Questions

Q1. What is the greatest challenge for young people entering the workforce? #GenYChat
Q2. If you could give career advice to a college freshman, what would you say? #GenYChat
Q3. Name one or more person(s) on Twitter who work to inspire young careerists. #GenYChat
Q4. Is it naive to think that entrepreneurship is a solution to traditional employment options? Why or why not? #GenYChat
Q5. Programs that aid startups exist. What are reasons for not starting your own? What are excuses? #GenYChat
Q6. What can entrepreneurship classes do to solve the problem of youth unemployment? #GenYChat
Q7. What do you know now about career development that you wish higher ed classes taught? #GenYChat
Q8. What do established workers feel young people don’t understand about the workplace? #GenYChat
Q9. What problems do young people entering the workforce face that older generations don’t understand? #GenYChat
Q10. What can the government do to aid young professionals entering the workforce? #GenYChat

Guest Host

Jennifer Edwards, Community Manager for theYEC, will serve as guest host on a special #GenYChat dedicated to the cause of finding solutions to Youth Unemployment. The YEC has begun a campaign to #FixYoungAmerica.

• The only way to 100% job security is to create your own job
• Student loan forgiveness for entrepreneurs
• Multiple entrepreneurship hubs around the US
• Students need to graduate with skills
• Crowd-funding bill
• Offer entrepreneurship training to all (including at-risk youth)

How to Participate in #GenYChat on Twitter

If you haven’t participated in the chat before, but have insights to share, please do the following to participate:

If using Twitter.com:

1. Type “#genychat” into the search field
2. Click “All” on the search results page
3. Reply and ReTweet but add “#genychat” onto your tweets in order for everyone participating to see your tweets

If using TweetChat:

1. Sign in through OAuth. (note: Please read this information about using  OAuth to give third party applications access to your account)
2. Type “genychat” into the search field (The “#” is already provided)
3. Click Go
4. Reply and ReTweet. TweetChat puts the hashtag in for you so you don’t have to

If using TweetDeck:

1. Click the + symbol to add a column
2. Type “#genychat” into the search field. A column will appear as the last column in your TweetDeck
3. Using the left arrow button, move it next to your Mentions column to better see and respond to your replies while in the chat
4. Click the Settings button
5. Click on the Twitter tab
6. Click on Auto include hashtags when replying
7. Click Save settings
8. Reply and ReTweet. TweetDeck puts the hashtag in for you so you don’t have to. (Note: You still have to add “#genychat” onto your own tweets in order for everyone participating to see your tweets)

#GenYChat begins at 9pm ET! Get in early for introductions and mingling. See you there!

The Path to Sustainable Business Growth

 Questions

Q1. Is passion enough to create a sustainable business model? What other pieces need to be in place?

Q2. What are the key components of a unique selling proposition?

Q3. What advice has helped you keep a (or your client’s) “pipeline” full of customers?

Q4. How can we balance benefiting society while maintaining/driving profit?

Q5. How do you identify revenue bearing business opportunities?

Q6.  You’re asked to identify a strategy to drive new leads while maintaining existing quality of work. What do you include?

Q7. In this economy, virtual teams of solopreneurs is becoming a viable biz model. How do you find team members?

Q8. How do you build relationships with trusted advisors who redflag business issues/encourage growth in different areas?

Q9. You notice that one strategy works well for your competition. Do you follow their model or remain aligned to current strategy?

Q10. How can social media enhance your ability to “show” rather than “tell” what your business is about?

Guest Host

Cathy Larkin is the founder of Web Savvy PR, and adds social media tools to the traditional Public Relations (PR) toolkit to help small businesses and entrepreneurs; non-profits; and speakers, bloggers, and authors build their businesses, and expand the reach of their brand.

