Do You Have World Cup Fever Yet?

What seemed like an eternity to soccer fans, when South Africa was announced as the host to the 2010 World Cup, is finally upon us. Of course the die hard soccer fans are ready for the first match (some were even counting down the days after the 2006 matches). There will be a lot of casual fans ready to join in on the fun. Driving around where I live you see lots of flags for the national team as well as other teams that are participating. I'd love to have a percentage of the money that will have been spent directly and indirectly on the 2010 World Cup in terms of advertising, promotion, merchandising, goods and services, and overall tie ins. One of the nice things about an event like the World Cup is that it gives us all a chance to be part of something much bigger than ourselves. It gives us a chance to connect with other fans. This World Cup in particular gives lots of opportunities to connect in all kinds of ways.

	Group A		Group B		Group C		Group D
	South Africa		Argentina		England		Germany
	Mexico		Nigeria		USA		Australia
	Uruguay		Korea Republic		Algeria		Serbia
	France		Greece		Slovenia		Ghana
	Group E		Group F		Group G		Group H
	Netherlands		Italy		Brazil		Spain
	Denmark		Paraguay		Korea DPR		Switzerland
	Japan		New Zealand		Ivory Coast		Honduras
	Cameroon		Slovakia		Portual		Chile

If the American team has a good run it will certainly help its popularity there. As time goes by soccer gets more and more popular but it is still dwarfed in popularity by the more traditional American sports. The sport is gaining popularity when you look at all the possibilities there are for boys and girls to play soccer. I imagine having England in the same group is probably a good thing as more Americans are likely to watch a match against England given the vast ties that we have to them. David Beckham was known to many Americans before, but since he has played some games in the U.S. now, he is a player that they identify with and therefore at least one match against England seems like a good idea.


In tournaments you never know what teams will catch fire, will there be any good Cinderella stories, or what matches will be the most exciting, but here are some of the games that are likely to be highly watched and anticipated:

• June 11th- South Africa-Mexico this is the opener for host nation and should give us a chance to see how much the home crowd motivates them to win
  

• June 12th- England- U.S.A

• June 13th- Germany-Australia- How will Germany do with their new captain and how will the other injuries they had effect their play
  

• June 14th- Netherlands-Denmark- These neighbors of Germany will be ready to play
  

• June 16th- Spain-Switzerland-

• June 17th- France- Mexico- You might remember that France lost the 2006 World Cup Finals, so they'll be out to capture what eluded them last time

• June 22th- Greece- Argentina- Will their recent social and political troubles give Greece that motivation needed to excel? Argentina is usually ready for a good World Cup go
  

• June 25th- Brazil-Portugal- Remember that Brazil was once a colony of Portugal, I'm sure this hasn't escaped conversations in Brazil, and Brazil has a storied World Cup history
  

There are all kinds of possibilities for match ups after the group play is over. Since North Korea and South Korea are both playing in the World Cup this go round, we could have them playing at some point (maybe even the finals?). The promotional possibilities are endless. Can you just see it, a Koren War without bullets being fired or people being killed, and hopefully no "police action" required. Maybe Italy, winner of the 2006 World Cup, will be more challenged by their group than I anticipate, but I think that they're ready to defend their title and are likely to advance past the groups at the very least.

Social Media And the 2010 World Cup

Social Media has exploded in the last few years, so this is the first World Cup where we're able to see an effect of the influence and how it is being used. Mashable suggests at least 5 Reasons Every Sports Fan Should Be On Social Media. I'm sure that Facebook will be full of all kinds of groups related to the World Cup, several soccer clubs already have fan sites in Facebook so, it'll be interesting to see what happens there. I'm even more curious to see what happens in the Twitterverse, while this is likely to take on several lives of its own in this sphere. Mashable wrote a a nice article about HOW TO: Follow the 2010 World Cup on Twitter, with some good tips on things you can do and who you might want to follow for scores, trivia, and so on. Many of your more traditional sports/news outlets like CNN, NY Times, Associated Press, BBC, Sports Illustrated will be tweeting from or about the World Cup. There will be lots of other sports/ news outlets tweeting about the World Cup. Twitter has set up a special site to keep up with the World Cup and they have a twitter account that uses an algoritum to keep track the top World Cup tweets. TweetMeme has also set up an account with World Cup tweets.


You can also use search terms and Hashtags to keep up with all of the World Cup tweets. #worldcup #wc2010 #2010worldcup were all widely used when Mashable wrote their story. Different search terms and Hashtags are being used depending upon what language you wish to follow in, for example,“Copa Mundial” is being used in Spanish tweets and “Coupe du Monde” in French and so on. There are also tags being used for the different national teams like #England and #USMNT for those national teams. Twitter and most of the various Twitter clients allow you to save searches, so you can experiment with saving various searches. In most cases it isn't difficult to delete the saved searches, so after the World Cup is over you should be able to get ride of any searches that you don't want saved any longer.

Twitter lists allow you to follow a group of users, so you can create your own list of Tweeters covering the World Cup, that you think are saying interesting things about it, or that you just want to interact with. Mashable has put together their own World Cup List, so you can follow this list or maybe use it as a basis to create your own list.

