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How to use behavioral science to improve your experience

How to use behavioral science to improve your experience A beginner’s guide to applying behavioral economics, cognitive science, psychology, and neuromarketing. Photo by Tyler Nix on Unsplash So you want to apply behavioral science to your experience, but you’re not sure where to start? You’ve probably been hearing a lot of terms like behavioral economics, psychology, or neuromarketing being kicked around. What does it all mean, and can it really make your experience better for customers? Behavioral science is the study of why people make, and act, on decisions. The “behavioral science” umbrella includes behavioral economics, cognitive science, neuromarketing, and psychology. Principles are fair game as long as they’ve been stress-tested in a research environment and deal with how people make decisions. Photo by Hugo Rocha on Unsplash How can we apply behavioral science to experience design? Design, Marketing, and Customer Experience managers can use behavioral science in several ways: Frame creative communications: If you’re designing an email, TV commercial, poster, pamphlet, or a website, research is your friend. Behavioral science can help you leverage the science of customer persuasion. If you’re designing an email, TV commercial, poster, pamphlet, or a website, research is your friend. Behavioral science can help you leverage the science of customer persuasion. Design “choice architecture”: Choice architecture is the way we present a choice, and how this presentation influences decisions. For example: How many product options do we show? How is the product priced in relation to other products? What language do we use to describe sales and promotions? Photo by Franki Chamaki on Unsplash Here’s the one thing you need to know about people At the core of behavioral science is the idea that people don’t actually know what motivates them. We’re all more influenced by our “choice environment” than we realize. For example, “anchoring bias” states that people use the first piece of information they see to judge all later information. Photo by Krissia Cruz on Unsplash This principle was explored in a study conducted by research duo Tversky and Kahneman. Participants watched a roulette wheel that was rigged to stop only on 10 or 65. They were then asked to guess the percentage of the United Nations members from Africa. If subjects saw the roulette wheel stop on 10, they guessed a number that was 25% lower than people whose wheel stopped at 65. People didn’t realize that the “random” number on the roulette wheel had influenced their answer to an unrelated question. In other words, people greatly underestimate context in their decision-making. Also known as the fundamental attribution error, it’s a key principle of behavioral science. We’re all liars — why behavioral science is so important One of the major pitfalls of market research is you can’t trust what people tell you. Everything they say goes through an internal filter before they share it with the world. To make matters worse, customers will say one thing then do the total opposite. This doesn’t mean focus groups and other kinds of qualitative research aren’t useful. But it does mean we shouldn’t rely only on qualitative research to make experience design decisions. As legendary marketer David Ogilvy once said: “The trouble with market research is that people don’t think how they feel, they don’t say what they think and they don’t do what they say.” Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash How behavioral science can help — and hurt — you Make your strategy stronger. The rigor, depth, and age of the field mean it’s robust enough to stand up to scrutiny. When you use behavioral science, you’re improving the odds that your approach will be successful. Recognize invisible barriers. Behavioral science helps you get under the skin of why customers might be doing what they’re doing. By looking at the context of decisions, you can spot places where the environment is driving the “wrong” behavior. Behavioral science helps you get under the skin of why customers might be doing what they’re doing. By looking at the context of decisions, you can spot places where the environment is driving the “wrong” behavior. Drive customer choice. When you use behavioral science, you increase the probability that customers will do what you want them to. You no longer have to rely on “gut feel” or qualitative research to make expensive and risky decisions. Instead, you can base your approaches on proven, peer-reviewed research. Hidden dangers of behavioral science The law of small numbers. Daniel Kahneman used this phrase to describe people’s tendency to make generalizations based on small amounts of data. Be wary of betting the farm on small experiments. When an experiment is successful in a pilot group, continue to test it in different environments. That way you can make sure it works across a representative sample of customers before rolling it out to everyone. Behavioral science interventions can go badly. Consider the case of United Airlines, who restructured their yearly bonus as a lottery with huge prizes. Rather than give a smaller cash payment to everyone, United gave everyone a chance at a big prize. United re-framed their annual bonus into what they felt would be a more attractive payoff. But they failed to consider the powerful “loss aversion” principle: People are happier with a small guaranteed payoff than with a chance at a much bigger prize. Within days United had to withdraw the lottery plan and return to their normal financial payout scheme.

https://medium.com/choice-hacking/how-to-use-behavioral-science-to-improve-your-experience-123da6618586

['Jennifer Clinehens']

2020-11-11 14:31:38.587000+00:00

['Marketing', 'Startup', 'Business', 'User Experience', 'Psychology']

Why You Should Ditch the Keyboard and Pick Up a Pencil Now and Then

Our love affair with all things digital has brought many great inventions into the world. But in our enthusiasm for computerized products and services we could be losing sight of an extraordinarly powerful tool for teasing out the kind of creative insights that fueled the technology revolution in the first place —namely, the hand-drawn doodle, sketch, or snippet. There are two arguments for incorporating this tool into your creative arsenal: one, research shows that ideas can flow from hand to mind as fluidly as from mind to hand, and two, visual thinking comes more naturally to us than language-based cognition. The nice thing is, you don’t have to be Leonardo da Vinci to wield a pencil or its modern equivalent to positive effect. In fact, the person who invented one of the most popular products on earth had no formal training in drawing, yet was able to harness pencil and paper to propel his invention from concept to market. Here is his story. A Milkshake, An Inventor, and An Idea Sometime in the 1930s a man sat with his young daughter inside a San Francisco soda fountain called the Varsity Sweet Shop. He watched as the counterman set down a milkshake in front of her, two paper straws poking up from the tall glass containing the frothy liquid. The girl beamed happily up at the treat. But there was a problem: how to drink it? The tops of the straws stood well above the little girl’s head. She could try elevating her diminutive frame by placing her hands on the counter and raising herself up, but it would be difficult to sustain the pose for too long. She could grasp the glass with two hands and lower it down to her lap, but it was heavy and uncomfortably cold to the touch. She could bend the straws downward, but the sharp crease resulting would choke off the supply of air and liquid, defeating their purpose. She could ask her father to find a few telephone books to lift her up, except that she might fall off the precarious prop. In business school, professors call situations of this kind a pain point. A pain point is the moment when someone encounters an obstacle preventing him or her from realizing a goal. Fortunes large and small have been built by people keen enough to discern a pain point afflicting a potential customer base, and then to devise a solution customers were willing to pay for. Such a person was the girl’s father. His name was Joseph B. Friedman. Friedman was a born inventor; he conceptualized his first product, a lighted pencil, at age fourteen. He was awarded the first of nine eventual US patents at twenty-two. Fig. 2: Concept sketch for a flexible straw, by Joseph B. Friedman. 1930s. Joseph B. Friedman Papers, 1915–2000, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. Leaving the fountain parlor that day, Friedman went home and played around with an idea bubbling in his head. An inveterate scribbler, he pulled out a piece of paper and pencil, and began to rough out an idea for a straw that would bend over the lip of the glass (Fig. 2). He also cobbled together a makeshift prototype out of a couple of straws he’d taken from the sweet shop. From these efforts came his concept for the Flex-Straw, the now ubiquitous drinking tube with the ridged section that allows for bending without crimping. It would take Friedman another decade to manufacture and ship his first order. The Flex-Straw proved such a hit with the market — hospitals especially — that twenty years later he could sell his rights to the invention to a large corporation for a considerable sum. The story of Joseph Friedman, a young girl, and a milkshake represents a classic case of opportunity meeting preparation. Integral to that story is the role of Friedman’s initial sketch, undoubtedly one of many he produced in the process of inventing a bendable straw. Together these sketches performed four critical functions in fueling his imagination: 1: Idea capture Ideas can be fleeting. Putting down his initial thoughts rapidly lessened the risk of Friedman’s forgetting them because of the brain’s limited capacity for retaining short-term memories. 2: Idea development Few ideas are born fully hatched, like Athena from the head of Zeus. Most require considerable refinement in progressing from concept to executable product. In Friedman’s case, his early scratchings would have been followed up with increasingly detailed and precise delineations, culminating in the mechanically drafted documents submitted for his patent application and for machine tooling. Back of envelope sketches by Joseph B. Friedman. Joseph B. Friedman Papers, 1915–2000, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution 3: Idea visualization Externalizing ideas does several useful things. It gives creatives something they can show others to get critical feedback. It builds a memory warehouse they can consult in the future. And it gives them a powerful tool for convincing others to buy into a creative idea. Friedman, for instance, was able to raise venture capital for his scheme by showing prospective investors a solution to a tangible problem. Writers do something similar by submitting queries and proposals to literary agents and publishers. Imagine either trying to achieve their ends merely by waving their arms around or talking a good story. Those are the methods of the huckster, not the visionary. 4: Brain and body conditioning Writing and drawing not only advance a project, they also bolster mental and physical states generally. Numerous investigations indicate that recurring motions of the hand energize regions of the brain associated with creativity and long-term neurological health. Video produced by my colleague in creativity Chris Dunmire of Creativity Portal. How to Do It Develop the skill Like riding a bicycle, drawing is a skill that anyone can learn. Abundant resources exist to help you get started. Sunni Brown’s The Doodle Revolution, Dan Roam’s The Back of the Napkin, and Betty Edwards’ Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain are just three volumes that come to mind. Online and classroom-based courses are valuable sources of instruction too. Fig. 3: Notebook of Joseph L. Friedman. 1958. Joseph B. Friedman Papers, 1915–2000, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. Be prepared Keep the tools for writing and drawing close at hand. Small notebooks and a smartphone outfitted with a stylus are universal favorites, since they can be slipped into a pocket for quick access. A journal on your nightstand and waterproof paper in the shower are excellent substitutes for locations in the home where pockets are commonly in short supply. Fixed surfaces, whether wall-mounted drawing boards or walls treated with special paints or adhesive panels, are better suited for places where collaboration, instruction, information sharing, and large-scale diagramming or picture-making occur. Make it a habit Author and design hacker David Kadavy writes 100 words every day immediately on waking up, exploiting the fertile creative period in between waking and sleep. Julia Cameron’s bestselling book The Artist’s Way ups the ante to about 750 words in her famous Morning Pages dictate. Complement routinized brain dumps throughout the day with other modes of writing or drawing, be they long-form, spontaneous scribbling, sketching, mind mapping, journaling, or quick captures of brain bursts. Bonus Fun Fact Did you know that the earliest known straws date from around 3000 BCE? And that for centuries they’d been fashioned by hand in various materials, from gold to grass reeds, until a fellow named Marvin Chester Stone patented the first industrially-produced paper version in 1888? Neither did I, until I began wading through the history of the drinking tube while researching my book on creativity in home environments. My point? That real-life creativity is far more likely to take the form of a tweak than a leap, to be evolutionary rather than revolutionary, like Friedman’s Flex-Straw. But that’s okay, because it means that it lies within the power of nearly everyone to make the world a little better one small step at a time.

https://medium.com/the-innovation/why-you-should-ditch-the-keyboard-and-pick-up-a-pencil-now-and-then-9151a29138ab

['Donald M. Rattner']

2020-09-11 19:30:49.141000+00:00

['Creativity', 'Innovation', 'Design', 'Psychology', 'Self Improvement']

Getting Back On The Shoulders Of Giants

Photo by Mattias Milos on Unsplash Giants in mythology are ferocious and terrifying beasts that are feared and often subjugated, lest they take over the universe. In Norse mythology, they dwelt in the infertile lands of Jotunheim, sworn enemies of the gods, destroyers of peace and order. Gods and humans enjoyed luscious and protected realms. In Welsh mythology, the pesky upstart giant Rhitta Gawr grew tired of serving the Kings of England and listening to their petty concerns. “He was stronger, braver, any bigger than any of them — despite their crowns and fancy royal cloaks.” He attacked and slew all but one of the kings , the legendary King Arthur. We side against the giants, but gods and men have their moments too. Wind forward from the 5th, 6th and 7th centuries; past the Viking Age and the rule of King Arthur and we start to see a re-characterisation of the giant. No longer the barbaric destroyer of peace and civilisation but a giant in thinking emerges — a phrase for someone who pushes knowledge and understanding beyond mere mortal comprehension. The colossal stature starts to refer not to the height of the creature but the distance beyond ordinary thinking that they can see. In 1695 Sir Isaac Newton wrote to his contemporary Robert Hooke, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulder of giants.” Now an iconic phrase it was a humble recognition of the contribution to Newton’s discoveries by those who went before. The words are then carried over to Stephen Hawking who writes about the trailblazers of physics and astronomy: Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, Einstein and of course Newton in his book, On The Shoulders of Giants. And now, when society stands on a sharp ledge, the opportunity to bravely venture into a new way of thinking on one side or attempt to re-create a past that we’re starting to recognise as unsustainable which way shall we turn? We must move in one direction. Have we been standing on the shoulders of medium-sized people for too long? A virus rages, unemployment soars, and the earth continue to suffer under a mass of waste and global warming. Isn’t it time to amplify some new voices? Giants in science and mythology share two characteristics. Firstly their stature; be it physical or metaphorical. Secondly, their position in society, they are coming from a position outside of a status quo realm. In Norse mythology the giants were Utangard spirits, meaning they were from “beyond the enclosure”, quite literally outsiders. Their existence represented a threat to those gods and humans of the ‘Innangard’, ‘inside the enclosure’. The Vikings recognised the essential nature of all creatures to provide balance in the universe. Gods and men are not infallible, and the giants keep them in check, as in Welsh mythology. They are a form of resistance. Who Are Our Giants Now? Who are your giants? Who are the people whose words and actions drive a new kind of future? Who are those who provide resistance to the gods of the now? Who of those can see beyond to another future; maybe better or maybe worse but a vision that transcends the stubborn denial or ignorance of most of us. It’s up to you whose shoulders you stand on, but I have three, probably more. They are women of different ages, from different continents and with various missions but who share the criteria of a giant. They see possibilities; they see dangers in the status quo and through their thinking allow me to see hope in another future. Malala Yousafzai Malala was eleven years old when the Taliban closed the schools for girls in her village in Pakistan, but she continued to speak out for the rights of education for women. The dangers involved cannot have been underestimated by Malala or her father, a champion of education for all. Three years later in 2012 a masked gunman boarded a bus and sought out Malala, shooting her in the head for her crime of speaking out for education. “The terrorists thought that they would change my aim and stop my ambitions, but nothing changed in my life except this; weaknesses, fear and hopelessness died, strength, power and courage were born.” Here she speaks in front of the U.N Youth Assembly in 2013, a year after the attack. Eight years on she is the youngest person ever to have received a Nobel Peace Prize, she has graduated from The University of Oxford, and she remains a vocal champion of free education for all children globally. A giant of courage, of vision Greta Thunberg Greta! I know, she’s everybody’s giant. Except perhaps the middle-aged men on talk shows who took time out from their otherwise critical job to ridicule the actions of a teenager with Asperger’s. Nice! If we’re talking of allegorical dimensions, this equates to the height of a leprechaun. We don’t look to this teenage climate activist for fluffy optimistic advice, she presents a darker view, but she’s also leading a movement of young people and activists. She shows us emotional turmoil, but she shows us a solution in her actions. She’s mobilised numbers in the millions across the world for action. You’ve probably seen her impassioned speech at the U.N Climate Action Summit 2019. A giant of action and resolution. “We are at the beginning of mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth.” Carlota Perez My third giant today is a British-Venezuelan researcher, lecturer and expert on the history of technical revolutions, amongst many other things. Carlota is currently pushing an agenda for a better world based on sustainable economic growth and new intangible models of measurement. When discussions among world leaders are focusing on the health vs economy argument, Carlota is painting a picture of a future of wellbeing; a more equitable existence for humans and a sustainable path for the earth. The battle between Green and Growth is sometimes presented as a winner take all fight, but Carlota sees past this and gives us options to drive a different narrative. Quite literally a breath of fresh air. Her ideas are big and involve a change at a governmental level which depending on which part of the world you are from, can feel hopeless. But her latest article Imagining A Good Life In A Green and Fair Society talks about cultural obstacles to a green and equitable future; negativity, consumption analysis and the way we convey our message. These things are up to us consumers. We don’t need government direction to tell us to consume less or be mindful of the world around us. She’s long been a proponent of Universal Basic Income which finally seems to be getting a look in across different cities on the globe. It’s that a system of capitalism that under-represents so many people on the world is so staunchly defended and alternative propositions kicked down the road.

https://medium.com/an-injustice/standing-on-the-shoulders-of-medium-sized-people-c28fba022df0

['Sarah Thomas']

2020-08-13 21:16:14.451000+00:00

['Storytelling', 'Climate Change', 'Education', 'Society', 'Writing']

Welcome to my story.

Welcome to my story. Excitement, science fiction, cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria! First of all, I really am glad that you have taken the time to come visit my blog. I am certainly new to this medium, and writing in general. Which is why the Word Crimes picture is up there from the song by the same title. You can find it here. Now, why do I have the picture there, well it is because I will for the most part be writing this story rough draft style. There maybe grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors. Though I will try my hardest to avoid those when possible. Let’s get to why you should follow my blog. I love writing fictional stories, but have never done so in a public place. As such, I wanted to give it a try, and here we are. This story I am about to write for you is called Alice. It will follow a female robot as she becomes the first self aware machine in human history by a fluke of nature. Like in Jurassic Park, life finds a way. You and I are going to follow Alice through her “life” as she discovers what it means. There will be adventure, there will be some adult content, there will be fun. Also I would love to hear your feedback as we go. We can sort of make this interactive! I am not afraid of criticism, however please keep it constructive. There is no need for trolls here. I want to aim for 3 pages a week, though we will see how long I can keep that up for. I love you beautiful creatures. ~Naomi

https://medium.com/a-l-i-c-e/welcome-to-my-story-92b1b746deaf

['Naomi Hanson']

2016-07-29 16:20:07.571000+00:00

['Fiction', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Science Fiction', 'Storytelling', 'Books']

I Went Viral And Got 674 Followers on News Break

I Went Viral And Got 674 Followers on News Break Playing it safe seems to be the worst thing you can do for News Break Screenshot from the author Like many Medium writers, I started posting and publishing my pieces on News Break, relatively later than many writers I know. According to Ash Jurberg, News Break is a tech company that gives writers the opportunity to receive a monthly retainer based on views and referrals. As a reader, I use News Break for local news since it gives me access to local outlets. As a writer, I haven’t really gotten that into it. I decided to hop onto the News Break bandwagon of other writers on Medium joining News Break. My philosophy going into News Break was to post the pieces that did well on Medium onto News Break. First, I decided to post my piece about the rise and fall of Jared from Subway, which is my highest performing piece on Medium. I then didn’t look at News Break for a whole day. But I looked back a day later to see 59 comments on it. Hearing about the notorious toxicity of many News Break comments, I decided not to check them. However, I, unfortunately, did decide to check them about an hour later, and I wish I didn’t. Readers just tend to be more crass and blunt, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s definitely a more immature audience than Medium. I would simply refresh the page to see significantly more comments every single time. I was pretty psyched and got the typical dopamine rush you get from an exploding article. But apparently, stats took a whole day to refresh, so I had no idea how many views or impressions my piece was getting. The stats finally did refresh some time before midnight that night, and that piece about Jared drove most of my traffic below: Screenshot from the author What have I learned from my progress so far on Newsbreak? Absolutely nothing. Most of the pieces I’ve posted have over 1,000 views on Medium, but only one has done well on Newsbreak, with over 1 million impressions and over 250,000 views. I don’t know what works well, and what doesn’t, and I don’t claim to. I post three articles a week since that’s what other Medium writers told me to do. I was later to the game than other writers, but I’ll still re-post occasionally. But the general rule, which I think my friend Matt Lillywhite can attest to, is to post, publish, hope for the best, then move onto the next one. Matt has published 359 posts and has 2709 followers, and I’ve read most of his pieces on Medium. You don’t know what might do well and what might not. And any degree of certainty you feel will likely be wrong. The rule that I originally thought of “what does well on Medium does well on News Break” is not necessarily true. And I thought it was just a different platform in general, with more newsy pieces performing better since it’s a news platform. That hasn’t entirely been true either. I notice that self-improvement is not the drive on News Break like it is on Medium, and some writers have said relationship-oriented pieces do better. It seems like I’m a complete one-hit-wonder on Newsbreak, and that’s fine. It’s not my main platform, and I’m glad it’s giving me more exposure for my work. Medium is still my main gig and always will be. As a reader, what I don’t like about News Break is that my publisher account and my reader account are not linked, so every time I like or comment on a Medium writer’s piece on News Break, I am “A user from Baltimore.” News Break has been different from Medium in that it’s novel and exciting. I don’t know much about the company, and would certainly like to reference Ash’s article about the history of News Break and the ins and outs of the platform. I certainly hope News Break isn’t a fad because it provides the opportunity for Medium writers to syndicate and gain a new audience. I have been lucky in a lot more ways than not. I was lucky to be accepted as a News Break writer since I’ve heard of other writers on Medium not being accepted. I have been lucky to have my first article be such a big hit, and I’ve been lucky to be one of the first Medium writers to surpass a big benchmark on News Break. I have been lucky in more ways than I can count just relying on zero intentionality and blind faith to do well on the platform. And it’s because of that luck that I don’t want to convey the message that “I was able to do this and you can too.” But you don’t know until you try it out. Screenshot from the author Overall, I encourage any writer on Medium who has the opportunity to seek a new outlet for their previous pieces on News Break. Sure, some people might suggest you ramp up the “clickbaitiness” on your News Break pieces, but it’s still too soon to tell for me. What I will say is it’s a relatively no-risk proposition to simply syndicate your pieces across News Break — I have spent about 10 minutes total putting my pieces from one platform to the other, so it’s not particularly time-consuming and you’ve already put in the work. My strategy is likely not perfect, and I do likely need to post more and revise my headlines, but I’m happy with the start so far. I initially wanted to play the “wait and see” strategy to see how other people did on News Break before exploring it myself. I will say now that that was a mistake since publishing on News Break tends to be a low effort proposition. There’s a lot of uncertainty about News Break from the Medium writing community, but playing it safe seems to be the worst thing you can do for News Break.

https://medium.com/the-partnered-pen/i-went-viral-and-got-674-followers-on-news-break-8f35d4f31112

['Ryan Fan']

2020-12-07 02:57:25.021000+00:00

['Freelancing', 'Nonfiction', 'Writing', 'Marketing', 'Self']

How to Build an Email List of 500 Subscribers in a Month

I’ve made a decision. 2021 is going to be the year I finally, finally, go all in on trying to make self-publishing a thing in my life. My plan is simple. I’m going to publish romance novels. They’re my first love. I found my traditional publishing niche in children’s literature, but I started out to be a romance writer. I decided to go with a pen name for a couple of reasons. Reason one: see children’s literature. I don’t want to write both middle grade books and smut with the same name. Reason two: I’m a teacher at heart and I want to be able to teach the things I’m learning to other people. That means starting from scratch and doing things that can be recreated. I don’t want to mess up my experiments by using my own already-established audience. So, I have a pen name. And a month ago, I created a brand new email list. You know — with zero subscribers. Photo: Author So, there’s a screenshot of my Convertkit subscriber chart. Here’s what I did in the last month to build my email list. Offer a Little More What you can see is that I started the account on November 4, so exactly a month ago. It’s hard to see but I had three sporadic followers between November 4 and November 16. Those are actually some of my favorites, because they represent people who read one of my stories and really liked it. I put a link to an expanded epilogue at the back of my first published short read. And three people out of the ten or so who actually bought the book downloaded it and made it onto my list. That’s 30 percent, ya’ll. Yay! It’s a good indication that my landing page at the back of my books will do okay, when I have more readers entering my funnel. What to do: When you put work out into the world, always have a way of capturing readers who enjoyed it. For fiction, a little more story is a great idea. An expanded epilogue, like I did, is one idea. You can also write a short story that answers a question or tells the story of a popular secondary character. Another idea is to just have a generic free story that you offer readers who might have enjoyed what they just read. This is a good idea, for when you don’t have time to write a new story. Ask Your Friends There’s a little blip at November 16. That represents me posting a little note on my personal Facebook wall that said simple this: Who do I know who reads romance books? About fifteen people either liked my post or left a comment. I PM’d each of them and told them that I have a new pen name and I’m publishing romance — it’s a secret, but would they be interested in joining my email list? If they said yes (they all did), I asked for their email address and then added them to my list manually. What to do: Just what I did. Ask a pointed question, designed to find out who you know who is interested in what you’re up to. I wanted to make sure I only added romance readers to my list, because I’m trying to preserve my Amazon also boughts (I don’t want Amazon’s algorithm to get mixed up about what people who buy my book are also interested in.) Rather than just posting a landing page link to Facebook (although, why not try that, too?) You can ask a question that is designed to bring your friends who really might be interested in what you’re doing out of the woodwork. Then reach out to each of them personally. Get their email address and add them yourself. This is a nice first step to building your list, because it’s pretty much guaranteed to work. And I promise, going from zero to a few subscribers is a good boost. Think About Where You Might Already Have Some Subscribers You’ll notice a big old spike in my subscribers on November 24. That was about 280 subscribers. After pretty much a whole week of not adding anyone and feeling sorry for myself, I started to think about where I might already have some emails I can add to my list. I remembered that three years ago, I’d added a short story to a site called Prolific Works. It was a romance story, so I knew that the people who downloaded it were romance readers. They were people who found it because they were looking for a romance story to read. So — full disclosure. Adding people who two or three years ago downloaded a story from a different pen name isn’t ever going to lead to a super healthy, engaged email list. Because those people likely don’t remember joining any list and for sure not my pen name’s list. But I added them anyway, then sent an email out letting them know what I’d done, linking them to my book on Amazon, and inviting them to unsubscribe if they didn’t want to be on my list. Fifty took me up on that. And only about 10 percent even opened my email. Here’s what I’m planning to do about it: This week, I’m going to tag all those folks in Convertkit. I’ll email them and ask them to click a link if they WANT to stay, then remove everyone else at the end of a week. It’ll shrink my list, but leave me with something healthier. I anticipate that the vast majority of this group of subscribers will be removed. BUT, I’m not sorry I did this. Because having an email list of 250 or so really lit a fire under my butt. I wanted more, so I started thinking about how to get more. Another place I might have found subscribers, but I won’t because I’m trying to preserve my experiment, is in my Ninja Writers list. I could write a blog post designed to figure out which of my followers read romance books, then send the link in an email, and finally send the people who click that link a landing page to join my new list. What to do: Think about where you might already have subscribers you can seed your list with. It might seem on first glance that you’re doomed if you don’t have something like this. Trust me, I’m only including this because you might have some subscribers laying around and I don’t want you to forget about them. But all isn’t lost if you don’t. Of all my new subscribers, these are the least effective and I expect to remove the vast majority of them in the next week or two. Host a Giveaway Starting on December 1 in my chart, you’ll see a steady influx of subscribers. Those are folks who joined my list via a giveaway I’m currently hosting. I spent some time thinking about what I could offer that would be valuable to readers of my genre, but wouldn’t be so generic that I’d wind up with a bunch of subscribers who only wanted to win my prize, but otherwise would never engage with me. So, something like a Kindle or a gift card to Amazon wouldn’t work. I realized that people who read my genre are voracious readers and they tend to read on e-readers and are almost always Kindle Unlimited subscribers. Because they read so much that buying hard copies of all their books would be too expensive. So I decided to choose five popular titles and offer paperback copies in my giveaway. I called it a Book Boyfriend giveaway and added in . . . um . . . another kind of boyfriend. Screenshot: author I’m five days into a seven day giveaway and I’ve added more than 300 subscribers to my list. Screenshot: author When I sent another email to my list, my open rate increased to 23 percent. That’s pretty much industry standard and includes those subscribers who will eventually be removed from my list. I put some money into this method. For me, it was important to get my email list off the ground and I was willing (and able) to invest in it. I bought King Sumo for a onetime $49 payment. And I’ll buy those books and the, uh, other thing, which I anticipate will cost about $100. And then I bought some Facebook ads. I’ve spent $50 a day on ads. In all, I’ll spend $350 on advertising my giveaway. So a total of $500. I love King Sumo, because it rewards people for sharing your giveaway with more entries. It also gives more entries for things like following social media. As a result of my giveaway, besides adding more than 300 email subscribers so far, I’ve built my Instagram and Facebook followers by about the same amount. I didn’t set up Twitter until three days in, but it’s built up some as well. Obviously, I could have built my list faster with a bigger ad spend. And I could have spent much less and still built some list. You can run a Facebook ad for as little as $1 a day. You can also find free places to advertise your giveaway. I’ve added mine to Facebook groups dedicated to my genre, when it’s allowed. I have NOT shared it with my friends because I’m really trying to keep my pen name secret. What to do: Come up with a prize that will appeal to exactly the folks you want on your list, and host a giveaway. Be really thoughtful about your prize. You want it to be something valuable — to the people you want to attract. You’ll want to have your social media accounts set up for this, too. Because if you use King Sumo, you can use your giveaway to build those as well. Set them up and get a little content up in them. I spent about two weeks starting up my Facebook and Instagram accounts. I wish I’d set up my Twitter account as well. I honestly didn’t think I was going to do Twitter at all, but changed my mind three days in. Put aside some money to pay for Facebook ads for this one, if you can. Even if it’s just $20. It’ll make a difference. And share your giveaway link everywhere you can think to. Offer a Reader Magnet A reader magnet is just what it sounds like: a free read that draws readers to you. I used a site called Story Origin to host my reader magnet. I did that around the same time I started my giveaway. Story Origin is in beta — and it has been for a long, long time — so it’s totally free right now. In the last four days I’ve added 25 people to my email list via my reader magnet. Screenshot: Author I used a novella that I wrote a long time ago as my reader magnet. At some point I may remove it and put it up for sale, but for now I’m happy to give it away. Story Origin is a site for all kinds of writers. You can put a reader magnet up there no matter your genre — including non-fiction. In addition, you can join newsletter swaps and other people’s giveaways or sales. What to do: Head over to Story Origin and join. Create a reader magnet and get it up on the site. Once you have some people on your email list, start looking for newsletter swaps and giveaways you can join. You can add your reader magnet to Prolific Works, too, by the way. It took me about three years to give away 280 copies, but it’s not nothing! Wrap-Up I started from scratch with a pen name and a brand new Convertkit account on November 4, 2020. I’m writing this post on December 4, 2020, one month later. I used a free account at Convertkit — which allows me up to 2000 followers before I have to start paying. I can’t do automated emails with a free account, but for my purposes (building an email list for my fiction that I’m just barely starting to publish), that’s okay. I can send a single automated incentive email with my opt-in attached, even with a free account. I spent $100 on the items to offer as a prize in a giveaway and spent another $350 in ads and paid $49 for King Sumo, to host the giveaway. A total of $499. I currently have 561 email subscribers, one month after starting to build that list. I’ll come back in another month for another update, where I’ll also be able to let you know whether the list made a difference when I launch a new book.

https://medium.com/the-write-brain/how-to-build-an-email-list-of-500-subscribers-in-a-month-8c8e99f5967c

['Shaunta Grimes']

2020-12-04 18:34:08.430000+00:00

['Writing', 'Creativity', 'Productivity', 'Business', 'Email Marketing']

Seven Dangerous Lies Trump Spread About the Coronavirus

Seven Dangerous Lies Trump Spread About the Coronavirus Believing in this fake-news can cost you your life Source: NBC News Unfortunately, we are living in Post-Truth and the pandemic has been the biggest testament to that. The last nine months have been fraught with beserk misinformation often times sugar-coated with flimsy research. President Trump seems to have prized the cake for being the leading progenitor of medically incorrect pandemic literature. While it is virtually impossible to call out the fluff from the towering peaks of untruth, it is worthwhile to remind ourselves of the facts that pose serious medical risks for all. Here’s are seven lies that are absolutely ridiculous and you better be careful with them to save your life. Anti-malarial drugs can treat Coronavirus The POTUS has shown tremendous confidence in hydroxychloroquine as an effective treatment for the virus. Having stockpiled 63 million doses, one would expect the belief to be backed by some scientific rationale. However, the FDA has warned against taking the drug. Not to mention, that large observational studies have concluded that the drug has no effect on Covid-19 patients. Furthermore, the Trump administration's testing czar, Brett Giroir hs also cautioned against the consumption of this medicine. In case, you do contract the virus, please do not rely on self-medication of chloroquine. It's advisable to seek a proper medical opinion on the prognosis. Coronavirus is as deadly as common flu Trump has repeatedly drawn on home-spun data to compare Coronavirus to common flu. The latest instance occurred on 6th October when he was fresh out of Walter Reed. Experts from across the globe have warned against this misconception and have stated that the virus is much more hazardous than the flu. In terms of the statistics as well as in terms of their behavior the two viruses are not comparable. Any allusion to the flu would potentially mellow down the dangers associated with the virus, risking public health and safety. It is extremely important that we take this crisis seriously and refrain from comparisons that embolden callousness. 99 percent of the cases are totally harmless On 4th July, Trump said that 99% of the cases are harmless and people should not be too bothered about the virus. Quickly defusing this belief WHO launched a statement establishing that about 15% of the cases can be severe with around 5 percent being critical. Moreover, Dr. Fauci has also lambasted the growing misconception that Covid-19 is predominantly a mild disease. Considering the voluminous medical opinion urging for caution, you should be as careful of the virus as you should be of falsehoods like this one. Children are immune to Covid-19 On multiple occasions has the President claimed that people from ages 0–18 are virtually immune to the virus. However, this claim has been proven wrong time and time again by prominent medical experts and pandemic data. Studies conducted in the US and China have suggested that though children are showing mild symptoms it does not imply that they do not contract the virus. In fact, the CDC believes that about 7% of the cases have occurred in children. Additionally, because they do not show symptoms, children can act as potential carriers of the contagion for older adults. With little research conducted on the long-term impacts of the virus, we are playing in the dark about what the future might hold for the infected children. Therefore, falling for this fad would be exposing oneself to unforeseen dangers in the future. The vaccine will be ready by Election Day Donald Trump has expressed his trust in a vaccine becoming available before Election Day. With less than two weeks to 3rd November, experts have warned against waiting for a cure before the deadline. On catching the disease now, one must not wait for the vaccine and immediately follow the established medical protocol. Waiting for a cure must not deter you from deferring your medical help under the pretext that a vaccine would happen in a short while. Such a false belief can lead to extremely devastating consequences. Injecting Bleach kills Covid-19 On April 23, Trump stated that injecting bleach can be a potential measure against the virus. In his defense, he did roll back the statement and claimed that he was being sarcastic. However, after his remarks, the damage has been done with disinfectant poisoning cases shooting up across the country. In an unrelated case, around 500 people succumbed to methanol poisoning in Iran over Covid related rumors. This shows how dangerous unscientific claims can be when they stem from the helm of leadership. For all intents and purposes, intravenous injections of disinfectants will do nothing but take life and the populace must be crystal clear about that. Mexicans are responsible for spreading the virus The President has held no barrels when accusing Mexicans of spreading the contagion in the US borders. With the extreme xenophobia aside, this statement has come under scrutiny by medical experts. Such a belief is baseless and incendiary with the medical reports identifying no relation between the spread and immigration. Even after we have overcome the virus, such strains of hatred can continue to plague our society if we fall for such fallacious beliefs. Falling for this lie would make you more susceptible to unwarranted stereotypes.

https://medium.com/discourse/seven-dangerous-lies-trump-spread-about-the-coronavirus-cbe9dae0689d

['Shourya Agarwal']

2020-10-25 20:05:26.903000+00:00

['Election 2020', 'Politics', 'Health', 'Coronavirus', 'Science']

Digital Media Is Suffocating — and It’s Facebook and Google’s Fault

Laura Bassett • May 6, 2019 Newsrooms across the country are laying off journalists, because the ad dollars generated from their work all filter up to Big Tech. Roughly 2,400 journalists and media staffers in the United States lost our jobs in the first few months of 2019. I was laid off in January, after nearly a decade in my newsroom. The Huffington Post had hired me in November 2009 to write what Arianna Huffington called the “flesh and blood” stories of the recession — people losing their jobs, plunging underwater on their mortgages, hocking their wedding rings to put food on the table. My first beat was economic suffering. I didn’t understand at the time that journalism was staring down its own Great Recession. We at HuffPost knew the cuts were coming. They’d been the subject of happy-hour chats for weeks. Verizon, our parent company, had declared our website essentially worthless in late 2018 and directed staff reductions across the board. Even so, my own layoff came as a shock. As a senior politics reporter for the site who represented it on cable news every weekend, my job had felt like an integral part of my identity. In a brief, surreal phone call, my boss told me she’d had to make some tough choices and that my job had been eliminated. I had five hours to clean off my desk, turn in my laptop, phone, and badge, and say goodbye to the newsroom that had been a second home to me. A sympathetic colleague handed me a miniature bottle of red wine and a plastic cup. In the days that followed, what was harder than losing my job was having to watch the whole industry start to crumble along with it. BuzzFeed laid off 15 percent of its staff the day after Verizon eliminated my job at HuffPost; Vice layoffs came soon after. Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the country, cut 400 jobs from local papers. In April, more job cuts hit the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which has shrunk to less than a tenth of its former size over the past few years, leaving just 33 journalists to cover a metro area of two million people. Last week, the New Orleans Times-Picayune was folded into a competitor, ending a 182-year run, with its entire staff, including 65 editors and reporters, let go. Tom Feran, a 66-year-old reporter at the Plain Dealer who heroically volunteered to be laid off to save the job of a younger staffer, aptly described the feeling as that of “a cartoon character running off a cliff into space and then looking down and noticing I’m not standing on solid ground anymore. Or like the end of ‘She’s So Heavy,’ by the Beatles, which just suddenly ends.” Google and Facebook dominate the digital ad market, consuming more than 60 percent of all revenue. I have never paid much attention to the financial side of journalism. But since being laid off, I’ve made it my mission to understand the existential threat news publishers are facing from Big Tech. Companies like Apple, Facebook, and Google are using their tech muscle to monetize news for their own profit, but at the expense of the newswriters. Google and Facebook dominate the digital ad market, consuming more than 60 percent of all revenue. Apple is leveraging its iPhone and Mac users to roll out its own news subscription product, Apple News+. Sadly, this product undercuts the subscriptions sold by existing publishers while Apple takes 50 percent of the revenue. Google is also planning a policy change that would severely undermine news gathering. The company is reportedly considering restricting third-party cookies in its Chrome web browser, which it could announce as soon as its annual conference on May 7. Cookies are the largely unseen infrastructure on which the online marketplace runs. Cookies allow websites that provide free content to also collect anonymized data on users’ interests, giving advertisers critical information about the market for their products. This value exchangeis necessary to support nearly every site on the internet, but it is the lifeblood of digital journalism. An online advertisement without a third-party cookie sells for just 2 percent of the cost of the same ad with the cookie. Google will likely frame its policy change in terms of online privacy — a real and important concern for Americans. But if Google restricts or eliminates third-party cookies on Chrome, the collection of user data for profit won’t go away. Tech giants will continue building dossiers on every American who uses the internet. The move would simply force publishers to use Google as a middleman for advertising sales, giving Google a cut of the ad revenue that would otherwise go to hiring journalists. Tech companies are well aware of their negative impact on journalism and have pledged $600 million toward efforts to support it. But this is a drop in the bucket compared to the damage they have caused. $600 million is a small price to pay to ensure publishers become more reliant on the data Google and Facebook harvest from users across their multiple platforms. It would be far more helpful for them to facilitate a flow of digital advertising dollars back to the publishers who hire the journalists and create the content, instead of tweaking their policies in ways that make it even harder for a digital news site to sell an ad. A robust and well-funded news media is vital to a healthy democracy. The public should be aware of Big Tech’s death grip on publishers, particularly as Google weighs a potentially devastating policy change that few people understand. And more broadly, lawmakers in Congress on both sides of the aisle should be discussing legislative solutions to regulate or break up the tech giants and restore fairness to the digital ad market. It’s uncomfortable for journalists to talk or write about ourselves, or to elevate an issue that’s in our own self-interest. We’re taught not to be the story. But as the president attacks us with dangerous rhetoric, and tech monopolies siphon off our revenue streams, it’s never been more necessary for us to link arms to fight for the health and future of our industry. One or two companies should not have the power to cripple the free press in the United States.

https://medium.com/save-journalism/digital-media-is-suffocating-and-its-facebook-and-google-s-fault-fdea4b9b7d7e

['Save Journalism']

2019-05-20 15:59:57.083000+00:00

['Journalism', 'Digital Journalism', 'Facebook', 'Google', 'Big Tech']

The True Power of Science Fiction

The True Power of Science Fiction It’s not just about pew-pew lasers and cranial ridges you know Science fiction as a genre is often sneered at by literary types as time-wasting pop-culture trash. In this article I will explain what science fiction means to me, and why it is not at all a frivolous genre. The Human Condition The best use of science fiction is when it allows us a peek at humanity in ways that other genres cannot. By posing outlandish ‘what ifs’, we can explore human nature from new angles. In fiction, we often see stories of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. Science-fiction really allows us to go to town with the ‘extraordinary circumstances’ part. What if you met a duplicate of yourself? What if you discovered you were not human, but a robot? What if you were thrown into another dimension, a time loop, an alternate history, or a simulation? These kinds of stories prompt us to think about how we would react in those situations, giving us a tool to better understand ourselves. To people who are not a fan of the genre, these premises may seem silly and nonsensical, but the premise is not the point. The science-fiction premise is merely the extraordinary catalyst for probing the human spirit in ways that real life cannot. Scientists often perform experiments where they put test subjects in situations beyond what would be found in nature, in order to see how systems react to extremes. Science-fiction is a laboratory for the human condition. Eliot is an ordinary boy exposed to extraordinary circumstances (E.T.) Social Issues In a similar way, the genre allows us to explore social issues from a clinical viewpoint, without the baggage of our everyday biases. Aliens let us to look at racism and other forms of bigotry, zombies can be an allegory of sexually transmitted diseases, and robots let us reexamine slavery from a fresh perspective. We can explore the issue objectively, taking on things like euthanasia, addiction, disease, prejudice, political extremes, mental illness, civil rights, sexuality, and transgenderism, all safely removed from an earthly context, without knee-jerk emotional responses clouding our judgement. Imagine writing a book about racial tensions in 60s America. It can be done, it has been done, by great authors. The problem is that people will bring their own perspective and their own prejudices to it. A real racist probably won’t even pick it up after reading the blurb, so even if the message is about how racism is illogical and harmful, the people who actually need to hear that message won’t get it. However, science-fiction can remove such issues from their real-world setting, and put them in jars to be studied by everyone. And the people viewing them won’t even realise what they are looking at until it has percolated through the subconscious. A classic example of this comes from an episode of Star Trek, called “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.” It has a species where people are born with one side of the bodies jet black and the other purest white. Their entire society is divided by which way round the black/white halves are. They have an oppressed race and an oppressor race. But which is which? Captain Kirk and crew cannot understand the prejudice and hate over something so arbitrary and trivial, just as an outside observer would be flummoxed by our own species’ prejudice over nothing more than skin tone. Oppressor and oppressed, which is which? (Star Trek) It’s a pretty unsubtle message, a product of its time, but the point stands. Within the genre of science-fiction, writers can put social issues under the microscope and study them in sterile conditions. You simply can’t do that without speculative fiction. Philosophical/Ethical Issues Through the genre, we can also really explore abstract philosophical and ethical questions in a way that we can really connect with. Can computers ever be conscious? Is terrorism ever justified? Is euthanasia sometimes the rational/compassionate option? At what point should our most sacred laws be suspended? Are a single person’s rights more important than the rights of many? What if we were all nothing but brains in jars? It’s entirely possible to sit in our armchairs, gazing at our navels and ponder these issues, but science fiction allows us to put them into stories where we can really explore them in a grounded way. Of course, many of these questions can be explored in other genres, but with science-fiction we can tailor an ethical dilema perfectly in ways that can’t be seen elsewhere. For example, Minority Report asks a mind-boggling question: if we could see the future, would it be ethical to punish the perpetrators of crimes they never actually commit? They would have committed them had we not interfered, but due to our interference they never actually get to commit them. It puts the concept of guilt into a kind of Schrödinger’s Box, where the defendants are in some kind of uncollapsed state of being both guilty and not guilty at the same time. It may seem like a nonsense thought experiment to some, but it can help to solidify our thoughts on the topic and make them more robust, and it often has surprising real-world applications. Minority Report. Actually, the short story is even more mind-bending than the movie. Future Exploration With science fiction, we can already begin to discuss important ideas that will not seem important until the future. For example, what will we do when we can build robots with genuine consciousness? How will we decide whether they are conscious or not? How will our legal systems have to change to accommodate freedoms of artificial intelligence? What kind of opposition and prejudice might they face in society? Even though AI is nowhere near complex enough for that to be an issue today, through science-fiction we can already begin debating and exploring such issues. This is true for other fields too. How shall we prepare for first contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life? What kind of government and economy should we have when people start colonising other planets, other star systems? What are the political, scientific, entertainment, economic, religious, and moral ramifications of bringing back extinct species through genetic engineering? We can explore the issues from the comfort of a good book and a soft chair. Also, it’s not uncommon for science-fiction to predict scientific discoveries or inspire new technologies. It can be a scratchpad for scientists and engineers to sketch out promising ideas that may invoke ‘eureka’ moments in their readers. A prediction of face-to-face calls from nearly a century ago. (Echte Wagner 1930) Exploration of the Unknown Personally, this is my main reason for loving science-fiction. I really want to have my mind blown and feel genuine awe. I want to see amazing new vistas, and discover mind-boggling new concepts. I want to see gob-smacking new technologies, novel organisms, dazzling worlds, and confusing paradoxes. And I want to see how humans, not too dissimilar to myself, react to such experiences. Certuries ago, the world was much more of a mystery. Explorers provoked real awe in the population. Outside one’s own parochial existance, people didn’t have a clue what might be living in the fartherst corners of the world. On every map, “‘ere be dragons” was a warning against stepping beyond the known, but now we know dragons don’t exist. We may not know absolutely everything about our world — there are always a new species of butterfly or bat being discovered every year — but we do have a pretty comprehensive understanding of life as it is now, and how it was in past eras. There’s very little real exploration to be done. There are no fantastical creatures left to discover on our humble planet. Science-fiction lets us all be explorers. We may have a grasp on what’s down here, but up there is still a huge mystery. While there won’t be literal dragons, its feasible that somewhere in the vastness of the universe, awe-inspiring behemoths slumber under golden skies, and gigantic helium-filled gas-whales softly graze on flying plantkon. I’m an explorer at heart, and I can explore strange new worlds from the saftey of my imagination. The alien world of Forbidden Planet Escapism And finally, science-fiction can also just be for fun. A jolly good romp. To tell a tale of generic heroism and adventure, with pew-pew lasers and snarky robot companions. Can’t we just have a bit of harmless escapism from our boring 9 to 5 jobs? Children’s fiction in the past used to always include a moral. It was specifically a teaching tool to explaining why children should not steal, tell lies, or bully others. But then in the 19th Century there came a period of utter nonsense, with the likes of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll, that made children’s fiction “fun” for fun’s sake. And so it is with science-fiction too. It’s allowed to just be fun. There is nothing wrong with space battles and sexy aliens for the sake of adventure and thrills. Not every story has to be deep and meaningful and lyrical.

https://daley-paley.medium.com/the-true-power-of-science-fiction-f4a1b70125dd

['Dale Thomas']

2020-12-16 23:59:18.892000+00:00

['Fantasy', 'Writing', 'Science Fiction', 'Science', 'Books']

Do You Really Have Insomnia?

Effects of Insomnia Just as I’m sure everyone experiences at least once in their life low mood that surpasses the intensity of regular sadness, I’m sure everyone experiences symptoms of insomnia at least once in their life. While any form of insomnia is dangerous, acute insomnia often resolves itself over time, once the underlying cause is addressed. Chronic insomnia, however, is far more dangerous, even lethal. According to an article by Healthline, an analysis of sixteen studies with over a million participants and over 112,566 deaths revealed sleeping less than seven to eight hours per night increased risk of death by twelve percent. A more recent study on the effects of persistent insomnia and mortality over 38 years revealed those with persistent insomnia had a 97 percent increased risk of death. Mayo Clinic says in addition to having a poorer quality of life, those who suffer from insomnia also have the following complications: Lower performance on the job or at school; Slowed reaction time while driving and a higher risk of accidents; Mental health disorders, such as depression, an anxiety disorder or substance abuse; and, Increased risk and severity of long-term diseases or conditions, such as high blood pressure and heart disease. From personal experience, I can tell you chronic lack of sleep affects one’s mental health in terrible ways. You always feel fatigued, have trouble concentrating on anything, lose the joy in everyday activities you previously found enjoyable, develop a persistent headache, experience frequent disorientation, absentmindedness and memory loss, perpetually remain in an irritable mood, and experience exacerbated symptoms of depression and anxiety. The three needs humans have are widely accepted as water, food, and sex. But I believe sleep is another fundamental need. After all, a lack of sleep has been linked to all kinds of problems, such as liver failure, hallucinations and psychosis, and in some rare cases, even death. In fact, there exists an incredibly rare sleep disorder known as Fatal Familial Insomnia (FFI). It is a genetic disease that begins with mild symptoms of insomnia and gradually progresses toward chronic insomnia, hallucinations, dementia, and ultimately, death. Bottom line — if you think you suffer from insomnia, no matter how mild, consult a doctor.

https://medium.com/invisible-illness/do-you-really-have-insomnia-e8a4d4b7eb3c

['Chandrayan Gupta']

2020-12-03 03:10:01.957000+00:00

['Psychology', 'Life', 'Mental Health', 'Health', 'This Happened To Me']

Should YouTube Have a Dislike Button?

Should YouTube Have a Dislike Button? My thoughts. YouTube is one of those platforms I don’t spend much time on. For starters, I am not a big fan of their interface. Plus, I find the vibe a bit on the old school side of things. However, I was on it recently because I happened to do a video collaboration with a friend that was uploaded onto the website. Then I saw the ‘thumbs down’ button. Mind you, I have not received any dislikes yet on the content we posted however I did have a few thoughts on it. Is having a ‘dislike’ button really necessary? While I am all for constructive criticism, I find that having a ‘thumbs down’ button promotes online negativity. And it could be a gateway to trolling others on the internet too. We’ve all heard the line on Medium, “If you don’t like something someone posted, unfollow them or just simply move on.” And I think that motto should apply for other platforms as well. It’s okay to dislike something. It’s okay to hate something. But I don’t agree with having a button that expresses that on someone else’s work. It reminds me of those websites back in the day like “Hot or Not” or “Rate My Body”. It simply just feels tacky and outdated. And here’s the thing: not everything on YouTube has to be good. However, it is supposed to be a platform where people can express themselves in a comfortable setting. Imagine if Medium had a “boo” button. Don’t you think that would demotivate a lot of writers on here? Don’t you think that it may push someone who’s already dealing with mental health issues over the edge? As a mental health advocate, I think that it is crucial that social media platforms pay attention to what they are allowing their users to do. With the rising number of suicides related to social media, it is so important to not provoke those who may be using the website as an outlet. Or sometimes even — a cry for help. Some people may say, “Well, if you don’t like the platform just don’t use it.” But it’s not that simple. Some people prefer to use the website simply because it is easily accessible. It’s a well-known platform that has an established following and it can be a good way to express your creativity. But in my mind, as an indie creator, I don’t find it empowering when others are able to ‘thumbs down’ your content. Honesty is great. Feedback is even better. But we don’t need to display the number of people who disliked our work. Creators are some of the most sensitive folks out there and one of the things that keep us going is knowing how much support we have. Throwing a ‘dislike’ button on your multi-billionaire platform spreads negativity on the internet and it even prevents some of the best people from creating more. Let’s bring people up and not down, shall we?

https://medium.com/the-partnered-pen/should-youtube-have-a-dislike-button-b0215ada869c

['Katy Velvet']

2020-05-14 09:28:14.482000+00:00

['Business', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Mental Health', 'Social Media', 'Psychology']

When not to call a Blue a Blue — functional colour names for Design Systems

Photo by Balázs Kétyi on Unsplash As a contractor, I frequently work with different companies and teams which included some good designers. However, regardless of where each design team might be in terms of skill level, as soon as you start handling multiple designs, organising all the elements between them starts to get tricky. This is where most people start thinking about organising a design system to follow, a part of which is the colour pallet. This is used to help ensure visual and semantic consistency throughout the project and facilitate both design and development (thank goodness for variables). Most of the times I’ve seen this style guide take a shape like the one on the side here. This might seem like the logical way of organising your pallets, but, as I’m about to argue, it comes with its own set of problems. Why is this a problem? “But Goncalo, surely it’s alright to name a blue colour ‘Blue’? What else would I call it?” That is a fair point, so let’s see where that leads by doing a hypothetical project, as a thought experiment. We start doing exploratory designs and quickly create styles for the brand colours which happen to be blue and purple. We even label them as brand colours, so it doesn’t get messy down the line. Now we can start working on the actual design. In the process, we end up adding a few more colours, for things like buttons, alerts, infoboxes, and all those fairly standard design elements. So far so good, but let’s keep going. In the real world, a designer’s work is subjected to frequent changes. This uncertainty comes as part of the job, after all. So let’s say the brand team decide the blue needs to be lighter. This is a problem for us because a lighter blue might get confused with the information colour. We can change it to a ‘Success Green’, but then we need to change the button colour as well. Before we know it, we ended up with our library very untidy, and with its colours mislabelled. “Granted, but you could always just relabel the colours” Sure, and it would be easy to do with a handful of them, but doing it with a library of dozens or even over 100 colours isn’t so easy. Besides, if handoff has already happened, which in the agile era is more likely than not, the developers will also need to go and change their code to match. So this problem extends beyond design and is a hassle for our coding friends too. How can we do it differently? There are a few libraries I’ve found at the time of writing which did it differently, and they tend to be development frameworks, not design. Let’s have a look at a couple of examples:

https://uxdesign.cc/when-not-to-call-a-blue-a-blue-functional-colour-names-for-design-systems-773e2a422464

['Goncalo Andrade']

2019-07-04 21:39:18.991000+00:00

['Product Management', 'Design Patterns', 'Design', 'Productivity', 'Design Process']

Long or Short: Which Headlines Are Better?

