Vocaloid Technology and Japanese Anime Culture Essay Example For Students

Vocaloid Technology and Japanese Anime Culture Essay In modern Japan, popular musics are always related to idols as being one of the Japanese social mainstreams. For the consumers, most of the idols are popular due to their stage appearances and visual attractions rather than their musical or vocal skills. However, there is one additional technique that Japanese use to produce unique idols and tend to distinguish them from other common idols. They are manufacture idols, which are good examples of how Japanese make new innovations in their pop culture. Manufacture idols system is a combination of anime-like characters and the technology in Japan. Both of these factors are huge in Japan and are well combined in other field of works. With the great novelty and the visual attractions behind the idea, manufacture idols become very popular in Japan; and because anime and technology are two widespread cultures in Japan, their combination make the manufacture idols system carry a very uniquely Japanese style. Japan has huge technological industries as its recent technology fast developed. The Japanese are likely and even proud to use technological productions, and many of the creative ideas are based on their technology. We will write a custom essay on Vocaloid Technology and Japanese Anime Culture specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now Similarly, Manufacture idols came from a technological software called â€Å"Vocaloid†. Vocaloid is originated from the singing synthesizer system which dates back to â€Å"a research by Kelly et al in 1962 when there have been various singing synthesizers proposed since then, whether they are commercial or noncommercial† (Kenmochi, 2012). However, Kenmochi (2012) also indicates that â€Å"those singing synthesizers have not been widely used in musical creation, although some musicians experimentally utilized them in their music. Later on, Japan became one of the countries that tended to develop this type of technology. â€Å"Since 2007, there has been a big boom of musical contents using singing synthesis software especially in Japan† while â€Å"amateur musicians use singing synthesis software to create their original compositions. (Kenmochi, 2012). Vocaloid was developed by Yamaha Corporation which is a Japanese multinational corporation, and it came out as a commercial singing synthesis software and are widely used in Japan. Yet, According to Kenmochi and Ohshita’s article (2007) Vocaloid is not released by Yamaha Corp. â€Å"Yamaha licenses the technology and software to third-party companies. Those companies develop and release their own singer library bundled with the Vocaloid software. Since 2004, five products have been released with Vocaloid version 1 so far: â€Å"Leon†, â€Å"Lola†, and â€Å"Miriam† from Zero-G Limited, UK, and â€Å"Meiko† and â€Å"Kaito† from Crypton Future Media, Japan† (Kenmochi Ohshita, 2007). These first released Vocaloid characters (known as Vocaloid 1) have different voices and appearance, and they are divided to different language categories as some of them were released by the British company and others were released by the Japanese company. The voices of these characters were not completely artificial. Instead, the producers collected the sample voices from certain singers or voice actors first, and then produced the singer library. Musicians with certain musical knowledge and technique could make musics by using Vocaloid, and they could choose to make musics for certain characters based on their preference on looks or voices. Vocaloid consists of three parts. Score Editor provides an environment in which the user can input notes, lyrics, and optionally some expressions; Singer Library, mentioned previously, is a database of samples (mostly diphones) extracted from real people’s singing; and Synthesis Engine receives score information, selects necessary samples from Singer Library and concatenates them. Kenmochi Ohshita, 2007) Later on, more and more characters came out in Japan released either by companies such as Crypton Future Media or on the Internet. These new characters are known as Vocaloid 2 and the second generation of Vocaloid software, and they embodied the same technology used in Vocaloid 1. Eventually, in 2007, Vocaloid technique and its characters became a huge boom in Japanese pop culture. Many music production teams in Japan started to make songs for these characters, and these producers are known as characters’ masters. Moreover, as the first Vocaloid 2 character Hatsune Miku came out followed by various Vocaloid characters, more and more amateur musicians (especially those who like electronic musics) joined to make Vocaloid musics; more anime fans started to support such products; and more other audiences appeared to be interested in such innovations. Different characters came out with different Vocaloid software and are released by different companies and medias. The productions began to play a big role in the music market in Japan. Like Goto says in his research â€Å"As music synthesizers generating various instrumental sounds are already widely used and have become indispensable to popular music production, it is historically inevitable that singing synthesizers will become more widely used and likewise indispensable to music production† (Goto). How technology naturally involved in Japanese music is indeed incredible. As we perceive in the naming of Hatsune Miku which could translated to â€Å"the first sound from the future†, we simply discover how Japanese producers and audiences