I started my boutique PR firm in 2005, and in 2007 I attended several conferences and let my inner “Geek Girl” out of the closet and have not looked back. I’ve  steeped myself in social networking, social media, web 2.0, organic search optimization (SEO), blog design, social bookmarking, and I am always learning new things. With 20 plus years of Public Relations (PR) experience behind me, an avid curiosity about technology, and love of connecting people to cool things, I’m having a blast as a social media guide, consultant and speaker. – Cathy Larkin 

How to Participate in #GenYChat on Twitter

If you haven’t participated in the chat before, but have insights to share, please do the following to participate:

If using Twitter.com:

1. Type “#genychat” into the search field
2. Reply and ReTweet but add “#genychat” onto your tweets in order for everyone participating to see your tweets

If using TweetChat:

1. Sign in through OAuth. (note: Please read this information about using  OAuth to give third party applications access to your account)
2. Type “genychat” into the search field (The “#” is already provided)
3. Click Go
4. Reply and ReTweet. TweetChat puts the hashtag in for you so you don’t have to

If using TweetDeck:

1. Click the + symbol to add a column
2. Type “#genychat” into the search field. A column will appear as the last column in your TweetDeck
3. Using the left arrow button, move it next to your Mentions column to better see and respond to your replies while in the chat
4. Click the Settings button
5. Click on the Twitter tab
6. Click on Auto include hashtags when replying
7. Click Save settings
8. Reply and ReTweet. TweetDeck puts the hashtag in for you so you don’t have to. (Note: You still have to add “#genychat” onto your own tweets in order for everyone participating to see your tweets)

#GenYChat begins at 9pm ET! Get in early for introductions and mingling. See you there!

Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Four years ago Tanisha Christie and Ellie Walton started on the path to creating a documentary fraught with inspiring tales of thoughtful, committed citizens who believed in their power to create change.

On Thursday, February 2, 2012 the completed project, “Walk With Me”, will have its first screening at the Arena Stage in Washington, DC at 8pm.

Against the backdrop of historical moments of social change, “Walk With Me” is an expressionistic documentary that follows three women who use theater to inspire, stir and animate our democracy. Journeying with them while they work in prisons, community centers and schools, we see how theater can ask and answer critical questions: How do we fight injustice? How do we reclaim our personal and collective history? And, how do we inspire positive change in each other? “Walk With Me” shares that the personal creative act is a political one revealing that one person – one artist – can make a difference.

This may be the first screening of this film, but these two ladies are not newcomers to this world. Ellie Walton recently received the Mayor’s Arts Award for Outstanding Achievement in Arts within the Washington, DC community. Tanisha Christie spent many years in the Washington, DC community as an actor-educator-director. She was formerly the Assistant Director at DC’s Living Stage Theater Company/Arena Stage.  She now lives in New York. Both were inspired to make this film by their mentor, the late Rebecca Rice who is featured in the film.

Check out the “Walk With Me” trailer

Walk With Me Teaser from Ellie Walton on Vimeo.

Suggested ticket price is $20 but no one will be turned away. Please pay what you can.
Seats are limited, so please RSVP here to reserve a seat: ayaartsandmedia@gmail.com

Q & A will follow the screening.

The Mead Center for American Theater (Arena Stage) is located at 1101 6th Street, SW, Washington, DC 20024 or the Waterfront-SEU Station on the Green Line.

“I Hate My Teenage Daughter”, a new Fox sitcom, tells the story of two popular teenage daughters being raised by two mothers who were unpopular in high school and their husbands.

Nikki Miller, one of the mothers, represses what are presumably her feelings of low self-worth – feelings that make her feel inferior to her daughter – by eating. She was supposedly, “cured” of these feelings, feelings for which she was teased mercilessly while growing up.

A sample of dialogue from the show:

“Honey, please don’t be mad at me. I hate it when you shut me out. Can’t we just go back to being best friends?”

“We were never best friends.”

“It’s okay. I know you didn’t mean that.”

It’s normal to hate our mothers, right?

In the pilot the two daughters are punished by their mothers for leaving a wheelchair-bound classmate in a locked closet. Meanwhile, their fathers, seeking peace with their daughters, pay them each $100 to stop being angry with them.

The show approaches its end with a tender moment from Annie Watson, the other mother, to her daughter, Sophie. Sophie’s apology leads the audience to believe the cause of their argument was a moment of failed communication where the mothers punished their children without listening to their daughters’ side of the story. Both mothers lift the punishment.

