Mark Cuban's Crowdsourcing for a New Jersey Design

Recently, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban posted on his blog a sort of challenge to help redesign the team's jersey. What's the reward? We're not even sure yet. All that Cuban guarantees in his blog post is bragging rights and he "may even throw in some tickets." Who will own the design? The Mavs as soon as you post it on the website.

Many critics are questioning the morality of such an act. You do all that work and you're not even guaranteed a reward and you lose your rights to your work. But this is actually a very smart move on Cuban's part. Why spend so much money to hire a designer to make your jersey when you can have someone do it for free? Sometimes even the public's work can be better than a designer's. No wonder why Cuban is so rich.

For those who aren't really business savvy, there's a term for what Cuban is doing. It's called crowdsourcing. He's using the cheap human capital that he has to try and get new ideas/concepts for his company. It's not an uncommon thing for businesses to do. Doritos has done it before by holding contests to help create their Super Bowl ads and look at how that's worked for them. The crowd responded with some really creative, low-budget commercials.

As to whether or not I will choose to participate in Mark Cuban's little game, I'm not sure yet. For those who are interested, the deadline to submit a jersey design is May 31st. You can read more here:

http://blogmaverick.com/2013/05/13/help-the-mavs-design-our-next-uniform/

Integrity and Company Values (More Like Me Venting a Month of Frustration)

So the past month I've been working hard at my poolside waitress job while trying to look for a full-time job. Something I've learned: it's hard to find a company that has integrity or upholds the company values that they claim they have.

I feel like a lot of the companies that I've been interviewing with the past month somewhat lack integrity. They falsely advertise the types of job positions they are looking to fill. I look for a marketing job and I end up at interviews for sales jobs. I understand that marketing itself is a kind of sales position, but this is the very questionable stuff. Like, I had 3 interviews for places where they are selling "$475 worth" of Texas Rangers tickets for $40. Clearly a sales position even though all of them touted a "marketing assistant" position.

Then there's the job that I'm at right now. The company claims to put their employees first, but so far I'm having trouble believing it. I asked for an early shift tomorrow so that I can get out in time to attend a mass for the one year anniversary for grandma's passing. They scheduled me for 2pm which roughly translates as I won't be done until 8. I also asked for Wednesday and Thursday off, but I was still scheduled for both days but I have Monday and Friday off. I texted my shift manager about it and then the pool manager personally called me to tell me that I was wrong for that. I admit that the way I went about it was wrong, but it would not have been a problem if they had even remembered that I had asked off. On top of that, they only sent out the schedule 2 hours ago and this is the schedule that starts tomorrow. They always send out new schedules at the last minute. If they sent out the schedule at least half a week in advance, there would be more time to sort out these problems. So in the attempt to make it so that I have those requested days off, they revised the schedule so that I would only be working for one day this week. It was supposed to be Tuesday, but lo and behold, they scheduled me to work on Thursday. Now I'm in a frantic scramble to try and switch with my coworkers instead of going through the management team again. It's not like this is the first time they scheduled me on a day that I requested off.

Don't even get me started about my paycheck. Over the past 4 weeks, I found that I'm missing over $200 total. Employees first, indeed. I just can't seem to catch a break with these waitressing jobs.

Anyways, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a job opportunity that Azim referred me to. I'm not to optimistic about my chances, though, since I managed to bomb my phone interview yesterday. I just really want to dig myself out of this ditch.