strongly pursue the advanced technology. However, the fascination of the technology is not only manifested in the scientific technique that is used in Vocaloid, but is also displayed in the way people make the anime characters doing vivid musical movements and expressions like humans. As Hatsune Miku and other Vocaloid characters were developed to music and game market, besides the technological success in some human-like elements reflected in their singing such as breathiness, portamento, etc. hey are required to have dance movements, gestures and even facial expressions. Nevertheless, as she sometimes appears in 3D image, Hatsune Miku is very different from both real humans and most of two dimensional anime figures. Thus, she is like a robot on the computer that is more likely to be stiff, and it is very hard to make her and other characters move as smooth and lively as humans or two dimensional anime characters do. Yet, creators took efforts to make their characters mimic the musical gestures and expressions of humans. .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a , .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a .postImageUrl , .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a , .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a:hover , .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a:visited , .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a:active { border:0!important; } .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a:active , .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .ua72cdfef41455d89e34d59399e918c7a:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: Japanese Gardens in the United States EssayFrom my perspective, this process is very similar to another scientific process relates to movements of musical robots although it is easier to make 3D characters do human-like movements than a real robot. Similar to the Vocaloid characters, Japanese also concern about the vividness among the robotic movement of musical robots. â€Å"Humanoid robots are polyvalent, and thus are perfect platforms for synthesizing the work from specialized, disparate domains. The idea is to develop a general ‘emotional intelligence’–an ability to express emotion in music as well as speech, gesture, and other modalities. (Lim, Og ata, Okuno, 2012) For instance, musical robots should imitate some natural habit of human musicians when they are playing music. â€Å"Human musicians naturally use visual cues such as eye contact and instrument movement to coordinate with fellow ensemble players, similar to conductors who use their batons to indicate beats. In fact, a study on clarinetist’s movements found that â€Å"movements related to structural characteristics of the piece (e. g. tempo)† were consistently found among player subjects. Movements included â€Å"tapping of one’s foot or the moving of the bell up and down to keep rhythm. Although we do not claim that all musicians use movements when performing, we believe that identifying common, natural gestures is a starting point to using vision as a human-robot interface. † (Lim, Mizumoto, Cahier, Otsuka, Takahashi, Komatani, Okuno, 2010). Likewise, Vocaloid characters are required to do human-like gestures when they are singing and dancing in games and perform at concerts. In this case, Japanese producers did a good job on creating dancing movements and facia l expressions for these characters by using advanced animation technology. They led the Vocaloid character (especially Hatsune Miku) to be on the stage like real idols by using the advanced 3D technology, and unfolded the vivid impressions of characters before their audiences’ eyes. â€Å"Although Hatsune Miku is a virtual singer, she has already had live concerts with human musicians in Japan, USA, and Singapore† (Goto). Although these characters have not reached the state of doing movements and expressions exactly the same as real humans, they appeal to their consumers very positively for their almost lively human-like characteristics. Moreover, the advanced animation technique in Japan definitely helps Japanese producers approach the goal, as the anime culture being one of the most popular social phenomenons in Japan’s market. Vocaloid characters are popular not only because of their unique singing style that is distinguished from humans’ voices, but also because of their anime appearance. For example, Hatsune Miku, the most representative Vocaloid character in Japan, was actually just a simple print on the Vocaloid software package at the beginning. However, such simple illustration has enough visual attractions to Japanese due to Japan’s widespread anime culture. Before games and concerts of Vocaloid characters came out, people had very few information about these characters. The only information they gained was the characters’ personalities which is portrayed in some typical published songs written by these characters’ â€Å"masters†. Therefore, amateur anime artists made videos of characters dancing and singing, and sometimes they tended to post their work on some popular website in Japan. People draw and post different illustrations of Hatsune Miku. Then people started to create videos, such as promotion videos for musicians, with such original songs and drawings. Some people even create 3D models of Hatsune Miku and create 3D animation videos. † (Hamasaki, Takeda, Nishimura, 2008). Apparently, it was not the production companies who promoted the idea of making the characters visually alive; it was the audiences who involved into animation works and advanced computer technology at first. Such phenomenon