Facebook from sociological perspective

Part 1

Networking is a skill you need to have

Studies show that between any two people in the world there are no more than six intermediaries. This means that it takes no more than 6 people to go directly to Bill Gates, Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama or the emperor of Japan.

Src. Wikipedia.org

Effective networking is an extremely valuable resource. Rising awareness of how much can be gained by being involved in this global network makes us inviting more and more people to our social network on Facebook. People aware of its importance are collecting contacts to develop their own field of connections allowing them to share interests, insights and also benefit in professional work.

Src. Wikipedia.org

The larger and richer the network, the easier it is to implement these six phones and talk to the richest man on Earth. The development of social networking sites confirms these observations , just look at the example of Facebook . The Internet has become a field of creating relations, which can often begin in it, not in a direct face to face-to-face contact. Facebook allows us to develop relationships, both informal and business.

Src. facebook.com

Facebook is an online social network within which registered users can create networks and groups, share photos, messages and play games. Currently it has more than 500 million users worldwide, and the monthly upload of more than 1 billion photos and 10 million movies. The project was launched on Feb. 4, 2004 in Cambridge (Massachusetts) and was originally intended primarily for high school and college students. Its lead author is Mark Zuckerberg (he currently serves as the CEO). The service employs about 1,000 workers.

Src. Assosieted Press

Facebook helps to sty in touch and develop relationships, both social and business. In instant makes possible to organize a big meeting at the other end of Europe through the exchange of several messages. Network of contacts gives you the possibility of obtaining discounts on all expenditures related to the meeting. In most of today's businesses and organizations, contacts decide everything. They help to find customers more quickly, contribute to the possibility of making interesting projects and much greater access to valuable information. All these things are important, but the greatest gift which an extensive network of good contacts brings is it the absolute safety and great flexibility. Effective networking brings security, because it removes dependency on one person - the contractor, supplier, subcontractor, or informant. In the event that something goes wrong - ill subcontractor, the customer had an accident, and the supplier was offended – you just email other people by the social networking sites. Dependance from suppliers and subcontractors disappears. However, before that happens, it is necessary to build a proper network of contacts.

Part 2

Network Society

http://senseable.mit.edu/nyte/visuals.html

Manuel Castells in “The Rise of the Network Society” describes the network society as one of the types of society, which in essence is a network of social relationships and access to participate in various organizations and social groups and circles of interest by an individual. Network society can not be described as an entirely new form of cultural and civilization, because to a large extent based on the capitalist social and economic relations. In his opinion in this way does not acquire the information society nor the utopian nature of technocratic. The existing social divisions are organized around a new central value - of information, not money”. Castells's vision can be related to the facebook site, because this service is freely available to all Internet users, it gives equal access to its resources each person using it.

Max Webber classic sociologist abut 150 years ago pointed tree most socially important values: prestige, power, money. Modern criteria for prestige and power are usually connected with a professional position and income, not the family heritage. Usually we don't have access to ones bank account to know how much ones earns, we connect a persons lifestyle to his prestige and power. In proposing this type of community research sites it is worth noting what features are used by most users and can be crucial to determine their social status. Viewing the page of each profile on Facebook in the upper left corner there is a profile photo, which also is present in all user posts. People carefully select a photo of themselves that will create the best fitting image of them in the community portal. There are photographs from everyday life and holiday events. We can see not only to the user profile holder but also his friends and the place where he lives. Therefore, in most cases, you can discover the wealthiness of the user, whether by clothes he wears or the photograph background can show an exotic beach or other desirable location like golf court. The photo can indicate presage, someone can publish a photo in which he receives a prize or is surrounded by well-known or important people. When we see the user in a good car or a well-furnished apartment, we can make assumptions about the status of ownership. Photos of the same people on other than professional services such as linkedin.com or goldenline.pl are often different from those on facebook. We could think that there is a clear division of formal and informal relationships on social networking sites, but taking into account the number o companies and institutions present on the facebook, we may discover that this division is not sufficient when individuals and companies seek to consciously create their image on the web. Combining business and private life in one is becoming more and more common. Therefore we can find on facebook profiles of non existing people which are brand of new products like “Ipla rozrywkowa”, “Mały głód” or dr Houses profile. The same happens with people having small business or freelancers who are in truing to find clients trough facebook and their friends.