Twitter certainly won't have a lock on all of the World Cup action in the Social Media space. Mashable had another interesting piece about JibJab letting you make your own World Cup video placing you and some friends in the bodies of soccer players. I'm sure that the number of soccer related videos will be exploding on YouTube. In fact, Mashable did a post about the 10 Best World Cup Goals on YouTube.


South Africa is certainly hoping that hosting the 2010 World Cup will bring them economic and other benefits. Hosting a successful and memorable event can certainly help to put the country in a more positive light. I wish them the best. It is probably too late for you to do some kind of tie-in to the World Cup but it can certainly be fun to figure out what you could do and what creative ways you can enjoy the World Cup. It will certainly be interesting to see what comes out of the Social Media in the 2010 World Cup and what lessons we can learn from it. And hopefully we have some good soccer to enjoy. Do you have World Cup fever yet?

Photo Credit: Classic Soccer Ball 3 courtesy of fangol

May Edition of the Carnival of Productivity And GTD

Welcome to the May 2010 edition of The Carnival of Productivity And GTD. We're really impressed with the submissions that we've seen for this edition. We would, however, like to see more GTD related submissions.

Blog Carnivals continue to evolve here at Systems-Overload. We've decided to put the Better Life Blog Carnival on hold for a while to see what changes we might make or how we can bring it back into the line up. We've scheduled the next edition of the Family Life Blog Carnival towards the end of June. The next edition of the Carnival of Productivity and GTD is currently planned for September. The Holiday Spirit Blog Carnival for 2010 will be kicking off towards the end of November. We're thinking about adding a couple of more themes to the blog carnivals that we host, possibly one on Social Media topics and charity. As always, we'll need to see about our bandwidth! We're pleased with the number of entries that we're receiving for all of the carnivals, we do wish to challenge you all to look at things from different angles and perspectives. We love to see useful articles that can really help people. If you have any suggestions for topics you'd like to see covered in future editions, feel free to leave a comment. If you have a post that you'd like to submit, please do so via the submission from link. Thank you to everyone that submitted posts! Remember that by subscribing via your RSS reader or via email, that you won't miss the next blog carnival hosted here and you'll know when new material has been posted. Without further adieu, here is the May 2010 Edition of the Carnival of Productivity And GTD....

GTD

DaveOzment presents David Allen Is A Genius posted at Do You Dave Ramsey?, saying, "I wrote this article after spending a day implementating many of David Allen's principles. David Allen himself tweeted this article and replied in the comments."

DIY

euphoriaideas@aol.com presents 7 Benefits to Doing-It-Yourself (DIY) Series posted at Reaching Euphoria.

Productivity

Simona Rich presents How To Be Productive posted at Personal Development Blog, saying, "Do you find yourself struggling to accomplish your projects? Does your work consume your whole day? There are certain steps you can take to learn how to be productive."

Miche presents Healthier Productivity: An Easy Strategy to Prevent Burnout posted at Serenity Hacker.

Adam presents 7 Tips On How To Motivate Yourself To Achieve Your Own Long-Term Linear Goal So You Don't Burn Out posted at ZenTactics News Page.

SpiKe presents Does Work/Life Balance Really Exist? posted at Part-Time Wage Slave.

Organizing

Sheryl Owen presents 10 Tips to Minimize Junk Mail posted at Change of Address.

Learning

Greg Burkett presents 3 Brain Hacks to Easily Memorize New Info and Save Time While Studying posted at SaveTimeTips.com, saying, "Memorizing information for presentations and professional tests can be a real time drain -- if done inefficiently. Take advantage of your brain's natural tendencies to save time memorizing."

WP Ho presents Smart Learning Techniques that Turbocharge Your Memory posted at The Conscious Life, saying, "Say hello to accelerated learning with these proven strategies."

Rugbygirl Crosby presents Top 50 Computer Science Blogs posted at Masters in Computer Science, saying, "The following blogs exhibit life in the computer science field, from blogs for beginners to complex theoretical blogs that can challenge the best minds in this field."

Virginia Hensley presents Top 25 Free & Freemium Web Apps for College Students posted at Online Nursing, saying, "In the spirit of creating smart people, we offer 25 top free and freemium Web apps — some designed specifically to help college students. All apps listed below are designed to help you stay organized, be creative and to study and write smart."

Shannon Wills presents 20 TED Talks That Will Make You A Better Person posted at Online Christian Colleges, saying, "These lectures can inspire audience members to look inwards and explore what they stand for and how they hope to uphold these values. By knowing themselves, they can better understand the best routes towards expressing love to others and making both the individual and the world just that much better."

Careers

nissim ziv presents Online: Career Assessment Test : Top Career Assessment Tool in the Market posted at Job Interview Guide, saying, "The purpose of a professional career assessment is to have a clear written career vision – a career aspiration and a better understanding of how you operate."

nissim ziv presents Career Planning and Career Development posted at Job Interview Guide, saying, "Why it is so important to plan a career? People tend to lose sight of their career path as the years go by. And many never had that career plan to begin with."