reflects that how Japanese, especially the younger generation, are highly involved in modern technology and animation as two of their social mainstreams. After such a huge impact happened to the consumers of Vocaloid characters, many more corporations and companies were involved to various productions of making animation images of Vocaloid characters. Some game companies such as PENTA and Tones Studio made Hatsune Miku a game character or made her sing one of the background songs in the games. Other CD company such as Frontier Works recorded some old songs, but some of them were sung by Hatsune Miku. Additionally, as more and more people continue using Vocaloid characters to sing their favorite or original songs, some amateur singers even sing the characters’ original songs and post them online. The website that receives most of these posts is called Nico Nico Douga, which is the most popular video sharing website in Japan. The websites’ basic service mostly resembles that of YouTube, besides most of the posts are animation work as â€Å"Douga† means animation in Japanese. What is more interesting than YouTube, is that â€Å"a user can add comments about a specific playback time at a specific position in the video which gives people a sense of sharing the viewing experience virtually. Furthermore, the creator can instantly know which specific moment or specific scene is appreciated by a viewer† (Hamasaki, Takeda, Nishimura, 2008). Videos relates to Vocaloid stuff are usually categorized as â€Å"hot topic† on this website. Such popularity on an animation website implies that Vocaloid system manifests the interaction between audiences and Japanese anime culture. Moreover, Characters like Hatsune Miku are always engaged with Japanese anime culture even they do not have any story or background. Anime fans can easily create stories, images and even personality for them according to the contexts among their well-known songs. â€Å"voice-generating software called Vocaloid, which makes anime-like songs in the voice of an imaginary character called Hatsune Miku (lit. â€Å"first sound of the future†), inspired fans to develop images, stories and videos around the synthetic voice. .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f , .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f .postImageUrl , .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f , .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f:hover , .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f:visited , .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f:active { border:0!important; } .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f:active , .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .u6b7866e8ca6348177d28302e26bb228f:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: Today, Telecommunications Technology Affects Lives To A Greater Degree EssayThere is even a blog that tracks the best fan-made music videos featuring this character† (Condry, 2009). Such enthusiasm among anime fans reflects the connection between Hatsune Miku and Japanese anime culture. In Japan, it is very common to consider a virtual idol like Hatsune Miku as popular even though she does not have any musical or vocal skill. Japanese audiences always have obsessions with visual attractions. Not every idol have to be good at singing or instruments, but popular idols are always good-looking, cute or sexually attractive. Hatsune Miku, with cute anime looking, is attractive to a lot of Japanese heterosexual male fans. However, as she being an anime character, she is still different from other living idols. For one thing, Hatsune Miku is never separated from the engagement with the consumers. To be more specific, living idols engage with their audiences when they perform on the stage or acting certain roles, but they separate from their public images when they come back to their private life. â€Å"stars have an existence in the world independent of their screen/ â€Å"fiction† appearances, it is possible to believe. hat as people they are more real than characters in the stories. † (Dyer, 1998) On the contrary, as a virtual character as most of anime characters are, Hatsune Miku has devoted everything to her fans. She does everything that satisfies her consumers and keeps her pure and ideal image. Such characteristic is very common in Japanese anime culture and is quite fascinating for a nime fans and especially for otaku. â€Å"Otaku, which translates to the English term nerd, was a slang term used by amateur manga artists and fans themselves in the 1980s to describe weirdos (henjin). The original meaning of otaku is your home and, by association, you, yours, and home (Kinsella, 1998). When normal anime fans like to talk to each other about their common interests, anime otaku people prefer just engaging with two dimensional or virtual anime characters. Although otaku culture is strange from an American perspective, it is still somehow considered as a symbol of contemporary Japanese society, as it reflects a popular phenomenon in Japanese younger generation. Otaku came to represent a younger generation so intensely individu-alistic they had become dysfunctional, a generation of ‘isolated people who no longer have any sense of isolation. ’ The dysfunctionality of otaku proved the unhealthy nature of individualistic lifestyles† (Kinsella, 1998). In this case, Vocaloid characters are tied to otaku culture because of their two dimensional or virtual images. â€Å"the virtual idols very clearly ties together the otaku obsession with computer technolo gy, animation technology, robotic or otherwise