Part 3

Give me your facebook logs and I'll tell you who you are

Construction of facebook.com, the development of its various functions comes mainly from expectations of it's users. By looking into what people want to hide and what to publicly reveal, we can make a typology of what type of information is important to people. On facebook profile page called "information" is the part titled "Basic Information" we can find their first name, surname, and gender. “Gender” is not displayed by default in the profile and can only be expressed if you so wish. An interesting field is the "date of birth," which is equipped with an additional option to hide the year of birth or completely hide your date of birth. This follows from the fact that the authors of the site for marketing purposes, want to have information about your birthrate, therefore it gives users the possibility to hide it (rather than leaving the field BLANK.) The desire to hide the age seems to be quite natural, in real life we estimate it rather intuitively. People quite common hide their date of birth on facebook it may suggest fear of exclusion both those too young as well as those too old.

Data collected by facebook such as city of residence, birth, district, adding to the profile of family relationships can be used both finding friends easier, and better matching of advertising campaigns to the user. So the campaign message can be limited to the target city or even neighborhood. More than that important seems to be a field, "Relationship status" with options including Single, 'It's Complicated "," Open Relationship ", introducing some new forms of cohabitation that are so often described by researchers as characteristic of postmodern societies. In the "Interested in" you can select both Men and Women gives a certain kind of freedom to people with non-heterosexual sexual orientation. Other available fields are the "Political Views" and "Religious Views" allows you to type any of the strings. Its common these fields are often left empty by users, or are serve as a joke such as "Religious Views: no thanks." This could suggest a lack of interest in participation in the political life of facebook users, however people often share "COSES" and the number of groups presenting specific models of worldview. However, this may confirm the observations of population of new forms of social movements characteristic for postmodern societies. Field "Looking for" can reveal the motivations of having an account, according to the creators of facebook users can look for "Frendship", "Dating", "A Relationship", "Networking." Given the collection of data this site acquires, such as the completed school and the workplace you can use facebook freely to find a better job. Facebook therefore can be both micro-blog service, dating site or professional service. Perhaps this ambiguity and the opportunity to create their own profiles in the various fields of interests is one of the characteristics of the network society.

People use Facebooks basic functions such as status updates where thy say "What's on your mind?", posting photos, videos, notes and sharing links. In addition user can decide which groups of friends should receive particular publications, and which information is displayed publicly. Furthermore, facebook privacy settings are so precise that you can specify access rights to each page element individually for each person or group. "Newsfeed" for each user is different because it has a different list of friends on facebook, therefore, may it may create the false impression of existence of some kind of unified vision of the world. This can happens because our friends are usually similar to as in some ways. Our friends often will publish views similar to ours. For example an activist of environmental organization will have a lot of friends who will publish a lot of information about environmental issues. This activist my think that everybody is concerned by the environment. News-feed can create an impression that the whole Poland and Warsaw are interested in one a problem or issue. While other users in the same time are quite busy with other things. In this way, Facebook can create illusion of living in a friendly and convenient world as we receive more than ever in history select and incomplete information. The post that aren’t interesting, you can simply hide forever.

The trust of users to each other is very essential for awards of privacy. Experts from Sophos created the Facebook profiles of two fictitious names that are anagrams of the words "false identity" (false identity) and "stolen identity" (stolen identity). Profile of a 21-year "Felettin Daisy" represented by pictures rubber duck toy. In turn, the profile of 56-year "Dinette Stonily" contains a photograph of two cats lying on a blanket. Each of the "women" sent out 100 invitations to a randomly selected people in his age group. Within two weeks, 95 total strangers decided to become friends Daisy and Dinette - more than during the experiment two years ago, which used as bait a plastic frog. The above study illustrates how easy it can be to obtain private records of your life on facebook.

This is how our friends, formed spontaneously and unconsciously while our tastes and criteria for assessment is fundamentally different from that in a purposeful way as a community service can be a marketing tool. Preparing advertising campaigns at the outset of its design sets up narrow or wide target . Facebook in addition to standard data such as age, sex, language provides more accurate information to address a message, which increases impact of the campaign and lowers its cost . While designing a campaign on facebook, you can use the location, education, place of work, language, status keywords, the “Looking for” a partner, and using keywords. The following example illustrates a case study in the selection of target groups for an advertising campaign to promote the wedding photography.

Given the number of members of more than 500 million users giving facebook detailed personal information, and a huge amount of data generated by users this company has the biggest database of human behavior in the world and access to the infinitely large research opportunities.