Long or Short: Which Headlines Are Better? The research is divided, but you don’t have to choose Illustration by Cynthia Marinakos. I spent over an hour today browsing reputable sites for the answer to the question: Are long or short headlines better? In between running to the couch to comfort my seven-year-old who was freaked out by the thunderstorm bellowing through our home, here’s what I discovered: Some tell us the ideal blog post headline length is 60 characters. Others recommend 90–99 character headlines because they increase click-through rates by 0.43%. Then it also depends on what platform you’re writing on. For instance, 40 to 49 characters are ideal for LinkedIn headlines as these were found to receive the highest number of post views overall. In The Anatomy of a Perfect Blog Post, Hubspot informs us that headlines between eight and 12 words are shared most often on Twitter. And headlines between 12 and 14 words are liked most often on Facebook. Backlinko analyzed 912 million blog posts and tells us that “very long” headlines outperform short headlines — 14 to 17 words are the way to go, generating 76.7% more social shares than short headlines. Buffer tells us that according to science, the ideal length of a headline is six words since we absorb only the first three words and the last three words of a headline. Then there’s Google search to consider: How many characters will appear in search results before the headline gets cut off? A Google forum product expert tells us it’s not about the number of characters — it’s a certain width in pixels that limits what is shown of a title. This width roughly translates into something between 60 and 70 characters. And then I was thrilled to find this, which none of the others mentioned at all: a cross-sectional study of 22 scientific journals discovered that longer titles seem to be associated with higher citation rates. The authors conclude that editors who insist on short and concise titles need to update the guidelines for authors so there’s more flexibility in title length. So are long or short headlines better? It makes sense that the more descriptive a title, the more a reader will know what to expect. But there’s such conflict between research, I’m not convinced that headline length is really that important.

https://medium.com/better-marketing/long-or-short-which-headlines-are-better-9752063361ff

['Cynthia Marinakos']

2020-01-15 15:36:12.314000+00:00

['Productivity', 'Creativity', 'Writing', 'Business', 'Headline Hacks']

Stop Waiting for Permission to Be Great

It’s scary to make a declaration to yourself about the deepest desires of your heart. It’s even scarier to unabashedly and publicly pursue the deepest desires of your heart. What if you fail? What if you’ll never be “good enough”? What if you disappoint your parents? What if your friends judge you? What if everyone thinks you’re crazy? What if this… what if that…. Maybe your ego kicks in…. “Who do you think you are? Pursuing this gregarious goal? One only the greatest of artists or entrepreneurs should pursue? Are you really willing to call yourself “great…”? What makes you so sure of your greatness?” To pursue what you deem your purpose to be… means you have to be brave enough to put in the effort, even though there’s no proof. The only proof is your heart guiding you there. A sad tendency among the “brave enough to pursue our passions…” is to work our asses off…. And then we wait. We wait for someone else’s words to validate how great we are. For someone to acknowledge the greatness of our creations. For permission to call ourselves great. For permission to continue pursuing our passions. We can end up spending our entire lives waiting for permission to believe that we are great. In the words of the wonderful watercolorist Angela Fehr, “But what if you’re good enough now… what if the only person you really need permission from is yourself?”

https://medium.com/curious/stop-waiting-for-permission-to-be-great-52dd22173eff

['Maddie Mcguire']

2020-12-18 12:42:37.179000+00:00

['Creativity', 'Personal Development', 'Motivation', 'Self Improvement', 'Productivity']

10 UI & UX Lessons from Designing My Own Product

Designers often think that all their ideas must be original, or they’re a fraud. Imagine that you’re looking at another product. You find a color palette that you like, an interaction that feels just right, or a pixel perfect layout for a landing page. You might be tempted to think, “Well, too bad because someone’s already beaten me to it.” That mindset is incredibly flawed and limiting to creativity, though. Occasionally, when I was stuck on a missing piece of the design, I would browse the internet for inspiration. I observed how other companies had designed their onboarding flow or how they managed user profiles. I never copied the entire experience, but every so often I would find myself appreciating little details that I would then include in my designs. My favorite example is the rotating exit effect that we use in our modals. I found a feature like this on a random website and thought it looked unique, so we decided to add it to Confetti. I also did this for our landing page’s button hover effect and the typeface that we used for the site. The truth is, everything is a remix. That doesn’t mean you should be blindly copying other people’s work, but don’t be afraid to find bits and pieces that you appreciate and work them into your own projects: a cocktail, if you will. 7. Wear your hats well

https://uxdesign.cc/10-ui-ux-design-lessons-from-designing-my-own-product-2f8518d5f0a1

['Danny Sapio']

2020-08-16 17:48:42.543000+00:00

['Design', 'Startup', 'Entrepreneurship', 'UI', 'UX']

3 trends reshaping the marketing industry

To say things are evolving fast would probably be a cliché. But that is indeed the reality of the situation: The marketing industry must continuously reinvent itself as new technologies, trends, and consumption habits emerge. During the last edition of C2 Montreal, three predominant trends stood out as the ones businesses should start integrating right away. Trend 1: Storytelling is good. Hypertelling is better. Storytelling is the art of telling a story in a manner that captures the attention of the receiver, whether the message is coming from a person or a brand. Hypertelling — as defined by Mike Yapp, founder and director of The Zoo at Google — is an immersive, non-linear experience where users create and determine their story. Transmitters are no longer in total control of the message; they simply supply the context and parameters with which the experience is built. It’s through this experience that brands find their residual benefit. This approach can dizzy brands that are historically used to controlling the minutest details of their messages (just think of the number of approval levels a national or global campaign must overcome). For Yapp, the solution is to redefine the role of the brand: “We can no longer see ourselves as designers or copywriters. We have to consider ourselves inventors.” New technologies, including virtual reality, are opening the door to new common ground where various parts of the equation find themselves. Moving from theory to practice remains a challenge, but certain brands — such as Lockheed Martin — have already put their shoulders to the wheel to create contexts where users can share a virtual experience in person with many other users at once. This video will tell you more: Trend 2: Environmental thinking, version 2.0 Having a green heart is a good thing. As we all witnessed at C2 Montreal this year, the idea of eco-responsibility has taken on a whole new meaning for businesses. According to David Suzuki — host of The Nature of Things and a scientific icon incarnating environmental consciousness in Canada — climate change represents a challenge filled with potential for companies who’ll know how to take them on. In his words: “It’s an exciting opportunity to get this bloody economy right.” Although environmental speeches have often been the prerogative of corporate social consciousness in the business world, Suzuki believes climate change is fertile ground to stimulate commercial creativity. “Americans said at the beginning of the ’60s that they would walk on the moon within 10 years. They had no idea how they would get there, but they did. On the way there, hundreds of technological innovations saw the light of day and are still used today.” This is where the opportunity lies: For brands who choose to take on this type of challenge — as colossal as it may be — the outcome will offer commercialization and brand equity potential that’ll be well worth the investment. Wanna know how much time your company has left to get involved? David Usher — lead singer of the band Moist and noted environmentalist — has developed a simple tool with a powerful message. Countdown2degrees.com outlines the amount of time left before humanity causes irreversible damage to the environment. We’re flirting with the point of no return, but it’s not too late. So what are you waiting for? Trend 3: Doing more with what we already have In marketing terms, we would probably talk about “resource optimization”. In the words of Massimo Bottura — chef and owner at Osteria Francescana, named best restaurant in the world in 2016: “We need to make the most of what we already have”. The Italian chef is the mastermind behind the Milan-based Food for Soul project, where meals are created using leftovers. On top of the obvious community benefits of his initiative, his approach has had a clear commercial and environmental impact. Whether we’re talking about food or human capital, the message is the same: These resources hold enormous potential we’re all missing out on. For a brand, that can mean millions of dollars left on the table. “When we already have” also refers to the local roots of his company. As a business, we sometimes want to do everything ourselves or rush to the other end of the world to find something we consider of the utmost importance. For Mark Brand — social entrepreneur and cofounder of Save on Meats: “There is more genius in the neighbourhood than what you could possibly bring.” Making the most of immediate connections and community relationships is therefore another way to “optimize resources”. Recap Historically confined to the role of broadcasting unidirectional messages, brands and their raison d’être have greatly evolved when observed from a marcom angle. Consumers now expect companies to provide experiences, rather than situations where they’ll simply witness something produced without their input: “We don’t want to know it, we want to feel it.” We also expect brands to be much more than good corporate citizens. We expect them to be agents of transformation, actively involved in improving their community. To find out more about the great ideas exposed during C2 Montreal, download your free copy of The Minutes — a collection of the most transformative quotes and ideas discussed during the event. While you’re at it, you can even reserve your tickets for the 2017 edition. And of course, I’d also be more than happy to answer any of your questions.

https://medium.com/insights-by-sid-lee/3-trends-happening-right-now-that-are-reshaping-the-marketing-industry-as-heard-c2-montreal-17ce5e3c0aa6

['Jf Bouchard']

2016-07-29 14:31:51.437000+00:00

['Content Marketing', 'Marketing', 'Environment', 'Technology', 'Storytelling']

How I Use Data To Build Better Products

If an organization isn’t using data to develop and grow its products, then its days are probably numbered. But while everyone talks about data, rarely does anyone explain what to do with all of it. So companies wind up skipping a data-driven approach because there isn’t any time. Or they use data incorrectly and get a false sense of potential success. Or they go totally data-driven and leave the human element out. Let’s fix that, because every new product, every new feature, every growth experiment, should be using data to make decisions. Data Science Is Not Rocket Science The science of data is made out to be far more intimidating than it really is. It’s also overhyped as a kind of nerd quest that will make selling tons of product as simple as punching a magic algorithm into a computer. The truth is it’s easier than ever to collect, analyze, and react to data — from sales data to performance data to marketing data. Get Started: It doesn’t matter where you get your data or how you track it I’ve been building products with data since 1999 — before Google Analytics, before Hubspot, before anyone had an API. I’ve gotten it pretty much down to a science at this point, and I can get a decent data analysis out of a rock and some string like MacGyver. Right now, as you’re reading this, I’m using data to build two completely different product lines. One uses a lot of data, the other uses just a little. I’m going to use each of these as examples in the hopes that you can find your happy data place somewhere in the middle. In the first scenario, let’s call it the “Lite” scenario, all I’ve got is a collection of unrelated web pages that show me basic usage stats. But one of those stats is revenue, and when I have revenue, I have the one single truth. I can trace everything else back to dollars. I’ve got no APIs, so what I have to do is check in regularly to get daily, weekly, and monthly stats, plus any reference points I want to track for any experiments I want to run. All of this goes into one massive spreadsheet with a dozen tabs. It’s not automated. At all. But once I have the structure down, all it takes a few minutes to maintain it. Plus it’s fun. I geek on this shit. In the second scenario, the “Heavy” scenario, I’ve got a software platform that cost millions of dollars to build and is constantly being developed, upgraded, and maintained by a team of excellent software engineers. Everything is in the cloud, it’s totally flexible, APIs everywhere, and it even has a replicated read-only database that I can hit with SQL in real time and not screw everything up. In the Heavy scenario, all I need to do is fire up something like TablePlus or SQL Server Management Console and run stored SQL statements to generate reports. Data Day! In both scenarios, I have a weekly Data Day. That’s when I spend an hour or two aggregating all my data and running analysis on every bit of it — which I’ll describe over the rest of the post. In the Lite scenario, I’m logging into various websites and copying the most recent numbers into the spreadsheet. I don’t get revenue until the end of the month, so I’m doing a lot of extrapolating as to what that dollar figure will be so I can grade performance continually in “real time.” Then I have a monthly Revenue Data Day when I get the revenue numbers. In the Heavy scenario, I’m getting revenue in real time, so I get to spend much more time on analysis. Once I’ve collected all my data, my analysis serves to: Catch errors — I’m looking for spikes in the data that suggest glitches in the software, the process, or some external market factor I don’t know about yet. — I’m looking for spikes in the data that suggest glitches in the software, the process, or some external market factor I don’t know about yet. Catch opportunities — I’m looking for patterns that suggest my customers are doing something new and different. — I’m looking for patterns that suggest my customers are doing something new and different. Keep score — I’m comparing incoming data to my previously defined expectations for new products, new features, and any growth experiments that are currently underway. — I’m comparing incoming data to my previously defined expectations for new products, new features, and any growth experiments that are currently underway. Make plans— I’m rewriting goals, dreaming up new ideas for the product, and considering new experiments. Here’s what I’m doing during Data Day analysis: Sales Data: Getting more revenue The first set of data I look at is sales. I total the entire revenue number first to get a sense if this was a good week or a bad week or an inconclusive week. This will color the rest of my analysis, dictating if I’m looking for problems or opportunities or both. If any number is way off, I’ll skip down to the end and do Forensics, then come back. The next thing I want to understand is where those sales came from, so I trace the revenue back as far as I can by using the data to answer these questions: How many customers were in a position to buy, but ultimately decided not to? How many customers were in a position to buy, but didn’t get to the offering? How many customers came into the “store,” but never got into a position to buy? How many customers were made aware of the store, but never entered? Then I take all of the breakdown and use it to confirm or adjust my goals for the month, the quarter, and the year. I get the results of all this analysis to discuss with the executive team. If we need initiatives to adjust our focus, we use this analysis as our guide. Performance Data: Increasing revenue and margin at the same time The next step is to compare productivity against revenue to get performance. I need to confirm where we’re strong, where we’re weak, and that we’re burning efficiently as we grow. These are like long-term growth experiments, except I’m looking at things we’re already doing and customers we already have. I’m looking for patterns in their usage that give me hints as to which features and which customers we should be focusing on. This analysis sets up a lot of the Growth Experiments I’ll be going over next. For example: At Spiffy, my performance data analysis led me to discover that a good number of our customers were declining a suggested and needed upgrade during their service, but then they’d add the same upgrade the next time they booked their service. We were missing some of those upgrades, right? The ones who forgot about it. So that led to an experiment to prompt those customers to add the upgrade when they book their next service so they won’t forget. Growth Experiments: Expanding market share by building a better product The experiment I mentioned just now is one of the most basic I can run. The likelihood is very high that the experiment will succeed, but we’ll test it first anyway because you never know what you’ll find out. On the other end of the spectrum, I’m also in the middle of testing a new product offering with a large corporate partner that has much broader implications and is a lot trickier. More reward, more risk, same analysis. I can use the same set of sales and usage data for most of the growth experiments I want to run. To run these experiments, I narrow down a customer segment, in this case by location. The size of the sample should be small enough to not be painful if we mess up, but large enough to matter. In fact, I’ve already had to add locations because the sample size wasn’t statistically significant. Then I run the experiment. I usually check in on growth experiments daily or even a couple times a day in the beginning, to flesh out facts like my sample size is too small. Then I try to get to success or failure as quickly as possible. Marketing Data: Creating new customers using the same value proposition While all the previous data analysis is about increasing the size of our market, marketing data analysis is about increasing the size of our megaphone to the market. For the Heavy scenario, we’ve got Hubspot and MailChimp and Google Analytics and all the social media accounts and everything is integrated and automated. In the Lite scenario, I’m just grabbing metrics from the ad server and from Google Analytics and throwing them in one of the spreadsheets. Google’s reports leave a lot to be desired, so I do it myself. Marketing data analysis is actually just another review of the sales and performance data, but this time I go all the way back to first interaction, or where the customer first became aware of the product offering. I’m looking at impressions, email opens, click-throughs, and conversions, all compared to ad spend. I’m adding the cost of acquiring the customer to the cost of serving the customer. The main difference with this analysis is that if marketing data is telling me to change something, that usually means changing either the marketing channel or the messaging or both. It’s only in rare cases that marketing data analysis leads to a product change, usually when my customers are confirming a hunch I already had from doing all the prior analysis. With marketing data, I’m also running experiments, but these are growth hacking experiments, not growth experiments. They’re A/B testing offers, discounts, and messaging. They’re varying the channels, the audience, and the spend. But it all eventually ties back to sales and revenue. Forensics: Chasing down problems and issues Forensics is the special projects part of Data Day. When I start to see patterns I like or I don’t like, especially when I don’t like, I pull the corresponding data and comb through it to figure out what to do. This usually means drilling down to and eventually combing through individual records— maybe single transactions, or customers, or product specs, or even code. For example: In the Heavy scenario, we noticed anecdotally that chargebacks were becoming an issue. We didn’t have any idea where the spike came from, so I spent a couple hours at the end of a data day pulling transaction data that correlated to chargeback data and drilling down into the individual transactions themselves. Turns out it was a combination of a single product, a single feature, and a couple customers exploiting a loophole. Rather than spend thousands of dollars on sophisticated software to sniff out bad actors with machine learning, we just closed the loophole. Problem solved. Thanks, Data Day! When I think about saving thousands of dollars with a few hours of data analysis, it almost overshadows all the additional revenue these product changes generate without the days and weeks of guesswork trying to figure out how to grow. Data-driven product development doesn’t have to be scary and it doesn’t have to be all-in. There are a lot of ways that using data to build and grow our product is going to add to the bottom and top line, all without having to hire a data science team.

https://jproco.medium.com/how-i-use-data-to-build-better-products-f5a7bf39198

['Joe Procopio']

2019-07-08 10:42:39.728000+00:00

['Startup', 'Business', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Productivity', 'Product Management']

Goodbye! (For Now)

Goodbye! (For Now) It’s time to check out, rest up, and prepare for 2021 Rarely in my 30+ years of journalism have I felt a greater need for some time off, and I am really not good at taking it. But after nearly 12 straight months of 24/7 reporting and thinking about the coronavirus and other aspects of the human condition, it has to happen, so I’m taking the next two weeks, full stop — no reporting, no newsletters, no social media. I need to think, and not think, evaluate and reevaluate, and come back fresh. I hope you find some time to get away, too, even if it’s just to escape within your own mind, perhaps in your own home, at least for a stretch. And yes, I wrote about this, for Forge… Me. You. Everyone needs a break right now. Among the 75% of U.S. adults who say they’re burned out at work, 40% blame the pandemic and the sudden disruption of working from home. Meanwhile, we Americans are, compared to other developed countries, terrible at taking time off. When we do vacate, however, we tend to return to work more motivated. In a survey commissioned by the American Psychological Association in 2018, 57% of Americans said they return to work more motivated after a vacation, 66% said they come back with more energy, and 68% report a more positive mood upon getting back at it. There’s a flip side, of course: Most Americans say their organization isn’t supportive about time off, so the whole idea of a vacation proves stressful. But you need time off. You must take it. You will enjoy it. And then you should do it again. Read more why and some how >>> *** I’ve always wondered what skills and traits are needed to be a successful entrepreneur, so I researched and wrote about it for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Successful entrepreneurs possess a diverse range of talents and traits that might seem to put them in a league of their own, but the reality is quite different. Nobody has the full range of abilities to guarantee success in small business, research shows, yet just about everyone has enough of the right entrepreneurial stuff to pursue their small-business dreams. The key is to identify your talents, proactively develop them and surround yourself with a team that possesses the skills you lack. See if you have the right stuff >>> Related: Research debunks the myth of youth having a leg up at starting businesses, and reveals advantages in wisdom, connections and practical experience. Read >>> *** Humans around the globe use their 40-plus facial muscles to express common emotions with the same basic smiles, scowls and other familiar looks, according to new research published in the journal Nature. That doesn’t mean there are no differences, past studies indicate. Read >>> Briefly… New research shows why anyone with high blood pressure — nearly half of U.S. adults — should seek to lower it. High blood pressure, or hypertension, can accelerate the decline in brain function, including memory, concentration and verbal skills. Read >>> Earbuds are on the verge of a major functionality transformation akin to the evolution from phone to smartphone, an expert says. Read >>> *** THE CORONAVIRUS One arguably innocuous annoyance struck me as telling of the countless things that are being disrupted by the pandemic — small pleasures and larger ways of life we take for granted but which will never be the same. I enumerated some of these things in Medium’s Coronavirus Blog. See the list (and feel free to add to it) >>> Related: Chance encounters with friends, casual acquaintances and complete strangers can cultivate creativity, and that’s not happening due to the pandemic, three researchers write in The Conversation. Read >>> From a scientific perspective, there’s no longer any question that face masks help prevent the spread of Covid-19, protecting both the wearer and others. So with optimism rising over vaccines that appear to be highly effective, one big question now is how long we’ll all be bound to cover our faces, especially since new cases and deaths continue to soar. I put the question to some experts, and you might not like the answer, but I bet you’ll be surprised what you learn about the vaccines. Find out >>> Briefly… Covid-19 is five times deadlier than the flu among people hospitalized for either disease, according to a new study that confirms previous research. Read >>> From the archives: I wrote this one ages ago (in July) and it’s still 100% true today. While most of us will still have to wait months to get a Covid vaccine, we can all get a flu shot today and lower the risk and burden for ourselves AND health care workers (!). Read >>> Katherine J. Wu writes for The New York Times about the REALLY IMPORTANT new at-home Covid test: “It’s slightly less accurate than gold standard laboratory tests designed to look for coronavirus genetic material with a technique called polymerase chain reaction, or P.C.R. But in a clinical study of nearly 200 people, Ellume’s product was able to detect 95 percent of the coronavirus infections found by P.C.R., regardless of whether the infected people felt sick.” Read >>> The latest U.S. Covid numbers. WORDS OF WISDOM “The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.” — Isaac Asimov *** See you next year, and may it be just a wee bit better. — Rob

https://medium.com/luminate/goodbye-for-now-219904ccdef5

['Robert Roy Britt']

2020-12-17 12:55:48.901000+00:00

['Mental Health', 'Science', 'Health']

Gut Microbes and Metabolism: Glucose, Hunger, and the Microbiome

Gut Microbes and Metabolism: Glucose, Hunger, and the Microbiome In mice, gut microbes influence the number of specific neurons that affect glucose control and feeding behavior (Pixabay, geralt) The reach of the microbiome We are all ecosystems. We house numerous creatures on and in our bodies. Among them, veritable communities of micro-organisms. Microbiome is the term that refers to these microbial ecosystems. The most well-known of these microbial communities we host is the gut microbiome. Our gut microbes have made the news often in the past few years. As we learn more about them, we begin to see how they are implicated in many aspects of our daily lives. How we metabolize food, our propensity for certain diseases, our risk for Alzheimer’s, even our personality traits, our gut residents seem to have their say in many of the processes underlying these factors. They also affect our risk for cancer, and they might even improve chemotherapy. Their reach can even span generations since the maternal microbiome can affect brain development in their kids. (Gee, thanks, mom…) Both the number and diversity of gut microbe species seems to be important, with functional diversity apparently being a major factor. That is because many of the effects of gut microbes are mediated through the chemicals they produce (which can be affected by what we eat and how we treat our gut, aka it’s a complex relationship of give and take). The second brain Most of us think of the brain when we hear the word ‘neurons’. No surprise there. Our brains are, after all, the most complicated collection of neurons we know. However, there is another network of neurons in our body that is surprisingly complicated: the enteric nervous system, the mesh of neurons coating our gastrointestinal tract. It is actually called our second brain due to its complexity. Wait a minute… Gut and neurons. Gut and microbes. What about gut microbes and gut neurons? Time for science. (Wikimedia commons, BruceBlausen) In a new study, the researchers first looked at our second brain in more detail. They found that a group of neurons (CART+ neurons) are disproportionally more present in the ileum and colon, the further parts of our intestines. This is also where most of our gut microbiome houses. Coincidence? Nope. The scientist found that the gut microbiome (in mice) controlled the number of these CART+ neurons through the molecules caspase 11 and NLRP6. They checked this by removing the microbiome. Antibiotics → less microbes → less caspase 11 and NLRP6 → less CART+ neurons. Now, what do these CART+ neurons do? Some tests later: Gut CART+ neurons are therefore both sufficient and necessary to modulate blood glucose through glucoregulatory organs…changes in feeding behavior are dependent on iEAN-specific neuronal [refers to the CART+ neurons] stimulation. No CART+ neurons → crappy blood glucose control + more hunger. The researchers conclude: Targeting peripheral-restricted circuits, such as the one uncovered here, could bypass undesirable CNS [central nervous system] effects for the treatment of metabolic disorders, such as type 2 diabetes. So, gut microbes tune the number of neurons in your ‘gut brain’, which affects blood glucose control and feelings of hunger. But, two important caveats! Mice are not human. A mouse metabolism is not a human metabolism. Yes, we too have CART+ neurons, and they are involved in appetite control, but that doesn’t mean the above findings map one to one. This does not alter the laws of thermodynamics. Or, calories in calories out always applies for weight loss. Yes, gut microbes might change the calories in (by making you hungry and eat more, for example), or the calories out (by affecting how much of your food you actually absorb), but to lose weight, calories in has to be less than calories out. Nothing changes that. Listen to both your brains.

https://medium.com/predict/gut-microbes-and-metabolism-glucose-hunger-and-the-microbiome-1c1ee5784ec3

['Gunnar De Winter']

2020-10-21 20:47:41.648000+00:00

['Biology', 'Health', 'Neuroscience', 'Science', 'Food']

Covid-19 Interactive Visualization

Visualizing covid-19 data to understand the impact it had on the American population. The novel corona virus has caused more than 200000 deaths worldwide. In this post i’m going to walk you through how to build an interactive dashboard of your own using only python tools and api’s and publish it on a provider like binder or heroku. First off, the raw dataset is available and provided by Johns Hopkins and can be found on their github page. This is focused only on US data but the same can be extended to other countries as well. Get started by making sure you have python, Jupyter notebook installed and ready to go. I’ll be detailing only a few of the operations performed. Go ahead and try all of it by yourself :) or find the entire project on my GitHub. You will need to install the following python files in order to perform analysis and visualize your data. import pandas as pd import matplotlib.pyplot as plt from IPython.display import Markdown, display from datetime import datetime as dt from ipywidgets import interact import chart_studio.plotly as py import plotly.graph_objs as go from plotly.offline import iplot, init_notebook_mode import cufflinks from plotly.subplots import make_subplots cufflinks.go_offline(connected=True) init_notebook_mode(connected=True) import dateutil import plotly.express as px pandas — To read the data and create subsets of data using dataframes. matplotlib — Python’s go to visualization library. datetime — Intuitive library to deal with time series data and works well with dataframes. ipywidgets — Creating widgets in Jupyter to make the dashboard more interactive. plotly/cufflinks — Better and interactive visualizations. Gather the data from the links provided in the git repo. x1 = 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_time_series/time_series_covid19_confirmed_US.csv' x2 = 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_time_series/time_series_covid19_deaths_US.csv' x3 = 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/abhim-12/Covid-19/master/population.csv' x4 = 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/abhim-12/Covid-19/master/state-codes.csv' Use the pandas read.csv() function to read the data into dataframes: conf = pd.read_csv(x1) death = pd.read_csv(x2) pop = pd.read_csv(x3) # US Population data codes = pd.read_csv(x4) # US State Codes Use the head() function to get an understanding of what the data contains, the columns, data types etc. Perform some data cleaning (like renaming columns, dropping) to make it more coherent and presentable. Also remove any unnecessary columns. del death['Population'] def filt(df): df.drop(columns=['iso3','code3','Admin2','Country_Region'],axis=1,inplace=True) df.rename(columns={'Province_State':'State'},inplace=True) df=df.reset_index() del df['index'] The first dataframe (z2) we create merges the confirmed cases and deaths frames State-wise. Next we create a few columns to infer based on the data the severity of the situation in each state. cols = conf.columns.to_list()[-1] ctemp = conf.groupby('State').sum()[conf.columns[-1]].sort_values(ascending=False).reset_index() dtemp = death.groupby('State').sum()[death.columns[-1]].sort_values(ascending=False).reset_index() ctemp = ctemp[['State',conf.columns[-1]]] dtemp = dtemp[['State',death.columns[-1]]] # State level aggregated data z2 = pd.merge(ctemp,dtemp,on=['State'],how='inner').merge(temp2,on='State',how='left') z2.rename(columns={deaths:'Deaths',confirm:'Cases'},inplace=True) z2['CMR'] = (z2['Deaths']/z2['Population'])*100000 # Crude Mortality Rate per 100000 z2['Infected %'] = (z2['Cases']/z2['Population'])*100 # Percentage of population infected z2['Case Fatality Rate'] = (z2['Deaths']/z2['Cases'])*100 # Case Fatality Rate - Ratio of Deaths out of those infected z2 = z2[['State','Cases','Deaths','Population','Infected %','CMR','Case Fatality Rate']] Crude Mortality, Case Fatality Rate and %Infected are calculated and i chose to highlight the states where CFR was greater than the average. The result looks something like this (Find more about styling dataframes here). Styling the data also helps convey information better, using any method you like. Our first visualization is how the virus has affected the country as a whole, so we do 2 visualizations — 1)A timeline of impact and 2)A choropleth plot def timeline(Condition): tempd = cc.groupby('Date').sum().reset_index() temph = tempd.loc[tempd['PerDay_Confirm']>0].reset_index(drop=True) if Condition=='Deaths': title = 'Timeline of Deaths' color='red' if Condition=='Cases': Condition='Confirm' title = 'Timeline of Cases' color='orange' temph.iplot(x='Date',y=Condition,xTitle='Dates',yTitle='Count',title=title,mode='lines+markers',color=color) interact(timeline, Condition=['Deaths','Cases']) So the function defined above generates a time series plot of the impact of the virus. The iplot package allows for plotting interactive plots combined with jupyter widgets. The function interact takes as parameter - the function name, and a variable Condition which is a list containing ‘Cases’ and ‘Deaths’. The plot generates a drop down list where the user can switch between Cases and Deaths across time. The plotly package makes our plots interactive showing us the numbers at each data point without any additional code. Interactive Time series plot of Impact of Covid-19 Another interesting visualization you can do is to animate the plot showing the effect on each state day by day. def timeline2(Condition): fig = px.choropleth(tempz, locations='Code', color=Condition, hover_name='State', locationmode='USA-states', animation_frame='Date', scope='usa' ) fig.update_layout( title_text = 'Spread of Coronavirus', title_x = 0.5, geo=dict( showframe = False, showcoastlines = True )) fig.show() interact(timeline2,Condition=['Confirm','Deaths']) Another intermediate data frame i created contains a merged version of the deaths and confirmed cases each day in each State (State-Day Level). def transform(df,s): #s is a String with 'Confirm' or 'Deaths' # To dcast the data and get it at a state-date level temp = df.copy(deep=True) temp.drop(columns=['UID','iso2','Lat','Long_','FIPS'],inplace=True) temp = temp.melt(id_vars=['State','Combined_Key'],var_name='Date',value_name=s) # Source data is cumulative, this gets the numbers per day temp2 = temp.groupby(['Combined_Key'])[s].diff().fillna(0).reset_index() p = 'PerDay'+'_'+s temp2.rename(columns={s:p},inplace=True) temp2 = pd.concat([temp,temp2],axis=1) del temp2['index'] temp2 = temp2.sort_values(['Combined_Key','Date',s,p]).reset_index(drop=True) return temp2 The function is called on each individual dataset(conf & death) and the result is merged to create the output as below: Now you can perform numerous visualization on the above data frame. One such visualization i performed was displaying the Cases or Deaths Per Day in a Province in a State. zz['Province'] = [s.split(',')[0] for s in zz['Combined_Key']] province = zz['Province'].unique() # Plots Cases/Deaths for a Province per Day def plots2(State,Province,Condition): a = zz.loc[(zz['Province']==Province) & (zz['State']==State) ] if Condition.startswith('C'): Condition = 'PerDay_Confirm' color = 'orange' if Condition.startswith('D'): Condition = 'PerDay_Deaths' color = 'red' a = a[a[Condition].gt(0)] a = a.sort_values('Date',ascending=True) a.iplot(x='Date',y=Condition,kind='bar',xTitle='Dates',yTitle=Condition.split('_')[1],title=(Condition.split('_')[1] + " in " + Province + ", " + State),color=color) interact(plots2,State=z2['State'].sort_values(),Province = province,Condition=['Cases','Deaths']) You can perform numerous similar plots using the examples i have shown. Moving on to how to create a dashboard out of your notebook. Voila — voila is a python library that works on top of jupyter to transform your notebooks into dashboards. Installing and running voila is fairly straightforward and instructions are provided on the github page. Running voila from cmd : voila \path\to otebook otebook.ipynb — theme=dark Your interactive will now look something like this : Voila dashboard Now that your dashboard is complete time to deploy it. As i said earlier you can use heroku or binder. Both require you to push your data to git (make sure you have git installed). Heroku provides a cli to push your projects. You can find more details here. The voila documentation provides clear steps to deploy projects. And “voila!” you’re done. You have created a dashboard entirely in python without requiring external software and a dashboard that can be shared with your peers, colleagues or others. Add more components use the template for future projects as you see fit.

https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/covid-19-interactive-visualization-b46966b8b63b

['Abhishek M']

2020-07-15 13:54:20.556000+00:00

['Covid 19', 'Python', 'Visualization', 'Data Science', 'Dashboard']

Testing Machine Learning Models

Model Evaluation in Machine Learning Testing Usually, software testing includes: Unit tests. The program is broken down into blocks, and each element (unit) is tested separately. The program is broken down into blocks, and each element (unit) is tested separately. Regression tests. They cover already tested software to see if it doesn’t suddenly break. They cover already tested software to see if it doesn’t suddenly break. Integration tests. This type of testing observes how multiple components of the program work together. Moreover, there are certain rules that people follow: Don’t merge the code before it passes all the tests; always test newly introduced blocks of code: when fixing bugs, write a test that captures the bug. Machine learning adds more actions to your to-do list. You still need to follow ML’s best practices. Moreover, every ML model needs to not only be tested but evaluated. Your model should generalize well. This is not what we usually understand by testing, but evaluation is needed to make sure that the performance is satisfactory. First of all, you split the database into three non-overlapping sets. You use a training set to train the model. Then, to evaluate the performance of the model, you use two sets of data: Validation set. Having only a training set and a testing set is not enough if you do many rounds of hyperparameter-tuning (which is always). And that can result in overfitting. To avoid that, you can select a small validation data set to evaluate a model. Only after you get maximum accuracy on the validation set do you make the testing set come into the game. Having only a training set and a testing set is not enough if you do many rounds of hyperparameter-tuning (which is always). And that can result in overfitting. To avoid that, you can select a small validation data set to evaluate a model. Only after you get maximum accuracy on the validation set do you make the testing set come into the game. Test set (or holdout set). Your model might fit the training dataset perfectly well. But where are the guarantees that it will do equally well in real life? In order to assure that, you select samples for a testing set from your training set — examples that the machine hasn’t seen before. It is important to remain unbiased during selection and draw samples at random. Also, you should not use the same set many times to avoid training on your test data. Your test set should be large enough to provide statistically meaningful results and be representative of the data set as a whole. But just like test sets, validation sets wear out when used repeatedly. The more times you use the same data to make decisions about hyperparameter settings or other model improvements, the less confident you are that the model will generalize well on new, unseen data. So it is a good idea to collect more data to freshen up the test set and validation set. Cross-validation Cross-validation is a model evaluation technique that can be performed even on a limited dataset. The training set is divided into small subsets, and the model is trained and validated on each of these samples. k-fold cross-validation The most common cross-validation method is called k-fold cross-validation. To use it, you need to divide the dataset into k subsets (also called folds) and use them k times. For example, by breaking the dataset into ten subsets, you will perform a tenfold cross-validation. Each subset must be used as the validation set at least once. This method is useful to test the skill of the machine learning model on unseen data. It is so popular because it is simple to apply, it works well even with relatively small datasets, and the results you get are generally quite accurate. If you want to learn more about how to cross-validate the model, check out a more detailed explanation on Medium. Leave-one-out cross-validation In this method, we train the model on all the data samples in the set except for one data point that is used to test the model. By repeating this process iteratively, each time leaving a different data point as a testing set, you get to test the performance for all the data. The benefit of the method is low bias since all the data points are used. However, it also leads to higher variation in testing because we are testing the model against just one data point each time. Cross-validation provides for more efficient use of the data and helps to better assess the accuracy of the model.

https://medium.com/better-programming/testing-machine-learning-models-434e973aa14d

[]

2020-11-14 15:36:16.285000+00:00

['Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Big Data', 'AI', 'Programming']

5 Powerful Lessons My Dog Taught Me About Writing

5 Powerful Lessons My Dog Taught Me About Writing Simple ways you can become your readers’ best friend Photo by Frank McKinley As I sat down to write this, my dog sat down in front of me. I rubbed her head. She licked my hand. Then she walked over to the door and turned her head to look at me. “It’s that time, isn’t it?” She wagged her tail and held her ground. Of course, I got off the couch and took her outside to do her business. When we returned, she showered me with affection and lay down for yet another nap. Delilah the four-legged teacher As writers, we’re always looking for illustrations. Delilah knows how to get what she wants. Every. Single. Time. Food. Love. A forever home. Whatever she wants. Would you like to know how she does it? Here are four simple but powerful lessons Delilah taught me about persuasion. The beautiful thing is you can do these things every day, and you don’t have to learn any complicated strategies to practice them. Let’s dive in. Treat your readers like your best friends. Every day when I open the door, Delilah runs to it to greet me. She doesn’t care what kind of day I’ve had. She doesn’t stop to ask me if I’m happy, sad, or tired. She just gives me all the love she has to offer, no questions asked. And if I don’t return her love, she’ll try again tomorrow. How can you show your readers you love them? Write to them like you’re writing a letter. Brew some coffee and have a heart-to-heart conversation. Read it aloud before you publish and make sure it doesn’t sound like a lecture. People read your writing by choice. Delight them and they’ll choose you again and again. Photo by Frank McKinley Get excited about what interests your readers. Delilah gets excited whenever she sees us. I can talk to her about whatever I want and she’ll never judge me. The way to anyone’s heart is to make their interests your own. I learned this from Dale Carnegie three decades ago. Nobody cares what you care about. When you meet someone for the first time, what do you do? You ask them to tell you about themselves. Do that, and people will talk all day — especially if you listen with enthusiasm. Do some research. Get to know people. Listen to what they say. Let them rave, rant, and brag. The time you give them might be the best gift they’ve ever received. And it’ll help you write stuff they’ll love. Pay attention to what your readers are doing. Delilah knows when I open the front door. She sits by the table when we have dinner to see if we’ll share. She follows us around the house to make sure we’re okay. Are you involved in writing groups? Do you have a few close writer friends to encourage and challenge you? Pay attention to what they’re doing. Celebrate their victories. Help spark their creativity when they feel blocked. Share ways they can shine so brightly it turns darkness into light. When you lift others, you lift yourself. Photo by Frank McKinley Assume the best. When Delilah sits down next to me at the table, she expects me to give her something. I usually do. I mean, who can resist that cute expression? And she sits so patiently. She doesn’t stick her nose in my food either. When you write, do you expect your readers to get what you mean? Do you expect you’ll write something great, or at the very least something that’s worth reading? People are busy. You’ve got to wow them to get them to give up a few precious minutes to spend with you — especially if they don’t know you already. So how do you wow them? Do like Delilah. Be audacious. Get in their faces. But don’t be rude about it. Make them smile, laugh, or find you charming. Or as Steve Martin says, “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” If you sit in the next room and wait for someone to notice you, it may not happen. Write everything assuming the best will happen. Show up consistently. Delilah never misses a meal. She also regularly comes to me so I can pet her, walk her, and let her lick my hand. She’s never too busy to love us. How often do you write? I write every day. I may not publish every day, but I do it as frequently as I can. I’m not going to tell you how often is enough. I will say this — publish before your readers forget you. Better still, show up often enough that they miss you when you’re gone. My son and I went on a trip for three days last month. My wife says Delilah looked for us every night. When we returned, what a welcome we got! I’m not sure who missed the other more. When your readers enjoy your company, they’ll follow you anywhere. When you love them, you’ll find time to write no matter how busy you are. Applying the lessons Think about how you can become your reader’s best friend. Here’s a few things you can do now: Be generous. Show your love by sharing something valuable. And do it without expecting anything in return. Expect the best. When you sit down to write, dig deep and share something awesome. You won’t always hit it out of the park, but you’ll definitely take better swings with that attitude. Show up because you love the work, not because it’s an obligation. If it starts feeling like a chore, rekindle the spark that got you writing in the first place. Find some other writers to get excited about. The journey is more fun when you’re not traveling alone. Love your readers and they’ll love you back. Then you can make friends as easily as man’s best friend.

https://frankmckinley.medium.com/5-powerful-lessons-my-dog-taught-me-about-writing-4af1290740d4

['Frank Mckinley']

2020-01-07 02:57:11.862000+00:00

['Marketing', 'Business', 'Creativity', 'Personal Development', 'Writing']

The Placebo Effect is Stronger than We Thought

Photo by Hal Gatewood on Unsplash You probably know what a placebo is. It’s a substance or procedure that should have no physiological effect when administered. It is inert, a sugar pill. You probably also know what the placebo effect is. It is when a therapeutic benefit is obtained, despite the sugar pill having no composition to effect physiological change. But you might not be aware of the fact that someone could be told that they are taking a placebo and still derive benefits. Open-label placebos have been effective in reducing the painful symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome when compared to a control group that received nothing at all. It is a great breakthrough as the painful symptoms of some ailments and the harmful side-effects of certain drugs can be eliminated. And while it isn’t some great panacea for every ailment known to man, it is another highlight of the mind triumphing over matter for the alleviation of symptoms of illness. But there’s even more to the strange wonder of the placebo effect. After open-label placebo experiments took place and the effects were noted, researchers began to question if a detailed explanation of what a placebo was versus a brief explanation of what a placebo was would affect the alleviation of symptoms. It’s strange enough that something that has no inherent ability to change one’s physiological state is able to do so. It’s even stranger when the person knows that what they’re taking is inert. One would think that any effect that would be caused by belief (or ignorance) would be cancelled by education, but it isn’t. Researchers recently studied the effect of open-label placebos on participants who had a detailed education on what a placebo is versus participants who received a short explanation. The results showed that both groups experienced a reduction of pain compared to the control group who received no treatment. The amount of education on placebos had no effect on the amount of pain the participants experienced. While more research should be done, the placebo effect continues to astound. It seems that despite knowing that one is taking a placebo, the psychological effect of knowing what a placebo can do is enough to alleviate pain, no matter how much or how little one knows. Placebos may not be making physiological changes, but its role in unearthing psychological change is something researchers will be paying attention to in the years to come as it dares us to question what else our minds can do for our health and our overall lives.

https://medium.com/swlh/the-placebo-effect-is-stronger-than-we-thought-635e457a1c5e

['Jason Henry']

2020-01-10 18:15:04.980000+00:00

['Research', 'Self', 'Health', 'Science', 'Psychology']

Writing is Fun, but Editing is Work

Editing is a different beast. If writing and plotting are like playing a song, editing is like tuning a guitar. (Okay, except that you edit after you write, not before. Don’t dig too much into this metaphor.) Except that guitar has 80,000 strings that all need to be perfectly pitched. That’s gonna take a while. Even with a good guide, editing is a bitch. As I’ve said before, I’ve been using Self Editing for Fiction Writers. It is a deceptively slim volume, but it’s packed full of great information and exercises. The little cartoons are funny, too. The book, along with Shaunta’s guidance, gave me a solid place to get started. I already have a pretty good grasp on the first chapter’s material, which is all about exposition versus narrative. Basically, asking whether we’re told about how your story plays out, or if we’re watching it play out in a scene. Good modern novels need a balance of exposition and narrative. So Shaunta guided me into the first step of working on dialogue tags. Basically, I’m searching out every instance of the word “said”, and deciding whether or not it can be replaced with a dialogue tag. This was a good idea. I have bad habit of doing something like this: “Job,” Char said. A small smile crested on her lips. “I haven’t heard that verse in years.” It’s not bad writing (if I dare say so myself), but it can be tightened up. One of Strunk and White’s cardinal laws, after all, is OMIT NEEDLESS WORDS. So, are any of these words needless? We’ve got dialogue, a dialogue tag, an action beat, and more dialogue. Can we combine any of these? Yes. Almost any time you have a tag and a beat together, you can get rid of the tag and work the speaker’s name into the beat. We’ll know who’s talking, and cut down on a few words in the process. Here’s how I revised that. “Job.” A small smile crossed Char’s lips. “I haven’t heard that verse in years.” A little bit more economical. The prose is a little tighter. To go back to the guitar metaphor, the string is a little tighter, a little closer to the perfect pitch. None of the meaning changes. We still know who’s speaking. Win, win, win.

https://zachjpayne.medium.com/writing-is-fun-but-editing-is-work-31893386b139

['Zach J. Payne']

2019-02-12 03:22:32.135000+00:00

['Storytelling', 'Creativity', 'Editing', 'Art', 'Writing']

Getting Started With Exploratory Data Analysis

I remember the first time I heard that term. The way it was said, made me understand that I was supposed to have known it. Of course I played along… Yea, sure EDA… no big deal! But it was sure a big deal. I got to understand what it meant though but I was still pretty much in the dark. I had questions; how far to go? How to go? What am I doing? When should I stop? How should I stop? Explore- means to investigate systematically, Analysis-means decomposition into components in order to study. These are pretty much closely related. So it is basically that you’re trying to break down and investigate on Data. But then, lets go formal; According to Wikipedia, exploratory data analysis is an approach to analyzing data sets to summarize their main characteristics, often with visual methods. The processes of Exploratory Data Analysis involves performing an observation check on the datasets to observe anomalies and finding out patterns with the datasets. So back to not being formal again; How far to go?…Answer: All the way if you’ve got the time and luxury of fetching out as much discovery as you can for your project or client How to go?… Answer: Orderly and systematically. What am I doing?… Answer: Looking for clues and patterns in the datasets focused towards solving the problem for which you selected or extracted the data for. When should I stop?… Answer: When you have found patterns that can help you solve your problems or when you can’t find clues or useful patterns anymore. How to end?… Answer: With summaries of your findings clearly stated and of course in an orderly manner. Some EDAs come before other processes such as prediction. So you would want to get all the information you can to help you with your next task, process or decision. Exploratory Data Analysis Processes (EDA) varies according to the datasets being used and the person performing the process although it is expected that certain general observations be made about the same datasets. When performing EDAs, you basically look for any clue (this could be in the structure of the dataset, the information surrounding patterns formed, reasons if there are any or basically anything), pick it up and run with it. Then do a repeat with as much clues as you can get. Remember the “orderly and systematic process”?... That’s why you try to see where that clue leads you too before you pick up another clue to investigate more on. To better explain this processes, I will use the US unemployment Rate datasets from the US Department of Labor’s Bureau of Statistics to get you STARTED. Then I would let you continue. This datasets is from the year 1990 to 2016. In order to perform EDA, it is important to have a background knowledge on what the datasets is/will be all about. For example someone who doesn’t understand what Unemployment rate is would simply operate blindly with the datasets. I performed the entire process in Kaggle basically because of the size of the datasets and the availability of an accelerator (GPU) and memory. You should check Kaggle out if you haven’t. It is such a wonderful space for everything datasets to data resources and tools. Understanding the Basic Structure of The Datasets: I needed to have an idea of what the data set looked like so I viewed the first five and last five rows: As soon as I saw the first five row, I had to quickly ask myself if the Year, Month and State had repeated values( that is ‘2015’, ‘February’ and ‘Mississippi’). So I had to quickly check the last 5 rows. And I changed my mind with asking that question when I saw different values. Next, I checked the data types and the shape(number of rows and columns). So I discovered that the Year column contained integers. The Month, State and Country basically object types (string in this case) and the Rate column, float(having decimals). I also discovered that the data shape was quite large(885548 rows and 5 columns), as expected, considering that it is for the United States. Next I checked if this large datasets had missing values. Lucky me, I discovered it didn’t. All rows were present with the appropriate data as a matter of fact. The image below just shows that no row was missing. I then though of viewing some statistical details in the datasets since I had some rows that were made up of numbers. This is what i discovered: I found out that the minimum (smallest) value in the Year column was 1990(ignore the other zeros) and the maximum value was 2016. From this I could tell that the latest year represented was 2016 and the earliest was 1990… just the way I expected. It is important to note that no datasets should be trusted because anything could have happened at some point to the datasets; from the point of collection to the point of download. The table above also shows that the highest unemployment rate was 58.4%, an outlier (a value far off from other values in the same column); pretty high and this definitely makes it an outlier especially when you consider the third quartile; the value (7.7%). But we’d look at it a bit later. More information from the table! It can also be seen that the minimum column was 0.00%; a zero unemployment Rate! Questions are starting to pop up… I mean… because a zero unemployment rate isn’t quite a good thing. How do I know? I researched zero unemployment rate! The mean unemployment rate was recorded as 6.18%. Taking a Closer Look at the Content of the Dataset My attention went to the State Column next. Like, first of all, are all states in the US represented? And if yes, prove it! Show me! Because I can imagine this unemployment rate would vary from state to state and would also come together(in form of mean)to give the general results of unemployment rate for the entire country. My findings? 47 states only… with the absence of Alaska, Florida and Georgia. Why? I’m not sure… I mean because Florida is the 7th most populous state in the US, Georgia the 8th most populous state and Alaska covering the largest area in the US. And all these states have been in existence since 1990. Could it be that these states would have influenced greatly the general unemployment rate for the US? Or the people who gathered the dataset lost some. Or my dataset source isn’t valid. Or any other hypothesis you may have? Let’s move on because we can’t answer these questions yet. Next is understanding how these states are represented by the number of rows they occupy in the entire dataset. Having this in mind; that we have a county column: So, it is clear that they occupy different number of rows. Why would this be so? Remember there is a County column? yep! Different number of counties per state would make the number of rows occupied vary. Don’t forget visuals This first visual above gives an easy view of the number of rows occupied per state. It is such a large graph else the y axes should be a bit more detailed in terms of giving the viewer a great estimate of the number of rows occupied per state. Finding out the number of counties and the names of the counties: 1752 Counties represented and that is alot to display. Another issue is that Counties are not evenly represented. Aha! Something we were suspecting on the States column but couldn’t conclude because of the varying number of Counties. But since, all the months of the year should be the same for all years and the counties should be repeated the same number of times per month for each year and for the same number of years, So we know something is truly wrong with this dataset. And would this mean that the average unemployment rate for the entire country won’t be quite accurate and not well representing of all states and counties? Yes, definitely! Next, picking up on another clue; that large unemployment rate we saw displayed on the statistic summary. Could that have been an error since some outliers are said to be errors? Let’s look at a boxplot for this information: It is seen that the outliers happen to be alot. Outliers are sometimes said to be errors, but from the graph above, I might actually say that it isn’t, because of the number of outliers present. seems to me that alot of counties experienced this high rate of unemployment as well. Just that in relation to the entire dataset, they are few. Below are displays of these high unemployment rate. I’m curious about getting a definite percentage figure of these outliers. They sure don’t make our dataset pretty and they pose alot of confusions about them truly being outliers, But if I can confirm that they aren’t much and aren’t just caused by a big gap in our dataset, then I would gladly move along and pay them no attention. So from information gotten from the boxblot, extracting the number of these outliers and the percentage as well in relation to the entire dataset, and getting the number of rows of unemployment rate greater than 15%; Number of rows with unemployment rate greater than 15% is 13,868 and that is just 1.57% of our entire dataset. That’s it, I’m done with the outlier thing. Oh, one more thing first: A little more detail about the largest Unemployment rate in the entire dataset : The highest unemployment rate recorder is 58.4%. in 1992, San Juan County, Colorado. This value is seriously high and posses lots of questions. Like what actually happened that lead to the high unemployment rate. The only activity around that period that may have caused this is the after effect of the recession that happened for 8 months between July 1990 to March 1991, because there are no histories of natural disasters, pandemic or anything of that nature! I won’t give much details on the other high unemployment rates in this percentage, because I have observed that they are from different years. No particular pattern. I mean, take a look: But then, How about the states, is there any pattern? oops! Sure! 39 states have their unemployment rates in several counties higher than 15%. And 8 states managed to maintain unemployment rates in the different counties, from 1990 to 2016 to be less than 15%. These states are Delaware, Wyoming, Kansas, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Nebraska and Rhode Island. Amazing! So, I’d just move to some other clue. Zero Unemployment Rate: 2 major counties in Texas kept having 0 unemployment rate though a three year span. This makes the Dataset questionable as a lot of people would argue that a zero unemployment rate is practically impossible. But then if data don’t lie, I smell problems forth coming in the following years basically because a zero unemployment rate would mean that the every person in the work force of that county was employed and so it would be difficult to upscale business, get more staff to grow the business and sack people who aren’t performing up to the company’s or organisational standard. But that wasn’t the case in the following years, so I would assume that these rates are errors, They probably weren’t imputed; my thoughts! Observing Grouped Data I cut my trail on individual state and county patterns and wanted to group my dataset and I did per state then per year: The state with the lowest average unemployment rate(through 1990 to 2016) is Nebraska (3.1%) and the state with the highest average unemployment rate is Arizona(9.3%). The year that had the lowest average unemployment rate was 2000 (4.32%). This shows us indeed that the US only started to experience this recession after the year 2000 although other countries started to experience it from the year 2000. The highest unemployment rate was in 2010 (9.19%). I would like to attribute this high unemployment rate to the great recession that took place between December 2007 and June 2009. Most recession cases are seen to have ended with growing unemployment rate lasting for nothing less than a year. So we can go on and on investigating (I would let you do that). Did you pick up any trail to follow? You could investigate more as to how the unemployment rate trended in the state with the highest average unemployment rate or the one with the lowest. You could also investigate the pattern of unemployment rate (from January to December) for each year or months. There are so many patterns that can be found. But don’t forget to visualize. You could check out my notebook for this Unemployment Rate Dataset HERE So yeah, EDA,… maybe not such a big deal!

https://medium.com/swlh/getting-started-with-exploratory-data-analysis-756732a5bf0e

['Gold Ochim']

2020-11-27 00:00:42.541000+00:00

['Exploratory Data Analysis', 'Unemployment Rate', 'Analysis', 'Kaggle', 'Wrangling']

Loneliness is a Human Paradox

Human animals are gregarious by nature. However, individualism has corrupted our ability to look out for one another. We do not care about others therefore no one cares about us and we become lonely. Although we’re aware that our behavior is against nature, we can’t help but recoil at the mere mention of loneliness, something that is far too close for comfort for an increasing number of us. Although loneliness is a universal predicament, it remains smothered in shame and only talked about in hushed tones if at all. To admit you are lonely is embarrassing as it implies you are bad company. And yet, even the most approachable of people can go through it for various reasons. Sometimes, being lonely is the result of a drastic change of environment, a relationship, or illness. In my case, it’s all three. I immigrated to the US in 2013 and married someone who prefers his own company and whose social circle is actually a dot: me. When depression felled me, I became loneliness not just squared, but cubed. Not that I even lack people skills. A friend once said I’d socialize with a lawnmower and my work has always required going toward others, be it as a journalist or as a tour director. And it’s not that I don’t enjoy my own company either, but from one day to the next it became all I had. This is how I became a so-called “loner”, quite by accident.

https://asingularstory.medium.com/loneliness-is-a-human-paradox-319024073c2d

['A Singular Story']

2020-12-14 12:36:21.232000+00:00

['Self', 'Mental Health', 'Relationships', 'Psychology', 'Society']

15 Surprising Upwork Hacks That Will Seriously Transform Your Freelancing Game

Upwork gets a bad rap from so-called six-figure freelancer-turned-coaches who’ve made it their mission to advocate against content mills. But actually, the platform is a goldmine for freelancers, especially those at the beginning of their careers. Here’s why: It helps you (literally) start from your scratch — no portfolio, no website, no prior experience needed. It helps you build a portfolio. It helps you figure out your niche. It helps you learn how to deal with clients. It helps you gain confidence so you can go after big shots later in your career. That said, a lot of freelancers fail and give up because they don’t know the right strategies. See, Upwork is a content mill after all. And content mills are saturated with freelancers. It’s like a tank full of fishes competing for space and food. You have to make yourself stand-out. The good news is it’s not that hard to stand-out. You only need a few skills and tactics and in this article, I’ll teach you what they are from my own journey of going from newbie to top-rated.

https://medium.com/better-marketing/15-surprising-upwork-hacks-that-will-seriously-transform-your-freelancing-game-38a845bb6fb0

['Sadia M.']

