Interview with dr. J. Schilperoord !

On the 29th of March, together with my BIT class group, I’ve interviewed dr. J. Schilperoord about his current and coming research. Topics discussed are ‘the law of proximity and similarity’ and ‘symmetric object alignment’. These terms would probably make your head spin right now! But will be made quite clear and understandable after watching our interview.

The interview was held @ the university of Tilburg. For this project, all of us had different task to make this video run smooth. Mine was producer, so I planned the whole interview, booked the location and co-wrote the story-board with the director (Martine). You can visit Martine’s blog @ http://martine87.blogspot.com/ Other groupmembers who made this video possible are: Sandra (who interviewed), Remco (camdude) and Rik (editmaster!).

This way I would like to thank Joost again for his cooperation with this interview! And hope that our video may be a pleasant surprised to him.

Interview Schilperoord video

Directors cut

Original movie

The Value of Understanding Communication Theory

Why should you know something about communication and the theory behind it? In addition to fostering critical thinking skills, being a student of communication theory will help you appreciate the richness of research across various fields of study.

Understanding communication theory also helps you make sense of your life experiences. Communication theory aids you in understanding people, media, and events and helps you answer important questions.

Thus far, I have observed that learning about communication theory helps your critical thinking skills, informs you about the value of research across different fields of study, and aids you in understanding the world around you. One final reason to study theories of communication pertains to an area that is likely to be most important in your life – you. Learning about who you are, how you function in society, the influence you are able to have on others, the extent to which you are influenced by the media, how you behave in various circumstances, and what motivates your decisions are just a handful of the possible areas that are either explicitly or implicitly discussed in the theories you will be introduced to in this book. These are not “self-help” communication theories; they do not provide easy answers to difficult questions.

The dark side...

Dark side of communication: negative communication that can undermine the communication process. Researchers began focusing on this dark side of communication, because obviously not all relationships are exciting and rewarding undertakings.

Suggesting that communication has a dark side generally means that communication has a negative component. Negative communication can be manipulative, sarcastic, abusive, and humiliating. It can also take the form of seemingly less harmful behaviors, such as name-calling and teasing, which are common among teenagers. Still, such badgering can be harassing and tormenting. The dark side of communication also includes verbal and psychological abuse and racist, ageist, and homophobic remarks.

When framing negative communication within the transactional model of communication, the complexity of the model becomes apparent. As one person sends supportive messages, the other may be simultaneously sending disparaging messages. People often engage in conversations with an agenda in mind, making miscommunication (and negative communication) possible.

I post this discussion of the dark side of communication because we all know that not all people communicate rationally. In addition, when studying theories associated with interpersonal relationships, some writers believe that the communication field has not been as inclusive and comprehensive as it could be.

Finally, knowing something about negative communication could help you in your conversations with others. Being knowledgeable about negative communication may allow you to understand and detect it when it occurs, and that can be empowering. Also, you should realize, that some conversations go wrong, regardless of how much of your communication is supportive.

Ethics and Communication

Something about ethics in communication. But what exactly are or is ethics? Ethics is the perceived rightness or wrongness of an action or behavior. Ethics is a type of moral decision making, and determining what is right or wrong is influenced by a society with its rules and laws. A number of influences affect ethical standards. As William Howell (1986) notes, the timing and time of the conversation, the environment, and the human relationships all affect the application of ethical standards.

  From a communication perspective, ethical issues surface whenever messages potentially influence others. Ethical issues also involve revealing information. Finally, ethics are a consideration with regard to messages on television. For instance, television could be used constructively if children are sent messages which promote racial harmony and tolerance; however, portrayals of ethnic and cultural groups in stereotypical and offensive ways have obvious ethical implications. This way, media is or could be used to send a message about tollerance and teaching about ethics by using communication.

What Is CRM?

What Is CRM?

Customer relationship management (CRM) uses information technology to create a cross-functional enterprise system that integrates and automates many of the customer-serving processes in sales, marketing and customer services that interact with a company’s customers.

Contact and Account Management

CRM software helps sales, marketing, and service professionals capture and track relevant data about every past and planned contact with prospects and customers, as well as other business and life cycle events of customers.

Sales

A CRM system provides sales reps with the software tolls and company data sources they need to support and manage their sales activities and optimize cross-selling and up-selling. Cross-selling is an approach in which a customer of one product or service might also be interested in purchasing a related product of service. Up-selling refers to the process of finding ways to sell a new or existing customer a better product than they are actually seeking.

Marketing and Fulfillment

CRM systems help marketing professionals accomplish direct marketing campaigns by automating such tasks as qualifying leads for targeted marketing and scheduling and tracking direct marketing mailings. Then the CRM software helps marketing professionals capture and manage prospect and customer response data in the CRM database and analyze the customer and business value of a company’s direct marketing campaigns. CRM also assists in the fulfillment of prospect and customer responses and requests by quickly scheduling sales contacts and providing appropriate information about products and services to them, while capturing relevant information for the CRM database.

Customer Service and Support

A CRM system provides service reps with software tolls and real-time access to the common customer database shared by sales and marketing professionals. CRM helps customer service managers create, assign, and manage requests for service by customers.

Retention and Loyalty Programs

Enhancing and optimizing customer retention and loyalty is a major business strategy and primary objective of customer relationship management. CRM systems try to help a company identify, reward, and market to their most loyal and profitable customers.

Telecommunications Media

Telecommunications Media

Telecommunications media include twisted-pair wire, coaxial cables, and fiber-optic cables, all off which physically link the devices in a network. Also included are terrestrial microwave, communications satellites, cellular phone systems and packet and LAN radio, all of which use microwave and other radio waves. In addition, there are infrared systems, which use infrared light to transmit and receive data.

Wired Technologies

Twisted-Pair Wire

The ordinary telephone wire, consisting of copper wire twisted into pairs, the twisted-pair wire, is the most widely used medium for telecommunications.

Coaxial Cable

Coaxial cable consists of a sturdy copper or aluminum wire wrapped with spacers to insulate and protect it

Fiber Optics

Fiber optics uses cables consisting of one or more hair-thin filaments of glass fiber wrapped in a protective jacket. The transmitting speed of fiber is hundreds of times faster than coaxial cable and thousands of times better than twisted-pair wire.

The Problem of “The Last Mile”

The last mile is the final leg of a cable TV, telephone or other telecommunications network that ends in the user's household. The problem is the telecommunications provider adopts a new, faster, better technology that can provide higher bandwidth and faster telecommunication speeds to consumers. The house it is connected to is wired with twisted-pair wiring that simply cannot handle the bandwidth provided by fiber.