Web 2.0 Workshops Announced @ Berkshire Athenaeum

If you live in the Pittsfield, Massachusetts area, you may want to sign up for one of the Web 2.0 Workshops to be held October/November at the Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield's Public Library. All workshops are 1 hour long, free, and being held at a variety of times, days, evenings and Saturdays.

There will be workshops on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogs and Blogging (Create Your Own Blog), Google (search strategies), These will be hands-on workshops geared to getting you started on your web journey.

While each of these workshops has a business connection, Business Websites You Should Know About will provide you with strategic websites and support networks useful in starting and maintaining your business. Your marketing efforts can be enhanced by using LinkedIn (the business social networking site), development of your Blog, and by Twitter and Facebook. Social media increasingly is the means of getting the word out about your business and all these sites are Free. For nonprofit business the workshop, the Berkshire Funding Resource Center with it Foundation Center databases will be critical in finding seed money and critical contacts in Foundation networks.

Other workshops will focus on DoItYourself databases, where you can learn about all things automotive and home repair. Workshops on Microsoft applications Word 2007 and Excel will also be held. Finally, there will be an Email workshop, getting you started and answering your email questions.

As you can see October and November will be a busy time. Sign-ups for workshops have already begun, but it's not too late for you. The full schedule with dates and times can be found here. (Just click on the word here.) All workshops are hosted by the Berkshire Athenaeum Reference Department. Register for workshops NOW by calling 413-499-9480 ext. 202 or by visiting the Department.

Labor Day 2009 - Record UnLabor Day

Happy Labor Day! Or is it Happy at all?

It's time to reassess the economy. Labor Day is a special day set aside to celebrate those who do not own the means of production, namely the laboring classes or more specifically anyone who needs to work for money to meet their short and long term needs. Those who labor are not in a position to let money work for them. Those who work for money are subject directly to the upturns and downturns in the economy. Here small businesses are in a similar position simply because they do not own enough money or assets that they can be free of the great economic shifts that have been going on in the last year.

According to the United States Department of Labor in its most recent report, over 15 million people are members of the rank and file of the Unemployed or nearly 10% of the "civilian" work force of 150 million plus as of August 31, 2009. For these 15 million Labor Day is not cause for celebration but another day in an extended forced time without work, an extended forced vacation.

To put these numbers in perspective 15 million represents the number of individuals that are unemployed and seeking full time work. The US workforce is about 154 million. Subtract 15 million who are unemployed and you get the employed workforce of 139 million. Now multiply 15 million by a factor of 3 or 4(dependents, spouses, others) and you get the real effect of these numbers. Anywhere from 45 to 60 million people are directly impacted by the 15 million unemployed. 45 to 60 million people are facing real hardship, not being able to think beyond the next week having to face foreclosure, bankruptcy, unable to meet rental and mortgage payments, forced to choose between paying bills and food, delays in going to college or increasingly reliant on college loans or to put it another way the credit markets, which only recently have started to loosen up. Another part of this working for money is the enormous difficulty individuals and small businesses have in getting out of debt.

So Labor Day represents a cautionary Holiday this year. The Labor Movement in the form of Labor Unions brought us this special day, as well as the 40 hour week and the weekend, itself. Today, organized labor represents only 12.5% of the civilian workforce. Those working in the civilian workforce are 98% employed in the private economy. Only 2% of the workforce is in the public sphere - government employees, public school teachers, police and firefighters. Organized labor represents 36.5% of the public economy and only 7.8% of the private economy. The recent bankruptcies of General Motors and Chrysler led to further weakening of labor contracts for these companies and to the breaking of longstanding agreements. It also led to breaking of business agreements with creditors. To work in a trade union in these companies is to do with less and this is true of the newspaper business, too.

Above we mentioned those who are unemployed are defined as looking for full time work. A trend in the last 15 years has been toward reliance of employers on part time workers and outsourcing jobs to contractors of jobs, whereby people work for short periods of time. Long term full time employment is not readily available.

Looking for more information on the economic and social impact of these trends, see The Future of Work in Massachusetts, edited by Tom Juravich and Pulitzer Prize winning author, David Shipley's The Working Poor: Invisible in America, (not so invisible anymore) both found at the Berkshire Athenaeum and other Public Libraries in Western Massachusetts.

So Labor Day 2009 is really UnLaboring day. It is the end of Summer. It's Back to School. It's time to buckle down and get back to work!

That's true, except for the 15 million out of work and the 45 to 60 million impacted!! For them it's a time of worry and concern!