2020-11-16 19:09:12.278000+00:00

['Marketing', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Careers', 'Creativity', 'Freelancing']

11 Book Recommendations from Mark Cuban to Stay at the Top of the Game

11 Book Recommendations from Mark Cuban to Stay at the Top of the Game The books that shaped billionaire’s mind Image by Wikimedia Commons In case you’re looking for books that will help you succeed in business and better understand the world, look no further than the reading list of billionaire Mark Cuban. Mark Cuban, a billionaire technology entrepreneur and investor is a strong reader. Cuban has attributed the first million dollars he made to reading, and he’s said that learning new skills is one of the most important qualities all billionaires share. “Life-long learning is probably the greatest skill,” Cuban says on Arianna Huffington’s The Thrive Global Podcast. He even calls it one of the top three skills billionaires share. If we can imitate his habits and follow his advice, perhaps some of his success will rub off on us. And maybe if we read like him, too. Here are 11 of his top picks for reading material for aspiring as well as current entrepreneurs that Mark Cuban shared on different channels — interviews, podcasts, his social media accounts.

https://medium.com/the-innovation/11-book-recommendations-from-mark-cuban-to-stay-at-the-top-of-the-game-9fe7f7c46294

['Esat Artug']

2020-12-01 22:02:49.179000+00:00

['Books', 'Self Improvement', 'Business', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Startup']

How to Write Prolifically if Your Brain is Sick

Writing is tough enough without adding poor mental health into the mix. Most find it impossible to quiet the anxious thoughts in their heads long enough to focus on writing. What do you do, if all you want to do is write, but your fickle mind won’t let you? I’ve been writing since I could hold a pencil and form a sentence. I’ve also been mentally ill for as long as I’ve been writing. I went through periods of depression where I didn’t create for months. Many times, at the urging of one doctor or another, I’d pick it up again and explore my issues on the page. During my horrible 30’s, I blogged about life with mental illness. I wasn’t a particularly good writer, but my feelings were raw, and I had a readership who identified with me on a deep level. An added benefit was that I was more honest than I could be in regular conversations with people, especially my therapist. She was able to read about what was happening to me and tailor topics for me to address in my sessions. For the past seven years, I have been writing both professionally and personally. But, I wasn’t until I joined Medium in October of 2018 that my writing took off. Not only have I improved as a writer, but I have been impressively prolific. Even though there are periods I can’t manage to write anything, most of the time I spend hours and hours typing into my laptop. I do it every single day. I’ve done all this even though I have a severe mental illness. Photo by Lonely Planet on Unsplash How the hell do you do it? How do I manage to write so much even with hallucinations, racing thoughts, panic attacks, anxiety, and depression? How am I going to push even further and double my output in May? I could talk all day about my process, or about getting “in the flow,” but, for me, getting a lot of writing done boils down to three things: motivation, positive thinking, and stubbornness. Motivation I spend a hell of a lot of time motivating myself to write. If I didn’t do certain things every day, I wouldn’t get up every morning fired up to tell a story. The biggest thing I do to keep myself motivated is to think about writing all the time. While you may say it’s not healthy to obsess, I find if I keep my writing goals in front of me every minute of every day, I am always working hard. Even when I’m not typing into a fresh document, I’m writing. When I’m reading, researching, and brainstorming, I’m still writing. When I’m driving in the car, I’m writing in my head. When I’m posting on social media, I’m documenting conversations to write about later. Even when I’m sleeping, my dreams serve as canvases for me to create new ideas. Yes, I still have a family life. But they know how important it is for me to stay motivated to write. Most of the time, they don’t put pressure on me to do otherwise. They know I need to be reading, promoting on social media, interacting with my fans, and obsessing over my next story. They know that even if they have to ask me something twice because I wasn’t paying attention — I love them and value them. They know how I overthink and ruminate, so they do whatever they can to make sure I am in the right frame of mind to be ready to write as much as I can, whenever I can. I do everything I can to stay motivated. Positive thinking I know, you’ve heard it all before — positive, blah, blah, blah. Don’t get me wrong; I’m no Pollyanna. But I’m always thinking of ways to keep myself in a positive frame of mind. It’s not that I don’t have negative thoughts — I do. But when my mind starts heading down a dark road, I counteract the negative with positive. When I have a negative thought, I think of a positive one. Or two. If I see myself heading down a rabbit hole, I do something to lift myself out. If you looked at my Facebook feed, you would see how I have carefully chosen people to follow so that I always have positive input when things turn negative. I don’t only see positive things on Facebook, but also Twitter, Medium, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube. Social media can be a battleground if you let it get that way. A few short months ago, I couldn’t even scroll anymore because there was so much negative shit in post after post. I shut off social media for a few months, and when I was ready to go back, I gave all my accounts an enema. I unfollowed everyone who caused me anxiety. I unliked pages that were feeding garbage into my mind. I cleaned everything away that didn’t make me happy. I am a much more positive person today because of the drastic steps I took to remove the negative from my everyday life. Photo by alexander bracken on Unsplash I am stubborn Above all, I am simply stubborn. If I start to deviate from my goals or the path I need to walk, I force myself back. I’m not easy. Coddling yourself may work for others, but if I want to get anything done, I have to be tough. I chastise myself if I complain too much. If I join a pity-party in progress online, I make myself leave immediately. If I start with negativity or begin to get unmotivated, I steer myself back onto the right road. If going easy on yourself isn’t working, be tough! I didn’t make the drastic changes in my life that I needed until I started being brutal. Be hardcore — but don’t forget to take yourself out for ice cream once in a while. You can do it! You can push yourself to be a great writer. You can be prolific. You can do it even if you have a mental illness. Push yourself to do what you need to do. I told you what works for me, and you are welcome to try what I do. But the bottom line is you need to find what works for YOU! But you will never find what works for you until you stop sitting around feeling sorry for yourself. You will never get anywhere if you aren’t convinced that you can change your life. Stop letting things happen to you and take your life by the neck. Guide it where you want to go and don’t be nice if you don’t have to. Motivate yourself. Think positive. Be stubborn about the things that matter. One day, you will get where you need to be.

https://jasonjamesweiland.medium.com/how-to-write-prolifically-if-your-brain-is-sick-32a8fc102ae1

['Jason Weiland']

2019-08-21 11:02:19.934000+00:00

['Mental Health', 'Social Media', 'Advice', 'Creativity', 'Writing']

The #1 Key to Make More Money in Your Writing Business

Have you ever had an idea for a story that you just couldn’t wait to write? You’re knowledgeable about the subject, and you do a masterful job sharing your enthusiasm with your reader. But it bombs. Nobody reads it, claps for it, or pays you for it. Let me tell you what probably happened. My Personal Failure Years ago, pursuing a lifelong dream, I started a kennel raising top quality German Shepherd dogs. I had terrific dogs with bloodlines back to the breed’s foundations — imported from Germany, Belgium, and Czechoslovakia. The dogs had the best training, conformation, and health. I carefully raised each puppy with the most up-to-date, scientific methods, and socialized them to my exacting standards. On my website, I had their parents’ pedigrees and photos, yet, I was struggling to sell my pups. I’d invested all my money and I was getting desperate. Looking for help, I met a talented marketing expert who asked me this question, “Why should your customer care?” He explained that we all share five core human drives or needs, and these motivate our behavior— including buying a dog. I remember them as A through E: A cquire- we all want material needs and power or status. cquire- we all want material needs and power or status. B elong- humans need to be loved, valued, and understood by others. elong- humans need to be loved, valued, and understood by others. C uriosity- people are curious and enjoy learning. uriosity- people are curious and enjoy learning. D efense- we will protect ourselves, our loved ones, and our property. efense- we will protect ourselves, our loved ones, and our property. Emotion- humans crave experiences that produce pleasure and excitement. This expert suggested that on my updated website, I should explain why my dogs’ genetics would result in a superior puppy, better than the ordinary German Shepherd. He told me to detail how my dog training methods produced puppies they would be proud to own — reliable friends and protectors. I posted copies of their parents’ hip x-rays and explained their diet, carefully formatted diet to prevent health problems. Many photos illustrated the pups’ daily lives — socializing at the airport, playing with kittens and kids, preparing to join the family. They were so cute. Who could resist? Especially with my 100% satisfaction guarantee. Now I had a waiting list of people wanting puppies at three times the price! Customers could imagine how proud they would be to own one of these fantastic dogs and see it fitting into their family. They could picture how comfortable they would be with a magnificent German Shepherd protecting their home. I suspect they even imagined how superior they would feel, knowing they had an expensive dog with ties directly to Germany. It was a lesson I try never to forget. My dogs and their care hadn’t changed. I had just put myself in my customer’s shoes and discovered their needs. We can forget to ask, “Why should my reader care?” Talking to other writers, I realized it’s easy to forget this prime directive, and wonder why no one is reading our work. Each article, essay, or piece we write must fill the reader’s need, not our own. It’s fine to write for yourself, but that is a journal. And few people are paid for sharing their diary entries. Educate, Inspire, Entertain These are the three primary purposes of writing. If a piece does none of these things, it’s unlikely anyone wants to read it. Our writing can educate the reader by inspiring curiosity when we promise to share a tip on improving a skill. The person imagines they can make more money and buy the things they need, hitting the acquire need. When we share a story of personal struggle, perhaps as tragic as a partner’s death, and our inspiring journey learning to love again, it matters. Our reader feels a sense of belonging, knowing we all suffer but there’s still hope. And fiction, humor, and poetry can all entertain and inspire us. At first, looking at your writing this way feels tough. However, it will soon become natural to you. If it bleeds, it leads. You’ve heard that old newspaper saying that means violence and tragedy are always top articles, and perhaps thought, “That is exploitative.” I will not suggest you capitalize on tragedy but rather understand the truth behind that saying. We are interested in the experiences of other people, whether happy or sad. Unless you are an academic, technical, or scientific writer, you need to include human stories in what you write. Writing styles change over time. We are in an era that favors creative nonfiction. This modern form combines elements of storytelling with facts, to educate and inform. Even journalists, who in former times may have been content to answer who, what, when, and where — now delve into the why. Why should the reader care? Check out this theory and see if I’m right. We know we’ve got to hook the reader with an intriguing headline for a relevant topic. Here are some popular stories from today; it’s easy to see how each one resounds with human needs. I Spent 3 Weeks in School, With Kids, Under Covid-19 The private school where I teach followed CDC guidelines to the letter. Let this be a cautionary tale. An Obsessive Misogynist Killed a New Jersey Judge’s Son. He’s Long Targeted Feminists, Too. How many people have to die before we take sexism seriously? How to Make Your First Twenty-Five Dollars as a Writer The key is to think small. Those Are Effective Topics. The first article appeals to our need to defend or protect ourselves by knowing more about COVID-19. The second article promises to inform us about an important news story, satisfying curiosity and suggesting the author understands the pain created by sexism. The third article says it will tell writers how to begin making money, clearly an acquisition. Of course, each article follows up with clear writing, proper formatting, and meeting the reader’s expectations. Keep the principles of meeting basic needs in mind and you’ll be an effective and compelling writer—and more successful.

https://medium.com/ninja-writers/the-1-key-to-make-more-money-in-your-writing-business-6bcdf960b3b

['Cindy Heath']

2020-08-02 17:48:21.990000+00:00

['Storytelling', 'Writing Tips', 'Creativity', 'Success', 'Writing']

How to Change Your Mind Over a Glass of Wine

How to Change Your Mind Over a Glass of Wine Becoming an expert in anything, whether it’s wine tasting or mathematics, changes the way you perceive the world. By Ann-Sophie Barwich Expertise is less about knowledge and more about observing things that elude novices. Through training, experts learn to see, taste, smell, and hear things that the rest of us can’t, therefore allowing them to perceive the world differently. This became clear to me after spending a weekend in conversation with an expert winemaker in Napa Valley. Wine tasting is a peculiar profession (and not just because critics spit $50 mouthfuls into a bucket). Sommeliers can sound like they’re speaking in a strange foreign language. Wines are said to possess “roundness, generosity, and depth.” Their aromas are berrylike (strawberry, raspberry, blueberry, blackberry, whatever berry), further containing hints of tobacco, vanilla, leather, and plum. Other aroma labels don’t sound like they belong in food, like “ pencil shavings,” “ petrol,” and — wait for it — ” cat’s piss.” But all these things cannot possibly be in a glass of wine, can they? The lyrical waxing of wine experts is hard to buy in its sincerity. Even poets like Kingsley Amis mocked their manners: “When I find someone I respect writing about an edgy, nervous wine that dithered in the glass, I cringe. When I hear someone that I don’t respect talk about an austere, unforgiving wine, I turn a bit austere and unforgiving myself … You can call a wine red, and dry, and strong and pleasant. After that, watch out…” Lots of people think of wine tasting as a scam. But wine tasting is a true scientific art — it’s just that words sometimes get in the way of it being taken seriously. Gasoline-smelling wines do not contain petrol per se — we hope — but often share compounds with another substance with a recognizable aroma. The brains of sommeliers learn how to link categories of sensory experience (i.e., “this smells like petrol”) to qualitative categories of specific chemical compounds. Aged Riesling, for example, contains TDN (short for 1,1,6-trimethyl-1,2-dihydronaphthalene), a compound with the aroma of petrol. TDN is a result of carotenoids (organic pigments found in many foods, including grapes) breaking down, a process accelerated by higher temperatures. Many odd wine descriptors, including “rubber hose” and — yes — ”cat’s piss,” can be identified as a specific chemical compound by expert noses. In the case of cat’s piss, it’s the compound pyrazine found in Sauvignon Blanc. Wine has several hundred aroma compounds, which is more molecular information than most of our brains have the ability to compute. Sommeliers have learned how to direct their sensory spotlight to identify specific compounds in a complex mixture. They have trained themselves to be extremely good at discriminating and identifying individual aromas and aroma patterns. The best wine experts can identify a vintage down to its specific vineyard and even year with a virtuosity that can occasionally take less than a minute. Acquiring this skillset not only makes sommeliers a knowledgeable (if not sometimes exasperating) dinner-party guest. It actually alters the structure and activity of their brains. Comparing the brain of a mathematician with that of a sommelier, we find remarkable similarities. In both cases, the cellular density of white and gray matter in designated areas increases. Whether it’s sniffing Syrah or performing calculus, the acquisition of expertise makes parts of the brain thicker. In mathematicians, for example, one of the most prominent changes in the density of gray matter is found in the superior frontal gyrus, an area also linked with the coordination of self-awareness and, most intriguing, laughter. In comparison, changes in sommeliers’ brain volume were found in the right insula and entorhinal cortex, areas that are notably involved in memory processing. Such changes in neural density give those areas enhanced cortical connectivity and signaling speed, as the synaptic connections by which neurons communicate become more tightly packed. A consequence of increased neural density is that dedicated specialized areas of the brain better integrate and orchestrate otherwise widespread neural activity. Expertise of any kind results in a more sophisticated communication architecture of the brain. But here’s the paradox. When an expert’s brain grows, they also use less of it. The more proficient you are at wine tasting, the less activity we’ll see in your brain’s fMRI recording, as reported in a scientific study from 2014. If you’re processing more information, though, how are you using your brain less? This observation is less puzzling if you compare your brain to the body of an athlete. You’ll need to put in less overall effort to lift weights if your body is trained to do so routinely. With practice, some brain activities become “automatized” and, according to the neuroscientist Christof Koch, resemble a “ zombie agent” — meaning these processes require less and less conscious effort and attention. So do sommeliers become merely better at memorizing patterns, like in the legendary study of hippocampi in London cab drivers, or do they also get better at the sensory part of smelling itself? The answer is both. Notably, a sommelier’s skill is not exclusively a method of memory ( this is what a Cabernet Sauvignon typically smells like, and that is the aroma profile of a Barolo). Training further enhances their ability to be more receptive to aromas in a mixture: the sensitivity to odors changes with repeated exposure. Whether it’s sniffing Syrah or performing calculus, the acquisition of expertise makes parts of the brain thicker. Yet the real surprise is this: The previously mentioned 2014 fMRI study on expert sommeliers suggests that sensory expertise modifies your experience of reality — it affects not just the ability to identify and recall things on a cognitive level, but also consciousness itself. During tasting, the scientists observed activation in the brain stem of experts but not in novices. This finding (which is still being further explored) implies a difference in how sensory information is integrated into the cortical cognitive activity of experts and novices. Engaging with your perception on an analytical level thus makes a difference in the quality of your experience by fine-tuning your brain to its input (and having it reorganize its neural story to match). Hold that thought: You get more control of the quality and content of your own conscious experience … by thinking while drinking wine. And yet we hesitate to trust sommeliers’ abilities. That’s because of our outmoded views of mind and brain, particularly our understanding of the senses. The philosopher René Descartes, the influential source of so many misled thoughts about the mind, famously claimed that you could not trust your senses. He believed that the existence of illusions proved the unreliability of perception, and that it is impossible to establish a difference in the experience of dreams and reality. Descartes’ skepticism led him as far as to doubt whether our entire experience may just be a hallucination induced by an evil demon. And you can’t trust your senses to reflect reality, neither by referring to what you see and hear or smell, nor by any other empirical observation. (Although demons are said to come with a pungent odor.) For Descartes, the only assurance of our material existence was the use of pure analytic reason — I think, therefore I am. The irrefutable truth from which all other truths must follow. Except Descartes was wrong. Our senses do not “deceive” us. They are built on experience. That experience can vary through our engagement with the world, and therefore different people see, taste, hear, smell, and feel the world differently. There isn’t one shared reality that all conscious beings observe; the wine tastes different to all of us, despite the drop in our glass being from the same bottle. The dress is black and blue. I heard Laurel, not Yanny. This shows how perception is markedly dynamic. That insight amounts to more than saying that you create your own reality. As sensory expertise enrichens the content of conscious awareness, you perceive more of the world, not just differently. The acquisition of expertise broadens your perspective — and not only on the particular thing you specialize in. Acquiring expertise has the hidden benefit of developing a cognitive meta-skill: you learn how to learn. Such a skill provides a scaffold — both sensory and cognitive — to approach learning about other areas you may not be sufficiently familiar with. Knowing one thing well allows you to branch out to other things without getting lost in the process. Knowledge develops with experience, and experience develops with knowledge. Or as Eleanor Roosevelt said: “When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else.”

https://medium.com/neodotlife/how-to-change-your-mind-over-a-glass-of-wine-6d85a3e19303

[]

2020-11-26 01:38:19.638000+00:00

['Health', 'Neuroscience', 'Wine', 'Self Improvement', 'Science']

The Art of Validating Your Book Idea

Validation can mean a couple of things to writers. It can mean that something has happened to validate the audacity of even calling yourself a writer in the first place. Someone really enjoying your work. Someone paying you for it. Someone publishing it. That’s why even a tiny bit of pay can feel incredible. If someone was willing to pay you anything at all for your work, it means that they liked it. They really like it. And maybe you aren’t wasting your time. Maybe there’s some hope for you. It feels fantastic. And then there’s the idea of validating an idea. When you validate an idea, it isn’t about you as a writer. It’s about figuring out whether or not the project you’re thinking about is something that anyone, at all, wants to read. Some things don’t need much validation. They don’t take too long to write and it’s worth just doing the work and seeing what happens. Blog posts come to mind. Social media posts. But there are things that will take you weeks, months, or even years to finish. Maybe you’re writing a book. Or you have an idea for a course or some service you’d like to offer. Or you want to start a whole blog for a specific niche. Before you invest in something that will eat up so many of your resources (meaning your time, energy, and money), then you might want to take the time to validate the idea with potential readers. Validating a Novel or Other Book Let’s start here, because it can be the most difficult. And because you’re going to maybe want to do this for your Blog-Your-Own-Book idea. If you want to validate a novel there are a few things you can do. Look at the market. Are there already a ton of books out there that are very similar to your idea? Figure out the genre of your novel and Google it. Are agents and editors tired of seeing it? You can still tell your story, but you might need to think about a different angle to come at it with. Are there already a ton of books out there that are very similar to your idea? Figure out the genre of your novel and Google it. Are agents and editors tired of seeing it? You can still tell your story, but you might need to think about a different angle to come at it with. Trends . If you’re chasing a trend and you want to be traditionally published, chances are that you’re too late. On the other hand, if something is hot, then it might be a great idea for self-publishing. For instance, a vampire book is still a hard sell right now to traditional markets, but they sell like hotcakes for self-publishers who get them right. . If you’re chasing a trend and you want to be traditionally published, chances are that you’re too late. On the other hand, if something is hot, then it might be a great idea for self-publishing. For instance, a vampire book is still a hard sell right now to traditional markets, but they sell like hotcakes for self-publishers who get them right. Join a writing group. You’ll be able to work through your idea with experienced readers. Go in willing to take the advice you get and be open minded about it. Your BYOB book probably isn’t a novel (although, it might be. You can write any book at all during this challenge.) Here are some ideas for validating a non-fiction book. Look at the market. You’re going to do this in a different way for this type of book. Go look at the shelf (probably on Amazon or another online seller) and research your topic. What’s missing? Where’s the gap you can fill? You’re going to do this in a different way for this type of book. Go look at the shelf (probably on Amazon or another online seller) and research your topic. What’s missing? Where’s the gap you can fill? Ask. It really is that easy. Go into a space where potential readers are, tell them you’ve got a couple of ideas for a book, and ask them which one appeals the most to them. You might be surprised. It really is that easy. Go into a space where potential readers are, tell them you’ve got a couple of ideas for a book, and ask them which one appeals the most to them. You might be surprised. Check out social media. This is my favorite little validation idea. Go into a Facebook group or other social media outlet where people who are your target market hang out. Search through it for questions. Look for keywords that fit your idea. Are people asking about your topic? Are they confused about any part of it? If they are, your book is likely to fill a need. My BYOB Validation Process Over here, I talked about how to choose which book to write for the BYOB Challenge. I came up with a few ideas for myself. (Molly is my fictional ideal reader.) Screenshot: Author The best way to validate, I decided, was to start a poll in the Ninja Writers Facebook Group. Which book would those people, who are actually my ideal readers, like to have from me. Screenshot: Author If I’d just picked a title and didn’t make an effort at validation, I would have chosen ‘creating a roadmap for your writing goals.’ That was my first choice. It’s the book I’d most like to read. But I’m not my own ideal reader. Not now. Me, 25 years ago? Yes. But not now. I write for newer writers who are just getting started. It is very clear, from this poll, that the folks in the Ninja Writers Facebook group would like a book about creating a writing habit. And now that I think about it, that makes sense. They know they want to be writers. What kind of roadmap do they need? Sit your butt down and write. The end. Right? But actually doing that day after day? That’s really hard when you’re just starting out. That’s why I’m not my own ideal reader. I’ve got 25 years experience sitting my butt down and writing every day. I have my habits set pretty well. But getting to my larger goals? That’s something I think about a lot. I could go out and validate again, maybe in a group of writers who are already published or otherwise have more experience. But I don’t want to. I want to write a book for Ninja Writers. Here’s what you’re going to do. Once you have a topic and you’ve come up with a few ideas for your BYOB book (if you need help, read this), do some validation. Ask the people you know who are your ideal readers. Run your list by some friends. Look on Amazon and see if any of your ideas fill a hole in the market. And be openminded. Remember that writing is a service industry. You aren’t writing your book for yourself. You’re writing it for your readers. There’s a balance, of course, where you’ll find your happy place. That’s where you’re writing what you want to write and what other people want to read.

https://shauntagrimes.medium.com/the-art-of-validating-your-book-idea-f62bf8bfc011

['Shaunta Grimes']

2020-07-07 18:33:14.313000+00:00

['Publishing', 'Productivity', 'Creativity', 'Byob', 'Writing']

The Coronavirus Funeral.

The Coronavirus Funeral. Remembering a Day of Mourning. Photo by Fernando Meloni on Unsplash We cannot hug one another. We wear masks. It is a beautiful day and the cemetery is full…the parking lot reminds me of how the mall parking lots used to look. We are not the only service. I see hearse after hearse. Each one containing a loved one. People on the news talk about allowing the old and sick to die so that the economy can restart. But everyone dies…whether you’re old or sick or not. So what is the idea situation? Let all of us die, and let the economy run on perfect robots, who do not die, do not complain, do not fear? There is the issue of a Zoom call for those who want to attend but cannot, because we’re only allowed 10 people. Who is good enough to be on this call? Who has the right to protest its existence? What would the deceased want? How can we hypothesize that, since the situation is unprecedented? Given the situation, isn’t it important to help the living grieve, even if it’s through a phone? Philosophical questions with no one right answer. It’s hard. But the day, at least the day is beautiful. The prayers are automatic, taught to me in childhood by the same person who is in the coffin.

https://medium.com/are-you-okay/the-coronavirus-funeral-c738874b15b8

['Lisa Martens']

2020-05-01 12:54:53.432000+00:00

['Humanity', 'New York', 'Grief', 'Society', 'Coronavirus']

My First Product ‘Broke’ Twitter and Then Crashed Hard

My First Product ‘Broke’ Twitter and Then Crashed Hard Celebrities were “harmed” in the making of this story. Background from Ryan Cryar It was late 2009. I was working in a corporate banking job and had just launched my first ever product online as a “side hustle”. It was a “social polling” network called WhatPoll? Basically, a website where you could vote up or down on things in lists about movies, restaurants, historical facts, etc and “debate” the merits with others. The idea was to build up an engaged community and then monetize via advertising and affiliate partners. I had spent the previous year reading a ton of literature about building Internet businesses and companies in general — search engine optimization, landing page optimization, guerilla marketing, “how they got started” stories, etc. Despite that, there wasn’t really a user acquisition or growth plan. And, by that I mean our approach was just to launch and “figure it out”. There was certainly no paid advertising budget, so we’d have to get creative. To give you a feel for the site, below is a homepage screenshot. Image supplied by author. Yes, it was basic and looks very dated today! But, “good enough” to test our hypothesis. Launch day was soon upon us, which basically just involved pushing the website live. Then nothing much happened. *crickets* For a while, the only people visiting the site was myself and other founders. No presence on Google. No traffic deals. No social traffic. No network to tap into. Nothing. So, we started to experiment with ideas and made some adjustments. First up, we introduced polls that were of a more compelling nature to consume — humor and curiosity. The intention being it would make the site more shareable on social media and other websites. So, instead of a generic list like “Best Disney Movie” it would be stuff like “Strange Place Names” or “Coolest Cat With a Hat”. This had little impact in the beginning but later worked to a degree. We’d occasionally get blasts of traffic to polls from social bookmarking sites like Fark or Reddit, and mentions from other media outlets. We quickly grew impatient and wanted to get our product “out there” in a big way. So, other ideas were researched and “brainstormed”. This led to an interest in a relatively new feature Twitter had launched, Apps — integrated through an API. We observed that another polling website was using this functionality to generate traffic to their website. Someone would vote, and it would automatically tweet their choice. So, pretty quickly, we had our own App up and running. Now, folks could sign up to our product with Twitter. Every time they voted it would tweet out their choice to their followers automatically, with a link to the poll on our website. It was engineered in such a way that if people were compelled to vote it would “blow up”. One voter, on average, could spur more than one other person to vote, so the behaviour would grow exponentially. In the first few days nothing much happened. *crickets again* We started “tweet voting” using our own personal Twitter accounts on a range of polls, but this didn’t go anywhere. Not enough followers. Plus, the subject matter just didn’t resonate enough to compel folks to vote at a rate that would “make it go viral”. Some questions were raised. How do we get Twitter “power users” to vote or encourage voting? And, what subject matter would be compelling to their audience? Then, an idea surfaced.

https://medium.com/founders-hustle/my-first-product-broke-twitter-and-then-crashed-hard-c63c33a95fce

['Martin Delaney']

2020-12-17 18:35:07.011000+00:00

['Marketing', 'Startup', 'Business', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Founders']

AWS Snowball and Snowmobile Tutorial

This article will introduce you to how data migration works on Amazon Web Services Cloud. Following pointers will be covered in this article, Use Case For Data Migration AWS Snowball Steps For Migrating Data To The AWS Cloud Using Snowball Snowball vs Snowmobile So let us get started then, Use Case For Data Migration With the faster penetration of higher internet speeds, satellites, and smartphones the amount of data generated is increasing day by day. For ex., a Satellite Imagery Company might be already storing Petabytes of information about the earth and updating the same on a regular basis. Adding storage capacity on a constant basis would be a huge challenge to them not only in terms of the cost but also in terms of logistics like space, power supply, security, etc. This is where Cloud Providers like AWS will come into the picture. A few other use cases where companies have huge amounts of data is for storing the video libraries, genomic sequences, seismic data. The Satellite Imagery Company and others would like to move their applications and data to the Cloud and let the Cloud Provider take care of the storage aspect like security, backup, additional storage, etc. This way the Satellite Imagery Company might focus on its core business to find more customers, providing more value to the customers, more ways for the customers to interact with them, etc. But, moving Petabytes of data over the internet has its own challenges. According to the AWS documentation here: 100 terabytes of data will take more than 100 days to transfer over a dedicated 100 Mbps connection. Forget about moving Petabytes of data, it will take close to a year. On top of the time required there is an additional cost of network bandwidth and let’s not forget the data snooping when a public internet is used. This is where services like AWS Snowball and AWS Snowmobile come into the picture. Next in this AWS Snowball and Snowmobile Tutorial AWS Snowball The Snowball is a rugged device and is also explosive proof, a tad bigger than the size of a suitcase, and can be checked into a flight also. Another option to speed up the data movement between the Data Center and the AWS Cloud is to use the AWS Direct Connect Service. Using this service, a dedicated line is established between the AWS Cloud and your own Data Center for a stable connection and consistent high bandwidth. Next in this AWS Snowball and Snowmobile Tutorial let us see how data migration works, Steps For Migrating Data To The AWS Cloud Using Snowball Here are the steps at a high level to migrate the data between your own Data Center and the AWS Cloud. Step 1: Request one or more Snowball devices from AWS depending upon the amount of data to be transferred. A Snowball has two versions with 50 and 80 TB storage and can be ordered from AWS via the management console. Step 2: AWS would be shipping the Snowball to the customer. The next step would be to connect the same to the local network and then transfer the data into the Snowball using the Client program provided by AWS. The data gets automatically gets encrypted and stored. Step 3: Once the data has been transferred to the Snowball, it must be couriered to AWS. The Snowball has e-ink to automatically populate the address of the AWS location. The data in the Snowball is encrypted (256-bit encryptions using AWS KMS Keys), so it’s now possible that the Snowball gets tampered with or someone tries to get the data out of it. It’s all protected. Step 4: Once the AWS folks get the Snowball, they connect it to the AWS Cloud, decrypt the data, and move the data to S3. Step 5: Once the data has been moved to S3, the Snowball is wiped out for no one to access it further. Step 6: The last and the final step is for the customer to access the data in S3. From there the data can be moved to EBS, EFS, DynamoDB, and various other AWS Services. The above-mentioned steps are very much like how we transfer the data from one Laptop to another when not connected to a network. We insert the USB Drive to the source Laptop, copy the data to the USB Drive. Remove and insert the USB Drive to the target Laptop and copy the data. While the above-mentioned steps are for moving the data from our own Data Center to the AWS Cloud, it’s also possible to move the data the other way, by following the exact steps in the reverse order. This way there is no locking of the data. Not only Snowball is used to move the data of the existing applications to the AWS Cloud, but can also be used for the Data Center Migration when it makes sense to close an existing Data Center and move everything to the Cloud. This approach makes the transition faster when compared to moving the data over the public internet which is a bit slow. This brings us to the final bit of AWS Snowball and Snowmobile Tutorial, Snowball vs Snowmobile A single Snowball can store up to 80 TB of data out of which only 72 TB is of usable space. Multiple Snowballs can be used in parallel when there is a requirement to move more than 80 TB of data. AWS also provides a Snowmobile where the size of the data stored is much more than what a Snowball can store. A Snowball is a rugged shipping container with a semi-trailer truck. While a single Snowball can store up to 80 TB of data, a single Snowmobile can store 100 PB of data, which is almost 1,250 times the capacity of a single Snowball. AWS recommends using a Snowball when the data to be transferred is less than 10 PB or else to use a Snowmobile. Apart from the default encryption Snowmobile takes a few additional steps like GPS tracking, 24/7 Video Surveillance, optional escort to make the data even more secure. If you wish to check out more articles on the market’s most trending technologies like Artificial Intelligence, DevOps, Ethical Hacking, then you can refer to Edureka’s official site. Do look out for other articles in this series that will explain the various other aspects of AWS.

https://medium.com/edureka/aws-snowball-and-snowmobile-tutorial-f8159ae8294e

[]

2020-12-10 06:01:38.972000+00:00

['Snowball', 'Cloud Computing', 'Amazon', 'AWS']

The Man Who Lost His Ability To Read Numbers

R.F.S. is a geologist in his 60s who suffered an acute neurological injury in 2010, affecting the parietal lobe of his cerebral cortex. This part of the brain is responsible for visual and spatial awareness. R.F.S. first experienced headaches, amnesia and tremors, but his condition unfortunately deteriorated. In 2011 he lost the ability to read and recognize the digits 2 to 9 though he had no problems with any other stimuli. Fascinatingly, he could discern between the digits 0 and 1. Since 0 and 1 are cognitive concepts conserved across species (bees, mammals, frogs and birds) and similar to shapes in nature, perhaps they are encoded elsewhere in the brain. R.F.S. retained his proficiency in mathematics, still understanding numbers written as words or Roman numerals. He even continued working as a geologist for a few years, using surrogate digits for calculations. In a video, R.F.S. holds a figure eight. He describes the round, curved shape while his fingers move about the edges. This is too strange for words, he exclaimed before laughing nervously. When he turns the figure-eight 90°, he is asked what he sees. It looks like a mask. Turning it back 90° he describes that the object does not look how it feels. This indicated to researchers that R.F.S.’s experiences are limited to numbers. He is still perfectly capable of recognizing shapes but somehow, he cannot perceive these numbers. When presented with pictures of digits with images embedded within them, he could easily read 0 or 1 and correctly identify the embedded image. However, he could neither recognize the digits 2 to 9 or images or objects/faces embedded within them. Interestingly, researchers noticed that higher-level brain processing was occurring, despite this lack of awareness. The authors posit that though his brain discriminates and identifies these digits, he is not consciously aware of them. Damage in one region of the brain involved in spatial processing disrupted specific aspects of awareness. These data support the possibility that extensive visual processing, up to and including activation of identity, can occur without resulting in visual awareness of the stimuli. — Schubert et al., PNAS (2020) These findings contribute to the mystifying literature aimed at describing the neural correlates of consciousness. Despite higher level processes in the brain firing, this study supports the notion that this information is not immediately made conscious. What parts of the brain are important for visual awareness and consciousness? This study suggests a role for the parietal lobe in certain aspects of visual awareness!

https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/the-man-who-lost-his-ability-to-read-numbers-e550a28fdc5e

['Simon Spichak']

2020-09-09 12:55:36.257000+00:00

['Research', 'Education', 'Science', 'Psychology', 'Neuroscience']

WIDeText: A Multimodal Deep Learning Framework

Deep learning (DL) is helping us at Airbnb serve our stakeholders better and enhance belonging. For example, we use it for search ranking models, fraud detection models, issue prediction models in customer support, content understanding on listings and many other areas. A broad division within DL are classification tasks, which use a set of features to predict labels or categories within a taxonomy, such as predicting room types from listing images. The complexity of classification problems in the real world is extremely high since there are all sorts of different signals and potentially useful features in production. Data scientists and machine learning engineers always aim for improving model performance (e.g., precision, recall, etc.) as much as possible when building the classification models, by adequately incorporating the rich signals in the problem domain. This has proven to be helpful from literature review across academia and industry. This post will introduce WIDeText, a multimodal deep learning framework built by Airbnb that enables developing and productionizing classification systems at ease, and walk you through an example of using WIDeText to build a state-of-the-art room type classifier. Overview of WIDeText based model architecture having Text, Wide, Image and Dense channels Background of Multimodal Classification Tasks Typically, ML engineers and data scientists start with a simple classification problem — there are core features, such as text or image, and the target is to train a DL model encoding and make predictions of their best category. For example, there are room images on Airbnb listings, and the model wants to predict the room type based on them. Single model design for classification task However, we realized that many other features are also of great value for understanding the room types in the Airbnb listings. For instance, an image caption saying “living space w/ dining area, TV and Electric Fireplace”, which is a text feature, provides strong signals to classify the room as a living room. As we incorporate more features, the model becomes a lot more complicated. First, more types of features and “experts” (encoding or embedding models) in charge of understanding each of them are added to boost its performance. Second, a more sophisticated “decision maker” (classifier) that can summarize all of the voices and make predictions is needed. Here is where engineering overheads become significant. More complicated multimodal model design for classification task For most of the cases, one has to build ad-hoc model architectures and a feature processing pipeline, write a training and evaluating script, and deploy the model into the pipeline or endpoint. In the meantime, great efforts have to be made to keep track of every detail in order to properly review the work, which are shown as steps 3 to 7 in the diagram. This turns out to be a major portion of the machine learning development process. It is neither time efficient nor scalable in the long run. Briefing steps on developing and deploying ML models in Airbnb We propose a unified framework to simplify, expedite, and streamline the development and deployment process for this type of multimodal classification tasks. WIDetext — Multimodal Deep Learning Framework By taking a look at several multimodal classification tasks and the features they used, it’s not hard to identify that the features fall into several common buckets and can be tackled by specific “experts” (model architectures). Image channel Examples: Listing images, amenities images, etc. MobileNet, ResNet, etc. are experts on this. We will cover more details in the section later. Text channel Examples: Image captions, reviews, descriptions, etc. There are many NLP models such as CNN, LSTM, transformers, etc. that are experts on it. Dense channel Examples: Categorical features, numerical features, such as amenity types, image quality scores, location information, etc. GBDT is one of the experts. Wide channel Existing embeddings which are generated by experts somewhere else, and can be directly leveraged by our decision-maker (classifier). Thus, at Airbnb, we developed an in-house PyTorch based multimodal deep learning framework, named WIDeText: Wide, Image, Deep, and Text, to enable developing and productionizing classification systems at ease. The core concept here is model fusion. We can leverage the state-of-the-art model architectures for different types of features and assemble the embeddings to boost the final classifier’s ability. It provides an experience of building deep learning models in the way of building blocks — one can easily plug in / off channels and adjust their architecture per the objective. Let’s take a closer look at how WIDeText gets you covered on: Model prototyping and developing (Configure channels and architecture) Training and deploy (Build pipeline in production) Model Development — Json based model configuration WIDeText supports using JSON alike to configure the models: every channel in the framework is pluggable and configurable in terms of their architecture and training hyper-parameters. Hyper-parameters are required for WIDeText classifiers. Other channels’ can be set up optionally for different user cases. Below snippet shows a dummy example of setting it up for a multimodal classification model. A dummy example of setting up a multimodal classification model using WIDeText To help visualize this WIDeText based model the snippets just built, it includes VGG based image channel CNN based text channel GBDT based dense channel Wide channel MLP based classifier and their training and evaluating hyper-parameters Visualization of the WIDeText based model having Text, Wide, Image and Dense channels Training and Deployment — integrated with Airbnb’s infrastructure The integration with Airbnb’s machine learning infrastructure makes model development and deployment easy. For context, Airbnb’s Bighead Machine Learning Infrastructure provides users with a composable, consistent, versatile interface for the creation of a self-contained model with minimal “glue” code. The Bighead transformer interface (to be noted, this has nothing to do with the other famous transformer architecture in the deep learning domain) provides a way to define stateful or stateless functions that transform a collection of named feature tensors to another collection of named feature tensors. Each transformer can be fitted and configured per your use case. Each transformer can perform a transform given a data source, then later applied on new data for inference. More importantly, a group of transformers can be connected to a directed acyclic graph (DAG) called ML pipeline. We provided a wrapper to make any WIDeText based model a Bighead Transformer. This can be combined with existing preprocessors, transformers, etc. to build and deploy an end-to-end machine learning pipeline together with the WIDeText transformer. For example, in the pipeline shown below, we added several preprocessors for different types of input before feeding them into the WIDeText transformer, which are JPEGResizeDecoder for image data, and one hot encoder, scaler and feature combiner for wide and dense features. An example of the integrated machine learning pipeline having multiple transformers, such as WIDeText transformer, several preprocessors, etc. With this constructed Bighead pipeline, one can use its unified APIs to pour their data in for training and evaluating, and deploy the pipeline to production and expose as an online endpoint. The WIDeText framework has been widely adopted by production teams. Multiple production models have been built and shipped in Airbnb’s products, such as issue prediction in customer support, and experience tagging to better understand experience listings on Airbnb. In the next section, we will describe an example application of WIDeText, Airbnb’s room type classification model. Application on Room Classification As of June 2020, Airbnb has more than 390M active listing photos. As the saying goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words”. Listing photos are key decision factors when guests make reservations, and photo room classification, e.g., bedroom, kitchen, etc., is an important process in providing the best search experience to guests. For example, different room categories are distinguished in the photo gallery for Airbnb Plus listings to provide a better search experience. In Airbnb, we have been using a room classification model based on convolutional neural networks (CNN) on room images. However, as our platform evolves, we come to have a diverse set of features over multiple modalities. These come from different input sources that describe an Airbnb home photo. For example, Figure 1 shows a home visualization typically available on Airbnb. The home photo, the image caption written by the host, and the listing geo-location (city and country) are provided. The multi-modularity leads us to create a joint representation of an image, the text description, and the geo-location category for room classification. An example of home photo with its image caption and home location available from Airbnb. The features selected in room type classifier are: 1) image thumbnail; 2) image caption text displayed on airbnb: “Living Space w/ TV”; 3) image technical features: image size, width, image height, and image quality; 4) computer vision features: amenity detection results (i.e. n_couch = 2, n_tv = 1, n_bed = 0, etc); 5) listing geo-location features: country = ‘US’, and region = ‘north america’; Inspired by these multimodal data sources, we leverage WIDeText to enable developing and productionizing room classification systems at ease. Architecture of WIDeText-based Room Type Classifier Channel choice for room type classification Text Channel The image caption text uploaded by Airbnb hosts is used in the text channel. Room type classification contains an average text length of 4 words, which is relatively short. Since CNN-based text architecture can effectively and efficiently capture local relationships on short phrases, we choose to plug CNN as a plug-in text channel. Text channel allows transfer learning from word vectors pre-trained from a domain-specific larger corpus. All room-related descriptions are served as domain corpus, and multilingual word embedding is pre-trained by first applying the skip-gram model to generate monolingual embedding and then aligning them in a zero-shot learning fashion. We apply multiple filter sizes to capture different region sizes and multiple filters for the same region size to learn complementary features in the same region. 1 — max-pooling is used to extract a scalar from each feature map and then optional dropout followed by a fully connected layer can be used to further shrink the dimension. Dense Channel Categorical features like listing geo-location (i.e., country and region) are essential signals in room type classification. As a concrete example: “house” as a listing type is widespread in suburbs but far less common in cities, so entrance as a room type tends to be very different between these two places. Entrance to Home in suburb (left) vs. city (right) In the dense channel, those categorical features are encoded as a one-hot encoder representation, then further learned from backpropagation through fully connected layers. Numerical features like the image size/width/height and number of detected amenities, including beds/pillows/microwaves/etc., can also help in predicting the room type. Scaled numerical features are served in a dense channel and then used in feed-forward layers along with categorical features. Image Channel We applied multiple models on the test set and compared the performance with a baseline model built on pre-trained mobileNet that only uses image features. It shows that incorporating non-image features using WIDeText significantly improved the overall performance across different room type categories. Finally, we launched a WIDeText model using ResNet 50 due to the trade-off between accuracy and computation time. Table: performance comparison between the baseline model trained by pre-trained MobileNet architecture without using non-image feature and the proposed Room Type classifier trained by WIDeText architecture based on pre-trained MobileNet, fine-tuned ResNet 50 and EfficientNet B4 image channel. Takeaways In this post, we reviewed how we designed a multimodal deep learning framework for quick product development and demonstrated that the models built upon it greatly improved prediction accuracy in the room classification task. Here are a few key take-aways from ML practitioners who have been using the WIDeText framework to train the multimodal classifiers: First, WIDeText Framework helps speed up the model development and deployment process from weeks to days. This end-to-end training and deployment framework empowers modelers to utilize as many raw features as possible, making the model debugging easier. Second, it is common practice to compare each channel's architecture choice separately. We confirmed the effectiveness of doing that in our multi-model frameworks. We started with experimenting different image channel choices for room type classification without changing other channels. As a consequence, we could independently select the optimized archetype for each channel. Third, distillation from GBDT to Neutral Network is recommended for better performance if numerical features play an important role among all features, as it allows missed or unscaled input values. If categorical features are essential, choosing embedding-based dense layers yields better performance. Acknowledgment Thanks to Bo Zeng and Peggy Shao for contributing to the WIDeText framework, adopting it in their work, and providing valuable feedback. We would also like to thank the contributors of open source libraries such as PyTorch and the original inventors of MobileNet, ResNet, and EfficientNet. We benefit tremendously from this friendly open source community. Finally, we appreciate Ari Balogh’s support, and thank Joy Zhang, Hao Wang, and Do-kyum Kim for their kind help in proofreading. Further Reading Bighead: A Framework-Agnostic, End-to-End Machine Learning Platform goes into the details of the Airbnb Machine Learning Infrastructure. DSAA’2019 Categorizing Listing Photos at Airbnb describes deep learning models applied on Airbnb photo categorization We always welcome ideas from our readers. For those interested in contributing to AI/ML work in Airbnb, please check out our open positions.

https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/widetext-a-multimodal-deep-learning-framework-31ce2565880c

['Wayne Zhang']

2020-12-08 20:59:25.089000+00:00

['AI', 'NLP', 'Computer Vision', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Deep Learning']

Do you have a Creative Bucket List?

Maybe it’s time to create one. @thejournalgarden unsplash.com I have a flood of creativity these days. I don’t know where to put it all. I haven’t been a true creative for 20 years. Now, I’m pouring buckets. This morning, I read this post by Stefani Vader. She has a great suggestion for making a list of all the creative projects that she would like to pursue. So, I started my list. Last week, my to-do list was completely shoved aside. I was on a writing rampage on Medium. It was driven by sheer force and the creativity that was pouring out of me. As I grow in my creative endeavors, I need to look at my to-do list as opportunities to create. Projects on my to-do list have to be actual line items on my Creative Bucket List. Otherwise, when I go through one of my creative rampages, all my to-dos on my to-do list become lost in my creative process. I know, you are thinking that I’m over managing my creative life. Well, as an analytical person and a creative person, I don’t know how else to manage this “Creative Beast” within myself. I need her to at least acknowledge the fact that being creative is great. But, we also need to channel this creativity into other endeavors such as Marketing, Editing and Communication. This way our work will actually end up in front of our audience. Now, I’m going to give some love to my blog and my social media accounts today.

https://medium.com/jun-wu-blog/do-you-have-a-creative-bucket-list-8a3cfe5a2408

['Jun Wu']

2019-11-07 11:55:05.326000+00:00

['Life Lessons', 'Writing', 'Work', 'Productivity', 'Creativity']

How Walmart used psychology to become the world’s largest retailer

How Walmart used psychology to become the world’s largest retailer Their approach is more scientific than you might think Photo by Fabio Bracht on Unsplash Founded by Sam Walton in 1962, Walmart is a retail juggernaut. Walmart is the world’s largest company by revenue, with $514.405 billion according to Fortune’s 2019 Global 500 list. The company employs 2.2 million people — that’s more than the population of New Mexico (and 15 other U.S. states). Walmart’s reason to exist is value. Their entire brand hinges on “Everyday Low Prices,” and everything they do must deliver value for customers. That’s a promise Walmart delivers on, with shoppers saving around 15% on a typical cart of groceries. Because of low prices, Walmart’s experience must deliver lots of sales Walmart might have rock bottom prices, but to make those prices deliver profit for the business, they have to get customers in the door and convert them as effectively as possible. As Sam Walton wrote in his autobiography Made in America: “Say I bought an item for 80 cents. I found that by pricing it at $1.00 I could sell three ties more of it than by pricing it at $1.20. I might make only half the profit per item, but because I was selling three times as many, the overall profit was much greater.” So how does Walmart deliver that volume of sales? One way is by applying behavioral science and psychology — consciously or not — to design, frame, and deliver its retail experience. How Walmart applies psychology and behavioral science to its experience There are countless ways Walmart uses psychology and behavioral science to their experience — some purposeful, and some by chance. Here are just a few of the ways Walmart applies these principles: Walmart’s Goal: Disrupt shoppers’ behavioral scripts If we had to think deeply about every moment of our day, we’d quickly get exhausted. To avoid being constantly overwhelmed by information, our brains develop shortcuts. Shortcuts that help us navigate everyday situations, like shopping at a store, are called behavioral scripts. These scripts describe the sequence of things that we expect to happen in any given situation. A behavioral script is a sequence of things we expect to happen in any given situation, based on our routines and habits. We develop these scripts through repetition. And because they’re an order we repeat all the time, we come to expect them. For example, when you eat at a restaurant, you sit down to order, eat your meal, order dessert, then pay and leave. That’s most people’s behavioral script for dining out. But if you walked into a restaurant that asked you to sit down, pay, eat dessert then order appetizers, it would throw you off. You wouldn’t be sure what to do or expect next. The behavioral script for shopping includes walking down big, empty aisles, and browsing products on shelves. But Walmart is a master at disrupting shoppers’ routines. They’ve created an area in their store called Action Alley. It’s a series of pallets with products that sit right in the middle of the aisles. 1. Salience Bias in “Action Alley” Action Alley at Walmart. Source: Walmart.com Action Alley is where the best deals in Walmart live. By sticking them in the middle of an aisle — even though this interrupts customers — Walmart guarantees that people will act on the deals. A less value-driven brand wouldn’t bother to interrupt the flow of their store with such a basic display. You wouldn’t find Action Alley in a Saks Fifth Avenue, for example. Walmart isn’t blind to the disruption that Action Alley causes. In fact, it discontinued the practice in 2009 to free up more aisle space for customers. But the sales impact of removing Action Alley was so significant that it was brought back a year later. The psychology and behavioral science behind Action Alley Why is Action Alley so effective? It’s down to a behavioral science principle called Salience Bias. What is Salience Bias? Salience describes how prominent or emotionally striking something is. If an element seems to jump out from its environment, it’s salient. If it blends into the background and takes a while to find, it’s not. Salience Bias states that the brain prefers to pay attention to salient elements of an experience. Visual salience is relatively easy to measure. Like the example below, heat maps can help us see where customers are looking and what information they’re noticing or missing. When designing a retail experience, on or offline, there’s a lot of truth to the saying, “If they see it, we sell it.” An example of a salience heat map on a store shelf. Source: Google Images Another (extreme) example of salience in action is Walmart’s Pickup Tower, located in the front section of its stores. These towers make the online ordering pickup area so salient that they’re nearly impossible to miss. It’s a great solution for the common issue of customers not knowing where and how to pick up their items. 2. Anchoring Effect in Rollback offers Because Walmart relies on their “Everyday Low Prices” to bring in customers, they don’t have sales. Instead, they have Rollback offers — permanent or temporary reductions in the retail price of an item. As you can see from the sign below, the original price is always shown in the upper right-hand corner. In this case, these green beans were 64 cents and are now rolled back to 50 cents a can. Why does Walmart always feature the previous price near the rollback price? It’s down to a behavioral science principle known as Anchoring. What is Anchoring? The Anchoring Effect states that our decisions are influenced by the first information we see. We anchor to this information without being consciously aware of its effects. A real-life example of Anchoring In 2006, researcher Dan Ariely led an experiment at MIT — it was an auction with a twist. First, he showed students random objects in his class, like a bottle of wine or a textbook. Ariely then asked students to write down a fake price for the item using the last two digits of their Social Security number. For example, if my Social is 123–45–6789, the price of a bottle of wine would be $89. After students wrote down the fake price of each item, they bid on it in an auction. The results? Students who had high Social Security numbers paid up to 346% more than those with low numbers for the same items. Why? Because the first number students saw — even though it was completely unrelated — influenced how much they decided to bid. The higher the Social Security number, the higher the bid. How Walmart applies Anchoring By showing the previous price for each product on their signs, Walmart is anchoring customers to a higher number. The rollback price then looks like an even better deal in comparison to this higher price. The use of anchors in pricing speaks to a fundamental principle: customers don’t know how much an item should cost in isolation. When retailers add context in the form of an anchor, they make the new price seem like a great deal in comparison. Not in comparison to every other can of green beans in America, but rather in contrast to what’s in front of a customer and therefore what they’ll consider. 3. Authority Principle in how Walmart stocks shelves Remember that Walmart’s mission is to offer value, not just low prices. Every year, their suppliers must either deliver the same quality at a lower price or keep the price and increase the item’s quality. Why? Research has found that customers perceive value as price plus quality. If your price is low, but your quality is too low too, customers think your product has low value. But if your price is low and your quality is high, then your product has high value. Customers perceive value as price plus quality. One way that customers perceive quality is by leaning on the reputation of a well-known brand name. As Stephen Quinn, former Chief Marketing Officer at Walmart told the New York Times, “Customers really need the assurance of brands… In the past we were focused on low price. But low price on what?” How Walmart applies the Authority Principle The electronics department at Walmart is an excellent example of using brand names strategically. The company found that they could improve sales, not by just offering the lowest prices, but by combining those prices with the authority of a well-known national brand, like Sony, Samsung, and Magnavox. As we’ve established, value is the combination of price and quality. Low prices are obvious, but Walmart needs to deliver the perception of quality for customers as well. Low price combined with a no-name brand translates to low quality perceptions because brands act as mental shortcuts for product features like quality. As Stephen Quinn put it: “A customer in the electronics department would see shelves of no-name TVs and think, ‘I can see it’s low price, but I will not buy that television.’” Why are brand names so powerful at creating a perception of value? It’s down to a psychological concept known as the Authority Principle. What is the Authority Principle? The Authority Principle states that people are more easily persuaded by authority figures. That could include police, government leaders, professors, and perceived experts. Or, in this case, a well-known brand. For example, when customers see a Samsung television they assume a certain level of quality. A low price combined with a brand name applies the Authority Principle. This combination creates a feeling of value, rather than just low price.

https://medium.com/choice-hacking/how-walmart-used-psychology-to-become-the-worlds-largest-retailer-11e78aedd216

['Jennifer Clinehens']

2020-11-24 17:42:11.367000+00:00

['Marketing', 'Startup', 'Business', 'Psychology', 'UX']

The Evolution of the Business Buzzword, ‘AI’

