#one of the employers literally reached out personally with an email titled

[bordonfreeman]

Bro i put "working for a youtuber" on my resume on indeed and now i am plagued by emails about graphic design jobs that are full time only and require a bachelor's and 5 years in cad and adobe suite [i literally just graduated high-school]

[piermanwalter]

Thief’s Apprentice: Civil Servant Triumvirate

What does it take to keep a city of immortal skeleton wizards functioning? These revenants are the antithesis of the bros: a semi-legitimate politician who won’t fall for petty scams, another large sealed container, and a guy who breaks into houses and attacks people but legally.

The Mayor of Veilheim

Although elected by the literate class as The Mayor, The Mayor isn’t a Veilheimer or even from Surenia. His outsider status is celebrated as bringing an end to cultural and political stagnation, but has caused some problems. Counter to Veilheim customs, he still treats his children and grandchildren as family even though he died decades before. The Mayor’s continued contact with them is seen as unnecessary interference with the affairs of the living. Integration between living and dead society has swung back and forth throughout history, although recently the living in Veilheim have gone from viewing the world outside the living district as another plane of existence to coming and going as they please (only if they are plaguebearers) within a few generations, as orchestrated by The Mayor. 

The Mayor’s political platform is normalising death so the living die happier and produce less madmen. Under his rule, living apprenticeship under dead Masters has increased, a few living businesses such as perfumers and the Rambush family distillery now serve the dead, and skeleton prostitution is decriminalised (for health and safety reasons it’s still illegal for anyone who’s not a skeleton to be a prostitute). The Mayor also implemented the infamous and controversial Destitution Inducing Tax Law, which reduced 1000 of the richest Veilheimers being taxed 0.1% of city budget per year to 100 of the richest Veilheimers being taxed 1% of the city budget per year. The repercussions of this law will be discussed later. With increased working population and ending a few monopolies, Veilheim’s self-sufficiency caused some diplomatic issues with other cities, such as Villa Princeps and Alhambra, which used to count on Veilheim for trade. The Mayor dealt with this by decreasing staple food and fabric imports, but increasing imports of luxury items from outside.

As well as being a functional statesman, The Mayor is also a great wizard. As covered before, magic is the energy derived from souls dying outside the body. Wizards can’t perform magic on their own, but can effectively use magic items, objects with pieces of mage souls in them. To use a magic item, a wizard needs to convince the soul piece inside to die for their sake. Thus wizards are all monstrously manipulative. The Mayor keeps a stash of magic items from his home country that nobody else can use because the souls inside all speak a different language. 

During the uncertain early years of his reign, The Mayor resorted to a lot of secret crimes to stay in wealth and power. After things stabilised, The Mayor has been able to stay in power via legitimate means for a long time and has worked to erase his history, but some elements of his criminal past come back to haunt him, including you. Some of his deals have gone on for so long with people so dangerous he hasn’t figured out how to end them yet. 

Noble Porter

About 10 years ago, a pirate crew attacked the city and were all arrested. While awaiting trial, some pirates died in the cell and went mad, killing and eating the rest, forming into one single creature composed of at least 8 pirates. Temperament stabilised by being made of so many people, the resulting being’s imposing size and treasure-protecting pirate instincts led to new employment. Noble Porter, most noble of porters, delivers state documents within Veilheim and also to other cities by putting them in the big cabinet. The key is delivered separately a few days earlier to the document’s recipient. Then Noble Porter finds you and kneels so you can reach the cabinet and unlock it. Noble Porter’s head is literally and metaphorically filled with state secrets. Noble Porter is constantly surrounded by guards and seems physically incapable. Despite Noble Porter’s helpless appearance, don’t forget the composition of at least 8 pirates who spent their lives killing and looting and died cannibalising each other.

Noble Porter has a very nondescript personality, can’t speak, and takes a very long time to make decisions. Noble Porter must always be referred to without pronouns, since Noble Porter lacks the mental faculty to comprehend anything other than the proper title. It’s easy to infer complete stupidity from this, but Noble Porter has a surprisingly good idea of the general vibe and often bails out of suspicious situations before they begin. How much Noble Porter likes you is determined by how long it takes you to unlock the cabinet. If you use the wrong keys too much or unlock the wrong drawer first, Noble Porter won’t like you. Noble Porter may also relock locks, change pin combinations, and shuffle documents into other drawers. It usually takes a few minutes to get the cabinet open, but you can use this to your advantage by robbing people while they are distracted. This has inevitably led to Noble Porter liking several specific nobles because they get delivered important documents a lot. This is about as fair and efficient as the standard workplace email. How has Noble Porter managed to accumulate the wealth and prestige prerequisite to being a noble without any language skills? Pirate hoarding instincts.

If Noble Porter doesn’t like you, documents will take much longer to be delivered. If Noble Porter likes you, documents will be delivered quickly and sometimes Noble Porter will deliver extra handwritten nonsense letters and random objects. These nonsense letters are starting to become a currency in high society. Noble Porter is also married to Cylinder Locksmith, who has an unfair advantage because she installs the locks into the cabinet. Is she purposefully being exploitative? It’s hard to tell.

Tax Collector

Despite being rich and influential, Tax Collector is seen as being on the same level as other Collectors, such as Rag Collectors, Dung Collectors, Ash Collectors, etc. Tax Collector has been around for at least 500 years and thus has cultivated an extensive legacy of terror. As per Veilheim’s traditional tax policy, if someone can’t or won’t pay taxes, their share will be paid by increasing taxes for other taxpayers and also Tax Collector will drag them out into the street and stab them, after which they are ridiculed by the general public and reviled by other taxpayers who had to pick up their slack. It’s possible to regain some clout by stabbing Tax Collector back. This happens often enough that it’s legal to stab him as he’s stabbing you (it’s still illegal to stab him at any other time). If you are a chronic tax evader, instead of stabbing you in front of your house, Tax Collector will drag you into the judicial district and stab you in the main square. It’s considered a great honor if Tax Collector stabs someone with the same thing you stabbed him with. Sometimes there are multiple rounds of tax collecting, where Tax Collector collects taxes from those who can pay, stabs those who can’t, then calculates how much extra needs to be paid, collects that from those who can pay, stabs those who can’t, and so on until he reaches a monolith of riches who pays for like 18% of the city budget.

Aside from tax collecting, Tax Collector is also involved with antiforgery, crime scene investigation, and tracing the origin of stolen goods. His giant soul from old age and also work experience makes him an excellent alchemist. Alchemy is the study of how souls affect chemistry. For example, if a chunk of limestone is mined by someone and put on the back of a donkey and unloaded by someone else, then burned into quicklime by a different person, the resulting calcium oxide still carries tiny fragments of the souls of three people and one donkey. Not nearly enough to be a magic item or affect its physical behavior, but still enough to be detected by an alchemist. If you touched something, Tax Collector knows. 

After his workload of 1000 people a year was reduced to 100 people a year by the Destitution Inducing Tax Law, Tax Collector is much more involved in normal law enforcement, turning him from an annoying figure among high society to widely reviled by all. As intended by the law, 1% of Veilheim’s yearly budget is enough to drive someone to destitution. Because productive property (things like food, tools, buildings of labor, working animals, and industrial materials) are counted for tax purposes as much less than other things like leisure buildings, precious metals, and jewels, people on the verge of being in to top 100 rush to convert their riches into raw flax, iron bars, and live sheep. Those unfortunate(?) enough to still be considered rich after this often have their life’s work erased. If revenants don’t die, to maintain a functioning economy they must be killed financially. The young by comparison are still afraid of this, but old revenants driven by greed to accumulate as much as they can often lose the will to live after they can no longer grow their wealth as fast as they used to and even the biggest diamonds makes them feel nothing.

Tax Collector! Render me destitute and give my life meaning again!

Then there are people like Noble Engineer and Sporadic Miner who are so absurdly rich that paying 1% of the city’s yearly budget doesn’t significantly affect them.

[were-cheetah-stiles]

The Blackouts (Part One) - Stuart Twombly

Author: @were-cheetah-stiles

Title: “The First Blackout”

Relationship: Stuart Twombly x Original Female Character

Based on: Writer In The Dark - Lorde, which you should listen to just cause it’s like so a part of this fic...

Author’s Note: So, my first Stuart. It is purposefully detailed as all get out and poetic-ish. *shrugs* This will only be two parts, and the second part will be coming soon enough.

Additional Note: *** so anything that looks like this is a lyric from “Writer In The Dark” by Lorde... I generally use italics for a greater effect on a certain part of a sentence, which I still do, but in the part where she is reading from her book, anything that is italicized but not bold, was borrowed from Said the Shotgun to the Head by Saul Williams. That is not my original content. He is a brilliant poet, and I am not, but I wanted Penny to be. so, credit given where it is due. ***

Summary: At age 18, Stuart Twombly met and fell in love with Penelope Marshall. At age 21, he let her go. At age 27, he saw her again.

"Hi, I'm sorry, I really don't want to bother you, but are you Penelope Marshall?"

The hair on Stuart's arms stood at the sound of that name. He lowered the volume on his laptop, as a new song began to play, and then pulled his headphones from his ears altogether. The coffee shop had died down as the lunch hour crowd had begun to clear out, and the tables around Stuart's began to empty. He looked around to see where the conversation he had managed to overhear, in between changing songs on his computer, was coming from. Three tables down he saw a girl standing in front of a table, and then saw a familiar sight: a pair of blue slip-on Toms, ankles crossed, resting on an empty chair. Stuart thought that it had to be a coincidence, and yet, he continued eavesdropping.

"I just, I'm such a huge fan of your work, and my Modern Literature professor at USF had us read your book my sophomore year and I have read it so many times since, and it has gotten me through a lot of hard times. I just, it would mean the world if I could get your signature."

Stuart listened, quickly slipping between bouts of absolute denial and sheer, heart racing terror over the fact that this was too great of a coincidence and it was actually her. He knew that he heard that name correctly though. He quickly grew frustrated that the coffee shop was playing Adele's "Hello" a little too loud, and that only the excited, standing fan was speaking loud enough for him to hear. He craned his neck, trying to see around her, but she was standing too close to what he really wanted to see, to actually set his eyes on it. He leaned in, and tried to listen more.

"I'm so sorry to hear that, honey." Stuart knew that voice. It was quiet and low, but it was unmistakable. "Oh, don't cry...."

"It's just, your writing has really helped me to not feel alone. That passage where you wrote 'Break the news, you're walking out to be a good man for someone else. Sorry I was never good like you. Stood on my chest and kept me down, hated hearing my name on the lips of a crowd. Did my best to exist just for you.' was something I so understood and identified with and to know that someone as talented and beautiful and wonderful as you got cheated on but bounced back and turned all this trauma into something so brilliant, it really... it really..." The girl devolved into a puddle of tears, and the one he wanted to see finally stood.

"Oh, you are so sweet. Come on, honey, let's sort you out and I'll buy you a coffee..." The familiar voice rang again.

Stuart sunk into his chair and hid his face with his hand as the girl was escorted to the bathroom by the woman she was talking to. He watched as the restroom door closed behind them, and he began frantically packing up his laptop, tablet, personal phone, work phone, multiple flash drives, and two external hard drives. Then he stopped.

He hadn't seen her, in person, in six years, and just the sound of her name still gave him literal goosebumps. He had dreamt about running into her again, on a more frequent basis then he would ever admit to anyone out loud and if Stuart believed in fate, he would think that this was it. But he didn’t and he had a decision to make suddenly. 

