Social Commentary

The video in this post is very graphic in nature. It is not recommended for those with heart conditions or weak stomachs. It definitely is NOT a video for children, and probably is not safe for work… although I think that some work places should require its viewing like taxi companies, UPS, FedEx, and Public Safety Agencies

Today starts the beginning of another holiday weekend. I’m sure some of you will be traveling, if you haven’t started to already, and there are others of you who will be working to ensure the safety of those who are traveling. I saw this video first on Facebook, and I felt the imagery was so powerful that I want to share it here as a reminder that your life can change in an instant because of impatience or inattention…

So now that you’ve seen the trainwreck… have a happy and safe holiday weekend!

I was lucky enough to spend the previous three days in the green mountain state of Vermont. While there, I went to McDonald’s for an ice coffee because in Vermont Dunkin’ Donuts closes at 8:00pm. While drinking my ice coffee and perusing Twitter and the web from my Droid these are the things that I pondered:

• Mark Glencourse has retired his blog.

  Prematurely.

  Technically against his will.

  Yet, I can find no fault in his decisions because he is doing it for the right reasons.

  As Mark describes, there are those in his service who are waiting for him to “trip up” in his blogging so that they can negatively impact his ability to provide for his family. Mark cannot, and for that matter should not, continue blogging if it causes him to live in fear.

  I’m not going to sugar coat it… I was (and to a large degree still am) downright pissed that this is still going on, and said so in the comment I left. Bloggers have been persecuted from the get go by the established status quo and it is still going on. There are of course a number of reasons this happens:

  For some it is jealousy because they buy into the myth that if one blogger can live off their blog, then all bloggers can. Now I know that while Mark may have had ads on his blog, I also happen to know that any payments to him would have been in US dollars which has about a 0.66 exchange rate with the GBP… so I highly doubt he was able to make much, if any, money off of it.

  For some it is the dark twisted sense of satisfaction by being able to destroy what someone else has created. Usually jealousy plays a role in this as well but that’s really neither here nor there.

  And for some it is fear that has grown out of ignorance about Social Media as a whole. This is the exact kind of ignorance that Greg Friese and I have attempted to combat at PIOSocialMediaTraining.com. Unfortunately, we obviously haven’t been able to reach those most in need.

  While it has become a recurring theme for administrators and officers to point to the video from the South Carolina Firefighter and the Facebook photos from the NYC EMT, I think it’s important to note that Mark adhered to the Healthcare Blogger Code of Ethics, and I have never read anything that in the slightest may have been inappropriate or violated that code.

  A quick glance at the comments shows that Mark has undoubtedly served as an inspiration to those who are EMS providers and those who are not. To those who are in his native England and to those who are not. The ability to inspire, empower, and to affect someone else’s life for the better is the true pure goal of Social Media.

  Mark has definitely achieved that goal.

  I for one will be leaving the light on in the feedreader for him… and I encourage you to do the same.

• McDonald’s ice coffee really is a sad substitute for Dunkin’ Donuts

That’s really all I had time for this week. I hope you enjoy your weekend.

Here are some things I noticed/pondered/thought about while drinking my some home brewed ice coffee last night:

• How loud is too loud? An ambulance siren is 120 decibels and the Vuvuzela is 130+ decibels. So obviously I need to get those installed ASAP
• So this oil spill in the Gulf is still going on now that we’re in what, Day 60? I know that as a first responder there is a certain amount of my time spent on live practices for “the big one”. Of course, over the years these types of practices have been cut back in favor of more economically viable table top exercises. Apparently BP did the same thing…

… which of course makes me wonder about the whole effectiveness of those tabletops because ours always seems to end with the good guys winning



• After today I actually have two weeks off from my full time job. Of course, it’s not like I’m really going anywhere, and I’m still technically working during that time but in a different division. One of the things that is on my to do list is to visit some of the city parks with my camera because I really have just not had the time to take the photographs I’ve wanted to and so I may as well take this opportunity to go some places and try to do that so I can have some new things for my photoblog
• Wordpress 3.0 was finally released yesterday! I had been playing around with an RC3 on a separate installation for awhile, but there’s just nothing like the real thing. So now I’ve had this idea bouncing around in my head for awhile, and I pretty much told myself after EMS Week that I was going to make a run at it but needed certain features , and now that WP 3.0 is out it’s time to put some work into turning the idea into a reality. Of course I haven’t updated this site yet, but if it happens to wink out for a bit don’t worry… it’ll be back… eventually

Have a great weekend!

