So this was great blogging for the past 2 weeks. I hope you liked my posts. Maybe I will continue doing it in the future because I actually liked it. But who knows??
Anyway I just want to give some credits to everyone who commented and liked my posts and especially thank Fajer, Peace, Richard, Sepideh and Slizzy for being a good company and helping each other out!!!!
CHEERS dudes!!
Today let’s just talk about sports. Some years ago most of the teams haven’t even embraced social media as a medium for marketing and increasing their revenues. For example as stated in Financial Times (2014) most of the big football teams didn’t even have an official Facebook or Twitter account. This situation has changed dramatically over the last 2 years as the need for social media use for a proper online marketing strategy became obvious to most of the big clubs.
As suggested in Salford Business School Blog (2014) there are several positive aspects in using social media for sports business. In fact sports clubs can:
Sport can also play the role of a platform for other businesses that don’t operate in the sports industry to market their product or service.
So how do you think sports clubs can make use of social media? Here is how:
Now let’s see two images about Facebook most followed clubs and the most successful clubs according to UEFA rankings.
Pictures adapted from http://kennethcortsen.com/football-economy/europes-top-football-clubs-active-social-media-platforms/
As one can see 6 out of the 9 most followed teams in Facebook are in the most successful UEFA list as well. I don’t know about you but it is no surprise to me and I’ll explain you why. In my opinion a team’s on pitch performance is strongly related to their financial situation which can actually get improved with proper social media presence strategy. Simple as that!!!
References
– Kuper, S. (2014, 21 January). Football and social media. Financial Times. Retrieved from http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/7593cd8c-7041-11e4-bc6a-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3U6TMdh6G
– Chulkins, Foster, Mamas, Watts, Yonev. (2014, 9 April). Sports business interaction: How marketing and social media helps sports business? [Weblog]. Retrieved from http://blogs.salford.ac.uk/business-school/sports-business-social-media-marketing/
Talking about Enterprise 2.0 in my previous post I decided to use some collaborative tools like Skype, wikis and blogs in order to get things going in this one. So one of our tasks was to critique some theoretical papers and one that drew my attention was one of Dr. David Kreps and Dr. Erika Pearson called “Community As Commodity”. It basically examines Social Networking Sites (SNS) taking into consideration the economy’s dominant role. You may wonder what blogs have to do with it. Well I made some research in blogs to learn some things about Gramsci and his theories, because his theory about hegemony is referred in this paper. I also used Skype to let my sister Venia -she’s a book freak- enlighten me a little more about Gramsci.
Here’s the video with me and Fajer critiquing this paper. Enjoy 🙂
Here is also the proof that it took us several time to shoot that video because Fajer insisted on laughing without any reason. She couldn’t even make a proper montage of our fail attempts. See for yourself.
Special thanks to Slizzy for his patience and for shooting this video!!!
References
– Kreps, D., Pearson, E. (2008). community as commodity. Paper presented at IFIP WG 9.5 International Working Conference on Virtuality and Society: Massive Virtual Communities. Retrieved from http://www.kreps.org/papers/communityascommodity_ifip95final.pdf
During the lectures with Dr Suzanne Kane we covered some slides about Entrerprise 2.0. I’m sure not all of you are aware of that definition so I will try to inform you briefly. Enterprise 2.0 is when a business integrates Web 2.0 technologies to its intranet, extranet and business processes. With simple words, it is the combination of social software and collaborative technologies -blogs, wikis, RSS, social media- to encourage the communication between employees, partners and consumers. Below is an enlightening video of Andrew McAfee speaking about the above.
The problem with these technologies is that actually rarely people have specific ideas about how to employ them in a way that creates new business opportunities as stated here.
But let’s see though a recent story of a company that used Enterprise 2.0 in a successful way. I’m talking about Alacatel-Lucent.
They started adopting social media like blogs, wikis etc inside the organisation back in 2008. Then employees started using technologies to interact directly with their CEO and they gradually added more collaborative social features such as Sharepoint in the years to follow. Bottom line Alcatel started with a pilot program to establish basic social collaboration and then continued with a unified approach across the company with the Jive platform, encouraging the employees to interact with each other. As ZDNET suggests it worked pretty well for them as “it guided the participation of workers across the company, without driving up the overhead costs to unsupportable numbers.”
The way I see it the social collaboration a company can achieve by using Enterprise 2.0 technologies can save them a fortune. And it makes working more fun for everyone as it encourages communities come together!!! What do you say?? Would you give these technologies a try or has anyone had experience in a company that embraced them???