Something in Stuart told him to keep his laptop out and remain in his seat. He did a Google Images search for 'Penelope Marshall' and stared at the picture that he had seen on the inside of her book cover a million times. It was about four years old at that point but it was certainly her.

"No, thank you, sweetheart. You are so kind and I really loved meeting you. I hope to see you at my reading on Thursday. Have a good day, honey." She waved as she sat back down at her table. 

Stuart saw her smile and shake her head, as she picked up her pen and began to write on the yellow legal pad in front of her. Her smile was like a shot of adrenaline to his heart; he felt more alive in that very moment than he had in years. A rush of memories came over him suddenly, but one in particular stuck out in his head. The kiss. 

He sighed and ran his long fingers through his chocolate brown hair, massaging his scalp as he worked his way to the back of his neck. He slumped his head down in the crook of his arm, feeling his glasses jab into the bridge of his nose, and he stared at the USB ports on the side of his MacBook Pro. He sighed, picked his head up, glanced over at her again, and then went back to reading the memos in his work email, trying to focus on anything but her. He reached for his now tepid coffee and looked up at the ceiling as he sipped. He slowly lowered the oversized mug back onto the accompanying saucer on the table and stared at her again. He couldn't take his eyes off of her.  

Penny tapped the end of her purple felt tipped pen on the paper in front of her, stalled in her writing, and she looked up. Finally, she saw him. A slow, but genuine smile spread across her lips as she made eye contact with the man across the room, hiding behind his laptop and coffee cup. She smirked and raised an eyebrow, as she pushed the empty chair across from her out from under the table with her feet, daring him to come over. Stuart accepted her silent proposal. He shoved his phone into his gray trousers pocket, stuffed his computer into his backpack, and grabbed his coffee. He adjusted his thick black rimmed glasses on his nose and walked over to her table.

"Hey, Pen." Stuart said in his low husky tone.

"Hey, Stu." She said smiling up at him. "You going to sit or...?"

"I don't want to bother you if you're writing..." Stuart began doubting himself. He was normally very confident and self-assured, but there was something about this exchange that was throwing him off. He knew what that something was: her.

She happily shook her head, and pushed the chair out a little further with her tip-toes, the sound of the legs sputtering against the terra cotta tiled floor filled the quiet room. "Sit, Twombly. Let's catch up."

Stuart smiled. 'Twombly.' God, he loved hearing her say his name again. Stuart dropped his backpack to the floor, pushed the sleeves of his navy blue pullover up to his elbows, and sat down in the chair across from her. "I never.. I, uh..." He struggled to find the perfect opener. "How are you?" He sighed internally.

She smiled and leaned forward, resting her elbow on the legal pad and her chin on the back of her hand. "I'm good, Stu, how are you?"

He rolled his pink lips into his mouth and wet them with his tongue, and rang his hands together in front of him on the table. He was mere inches from her and he could not think straight. "I'm good. Uh.. just, you know... Um.." Stuart struggled to find his words.

"Okay, well while you figure that out, I am just gonna..." She snickered and pointed her pen down towards the paper underneath her. "..go back to this..."

"Oh god, I'm gonna go."

"STUART! I'm kidding! Sit! Oh my god, you act like I'm auditing your finances, not catching up with you for the first time in years, would you relax? I'm your ex, not like the boogeyman." Her raised tone garnered some attention, and a few of the other customers looked up to watch what was happening at their table. Stuart lowered himself back into the chair and sighed.

"I'm surprised to see you is all. I never thought you'd come back to San Francisco again."

Penny smiled, and leaned back in her chair, biting down on the end of her pen between her front teeth. Her arms folded in front of her, as she barely held onto the cap. "Well, I've only been in town for a couple of months, so."

"Months?" Stuart questioned, unable to hide the surprise in his tone.

Penny nodded. "Yes, Stuart, months."

"What are you doing back here?" Penny frowned slightly and narrowed her eyes at him. "I didn't mean it like that, just, like, what brought you back... oh, fuck, Pen, you know what I mean." Stuart brought the palm of his hand up to his forehead and Penny laughed. He glanced up at her from under his eyelashes and felt like he had been struck through the heart again. Her laughter was like the best song from his childhood; the sweetest and most nostalgic music he had ever heard.

"I got recruited by a writer's collective in the area, and... yea, my publisher has been on me to write and I thought that a new space could get the creative juices flowing again, and yea, so I moved back."

"You have a publisher? That's amazing, Pen." Stuart played coy. He didn't want her to know that he had kept tabs on her after all these years.

Penny narrowed her eyes and smiled, then nodded. "Yep, and she's trying real hard to get a decent book out of me."

"I'm sure you could write a wonderful book, Penny. You were always incredibly talented." Stuart continued his charade.

"You still at Google?" She asked, trying to steer the conversation away from her reappearance in the Bay Area and her employment by a publishing house.

Stuart nodded. "Still at Google. I've been headhunted by a few other companies, Facebook, Spotify, Microsoft, but Google was always the goal, and it's home at this point. I couldn't leave." Stuart relaxed as he talked about work, one of the few things he was truly passionate about in life.

"How's Neha?" Penelope was never one to beat around the bush, and in this instance, she felt like she had nothing to lose by being direct.

Stuart's cheeks flushed a bright and noticeable red, and he ran his hand through his hair, pushing the locks back and forth, trying to hide his face with his arm. "She was good, the last time we spoke. I haven't talked to her in a long time though. She moved on to Apple like five years ago."

"So you broke up?" Penny’s facial expression remained completely unchanged. She was playing the best game of personal question poker that Stuart had ever participated in.

Stuart furrowed his brow and frowned slightly. All of his daydreams of running into her and instantly falling back into a happy rhythm were being dashed by the talk of Neha. He rubbed his hands together nervously. "We broke up after only a few months; it was never destined to be anything special..."

"Hmm.." Penny moved her pen off of her paper and onto the table. She had spent six years irrationally hating a girl she had never met, and now she knew that she had never been replaced by that girl, and Penny didn't quite know what to say about it. She moved on instead. "If you're working for Google, what are you doing here on a Tuesday afternoon? Shouldn't you be at work, at Google...?" Her smile returned.

Stuart was grateful for the topic change. He smiled and Penny felt a small tingle dance across her skin. She pulled the sleeves down on her denim jacket to hide her sudden goosebumps. "I can work remotely if I want and sometimes it's nice to just get out of the office."

"So you're supposed to be working right now?" Penelope asked, with a smirk, leaning to the side of the table to look at Stuart's full backpack.

Stuart chuckled quietly. "Kind of, yea... and you were obviously writing, so I can just..." He scooted his chair back and began to get up to go back to his previous table, until suddenly Penny's hand was on his forearm.

The two of them stared silently at each other, frozen in their respective positions for a longer amount of time than would be considered normal. Finally, she spoke. "No, you weren't bothering me, Stu. You don't have to go back over there to work, I can work just fine with you sitting here... if you wanted. I wouldn't mind hearing about your job and your parents and brother a little more too.."

Stuart felt like he had been kicked in the stomach; his breathing was ragged and shallow. He could barely think straight, let alone speak coherently. He simply nodded and sat back down, grabbing his laptop out of his backpack and placing it on the table.

Stuart tried hard to focus on his work and not the way that she chewed on her bottom lip as her pen flew across the paper. He could make out the words if he tried, but instead he felt warm inside staring at her handwriting. He always thought that it looked more like calligraphy than regular handwriting. It was a beautiful cross between print and script and it was steady and full of flourishes and embellishments. He remembered all of the handwritten notes that sat in a shoebox at the top of his closet in his apartment, and all of the memories attached to each letter. Some were pages long and some were simple and short, pages torn out of her books with affirmations of her love to him, or napkins that she had scribbled little notes of encouragement on when he needed a quick confidence boost.

Penelope was hunched over the table, her free hand rubbing her shoulder and neck, under her shirt. He became distracted from her writing when a section of her hair feel from her back to the front side of her shoulder, and suddenly, Stuart found himself at eighteen again, on his first official date with Penny, watching her stare at the menu and then smile up at him when she caught him admiring her.

"Stu... Stuart...."

Stuart jolted out of the movies playing in his head when he felt her soft skin touch his arm. "Yea?" He blinked at the contact that she hadn't broken yet.

"You haven't typed anything in, like, three minutes and you have been staring at me...." She narrowed her eyes and smiled at him.

Stuart laughed. He missed how direct she was. Regardless of the fact that both of their blunt natures used to lead to some arguments between them, that quality was one of his favorite things about her. He never had to wonder what she was thinking because she would always just tell him. They never really played games. It was something he struggled to find in his dating life as an adult.  

"I kind of zoned out there for a minute there.. sorry." He winked at her quickly, and then glanced at her smile in reaction to his gesture.

"I missed that." She grinned from ear to ear and shook her head. "Fuck, I didn't even realize I missed that until you just did it." She began laughing, and covered her face with her hands.

Stuart closed his eyes and drunk in the sound of her laughter; that childhood song playing over again. "I missed that." He whispered, testing the limits of his upfront nature. He opened his eyes and saw her leaning forward, softly smiling and looking at the paper in front of her.

"You know what I've been thinking about since I saw you?" She asked, as she leaned in, her chin resting on her balled up fist, suddenly willing to take a walk down memory lane with him.

Stuart raised his eyebrows, rolled his lips into his mouth, and allowed the corners of his mouth curve upwards into a coy smile. "Hmm?"

"The kiss." She replied, and Stuart felt like he had literally been shot in the chest. He instinctively brought his hand up to his heart and dug his fingertips into his chest, almost like he was trying to jumpstart his heart again.

Stuart stumbled with his words; his brain felt like it was on fire. "Is that what you've been writing about?" He asked, glancing down at her yellow legal pad.

Penny smiled, and Stuart felt his skin tingle. He rubbed his left arm and wondered to himself if he was having a heart attack. All of those thoughts left his head though, as he watched her long and delicate fingers run across the dried ink and flatten out the pages. "I was working on short stories and some poems about my time in New York before, but it was going no where...." Penny grinned. "Then some inspiration hit, but I haven't quite worked out my thoughts yet." She gently pushed the pad of paper across the table, towards Stuart, and he read the words quietly to himself.

Stuart saw some scribbles at the top of the page about old school versus new school and a doodle of his glasses. He flipped the page up to see if anything was written on the back and noticed the underside was blank, so he tore out the doodle and placed it on the table. He reached into the small front zipper of his backpack and pulled out his wallet. He opened it and placed the doodle inside, next to his cash, and then closed it and put it back in his backpack.

"For the collection." He winked, and Penny blushed, and grinned.

He continued reading the ramblings on the page. A lot was crossed out and most was her just jotting down feelings and words and ideas, but when Stuart got to the bottom of the page, he read something that was incredibly familiar. Something he had read before. Something he had read upwards of a hundred times. 'When you see me, will you say I've changed.' Stuart tried to fight an emerging smile, as Penny became fidgety, and leaned back in her chair, tapping her pen quickly against the air as she waited for him to speak again. He reached across the table and pulled the pen out of her hand, and then wrote something down on the paper below her scribbles, then slid the pad back over to her.

Penny held her hair back from falling in her face with her hand, as she leaned over the table and stared at the words he wrote. She glanced up at him through her eyelashes, a bashful smile emerging on her lips, and she remained frozen in her position. "'Just more gorgeous with age'?" She repeated what he wrote, and then shook her head. "Still know how to make a girl weak in the knees, Twombly." She shook her head and grinned.