The term “analytics” became popular due to the 2006/2007 Harvard Business Review article and book by Tom Davenport called “Competing on Analytics.” The content made companies realize they should be doing more to ensure they were making data-driven decisions across their entire enterprise. Davenport made the case that if companies weren’t using data to continually make better decisions, they risked losing out to competitors who did. Business leaders took this message to heart and the term “analytics” took off. For a while, the term “analytics” was co-opted to refer mostly to data reporting (also called Business Intelligence), which greatly diluted its potential value. As important as data reporting is, it can only take you so far — there is much more to using data than just dashboards! As a reaction to this, serious thinkers presented us with the terms: “Descriptive Analytics” (which includes reporting) “Predictive Analytics” (forecasting the future or classifying data) “Prescriptive Analytics” (using data to suggest actions) With these terms, we then had a more sophisticated way to think about obtaining value from data, well beyond reporting and business intelligence systems. Around 2014, the term “machine learning” became a more recognized term in business settings as companies began to realize the value these new, readily available, algorithms could provide. The business community knew that machine learning algorithms could lead to better predictions, or even to predictions in completely new areas. This created a lot of new business value. And yet, the term “machine learning” always referred to the algorithms; it never became an umbrella term. However, back in 2012 and unbeknownst to the business world, the term AI began gaining steam in the research community. That year, there was an important breakthrough in algorithms for image recognition. Part of this was because of improvements in hardware — specifically the use of GPUs for massive parallel computing, but another big driver was advances in deep neural networks (really just advanced machine learning algorithms). In 2012, for the first time, it became clear that these deep neural networks could recognize images better than people could. Researchers and application developers doubled-down on this approach and invested heavily. Historically, people give credit to the 1956 Dartmouth Conference for the original rise of the term AI. The term has come in and out of favor in the intervening decades with a variety of different approaches claiming to be on the verge of AI. In 2012, researchers had a good reason to revive the term AI: the underlying algorithms were neural networks. Neural network algorithms are loosely based on our current understanding of how the brain operates (through a network of neurons). If these algorithms truly do work like the human brain, then the term “AI” is a natural (and fun) way to describe the algorithms. From 2012 onward the research efforts paid off and the advances were impressive: better image and video recognition, realistic autonomous vehicles, great language translation and understanding plus well-publicized victories in board and video games. By 2017, it was clear these advances could dramatically change many industries and alter how a business was run. The term really caught on, and it captured our imaginations. At the same time, more algorithms were placed under the umbrella term “AI” — even if the algorithms didn’t use a neural network. Of course, as the term “AI” became more of an umbrella term in the general business community, the research community found a need to differentiate it from the ongoing goal of building machines that “think” in ways more human-like. Today, the research community sometimes uses the term “artificial general intelligence” (AGI) to describe systems that learn and react just like a human. Think of this as the self-sufficient robots of science fiction. In our view, AGI is still in the very early stages. This leaves the term “AI” (or “narrow AI” in some circles) for the technology that exists today. For example, when an AI algorithm identifies an image as a cat, we don’t expect general intelligence from that algorithm to decide whether to feed or take the cat to the vet. Overall, this wide reaching definition is a good thing. Used in this way, the term AI better reflects how you should be thinking about the various algorithms and new advances that are now being implemented by the world’s leading businesses. In our view, the use of “AI” as an umbrella term keeps things simple by embracing many types of algorithms rather than debating where an algorithm may fit or creating new terms like “advanced analytics” to differentiate it from reporting. We also think “AI” is a great umbrella term because it represents a greater call for action than the term “analytics” did. “Analytics” perpetuated a misinformed view that reports, dashboards, and insights might be enough while “AI” clearly implies that you have to think more carefully about how to change your business, your workflows and the jobs people do. In other words, if you are not reinventing your business with AI, your competitors will be. In the end, the most important realization to be aware of is that the definition of AI that suits your business may be entirely different for others. For example, computer vision may be an essential AI advancement at Google while Amazon’s key AI application could be demand forecasting. Your business might be transformed by a different AI algorithm altogether. The bottom line is that AI is behind many of the most influential transformations in business but exactly how it is applied in each instance is unique. The power behind AI is what you make of it. If you liked this blog post, check out more of our work or follow us on Social Media.

https://medium.com/opex-analytics/the-evolution-of-the-business-buzzword-ai-e25610bb8496

['Opex Analytics']

2020-10-09 16:30:21.515000+00:00

['Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'AI', 'Business Intelligence', 'Deep Learning']

13 Attributes of the Ultimate Writer (Part 4 of 4)

The Ultimate Writer Series Idea If this is the first article that you’ve read in this series, allow me to give you the scoop on the idea. The Ultimate Writer series was created from a daydream on how I would create the Ultimate Writer based on 13 core writing attributes. I believe that these attributes are the most important to being an excellent writer. You don’t have to be good at every attribute, but excellence in a few of them would do wonders for your writing skills and career. The 13 attributes for the Ultimate Writer are: Soul Creativity Intelligence Voice/Presence Communication/Delivery Vocabulary Sense of Humor Heart/Empathy Work Ethic Stamina Guts Versatility Connecting As you read this list of writer attributes from top-to-bottom, you will notice that I’m covering the all-encompassing eternal aura with all the way down to the Ultimate Writer’s “feet” with Connecting (with your readers by building a community). Today, in Part 4 of this series, I’m focusing on the attributes of Guts, Versatility, and Connecting. Let’s end this fun series on a strong note! Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash Guts When I think about writers having guts, I think about writers who aren’t afraid to cover difficult topics. There’s a certain class that I appreciate when writers cover sensitive topics. I considered all of these things when picking the writer for this attribute. Nikki Brueggeman is my choice for a writer that exemplifies classy courage or Guts. There are some heartbreaking and controversial true stories from history. Nikki is an excellent oral historian who does a good job of writing about the little-known stories behind historical events. Many of Nikki’s stories touch on racial injustice in the United States. I really appreciate her work and all of the research that goes into her stories. A story by Nikki that highlights her guts to cover tough and controversial topics: How Minnesota Reminds The South It Was Bad At Rebellion. It’s a good story about the capturing of the Confederate flag during the U.S. Civil War and how it is still held in Minnesota to this day. The Confederate flag is always a controversial topic, and Minnesota’s holding on to the flag signifies that the Union won and that they won’t allow Confederate sympathizers to gloat over the flag’s return.

https://medium.com/inspirefirst/13-attributes-of-the-ultimate-writer-part-4-of-4-1c01b69960a8

['Chris Craft']

2020-08-26 13:03:26.201000+00:00

['Writing', 'Writing Tips', 'Creativity', 'Inspiration', 'Journalism']

How To Get The Most Out Of Any Self-Help Book

How To Get The Most Out Of Any Self-Help Book Don’t just read books, devour them. Photo by Tamarcus Brown on Unsplash Do you read books, or do you devour them? Or for lack o better words; how do you read self-help books? The purpose of any self-help book is to fix some problem or to ‘level up’ in some area of personal development. “Reading self-help books but not applying those habits in life is like buying fitness equipment but not using them.” I’ve read over 100 self-help books within the last few years, and within that time, I’ve learned a few tips to make the most out of any good book. Read, re-read — read again. “For best practices, I recommend that you read this through once, and then reread it.” Seem familiar? It’s not uncommon for many authors in the self-help genre to start their book off by recommending to ‘read through’ multiple times. This is so you can absorb the book in one sitting without having to stop to take notes. The second time around you’ll usually want to read chapter by chapter. Take notes and work on ways to implement the author’s ideas into your own life. This is exactly how you should read any great self-help book; you should do more than just read the book — devour it. Yet, I’m gonna suggest you do one more thing — and that’s to read, re-read & read again. The third read-through is very important, and I’ll tell you why. Just recently I picked up The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy. Phenomenal book. In it, he explains the importance of small, consistent actions repeated over time. That’s not the point though. Think about it; you read the book through once, then again — implementing small habits into your own life. By the third read through, you should actually feel like a part of the book. If you don’t really vibe with the book by the third read-through — either it’s not for you, or you might need to take some more notes. Highlight & Sticky Note! I’ve met others who’ll avidly oppose the thought of highlighting in a book. “Why ruin a perfectly good book with your notes? I mean, it’s basically forcing your opinion onto others!” Okay, slow your roll, I mean — it’s my book! It’s not like I’m going to be ‘gifting’ it to somebody down the road. If I do, I’ll just end up buying them a new copy. But I also understand if you’re just against highlighting in your own book. Maybe your opinions will change down the road, and what you previously highlighted won’t ‘vibe’ with you as much later in life. That’s why I also suggest using sticky notes. I do both; highlight and sticky note. If you took a good look at my bookshelf, you’d notice three things. My bookshelf is way too small to be holding that many books. Every single book looks torn to shreds from constant use. Each book is littered with highlights and sticky notes. At some point down the road, I decided to start highlighting and document all of my notes. This ended up saving me so much time, because now whenever I return to a book I can simply glance at the important stuff. 80 percent of all books are just ‘fluff’. Highlight the important stuff and move on! Use A Whiteboard. Above my desk, you’ll notice two separate whiteboards. One is covered with my favorite quotes of the week, and the other is decorated with important notes. Whenever I want to implement a new habit into my life, I first write it on the whiteboard. It’s almost like an affirmation. I’m making it easier to follow through on my commitments by publicly displaying my desired changes in life. Right now, I’ve got nothing but parenting advice spread out all over my whiteboard. It’s ridiculous, but necessary for what’s coming. Decorating my whiteboard with important facts relating to my current circumstance helps mostly be keeping me focused on the task at hand. It’s hard to procrastinate when you stare the task dead on. Join a book club Last but not least — join a book club. Just do it. Even right now during the pandemic, it’s easier than ever to find online book clubs. Find a group of people with common interests to yours and spend at least once a week going over a book of interest. This helps for two reasons Joining a book club will help keep your commitment to finish reading the book. Discussing the book with others will force you to really study and observe its content. Above all else, book clubs are like having an accountability partner. They’ll praise you for any takeaways and will shun you when you don’t remember to read!

https://medium.com/illumination-curated/the-proper-way-to-read-8bf42610435

['Jazz Parks']

2020-10-11 08:28:12.357000+00:00

['Books', 'Self Improvement', 'Inspiration', 'Startup', 'Productivity']

Cross that Finish Line, No Matter What it Takes

why finishing your work is the most important thing you can do as a writer Photo by Isaac Wendland on Unsplash We all get a little starry-eyed when we think of our favorite works of art. The evocative and tender stroke of a paintbrush. A sentence so gorgeously wrought you find yourself whispering it aloud, just to relish the sound of it on your tongue. Entire universes of the human condition at 24 frames per second. These works of art are masterpieces, in every sense of the word. Despite their inherent beauty, I’m often struck by something beyond the workmanship of such pieces. Beyond the aesthetics, beyond the themes that seem to encompass all of humankind. I get excited about the fact that they ever got finished in the first place. The Road Less Traveled, the Line Rarely Crossed Some writers never get to experience the joy of finishing a piece of work. They sit down to write and end up on Google, combing the web for distraction. They sit down to write and then realize they have another dozen things they should be doing, and immediately get back up again. Oftentimes they don’t sit down at all. They simply dream, and figure that someday they’ll be ready to pen their masterpiece. Someday they’ll find the right words, the right idea, the right way to tell their precious story. We’ve all been “they” at some point. Writing is hard. If you don’t think it is, you might be kidding yourself. It’s not just placing words down on paper. For fiction writers, it’s juggling a million things at once: characterization, the trajectory of the plot, subtext, effective storytelling, gorgeous prose that doesn’t get in the way of itself. Non-fiction is just as fatiguing, when you think of the research involved, the metric tons of notes to look over, and the precision required to tell the truth of the matter in captivating terms. It isn’t easy, friends. But we all do it for a reason, whether that is the joy of writing, the need to tell a certain tale, to be paid for our work, or to simply hold a copy of our own story made flesh and blood, and pat ourselves on the back for a job well done. Is that reason enough? “Why Finish? Why Even Bother?” I know I’ve mumbled those very words, closing my laptop after a particularly frustrating writing session. Sometimes it seems like it’s more trouble than it’s worth. Sometimes it seems like the end will never come into sight, that it will remain a distant point on the horizon: the closer I move, the smaller it gets. It’s a well-crafted illusion, but one that is inherently false. How else could it be that buildings are constructed, soaring to dizzying heights through the air? How else did the Great Wall of China and Hadrian’s Wall come into being? They didn’t just appear, fully-formed. They were laid down, brick by brick, stone by stone. We know this to be true, but aren’t able to see our writing the same way. It’s taxing on the mind rather than the body, and oftentimes simply lifting the “stone,” whether that is a word, a sentence, or a chapter, feels Sisyphean. But that’s all it is. One plus one plus one. Every word you write brings you closer. Every idea you catch elevates your work to new heights. There’s Only One Way to Finish… and that’s to keep pressing on, word after word, line after line until the piece is finished and there is nothing left to say. It may not be a neat finish. It may not be pretty at all — it may be wrapped in a crooked and colorless and poorly-tied ribbon, with an awful cliche plopped on top for good measure. But did you catch what I said? It’s finished. And once it’s finished, you can let yourself relax. The first draft is always the hardest part, because anything is possible, in fact, everything is possible. Once that first draft is down, you can narrow your focus. You can go through, circling words to be substituted, phrases that can be refined. You will see little diamonds glittering in the dust, the debris, the clutter intrinsic to the first draft process. Rather than staring glumly at a blank page, you will watch, amazed, as seemingly disparate parts begin to align, as themes arise from the chaos. As Margaret Atwood so succinctly put it, “A word after a word after a word is power.” Go write that story. Go tell the world what it needs to hear. Everything you dream of is waiting just beyond that finish line, and it’s growing closer and closer every day.

https://medium.com/swlh/cross-that-finish-line-no-matter-what-it-takes-db91ee2d127d

['Dana Marie']

2020-06-06 07:15:31.242000+00:00

['Writing', 'Productivity', 'Writing Tips', 'Creativity', 'Inspiration']

Laziness Does Not Exist

It’s really helpful to respond to a person’s ineffective behavior with curiosity rather than judgment. I learned this from a friend of mine, the writer and activist Kimberly Longhofer (who publishes under the name Mik Everett). Kim is passionate about the acceptance and accommodation of disabled people and homeless people. Their writing about both subjects is some of the most illuminating, bias-busting work I’ve ever encountered. Part of that is because Kim is brilliant, but it’s also because at various points in their life, Kim has been both disabled and homeless. Kim is the person who taught me that judging a homeless person for wanting to buy alcohol or cigarettes is utter folly. When you’re homeless, the nights are cold, the world is unfriendly, and everything is painfully uncomfortable. Whether you’re sleeping under a bridge, in a tent, or at a shelter, it’s hard to rest easy. You are likely to have injuries or chronic conditions that bother you persistently, and little access to medical care to deal with it. You probably don’t have much healthy food. In that chronically uncomfortable, over-stimulating context, needing a drink or some cigarettes makes fucking sense. As Kim explained to me, if you’re laying out in the freezing cold, drinking some alcohol may be the only way to warm up and get to sleep. If you’re under-nourished, a few smokes may be the only thing that kills the hunger pangs. And if you’re dealing with all this while also fighting an addiction, then yes, sometimes you just need to score whatever will make the withdrawal symptoms go away, so you can survive. Few people who haven’t been homeless think this way. They want to moralize the decisions of poor people, perhaps to comfort themselves about the injustices of the world. For many, it’s easier to think homeless people are, in part, responsible for their suffering than it is to acknowledge the situational factors. And when you don’t fully understand a person’s context — what it feels like to be them every day, all the small annoyances and major traumas that define their life — it’s easy to impose abstract, rigid expectations on a person’s behavior. All homeless people should put down the bottle and get to work. Never mind that most of them have mental health symptoms and physical ailments, and are fighting constantly to be recognized as human. Never mind that they are unable to get a good night’s rest or a nourishing meal for weeks or months on end. Never mind that even in my comfortable, easy life, I can’t go a few days without craving a drink or making an irresponsible purchase. They have to do better. But they’re already doing the best they can. I’ve known homeless people who worked full-time jobs, and who devoted themselves to the care of other people in their communities. A lot of homeless people have to navigate bureaucracies constantly, interfacing with social workers, case workers, police officers, shelter staff, Medicaid staff, and a slew of charities both well-meaning and condescending. It’s a lot of fucking work to be homeless. And when a homeless or poor person runs out of steam and makes a “bad decision,” there’s a damn good reason for it. If a person’s behavior doesn’t make sense to you, it is because you are missing a part of their context. It’s that simple. I’m so grateful to Kim and their writing for making me aware of this fact. No psychology class, at any level, taught me that. But now that it is a lens that I have, I find myself applying it to all kinds of behaviors that are mistaken for signs of moral failure — and I’ve yet to find one that can’t be explained and empathized with.

https://humanparts.medium.com/laziness-does-not-exist-3af27e312d01

['Devon Price']

2020-07-15 16:41:11.242000+00:00

['Mental Health', 'Productivity', 'Psychology', 'Life Lessons', 'Life']

How to recycle all of your Amazon packaging

Amazon has become an increasingly ubiquitous part of our lives, as more and more people receive weekly — and even daily — packages from the company. But as these packages pile up on doorsteps all over the world, a glaring issue has emerged: How do you recycle all those damn mailers? Given the huge variety in packaging, the answer isn’t so clear. Amazon does have guidelines around the topic, but David Pinsky, a senior plastics campaigner at Greenpeace, doesn’t think they’re very useful. “While it is helpful to provide this information, does Amazon actually expect customers to reference this website and follow the steps (sometimes multiple in the case of its Prime Now insulated pouch) to attempt to recycle its packaging?” Pinsky, who works to make large companies reduce their single-plastic use, wrote in an email. Instead, large corporations like Amazon need to take responsibility by getting rid of throwaway packaging and switching to reuse and refill systems, Pinsky explained. Amazon does offer a program called Frustration-Free Packaging, or packaging made up of 100% recyclable materials without any unnecessary shipping boxes. And it’s working, to some extent. Since 2008, Amazon says programs such as FFP have “eliminated more than 665,000 tons of packaging materials — more than 1.18 billion shipping boxes.” What’s more, in 2018, Amazon debuted a fully recyclable paper padded mailer. But these sustainability efforts might not be going far enough. As the Washington Post reported, in an effort to pack more shipments into delivery planes and trucks, Amazon is using more small plastic mailers rather than cardboard boxes. Many of the plastic mailers it uses (like its regular and bubble-lined plastic bags) include plastic film. Amazon notes on its website that some cities have curbside recycling programs, and if your city doesn’t, Amazon provides a website to find a drop-off location (which the website says refers to retail stores, municipal recycling centers, and private recyclers) that will take plastic film. But there aren’t that many cities with curbside recycling programs that accept plastic film, says Darby Hoover, a senior resource specialist who works on plastic waste issues at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an environmental advocacy organization. When it comes to recycling centers, even if they do accept plastic film, it can be hard, if not impossible, to process, as they often get caught in the center’s machinery, a spokesperson from the recycling, landfill, and compost operator Recology wrote in an email. To avoid this problem, Recology workers try to manually remove loose plastic film before it enters the machinery, but this doesn’t always work. “Amazon packages represent a challenging new packaging trend,” the Recology spokesperson explained. And then there’s the paper address label. If it’s a self-adhesive label, it’s probably not recyclable, Hoover says. “It’s pretty upsetting to see Amazon has gone in this direction by putting more single-use plastics on the market,” Pinsky says. Although online shopping has become the de-facto way of living, it shouldn’t just be the customer’s responsibility to figure out how to recycle. Companies need to step up, too, Hoover says. In the meantime, here’s how you can properly recycle Amazon’s packaging. 1. Paper padded mailer IMAGE: AMAZON Amazon says these paper padded mailers are recyclable, just like cardboard boxes and other paper items. Paper products should be accepted by most curbside recycling programs, says Pinsky similarly. 2. Bubble-lined plastic bag and plastic bag

https://medium.com/mashable/how-to-recycle-all-of-your-amazon-packaging-b07600820c55

[]

2019-11-20 23:01:01.497000+00:00

['Environment', 'Sustainability', 'Amazon', 'How To', 'Wasted']

How My 45 Year Old Diary Started My Writing Career

I had my first diary at age 13. Didn’t all girls? Mine was pink. I loved it so much. I protected it like a momma bear watches over her babies. Touch it and you die. No questions asked. I wrote about boys mostly. Jamie Jones. I’ll never forget him. He was the cutest boy in the neighbourhood. All the girls loved him. Especially me. The only problem with that was all the girls were so much prettier than I was. He would never give me the time of day. Dear Diary. Why won’t he look at me? Why do I have to be this ugly? I hate Jennifer. She’s such a bitch and she’s so phoney. I love him so much and want to marry him. It would be so beautiful. If only I was pretty like all the other girls. I was 13. And my writing career was born. And I had no clue. I wrote all the time from that moment on. Dear Diary…I hate my life. I want to die. I hate boys. And I especially still hate Jennifer. I want her to die. She’s so pretty. As I got older, my diary writing turned into journal writing. Dear God. Dear Universe. Dear Iva. Following that, I poured my heart out. I wrote almost everyday.

https://medium.com/illumination/how-my-45-year-old-diary-started-my-writing-career-88547cbf88b3

['Iva Ursano']

2020-12-15 14:28:59.499000+00:00

['Motivation', 'Writing', 'Freelancers', 'This Happened To Me', 'Entrepreneurship']

Short Literary Fiction: Superfood for the Digital Soul

Short Literary Fiction: Superfood for the Digital Soul Why Short Stories? There is a place in this digitally-driven world for literary fiction. The internet has changed the world, including the world of literature. Arguably, people are reading more than ever thanks to the ubiquity of smartphones and social media. But reading more does not necessarily mean people are more literate. Does declaring a difference between the two make me a snob? Perhaps so. But multiple studies connect heightened empathy with reading literary fiction. Specifically, the “act of transportation into the story and identification with the characters can lead to substantive changes in perception and worldview.” In part, this may be because “literary representations of emotion may be ‘purer’ than those encountered in real-life, and thus have the power to enhance individuals affective empathetic responses.”

https://medium.com/swlh/short-literary-fiction-superfood-for-the-digital-soul-2dfe3544c0a9

['Edie Meade']

2020-03-20 01:52:13.339000+00:00

['Writing', 'Mental Health', 'Education', 'Art', 'Psychology']

Lessons from a $7000 Budget Movie That Made over $2 Million

Anyone Can Be Ok at Anything Rodriguez had to learn a lot of tough skills to make his movie such as editing, sound capture, set design, organising a crew etc. These ain’t skills you learn the usual way by being a good student at school, it’s what you learn by getting down and dirty doing something you really want to do. We all have projects and ideas that we would like to act upon, but the skills gap between whats needed and what we have can be daunting. Do not let it fool you. Let’s think of this mathematically. You, the person reading this, are likely an average human being (but probably above average since you’re reading the The Ascent 😉). So that means you can get up to an average level in 90% of the domains of human achievement, which leads to a lesser-known fact : You can only tell if you’ll be successful at something when you get to being OK at it. There’s a great lesson hidden here: You can’t say ‘I’m not good enough’ until you’re OK enough. This fear that ‘I might not be good enough’ is one I’ve felt and given into far too frequently, and one that’s killed more dreams than any other. But you can only have that fear when you’re at an average level, so get there first, then worry. You will almost never be as good as you want to be on the first attempt at something worthwhile, but thats not the point of first drafts. All you need to be first is OK-ish, only then can you find out if you’ve got what it takes. So, if you have an idea for a business, show, career — get yourself to a point where you’re OK-ish and then get good.

https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/lessons-from-a-7000-budget-movie-that-made-over-2-million-c2b4a0e98727

['S Pats']

2020-12-06 08:51:33.047000+00:00

['Self Improvement', 'Life Lessons', 'Productivity', 'Startup', 'Entrepreneurship']

‘Gaslighted by the Medical System’: The Covid-19 Patients Left Behind

Even in normal times, persistent mysterious symptoms, combined with an uncertain diagnosis, can be a recipe for stigma — but the pandemic may be worsening this phenomenon. In a study published on July 25 that hasn’t yet been reviewed by other scientists, Natalie Lambert, PhD, an associate research professor at the Indiana University School of Medicine, surveyed more than 1,500 long-haulers who were members of the Facebook group Survivor Corps, now more than 96,000 members strong. She found that although many patients reached out to their primary care physicians for help, some doctors were, in Lambert’s words, “unable or unwilling to help patients manage [their symptoms] due to lack of research.” Another survey conducted by volunteers from the Body Politic Slack group was published without peer review in May. It found that among a sample of 640 suspected Covid-19 patients in which more than three-quarters did not get positive test results, 71.5% felt that medical staff had been either not attentive or only somewhat attentive to their needs. “Respondents who felt unsupported often reported having been dismissed or misdiagnosed by health professionals,” the authors wrote. “They were told to stay home, and sometimes denied resources such as prescriptions and further testing.” “It feels like being gaslighted by a disease — or by the medical system.” In many ways, it is unsurprising that these patients are not getting sufficient care and attention. It’s unclear how to treat some mysterious Covid-19 symptoms, given that the coronavirus is still poorly understood. And as has been covered at length, U.S. doctors are stretched extremely thin right now; they do not have the tools and resources they need to treat their patients or even protect themselves, and they are dealing with death and grief on a daily basis. They are forced to ration care, sacrifice their own needs, and keep up with ever-changing recommendations and rules. Yet the unfair pressures and expectations the pandemic has placed on physicians have real impacts on patients. Many patients feel slighted, as if they weren’t sick enough to warrant attention or help, especially if they didn’t have positive coronavirus test results. These patients are not only suffering but also scared, unsure of how to manage their confusing and debilitating symptoms alone. Becca Blackwood, 34, who lives in Montreal and tested positive for the coronavirus in March, says she hears horror stories from the friends she has made in coronavirus-related Facebook groups, including Survivor Corps. “We talk a lot about how I was ‘lucky’ enough to get a positive test, because at least I can get health care now,” she says. “There are so many people globally that are just not able to access proper treatment; they’re being denied referrals.” And, she says, many of them had the exact same symptoms she did. Patients who do get tested but whose tests come back negative also report being stigmatized. “It feels like being gaslighted by a disease — or by the medical system,” says Jessica Standifird-Rich, 48, who lives in Portland, Oregon. In mid-March, Standifird-Rich, who is at high risk for coronavirus complications because she has Type 2 diabetes, went to her local urgent care with a sore throat, cough, high fever, and shortness of breath. There, a doctor diagnosed her with pneumonia. She was not given a coronavirus test despite asking for one, and her visit summary did not instruct her to quarantine. She finally got a coronavirus test five weeks later, when she was still feeling sick, and it came back negative. She recalls an urgent care clinician telling her that the negative result was definitive. “We have the best tests there are,” she recalls him saying. In fact, many people who actually have the coronavirus get negative test results. In a meta-analysis and systematic review of studies published in May 2020 in the Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that coronavirus PCR tests have the highest chance of working — coming back accurate and positive — three days after a person develops symptoms, but that even on this ideal day, the tests incorrectly come back negative for one out of every five coronavirus-positive patients. On a person’s first day of symptoms, the tests come back negative 38% of the time, on average, and on a person’s 16th day of symptoms, the tests are incorrectly negative 66% of the time. “Those RT-PCR based tests are really the best tool we have,” says Lauren Kucirka, MD, PhD, study author and Johns Hopkins Medicine physician, but they have a “high false negative rate. There’s kind of no getting around that.” That women without positive test results feel dismissed by doctors does not come as a surprise to researchers who study bias in medicine. Decades of evidence show that doctors treat patients differently depending on social characteristics, such as gender and race, as well as medical characteristics, such as whether symptoms can be explained or tied to a particular diagnosis. “All these things are nested in each other that matter for what someone gets diagnosed with, and therefore how they get treated — and it goes way beyond the signs and symptoms of their disease,” says Karen Lutfey Spencer, PhD, a health and behavioral scientist at the University of Colorado Denver who studies medical decision-making. “Who the patient is, who the doctor is, what the setting is that they’re seen in, all matter a lot.” Sexism, for one, is a huge problem. Women have long been treated dismissively by doctors, and their symptoms are more often attributed to psychological causes, such as anxiety and depression. “Women’s complaints get discounted as minor, while men’s complaints get taken quite seriously and sometimes more seriously than they warrant,” says Irena Stepanikova, PhD, a medical sociologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Studies have shown that women in pain have to wait longer than men before they’re given painkillers, and women are more likely than men to be prescribed sedatives — drugs used to treat anxiety — rather than painkillers. Women also must wait longer to be diagnosed with deadly diseases, including cancer and heart disease. One study Spencer co-authored found that women were twice as likely as men to be misdiagnosed with a mental illness when their symptoms were, in fact, caused by heart disease. “Women often get persecuted, particularly when there’s an illness that occurs that doesn’t have a definite cause,” says Leonard Jason, PhD, a psychologist who directs the Center for Community Research at DePaul University. Doctors say, “It’s hysteria, it’s depression — get on with your lives.” Physicians “have to be able to hold the abnormal result in their hands. And if they don’t, they say, ‘Well, all the tests are normal, so nothing’s wrong. Must be in your head.’” Many women interviewed for this piece say doctors told them that their coronavirus symptoms were all in their head. WhiteFeather Hunter, a 47-year-old who lives in Quebec, Canada, never got a positive coronavirus test and says several physicians told her that her symptoms — which included blood clots and pericarditis, an inflammation of the lining of the heart — were caused by anxiety. “The last of the four male doctors who told me it was just anxiety was extremely condescending and exasperated, told me to go off all the medications I was taking, and when I asked for further advice, he said to speak to a psychologist. I felt extremely demoralized, stepped on, and angry, and at a total loss for what to do,” she says. Hunter has reason to believe she could have been exposed: In the months preceding her symptoms, she had been renting a room in a house in Australia, which had a frequent turnover of travelers from around the world. Also, a few days before, her partner had returned to Australia from Cyprus, where he had been visiting an ailing relative. Certainly, some patients without positive coronavirus tests didn’t have the coronavirus. Many viruses can cause fevers and respiratory symptoms. But regardless of the cause, patients’ health issues should be taken seriously. And researchers say they have no doubt that test-related bias exists. If two patients have the same coronavirus symptoms, but one has a positive test result and one doesn’t, “I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that they are going to be treated differently,” Stepanikova says. Benjamin Natelson, MD, a neurologist who runs the Pain and Fatigue Study Center at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, agrees. Physicians “have to be able to hold the abnormal result in their hands,” he says. “And if they don’t, they say, ‘Well, all the tests are normal, so nothing’s wrong. Must be in your head.’” Since the coronavirus can incite vague, hard-to-measure symptoms, such as fatigue, headache and brain fog, it is the perfect type of ailment to inspire physician disbelief. Some doctors haven’t completely dismissed their patients’ symptoms but attributed them to other, more common ailments — even ailments that don’t make much sense. On April 23, Natalie Nowell, a 34-year-old who lives in Memphis, Tennessee, developed classic coronavirus symptoms: fever, shortness of breath, and chest tightness. She made a telehealth appointment with a doctor in her primary care practice, who suggested she go to the emergency room for a coronavirus test. There, she tested negative. Over the next week, she felt worse and worse. “I truly thought I was going to die in my sleep because of how unable I was to breathe,” she says. Nowell then made another telemedicine appointment with the same physician she’d seen initially, and when she mentioned her negative test result, the doctor suggested she might instead have a urinary tract infection. “It’s bonkers to me, since he specifically asked if I had pain while urinating, and I said, ‘No, no issues at all in that area,’” Nowell recalls. “He then said, ‘Well, let’s just call it a UTI, or maybe a stomach infection, or a sinus infection.’” A few days later, Nowell was able to get another coronavirus test. She tested positive. Since the coronavirus can also incite vague, hard-to-measure (and treat) symptoms, such as fatigue, headache, and brain fog, it is the perfect type of ailment to inspire physician disbelief, especially among women. “If there hasn’t been enough medical research about a disease yet, there are a lot of patient reports that [doctors say] the problem ‘isn’t real,’” Lambert says.

https://elemental.medium.com/gaslighted-by-the-medical-system-the-covid-19-patients-left-behind-3ee0d3419197

['Melinda Wenner Moyer']

2020-09-01 15:59:05.850000+00:00

['Healthcare', 'Health', 'Science', 'Coronavirus', 'Covid 19']

The Logo Comes Last: Developing an Effective Brand Identity

-This article was written by Juan Castillo, Creative Director at Endertech- My design team and I recently had the exciting opportunity to develop the brand identity for a new product from scratch. When our client, Global Electronic Technology, approached us with this project, their new product didn’t even have a name yet. We just knew that it would be a payment processing platform (Think of the services that companies like PayPal, Stripe, or Authorize.net offer merchants and vendors–basically anyone selling stuff). It was up to Endertech to develop the name, slogan, logo, and accompanying style guide. As a designer, I’m always eager to jump straightaway to the visual part of developing a brand identity. While a logo is indeed the linchpin for a brand’s visual identity, often serving as the basis for the color palette, typography, etc., it also encapsulates the brand’s spirit and values. These are things that can’t be defined by the logo; rather, they must be defined first and then inform the design of the logo. To that end, my team and I followed what we felt was a logical, orderly process. First, we defined the brand with written Brand Statements. These statements then facilitated the process of coming up with a suitable name for the product. Together, the brand statements and name in turn informed the design of the logo. Finally, the logo then informed the other visual aspects of the brand identity–the color scheme, the font and typographic rules, and other guidelines. Of course, not every branding project will entail this entire process; however I hope that the case study I outline below can serve as a template. Brand Statements Before even coming up with a name, we wanted to distill the concept, values, and other attributes of the new product into a few concise brand statements. We started the process with a free-form whiteboarding session. My design team and the client’s team wrote down adjectives and phrases that we wanted the product to embody. We started very broadly, coming up with dozens of words, which we then whittled down to what we felt were the most salient attributes of the product. In subsequent sessions, the client went into further detail regarding the product’s functionality, its position within the market, as well as the desired customer impression and experience with the product. We synthesized our learning into three statements: Position, Promise, and Character. For the product’s Position, we focused on its comprehensive feature set and customizability. We realized there is an intrinsic dichotomy in the product between the fact, on the one hand, that it will be used by a wide range of companies in different industries and of different sizes, and on the other hand, that each individual customer will experience the product in a unique way that is tailored specifically for them. One slogan idea to come out of the Position statement was “Made for everyone; made just for you.” For the product’s Promise, we reiterated the product’s flexibility and customizability, while concluding that the product should also be state-of-the-art, secure, and both user- and developer-friendly. Finally, for the product’s Character, we focused less on the hard functionality (facilitating taking payments) and market positioning and more on intangible qualities, like the kind of experience the user should have with the product and the kind of emotions the product should evoke. The client promised the product would offer a polished and seamless user experience. They wanted the product to exude feelings of friendliness, competence, and a forward-thinking attitude. Brand Name With the brand statements in hand, my team and I were ready to delve into the task of actually coming up with a name for the new product. In brief, the product would be a state-of-the-art payment processing platform that offered customizability and flexibility, and whose polished user experience would inspire confidence and exude reliability and security. We once again did research individually and then came together for a group brainstorming session. As with the brand statement exercise, we initially took an “anything goes” approach, throwing out dozens of keywords and concepts we felt reflected the position, promise, and character of the new product. We then took stock of everything we had produced, rejecting what we deemed to be the weakest ideas, and ordering and categorizing the best ideas. We found that all of the names fell on a spectrum, with literal names on one end and figurative, or metaphorical, names on the other, with “transitional” names falling in between. The literal names all had some reference to payment or money in them, for example Payable or EdgePay. For existing examples, we pointed to PayPal and Authorize.net. The transitional names all still made reference to money, payment, or credit cards, but did so in a more oblique manner–for example Silvr, Green, or Plastic. Companies like Stripe (as in the magnetic strip on the back of a credit card) or Square (the shape of its proprietary card reader) go this route. Finally, we offered more abstract names that again made reference to money or monetary transactions, but only in the most roundabout way. For example, Moneda is based on the word many romance languages use for “coin.” Another abstract name we proposed was Vesta, after the Roman goddess of the hearth and agriculture–the bounty of a good harvest being an analog to material wealth. The abstract category was represented by existing companies in BrainTree and Moneris. We offered this range of options to the client because we felt each approach was equally legitimate and viable. We didn’t want to prematurely limit the options when we didn’t know what the client would respond to, or how conservative or adventurous they would be in their preferences. After some deliberation, both among the client’s team, and between their team and ours, EdgePay emerged as the winner. They liked the inclusion of the word “pay” in the name, and liked that “edge” reflected the product’s state-of-the-art and forward-thinking qualities. Logo (and Style Guide) With the brand defined verbally, and the product given an actual name–EdgePay–Endertech’s design team was at long last ready to dive into the visual aspects of the branding. Similarly to the previous phases of this project, my fellow designers and I first cast a wide creative net, quickly sketching out dozens of concepts and exploring many different paths. We knew that many of these paths would turn out to be dead ends, but initially, we didn’t want to reject any idea before giving it full consideration. Even a weak logo could contain one strong aspect that would find its way into a better logo. In successive internal rounds, we gradually winnowed out the concepts we felt were weaker, while incrementally refining the stronger ones. Eventually, we were left with the final ten candidates (with some variations) to propose to the client. We made sure that each logo in the final batch was one we’d be happy with if the client chose to use it. Each logo had its own strengths, and the group overall was varied–as with the name proposals, we wanted to give the client a range of options. During the presentation, we made a case for each logo, pointing out how it embodied the brand values and how it might be expanded into a full suite of visual brand elements. Some logos were more conventional, incorporating classic corporate colors and staid graphics and typography, while some were more avant-garde and adventurous, with more striking graphics and type and color choices. To our surprise–and pleasantly so–the client was rather decisive in picking a winner. They chose the first concept in the presentation outright, requiring no further revisions. The winning logo was on the more conservative end of the spectrum of options, but was nevertheless a strong choice. The final logo features a customized version of the Avenir typeface, a classic geometric sans-serif font. Avenir is part of a style of modern fonts developed in the early 20th century that use the circle as the basic shape underlying their letterforms; unlike other similar fonts such as Futura, Avenir is not slavishly geometric, incorporating “humanist” or organic elements from traditional fonts to improve legibility, such as an “o” that is not perfectly round, or a lowercase “t” with a tail. We tweaked the font slightly to match the slant of the logo’s graphical symbol, a stylized “EP,” and created a custom “y” character that matches the curved tail of the “g.” Avenir also became the primary typeface in our branding guidelines. It is a strong choice owing to its timeless modernity and cleanness; it is neutral but nevertheless friendly, and lends itself to a wide range of applications. Companies as varied as Apple, Best Buy, and Walt Disney theme parks have used them in their corporate identities. Another strength of the logo is that it works both as a full logo with symbol and wordmark, and as a standalone symbol. The symbol is distinctive and memorable. Its simplicity allows it to be rendered at small sizes (for example, on business cards), or blown up to become an abstract graphical element of a design. It is our hope that as EdgePay becomes an established brand, the client will be confident enough to use the symbol exclusively on its own. Finally, the logo incorporates a classic corporate color–navy blue. The specific hue and shade we chose felt stylish and modern, conservative without feeling stuffy or boring. Additionally, navy blue is considered a neutral color, so it can complement brighter, more vibrant and saturated colors–thus EdgePay’s brand identity does not necessarily have to be pigeonholed into the traditional “corporate” look-and-feel. Conclusion When we finally got to the logo design phase near the tail end of this project, we found that the design process was fun, stimulating, and resolved quickly–both the client and our team were happy with the outcome, and there was no hint of contention along the way. All of the iteration happened internally within our team, with no back-and-forth with the client that in my experience can bog down a project and create friction that hinders creativity. However, I believe things would have gone much differently had we jumped the gun and delved straight into the visual aspects without first developing the brand statements and therefore having a strong sense of the values and concepts the brand should express visually. My experience with this project affirmed one of the fundamental principles of design that I have learned–that effective design is 90% ideas, and 10% actual visualization. Of course, a design should be aesthetically pleasing and well-executed; however, a strong concept is crucial to an effective design. What separates design from art is that design is not an end in itself, but rather is a vessel for an idea–whether it’s a sign at an airport that must clearly convey important information to travelers, or a logo such as the one we designed for EdgePay which sells a product by embodying the brand’s values and evoking specific emotions and cultural associations in the consumer. An attractive design with a weak concept behind it is just a pretty picture, but a polished design with a well-considered conceptual basis is more than the sum of its parts.

https://medium.com/endertech-insights/the-logo-comes-last-developing-an-effective-brand-identity-912a4f4543e5

[]

2017-06-02 18:42:47.413000+00:00

['Branding', 'Design', 'Business', 'Startup', 'Marketing']

Think “Work From Home” Means Working Less? Think Again

Think “Work From Home” Means Working Less? Think Again Those micro-moments of downtime are critical for mental and physical health Monday morning. I sit at the desk in my house, sunlight streaming into my work-from-home space, hoping for a moment’s rest before the onslaught of meetings and requests come in. It’s worse than I thought. In my Outlook calendar, there are actually meetings overlapping each other — you know those side by side meetings. Well, that’s great. I forgot to clone myself this morning. So, I usually just use the “eney meeny miny moe” (yes I did in fact have to Google that spelling) or the rock, paper, scissors approach to pick which to go to. Or maybe it just goes to the person who picked up a coffee for me last time or liked my idea in the last meeting. Unfortunately, working from home means I can’t walk over to said meeting sender’s desk and see how critical I am. It also means that not only are meetings side by side but back to back, meaning there’s no break between meetings. I don’t know about you, but this is a problem for my introverted self. I thrive on downtime — time to process and time to actually use my overly analytical brain. We all used to have downtime when migrating to a different in-person meeting, whether it’s in a different room, building, or a short drive. Now we have no excuse. Maybe if we are lucky we get a bite to eat or find the bathroom (though that’s what the mute button is for, right?). Either way, we are expected to push on. In many of us, this can easily spiral out of control into burn out. I’ve been there, in the burn out spiral — working more to stress less — with little success. Understanding your own cycle and habits, and what helps restore your own personal energy is key to solving this problem. Gerd Altmann on PIxabay Covid-19 Impacts on Work Breaks When the pandemic first started people were confused, work seemed to slow down a bit for some (not me, unfortunately). People were buying out the flour stocks to bake every version of apple pie they could think of. Others started knitting blankets. But that all stopped when people realized one thing. You don’t need to actually walk or drive between meetings anymore. Now, what can we do with all of that free time? Ah, yes, we can actually increase productivity. At least that’s what I imagine hearing if I were the fly on the wall in the Executive Boardroom. I remember sitting in one meeting recently where someone was on my zoom, a webinar, and another zoom call all at once. I was floored. Then I heard this come up again on another meeting. I thought first, well that’s a great solution to not being able to clone yourself. Next, I wondered what happened if they were asked a question at the same time in two different meetings. Intriguing. I suppose they just do what we all do and say there’s a network issue here, be right back. Across the board, I hear from colleague after colleague about these same issues. There’s no downtime or break with these new work-from-home expectations. So what, you ask? Well, there are some clear benefits of workday breaks to productivity, mental health, and well it’s just the law. Importance of Scheduling Downtime During the Day 1. Improves Mental and Physical Health Downtime can improve mental and physical health. One study, for example, found that employees who unplugged and took time off reduced serious health issues like coronary heart disease. Constant sitting puts you at higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, depression, and obesity. 2. Restores Focus and Energy The need to make frequent decisions throughout your day can wear down your willpower and reasoning ability. Even being hyperfocused on a single task can decrease work performance without taking breaks. Stretch yourself just a bit beyond that productivity zone and you might feel unfocused, zoned out or even irritable. What changes? Basically, the human brain just wasn’t built for the extended focus we ask of it these days. Studies show that brief periods of downtime, like afternoon naps, can restore focus and energy. According to the Harvard Business Review, breaks allow us to take a step back and make sure we’re accomplishing the right things in the right way. Deactivating and reactivating your goals allows you to stay focused. 3. Increases Creativity and Systemic Thinking Downtime lets our brains reorganize, revisit moments with more clarity, and troubleshoot problems. Remember as a kid, or if you’re really lucky, as an adult when you would lay in the grass and watch the clouds go by? That’s when our brain has the chance to reorganize. Brain activity actually increases when we daydream. That also might be why many people have their best ideas in the shower. This is when the brain switches from the focusing mode to the diffuse or default mode. Daydreaming lets our brain replay conversations and learn from them. It lets us come up with a solution to failures or challenges we are facing. 4. Reduces the Chance of Burnout Nearly two-thirds of workers in the U.S. feel burned out at some point according to a Gallup survey. When we burn through our internal resources we have to begin grappling for resources that aren’t there — like a car sputtering on its last few drops of gasoline. If you are an employer, letting your employees burnout will not do you any good. And yes, you are letting them burn out because as a good manager you should be learning skills in emotional intelligence, organizational development, and empathy, no matter what field you are in. It’s now well known that employees who burn out are less committed to their place of work, may slip into unsafe practices, and are likely to leave — exposing employers to increased healthcare and productivity costs. The unfortunate part is that once people fall into the burnout spiral they are likely to fall into the spiral again unless they are able to shift their habits. But there are also very real costs to the workplace and spiraling costs to the healthcare system. Stanford researchers found that workplace stress leads to spending of nearly $190 billion — roughly 8% of national healthcare outlays — and nearly 120,000 deaths each year. This includes depression and work-family conflict creating a culture of happiness throughout their lives. According to the Mayo Clinic, burnout can include: Excessive stress Fatigue Insomnia Sadness, anger or irritability Alcohol or substance misuse Heart disease High blood pressure Type 2 diabetes Vulnerability to illnesses How to Schedule Breaks During Work Read that title closely. In the current work-from-home environment, we absolutely need to schedule downtime, instead of assuming it will come along. Because it won’t. And to be frank, no one knows how stressed out you are but you. In fact, one of the key strategies for breaking the burnout cycle is to protect and build your own personal resilience. People who don’t feel burnout are more effective at recovering after work in that they experience very little change in energy when they have control after work. On the other hand, burned-out people are actually more likely to continue to lose energy when they have control over their leisure time. What this means is that people who are burned out continue to lose energy because they are not choosing activities that renew and recharge them. People who already are burned out and disengaged at work tend to need help rediscovering a path to life purpose and their own competence. This is why, as is true for most health issues, prevention is key. The most important consideration when choosing a respite or break activity is to make sure it’s a preferred activity. Having access to activities we enjoy helps with recovery from burn out while activities that seem like chores send us farther down the spiral of burnout. This means that those work mandated wellness activities are likely not helping your burned out employees if it’s not something they truly enjoy. And to be honest, if it's not a preferred activity, you are just sending them further into the burn out spiral by taking time away from them that they do not have. As an introvert I avoid the voluntary “coffee breaks” and wellness breaks like the plague since I need time to recharge on my own. The one thing you can do for us introverts is to create a culture that supports us taking time to ourselves and not having to engage with others. Characteristics of a good break include: Giving employees control over timing, duration, location, and type of break activity. Relaxation to allow for recovery and recharge of resources. Learning something new, not related to work, such as reading or volunteering. Enjoyment, creativity, and finding joy in the activity. Finding a Break That Works for You There are endless opportunities for finding a break that works for you, but it’s up to you to take action, and up to your employer to support you. Employers can do this by adding in physical and scheduling space for breaks that do not have performance goals or any other goals attached to them for that matter. Consider adding self-care to your annual professional development plan. Below are some ideas on what to include. Be more organized and check off all of the small tasks as soon as possible so you don’t have them clogging your neural highway. Break up your time. Use the Pomodoro method by working in short bursts to finish focused tasks. Set a timer to work for 25 minutes, then break for 5 minutes. Not only does it force you to take a break, but you might make decisions faster. If 25 minutes is too short, try 90 minute cycles, known as the ultradian rhythm, used by many professional athletes and musicians. Lastly, you can try somewhere in between these two with the 52–17 method — working 52 minutes and breaking for 17. Daydream. As I wrote earlier, daydreaming allows our brain to troubleshoot. This can be anything that allows your brain to wander, but I highly recommend getting out of enclosed space, as more open-air environments tend to increase creativity. Do anything from people or cloud watching to doodling, to watching bees pollinate flowers. Forest bathing is also becoming a popular way to immerse in nature and disconnect. Read a book, and not a work-related or self-help book, please. People who frequently read fiction are better able to understand other people, empathize with them, and see the world from their perspective. Take a nap. You remember all of those medical drama shows where the resident sleeps in between patients. Naps between 10–30 minutes are best to reduce grogginess. When pilots were given a nap of 30 minutes on long flights, there was a 16 percent improvement in their reaction time. Get active — anything from taking a walk, playing a game or meditating. Exercising or meditating for as little as 10 minutes can improve cognitive function. Doing either outdoors can stimulate the brain and relax. Any way you look at it, we need a break more now than ever. Find out what works for you, test it, then implement it. Doing this on a regular basis can make you happier at work, increase productivity, and prevent nasty health issues in the future. If you find you are not supported by your workplace and have had meaningful conversations with your supervisor and HR, you might need to consider switching jobs.

https://medium.com/invisible-illness/think-work-from-home-means-working-less-think-again-21cae697deab

['Marcus Griswold']

2020-11-29 01:00:23.804000+00:00

['Psychology', 'Productivity', 'Self Improvement', 'Remote Work', 'Mental Health']

Masks, Protection, and Our National Character

Masks, Protection, and Our National Character Public health is inherently unselfish; why aren’t we? A man wearing a cutout mask gathered with hundreds of others at a “Hazardous Liberty! Defend the Constitution!” rally to protest the stay-at-home order on April 19, 2020, in Olympia, Washington. Photo: Karen Ducey/Stringer/Getty Images Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed its guidance around mask-wearing to say that masks protect the wearer as well as others around them, presumably to encourage mask-wearing. This is notable for what it says about our national character. For context: Fabric masks are not N95s, which we know offer substantial protection to the wearer. Cloth or surgical masks provide some limited protection against larger droplets, and as Dr. Saskia Popescu points out, this is variable. Most of the data for this protection is from health care settings, which can be very different from using them in the real world. The primary function of wearing cloth and surgical masks is source control, and the primary benefit they offer is to others. It says a lot about our priorities that the CDC has to issue guidance appealing directly to an individual’s self-interest to overcome the resistance to employing easy-to-implement, safe public health measures. To me, this also says a lot about how deeply divided we are as a nation. If we can’t convince millions of Americans that they should wear masks for the benefit of others rather than to benefit themselves, it suggests that we no longer value being one nation, indivisible. I think of myself as a patriot, and of course I deeply value freedom, including individual freedom. But I also value my community and my people as a nation. We can only fight this pandemic by unifying as a nation and by caring about others. It says a lot about our priorities that the CDC has to issue guidance appealing directly to an individual’s self-interest to overcome the resistance to employing easy-to-implement, safe public health measures. I was on the fence about masks early in the pandemic (as critics love to point out), but the data persuaded me that they are an important tool for reducing community transmission. So I have been wearing masks in public for months now because it’s not about me. Public health is inherently unselfish, so I’m saddened and disappointed that the greater good isn’t sufficiently motivating to get everyone on board and we have to put critical guidance into a selfish context. We all need to do our part. At the end of the day, I hope this encourages people to wear masks. I just wish we didn’t have to encourage people to care for their communities by appealing to individual interests. This is pulled and lightly edited from my November 11 Twitter thread.

https://elemental.medium.com/masks-protection-and-our-national-character-b90275ec01d3

['Angie Rasmussen']

2020-11-16 17:44:43.503000+00:00

['Covid 19', 'Health', 'Public Health', 'Science', 'Coronavirus']

How To Become A Top Earner On Medium

I’ve been writing pretty consistently on Medium (around 3,000 words per day) for the past few months, with stories hosted in over a dozen publications. Over time I’m beginning to learn what it takes to make a decent income on Medium, and I want to share what I’ve learned so far. Some writers earn an incredible amount of money on this platform. In April 2020, one writer brought in over $28,000 in a single month! Even with jaw-dropping statistics like that, it’s important to understand that less than 6% of writers on Medium have earned more than $100 in a single month. What Are You Expecting To Get Out Of Medium? In all honesty, I don’t believe there’s a huge difference between making $100 and $1,000 on Medium. The only thing that matters is your level of commitment and time spent on the platform, so ask yourself what you expect to get from Medium? A livable side-income? Professional writer status? Or maybe you’re here to write and connect with other like-minded individuals? In the end, all of the above’s possible if you commit to making it happen. In my first month, I made a measly $6, yet I made 3x that the following month and 10x the month after that. Years from now, I’ll make 1000x that. Patience, consistency, and a commitment to improving as a writer — these are the qualities of Medium’s top earners. But what can you do right now to start making a decent income and build authority on the platform? Build A Following The most profitable writers on Medium have large followings, which means consistent views — it only makes sense. Yet, to build a following of that caliber takes time, which is why your sole focus, in the beginning, should be to pitch to big publications. Over 90% of my income on Medium comes from stories that have been hosted by some major publications. In fact, few of my articles have made over $20, yet all of them were hosted with medium-to-large-sized publications. How To Become A Master Salesman /Featured on The Post-Grad Survival Guide I Published 150 Stories On Medium — Here’s What I Learned/ Published with The Startup The two examples above represent stories that have been published with large publications. Not only have these stories brought in a decent payout, but they also helped me gain an extra hundred followers within a matter of days once published. Most of my engaged readers found my work on a publication that they followed already, so exposing your work to various publications is key to building a diverse and engaged audience. Focus On Writing Engaging Content Besides submitting to large publications, writing engaging content should be the key focus for any aspiring writer on Medium. Yet, unless you’re some (Hemingway or Shakespeare), nobody expects you to write top-notch content every time. However, there are a few things you can do to ensure that the work you do put out there gets — at least to some level of degree — engagement from your readers. Write 2–3 Articles A Day, But Don’t Post Them All As I said, unless you were born with some unnatural god-given writing ability, we don’t expect you to produce top quality content every time. Still, you can help ensure that (most) of your content that hits Medium’s paywall provides ample levels of engagement. I write 2–3 articles a day, but I rarely publish more than once a day. I only write as much as I do to improve my writing abilities. After writing my articles for the day, I’ll pick the best one and edit it for an hour or two before submitting it to a publication of my choice. I spent a few days editing my best-performing articles. In a way, editing can be just as (if not more) important than the writing itself. Use Grammarly I contribute a large portion of my success on Medium to Grammarly, a service used to check — and correct (if necessary) — your grammar. I can’t even begin to express the importance of using Grammarly. In the beginning, it showed me exactly why I needed it. My first month’s report using Grammarly. This month’s report using Grammarly. As you can see, not only did my grammar improve (drastically), but my overall writing production improved as well. Using Grammarly encouraged me to write more by sending me weekly updates, shedding light on my improvements, and encouraging me to write more. So unless you happen to have a master's in grammar tucked under your belt, I recommend you start using Grammarly. Give Your Headlines A Boost I had no idea how important a quality headline was when I first started on Medium. Then, I started to see it everywhere. Every successful writer on Medium will tell you the importance of a quality headline. Not too long ago, click-bait seemed to be the key to a successful headline. Now, however, Medium has made changes, discouraging all kinds of click-baited headlines. So instead of click-bait, focus on writing headlines that intrigue the reader and pique their interest. How To Achieve Results Using This One Weird Trick suddenly becomes 8 Effective Tips To Increase Productivity And Achieve Your Goals. Give the reader a glimpse of what to expect before reading your story. Utilize the subtitle to expand on your headline if necessary. Generally speaking, your second headline will always be better than the first. So before submitting your story, ask yourself, could it be better? Try using Coschedule. Before you publish your next story, copy the headline and place it into Coschedule’s headline analyzer. Coschedule does a brilliant job at breaking down your headline, providing a score of 1 to 100. They monitor your use of common, uncommon, powerful, and emotional words to draw the reader in. As a rule of thumb, I generally won’t publish a story unless I score above a 70. Ever get a full 100 score on Coschedule? Let me know in the comments! Engage With Other Writers My most engaged readers happen to be the people who I follow and engage with as well. To grow an engaged audience, focus on reading and mingling with other active writers on Medium. In the beginning, those first few followers will be the difference between making it or breaking it as a top earner on Medium. Engage with others, and in return, they’ll provide feedback on your work, share your stories, overall contributing towards your success as a professional writer.