Here are some things I noticed/pondered/thought about while drinking my Goji Berry Cherry Slurpee last night:

• Rogue Medic was interviewed over at The Tactical Pants Blog and in the interview he was kind enough to give me a nod regarding how This Job Is Not About Helping People, while at the same time saying that is why he does what he does. Which makes me wonder… what is blogging actually about? Do we blog to help others, to pontificate our viewpoints, to share and exchange ideas, or is it all of the above?



• I’ve really gotten into the whole 7-11/Zynga promotion… in fact I’ve already unlocked their “Uber Gifts“. So yeah, 200 Farmville Cash and 50 Mafia War Skill Points are mine… and I’m still trying to figure out what this whole YoVille thing is. My actual point in this ponderance is that for years the real world has been crossing into the virtual space, and finally now the virtual space is crossing into the real world. Of course this is either a sign of a bright future, or the end of times…



Image by nycwatchdog via Flickr

• Mondays aren’t my best days, but next week The Hard Rock Cafe is celebrating their birthday by offering Police, Fire, AND EMS their Legendary Burgers for $.71 in honor of their birth year. It’s not often that big corporations go out of their way to include EMS in these types of promotions, but when they do we should really show them our appreciation by participating. I’ll be showing my appreciation at this Hard Rock… I sure hope their one of the participating locations or I may have to wash some dishes to pay the bill



• One of the tools I use for blogging is called Zemanta. It’s a related content search service that automatically searches for related content and links based on the text that you write. It’s really easy to use for photos and links that you may not otherwise know about. Today I happened to see this little box where I would normally see Content Recommendations. Do you know why I’m seeing this box? Because I write all my blog posts in HTML mode and not with the visual WYSIWYG editor built into WordPress. So now that Zemanta is no longer supporting we dinosaurs of ye old HTML view, I can no longer support Zemanta and recommend them to people who are blogging or are going to be blogging. Why such a hard stance? Because as much as people might like to deny it… without HTML coding there would be no such thing as the World Wide Web which is what 99% of users actually utilize the Internet for. Considering this is a recent change because Zemanta was usable in HTML before, it’s a classic example of forgetting where you come from and I can’t support something like that.
• Speaking of WordPress, where’s WordPress 3.0? It’s past May and halfway into June and it still isn’t out yet! It’s enough to give me a sad

Have a good and safe weekend!

Here are some things I noticed/pondered/thought about while drinking my Jamba Juice Chocolate Moo’d yesterday:

§ This week is Hurricane Preparedness Week, and in its honor I’m using the Section ASCII code to accentuate the bullet points (again). Do you live in a Hurricane prone zone? If so, be sure to be prepared!



Image by nycwatchdog via Flickr

§ I don’t understand why people check into cabs on Foursquare. It’s not like those cabs are going to be where you hailed them day after day. It makes me wonder what’s next? Will people start checking into ambulances the same way? That might actually be useful information to see who the frequent fliers are as opposed to the rest of the population

§ Last weekend I went to a hibachi grill with some friends and saw the same knife and spatula spin act, grill on fire, egg in the air, and onion volcano put out by a peeing fireman as every other time I’ve gone to a hibachi grill. Even though the soup is good, the act is kind of old. Hibachi grill chefs need an innovator to change the dynamic up… and they need it soon

§ I think that if Brett Michaels had been up against Betty White on Celebrity Apprentice instead of Holly Robinson, Betty would have won. Just sayin’

§ The iPad became the dream device for aspiring authors and at the same time lost alot of its appeal for heavy duty users. I really hope Verizon or T-Mobile realize the mistake AT&T has made and will offer an affordable unlimited data plan alternative with the coming Android based tablets… and I really really hope they have a viable option for authors who want to e-publish independently

