To Tweet or Not to Tweet?

The blue bird. Twitter. Intertwining our personal life with our responsibilities at work. Experienced as increasingly annoying at home and as more time-consuming at work. How should we see Twitter? As a good tool, or a monster; to tweet, or not to tweet?

Recent research by Brandfog shows that CEOs who tweet are held high in regard. More than 85% of consumers and employees rated CEO engagement in social media as somewhat important to indispensable. People who still deny the importance of social media within the business environment, must admit to being rather short-sighted.

Although I fully believe in the strength of social media and think the majority of firms should actively participate in creating online communities and engaging in e-marketing, I also see some downfalls. Studies have shown that employee productivity dramatically decreases when social networking sites are allowed during working hours. Some studies go as far as saying that employees spend more than 2 out of 8 hours to 'being social online', which does not benefit companies much. So in fact, we are dealing with a catch 22 here. On the one hand, companies benefit from social media in terms of employee and consumer engagement and positive effects on corporate image, while on the other hand employee productivity decreases.

My view on all of this is that the cons are easily outnumbered by the pros and that firms, especially B2C firms, should all actively engage in strategic social media initiaties. Nothing makes consumers feel more personally involved than receiving a 'Retweet' from their favourite brand. Negative experiences and complaint can be solved more easily by engaging in personal contact via Twitter.

To Tweet or Not to Tweet?

Tweet!

Holland's hardest prisons?

Last week I was watching a Dutch documentary about Tony, a repetitive offender who ends up back in prison after yet another armed robbery. Court had decided to subject him to a 7-week program at the Pieter Baan Centre.

(For all foreign readers unfamiliar with the Piet Baan Centre, this institute is a ‘forensic psychiatric observation clinic, operated by the Ministry of Security of Justice, where suspects of crimes in the Netherlands are observed to ascertain whether they can be held wholy responsible for their suspected crimes.’ (Wikipedia))

During the documentary, we follow Tony as a team of dozens of psychiatrics and behavioural analysists pass by and create a detailed image of Tony’s childhood and the influences this might have had on the offences he has committed. As I’m watching, Tony regurarly throws a fit of temper, as soon as someone refutes with anything he says. I’ve only seen him showe remorse once, when he explains how awful it made him feel that one of the girls working in the last shop he robbed, peed her pants out of fear. Tony comes across as extremely unsympathetic and the team of highly educated researchers later conclude that Tony is a narcistic, self-centered person who is extremely likely to continue his path of repetitive (armed!) offenses. They estimate the chances that Tony will fall back to the pattern of drugs and armed robberies as high as 95%, so they’re basically sure that it’s just a matter of time before the same crimes will be committed yet again. The eventual verdict, after 7 weeks of observation, is that Tony should be admitted to a so-called ‘TBS-program’, a measure taken to help criminals of unsound mind return back to civilization.

As the camera follows Tony in his cell, approximately 4x3m in size, we can clearly see there’s no shortage in luxury in his living conditions. A television, radio, books, computer… People who earn just below modal wages probably can’t afford some of the facilities this convicted criminal can freely make use of. Any time Tony had to attend sessions or interrogations, he is taken by one of the members of the psychiatric team, someone who is probably paid around €100 an hour by the government.

I can not believe why the government would be willing to invest such a huge sum of money on someone of whom they are pretty much certain will commit similar crimes after his TBS program anyway? Tony is just an example, but I would like to stress the fact that he has been in and out of jail since he was young, arrested over and over again for the same crimes. Why doesn’t the Dutch government realize that this jurisdictional system is highly ineffective? Yes, I agree to the fact that (almost) anybody, depending on the nature of the crime, should be given a second chance. I do not agree with the death penalty, I’d rather say I oppose such an extreme measure. However, I do think that the government should start to take on a more realistic approach in putting serious repetitive offenders behind bars. In America, if you get arrested for, let’s say, steeling a car for the third time, you’ll get sentenced with life in prison. But here, if you get arrested for robbing a gasstation at gunpoint for the 60th time, you’ll get the latest copy of Nicci’s book, cable tv and high speed internet. Something to think about?

Great dress-code today during our NXP plant visit in Nijmegen. 

As a corporate communications intern at NXP Semiconductor, with a background in international communications, getting a grip on the chip-making industry has proved to be quite the challenge. Yes, to a certain extent I understand that a chip is something ridiculously tiny (some are almost invisibly to the - at least my - human eye and enable high-tech applications to run smoothly. I get that. And that's as far as it goes. Or went I should say, because today me and another NXP intern got a tour around one of NXP's largest chip plants in Europe. From wafer, which is something like a blank cd, to the actual end product - chips - the whole process was explained and it actually started to make some sense. Although I could try to explain, or re-explain, what I've been told today in a technical way, I'd rather not embarrass myself, so I'll do try to do it my way ;)

So, it all starts with a wafer, which is a (usually) 6-inch cd-like piece of silicium. This wafer can be seen as the ground floor of an apartment building. Throughout the production process, the wafer goes through machines worth millions of dollars, to create different layers. Again, speaking in construction terms, these layers can be seen as floors in the blueprint of an apartmentbuilding: every layer on a wafer pretty much looks like a blueprint with different hallways, rooms and connections, which can only be seen under a microscope (180x zoom). Every wafer has to go through extensive programs to create new layers, which can take up to a few days. Some chips need to go through up to 15 processes, so you can imagine how time-consuming chip production can be.

