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Susan Getgood's personal blog

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Kids, online relationships, digital safety and a little Minecraft

07.02.2014 by Susan Getgood //

Last month, I had the privilege to attend the New York Women in Communications (@nywici) Cocktails & Conversations panel on The Future of Communications. Moderated by the group’s outgoing president and NY PR agency head Liz Kaplow, the panel featured BlogHer CEO Lisa Stone, Dana Points from Parents and American Baby and Sarah Davanzo from ad agency Sparks & Honey. The conversation ranged across a number of topics, including a survey conducted jointly by BlogHer and NYWICI on women’s attitudes toward technology, but the panel really dug into to the issue of our children’s use of technology, with varying points of view about how to manage it and whether so much tech was good or bad for child development, interpersonal relationships and future success in life.

BlogHer CEO Lisa Stone during NYWICI panel
Lisa Stone during the NYWICI panel

I’m the parent of a 14 year old young man who is deeply engaged in the online gaming world and has been digitally active since he was barely out of diapers. I also have a professional background in the online safety industry; I worked at Cyber Patrol and SurfControl for 10 years (1994-2004), during which time I testified about online safety in Congress and at the FTC, represented my company at an OECD workshop in Paris, and was generally deeply involved in the discussion/debate about children’s use of the Internet. Safe to say I have strong, and I would say fairly well informed, opinions about children’s use of technology. None of which I try to impose on anyone but happy to share.

How much is too much? What is too much? Are we spending too much time in front of the screen? To the detriment of our personal relationships?

This is tricky, because how you answer depends on how you value your relationships, and specifically the differentiation you apply to online versus offline friends. As a society, we still tend to place more value on the people we know in the physical world, our “real life” friends, but why? Why is someone you’ve shaken the physical hand of inherently more valuable as a friend merely because you have been geographically co-located? The long tail when applied to personal relationships implies that we are now able to “meet” people “like us” from all over the world. Are these people any less our friends?

This has become a very robust and long lasting online conversation. Our rule at home is that Doug needs to spend some time every day with the family, and I regularly plan offline activities for us including day trips to NYC and other local attractions, but his online friends are just as much his friends as anyone he might meet in “meat space.” I feel the same way about quite a few friends that I have never actually met in person, but have been chatting with online for 10 years or more.

For some people, the safety of online is what permits friendships to develop, and not just when it comes to online dating. For folks who are even remotely socially awkward or uncomfortable in social situations, online is a safe haven for trying on personas and navigating the white water of developing friendships. For that alone, gaming is a gift. I firmly believe that the demands of these environments, including the need to understand the rules and social mores within the game, help kids develop many necessary social and coping skills. Far from preventing development, games foster it.

What about porn? 

What about it? Seriously, there is a ton of bad shit on the Internet, and as parents we do want to protect our kids from inadvertently accessing inappropriate material, at home and at school.

There are two lines of defense. Teach your children well is first and foremost. Your good relationship with your child, and mutual trust, is probably the best parenting tool we have in general. As a secondary safeguard, especially when your kids are young, there is no harm in using filtering software to block inappropriate content. Just know that even if it could find and block all the “bad” web content, it can’t protect your child from everything. Cyberbullying and sexting don’t have URLs that a filter can block. Teaching your child to recognize, avoid, handle and report these sorts of things is best defense. As an aside, know that while there are online predators who lure children in chat rooms and so forth, I firmly believe the bigger danger is bullying and bad behavior from the people we know, not the bogeyman under the bed.

Two other tips. Keep the Internet connected machines in family rooms, not in children’s bedrooms, and most important, be genuinely interested in what your kids do online. Even if it is not your cup of tea. The best thing that can happen to you is your kid WANTS to show you the mod he created for his game or the dumb thing he found on a video sharing site. Don’t squander that opportunity.

I’m not. This July 12 and 13, I will be spending the weekend with Doug at MineOrama in New York City. The minute he heard about the convention, he wanted to go so he could meet other Minecraft enthusiasts in person. I *have* to attend because he is less than 16 years old, so I can’t just drop and go, but I am actually looking forward to the opportunity to spend time with him in his world. It’ll be fun, and you can be sure I will tell you all about it.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with my first exposure to Minecraft about three and a half years ago. My son was playing on his laptop and I was working at my desk when I heard this song emerging from his speakers. I thought for the life of me they were singing “Digging the whores. Diggy diggy whores.” Needless to say I was a little freaked out. Turns out it was “holes, Mom, holes.”

Categories // Blogging, BlogHer, Family, Online safety Tags // BlogHer, minecraft, online safety

Monster headphones deliver Monster sound (and cut out commuting noise!)

10.11.2013 by Susan Getgood //

Three days a week I commute 90 minutes each way into Manhattan. Most mornings, the train is fairly quiet; there is an unwritten weekday commuter rule (suspended on weekends!) that noise and conversation should be kept to a minimum. So most mornings I work or read or sleep. From time to time though I end up in a car with a couple of folks that just have to have a conversation. All the way. Nonstop.

Those are the days I resort to my iPhone and Pandora for enough peace to concentrate. I used to use the earbuds that came with my phone even they don’t really cut out the noise very well. I just didn’t want to cart around a set of bulky headphones on top of all the stuff I carry back and forth every night – iPad, laptop, shoes and so on, and smaller headphones generally didn’t seem much better than the earbuds.

