send documents by the email, to the addresses you provide, 6 days after the “Rapture” of the Church. This occurs when 3 of our 5 team members scattered around the U.S fail to log in over a 3 day period. Another 3 days are given to fail safe any false triggering of the system.

How NOT to Witness Through Your Business

In previous posts, I’ve discussed how Chick-Fil-A and other businesses use their Christian faith to draw in customers. After all, a good testimony as a trusted servant is a good reputation to have in business.

However, here are four different accounts about how a car dealership in California advertised on the radio to non-Christians: they told non-Christians to “sit down and shut up.”

Lessons of the Fall

One of the aspects that we haven’t discussed as much in class are the functional reasons for communication. In this article from Fortune magazine, the former CEOs of JetBlue, Starbucks, and Motorola explain how the lack of communication was instrumental to them becoming unemployed.

David Neeleman (formerly of JetBlue Airlines): I didn’t have time to update the board on everything. If you don’t, somebody else will. You have to be able to give them an accurate picture of what’s going on, or they develop their own perceptions and start creating their own stories. And then they make their decisions. How do you keep these people up to date and give them the whole picture? That’s the job of the CEO, and I failed.

Jim Donald (formerly of Starbucks): I made it a habit of every other week updating the board through an e-mail on revenue, any store openings, any issues around the world.

Neeleman: When things start going south, communication should increase. Even if you think you’re doing enough, you’re not doing enough. I didn’t do a good enough job because [board members] developed their own perceptions of where things were headed.

It’s an interesting read, both from a communications perspective and from a management perspective.

Keep It Stupidly Simple

As you all begin preparing for your final team presentations next week, I thought this slide show might be helpful to you. There are probably 10,000 people on the internet with their own ideas of how to put together a PowerPoint presentation, but this is one of the few I have found that integrates the delivery and communication aspects of the presentation equally with the technological aspects.

COM 115 - Workshop 3 Postscript

Again, I was very pleased with the quality of speeches last night. I saw improvement in everyone from the first night, and I thoroughly enjoy hearing about everyone’s interests and personal causes (whether everyone agrees with them or not). I think such diversity in the classroom environment keeps things interesting, and there were definitely some lively Q&A sessions after many of our speeches. I’m looking forward to the personal aspects you will each bring to this week’s Faith Integration papers and speeches.

Next week, I’m looking for some specific feedback related to the team teaching assignments. I’ve been collecting some of your feedback so far to pass along to the school along with my personal feedback, and you will have the chance to share it again in your end-of-course surveys. Please think about the last two weeks of class over the coming week so you will be able to answer the questions. I have a feeling I already know the answers, but I don’t want to second guess anyone.

Below is the PowerPoint that I use for the reading assignments for Workshop 3. Again, because last night was a team teaching event, you didn’t see these, but these are what I feel are the core concepts that are essential to get out of the reading. Hopefully, we will have time in the next two weeks to follow up where necessary.

The Dangers of Driving After GTA

One of the mass media that I think your textbook ignores is video gaming. In terms of revenue generated, video game hardware and software is a multi-billion dollar industry that stands right up there with the motion picture and television entertainment industries. It fits as one of the mass media by definition, because the software is the same no matter where it is purchased geographically, and it is meant to be consumed by a large, diverse audience. In fact, on the subject, DVDs and video downloads would also fit into this category.

When the video game Grand Theft Auto IV was released earlier this month, there were concerns that it would actually cut into movie revenues of the key male 18-29 demographic, because players would stay at home to play the game. This mirrors the same concerns over lost work productivity when other video game releases such as the Halo and Madden NFL franchises coincided with “sick days”. The game ended up generating $310 million of revenue in first-day sales and $500 million in first-week sales. The link has some other interesting details about the game.

As a communication medium, gamers can go online via the internet and play a character in a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) or create a virtual character to live in a virtual world such as Second Life. If you’re unfamiliar with either of those terms, Google them or ask your kids. Either they or their friends are probably playing them. People befriend other players through the game, communicate with each other, go out on missions together, or in the case of Second Life, open businesses and engage in transactions together.

There are also negative arguments against the violence and morals of some of these games and how they influence children. The industry uses a ratings system, but it is not always enforced and parents that buy the games don’t always pay attention. So, video games often come under the same scrutiny as television violence, and perhaps even more so, because in violent video games you feel like you are actually engaging in some of those activities. Here is an interesting excerpt from a blog on Wired.com:

Networking Challenges

The purpose of this article is geared more towards salespeople and how to communicate with sales prospects in a way to earn their trust, befriend them, and eventually earn a sale. However, there are many aspects of the article that apply to the discussions of interpersonal communication in your textbook.

Communication Key to Harmonious Workplace

On the surface, you might look at this story and think, “Well, duh!” However, as we shift our attention this week to organizational communication, there are some interesting ideas we can draw from this article about how communication affects more than just our personal relationships.

COM 115 - Workshop 2 Postscript

There were a lot of great speeches and great speakers last night during class. I always enjoy the informative speeches because we learn a little bit about everyone in class, their interests, and their experiences. I’m looking forward to your speeches this week and next. I’m hoping everyone is able to make some improvement based on the class feedback from last week, and I’m hoping that everyone will be able to stretch their speaking abilities a bit this week.

Below is the PowerPoint that I use for the reading assignments for Workshop 2. Of course, last night was a team teaching event, so you didn’t see these, but there are some points here that I would like to reiterate in Workshop 4, and we’ll have some activities to reinforce the concepts.