That concludes the May 2010 edition of The Carnival of Productivity And GTD. You can submit your blog article to the next edition of The Carnival of Productivity And GTD using our "Submit an entry to “The Carnival of Productivity And GTD” submission form". Links to past editions, as well as the current scheduling of future editions can be found on our The Carnival of Productivity And GTD index page. Thank you to everyone that submitted articles for this edition! If you have any topics that you'd like to see covered in a future edition, or any feedback in general, feel free to leave a comment. Be sure to stay tuned for the Family Life Blog Carnival, as well as the normal articles that are posted here. Thank you.

Photo credit: Humming bird 1 courtesy of DebbieMous

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The Nannette Heron Foundation- Your Help Needed!

Ever since my mother passed away on September 11th, I've been wanting to set up a foundation and/or charity in her name. Not really knowing a lot about the appropriate laws and financial regulations, this is something that has been on the back burner, but never too far from my thoughts. I thought that I'd write up some of my thoughts on my idea and see what good advice I get on how I can move forward with this. I would like to at least get this kicked off with some phase running before September 11, 2011 (the 10th Anniversary of her death). What follows is very high level and I would certainly welcome help in filling the details.

Background

My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She underwent chemotheraphy and radiation treatment and even had a Mastectomy, but the cancer returned and spread. She died in her home in the Las Vegas area sometime between when the first and second planes struck the World Trade Center, so my mother's death will always be tied to September Eleventh. She was only 55 when she passed away.

What the Nannette Heron Foundation/Charity Will Strive to Do

Given the nature of her death, you can understand that I would like to raise money for cancer research and to be able to wipe out Breast cancer. But my mother was so much more that the cancer and that is why I wanted to also make the foundation/charity multi-faceted to reflect more of the person that she was and remains in my memory and in the memories of those that knew and loved her.

Cancer

Because my mother died of Cancer (and her mother as well), I'd like to see money raised for research, hospice care, and treatment. Giving donations to the Race for the Cure, American Cancer Society, and other possible Cancer organization. We had a very good experience with a hospice organization in the Las Vegas area and I believe that dealing with Cancer is hard enough for family and loved ones and would like to see more done to alleviate the pain and suffering that they go through as a result of dealing with terminal situations. Even when it isn't terminal, it still is a lot of stress and not easy to deal with.

Alzheimers

My mother was always fogetting where she put things and we found out that she had early Alzheimer's Disease. If the Cancer hadn't gotten her, is is likely that her memory would have further detteriorated. I'd like to see donations made for research, care, treatment of Alzeheimers

Nursing

My mother was a nurse and she loved working in the NICU (Neo-natial Intensive Care Unit), taking care of the babies that were born prematurely. She worked in several doctors offices and practices before she finally got her first nursing degree. She started studying to be a nurse at time in her life when most people already had established careers and most peple wouldn't dare to start another profession. Looking back this was really an extension fo what she had done much of her working life and was a lifelong goal. I'd like to see donations made for NICU research and care as well as a scholarship program for people studying nursing at the University of Michigan and Hurley Medical School (she received degrees from both institutions). I'd further like to see money applied for the betterment of nursing as a profession and for those working in nursing.

Orphanages & Foster Care

My mother loved kids and babies. You'd see her face just brighten up when she held a baby or when she was talking to little kids. She had a special talent or quality in this area. I'd like to see some money raised for orphanages and foster care, so that more kids can get a better start in life and have a family that loves them.

Animals

Anyone that knew my mother, knew what an animal lover she was. I just have to chuckle when I think of all the pets she talked my dad into having, when I know that he felt tied down with all the responsiblitly that goes along with taking care of a lot of pets. He always gave in because he loved her that much and she was so determined. I'd like to see some money raised to go to animal shelters and promoting the adoption of animals. I'd also like to see that money goes to ensuing the ethical treatment of animals.

How It Could Work

I can imagine having a website where people can make donations, primarily through Paypal and possibly credit cards. I'd like to see a Nobel Prise style endowment, so that the Foundation can continue long after I'm gone. Because I'm living in Germany, while much of my family lives in America, I see the need for some sort of international set-up. I'd like to make is possible for people to be able to give no matter where they are.

I want to keep administrative cost as low as possible. At the moment I'm not a rich man, nor do most of my family have a lot of money buring a hole in any of our pockets, so I'd like to set up something that gives as much bang for the buck as possible. I'm also raising my family and need to be able to have time for them and to earn a living substancial enough to be able to support them, so I want to keep the financial administration and time required as low as possible.

In talking to a fanancial advisor a few months ago, he suggested linking to other charities and foundations as a way of leveraging what they've already put into place and so that I didn't need to build everything from scratch. There are some charites that I respect and would like to work with them to help realize my dream of setting this up and making it successful. At the end of the day I want to raise money for causes that were close to my mom's heart and help to perserve her memory along the way.

Do you have any ideas on how I can pull this off or do you know of someone that I can get in contact with about this? Feel free to put your comments after the article or you can write me at systems.overload.timeATgooglemail.com.

Photo Credit: A glowing Nannette Heron with grandchildren, Caitlin, Jakob, and Dallas taken in 1999.