Hi :)

Curiously, the more I get to practice PR, the less I get to disclose.

Therefore, you will rarely have me talk or write about the work I do except if it’s for events or CSR.
But for the record, I feel more than blessed to be part of a 2-person team that gets to do a little of everything: PR, media relations, advertising, CSR and events.

Maybe saying a “little of everything” is an understatement but it should suffice. I can’t do everything 🙂
And as workaholic as I think I am, I still very much value my life outside work.

Ciao.

HAPPY BEST!

I admit to laughing over how this was absolutely cheesy and unexpected. But I also admit that it got to me.

I know how it is to seem to have everything or have done everything (not academically, I guess) yet still feel that space between that so-so feeling and being actually happy. And for that, I apologize to everyone if at one point or another I have failed to be my happy best and in turn have disappointed you as well. I’ve always said that my ultimate goal in life is to be a constant source of pride and joy of the people around me.

 

Then again, being your happy best doesn’t really have a deadline. Unlike all the other things that have passed this semester. So I will continue trying. 🙂

Even through all the tears, the sleepless nights and the mandatory (but occasional!) dose of alcohol and music, we all secretly loved every moment of what seemed like an endless path to hell they have all disguised as academics. Yes.

Even if at one point of what has passed we have come to hate our group mates, our professors or most of the time ourselves, we would still have gone through everything because in between those are the moments we felt most alive. (Yup, even as we were sure we were dying)

So whether we are slaves to the university or to the corporate world, we must always remember that we owe it to ourselves and to the people who love us that we need to be our happy best.

*sigh*

Even if one point in our academic life that we just wanted to put everything to a halt,

now that everything is almost over, (or actually over for OrCom 152)

there is a certain kind of sadness over the relief that it’s over.

😦 🙂

Break modes and codes, not hearts

They say sometimes you have to fall apart to get it together.

Thankfully, organizations don’t have to subscribe to a romantic philosophy to adapt. They don’t have to break down and fall apart. Sometimes, all they have to do is loosen up.

Break modes and codes

In truth, it’s not very hard to listen. Did you know that coma patients lose all ability to function but their ability to hear remains? We are physiologically manufactured to listen. But the brain is powerful; it can will a physiological function to appear as though it never happened. It’s not hard to listen but it’s hard to make sense of what you’re hearing, moreso if you don’t believe in it. This difficulty is exponentially increased by the novelty of the idea.

Truthfully, change is hard. You cannot expect your organization’s leaders, after listening to a preaching of icky wikinomics to go ahead, jump in, hold their breath and pray desperately to not drown in this new, icky wikinomics world. Ultimately, these organizations know it’s a sink or swim. But some have chosen a third option and that is to wait and see. Some organizations are still looking for that eureka moment and, yes, they are looking at us. So what do we tell them? I say break modes and codes.

And by breaking modes and codes, I simply mean listen to what’s going on in the workplace other than the clicking of keyboards. Marvel at the opportunities as pointed out by self-organization. Try to listen to what people are afraid to tell you because walls and walls of traditional business function tell them, it just isn’t the way things should be done. Do not flinch at the hint of an unorthodox approach to accomplishing a task. Don’t freak out at the sight of multiple windows open in your workers’ desktops. The best ideas don’t always present themselves printed neatly in your office stationery.

Perhaps the problem is that organizations have attached function to tradition. And somehow, that makes sense because for them, it is through their traditions that they are able to know themselves amongst a crowd of competition. But if these traditions have walled functions into the four corners of an office, then we may have to rethink as to whether we are sheltered by it or actually caged in it.

The thing is organizations sometimes get the wrong picture of the wiki workplace. They think of it as kindergarten and letting their guard down is like letting little children run around carrying scissors. In truth, it’s not really about breaking rules but about making new rules or tweaking those that exist, to foster creativity amongst your wiki workers. Stop them from running around like crazy, but don’t take the scissors away.

It’s not sacrilege to your organization’s traditions to come down from the pedestals of centralized authority. Also, it’s not a congeniality contest of organizational leaders. The point here is to nurture their skills, in perhaps what others may deem as unconventional, but ultimately serving the organization’s purpose. Don’t just make them work. Let them work. And they will, and probably accomplish so much more than what you would traditionally expect of them.