The audience, now ready for a touching moment showing the daughters’ complexity and exposing them as well intentioned, are instead shown that the girls are, in fact, liars. Years of family sitcoms with tender teaching moments offered at show’s end might have trained our minds to expect and accept these endings. The show, in fact, ends with a realization that the daughters lied to have their punishments waived. Not only did they lie, but they also blamed their plight on hurtful comments received from the supposedly racist wheelchair-ridden student. Nikki, a Caucasian woman, is raising a biracial daughter, MacKenzie, the product of an interracial marriage now dissolving in divorce.

Instead of portraying the daughters as having the ability or the desire to grow and become better, they are portrayed as manipulative bullies who repeat the negative behaviors learned in their homes with their peers at school. Upon realizing the truth, that the wheelchair bound classmate is African-American and did not make racist statements, Annie notes they might simply have horrible daughters.

Is It Normal to Hate Your Daughter?

As a GenY-er I wanted to be on the side of the daughters prior to watching this show based solely on its title. I cannot support their behavior. This show highlights one kind of young person, an individual that does not represent the broad and diverse spectrum of today’s youth. Daughters have long hated their mothers; it’s part of youthful rebellion. Is “I Hate My Teenage Daughter” creating a new normal in hating the daughter right back, publicly? Is there a possible lesson to be learned that will be revealed in time?

The title of this show leaves much to be desired. Given its popularity, though, the show might not be going anywhere for a while. In December it won its Wednesday 9:30-10pm time period among Teens and Men 18-34 and ranks #2 among Adults 18-49 and Adults 18-34. The ratings show the unpopularity of this show among women, perhaps driven by its title. What is drawing teenagers and men to the show? Is this entertainment?

In an effort to call more attention to and find a solution for this crisis, Tavis Smiley, host of Tavis Smiley on PBS, The Tavis Smiley Show and co-host of Smiley & West from PRI, (Public Radio International) and a panel of prolific thought leaders and advocates will convene in Washington, DC on January 12, 2012 from 6:30pm – 9pm ET for “Remaking America: From Poverty to Prosperity.”

This symposium will discuss solutions for restoring America’s prosperity and dissect the findings from a recently released White Paper from Indiana University on ‘the new face of the poor.’ “Remaking America” will feature a list of distinguished influencers from political, finance, film and economic communities including: Cornel West, Princeton professor and author; Suze Orman, America’s leading authority on personal finance; Michael Moore, Academy Award®-winning filmmaker; Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed; Jeffrey Sachs, poverty expert and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University; Majora Carter, Urban Revitalization Strategist; Vicki B. Escarra, President and CEO of Feeding America and others!

WHERE:             George Washington University Lisner Auditorium 730 21st St. NW, Washington, DC 20052

ADMISSION: FREE TO THE PUBLIC on a first-come, first-served basis. Doors open at 5 p.m. Self-parking is available on site. All attendees must register at www.TAVISTALKS.com/REMAKINGAMERICA

To participate on Twitter, follow the hashtag: #RemakingAmerica

I’ve always been proud of my independence and ambition.  I never thought I’d consider moving back home.  My senior year of high school was the last time I lived with my parents for more than a few days.  As of August I’m back for a return engagement.

Society has attached a nasty stigma to the notion of adult children living with their parents.  After college it seemed most of my friends flew right back to their comfy, cheap nests when the job market was still poor, when their dream firms didn’t extend offers, when their chosen fields and expected salaries didn’t materialize.  I, on the other, less frugal hand, took an internship that didn’t pay me nearly enough to afford my studio apartment in West Philadelphia (or life alone, in general).  While I was technically living under the poverty line, I saw stars – literally and figuratively – during my stint as an intern with the Philadelphia Eagles.  The brand recognition I earned from working with a professional sports team was too impressive to pass up.

After the internship’s honeymoon phase wore off, I realized student loans didn’t care about brand recognition and whether or not I saw literal or figurative stars.  My loan obligations were steadily piling up while I earned less as a literal and figurative star-seeing intern than a Burger King cashier.  Something didn’t add up. I decided enough was enough and began the stressful and disheartening task of finding a new job. The figurative stars later aligned perfectly as a contact I met via Twitter told me of an opening with an agency. I’d finally found a new job and a spot above the poverty line.