artificial bodies and the kind of femininity presented by the living idol† (Black, 2012). Male anime otaku are usually obsessed with bishojo(pretty girls in Japanese) in animation works like Hatsune Miku, because â€Å"the virtual idol can satisfy fan desires in the way that living idols can not† (Black, 2012) Thus, Vocaloid certainly has an attractions towards anime fans and otaku, which can be another engagement between Vocaloid and anime culture. On the other hand, for anime fans or even other audiences, the gender interpretation appears to be more ideal on virtual characters. Choo mentioned that anime girls are more ideal with big eyes and smooth skin, and sometimes they involve in sexualized images in the contexts. In addition, anime boys are more attractive for female consumers because of their slim bodies and pretty faces (Choo, 2008). Therefore, with the same gender oriented attraction, Vocaloid characters gain more attentions from their heterosexual fans, and have more advantages because of their anime imagery. In conclusion, Vocaloid is an extremely representative symbol of Japanese pop culture. Among many music forms in Japan, Vocaloid music reflects how Japanese is good at making innovations, as they blend advanced cyber technology and Japanese anime culture. However, the novelty inside this music form is explicit not only due to the genius combination, but also due to the reactions from the Japanese consumers. As we watch Hatsune Miku’s 3D image dancing on the stage with hundred thousands of living fans, we can simply realize how Japanese audiences support their technology and anime culture. Bibliography: Black, D. (2012). The Virtual Idol: Producing and Consuming Digital Femininity.Idols and Celebrity in Japanese Media Culture, 209. Choo, K. (2008). Girls Return Home: Portrayal of Femininity in Popular Japanese Girls’ Manga and Anime Texts during the 1990s in Hana yori Dango and Fruits Basket.  Women: a cultural review,  19(3), 275-296. Condry, I. (2009). Anime Creativity Characters and Premises in the Quest for Cool Japan.  Theory, Culture Society,  26(2-3), 139-163. Dyer, R., McDonald, P. (1998).  Stars. BFI Pub.. Page 8. Goto, M. Grand Challenges in Music Information Research}}.  Multimodal Music Processing},  3, 217-226. IEEE. Hamasaki, M., Takeda, H., Nishimura, T. (2008, October). Network analysis of massively collaborative creation of multimedia contents: case study of hatsune miku videos on nico nico douga. In  Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Designing interactive user experiences for TV and video  (pp. 165-168). ACM. Kenmochi, H. (2012, March). Singing synthesis as a new musical instrument. In  Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), 2012 IEEE International Conference on  (pp. 5385-5388). IEEE. Kenmochi, H., Ohshita, H. (2007). Vocaloid–commercial singing synthesizer based on sample concatenation.  Proc. Interspeech 2007, 4011-4010. Kinsella, S. (1998). Japanese subculture in the 1990s: Otaku and the amateur manga movement.  Journal of Japanese Studies, 289-316. Lim, A., Mizumoto, T., Cahier, L. K., Otsuka, T., Takahashi, T., Komatani, K., Okuno, H. G. (2010, October). Robot musical accompaniment: integrating audio and visual cues for real-time synchronization with a human flutist. InIntelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2010 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on  (pp. 1964-1969). Lim, A., Ogata, T., Okuno, H. G. (2012). Towards expressive musical robots: a cross-modal framework for emotional gesture, voice and music.  EURASIP Journal on Audio, Speech, and Music Processing,  2012(1), 3.

Yucca mountain essays

Yucca mountain essays After reading the article, I do not know if the author is qualified to write on the subject of nuclear waste disposal. He seems to know what he is talking about but he failed to put the information in any particular order so that his readers will understand what he is trying to say. He proposes a way of disposing nuclear waste but then proceeds to skip around and not connect his thoughts. He needs to think before he writes. Maybe a rough draft or two would help. The author is trying to propose a method of disposing nuclear waste. He suggests that radioactive waste be incased in lead and then be incased in glass. He says that glass, when properly annealed, would be as hard as steal and virtually indestructible. He also states that the Yucca Mountain Project is not a good choice by telling the reader that on June 14, 2002, a 4.4 earthquake on the Richter scale was experienced. He questioned how safe the site is. The author has very good points but fails to back them with facts. He makes very good points such as the current method of nuclear waste disposal is not safe to the environment at all. Currently, the rods are wraped in lead then they incase them in concrete. After that, we store them at the site or dump them in the ocean or the North Dakota Badlands. He also states that in Norway, a hole is dug and the rods are simply dropped into it. The problem with these methods are that their lifespan is roughly about 200 years and then waste begins to leak. The tone of the article is persuasive. He is trying to convince everyone that his proposal will work. By having a persuasive tone, he than can affect the readers in one strong point. The author tends to use broad generalizations rather then a well thought out analysis. Haddow, like many others, is clearly bias. He believes strongly that he is correct. Writing a biased paper in not wrong but it does not give the other side of the argument which can be a little frustrating if...