https://medium.com/illumination/how-to-become-a-top-earner-on-medium-95cabc9859b1

['Jazz Parks']

2020-12-17 09:17:06.243000+00:00

['Writing', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Startup', 'Finance', 'Inspiration']

How Startups Fill Leadership Gaps With Expert Resources

The hardest role to fill in any company is leadership. Say what you will about logic-defying compensation packages and golden parachutes for C-level executives, because I’ll nod my head right along with you. The hard truth is that experienced leadership is always the difference between success and failure. Always. But how in God’s name do you get that level of talent at that level of leadership when you’re a resource-and-cash-strapped startup? And how do you avoid the hucksters, blowhards, and dinosaurs? We can get just about any part of our business built for a fraction of what it used to cost. The barrier-to-entry for making, distributing, marketing, and transacting has been greatly reduced in the wake of a massive populist technology shift brought about by the Internet, mobility, and automation. You and I, we can afford to start a business that can compete with any incumbent. Until we get to leadership. It’s impossible to automate experience, and there is no substitute for it if you want to take your company past a pedestrian level of success. Luckily, the access and affordability of experienced startup leadership is changing too. And that change can’t some soon enough. What Is a Fractional Startup CXO? Would you rather hire 40 hours a week worth of recent college graduate or 10 hours a week from a seasoned veteran? Now, there’s nothing wrong with the former. I do it and do it often. It’s a great way to get potential on board that can benefit my company for years. But if I’m early in the life of the company and I have leadership gaps that I can’t fill, it’s the latter. Every time. Unfortunately, a lot of startups make the same mistake when it comes to hiring a fractional leadership resource. They’ll hire 10 hours a week from an experienced CEO, another 10 from an experienced CFO, and another 10 from a pick-two of any of the other executive functions. It equals one expensive full-time-equivalent to cover all the C-Level functions of the company. This never works. What will happen is the original startup management team will fall back into a secondary role for these functions and leave the heavy lifting and decision-making to the pros. But no one, no matter how experienced, can run a company function at 10 hours a week. Founders do this because they’re plucking these resources from a field pool of executives who have held a singular position for a long, long time. At first blush, this strategy makes all the sense in the world, but you can’t run a startup like you run a mid-level or large corporate business. Invariably, that 10 hours a week will get swallowed up by bullshit, usually brought on by the expert resources themselves when they realize and run away from the fact that sometimes being a startup CEO means being on the phone with an irate customer for hours at a time. No. You need a single, experienced CXO, and you need them for a couple hours a week, tops. The CXO Role is Changing, So Change With It So what’s the right way to fill this leadership gap? Well, that’s all going to depend on your company’s individual and unique needs, budget, and comfort level — the last one probably being the most critical. The CXO role is going through an evolutionary process due to a number of factors that have changed as startups themselves have evolved over the last decade. If you know those factors, you can really open up your pool of candidates, find the exact right person, and establish the exact right relationship between your company and the CXO. Here are just a few of those evolutionary factors: Factor #1: The pool of available CXOs is expanding rapidly. Thanks to the proliferation of startups that have been able to push themselves quite a long way before exiting or failing, there are a number of talented, experienced people out there who have been through the ringer more than once. These are the multi-faceted experts who can speak to company growth from tech, product, finance, operations, sales — they’ve done it all. Startups have long since realized that they don’t need a former CEO/founder with a single nine-figure-plus exit, they need a hands-on leader who has several stories under the experience belt — good, bad, and middling. Factor #2: The roles are changing too. Startups are also more than willing to throw out the corporate governance model until they need it, so they’ve started fitting leadership into the right place at the right time. If that time passes, they rethink it and change the role. A mentor one day might become a consultant the next, on their way to being an advisor or a board member. If any of that happens at all. The concept of fractional resourcing has led to a reduced emphasis on fitting the role to the person. Figure out what your company needs, then find the person to fill those needs. Factor #3: The gig economy has changed the relationship dynamic. The old way of bringing on fractional leadership used to be a long, drawn-out process that took months to establish and resulted in an expensive and often ill-fitting relationship. This also attracted the wrong kinds of leaders into those roles — for example, retirement-ready executives trying to keep themselves busy. Concepts of the gig economy have begun to take hold at the leadership level. Pay these people, pay them now, pay them month-to-month for as long as the relationship works, then change the relationship over time as the company evolves. If you’ve hired the right resource, they’ll be able to change with you. Watch Out for the Bullshit Factor I was on a conference call with a major startup bank talking about this very subject when they asked me what the top drawback of bringing on fractional leadership was. I paused. Then I said, “The people most willing to do fractional leadership are usually the most incompetent at it.” Luckily, they laughed. But it’s no joke. There are plenty of organizations, programs, and individuals out there who are looking to take advantage of a desperate startup team. And there are others who are just ill-equipped to mold their experience and knowledge into something that’s about helping the startup, not just adding an entry to their LinkedIn profile. Here are some signs to watch out for: You should be reaching out to them, not the other way around. There are certain occasions, mostly around intellectual curiosity, that will lead an expert to contact a startup and offer to help. But those scenarios are few and far between, and when they do happen, the expert will come to the table loaded with familiarity about your company after having done the research. Because they’re interested. Don’t fall for pretty programs or surefire methods. Proper help and advice is organic, individualized, and unique. If I had a guaranteed method for making a company successful, I wouldn’t be helping you, I’d just keep cranking out successful companies. Get a taste of what you need before you bring them on board. Here’s a dirty little secret. Anyone who’s worth their experience should be able to impress you or give you something unique to think about within the first few rounds of communication. Don’t hire them until they do that. But also, I’m looking at you — investors, incubators, banks, and support organizations. These folks are in the perfect position to not only vet and verify fractional leadership, but it should be part of any program or investment aimed at early stage startups, if just for the added chances the startup will succeed. Some of these entities offer a fractional leadership type program for “free,” so to speak, but both sides just end up getting what they pay for. It’s only common sense for that model to change as well. Hey! If you found this post actionable or insightful, please consider signing up for my weekly newsletter at joeprocopio.com so you don’t miss any new posts. It’s short and to the point.

https://jproco.medium.com/how-startups-fill-leadership-gaps-with-expert-resources-7af031ae84ac

['Joe Procopio']

2019-12-14 19:44:39.453000+00:00

['Leadership', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Business', 'Startup', 'Productivity']

The Failure that Led to Sigmund Freud’s Success

The Failure that Led to Sigmund Freud’s Success Why Even a Dead Page can have Purpose In 1895, Sigmund Freud started Project for a Scientific Psychology, a monograph where he tried to explain all neuroses under a single framework. The ambition and expectation of the task brought trouble of equal magnitude. In Creating Minds, Howard Gardner writes that Freud “reveals his own despair at the magnitude of the task, the meager tools at his disposal, and the seemingly contradictory mission of laying bare what the psychic censors have withheld from introspection or consciousness.” And yet, as Gardner highlights, Freud’s breakthrough work The Interpretation of Dreams can be seen as the successor to Project for a Scientific Psychology. The editorial note in Project for a Scientific Psychology agrees, “The immediate continuation of the ‘Project’ among Freud’s published writings is to be found in The Interpretation of Dreams.” It was only after Freud finished Project for a Scientific Psychology, that he felt the doubts of it, “I no longer understand the state of mind in which I concocted the psychology,” he writes in a letter. He didn’t end up publishing Project, and it wouldn’t see the light of day until a decade after he passed away. New creative work can always be built at the tail end of a creative failure. In Freud’s case, The Interpretation of Dreams wasn’t an immediate success either; only years after publishing did it cement itself as something that would change the fields of social science and establish the domain of psychology. There are lots of reasons for us to do things that won’t work out well, especially because there’s a possibility that they lead to something that will. It’s possible, of course, that Freud could have come up with Interpretation without Project. But in practice, and in actuality, he made a monograph he couldn’t bring himself to publish, before he made the one that would cement his legacy. Writers sit on both sides of this, and I’m sure people in creative work of all sorts do as well. Mark Manson doesn’t force his writing when he knows it’s not good; why waste the time re-writing? But Danielle Steele advocates writing dead pages, knowing she’ll have something to work with after and that re-writing is easier than getting blocked. Not every piece of work is meant to see the light of day; but maybe that wasn’t its purpose. The decision is yours to make.

https://herbertlui.medium.com/the-failure-that-led-to-sigmund-freuds-success-6bf82c58a297

['Herbert Lui']

2020-05-01 15:33:19.276000+00:00

['Creative', 'Motivation', 'Failure', 'Psychology', 'Creativity']

Why is storytelling so important to the world? It’s our TRUTH.

“Tell me a story!” Something we have all said or heard in our lives. Stories bring us together around the campfire. We can escape into the rich and inviting worlds of our favorite authors, in a thrilling tale of adventure like Indian Jones movie, or like my grandmother escape into fantasy world of a soap opera. A story is a narrative that can relay lessons and warnings. A method in which we can portray dreams of what the future may hold, or allow introspection on what has occurred in the past. Through stories, we can scare children straight with tales of monsters. Stories give them heroes in which they can aspire, having adventurous journeys in distant lands. Children need these heroes, for heroes are a positive influence on their lives. A template from which they can learn to grow and develop. Stories also teach them to use their imaginations. The lessons are important to the development of children. Stories offer archetypes as role models for us to emulate and they also show the dark side of humanity for us to abandon. I am embracing my journey to become a writer because I want to hone my words into well crafted stories. Hopefully they will resonate with my readers. I am a storyteller at heart. I feel it is my purpose, my destiny if you will. It is important for me to show truths in my stories. I write for myself and through these truths I connect with my characters and the story I am trying to create, if I do not connect, how can I expect anyone else? Larry Kim recently wrote in a piece: “Become an expert storyteller. People love a good story and great stories come from sophisticated storytellers. Storytelling is an art form that requires understanding of language and pacing. Master it and people will flock to you.” Why is this so important to me? Why do I desire to spin a tale? Am I fulfilling my own fantasy of writing for myself? I think it is much greater. Like Plato, I believe art is a purity of truth and maybe my total devotion to it will restore my wings. Creativity makes me feel alive. It makes me feel like I am doing what I am supposed to be doing. (Unlike how accounting makes me feel, like something boring, going nowhere, and everyday is exactly the same) I feel the stories inside me come from somewhere else. Something bigger is guiding me to write. It is important because without stories being written there would be no divine intervention. The lessons needed would not be relayed without writers having the courage their truths. We as writers are always evolving and striving to improve. It is our duty to keep finding new ways to drive home the important truths and the lessons they teach. It is our duty observe and divulge. Stories give us a point of reference. They show us the good and the bad in a person or in a situation. They allow us to relate and learn from the trials and tribulations of the characters we come to love. In order for a connection to be made with any character, the character must ring true. Without this truth, we cannot learn empathy. I cry at commercials sometimes. How is that possible you ask? There was something connecting me with a 30 second spot and its characters. It played at my heart strings or made me think of something that happened in my past. Because of its truthfulness, I could not help but relate. I could not help being empathetic. Stories must strike a nerve. Stories have to be able to reflect reality in order for a connection to be ever be made. This reflection of the world sheds light on own reality and allows our minds to open up and reach for something bigger and better. Stories teach us about hope. They remind us how valuable and intrinsically meaningful our lives really are, even when at times we don’t feel they are. Stories have the power to save us. They can show us that life can be too beautiful to give up. They can pull us out of the dark. They can make us feel we are not alone in the world. They can make us feel that there is someone else in the world that understands what we are going through. Stories show us the importance of our lives and of humanity as a whole. If something is important, it needs to be told. What is in our minds bursting to come out, has to be brought to a pure state, free from outside influence. As storytellers we have a duty to dig deep in order for the truth to shine bright. Without this depth the importance of the message will be lost. Stephen King once said in an interview: “Stories are found things, like fossils in the ground. Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world.” Stories have the power to change our lives. And as a storyteller that is my ultimate purpose. I want my stories to bring people together. I am like a character in a story, I must live my truth. I can’t turn back when I run into conflict or self-doubt. If I do I will be turning my back on my yearning. I will be giving up my life.

https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/the-truth-of-stories-why-do-we-tell-tales-f262f84650d8

['Adele Walsh']

2016-10-26 15:06:17.649000+00:00

['Storytelling', 'Insight', 'Writing', 'Creativity', 'Purpose']

You.i Engine One Performance: Manipulating the Scene Tree

The Scene Tree All JSX Components written in a React Native application are ultimately translated to platform level nodes understood by the underlying rendering engine. The representation of these nodes can be described as a Scene Tree. It contains the relationships and contextual information needed by the engine to render the application. This article will describe how to minimize the changes on the scene tree, which may be expensive in certain situations on low end devices, in order to provide the best user experience possible while managing memory constraints. Creation and Destruction on a whim A common pattern when building an application in either ReactJS or React Native is the use of Conditional Rendering to quickly change the stateful representation of a screen. This allows for a render pass to completely change what is on screen with the change of a single state. Set and Reset of Image via Conditional Rendering In this example, the <Image /> is being destroyed or created on each pass depending on the state of the showImage variable. When a change like this occurs, the Scene Tree requires an update to redraw itself with the absence or inclusion of this node. Changing Visual state without Creation or Destruction Each component in JSX has a Shadow View that links it to a platform node that represents it at the engine rendering level. This node is what is represented in the Scene Tree. In the case of an <Image /> node, for the You.i Engine One platform, it is a CYIImageView . If we reach into the platform with a Native Module, we can manipulate this counterpart view in the scene tree and cause a change in behaviour without requiring the creation or destruction of an element. (In this example I will also set opacity on the node to show a visual differentiation). Replacing the conditional rendering logic with some that relies on working with references to items are created once, we can utilize the Native modules and achieve the same result with less cost. While this is possible with iOS and Android Native Modules on Facebook React Native, the important distinction is that the Native Module to manipulate the CYIImageView is effective on every single platform supported by You.i Engine One. Set and Reset Image (and opacity) via manipulation of Engine Scene Tree Node This example demonstrates a small sample of what can be achieved with this approach. Effectively, all functionality of the underlying node is made available to you when you access the counterpart engine node. While this example demonstrates managing the state of an image, and resetting it to the initial state of the node, it’s possible to use this to unlock functionality beyond the capabilities of Facebook React Native. Performance & Memory Management for Low End Devices While the above is a simple isolated example, where this can come in handy is when you have a design that calls for a very large number of assets to be displayed in a list, each having an image attached to them. For an application that has 25 lanes with 30 assets each, this can quickly overwhelm a low end device. There are multiple approaches using core Facebook React Native to manage the display of these images and prevent images not on screen from attempting to download, but they typically rely on the notion that if you don’t want it to be present then conditionally make it go away. windowSize The most notable is windowSize on a virtualized list. This is an indicator of the streaming range of a list, how many list items (in number of screens) to keep created at any given time to enhance the user experience as they scroll through. Lowering the windowSize property can provide the benefits of (1) lower memory consumption, especially if images are involved, and (2) quicker load times as there are less nodes to create. The issue with windowSize is that it works in absolutes — the list item is not created, and then it is, and then it isn’t. If you set your windowSize to be too small, the user may have a poor experience as the quickly scrolling through items can result in momentary blank spaces as items load in taking the user away from their immersive experience. onViewableItemsChanged By tracking the indices that are visible at any given moment, it is possible to set the state of individual list items informing them if they are in the viewable range or not. This is configurable with viewabilityConfig but can also be controlled manually in the onViewableItemsChanged callback if you prefer. A wrapper class can provide this added contextual information to the renderItem method for use in the list. With the wrapper class, the list items when rendering will be aware of it they are in the visible range as renderItem props can be destructured as ( {item, index, show}) and the item act accordingly. To best utilize this, a Placeholder component that represents the List Item in both its visual and non-visual state is a good way to manage the items load on performance and memory. Assume each item has a payload of: { image: "<image_url>", background: "<background_color>" } A Placeholder component can be constructed such that we always use the background color regardless if the item is visible, and then only show the image if it is visible using the Native Module calls we defined above. We can effectively build out the image when it’s not visible, and then manipulate the node to display or reset when appropriate. A slight delay has been added to the image load to simulate poor network conditions where a solution like this can shine. Image nodes being set at the scene tree level without creation or destruction of components All list items are created, but only images are loaded when they are visible. In this extreme example, images are also reset (and unloaded from the GPU) when they go out of visible range minimizing memory used by the application while still providing a great user experience. note: For the best experience while minimizing memory footprint, you will want to adjust the visible items so that items do load off screen, perhaps two screens worth, in order to make the transitions seamless for the user Using the After Effects Workflow While the above was all done using pure JSX and core Facebook React Native Components, everything works in an identical fashion when using You.i Engine React Native Components (such as ListRef , ViewRef , ImageRef ) and referencing components from the After Effects Workflow. While the Components may differ, the underlying Scene Tree node will be the same. Class that represents interacting with AE Workflow Component As an added benefit when using the Workflow, calling reset not only unloads the image from the GPU but also resets the state of the CYIImageView and all associated helper timelines. After Effects Composition to represent List Item This means if you employ an ImageSet timeline on your node, the next time the uri is set on that image the timeline will once again play. This means you can once again put the power of design and managing state into the hands of the designer.

https://johnwcassidy.medium.com/you-i-engine-one-performance-manipulating-the-scene-tree-e6721eeb50d9

['John Cassidy']

2020-03-16 17:47:58.260000+00:00

['Mobile App Development', 'JavaScript', 'React', 'Development', 'React Native']

Viewing the E.Coli imbalance dataset in 3D with Python

Viewing the E.Coli imbalance dataset in 3D with Python Tracyrenee Follow Dec 16 · 4 min read The E.Coli imbalance dataset is a very good dataset to experiment on because two of its classes only have two occurences in and one class has only five occurrences. Some individuals suggest removing those classes from the dataset to obtain a better accuracy, but I personally would like to find an algorithm that will pick up all of the classes. One way to better understand how the labels in the dataset inter-relate with the independent variables associated with them is to view their visual representations. In a recent post I presented the target variables in a two dimensional plot and the link for that post can be found here:- A look at the E.Coli dataset using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) | by Tracyrenee | AI In Plain English | Dec, 2020 | Medium In this post I intend to present the targets in a three dimensional, or 3D, graph to illustrate the way this variable fits into the memory locations in the computer’s memory. The e.coli dataset describes the problem of classifying E.coli proteins using their amino acid sequences in their cell localization sites. That is, predicting how a protein will bind to a cell based on the chemical composition of the protein before it is folded. The e.coli dataset is credited to Kenta Nakai and was developed into its current form by Paul Horton and Kenta Nakai in their 1996 paper titled “A Probabilistic Classification System For Predicting The Cellular Localization Sites Of Proteins.” In it, they achieved a classification accuracy of 81%. The dataset is comprised of 335 examples of E.coli proteins and each example is described using seven input variables calculated from the proteins’ amino acid sequence. In order to plot a 3D grappd of the targets, I created a program in Google Colab, which is an online Jupyter Notebook that can be accessed from any computer that has the internet connected to it. I loaded some of the Python libraries, which are pre-installed in Google Colab, and then loaded and read the e.coli dataset. The column titles are not present in this dataset, so I had to define the column titles, otherwise one of the rows in the dataset would show up as a title:- I then checked for any null values and in this dataset there were none that needed to be imputed. I then counted how many occurrences were present in each example of the target, which revealed a very large class imbalance:- I defined the X variable, which is the dataset’s independent values, and scaled it using the StandardScaler() function in sklearn’s library. I then calculated X’s mean value and standard deviation. I defined the variable feat_cols, which is made up of the scaled columns in the X dataset. I then created a dataset, normalised, which will be used in the program:- I then entered the block of code to create the 3D representation of the e.coli dataset. In order to accomplish this I had to use sklearn’s LabelEncoder() to convert the target to numeric values, which is what the model wants to see:- Once the code was entered, which is a modification of the code that is presented in the sklearn website, I ran the program and was presented with a 3D view of how the target variable examples appear in the computer memory:- The code for this program can be found in its entirety in my personal GitHub account, the link being found here:- Misc-Predictions/E_Coli_PCA.ipynb at main · TracyRenee61/Misc-Predictions (github.com)

https://medium.com/python-in-plain-english/viewing-the-e-coli-imbalance-dataset-in-3d-ed59597eefc4

[]

2020-12-16 09:15:36.316000+00:00

['Machine Learning', 'Python', 'Matplotlib', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Data Science']

The Two Things You Need to Build an Email List

A couple of days ago, I wrote about why writers need email lists. I hope I convinced you. If I have, your next question might be — fine, I’m in, but how exactly do I do this? The most basic way to keep an email list is to literally write down people’s email addresses. Keep a notebook. When you want to write an email, type in all those email addresses and press send. The problem with that method is that it’s not very efficient. For one thing — you’d have to type in all those emails. For another, most email providers (like Gmail or Yahoo) have limits to how many emails you can send and receive in a day. So — let’s assume that beyond your mom and your best friend, you’re going to want a more efficient way to manage your email list. You’ll need an email server and a way to let people sign up to your list. I’m going to walk you through this like you’re five years old, because I wish someone had when I was first starting. I’m also going to share with you the services I use and the system that works for me. There are others. I hope that you’ll at least take enough from this post that you’ll be able to be more confident if you decide to Google around and find other ways to get the same thing done. I’m not a very techie person. I take the analog option whenever possible. If I can do this, so can you, I promise. You need an email server. An email server is a provider that manages your email list. At it’s most basic, an email server holds your email list and allows you to send emails to it. You can think of it like an electronic secretary. When you put your email in a form so that your favorite restaurant or store can send you a coupon — you’re adding your info to their email server. A good server lets you do things like sort your list based on which form they used to join — so that you can know, for instance, that this group of subscribers wanted more information on a specific part of your business. I’ve used ConvertKit as my email server for three years and I love them. It costs $29 a month up to your first 1000 subscribers. They have something called a Creator Pass that lets you pay $199 for a year or up to 100 subscribers, or $299 for a year or up to 1000 subscribers and gives you access to some courses to teach you about building and using an email list. Before ConvertKit I used Mail Chimp — which is free up to your first 2000 subscribers. Lots of people use Mail Chimp when they’re starting, because it’s free. It’s a decent option, although it’s no where near as easy or fun to use as ConvertKit. If you can afford to start out on a good service, I highly recommend it. For me, it was the best money I’ve ever spent on my writing business. I’ve never used any other servers, so I can’t speak to them, but there are a lot out there. You’ll need a way for readers to subscribe. Your server should allow you to make a form that you can add to your website or direct people to. ConvertKit does and it’s very easy. Mail Chimp does too, but it’s less simple. I always had to look up Youtube videos every time I wanted to do it. (But the videos are there — so if you need free, that’s an option.) If you’re writing on Medium, you’ll want a way to put your form in your posts. The absolute easiest way I know to do that is with Upscribe, which is a service that lets you build a Medium-friendly form (also super easy) that connects to your email server. It costs $9 per month. Upscribe connects with your email server — so when someone uses their form to join your list, they’re automatically added to your server. They give you a URL that you paste into your Medium post, hit return, and the form populates. When I paste this URL into this post and hit return: https://upscri.be/848309/ I get the form below. And if you put your email address into it, my email server will automatically add you to my list and send you the promised secret weapon. You can also hyperlink text, so that when a reader clicks it, they are sent to your form. For instance, if you click here, you’ll be taken to the same form as above. (You can hyperlink text with your email servers forms as well.) Bonus: You need some subscribers. My next post in this series will have some more specific ideas for how to start to build your list. For now, if you’re writing on Medium or somewhere else, start adding an invitation to join your email list to the bottom of posts. If you look at the bottom of this post, at my bio, you’ll see a hyperlinked invitation to take a look at my secret weapon. If you click it, you’ll get the same form as I posted above. I get 20 to 30 email subscribers per day via that line in my Medium bio. There are more effective ways, which we’ll talk about soon, but a simple “Let’s stay in touch” will start your list growing. Your homework.

https://medium.com/the-write-brain/the-two-things-you-need-to-build-an-email-list-301f7a4bd4cc

['Shaunta Grimes']

2019-04-05 06:04:03.969000+00:00

['Marketing', 'Business', 'Startup', 'Email', 'Writing']

People first: Valentin Grigoryevskiy (AIFORSE Community)

What is the most complex technical task you have ever solved? There are different Criteria of Complexity for Tasks we need to solve from day to day. A task may be Complex by tough Timelines, by Communication Issues within the Team or with a Customer, by Lack of Resources and finally, by it’s Nature. I experienced all the mentioned Cases, but sure, when I’m thinking of really Complex ones, the last Category comes to my Mind first. For me as for a Software Engineer, the most complex and at the same time the most interesting Tasks were related to Coordination of Functionality of different directly and indirectly related Modules of Enterprise-Level Software, which altogether should work as a Single Solution and cover End-to-End Scenarios.

https://medium.com/ai-for-software-engineering/people-first-valentin-grigoryevskiy-aiforse-community-ab0f4465271d

['Aiforse Community']

2017-11-06 09:25:40.390000+00:00

['People', 'Software Engineering', 'Software Development', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Machine Learning']

How the CRISPR- technology can help set up a faster and cheaper COVID-19 testing strategy

The year 2020 witnessed a pandemic, crashing economies, depressing lockdowns, loss in all forms and figures, hospitals and healthcare centers stacked with the diseased and their helpless loved ones, unsung heroes working relentlessly in the depths of such facilities, and widespread chaos. We were hit by an enemy we weren’t prepared for. Now, everyone knows how that played out. It’s hard not to miss the jostling streets, the jammed high roads, grabbing a quick bite in a restaurant, or even the Monday morning dread of rushing to work. While some are trying to cope up with the disease itself, the rest try to acknowledge the mental and economical damage unearthed by this pandemic. In summation, everyone seems to be going through a tough time. The best of times only took a year to culminate into the worst of times. However, when the world was toiling away into the abyss of uncertainties, Science was the only guy holding the cards. This might be a sorry state, but the progress made by the researchers is unparalleled. Just when we all thought that there’s no more going around this impending disease, Research revealed another trick up its sleeve. Can CRISPR-technology diagnose COVID-19? There was a time when CRISPR technology was a fancy term only known to the Biotechnologists, Biologists, and a few Biology enthusiasts. The fancy gene-editing technology rose to fame during 2013 and has ever since been on a journey uphill. Over time there came about designer babies, transparent squids, and whatnot. CRISPR now has become a household name. Who knew CRISPR could do more than that? You ask What? Well, before jumping on to the answer, it is important to speculate on the relationship between CRISPR technology and COVID-19. Coronaviruses or CoVs are not new to the game. They have been cohabiting with our kind for a long time now. The newly mutated strain SARS-CoV-2 is the one with enhanced pathogenic powers and spells trouble. This new strain was detected in the first place by nucleic-acid based tests (metagenomic next-generation sequencing or mNGS) that suggested a 79% difference from the six members of the existing SARS-CoV family. Besides, a CRISPR based assay namely, the GeneXpert assay was suggested only last year to detect Mycobacterium tuberculosis with enhanced sensitivity. This indicated the potential of the CRISPR/Cas complex in assay development for other pathogenic diseases as well. Furthermore, in a recent study, CRISPR technology happened to show the potential for in vitro diagnosis of COVID-19 with 100% accuracy. On the contrary, the best part of this discovery remains the estimated manufacturing cost of 70 cents. What does that mean? As of now, over five million individuals have been identified with SARS-CoV-2 infection. It means that COVID-19 tests can be made available to a larger mass of people, especially in the developing and under-developed countries. This comes as a milestone for places where healthcare comes at a great cost and the citizens have been failing till now to get themselves tested. Besides, as the world grows desperate to get back on its feet and run into the dear dear arms of a normal life, the demand for rapid, sensitive, and inexpensive diagnostics has increased. COVID-19 testing In the past few months, countless debates have been aired and promoted concerning the efficiency of COVID-19 testing. However, the lack of 100% accuracy had always left a window open for doubt and speculation. Currently, metagenomics next-generation sequencing and reverse transcription PCR (RT-PCR) are commonly being used to diagnose COVID-19. While sequencing is costly and time-consuming, RT-PCR requires specialized equipment (thermocycler) which is difficult to use. Therefore, the deficiency of precision and a higher time consumption lands us in a weak spot. “A tool kit of rapid diagnostics faster than typical RT-PCR is in great demand to circumvent the bottlenecks in assay turn-around time and reagent supply for COVID-19 testing,” the researchers write. “To address the expanding clinical needs, we developed CRISPR-COVID, a rapid assay for SARS-CoV-2 detection based on Cas13a.” Into the Experiment Chambers Scientists used genome sequencing to determine two unique regions of Sars-Cov-2 that sets it apart from other pathogens including other coronaviruses. Therefore, having two such targets coupled with the sensitivity of CRISPR/Cas13a, the situation turned out to be advantageous. They were now finally able to develop an assay combining the two to create an isothermal-based assay that eliminated the need for sophisticated analytical instruments. Hard to believe, but the study progresses to show a single-copy sensitivity of the assay. When examined against human cells infected with a variety of pathogens as interference samples, the newly developed assay did not have one false positive on record. The study has been published in Plos Pathogens. Trust comes with Evidence When talking about scientific discovery, it is difficult to obliterate the technical aspects. And when talking about COVID-9, the evidence is the Holy Grail. The scientists used 114 RNA samples to conduct the diagnosis among which 61 were suspected COVID-19 cases (52 confirmed, 9 ruled-out by mNGS), 17 SARS-CoV-2-/hCoV+ cases, and 36 samples were of healthy individuals. CRISPR-COVID (as the researchers named the assay) demonstrated a sensitivity of 100% by detecting all 52 COVID-19 cases. No false positives were found in all 62 negative cases, including the hCoV-infected samples. On the contrary, PCR methods showed 90% accuracy on records. Besides, it took 1.5 hours for a complete run. mNGS on the other hand took 20 hours to generate any results. In comparison to these data, CRISPR-COVID took 40 minutes in total to give the result. Precisely, the reaction turn-around time (TAT) of the CRISPR-COVID assay was much lower than that of the other molecular biology-based methods. “The current discovery of the collateral activity of certain Cas family members, provides a great opportunity to take advantage of both the sensitivity of an isothermal assay and the specificity of the CRISPR system, suggesting CRISPR-COVID as a competitive alternative not only technologically but also financially.” When it comes to healthcare, it is better to be safe than sorry. Besides, studies like these call for much more research and experimentation to ascertain that the medical advances being made are for the people, and of the people. However, this recent discovery can evolve to be a successful endeavor only if more diagnostic studies show equally accurate results. It has the potential of not only becoming an excellent diagnosis strategy but also an economical one. Needless to say that this pandemic is a medical challenge coupled with a financial one, and we need to use the resources at our disposal to the best of our abilities to make the most out of the situation.

https://medium.com/the-innovation/how-the-crispr-technology-can-help-set-up-a-faster-and-cheaper-covid-19-testing-strategy-987bc504afb0

['Trisha Bose']

2020-09-13 09:15:01.368000+00:00

['Research', 'Biotechnology', 'Health', 'Covid 19', 'Science']

How to Recover After a Failed Startup

Just as with any human relationship that comes to an abrupt end (or not so abrupt at times) certain events in our lives will require us to take a step back, heal our wounds, take some time and recover before we venture out again into the unknown. Typically, when startup founders make the tough decision to not continue forward with their business, it’s because resources have been depleted and there is no clear sign of progress ahead. It’s a tough call to make, but an important one as going too long and too far without proper supplies typically does not boast well for anyone in the group. In 2019, after 3 long years of engineering, planning and trial and error, my startup came to a sudden end. It didn’t hit a wall, there was just no more road left to walk on. Our financial resources were running low and, more importantly, my financial resources were non-existent. And the rest of the team was also having to make unwanted adjustments as we headed towards uncharted waters. There is a fair amount of damage that comes with starting up your own company. Families can become fractured, friendships can end, finances can become depleted, careers suddenly halt and then once the roller coaster is over, you have to find your way back to normal life somehow. At least, whatever the current definition of normal is. Sometimes normal at 35 years of age is different than normal at 30. It’s been over a year now since I handed over the keys to the office and things aren’t quite back to normal just yet, but they are getting better slowly and surely. Here’s what I’m doing currently to heal up and come back stronger for the potential next phase. Because it’s never quite “over” per say. It’s just “not right now”. Don’t join another startup Startup life can be addicting to some. The daily unknowns mixed in with engineering, networking and getting to role-play this character that we call an entrepreneur. It’s funner than most 9 to 5’s, that is for sure. You can imagine that after 3 years of doing it daily, I didn’t really know how to do anything else. All I wanted to do was to get to work on my next big idea. To put together another team and to take everything that I had just learned and not repeat mistakes. So I did. I joined online co-founder communities and answered requests for tech leads and engineers. And within a few months, there I was at another pitch meeting as CTO of a game advertisement startup. And it was just as exciting as the first time around. We worked out of coffee shops and managed remote teams through Zoom. The typical startup workload was back. The only difference was that I was pretty much broke at this point. And I had no office. And my energy levels were almost non-existent. I was running on sheer willpower and cheap coffee it seemed. To make matters worse, this new startup only had 2 members (myself included) and no budget. Needless to say, it didn’t take too long before the CEO decided that it wasn’t worth his time before he scrapped the project. I jumped around a few startups after this and everyone pretty much suffered from the same fate. They did not have enough financial resources to last more than 2–3 months. Some companies didn’t even have an actual product. They only had very nice looking slides and presentations. In which case my role would be to build them their dream product. At this point, I decided to change course and to really recover, financially and mentally and to leave the startup world behind, even if just temporarily. I dove into my part-time teaching job more and I started to spend more time on my coding blog (www.thatsoftwaredude.com). And slowly but surely, I eventually felt like I was able to breathe again. I still had my startup experience and knowledge. That didn’t magically vanish into the ether like I once feared. I still take on monthly meetings and consult with early stage startups when possible. But this time around, I’m more patient with the process and I realize that everything has its season. Learning to slow down again is the biggest challenge I have found so far. Talking about it And I don’t meant to a therapist, unless you feel like that’s a route you need. Definitely not against that. But really I mean to anyone that’s willing to lend you their ear. We are all allowed to vent in this life and in doing so we might learn a thing or two about ourselves. The truth is, you might not want to relive through the process of what you just went through. I know I didn’t. I left in the past and let bygones be bygones. There is no point in blaming anyone at this point I thought. But unless you confront what went wrong and what went right, you won’t learn anything from it. And you can only really do that by talking about it. The more I opened up about the experience, mainly with family during morning coffee trips, the more appreciation I felt for the entire process. Stories that had become common to me, like flying across the country for startup competitions or driving for 10 hours for a 5 minute investor meeting sounded crazy to others. “Why would anyone do that?” Why indeed. Well, because you have commitments and you should stay true to your word and not break them. That’s the response that inevitably comes out when asked, but that I never give myself the credit of thinking when alone. And it’s not until someone asks you “What do you think could have gone better?”, that you really get to dive in and reflect on what you learned. Because there’s alot there to unpack. There’s also alot of information there that can help somebody else going through the same process. And it would be a shame to keep it bottled in thinking that it is wasted experience. Since that time, I have been able to guide several younger entrepreneurs through their own startup journeys and that has definitely been one of the more rewarding outcomes of this process. So share the stories however you can. Share it in writing (like I am here), or by talking to those willing to lend an ear or to someone that could use the words to keep them going on their journey. Plan ahead I started this list by stating that you should not join another startup after your first one has closed its doors. And I stick by it. Recover the wallet and recover the life around it. But, if you are a true startup entrepreneur with big ideas and big dreams, then it would be a shame for you to become disheartened and to stop here at this juncture. Startup people are a rare breed despite what TV shows portray. Not many people would be willing to forego the safety and comfort of a standard lifestyle for a potentially chaotic and unknown venture. So plan for your next business venture and plan it well. Don’t worry so much about timelines and legal docs and buying domains. Not just yet. But sketch out your idea. Write out your potential business plan. And come back to it whenever you have free time. Slowly but surely, as your finances recover and you start to remember what it’s like to not be stressed daily, you will gain that confidence again and this time around you will be much more resilient and your chance of success will be that much more increased compared to the first time around. There was a time after my startup that I believed that maybe this lifestyle wasn’t for me. That I should put those things aside and to focus my energy elsewhere. But just as quickly as that thought enters my mindscape, it is countered by that amazing idea that I sketched out years ago in an old notebook. And every time I look at that sketch, I smile and think to myself “I need to build this”. Because as I said, it’s never quite “over”.

https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-recover-after-a-failed-startup-7fabfc4fad8c

['Walter Guevara']

2020-12-15 01:58:50.621000+00:00

['Business', 'Productivity', 'Life Lessons', 'Motivation', 'Startup']

20 Facts About COVID-19

In the last 12 months, fact checking has gone from a fun pastime where you get to make fun of Big Walnut to something of a life-and-death scenario where the myths that are promulgating online can have serious consequences for people’s longevity. Instead of impacting which berry you favor at the supermarket checkout, the scientific myths of 2020 might define how your government chooses to respond to a global pandemic. It’s a bit less fun than it was last year to check facts, is what I’m saying. Ah, the halcyon days of yesteryear, when I could check facts about hair dye instead of COVID-19. Source: Me And somehow, some of the biggest myths about COVID-19 are still spreading. Given the global situation, I thought I’d round off the year by looking at some facts that are well-demonstrated about COVID-19, with references. Enjoy. FACT 1: COVID-19 IFR IS HIGH The death rate of COVID-19 varies substantially by age. I and my colleagues demonstrated this in a paper aggregating antibody studies from across the world. We also showed that, even for relatively young people, COVID-19 is pretty dangerous — at the age of 35, about 1 in 2,700 people who get COVID-19 will die of the disease. The IFR of COVID-19, by age. Source: Us FACT 2: COVID-19 IS MORE LETHAL THAN INFLUENZA Another fact that we have known for some time is that COVID-19 is far more dangerous than influenza. For younger people, particularly age 5–20, the two diseases are comparable (we don’t have good data on <5yo for COVID-19 so it’s hard to compare), but for anyone older than this COVID-19 is far worse. A great graphic showing the difference in IFR between influenza and COVID-19 by Marc Bevand on twitter. FACT 3: PCR TESTING FOR COVID-19 HAS A VERY LOW RATE OF FALSE POSITIVES Yes, it’s true, false positives are incredibly rare when it comes to PCR testing for COVID-19. They definitely happen, but unless you have fewer than 1 case per million people in the country it’s almost certain that true positives are vastly more common than false ones. For some context, the Australian state of NSW has an outbreak happening right now. We ran 138,966 tests and found 94 positives from 16/12–23/12. If every one of those positives was a false positive (which is...unlikely), the false positive rate would be 0.068%, or 1 per 1,500 tests run. Yes, the ‘casedemic’ is a myth. Sorry. FACT 4: MOST DEATHS ATTRIBUTED TO COVID-19 WERE CAUSED BY COVID-19 (AT LEAST IN THE U.S. AND MOST DEVELOPED NATIONS) This is something of a complex fact, because it is important to say that every country is different, and so it’s entirely possible that in some places COVID-19 deaths are wildly misclassified. That being said, there is abundant evidence from the U.S. and elsewhere in the developed world that this is largely a non-issue. If anything, the opposite — i.e. not counting all deaths caused by COVID-19 as COVID-19 deaths — is a bigger problem. FACT 5: COVID-19 IS A REAL DISEASE CAUSED BY SARS-COV-2 Weird that this actually needs to be said, but there are conspiracists out there who still spread the lie that COVID-19 is a hoax. It isn’t. FACT 6: EVIDENCE PUBLISHED THUS FAR SHOWS NO INCREASE IN SUICIDES ASSOCIATED WITH LOCKDOWNS This is another complex point, but basically people were sure that lockdowns would cause enormous surges in the suicide rate. Thus far, from evidence around the world, we have not seen such increases. There are definitely issues with mental health associated with lockdowns, and it’s likely that the pandemic itself will have an impact on suicides, but so far the published data do not show increases in suicide numbers associated with lockdowns. This is, as they say, good news. Source: Pexels FACT 7: THE IMPACT OF GOVERNMENT RESTRICTIONS ON COVID-19 IS COMPLEX This should come as no surprise to anyone, but the impact of implementing restrictions (such as lockdowns) to prevent the spread of COVID-19 is not a simple calculation. As the International Monetary Fund has shown, in some cases there may be a net benefit from lockdowns. In some cases there may be a net detriment. It is complex, and very hard to pin down to a definite good/bad, no matter how much people may want it to be simple. FACT 8: COVID-19 CAN BE SPREAD ASYMPTOMATICALLY Of those who are infected with SARS-CoV-2, best evidence indicates that about 20% will be fully asymptomatic during their entire disease. These people can probably spread the virus, but to what extent we aren’t entirely sure. However, there is also evidence that the peak of infectiousness (when someone is most likely to pass on the disease) is right around the time that they start experiencing symptoms. What this means is that someone who is currently asymptomatic may still be very infectious, especially if they go on to develop symptoms later. This is why isolating positive cases of COVID-19 is so important! FACT 9: PRE-EXISTING IMMUNITY BECAUSE OF T-CELLS IS NOT A THING A very popular myth that consistently gets brought up by denialists is that we are all immune to COVID-19 already because some people’s t-cells react to the disease without them being infected. Rather than explain why this is flawed, I’d recommend you read this thread by Professor Crotty, the immunologist who made the initial findings about t-cells that got everyone excited in the first place. FACT 10: MOST PLACES IN THE WORLD ARE STILL WELL BELOW HERD IMMUNITY THRESHOLDS This fact is, sadly, becoming somewhat less true as time goes on, but even with the massive outbreaks in the United States and Europe, the number of infections is still well below the 60–70% — or even a lower threshold of 40–50% — that we would need for the pandemic to substantially falter. While estimates vary, it is likely that even in the US less than 20% of the population had been infected by December despite record hospitalization and death numbers. FACT 11: COVID-19 IS PROBABLY LESS LETHAL NOW THAN IN MARCH 2020 BUT IT IS VERY HARD TO KNOW HOW MUCH Is COVID-19 less likely to kill you now than when the disease first emerged? Almost certainly. We have better treatments, better understanding of the disease, a vaccine, etc. How much less lethal is it? That is an incredibly hard question to answer. FACT 12: THE CYCLE THRESHOLD OF PCR TESTS IS LARGELY NOT AN ISSUE FOR FALSE POSITIVES Earlier this year, everyone became overnight epidemiologists. With the advent of the latest conspiracy theory — that all COVID-19 PCR positives are false positives — everyone became overnight virologists instead. Here is an excellent piece by Professor Ian Mackay of the University of Queensland on why you shouldn’t worry about cycle threshold (CT) values and PCR tests for COVID-19: FACT 13: YOU CANNOT COMPARE GOVERNMENT ACTION ON COVID-19 TO “LIFE AS USUAL” This is something of an obvious fact, but again a point that is often made by denialists. If we took no action on COVID-19, apparently, life would be back to normal. This is obviously untrue, because having an out-of-control epidemic raging through your population and filling up ICU beds also has consequences for the economy, as the IMF report referenced above shows. FACT 14: LOCKDOWNS REDUCE CASE NUMBERS. GOVERNMENT ACTION CAN KEEP CASE NUMBERS LOW LONG-TERM One of the startling things about the global pandemic, as an Australian, has been watching people across the world declare that it is totally impossible to control the virus and we should all stop trying. There are numerous examples from our region of globe — Vietnam, Taiwan, Thailand — as well as Australia itself where the wave of the pandemic has been reduced to a slow trickle. Last week the Australian state of New South Wales was the subject of enormous national outcry because we had a day with 30 new cases, although this outbreak appears (fingers crossed) to now have been controlled. Whether this means that lockdowns/restrictions “work” or not depends entirely on your definition of “work”, but it is absolutely clear that it is possible to control the virus even long-term through such restrictions. The excess mortality for Taiwan vs the United States tells a story all on its own. Source: Our World In Data FACT 15: COVID-19 WAS THE LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH IN THE UNITED STATES TOWARDS THE END OF 2020 A new scientific paper was recently published looking at public statistics on mortality in the U.S. during 2020. The daily deaths attributable to COVID-19 were the highest of any cause for several months of the year, and overall it was the third leading cause of death behind heart attacks and cancer. Moreover, even though COVID-19 was only officially the cause of death for 40% of the excess deaths in young people during 2020, it is likely that this is due to undercounting and that COVID-19 was the primary cause of excess fatalities even in younger age groups. FACT 16: THE LONG-TERM CHRONIC IMPACT OF COVID-19 IS UNKNOWN, BUT NON-TRIVIAL It is, at this moment, very hard to put a number on the total long-term impact that COVID-19 has on people who survive the disease. That being said, there are indications that the number of people impacted in this way — by LongCOVID and other issues — is non-trivial, and may represent a substantial portion of the people that recover from COVID-19. FACT 17: NEW ZEALAND RECORDED FEWER ALL-CAUSE DEATHS IN 2020 THAN IN PREVIOUS YEARS Another point against the “lockdowns kill millions” argument is that New Zealand, with arguably the toughest COVID-19 restrictions in the world, recorded fewer all-cause — or “excess” — deaths in 2020 than ever before. Indeed, during the New Zealand lockdown there appears to have been a substantial reduction in the all-cause death rate, which would be impossible if the lockdown was causing untold tragedy. FACT 18: THE AVERAGE LIFE EXPECTANCY FOR AN 80 YEAR OLD IS ~9 YEARS Because people still go on about the absolutely ridiculous idea that old people are all on death’s door, here are the facts from the United Kingdom. At age 80 you would expect to live an average of another 9 years (8 for men, 10 for women). If someone dies at the age of 80 due to COVID-19, it has cut their life short by almost a decade, on average. FACT 19: COVID-19 REINFECTIONS OCCUR This is, again, not a contentious point. We always suspected that reinfections would happen — they do for all other coronaviruses — the question is how often and how long on average until it starts to happen. Thankfully, every indication at this point is that reinfections are relatively rare, which is great news for vaccines which will probably provide quite long-lasting protection. FACT 20: THERE ARE STILL MANY UNKNOWNS Pictured: What we know about COVID-19, to a great extent. Source: Pexels Ultimately, this article is not about giving you absolute answers to everything, because that’s impossible. People who express total certainty tend to be wrong a lot, because we really don’t know that much about COVID-19 even now. The science done this year has been absolutely incredible, true, but despite this there are questions about everything from school transmission to the precise infection-fatality rate for each place in the world. The reality is that we may never have perfect answers to all questions, but we do know some things and I’ve tried to sum them up here for you. There are many trade-offs when it comes to COVID-19. It’s important to recognize that none of these facts makes lockdowns a given, nor even supports government restrictions per se. In some cases, it’s almost certain that a lockdown will be a terrible path to take. The point here is that every way forward has consequences, some good and some bad. It may not be easy to make decisions about COVID-19, but if we do not at least use facts to inform our choices we will end up much worse off overall. If you enjoyed, follow me on Medium, Twitter or Facebook!

https://gidmk.medium.com/20-facts-about-covid-19-1afbb026bc98

['Gideon M-K', 'Health Nerd']

2020-12-22 23:15:20.034000+00:00

['Facts', 'Health', 'Covid 19', 'Coronavirus', 'Science']

Growing a Growth Team

What is a growth team? Growth can mean a lot of different things at different organizations. At Wish, growth is a mission-based, multi-functional team. It’s a collaboration of marketing, creative, engineering, analytics, and product professionals to create a dynamic team that excels at efficiency and innovation. Together we optimize our over 400 million users’ experiences from the first time they see Wish online, to the point that they love it so much that they start referring friends to download the app! The team is extremely data-driven and works on each feature based on user actions. Here at Wish we think, what better indication of what to tackle than how customers are actually using the app? Because of the nature of data-driven decision making, the team is very flat in organization and everyone is encouraged to own and add new channels / features to engage users. And with users across 78 different countries and over 1 million products sold per day, there are a lot of opportunities for engagement. The growth team works cross-functionally across international markets to ensure that users are being taken care of throughout the user lifecycle. To do this, the team is comprised of several different channels that each have a core function in maximizing our users’ experience. They are: User Communications — Naturally, email and push notifications are huge components of any e-commerce company’s success. If you are a Wish user, you’ve definitely been touched by one of the 200+ million emails, sms or push we send every day via our personalized campaign system backed by machine learning and growth analytics. Wish is always adding new channels to streamline communications for our users, and we pride ourselves on being early movers and adopters for new product offerings. Keep an eye out for our new channels that are in the works! SEO — Our engineers work to ensure that the best Wish information is easily available to users (or soon-to-be users!) who are searching for information about us on the web. — Our engineers work to ensure that the best Wish information is easily available to users (or soon-to-be users!) who are searching for information about us on the web. ASO — Our app store pages are optimized to showcase the overall app experience and unique product features in each locale. Most of our users sign up via the app, so it’s important that we make a great first impression when they’re deciding whether or not to download the Wish app. — Our app store pages are optimized to showcase the overall app experience and unique product features in each locale. Most of our users sign up via the app, so it’s important that we make a great first impression when they’re deciding whether or not to download the Wish app. International Growth — Wish is available in 78 countries, and our regional growth leaders help to propagate our app in their respective markets. We aim on making Wish the #1 shopping app for all types of users across the world. Our team members come from a variety of backgrounds, such as math, statistics, fine arts, and MBAs, given the cross-functional nature of growth. Whatever your background is, if you’re interested in re-defining the shopping experience on mobile, don’t hesitate to reach out. We are currently hiring for our growth team! Please visit wish.com/careers and click on the “Growth” button to view available positions. Come be part of a fast-growing company!

https://medium.com/wish-engineering/growing-a-growth-team-88a8bf852bac

['Jonathan Collins']

2018-07-17 17:42:07.467000+00:00

['Growth', 'Engineering', 'Design', 'Startup']

5 Lessons I Learned From My Neuroscience Degree

5 Lessons I Learned From My Neuroscience Degree A call to celebrate with reflection in the absence of convocation. I just graduated with a degree in Neuroscience without a plan to go to med school or grad school. “Then what do you want to do with that?” People would always ask. “Learn about the brain.” That was my answer every time. To me, a degree was always a gem of knowledge before it was a stepping stone. I hope my fellow graduating class of 2020 feel that way about their degrees too — we need to, now more than ever. With jobs and internships blasted to smithereens, convocations cancelled, and glamorous grad trips put on hold, graduation must take on a new meaning. It must be a reflection on the gems of knowledge we gained from our degrees: the lessons learned that will forever change the way we look at, live in, and leave the world. Here are 5 lessons I learned from my Neuroscience degree. Lesson 1 — Let Your Parents Take Pictures: Episodic Memory is the First to Go I used to get annoyed when my mom wanted to take a selfie with us. I don’t any more. “Why now?” we’d all ask as she whipped out her phone. “To remember this!” she’d say. As I studied aging and memory, I began to realize how good of a reason that really was. Generally, most of us can achieve “healthy aging” by learning new skills, being creative, and thinking and working in different ways. We can sail into the sunset of life with relative sharpness of mind, and even memory. For example, we won’t forget how to drive a car or brush our teeth because our procedural, or “muscle”, memory remains in good shape. Semantic memory — memory for facts — doesn’t suffer much either, and can even get better as we age (think about your last game of trivia with mom and dad). One type of memory, however, is not immune to aging: episodic memory. Episodic memory, or memory for personal experiences, is shown to decline in accuracy as we get older. So, while my mom may be able to mince garlic, drive to Costco, and name the singer of Suspicious Minds with ease, she may not always remember what she ordered on the second time we went to that Ramen place in Palo Alto, and who was there. But a cue, like a picture, can be the magic wand for recalling the night a few siblings and I slurped away with her just down the street from Stanford. Lesson 1. Be patient with your parents when they can’t remember the little things, and support their requested selfies so they can. Lesson 2 — Play Cards With Everyone : Remembering What Makes Us, Us If you were observing the beginning of a card game, you wouldn’t judge the players by their starting hands. We’ve all been dealt a hand of cards. This hand isn’t chosen and doesn’t change. This hand is unique to us and has certain strengths and weaknesses. This hand is our genes. Understanding the relationship between genes and behavior has changed the way I interact with others. Looking back at the times I discriminated against people because of their behavior, I could very well have been doing so because of their genes. I have been guilty of judging card players by their starting hands. “Why is she overreacting?” I’d ask. “I wish he wasn’t so impulsive,” I’d think. I later learned in Behavioral Neuroscience that slow stress recovery and impulsivity are sometimes results of specific gene variants — a specific card in one’s hand. I learned that one fourth of the population holds the slow-acting variant of COMT, which is an enzyme that aids in stress recovery. It turned out all the “over-reactors” I was so quick to label were just working with a unique card in their hand. Then I learned that a certain variant of the DRD4 gene, held by around 20% of the population, is implicated in addiction, impulsivity, higher risk-taking and even schizophrenia. Come to think about it, all those people I thought were “impulsive adrenaline junkies” had been dealt a joker at the beginning of the game. Other behaviors can hardly be traced back to a single gene, but follow the “common variant” model. Autism follows this model, wherein a certain “recipe” of common gene variants may be the culprit. Individuals with autism might have a 5 of diamonds, an 8 of spades, and a jack of hearts — common cards all of us hold. But that specific combination may be just the one to produce the set of behaviors we’ve come to define as “autism.” While I never dared call an autistic person weird, I was no stranger to passing that judgment on “normal” people I found socially clumsy. Understanding the neurobiology of autism (or lack thereof) called for a shift in paradigm: “autism” is a set of traits, just like any other set of traits produced by any given hand of common cards. If every single person could have their genotype mapped and behavior closely observed, we would find more correlations between certain behavior sets and gene variant combinations. Then everyone would have a “disorder.” So if today I run into someone I’m tempted to call weird, annoying, or anything else, I can remember that these traits are the results of unique card combinations, a lot like the ones in my own hand. Now, you’d might as well rescind my degree if I were claiming we were all puppets of our DNA. If there is any certainty in neuroscience, it’s that our brains are plastic: we can change the way experiences and genes have programmed us to think and behave (more on that in Lesson #4). A DRD4 holder can learn to tame his impulsivity. Someone with the slower COMT variant can work to reframe her stressors. And those who behave a little differently in social situations can find confidence and connection in society. Nevertheless, everyone has to start — and end — with the genes they’ve been dealt, and only time, experience, and patience can help us fulfill the potential therein. Lesson 2. Never judge a player by their starting hand and play fairly with everyone — we’re all learning to play our cards right. Lesson 3 — The Best Way to Do Dishes : Letting Dish Soap Do Its Job. Photo by Odua Images Imagine you had to learn how to wash dishes all over again, but this time only through observation. You’d soon find there are different styles. You may enjoy the efficiency of the filler-uppers, who turn their sink into a soapy swimming hole for the evening. The brute-forcers might excite you as they pour soap straight onto the dish and scrub frantically under a running faucet. But understanding the chemistry may call you down a different path. Soap cleans dishes — I didn’t need a chemistry class to tell me that. What I did need it to tell me was how. Water — a polar molecule — and grease — a nonpolar molecule — don’t mix. This is where dish soap comes in. Soap is an amphipathic molecule: it’s both polar and nonpolar. It can grab the grease and hold on with its nonpolar tail as its polar head follows water down the drain. Understanding this, we can see how soap can’t possibly do its thing when violently swished around in a pool or under a waterfall. It needs to do its job in steps: 1) bind to the grease, 2) get washed down the drain. Lesson 3: The best way to wash dishes is a quick rinse to remove the leftover food scraps followed by a soapy scrub sans water, and then a thorough rinse under the faucet. “Wash, rinse, repeat,” simple. But for me, it’s now a simplicity that isn’t blind. For me, the magic of dish soap is, as Oliver Wendell Holmes said, a “simplicity that lies on the other side of complexity.” Lesson 4 — Why “It’s Not Good For Man to Be Alone”: On Potentiation and Proximity. Photo by ZoomSpectrum “Marketing degrees are useless.” “He’s just following the crowd.” “She’s just doing that because…” “Musical Dance Theatre majors are wasting their time.” Left alone, I would think thoughts like these. Left alone for longer, I would start to believe them. This is the dark side of potentiation, or how thoughts become “ingrained” in our brains. Understanding potentiation helped me break unhealthy trains of thought, and build healthier ones. To understand potentiation, however, you’ll need a crash course in neuroanatomy. A rake is a great model for a neuron. The teeth of the rake represent the dendrites, the receiving end of a neuron. These dendrite “teeth” converge onto the head of the rake, which represents the cell body, a control center that processes input from the dendrites. From the head protrudes the long rake handle representing the axon, or “giving” end of the neuron. If the cell body “decides” to send a message to the next cell, it shoots an electrical impulse — an action potential — down the axon. The axon then communicates to the dendrite of the next cell. If you string a bunch of rakes together end-to-end, with the handle of one rake feeding into one of the teeth of the next, you have a neural pathway. The first time I thought, “marketing degrees are useless,” an entire neural pathway fired. Zooming into the connections, or synapses, between neurons in the pathway, we can begin to understand how our thoughts become potentiated. Take the first neuron in the pathway: when an action potential shot down its axon and reached the end, it released chemicals — neurotransmitters — that travelled across the synapse toward the dendrite of the second neuron. When the dendrite received the neurotransmitter, it sent input to its cell body, much like one of the skinny teeth of a rake feeds into the head. As I kept thinking, “marketing degrees are useless,” the cell body continued to receive input from this dendrite and charge began to build up. When the amount of charge reached a threshold, the cell body shot an action potential down its axon to communicate to the next cell, but this had repercussions. An action potential did not only shoot forward, down the axon rake handle, but also backwards, throughout the dendrite teeth in the form of a backpropagating action potential. So long as I kept thinking “marketing degrees are useless” without interruption, one of these teeth was still busy receiving input from the first neuron. When the action potential of the first neuron met the backpropagating action potential of the second at their synapse, potentiation ensued: the connection between the first and second neuron was strengthened. The first now released neurotransmitter with every thought, the second neuron was more sensitive to that neurotransmitter, and as a result, it became a lot easier for me to think that marketing degrees were useless. Until of course, I talked to a marketing student, and learned a new idea that would prove valuable at work. I thought my neighbor was just following the crowd until I talked to him on the way to church and learned his genuine motivations. I was sure why my friend was acting irritated until she told me otherwise. I was so convinced that Musical Dance Theatre majors were wasting their time until I interviewed one. It turns out, Musical Dance Theatre majors spend multiple days understanding the inner world of character they dance, sing, and act on behalf of. They do what I hadn’t done: get proximate to those who so desperately need their understanding. Students of the Bible agree that when the Creator stated, “It’s not good for man to be alone,” he was hinting at a partner. But there’s another reason it’s not good for man to be alone: Partners and everyone else were meant to be loved, and when we are left alone to think about them, our thinking is flawed. When we are left alone for longer, we begin to believe ourselves. Lesson 4: It’s not good for man to be alone because thoughts potentiate, so get proximate to others. Proximity will shatter your belief about someone and give you a chance to build something beautiful in its place. Lesson 5 — Mercy Softens, Trust Ennobles. A few weeks into my last semester, I made a realization. In response to it, I wrote the following email to my professor and meant it: Hi Dr. ______, I made a mistake: I did not check the exam availability days. I assumed it ran for 4 days and thought I could still take it today. May I still take the exam, not for credit, but just as a benchmark for myself? I know you don’t allow exams to be taken home, so I can take it during a TA office hour or one of yours? Let me know what you advise. thank you, Isaac Wu He said yes. The morning of the exam, I was upset. My roommates had done something I couldn’t let go of. As I walked with my professor of Advanced Neuroscience to the empty computer lab, my mind hardened with grudges. As we neared the entrance, he spoke up and told me the test I was about to take was actually going to be for credit and that there were no penalties. Every thought was silenced — something had changed inside. I felt the muscles in my face relax. I let go of the roommate thing. I was softened. He was letting me off the hook when he had every reason not to, and it stopped me cold. At that point, the points were immaterial: My accumulated GPA was high and essentially set in stone and I’d already had a job lined up. Nevertheless, his mercy had softened me. I was getting my things settled when he spoke up again, saying that he needed to go teach another class, and I should slide my test under his door when I was finished. He then said, “I know there are so many ways you can cheat, and I know you won’t use them. Do great.” He slipped out the door and I was alone in the large computer lab. I completed my midterm in silence, with a pencil and nothing else. I did my absolute best — his trust had ennobled me. I grabbed my phone and took the above picture. I wanted to remember this moment forever. I didn’t need the picture. I would continue to put forth incredible effort in that class to learn everything I possibly could, to perform as well as I could, and to do it all with the utmost honesty. A few months later, I only needed a fifteen out of one hundred on my quarantined, un-proctored final to pass the class. With the COVID-converted grading system, anything above a C would be a “Pass” that wouldn’t affect my GPA. Still, I studied as if every future neurosurgery patient or grad school application depended on it, though I knew I’d never have either of the two. He didn’t have to let me take the test for credit but he did. He could’ve gotten someone to proctor but he didn’t. Lesson 5: Mercy softens, trust ennobles. Congrats, Grad. These gems won’t lose their shine. Because there are more selfies to be taken …more card games to be played, …more house chores to be enriched by a scientific lens, …proximities to be enjoyed, …mercy and trust to be given. We are all graduating with something: a Neuroscience Degree at BYU, a marketing degree somewhere else (and a useful one at that!), more time at home with family. Whatever we emerge with during this world-wide pandemic is a graduation, a step toward a life more insightful and moral. Write down the lessons learned — these are the things worth celebrating. Congrats, Grad. Your Fellow Graduate

https://medium.com/the-spike/5-lessons-i-learned-from-my-neuroscience-degree-3e35a9461a7d

['Isaac Wu']

2020-06-11 19:01:01.804000+00:00

['Neuroscience', 'Education', 'Psychology', 'Science', 'Life Lessons']

Good Writers May Not Be Able to Read Minds, But We Can Make You Believe We Can.