Stuart closed his laptop and leaned his elbows on the table, folding his hands over the closed lid. He leaned his chest against the edge of the table and spoke lower. "Penny, I don't want this to be the last time I see you again." As soon as the words left his mouth, Stuart's AppleWatch lit up with a phone call from Dana. "Shit, it's my boss... I may have just accidentally dropped out of a work Google chat... Um, I probably have to head back to the office, but Pen... I'm serious. Can I see you again? Take you out to dinner and actually catch up?" Stuart founds his confidence in desperation. He needed to see her again. He had waited six years to see her again, and he was not going to let the opportunity slip through his fingers.

Penny smiled gently, and tucked a small section of her hair behind her ear. She began to slowly nod. "Okay. Yea. I'll see you again... For old time's sake."

Stuart didn't love that clarification but he would have to take it. He began to pack his computer back into his backpack, and then pulled his phone from his front pants pocket. "Um, what's your number? We'll set up a plan for maybe Thursday or Friday?"

Penny leaned back in her chair and smirked. "I don't have a phone, Stuart."

Stuart's mouth gaped open slightly, and he raised his eyebrows. "You what?"

"I feel like that should surprise you less.." She smirked, and Stuart snickered and shook his head. If anyone he knew would live a cell phone-less life, it would, in fact, be Penelope Marshall. "I'll tell you what, do you remember that dim sum place we used to go to all the time in Chinatown?"

Stuart grinned and nodded. "Yea, but it isn't there anymore."

Penny smiled at the fact that Stuart knew that. "I know, but the Greek place that replaced it, that's in the space now, is weirdly amazing. I have a work thing on Thursday at 6:30, but it should be over by 8:30 and I can meet you for dinner there at 9. If you're late though, Stu, I won't wait. Sound like a plan?"

Stuart sighed softly and nodded, while he typed the dinner date into the calendar on his iPhone. "I'll see you on Thursday then."

Penny stood as he stood, and she walked around the table to hug him. The familiar smell intoxicated her and she was grateful for his prolonged embrace. Stuart rested his cheek against the top of her head and wrapped his arms around her back. "I'll catch you later, Twombly." She whispered into his clavicle.

Stuart exhaled through his nose. His heart hurt and his chest constricted again. He didn't want to let her go, but she began to break from the embrace. He licked his lips and adjusted his glasses, the slung his backpack over his shoulder. "I'll see you on Thursday, at nine. I won't be late." He winked one last time, watching her cheeks flush pink, as she smiled and shook her head, and he walked out the door.

"Stewieeeee. What's happenin', kiddo?"

"Oh, hey, Bill. Nothing, just trying to troubleshoot that glitch for Nick." Stuart answered, barely glancing up from his computer.

"Whoa, 'Bill'? What am I your boss or something? Since when do you not call me 'Big Daddy'?" Billy asked, his face contorted with confusion and a subtle smirk.

Nick walked over and patted Billy on the shoulder as he saw his friends and colleagues congregating without him. "What's up, guys? What's the news?" The tall and shaggy blonde-haired man always had a much more casual and gentler approach than his lifelong friend, Billy.

"Stewie neither complained about me calling him 'Stewie', nor did he call me 'Big Daddy'." Billy reported to Nick.

"Whoa.. Stu, what's going on? Your aura is a little weird." Nick ran his hands above Stuart's head.

Stuart rolled his eyes and turned in his swivel chair to face the two men behind him. "Shut up about my aura, Nick. You have no idea what you're even talking about."

"No, no, it's really dark, I can feel it. What's wrong, bucko?"

"You know he's not going to give up until you tell him? He's a relentless friend like that. He cares. I respect your privacy but Nick, he cares." Billy began to talk faster and faster, knowing exactly which of Stuart's buttons to push in order to get him to talk, and finally Stuart did.

"OKAY! Enough, my god. The two of you are like a circus act. Fine. I'll tell you." Stuart huffed and rolled his neck along his shoulders, then adjusted his glasses. "I ran into my ex yesterday..."  

"You ran into Neha? How is she? Man, I miss her. She always had a penis joke just ready and waiting." Nick grinned, and Stuart shook his head profusely.

"No, not Neha. Penny."

"You gotta give us a little more here, Stewie. This is the first time you have mentioned a 'Penny'." Billy replied.

Stuart sighed and turned back to his computer. He opened a new webpage in Chrome and typed in Penny's name, along with the title of her book. Nick sat in the chair next to Stuart and leaned over to see the screen. "Oh, I know her! Dana is obsessed with her book... wait.. Penny... Penelope Marshall is your Penny? Your ex? Dana is going to flip." Nick became very excited and smacked his hand against the desk top.

Billy patted Stuart hard on the back and Stuart scowled, sighed and then turned back around. "Well, she is quite the looker. How'd you mess that up?"

Stuart became more pensive looking and shook his head. Billy pulled up a seat and sat near the two of them, listening intently as Stuart began his story. "Penny and I met during Freshman Orientation at Stanford, during one of those idiotic ice breaker games. She was complaining about it and I was on my phone and she kept leaning over and making snide remarks about other kids' stupid answers and instead of finding her annoying, I found her funny, and..."

"Wait a minute.... she wrote, wait a minute, if you met her when you were Freshman... wait.." Nick tried to work out the problem out loud, but it only frustrated Stuart more.

"IT WAS ME!" He shouted, then looked around and saw that he had garnered some stares. He lowered his voice and continued. "It was me, okay? She wrote the book about me... about us, and about what I did."

"I'm confused. Who is this girl, besides someone who is really hot?" Billy asked, gesturing to Penny's picture on the screen.

"She's a New York Times Bestselling author. Dana read her book a billion times. Hell, she made me read it too. It's amazing." Nick explained.

Stuart took his glasses off and pinched at the bridge of his nose, trying to stave off a tension migraine. He sighed and put his glasses back on. "Penny and I dated from eighteen to twenty-one, about three and a half years, and honestly, she was the love of my life, and I let her get away."

"Weren't you twenty-one during the internship, Stu?" Billy asked, toning down his jokes and sarcasm, seeing the internal struggle happening inside of Stuart.

Stuart rubbed the back of his neck and closed his eyes, a pained look covering his face. "We lived about thirty minutes away from each other when we were home from school, we grew up in adjacent towns outside of the Bay Area and I was... well, you knew me back then."

"You were kind of a dick, buddy." Billy patted him on the shoulder.

"Not too bad though. You grew out of it. I mean, it only took you.. how old are you now?" Nick tried to defend Stuart.

"Twenty-seven.... and I didn't grow out of it quick enough. I just, I thought I was too good for her when I got here and we started doing well as a team, and Neha would flirt with me, and I felt like we were going in different directions in life, and so about half way through the internship, I broke up with her..... over text message...." Stuart winced and glanced between the two older men.

"Oh, you dog." Billy chuckled.

"Not good, Stu, not good at all. That's not how you treat a lady." Nick shook his head.

"I know that now. I was an asshole back then."

"Alright, then what happened?" Billy asked.

"Then towards the end of the internship, Neha and I sort of hit it off, and you guys know that story, but then we all went home because classes for my senior year started a few weeks later, and she knew what day I was coming home, and when I pulled up with my parents, she was sitting on my front steps. My parents went inside and she just sat there, holding her phone in her hand, and her eyes were all puffy and red, and she just kept asking me if I had seriously dumped her over text after almost four years, and I only then realized how fucked up that was. She cried and asked if it was because of someone else, and I told her no, but I also told her that I had become recently involved with Neha an-"

Billy cut Stuart off. "She thought you were cheating?"

Stuart nodded shamefully. "I hadn't, not even emotionally, but there was no changing her mind on that. She smacked me across the face, and she accused me of being self-involved, which was true, and having a superiority complex about my future, which was true, and not supporting her when she would perform her writing live, which was sort of true too. Then she told me that she had managed to get into the study abroad in New York City for Fall Semester and that if she ran into me when she was back for Spring Semester, not to fucking talk to her. She said she would never forgive me and that I broke her heart."

"And then she wrote a best selling novel about it." Nick shook his head, and patted Stuart on the shoulder lightly.

"Yea, and I mean, she wasn't even petty or cruel about it either, and she never mentioned my name and basically every thing she wrote was true.." Stuart trailed off, staring into empty space as he thought about the book.

"So you ran into Penny yesterday?" Billy asked.

"That makes sense, she must be in town for a book reading and signing. Dana is going to it tomorrow night." Nick interjected.

Stuart shook his head. "No, she moved back. She lives here again, and she's writing another book, and she looks amazing and she was Penny, and it was kind of spectacular being around her again." He stared down at his hands.

"Oh, I see, Stewie, you still have it bad for this girl, huh? Never got over it?" Billy prompted Stuart.

Stuart nodded, shamefully. "She was the one and I'm pretty sure I just barely got her to agree to get dinner with me tomorrow night after the reading."

"You need a big gesture." Billy suggested. "Show her you care."

Penny listened intently and graciously as the manager of the local bookstore introduced her to the packed house of eager fans. She stepped up onto the stairs, leading up to the platform where the podium stood in the middle.

"Please give a big round of applause for Ms. Penelope Marshall." The manager said before the room broke into a round of applause.

"Pen.." Penny's agent, Meg, grabbed her wrist and put the book in her hand. "The day you don't forget to bring your book up with you is the day you can fire me."

"Lucky for you, I'll probably always forget my book." Penny smiled and then walked up onto the stage. She stood in front of the podium, adjusted the microphone and opened her book. "Hi, everyone. How are you all tonight? Thank you for not only coming out to this reading tonight, but for sending my agent so many emails requesting that this happen that we had no choice but to make sure it finally did."

The crowd sat in their chairs chuckling and one younger girl screamed out above the laughter, "WE LOVE YOU, PENNY!"

Penny chuckled, smiled, and shook her head. "Thank you..." Penny flipped through the book, staring at the words on the pages of her usual passage that she used for readings, but something about it didn't feel right that day. "Um, do you guys mind if I read something a little different than what I usually do at these sorts of things? I am feeling particularly....." Penny cleared her throat. "...connected to this chapter this week, and you all know I try to live my most authentic life as often as I can."

Excited murmurs filled the room and Penny's agent whispered from the side of the stage. "What are you doing?"

Penny smiled at her friend, and flipped to the section of the book that had been on her mind for two days. She took a deep breath and began speaking slowly into the microphone, staring out into the eyes of her audience members as she asked her first question. "Have you ever been kissed by God? Passionately (tongue, lips, etc.)? Here's a simpler question: Have you ever lost yourself in a kiss?" Penny looked up from her book and out into the crowd, connecting her eyes with those looking back, when suddenly she connected with a familiar amber set, hiding behind black thick framed glasses. Penny felt like she had been punched in the stomach; all of the air left her lungs and she adjusted her focus to be sure, and she was. Stuart sat in the third seat from the left, in the back row. His brow was slightly furrowed, like he was worried that she would be upset that he was there. Penny understood that she had started this chapter in front of some of her most enthusiastic and dedicated readers and that she would have to commit to what she had started. She blinked up at the warm lights above her, and took a deep breath. "Sorry. I've been having one of those weeks."

Penny heard the soft and comforting sound of people rubbing their hands together over and over in support of her. She smiled out at her fans and bowed her head slightly. "Take your time, Pen!" Someone finally shouted out, and others snapped in agreement. Penny loved the quirky support that usually accompanied creative communities like this. She took a quick sip from the glass of water under the podium and decided she was ready to continue.

