Event Board

"Reclaiming lost productivity, one meeting at a time."

Technology today is eternally growing and evolving. It affects nearly every aspect of our lives. Communication and more specifically professional communication is one aspect in particular that continues to be modified constantly by the ever-changing entity of technology. One technological gadget that has and will innovate professional communication is Eventboard. 

As we continue to expand our professional communication circles domestically and globally, it becomes more and more difficult to coordinate everyone’s schedules and arrange an appropriately sized room with the necessary technology present to accommodate the needs of everyone involved. Event board is the solution to all of these obstacles to professional communication. 

“The EventBoard platform simplifies meeting scheduling, streamlines conference room and resource booking, and improves overall meeting effectiveness – all aspects of business that have long been recognized as hurdles to productivity.” 

Eventboard uses a cloud-based platform that focuses on two major feature sets: employee-focused meeting tools and activity-driven insights.  

The employee-focused meeting tools help members of an organization connect with the right rooms and resources for their needs. There will be no need for squabbles over who should actually get a conference room, or why the technology in the room isn’t right for what was needed. It will ultimately keep meetings on track. This not only helps on a micro level with individual groups or employees, but also on a macro level because this feature sets streamlines for how your employees schedule and direct meetings and as a result it is easier to manage meeting told across the entire organization.  

The activity-driven insights will be extremely useful in enhancing professional communication within a company because it is powered by data collected from employee meeting tools and it will suggest things for a company to do to improve productivity. This feature helps figure out how many attendees are in a typical meeting and the times and days that employees would like to have meetings. It also finds out which rooms are over and under used as well as how many cancelled meetings there are. This feature singles out which technologies are needed for which employees and can figure out which types of technologies produce the most problems.  

By using Eventboard, professional communication can be more organized, time efficient, and effective. This will effect everything from groups to entire organizations. According to Eventboard, 11 million meetings take place in a day throughout the US. That is a lot of meetings and even more people that are involved in these meetings. Imagine how much time this technology will reduce if implemented. Imagine you are personally in charge of planning a meeting that involves 10 people, 2 of which are over seas and you will need a room big enough to fit those people comfortably, and the technology needed to connect with the members overseas. With Eventboard, you could easily look up which rooms are available, have the proper technology, and can fit everyone. With Eventboard, you wouldn’t need to worry about people knocking the door on your important meeting to ask how much longer you need, or that they scheduled the room. All of these problems will be avoided because everyone will have access to it.  

Infographic

Apple Bees Mishap

Apple Bees Mishap

The interesting thing about this social media case is that there are many different angles you can take to dissect the case.

 The first angle is that of the pastor, Alois Bell, the customer who wrote the note on the receipt next the 18 percent tip line that said, “I give God 10% why do you get 18”. Bell had an opinion about giving her waitress 18% tip and felt it was unfair to give the waitress more than she gives God. This was an expression of speech that some people have advocated or disapproved of as we see in the comments below the articles written.  Click here to read articles from Yahoo and CBS. One such commenter felt that Bell was in the right and said,

 “What ? Did I read this correctly ? Is the pastor apologizing for not tipping? When I first heard of this I had immense respect for the pastor. But now I am ashamed of her. The auto tipping should be illegal and she should defend herself and her actions. She did nothing wrong. Welch is the #$%$”

Another commenter posted, “wow the pastor did not even leave a tip for that poor hard working waitress. and then he mentions God. Now he's embarrassed and it is a bad example for his ministry. she should not have gotten fired”

Now let’s look at this from a legal stand point--  did Bell do anything that was illegal when she wrote the sentence on the receipt? No. However, can she expect, after writing something like that not to get the social ramifications. If there is one thing we know for certain as we continue to navigate through this evermore online driven world, we realize that what we say, do, and especially write can’t be expected to be kept private. If you don’t want something to be spread to millions of people, then don’t do it.

Now another angle, that of our apple bees waitress, Chelsea Welch. She was simply expressing her opinion of what Bell had initially wrote of not paying a tip. Note that Welch wasn’t even the server to Bell. She found it “insulting,but also comical” ­­­­.

