Daniel Johnson, Jr.

I’m teaching a class on Interpersonal Communications this term at Antonelli College. It’s designed to reinforce and expand interpersonal communication as it relates to having a successful business in the world today. The context for the course encompasses psychological, relational, situational, environmental, and cultural communication. We’re learning how interactions and reactions have a direct connection in the professional setting.

The communications junkie in me LOVES this class!

I really love the textbook, which we got from Cengage, called IPC.

Interpersonal Communications Series

Each week I assign a journal entry on something related to what we’ve discussed in class. Originally, I was going to require that students email me their journal entry. After talking about it with my peers, I decided not to require them to email me their entry because it may lead to them not being as open and vulnerable in what they write. All I do is have them show that they did it, and they get credit for the work.

I’m doing the assignments, too. But I’m going to post mine to this blog in an Interpersonal Communications series. I invite you to join in the discussion, if you’d like.

Week 1

With whom do you communicate best and worst in a one-on-one situation? Why?

In one-on-one situations, I tend to communicate best with those whom I naturally feel close to. We already have some type of history together and can build on our shared field of experience. When it’s hard to find that shared field of experience with someone, I find it harder to communicate with them.

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It was January 2002. I had some down time on a project at work and was given permission to do some outside stuff. So I signed up and started my first blog, entitled Journey Inside My Mind. I later spun that blog off to a few more niche sites; among them were QuotesBlog and Get That Job!

I’ve launched other blogs and have put several up on the shelf over the years. I migrated many of my sites from Blogger’s Blogspot platform to WordPress.

One thing I’ve noticed in myself and others, especially as sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus have become more popular, is that we’re not blogging as much as we might have in earlier times.

I don’t think this is entirely a good thing. No, not at all.

Why aren’t you blogging more?

I cannot speak for you, so I’ll speak for myself.

Feedback-loop-general (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As a blogger one thing I’ve always craved is feedback from others. Even when I was podcasting much more frequently some years ago. We always wanted to know that what we created wasn’t sent out into some void that no one paid attention to. Social networking sites provide that feedback, even if it is only a Like, a Reply, a Retweet, a +1 or something else. My circle of connections is defined, and they more readily know when I’ve done something on those platforms. So it’s easy to post there.

But a question like the one posed in this post begs another: why blog at all?

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Let’s get this out of the way:

Lock your doors via vshioshvii from Flickr

I have not, nor will I ever give my social networking credentials to a prospective employer. What I have already made public is good enough.

If you’re looking to hire me and one of the conditions of employment are that I hand over my login credentials to Facebook, Google Plus, LinkedIn, or any other social media platform, then we’re not a good fit for one another. That may mean that, all other things being equal, we’re both missing out on doing some great work together.

If people don’t buy what you do – they buy why you do it, then what does the practice of asking potential employees for their Facebook passwords say about why you do what you do? No, in this case your WHY and mine do not align, and we’re not going to work together.

Unless. Read the rest of this entry »

Do you have a PIMP list? I do.

Asking this question raises a number of eyebrows, because of what we often think of when we see the word PIMP. It doesn’t mean what you think it might (or maybe it does?).

For a few years now, I’ve occasionally mentioned on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere that I have a PIMP list. Some have seen themselves on my Facebook PIMP list and have wondered if that’s a good thing or not. I’ve needed to write a blog post to explain what it is.

This is that blog post. (Finally!)
Read the rest of this entry »

What does jazz have anything to do with social media, digital marketing, and helping stories get told, you ask?

Improvisation.

Improvisation (or The time of a note...) (Photo credit: ePi.Longo)

Consider these quotations I borrowed from Lukasz Langa‘s DailyImprov.net:

In 1968 I ran into Steve Lacy on the street in Rome. I took out my pocket tape recorder and asked him to describe in fifteen seconds the difference between composition and improvisation. He answered: “In fifteen seconds the difference between composition and improvisation is that in composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in fifteen seconds, while in improvisation you have fifteen seconds.” His answer lasted exactly fifteen seconds. – Frederic Rzewski

Even if you’re improvising, the fact that beforehand you know certain things will work helps you make those improvisations successful. It really helps to have a certain amount of knowledge about musical structure. — John Cale

Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails, but that’s what we face when we’re dealing with improvisation. — Jan Garbarek

Story

A couple weeks’ ago I’m on a project helping with sound and media for a church function. I’d heard that there was a video the team would want played. Not a problem, I’m thinking. What typically happens is that we get the video burned onto a DVD or some other media. It’s easy to bring it right into the MediaSHOUT software we use. Read the rest of this entry »