Sue O Lee's Blog

There are many things I’ve learned in comm 299. Some of these things include how to build a good resume and cover letter, how to network with prospective employers, and how to speak in public. The greatest skill I have learned from Comm 299 is how to build a resume. I have never heard of these techniques before prior to coming to class. CAR statements helped a lot and hopefully I will successfully land a job in the summer because of them.

A teacher. A visionary. A caregiver. My father.

Throughout the span of my life, my father has guided me in ways I cannot possibly imagine. Most people think when they hear Asian parents are: “Oh they must be very strict and make their children study all the time.” I can safely say this is partly true, but I take these comments with a grain of salt.

My dad has taught me the value of hard work and passion. He always believed in my abilities to become anything that I wanted to be, which kept me motivated. I can safely say that I would not be here if it wasn’t for his meddling into my life.

It all started with a trip to Canada 19 years ago. I was merely but a small embryo inside my mother’s womb when my parents arrived in Vancouver. “Hey, this would be a great place to live!” my parents said. With the hopes of new opportunities and a new family, my father and my mother sacrificed everything in South Korea to immigrate to Canada. Soon after, I was born and our family was complete.

Times were tough in Canada when they first arrived. With their limited English they were only able to acquire strenuous work for minimal compensation. Arguments arose and glasses shattered because of finances. For my benefit, they continued to live a difficult life so I could live in a prosperous land.

Everything my father did was for me. He taught me the strength of love and faith, and what family truly means. He continues to teach me to this day. My only goal is to make him proud of me, as I am proud to be his son.

Did you know that Costco CEO and Co-Founder Jim Sinegal’s salary is only 350,000?

Although it is one of USA’s largest corporations, he refuses to live the lavish life of luxury. In Costco, their employees get treated extremely well, covering 94 percent of their health case and wages starting at 10 dollars an hour. Because of this the employees feel safe working at Costco, keeping turnovers extremely low.

This is a huge contrast from Wal-Mart’s business plan of cutting costs to the bare minimum to maximize revenue. Some people even went so far to create a website in petition for their acts.

Which approach is the best for maximizing costs? For Jim to maximize costs, he took money out of his own pocket so that employees do not have to suffer. Wal-Mart does the exact opposite, keeping the wealth while the employees get the butt-end. It all comes down to a matter of perception.

We cannot expect Wal-Mart’s culture to be top of the line as a result. It will lack the benefits of happy employees such as high turnover, absenteeism, and productivity. One thing’s for sure, I’d never want to work for Wal-Mart because of this.

Globalization.

Currently, a lot of our manual labour is being outsourced to countries, the two big names being China and India. Almost everything nowadays is made in China, and most of the customer service care is handled in India.

With the continuous rise of growing Chinese and Indian economies and the rise of wages in said countries, cost for production is rising. A good thing, yes, but every coin has 2 sides.

Because of globalization with the aid of technology, jobs are being lost in North America. The market is becoming more and more competitive, and simple and repetitive jobs are taken over by China who is large in work-thirsty hands. Another problem that poses a threat are condoning the use of sweatshops and child labour. Cheap work comes at a heavy ethical cost.

How can we solve this problem?

One solution is to cut wages in North America. This will cut down in the amount of outsourcing done to other countries by appealing to business owners. Creating media attention and boycotting of companies that use sweatshop labour is another solution.

Sweatshops are unethical. Because of loose employment laws employees are being abused, while being overworked and underpaid. We need to end this.

I want to change the world for the better. Make life worth living for people who have next to nothing right now. One way I can reach this goal is through social entrepreneurship.

A social entrepreneur is someone, through business practices, builds a venture to create social change in today’s society.

One organization that I admire is Kiva. Kiva is a micro-lender. What this means is that it lets people from poverty-stricken nations to receive capital in which they build a business out of. The person would in turn, pay back the money in full to the person who lent the money. The loaner could then in turn choose to lend the money out again or hold onto it.

Because of the lack of motivation of banks to lend them money, aspiring entrepreneurs in third world countries cannot muster up enough dough to support their business plan. Kiva changes this by offering a channel for easy funds, while earning a profit by charging them 35.21% average interest rate to handle the operations of the business as well as relending that same profit. Some might say that the interest rate is high, but reports show that the benefit they receive pales in comparison to this minuscule fee.

Hello readers, look at this video, now back to me, now back at this video, now back to me. Sadly, this isn’t your marketing strategy, but if you stopped using old generic marketing methods and switched to viral marketing you could pretend like Old Spice’s you. Look down. Back up. Where are you? You’re in the information age with the most social media tools ever available. Look again, the video is now DIAMONDS. I’m on UBC Blogs.