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What were the cultural and social factors that created the conditions for the adoption of radio (wireless) by home users in the 1910s and 1920s - Essay Example The social changes that took place included the rise of mass entertainment in the form of radios as well consumer culture. Various social and cultural factors played a vital role in the adoption of radios by home users in the years 1910s and 1920s as the document discusses (Popular Science Monthly, 1917).   Broadcasting started acting as a crucial instrument in the political and social organization in early twentieth century. The aspect played a very crucial role in enhancing the adoption of radios by home users. At the peak of influence created by this factor, national leaders started making use of radio to address the entire nation. It was because the leaders had come to realize that radios had potential to reach large numbers of the citizens. The factor, therefore, created a necessity of the citizens to own and also adopt a radio so that they would remain updated on any update from leaders. The aspect hence caused many home users to adopt radios after recognizing how significant it was in communication (Hilmes, 2013).   The outbreak of First World War in Europe also triggered the necessity of understanding the activities that were taking place. The factor led to massive adoption of radio by domestic users. The main reason happened to be many people wanted to know the well about of their well about of their relatives in different places of the United States. Towards the final years of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, radio broadcasting was under strict regulations from the government’s leaders. In 1910s, an Act that gave radio broadcasting freedom was enacted in the United States. One of the factors that got addressed in the Act was freedom of radio stations to be privately owned (Gernsback, 1924). The freedom gave helped the radio broadcasters to air diversified content in terms of news and entertainment. The factor created a sound condition for the adoption radio in homes. Much was available in the radios from

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Marketing of Liability Products of Bank Essay There are number of Liabilty products, some of the liability products are listed below * Savings Account * Fixed Deposit Account * Recurring Deposit * Current Account * NRI Account Etc†¦. These products are the basic products of bank which are taking new dimensions in the banking world as the competition is tougher. The products which are mentioned above are the products of Retail Banking. Wholesale banking is another big segment of bank which deals with the SME and Corporate clients. WholeSale Banking Though Internet banking as a concept has not caught the fancy of a majority of customers as yet-even the small percentage that does use it, makes a difference to the overall cost. Almost all leading banks in India are hoping that just as ATMs saw a period of inaction before they were accepted by Indian masses, Internet banking too would be adopted once customers are comfortable with the technology. For instance, in 1998 India had just 500 ATMs today it has close to 7,500. Advertising Boards; According to the case study which we have done in the Bhubaneswar city from Rabi Talkies to Janapath. The Advertising Boards are very rarely used , we found only one Hoarding that belongs to Bank of Baroda in Bapuji Nagar and that too was removed after a week from our survey. The other advertisement which is given in the bus stand by HDFC in Lewis Road. Analysis; Bank’s believe less on this strategy of advertisement. The Case study was done in a very short distance so this might or might not be the actual situation. Social Media Marketing Strategy * Bank Adverts on certain Websites * Social media in business allows anyone and everyone to express and share * Social networking sites act as word of mouth. (For example Facebook, Twitter, Google+ etc†¦) * Professional Sites like Linkedin * â€Å"retweet† or â€Å"repost†-repeating the message * Sharing videos through â€Å"Youtube† They advertise the bank products through different finance related, business related etc websites. As we can see in the above screen shots from different websites we could understand that Banks rely on Social Media Marketing too to advertise and publicize their products. Conclusion We have analysed different strategies of the bank from Marketing Mix to Technology Based Marketing. From analysing in all aspects the only strategy which is helping and which will help the bank to be successful is Product Innovation. High Interest or discounts are not going to help the bank anymore because the customers are expecting the high quality service not the interest from the bank. People have become Quality conscious in the recent past so the new products and the service of that particular product in a appropriate way will help the banks to reach greater Heights.

