Nintendo, creator of the best non-verbal communication

Nintendo is a videogame distributor company, famous around the world by creating a huge cast of iconic characters, such as Mario, Link, Samus, Megaman, Kirby, Pokemon, etc.

One of the most interesting things about Nintendo games is that there is barely voice acting in the franchises. The characters usually scream when they attack, jump or take damage, but never saying any kind of word. As simple as it seems, the main characters are very popular. But why?

The answer is very simple: By using gestures and faces, ending with a personality that doesn't need to be spoken. Nintendo took the non-verbal communication into a whole new level by not only speaking with no words, but also to give development and a personality. 

Also, they make their franchises by giving changes to the same concepts (different graphics and mechanics), meaning that the characters evolve as years pass by, facing new challenges and enemies, growing as people along with the players.

Another example of good personality developed in the characters is the cross-over fighting game from Nintendo, Super Smash Bros Brawl, where the story resembles perfectly with the cast of characters, as well as they interact with each other.

Here is the opening scene of the game.

Microcredit

Microcredit is the extension of very small loans to impoverished borrowers who typically lack collateral, steady employment and a verifiable credit history. It is designed not only to support entrepreneurship and alleviate poverty, but also in many cases to empower women and uplift entire communities by extension. Microcredit is part of microfinance, which provides a wider range of financial services, especially savings accounts. Critics argue, however, that microcredit has not had a positive impact on gender relationships, does not alleviate poverty, has led many borrowers into a debt trap and constitutes a "privatization of welfare". But despite this criticism, the microcredit has made a huge impact on several countries in Asia and Africa.

Ideas relating to microcredit can be found at various times in modern history. Jonathan Swift inspired the Irish Loan Funds of the 18th and 19th centuries. In the mid-19th century, Individualist anarchist Lysander Spooner wrote about the benefits of numerous small loans for entrepreneurial activities to the poor as a way to alleviate poverty. At about the same time, but independently to Spooner, Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen founded the first cooperative lending banks to support farmers in rural Germany. In the 1950s, Akhtar Hameed Khan began distributing group-oriented credit in East Pakistan. Khan used the Comilla Model, in which credit is distributed through community-based initiatives. The project failed due to the over-involvement of the Pakistani government, and the hierarchies created within communities as certain members began to exert more control over loans than others.

Microcredit is ideally based on a unique set of principles that are readily distinguished from trends in the wider credit market. Microcredit organizations were initially created as alternatives to the "loan-sharks" known to take advantage of clients. Indeed; many microlenders began as non-profit organizations and operated with government funds or private subsidies. By the 1980s, however the "financial systems approach," influenced by neoliberalism and propagated by the Harvard Institute for International Development, became the dominant ideology among microcredit organizations. The commercialization of microcredit officially began in 1984 with the formation of Unit Desa (BRI-UD) within the Bank Rakyat Indonesia. Unit Desa offered ‘kupedes’ microloans based on market interest rates.

Ironically, many microcredit organizations now function as independent banks. This has led to their charging higher interest rates on loans and placing more emphasis on savings programs. Notably, Unit Desa has charged in excess of 20 per cent on small business loans. The application of neoliberal economics to microcredit has generated much debate among scholars and development practitioners, with some claiming that microcredit bank directors, such as Muhammad Yunus, apply the practices of loan sharks for their personal enrichment. Indeed, the academic debate foreshadowed a Wall-street style scandal involving the Mexican microcredit organization Compartamos.

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.