Three unpaid college internships and countless student loans did their damage, however.  My new salary and benefits still don’t allow me to save money and continue with my lifestyle, already something less than extravagant.  Asking my parents for help was the last thing I wanted to do, as my independence has always been important to me.  Fortunately, they both recognized my struggle with poverty-ridden pride and offered the move home as a temporary solution (the “temporary” is my addition).

I have established a January 1, 2012 deadline to move out (again), to reestablish my independence.  By then I will have a nest egg and be ready to kick myself out of my parents’ nest.  A timeline for my departure is the only way I can mentally prepare myself for my return to the nest. I wanted to do it all on my own, and will, but us GenY’ers must know when our time in the wild has proven too dangerous to continue alone.  The global economy is in distress.  Debt – the country’s, our parents’, ours – is threatening our ability to take flight.  So don’t be discouraged if the nest beckons.  It’s warm and welcoming there.

The preceding was a guest post by Cristin McGrath.

Cristin McGrath is a creative and passionate communications specialist with experience across both traditional and emerging media. Her young but vibrant career has focused on building brand images for impressive organizations across the music, entertainment, technology, and sports industries — her expertise in the fields of social media and events management has enabled her to successfully aid in the operation of press departments with the Philadelphia Eagles, Sony Music Entertainment, MTV Networks and Dell.  Most recently, she has transitioned into the world of agency PR with Vault Communications.

Cristin graduated in 2010 from Temple University with a BA in Strategic and Organizational Communication. She will be living (temporarily, of course) in the Poconos with her parents until January 2012.

The following is a guest post by Liz Funk (bio below)

We’ve all felt buyer’s remorse.  That lime green sundress that looked great in the fitting room looks putrid in the natural light.  You decide to splurge on a dinner out, ordering an $18 entrée. When you finally eat it, it’s good, but not $18-good.  You buy a bag of clearance clothes from the Gap, get home and deeply resent spending $60 on non-refundable clothes.  It happens to everyone, every now and then, and you move on, because hopefully your buyer’s remorse isn’t on items worth more than a few hours’ pay.

But, what if you have buyer’s remorse for a major investment you made that will take years of income to pay off? And, without the resources to pay off such an investment, it seems like it was a terrible idea?

The “crap economy” and the devastating impact that the 2008 economic crash has had on young people has caused widespread unemployment among 20somethings.  Because young people don’t have jobs, a) many young people don’t have the money to repay their student loans, and b) many young people are wondering why they went to college in the first place, if they’re unemployed!

While some “quarterlifers” miss college and want to go back to a simpler time, others are thoroughly resenting their college experience.  Here’s how to reconcile this:

How to find value in your degree

1) First and foremost, be nice to yourself.  Before 2006, there were relatively few people who had an idea that the economy was going to go so far downhill, and odds are good that you weren’t one of them.  There’s nothing you can do to change the fact that you did go to college (i.e. a time machine), so be compassionate and nice to yourself and don’t beat yourself up.

2) Write down everything positive that you got out of college, whether it was a few really good friends who you still keep in touch with, some awesome memories (write each of them down!), or classes where you read some life-changing books.

3) Be critical of the system.  There is definitely something messed up in that our society encourages entering college seniors to take out loans to go to the best college they were accepted to, but many take out a Range Rover’s worth of student loans, picking majors that will not help them pay off these loans.  This isn’t to say that you should major in engineering if you aren’t interested in it. Rather, we should encourage students to consider alternate paths. Rather than rushing from high school straight into college, students should consider taking a gap year or two to work, travel, or intern so they have a stronger sense of what they might want to do professionally.  Then, if they do take out student loans, they’ll be investing in an education that will help them pursue their passions, rather than going to college because that’s what you’re supposed to do, without much of an endpoint short of graduating.  On that note, give yourself a break from job hunting, worrying, and stressing.  This will ensure that you have some mental and emotional energy to brainstorm both where you want to go from here and how you can tap into what you learned in college to help you carve out a career!

But, overall, be nice to yourself because you can only move forward to a place that’s more positive if you’re really rooting and advocating for yourself!

Your turn! How do you come into your own when the first years of your adult life are marked by joblessness, instability, angst, and incessant money problems?