Steel and Tariffs Essay -- Economy Economics Essays

Steel and Tariffs We have all heard this joke. Only now the horse has been replaced with consumers of steel in the US steel industry. Why? Many companies in our economy that use steel as an input to produce their goods are staggering due to recent extraordinarily high steel prices. President Bush dropped a tariff on imported steel on Thursday March 4th; according to basic economics, this cancellation of the steel import tariff should have dropped the price for US domestic consumers. Unfortunately though, that hasn't happened. Steel prices are currently at record highs and many forecast even higher prices to come. This puts huge pressure on small businesses that are dependent on steel for their well being. With higher prices threatening these business owners’ profits and future sales all, including the very large companies, are looking for any break in the high priced storm that seems to be closing in on the future of the steel industry. While many companies are sending out fair warning that con sumers can expect higher prices in the car, furniture, and construction industries, many look for ways to cut costs and layoffs have been mentioned. Could this have been avoided? Many look to the recent lifting of tariffs imposed on steel imports as a possible culprit. Although the lifting of the tariff has affected the market, it is unlikely that the lifting correlates with the recent spike in steel prices. With the United Steel Workers of America screaming that the dropped import tariffs are, "clear evidence of capitulating to European blackmail and a sorry betrayal of American steelworkers and their communities," (Crutsinger 1) and representatives in congress showing much disgust at the presidents lack of respect and compassion for o... ...k, John. "US Steelmakers in Continuing Crisis." Challenge.Vol. 47, no. 1, January/February. M. E. Sharp, INC. 2004. 86-106. Crutsinger, Martin. "Bush drops steel import tariffs, accused of 'betrayal' by industry"The Game Cock. 04/05/04. <http://www.dailygamecock.com/news/2003/12/05/News/BushDrops.Steel.Impot.Tarif.Accused.Of.betrayal.By.Industry-573188.shtml> Goodrich, Ben. Hufbauer, Gary Clyde. "Steel Policy: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." Internationas Economics Policy Briefs. January 2003. ---. "Time for a Grand Bargin in Steel?" Institute for International Economics. 04/05/04. <http://www.iie.com/publications/pb/pb02-1.htm>. Hagenbaugh, Barbara. "Steel Prices Soar 66% in a World Market 'gone mad'." USA Today. McLean, VA. Feb 20, 2004. pg B.01 Irwin, Douglas A. Free Trade Under Fire. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 2002.

Managing Groups in a Multicultural Setup

Surviving and succeeding in today’s global competitive business environment is obviously difficult. Cross-cultural working, managing changes, technological advantages give the much needed edge to set organizations apart. Our progress and approach strategies clearly defines our success. Developments in recent years have reinforced the view that we are moving from a world in which we determined our destination to one in which we must learn to navigate a path between myriad future possibilities (Stickland,1998).I had been assigned to a study group, which I was to work with, during the first semester. The group members met each other for the first time in the lecture theatre and decided to meet after class. The meeting was informal and we all introduced ourselves, exchanged e-mail addresses and phone numbers. All five team members talked about their backgrounds and I seemed to like the team from the beginning.Everyone seemed humble. As we kept on talking, it became apparent that s ome team members were more talkative than others. Team members, A and B were very talkative and kept asking questions while C and D were more quiet. I was more like an average participant, but in the end I too talked less. A and B looked at each other and me but not at C and D; C and D were thus not included in the conversations. I noticed this, but decided to ignore it for the time being. I thought I need to only change it later.The five members came from different countries across four continents. A was from India and from experience I knew that Indians would talk a lot and have strong opinions. B was from Honduras whom I thought would be talkative and easy going like my friends from Nicaragua and other Central American countries. While C was from Georgia, a country I did not know much about, D was from the US whom I thought would be a hard working, self-centered and confrontationist.The team was truly diverse. Having lived in Asia, North America and Europe, working with several m ulticultural teams for over a decade; I knew from the beginning that I had to learn more about their cultures and backgrounds. This was perhaps the only way I could interpret their behavior and adapt to them, while they could adapt to me too. I believed that judging people even before you get to know them was wrong, while at the same time I was sure that my assumptions about certain cultures and the norms within these cultures, were mostly right.We were assigned the first group task in management science. I walked into the assignment with a positive attitude and everyone else in the group did, too. After all, the first get-to-know meeting had been positive. Once we had gathered, we decided on where to work. We sat down and focused on the task that had been given to us. We read the assignment and were ready to discuss the task.Here things started to go wrong. As group members are not much familiar with each other, there is a certain amount of uncertainty and suspicion, when interpret ing each other’s conduct and action. Lack of positive relationship carries opportunities for development of serious conflicts. These may not only be difficult to resolve, but also decrease team performance, particularly when a relationship conflict is not differentiated from task disagreements. (Pamela and Sara 2002)As we had not established a hierarchy structure, there was no leader. It was an equal platform for all to put forth their contributions, at an identical level. I come from a consensus driven society and thought that it was the