Old Spice have garnered a lot of attention lately because of its unique approach to marketing strategy. Let me show you how they rose to fame.

But first, what is viral marketing?

Viral marketing is simply, like a virus, spreading of advertisements through word of mouth. Person A might really like something and send it to Person B C and D, who also sends it to all their friends. Awesome amounts of brand awareness, for potentially an exceptionally low cost.

After the video’s success, Proctor and Gamble decided to create interaction with its audience in the form of twitter video responses. Old Spice made sure to reply to social figures with lots of followers such as Digg founder Kevin Rose.

Old Spice has repositioned itself as number one in consumers minds for Men’s deodorant and body wash.

Not bad.

If I had to bet my money on one company that I consider to be entrepreneurial, it would be Google.

The Googlenator

Using Schumpteter’s View of Entrepreneurship, we can see that innovation is key for describing what it takes to be fit in this category.

Google is constantly coming out with new creations that were never thought plausible, and buying old ideas from modern inventors. Some of its products include Youtube, the Google Android, Google Docs, Blogger, Google Chrome, and the soon to be Google car (the car that drives itself).

Google is in control of everything technological. They live their life on the edge, buying out Youtube when it was fairly new. It might have been risky to some, but Google had a vision. Television was slowly dying out, and everyone was  moving to the internet for their viewing pleasures. Because Youtube could have so many applications to generate revenue (Youtube Live, Advertisements, Partnerships, etc), they jumped at the chance to buy the company for 1.65 billion dollars.

Judging by current numbers, Google earned about 24 BILLION dollars in revenue just last year. How’s that for wealth creation?

(And they treat their employees excellently).

Patricia Dunn was the chairman for Hewlett Packard for quite a bit. During her reign a scandal leaked out about HP’s spying endeavors. Apparently they were spying on their employees.

HP used a method called “pretexting” where agents disguised themselves as board members and employees to extract information regarding phone records from phone companies. They also performed a sting operation where a “dummy” codenamed Jacob fed insider information to CNET writer Dawn Kawamoto. This created a false sense of trust. Afterwards, Jacob injected malicious spyware that would afterwards record every keystroke Dawn would write to extract more information. After this became public, Dunn denied any involvement with this ordeal, although it was her who approved it. This led to her quick resignation as chairwoman. She was then succeeded by Mark Hurd.

As you can infer, this was a clear violation of basic employee’s rights for privacy. Hewlett Packard did not make an ethical decision. Although it could be argued that other companies closely monitor their workplaces via surveillance cameras, the employees of HP had no idea this was going on. There was no consent, which led to a huge outburst from the media.

People are aware of video games and its gigantic popularity, but are people aware that these said games can be played competitively AND for money?

In Korea especially, gigantic stages are built just to accommodate the fans of Starcraft, a real time strategy game developed by Blizzard Entertainment. There are teams that are sponsored by big name companies such as Samsung, SK Telecom, and CJ Entertainment.

Now comes a new game, with already a gigantic fanbase, Starcraft 2. There is no question that its popularity not only exists in Korea; millions of views are constantly being hit on Youtube of Starcraft 2 commentaries. People currently utilize Justin.tv and livestream to stream up to date videos of their Starcraft 2 ventures. This is where the Google proposal was made.

Although the conditions for a viable career as a professional gamer is limited in North America, certain people believe that such a dream can be achieved. If this succeeds, we will see a gigantic new market be introduced, in conjunction with new jobs, increased demand in electronics, and a change in the social norm of how we view “sports”.

As you all know, RIM and Apple have been constantly duking it out with their phone line, the Blackberry and the iPhone. Now with Tablets becoming immensely popular and its applications almost limitless, the iPad was released for consumers in April.

The iPad had done extremely well for itself, selling 3 million copies in the first 80 days of its release. People loved the iPad because of its innumerable amount of capabilities. The iPad is giving markets such as the e-reader, portable gaming device, and ultra-portable laptops a run for its money. Although the iPad is one heck-of-a-gadget, it leaves the consumers wanting more; something with Adobe Flash capabilities, a camera for video conferences, and HD video output. The Blackberry Playbook looks to change all that.

As we can see here, compared to the iPad, the Blackberry Playbook offers a front facing 3MP camera and a 5MP camera in the rear, support for Adobe Flash, Higher tech specs (2 1GHz cores instead of 1, 4 times the RAM of iPad) and to top it all off, weighs significantly less; almost half of that of the iPad.

Apple fan-boys should beware, the Playbook looks like a serious contender to kill the iPad as we know it.