Interview

I'm going to do an interview to Julio Franco, an editor from www.telefoneate.com .

Can you give us a short introduction about your studies and how you started here?

I studied a Bachelor's Arts degree in Journalism back in 2009 at the Faculty of Media Studies at Complutense University of Madrid and in fact I'm currently attending its last year.

And I started working at Telefoneate.com one day I was searching for a job in the Internet. They hired me in September of the last year and I’m currently working there as a freelance editor.

How many posts do you write per week?

As a freelance editor I can write a post anytime I want. I may write three post one after another or I may write one a month. However, I started writing a post a day from Monday to Friday, which makes five posts a week and more or less twenty or twenty five a month, and that was from September to February. Right now I’m looking for a better job, so I have little time to write. Because of that I hardly post anything nowadays, though I’m still working on it.

Can you tell us your writting techniques and the style you use?

I hardly can speak about writing techniques aside from the standard journalist style. Being myself the only person who actually studied Journalism in the site, I’m the best writer they have and my posts are the only ones made in a professional way, and that’s with the standard issue: corroborating sources for a truthful information, using an inverted pyramidal structure that goes from the most important or specific things to talk about to the least or more general ones, a subject-predicate-complement structure to make simple sentences, condensing all the important information in the least number of characters, etc… Also, the good use of hyperlinks and SEO tools among others is crucial to make the post visible not only on the website but for the internet browsers too.

Finally, does this job help you as a job experience?

Being honest with you, yes, it is. Working for this site lets me to practice everything I know about how to make news and stuff so I don’t get rusty. However, I feel like this is not a place I should be because it’s neither a real job nor a webpage that pays me well for a professional service like mine. It’s indeed a good curriculum filler but what I need is to work in a real press agency or a bigger site, that’s why, like I told you before, I hardly post nowadays, because I’m looking for a better place to work. However, if someone wants to start with something related to the world of new technologies or with something easy related to making news I’d suggest to begin in a place like this at least to practice and acquiring some experience while searching for a better place to be working on.

Video: Assertive-Passive-Aggresive

Here in this link you have a video I made with some students for an activity and it's about three situations: Two aggresive people talking about football, an aggresive and passive people talking about a late report and the last one, two assertive people, one asking about dating with the ex-boyfriend of her friend.

Assertiveness

It's important to state your own opinion when a discussion is taking place, but also be really carefull when stating it. You must be assertive to avoid misuderstanding or problems.

1. First, make eye contact with the other speaker and use a calm tone of voice; be polite (ask him how he is) and relaxed because there is no need to be nervous.
2. Use a formal languaje and a coloquial style. This means there is a respect and close connection to the speaker resulting in a very calm and quiet situation.
3. Never think his opinion is wrong because that may lead into problems, such as misurderstandings, aggresive and awkward situations.
4. On the other hand, if he's wrong with a fact then you should say it and why, using as many arguments as possible. But using several arguments doesn't mean you have to speak a lot. Try to concrentrate as many as possible.
5. Finally, say goodbye to the speaker politely and reflecting a very good mood.

Being assertive is very important because it will barely give you any kind of problems.

Communication with foreigners

Talking with people from other countries can be somehow difficult in some cases because you have to adapt to the situation in order to make a succesful conversation. Here are some tips as a help.

1. Foreigners have different accents, so they will pronouce some words in a different way, as well as your own accent, so in this case, you need to pronounce as precisely as you can.
2. Some specific words in some countries are never known because they may have never heard it, so in that case, use not only a phrasal verb to give a better definition, but also every way of non-verbal communication, such as gestures, postures, etc.
3. Althought this is not a common point, some foreigners talk faster and that may cause to a understanding. In that case, don't feel shy to ask him if he can speak a little slower.
4. If it's not a teacher, boss, etc, you can use a coloquial language. A classmate may not understand cultivate words and a phrasal verb may cause the conversation to be more difficult.
5. Finally, make sure to be assertive (you can find more tips about this in another post)

This can make your english skills more efficient, so don't hestitate to talk to a foreigner and give it a try.

Prezi format

Prezi is a webpage where you can do presentations but in a different way. First, is not a program itself, but a webpage where you make an account and then have access to the Prezi.

The format works with a single slides which you can zoom and un-zoom several times, making it a fluid way of changing slides. It has a huge variety of backgrounds, sizes, models and colours. It gives a 3-D perspective, everyone can cooperate, it's easy and accessible.

Several companies has been using this web page for meeting with other companies and they improve it's use. As you can see in this link we already used this for a Communication's Skills Class.

Prezi is way much better than Microsoft Powerpoint because of the main point of the accesibility so everyone have a track of what are you doing. Also, not everyone has PowerPoint and when it comes for a teamwork, like my case, not everyone can agree with the whole presentation, so I would like to encourage people to use it in future projects.

Asperger's Syndrome

I have in my class a student that has Asperger Syndrome, so we spent a class talking about it. Not only the university thinks those subjects are important, but also for Communication Skills class, because this girl had severral problems and we never realized that.

The first time I saw this girl I didn't realize she was Asperguer nor nobody told me, but even that, I already have an Asperguer friend, so I know how to talk with them. Basically, you have to be distant but also salute them by looking at their eyes. They are not capable of talking a long conversation and they usually think the literal words of everything. Here is a vide ot understand better the situation for an adult Asperguer.

My schoolmate has no problems now that everyone knows about this Syndrome and I hope we can help her in everything we can.

PechaKucha

PechaKucha is a presentation format introduced in february of 2003 in Tokyo. It consists on a presentation (PowerPoint mostly) with 20 slides that changes every 20 seconds. The only neccesary thing the slides need is images and very little text.

The purposes of this new presentation format is to avoid people getting bored or read too much. That's why the PechaKucha only needs images, so the people can listen to the speaker and also, he has a supporting material to make the presentation more entertained. The 20 slides 20 seconds between each one means the total time of the presentation of 6 minutes 40 seconds, making it a decent time of listening.

This format has been so succesfull that several companies have taken it to apply in their presentations. Also, a web page has been created in order to track the most popular PechaKucha presentations made these days.

Personally, for the fist time you try to do the PechaKucha can be really difficult, but when you get used to it, it makes the work much easier. Give it a try.

Writting effective e-mails

Electronic mails are the best tool of communication nowadays. Fast, simple and has a worldwide connection. No matter if it's to a family member, friend or an employer, is neccesary to write them properly.

There are three types of destinataries: The normal one, Carbon copy (cc) and blind carbon copy (bcc). The first one displays all the destinataries that are going to receive your e-mail. The second one, Carbon Copy, sends a copy of the e-mail itself but you can't respond. Finally, the Blind Carbon Copy is made to send the-email that can't be respond and the receiver doesn't know the rest of the e-mails because they're hiding.

The subject has to be clear and compact, telling the main point of the whole e-mail. Also, the e-mail itself wil depend on which people are you sending: Long or short, formal or informal, etc. If you're writting to your boss, you have to be clear and specific and also, formal.

Also, check the ortography and paragraphs and make sure to put an end to the message, like "Greetings" or "See you". That final message also depends on who are you texting to.