right approach. I believed that everyone knew how dynamics in a consensus driven group works. However, I was proven wrong. People were not listening to each other! People would not let each other talk. Instead they interrupted each other!I could not overcome the feeling that some people wanted to prove that they were intelligent and knowledgeable. We did not have a dialogue. The task’s problems and scope were not discussed. We did not talk about how to solve the task at hand. Instead people presented their solutions!. The team found it hard to keep up the schedules, and inefficient communication was taking its toll.I have worked as a management and strategy consultant in many countries and even founded companies in cultures foreign to me and I had never seen such chaos and unstructured behavior. In fact, gradually the team structure itself broke down and began functioning like two divided teams working on separate agenda. Did this have to do with some people’s inexperience?! Or was this peculiar only to me?.I went along with what was happening in the group, always trying to pull people back to discuss the task’s scope. The group agreed that we needed to look at the scope and understand it. However, people continued to argue their causes defending their ideas. We were not getting anywhere. Time was running out and I knew that we did not have a good solution. This was confirmed when we saw what other groups presented. Now, I wondered whether the other people in the group saw it the same way? But I never asked them. We had talked to each other in the first assignment but not with each other now . We were not communicating well.Several days later, the second assignment was given to us. We went back to the same room we had used earlier. We read the task and, to my surprise, nobody’s approach had changed. Everyone was talking and no one listening. D who had been quiet in the first meeting tried to explain his idea which I thought was good. I wanted people to listen to D and they did after I specifically asked them to. D has only studied English for four years and he had a hard time expressing his thoughts, lacking the necessary vocabulary.Everyone else in the group speaks English fluently. I believed this might be the reason why no one listened to him. Anyway, after D had talked, they resumed their unconstructive debating, ignoring D’s ideas. After I initiated a secon d attempt to get D back into the discussion without any success I must admit that emotions replaced my otherwise logical and rather rational thinking. The other group members’ ignorance upset me. I decided not to participate anymore. Instead, I decided to observe what was going on in the team, making mental notes and checking my initial assumptions about each others’ attitudes.I then realized that initiating a groupwork successfully is very important and difficult. Perhaps the task or objectives at hand need to correspond to an initiation level too. Not much has been said or written on tasks, which are more suitable for groupwork, particularly at the initiation level. But it has been widely accepted that group work must be established in defined stages or steps, so that there is a better sense of direction and focus at the early stages. It would also be more beneficial if the topics and activities are initially focused at a simpler, straightforward and interesting agen da, gradually moving on to complicating issues. (Elisabeth 1990)Once again, we ran out of time without having completed the task, we returned to the lecture theatre only to find that our solution was substandard. At this point, I thought we have had enough and decided that we need to have a team discussion to analyze why we were under performing and how can we improve?. I sent out an e-mail to the group on this and to my surprise the team agreed with me, and we met the next day. During the subsequent meeting everyone admitted that we have been under performing.We also agreed that an important problem was that we were not letting everyone speak up and that some members dominated the discussions. We had to change this. This is when we created a â€Å"Group Work Guidebook† and work structure guidelines. We established guidelines on courtesy, respect, conduct and criticism, which are to be exhibited by all, in the course of our groupwork. We also took certain strategic initiative s like sharing our strengths and weaknesses and setting up a roadmap for achieving our objectives.Even though we did not have specific roles I soon became the facilitator, with many suggesting that I take over as a secretary. I made sure to empower others in the group as we went along but also made sure that discussion went smoothly without getting stuck in details. When emotions started to come up in discussions I tried to intervene usually with humor. I had to skip a meeting as I was sick; however it gave me an opportunity to understand how the team performed in my absence. I was surprised to note that the team was indeed more receptive to each other than before. Meetings were however becoming more hectic due to time constraints caused unnecessarily by professors, and at times we felt like we were slipping off as before.What made me uncomfortable at times was that some group members started to see me as the leader, which I did not like. Group members would look at me when there wa s an argument or when they had questions. I felt like a judge! I did not want this because I felt that it would hold the group back from having open and productive discussions. I believed that we could have â€Å"new leaders† every time depending on what we talked about. The leader would naturally emerge and it would obviously be the one who knew the most about the matter at hand. When I received for example questions, and people looked at me.I would give my opinion but then make sure that I asked everyone else what they thought. It was a time consuming process and ate into our efficiency but it was worth it. We ended up with good results and everyone felt involved. However, not everyone felt that they had been involved every time we met. C had never worked in a multi-cultural team before and likes task-focused approaches. C took over the role of coordinator without us noticing.A says that