Coming of Age in a Crap Economy is the brainchild of Liz Funk, a New York-based freelance writer, author, and college lecturer. Liz has written for USA Today, Newsday, the Washington Post, New York magazine, the Christian Science Monitor, CosmoGIRL!, Girls’ Life, the Baltimore Sun, the New Jersey Record, the Albany Times Union, Lemondrop.com (AOL), and the New Humanist (UK). She is the author of Supergirls Speak Out: Inside the Secret Crisis of Overachieving Girls, a non-fiction look at how today’s young women feel that they must be constantly improving themselves if they want to be loved. She regularly speaks at colleges about how young women can overcome perfectionism and about breaking into journalism/publishing, and she has been a guest lecturer at Columbia University, Cornell University, Duke University, New York University, Boston University, Emerson College, Rice University, Whitman College, the University of Iowa, the University of Missouri, Mississippi State University, the University of South Florida, and Penn State University, among many other colleges.

She graduated from college in 2009 with high honors in English literature and has yet to be extended a single full-time job offer. She lives in upstate New York with her collie, Buddy (who she’s pretty sure has figured out the meaning of life), and her parents, of course.

The following is a guest post by Benjamin Daniel of WriteRight Publications. Benjamin is really big on education research, measurable metrics, improved education outcomes and education reform. He has successfully lobbied for increased funding for early childhood education funding, done field work and led teams as a community organizer. Benjamin also led nonprofit and community development initiatives in underserved communities.

This post is continued from A New Soviet Model for American Education Part I

Motivation

These three groups suffer from what I’ll call a lack of collective communication and advancement. They have different, though related, reasons for wanting success (we assume they all want success) but none seem to have anything to do with one another. Does it make a difference if they want the same thing for related reasons, you ask? Why yes, it does!

Say a teacher wants to earn more money by helping her students produce better results as measured by their performance in the classroom and test scores. Students need to understand how it helps them to perform well. Scholarships to colleges for good classroom performance or paid training for careers that don’t require a college degree are strong incentives for success. Teachers and students now have a shared financial incentive to perform well.

Parents who aren’t certain about why they should motivate kids to excel or who don’t care whether a teacher buys a bigger house also need incentives. Circumstances will dictate the kinds of rewards they receive but low-income families, for example, might receive vouchers to local grocery stores to purchase food (in addition to whatever aid they might already receive). Schools can form partnerships with area businesses to help promote improving education for students and teachers and, by extension, the lives of everyone involved. It’s also a great opportunity to promote the idea of community-based education, where everyone involved has an incentive to ensure the other does well.

I Know How We Can Change

Ultimately, people will probably act in their own self-interest. The trick is to make their self-interest behave in such a way that it promotes and supports the other people’s self-interest. Here’s how:

Parents: get your kid to school on time, attend your parent-teacher conferences and come to an assembly when you’re asked. You can earn yourself perks and rewards at local businesses.

Students: work with your parents and teachers to do well in school, respect authority and earn money for college or vocational education.

Teachers: get involved in your school’s neighborhood, learn something about your kids’ parents and families, work with them to improve classroom performance and maybe earn the kind of bonus that could mean a remodeled kitchen, a longer vacation or a new house entirely.

Collectively working to advance the other’s agendas, then, is a great idea for everyone involved and can dramatically improve per-student performance, teacher success and parental involvement.

Your turn: What do you think of this proposed solution? Can it work? What can work?

The following is a guest post by Benjamin Daniel of WriteRight Publications. Benjamin is really big on education research, measurable metrics, improved education outcomes and education reform. He has successfully lobbied for increased funding for early childhood education funding, done field work and led teams as a community organizer. Benjamin also led nonprofit and community development initiatives in underserved communities.

This post is continued from A New Soviet Model for American Education Part I

So, what does work? How do we fix our middling American education system? I’ve often wondered if we haven’t given the Soviet Communist collectivist model a bad rap. If you’re aware of the “it takes a village to raise a child” saying, you know where I’m headed with this.

