Movies

The movies are the only thing that has not had any racial issues in recent years. The movies can make you laugh, cry and cheer with people you do not know and will probably will never see again. The were movies used as a source of news during WWI and WWII. The movies informed and entertained in the early days.

Now the movies are in competition with the internet. “Bootleg” movies have cut into the profits of movies. Television has also cut into the movie watching. Many stars are now turning to T.V. The movie industry needs to find a way for people to fall in love with movies again. We need to see the magic in movies. The popcorn, candy and drinks sitting dark theater with surround sound there is nothing like it.

Community Service

Our company gets out in the community and represent for our company a lot we go to public events and help out the community. We just completed heart walk to help raise money to help cure heart disease. We raised a couple thousand for the cause. We try to get our name out in the public because being a red light company tend to frown on us.

Any cause that have to do with the heart and lungs we are involved because we have had a couple people died from both in our company. We always make time to give back to these causes because they have made a big impact in the company’s life. Our company vehicle is about safety, but we also try getting out and serving the community.

Really??

As businesses where they are becoming companies, they have to manifest themselves into a corporation. In order to do this you have to have policies in place to help the structure of the organization be strong. Corporations and businesses have rules and policies in place. When you break these policies or rules then you are reprimanded, this is common knowledge in the business world. However, how can you be reprimanded for somewhere there is no rule or policy in place?

It baffles me that businesses can even have something to say to anyone without having any rules. Businesses that have investors are run to please the investors. The company owners no longer run the company the investors do. When you have investors, you need to rules and policies in place for the investing interest. You can be “Duck Company” (looking calm on the surface and frantically moving around inside the company). This is the main reason why I changed my career to public administration. Because I am very tired of working for investors.

Whos Your Top Five?

In the Black community we have our favorite rappers. They range from hardcore to crossover. In the black community, we have debates in “the hood” over our top five rappers of all time. These debates have gone on so long they had a spin off movie about it. Over the span of thirty years, there has been a lot of rappers,  some only had one hit and some spanned a decade. Some rapper has spanned the test of time and stayed relevant.

Whether you like beets, the rap or both a top five are the rappers that made an impact in your life. “Six in the morning police at my door fresh addias sqeakin cross the bathroom for”. The immortal words of Ice-T from his 6 in the morning song resonates with a lot of fab 40’s as a powerful lyrics that transcends time. “rrraaahhh rrraaahhh like a dungeon dragon” is another memorable lyric from the Busta Rhymes of Leaders of the New School the group he was with at the time. The memories of these lyrics and other like them is what creates a favorite rapper so I ask you who’s your top five?

1.      Ice Cube

2.      DJ Quik

3.      Nas

4.      Jay-Z

5.      Busta Rhymes

Leadership

In my internship, we all have opportunities for leadership. We analyze helpdesk tickets that come in. When we get a ticket that we think is a severe were we think that operations will be impacted we can call a outage in this we call the appropriate people to get the problems taken care of. Any of us can take ownership of these tickets and the others are to fall into a subordinate role to help. We all share leadership and subordinate roles every day.

We have a supervisor and a manager that use the laissez faire style of leadership. We can take care of ourselves and we are all self-starters. This can sometimes cause conflicts because sometimes we need more leadership or instruction. As a team, we are all able to lead when need be to get our goals accomplished.

Family First

I am a husband and a father. I work full time and go to school full time with all these things going on its important to put family first. I grew up in a house where my father and mother were busy. They never did anything with the family. My father was involved in the community and he was loved in our community. My mother helped run a flower business with her best friend. When she wasn’t doing that she was helping my father with youth football.

I understand the importance of being in the community. I like helping out in the community when I can but when you do that it cost you something. In my upbringing with my parents, being busy there was never time for family. My father only took us on one vacation to California, which was the best vacation ever. I vowed to not be like my father with my family so, I try to have us go out to a restaurant once a week and we eat dinner as a family as much as we can. We have a Sunday night, game night where we play a board game on Sunday night after dinner. I try to take time off when my family is off so we can spend time together. I try to be involved with my daughter to let her know I love her. I put family first because we are all we got for the rest of our lives.

Interview with Dr. Lavern Diggs

I would like to be a City manager. This occupation is a powerful one in which you are over all city policies and projects in the city. The position has a lot of power you are not in the spotlight, how many city managers do you know? City managers work with city council, city, and state government on a daily basis. I was tasked with finding a person in the position I want to be in and interview them about the position. I so happen to find a person that had held the position right here at ASU.

Dr. Lavern Diggs is a faculty associate for ASU that has held the position of assistant city manager for the City of Norfolk. Norfolk is a small naval town in Virginia. I sought out Dr. Diggs to interview her for the position she held. We had communicated through email then on the phone until we were able to get an interview. I was excited because Dr. Diggs has vast amounts of experience. She was not only an assistant city manager, but she also worked as she also served as the Director of Human Resources and Organizational Development for the City of Glendale, Arizona.

I started the interview with the question of what was her main responsibilities as an assistant city manager for the city of Norfolk? She responded that her responsibilities included, she directed the administration of an entire city from the supervision of management employees to interact with citizens. She also ensured that each municipal department operates effectively and Develop strategies to meet strategic goals and oversee the projects through to completion. She also Participated in the creation of the city budget and allocate funding for the upcoming year. I then asked her how she choose her career? She stated she realized early in her career that she wanted to be involved with making a difference in the local community and that making a difference does not necessarily happen through the elected officials.  It is the education, skill and ability of the city management staff responsible for the implementation, and oversight of the policies and programs decided by the elected officials. Dr. Diggs stated that you need to have at least have a master’s degree and have taken some leadership courses as a perquisite for a city manager position. When asked about trends she noticed in her the city manager field. Dr. Diggs elaborated that she noticed Shared Services was a new trend, shared services is state and local governments collaborating to combine technologies or solutions.  This concept would help contribute to the overall financial cost. Dr. Diggs stated many state and local officials have begun to explore new collaborative relationships with neighboring public sector entities. I thanked her for her time and ended the interview.

Dr. Diggs is a trailblazer in the Public Administration field that has a lot of experience and I was glad she could share with me.