After today, my view of my darling car, beloved TV and essential iPhone has changed radically. It takes so much work to create something that can sometimes not even be seen by the bare eye. Although I am not an engineer, I have huge respect for what they do! We should be more thankful to the long days they spent in their labs, figuring out best ways to make our phones more endurable and our cars more safe. Thank you, to all engineers worldwide!

Unforgivable ignorance

‘A 2-year-old Chinese girl died a few days ago, after being run over by a van in a busy market street’

At first, I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard that 18 people had just passed her, leaving her lying on the street in pool of blood. But, I figured, something must have happened for people to overlook her. Then I saw the video in the news and it took a lot of strength not to burst out in tears. This tiny girl was walking down the street, looking over her shoulder unexpectedly, when she gets hit by a van. The driver must have known he hit something, because he stops and waits for a while. Then he continuous driving, running her over yet again with his reer wheels. The toddler lies there seriously injured in the middle of the road, as person after person just walks past. I wouldn’t even call it ‘walking past’, as some of these people almost have to step over her. Even on the video, of which the quality is bad, you can clearly see that she’s bleeding. And then after 18 people, there finally is a woman that picks up the girl and goes and get help.

18 people pass a dying girl in the street. 18! China is probably seriously ashamed of this incident, since articles keep popping up about how it is common for people in China to press legal charges against their rescuers. This, supposedly, holds citizens back now, in case of offering help when there is an accident. 

Well, isn’t that an easy way out? Sure, so there have been incidental cases where someone sues his rescuer, but is that really the first thing on peoples’ mind when they see someone injured? Probably not. I’m guessing it has more to do with the fact that Chinese people are always in a rush, doing business 24-hours a day and being primarily self-interested. But are they to blame? Can we point the finger at the Chinese people in general, because what if they do not adopt this way of living? They are either hard-working or poor and there are not that many options in between.

Still, I can’t believe 18 people ignored this dying little Chinese girl. In the aftermath of this incident, I think that everyone worlwide should start to think about the common humanity. No, you should not go to church in order to make yourself believe you did something ethically right, just consider what you would have done in a similar situation. I am just hoping you’ll say you would stop and call an ambulance, if not, then where the hell are we going?

Inspirational quotes

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” – Oscar Wilde 

I’m a huge fan of meaningful quotations, that inspire me at any given time. When I was 12, me and my parents were enjoying a weekend at the Island of Texel, when I found the quote on the picture: 'Taste life, it's delicious'.

I hung this quote in my bedroom, at the foot of my bed, and so I faced it everyday. It sounds weird, but during the difficult times of my childhood, this quote really pulled me through sometimes. From then on, quotes have been very influental to me and I make sure they’re – literally – everywhere. In my agenda, for some inspiration on those long working days and on my Facebook page, so when I scroll back every now and then, it’s like a very personal diary of my feelings, that other people will never interpret as such. 

Leaving quotes in places you forget you left them after a while, sometimes provides you with an unparalled sense of awakening. It reminds me of what is important and what really matters to us in the end. It helps me to make sure some things don’t get to me and, on the contrary, to make sure some things do. Here are some of my favorite quotations: 

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“In the hope of reaching the moon men often fail to see the flowers that blossom at their feet.” – Albert Schweitzer

“Every day People straighten up the hair, why not the heart?” – Guevara

“The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.” Arthur C. Clarke

We're all animals

“You and me baby ain’t nothing but mammals”

Taken from a song by the Bloodhound Gang, this song is basically an outline of today’s blogpost. No matter how sophisticated we think we are, as human beings, we’re all just animals. Recently, a friend of mine posted a video on facebook, where a dog got hit by a car. He was lying in the middle of a busy highway, cars passing by on both sides and he wasn’t able to move. Then, out of nowhere, a second dog approaches, which first crosses the highway in order to get to the wounded dog and then starts dragging the dog to the side of the road to get him to safety. Not with his teeth, but with his paws!! It appears very far-fetched and it might be an uncommon example, but come to think of it, what other animals do not show similar behaviour?

People have a tendency to feel extremely superior over animals. Is there enough evidence to justify this superiority though? For example, recent evidence into the behaviour of killer whales, suggests whales work together in groups to create waves that sweep seals of their protective ice floe.

Dolphins are known to cooperate in teams to chase groups of small fish onto the shore banks, making them easy snacks once they’re out of the water. In the most extreme droughts, elephants travel hundreds of kilometres following invisible tracks that they have memorized and which lead them to water sources. Some elephants have been seen mourning for days over the bodies of their dead calves, unwilling to leave the corpse behind.

I am not saying here that, in the near future, I expect to be waitered at a local restaurant by a monkey that speaks three languages fluently. All I’m trying to point out is that the differences between animals and human beings might not be as big as we’ve always anticipated. Animals are, without a doubt, smarter than many people have thought for a long time and I think it’s about time we start treating them with the corresponding respect. How ‘human’ is it to harpoon whales and next slaughter them while their still alive, just because a bunch of weirdos love to eat their meat?

Maybe we should take a look at animals more often, to get a sense of what being ‘human’ to one another actually means….

If you still think the story of the wounded dag is far-fetched, here’s the video. It still amazes me.