"Have you ever lost yourself in a kiss? I mean pure psychedelic inebriation. Not just lustful petting but transcendental metamorphosis when you became aware that the greatness of this being was breathing into you... The first kiss of the rest of your life. A kiss that confirms that the universe is aligned, and that the world's greatest resource is love." Penny spoke slowly and emphatically, hovering on certain words over others, using hands gestures and the slow winding of her neck to further drive her point home. "Will you allow me to tell you a story about that kiss?" Penny looked up again, and instead of watching as the people in her audience snapped in agreement with her question, her eyes became glued to the handsome man in the back, who had leaned forward, pressing his elbows against his knees, his hands pressed against his mouth, just to focus more on the words escaping her lips.

"It was a record breaking and sweltering one-hundred and two degree September evening, in the Nob Hill neighborhood of San Francisco and the power had gone out four hours and twenty-three minutes prior. The rooms in Billy's apartment were illuminated by the candles that were haphazardly strewn on level surfaces, inevitably raising the temperature by another few degrees. The apartment smelled of sweat, skunky beer and weed, and to this day I am certain that the only reason that we talked as long as we did was because his phone died and even if he had gone home, he wouldn't have been able to charge it." Penny looked up at Stuart, and saw the right corner of his mouth curl up. He recalled that evening like it was yesterday, instead of nine years ago.

"'What kind of stuff do you write?' He asked me, as he adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose. 'Poetry, mostly.' I told him, confident in my youthful talent. Three more hours, and the entire city was covered in a dark sheet; no light, no distractions. Just truths. The kind of night that only happens under those circumstances. Our skin wasn't sticky, not with that much sweat involved; it was just smooth and wet. I watched him watch me drag my hand from my jaw down my clavicle, under my shirt towards the valley of my breasts, trying to wipe away whatever salty excretion I could." Penny mimicked the movements she explained, closing her eyes and getting lost in a memory. Stuart felt his blood pressure rise, as he remembered the epic moment that followed, and how it led him to be sitting in the sturdy mahogany chair he was currently in. He shifted uncomfortably.

"Have you ever lost yourself in a kiss? We did. We kissed as if we, alone, could forge the signature of the sun. Licking the sides and corners of your mouth, like sealing a thousand fleshy envelopes filled with the essence of your passionate being and then opened by the same mouth and delivered back to you, over and over again - the first kiss of the rest of your life." Penny wasn't even reading from the pages in front of her anymore. Her eyes were closed and she was speaking from pure memory and feeling. When she opened her eyes, she saw that at least half of the audience had pulled out their phones and were recording her, but there was one person who was still watching for just him, his eyes glued on her.

"'Bet you rue the day you kissed a writer in the dark.' I said to him, the joking threat rolling off my lips in between reality-shattering embraces, on the dingy old couch in Billy's cramped living room. 'Why's that?' He inquired in a whisper, peeling a damp strand of hair off of my shoulder, and replacing it with his fingertips. 'Cause now I'm gonna play and sing and lock you in my heart. Bet you rue the day you kissed a writer in the dark.'"

Penny paused, and opened her eyes. She made eye contact with Stuart, who suddenly looked visibly uncomfortable. They both knew what was coming next in their story. "Three and a half years of love and laughter and pain and tears and opposites coming back together through history's most epic kisses...." She took a very long pause, and stared straight into Stuart's amber eyes. "Then he left." Stuart pursed his lips together, his nostrils flaring, as he tried to fight the sharp pain building in his stomach. His regret was eating its way out of his body.

She never broke her gaze on him. Some of the audience members began to take notice of their prolonged eye contact, and began to glance back and forth between Penny and Stuart. A spectacle was forming, but neither of them noticed.

"So, she left. But those feelings never did, because I am my mother's child, I'll love you 'til my breathing stops. I'll love you 'til you call the cops on me. It took two years, but in our darkest hours, I stumbled on a secret power. I'd find a way to be without you. But I'll always wonder if you regret the day you left a writer in the dark."

Penny stopped speaking. She stared into Stuart's melancholic eyes, and then got brought back into the present by her agent fake coughing off to the side. Penny blinked excessively for about ten seconds, trying to collect herself, and then she finally closed the book, and leaned back over to the microphone. "Thank you." The crowd erupted in excited applause and gave her a standing ovation.

Let me know what you thought and if you would like to be added to the forever tag!

@ninja-stiles @lightbreaksthrough @maddie110201 @hattyohatt @stilinski-stydia-obrien @iknowisoundcrazy @leilaelizabeth @5secsxofamnesia @awkwarddly @completebandgeek @chivesoup @ivette29 @sunshineystilinski @theneverendingracetrack @dailyburritos @mieczzyslaw @im-very-odd33 @amethystmerm4id @anonimereader06 @sp00der-m00n @ellie-bee242 @nocturnalzeal @sumcp @gluetwentyfourobrien @stopit-ihateyou @wittystiles @mrs-mitch-rapp93

[wolfmatirx]

13 Things You Can Do Right Now to Motivate Your Tech Team in 2019

Handling an all-star tech team starts with the right people--hiring credible individuals and maintaining an open mind regarding what they will attract --and never really ends if you are doing it right. In my previous blog, I shared with some of my adventures on how best to make an All-Star Tech Fantasy Team. In this guide, I'm going to talk about 13 things you can do immediately to inspire your technician team.

Who are we speaking about?

Millennials now take the largest portion of their international workforce and the percentage is significantly higher in tech companies.

While they've altered the dialogue about what people want from work, we have reached a country where mild-to-moderate pampering is forecast to be a typical part of job: fully stocked bars, catered lunches, and also the occasional staff retreats. In startups and big companies alike, such generous, borderline lavish perks have increasingly become the standard, not the exception.

But the question is, how does the ordinary employee actually use the Xbox One at the company gambling den, or is he too busy for that? Does she need to edit spreadsheets sitting on this purple beanbag? Are employees really pining for ping-pong tables and much more "rest time" at work (presuming their boss won't give them the stink eye after that)? Or are those perks miss the point of what actually does motivate your tech team?

So what do they need?

Regular Review of Performance-Based On Tangible Metrics

'Of everything we have done to enhance employee satisfaction, the best impact has come from our daily performance encounters. There we concentrate on how our staff did with essential metrics that the day before.

Motivate your tech team: feedback

Feedback

This millennial cohort is hungrier for opinions and a clear path of growth than any other generation.

1 way to feed that hunger is creating a mentorship program where junior employees are matched with senior administration. Encourage routine weekly meetings that have a nurturing environment for workers to ask for review, get compliments, and air grievances. Mentors lead together with the responsibility of their mentee's professional development -- by outlining goals to delivering reviews.

Employees will feel much more strongly linked to the company if someone with skill and ability helps them propel forward.

Give More Shout-Outs

Multiple around happy hours or pricey dinners aren't the only ways to celebrate victory. If an individual went over and beyond the call of duty, a simple company-wide email or handwritten note can be just as powerful.

Try devoting the end of each all-hands meeting to give employees an chance to publicly recognize somebody else's work. This seems simple, the positive effect on a person's sense of self-worth and value to the company is priceless.

Rethink Team Structure to Motivate Your Tech Team

A recent Deloitte survey found that 63% of millennials think their leadership abilities aren't being fully grown, making them much more inclined to switch jobs.

Buck the trend by producing a structure for new initiatives which give individuals who might not be at the managerial level the opportunity to direct and take ownership of projects. It reveals a willingness to invest in your employees' ability while raising their morale and dedication.

While you're at it, do away with closed-door meetings. Nothing produces a sense of seclusion -- or fuels the gossip mill -- like seeing the same group of individuals whisper behind the glass walls of this conference space. If it's not strictly confidential, speak out in the open.

Switch Perks Into a Motivator

If your business finds itself at the financial position where scaling back perks becomes necessary, consider sharing the cost of supplying free lunch or gym memberships so it becomes a concrete figure to employees. 9 out of 10 will probably be amazed by how large the number is, guaranteed.

Here are the earnings figures we need to reach to bring it back. Instill the message that in case you want it, you got to work for this. By doing so, you are going to learn quite quickly who truly believes in what the company is attempting to achieve, and who's quite literally in it to get the free lunch.

When executed successfully, perks do exactly what they're supposed to do: boost productivity, inspire your tech team, and foster a stronger sense of internal community.

As a venture-backed startup, these ups are especially large. So creators may feel that the downs don't deserve public attention among their own team. Fight this urge.

Open New Opportunities For Them

Aside from a great civilization, a recognition system, and an enjoyable work environment, the key thing to inspire your technician team is new chances. For example: handling a new project for which we may not have shown skills yet. Believing in the team and each person, and demonstrating it daily, is the best morale booster one could give.

Give Them Work-Life Flexibility

Propel your technician: work-life balance

Nevertheless, the secret regarding the equilibrium is about acknowledging the pendulum will swing anywhere from zero to 100. And it may change- per week. Allowing workers to plan ahead based on upcoming work or personal deadlines and to receive the job done and where they need makes the happy staff and contributes to better productivity.

At Wolfmatrix we speak on Slack and via video conferencing. In addition, we utilize Trello and JIRA to assign projects and also to ensure deadlines are met.

Heal Them with Respect

Respect is the title and keeping employees happy is the sport. 'Respect' may sound easy and maybe even clichéd. Nonetheless, it is heartbreaking to see just how many businesses and managers still aspire to employ the best employees in the talent pool, trust them with the works and responsibilities, expect them to create excellent results as a bona fide worker but somehow wind up treating them such as sleazy shirks whose supreme aim in life would be to deceive the employers. There's not any quicker way to demotivate an employee than that.

Personally, a tool I vow by to cope creatively with my mates (who have diverse sets of abilities and openness ) is your Skill-Will-Matrix.

Have a peek at this and you will not again danger micromanaging your employees who only needed your advice. You will never again increase responsibilities hoping to inspire your technician team whereas all they wanted was a bit of enthusiasm in the job.

Instill A Sense Of Belonging To A Larger Goal

Imagine this; you own a wagon filled with products you need to market in the nearby village. There, a group of merchants are awaiting you. You're leading the wagons in the front and directing directions. A bunch of men are pushing the wagon from behind to make sure things are moving ahead.

There are hills and streams and gardens along the road. Flowers blossoming, butterflies trees and flying dance. But just the chief sees it. What do the men pushing the wagon see? A wagon filled with loads they need to push until somebody comes to purchase them!

Motivate your team

Yes, the leader is you. The merchant is the client. The wagon is your business, the products being your services or products. The opinion is the vision and those men are the workers. They don't see exactly what you see unless YOU tell them what lies ahead and how beautiful your perspective is!

Got my point?

Keeping staff happy and also to motivate your technician team normally boils down to rest and benefit. They need the chance to recover from the cost that tough work requires. Ensuring there is a lull between projects goes a ways to prevent burning out your workers.

Show Them The Results Of Their Work

I discover that software development teams would be the happiest when folks utilize and appreciate the goods they deliver. Pride of ownership is greatest when we hear continuous feedback from actual customers even if these opinions is sometimes negative. There's nothing worse than working on a product which no client is using and not one of your employees care about.

Challenge Them

If you're searching for engaging top gift, give your team members jobs that challenge them, with plenty of opportunities to learn and develop professionally. Give developers the chance to touch the entire heap and perform with a great deal of different technology. Let them find out what they like doing before they narrow their focus. Permit them to take the lead on high-profile projects. However, make sure they have realistic deadlines and suitable service to do a fantastic job. Encourage team members to speak at public events, write articles and volunteer locally.

'My staff enjoys challenges, so that I enjoy giving them puzzles, scenarios, and job issues to decode. When they solve it figure it out, they're enthusiastic and amped to keep on working.' Chalmers Brown of Due shares his tried and tested strategy.

Need a shortcut to inspire your tech team or seek the services of a driven developers' team with the hassles? Wolfmatrix can be of assistance!