What organizations need to be assured of is this: workplace functions remain. Working in the wiki workplace does not necessarily mean working away from work or just metaphorically working. Teaming, Time and Resource allocation, Decision-making and Corporate communication have been made to fit the wikinomics paradigm. But everything’s still there. And more importantly, everyone’s still there. And look, they’re doing it all on their own!

Not hearts

For those wanting to work in the wiki workplace, I have this to say too: break modes and codes. And this to add: but not hearts.

Organizations have this fear: letting their best people loose may also mean letting them walk away. Losing the people that make your organization work is a valid fear.

Don’t let them nurture you only for you to slack off and/or walk away. Show that you deserve the attention that you are given. At least within your work hours let it be work and play, not work or play. Remember they can always listen because their physiological make up says so, but it takes a lot more for them to believe you.

Do it for yourself, for your personal growth. Do it for us, the future wiki workplace workers.

What the concept of the wiki workplace suggests is not abandonment of traditions—but tearing down the walls to help those people living out those traditions to stop working in restraint. I know I’ve mentioned tradition in this entry a couple of times and you can interpret it as age-old business practices, but this time, what I mean by tradition is staying true to what your organization truly is. You are allowed to play, but do not stray. Stay true to the heart of the organization. Don’t break it. Don’t break away from it.

For those rethinking of adapting a wiki workplace, do not fret at a possible exodus of your creative resource. If ever some employees choose to leave and bring the ideas they have created in your playground with them, you will be able to let them walk away. If you have created a way to capture your eureka moments into organizational memories, then you can always look back at these memories and create new, or even better ones.

Maybe modes and codes need to be broken, but spare your hearts, please 🙂

Comments for the Week #2

Hello universe!

This series/category “Comments for the Week” will document the LoudUser’s loud mouth. To put it in more acceptable (and more me) terms, these are my comments on my OrComates blogs. Basically, I’m doing this so I can keep track of my comments.

😛

Here’s my take on:

Sir Barry’s Mirroring Iran

Nash Albacea’s Second Stop Wikinomics

Jeanne Rivera’s They Say Sex, I say Intercourse

Paula Batalla’s More. More. And more.

Jona Atienza’s The Ride

Dasi Guevara’s On Internet Apocalypso

Jena Lariza’s Confessions of an Ugly Duckling

Bianca Cruz’s Identity

Ace Acosta’s My Question on Stigma and Communication

Wynne Valenciano’s Rethink, Redo, Restart

Kervi Maximo’s Globally But Not Locally

Arven Eusebio’s Aleck Bovick vs Twitter

P.S. Some of my comments are still “awaiting moderation.” 😦

Ickynomics

Not everyone likes to get down and dirty. But I do.

And by down and dirty, I mean doing the dirty work. True, for quite a while, I enjoyed watching on the sidelines how anything and everything worked. I liked the fact that I was comfortably seated on the receiving end of the conceptualizing universe. I liked the fact that I wake up and the world has already invented all that I think I will ever need.

Let me tell you a secret: being born this generation makes me feel special. Dear reader, if you’re reading this and consider yourself to be part of my generation, don’t you feel a little lucky? Like everything was prepared for you–a sense of democracy, technology for your convenience and entertainment, a world seemingly without boundaries? That you never got your hair messy, your shirt wrinkly or your hands dirty in the process? Because someone else’s generation did it for you?

But isn’t it about time to get dirty?

And by dirty, I mean icky wikinomics–the art and science of collaboration. Wikinomics follows simple principles, nothing new, yet it’s still treated as some sort of risky experiment: openness, peering, sharing and acting globally. It basically asks us to be aware of each other’s existence and each other’s capabilities. It offers an open stage wherein we can be the front act. Forget being in the front row. It asks us to dig in, dive in, get involved, become co-creators–get dirty.

It asks us to peer above the walls of personal inhibitions, strict business rules, economic and cultural boundaries and dares us to imagine what could be–if we came together. Icky wikinomics is not a religion but it has some sort of calling. And it should’ve reached us by now.

I would like to point out the scariest yet most ambitious line in the text: collaboration on a mass scale is set to change every institution in society.

