Thursday, November 28, 2019

INTRANET CONTENT, WRITING, AND GRAPHICS - The Writers For Hire

INTRANET CONTENT, WRITING, AND GRAPHICS Deciding on Content for Your Intranet What makes you want to open your morning news source? A shrieking headline like this one? A New York Times Morning Briefing text every five minutes on your IPhone? The latest from your local journal? Answer: you open, turn on, watch, or buy the news because you’re looking for something that peaks your interest. Maybe even something you can’t afford to miss. That’s what you’re going to offer on your intranet. And although you can’t use screaming headlines to lure people to your homepage, you can offer plenty of legitimate content-bling, more than enough to make everyone from the CEO to the stock boy want to check in at least once a day. On an intranet, content is the star of the show. No question that the co-star is superb engineering. Without it, content is nothing. And great graphics improve the experience exponentially. But content is what keeps the crowd coming. That’s why decisions about what content, how often it will appear, how much space it will be given are made long before the site goes live. And knowing what your audience wants and needs will help your intranet team make some of those decisions. As far as the ‘what’ of content goes, Christie Atkins of the Thought Farmer says four favorite intranet features with employees are: company success stories, written up in detail with all the team names and accomplishments so everyone can share in the win an event section, whether it’s internal or something nearby in the community a humor section where people can share memes, gifs, videos and jokes job postings Chris Charlwood of Simple Intranet listed another five: an Employee Directoryprofiles with photographs and some personal informationfor ease of contacting one another a file repository that provides a powerful search function for content, allowing people to access information more readily HR forms that can be filled out online real-time activity feeds that permit commenting and empower employees to share what they are doing. This also provides a venue for thanking colleagues who went above and beyond in helping out. interactive tools that keep employees engaged such as surveys, feedback forums, or wikis. Other interactive features can include threaded discussions, Q A forums, competitions, and micro blogs. Entire intranet sections are sometimes set aside for training and educational opportunities executive communications document libraries teams corporate news Intranet content is as diverse as the companies and organizations that host them. The more networking you do, the more you’ll find out what unique features and devices other intranet teams have created.Tweet this Writing for Your Intranet Okay, putting some of the above features onto your intranet will only involve transferring digital data. But some will involve actual writing. And you and your Intranet team probably don’t have staff writers. You have busy HR professionals, trainers, accountants, and coders. Perhaps you even have mechanics, pastry chefs and airline pilots. And you are asking them to produce a regular amount of intranet copy in a lively consistent style. Hmmmm. Big ask. Other than offering fresh cookie rewards, these ideas may help: Encourage your writers to stick to a few basic rules of style (punctuation and usage) to give the site some consistency. A good resource is the AP Style Guide. Subscribe to the shorter-is-better concept: shorter words, shorter sentences, shorter paragraphs. (Note:   Not necessarily shorter content.) Don’t write for your college professor. Write for a fifth-grader. Microsoft Word helps you do that; see The Writers for Hire blog titled ‘Word Tip of the Week: Using the Readability Feature.’ Cut back on the adjectives and other descriptives in general, unless you’re sharing your trip to Botswana. Don’t ramble on. Before you start writing, ask yourself, â€Å"What am I trying to say here?† And then, just say it. Keep it simple. Let your personality shine through! Presumably, you are not required to be anonymous. Use plenty of graphics. Update! Update! Update! Keep your particular task area fresh. Don’t let readers see the same thing week after week. I know you can think of something new to say! Make it relevant! Irrelevant content was the No.1 gripe among Intranet Haters polled in 2017. Keep it real! A word to administrators. Producing good content, whether it’s writing, editing, proofing, or updating, is time consuming. So, a strategy for accommodating employees tasked with this new responsibilitypost launchmust be developed. Success for the shiny, new intranet means giving writers adequate time to attend to their new intranet duties, be it researching, writing, editing or updating. If your stable of newly christened writers are a little wobbly, help is at hand. First of all, be sure they have the technical skills needed to upload copy. Next, schedule a half-day writer’s workshop, presented by a professional writer. Offer one-one-one training from a professional who can help inexperienced writers organize materials and produce copy more easily. Create easy-to-use templates with goals for each piece and instructions on types of information required for each content area. Set doable deadlines that are agreed to by the subject matter experts (SMEs), and give SMEs a reason to meet those deadlines. Tying content to a real time event – even if it’s just a weekly announcement giving kudos or mini-awards to contributing authors, can help encourage your SMEs to push through to the finish line.    The Graphics: How Your Site Looks Think of your intranet visuals as the cover on the book, the headlines above the fold, the landscaping in your front yard, the faà §ade of a retail store. The exterior is not where the real stuff is, but it does invite you in. And even more important, like Ikea’s endless aisles, if the exterior is enticing, it might just lure you deeper into the interior! â€Å"Don’t spend all the time and effort planning out your intranet and coming up with content strategy just to stumble because it doesn’t look pretty,† advises Carlos Ruiz, Phase2 Account Director. He warns that sometimes out-of-the-box solutions lack the ‘wow’ factor companies are looking for. But beyond simple esthetics, the visual appeal of your intranet can be extremely important when it comes to building a lasting relationship your users. Think of the many Websites you’ve been exposed to. Each site is meant to influence a visitor’s psychological state of mind as well as impart information. Designers will tell you that’s because the colors, the lines, the slant of the curves, the movement of the eye either to the left or the right, or up or down, are all calculated to please a particular audience. It’s no different with a company intranet. It sends a visual message about who you are as a corporate entity and it adds to the value of your corporate brand. Equally important, good graphic design increases the usability of a site, helping to keep navigation simple, No doubt when you’re in the planning stages, you’d like to take a look at other intranets to get a feeling for visuals that appeals to you. But unlike print materials, and Websites, you can’t view intranets and say, â€Å"Hey, I like the visual feeling of that one.† Intranets are, by nature, private. However, you can catch a glimpse of other intranets by ordering The Neilson Norman Groups Intranet Design Annual: 2018. This 463-page report has detailed information about its ten prize-winners for the year including 155 full-color screenshots of before-and-after designs, which are usually protected behind the organizations firewall. In Conclusion Think about it. When it’s done, your intranet site will be an amazing communications channel with usability and features that would have been impossible even a few years ago. Serving multiple objectives and reaching a broad audience, its many features will function in a variety of ways that that owe their existence to constantly improving technology. At the very least, your intranet will be easy to use, pleasant to look at, make work faster for your employees, give them a greater sense of engagement, and a greater voice in the company as a whole. Pretty cool, huh?