[schmidtsource]

On the Rise

February 27th, 2018 on my website, schmidtsource.com. After a month of worries and woes, it seems February couldn’t have gone better. Everything actually panned out, and I’m quite pleased with where I stand today!

Leading up to my last lunch break at Magmic, though, I felt like I was in a pretty precarious position. The studio had yet to confirm or deny a contract renewal, which I began to interpret as a ploy to ensure morale wasn’t dashed before a swift termination, and I hadn’t heard back from the interview I had with the Mood Foundation: the cryptic opportunity I mentioned in last month’s entry. Things took a turn later that afternoon, though: I received an email from Jillian Mood to schedule a Skype call the following morning, and my QA Lead came over literally fifteen minutes later to extend an offer for full-time employment.

As I learned at the close of my first interview with them, the position I was under consideration for at the Mood Foundation wasn’t the same as what I applied for. They were looking for a Mood Manager, or executive assistant, but the application video I sent in led them to feel I’d be a good fit for their upcoming media branch. Considering I’ve dedicated myself to video production for the last year, I was inclined to agree!

Fortunately, our call went well and we locked in my position at the new company that same day. While I loved my team at Magmic, and the promise of guaranteed job security and a higher salary was alluring, there was no way I wasn’t going to take a gamble on this startup under folks I admired: doing work I’d enjoy to boot! Even if this as-of-yet-unnamed media branch doesn’t make it to the point where I can transition to a full-time employee, the opportunity alone will be worth it!

What really flipped the script this month was my first meeting as a member of the Mood Foundation. We travelled out to Montreal and were told that the team would be attending GDC in March. To put that in perspective, this is a conference I’ve dreamed about experiencing for years. I thought it’d be at least a decade before I’d be able to make the trip, so to say this was a bombshell would be an understatement. I’ll be going there for work, but that doesn’t change how excited I am to have the chance to go! It’ll set a few personal records for myself, too: furthest trip, first flight, and first time out of the country. I’d call that the makings of a memorable adventure!

I wasn’t given an official title when I joined the Mood Foundation, but I settled on calling myself a “Video Producer” for now since it covers what I’ve been doing there: a little bit of everything. I’ve been planning formats, producing sample videos, reaching out to collaborators, preparing contracts, and laying the foundation for what I hope can be a successful media channel.

Since we operate on the honour system, I’ve been committing as much time as I can spare to the Mood Foundation, and Schmidt Times feels a bit neglected. I should be able to maintain my video-a-week schedule, but longform content will be difficult if I don’t strike a better balance between work and… other work! The Top Time episode I hoped to release for Valentine’s Day didn’t make it, but there’s still a perfect slot for it at the beginning of April. There’s no guarantee I’ll be able to squeeze out enough time to finish that particular video in time, but it’d be great if I can make it happen!

In either case, March is going to be another fantastic month. Our work at the Mood Foundation will be going public, and although I expect this job will push me out of my comfort zone often, I welcome the chance for character development. After so many months struggling to find a foothold, I feel like I found one and I’m finally on the rise!

[junker-town]

The Astros are a contemptible franchise from top to bottom

Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images

The Astros had a month to plan a proper apology, and they still screwed it up

There’s no reason to believe anything the Houston Astros say at this point. One of baseball’s very best teams is also its most contemptible. The Astros are a study in hubris, only emboldened by a report into their cheating by Major League Baseball, which turns out to have been designed more to sweep this scandal under the rug than punish the team.

On the first day of Astros spring training camp, a full month after MLB suspended the club’s manager and general manager, cost the team four draft picks and issued a paltry $5 million fine, current Houston players finally apologized. These apologies came in the form of two brief, prepared statements by Alex Bregman and Jose Altuve. The pair spoke for a total of a 90 seconds.

Even new manager Dusty Baker, who had no part in this scandal but is being used by the Astros as a credibility shield, read a statement. But the standout was owner Jim Crane, a man impervious to personal responsibility.

“Our opinion is this didn’t impact the game,” Crane said regarding the sign-stealing scheme. “We had a good team, we won the World Series, and we’ll leave it at that.”

Crane less than a minute later: “I didn’t say it didn’t impact the game.”

The tone of the Astros’ press conference was one of defiance and PR-coached vanilla statements disguised as apologies. But there was no remorse, which is remarkable given the team had literally a month to formulate a plan for contrition.

Then again, this is par for the course for the Astros, who completely bungled the detestable Brandon Taubman incident in October, mishandled the fallout from Yuli Gurriel’s racist gesture during the 2017 World Series, and barred a reporter from the clubhouse in 2019 in violation of the collective bargaining agreement.

The most convenient thing for the Astros, and for MLB, would be if this story just went away, but relief from the scandal doesn’t appear to be on the horizon. The team would very much like to refer to the suspensions and firings of manager A.J. Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow as the final word on the matter. They certainly don’t see themselves as culpable.

“I don’t think I should be held accountable,” Crane said Thursday.

Crane, whose Eagle USA company in 2001 reached a settlement with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to pay $8.5 million for discriminating against African American, Hispanic, and female employees (an amount later reduced to $2.5 million on appeal), is no stranger to toothless rebukes. He bought the Astros, a franchise currently estimated to be worth $1.775 billion, for $680 million in 2011. Crane himself is reportedly worth $1.3 billion, so the $5 million fine levied by MLB — the maximum allowed by baseball’s constitution — was merely a drop in the bucket.

The commissioner is hired by MLB owners, so good luck thinking any future such fines against them will have any significant impact. What the commissioner can do is levy punishment on those directly involved, and each day it becomes increasingly clear that Manfred fell woefully short in this regard.

“We have the right to discipline players right now. I’m absolutely convinced of that fact,” Manfred told reporters at baseball’s owners meetings. “We made a decision in the Houston investigation that in order for us to get the facts that we needed, somebody had to get immunity.”

The players got immunity in both investigations, but weren’t the only ones to get off lightly.

A report by Jared Diamond at the Wall Street Journal details how the Astros front office, under Luhnow, devised an application called “Codebreaker” to decode signs from opposing catchers. Manfred wrote about it to Luhnow on Jan. 2, 11 days before the organizational punishment was handed down by the league, despite the assertion from the league report that this was a scheme driven by the players and former bench coach Alex Cora.

The WSJ article, which involved Astros director of advance information Tom Koch-Weser and then-intern Derek Vigoa, reads like an absurd clandestine novel:

Vigoa’s presentation wasn’t the only time Astros employees say Luhnow was informed about Codebreaker. Koch-Weser, the Astros’ director of advance information, said he discussed Codebreaker with Luhnow in one to three meetings after the 2016 season.

Koch-Weser told MLB that Luhnow would “giggle” at the title and appeared “excited” about it. Koch-Weser also said that Luhnow sometimes entered the Astros’ video room during road games and made comments such as, “You guys Codebreaking?”

Luhnow denied Koch-Weser’s accounts.

In addition to Koch-Weser and Vigoa, special assistant Kevin Goldstein was reported by Jeff Passan of ESPN to have sent an email in August 2017 asking scouts to assist in the sign stealing process:

Goldstein, who did not return a message seeking comment, wrote in the email: “One thing in specific we are looking for is picking up signs coming out of the dugout. What we are looking for is how much we can see, how we would log things, if we need cameras/binoculars, etc. So go to game, see what you can [or can’t] do and report back your findings.”

This email was also reported by Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich in The Athletic, four days after their initial report of Houston’s sign-stealing scheme that started MLB’s investigation in the first place.

Yet despite the Goldstein’s email, and MLB’s knowledge, per the Wall Street Journal, of at least two emails from Koch-Weser to Luhnow about sign stealing, Manfred failed to suspend any other front office member but Luhnow (Taubman was also suspended for a year, but for his sexist conduct following the 2019 ALCS rather than the cheating).

Koch-Weser is still employed as the Astros’ director of advance information, Goldstein remains a special assistant to the general manager (now James Click), and Vigoa is now Houston’s senior manager of team operations.

“The leader of that department has been fired. I’ve had some time to review the department, and there will be some changes in there,” Crane said Thursday. “The commissioner said he wasn’t going to hold the lower-level people accountable, and I agree with that.”

General manager James Click, in his first week on the job, was evasive when asked about reports of cheating from current members of the Astros’ front office, saying, “Any new GM coming in would want to take a full view of the baseball operations staff, the full staff.”

New Astros general manager James Click when asked about Derek Vigoa, Tom Koch-Weser and Alex Cintron and their roles in the sign stealing scandal and future with the club pic.twitter.com/OpJEyb0wYm

— Brian McTaggart (@brianmctaggart) February 13, 2020

Luhnow’s tenure in Houston was defined by an all-knowing front office where information was king, and the ability to place a value on every single aspect of the organization. The idea that he was unaware of such an elaborate scheme, if not intimately involved, is laughable, yet Luhnow’s official statement in response to his suspension and subsequent termination by the Astros was defiant, insisting “I am not a cheater” and “I did not know rules were being broken.”

Sure.

Baltimore Orioles general manager Mike Elias was assistant general manager under Luhnow in 2017. When he left for Baltimore in 2018, Elias brought Astros’ director of decision sciences Sig Mejdal with him. Understandably, Elias would like to distance himself as much as possible from the scandal.

“I am confident that group that’s here that came from Houston will not be connected to or implicated in the sign-stealing situation in Houston,” Elias told reporters at Orioles fan fest last weekend.

There’s reason for Elias to be confident that that connection will never be officially drawn. Major League Baseball has demonstrated they won’t pursue anything unless its feet are put to the fire. It took them two years to thoroughly investigate the Astros, and only then after a player (Mike Fiers) went on record to disclose the scheme. Manfred’s report went out of its way to avoid placing blame on the front office. Now we know that Houston’s front office was integrally involved, and it’s difficult to believe that MLB didn’t.

Former Astros manager Hinch, suspended and fired for failing to stop the electronic sign stealing in 2017, was asked about further allegations of the Astros using buzzers in 2019 in a redemption plea interview with MLB Network.

“We got investigated for three months, and the commissioner’s office did as thorough an investigation anyone could imagine was possible,” Hinch said. “I believe him.”

Hinch did not deny, instead referring to MLB’s response saying they found no evidence to substantiate the use of wearable devices.

The Astros were once considered a success story, the embodiment of thoughtful team-building and the poster boys for the cutting edge of baseball analysis. But that analytical edge seems to have carried with it a sharp edge of contempt, which even now is preventing the organization from showing any sign of contrition. By abdicating their collective responsibility in this scandal, the Astros have become baseball’s villain, and they seem more and more worthy of that title with every passing day.

[freelancesumandas]

Divorce Preparation: How to get yourself and your family ready

Divorce Attorney in Houston: In the event that you are considering a divorce you should understand that of all things in life you should not rush into this process before putting forth some serious thought into whether or not this is the best decision for you and your family. While I cannot speak to your particular circumstances and whether or not a divorce is justified the information that we discuss today will assist you in preparing for a divorce once you have decided that you need to move forward and divorce your spouse.

Once you hire an attorney your responsibility to understand the issues and make decisions based on those issues does not go away. Your attorney is only a tool that you can use to carve out a successful outcome. Remember that ultimately what happens in your divorce affects you and your family. Your attorney is an advocate and a representative but she cannot live your life for you or even make decisions for you. As such you should begin to prepare for your case well in advance of actually hiring an attorney. Getting your literal and metaphorical house in order is the best way to prepare yourself for what is to come.