Top 20 Most Popular Websites

Alexa -- The Web Information Company tracks globally web surfer activity and comes up with daily statistics on most popular websites. As you can imagine this means dollars and cents in the global marketplace. And this puts into perspective the competition between Google, Yahoo. and Microsoft for dominance. Also it allows us to see where social media sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Craigslist are going.

Alexa is an Amazon.com owned company and, yes, it tracks companies like Amazon, Ebay and their reach across the globe. Besides what sites are being surfed, Alexa also breaks down average number minutes on each site, and who is using the site by age group, education, gender, income and location. These demographic breakdowns are essential in the competitive marketplace.

So what are the top 20 sites for United States websurfers? They are Google, followed by Yahoo, Facebook, YouTube(a Google company), MySpace, Windows Live, Wikipedia, Craigslist, Ebay, Microsoft Network, Blogger (a Google company), AOL, Amazon, Twitter, GO, Bing (Microsoft's new search engine), CNN, Flickr (a Yahoo company), WordPress (like Blogger, a free Blog service), and ESPN Sportzone. LinkedIn appears as number 24, Weather.com 25, and New York Times 28.

Google gets 34% of marketshre globally, Yahoo 26 %, Facebook 25%, and YouTube 24% and MySpace 4.5% and Twitter gets nearly 4%. Individuals spend more time on Facebook, an average of 27.5 minutes compared to Google's 7 minutes and YouTube's 22.5 minutes. Twitter users spend average of 8 minutes a day twittering. Bing, the new Microsoft search engine, is already in the top 20 at number 16 but amount of time spent is only 2.1 minutes. Nevertheless Bing can be seen as up and coming and Microsoft and Yahoo will be using Bing as their search engines, thus providing real competition for Google.

Now statistics such as these are not great for reading, but they do provide the nuts and bolts backdrop to news about Google, Yahoo and Microsoft and web trends. Notably, social media sites are heavily represented in these statistics. People are spending much of their time on these social sites, making friends, sharing photos and information, and exchanging and sharing files. News sites are not represented among the top twenty but they are represented in the top 50 and include the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal. Amazon and Ebay make strong showings in the top 20 at 13 and 9 respectively. Internationally Google China is number 4 in China and Google Japan is dominant there. So these companies have taken an international position and are heavily represented there. Baidu, a Chinese search engine is number 1 there and because of this carries 6% world share of surfers.

Are these fleeting trends? Hard to believe but the World Wide Web is only 15 years old. Skeptics then said that money could not be made on the Internet. Today the World Wide Web is a vast economic engine. Amazon is turning profits. Microsoft and Yahoo and have been around for more than 10 years; Google celebrated its 10 anniversary this year. Colleges, Universities, the United States Postal Service and all government agencies are on the web. Any business will need, if it does not already have one, a presence on the web. In a short 15 years the World Wide Web has become a part of our daily discourse and activity. Today there is still skepticism about profitabilty but no question that the world wide web is here to stay. Ignoring its possibilities would be ignoring vast opportunity.

Alexa is a useful marketing and analytical tool in gauging the reach and progress of these critical websites and their positions in the global marketplace.

Are You LinkedIn?

A few weeks ago a patron who had just been layed off from his job came to the Reference Desk at the Berkshire Athenaeum and was seeking resources on resumes and job searching. He'd worked in the same job for the past 10 years and job searching was new to him. It was like starting over. He was professional and used to lots of responsibility.

After showing him some of our resources I asked if he had considered LinkedIn as a possible avenue for his job search. I explained that LinkedIn was an online social network for business where future employers and employees could connect. He had heard of LinkedIn but knew nothing about it or how it worked? I suggested he go to LinkedIn, explore the site and join, that it was free, that he could set up a profile, include pertinent parts of his resume and what he was looking for in a job, Since he had developed web sites, he was web savvy. He thanked me for the information and said he would check it out.

Soon after we spoke I received an email from him (I had given him my business card,) The email was an invitation to join LinkedIn, to be part of his network. That's how LinkedIn works. You join, set up a profile, develop a network by inviting friends, colleagues, associates. It's by invitation only. The first tier is your network. The second tier is the network of your invitees. The third tier is the further associated members and so on. This is how LinkedIn grows and how a most powerful network has developed that includes thousands of companies, all Fortune 500 companies, company profiles as well as individual profiles, and LinkedIn claims over 40 million registered members using their site. This is all free, but there is a premium paid membership level as well.