Sunday, November 24, 2019

Da Vinci Code Reflection Surban Essays

Da Vinci Code Reflection Surban Essays Da Vinci Code Reflection Surban Essay Da Vinci Code Reflection Surban Essay It is a well written novel for those who like mystery, codes, secrets and many more like Robert London which is so familiar with Indiana Jones but a smarter version of him and that is why even though it is a very controversial novel to my religion it still amazes me for it is thrilling at the same time it has hidden lessons for all humanity to realize and that is that faith is something you believe in and not what others believe. Although it is an amazing novel with exciting plots, I realize that this is a fictional novel where the facts are not all true but it makes me interested in something more than just the novel. The Dad Vinci infuses both actual historic evidence and imaginary made up evidence so well that it is official for the uneducated people to interpret between what exists in our reality and what is simply something in the reality in which these characters live in. But, The Dad Vinci Code has some limitations like there are serious historical and theological inaccuracies in novel that create false impressions about Jesus, the Christian faith, and the Church. For example, the idea that the divinity of Christ was virtually created by the Council of Nicola is a complete misunderstanding and that is why people think that this novel is mom kind of a threat to the church or even the religion itself for it conveys messages that would deteriorate the image of the Catholic Church. It is not that I find the idea scandalous in any way. I just think it lacks any historical source and frankly, these fictional elements do not overly worry me because I think the film on the whole conveys an important message loud and clear-?that Jesus of Nazareth was an extraordinary teacher and prophet, but a human being, not a God-?and that his resurrection freed Christianity of a rang turn it took many centuries ago and allow us to discover him anew and hear his message unclouded by spiritual belief for the novel I think never wanted to offend the Catholic for the novel just wanted to portray something that the author himself would want to address to the people. Also, in some sense, it is also some kind of test for me because with all the things that the novel would show, it would really test your faith to God and the Church itself because even though that you know that it covers a fictional base, some loud really be persuaded about its contents like the fresco of Leonardo Dad Vinci. Who would have thought that there was a woman in the portrait and that there was no cup? M just saying that the novel has some kind of strong influence to people that the content is true in some ways even though it is real and some may even think about it for a moment and say to themselves 00 nag non?! or Really?! . I on the other hand, after watching The Dad Vinci Code, I still believe in one God even though there are sometimes that doubt my faith and religion but know to myself that I will come back to God or He alone guides me and always helps me in my life for He acts like an inspiration for me to live my life. In the end, I know that the novel is so good and very thrilling but would like to suggest that Catholics and other Christians should genuinely care about the ways in which Jesus and the Christian community are portrayed in modern media We should care enough to re-commit ourselves to Christ, to strive to make the Church a vital and credible witness to the living Christ, and to show by our lives what our faith means to us. Ultimately, we should care because we have a deep love for Christ.

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Poverty and the Development of Adolescence Research Paper

Poverty and the Development of Adolescence - Research Paper Example The current study examines the previous research studies on four domains of adolescence development namely, physical, cognitive, social and emotional with special emphasis on household poverty. The specific objectives of the current study are to identify the concepts which are useful for measuring poverty and adolescent development and their association to investigate the impact of poverty on four domains of adolescent development. The paper is organized as follows. The first chapter presents the models, indicators and statistical concepts useful for measuring the household poverty level, adolescence development processes and the factors which influence the adolescence development. Second chapter on literature review describes the physical, cognitive, social and emotional development of the adolescents in poor families by reviewing the literature. Finally the conclusions are drawn relevant to adolescent development and poverty. Concepts The distinguished physical developmental charac teristics such as development of breasts for girls and the deepened voices and broadened shoulders for boys are probably the most prominent characteristics of the adolescent development. ... In the proceeding chapter, these domains are discussed in detail with reference to relevant research literature. Literature Review Physical Development The lower socio economic status in the family can result in impaired development and poorer health of children and increased mortality and morbidity of adults (Emerson et al., 2005). Purchasing power of the poor families is low. Limited access to foods and nutrients is a common problem faced by the third world countries. It is also well established that social support and health beliefs play an important role in physical activity level of the adolescence. These have been recorded as inadequate even among the poor youth in the USA (Debbie et al. 2008). In the US more than 25 percentage proportion of the adolescents are also overweight. More than 11 percentage proportion of the adolescents are obese which cause long term physical and mental health consequences in individuals. Wickrama et al. 2006, revealed that poverty, single parenthoo d and most of the racial minority statuses (African American, Hispanic American, and Native American racial/ethnic groups) are positively associated with obesity and overweight among adolescents in the USA. Asian American status however was found negatively correlated with these health problems. Emerson et al. 2005, used the statistics of National Statistics survey of the mental health of children and adolescents in Great Britain to study the health status of the adolescents and household income. Sample consisted of 10,438 children between the ages of 5 and 15. In the above study the physical development of the adolescents were measured in terms of nine categories namely, current