Castells, Manuel. 2003. Galaxy Internet. Reflections on the Internet, business and society, Poznan: Rebis.

Slevin J. (2008). Internet and form relationships. [In:] P. Sztompka Bogunia-Borawska M. (ed.), Sociology of everyday life (pp. 594-627). Kraków: Znak.

George Hotz aka geohot – the best hacker in the world? Part 3

After releasing Apple iPhone „jailbreak” (system files access), Apple stated that this process is illegal. under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which is a law from 1996 in the US. After a lot of court cases between Apple and jailbreakers in 2010 July 26th, the United States government announced by adding new entry to DMCA, that jailbreaking and unlocking iPhones) is completely legal as long as they are not violating copyright law. Jailbreaking and unlocking of iPhones has never been illegal, it was just that Apple had strict policies right from the start which prohibited users from installing apps on their device which were not approved by Apple, along with locking the phone so that it can be used on one carrier only. You can read the whole statement here

http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2010/Librarian-of-Congress-1201-Statement.html

Now let’s get back to PS3 jailbreak. After “geohot” released root keys to PS3 system, and released his jailbreak which allowed to run unsigned code, Sony sued George Hotz (geohot), Hector Cantero, Sven Peter (fail0verflow) for bypassing effective technology protection measures employed by Sony. Geohot has removed the root keys and other software helpful in PS3 jailbreak from his website until the decision is made in favour of him and other hackers with hope that courts will use the same logic that Library of Congress Copyright Office used when ruling that iPhone jailbreaking was legal. Sony requested in lawsuit that all tools helpful for jailbreak must be deleted from all over the Internet, which is as we know impossible. A lot of people mirrored geohot website with statement “Sony sue me too”. Below is the latest interview with “geohot” about Sony lawsuit.



1. Do you think that if you bought some device you could do with it whatever you liked to?
2. Do you think that homebrew applications improve the usability of devices?

George Hotz aka geohot – the best hacker in the world? Part 2

Sony PS3 was considered the most secure game console In the world. It was first released in Japan on November 11, 2006. The console was originally planned for a global release through November, but the European and rest-of-the-world's release was delayed until March. For nearly 3 year PS3 wasn`t hacked and there was no way to play pirated games on it or run homebrew application. It is a very long time, because for example Xbox 360 (which is the same game console generation as PS3) was hacked just after 3 months (!!!). The PS3 was so secure not because Sony used not popular and expensive BluRay Disc reader, but also that they used 3 different ways to sign code and verify games if they are genuine.
People loved that they can run legally Linux on their consoles, but then Sony released PS3 Slim version in the beginning of 2009 which doesn`t had an option to install linux. And here comes our hero “geohot”. In the end of 2009 he posted on his blog that he is working on custom firmware version for PS3 Slim which would be able to launch linux. On January 26, 2010, Hotz released the exploit to the public which allowed to get some security keys of PS3. This was only available on PS3 Fat, because it needed a linux installed on PS3, but that was a huge step to hack both versions of PS3 as their firmware are nearly the same. George wrote that "Sony may have difficulty patching the exploit". On March 28, 2010, Sony has responded by announcing to release a PlayStation 3 firmware update that removes the linux feature on all consoles.
On April 7 2010, “geohot” had posted a video on the Internet detailing his progress with custom firmware on the machine, and showing a PlayStation 3 running and having the linux installed on firmware 3.21. He had named his custom firmware “3.21OO”, and said it may work on newer Slim models of the console, as the feature was removed altogether with the launch of the newer revision. After that the whole scene waited for the release of his custom firmware, but that never happened. A lot of people were claiming that his video is a fake, and they gave a lot of hatred to “geohot”.



He closed his blog and website for almost a year and he disappeared from the scene. Not long after that some group of hackers from Hong-Kong released a first tool to hack PS3 so it would launch pirated games. People had to buy a USB dongle and plug it to PS3 to enable that. Sony made a lot of firmware updates to remove ability of playing backup games, so people who wanted to play pirated games wasn`t able to play throw the Internet.
Not more than 2 weeks ago “geohot” came back. He wrote that he was able to “jailbreak” the newest PS3 firmware 3.55 without using any extra hardware. Just a week ago he released a software that allows users to run homebrew applications but without option to run backup games. It is worth mentioning that after every post George wrote a sentence “I do not condone piracy”. He also released almost all PS3 root keys. The only key he didn`t released is a key to crack the security of games. He also wrote that after 4 years of being the most secure system, PS3 I now less secure one. If you are interested you can visit his website.

http://geohot.com/old_index.html

Questions:
1. Do you own any of this generation game consoles?
2. If you own a PS3 – did you know that PS3 was already hacked?
3. Do you condone piracy?