LinkedIn is the most powerful business social networking web 2.0 website. Now when I was invited to join LinkedIn, I had to join because I was not yet a member. I knew about it. I was aware of it and its possibilities and I was considering joining but had held back. From the viewpoint of being a Business Reference Librarian it made sense to join if only to be able to demonstate first hand information to those inquiring. So I accepted the invitation, joined LinkedIn and developed a brief profile.

Then, shortly after joining LinkedIn and my friend's network, something happened, something that surprised and delighted me. A colleague of 10 years ago, who I had regrettably lost contact with, sent an invitation for me to contact him and to be part of his LinkedIn network. We reestablished contact and our friendship and this happened through his searching for me on LinkedIn and Google amongst other sites. I had searched for him as well. I had lost his email due to a computer crash a couple years ago. Subsequently I have reestablished contact with some other associates and friends, and working colleagues.

So these are a few of the things you can do on LinkedIn -- develop a profile, give basic information and resume about yourself, develop a job search or recruitment strategy, seek people through the search function, join community forums, ask questions, seek funding of your start up. The possibilities are endless. And your contacts have contacts as well. Skills you are looking for may be represented in these networks. Ideas abound. Because everyone is there by invitation, there is also the possibility for personal recommendations, job and business ideas.

One of the more valuable aspects of LinkedIn, attactive to company recruiters and job seekers alike, is the ability to scope each other out. Looking for a job; talk with people at that company or employers may contact people in your network. Major businesses have seen the utility of this approach and human resource professionals are using LinkedIn to scope out candidates. This is much more intimate and useful than a passive resume. Further, many jobs do become available in this manner.

LinkedIn has had 100s of features in Business Week, Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, Inc Magazine, and the New York Times. Business Week and the New York Times has partnered with LinkedIn. So too has CNN, IBM and LexisNexis. If you are starting up a business, looking for contacts and contracts, looking for venture capital, you will want to consider joining LinkedIn! The video LinkedIn For Dummies, below by Adriana Lordan from SiteReference.Com, will get you started on LinkedIn. You will want to make LinkedIn part of your Business Plan and Job Strategy.

With me you'll ask "Are You LinkedIn?"

Wal-Mart Effect Revisited

On July 2, 2008 we reviewed Charles Fishman's The Wal-Mart Effect for About Business. Fishman's book critically evaluated the impact of Wal-Mart on retailers and its suppliers. Wal-Mart's dominance led to many innovations in packaging and in production. Being such a large buyer of supplier's goods and services they were able to continue to reduce prices in products and pass those cheaper prices on to Wal-Mart customers.

In last year's post we also mentioned Wal-Mart's "green initiative" and commitment to sustainability. On July 16, 2009 Wal-Mart President and CEO Michael Duke committed the company to Sustainability for the long term, announcing its Sustainability Product Index and 15 question survey that is being submitted to its 100,000 product suppliers worldwide. Results of the survey will lead to a great transformation in the way Wal-Mart and by inference other retailers will be doing business. Executive Vice President and Chief Merchandiser John Fleming discusses this initiative in the video below. The survey asks what suppliers are doing to cut their carbon byproducts, what they are doing to create more efficient production. Wal-Mart expects answers from suppliers to this survey by October 1 and then will go to the next stage in planning.

It is expected that where unit pricing tags are part of the everyday shopping experience now, that environmental labeling will be added to these tags for each and every product Wal-Mart sells and each consumer buys. Duke calls this the need that every consumer has for transparency so they will know how the product was made, who made the product, its contents and so forth. This is a radical initiative and Wal-Mart invites other companies in join with them in this effort. Sustainability to Wal-Mart is now as important to them as low prices.

After Wal-Mart's announcement the New York Times published an extensive article by Stephanie Rosenbloom, At Wal-Mart Labels to Reflect Green Intent. Rosenbloom quotes Michael Duke, "We have to change how we make and sell products. We have to make consumption smarter and sustainable." Wal-Mart's ability to require suppliers submit to its standards will have a ripple effect throughout industry.

The Wal-Mart Effect by Charles Fishman is available at the Berkshire Athenaeum and other Public Libraries.

Do You Twitter?

You've heard of Twitter. Aside from Facebook, it's the fastest growing social networking site on the web. Business Week and PC Magazine are following Twitter closely, Business Week focusing on business applications. News reporters, White House staff, political campaigns, college and high school students, job seekers and marketers are making connections through Twitter. Major businesses such as Dell are incorporating twitter into their business plans. Everywhere you turn, you hear the term Twitter. Facebook wants Twitter as does Google.