References
-All, A. (2010, 27 January). Some Enterprise 2.0 Success Stories. [Weblog]. Retrieved from http://www.itbusinessedge.com/cm/blogs/all/some-enterprise-20-success-stories/?cs=39021
-Hinchcliffe, D. (2012, 31 January). Enterprise 2.0 Success: Alcatel-Lucent. ZDNet. Retrieved from http://www.zdnet.com/article/enterprise-2-0-success-alcatel-lucent/
-McAfee, A. [Oracle Video]. (2008, 30 April). Andrew McAfee- What is Web/Enterprise 2.0 [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xKSJfQh89k
After reblogging Richard’s post about smart cities and returning back to health issues I was thinking how important it is for a country to implement a good National Health System. Just the other day Richard was talking to me about the failure of the UK NHS IT system. It is more than obvious that it was a harsh blow for the UK, as it has cost to taxpayers nearly £10 billion -9.8 to be accurate- needless to say that it is abandoned. It was even characterised as “one of the worst and most expensive contracting fiascos in the history of public sector” by Richard Bacon, a Conservative member of the committee. All the above according to Guardian.
Image attached from kidshealth.org
That made me consider how important is the role of a well-designed IS for a country that needs to make reforms in its public sector. In my opinion the Information Technology and Healthcare information systems can play the most critical role towards the direction of a country’s health system reform. So, being a Greek I felt that I should reflect my view on the paper of Maria Burke and Maria Emmanouilidou about the Greek NHS and the need of a proper Electronic Health Records (EHR) policy. Honestly, I found it really interesting as they actually propose a framework for the Electronic Health Record policy in Greece.
Lastly I want to add that in my opinion this framework could be applied to Greece and to other countries with NHS problems too. And I obviously meant to say “countries” and not “languages” in the last sentence of my video… 🙂
Oh, and if you wonder why I renewed my blog so late, it’s because I had to wait for a century for my video to be uploaded. REALLY Youtube????
References
– Burke, M, Emmanouilidou, M.. (2013). A thematic review and a policy-analysis agenda of Electronic Health Records in the Greek National Health System. Health policy, 109(1), 31-37. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.healthpol.2012.09.010
– Syal, R. Abandoned NHS IT System Has Cost £10 Bn So Far. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/18/nhs-records-system-10bn
Straight to the point post from Richard… Give it a look!!
Continuing from yesterday, and inspired by Fajer’s article, I would like to briefly consider the interconnectivity of everything. Just like my bottle of water and it’s presence on the Internet, whole cities are becoming internet enabled, like the city of Barcelona.
I can see all these advantages of this, but it is also difficult to reconcile, and there are some times that we as people don’t want to be tracked. As we push further toward a convergence of technology and physical world, it reminds me of the credits to Person Of Interest (Wikipedia, 2015).
At some point do we not have the right to privacy and to not be tracked? What about the right to be forgotten? (European Commission, 2010) You do have some rights to demand that mined data be deleted, but as we move closer to integrated cities, how can we separate ourselves from that data?
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After talking about basketball I figured out that it would be useful to share my view about health and fitness applications. Mobile health continues to climb in popularity (Pew Research Center, 2012) with health apps being found in abundance both in the App Store and in the Android Google Play.
Adapted from http://www.techcrunch.com
The range of these applications varies from calories counting apps, online consultation to apps giving complete medical guidance to their users like the Health app in iOS (Wired, 2014). Even a suicide prevention feature was recently launched by Facebook (BBC, 2015)!!! As for me, well, I am not fan of any health app (fitness apps excluded) for two reasons.
Firstly, I don’t think one needs to constantly have access to his vital signs. Let me explain myself. As an individual who panics relatively easy, I don’t feel the need to be aware of whenever my body doesn’t function at 100%. I wouldn’t like possible diseases passing through my mind if I notice that at one random situation I had low blood pressure for instance!!! At the end of the day, I would prefer a physician to interpret the data and avoid making assumptions my own. Then it’s just me, so I can totally understand it when people need to be constantly updated with their health data and in that way most health apps are extremely useful.
The second reason which I think isn’t debate-able is that I wouldn’t give away my health data at any cost to anyone except for my personal doctors. Especially when I don’t know where these data are stored and how could possibly owner of these apps sell them to third parties for money purposes.
Adapted from omowizard.wordpress.com
I know it sounds like I suffer from technophobia, but it’s not the case. I love having access to my health data from my mobile devices through emails I get from my physician, but having them stored somewhere from people I don’t know is another thing. I would love to hear your thoughts on that.
References
– Facebook launches new suicide prevention tool in the US (2015, 26 February). BBC Newsbeat. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/31641216
-Pew Research Center(2015). Mobile Health 2012. Retrieved 6 March,2015 from http://www.pewinternet.org/2012/11/08/mobile-health-2012/
– Tate, R. (2014, 17 March). Apple’s Upcoming Health App Is The Start Of Something Huge. WIRED. Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/2014/03/apple-healthbook-is-just-the-beginning/
Today I felt like talking about one of my hobbies. Basketball it is!!! I’m totally sure all the sports fans have at some point witnessed sportscasters talking about stats of a team or of a specific player or of a match tradition etc. Well, all these stats come out of data manipulated by specialists. It is insane how many categories of stats there are in sports.