Another comment made to support Welch, 
“this is all a bunch of crap... the waitress who posted the receipt had every right to post it..maybe not the whole receipt but the part that had the comment on it...the pastor in this is a fool, why was the info about her being a pastor on the receipt to begin with? lots of 'important' people do that to try to get a deal on the bill...”

Again let’s look at this from a legal standpoint. By posting this receipt online, did bell violate any laws? Not technically. If she would have posted other parts of the receipt that had information like the last four digits of her credit card or other confidential information, then Welch could be facing legal ramifications. But she did not post such information.  Did she violate any company Policies? According to Welch, there is nothing specific in the employee handbook admonishing the behavior. However, Michael Archer, president of Apple Bees, said that is was a violation of a “simple rule” of customers privacy. So whether it is explicitly stated within a company handbook or not it’s implied that publicly posting a receipt that associates a company with a customer’s controversial behavior is probably not a good idea.

This brings us to our third and final angle, the angle of President of Apple bees, Michael Archer. As any PR or Senior official knows, with social media and the internet as rampant as they are in this time period, undesirable situations that occur with customers would be best dealt with internally, rather than posting it publically and letting the whole world judge you on social media. Either decision the company made to correct this would have led to criticism because it’s now on the internet for everyone to know and interject their opinion. What was the best way to handle this as the President of the company? Did he do the right thing by affirming that they needed to fire Welch because it was a violation of customer privacy? Archer said, “ It’s not favoring the guest over the employee, It’s really a simple rule that we have that was violated.”

Was there a better way to handle it?

Either way, the best lesson to learn from this is that if you don’t want something posted on the internet, probably don’t write it. People then can do what they want with it. A second important lesson to learn is that as an employee, most definitely don’t post anything that could bring negative publicity to your company because let’s be frank, there is a high likelihood that you could lose your job. 

Online Reputation Assignment- Collin D. Sorenson

Dear Collin, 

As I was diligently trying to research more about you on the internet, I found it exceptionally difficult to find a lot of information on you. I started with Facebook only to find two posts on your timeline since 2009. That is a span of nearly seven years. I then tried to simply find  what you looked like only to discover that you have 2 posted photos that are viewable and one was hard to determine if it was you because it appeared to be a bearded man wearing a sequined dress. That particular photo was uploaded November of 2013.  The other picture was very shaded on your face because there was a blaring sunset in the background. A beautiful one if I might add, kudos for that one. I learned from your “about” page that you are single and interested in women, and apparently you have no family—at least not that you posted on Facebook. You have attended Utah state University and Sky View High in Smithfield Utah. You work at The Clean Spot.  

After learning all I could from Facebook, I researched The Clean Spot to see if I could glean anymore information about you there.http://www.thecleanspotutah.com/ When I searched your name in the search bar, this is what I found:  

   

Your name attached to everyone of the products, items, or designs for the Clean Spot. From this information I decided that you are may be a big wig there either as a graphic designer, product manager,  or something like that.  

So I then tried typing your name with The Clean Spot into the search bar of google to no avail. 

After that, I decided to go a different route and try finding out more about you by searching your name attached with Utah State University into three different search engines. Still nothing other than I may have discovered that you have a dad named Brent, and either a sister or a mom named April. If you aren't related to either of them then I apologize sincerely. http://www.whitepages.com/name/Colin-Sorenson

I then decided to go back to the roots and research Sky View High School. I was unable too! Seriously Collin if you were trying to be untraceable, you are really good at it. You are OFF THE GRID! (like Jason Bourne, if you have ever watched the Bourne Series) 

My dear friend, you don't have an updated Facebook page. You don't have a LinkedIn. You don't have an Instagram. And you don't have a Twitter. I'm amazed you have alluded this generations obsession with pictures and newsflash updates about personal life. You have successfully escaped the social media/ internet death trap of the millennial generation unscathed and I applaud you for it. 

Sincerely, 

Katelin