We (Don’t) Live Together

One of the biggest and most difficult problems we need to overcome in education is that often each of the actors involved (teachers, students, parents) brings different agendas to the classroom. Teachers have a curriculum they have to follow; the state and school requires that a lesson be taught in a specific time frame. These lessons help teachers prepare students for both the next grade level, long-term, and mandatory testing, near-term. These tests, if students perform well on them, help schools earn congratulations from other educators, parents (hopefully) and legislators which, in turn, could mean more money or, perhaps, a successful bond issue for another school in the district or improvements to existing schools.

Some districts are paying teachers more money if students perform at a certain level both in the classroom and on standardized tests. There’s a financial incentive to get as many students as possible doing well enough to not only pass classroom and standardized tests, but to pass them at a certain level. These bonuses can help teachers pay their bills, buy a bigger house, improve their existing homes, buy another car or take vacations. Of course they want to do well.

But wait, you say. What about students and their parents? Students are getting a couple different kinds of lessons in school: intellectual, or thinking, lessons (we’ll call them practical since they’re supposed to put kids on the road to college and a college degree which, in turn, is supposed to help them earn more money over the course of their lives than they would without it) and moral, or personal, lessons. Codes of conduct, rewards and punishments for good and bad behavior and for good and bad classroom performance are designed to teach personal lessons. Students, then, depending on the school and its reward/punishment structure, have an incentive to do well and behave. Their reasons, however, are not the same as or even in line with those of teachers.

Finally we have parents. It’s easy to say, “That kid’s mom and dad obviously don’t spend enough time with him/her. See how poorly he/she does in school? Look how disrespectful toward other students and teachers he/she is!” This, of course, both oversimplifies and reduces a parent’s role in a child’s education. Some parents send kids to school to learn, to have opportunities for better jobs and to stay out of trouble. Other parents don’t care how their kids perform and just want them away from the house for the time they’re in school. Parents, then, don’t have the same motives for helping their kids be successful students as the kids or the teachers.

To read what will motivate us to change, please come back for Part III to be published later this week. Until then, please leave your comments below.

In a quiet suburb of a large, major American city, on streets with loud, laughing, child-filled environmentally friendly parks and whose homes feature two-car garages, whose two-parent, racially-diverse, middle-class, college-educated mothers and fathers make sure to recycle paper and plastic and use energy-friendly lights for lamps, who water well-maintained, landscaped lawns during off hours to help conserve water and who have between two and four well-read and attentive children, there is daily, violent fighting. The fighting is political and, therefore, personal. The fighting is over the present and the future of American public education. But I’ve skipped a step or two.

By 1918 every state in America had passed laws requiring children to receive an education. America was changing from a country where most people were farmers and worked schedules tied to planting and harvesting crops to a country where most of the people worked in factories and were moving to heavily-populated cities on its coasts. Education was becoming increasingly important in these cities.

Unfortunately, the education laws put in place in 1918 set varying, inefficient guidelines. The new laws did not specify what kind of education children should receive, what was important to learn, why it was important to learn it, and, depending on the state, set different limits on how long children had to attend school and how old they had to be upon starting and finishing. Until the United States Department of Education was formed in 1980, states set their own rules that involved a lot of guesswork and were based on different kinds of research with no unifying ideas about effective policy. America still lacks a clear and effective national education policy and hasn’t agreed on a national curriculum.  Many of the countries now found ahead of us in world rankings have instituted universal education standards and policies and done well as a result, improving education outcomes for students across socioeconomic and racial strata.

Still, for a long time we managed as the stick stirring the global education and innovation pot. America was ranked at or near the top of so-called “first world” countries for education. Now, however, America ranks as “average” according to the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD). On a 1,000-point scale, America rates around 500 in reading, math and science. OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), meanwhile, says that, of the 34 countries studied, American 15 year-olds rank 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math, in the middle or near bottom.

The Purpose of an Education

We’re fighting over American education because we can’t agree on what an American education is. We’re fighting over American education because too often a quality education depends on how much money a family earns and where that family is allowed to live. We have a mismatched group of education policies that are different for each state and, in fact, are different within states. I was raised in a state, New Jersey, where the quality of education varied wildly within a 10 square-mile radius. Politicians and educators are proposing solutions from vouchers to small classes to paying children to get good grades. None of these work consistently, if at all.

To see what solutions will be offered, please come back for Parts II and III to be published later this week. Until then, please leave your comments below.