In fact I was watching the Twolves vs Clippers (recently acquired by Microsoft’s former CEO, Steve Balmer) game a few days ago in which Ricky Rubio recorded a triple double (18 pts, 11 ast, 12 reb). Unfortunately for him Minnesota lost the game.
If you want you can watch his triple-double highlights in the video below
So, I was just wondering. Has there a quadraple double ever been recorded in the NBA??? Google is our friend, right?
photo adapted from http://www.sportcity.com
Voilà. There’s not only one, but FOUR former NBA players. This made me think how easy it has become for us to access useless data through the Internet. Well, it is useless for the majority of people, but actually most of the NBA teams, 26 out of 30 to be accurate, do have an Analytics Department according to nbastuffer (2014).
In my opinion data manipulation and data analysis are fields in which most modern organisations, even if we’re talking about sports organisations, should at least consider spending some money on in order to make better decisions. Do you agree with that?? Last but not least I must say that after doing the maths and analysing loads of data in NBA2K I managed to beat Chris by utilizing my perimeter offense in that lousy 2013 76ers team. Ain’t that right Chris?????
References
– SPORTSCITY (2014). NBA All Time Quadraple Double. Retrieved 4 March, 2015, from http://www.sportscity.com/nba/records/all-time-quadruple-doubles
– Nbastuffer (2014). NBA Teams That Have Analytics Department. Retrieved 6 March, 2015 from http://www.nbastuffer.com/component/option,com_glossary/Itemid,0/catid,44/func,view/term,NBA%20Teams%20That%20Have%20Analytics%20Department/
Have you ever heard of knowledge management??? Personally I haven’t until recently in the lectures of the Information Systems module in the Uni. From what I learned so far, there can’t be an accurate definition about knowledge management but it’s a fact that in the age of “knowledge economy” most corporations from IT-related even to lawyer companies have chosen to spend some serious cash on KM systems (Ithia,2003).
To my understanding most of the organisations performing knowledge management do it with the purpose of sharing raw data and pure knowledge among their employees in a sense of collaboration. Unfortunately for most of them they hardly ever reach the point of improving their performance with KMS. I’d say this happens because of the lack of a specific definition. So, after doing some research about KMS I found this very interesting article of Chua and Lam (2006) where after observing some case studies they pretty much indicate that the failure factors of a KMS are technology, culture, content and project management. I couldn’t agree more to that especially when it comes to culture, because you know how difficult it is for people to share knowledge in a way that will actually help an organisation when they come from different cultural background.
Another great paper I’ve read was that of Wilson (2002). He concludes that knowledge management is nonsense as a concept and it is based upon the Utopian idea of information being shared by all. At the end of the day as Mary Lisbeth D’Amico said
“Knowledge management is something many companies are sure they need, if only they knew what it was.”
So, what do you think about KM guys? How would you define it? Do you see it as a must in modern business society? After all I’m not really aware of any KM success story. Are you???
References
-Ithia, A. (2003), ‘‘UK lawyers spend more on KM’’, KM Review, Vol. 5 No. 6, p. 11.
-Wilson T.D., The nonsense of ‘knowledge management’, (2002), [Online] Available at http://www.iwp.jku.at/born/mpwfst/06/nonsenseofwm/p144.html, Accessed 4/3/2015
In the previous post I was talking about this Twor/ds application and how cool I found it. But what if someone just uses a pic of someone else without their permission?? I’ve even noticed people just taking photos of an empty wall and just waiting for their match photo. I mean how ethical is that?? So, I will try to share some of my thoughts about privacy issues in social media and modern photo-related and location-based applications.
Most people nowadays including me are using social media. In fact a good 71% of online adults use Facebook, while 26% use Instagram and 52% use more than one social media (Pew Resarch Centre). Wow!! These numbers are huge, right??? Well, not exactly if you consider that people not only use social media for their personal life, but for commercial reasons as well. May I also add that I just read this brilliant journal of Susan Barnes, which despite being old (2006) it examines privacy (especially of underage children) from different perspectives. It also states that social media were indespensable for people back in 2006. Imagine how accurate is such a statement today. She also wanders in that journal if we really have any privacy in the digital era we live in and if we should consider it as a real problem. As for what I really loved in this journal it was the use of the Panopticon metaphor, which in essence is the monitoring of social media users by observers (other media users or government employees etc.).
So would you actually think of your life without the use of a social media and to what extent do actually private issues halt you from using them??? I leave you with a video of Fajer admitting that she will use the Twor/ds app for stalking and spying on people. 🙂
REFERENCES
– Barnes, S. (2006). A privacy paradox: Social networking in United states. Peer-reviewed journal on the internet, 11(9). Retrieved from http://firstmonday.org/article/view/1394/1312
– Pew Research Center (2014). Social Media Update 2014. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/01/09/social-media-update-2014/
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