Make copies of important documents that are in your home

Go through your life now and begin to take care of things that you may have been putting off. For starters, go through and make copies of financial documents like bank statements, 401(K) statements, insurance policies, and titles to real property. If you would prefer you can scan those documents and have electronic copies. Many clients of the Law Office of Bryan Fagan, PLLC will store those type of documents in the “cloud” but be aware that if you share an account with your spouse it will cause suspicion to one day find those documents saved.

Update passwords to any important account or website that you access regularly online

With that said, go through and change passwords and begin to divest yourself of any connection to your spouse in banking, checking, social media and email accounts. We all have a friend or two who shares a Facebook profile with their spouse. While this may help keep one another accountable, it can present problems for a spouse who is going through a divorce. You should delete social media accounts altogether if possible, before any court orders appear that tell you that you cannot. When it comes to email accounts that you do not share with your spouse make sure that your passwords are updated immediately.

Pull a copy of your credit report from the internet and take some time to review it

A large part of your divorce case will center around finances. You may be a person who does not take much interest in your financial life, and that’s fine. Nobody is forcing you to become an accountant. However, you should at least pull a copy of your credit report and take a look at it. Are there any credit accounts listed that you were unaware of? If so it is possible that your spouse took out a loan or opened a credit card in your name without your knowledge. You will want to get that address in your divorce rather than to find out about it afterwards after the court has issued orders in your case already.

Another benefit to pulling your credit report is that you can know exactly what creditors need to be paid and how much is owed. Begin to think about how you believe a settlement could go in relation to these issues and how you believe debt should be divided. In large part the community property laws of Texas will dictate which debt goes to which spouse but you and your spouse can decide amongst yourself a separate agreement if one can be reached.

Prepare a budget that you can live off of for the duration of your divorce case

Divorce Attorneys Houston: Budgeting needs to be a part of your life starting now, if it isn’t already. A common concern I have heard expressed by clients has to do with the constricting nature of a budget. After years of living without one, won’t creating a budget make it feel like you can’t breath?

Quite the opposite, actually. A budget doesn’t tell you what you cannot do. Rather, a budget tells you what you can do. Most people find that they begin to have more money to spend as a result of focusing on their spending. It’s not that they get an immediate raise from their employer, but it is that once on a budget you know exactly where your money is going. This eliminates any opportunity for you to spend too much in any one area of your life.

A budget is key when you are going througha divorce because you will have increased costs associated with your case (Attorney’s fees, child support, etc.) and you need to make sure that you have money at the end of your month to pay bills. Getting on a budget now will help you to do so after your divorce when you get back into the real world.

Do a wellness check and go to see your doctor/dentist/therapist

Going to see a doctor and/or dentist before beginning a divorce is a smart move also. You may not have an opportunity to do so during your case and now is the time to go as a result. Divorce is stressful so any physical or mental issues you are battling will likely get worse during a divorce. Have them checked out before you start the process and your body will thank you.

Inventory the items in your home in preparation for dividing them in your divorce

Do an inventory of the items in your home. Every family law attorney that I know of will ask their client to fill out what is called an inventory and appraisement. This document is done under oath and will be submitted to the court. Your run-down of all the items owned by you and spouse will be included in this form.

Like the credit report suggestion, being aware of all the property owned by yourself and your spouse will allow you to plan ahead for how to divide these items up in the divorce. You will have some time to think about what you want to keep and what you are willing to allow your spouse to have. If you own valuable items take note of each of them. You should take photos of each item including where in the house the item is kept. If an item is removed you can have your photo to refer to.

Take time for yourself- no matter how difficult it may seem to do so

You are being pulled in a thousand different directions at once when you are preparing yourself to file for divorce. If you thought your life was busy before now, you will double down on that belief as you move closer to the actual filing date.

With that said make sure that you are taking care of yourself physically and mentally. This means eating healthy, getting exercise and keeping yourself centered. Remind yourself that a divorce will take longer than just a week or two and that the experiences that you encounter will not always be pleasant. The bottom line is that you are doing this to better yourself and your family and that the end justifies the means no matter how difficult the times are that you face.

More tips and tricks in the field of divorce will be posted tomorrow

Houston Divorce Attorneys: Please return tomorrow to the website for the Law Office of Bryan Fagan, PLLC as we discuss additional methods for best preparing for a divorce. We hope that what you’ve read today will be helpful and can assist you in this difficult time.

If you have any questions over what you read, would like clarification or are just seeking some thoughts about your situation please do not hesitate to call us. Our office offers free of charge consultations with a licensed family law attorney ... Continue Reading

[letscreateafricaorg]

New post in LET'S CREATE AFRICA (L.C.A.): •Demonstrated Performance Management and monitoring skills •Knowledge of labour laws and employment legislations •Effective communication and listening skills •Strong interpersonal and relationship building skills •Flexible and adaptable with the ability to produce creative solutions to HR problems •Strong industrial and employee relations skills •Training planning/management skills •Strong leadership skills with ability to provide innovative solutions to problems •Proven ability to plan, organize and prioritize work, together with the ability to remain calm under pressure often in difficult circumstances and not lose sight of strategic priorities. •Computer literate, with high degree of proficiency and productivity. •Experience working with HR information systems an added advantage. •Commitment to the organizational values of AAH-I. Application Instructions Interested candidates should email application letter and CV (with 3 referees) addressed to recruithq@actio nafricahelp.org to be received by 31st March, 2019. The email Subject Line must show the job title of the position applied for. AAH-I is an equal-opportunity employer. We thank candidates for their high interest in the opportunities we publish on our website. Due to the high number of applications we receive, we will only get back to shortlisted candidates. https://ift.tt/2U4cquI [3/15, 12:04] Nelson Komba: ASSISTANT OFFICER - COAST REGIONAL OFFICE-REF:KNCH R/ADM/AO/ VOL.1 .KNCHR. Location: Mombasa with occasional travel. Duration: 1 Year Contract. Gross Salary: Kshs. 81,056.67 Requirements. a)Higher Diploma/Diploma in social sciences from a recognized institution. b)One year of service, or similar experience facilitation of participatory processes in a comparable position from a reputable organization. c)Experience with networks, networking skills. d)Understanding of human rights gender, racism, power structures in the region. e)Understanding of conflict transformation and Do No Harm f)Ability and willingness to work independently g)Knowledge of and experience with Mombasa Civil Society landscape and actors would be a plus. h)A good listener and communicator. i)Excellent IT skills/ social media knowledge. j)Meet the requirements of Chapter Six of the Constitution of Kenya. If you possess the above qualities, please submit your application manually through the post office or by hand delivery, clearly indicating the position, and the Ref No. on both the cover letter and envelope, together with a detailed C.V, names and telephone contacts of three referees one of whom should be your immediate supervisor, to reach us by 25th March, 2019 to: The Commission Secretary Kenya National Commission on Human Rights CVS Plaza, 1st Floor,Lenana Road, P. O. Box 74359 – 00200 Nairobi. Click here to download the advert https:// www.knchr.org/Portals/0/Long%20Version-% 20ASSISTANT%20OFFICER%202.pdf Please note that it is a criminal offence to provide false information and documents in the application. KNCHR is an equal opportunity employer and qualified female candidates and Persons with disabilities are encouraged to apply. Only short listed candidates will be contacted. KNCHR does NOT have recruitment agents and does NOT charge a fee at any stage of its recruitment process. Report any incident of extortion to KNCHR or to the Police. https://ift.tt/2WdQhb2 tunities [3/15, 12:04] Nelson Komba: https://ift.tt/2TZEcbL [3/15, 13:27] Nelson Komba: https://ift.tt/2WcWsMf Software engineer [3/15, 16:07] Nelson Komba: KickStart International ICT Manager KickStart International Job Advert: ICT Manager KickStart International prides itself in being an award-winning, global nonprofit social enterprise that develops and mass- markets low-cost irrigation solutions that are bought by thousands of small-holder farmers in developing countries by enabling them to lift themselves out of poverty. https://ift.tt/2U0C43C

[herbkimbleblog-blog]

Herb Kimble Tips To Help You Sell Your Business Online

Herb Kimble Expert tips provider. There is not another advertising medium that even comes close to the success and potential of internet marketing. It allows you to reach customers all over the world and brings them to you with just the click of a mouse. This article contains information that can help you to enter the world of internet marketing and open your business doors to the world.

Creating a multi-sensory experience with your online properties is the key to successful internet marketing. Incorporate either an interactive space on your website, an audio option, a video option or all of the above. This will help visitors to your online properties experience your brand more fully and remember you above competitors.

A great tip to help you market yourself on the internet is to create your own profile on a developed community network site. Simply fill out your work history and get in touch with potential employers. It's one of the best ways to network professionally.

Create a blog for your site and link back and participate with other related blogs. Search engines are constantly crawling blogs and the results of jumping onto the blogosphere can be of great use to your search results and click backs. When you work with other related blogs, you will also pull in clicks from the readers of the other blogs.

"Fire" products that are not making you money. Your space is valuable so do not keep products that are not helping you. Track the success of each ad, both in terms of number of clicks and in how much money you receive. Consider that some products are seasonal and may need to be temporarily retired until needed again.

You can present your product more efficiently by adding pictures or videos to your review. Film yourself using the product and commenting on its advantages. Demonstrate all the features of the product. You should look natural and sincere in your videos and pictures. The goal is to show how the product has helped you.

Herb Kimble Qualified tips provider. Keep your marketing messaging consistent through all of your online properties. If there is a disconnect, your brand will look disorganized and consumers will question your legitimacy. For example, if you create a post on Twitter that says consumers should join an "open forum" on your brand's website, don't rephrase this to be a "community discussion" when posting on your Facebook page.

Keep your sentences short and to the point. An average sentence will be in the range of 13-16 words. If you are including a lot of unneeded information in a post, you will lose your readers attention. Keep it clear and precise, in order to make an impression on your viewers.

Analyze the statistics on your website, especially the traffic that comes in and out during a day, week, or month. This will give you a great idea of when the most people come to your website and what times during the day are the most efficient. Also, over the course of the year, this can help establish seasonal trends for your product.

Build a signature for your emails that promotes both your website and your social media. If you are like many business owners, you send out many emails each day. It is the perfect vehicle to remind your email recipients of the many ways they can enjoy your brand across the web.

Advertising has many facets. It has evolved to becoming essential to advertise on the internet. Advertising your business on the internet is easy with the right tools and should be marketed in a completely different fashion than marketing a "brick and mortar" store. Your website is the entrance or front door to your business. Always remember that your website is the only way customers can find your business.

Internet marketing requires you to work with the search engines, meaning you have to design your campaigns around what the engines like. One way to make sure your site is always ranked highly is to use proper Meta and title tags, and to ensure that they're not complicated, broken, or off-topic.

Choosing Google to handle your ads is always the best bet, so try whatever you can to ensure you're using Google. You can use other ad services alongside Google, but remember that Google is the king and the rest of the services are just pretenders to the throne. Follow Google's guidelines for acceptance and remember that this is a make-or-break factor of your business.

Your business should have a Facebook and Twitter page, so that you can increase your marketing presence online, but you shouldn't include your personal pages. You can still be a real live person, but you want a facebook page for your business and a Twitter account as the owner of the business. You can have the same identity, you just don't want your customers on your friend's list, unless you truly are friends.

A very important keyword to use, in order to have a successful internet marketing advertisement, is the word "new". People like hearing that the product that you are selling is new and innovative. A good phrase to say are phrases, such as, "This product is new and was just released in the market."

Try to avoid legal jargon at all costs on your website. This can serve to confuse the customers who visit your site and can turn their business away, reducing the profit that you make. Write clear and understandable text, if you are looking to attract visitors and upgrade your client base.

