Update on XM/Sirius Merger

This is a big one for our students. Here's an update from The Washington Post. There are two FCC members on the record in favor, and a third FCC member is pushing for price caps and more minority programming before he says yes for an XM/Sirius merger.


(Photo from The Washington Post, taken by Daniel Acker of Bloomberg News.)

Lunch and Strategic Planning!

Nancy brings to our attention the nest Strategic Planning session, July 28 from 12:30 - 2 in MGC 4-5. RSVP to strategicplan@american.edu.

For more information, visit the Strategic Planning website and submit your feedback by August 1! Unfortunately, holding Rae Ann's baby isn't part of the deal.

Miss Manners comments on internships!

I saw this on the news feed at the bottom of our blog! (Hey! It works!) It's nice to have some basic etiquette reflection for employers and interns!

Image from Featurebank.

The Future of International Development work

This internship posting came through the SIS listserv the other day. We can expect to see much more involvement by the military in work that has traditionally been undertaken by development agencies. This is especially true in post-conflict settings.
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The Civil-Military Initiative of the Office of the Secretary of Defense (Policy) of the Office of African Affairs seeks a part-time (paid) intern to do the following: conduct research; write briefing papers; assist with event planning; and perform database entry.

The Civil-Military Initiative (CMI), an OSD policy initiative, will help optimize comparative advantages among organizations that share increasingly interconnected security- and stability-related roles in Africa. Through seminars, workshops, and other events, CMI will facilitate relationships, networking opportunities, information sharing, problem-solving, de-confliction of efforts, and the development and dissemination of lessons learned in the civil-military interface. CMI participants may include elements from the Department of Defense, other interested USG executive agencies, and interested multinational, non-governmental, academic, and private sector organizations.

Candidates should be graduate students with experience in Africa (academic or field), security or development experience preferred.

Please send your resumes by August 5, 2008 to info@civ-mil.org.

Dirty Mike Rowe

I think we should have a link to Dirty Jobs on our Facebook page! But in the meantime, you can read an interview with Mike Rowe, a former singer with the Baltimore Opera, here.

I'm adding his blog to our blog, too, right up there with Daniel Pink!

Kollection 1: Musings from the past week or so

We get a lot of email, some needing urgent responses and others are interesting tidbits. Would is be helpful to post our tidbits here? It could keep our mailboxes a little less red, and we could organize our kollective wisdom!

Nancy offered this piece from The Chronicle of Higher Education, "When Politicians Come Calling" which looks at how their visits might be managed if you know their motives.

Though only dimly work related, Chris Swanson refers us to Yale's efforts at going green, and "Creatives grow better in the South West" below.



Our colleague, Heather Ball, forwarded this Chronicle article to the Internship team on "Subsidizing the Internship".

John Charles caught Naomi Baron on WAMU speaking about how new media affects students abilities to write.

And yours truly found a great Politico piece that demonstrates the importance of networking, Hill Job Seekers Must be on the List.

Welcome, Kolleagues!

We always have such interesting nuggests of wisdom to share, about careers or emerging fields or new media and using it for educational purposes . . . that we sometimes overwhelm ourselves with emails and links.

Well, here's a chance to post to a blog, subscribe to the RSS, and look at it at the end of the day, or the beginning . . . whenever it suits your fancy. We're all authors. And I'll start with an interesting tidbit from Manpower, Inc. From their Second Life site, they posted this email to which I added hyperlinks:

Hello all,
We have a special exhibit at Manpower's Second Life Headquarters, including new machinima and interactive displays. Feel free to take a copy of a new report on virtual work, titled "The Power of Collaboration", written by Rita J. King from Dancing Ink Productions. While you're here, take a minute to watch Draxtor Despres' machinima titled "The Future of Work" in our auditorium. We hope to see you soon!