Have a safe weekend…

Here are some things I noticed/pondered/thought about while drinking my ice coffee this morning:

§ Next week is Hurricane Preparedness Week, and in its honor I’m using the Section ASCII code to accentuate the bullet points. If a hurricane does hit the southern region this year, is it going to make the Gulf of Mexico into an Oil Shake? That would be really really really bad

§ I don’t understand why people today think they can just take “time off without pay” and remain employed. It seems like a basic concept that you are employed because there is a need for your services. It’s frustrating when they don’t seem to understand the concept that they were hired to fulfill a need and just taking time off that has NOT been earned is NOT fulfilling that need and therefore is NOT acceptable, because otherwise why not just hire someone else? There’s a whole lot of NOTs in that sentence, but do you think I’ve made my point?

§ It appears that Farmville has infiltrated the real world from the digital one in the form of a 7-Eleven advertising campaign. Along with Zynga’s Mafia Wars and YoVille, the purchase of a Super Big Gulp will earn you both a souvenir cup and a special code for the game. 7-Eleven advertising campaigns don’t come cheap, so they must be making a truck ton of money

§ I think tonight I am going to celebrate my election as Captain of the Forest Hills Volunteer Ambulance Corps, and my partner’s election as 2nd Lieutenant, like it’s 1991 with a bacon and pineapple Domino’s pizza. I bet you didn’t know that I had invented the “Hawaiian Pizza” before Hawaii… but I did

§ I hate Mondays. I hate Tuesdays after a holiday weekend even more because it’s like Monday squared

Have a safe holiday weekend and be sure to remember why the holiday exists…

Related articles by Zemanta

• Zynga And 7-Eleven Strike Branding Deal, 10% Of The U.S. Now Playing FarmVille (techcrunch.com)
• Hurricane plus oil equals more problems (cnn.com)
• Hurricane Season: US Predicts Up To 7 Major Atlantic Hurricanes (huffingtonpost.com)

I think that I consume news a little bit differently than most others. Besides the usual activities of showering, shaving, and getting dressed, my morning routine includes updating the Podcasts on my iTunes and syncing my iPod. On the drive into work, I “listen” to podcasts of the news shows from the night before. My first “listen” of the day, and the one I tend to be the biggest fan of, is AC360 with Anderson Cooper and his co-anchor Erica Hill.

One of the things that separates CNN from the other professional news networks is their full on embrace of the power of Social Media. As a network they took on Ashton Kutcher to see who would reach a million followers on Twitter first, and although they lost their use of Social Media is prevalent in the majority of their shows. One of the things that AC360 does is a “Live Blog From The Anchor Desk” where I came across this doozy Friday night…

It’s bad enough that most e-mails have become devoid of capitalization and punctuation, but when I see a “journalist” post something like this which is representative of her abilities as a professional I cringe.

Literally.

The shift key is not that hard to hit and her lackadaisical approach to using correct grammar sends the wrong message. Correct grammar and spelling should be used in not only official reports or stories, but in all blog posts and comments as well. Failure to do so is not only lazy but indicates a level of incompetence in monitoring the quality of your own work.

So during the discussion about what’s appropriate on Facebook in the JEMS Connect Forum that I highlighted yesterday, there was this interesting posting:

Our Service Is Dealing With This Issue Now. Our New Policy Reads That You Can Not Identify Yourself As An Employee Nor Have Pictures Of Any Calls, Trucks, Etc…… Our Policy Is For All Online Networks Facebook, Myspace Etc….

Image via CrunchBase

As Far As Management Monitoring Our Public Safety Director Has A Facebook And My Training Officer Has A Myspace So If They See Infractions It Will Be Handled Per Policy, First Offense Verbal Warning, Second Offense Written Warning, Third Offense Can Be Up To Termination.

Really?

There are EMS Agencies that are so afraid of their own Patient Care Providers using Social Networks and creating Social Media that they have to enact a draconian policy such as this and follow it up with Gestapo tactics?