Choosing the right color schemes can have a huge impact on your Internet marketing. Researchers have looked into how users perceive colors, and studies have shown that some colors will engage users to visit sites, while other colors will drive them away. Depending on your website and marketing campaign, this could greatly affect your results.

Herb Kimble Most excellent service provider. It has been noted that internet marketing is an advertising method that beats every other method of advertising in so many ways. It can literally bring customers to you from around the world. It can bring your business into homes all over the globe. By considering the ideas presented in this article, you can enjoy the success that so many others have achieved.

[marie85marketing]

How to Use Facebook as Your PR Engine

A PR agency’s job is to get your story in front of the press and potential customers.

It might set you back $5,000 per month.

But what if you could get the same—if not better—results yourself, by using Facebook ads?

Facebook ads are one of your biggest business opportunities. The targeting capabilities, the tracking functionality and the low cost of getting started means they beat any other form of advertising hands down. If you’re not using Facebook ads as part of your overall marketing strategy, you’re missing a trick.

Facebook has a neat little feature called workplace targeting that many people don’t even know about—and from a PR perspective, it could save you thousands of dollars every month.

Let’s see how.

How to Target the Media on Facebook

When you think about Facebook targeting, you might think it’s all about location, age and interest-based targeting. But when you dive into the demographical data we can use to target people, it goes much deeper than that.

Let’s take a second to think about the data Facebook has. There are 1.94 billion active monthly users on Facebook, and over 1 billion people use the platform every single day.

That’s a lot of data. I’ve personally been on Facebook for over 10 years. During the course of those 10 years, Facebook will have amassed a huge amount of data about me: the pages I’ve liked, posts I’ve reacted to, photos I’ve uploaded, places I’ve checked in, links I’ve clicked on and sites I’ve visited, to name a few. They’ll understand how my behavior has changed over time. When we combine that with the data they have about my Instagram and Whatsapp usage (not to mention data from third-party partners), we’re starting to talk real big data.

As they say, if you don’t pay for a product, you are the product. This might sound slightly daunting to a user, but as a marketer, it’s a huge opportunity—an opportunity you need to be taking advantage of.

When we use workplace targeting to target people based on where they work, we’re simply using the data Facebook gathers when you create your profile.

It’s a targeting feature that many people don’t know about, but it’s one that can be super powerful. Here’s how to do it:

Using Facebook Workplace Targeting

Presuming you already have an advertising account, when you’re in the ads manager, click on create advert.

You’ll be taken here, where you need to choose your campaign objective. You can target the media through any objective, so what you choose here will be entirely dependent upon your goals.

For example, if you’re trying to get people to take a specific action, such as download an eBook, you’ll want to choose the conversions objective. If your goal is to drive traffic to a blog post, you might want to use the traffic objective.

The objective you choose will alter how Facebook optimizes your ads (if you choose conversions, Facebook will show your ad to the people it thinks are most likely to convert. If you choose traffic, Facebook will show your ad to the people it thinks are most likely to click through). Again, Facebook has data on what action you’re most likely to take, based on your user behavior.

Name your campaign and click continue.

You’ll then be taken to the ad set level where you get to choose your targeting options. Your ad set is basically a place where you tell Facebook how you want your advertisement to run. Your options here include:

Targeting

Placement

Budget

Bidding

Scheduling

Targeting is what we’re interested in here. Find the detailed targeting box, then hit browse > demographics > work > employers.

Here, you can enter the names of the companies you want to target. This will target the employees of the companies you choose. If we’re looking to get some PR, we want to choose media companies as the employers.

You can go ahead and fill that detailed targeting box with as many companies as you’d like to target.

I’d recommend creating a list of all the media companies you think might be interested in what you do and any stories you produce. You can then save that audience and come back to it whenever you want to target the media again. I’ll often target the media companies even when I don’t have anything to pitch them—just to keep myself top of their minds.

You’ll then have an audience you can target whenever you have something you feel is media-worthy! Here’s an audience I created of people who work for media companies:

As a marketer, getting into the media and onto podcasts, writing guest blog posts and connecting with influencers are all great ways to reach and provide value to new audiences. But the people with the power to get you onto these mediums (the owners, journalists, hosts etc.) are inundated every day by people requesting to be on their show or to write a guest post for them. Do you think they want to receive any more requests than they already do?

Definitely not.

Why not do something to stand out from the crowd? Jump on to Facebook, find the person who owns the podcast/blog you want to appear on, see what they’ve put as their company name and then create an ad targeting employees of that company.

In your ad copy, you can specify that you love their podcast/blog and would like to appear on it. What’s gonna stand out more—a boring email pitch or a creative ad?

The ad will win all day long—it’s fun, it’s different and it’s relevant.

Alternative benefits

Workplace targeting doesn’t just offer media/PR benefits. It can literally be used for anything, whether that’s lead generation, getting meetings with specific people or using it to get your next job.

I’ve used this tactic to get meetings with people many times. For example, I wanted to meet the team at Social Chain. After emailing a few times to no avail, I decided to run an ad targeting employees of Social Chain.

After only $.39 spend, I had a message from the CEO inviting me down to the office the next week. Crazy, right? Every marketer has a list of companies they want to meet/work with. Rather than sending them cold emails, why not create Facebook ads targeting the employees or CEO of that company?

Relevancy

Relevancy is the key to why this works so well. If you pinpoint an ad to someone and call them out based on how you targeted them—for example, by targeting people that work for ‘x’ company and using copy such as ‘work for ‘x’?’—of course they’re going to click on that ad! Why wouldn’t they when it’s so relevant to them?

But at the same time, just because you’ve used their workplace or job title as the identifier, it doesn’t mean the ad or message you’re trying to get across is interesting to them. There are more than 5 million advertisers on Facebook, of which a small percentage will be targeting you, trying to get their message in your feed. Some of them may have identified you by your job title, while others may have identified you by your interests.

This is where having great ad creative is important. The targeting functionality allows us to get our message in front of the right people with ease. But that doesn’t mean they’re automatically going to be interested in what we have to say. Great targeting can’t fix poor messaging. Understand the mindset of Facebook users and serve them an ad that is truly valuable and relevant to them.

Final Thoughts

How can a PR agency compete with results like this—instant results for a tiny spend? Now, the point of this article isn’t to suggest that PR agencies are dead. They still have a place, but if you’re looking to get into the media or to target specific companies, Facebook ads might be your best bet.

The great thing is, you don’t need huge budgets to get results. You can get started from as little as $1 a day. Once you’ve tested and played around with this method, you can scale your budget to as high as you like.

About the Author: Gavin Bell is an award winning entrepreneur and Facebook advertising expert. At just 21 years of age, he launched his social media agency, Blue Cliff Media. Fast forward two years and they’re working with brands across the world, helping them to transform the way they communicate and market themselves online. Also a vlogger, Gavin has a weekly vlog titled “The Journey” which follows his life through the world of entrepreneurship.

[samiam03x]

How to Use Facebook as Your PR Engine

A PR agency’s job is to get your story in front of the press and potential customers.

It might set you back $5,000 per month.

But what if you could get the same—if not better—results yourself, by using Facebook ads?

Facebook ads are one of your biggest business opportunities. The targeting capabilities, the tracking functionality and the low cost of getting started means they beat any other form of advertising hands down. If you’re not using Facebook ads as part of your overall marketing strategy, you’re missing a trick.

Facebook has a neat little feature called workplace targeting that many people don’t even know about—and from a PR perspective, it could save you thousands of dollars every month.

Let’s see how.

How to Target the Media on Facebook

When you think about Facebook targeting, you might think it’s all about location, age and interest-based targeting. But when you dive into the demographical data we can use to target people, it goes much deeper than that.

Let’s take a second to think about the data Facebook has. There are 1.94 billion active monthly users on Facebook, and over 1 billion people use the platform every single day.

That’s a lot of data. I’ve personally been on Facebook for over 10 years. During the course of those 10 years, Facebook will have amassed a huge amount of data about me: the pages I’ve liked, posts I’ve reacted to, photos I’ve uploaded, places I’ve checked in, links I’ve clicked on and sites I’ve visited, to name a few. They’ll understand how my behavior has changed over time. When we combine that with the data they have about my Instagram and Whatsapp usage (not to mention data from third-party partners), we’re starting to talk real big data.

As they say, if you don’t pay for a product, you are the product. This might sound slightly daunting to a user, but as a marketer, it’s a huge opportunity—an opportunity you need to be taking advantage of.

When we use workplace targeting to target people based on where they work, we’re simply using the data Facebook gathers when you create your profile.

It’s a targeting feature that many people don’t know about, but it’s one that can be super powerful. Here’s how to do it:

Using Facebook Workplace Targeting

Presuming you already have an advertising account, when you’re in the ads manager, click on create advert.

You’ll be taken here, where you need to choose your campaign objective. You can target the media through any objective, so what you choose here will be entirely dependent upon your goals.

For example, if you’re trying to get people to take a specific action, such as download an eBook, you’ll want to choose the conversions objective. If your goal is to drive traffic to a blog post, you might want to use the traffic objective.

The objective you choose will alter how Facebook optimizes your ads (if you choose conversions, Facebook will show your ad to the people it thinks are most likely to convert. If you choose traffic, Facebook will show your ad to the people it thinks are most likely to click through). Again, Facebook has data on what action you’re most likely to take, based on your user behavior.

Name your campaign and click continue.

You’ll then be taken to the ad set level where you get to choose your targeting options. Your ad set is basically a place where you tell Facebook how you want your advertisement to run. Your options here include:

Targeting

Placement

Budget

Bidding

Scheduling

Targeting is what we’re interested in here. Find the detailed targeting box, then hit browse > demographics > work > employers.

Here, you can enter the names of the companies you want to target. This will target the employees of the companies you choose. If we’re looking to get some PR, we want to choose media companies as the employers.

You can go ahead and fill that detailed targeting box with as many companies as you’d like to target.

I’d recommend creating a list of all the media companies you think might be interested in what you do and any stories you produce. You can then save that audience and come back to it whenever you want to target the media again. I’ll often target the media companies even when I don’t have anything to pitch them—just to keep myself top of their minds.

You’ll then have an audience you can target whenever you have something you feel is media-worthy! Here’s an audience I created of people who work for media companies:

As a marketer, getting into the media and onto podcasts, writing guest blog posts and connecting with influencers are all great ways to reach and provide value to new audiences. But the people with the power to get you onto these mediums (the owners, journalists, hosts etc.) are inundated every day by people requesting to be on their show or to write a guest post for them. Do you think they want to receive any more requests than they already do?

Definitely not.

Why not do something to stand out from the crowd? Jump on to Facebook, find the person who owns the podcast/blog you want to appear on, see what they’ve put as their company name and then create an ad targeting employees of that company.

In your ad copy, you can specify that you love their podcast/blog and would like to appear on it. What’s gonna stand out more—a boring email pitch or a creative ad?

The ad will win all day long—it’s fun, it’s different and it’s relevant.

Alternative benefits

Workplace targeting doesn’t just offer media/PR benefits. It can literally be used for anything, whether that’s lead generation, getting meetings with specific people or using it to get your next job.

I’ve used this tactic to get meetings with people many times. For example, I wanted to meet the team at Social Chain. After emailing a few times to no avail, I decided to run an ad targeting employees of Social Chain.

After only $.39 spend, I had a message from the CEO inviting me down to the office the next week. Crazy, right? Every marketer has a list of companies they want to meet/work with. Rather than sending them cold emails, why not create Facebook ads targeting the employees or CEO of that company?

