I just completed reading the book "Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way we Work and Live" by Jeff Jarvis. The book is about how being open and public with our information responsibly and not rushing to keep ourselves private all the time benefits ourselves and everyone around us. He talks about the history of the issue and how society's views and apporach to privacy and how much is acceptable has changed over the years. He also goes into detail about the line between publicness and privateness and how one should try to decide how far on either side one should be, especially with media platforms like the Internet. He also talks about how institutions like Governments and Private Industries should be more open and public with the masses, not so to gain information but to build relationships with the people so in the long-term, products and services offered will be better and more productive to all.
I wrote this on my Google Plus page when I was about halfway through the book and I think it's the best way to describe how I feel about it.
"More than halfway through +Jeff Jarvis new book "Public Parts". The book reinforces the age old phrase "honesty=best policy" holds true. It's a fascinating book and really makes me look at how open and honest I am with myself and others.
If you have interest in the debate on privacy, I'd highly suggest you read it. The book has a ton of information and this should be the rule book that social media/internet users should follow.
Amazing praise since I'm not done, but that's how good what I have read has been"
Funny thing is this past weekend I found out how building releationships makes doing business with people better and compells me to want to go back to them. After moving my girlfriend into her new apartment, I took my two friends to a cigar shop by her place to say thanks for helping out. We go to the cigar shop, purchase some cigars, and sat in the lounge of the cigar shop to enjoy our just purchased cigars. While we were smoking them, we struck p a conversation with the owner, and spoke about many different subjects. We spoke about sports, politics, some philosophies about life, and we found out the place where the store gets its cigars is not far from where one of my friends grew up in the Dominican Republic. After some time, the owner got up, went into the walk-in humador, and gave us a free cigar-just for being good conversation. After we were all done, we left and the owner was very nice and has made myself and my friends feel like we should go back more to do business with his store.
I use this story because I have been in many businesses where I felt like I was not wanted there, and therefore I choose not to go back. Some places close themselves off to the customer and just want to the least to get the deal. I am not asking for all businesses to kiss my feet or the ground I walk on, but try to build a relationship with me to make me want to spend my money at your business.
One other thing I wanted to write about is an awesome event that took plae over the weekend and raised over $50,000 for charity. The Tech website Tested.com did a 24 hour internet video and audio broadcast to raise money for the organization Child's Play. First, let me praise Tested.com. This is a site I've been going to sine it started. It's a site whos philosophy is to report on technology news and events in a way so the common person can understand and see how it will affect their lives. Their staff writes stories with this principle in mind, and I usually go to this site first to get any tech news. This site sometimes helps me understand what's going on with tech news, even though I know quite a bit about technology. Tested does a weekly podcast called "This is Only A Test", where the two main editors, Will Smith and Norman Chan, and former PC Gamer Editor and "The book of Eli" Screenplay writer Gary Whitta talk about tech and sometimes aspects of their lives. These three came up with the idea of a 24 hour podcast, streamed live, to raise money for charity. The charity they chose is called Child's Play.
Child's Play is an orgnization based in Seattle that does an amazing service. With the help from hospitals around the world, they get toys for kids with serious medical conditions to play with when they are in the hospital. Kids with cancer generally have compromised immune systems that means they can't play with just any toy for fear of getting sick. What Child's Play does is they give kids new toys to play with, sometimes handheld games like Nintendo DSs or any toy to keep the kids happy dueing the Hell they must be ging through. When you hear about organizations like this, I defy you to say you don't shed a tear and you don't feel like this is an amazing organization.
So The people at Tested.com did this event, and had many different guests on throughout the 24 hours they were broadcasting. As I said in the end, they raised over $50,000 and every cent goes to this organization that helps kids. It's funny how many complain that video games hurt the children in this world, yet there is a group of people out there using video games to help children with the healing process from disease.