Following that excerpt and the picture’s logic, assuming it to be flawless, imagine if smart people came together. And, dear reader, if you’re just starting to imagine that possibility, please come out of your rabbit hole. That was yesterday. But I post this question: Seriously? Every institution? I hope to live to see that day. Or at least bear witness to its beginnings. Or to stretch it to a challenge–be a part of the change that can change everything?

What do you say my fellow future OrCom practitioners?

………………………………..

I’m not a rain person. I don’t like storms because I don’t get to come out and play. And it makes me lazy and unproductive. And my shoes get dirty. Yes, I’m one of those few people who sing to make the rain go away. But I digress.

If icky wiknomics prescribes a perfect storm that’s from a global platform for collaboration:: the internet, a collaborating population:: that’s hopefully everyone and a global economy:: hopefully better than what we have today–then let’s get down and icky with the wiki…nomics.

Comments for the Week #1

Hello universe!

This series/category “Comments for the Week” will document the LoudUser’s loud mouth. To put it in more acceptable (and more me) terms, these are my comments on my OrComates blogs. Basically, I’m doing this so I can keep track of my comments.

Here’s my take on:

Sir Barry’s OrCom Seniors, Exposed!

Nash Albacea’s License

Kervi Maximo’s My Experience of The Apocalypse

Paula Batalla’s To die or To Live–That is the question!

Arven Eusebio’s How To Get Into The Internet

Arvin Razon’s Who Are You Christopher Locke

Squeeze away!

Organisms, humans obviously included, don’t change in order to survive. We survive in order to change.

Just recently, we were asked by Sir Barry how much we’ve changed. If there were some sort of actual measurement, I would’ve answered something else more than “a lot”.

I expounded on that, saying that I am now more outspoken than I was before I was OrCom-ized. How vague. I’m glad I’m given the chance to expound on that (again) using this blog. I guess I was always that person who thought those things. Perhaps my thought processing pales to today, having already spent three years under the BA Organizational Communication program of the University of the Philippines Manila (shameless plug), but I wasn’t always the person who actually said those things. Now, I am.

Quoting Wilson from House MD, I tiptoed around everyone as though they were made of china. I was so bent on pleasing people that I forgot that conflict—or competition, breeds creativity. I know that now. We all know that now. And despite initial conflict, we’re happily reaping the benefits.

As people do evolve, we also get creative in communicating that change.

Documented by the BIS model, we have gone from Broadcast, Interactive to Social media. Broadcast media, lovingly referred to as traditional media such as television and print, maintained a passive audience and full-pocketed media buyers. Interactive media, exploring the contributions of forums, maintained an opinionated and a passive audience at the same time, while offering options for the media buyers. Social media, on the ideal hand, thrived on the idea of variety and creativity for the audience, the co-creators and the media buyers.

Our class activity was to document through photographs such evolution beyond the four walls of our classroom, but within the area of UP Manila, in 30 minutes. There wasn’t much you could do and you couldn’t go very far in 30 minutes in the excruciating afternoon heat. The best option was to get creative and go with the metaphors. Suffice to say that we were successful as we were ready to present that same day. Apparently, the presentation was due next meeting which means more time and that translates into higher expectations.

I shall post the presentation we made within the week. I hope it can evolve into something that can make the grade! 🙂

Perhaps the lesson of the day was that change can be painful. It can sacrifice things like credibility and identity, among other things–but if the (creative) juice is worth the squeeze, squeeze away! We will always have someone–or something we can trust. Something like Broadcast media.

🙂

Rebels without a clue

Seldom do we hear history documented in such cutthroat language. It’s not exactly a breath of fresh air but it’s a refreshing read—a romantic read at that. The triumphs of humanity over time and space so cryptically titled as “Internet Apocalypso”.

It’s so easy to feel lost in cyberland. The world is not getting bigger—at least not geographically—but it feels like it. The objective was to actually make it smaller. People realized that indeed, there was a world outside us but the world inside us, was bigger, and even more, unexplored. We wanted to know what other people thought about us and about themselves.

As James Dean was a Rebel Without A Cause, we were rebels without a clue. And our cause was an answer. No longer were we seeking authorization to learn new things. We figured that we owed that to ourselves—to humanity.