she comes from a passive culture and thinks she is helping us which isn’t. . In the session, A mentioned that she was not feeling that everyone understood her and she had a hard time expressing her feelings in the group. I spoke to A about it, who needed more reassurance when she worked in groups. She had a tendency to talk a lot and many group members found it distracting and I sensed that she was being kept outside the team a little bit. We had agreed on some guidelines but, especially A and C wanted to work the way they were used to, unwilling to accept others’ ways of working. We started to prepare slides so that we could hit the ground running and it took a long time before we felt comfortable with dividing tasksThe initial phase helped us to bond. As we went along, the group worked harmoniously with some few interruptions. The group bonded more and more as we went along. Mostly, because we now understood each other’s needs and how everyone liked to work. Our team outing also contributed to this bonding, giving us an opportunity to talk on so mething personal. Also, we started to split tasks and worked in small groups. The objectives and approaches were discussed with the team.Then tasks were delegated. We were able to work faster this way. This also satisfied C who wanted a more task oriented approach. However, we did not exaggerate the task focus. A admitted that she in general has problems to express feelings, and we as a team assured her that everyone does have it, but that it is better to talk to us, so that we can support her as we work together almost every day. We were here to learn, try new things and have fun. In the â€Å"group therapy† session, the team agreed that efficiency was an issue although, it had improved over the past weeks. The question now was how quickly we could improve our efficiency and how?. We decided, especially during our project, to pick up the pace and set more deadlines.As we continued to progress well, it was becoming obvious that some team members missed a hierarchical structur e. The more experienced members however, were fine with not having one, while the less experienced ones looked for guidance and at some time even thought that they had turned into leaders as they tried to enforce a hierarchy or assigned themselves tasks such as structuring meetings, etc. I believe this helps them tackle their insecurity.The younger members showed that they could not handle stress very well. When we had client meetings C would get nervous and start bossing people around. I laughed at it initially, but pointed it out to him. Even other group members pointed it out to him and he improved. As we entered the final phase of the project I discovered that the younger members liked to talk in the â€Å"I† form more and more. When I had put together a model with A or C they would still say â€Å"I created XYZ† in the group. B picked up on this and it irritated her as well as me. I explained to them the importance of teamwork and made it clear that it should alwa ys be ‘We’ and not ‘I’.The study group bonded more and more. Even C who in the beginning thought that dinners were simply a waste of time now started to enjoy them and even initiates them. He felt comfortable with the team and the team in general spoke openly about everything. Today, we are still improving our organizational skills and efficiency. However, we are very comfortable with each other, joking and laughing more than we work at times. This slows down work, but we still achieve good results and most importantly we discuss things outside the assignment, which is also a way of developing.The project presentation went very well. C talks and jokes more than he has ever done before – not just with the group. D has found a humorous side as well and has been very calm throughout the process. B is very involved sometimes at a level that is too detailed but she keeps everyone positive. A is motivated again after the Management Science debacle when we scored lower than we had expected. I am more structured in my approach and communicate much clearer (harder) than before pulling the teams back to the essential problems, when needed. And, yes, I still spend much time talking to group members outside the group, helping in any way that I possibly can. Did it require much energy and time? Yes! But it was worth it.I look forward to working with this group again, because we are now working well together, learning more and faster; being adapted to each other’s working style and body language. There are people in the MBA with whom I do not want to work with. These are people who do not understand integrity, honesty and respect. Selfishness does not go well with me. I have understood and realized this only in the past few weeks, more than ever before. I continue to believe that my passive leadership style in which I try to make people discover their flaws themselves is good. Sometimes I have to be more direct, or there will be misun derstandings leading to potential conflicts.Creating a group and implementing a working plan or road map is a difficult and time-consuming task. The planning stage is very crucial for the effective working of the group, however it is also essential that we do not hold on completely to the plan. The group and leader must react to situations impulsively. (Linda 1997). I see myself more of a transformational type leader who set goals and inculcate awareness on the setting and achieving of goals by others to pull them from unworthy preoccupations.Transformational leadership elevates levels of morality and motivation among others and are more effective, It has not been possible to relate their leadership with demographic, social or personal characteristics (Linda et al). I have indeed been benefited by this groupwork experience, a benefit that will remain with me, contributing to whatever I would be involved in.REFERENCESLinda et al., 2001;Organizational Behavior; A Management Challenge, Lawrence Erlbaum AssociatesLinda. F. Groupwork in Occupational Therapy. Nelson Thornes (1997)Elisabeth D. Talking and Learning in Groups. Routledge (1990).Pamela J. and   Sara. K Distributed Work   MIT Press, (2002)Stickland, F.; The Dynamics of Change. Publisher: Routledge, London (1998).