final, finalization, finality, finance...

This is it!  My final post (*sniff*)!  I've organized this approximately according to the expected learning outcomes, which I have given as headings.  Not everything fits perfectly beneath its heading, and sometimes if a post matches two heading I only link to it once, but I think it will be close enough for jazz, as they say.

History, Concepts

Free

A few examples of a few different kinds of free.  Related to the business chapter of the ebook, but I wasn't able to transition into these examples smoothly.

Jell-O--have you ever looked at how Jell-O is made?  Where gelatin actually comes from?  It's quite gross.

Invitations and invitees

And here's my own little foray into the adventure of inviting people.

First, I posted the flier to my facebook timeline and invited everyone there to watch the live stream online.  Then I started individually talking to people.  I did invite ten people (and then a few more), and a few of the more interesting ones are posted below:

Authors, Authority and Authenticity (but mostly the first two)

This is a short reflective post about this class, and not my final reflective post.  I've been working on this for a few weeks and just realized I never posted it.

One thing that has bothered me for a long time about schools and education is the way that we are encouraged to think for ourselves, and then denied the opportunity.  We are taught, not to synthesize, but to summarize.  I'm sure most of us have been in classes where we were supposed to research an assigned topic, then take quotes and ideas from "real" authors (sometimes we are even told what authors to use), summarize them on paper, and turn in our own work*.

The Fall of Modern Institutions?

I have a flair for the dramatic, or had you noticed?

Clay Shirky, in his book, makes some very bold statements, which I have recorded below.  This might be it for our modern institutions and businesses...well, maybe.

Annotated...videography?

So, this is mostly for the business group, but if anybody else is interested in business-related videos and TED talks, you might find this interesting, too. I'll make this public for anyone interested, just in case. Here are a couple of Ted talks and other videos on business I've been looking at.

I don't know everyone else's content as well as my own, so I'm going to need your help.  Do you want something like what you see below, just a brief clip of somebody talking about such and such a part of business?  Or do you want something more like the video we saw in class of the man using the internet to help people in his village in Africa?   I'm pretty confident I can find things, but it will be a lot easier if I have more direction.

This link connects to about a hundred ted talks on the subject of 'something other than business as usual'; if you just browse and read the titles, you might find something that you like or that is related to your topic.  For example, I found this video; the section from 1:10 to 1:35 and especially the bit from 11:30 to 12:10 are great for my section of the chapter.  He discusses the key concepts of 'free', which is exactly what I'm writing about.  Also, this shorter video, by the same speaker is interesting, especially the part after 2:15 where he talks about people giving content away and discusses the ideas of non-monetary economies.

So, that's the best of what I have, right now.  Is this what we're looking for?  Do you have things you'd like to suggest?  I'm absolutely open to suggestions.

The Changing Business Landscape: An Annotated Bibliography

Further Reading:

·

  Shirky, Clay. (Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.  Penguin Group, 2009).  Discussion with useful examples of important social changes being caused by advancing technology.  It deals especially with the enhanced opportunity to cooperate and collaborate created by the internet via such means as crowdsourcing.  [I was assigned to read this book for class]

·

  Chris Anderson. (Free: The Future of a Radical Price, Hyperion Publishing, 2009).  Discusses the history, present reality, and future of free business models.  It is based in economic theories and evidence, but is still written in clear, easy language.  Free also discusses the idea of a new industrial revolution.  [This book was recommended to me by Professor Burton, and I have also run into it several times in the bibliographies of business articles I’ve been reading]

·

  Charles Wheelan. (Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science, Norton Publishing, 2010).  In the introduction and the first chapter, he gives some very good examples of businesses that have successfully used ‘free’ campaigns in the past.  Throughout the book, he also gives a good background of economic principles, many of which are implied in the text of the business chapter. [I read this for an economics class last year.  When I saw it cited in a different book, it motivated me to pull it off the shelf and dive into it again.

·

  David J. Bryce, Jeffrey H. Dyer, and Nile W. Hatch. (Competing Against Free.  Harvard Business Review, June 2011).  An interesting article that gives credit to Chris Anderson’s Free, by presenting the business plans necessary to combat competitors using free tools or business models.  It makes and supports the claim that “sooner or later, every business must learn to compete against, become, or work with free business models.” [Found while I was researching anti-free literature; I wanted to make sure I heard both sides of the issue and stumbled across this article.]

Thought Leaders:

·

    Muhammed Yunus (http://www.muhammadyunus.org/). Muhammed is an exceptionally well-known Bangladeshi business leader who received the Nobel Prize in 2006 for his work in setting up his microcredit bank to improve the Bangladeshi way of lifestyle.  He is also a noted economist, and seems very open to discussing ideas.  [Mr. Yunus is a great example of how businesspeople can accomplish amazing things for the social good, and happens to be specifically noted in one of the examples we brought out in our chapter (i.e. microloans)]

· 

J Jay Baer (<co-author with Amber Naslund> The Now Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter and More Social. Wiley Publishing, 2010).  Jay Baer is a marketing consultant, speaker, and author, who focuses primarily on social media strategy.  He is naturally very active on various social media, so he would be easy to contact to discuss ideas.  [Found using a google+ search to find conversations I could join].

·

  Denise Wakeman (http://www.buildabetterblog.com/).  Denise is a business professional who maintains several blogs giving instruction about how to effectively incorporate blogs into a business strategy.  Professionally, she also advises businesses on how to make themselves more visible to the public via social media and other internet sources.  She is very active on several social media websites, so it would relatively easy to contact her, as well. [Found while searching for business blogs on which I could comment.]