Contrary to how people put down the Internet, and other forms of technology, as crippling the human touch, I say it is an evidence of our humanity: the need to be comforted by the thought that there’s someone out there, out of the billions of people who traverse the earth, who will understand.

Like bacteria to heat, we thrive in anonymity. We worked so hard to have voices yet we are empowered by the thought of having that nameless voice. As long as it was out there, someone will hear it—or read it. And somehow, it was enough to be known as Blogger007.

And who did not gush at this line? “So what did we come for? And the answer is: each other”. Admit it. You did, didn’t you?

Markets are indeed conversations not cold, quiet transactions. How else can you expect to sell that delicious cake, if you can’t convince people it won’t make them fat? We want to have our cake! And we want to eat it too! Products can’t be shoved into people’s faces hoping that they dream about it and wake up actually purchasing it. It was a courtship that began with a conversation. And listen, we’re still talking—conversing.

Mass marketing, standing in the same line and looking like and wanting the same thing as the person behind you, led people to jump off the bandwagon. Individuality is the new currency of the world—or at least people didn’t want to believe that they were just like everyone else. Thus, the rebellion.

Competition breeds creativity, as evidenced by the huge corporations holding their breath with the emergence of micro markets under their noses. It was what Christopher Locke referred to as gonzo business management—paradox turned into paradigm. The crazy ideas of yesterday are now fueling the markets of today. We have become the inspiration.

Soon enough, people learned to protect what they knew, as they were also protecting what they have. Because apparently, what they knew could either build multimillion corporations or become the downfall of one. Quoting the late Ernie Baron, however cliché it may sound, knowledge IS power. And more often than not, that power resided in the so-called inhabitants of corporate basements, rather than with the finger-tapping and head-nodding bosses. Not to undermine the power of authority that resided with those who have earned the titles, they did actually do something. Thus with emergence of the internet also came the dawn of intranets, walls, passwords, security certificates and the list goes on. They thought of everything to keep the lines from blurring.

Then finally, there was a call to get serious about business. Surprise, the markets speak up, again, echoed by the corporate basement residents:

Relax. Get a little humor.

Don’t wall us out. Let us in.

There’s something we need to tell you. There’s something you need to hear.

And the conversation goes on.

The story of how everything came to be is a story of colorful characters who managed to keep themselves grey: the markets and the corporations. We cannot point out the protagonists and the antagonists because we’ve yet to reach the end of this corporate fairytale. Soon, my OrCom batch mates and I will make that fateful leap to what tomorrow has prepared for us what we have prepared for tomorrow, so we shall just see from there.

………………………………….

We seem to always want something more.

We seem to always want it to last a little longer.

Insatiable creatures, aren’t we?

Hats off to humanity!

//Here’s to the Crazy Ones by Jack Kerouac
Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits. The rebels.
The troublemakers. The round
pegs in the square holes – the
ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules and
they have no respect for
the status quo. You can praise
them, disagree with them,
quote them, disbelieve them,
glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing that you
can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.

Here’s to the crazy ones—the former rebels without a clue.

Thinking Aloud. Thinking Allowed.

Hello Universe!

I understand the reach of this site because of its purpose, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to greet the whole universe! Before you read on, read this: TheLoudUser

Here we go. *breathes in, breathes out*

I was never the writer with a purpose. Sure, I write about this and that, but I’ve never really written anything that will elevate my purpose from cathartic to catalytic. (Woah there. Now I’m just scaring myself. Haha!)

I belong to the Wala Lang Generation whose default answer, besides the aforementioned “wala lang” (Oh nothing–not an exact translation) is a mere shrug.

Cue the entrance for new social media paired with the new teaching methods of educational institutions today, we are given a second chance and a choice. I say second because the chance and the choice has always been there. But there have been few takers.

Putting aside the following facts:

1. This communication weblog is an academic requirement in OrCom 152: Communication Trends and Styles of the BA Organizational Communication program of the University of the Philippines Manila.

2. This can persuade a future employer!

…this is actually my chance to write about something that may matter, not only to me, but perhaps to a slightly bigger audience than just myself.

Thus the subtitle: Thinking Aloud. Thinking Allowed.

Read on for your OrComusement 🙂