Chapter 4-6 Groundswell Reaction

In the first paragraph they mention a company who did something different in 2007. I worked at Sears as a high school senior, and still do; 4 years, too long. They began using a program called Pebble, in which it creates an environment for people within the organization to stream information. It acts exactly as Facebook, where an employee has a title: Name, and a small bio describing hobbies and skills. Anyone within the network can follow, or linkup with another employees profile. There are also big corporate bosses on there sending messages and event shout outs. And the Groundswell chapter makes an excellent point of the POST goals. (People, Objectives, Strategy, and Technology) The funny thing is, is on the Pebble site, there are direct representations of these kind of factors. The is a direct result of the fluid and vast amount of information out there at the publics disposale and how companies will try and take advantage of the opportunity for spreading the word or the goals of the community at hand.
I agree that the "Groundswell conversation" is gigantic giving users and receivers lots of methods and options for obtaining information. There tips they offer in the 6th chapter are concrete. (Post a viral video, engage in social networks, join the blogosphere, create a community) Basically encouraging and offering tips how to blog and what to blog.
A blog is an excellent way to broadcast an individuals opinion, and social networks formulate excellent ways to filter all the information.

Gender Perspective: Vagina Monologues

Back in 2007 I was able to watch a performance of the Vagina Monologues in Austin, TX. The performance was located at a venue outside called The Enchanted Forest. Typical shows included independent, amateur events such as fire dancing, interpretive theatre and music artist (DJ and performance). At the time, I had never heard or seen the Vagina Monologues. After hearing the title, I thought of it as a play in which women were the focus. As a male, I had no idea what to expect, and that gave the monologues more influence in leaving a long standing impression on my thoughts and future actions.
After the first couple minutes, the audience was in a trance. There was a huge turnout to watch the performances, more than 500 people. I had never heard such a graphic account of women's experiences, ecspecially of sexual molestation and harassment. It was shocking because of how our culture teaches us at an early age not to talk about denotations and connotations of vaginas. Not until this semester, 2011, when I watched the movie "VDay: Until the Violence Stops" did I understand the significance. Eve Ensler, the leader behind raising and gaining awareness for women and their experiences, made some excellent points about the "culture of silence" and by advocating for silence, one in a sense is advocating for the oppressive facets that are horrendous and unacceptable. Her emphasis is for our culture, the global culture of women and men, to not shun and silent experiences. Even if those experiences may be negative. Because the underlying issue that needs to be addressed is for females to have the opportunity and confidence to relay their experiences, to develop off those experiences; but in large that whatever experience it is, it is the same significance and same importance and same influence as any male experience. Women should be encouraged to live through their experiences, therefore evening the plane between gender expectations.

Social Influencers

Social media is a fluid between the cyber world and the tangible environment we live in. In that sense, certain people are more significant in social media contexts and can create opportunities for others trying to gain influence in the cyber world. The trick is to find who influencers are and understand the relativity of what they are saying. There are plenty of articulate people able to read something and repeat it. The trick is finding who the main sources are and how does they have those sources.
In class we talked about different methods for finding people over the web. We went through twitter and were able to set up a network of people to follow who may have informative comments or advice for people wanting to gain expertise in a certain field. We also were able to find people through social bookmarks, and trace those posts back to the original user. Therefore, if a user is the original user more often, then most likely he is going to be an influencer, and someone who produces positive benefits to the social media context and world of ideas.
Ben Straley has a good article posted in the Mashable: