How To Overcome Your Fear

The video you see above is a video of me showing how to sing the James Taylor song, "Fire and Rain". The decision on what to do for a how to video was not as easy as I though it would be. The first idea was to try and draw the Disney character, Simba. That would take too long and was not a timely subject for my project.

The next idea was to show how to grip a baseball and pitch it differently since I am a pitcher here for the baseball team. But I am not able to get up and throw a baseball due to my knee being in an immobilizer.

Then I thought about doing something like how to make a great peanut butter and jelly sandwich. That seemed too simple and not creative enough.

I was ignoring my confidence in singing because I was too afraid to do it in front of a camera or for anyone to see or hear. The idea was creative, easy enough but still required me to overcome something that wasn't an easy task for me, personally. I knew that I was going to have to swallow my fear and just do it with no regards for how people would react to it.

Social media is a great way for us to share our thoughts, expressions, feelings, and so forth, but it is also a way to express ourselves with no regard for feedback, good or bad. Doing it for the feeling of self-worth and self-esteem. In terms of good social media principles, I would want to have plenty of feedback with good impressions and views and likes. Don't get me wrong here, I want to have a healthy viewership of this video and let people discover my voice if they want or just have them learn how to sing this great song, but this project helped me overcome this fear of singing in front of a camera and that cannot be taught in a textbook.

This video was also on Jon Andrew's birthday, and I couldn't help but think about Jon when I chose to sing this song. Check out the YouTube video above for how to sing "Fire and Rain" and also check out my facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/casey.p.mulcahy

Enjoy and God Bless!

Measure What Matters

As the beginning of our next class reading comes upon us, the book, "Measure What Matters" by Katie Delahaye Paine has a different tone to it than others. It seems a little harder to comprehend and follow, but with the assistance of Dr. Agozzino and her power points, it is very much a refutable resource and has content that made me think this weekend.

In chapter 2 Paine states that there 10 questions that every communication professional needs to answer:

1. What are your objectives?
2. Who is the target audience?
3. What is important to your audience?
4. What motivates them to buy your products?
5. What are your key messages?
6. Who influences your audience?
7. How do you distribute your product or service?
8. What are you going to do with the info from the research?
9. What other departments or areas will be affected?
10. What other measurement programs are underway?

The more I analyzed these questions, the more I realized that it was true in the real-world. I understand that the author would't publish these ideas if they're weren't applicable in the real-world, but I found them very relatable to my experience this summer in Los Angeles working as an intern for FOX Sports. Question 6 is the question in particular that got me thinking, because what really motivates or influences us as an audience to a company like FOX Sports? In my opinion, what influences us to watch FOX is the whatever ESPN is not showing. FOX has had trouble trying to keep up with ESPN, but in it's efforts this year, it has made some significant triumphs over the bigger brother that is ESP. FOX hosted the women's World Cup for the summer and also just hosted the World Series. Those 2 monumental events are not being televised on ESPN, so that influences us to watch FOX sports more frequently. These questions are a great way to break down your job as a communicator or just to prepare for the future in the business world. 

New Twitter Feature Gives Fire to Sports

Twitter, as everyone knows, is a place to find newsworthy content and real-time stories going on around the world. But, as every good company does, they have found a way to enhance themselves and critique their flaws to make their product or service even better. The news on Twitter, in my opinion, has always been hard to pinpoint. Either you found it on your timeline or you had to search for it yourself and make a decision on what you wanted to find.


Now, thanks to the innovation by the folks at Twitter, there is a much easier and efficient way to find your news and what is going on in the world. The feature, "moments" has been created to be much more user-friendly to Twitter users."What we're trying to do is get the content directly in-front of you without you having to make decisions," said Madhu Muthukumar, the project manager over seeing the new feature. When you enter the tab for "moments", it categorizes options so you know what you want to look at. The categories are: Today, Sports, News, Fun, Entertainment. When you get to whatever tab you want to look at, it is previewed with a video. I believe involving this media really catches the audience's attention and is a great hook for SEO. 


When I think about how this new feature of Twitter will change sports, I think of how we watch sports. I personally, watch sports live and on television because I am an avid sports fan and like watching the full game. In today's culture however, the way people watch sports is "highlight syndrome" or people only watching the highlights on ESPN or something. In "moments", the highlight's are given and in high quality, which is another overlooked detail. Also, when the highlight is seen, if the user finds an attraction to that post, they can favorite it, retweet it, or comment to it. In the video above, this feature gave wildfire to the MLB postseason and created a whole new animal in terms of fan engagement. The trending ability of Twitter really came into play this post season and how people followed Major League Baseball. 

Wake Up the Echoes

The Fighting Irish have done it again. They played a game down to the wire and found a way to pull out the win. In a tough road game in Philadelphia playing the undefeated, no. 23 ranked Temple Owls, Notre Dame was clinging on to the rest of their season and hopes for a birth in the college football playoff. With 2:14 left to play in the fourth quarter and trailing Temple 20-17, Fighting Irish quarterback Deshone Kizer rifled a pass to the back corner of the end zone ESPN, Kizer has a QBR (quarterback rating) 152.1, which is above the average QBR in Division 1 FBS of 97.4. Kizer demonstrated extreme poise in this tough road game and is another checkmark on the list for the Irish. Having a quarterback that can deliver in the clutch on the road is something every team in the country want. Notre Dame knows they have that, and they need to do everything in their power to utilize his talents and skills. Temple was undefeated and had the biggest game in program history at home, so that can justify the close score for me. As for the playoff selection committee, I am not so sure. There is still plenty of football to go with about 5 weeks left in the season, but as time passes, Notre Dame lives to see another day and fight for a spot. This win was not only huge for Notre Dame, but also coach Brian Kelly who was 10-10 vs top AP 25 (elias sports bureau) teams before coming into the game on Saturday night. That win putting him over that .500 hump helped take a big weight off his back and maybe a bit of job security as well. The Irish's defense also played a large role in the victory as safety #6, KeiVarae Russel intercepted a Temple pass in their hopes of making a game winning drive. The interception sealed the deal for Notre Dame and put the cherry on top for a full team victory. Notre Dame travels to Heinz Field on Saturday to take on the Panthers of Pitt. If Notre Dame wins on the road next weekend, that will be the first time a backup quarterback has won back to back road games for Notre Dame since 1983. Just saying.
and into the hands of his receiver, Will Fuller. The kid had done it again! When the pressure was on, Kizer delivered a big time play. Kizer has gone 5-1 in his 6 career starts this season and has proved that he has what it takes to win whether it be coming from behind or holding a lead, but especially coming from behind. According to