George Hotz aka geohot – the best hacker in the world? Part 1

George Hotz known as “Geohot” is in my opinion one of the best hackers in the world. George was born in 1989. He was the first person to remove simlock from Apple iPhone and let it launch homebrew applications. A Few days ago Geohot also hacked Sony PS3 – which was considered the most secure game console in the world. My presentation will have 3 parts – in this part I will write about iPhone hacking. In second part I will write about PS3 hacking, and finally in part 3 I will write about his legal problems with Apple and Sony.


When Apple released first iPhone in 2007 George was only 18 years old. First iPhone was sold only in the United States with data plan and simlock on AT&T carrier. After just a few months Geohot was able to remove simlock with a hardware method. You can watch a video below, where he is presenting world first unlocked iPhone.

That was a huge event in hacking world, but not because he was able to do that. He was working with group of hackers known as “iPhone Dev Team” and he didn`t inform the other team members that he is releasing information about being able to unlock iPhone. That is not the way hackers actually work and they blamed him that he wanted the fame just for himself – but they agreed that he made the biggest progress with unlocking iPhone. From that event “geohot” was banned from hacking scene because he was considered to be a megalomaniac. The funnies and most shocking thing is that George traded his first unlocked iPhone 8GB with Terry Daidone, the founder of Certicell, for a Nissan Z350 (quite cool car I think :) ) and 3 8GB iPhones . After another few months he released the first tool to remove simlock with software method. George has received considerable attention in mainstream media, including interviews on the Today Show, Fox, CNN, NBC, CBS, G4, ABC, CNBC, and articles in several magazines, newspapers, and websites, including Forbes and BBC. The Forbes article said Hotz hopes to go into neuroscience: "hacking the brain," he called it. In March 2008, PC World magazine listed George as one of the top 10 Overachievers under 21.

Questions:

Are you interested in hacking world?

Do you think there are many genius hackers in the world but they just don`t want to show off?

COMMERCIALS

part 3

In the last part I try to concentrate on history of commercials. Do you know that even ancient cultures used advertising to makes their products more popular. For instance Egyptians made wall posters and sales massages from papyrus. It was also common in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. Apart from that, another form of advertising famous in ancient world was also rock or wall painting, kind of billboards like we would call it today. Supposedly this is the oldest form of advertising.

Advertising flyer from19th century for a traditional medicine

http://www.addigitalmedia.com/2009/03/advertising-history/

In the Middle Ages images were used only. Because of general inability to read. Not until 17 th century as education became social need, advertising developed. Ads appeared weekly in newspapers in England which were mostly used to promote books and papers. In 19 th century expanded economy became a cause of developed advertising as well.

What might be interesting is that first ad in which used “sexual sell” was created by a woman in America, advertised a soap. On advertisement there were a couple with a message “The skin you love to touch”.

When another media like radio or TV appeared, sponsoring became a popular practice. That’s mean that each program was sponored by individual business in order to short mention about name of sponsor at the beginning and in the end of the show.

What is worth to mention is Creative Revolution in U.S. – which mean advertising more freely and creative. It was beginning of tempted, uninhibited commercials era.

The man who had a great impact on that was William Bernbach. This is essence of

how he was thinking:

"Logic and over-analysis can immobilize and sterilize an idea. It's like love—the more you analyze it, the faster it disappears." W.B.

These days the most popular is concept called “guerilla marketing”. Generally guerilla campaigns are unexpected and unconventional, might be interactive but it’s not a rule. Result must be unique.

http://termid.wordpress.com/2010/12/26/old-advertisement-pictures-hilda-clark/http://influentia.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/12/23/sundblom_1931_2.jpg

First print ad published in 1895 New image of famous beverage

What do you prefer the “old image” of advertising or the modern one?

Do you know any interesting story about how some of the commercials had been done?

Do you agree with Wiliam Bernbach thought?

