About Me

Hello and welcome to my blog.

There are a few things that I want to share with you. The first is a little about myself, Janis Butkevics. The other is the inspiration and reason for this blog.

ABOUT MYSELF

As mentioned already, my name is Janis Butkevics. Let me avoid droning on about personal details such as my frustration with my golf handicap, the listing of my achievements (it is a very short list), or places I have lived and let me tell you just a bit about the actual me.

- I am a big proponent of social media, collaboration, and open source.

- I enjoy trying new things and embracing novel ideas.

- I believe that accountability and validation are steps that are often skipped, but work is often wasted if its success can’t be quantified.

- I like to work with Excel and can barely tolerate PowerPoint.

- I can’t sit by a laptop and write, my mind instantly goes blank. I have to pace around, play with something, and think out loud.

- I love the feel of real books because there is nothing more satisfying than earmarking a book or flipping a page.

- I am from Boston and love everything Boston, especially the Bruins.

Over the last few years I have become more involved with various aspects of social media and have become more and more fascinated by emerging technologies as well as the possibilities. Social media and the internet is changing the way we live, work, and communicate but often does not receive the credit it deserves. In my opinion this often has to do with the definition of social media, but that is a different discussion.

ABOUT THE BLOG

This blog was started as a part of my Introduction to Multimedia Communication class in the University of Florida’s School of Journalism and Communication where I am pursuing a Master of Arts in Mass Communication with a focus on Social Media. I had contemplated and imagined starting a blog for a while but thankfully to the class and my Professor I was mandatorily showed into a step I wanted to take anyways. That is what I call a win/win.

The blog contains both assigned classwork, my own personal additions, as well as resources, articles, tools and ideas for analysis, as well as other tidbits. A main interest and partially a focus of my own additions is the analysis of social media and methodology. Personal experience up till now has shown that everyone always jumps on the good idea train and simply spews one idea after another. There is nothing wrong with generating ideas or the creative process in general, I love it myself. However I have seen that at times there is a lack of methodology that forces individuals to focus on answering the problem set before them, and identify exactly how it is that they will measure success.

If you have questions or comments please feel free to leave a comment or contact me and I will do my best to answer. I hope that this blog helps to answer a question, provides a good read, or at least points you in the right direction.