Relevancy

Relevancy is the key to why this works so well. If you pinpoint an ad to someone and call them out based on how you targeted them—for example, by targeting people that work for ‘x’ company and using copy such as ‘work for ‘x’?’—of course they’re going to click on that ad! Why wouldn’t they when it’s so relevant to them?

But at the same time, just because you’ve used their workplace or job title as the identifier, it doesn’t mean the ad or message you’re trying to get across is interesting to them. There are more than 5 million advertisers on Facebook, of which a small percentage will be targeting you, trying to get their message in your feed. Some of them may have identified you by your job title, while others may have identified you by your interests.

This is where having great ad creative is important. The targeting functionality allows us to get our message in front of the right people with ease. But that doesn’t mean they’re automatically going to be interested in what we have to say. Great targeting can’t fix poor messaging. Understand the mindset of Facebook users and serve them an ad that is truly valuable and relevant to them.

Final Thoughts

How can a PR agency compete with results like this—instant results for a tiny spend? Now, the point of this article isn’t to suggest that PR agencies are dead. They still have a place, but if you’re looking to get into the media or to target specific companies, Facebook ads might be your best bet.

The great thing is, you don’t need huge budgets to get results. You can get started from as little as $1 a day. Once you’ve tested and played around with this method, you can scale your budget to as high as you like.

About the Author: Gavin Bell is an award winning entrepreneur and Facebook advertising expert. At just 21 years of age, he launched his social media agency, Blue Cliff Media. Fast forward two years and they’re working with brands across the world, helping them to transform the way they communicate and market themselves online. Also a vlogger, Gavin has a weekly vlog titled “The Journey” which follows his life through the world of entrepreneurship.

http://ift.tt/2s0JdDY from MarketingRSS http://ift.tt/2t3ioP2 via Youtube

[ericsburden-blog]

How to Use Facebook as Your PR Engine

A PR agency’s job is to get your story in front of the press and potential customers.

It might set you back $5,000 per month.

But what if you could get the same—if not better—results yourself, by using Facebook ads?

Facebook ads are one of your biggest business opportunities. The targeting capabilities, the tracking functionality and the low cost of getting started means they beat any other form of advertising hands down. If you’re not using Facebook ads as part of your overall marketing strategy, you’re missing a trick.

Facebook has a neat little feature called workplace targeting that many people don’t even know about—and from a PR perspective, it could save you thousands of dollars every month.

Let’s see how.

How to Target the Media on Facebook

When you think about Facebook targeting, you might think it’s all about location, age and interest-based targeting. But when you dive into the demographical data we can use to target people, it goes much deeper than that.

Let’s take a second to think about the data Facebook has. There are 1.94 billion active monthly users on Facebook, and over 1 billion people use the platform every single day.

That’s a lot of data. I’ve personally been on Facebook for over 10 years. During the course of those 10 years, Facebook will have amassed a huge amount of data about me: the pages I’ve liked, posts I’ve reacted to, photos I’ve uploaded, places I’ve checked in, links I’ve clicked on and sites I’ve visited, to name a few. They’ll understand how my behavior has changed over time. When we combine that with the data they have about my Instagram and Whatsapp usage (not to mention data from third-party partners), we’re starting to talk real big data.

As they say, if you don’t pay for a product, you are the product. This might sound slightly daunting to a user, but as a marketer, it’s a huge opportunity—an opportunity you need to be taking advantage of.

When we use workplace targeting to target people based on where they work, we’re simply using the data Facebook gathers when you create your profile.

It’s a targeting feature that many people don’t know about, but it’s one that can be super powerful. Here’s how to do it:

Using Facebook Workplace Targeting

Presuming you already have an advertising account, when you’re in the ads manager, click on create advert.

You’ll be taken here, where you need to choose your campaign objective. You can target the media through any objective, so what you choose here will be entirely dependent upon your goals.

For example, if you’re trying to get people to take a specific action, such as download an eBook, you’ll want to choose the conversions objective. If your goal is to drive traffic to a blog post, you might want to use the traffic objective.

The objective you choose will alter how Facebook optimizes your ads (if you choose conversions, Facebook will show your ad to the people it thinks are most likely to convert. If you choose traffic, Facebook will show your ad to the people it thinks are most likely to click through). Again, Facebook has data on what action you’re most likely to take, based on your user behavior.

Name your campaign and click continue.

You’ll then be taken to the ad set level where you get to choose your targeting options. Your ad set is basically a place where you tell Facebook how you want your advertisement to run. Your options here include:

Targeting

Placement

Budget

Bidding

Scheduling

Targeting is what we’re interested in here. Find the detailed targeting box, then hit browse > demographics > work > employers.

Here, you can enter the names of the companies you want to target. This will target the employees of the companies you choose. If we’re looking to get some PR, we want to choose media companies as the employers.

You can go ahead and fill that detailed targeting box with as many companies as you’d like to target.

I’d recommend creating a list of all the media companies you think might be interested in what you do and any stories you produce. You can then save that audience and come back to it whenever you want to target the media again. I’ll often target the media companies even when I don’t have anything to pitch them—just to keep myself top of their minds.

You’ll then have an audience you can target whenever you have something you feel is media-worthy! Here’s an audience I created of people who work for media companies:

As a marketer, getting into the media and onto podcasts, writing guest blog posts and connecting with influencers are all great ways to reach and provide value to new audiences. But the people with the power to get you onto these mediums (the owners, journalists, hosts etc.) are inundated every day by people requesting to be on their show or to write a guest post for them. Do you think they want to receive any more requests than they already do?

Definitely not.

Why not do something to stand out from the crowd? Jump on to Facebook, find the person who owns the podcast/blog you want to appear on, see what they’ve put as their company name and then create an ad targeting employees of that company.

In your ad copy, you can specify that you love their podcast/blog and would like to appear on it. What’s gonna stand out more—a boring email pitch or a creative ad?

The ad will win all day long—it’s fun, it’s different and it’s relevant.

Alternative benefits

Workplace targeting doesn’t just offer media/PR benefits. It can literally be used for anything, whether that’s lead generation, getting meetings with specific people or using it to get your next job.

I’ve used this tactic to get meetings with people many times. For example, I wanted to meet the team at Social Chain. After emailing a few times to no avail, I decided to run an ad targeting employees of Social Chain.

After only $.39 spend, I had a message from the CEO inviting me down to the office the next week. Crazy, right? Every marketer has a list of companies they want to meet/work with. Rather than sending them cold emails, why not create Facebook ads targeting the employees or CEO of that company?

Relevancy

Relevancy is the key to why this works so well. If you pinpoint an ad to someone and call them out based on how you targeted them—for example, by targeting people that work for ‘x’ company and using copy such as ‘work for ‘x’?’—of course they’re going to click on that ad! Why wouldn’t they when it’s so relevant to them?

But at the same time, just because you’ve used their workplace or job title as the identifier, it doesn’t mean the ad or message you’re trying to get across is interesting to them. There are more than 5 million advertisers on Facebook, of which a small percentage will be targeting you, trying to get their message in your feed. Some of them may have identified you by your job title, while others may have identified you by your interests.

This is where having great ad creative is important. The targeting functionality allows us to get our message in front of the right people with ease. But that doesn’t mean they’re automatically going to be interested in what we have to say. Great targeting can’t fix poor messaging. Understand the mindset of Facebook users and serve them an ad that is truly valuable and relevant to them.

Final Thoughts

How can a PR agency compete with results like this—instant results for a tiny spend? Now, the point of this article isn’t to suggest that PR agencies are dead. They still have a place, but if you’re looking to get into the media or to target specific companies, Facebook ads might be your best bet.

The great thing is, you don’t need huge budgets to get results. You can get started from as little as $1 a day. Once you’ve tested and played around with this method, you can scale your budget to as high as you like.

About the Author: Gavin Bell is an award winning entrepreneur and Facebook advertising expert. At just 21 years of age, he launched his social media agency, Blue Cliff Media. Fast forward two years and they’re working with brands across the world, helping them to transform the way they communicate and market themselves online. Also a vlogger, Gavin has a weekly vlog titled “The Journey” which follows his life through the world of entrepreneurship.

How to Use Facebook as Your PR Engine

[letscreateafricaorg]

New post in LET'S CREATE AFRICA (L.C.A.): •Demonstrated Performance Management and monitoring skills •Knowledge of labour laws and employment legislations •Effective communication and listening skills •Strong interpersonal and relationship building skills •Flexible and adaptable with the ability to produce creative solutions to HR problems •Strong industrial and employee relations skills •Training planning/management skills •Strong leadership skills with ability to provide innovative solutions to problems •Proven ability to plan, organize and prioritize work, together with the ability to remain calm under pressure often in difficult circumstances and not lose sight of strategic priorities. •Computer literate, with high degree of proficiency and productivity. •Experience working with HR information systems an added advantage. •Commitment to the organizational values of AAH-I. Application Instructions Interested candidates should email application letter and CV (with 3 referees) addressed to recruithq@actio nafricahelp.org to be received by 31st March, 2019. The email Subject Line must show the job title of the position applied for. AAH-I is an equal-opportunity employer. We thank candidates for their high interest in the opportunities we publish on our website. Due to the high number of applications we receive, we will only get back to shortlisted candidates. https://ift.tt/2U4cquI [3/15, 12:04] Nelson Komba: ASSISTANT OFFICER - COAST REGIONAL OFFICE-REF:KNCH R/ADM/AO/ VOL.1 .KNCHR. Location: Mombasa with occasional travel. Duration: 1 Year Contract. Gross Salary: Kshs. 81,056.67 Requirements. a)Higher Diploma/Diploma in social sciences from a recognized institution. b)One year of service, or similar experience facilitation of participatory processes in a comparable position from a reputable organization. c)Experience with networks, networking skills. d)Understanding of human rights gender, racism, power structures in the region. e)Understanding of conflict transformation and Do No Harm f)Ability and willingness to work independently g)Knowledge of and experience with Mombasa Civil Society landscape and actors would be a plus. h)A good listener and communicator. i)Excellent IT skills/ social media knowledge. j)Meet the requirements of Chapter Six of the Constitution of Kenya. If you possess the above qualities, please submit your application manually through the post office or by hand delivery, clearly indicating the position, and the Ref No. on both the cover letter and envelope, together with a detailed C.V, names and telephone contacts of three referees one of whom should be your immediate supervisor, to reach us by 25th March, 2019 to: The Commission Secretary Kenya National Commission on Human Rights CVS Plaza, 1st Floor,Lenana Road, P. O. Box 74359 – 00200 Nairobi. Click here to download the advert https:// www.knchr.org/Portals/0/Long%20Version-% 20ASSISTANT%20OFFICER%202.pdf Please note that it is a criminal offence to provide false information and documents in the application. KNCHR is an equal opportunity employer and qualified female candidates and Persons with disabilities are encouraged to apply. Only short listed candidates will be contacted. KNCHR does NOT have recruitment agents and does NOT charge a fee at any stage of its recruitment process. Report any incident of extortion to KNCHR or to the Police. https://ift.tt/2WdQhb2 tunities [3/15, 12:04] Nelson Komba: https://ift.tt/2TZEcbL [3/15, 13:27] Nelson Komba: https://ift.tt/2WcWsMf Software engineer [3/15, 16:07] Nelson Komba: KickStart International ICT Manager KickStart International Job Advert: ICT Manager KickStart International prides itself in being an award-winning, global nonprofit social enterprise that develops and mass- markets low-cost irrigation solutions that are bought by thousands of small-holder farmers in developing countries by enabling them to lift themselves out of poverty. https://ift.tt/2U0C43C