So I was delighted when BlogHer and Monster asked if I would like to try the N-Tune noise isolating headphones.

photo

Things I love:

  • Great sound quality for my music and they keep out most of the annoying conversations I am trying to block.
  • Very comfortable, avoids the “itchy ear” syndrome that sometimes comes from using earbuds for an extended period of time.
  • Small form factor, plus they come with a little carry bag to protect them in my bag.
  • Tangle free cord.

I also asked my 13 year old son and my brother, both of whom also use headsets regularly, what they thought. My son, who primarily uses a headset for gaming and Skype calls with other gamers reported that the sound quality was good, but he prefers a wireless headset that completely surrounds the ears. Better to totally block me out when I speak to him I suppose. My brother also liked the sound quality for listening to music but wasn’t crazy about the microphone for making phone calls.  I received a call on the train the other morning while listening to my tunes, and I thought the quality was fine.

Net — if listening to music or watching videos is your primary use for a headset, the Monster N-Tune is good choice. I probably won’t replace my earbuds for phone calls, especially when walking down the street in Manhattan 🙂 but these candy apple red beauties will definitely get a spot in my commuting bag. And if candy apple red isn’t your color, there are 4 other choices – green, purple, blue and orange. The N-Tune would also make a great holiday gift for the music-lover in your life.

Want to try them out for yourself?  For a chance to win your very own pair of N-Tune headphones (valued at $150), read all about them here and let me know in the comments which color you prefer. The comments on this post will be aggregated with the comments on the posts from the other bloggers participating in this review, and 25 pairs will be given away.

Sweepstakes Rules:

No duplicate comments.

You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:

  1. Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post
  2. Tweet (public message) about this promotion; including exactly the following unique term in your tweet message: “#SweepstakesEntry”; and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post
  3. Blog about this promotion, including a disclosure that you are receiving a sweepstakes entry in exchange for writing the blog post, and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post
  4. For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry.

This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older. Winner will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. You have 72 hours to get back to me, otherwise a new winner will be selected. BlogHer will pool entries from participating blogs and select a sweepstakes winner at random and will contact the winner with details about fulfilling the prize. The Official Rules are available here. This sweepstakes runs from 10/2/13 – 11/1/13.

Categories // BlogHer, Giveaways, Music, Reviews, Sponsored

Here’s to 2013…

12.28.2012 by Susan Getgood //

Taken at Ground Zero December 21, 2012

2012 has not been a great year for so many friends, colleagues and acquaintances, and truth be told, not so wonderful for me either. Most days, it definitely felt like the toast was jelly-side down.

But I’ve always been a glass half-full person. So rather than dwell on the bad, I thought I would take some time to share some of the things about which I am grateful and happy.

First, and always, my son Douglas (Instagram picture). The (still in progress) divorce has meant changes for all of us but Doug has really come into his own this year, and brought home his best report card EVER this fall, which makes me disgustingly proud.

I missed him over Thanksgiving when he was with his Dad and will miss him this weekend when he goes to spend the New Year with my ex, but we are forging new holiday traditions. Starting with a trip to New York City at holiday time. This year, it was the school field trip on December 21st. We went to the World Trade Center site, Bryant Park (Instagram picture), Rockefeller Center (Instagram picture) and of course the M&M Store in Times Square. With exciting (to 6th, 7th and 8th graders) culinary stops at McDonalds, Sbarro and the train station cafe.

We also make a point of visiting the Norwalk Maritime Aquarium every year for the Festival of Lighthouses Contest. We stumbled upon it the first year we lived here, and now, three years in, it is part of the holiday tradition. It runs through January 21st, so if you are in southwestern CT, well worth the stop.

The Bridgeport Independence Day parade starts from the public park next to our house.

I am beyond grateful to my mother and brother who sold their house in Massachusetts to consolidate with Douglas and me here in Connecticut. Things are still dicey on the financial front, and will be for a while, but having family support nearby has made a world of difference to both me and my son. I posted some pictures of  the house decorated for Christmas on Instagram (at these links – one, two, three) and at right is a shot I took on July 4th.

My job at BlogHer is still the most fun anyone should be allowed to have at a job. Some days the toast is jelly-side down at work too, but I get to do some amazing things. Like ride a Harley-Davidson motorcycle last summer and hang out with some tremendous Chicago area bloggers at a Balanced Living workshop hosted by Coca-Cola earlier this month.

Plus, every day, I get to work with a terrific group of people ( my BlogHer colleagues, our amazingly talented network bloggers, and our sponsors and advertisers) doing what I love the most — connecting brands and social media influencers in mutually beneficial ways. Below is a picture from BlogHer Pro earlier this month of just a few of the tremendously talented folks I get to work with at BlogHer.

Left to right: Skye Kilaen, Susan Getgood, Jenny Lauck, Jenifer Monroe, Lena Lotsey. Photo taken for us by the lovely Josie Webb at BlogHer Pro

Not the least, I am grateful for the stalwart few of you who continue to read my blogs even though I update so infrequently. I start each week with the best intentions. Truly. But so much of what has consumed my personal life this year is just not suitable for blogging. Nevertheless, in 2013, I am aiming for one post a week here, and one on Marketing Roadmaps.

As I have in past years, I’d like to leave you with the words of one of my very favorite Christmas carols, May Every Day Be Christmas by Louis Jordan.

“May every day be Christmas
And every day be blessed
Let the end of every day be filled with happiness
And may the Lord be good to you with every rising sun
All through the day have a smile for everyone
At night time comes a longing to be with ones you love
To sit around the fireside and dream of stars above
So may God bless you and keep you, come what may
Then every day will be a happy day
May good times come to you every day”

Here’s to a buttered-side up 2013 for all of us!

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