COMMERCIALS

part 2

Hi again:)

In next part of my presentation I want to show you some funny commercials from different countries. Maybe not all of them are amusing for you or won’t be if you don’t know them yet, but we can compare what makes people laugh from all over the world.

There is a series of funny but also a little dark ads of Panda cheese. I don’t know exactly what country these commercials come from but it was made for an “Arabic diary” so I guess we would have a chance to see it in the middle East:). Although we still have the internet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkB3Pa20R54&feature=related

What makes some ads funny?

Maybe when we see something we didn’t expect to see or hear. Like in the commercial of Empik language school.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFoiCdQrMc0

It can be funny for us because we live in this country. And we know how hard for foreigners it is to communicate with clerks at Central Railway Station in Warsaw for example. But would it be so amusing for Asian people? I’m sure many of us noticed how different from Europeans or Americans are Japanese, Chinese ads. These few which I saw I didn’t find funny at all. But it’s all about variety of cultures I think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceUfcozJu8A

The most controversial ads are these which are immoral in some way or which seem to be immoral for some people. When commercials touch upon very delicate subjects like contraception, euthanasia and others it provoke fights. This is one of the examples of such an ad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fitxofd7kOA

The biggest problem of advertising agency is to find the best way to win over a client. Sometimes a funny commercial can convince us to buy products much more than regular ads, they’re more effective. But not always..I read recently some article about radio commercial in U.S. It was about a monkey which was trying to feed the baby and no matter how hard it tried the baby wouldn’t eat. And as far as I remember the author of this article really liked the ad, it made him laugh but he couldn’t remember what the commercial was for. So this is the most funny part of the story. It became for him

“prime example of ineffective advertising”. Unfortunately I don’t know where I could find this ad, it’s rather impossible.. because then we could discuss it. Anyway messages should be clear enough for a consumer, because it’s the most important aim of advertising I guess: to make people go and buy product which is being advertised.

And one more for a desert:)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNrHHYHdtaE

What makes commercials effective?

Do you have your favourite ad?

Differences between men and women PART III

Gender stereotypes

In the third part of my presentation I would like you to think if the differences between men and women really exist or if these are simply stereotypes. I would like to start with providing you with the definition of stereotype taken from Wikipedia. “A stereotype is a commonly held popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. (…) Stereotypes are standardized and simplified conceptions of groups based on some prior assumptions.”

Source: http://newsblaze.com/pix/2007/1009/pix/parenting.230.jpg

Majority of people asked about the adjectives describing women say: sensitive, weak, friendly, pretty, well-dressed, polite, etc. The stereotypic role of women is to marry and to have children.. While being asked about characteristics of men they usually answer: strong, muscular, tough, fighting to be a leader. The stereotypic role of men is to be the financial provider of the family Men are perceived as persons who hide their emotions, not eager to ask for help. Let us think about the advertisements. For example, producers of products for babies prefer to show happy mothers with their newborns instead of fathers. This suggests that these are women who take care of children and homes. On the other hand, if we think about ads referring to sport activities it is not difficult to observe that men are the heroes engaged in sport activities.

Right now, I would like to request you to have a look at the following movie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z6ks8Z0X20&feature=related

source: youtube.com

Could you think of your own definition of the stereotype?

What stereotypes regarding men and women do you know?

Where do you know them from?

Just think about the children who were asked to show which of the dolls is responsible for given activities. Why were they indicating a ‘woman doll” while being asked about a person taking care of children? And why were they indicating a “man doll” while being asked about the person earning money for the family?

How do children create stereotypes in their minds?

Right now, please watch the interview with teenagers and think how they would comment on the picture below.





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgHBavtavqQ&feature=related

source: youtube.com

Source: http://www.farnazglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/reverse-gender-stereotypes.jpg

Do you think that stereotypes can be harming for any of the genders or maybe they can bring benefits?

COMMERCIALS part1

sorry forgot about sources:

http://www.latenightwithjimmyfallon.com/blogs/2009/11/your-billboard-spilled-paint-all-over-my-car/

http://www.frigginrandom.com/awesome-billboards/

http://www.billboard-outdoor.com/2009/02/

http://www.adpunch.org/entry/asia-injury-prevention-foundation-i-dont-wear-a-helmet-it-makes-me-look-stupid/

COMMERCIALS part1

Hello Guys!
I want to write a little about commercials. I realize that this is very
controversial topic. Some of us just don't tolerate them, especially on TV
when they appear in the middle of some interesting movie or program. It can
be very annoying.
There are many kind of ads, too many to list each one. So I'll just
mention about a few. Most popular are these on radio, cinema and television.
On the street we can find some billboards or even human billboards as well..
Magazines, newspapers are in half full of ads. So in one sentence: they're
everywhere, well almost everywhere..