I wonder where they might have gotten this idea from…

Now I can understand parents going overboard with the monitoring… much to the chagrin I’m sure to their son… but how many EMS Agencies are protecting their Responders from The Tramp Named Jenny? For some reason, I think the answer to that question is none.

So EMS Chiefs, CEOs, Directors, Captains, Supervisors… do the right thing by your Responders… develop a Social Media Policy, educate them on the Social Media Do’s and Do Not’s for your agency, and above all remember you are probably funded in one way or another by the tax dollars of those who believe there should be liberty and freedom for all.

Do the right thing for yourself and learn how to use Social Media for your agency.

Come
As you are
As you were
As I want you to be
As a friend
As a friend
As a known memory

-Come As You Are, Nirvana 1992

I am, for lack of a better term, a product of the grunge era. I wore flannel, went to my first Lollapalooza in 1992, owned CDs that were considered “imports” from the far away land of Seattle, and I had the Grunge Samurai haircut of a ponytail topknot with a close shave around my head. While I no longer wear flannel, no longer listen to CDs, and haven’t paid for a concert since 1997… there are still two things that remain with me to this day from that era.

The first is the belief that you should always “Come As You Are“, which is a title of the second single off Nirvana’s album Nevermind. As the song implies, be as you are in real life. That should carry over from real life into your online life as well. Come as a friend and be memorable to those you interact with.

Sure we’ve all seen how Facebook Can Cost You Your Job, how free speech has consequences, and how photos can cause lawsuits. While these are things that we can control by using some simple common sense, we shouldn’t let fear of these issues change who we truly are and how we interact with others online.

Be as you are on Social Networks and in creating Social Media as you are in real life.

The second thing that remains with me from those days, as many of you may suspect, is the Grunge Samurai haircut.

Why mess with perfection?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Book Review: “Grunge Is Dead: The Oral History of Seattle Rock Music” (popdose.com)
• 15 Years Later: Reflections on Kurt Cobain & Nirvana (evolvor.com)
• Grunge documentarian to sign new book at Easy Street Records (westseattleherald.com)
• Not So Young, Still Fresh (seattleweekly.com)

Recently I’ve been doing alot of interviews for some vacancies I have at work. While there are legitimate employment opportunities available, some people just don’t understand the basics of what a potential employer is looking for in a candidate during an interview.

To be honest, it can really be quite frustrating at times. I’m not even talking about the industry specific things like knowing that you apply suction after inserting the pharangeal tip. I’m talking about candidates who apply to be an EMT but haven’t taken their state test yet because they want “early consideration”, candidates who check off that they can work weekends but can only work on Saturdays between 1600 and 1900, and candidates who will give you the exact same answer using different words to every question you ask them. That last one is a real pet peeve of mine, because it shows someone either as not knowledgeable or worse… listening comprehension challenged.

So here are a few tips on having a successful interview that are not exclusive to just the EMS field:

• Make sure you are actually qualified – If you apply for a job that requires a level of certification make sure that you have that actual certification. Irregardless of your scheduled test dates and whether it be EMT, EMD, or AEMT, if you don’t have the actual certification then you shouldn’t be filling out applications for positions that require them
• Convey changes on your application early – If something has changed on your application, such as your availability to work certain hours or certain days, be sure to tell the interviewer that before the interview. They may be bringing you in specifically for that reason, and if you can’t perform on that
• Show up on time or early – This is really your first test on punctuality… so if you show up late, well that’s going to raise the specter of tardiness as an employee
• Be prepared – Be ready with any certifications, licenses, or other documentation you may need. Also be ready mentally for an oral or written test and physically for a lifting or skills test

And the most important piece of advice I can give you…

• Actually answer the question asked – Listening comprehension is an important aspect for any candidate to have. If you display a lack of it during the interview, then your potential employer really has no reason to consider you for the job. Work the question back into your answer, and don’t be afraid to ask them to repeat it. As an interviewer I’ll penalize you for not answering the question, but will actually give you more points for asking it to be repeated provided you actually do answer it in the end

Following these tips will hopefully put you on the path for a good interview… because a good interview is the first step to a good job…