Character building in stories is such a fun challenge. One of my favourite ,weird past times, is people watching to help build character’s backgrounds, stories and descriptions. It is a fascinating hobby, and although it may make me look like a creeper, I do it anyhow. Just For Fun Let’s go sit at a mall together. You see a lady, middle aged, with an expensive handbag draped across her shoulder. She is wearing high end, name brand leggings, knee high leather boots and a mid length faux leather jacket. Her blond hair is piled up high, in a messy bun, and her face is free of make up. She is a natural beauty, who probably looks younger than she is. She walks into an expensive dress shop that is advertising an “Up to 50% off” sale and spots a red, sparkly dress on the first rack she sees. You watch her intently, as she glances around the store at the other racks, and walls, to see what else she likes. Before she pulls the dress off of the rack, she scans the price tag hanging from the neckline. She bites her bottom lip, and looks around again. She is looking to see what the sale price of the dress would be, she might be looking for duplicate dresses in her size, or she may be waiting to ask if she can try it on. By biting her lip, you sense hesitancy. Maybe she has spent her budget on her handbag, or name brand pants. She might be considering if the dress is worth paying more interest on her credit card, OR she may be contemplating what her man will think of the dress if she buys it. Another thought is, maybe, her biting lip is an indication that she is wondering if the dress is appropriate attire for a planned function, and she is hoping for the opinion of the store’s floor staff. Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash These are the Moments Writers Can Enjoy and Fly With It may just be a “typical” scene at the mall, but how much fun do writers have with situations like these? We have the ability to write her story. We can WRITE what she is thinking, even if we are way off track. All it takes is ONE situation to begin a story-it may be fictional, or poetic, or even an article such as this one. But, it’s ONE situation we observe, that gets our creative juices flowing. Consider all of the other moments in your day. The people you see, the happenings around you, or the conversations you have. Aren’t we fortunate to be able to lock into those, to help us do what we love? Moments are like props for painting artists, or scenes for photographers. They are ALL around us. When we have a writer’s mind, literally ANYTHING can spark a story. ANYTHING can become the topic, the theme, the character, the plot, or the imagery, if we write vividly and honestly enough. We have the power to WRITE the mind of someone else, whether it’s true or not. Of course, if it’s not, it’s fiction, but if it is accurate, it becomes an article or even an interview. We are very lucky to have this passion. Photo by Timon Studler on Unsplash Back to the Mall You see a middle aged, well dressed, balding man. He is carrying some pink shopping bags and looking around the hallway, trying to spot someone, or something. You see him hone his eyes on a bench in the middle of the walkway, where there are two other men sitting. They all have shopping bags from Women’s fashion stores either on their arms, or on the floor in front of them, as they perch on the bench. One man is scrolling through his phone, another is looking at his watch, and the third approaches the bench, causing the one on his phone to distractedly move over, to give room to the new bencher. As soon as the third man sits down, the three of them give each other a “knowing” look of understanding. They exchange a few words, and laugh in unison. You KNOW what the topic of conversation is, and you jot the scene down in your phone, or notepad for a story to write later. Another great opportunity for a story line and character building! You can add descriptions of the men, the bags they are “in charge of”, the reason why they are all penalized to the bench, and a dialogue of their banter. What fun! Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash Creativity Now, take those characters, and build, build, build. The lady could be out buying a dress to wear for the man she is having an affair with. Biting her lip, she looks around to make sure no one is witnessing her planned purchase. She is thinking about their secret rendezvous and wants to look smoking hot for him. They may be planning to meet in his cabin by the lake, and he will surprize her with flowers and promises to leave his wife. She’s too smart for him, however, and knows he is lying, yet again. They have a glass of wine, and one last sexual escapade. He gets up, and goes into the bathroom to wash her off his body. As he emerges from the bathroom, she shoots him in the chest, with a handgun she had in her expensive handbag, before burying him in his own back yard. She is relieved to have this pain in the ass out of her life. Paranoid that her husband has followed her to the cabin, or has tracked her phone ,she deletes her GPS tracker, and as she drives home, she throws her precious iPhone out the window. A few miles down the highway, she tosses the gun out of her window too. She goes home, after stopping at a gas station to change back into her leggings and sweater. She leaves the blood-spattered, dirty, red dress in the garbage can in the public washroom. She casually strolls inside her house and tells her husband that someone stole her phone out of her purse at the mall. She puts on a charade about how angry she is and tells him that she was at the mall all day long, trying to find something special to wear for their date this weekend. She sobs that she couldn’t find anything she liked, and asks him for his advice on a red sparkly dress that she shows him online. Moments later she sneaks into her bedroom and notices a smear of dirt from the ground she dug up, in her mirrored reflection, and hastily wipes it off with her sleeve. She grins to herself before returning to the kitchen to pour her husband a glass of Chardonnay. And, JUST LIKE THAT. A moment can give you a story. Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash That’s Why There is No Such Thing as Writer’s Block. If you can imagine, you can write. If you can see opportunities is simple moments, YOU CAN WRITE. It may not always be a masterpiece, but it’s a piece. And, that piece will help you to reconnect with your creative self again. Every morning, sometimes as I workout, or have a shower, I ask myself, “What should I write about today?” Most days, I have one or two ideas, but throughout the day, I find more, and more. I just watch for stories to happen around me, the same as a photographer looks for cool things to take images of, and manipulate. Sometimes the topics come so fast and furious, I have to jot them in my notes on my phone, on a paper, or sit down and write a story about it-immediately. Even if you write the vision down one day, and don’t get to it for a few days, it’s okay. The story can change. The perspective can change- even the characters can change. It’s a fascinating craft we have, and the way we can use the art of language and words, is literally an open book. We have the ability to make anyone think how we want them to. We can make any moment inspire us and we can use anyone or anything as our provocation to love our craft. I encourage you to use my scene of the three men with shopping bags, and BUILD that story. I would love to read what can be developed. Don’t forget to “read” their minds and write what they are thinking. It’s a challenge I think you will find intriguing. Let’s have some fun. This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by +417,678 people. Subscribe to receive our top stories here.

https://medium.com/swlh/good-writers-may-not-be-able-to-read-minds-but-we-can-make-you-believe-we-can-604f64a9b098

['Kristina H']

2019-01-29 13:30:31.908000+00:00

['Creativity', 'Short Story', 'Storytelling', 'Writer', 'Writing']

Why Creative Blocks Happen

In The Dynamics of Creation, psychoanalyst and psychologist Anthony Storr attempts to understand what motivates people to dedicate themselves to creative work. Considering that creativity is a difficult endeavour and often carries few rewards, it has to be about more than fame or money. Storr believed that for some people, creativity could substitute for unmet needs in the real world. Individuals who fail to find satisfaction in relationships and the like turn more to their internal worlds. Writing, music, painting, and other forms of art can be a way of communicating with others on your own terms. It can feel safer than doing so through conversation because the whole situation is under your control. You don’t need to fear other people tricking you into revealing more than you wish. For those who struggle to maintain a solid sense of self, creativity can be a means of self-assertion. It’s a way of expressing your thoughts and emotions with minimal pressure to confirm. Some creative people gain self-esteem from their work, as opposed to their concrete selves. Equally, making stuff is a form of escapism. It takes you out of yourself for a while. Storr goes on to write that some people put more of themselves into their creative efforts than they do into their social lives. Those who feel unable to reveal their true selves to others in relationships can end up feeling their art is the sole real expression of their identity. Storr writes: ‘Great artists are seldom great talkers; and when they are, like Oscar Wilde, one has the impression that they would have produced more work of lasting value had they talked less. This needful secrecy, however, means that creative people very often reveal less of themselves in company than ordinary people, and thus may not experience the reinforcement of the sense of identity which comes from a true exchange of one’s ‘real self’ with the real selves of others.’ Taken too far, you end up hyper-sensitive about your art because any criticism of it is an attack on your fundamental self. Taken even further, making anything becomes impossible. Finishing a project and risking exposure is too dangerous. Caring too much about your art can prevent you from actually making anything. Conversely, creating in order to attain necessary doses of self-esteem can make you too eager to release your work as often as possible, to make it visible to as many people as possible, to get as much of what’s in your mind out as you can. Needing that reassurance is a barrier to spending a long time working on a bigger, more complex, or more developed thing.

https://medium.com/swlh/why-creative-blocks-happen-580315369a8

['Rosie L']

2020-08-01 16:20:46.361000+00:00

['Creativity', 'Self Improvement', 'Productivity', 'Life Lessons', 'Writing']

Why I Quit My Full-Time Writing Job over a Viral Tweet

Photo by Ioana Cristiana on Unsplash TL;DR: I quit my relatively cushy, full-time reporter job at the New York Post after one of my tweets went very viral with no backup plan and no real professional prospects. But the full-length version of how I came to that decision is something slightly more complicated. Something much more quintessentially, perhaps tiresomely, millennial. I should probably start by saying that I did actually enjoy my time working at the Post. My boss took a chance on me in a senior position, I learned how to be a real reporter for the first time in my career, and I was often given a lot of leeway to write some very weird pieces of content. One of my more inspired galleries. That being said, however, writing for the fashion section of the Post was like working in a shiny pink, liberal bubble. No real oversight from upper management, no enormous traffic expectations, and the veneer of “women’s writing” as protection from some of the more aggressively conservative op-eds and stories the paper is known for publishing. At first, I just tried not to read them. A job is a job, after all. But that type of content is built to poke and prod at you. Its only goal is to get under your skin, to provoke, to stoke the flames while playing the victim. Still, I held my tongue. Until one day I didn’t. New York Post The story that finally broke the camel’s back wasn’t even one of the more particularly insidious examples. I never dreamt a half-baked piece on millennials killing the power lunch would be the professional hill I would choose to die on, until one night in late October I found myself typing up a heated response to my employer’s tweet on that very subject. I paused before pressing send and asked myself, “Is this really what you want to say?” Yes. “Do you stand by it?” Hell yes. “What’s the worst that could happen?” They fire me, I guess. My poor impulse control on full display. So, as roughly 93,000 of you now know, I took that chance and the tweet spiraled exponentially out of my control. Unsurprisingly, the next day I was called into HR and given a choice: delete the tweet and be put on probation or leave it and they’d have to pursue more serious consequences, which given the tone of our conversation, to my mind, could only mean unemployment. When I told them I needed to sleep on it, they said if I needed to sleep on it I clearly didn’t understand the seriousness of the situation. But I think the situation was actually more serious for me than they understood. This wasn’t just about my stupid tweet or a lazy take about millennials murdering something completely out of their control. It had come to symbolize something far beyond me being a dumbass online. It was the first time, in a long time, I’d written something in my real voice from my real point of view. It was like everything I’d been holding back for so long had come tumbling out and the response was overwhelming. Hundreds of people commented with their own bad lunch break stories and shared frustration with the blame our generation gets for the collapse of everything around us when we’re really just trying to get the boot off our necks. A reply to my tweet. For the first time, I felt like an integral part of a much larger cultural conversation. I felt like I had allowed this small geyser of communal rage to be released. I remembered why I even wanted to write to begin with. The most popular reply to my tweet. So I left the tweet up. Then three days passed and nothing happened. Meanwhile, the tweet just got bigger and bigger. The following week I met with HR again and was told that I somehow still had a job. But mentally, I had already been fired. I had spent the past week crying and asking every person I knew for guidance before ultimately steeling myself for the worst. Except the worst never came. That should be the end of the story. Just learn your lesson and get back to work. But for me it was like the lights had suddenly been turned on and I could finally see my career for what it really is. I’ve spent my entire professional life diligently working my way up the fashion writing ladder, doing whatever was asked of me, telling the stories everybody else wanted told. I woke up at 5 A.M. every day for two years to be the first person to cover Kim Kardashian’s nude selfies. I worked until midnight on weekends so readers would know where they could buy Beyoncé’s clutch. I became an SEO master to make sure as many eyes as possible would land on my expertly crafted descriptions of celebrity hair changes, wardrobe malfunctions, and women over 50 in bikinis. One of my signature stories. What I didn’t do during all that time is write very much of anything that I‘m really proud of. I sacrificed a lot of myself in the name of experience, money and a moderately more impressive resume. Not to say there’s anything wrong with that, especially when you’re young and just want someone to take a chance on paying you to do what you love. But eventually, all that clickbait wears thin and you get hungry for something more. It took doing something a little reckless for me to finally realize I was actually starving. So I quit. I don’t expect a lot of sympathy for this decision. I don’t even particularly expect anyone to give a shit. This is a story of immense privilege, after all. I’m well aware of the privilege of even having a job to quit in a year when 7,800 media people lost theirs not by choice. To say nothing of the inherent privilege that comes with being a white, cis, hetero, able-bodied, childless woman from a family that would love nothing more than for me to be forced to move back home to New Hampshire full time. The decision I made makes no real logical, financial, or professional sense. But then again, neither does the decision to even be a writer in the first place. Too many of us are hired for our voices and then paid to edit them out again. Hired to produce an endless stream of titillating, yet anodyne, content designed to appeal to the widest possible audience. There are no guarantees in what we do. The entire industry is just making it up as they go along while acting like we’re marching towards some digital manifest destiny. But the truth of this medium is that it’s eternally inchoate. As millennials, we know we’re going to get blamed for however this big media experiment turns out anyway, so why don’t we at least start playing by our own rules?

https://medium.com/blankpage/why-i-quit-my-full-time-writing-job-over-a-viral-tweet-934657ddafca

['Emily Kirkpatrick']

2020-12-21 15:55:24.437000+00:00

['Journalism', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Jobs', 'Freelancing', 'Writing']

Darkness in America: How to start healing from toxic masculinity

Photo Credit: Unsplash Have you felt repressed? Have you felt ashamed of yourself, of your sexuality, afraid of being too loud? Have you felt embarrassed by your emotions, believing you are too sensitive or dramatic? You are not alone. “Men who do not turn to face their own pain are too often prone to inflict it on others.” Both men and women have many shadows, pain that has been shoved away. Every year, over 10 million Americans are victims of psychological and physical abuse from people they love and trust the most. I want to share my trauma with you. I want to share how I have learned to feel safe and whole. 14 years old, Courtesy of the author, Allison Crady At 14 years old, I was bright, curious, and energized by the world around me. As my healthy adult self, I would tell young Allison, “You are beautiful and full of light. I will give you the unconditional love you need. The people around you are in pain, and it’s not your fault.” Religion, especially men in religion, traumatized me. Religious teachers taught me that as a woman, I am meant to be quiet, submissive, and “sexually pure.” If I fail to mute myself and save my sexuality for marriage, then I am evil. I am not evil; I am courageous and powerful, and that scares them. We need to integrate our shadows Our American culture has become increasingly masculine and toxic. We are taught to be productive above all else, how to do more with our time. We are not taught how to be more authentic, to embrace gratitude, joy, and being. We need more nurturing, acceptance, curiosity, empathy, and kindness of the feminine consciousness to heal. We need to explore and integrate our shadows, to stop passing judgment on ourselves and each other. We are human beings, not super-humans or machines. We do not have to pretend to be perfect. We can find safe spaces to explore the darkness. When we integrate our shadows, we stop feeling repressed. We stop accepting the expectations and “truths” that have been given to us. Feeling, exploring, and healing our shadows make us more balanced humans. “Survivors of abuse show us the strength of their personal spirit every time they smile.” 21 years old, Courtesy of the author, Allison Crady I was not taught to create physical or emotional boundaries, to keep my heart safe. I had been criticized for dressing immodestly and “being a distraction,” and I felt rebellious. I have been sexually abused by men multiple times, and I felt guilty. It must have been my fault. I never shared my story, and I internalized that guilt. For years I have struggled with owning my voice, expressing my needs, and embracing my sexuality without feeling ashamed or embarrassed. I never deserved that treatment. I definitely did not “earn” abuse through my wardrobe. I felt so small and ashamed. We need to nurture ourselves Our culture’s Capitalistic messages convince us that we need more to feel happy and complete, i.e. more things, fame, money. Our souls have become under-nourished, and we feel disconnected, disenchanted, and competitive. Patriarchy has led to so much pain in our country. Women have been told to be more like men to become leaders when actually the average woman has more natural and effective leadership skills, i.e. humility, empathy, inspiration. Men often become leaders with overconfidence and narcissistic behaviors, leading to poor leadership and toxic work environments. We need to nurture ourselves with our creativity, playfulness, openness, curiosity, kindness, and intuition. We need more collaboration, empathy, psychological safety, and compassion in our personal and professional lives, starting with ourselves. We need to cultivate strong internal relationships. We need to honor our feelings Photo Credit: Unsplash Our bodies and emotions are incredibly wise. Studies have shown that our bodies pick up on the relationship and environmental issues long before our minds do. We are not thinking machines; we are feeling beings who think. The more we honor our emotions, the less burned out, depressed, anxious, stuck, and out of shape, we’ll be. Awareness and kindness towards our emotions is a superpower. We need to reconnect with our divine feminine energy to bring balance to our hyper-masculine selves and our hyper-masculine culture. Instead of trying to fit in, let’s tune in to our own frequencies and surround ourselves with people who resonate, people who want the best for us and who nurture our growth. Sometimes, We need to walk away Our work and relationship environments have a strong impact on our wellbeing. If you find yourself in environments that do not nurture your wellbeing and encourage your growth, then it’s probably time to walk away. Feeling unworthy and unsupported makes walking away really difficult for most people. Find communities who can relate, find the right therapist, find the people who give you unconditional love, and make yourself one of them. Instead of traveling outward, try exploring inward to learn about yourself, who you want to be. 26 years old, Courtesy of the author, Allison Crady Writing this article has been very emotionally challenging for me. I started with the idea a few months ago, and I never thought I would feel comfortable or confident enough to share my experiences and feelings on this dark topic. But I know that getting out of the “nice and pretty,” people pleaser box means ruffling feathers and sharing hard stories. I believe being creative heals ourselves and each other. I hope my story helps at least one person to know that they are not alone and that they deserve better unconditional love. You are loved and lovable.

https://allisoncrady.medium.com/darkness-in-america-how-to-start-healing-from-toxic-masculinity-f1aa59dc5b00

['Allison Crady']

2020-12-11 18:52:23.519000+00:00

['Creativity', 'Mental Health', 'Feminism', 'Psychology', 'Abuse']

Episode 1: “The Evolution” — Java JIT Hotspot & C2 Compilers (Building “Super Optimum Java MicroServices Architecture" Series)"

Episode 1: “The Evolution” Java JIT Hotspot & C2 compilers With Java, we achieved the “write-once-run-anywhere” dream, in the early 90s. The approach was very simple. The Java programs are compiled to “byte-code” Interesting fact: byte-code is called byte-code, as each instruction in byte-code is of byte length, so that it can be loaded into the CPU cache, and in fact there were also java CPUs built!!! didn’t take-off We have JVM implementations, for each supported operating system. The respective JVM will “interpret” the byte-code to machine instruction (using something like a map). Obviously, this is slow, as the interpreter goes one statement at a time!!! To speed up this, it makes sense to identify the code, that is run more commonly, and compile them ahead of time, and cache it 🤔. That is exactly, what later versions of JVMs started doing. A performance counter was introduced, that counted the number of times a particular method/snippets of code is executed. Once a method/code snippet is used to a particular number of times (threshold), then that particular code snippet, is compiled, optimised & cached, by “C1 compiler”. Next time, that code snippet is called, it directly executes the compiled machine instructions from the cache, rather than going through the interpreter. This brought in the first level of optimisation. While the code is getting executed, the JVM will perform runtime code profiling, and come up with code paths and hotspots. It then runs the “C2 compiler”, to further optimize the hot code paths…and hence the name “Hotspot” C1 is faster, and good for short-running applications, while C2 is slower and heavy, but is ideal for long-running processes like daemons, servers etc, the code performs better over the time. In Java 6, we have an option to use either C1 or C2 methods (with a command-line argument -client (for C1), -server (for C2)), in Java 7, we could use both, and from Java 8 onwards it became default behavior. The below diagram illustrates the flow… Here are some of the code optimization, that the JVM compiler Removing null checks (for the variable that are never null) Inlining smaller, most called methods (small methods) reducing the method calls Optimizing the loops, by combining, unrolling & inversions Removing the code that is never called (Dead code) and many more… Whatever said and done, JIT (Just-In-time compilation) is slow, as there is a lot of work that the JVM has to do in the runtime. Ahead-of-Time compilation option was introduced since Java 9, where u can generate the final machine code, directly using jaotc This code is compiled to a target architecture, so it is not portable…in X86, we can have both Java bytecode and AOT compiled code, working together. The bytecode will go through the approach, that I explained previously (C1, C2) while the AOT compiled code directly goes and sits in the code cache, reducing the load on JVM. Typically the most frequently used libraries can be AOT compiled, for faster responses. This is the story of Java VM…and pretty much every language has a similar story, where it goes thru the similar inception and over a period of time, the compiler/VM gets optimised to run faster In the next episode, we will look at how GraalVM, takes this further, by reducing the footprint, optimising the execution and bring in support for polyglot/multi language interoperability. The Holy Grail You can read the blog here Episode 2: GraalVM — “The Holy Grail” 👋 Join FAUN today and receive similar stories each week in your inbox! ️ Get your weekly dose of the must-read tech stories, news, and tutorials. Follow us on Twitter 🐦 and Facebook 👥 and Instagram 📷 and join our Facebook and Linkedin Groups 💬

https://medium.com/faun/episode-1-the-evolution-java-jit-hotspot-c2-compilers-building-super-optimum-containers-f0db19e6f19a

['A B Vijay Kumar']

2020-09-25 20:08:06.153000+00:00

['Microservices', 'Java', 'Graalvm', 'Containers', 'Kubernetes']

5 Helpful Resources That Will Transform the Way You Write

There are a number of online classes, articles, and books to read on writing, which is why it can be difficult to figure out where to begin. You want to improve your writing skills, but you feel intimidated by the amount of information there is, so you do what all sane humans do: you avoid it. To make it easier for you, I’ve compiled a list of five resources for writers of all levels who want to grow and tell better stories. There’s nothing on this list that I haven’t taken or read myself. These resources are actually the ones that were most helpful to me — even to this day. I’ve no doubt you’ll learn a thing (or thirty) from them yourself.

https://medium.com/the-brave-writer/5-helpful-resources-that-will-transform-the-way-you-write-61654336a680

['Itxy Lopez']

2020-12-26 13:02:14.428000+00:00

['Creativity', 'Writing Tips', '5 Tips', 'Books', 'Writing']

Launch of Google Stadia: What it is & Why It’s A Mess

Launch of Google Stadia: What it is & Why It’s A Mess The Future Of Gaming Is Here Apparently The gaming industry has grown tremendously over the last few years, with games such as League of Legends, Dota 2 and more garnering millions of players around the world. What’s even more amazing is the technology that is growing with it. As the world is moving into a cloud-first model, gaming is joining such movement. One of these services is Google Stadia. Ok, so what is it firstly? You’ve heard of Netflix, right? Instead of streaming TV shows, however, you’re streaming games that you can play yourself. But how does that work? Google Stadia is basically a cloud gaming service where you use your own screen but with Google’s own server handling the rest. This means all the processing power that is needed is all taken care of and realistically, all you need is a stable internet connection. This means you don’t need a high specs computer with the latest graphics cards and software to play high-end games at the best quality. This type of ‘new gaming platform’ hasn’t been kept in the dark. Late last year, Google offered a closed beta test for “Project Stream” and at the GDC 2019, where they revealed full playable demos on the show floor. With much hype around the launch, people were super excited about this launch as it could revolutionize how gaming is played out. But why was it a mess? With its launch on November 19th, there was a lot of anticipation. There were many that were definitely impressed with the technology and it did work…sort of. Unfortunately, there were equally many who were disappointed with the initial platform with many citing quality issues, lackluster game selection and a range of other technical capabilities that were missing. To boot, their pricing model was all over the place. Today, Stadia is a $130 one-time purchase, plus $10 a month (after a three-month trial), plus $20 to $60 per premium game. Many believe that this pricing model is not competitive and have concerns about how Google Stadia is being priced. Biggest Problem: Quality Issues With the launch, Google initially promised 4K quality games at 60FPS. Sounding too good to be true maybe the actual statement here. On release, big titles like Destiny 2 and Red Dead Redemption 2 had a lackluster performance with game developer Bungie confirming this directly. Even ironically, Google Stadia posted a tweet promising 4K quality at 60FPS for RDD2 but they have since deleted the tweet. Many went online to vent their frustrations with one user comparing the quality to the Xbox One X console. Source: @Nitomatta The unfortunate mess was they promised games at a certain quality. If Google had simply stated that this was an initial pilot with lower quality games to start, there might have been less backlash. Unfortunately, Google is receiving major criticism for not meeting certain statements that they have since deleted. Lack of Games And Much More With an initial library of only 12 games, (since then they have added 10 more titles) it feels almost unambitious that Google would not load more onto their platform. If you think about other cloud streaming platforms out there, having a wide selection of content to view and play would be valuable, especially for those paying for the hardware and a monthly subscription. Here’s an additional list of things that Google previously showed off or have hinted that aren’t in the original release. Connect wireless headphones with the Stadia controller Fully wireless gameplay with the Stadia controller on PC and phone Any original first-party games from Google’s own studios (Yes their own studio) Stream Connect, State Share, and Crowd Play Most of Google Assistant’s functionality This list is just a part of what’s not currently available and there is more that isn’t mentioned. There is also limited smartphone capability, one of the selling points of being able to game through a cloud service like Google Stadia. Tough Competition Coming In This mess, unfortunately, comes with more problems. Google is not the only one investing money into this part of the industry, with big companies like Microsoft and Amazon also looking into this space. Microsoft especially has had a footprint in the gaming industry with Xbox since the 2000s. Their own platform called ‘XCloud’ is already getting good reviews within its private beta. One of the most important parts of their platform is it’s focusing on the developer. Developers and publishers don’t have to do anything to get their games onto Microsoft’s new platform. Just a simple agreement is all they need. The most important part of it all, Xbox has already thousands of games ready to go live from their history (including exclusive titles). To add, their pricing model is much more straightforward and quite competitive, with an estimate of $10 — $15 monthly costing. It’s obvious to see that Microsoft already has quite an advantage of Google Stadia with its slicker pricing + content. As long as they nail quality and features, it looks quite promising. Can Google Compete then? Well, of course, it is Google after all. Right now, they have first mover’s advantage (among the tech giants) in a soon to be crowded marketplace. It’s an unfortunate mess currently but Google Stadia has its positives. Firstly, it does actually work albeit with its hiccups. Most importantly, it is compatible with most displays and controllers which does show promise moving forward. It’s only a matter of time before others start moving into a public release so Google will need to move quickly to address its issues.

https://medium.com/swlh/launch-of-google-stadia-why-its-a-mess-66457cc7748

['Richard Liu']

2020-11-09 12:39:43.343000+00:00

['Gaming', 'Startup', 'Google', 'Future', 'Tech']

I’ll fall in love with your beautiful health story

I’ll fall in love with your beautiful health story I can’t help it, I fall in love every time. As I get started up with Pictal Health, I’ve been working with patients 1-on-1 to help gather, distill, and visualize their health stories. This process involves talking together, prioritizing what’s important, and creating some kind of visual to help patients communicate with their care team — usually a visual timeline, and sometimes other types of visuals. My goal right now is to learn from these interactions and iterate toward a viable business model. As I sit at my computer deeply focused on creating a timeline for someone, it inevitably happens: I sit back, look at the colors and shapes that are emerging, and get that warm, falling feeling. Partly because my friends at Make New helped me pick a set of complimentary colors that work well together on these timelines, but the love is really about what the shape and texture of the visual tells me about each person’s story. Below are some de-identified examples, with all words replaced with lines. I often see overlapping periods where many symptoms are co-occurring; this usually represents a hard time in the person’s life. Or as one of my clients put it, their ‘dark period.’ (Which is interesting, because the overlapping colors create darkness.) It also reminds me of a mountain range. What looks like a hazy setting sun in the below graph represents a scary hospitalization. Large yellow circles, which I’ve been using to indicate life events and stress levels, might mean death, divorce, or stressful jobs. They also look like warm suns. Thin spiky needles can show severe flare-ups that happen intermittently. The contrast between visual representation and content is striking: beauty vs. fear, elegance vs. chaos and stress, hope and relief alongside tragedy. I think this is why I love it. Each little shape and slope is brimming with emotion.

https://medium.com/pictal-health/ill-fall-in-love-with-your-beautiful-health-story-4893b3ca69b2

['Katie Mccurdy']

2018-08-03 12:05:15.132000+00:00

['Design', 'Health', 'Storytelling', 'Healthcare', 'Data Visualization']

What We Can Learn About Emotional Payoff From My Octopus Teacher

What We Can Learn About Emotional Payoff From My Octopus Teacher TLDR: This post does not have one single thing about politics in it. Photo by Serena Repice Lentini on Unsplash Spoiler Alert: You can tell by the title and the genre what this Nextflix documentary, My Octopus Teacher, is going to be about, so there is no real spoiling it. It’s sort of like saying you’re going to spoil an episode of The Blue Planet by saying that you will see some crazy animal behaviour. It doesn’t really spoil the experience — because the camera work is so extraordinary and the whole spirit of the thing is so amazing and you see the crazy animal behavior and think, Right… I expected that. That being said, what I am going to say in this post might stick in your head in a negative way while you are watching My Octopus Teacher in the way reading a critical review of a movie before you see it might stick in your head in a negative way, and if that’s going to bug you, consider this a spoiler alert. Another Preface About This Post (Because Why NOT Have Two): This blog post is part of a challenge that Dan Blank and I gave ourselves. It arose one day during our weekly mastermind chat. Dan said, “I’m going to watch The Octopus Teacher again because I have to write about it — and I have to do it before Jennie Nash does.” I’d heard about the Netflix documentary from some friends, who said it was extraordinary, but that was my only knowledge of it. “What?!” I said. “Why?” He began to answer, something about how I would surely write something about — and then I said, “STOP! Don’t say anything else!” And we devised the challenge: to each watch this film and write something about it we would find meaningful for our followers with no conversation or communication about what we were each doing. Challenge is my word that I put on the endeavor — and the reason I chose it is because the challenge any of us have is to write what we see and think and feel and believe, and to know in our bones that no one else in the world could possibly write the same thing, because we each see and think and feel and believe such very different things. I feel 100% certain that what I am about to write here is nothing like what Dan is going to write. And odds are good that it is nothing like what he thought I was going to write, either. You can read his post on The Octopus Teacher HERE. My Octopus Teacher is, first and foremost, a gorgeously filmed nature documentary. It immerses you in the wild ocean world of the kelp forests off Cape Storm, also known as the Cape of Good Hope, in South Africa. There is mind-blowing underwater camera work and a haunting musical track and moving time-lapse photography and the kind of once-in-a-blue-moon shots that make you scratch your head and think, “How did they CAPTURE that?” This all is to be expected from the medium — it’s nature photography by a guy who has been doing it professionally all his life — but it’s still dazzling. The story is about Craig Foster’s unusual and unlikely relationship with an octopus, whom he visits every day for nearly a year. It’s a gripping tale about the power of observation, the nature of trust, the vulnerability of being both predator and prey, and the fact that the strange creatures who inhabit the earth are far more like us than they are different. Foster used a simple structure to contain his tale: the commitment he made to spend time with the octopus every single day. Many excellent and powerful stories have been told using this kind of construction — someone who vows to make every recipe in The Art of French Cooking (Julie and Julia) or someone who attempts to live for a year exactly the way Jesus lived (My Jesus Year) or someone who wants to see how their relationship is impacted if they have sex every single day (Sex Every Day). It’s a human imposing some kind of time stamp on an idea or a topic that doesn’t naturally lend itself to being contained by time. It’s a process of immersive storytelling and it tends to amplify fascinating things about the individual storyteller, the idea or topic, and humans in general. Had Foster left it at that — had he focused on just that story (the daily visit to the octopus, how it is that a human can befriend an octopus, what you can learn by knowing an octopus) in just that structure — it would have been a very different, and in my mind, a more resonant story. But he didn’t leave it at that. He put another framework around his relationship with the octopus that was a completely different kind of narrative: the story of his own healing. And he doesn’t make good on the promise of that story. He cracks open the door and never opens it to let us in. At the end, I was left with more questions than answers — and not the kind of questions (questions about life and death and pain and recovery and resilience and perhaps redemption) you want at the end of this kind of story. I felt as if I’d been led on; I felt cheated. Cheated, Jennie? By a Beautiful Documentary? Really? Yes! Here’s why — and here’s why it’s so important for writers to give us the emotional payoff they promise (which means they need to both make the promise and then close the loop). The opening of this film paints the picture of a man who is in a great deal of emotional pain. Unable to work, unable to connect with his family — it’s clear there is some kind of deep inner turmoil. It’s just not entirely clear what the turmoil is — depression, anxiety, emotional burnout, exhaustion, overwork, all of the above? He never lets us see or feel or experience or know the specific pain he is in. He recalls working to film the master trackers in the Kalahari desert (in the film, The Great Dance) and speaks about being in awe of how close they are to nature; he realizes that in order to heal, he needs to experience that level of closeness. But then he leaps right to this solution — which is to go to the ocean where he grew up and immerse himself in it. He references his wife and son in this opening frame — we see them in fuzzy camera footage — and although he doesn’t say it, we get the sense that he has to leave them in order to heal. He never tells us what they think of his leaving or if they worried or objected or threw a coffee pot at him. He just goes off to the cold waters of the kelp forest where he meets the octopus. We watch as the relationship with the octopus unfolds, thinking we are going to get the explanation of his pain so that we can more fully experience his healing we know is coming; the movie is, after all, called My Octopus Teacher. Twice we almost get the story — when he first picks up the camera and starts to film, it feels like a kind of thawing, and we expect him to let us into the pain at that point, to explain it or describe it or wrestle with it in some way, but he doesn’t; again, we get to see the solution — which, for him, is to create, to go back to the work he loves that he had to leave — but we don’t get to see the problem that solution is meant to address. The second time we almost get the story of his pain is when the shark tears the limb off the octopus (so dramatic! How was he THERE for that scene??) and the arm re-grows. Foster talks about the remarkable ability of the octopus to heal and the remarkable ability of himself to heal, too. I was thinking, Yes! The ability to heal is remarkable! Nature is so amazingly resilient! The octopus heals and we can heal too! But heal from what, Craig Foster?? How much more resonant it would be if we knew! If we had been able to experience whatever darkness Foster felt that drove him to the sea. The End Must be Earned The final betrayal for me was at the end, when Foster’s teenage boy enters the story. The boy swims with his dad. Shares this beautiful moment with his dad. Seems to commune with his dad and with the ocean his dad loves. So when did the boy come to the little house by the sea where Foster lived when he met the octopus? How long was he there? Was he angry at his dad, at first? Confused by his dad’s pain? Brooding? Mad? Refusing to swim? Totally forgiving at every turn?? We don’t know. At one point, Foster says that he was telling his boy about the octopus all along, and was able to introduce them to each other. When was that? What was the boy’s response? Foster states that his relationship of trust with the octopus helped him build his relationship with humans. That is a powerful message but that is the moment I felt cheated. You can’t give me the emotional ending if you didn’t give me the pain at the beginning, if you didn’t earn it. If the healing was about his relationships, what was the nature of those relationships? Was the son there the whole time? Was the wife? Is the wife the mother of this son? If not, where is she? And what happened to their relationship? She is nowhere to be seen at the end — no mention of her, no reference of her — so we can guess. And indeed a quick Google search tells me that Foster is divorced from his child’s mother. The point here is that if you don’t give your reader (or viewer) the story, they will make one up. Telling a story is like leaving breadcrumbs in the woods, revealing the path, showing us the way, taking us where you want us to go. Not enough breadcrumbs, and we’re off following some other trail. The Lesson the Octopus Taught The measure of a movie, for me, is often if I wake up after watching and keep thinking about it, keep pondering it. In this case, I did that. The octopus part of the story is an amazing story. I had so many of the GOOD kinds of story questions — questions about octopus and the kelp forest and how long Foster could stay underwater, and who filmed him, and how he got that insane shot of the shark. Foster said that the octopus taught him “that we are inseparable from nature.” I love that message — it would have been the perfect point to a story about his relationship with the octopus, and perhaps a perfect explanation of how to heal from deep pain: to reconnect with nature, to immerse ourselves in the wildness of the environment around us. But it is not the same lesson he learned about reconnecting with his son, whom he said at the start he didn’t know how to parent. Foster did not give us that lesson. His decision to share it and then hold it back from us caused a rift between the viewer and the creator. In the final credits of the film, you see that Tom Foster — the teenage son — did the aerial photography and also wrote music for the film. So there was definitely something big going on between father and son that we were not allowed to see. And you may be thinking, “He can protect his son! He doesn’t have to bring his son into it!” But he DID bring his son into it. He SAID that at the start — I couldn’t be a good father to my son. And he BROUGHT the kid back at the end of the story, but only to say, “He’s a great swimmer and loves these waters, too.” He doesn’t say anything like, “I learned what love is,” or “I learned the incredible power of forgiveness,” or “I learned how fragile our time on earth is and how we have to work to maintain our relationships.” He chose to put the son into his story, but didn’t let us experience that story. Storytelling is a powerful contract between the creator and the reader/viewer. When you tell a story, you make a promise. It’s your job to see that promise through — to give us what you said you would. Either be willing to go all the way, or tell a different story where you can do that.

https://medium.com/no-blank-pages/what-we-can-learn-about-emotional-payoff-from-my-octopus-teacher-4aaca6d0a740

['Jennie Nash']

2020-11-05 20:51:24.705000+00:00

['Storytelling', 'Books And Authors', 'Books', 'Writing', 'Documentary']

How to Overcome Perfectionism and Just Write the Thing

My friend Juneta is an artist writer. In fact, when I think about artist writers, I always think about Juneta. An artist writer is someone who: Is a perfectionist. Has lots of ideas, but tends to want struggle shifting between them, so usually works on one thing at a time. Writes for their muse. Really wants readers to appreciate the artistry of what they’ve done. Has a hard time moving on if what they’ve done so far doesn’t feel perfect enough. Sometimes feels like they can’t do something, even though they totally can, because they want to do everything really well. They often work more slowly than other writers, but generally wind up with a really beautiful draft. Every type of writer (there are five, btw) has their own kryptonite they have to overcome. For artists, it’s that perfectionism. Everything that trips them up stems from that. Their muse often won’t let them move past something that isn’t perfect. They write more slowly than they’d like to, because they are striving for perfection. It’s sometimes impossible for them to even consider writing something that isn’t perfect, so they often suffer from Blank-Page-Syndrome. Artist writers need systems for overcoming that perfectionism — or at least working with it. Here are my ideas. Create a Zero Draft I’m really excited about this strategy, because it’s new to me. A zero draft is basically the draft before your first draft. Sometimes it’s called a fast or dirty draft. Basically, you just sit down and tell yourself the story. Because this draft doesn’t ‘count,’ writing it may help you to bypass your perfectionism. Once you’ve got your zero draft written, you’ll have something to perfect rather than trying to create perfection from scratch. My favorite way to zero draft is to write it like a giant synopsis. Maybe one page per anticipated 10,000 words of finished draft. So, for an 80,000 word novel a zero draft might be 8 or 10 pages long. I write it in third person, present tense, and literally just tell myself the story. Write Tomorrow’s First Line Today One of the best ways to avoid the blank-page syndrome that can arise when you’re gripped by perfectionism is to know what you’re going to write before you sit down to work. I have a long-standing habit of making a note of what I plan to write tomorrow when I’m done writing today. Just a quick note about the next scene. You can take this further by also writing the first line of that scene. When you’re done writing today, you’ll be warmed up and on a roll. Coming up with one more line won’t be difficult. Your muse is already engaged. Writing that first line can be a reminder of what you meant to do next. Practice Shitty Writing You’re allowed to write poorly. I know. It’s hard to wrap your head around. Especially if you’re a perfectionist artist writer. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked to an artist writer who tells me that they can’t write any faster or even at all, because they’re all up in their head about making what they produce just right. One strategy for overcoming (or at least learning to work with) perfectionism is to actually practice shitty writing. You need to override your instinct to give up when what you produce doesn’t meet your creative standards. Repeat after me: your first draft can stink. It’s okay. It will all be okay. Once you have that crap first draft written, you’ll have something to work with and perfect. Think about it this way: the least perfect thing for a writer is an unfinished draft. You must finish your first draft if you want to be a successful writer. Make Sure You Really Understand Your Goals What is it you really want out of being a writer? Do you want to earn your living at it? If you do, that’s awesome. But maybe you don’t. Maybe you want writing to be your art and you’re okay with supporting it with some other kind of work. Do you want to be a blogger/novelist/poet/whatever? Maybe. But maybe not. You don’t ever have to write anything you don’t want to. I promise. Artist writers often struggle with the volume of writing that’s required for being a full-time writer. The idea of producing work just for pay can also be difficult. You can, of course, overcome that. Separate the work you do for money from the work you do for art. Set deadlines for yourself and just power through. But also? It’s okay to decide that you’re an artist and that you want to keep your writing about art. It’s okay to never want to write to market or blog or freelance or whatever it is that you think you have to do because it’s what working writers do. Cage Your Inner Editor My inner editor is named Blythe. She’s kind of a bitch. She has a habit of undermining my self-confidence, reminding me that I’m not good enough. Blythe actually wants to protect me. Writing is hard and when she ‘helpfully’ points out that I don’t know what I’m doing and I’m probably going to fail anyway — she’s just truthtelling to give me a way out. Right? I mean, surely my brain isn’t actually beating me up for fun. I have to override Blythe to keep my sanity and ever get anything done. And if you’re an artist, you really need to do the same with your inner editor. I keep Blythe in a bird cage. It’s pretty. Very ornate, Victorian, gilded. And it’s covered with velvet. The dark keeps the bitch quiet. I let her out when I need her — when I actually have something to edit. Remember That This is Supposed to be Fun Writing is the best work in the world. I really believe that. It’s awesome, because it’s big fun. Creating stories is magical. Perfectionism is the killer of fun. It turns everything into a drudgery, sometimes. There’s a time and place for it. When you’re finishing up your final draft? Let that inner editor go wild. But until then, remember that it’s okay to have fun. It’s okay to let go of the idea of being perfect.

https://medium.com/the-write-brain/how-to-overcome-perfectionism-and-just-write-the-thing-a45636570643

['Shaunta Grimes']

2020-10-07 15:18:24.206000+00:00

['Creativity', 'Blogging', 'Perfectionism', 'Productivity', 'Writing']

Which Doctor Can Help My Colon? One Cuts Butts and One Deals With Guts

Which Doctor Can Help My Colon? One Cuts Butts and One Deals With Guts The difference between a gastroenterologist and a colorectal surgeon Tools of the Colorectal trade. copyright Carmen Fong 2020 This is one of the most common questions I am not asked, as the majority of my patients believe we are one and the same. While we treat a lot of the same diseases and some of our procedural skills overlap, there is one major difference. Colorectal surgeons do surgery and gastroenterologists don’t. To date, I have not seen much online about this, likely because people don’t know to ask. Training When we graduate from medical school, we have to decide on a path. The algorithm divides into medicine and surgery. Wait, you ask, isn’t it all medicine? You graduate from medical school, not surgery school. Yes, it’s all under the big umbrella of Medicine, but we have to choose our specialties, so the two branches are medicine (Internal Medicine) and Surgery. There are a ton of other specialties that are categories of their own, but generally, you have to decide whether you want to operate on people or not. Just Google ‘medicine specialty decision tree’ and you will see algorithms people have made up over the years for how to decide what to do with your life, like this classic one from BMJ, “Physician, Know Thyself”. Some are more humorous than others. The split between medicine and surgery. copyright Carmen Fong 2020 Gastroenterology Gastroenterology (abbrev. GI), is a subspecialty of Internal Medicine, another 3 years of training on top of 3 years of residency training. Since they are a branch of medicine, they do not do surgery — that is, ‘large’ operations that generally involve cutting open the belly and general anesthesia. Part of the confusion stems from the fact that gastroenterologists perform a lot of procedures — generally, smaller things that can be done in the office or in an outpatient setting. Most notably, these involve scopes- colonoscopy (for the colon/large bowel), or esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD), which is an upper GI endoscopy for the esophagus, stomach, and duodenum. This is sometimes is just called ‘endoscopy’ even though endoscopy actually refers to anything involving a scope. Because GI is a medical subspecialty, they have the knowledge to treat a lot of diseases with medication. While some surgeons will do that, they generally leave medical management to the GI docs. Colorectal surgery Colorectal surgery is a subspecialty of General Surgery. This requires another one year on top of five years of surgical training. We are trained to diagnose all diseases, but especially diseases that may eventually require surgery. We consider the abdomen our domain because once you have seen the inside of the abdomen during surgery, you have a much better correlation between things that happen on the outside and things that happen on the inside. Surgical emergencies generally include bleeding, perforation of the colon, or obstruction of the colon (usually by tumor or infection), or ischemic colon which is colon devoid of functional blood supply. Sometimes, these issues are diagnosed by GI, and then a surgeon is consulted. Most often, surgeons are involved from the beginning. Similarities GI and Colorectal surgeons have overlapping areas of disease pathologies that we treat. The list is quite extensive and encompasses both benign and malignant colon, anal and rectal diseases (and some small intestine as well). These problems include colon or rectal cancer, diverticulitis, inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis, hemorrhoids, chronic constipation, fecal incontinence, and sometimes small bowel tumors or benign idiopathic abdominal or pelvic pain. Both GI and Colorectal surgeons do colonoscopies, though I will be the first to admit that, in their training, GI physicians perform many more colonoscopes than we do in our surgery training. While we may do 1000 surgeries and 300 scopes, GI does 1000 scopes. This makes for a natural divide, one that I am happy to facilitate: GI is much better at routine, screening colonoscopies. I will also do screening colonoscopies, generally for patients who specifically ask me to because I am their surgeon, but I try not to step on the toes of the lovely GI docs who refer cancer patients to me. What I will do are diagnostic colonoscopies — that is, patients who are already known to have a tumor in order to determine the location and mark it before surgery. I also perform colonoscopies on patients whom I’ve operated on, and I have first-hand knowledge that their colon anatomy has deviated from normal. GI physicians will also do smaller, in-office procedures such as banding hemorrhoids, which colorectal surgeons do as well. But here we start to delve into our differences. Differences GI can also subspecialize into upper GI, which is the first part of the digestive tract including the esophagus, stomach, and the liver (hepatologists treat diseases of the liver and bile duct, such as Hepatitis C). Some GI do upper GI procedures via endoscopy, such as clearing out gallstones from the biliary tract (ERCP). Colorectal surgery deals with the hindgut, that is, the last part of the digestive tract, including small bowel, colon, rectum, and anus. (Some of us are also board-certified general surgeons and can operate on the upper digestive tract, such as stomach, gallbladder, liver.) copyright Carmen Fong 2020 Colorectal surgeons spend a lot of time learning about anal and pelvic anatomy. This sets us apart from any other specialty. This allows us to be specialists in anal fistulas, fissures, anal warts, anal cancer — all of which may require small surgeries or pathologies of the rectum such as fecal incontinence and rectal prolapse. Gastroenterologists tend not to do anorectal procedures, aside from hemorrhoid banding. What we learn in training are the eight other ways to surgically treat hemorrhoids (some are better than others), which I will not go into here, but include excision, laser, injection, stapling, and a ‘minimally-invasive’ approach that I do call transanal hemorrhoidal dearterialization. Gastroenterologists and colorectal surgeons have a lot of overlap in terms of the diseases we treat and the procedures we do, in fact, we work very closely most of the time and even have joint conferences on complicated patients. The main difference is that while gastroenterologists will treat conditions medically, only colorectal surgeons can treat them surgically. In general, if you are seeing a doctor and not quite sure the scope of their practice (no pun intended), just ask! We are always happy to elucidate.

https://medium.com/beingwell/which-doctor-can-help-my-colon-one-cuts-butts-and-one-deals-with-guts-332fd9ac510c

['Carmen Fong']

2020-05-27 19:20:12.170000+00:00

['Health', 'Surgery', 'Wellness', 'Science', 'Medicine']