Triptych included billboards and car park installation, Ohio.

Oldtimer is a chain of restaurants around Austria

Advertisement of Bic Razors shows trimming potential of this product

Do you think we need so many commercials in our surroundings?
Let's think about arguments for and against advertising.
I think sometimes it's worth seeing some ads because maybe we can
discover a new product which can be useful for us or which we need badly.
It can be also cause of sales increase which leads to higher production, so
maybe more people could find a job because of it.
The biggest disadvantage in my opinion is that very often advertised
products don’t mean good products, I mean good quality. Sometimes
they’re simply harmful. So we should be careful. And in addition we tend
to buy things we don’t need just because of ad we’ve seen.
But next to regular commercials there is also different kind of
advertisement like social or political campaigns. Aim of these ads is not to
sell the product but to share some important information with people. Social
campaigns are usually about addictions to drugs or alcohol but also about
homelessness and other problems communities have to deal with. This is an
example of such a campaign organized in Vietnam by Asia Injury Prevention
Foundation:

Political campaigns are created to win the electorate over. Usually
it's very expensive especially in America where candidates use almost all
known methods to advertise themselves and show that they would be the right
person at the right post.


What impact do ads have on you?
Do you watch sometimes commercials on television or you simply change the
channel to try to avoid them?
Have you ever bought something you really didn't need to just because of
an ad?
Do you know any interesting campaigns?

How do budget airlines work?

Budget airlines, as their name implies, offer cheap tickets to its passengers. Sometimes the price of a ticket is as low as €5. Airlines manage this by cutting their own expenses and operating costs. What’s behind the success of budget airlines? Do they cut expenses also on safety? Let’s find out!

Airline operating costs
One of the major costs for every airline company is the price of airplanes themselves. For instance, a Boening 737, a relatively small passenger jet costs around €40 million. Hiring pilots, first officers and crew members is also a significant expense. Fuel costs instead of being another major cost, also tend to vary often.

Countless other expenses not mentioned before are maintenance costs, fees paid to airports, government, costs of food and drinks served to passengers as well as costs of running booking systems and websites.

How do they cut costs then?
There is no single model for cost-cutting however budget airlines tend to specialise in similar matters. What they try to do generally is to trim costs where possible and use the gains to offset reduced ticket prices. Simple as that :) One of the most important ways for an airline to save money is through fuel hedging. All airlines use fuel hedging, but budget airlines seem to be particularly good at it. For example, between 1991 and 2008, Southwest Airlines paid $3.5 billion below the industry average for jet fuel by using aggressive fuel hedging. (source: http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/travel/2008-07-23-southwest-jet-fuel_N.htm website)

What is hedging then? Those of you interested in economics may know the word hedging from funds. “Fuel Hedging is a contractual tool some airlines use to stabilize jet fuel costs. A fuel hedge contract commits an airline to paying a pre-determined price for future jet fuel purchases. Airlines enter into such contracts as a bet that future jet fuel prices will be higher than current prices or to reduce the turbulence of confronting future expenses of unknown size. If the price of jet fuel falls and the airline hedged for a higher price, the airline will be forced to pay an above-market rate for jet fuel.” (source: Wikipedia.org website)

Fuel price risk management is a risky business but may be very effective if leveraged wisely. Another effective way of cost-cutting is using only one kind of plane. Ryanair for example uses only Boeing 737-800 airplanes. This saves a lot of maintenance costs as the airline stocks parts only for one type of plane. They also save on pilots and mechanics trainings. Another significant cost-cutting method is avoiding expensive airports situated near (or in centres) of big cities. True budget airlines usually choose smaller cities (smaller and simpler airports usually at the same time) over modern and well located airports as they have much lower fees. Stockholm Skavsta airport instead of its name is situated 100 km from Stockholm. Bus ticket to city centre is a similar expense to airplane ticket :)

Yesterday's Future Today: Air Travel from Xeth Feinberg on Vimeo.

