Posted by Ellie Mirman on Wed, Jul 23, 2008 @ 09:11 AM
Remember the good ol' days of birthdays at mini golf, Roller Kingdom, or the local bowl-a-drome? Well, those good ol' days aren't over quite yet.
This month my company, HubSpot, is celebrating its 2nd birthday / anniversary of its founding. And in honor of this great occasion, we made a trip out to King's in Boston for some bowling. We posted a bunch of photos on our flickr account.
Oh, and what would a birthday bash be without a birthday cake?
Posted by Ellie Mirman on Fri, Jul 18, 2008 @ 08:32 PM
This week I was in Austin, TX for a conference and one of the nights, I had a fabulous dinner with a client, that turned out to be a true heart-to-heart. Of course that was after two glasses of wine and a margarita. A good, Texan margarita.
We launched into a great discussion about life, politics, and (of course) marketing (but only a little of the latter). I have the problem that I become a chatterbox after a couple drinks and talk about who-knows-what. But apparently who-knows-what is actually my parents.
That's right. Two glasses of wine and a margarita later, I'm going on and on about how I admire my parents. Their whole story - their life in the Soviet Union, their immigration, how amazing it is that they did all this so their children could have a better life. And how they don't even talk about it. It is the classic American Dream story, except the somehow humble version of it...?
I guess the part that amazes me is the humble part. The part how they don't talk about how our family of four lived in one bedroom in a shared apartment for years. How people were persecuted at their offices, or even lost their jobs, if they applied for immigration. How it took four years of applying for immigration and getting denied each time (every six months I believe) before they finally got the go-ahead. It amazes me to know how they lived, how different our lives are now, and that they don't even relish in it (none of that "in my day, I had to walk to school uphill both ways barefoot in the snow"). They do, of course, have lives to live and I know they appreciate so much the difference in life in the US. That's the thing a lot of people don't realize (oh, here comes my tiny bit of personal politics) - immigrants are among the most grateful, appreciative residents of the US. People who have not known a different way of life just don't realize how damn good it is around here. But enough of my rant. I guess I really just wanted to state my pride and admiration for my parents. I think I'm old enough now for that not to be super uncool, right?
Posted by Ellie Mirman on Thu, Jul 03, 2008 @ 01:10 AM
The ongoing debate around social media and computers in general is around whether this is pulling people apart - diminishing the amount of real social interaction - or if it is, in fact, bringing people together by breaking down the barriers of time and space in connecting people with one another.
So far I've always been on the side of the latter group - the Internet and social networks have made it possible to connect with a much larger pool of people and, quite importantly, connect with people of very specific, perhaps off-beat interests. You're no longer bound by the constraints of where you live, your transportation options, or your time zone. None of that matters online, where you can interact on your own terms - time, medium, etc.
But, alas, here comes my experience swaying me to the other side. My one, recent, emotional interaction with an angry emailer. I'm guessing one of the unspoken rules of blogging or journalism or one of those writing related activities is that you're not supposed to write when you're so emotional. Well screw that. You often have the most to say when you're emotional.
I won't go into the details of the interaction, but I will share the possible insight that came out of it. I wonder - in a virtual world in which you don't see someone's face, perhaps don't interact on a personal level, do you start to dehumanize the person at the other end of an [email, blog, message of some sort]? Having not met the person - seen their face, heard their voice - do you perhaps not consider them a true person? Does this, in turn, allow us to deal with little regard with these people?
Maybe I get too emotional. I take a message - not even addressed to me, just delivered to my Inbox - full of angry sentiments as a personal attack on my being. I know I shouldn't. But that's not the real issue here. Because, as my mother often argues against me, the moment I stop crticizing is the moment I stop caring. And we definitely don't need less care in this world.
In the end, things were straightened out with my Angry in Australia character. Because we had a conversation - we heard each other's voices (well, through our writing) and recognized that there was a real human on the other end. it's too bad we had to have that negative interaction to begin with. And I know this is not a unique case and I worry that these moments of dehumanization are continually mixed in with the oh-so-wonderful examples of the power of social media in bringing people together. I think the successes outweigh the failures, the joys outweigh the.. uh.. mini emotional breakdowns, and I still believe in the beneficient power of social media.