Reinforcement learning with Skinner

Reinforcement learning with Skinner A friendly introduction to the problem of reinforcement learning with examples from neuroscience Reinforcement learning has entered the spotlight recently with accomplishments such as AlphaGo, and is supposedly one of our best shots at Artificial General Intelligence — or at least more general intelligence. In this post, I will trace some of its history back to the study of operant conditioning by Skinner. The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do — B. F. Skinner B. F. Skinner working with an Operant Conditioning Chamber of his creation. Image taken from Here. Skinner wanted to understand how animals develop adaptive behavior, what were the rules underlying learning. Many other scientists were interested in conditioning around that time, such as Ivan Pavlov — famous for showing that after pairing a bell with a beef, dogs salivated to the sound of the bell. The main difference between Skinner and his counterparts was his thoroughness in making very controlled experiments. Skinner developed a chamber — now called operant conditioning chamber, or just Skinner Box — in which the animals, typically rats and pigeon, could be isolated from external sound, smell and light, and stimulated precisely for each experiment. Marvin Minsky jokingly compares Skinner’s meticulousness with Pavlov’s experiments in a lab full of caged dogs, far off in terms of care and control. Rat inside a conditioning chamber. There are two lights that can be used to stimulate the animal, and two levers the animal can use to respond. The sucrose solution is controlled by an automated system. Image taken from Malkki et al. 2010 Reward and repeat The animals would receive a specific stimulus such as a light, sound, or smell, and the information from the stimulus could be used to gain some food or water (a reinforcer). But the rat needed to execute some specific action to be rewarded with the reinforcer, choosing correctly between the small set of possible actions to be undertaken. There could be a discriminatory task where a single light would go on, and if the light was green the animal would be rewarded for pressing the lever right below. On the other hand, if the light was red the animal would be rewarded for pressing the contralateral lever. T-Maze for an operant conditioning task. Image from Smith, Kyle S., and Ann M. Graybiel, 2013 After some trial and error, the animals started behaving in such a way to increase their rate of reward, as if understanding the rules guiding their rewarding, as if understanding that red means “the other lever”. Moreover, if the animals were rewarded at a higher rate, they (generally) learned faster. A large number of controlled spaces have been created inspired by the Skinner box. Take or example the T-Maze show here, with a starting location and a decision point. Depending on the sound played (the tone cue), either the left or right arm would contain its respective reinforcer. The animal eventually learns to go to the right arm depending on the sound, increasing its rate of reward. Responses that produce a satisfying effect in a particular situation become more likely to occur again in that situation, and responses that produce a discomforting effect become less likely to occur again in that situation — Thorndike’s Law of Effect The study of operant conditioning is still very active, with a lot of branches in development such as on the dynamics of habituation, e.g. how much training it takes for a behavior to lose flexibility — becoming resistant to devaluation — and what are the underlying processes involved. Without getting too much involved with the possible algorithms our brains use, this post focuses more on delineating the problem. Of special interest to those studying artificial intelligence are sequential tasks, in which many actions need to be taken before rewards are attained. Sequential tasks A great example of a sequential task is a maze. There are many others, in which the contingencies at each step depend on previous ones. But in the labyrinth, the sequential aspect is spatially distributed, so it is as clear as it could be. Imagine the animal runs exploring the maze until it finds the reward (and is removed from the maze to start again). Following strictly the law of effect, the animals would try and repeat the same quasi-random jug around the maze until they found the reward again the same way, but this is clearly inefficient. In fact, it is clear from experiments that animals get more efficient with training, up to the trial when they go directly to the reward without making any “mistakes”. The problem that animals contend with is the Credit Assignment problem, viz how to reinforce those actions that truly help to bring about the reward without reinforcing those actions that just happened to be enacted close to the reward? In fact, there are many registered cases of pigeons and cats making repeated and completely unnecessary actions before pressing levers (e.g. Guthrie 1946), cases where the credit assignment was evidently not optimal. The problem is a big one, and each advancement in this direction is a potential huge improvement for reinforcement learning systems of our creation. To be clear, this is not a marginal problem: it is the central complication tackled by Reinforcement Learning. In this setting actions are distant from rewards, and the “perfect response” may not even be well defined. Compare this with supervised learning — where the “correct” response is specified and shown at each step. The additional difficulty is exactly what makes Reinforcement Learning so broad, and our proposedly best shot at Artificial General Intelligence. Reinforcement Learning Formalism — A sketch RL resembles the skinner box. An Agent has access to one state from a specified set of States (in the previous example this could be a specific left green light on) and may choose some Action (pressing the left lever, right lever, not pressing, …). Then, after acting in the environment the Agent receives a Reward (e.g. food, nothing, …) and perceives itself in a new State. Learning is: increasing the rate of rewards Image from Sutton & Barto, 2018 To increase the number of rewards during a task, the agent must have an account of “which is the best action at each state”. This originates an optimal policy — a program to decide actions — , that reaches the maximum expected rate of reward. The existence of an optimal policy is mathematically well-defined when either one of the two following criteria is met: The task is finite, or Rewards later in the future are less valuable than rewards closer to the present (there is a discount rate). In the case of operant conditioning, the tasks are obviously finite, but this does not imply a lack of discounting. In fact, there is a very contemporary discussion around delay discounting and its implications for human living, for example, its relationship with drug abuse (Bickel and Marsch, 2001). On the other hand, for artificial agents training to perform a continuous task (like playing Minecraft, which is not finite), it is important to have a small discount factor, to ensure that there exists an optimal policy for the agent to learn. Using the algorithm Ok, so we could not end a Reinforcement Learning introduction without a little snooping into the equations that make it possible in computers. I will bypass the formalism, giving instead a small and intuitive derivation of an algorithm that can be used to find the optimal policy. I do this to illustrate how fast we can go from the theory to an algorithm. Before going into the image, we need only build a small intuition on values for actions: The best action is the one that maximizes the future expected reward. If we know the future expected reward for taking each action, then we can always choose the best action. If we can always know the best action, then we have reached the optimal policy. The idea here is then to find this Value function that outputs the expected return value of taking an action in a state. You will see that we start with the definition of the value function in (1), and end up with the algorithm in (5). SARSA algorithms with some simplifications. The last equation can be used on-line in a loop of interaction with the environment. Here the discount rate is set to 1, and the Q-function is called V for simplicity. With this algorithm, it is possible to iteratively learn by interacting with the environment. In each step, the agent observes its state s and takes an action a, updating its Values according to the received reward and to the next state-action pair. Remember the maze problem? Because it has a discrete and finite set of states (decision points, the bifurcations) and actions (e.g. go left, go right), we can solve it using a Q-table like the one below. Using this Q-table, the agent will take the left in the third bifurcation, since the value of action 1 is the highest. The table will be updated at each step, eventually converging to an optimal policy. Here I show a very simple agent that learns how to hold a pole using this algorithm! You can see that it needs a lot of repetitions to perform acceptably, but this is because there are a lot of improvements that can be made for this setting. Truncated Q-Table for the discretized CartPole. With a not-so-fine discretization of 20 bins for each dimension, there is a humongous total of 20⁴ = 160.000 states. In these cases, function approximators are the way to go. Because the states are continuous, we could improve a lot over the discretization, using instead a continuous function approximator such as a neural network! Nevertheless, the formulation of the problem is still the same, and introducing the problem was the central aim of this blog post. Conclusion This post was a very short bridging introduction to reinforcement learning and operant conditioning and I intend to write follow-ups going deeper into the theory and math underlying both, showing increasingly better and more complex algorithms and relate them to neuroscience. I hope to get you as interested in Reinforcement Learning as I am! I believe (as a lot of people do) that neuroscience has a lot to offer the field of Artificial Intelligence, especially with high-level insights. Please comment and give feedback, and thank you for reading! Further reading This post by neptune.ai has a lot of interesting resources to dive deeper into the field of reinforcement learning, from tutorials to full courses. If you want to learn more about neuroscience, try The Spike here on medium. References Bickel, W. K., & Marsch, L. A. (2001). Toward a behavioral economic understanding of drug dependence: delay discounting processes. Addiction, 96(1), 73–86. Dam, G., Kording, K., & Wei, K. (2013). Credit assignment during movement reinforcement learning. PLoS One, 8(2), e55352. Guthrie, E. R., & Horton, G. P. (1946). Cats in a puzzle box. Malkki, H. A., Donga, L. A., De Groot, S. E., Battaglia, F. P., & Pennartz, C. M. (2010). Appetitive operant conditioning in mice: heritability and dissociability of training stages. Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience, 4, 171 Smith, K. S., & Graybiel, A. M. (2013). A dual operator view of habitual behavior reflecting cortical and striatal dynamics. Neuron, 79(2), 361–374. Sutton, R. S., & Barto, A. G. (2018). Reinforcement learning: An introduction. MIT press.

https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/reinforcement-learning-with-skinner-deacef0a281a

['Estevão Uyrá Pardillos Vieira']

2020-12-02 18:55:53.751000+00:00

['Machine Learning', 'Neuroscience', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Psychology', 'Reinforcement Learning']

The Red Menace is real

No this is not a piece about the rise and fall of communism, political ideology, or propaganda. It’s about the current state of digital advertising. “T he Red Menace is real!” — read posters from the cold war. Why? Because politicians throughout history know this truth: if there’s one thing that can bring down a large, established system — say a nation — it’s an idea. An idea spread widely, believed deeply, and acted upon can be the iceberg to a Titanic. What does that have to do with the digital advertising landscape? Here’s my thesis: I submit to you that Netflix is the biggest threat to the current digital advertising landscape, which is dominated by Facebook, Google, Amazon, and programmatic vendors. You might think I say that because Netflix has a paid subscription, ads-free business model. As a services it steals valuable minutes of consumer attention away from Facebook, YouTube and other services that rely on advertising. That’s true! But that’s not why I think Netflix is threatening digital advertising. Or a least that’s not the most important reason why. The bigger reason is that Netflix has created a specific market for an idea that fundamentally threatens how the ad industry works. Stay with me here — I’ll explain. Going back to the party like it’s 1999 I grew up in the 90s. Back then, I’d plant myself in front of the TV every Saturday morning to watch my favourite show, a countdown of “best ads of the world.” Typically, this was a mix of clever beer ads, suggestive condom commercials (I grew up in Europe), and witty learn-a-foreign-language pitches. Interrupted, of course, by mediocre TV advertising. I loved every minute. It was like watching back-to-back skits. Except that each skit was the same length: 30 seconds. All that’s changed of course. Not so much in television; commercials are mostly made in 30-second blocks. I mean media, particularly advertising, and how we consume it. Or at least how marketers are told people consume media. My thumb is hurting from watching videos! We’re told the masses consume media with our thumbs. We’re told attention spans have shrunk so dramatically that only “thumb-stopping content” will break through into the consumer’s cerebrum, interrupting the robotic scrolling of our mobile feed. Now, if it’s true that attention spans have plummeted … who benefits? Sidenote: I’m not a conspiracy theory type of person, but stay with me. To understand that, we have to sidetrack into how media has evolved in the past few decades. Specifically, how it democratized: Let’s look at TV. As you know, when satellite and cable TV disrupted the norms in the 80s and 90s, the number of channels exploded. It became easier for smaller broadcasters to distribute local content (not too dissimilar to what happened to Print far earlier in the century as printing presses became more cost-effective). Next, the internet rocket-charged this democratization trend, particularly for micro-creators. Suddenly, everybody was posting daily content, flooding screens worldwide with images, videos, and options. With that, the pendulum swung in favour of those who provide a podium to the micro-creators. The so-called gateways of the internet — e.g. Google and Facebook, and the platforms that they own, YouTube and Instagram — to name only two. … Creating the opportunity for the data-driven marketer As data piled up and technology evolved, data-driven marketing gained traction. Marketers began experimenting with different versions of ads to different targets in real-time, learning how to incrementally improve images and copy to optimize. And it worked. It still does. So we kept feeding the beast with more content from more sources, supported by more advertising, from more marketers. Advertising accounted for 86% of Google’s revenue and 98% for Facebook’s revenue in 2017, Statistica tells us. The more we produced, the more data-points we provided that enabled more advertising (feeling like a hamster yet?). According to Recode, 2017 was the year where digital advertising ($209B) surpassed TV ($178B). Marketers go where the consumers are. Online marketers, always looking to find the newest thing and optimize, began introducing things like 6-second ads — in-part spearheaded by YouTube — requiring less attention span than ever before. But wait — what about binge-ing? How often do you binge-watch on Netflix? I did that last weekend, when the family was stuck sick at home. Hey … what happened to that 6-second attention span? And a few months ago, when I asked a videographer: “What’s the ideal length of a video?,” he laughed and replied: “Somewhere between 6 seconds and 9 hours, depending if you ask YouTube or Netflix.” Amid my infinite Instagram and Facebook feeds, all the articles and the tweets … I still manage to watch a movie, read a book or binge on Netflix every once in a while. Most people I know do too. My wife just finished her fifth audiobook on audible this week; she got a badge (I get notified on my device). Yet, she hates sitting through that pesky YouTube ad for 30 seconds before her video and can hardly wait for the 5-second countdown to end. Hmmm … what does that tell you? I recently saw a presentation by a digital advertising provider that described the consumer as “Curious, Demanding, and Impatient”. And I thought: “Sounds like they’re describing a 6 year old.” Yet I’ve seen six-year-olds get pretty lost in play, for a long time, when it’s a toy they love. Enter the Red Menace Perhaps you see now where I’m going with this? Just the same way the “shrinking attention span” idea as gave rise to digital ads slowly starting in the early 2000s, the binge-watching paradigm is threatening that ecosystem. And no other service in the past few years has done more to propel that idea into cultural mainstream than Netflix. Here’s the reality. It is true that we are expressing more impatience. But it’s because we can. One of the biggest reasons ads are shorter is because we never liked those boring old 30-second ads, and we sure would have clicked-out if we could have, back in the day. If we’d really reduced our attention spans to 10 or 5 seconds or less … then there would be no rise of long-form content like Podcasts, and Audiobooks. All hope is not lost Smart marketers know that there is a better way. They always have. Remember the BMW commercial featuring Madonna and Clive Owen, directed by Guy Ritchie (2002)? Or the H&M Holiday Advert with Adrien Brody (2016)? For a more recent example, search for “Koho Dream Thief” to see a 10-minute ad that’s brilliantly produced. I think you’ll enjoy every minute. Smart marketers have never been concerned with the length and size of an ad. They care about emotive value of the story behind it. Then why the endless flak about shorter attention span? The short-attention-span narrative feeds a specific purpose. Namely, to feed the advertising engine of the micro-creator economy. To be clear, I’m not suggesting that some tech executive in a boardroom concocted a devious PR plot to sell a story and thus more advertising. Rather, this is a natural consequence of the new media economy. A circular relationship, arguably unavoidable. However that idea is being prominently challenged with podcasts, binge-watching services, audiobooks, and yes… long-format brand storytelling. And Netflix is leading the charge. At the end of the day, people do not hate ads because they are too long. They hate bloated, lazy, poorly-targeted ads. Ads for everyone, ad that don’t meet what they are interested in. Ads that don’t tell a story. Ads that are an interruption, a nuisance. Even more, they hate bad advertising. They always have. They always will. And now on the internet they have a way to avoid those. I’m not saying that digital advertising is going to go end today. Media doesn’t perish that easily. But the landscape is slowly shifting. Are you prepared?

https://medium.com/empathyinc/the-red-menace-is-real-855b389c27b5

['Mo Dezyanian']

2018-12-11 14:28:15.731000+00:00

['Marketing', 'Facebook', 'Netflix', 'Google', 'Advertising']

Catching Up With Giovanni Magni of Accurat Design Studio

SK: You’ve told me before that a data viz is only as good as the questions that are being asked. Can you explain why you think that is? And what questions are you interested in right now? What questions aren’t being asked? G: Data visualisation should solve problems: We are not artists, we are designers. Don’t get me wrong, this does not mean that we don’t need art in projects. Accurat’s work has clearly shown the importance of aesthetics in data visualisation. What I’m saying is that clients and people have problems, and they come to us for solutions. Problems might be clear, specific, and business oriented (“We want to make more money with our platform”) or experimental and ethical (“Let’s find a new way to convey this message”), but we have to focus on finding the solutions that help solve the problem. The questions that aren’t being asked are: What was the context? What was the goal? I see a lot of people debating on how charts might or might not respect all the statistical rules of charts and interpretability of visual models, while really few understand that every single rule—even the strongest ones— could be shaped and adapted if it will make the project more effective. It is the same with complexity, but that’s another story. SK: How can data viz practitioners become better at asking questions? G: We should take as much as we can from positive design critique. One of the things that we are trying to do in Accurat is foster self-critique and take internal moments when our work could be discussed and our choices doubted. Thanks to the work and approach of Amin Al Hazwani, our director of design operations, we are working on making this possible. It takes time to point out the multiple possible solutions for a problem, to discuss them, to understand the context and the designer’s choices. Hopefully this will make the team more oriented to self-critique and our projects will keep on getting better and better. SK: There aren’t many data viz studios in the world, and I think Accurat one of the largest ones. How does Accurat’s structure of designers and developers work? What does that collaboration look like? Are there unique outcomes from that setup? G: When I started working at Accurat there was only one developer, but right now there are more developers than designers. I think it’s the normal evolution of things since we mainly work with digital products and applications. Even when we create something different (such as exhibitions), due to the nature of our work we always have a more technical side in all of the projects where we need the support of coders. We try to work together from the beginning; it’s not always simple but it’s important, and it even happens that great ideas also come from developers. Recently a thing happened that made me glad of our process. We were working on a project with basic chart models (bar charts, line charts, etc.) and within a discussion about a specific task the developers explained to the designers the best logic given their experience with similar projects and due to typical chart behaviour. The roles were reversed and that was brilliant! We have been able to create a data visualisation culture on the whole team, and I’m super proud of this.

https://medium.com/nightingale/catching-up-with-giovanni-magni-of-accurat-design-studio-a6de81073342

['Sarah Kay Miller']

2020-05-13 13:16:00.856000+00:00

['Creativity', 'Design', 'Dataviz', 'Data Science', 'Data Visualization']

Building Your Home Raspberry PI Kubernetes Cluster

Are there any Kubernetes fans here? I’m running it in production both at work and for my private projects for quite a while now, but sometimes I need a place to quickly develop and test new features without incurring additional costs or simply — run my home entertainment, backups, file sharing and kettle. Few more nodes on the way, cluster is almost ready. Hardware used ( Black Friday prices 🥳 ) Why Raspberry Pi? TL;DR: Cost vs processing power. 4 node cluster provides 4 x ( 1.5Ghz, 4 core ARM cpu and 4 GB of RAM ) — that’s 16 1.5 Ghz cores and 16 GB of RAM available. I’ve done the math and the overall cost of the cluster is still cheaper than similar processing power / nodes cloud offering. Say no more… Memory card preparation Start with downloading the operating system, which will do the heavy lifting. I spend most of my days working with docker and Kubernetes, any one of my hobbies is slimming down the docker images to the absolute minimum — most of that achieved thanks to the Alpine Linux — therefore I’ll base my cluster on this exact distribution. Head to Alpine Linux Downloads section and pick the AARCH64 version for your Raspberry Pi 4 Model B. In the meanwhile — let’s prepare the memory card starting with formatting it with FAT32 filesystem. I’m OSX person in so using the following command to obtain the disk identifier for your memory card diskutil list Follow it with to format whole memory card — I called my memory card RPI sudo diskutil eraseDisk FAT32 RPI MBRFormat /dev/diskX Unpack downloaded package with Alpine linux onto the memory card sudo tar xf alpine-rpi-3.12.1-aarch64.tar.gz -C /Volumes/RPI Base system configuration Congratulations, you are one step closer to the world of kubernetes in your own living room. Slide memory card into your Raspberry Pi, monitor ( or TV ), together with keyboard and switch the power on. After system boots up and asks you for login — use root as both username and password. Execute following command to initiate the setup process. setup-alpine I’m running my cluster at home, and because I’m running short on available router ports I decided to use WiFi network. There’s not too much of a difference in options you’ll pick — choose wisely though. After you’ll be done with setup — there’s few more things which you should do. Alpine by default runs from the RAM, but we’d like our changes to persist on the disk and between potential restarts. apk update apk add cfdisk e2fsprogs # Install disk tools cfdisk /dev/mmcblk0 # Run cfdisk on your memory card In this step you need to: Resize the FAT32 partition to reasonable minimum — I gave it 1GB in my case. Use all remaining free space to create new bootable partition. Don’t forget to write the changes you just made. Helpful tutorial: How to use cfdisk. There’s few more commands you need to execute now to complete the whole process. mkfs.ext4 /dev/mmcblk0p2 # Format newly created partition as EXT4 mount /dev/mmcblk0p2 /mnt # Mount it setup-disk -m sys /mnt # Install system files mount -o remount,rw /media/mmcblk0p1 # Remount old partition in RW # Let's do some housekeeping rm -f /media/mmcblk0p1/boot/* cd /mnt rm boot/boot mv boot/* /media/mmcblk0p1/boot/ rm -Rf boot mkdir media/mmcblk0p1 ln -s media/mmcblk0p1/boot boot Update /etc/fstab records echo "/dev/mmcblk0p1 /media/mmcblk0p1 vfat defaults 0 0" >> etc/fstab sed -i '/cdrom/d' etc/fstab sed -i '/floppy/d' etc/fstab cd /media/mmcblk0p1 Last touches after system restart — keep in mind that without appropriate cgroups enabled the kubeadm step will fail. # Enable edge repository for Alpine sed -i '/edge/s/^#//' /mnt/etc/apk/repositories # Force use of new partition as the root one sed -i 's/^/root=\/dev\/mmcblk0p2 /' /media/mmcblk0p1/cmdline.txt # Make sure that appropriate cgroups are enabled echo "cgroup_enable=cpuset cgroup_enable=memory cgroup_memory=1" >> /media/mmcblk0p1/cmdline.txt sed -i ':a;N;$!ba;s/ / /g' /media/mmcblk0p1/cmdline.txt rc-update add wpa_supplicant boot # Make sure your wifi will come back up after restart Finally, really important thing after all those steps above — backup the changes you just made and reboot the system lbu_commit -d reboot Rest of the system configuration I’ve mentioned that I intend to use this kubernetes cluster in home environment — before you’ll ask — it will work in the office network as well, although — there’s few extra touches we should add Announce hostname in local network — avahi daemon Why this step? It’s much easier to ssh pi0.local than trying to find the correct IP address. It will also make your connectivity and clustering configuration much easier afterwards, especially when you can’t count on static IPs. apk add dbus avahi rc-update add dbus boot # avahi won't start without dbus rc-update add avahi-daemon boot Allow ssh access as root Edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config file — add following line to it to enable access to ssh as a root. PermitRootLogin yes Install docker, kubernetes and rest of remaining packages you will need later apk update apk add kubernetes docker cni-plugins kubelet kubeadm rc-update add docker default rc-update add kubelet default Little helper says: You can save your efforts At this stage you should have everything ready for your journey. I used this opportunity to switch off my Raspberry Pi, take the memory card back to my laptop and create an image of the card so I can restore it on the remaining three cards and save time. Remember to change the /etc/hostname content for every newly re-created machine to avoid conflicts. I’ve picked pi0, pi1, pi2 to make it easier to remember ( and use in my local ssh config ) although there’s no limitation. Create your kubernetes master service docker start kubeadm config images pull # Get the necessary images kubeadm init --pod-network-cidr=10.244.0.0/16 If you see any cgroups related errors which stop the initialisation process — you’ve missed one of the steps before, otherwise you should see message starting with `Your Kubernetes control-plane has initialised successfully!`. SAVE the command from the output ( the one starting with kubeadm join ) in safe place. You will need it to allow remaining nodes join your cluster. Run the following commands to store credentials in your home directory mkdir -p $HOME/.kube sudo cp -i /etc/kubernetes/admin.conf $HOME/.kube/config sudo chown $(id -u):$(id -g) $HOME/.kube/config How to access the node? I’ve copied content of $HOME/.kube/config from the node onto my local machine, changing few default values to avoid potential clashes. Thanks to this I can use tools like kubectl or k9s from my laptop and make sure I’ll always reach the right server. Master is running, what’s else to do? Networking between the pods — without it your node will remain tainted and in NotReady state forever. You can’t deploy anything on master node by default and node shows as tainted but don’t worry — we can change it with this command kubectl taint nodes --all node-role.kubernetes.io/master- Dashboard. Have you ever met anyone saying “I don’t like dashboards”? Kubernetes have their own, quite universal dashboard which can give you a great overview of your cluster ( and anything within ). # Add kubernetes-dashboard repository helm repo add kubernetes-dashboard https://kubernetes.github.io/dashboard/ # Deploy a Helm Release named "kubernetes-dashboard" using the kubernetes-dashboard chart helm install kubernetes-dashboard kubernetes-dashboard/kubernetes-dashboard --set protocolHttp=true,ingress.enabled=true,rbac.create=true,serviceAccount.create=true,service.externalPort=9090,networkPolicy.enabled=true,podLabels.app=dashboard As you’ve noticed I have added quite a few extras to the helm chart settings but there’s a reason for that. Your dashboard will be up and running but.. It won’t show anything. Missing permissions. kubectl create clusterrolebinding kubernetes-dashboard --clusterrole=cluster-admin --serviceaccount=default:kubernetes-dashboard Okay. We are almost there. We have master node, we have dashboard but we can’t access it at the moment. We could potentially use the nodePort to expose dashboard, but it’s not the way we roll — to do it the kubernetes way we need a loadBalancer. Node runs in our local network so we can’t count on any goodies provided by AWS or GoogleCloud but fear not — there’s way to deal with it. Load balancing in home network Follow installation steps on MetalLLB till end of Installation By Manifest. ifconfig wlan0 promisc # Set PROMISC mode for WiFi - for ARP Command above have its effect as long as you keep the Pi running. To avoid creation of the startup scripts I decided to edit /etc/network/if-up.d/dad to set the promisc mode on when interface comes up. Create following manifest as my-dashboard.yaml apiVersion: v1 kind: ConfigMap metadata: namespace: metallb-system name: config data: config: | address-pools: - name: default protocol: layer2 addresses: - 192.168.50.200-192.168.50.250 --- apiVersion: v1 kind: Service metadata: name: k8s-dashboard annotations: metallb.universe.tf/address-pool: default spec: ports: - port: 80 targetPort: 9090 selector: app: dashboard type: LoadBalancer Don’t forget to change addresses section to correspond with your local network settings. kubectl apply -f my-dashboard.yaml kubectl get svc k8s-dashboard From now on your dashboard can be accessed at ( in my case ) http://192.168.50.200/ Raspberry Pi powered k8s cluster. Article powered by the Saturday struggle, RedBull and love for experiments. Cluster PODS overview provided by K9S Adding additional nodes As we DRY ( Don’t Repeat Yourself ) KISS ( Keep It Stupid Simple ) — scroll up to the beginning of article and follow all the steps until “Create your kubernetes master” on newly created nodes, then execute following ( remember to replace ip address with your master node IP — or it’s hostname ( pi0.local, thanks to avahi daemon ) service docker start kubeadm config images pull kubeadm join 192.168.50.132:6443 --token dugwjt.0k3n \--discovery-token-ca-cert-hash sha256:55cfadHelloSuperSecretHashbf4970f49dcadf533f86e3dba Tip: If you forgot to copy kubeadm command during master node creation, I got your back — following command on the master node will print it out for you again

https://medium.com/swlh/building-your-home-raspberry-pi-kubernetes-cluster-14eeeb3c521e

['Lukasz Raczylo']

2020-12-10 20:53:43.322000+00:00

['Linux', 'Raspberry Pi', 'Kubernetes', 'Development', 'Clustering']

Do I Need to Code in My Free Time to Be a Good Developer?

“But Hey, I Love to Write Code and I’m Passionate About It” Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind if someone codes in their free time. It makes a lot of sense in different situations, like with junior developers who obviously need to learn and practice. Or when you need to learn a new language or a new technology. Or when you’re preparing for an interview (especially for big companies). Or when you just like coding and it’s your hobby. Or when you work on your own projects. And so on. All these situations and reasons are wonderful and great, so there is no reason to argue. My question is a bit different: Why do some people expect that I will code in my free time if my circumstances are different? Just to give a bit of context about myself, it happens that coding is not my hobby, although I do like it and do my work at a high level. I really enjoy it when I see the result of my work. It’s an amazing feeling to see how people interact with interfaces that I’ve built. And I love it even after eight years of developing. But I spend eight hours per day for work, and a third of a day goes to sleeping. As a result, I don’t have that much time left for something else. What about my hobbies? Family? My friends? I need a lot of time for all these. I need a balance. I don’t want to tell my wife something like, “Yeah, I will be right there, just finishing one more small bug” when she asks me to join the family dinner. Because I know, in that case, I will have dinner alone and will eat something cold. I don’t want to miss really important moments in my life. My hobbies are slightly related to computers. I do like practicing yoga. I enjoy bicycle trips. I like baking (even though I’m not very good at it). I’m trying to learn how to play the harmonica. I want to try new things and new hobbies, and I want to feel the life outside of these computers. And how can I find enough time for all these hobbies when I have so little time left in the evenings?

https://medium.com/better-programming/do-i-need-to-code-in-my-free-time-to-be-a-good-developer-6509b3777327

['Maxim Chechenev']

2020-07-06 21:40:18.894000+00:00

['Programming', 'Productivity', 'Development', 'Startup', 'Software Development']

How to Build a Simple Image Recognition System with TensorFlow (Part 2)

This is the second part of my introduction to building an image recognition system with TensorFlow. In the first part we built a softmax classifier to label images from the CIFAR-10 dataset. We achieved an accuracy of around 25–30%. Since there are 10 different and equally likely categories, labeling the images randomly we’d expect an accuracy of 10%. So we’re already a lot better than random, but there’s still plenty of room for improvement. In this post, I’ll describe how to build a neural network that performs the same task. Let’s see by how much we can increase our prediction accuracy! Neural Networks Neural networks are very loosely based on how biological brains work. They consist of a number of artificial neurons which each process multiple incoming signals and return a single output signal. The output signal can then be used as an input signal for other neurons. Let’s take a look at an individual neuron: An artificial neuron. Its output is the result of the ReLU function of a weighted sum of its inputs. What happens in a single neuron is very similar to what happens in the the softmax classifier. Again we have a vector of input values and a vector of weights. The weights are the neuron’s internal parameters. Both input vector and weights vector contain the same number of values, so we can use them to calculate a weighted sum. So far, we’re doing exactly the same calculation as in the softmax classifier, but now comes a little twist: as long as the result of the weighted sum is a positive value, the neuron’s output is this value. But if the weighted sum is a negative value, we ignore that negative value and the neuron generates an output of 0 instead. This operation is called a Rectified Linear Unit (ReLU). Rectified Linear Unit, which is defined by f(x) = max(0, x) The reason for using a ReLU is that this creates a nonlinearity. The neuron’s output is now not strictly a linear combination (= weighted sum) of its inputs anymore. We’ll see why this is useful when we stop looking at individual neurons and instead look at the whole network. The neurons in artificial neural networks are usually not connected randomly to each other. Most of the time they are arranged in layers: An artificial neural network with 2 layers, a hidden and an output layer. The input is not considered a layer, since it just feeds the data (without transforming it) to the first proper layer. (Image is part of the Wikimedia Commons and was taken from here) The input image’s pixel values are the inputs for the network’s first layer of neurons. The output of the neurons in layer 1 is the input for neurons of layer 2 and so forth. This is the reason why having a nonlinearity is so important. Without the ReLU at each layer, we would only have a sequence of weighted sums. And stacked weighted sums can be merged into a single weighted sum, so the multiple layers would give us no improvement over a single layer network. Introducing the ReLU nonlinearity solves this problem as each additional layer really adds something to the network. The network’s final layer’s output are the values we are interested in, the scores for the image categories. In this network architecture each neuron is connected to all neurons of the previous layer, therefore this kind of network is called a fully connected network. As we shall see in Part 3 of this Tutorial, that is not necessarily always the case. And that’s already the end of my very brief part on the theory of neural networks. Let’s get started building one! The Code The full code for this example is available on Github. It requires TensorFlow and the CIFAR-10 dataset (see Part 1) on how to install the prerequisites). If you’ve made your way through my previous blog post, you’ll see that the code for the neural network classifier is pretty similar to the code for the softmax classifier. But in addition to switching out the part of the code that defines the model, I’ve added a couple of small features to show some of the things TensorFlow can do: Regularization: this is a very common technique to prevent overfitting of a model. It works by applying a counter-force during the optimization process which aims to keep the model simple. Visualization of the model with TensorBoard: TensorBoard is included with TensorFlow and allows you to generate charts and graphs from your models and from data generated by your models. This helps with analyzing your models and is especially useful for debugging. Checkpoints: this feature allows you to save the current state of your model for later use. Training a model can take quite a while, so it’s essential to not have to start from scratch each time you want to use it. The code is split into two files this time: there’s two_layer_fc.py , which defines the model, and run_fc_model.py , which runs the model (in case you’re wondering: ‘fc’ stands for fully connected). 2-Layer Fully Connected Neural Network Let’s look at the model itself first and deal with running and training it later. two_layer_fc.py contains the following functions: inference() gets us from input data to class scores. gets us from input data to class scores. loss() calculates the loss value from class scores. calculates the loss value from class scores. training() performs a single training step. performs a single training step. evaluation() calculates the accuracy of the network. Generating Class Scores: inference() inference() describes the forward pass through the network. How are the class scores calculated, starting from input images? The images parameter is the TensorFlow placeholder containing the actual image data. The next three parameters describe the shape/size of the network. image_pixels is the number of pixels per input image, classes is the number of different output labels and hidden_units is the number of neurons in the first/hidden layer of our network. Each neuron takes all values from the previous layer as input and generates a single output value. Each neuron in the hidden layer therefore has image_pixels inputs and the layer as a whole generates hidden_units outputs. These are then fed into the classes neurons of the output layer which generate classes output values, one score per class. reg_constant is the regularization constant. TensorFlow allows us to add regularization to our network very easily by handling most of the calculations automatically. I’ll go into a bit more detail when we get to the loss function. Since our neural network has 2 similar layers, we’ll define a separate scope for each. This allows us to reuse variable names in each scope. The biases variable is defined in the way we already know, by using tf.Variable() . The definition of the weights variable is a bit more involved. We use tf.get_variable() , which allows us to add regularization. weights is a matrix with dimensions of image_pixels by hidden_units (input vector size x output vector size). The initializer parameter describes the weight variable’s initial values. Up to now, we’ve initialized our variables to 0, but this wouldn’t work here. Think about the neurons in a single layer. They all receive exactly the same input values. If they all had the same internal parameters as well, they would all make the same calculation and all output the same value. To avoid this, we need to randomize their initial weights. We use an initialization scheme which usually works well, the weights are initialized to normally distributed values. We drop values which are more than 2 standard deviations from the mean, and the standard deviation is set to the inverse of the square root of the number of input pixels. Luckily TensorFlow handles all these details for us, we just need to specify that we want to use a truncated_normal_initializer which does exactly what we want. The final parameter for the weights variable is the regularizer . All we have to do at this point is to tell TensorFlow we want to use L2-regularization for the weights variable. I’ll cover regularization here. To create the first layer’s output we multiply the images matrix and the weights matrix witch each other and add the bias variable. This is exactly the same as in the softmax classifier from the previous blog post. Then we apply tf.nn.relu() , the ReLU function to arrive at the hidden layer’s output. Layer 2 is very similar to layer 1. The number of inputs is hidden_units , the number of outputs is classes . Therefore the dimensions of the weights matrix are [hidden_units, classes] . Since this is the final layer of our network, there’s no need for a ReLU anymore. We arrive at the class scores ( logits ) by multiplying input ( hidden ) and weights with each other and adding bias . The summary operation tf.histogram_summary() allows us to record the value of the logits variable for later analysis with TensorBoard. I’ll cover this later. To sum it up, the inference() function as whole takes in input images and returns class scores. That’s all a trained classifier needs to do, but in order to arrive at a trained classifier, we first need to measure how good those class scores are. That’s the job of the loss function. Calculating the Loss: loss() First we calculate the cross-entropy between logits (the model’s output) and labels (the correct labels from the training dataset). That has been our whole loss function for the softmax classifier, but this time we want to use regularization, so we have to add another term to our loss. Let’s take a step back first and look at what we want to achieve by using regularization. Overfitting and Regularization When a statistical model captures the random noise in the data it was trained on instead of the true underlying relationship, this is called overfitting. The red and blue circles represent two different classes. The green line represents an overfitted model whereas the black line represents a model with a good fit. (Image is part of the Wikimedia Commons and was taken from here) In the above image there are two different classes, represented by the blue and red circles. The green line is an overfitted classifier. It follows the training data perfectly, but it is also heavily dependent on it and is likely to handle unseen data worse than the black line, which represents a regularized model. So our goal for regularization is to arrive at a simple model without any unnecessary complications. There are different ways to achieve this, and the option we are choosing is called L2-regularization. L2-regularization adds the sum of the squares of all the weights in the network to the loss function. This corresponds to a heavy penalty if the model is using big weights and a small penalty if the model is using small weights. That’s why we used the regularizer parameter when defining the weights and assigned a l2_regularizer to it. This tells TensorFlow to keep track of the L2-regularization terms (and weigh them by the parameter reg_constant ) for this variable. All regularization terms are added to a collection called tf.GraphKeys.REGULARIZATION_LOSSES , which the loss function accesses. We then add the sum of all regularization losses to the previously calculated cross-entropy to arrive at the total loss of our model. Optimizing the Variables: training() global_step is a scalar variable which keeps track of how many training iterations have already been performed. When repeatedly running the model in our training loop, we already know this value. It’s the iteration variable of the loop. The reason we’re adding this value directly to the TensorFlow graph is that we want to be able to take snapshots of the model. And these snapshots should include information about how many training steps have already been performed. The definition of the gradient descent optimizer is simple. We provide the learning rate and tell the optimizer which variable it is supposed to minimize. In addition, the optimizer automatically increments the global_step parameter with every iteration. Measuring Performance: evaluation() The calculation of the model’s accuracy is the same as in the softmax case: we compare the model’s predictions with true labels and calculate the frequency of how often the prediction is correct. We’re also interested in how the accuracy evolves over time, so we’re adding a summary operation which keeps track of the value of accuracy . We’ll cover this in the section about TensorBoard. To summarize what we have done so far, we have defined the behavior of a 2-layer artificial neural network using 4 functions: inference() constitutes the forward pass through the network and returns class scores. loss() compares predicted and true class scores and generates a loss value. training() performs a training step and optimizes the model’s internal parameters and evaluation() measures the performance of our model. Running the Neural Network Now that the neural network is defined, let’s look at how run_fc_model.py runs, trains and evaluates the model. After the obligatory imports we’re defining the model parameters as external flags. TensorFlow has its own module for command line parameters, which is a thin wrapper around Python’s argparse . We’re using it here for convenience, but you can just as well use argparse directly instead. In the first couple of lines, the various command line parameters are being defined. The parameters for each flag are the flag’s name, its default value and a short description. Executing the file with the -h flag displays these descriptions. The second block of lines calls the function which actually parses the command line parameters. Then the values of all parameters are printed to the screen. Here we define constants for the number of pixels per image (32 x 32 x 3) and the number of different image categories. Then we start measuring the runtime by creating a timer. We want to log some info about the training process and use TensorBoard to display that info. TensorBoard requires the logs for each run to be in a separate directory, so we’re adding date and time info to the name of the log directory. load_data() loads the CIFAR-10 data and returns a dictionary containing separate training and test datasets. Generate the TensorFlow Graph We’re defining TensorFlow placeholders. When performing the actual calculations, these will be filled with training/testing data. The images_placeholder has dimensions of batch size x pixels per image. A batch size of ‘None’ allows us to run the graph with different batch sizes (the batch size for training the net can be set via a command line parameter, but for testing we’re passing the whole test set as a single batch). The labels_placeholder is a vector of integer values containing the correct class label, one per image in the batch. Here we’re referencing the functions we covered earlier in two_layer_fc.py . inference() gets us from input data to class scores. gets us from input data to class scores. loss() calculates a loss value from class scores. calculates a loss value from class scores. training() performs a single training step. performs a single training step. evaluation() calculates the accuracy of the network. Defines a summary operation for TensorBoard (covered here). Generates a saver object to save the model’s state at checkpoints (covered here). We start the TensorFlow session and immediately initialize all variables. Then we create a summary writer which we will use to periodically save log information to disk. These lines are responsible for generating batches of input data. Let’s pretend we have 100 training images and a batch size of 10. In the softmax example we just picked 10 random images for each iteration. This means that after 10 iterations each image will have been picked once on average(!). But in fact some images will have been picked multiple times while some images haven’t been part of any batch so far. As long as you repeat this often enough, it’s not that terrible that randomness causes some images to be part of the training batches somewhat more often than others. But this time we want to improve the sampling process. What we do is we first shuffle the 100 images of the training dataset. The first 10 images of the shuffled data are our first batch, the next 10 images are our second batch and so forth. After 10 batches we’re at the end of our dataset and the process starts again. We shuffle the data another time and run through it from front to back. This guarantees that no image is being picked more often than any other while still ensuring that the order in which the images are returned is random. In order to achieve this, the gen_batch() function in data_helpers() returns a Python generator , which returns the next batch each time it is evaluated. The details of how generators work are beyond the scope of this post (a good explanation can be found here). We’re using the Python’s built-in zip() function to generate a list of tuples of the from [(image1, label1), (image2, label2), ...] , which is then passed to our generator function. next(batches) returns the next batch of data. Since it’s still in the form of [(imageA, labelA), (imageB, labelB), ...] , we need to unzip it first to separate images from labels, before filling feed_dict , the dictionary containing the TensorFlow placeholders, with a single batch of training data. Every 100 iterations the model’s current accuracy is evaluated and printed to the screen. In addition, the summary operation is being run and its results are added to the summary_writer which is responsible for writing the summaries to disk. From there they can be read and displayed by TensorBoard (see this section). This line runs the train_step operation (defined previously to call two_layer_fc.training() , which contains the actual instructions for the optimization of the variables). When training a model takes a longer period of time, there is an easy way to save a snapshot of your progress. This allows you to come back later and restore the model in exactly the same state. All you need to do is to create a tf.train.Saver object (we did that earlier) and then call its save() method every time you want to take a snapshot. Restoring a model is just as easy, just call the saver’s restore() method. There is a working code example showing how to do this in the file restore_model.py in the github repository. After the training is finished, the final model is evaluated on the test set (remember, the test set contains data that the model has not seen so far, allowing us to judge how well the model is able to generalize to new data). Results Let’s run the model with the default parameters via “ python run_fc_model.py ”. My output looks like this: Parameters: batch_size = 400 hidden1 = 120 learning_rate = 0.001 max_steps = 2000 reg_constant = 0.1 train_dir = tf_logs Step 0, training accuracy 0.09 Step 100, training accuracy 0.2675 Step 200, training accuracy 0.3925 Step 300, training accuracy 0.41 Step 400, training accuracy 0.4075 Step 500, training accuracy 0.44 Step 600, training accuracy 0.455 Step 700, training accuracy 0.44 Step 800, training accuracy 0.48 Step 900, training accuracy 0.51 Saved checkpoint Step 1000, training accuracy 0.4425 Step 1100, training accuracy 0.5075 Step 1200, training accuracy 0.4925 Step 1300, training accuracy 0.5025 Step 1400, training accuracy 0.5775 Step 1500, training accuracy 0.515 Step 1600, training accuracy 0.4925 Step 1700, training accuracy 0.56 Step 1800, training accuracy 0.5375 Step 1900, training accuracy 0.51 Saved checkpoint Test accuracy 0.4633 Total time: 97.54s We can see that the training accuracy starts at a level we would expect from guessing randomly (10 classes -> 10% chance of picking the correct one). Over the first about 1000 iterations the accuracy increases to around 50% and fluctuates around that value for the next 1000 iterations. The test accuracy of 46% is not much lower than the training accuracy. This indicates that our model is not significantly overfitted. The performance of the softmax classifier was around 30%, so 46% is an improvement of about 50%. Not bad! Visualization with TensorBoard TensorBoard allows you to visualize different aspects of your TensorFlow graphs and is very useful for debugging and improving your networks. Let’s look at the TensorBoard-related lines of code spread throughout the codebase. In two_layer_fc.py we find the following: Each of these three lines creates a summary operation. By defining a summary operation you tell TensorFlow that you are interested in collecting summary information from certain tensors ( logits , loss and accuracy in our case). The other parameter for the summary operation is just a label you want to attach to the summary. There are different kinds of summary operations. We’re using scalar_summary to record information about scalar (non-vector) values and histogram_summary to collect info about a distribution of multiple values (more info about the various summary operations can be found in the TensorFlow docs). In run_fc_model.py the following lines are relevant for the TensorBoard visualization: An operation in TensorFlow doesn’t run by itself, you need to either call it directly or call another operation which depends on it. Since we don’t want to call each summary operation individually each time we want to collect summary information, we’re using tf.merge_all_summaries to create a single operation which runs all our summaries. During the initialization of the TensorFlow session we’re creating a summary writer. The summary writer is responsible for actually writing summary data to disk. In its constructor we supply logdir , the directory where we want the logs to be written. The optional graph argument tells TensorBoard to render a display of the whole TensorFlow graph. Every 100 iterations we execute the merged summary operation and feed the results to the summary writer which writes them to disk. To view the results we run TensorBoard via “ tensorboard --logdir=tf_logs ” and open localhost:6006 in a web browser. In the “Events”-tab we can see how the network’s loss decreases and how its accuracy increases over time. TensorBoard charts displaying the model’s loss and accuracy over a training run. The “Graphs”-tab shows a visualization of the TensorFlow graph we have defined. You can interactively rearrange it until you’re satisfied with how it looks. I think the following image shows the structure of our network pretty well. TensorBoard displays the TensorBoard graph in an interactive visualization. In the “Distribution”- and “Histograms”-tabs you can explore the results of the tf.histogram_summary operation we attached to logits , but I won’t go into further details here. More info can be found in the relevant section of the offical TensorFlow documentation. Further Improvements Maybe you’re thinking that training the softmax classifier took a lot less computation time than training the neural network. While that’s true, even if we kept training the softmax classifier as long as it took the neural network to train, it wouldn’t reach the same performance. The longer you train a model, the smaller the additional gains get and after a certain point the performance improvement is miniscule. We’ve reached this point with the neural network too. Additional training time would not improve the accuracy significantly anymore. There’s something else we could do though: The default parameter values are chosen to be pretty ok, but there is some room for improvement left. By varying parameters such as the number of neurons in the hidden layer or the learning rate, we should be able to improve the model’s accuracy some more. A testing accuracy greater than 50% should definitely be possible with this model with some further optimization. Although I would be very surprised if this model could be tuned to reach 65% or more. But there’s another type of network architecture for which such an accuracy is easily doable: convolutional neural networks. These are a class of neural networks which are not fully connected. Instead they try to make sense of local features in their input, which is very useful for analyzing images. It intuitively makes a lot of sense to take spatial information into account when looking at images. In part 3 of this series we will see the principles of how convolutional neural networks work and build one ourselves. Stay tuned for part 3 on convolutional neural networks and thanks a lot for reading! I’m happy about any feedback you might have! aYou can also check out other articles I’ve written on my blog.

https://medium.com/free-code-camp/how-to-build-a-simple-image-recognition-system-with-tensorflow-part-2-c83348b33bce

['Wolfgang Beyer']

2017-02-18 05:12:54.230000+00:00

['Machine Learning', 'Python', 'TensorFlow', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Image Processing']

How to Build a No Code Startup Around Your MVP

How to Build a No Code Startup Around Your MVP You don’t have to spend a fortune to build out your company, yet Why do some successful startups scale smoothly while others flail and eventually fail? In the early days of any company — the minimum viable product days — it’s a miracle just to get a working version of your product into a customer’s hands. So what happens when you eventually wind up delivering a lot of product to a lot of customers — but you’re still recording all your information on sticky notes? Or whatever the 2020 equivalent of a sticky note might be? When I founded my first startup 20 years ago, one of the first things I did was build a system to keep track of every data point of my business. Today, I can accomplish the same thing, but with No Code options, which means I no longer need to spend dozens of hours reinventing wheels when I should be spending that time building a better product and selling more of it. You don’t have to build a proprietary system or spend a fortune on SaaS solutions in order to scale. Not yet. Here’s how to get started with No Code options for tracking the most important growth aspects of your business. Why you need to track the growth of your business It’s never been easier to start a company, and it’s never been easier to create a working product or market a new service. The options for building a sustainable business are nearly unlimited. But that lowering-of-the-bar comes with a downside — I see a lot of newly-formed companies skipping those unlimited options altogether. In fact, I recently polled my Teaching Startup entrepreneurs about how they were monitoring the health of their business. These are serious, revenue-generating, early-to-growth-phase entrepreneurs, and their answers, on the scale from most ideal to least, was not as ideal as I would have assumed. Almost half of these startups are only tracking sales (the 2020 equivalent of the sticky notes option). This is understandable, of course, and not a big problem. Yet. That’s going to come later. To illustrate the impending spiral, I like to use the example of a well-financed startup I consulted for a long time ago. When I got there, the company was generating $6 million a month in revenue, and burning $7 million a month to do it. Not a rarity for a startup, for sure. The problem was, everyone knew this was happening and no one knew how to stop it, because no one had a handle on costs and how costs and revenues broke down over customers. Costs kept rising faster than revenue. They burned through all the investor money and never recovered. An ounce of preparation is worth months, maybe years, of painful, cash-burning cure. Here’s what you should be thinking about from the get go. Customers There are a lot of ways to track your customers and prospects. Here are just a few examples: CRM software like Salesforce. Marketing management software like Hubspot. Payment software like Stripe. Accounting software like Quickbooks. Chances are you are already using one or more of these systems and hopefully tracking your customers individually in at least one. In fact, the problem most startups have is that they usually have multiple copies of a customer across several systems. What every startup needs is a system of record for customers. This is one single source list that tracks them from initial prospect through conversion and until they leave you forever. What most startups do instead is choose one of their customer databases from the list above, and call that their system of record. That’s not a terrible option, but I don’t recommend it. First of all, your customers are YOUR customers. They’re not Salesforce’s, they’re not Hubspot’s, and they’re not Stripe’s. And depending on what software you’re using, your customer data in that system might not 100% belong to you or be 100% accessible outside of that system. If you are using someone else’s database as your system of record, make sure it has the ability to create and update multiple custom fields. Also make sure it has an export/import function, so you can bring that data into a spreadsheet whenever you want, make mass changes, and import those changes back in. The lowly but powerful spreadsheet It’s OK to use a spreadsheet as your system of record. You can either create it as the result of an export from another system or create it manually. Each customer in your system of record should have a unique ID that you generate — don’t use Hubspot’s ID, don’t use Stripe’s ID. Having this data in a spreadsheet is extra work, of course, especially if your company is B2C and selling to hundreds of customers per day — this is why your other systems need an import/export option. What your system of record allows you to do is pull in data from other systems, so you can analyze how marketing is increasing sales, how sales is triggering discounts from suppliers, how suppliers are raising costs in support, and so on. Once all the data (or most of it) is in a spreadsheet, you can run all kinds of analysis to monitor the health of your business and keep it growing. So where is the rest of that data coming from? Marketing I’m going to poke conventional wisdom here, but in the beginning, you do not need a lot of data tracking around digital marketing until the numbers start to produce a sustained impact on sales. Most young startups aren’t remarketing, they’re not A/B testing, and they can usually count conversions manually. There’s little need to go all-in on software to do that counting at the customer level. So until you can prove causation between a marketing campaign and a rise in sales, focus on aggregate, not granular, marketing data. Make another spreadsheet — this time you’ll be correlating aggregate marketing activity to aggregate sales generated. In other words, if you spend $100 on a digital ad campaign, track how much that bumped sales. Why another spreadsheet? Because in most cases, getting the truth between one system that does your marketing and another system that tracks your sales is like deciphering hieroglyphics. But also, your business is probably different enough from every other business on the planet that the default connections between those systems will result in numbers but no insights. That said, I can use those systems, if I have access to them, to analyze cause and effect. If I can pull a customer from an ad campaign and see what I had to do to land them and what they did once they got to me, that can be super-helpful. But again, early on, that kind of analysis should be reactive, not proactive. Sales Money never changes hands without some kind of digital record being created. Plug into this digital record and tie that revenue back to your system of record for customers. The key here is to keep this data as real-time as possible. Again, most startups do their “banking” once a week or even once a month. I don’t like to do banking at all, and my accountant will tell you that the thing I’m worst at is accounting. Just about every bank’s digital offering, as well as every credit card processor and every flavor of accounting software on the market today, will allow an almost seamless connection and update to other systems. If you don’t have an accountant, or even if you do, get some free or cheap accounting software with an import/export ability, and routinely get a sense of where your money is coming from and where it’s going. This software can serve as the system of record for sales and costs. Again, being able to import into your accounting system from your spreadsheet — your system of record for customers — is going to cut way down on your “banking” time, as well as keep you on at least a daily monitoring cycle of the health of your business, if not real-time. Automation Speaking of real-time, let’s talk about Zapier. In cases where I don’t have automatic updates between systems, I can use Zapier to automate those updates for me. So when I make a sale (in Stripe), my marketing system (MailChimp) gets updated. But what’s even better is that Zapier can update my spreadsheets too. This means I can be running constant analysis on my business, conduct experiments, and let the results store themselves in real time so I can analyze them when I’m ready without a lot of prep. Communications And finally, let’s talk about Slack. If I’m real time with my data, or even when I’m not, there are certain situations where real time notification and communication is critical. Slack is more than an instant messaging tool for your team, it’s an instant messaging tool between your team and your data. When I pair Slack with Zapier, not only will my systems know when I’ve made a sale, but my sales, customer success, and support teams will too. And if something’s not right, they can all gather in the same place, immediately, without leaving where they are. All this and I’m not spending thousands of dollars on a custom data infrastructure and monitoring system. Yet. This is all temporary, but it’s also permanent Of course, you’re going to pretty quickly outgrow the free-to-use variants of these no code tools. Eventually, the unique needs of your business model will even push you past the capabilities of the paid versions of these tools. Not only that, but I’m willing to bet your spreadsheets will become a heated, unusable mess before the latter happens. So yes, you’ll have to ditch all this duct-tape mess at some point. But here’s the thing. 20 years ago when I sat down to create my custom systems, the hardest part was figuring out how to build them to suit the unique needs of the business I was creating. When it’s time to build your own custom system, you’ll not only have figured out exactly what kind of data structure you need, you’ll have an initial set of data that goes almost all the way back to the beginning. And it won’t all be on sticky notes. Hey! If you found this post actionable or insightful, please consider signing up for my newsletter at joeprocopio.com so you don’t miss any new posts. It’s short and to the point.

https://jproco.medium.com/how-to-build-a-no-code-startup-around-your-mvp-b1296a650a5e

['Joe Procopio']

2020-07-27 11:38:29.359000+00:00

['Product Management', 'Business', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Startup', 'Productivity']