Budget airlines safety
The word "budget" implies something made cheaply, without much concern for quality. This is something that budget airlines fight against. Many people come to conclusion that if it’s cheaper it must be of worse quality. Well, yes it is, but does the quality aloes concern safety? Fortunately not. Budget airlines are no less safe than any other airlines. While they cut operating costs on luxuries, they are aware that if they cut costs on safety it could ruin their business. The bottom line on safety is that plane crushes happen and they are not more susceptible to low cost carriers.

Another Low Budget Airline is going to be launched in India very soon...

Budget airlines maths
While browsing through the Internet I have found a very interesting essay (in Polish). It describes in close details economics and maths standing behind budget airline. Authors state that budget airlines sell approximately:

• 30% of lowest price tickets
• 30% of middle price tickets (it’s estimated that with compounded 60% of lowest and middle price tickets they already have revenue)
• 30% of expensive tickets
• 10% of very expensive tickets (usually more expensive than regular airline tickets)

This model provides airline companies with quite a revenue if they manage to sell ALL tickets for a given flight. On the other hand, 30% of passengers have the opportunity of buying very cheap tickets. It’s a great fun combining many cheap flights in a single trip as you are able to visit many places for a low cost.

Discussion topics

1. Is the term fuel hedging new to you? Do you think it's a model that is able to last long till it's to risky?
2. Would you be interested in combining a trip along with your friends using connecting flights from budget airlines? Maybe you;ve already had the opportunity?
3. Are you convinced of the low cost carriers safety?
   

Differences between men and women Part II

The second part of my presentation also refers to differences between men and women but this time it is not so funny. It refers to differences in remuneration of both sexes.

First of all, I would like you to read a short passage taken from article published in Washington Post on 30 July 2007.

“About 10 years ago, a group of graduate students lodged a complaint with Linda C. Babcock, a professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University: All their male counterparts in the university's PhD program were teaching courses on their own, whereas the women were working only as teaching assistants.

That mattered, because doctoral students who teach their own classes get more experience and look better prepared when it comes time to go on the job market.

When Babcock took the complaint to her boss, she learned there was a very simple explanation: "The dean said each of the guys had come to him and said, 'I want to teach a course,' and none of the women had done that," she said. "The female students had expected someone to send around an e-mail saying, 'Who wants to teach?' " The incident prompted Babcock to start systematically studying gender differences when it comes to asking for pay raises, resources or promotions. And what she found was that men and women are indeed often different when it comes to opening negotiations.”

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/29/AR2007072900827.html

I would like you to think a moment above the above described situation. The article was published in 2007, i.e. three years ago.

Do you think the situation was the same in Poland at that time?

Do you really think that men are more self-confident and they say openly what they want if we consider career opportunities? Or maybe it is not the truth and you now more women have better professional positions than men? Think about yourself, some of us are working now. Do you remember how you were applying for your job? Were you struggling to get a better position or were you satisfied with what was offered to you?

Right now, please have a look at the following movie and think it over while watching.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4vvN9XU5qA
source: youtube.com

What do you think about what you have just watched? Do you think that the gap between the salaries of men and women is still growing or is it decreasing?

Do you think that pregnancy anyhow influences the salaries of women? Do you think that after the maternity leave women lose their qualifications/skills?

What do you think about what was said about the education and choice of professions?

Do you think that women in fact tend to choose the professions that are less-paid?

Recently, there is an informative advertisement on the radio and TV telling that women and men in Poland receive various remuneration even though they graduated from the same studies; they have the same level of experience and they are equally successful.

Is it the reality that men and women at the same positions have different salaries? What are your observations? Think about the persons you know.

Right now, please watch the movie and think what in fact influences the whole situation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs_avU7Nv0c&feature=related

source:youtube.com

Do you think these are the negotiation skills that really create the gap?

Think about the past. How many of women you know were employed as managers 15 years ago and how many are now? Have you observed that the situation has changes recently?

Who do you think is responsible for the gap between men’s and women’s salaries?

Differences between men and women

Dear Colleagues,

In my presentation I would like to touch upon some psychological aspects, in particular on the differences between men and women. Everybody knows that there are lots of differences between how men and women think. There were lots of studies trying to explain what the reasons for the above are. We are all aware of the fact that brains of men and women react in a different way to various situations. For example, think how men react when they are shown a newborn baby and what is the reaction of women then. No matter what age they are, men try to avoid contact with the newborns, they are afraid they can hurt them, and they simply do not know how to react when such a baby starts to cry. Women, on the other hand, are being caught by babies. They start to visit their friends more often once a newborn is delivered. Moreover, just think about the hobbies and interests of both sexes. How many women who are interested in car engines do you know, or how many of your male friends enjoy doing shopping or cooking? Below, please find a list of some of the major differences presented by Amber Hensley.