So what is Twitter and how does it affect you? Twitter posts, called tweets, are microblogs. Each entry is 140 characters or less. When you join Twitter, you are asked a seemingly innocuous question, "What are you doing?" and each tweet starts from that question. Your answers to the question become your blog posts and can be followed by your friends or anyone, just as in a regular blog. Tweets at first seem very personal, but they quickly can take on more elaborate objectives. Dell Computers claims to have made $3 million from Twitter.

The video below, Twitter In Plain English is extracted from the Twitter site. Notice that it's appeal is personal, connect to friends, family, co-workers. Nielsen, which tracks Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other social networking sites, saw Twitter leap "... 1,448 percent from this time last year... according to Monday data from Nielsen. The micro-blogging site logged 18.2 million unique visitors in May 2009, up from 1.2 million in May 2008, and up 7 percent from April 2009" as reported by Chloe Albanesius in PC Magazine online June 22. Albanesius in the same article also notes the continuing dominance of Facebook with 144.3 million unique visitors in May!

Twitter obviously has broad appeal beyond the personal. 140 characters could be a short poem, a haiku, or it could be the lead sentence of a news article, a series of business marketing slogans or a call to organize around an issue, a vote, a sale. It is attractive to journalists who are taught to write the jist of a story in one sentence (who, what, when, and why?) and to generations raised on Headline News of television and radio. "Chrysler Corporation no longer in bankruptcy, ready to start producing cars again." is perfect as a tweet. or "Berkshire Athenaeum announces Summer Schedule of Workshops starting July 2. Sign Up Now!" or "Gas Prices Increase As Summer Vactions begin, $3 gas prices expected midSummer." or "I am reading Deborah Micek's Twitter Revolution. Found it at the Berkshire Athenaeum. Check it out!"

The possibilities of Twitter are endless. It's free and easy to join. I have a Twitter account. You can view my Twitter profile and twitter entries by going to http://twitter.com/aboutbizness.

See Business Week's article, Twitter: Building Businesses Tweet By Tweet and their handy guide to TwitterSpeak. See how it may fit into your own business plan and strategic thinking.




Want to learn more about Twitter? Sign up for our Technical Services librarian, Jeremy Goldstein's Thursday, July 16 workshop on Twitter. It starts at 6p.m. Sign up at the Reference Desk or by calling 413-499-9480 ext 202.

Marketplace Whiteboards On The Financial Crisis

Marketplace is National Public Radio's Business program. It is broadcast Monday thru Friday at 6:30 p.m. on public radio stations nationally. In the Berkshires it may be heard on WFCR and WAMC, each on FM. As with newspapers and magazines Marketplace has a multimedia presence online, where its programs, special reports, podcasts and videos may be downloaded and heard as well as viewed. The program is uniformly informative and worth listening to if you're trying to understand what's going on behind the headlines in the business, financial and working worlds.

For the past year Marketplace online has had a continuing feature, "The Whiteboard", on getting behind the financial crisis and taking the mystery out of Credit Default Swaps, Collatoralized Debt Obligations, Write Downs, Mortgage Backed Securities, and other arcane terms and making them clear. "The Whiteboard" features Marketplace Senior Editor, Paddy Hirsch, in short, graphic, 5 to 10 minute presentations. In this posting I am including 1 of these Whiteboards, as an example, for you to view:

"Uncorking CDOs (Collatorized Debt Obligations)" from October 3, 2008 (Marketplace online) .

When viewing this 6 minute presentation, you may need to watch more than one time. These are after all complicated matters. But Paddy Hirsch does an excellent job. The presentations are never boring. If fact they only got better the more I repeated them. You may understand them quicker than me. But Paddy Hirsch has provided us with an excellent reference backdrop. If you have RealPlayer or Windows Media Player you should be able to view. If not viewable you may need to download a recent version of Quicktime.




After viewing this and other Whiteboards you'll have a better understanding of the financial system and how it works, relation to mortgages, credit card debt, student loans, General Motors bankruptcy and their impact, or, as Paddy Hirsch puts it, "the financial mess we're all in". For the full list of Paddy Hirsch's Marketplace Whiteboards click here. You won't regret time spent.

Another website that continues to illuminate with clear explanations, is Investopedia, which we have featured in the past and continue to consult for accurate, informed discussion. Marketplace and Investopedia are worthy of your Bookmarks.

The Berkshire Athenaeum has 2 dictionaries of finance and banking you may want to consult:
1) Dictionary of Finance and Investment Terms by John Downes and Jordan Goodman; and 2) Dictionary of Banking and Finance by P.H. Collin.