“Human relationships. Hensley claims that women tend to be more communicative and they focus on finding solutions, whereas men tend to be more task-oriented, less talkative. She claims that it is more problematic for men to understand emotions, while women are emotional masters.

Left brain vs. both hemispheres. With regard to psychologists, left hemisphere of men’s brain is better developed, while in case of women both hemispheres are developed in the same way. What follows, men are better at activities that involve left hemisphere, while women think more about feelings and are more creative. Think for whom it is easier to decorate a table when the guests are coming? Men are more practical, while women want to create atmosphere and they spend much more time for preparing decorations.

Pain. Men and women react to pain in a different way. It was found that women need more morphine to kill the pain than men. Women more often think about the pain they feel, while men try to hide it.

Language. It was discovered that women have better language skills than men. Just think how women and men talk about the same situation.

Below, please find an example taken from a famous sitcom “Friends”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGoC8FTLKSI&feature=related

Spatial ability. I think you could observe it many times that it is easier for men to work with a map. Men have stronger spatial abilities, it is easier for them to imagine shapes and dynamics, while majority of women needs more time to perform these activities”.

Source: http://www.mastersofhealthcare.com/blog/2009/10-big-differences-between-mens-and-womens-brains/

I once found a funny presentation showing differences in how men and women perceive each other. I encourage you to have a look at it. It illustrates relations between men and women in a simple, really funny way.

Please watch the short movie and answer the questions below.



Source:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BxckAMaTDc

I hope you enjoyed the short movies, right now I would like you to share your opinions with colleagues. You are free to comment on the opinions of other group mates if you do not have so much experience in the relations between men and women.

Can you think about any movies that show differences between men's and women's thinking?

Do you think the short extract taken from famous “Friends” movie represents the reality?

For males: do you think your partner should always state directly what she wants?

For females: do you think your partner often does not get what you mean?

What do you think you can do in order to improve your relations?

Low-cost carriers: Ready for battle!

Low-cost carriers, also known as a no-frills, discount or budget carriers are airlines that generally have lower fares and less comforts than regular carriers. I will try to make it more clear how such airlines cut costs, as well as what's behind the success (and sometimes failure) of budget airlines.

Aviation and air travel has had a huge impact on society as well as development of industry and business partnerships. Without air travel most of us would have never stand a chance to visit places very different from our own. When air travel debuted in the early 20th century, it was both rare and expensive. Air travel as we knew it back then was restricted to rich and successful. “Since 1938, the Federal government had strictly regulated airline fares and routes. The government kept fares high to please airline investors and airline-employee unions. This policy kept airline costs high and priced air travel out of the reach of most Americans.” - http://www.centennialofflight.gov After WW II improved engine and plane designs made long distance flights available to even more passengers. Till late 1970s many carriers treated air travel as luxury and kept delivering luxury service on their planes. Free meals and drinks, personal attention from flight assistants as well as spacious and comfortable made the ticket prices high.

“Probably the first such airline was Sir Freddy Laker's ‘Skytrain’ of the ‘70s. In the US, Southwest Airlines revolutionized American air transport by running fleets with one type of aircraft, the Boeing 737, to save on maintenance costs, and eliminating the 'frills' of air travel. In Europe, Ryanair pioneered the concept.” – Wikipedia.org

Nowadays there are over 60 budget airlines in Europe and this number is rapidly changing. Most of them sell their tickets exclusively over their website. The tickets are not available via travel agents. The pricing structure of no-frills carriers is complex. Fares change accordingly to demand, often on hourly basis. There are no rules for obtaining cheapest fares. Although you have probably heard from your friends that they managed to buy return tickets for 20 PLN. In the next article I will describe in more details budget airlines maths. Until then enjoy watching a British film about post war commercial air travel in the UK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyCTpZvjW1U

If you are a Monthy Python fan, make sure to watch this movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEIB4baOSd8

Discussion topics
- Have you ever used a low budget airline? Where you satisfied with the service it provided?
- Do you think it is safe to travel using low-cost carriers? Are they reliable enough?