Ready, Set, Go — Making an Impact in Your First Few Months at Wish

Ready, Set, Go — Making an Impact in Your First Few Months at Wish A look into the first projects of 4 team members Image by Ruby Yeh With so many tech companies and tech workers in the Bay Area, it would be easy to get lost in the fold at another company. This is not the case at Wish, where each one of our 350 employees makes a huge impact. Although Wish is growing rapidly, we still retain a good deal of our startup company charm. Our relatively flat structure gives employees latitude to suggest ideas, and work closely with senior management to turn those ideas into reality. Every employee at Wish has a chance to make their mark, right from the get-go. Need proof? We asked four contributors at Wish about the first projects that they tackled when they came on board. If you’ve ever had a slow ramp-up at another company, their answers may surprise you. Lorna Product Designer What she has to say: “I came from a much bigger company. I was looking for a position with greater ownership and more responsibilities — as a designer, you want to be able to create and craft your own designs. Wish allows me to do that, to have my own voice. One of the first projects I worked on was redesigning the shopping cart. I requested the project and Wish allowed me to work on it. How many people can say they joined a company and were immediately able to work on such a key area of an app? When I started working on the shopping cart, it was not user-friendly. It was cluttered and it was difficult to process what you were seeing on the screen. The pricing, shipping, and billing information was arranged in such a way that it was overwhelming for the user. Overall I condensed information, removed unnecessary spacing, and prioritized what was important for the customer on the screen. In the end, I was able to let millions of users see my work, and over the course of a few months our Gross Merchandise Value went up 2%. It was great to see my hard work pay off.” Reni Platform Product Manager What he has to say: “One of my first projects was working on merchant growth, and how to make merchants successful on our platform. We used full funnel analysis and dashboards to measure [the merchant onboarding and sales process]. We tracked everything and used data to strategize. In the end, we were able to double the rate at which merchants got their first sale. I’m a quantitative guy, and I like that Wish is a data-driven company. Data allows employees to stay focused on the same goals and make decisions based on the same KPIs, even with their individual contributions. In terms of business transactions, Wish is a big company. But they have truly been able to keep the startup pace. At Wish, you enjoy the speed and full responsibility of your projects. You see the passion in everyone’s work. Wish should be proud of this — I haven’t seen this in comparable companies, ever.” Alireza Android Engineering Lead What he has to say: “One of the first projects I worked on was our rewards system a.k.a. our loyalty program. The program gave customer rewards for performing various actions on the site, which would later turn into discounts that could be applied to their future purchases. It was a fun way for users to stay engaged with the site, and become engaged in new ways. It was a major undertaking, and I worked on the project by myself as a newly-graduated engineer. It felt great to work on such a big task, and even better that the results were positive. Within a couple of weeks, there was a 2% increase in sales, a 2.5% increase in the number of unique buyers visiting the site, and a 2.5% increase in purchases completed. Over 2 years later, it is still one of our major features.” Image by Ruby Yeh Shiyu Growth Data Analyst Intern What he has to say: “Wish treats interns like they are regular full time employees. This was not always the case in other internships that I’ve had. Before, I might have trouble getting permission to work on large impactful projects. At Wish, you get a lot of freedom. You are welcome to propose different strategies and they will listen to you as long as your strategies make sense.” Image by Ruby Yeh This is just a peek into some of the exciting projects you will have the opportunity to work on as a part of Wish’s dynamic team. If you’re looking for a company where you can make a huge impact, check out our open positions here: https://jobs.lever.co/wish?lever-via=Te-nD12q0H

https://medium.com/wish-engineering/ready-set-go-making-an-impact-in-your-first-few-months-at-wish-4c0a2e8478c4

['Kristina Wang']

2018-02-22 23:39:46.872000+00:00

['Startup', 'Engineering', 'Design', 'Analytics', 'Product Management']

Teams don’t struggle with solving problems but figuring out what the problems are

Teams don’t struggle with solving problems but figuring out what the problems are. Table of Contents Summary Though many factors contribute to a project’s failure, nothing is more certain to cause a project to fail than solving the wrong problem or realizing too late that the problem was misunderstood. A common misconception is that identifying the right problem is an innate ability that only a select few visionaries like Henry Ford or Steve Jobs possess. Their quotes, “If I asked people what they wanted, they would say “a faster horse”, and, “Its really hard to design products by focus groups, as people don’t know what they want until you show it to them”, have propagated this myth. Identifying, analyzing and defining problems is a process and its accessible to anyone that is passionate about doing so. The rigor with which a problem is defined is the most important factor in finding a suitable solution. Founders and Organizations investing in projects don’t spend enough time defining the most important problem they’re attempting to solve. Many have considerable difficulty even identifying which problems are crucial to their missions and strategies. This results in too many pivots, shifting business requirements, missing deadlines and re-work as teams go back to the drawing board. This eventually results in schedule and budget overruns or project cancelation. Teams speed toward a solution, fearing that if they spend too much time defining the problem, they will lose the window of opportunity or get scolded by corporate leadership for taking too long to leave the starting line. Many times, projects go down the wrong path and end up implementing the wrong system. They discover too late, that they didn’t solve the “right problem”, or they didn’t solve the “whole problem”. They only realize in hindsight the right problem to focus on and which path to follow. Projects also fail when they start with the solution first. Often referred to as “Solutions in search for a problem”. This happens frequently when new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain come on the scene and teams are adamantly attached to building with it. Teams often end up shoe-horning problems instead of objectively evaluating the situation and using the right solution to solve it. Most teams are not proficient at articulating their problems clearly and concisely. They need to ask the right questions earlier and not start building solutions too soon. Teams need to get a lot better at: Identifying the right problem to solve Being sure the problem is worth solving Understanding who is affected and how Understanding the root causes of the problem and breaking down large problems into many smaller ones Asking why it hasn’t yet been solved and understanding the most difficult parts of the problem Defining the problem clearly and concisely Validating the economics — the costs, benefits and payback Asking how we will know when the problem is solved and whose opinions count Identify the right problem to solve Where do the ideas for the right problems (or opportunities) come from? Life is problematic and solving challenges is an integral part of our everyday lives. So ideas for problems are everywhere. Whilst there is no shortage of problems to find, there are limits on what we as individuals or corporations can take on. Therefore, the process starts with asking the right question — “What does the world want changed, that I am, or we are, passionate about solving and are uniquely qualified to tackle?” Simon Sinek puts this as “Do what inspires you”. Simon explains that to do what inspires, start with the “Why”. Start by understanding and explaining why the problem matters to you. If you can answer that question, you will not only inspire more people to use the solution, but you will also inspire yourself to get out of bed each morning and push through difficult tasks. Simon goes onto explain that searching for why the problem matters, requires you to examine the significant moments from your past to understand your why. This process also applies to corporations, who must look to their history so that they can understand why its important to their mission. Another less used, but powerful technique to gaining clarity on what matters to you is to write your own obituary or for a corporation, a bankruptcy filing. Although it sounds a bit macabre, writing your own ending, can be an excellent way to gain clarity on how you want to use your time. Be sure the problem is worth solving Not all problems can be solved viably. Some problems are not economical to solve because: The solution would cost more to build or sell than its benefits The solution would take too long to pay back the investors or the corporation. Some problems are not economical to solve right now, because the conditions for success are not yet ripe. But how can we predict if a problem is worth solving and the timing is right? Significant contributions on answering this question come from the Tech Startup Community — these insights also apply to problems faced by corporations. Problems are worth solving when they: Matter deeply to the founders (if it’s a Startup), or to a corporation’s mission Are useful to enough people And are: Growing or getting worse with time compared to other problems these people face Urgent and needs to be solved quickly Hard to solve and the people impacted don’t have good enough alternatives or the solution is not immediately obvious Mandatory and not just a nice to have Caused by changes in the environment Frequent and affects people often Understanding who is affected and how To analyze if a problem would be useful to enough people, you need to: Identify who and how many people might be impacted by this project the most or have influence over this project who and how many people might be impacted by this project the most or have influence over this project Prioritize the people based on their interest and influence the people based on their interest and influence Understand how they are impacted or how they will impact you Enterprise IT / transformation projects often refer to this analysis as “Stakeholder Analysis” and charts such as the one below is created to visualize the Power-Interest of each stakeholder. Source : https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newPPM_07.htm This area is well covered by multiple sources. Some of the notable ones are listed below: The Technology Startup community has a rich body of knowledge on finding potential users. Geoffrey Moore describes the various segments in his book “Crossing the Chasm”. The central idea of the book is that Startups should focus first finding innovators, then target early adopters and so fourth as the company matures. Crossing the chasm, by Geoffrey More Understand the root causes of the problem and break down large problems into many smaller ones Problems often start out “fuzzy” — vague, formless thoughts. A problem is fuzzy if the founders and project teams struggle to explain the problem concisely and precisely. Its often said, that if you cannot explain the problem you are working on to your partner or parents, you haven’t understood the problem well enough yourself. Root cause analysis is about digging beneath the surface understanding of a problem. The goal is look beyond trying to find one singular cause, and instead uncover the system, or network of causes. A Root Cause Network Map is a simple visual explanation of all the causes that contributed to the problem. Source : https://www.lucidchart.com/blog/root-cause-analysis 5 Whys This method encourages you to keep going deeper as you examine an issue. Ask “Why?” at least five times until you’ve uncovered all potential causal factors and determined the real reasons this problem occurred in the first place. 5 Fives is well established technique with detailed steps and tips. Using a root cause analysis, teams can break fuzzy large problems into multiple well-defined smaller pones. In doing so they can also identify the sources of a problem. This level of understanding will later help to implement permanent and lasting solutions. How to deal with complex root causes The root cause network map is often a simplified view of the true nature of the issue. Most real-world issues have a more far more complex causal chain. For example, the diagram below depicts the behavioral and societal factors that contribute to the cause of obesity. Analyzing the root cause when the causes are complex are covered by the complexity theory field of study. Teams facing complex causes should look to tools and techniques used by complexity analysts, such as graph analysis. Source: Government Office for Science 2017 Ask why it hasn’t yet been solved and understand the most difficult parts of the problem With a clearer view of the problem and the network of causes, teams can then ask these questions: “Why hasn’t each of the smaller problems been solved?” “Which of these smaller problems are the hardest to solve”? Difficult problems remain unsolved, generally because somewhere in the network of causes is a “Mini-Wicked problem” that’s hard to solve, because it is: Not economical to solve The problem is highly interconnected with too many other problems The technology doesn’t exist yet to effectively solve the problem No obvious solution exists If viable solutions cannot be found to these wicked problems, project failure is imminent. Define the scope of the problem Teams must solve a root cause completely and better than an alternative to be successful. However, teams often don’t have the resources to solve all the root causes of a problem. Therefore, teams must decide which of these ones they wish to undertake and include within the project. The list of root causes that the team chooses to include within a project is referred to as the “Scope” of the project. Various frameworks exist for defining the scope of the problem and teams must select one that works best for their situation. The Concise Scope Definition (“The Elevator Pitch”) This type of scope definition is a few sentences that describe: Current State — who is facing the issue, what is today’s reality, when, how and why, do they face the issue today The loss — the frequency and impact of that this issue is having on users today Ideal End State — the users experience once the problem is solved Example: Managers are spending 20% of their time each week receiving and compiling sales reports for upper management, reducing the number of hours spent on mentoring sales staff, lead generation, and closing business. This is a productivity issue, and ignoring it results in decreased sales and missed revenue targets over the past 3 months. XYZ Company is committed to reducing the time spent compiling reports to no more than 10% of the sales manager’s time in any week. Scope Modeling Frameworks Some scope definitions need more information to set the stage and define where the problem exists and which problem is being tackled. In such situations the problem definition often requires several pages, several PowerPoint slides, various diagrams or even more formal models. The scope definition must help explain the impacted Business units Business processes Business capabilities Data Applications Projects Infrastructure If the problem is a caused by a change in the external environment, the model may also need to explain: The Influencers — trends, competitors or legislations that are causing this change trends, competitors or legislations that are causing this change The SWOT — strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to the business because of these external changes — strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to the business because of these external changes The drivers — the main reasons why this is a problem and why it’s a problem now If the problem is a so severe that it requires the business to change direction or morph into a different business to survive, the problem definition may need to explain: The business model — the most fundamental building blocks of the business that are impacted such as Customer segments, Value proposition, Revenue streams, Channels the business uses to interact with customers, Customer relationships, Key activities, Key resources, Key partners, Cost structure Teams can refer to frameworks such as the business model canvas. This framework is also useful to Startups as they are often invent new business models. Validate the economics Teams often asked the question “How much will this project cost?”. Teams should resist responding only with the cost “this project will cost $1 Million” as it offers no frame of reference to understand if this cost is too high or just right. Teams need to get better at providing both the cost, the benefit and the return on investment — for example “This project will cost $1 Million, and will deliver $5 Million in Benefits over 3 years”. Even at the early stage of the project, teams should strive to envision ballpark return on investment figures. Creating business cases has been extensively written about. Some notable references include How will we know when the problem is solved and whose opinions count The big problem with assessing project success is that is no consistent way to define “project success.” There is a great deal of diversity in terms of what is considered as the project success criteria, and worse they change over time. Projects that struggle to define success or aim for moving targets, risk the odds that the project will be viewed as a failure in the end. Getting project success criteria is sometimes so hard, that a popular practice has simply been to ignore it. Many project teams never ask the two fundamental questions at the beginning of their projects: Who declares success? What are the criteria that will be used to determine success or failure? Project Management Institute has made significant contributions in this area and suggests that there are broadly two types of success criteria Project management success — the team’s ability to meet the projects budget and schedule and deliver a product of acceptable quality Product success — the outward view of success of such as revenue and customer adoption, customer satisfaction and so fourth. Whether the project will be judged more so by project management success or product success will largely dependent on the power-influence mix of the project’s stakeholders and if they are more focused on project management success or product success or some combination of the two. Conclusion Projects succeed when teams solve the right problem and solve the whole problem. To do this, teams must resist the urge to speed toward a solution, and spend more time upfront, identifying and defining the problem. To find the right problems, individuals and corporations must be selective in which problems they choose to take on. They should prioritize those that: Could have a big impact on people They are uniquely qualified to tackle Can be solved viably — i.e. the solution has greater benefits than the cost to build and sell it Have an acceptable pay back period for the investors or corporation. Teams must identify the users that will be impacted or have an influence over the success of the projects and assess if there are enough people that will benefit from this project to make it worthwhile. Root cause analysis is an essential step to help teams Break down fuzzy large problems into multiple well-defined smaller ones Identify and visualize the multiple causes of a problem. Before embarking on solution design, teams should Try to understand why the problem hasn’t yet been solved, and Where in the network of causes is the hardest part of the problem to solve. The list of root causes that the team chooses to include within a project is referred to as the “Scope” of the project. There are various frameworks for defining the scope of the problem and teams must select one that works best for their situation. Teams need to get better at Validating the project’s economics by understanding the cost, the benefits and the return on investment. Uncovering at an early stage, who declares success and what criteria will be used to determine success. Teams don’t struggle with solving problems but figuring out what the problems are. Identifying, analyzing and defining the problem is the key to project success. Einstein summarized it best by saying: “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.” Reference

https://medium.com/swlh/solve-the-right-problems-c3992f7491a9

['Vasa Digital Architects']

2020-11-07 20:02:13.953000+00:00

['Technology', 'Design', 'Startup', 'Digital Marketing', 'Entrepreneurship']

NLP — Zero to Hero with Python and More!

NeurIPS, the largest conference in artificial intelligence, is currently underway, and it has over 20k people registered. If you are not registered and would like to access their goodies, please visit this public access version of the NeurIPS website. If you are into deep learning, we recommend you to check out this phenomenal tutorial by David Duvenaud, Zico Kolter, and Matt Johnson, which makes use of many tools such as Anderson acceleration, differential equations, neural nets, convex optimization, Jax, automatic differentiation and others, presented on NeurIPS. Next, we recommend you to check out this article titled “We read the paper that forced Timnit Gebru out of Google. Here’s what it says” by Karen Hao from MIT Technology Review, which gives a very insightful overview of what caused the departure of Timtit Gebru, co-lead ethical AI researcher from Google Brain. For those interested in natural language processing, Carnegie Mellon Professor Graham Neubig just published 23 class-lectures on multilingual natural language processing, including two guest lectures by Pat Littell and Orhan Firat. The video playlist can be accessed for free on Youtube. Last but not least, Paul Liang and Misha Khodak from ML@CMU published a post containing all of CMU’s submissions to NeurIPS 2020, with many goodies, from papers to code, and much more.

https://medium.com/towards-artificial-intelligence/nlp-zero-to-hero-with-python-and-more-6f5968e96f1c

['Towards Ai Team']

2020-12-08 17:22:53.925000+00:00

['News', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Science', 'Future', 'Technology']

The power of visualizing as a tool for creativity

A creative director explains how dyslexia is the secret to unlocking flow. In my mind, I see a lady with a tattoo. I also see a bearded man. Scattered in this orbit are a small cat, a large dog and the swell of love. These images are all part of a rebranding project I’m visualizing for a veterinary technology company. Some are close and some are blurrier, farther away. I can reach out and arrange each one to help me make unexpected connections. They’re all in motion. When one connection lights up, I move toward it. As I move, I accumulate more nodes that feel right. Soon, all of these once-disparate parts fall into alignment. As someone with dyslexia, I’ve always been able to see my ideas. You won’t be surprised to hear that you can write on every wall at Gershoni Creative, my creative agency that builds brands and propels ideas. My inner dialogue is more like an inner whiteboard. And I know I’m not the only one. Many of you may be nodding. You, too, have experienced the power of visualizing as a tool for creativity. Formally, visualizing is the act of forming a mental image of something. Informally, it’s a way to spark, connect, expand and evaluate our (many) ideas. Anyone can have a knack for this skill. I’ve found dyslexics over-index on this ability. For example, inventor and fellow dyslexic Tom Pellereau agrees, “I seem to be able to visualize things easier than other people,” he said. “I can see it and I can picture it and I can turn it around.” Pellereau recently joined me and marketer Steven “Woody” Woodgate for The Bigger Picture With Amazing Dyslexics, a live virtual salon series I host to celebrate the way divergent thinking influences the way we think, create and relate to one another. It’s what I call Dyslexic Design Thinking. In the salon, Pellereau shared how visualizing allows him to be more iterative and creative in real time. These techniques helped him become a winner on BBC One’s The Apprentice, where he became the first business partner of self-made billionaire Lord Sugar. The three of us grasp the big picture in similar ways because, in our minds, everything is nonlinear, no matter the industry or profession. I apply visualization to the innovation, strategy and design work we do for clients. Pellereau steers his techniques toward innovation in the beauty category, while Woodgate applies them to product and software strategy. Although our professional lives diverge, each of us sees visualizing as an essential part of our creative process. So why visualize? Here are five reasons that came up in our recent chat: It sparks ideas. Visualization is a process that’s integrated, not interruptive, to concepting. In rebranding the veterinary technology company, I pulled inspiration from all over: an audience insight from an unrelated industry, a conversation with a longtime employee, an afternoon walk with my own dog. Pellereau can’t help but incorporate his mechanical engineering background into his work. Woodgate has a passion for football and cricket. Because ideas come from everywhere, it helps to let everything in and worry about where it fits later. Instead of pausing to process the information, I tap into a natural state of flow. I withhold judgment and let the visualizations roll in. It reveals connections. Not all ideas arrive fully formed. Having a mental landscape where everything is visible allows me to find commonalities and see how ideas fit together to create something bigger than themselves. Seeing things from new perspectives always lights up new rooms in my team’s minds, too. We make a point to work with people who look up and look around and never look at the same thing the same way. It expands ideas. The easiest way for me to deepen an idea is to go back to my visualization. When a global professional services company wanted an innovative approach to a textbook-long curriculum, I visualized the ideas presented on paper as living worlds. I couldn’t talk innovation until I could see the content in an innovative form. In my mind’s eye, I saw a complete immersive experience that moved the curriculum into new mediums and opportunities. The success of our project reinforced what I always instinctively knew: There are always more ideas once you look beyond what’s in the frame. It evaluates ideas. Visualization helps me quickly determine whether an idea is viable or not. I organize ideas into lists and color-code them based on effort. A low-effort task that takes two hours is green; a more time-intensive task is blue. The different colors allow me, at a glance, to account for all the elements needed to bring an idea to life and make a determination whether we have the resources to complete it on time and on budget. Another fan of color? Pellereau. He’s often seen carrying around Pilot’s FriXion erasable color pens. They help him map out what’s next for the latest STYLIdeas makeup-brush cleaner that just became available at Costco in the U.S. Why practice visualization? Because it opens the door to inclusivity. Once a visualization leaves my head, it brings different mindsets and skill sets into the creative process. Everyone on the team gets to add their own ideas, experiences and points of view. We co-create and iterate until we’re all on the same page. Visualization is about having a vision of where you’re going. We move together not just because we agree on the future, but because we can see it, too. To read more counterintuitive ideas from one dyslexic creative leader, sign up for the newsletter.

https://medium.com/design-bootcamp/the-power-of-visualizing-as-a-tool-for-creativity-98c46e76e1ee

['Gil Gershoni']

2020-12-21 02:11:42.297000+00:00

['Creative Process', 'Design', 'Creativity', 'Design Thinking', 'Visualization']

4 Things Brands Must do Right Now to Prepare for 2021

Set a SMART goal Business mentors, coaches, marketing gurus, and experts really like to wave a very threatening statistic around our faces. Apparently, 90% of startup businesses fail within the first year. If, as a creative, you thought you’d be exempt from being part of the failure complex, you may be wrong. If we do the maths correctly, setting up a website can take as little as 15 minutes, or as long as a month. More than the feeling of failure in itself, what really packs a punch is the amount of time we spend setting up something that we do not see following through. However, I do not believe in failure. That’s why I believe that goal setting is a key aspect of creating a great strategy and a glorious brand. This leads me to another key point of this discussion. If you are not seeing the results you expected, chances are you’re not going to achieve your goals by accident: it takes purposeful planning. If you don’t define those goals and create a plan to work toward them, you’ll never reach them. This is why, today, I am introducing one easy way of setting meaningful goals for your brand. Before you ask, Fab is not re-inventing the wheel here. S.M.A.R.T. goals are not a new thing. They have been used by many very successful professionals and individuals for many years. S.M.A.R.T. is an acronym that helps you set the right type of goals. Specific This is quite straightforward. The more specific you make your goal, the more likely you are to achieve it. Instead of saying “I want to make money from my content” make sure you set a specific goal to make enough money from your content to pay, for example, for a week-long holiday. Measurable Setting targets can be scary, hence why we are more likely to shy away from them! Just like how people struggle to “grow their Instagram” because they do not know what that actually entails, you need to get clear on what true results mean to you. You want to know how many new followers you are expecting, how many articles you want to write in a month, how many new emails you want to collect in a specific amount of time — this makes your achievements measurable and more manageable. Achievable Less is more, especially when it comes to goal setting. Choose one big goal, and work toward it. Then move on to the next one. Remember, you can only achieve so much before your willpower dwindles and you jump straight into burnout. Don’t get fooled by the shiny object syndrome: if you create many goals to accomplish at the same time, you’ll burn through your willpower very quickly. Relevant Your goals should be consistent with what you want to achieve with your brand, hence you need to know WHY you are in business altogethr. There’s no point in wasting time on a goal that won’t help you achieve your overall purpose. Think carefully about how your goal is helping you to achieve your purpose in your brand. Is doubling your Facebook likes really going to help you make the money you want for that holiday? Time-bound A time-bound goal gives you focus and allows an end date for achieving your goal. Let’s use the weight-loss analogy just one more time. You don’t want to just set a goal, such as “I want to gain 1,000 followers”. Instead, you want your goal to be time-bound, such as “I want to get to 10,000 followers by the end of the year.” By adding a deadline for achieving the goal, you will be able to see how close you are and keep yourself on the right track. Remember, you are always encouraged to adjust your deadlines accordingly to the goal, and how achievable it is.

https://medium.com/the-business-of-wellness/4-things-brands-must-do-right-now-to-prepare-for-2021-fc5af87f1703

['Fab Giovanetti']

2020-11-30 17:37:56.595000+00:00

['Marketing', 'Creativity', 'Business', 'Productivity', 'Work']

Read the Email That Led to the Exit of Google A.I. Ethicist Timnit Gebru

Read the Email That Led to the Exit of Google A.I. Ethicist Timnit Gebru ‘Your life gets worse when you start advocating for underrepresented people’ Photo: Kimberly White/Stringer/Getty Images Timnit Gebru, one of Google’s most prominent researchers on ethics and computer vision, says she was fired this week after sending an email to Google Brain Women and Allies, an internal resource group at the company. The email alludes to Google censoring one of Gebru’s research papers without talking to her about it, as well as the poor treatment of those who advocate for underrepresented people at the company. The email was published in full on the outlet Platformer. After sending the email, Gebru had an exchange with managers and privately threatened to quit unless certain undisclosed conditions were met. Instead, Gebru says she was immediately fired, she told OneZero’s Will Oremus. Gebru’s contributions to the field have shaped modern understanding of how artificial intelligence fails and the technical underpinnings of how algorithms treat underrepresented people differently. A Twitter thread by Fast.ai co-founder Rachel Thomas lays out how Gebru’s years of scholarship have influenced A.I. research, including her co-authoring a seminal work that showed facial recognition is far less accurate on women of color than on white men. Gebru helped lead of Google’s A.I. ethics team and co-founded Black in A.I., an international organization focused on supporting Black A.I. researchers and expanding access to the traditionally exclusive field. According to the Platformer, the email reads, in part: Imagine this: You’ve sent a paper for feedback to 30+ researchers, you’re awaiting feedback from PR & Policy who you gave a heads up before you even wrote the work saying “we’re thinking of doing this”, working on a revision plan figuring out how to address different feedback from people, haven’t heard from PR & Policy besides them asking you for updates (in 2 months). A week before you go out on vacation, you see a meeting pop up at 4:30pm PST on your calendar (this popped up at around 2pm). No one would tell you what the meeting was about in advance. Then in that meeting your manager’s manager tells you “it has been decided” that you need to retract this paper by next week, Nov. 27, the week when almost everyone would be out (and a date which has nothing to do with the conference process). You are not worth having any conversations about this, since you are not someone whose humanity (let alone expertise recognized by journalists, governments, scientists, civic organizations such as the electronic frontiers foundation etc) is acknowledged or valued in this company. Then, you ask for more information. What specific feedback exists? Who is it coming from? Why now? Why not before? Can you go back and forth with anyone? Can you understand what exactly is problematic and what can be changed? And you are told after a while, that your manager can read you a privileged and confidential document and you’re not supposed to even know who contributed to this document, who wrote this feedback, what process was followed or anything. You write a detailed document discussing whatever pieces of feedback you can find, asking for questions and clarifications, and it is completely ignored. And you’re met with, once again, an order to retract the paper with no engagement whatsoever. Then you try to engage in a conversation about how this is not acceptable and people start doing the opposite of any sort of self reflection — trying to find scapegoats to blame. Silencing marginalized voices like this is the opposite of the NAUWU principles which we discussed. And doing this in the context of “responsible AI” adds so much salt to the wounds. Read the full letter on Platformer.

https://onezero.medium.com/read-the-email-that-led-to-the-exit-of-google-a-i-ethicist-timnit-gebru-45a4775c14ca

['Dave Gershgorn']

2020-12-03 19:43:19.918000+00:00

['Technology', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'AI', 'Google', 'Race']

6 Powerful Headline Principles Inspired by Claude Hopkins

6 Powerful Headline Principles Inspired by Claude Hopkins 42 Headline examples and practical tips you can use immediately Illustration by Cynthia Marinakos. Claude Hopkins was one of the world’s greatest copywriters and advertising men. He is credited with ad techniques such as market research, money-back guarantees, sampling, and trials. His techniques are as powerful now as back then. His book, Scientific Advertising, captures foundational principles of advertising and copywriting. We don’t spend time creating and testing headlines because we want our articles published quickly. We neglect our readers because we’re too absorbed in writing what we want to write, the way we want to write it. We get tunnel vision from the products, services, and ideas we want to sell. This book reminds us we’re here because of our readers. So shift the focus back to them. It covers headlines in one chapter, yet so many of the principles can be applied when creating headlines. I came up with six key learnings from analyzing Hopkins’ headlines while at the same time studying his classic principles. Address your target reader Aim for clarity Appeal to people’s desire to avoid pain Show credibility Focus on your reader’s interests Spend time creating and testing headlines You’ll see examples of his headlines, a discussion of his approach, how it can be applied to our own headline, and examples of headlines we can create from the techniques. Let’s dig into these, shall we?

https://medium.com/better-marketing/6-powerful-headline-principles-inspired-by-claude-hopkins-dc73a8a68947

['Cynthia Marinakos']

2020-08-09 03:29:12.085000+00:00

['Headline Hacks', 'Business', 'Creativity', 'Startup', 'Writing']

How to Organize Your Medium Submissions With Trello

How to Organize Your Medium Submissions With Trello Manage where and when you publish and increase your writing productivity Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash One of the best ways to get your writing seen on Medium is to publish them in popular publications. The number of my submitted stories that get accepted into a publication vs. the number of those that don’t is about 50/50. Finally, because I figured out how to organize my submissions, at least I never have to guess (or remember) where my story landed. When I first started submitting stories, I chose a few publications that had a lot of subscribers and covered topics I know well. Since I’m a copywriter of 15 years and a personal essay writer, I chose The Writing Coop and P.S. I Love You. I also found my way to Illuminations because I found myself reading a lot of stories there and I figured my writing would fit in. Since then I’ve added a few more publications to the list. Now and then, I write a story that might be a good fit for more than one publication. The business side of writing, and the growing complexity of where and when I would submit a story, was taking over and cutting into my writing time. I had to develop a very simple method for keeping track of my submissions so that I can free my creative brain for writing. The more you write, the more you spread yourself around At first, when I was only writing one story a week or maybe even a month, it was easy to keep track. I’d finish editing my story, check the submission rules, and then submit. Then I’d sit back and wait to hear back. This worked just fine until I started writing more regularly. Today, in late 2020, I publish several stories a week on my Medium platform and enjoy interacting with other writers and bloggers. I’m working on finding my niche, and other writers whose stories I adore. I want to be read and found by people who are actually going to spend time reading my stories. Over the past year, the busier I got writing, the more my regular writing schedule started causing problems with my submission process, or lack of it, I should say. I would write on my whiteboard when I submitted a story and where. If my story was declined by my first choice, sometimes I’d submit it to another one before simply publishing under my own page and publication. This worked for a while until I started branching out and looking for more publications to write for. This is where things got complicated. Because publications have guidelines and their own curation rules, the turnaround time for acceptance is usually between 3 and 5 business days. Some even hold new story ideas for specific days of the week. For example, Entrepreneur's Handbook only accepts stories on Mondays. So I’m waiting… If we writers could receive an instant yea or nay, life would be easy! However, editors of popular publications are swamped. Many of the most popular ones get thousands of submissions each week. Editors work hard to find the best stories for their subscribers. They can’t be expected to get back to everyone within a day or two. For the writer, this means we must wait and be patient. It also means we must have some sort of process for staying organized. Easy, tiger Once you’ve done the work and polished the perfect story, you’re eager to get it out there. I know the feeling! You need to assess the value in waiting for a publication to accept your work, or to move on and try another publication, or to simply publish on your own. I was keeping cryptic notes and scrawls on my whiteboard to help me remember where and when I sent what. Here’s my old way. It still works in a pinch. I remind myself of the number of days it takes a publication to get to my story, etc. and, sometimes, a motivation for why I should try getting my story published there. (See the “124 K” notation… that’s the number of followers!) My whiteboard, courtesy of the author Then, like an epiphany, I remembered my old friend Trello. I used to use this SaaS (software as a service) to keep track of client projects when I was writing content and copy for others, and often working with a team of other creatives. It’s great for that! Now that’s my go-to place to organize my most recent stories and submissions on Medium. Trello is easy to use If you’ve never used it, you can try a free version to check it out. Basically, it works like a bulletin board, on which you make list-columns that have cards beneath each column. It’s like a colorful spreadsheet. You can easily add information and details, pictures and notes, even dates. For me, Trello provides structure to my submission process. I can see at a glance when I submitted a story and how long I need to wait before I should consider it declined and move on. I like to add the main image associated with the story, too. The visual helps me quickly remember the content of the story. Trello‘s elegant, user-friendly design is perfect for this. There’s a flush of satisfaction as you slide your stories from “submitted” to “published.” There’s even a kernel of pride as you publish your stories on your profile or through your own publications. You feel like you’ve completed your job. These days, my Trello board titled “Medium Articles” looks like this. Much more clear. Image courtesy of the author. The four lists you should start with After playing around with lists for story ideas and drafts, I landed on four main lists: Submitted to publication, date Published by publication, date Published to my profile, date Curated by Medium, date With these four lists, I simply add a card every time I finish a story. I add the date I submit and the turnaround time of that publication. Once it’s accepted or declined, I note where I’ve already submitted that story and either try another publication or add it to my profile. Then I slide that card to the appropriate list. Last, if my story is curated by Medium, the card slides to the far right column — the Shangrila of Medium story cards. If I have to scroll down too far to see my published or curated stories, I move them to a Google spreadsheet, where I include the link to the story as well as the tags I used for each one. This helps me quickly grab it when I need to link to a story from one currently in progress. This way, I keep my submissions and rejections clearly documented at a glance. At this point, it’s all I need. The only hard part of the process is waiting for a response from the publication. But at least I’m not accidentally submitting a story twice to the same publication, or forgetting to publish it altogether. Don’t forget to work within Medium to save time First, I should tell you, in my zeal to put everything within Trello, I got a little carried away. Originally I intended to develop stories and headline ideas on my Trello board, but I found I was just duplicating content that was already in my Medium drafts tab. Now I religiously use the Medium drafts folder as my go-to brainstorming area. Your Medium drafts folder is there for you. Why complicate things? Medium holds your ideas until you are ready to write. As I come up with story ideas, many times they come from deleted parts of a story already in progress. If it’s an idea I feel deserves its own headline and story, I just start a new story on Medium and add content there. Whenever I think of an addition to the story or find a relevant article on the Internet that would help me write, I simply open that draft and copy the link or jot down the idea right within Medium. Still, Trello can’t be beat for categorizing and planning what happens to those stories. More ways to use Trello for writing Medium stories You may like to brainstorm headlines and keep great images within Trello, too. Don’t let me stop you. You can use Trello any way you want to boost creativity and productivity. By the way, I’m also thinking of starting a Trello board to keep track of tags I use regularly, and the stories that go with them. The main four popular tags I use are Health, Lifestyle, Grief, and Writing. Sometimes I get so many similar, but different ideas at once. (Does that ever happen to you when you’re on a roll?) With Trello, I could easily plunk them all under a single category and come back to them when I’m ready. Also, I want to start a board just for the publications I submit to regularly. By distinguishing each of my target publications and keeping them all in view in one place, it would be easy to organize themes and topics I want to write about in the future. I could also add new publications I want to try submitting my stories. I’m always on the lookout for the perfect spot — and new readers, too. Finding a home for your story When submitting to publications on Medium, accept the fact that every publication has its own modus operandi. Editors of the most popular publications know their readers; their priority is to them. After that, they work hard to help the author get visibility. I’ve found that most editors are actually very helpful and even make suggestions for improving your story. Some don’t of course, but I think it’s because they just don’t have time to give every story individual attention; not because they don’t care. I regularly get personal notes on my submitted drafts that go something like this. “Thanks for submitting. We appreciate you. Your story is not a fit for us at the time, but please submit again. Keep writing!” As I parse my stories within Trello and decide where they would ultimately do the best, I include my own (very new) publication in my “Published by publications, date” category in Trello. As a new editor, I try to be objective and publish only those articles that fit, and I accept the fact that sometimes even my own stories don’t fit. I often publish stories under my profile, and not within my own publication! Meanwhile, I use Trello to help me keep track of all those other submissions I attempt to share with audiences I haven’t met yet. Use Trello to help you get organized, and you’re sure to find your way into the publications where your work will shine. P.S. I don’t get any money from Trello for recommending this software. It’s just that I use it daily and find it helpful. I hope it helps you, too.

https://medium.com/portals-pub/how-to-organize-your-medium-submissions-with-trello-8e32c0f2fc1d

['Jen Mcgahan']

2020-11-03 02:33:57.544000+00:00

['Creativity', 'Publishing', 'Writing Tips', 'Productivity', 'Writing']

Interferon: The Latest Advancement in Covid-19 Treatment

Interferon: The Latest Advancement in Covid-19 Treatment A frontline doc unpacks results of a new clinical trial that shows interferon may reduce the odds of severe illness or death from Covid-19 Photo: Emin BAYCAN/Unsplash As someone who provides care for those with Covid-19 in a hospital approaching its capacity, I’m constantly on the lookout for safe and effective treatment strategies — anything to help my patients recover faster and get home sooner. With so many therapies being studied, it can be difficult to determine which new piece of data is truly valuable. My attention was caught by a well-constructed clinical trial published November 12 in The Lancet by Phillip Monk, et al. Here’s why I believe it’s so important. Recent studies have shown a significant portion of individuals who become severely ill from Covid-19 possess antibodies that disable naturally occurring immune proteins called interferons. Instead of targeting invading pathogens, these antibodies, called autoantibodies, act against the body’s own immune system. Interferons are cell-signaling molecules that function to alert the immune system of a developing infection. When interferons are deactivated by autoantibodies, viruses like the novel coronavirus are able to evade the body’s early warning alarms. The importance of interferons is also highlighted by studies observing individuals with mutations in genes that code for interferon production. When interferons are diminished because of a mutated gene, patients tend to suffer from more severe symptoms of Covid-19. The lead author of one such study, Qian Zhang, explains, “If you don’t get the alarm out, you could have viruses everywhere in large numbers.” It would stand to reason that providing the body with an added supply of interferon could potentially improve its response to the virus, SARS-CoV-2. This theory is supported by studies on animals infected with other coronaviruses, SARS and MERS. Unfortunately, the concept did not translate well to humans with Covid-19 as evidenced by the Solidarity trial conducted by the WHO earlier this year. Patients in this study failed to benefit from interferon injected under the skin, but what might happen if the medication was administered by a different route? That’s the question Monk and colleagues sought to answer by treating patients with an inhaled formulation of interferon beta-1a. By targeting the organ most strongly affected by SARS-CoV-2 — the lungs — researchers hoped to deliver interferon directly to its area of greatest need. What separates this study from many other pharmaceutical trials is its thoughtful design. Despite having a small sample size, being a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial allows this investigation to bypass many confounding elements that plague retrospective and observational studies. Moreover, publication in a peer-reviewed journal elevates its findings above data found on preprint servers which have become so prevalent lately. The 97 hospitalized patients in the United Kingdom received either interferon beta-1a (code-named SNG001) or placebo for up to two weeks. At the end of four weeks, 58% of patients receiving interferon recovered compared to 35% of the placebo group as measured by the WHO Ordinal Scale for Clinical Improvement (figure below). Of the 49 patients in the placebo group, three died, whereas all of the 48 patients receiving interferon survived. In her report on the study, Mary Van Beusekom, a writer for the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy notes, “A secondary analysis showed that SNG001 patients were more than three times more likely to recover, defined by resumption of ability to resume normal activities, than those receiving a placebo at 28 days.” Lead investigator, Tom Wilkinson, PhD, recognizes that interferon has the ability to boost the lung’s defense against pathogens in a nonspecific manner which could prove especially beneficial this time of year when co-infections are more likely to occur. “This [interferon beta-1a] might carry additional advantages of treating Covid-19 infection when it occurs alongside infection by another respiratory virus, such as influenza or respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) that may well be encountered in the winter months.” One drawback is that, despite showing a trend toward improving mortality, the study did not involve enough patients for this trend to be considered statistically significant. Authors of an associated commentary in The Lancet call for expanded research on the safety and efficacy of interferon. “Larger randomised clinical trials are therefore needed to further investigate the effectiveness of nebulised interferon beta-1a therapy in this setting.” Because interferon plays a role in the initial response to a pathogen, the group is now studying the effects of the drug when administered prior to hospitalization. They also hope to examine the response to interferon in “ventilated, critically ill patients with Covid-19 who have evidence of active viral infection in the lungs.” Randomization of a small sample of patients can also lead to an unintentional imbalance in the group characteristics. The authors note that “SNG001 and placebo groups were well matched for age, sex, and overall comorbidities, but were less well matched for disease severity at recruitment and for specific comorbid conditions — particularly diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and hypertension.” Of the serious adverse events that occurred during the study, none were attributed directly to interferon beta-1a and all were thought likely to have been caused by Covid-19 itself. The most frequently reported adverse event was the development of headache which occurred in 15% of the interferon group and 10% of those receiving placebo. Because inhaled interferon is not currently marketed to treat other diseases, information regarding its cost is lacking, but, undoubtedly, price will factor into its chance of widespread success. Despite some clear obstacles, I believe this novel therapeutic has as good a chance as any to become a game-changer in the pandemic. Here’s to inhaling a deep breath and waiting patiently for what happens next.

https://coronavirus.medium.com/interferon-the-latest-advancement-in-covid-19-treatment-9c2c02bed72a

['Bo Stapler']

2020-11-18 17:12:29.684000+00:00

['Health', 'Healthcare', 'Covid-19', 'Coronavirus', 'Science']

Increase Your Reach 10x by Turning Blog Posts into Videos

Increase Your Reach 10x by Turning Blog Posts into Videos Video receives more engagement than text and other mediums Photo by Jackson Hayes on Unsplash Producing and publishing great blog posts is not enough to grow your views and reads. You also need to promote those blog posts to attract visitors. Don’t stop at sharing a link on Facebook and Twitter, you can also turn that blog post into a video to get more traffic from YouTube. With over 1.5 billion monthly active users watching 1 billion hours of video content per day, YouTube is one of the most effective platforms you can leverage to generate traffic and promote your business online. You spend days writing and crafting the best content for your blog. Yet most of those blog posts often go unnoticed. Repurpose those old blog posts by turning them into videos and easily get started on a video marketing strategy. There’s no need to buy expensive video camera equipment or invest in video production agencies. You can create videos all by yourself. I’ll show you how.

https://medium.com/the-innovation/increase-your-reach-10x-by-turning-blog-posts-into-videos-8e97b89236cc

['Esat Artug']

2020-12-08 21:44:56.888000+00:00

['Writing', 'Social Media', 'Marketing', 'Productivity', 'Money']

Taking Your Anger and Frustration Out on Others Might Be Killing You

Stop Killing Yourself Little by Little with Positivity There are some habits you need to break and some gratifications you need to rechannel, if you want to be healthier and not cut your life short. Make a conscious effort, everyday, to be more positive. Here’s 6 ways to start: You can do this by consciously practicing restraint when you feel the urge come upon you to lash out at somebody, for whatever reason. One way to do this is to catch yourself and redirect your thought patterns and thereby rechanneling the negative energy vibrations into positive vibrations. You will transform from operating in a lower vibration to a higher vibration. You just need to shift your mentality. Worked for me! For example: If someone cuts you off in traffic, when you feel the urge to hang heavily on your horn, flip them the bird, yell and allow anger to well up in you, instead consciously use that moment as a reminder to produce a positive thought or say something positive out loud to yourself. Send out blessings instead of curses whenever someone does something rude, stupid, inconsiderate, selfish, etc. If you usually treat people mean just because you’re being a jerk, then go back and apply the concepts in #1 and #2 above. You can change how you choose to act or react. You choose how you treat others. The Takeaway Be kind to yourself by being kind to others. Now, granted, sometimes people just get on your last nerve and sometimes you will still lash out. But, if you choose the higher vibration most of the time, you will eventually reach your goal of not being someone who takes out your frustrations on others all the time and become more of that better person that you want to be. That is if you really want to be better— of course.

https://medium.com/in-fitness-and-in-health/how-to-not-take-out-anger-and-frustration-on-others-40a9bbc58ed9

['Audrey Malone']

2020-12-27 02:12:03.557000+00:00

['Mental Health', 'Health', 'Psychology', 'Abuse', 'Anger Management']

What Words Should Be Capitalized in a Headline?

Comparison Between Styles Using Real Headlines Here’s what each style looks like when applied to the headline: All the Silicon Valley Copycat Cities Around the World AP: All the Silicon Valley Copycat Cities Around the World APA: All the Silicon Valley Copycat Cities Around the World CMOS: All the Silicon Valley Copycat Cities around the World MLA: All the Silicon Valley Copycat Cities around the World NYT: All the Silicon Valley Copycat Cities Around the World WP: All the Silicon Valley Copycat Cities Around the World The main difference between them all is the Chicago Manual of Style and MLA write “around” with a lower case “a” — because “it is probably used as a preposition (as in ‘traveling around the world’). However, it can also be used as an adverb (‘come around soon’), in which case it must be capitalized.” The title converter includes a helpful explanation about why each word is capitalized or not. So for instance, in AP style, the heading is formatted as All the Silicon Valley Copycat Cities Around the World because: All is capitalized because it is the first word of the title. the is not capitalized because it is an article. Silicon is capitalized because it is neither an article, a coordinating conjunction nor a preposition with fewer than four letters. Valley is capitalized because it is neither an article, a coordinating conjunction nor a preposition with fewer than four letters. Copycat is capitalized because it is neither an article, a coordinating conjunction nor a preposition with fewer than four letters. Cities is capitalized because it is neither an article, a coordinating conjunction nor a preposition with fewer than four letters. Around is capitalized because it is neither an article, a coordinating conjunction nor a preposition with fewer than four letters. the is not capitalized because it is an article. World is capitalized because it is the last word of the title or subtitle. Screenshot: Explanation for headline formatting. Source: Title Case Converter Other headline comparisons Headline: CN Rail to Shut Eastern Canada Network Amid Protests AP: CN Rail to Shut Eastern Canada Network Amid Protests APA: CN Rail to Shut Eastern Canada Network Amid Protests CMOS: CN Rail to Shut Eastern Canada Network amid Protests MLA: CN Rail to Shut Eastern Canada Network amid Protests NYT: CN Rail to Shut Eastern Canada Network Amid Protests WP: CN Rail to Shut Eastern Canada Network amid Protests Comparison: For AP, APA, NYT: Amid is capitalized because it is neither an article, a coordinating conjunction, nor a preposition with fewer than four letters. FOR CMOS, MLA and WP: amid is not capitalized because it is a preposition with four letters. Headline: Genius Crackle You Must Try at Burwood Rooftop Farm AP: Genius Crackle You Must Try at Burwood Rooftop Farm APA: Genius Crackle You Must Try at Burwood Rooftop Farm CMOS: Genius Crackle You Must Try at Burwood Rooftop Farm MLA: Genius Crackle You Must Try at Burwood Rooftop Farm NYT: Genius Crackle You Must Try at Burwood Rooftop Farm WP: Genius Crackle You Must Try at Burwood Rooftop Farm Comparison: Same in all styles. Headline: Kim Kardashian Shows Off Her Kids’ Playroom and It’s Jaw-Dropping AP: Kim Kardashian Shows Off Her Kids’ Playroom and It’s Jaw-Dropping PA: Kim Kardashian Shows Off Her Kids’ Playroom and It’s Jaw-Dropping CMOS: Kim Kardashian Shows Off Her Kids’ Playroom and It’s Jaw-Dropping MLA: Kim Kardashian Shows Off Her Kids’ Playroom and It’s Jaw-Dropping NYT: Kim Kardashian Shows Off Her Kids’ Playroom and It’s Jaw-Dropping WP: Kim Kardashian Shows Off Her Kids’ Playroom and It’s Jaw-Dropping Comparison: Same in all styles. Headline: I Quit My Job and Now My Partner Pays Our Bills. Here’s How It’s Affected Us. AP: I Quit My Job and Now My Partner Pays Our Bills. Here’s How It’s Affected Us. APA: I Quit My Job and Now My Partner Pays Our Bills. Here’s How It’s Affected Us. CMOS: I Quit My Job and Now My Partner Pays Our Bills. Here’s How It’s Affected Us. MLA: I Quit My Job and Now My Partner Pays Our Bills. Here’s How It’s Affected Us. NYT: I Quit My Job and Now My Partner Pays Our Bills. Here’s How It’s Affected Us. WP: I Quit My Job and Now My Partner Pays Our Bills. Here’s How It’s Affected Us. Comparison: Same in all styles. Headline: Counting Calories Is Basically Pointless. So Why Are We Still Doing It? AP: Counting Calories Is Basically Pointless. So Why Are We Still Doing It? APA: Counting Calories Is Basically Pointless. So Why Are We Still Doing It? CMOS: Counting Calories Is Basically Pointless. So Why Are We Still Doing It? MLA: Counting Calories Is Basically Pointless. So Why Are We Still Doing It? NYT: Counting Calories Is Basically Pointless. So Why Are We Still Doing It? WP: Counting Calories Is Basically Pointless. So Why Are We Still Doing It? Comparison: Same in all styles. Headline: What Valentine’s Day Is Like After Marriage, As Told in 26 Tweets AP: What Valentine’s Day Is Like After Marriage, As Told in 26 Tweets APA: What Valentine’s Day Is Like After Marriage, As Told in 26 Tweets CMOS: What Valentine’s Day Is like after Marriage, as Told in 26 Tweets MLA: What Valentine’s Day Is like after Marriage, As Told in 26 Tweets NYT: What Valentine’s Day Is Like After Marriage, as Told in 26 Tweets WP: What Valentine’s Day Is like After Marriage, As Told in 26 Tweets Comparison: In AP, APA, MLA, and WP: “As” is capitalized because it is probably used as an adverb (e.g., “delivered as promised”). However, it can also be used as a preposition (e.g., “working as a teacher”) or conjunction (e.g., “cold as ice” or “do as I do”), in which case it must be lowercased. In CMOS and NYT: “as” is not capitalized because it is always lowercased according to the Chicago Manual of Style and the New York Times style manual.

https://medium.com/better-marketing/what-words-should-be-capitalized-in-a-headline-1cd311f617b5

['Cynthia Marinakos']

2020-03-07 07:04:49.629000+00:00

['Headline Hacks', 'Business', 'Productivity', 'Creativity', 'Writing']

Why reading more makes us better at our jobs

I’m passionate about talent management and culture. My objective is to make Osedea the best workplace for our team. Follow

https://medium.com/osedea/why-reading-more-makes-us-better-at-our-jobs-1fc70bf4f718

['Ivana Markovic']

2020-09-09 14:55:50.592000+00:00

['Books', 'Reading', 'Creative Thinking', 'Productivity', 'Creativity']

New Research On Masks Show They Can Act Like A Vaccine

New Research On Masks Show They Can Act Like A Vaccine This is the strongest evidence yet that masks really work As a healthcare professional who has actually taken care of patients afflicted with COVID-19 on the front lines, it has been distressing to me to see the active campaign against masks. Yes, this would not be the first time Americans have resisted masks in the midst of a pandemic. At the same time, I would have hoped that we would know better 100 years later. This is especially true since the latest research shows that masks really do work and are very effective at reducing the spread of COVID-19. Researchers out of the University of California San Francisco looked at virologic, ecologic, and epidemiologic evidence in the literature. They found that wearing masks reduces what’s called the “viral inoculum,” which is the amount of virus that one can potentially inhale into his or her respiratory system. The higher the viral inoculum, the more likely someone will get infected and get severe illness. The lower the inoculum, the less likely someone will get the disease, because there are less viruses in that inoculum. What’s more, while masks do reduce droplets and particles that get into your mouth and nose, it is not 100%. So, even if one does get an infection with a low viral inoculum, it is much more likely to be very mild or totally asymptomatic infection. And, barring a weak immune system, the body will generate an immune response to the virus and hopefully confer some sort of immunity to the virus. It may not be long-lasting, as some research has borne out, but there is a secondary immune response, and hopefully this response will be intact and will help protect the individual from re-exposure. And so, in essence, masks can act like a “poor man’s vaccine,” as the researchers in the paper called it, while we wait for a real vaccine that is safe and effective to be developed. Yet, how does this work? Well, a vaccine is an injection of either a weakened or dead pathogen or a critical protein of the pathogen. This injection stimulates an immune response to the pathogen, one that is hopefully long-lasting. It’s a way to get immunity without having to suffer the devastating effects of the illness itself. In the case with masks, if you get a very small viral inoculum of SARS-CoV-2 that causes asymptomatic infection, your body generates an immune response without suffering the devastating effects of full blown COVID-19, in other words, similar to what a vaccine does. This is the strongest evidence yet that masks are an effective way to reduce the spread of COVID-19. To me, there really is no debate. There should be no one who derides or harasses someone who is wearing a mask. Yes, the CDC was wrong not to recommend people wearing masks early on in the pandemic. I myself regret having retweeted this tweet from the CDC back in February: We know better now. We understand better now. The data are very clear: wearing masks is an effective way to slow the spread of COVID-19. It is the very least we can do, and it is about respect and yes…freedom.

https://drhassaballa.medium.com/new-research-on-masks-show-they-can-act-like-a-vaccine-5dbde9398dd4

['Dr. Hesham A. Hassaballa']

2020-08-03 15:07:24.371000+00:00

['Politics', 'Medicine', 'Health', 'Coronavirus', 'Science']

Creative and Critical Use of Complex Networks

A network diagram offers a “common language” that is both visual and mathematical. So, from a network map, we can get qualitative information by reading its actors and relations, as well as do quantitative analysis by computing its connection structure. In fact, we can use this common language to study systems that may differ widely in their nature, appearance, or scope. For example, rather three different systems 1) devices sending messages to each other, 2) film actors connected through taking roles in the same movies, 3) organizations connected through partnerships may have exactly the same network structure. While the nature of the nodes and the links differs widely, each network has the same graph representation, consisting of 4 nodes and 4 links. We can use this simple method to begin studying a variety of complex systems. Why is network logic significant today? Let us look at why do networks matter today, although they existed in every society in the history. It is known that ~3000 years ago the ancient Phoenician and Greek colonies formed their trade routes and built network of harbours in the Mediterranean Sea. Whereas today, in the same geography, submarine cables carry messages and enable a global communication system. What we have today, is not just networks as analog or bare life happenings, but networks that are digitized, like the way many aspect of life is digitized. Thus, networks matter today, because electronic and software based communication systems made networks measurable. Only in this day and age, networks are able to reach a global scale and infiltrate into every part of our life. With today’s advanced information technologies the metrics of network effect have become trackable and measurable even in one’s daily course of life, at the same structuring the social world as such. ~3000 years ago Phoenician and Greek colonies formed the trade routes in the Mediterranean Sea. Map Source Today, in the same geography, submarine cables are enabling a global communication system. Map Source Only in this day and age, networks are able to reach a global scale and infiltrate into every part of our life. Map Source Use of complex networks In fact, we all experience the network effect, from email to e-commerce, from social networking to banking, from telecommunication to transportation. We all acknowledged the fact that the world is complex more than ever. It feels both flat –one can email anyone any time– and chaotic –our inbox is inundated with information coming from all directions. Sometimes we are opportunistic about the internet, talking about it as a global good, other times we are pessimistic knowing that we are all under surveillance all the time. In such an antagonistic world that is at once flat and chaotic, the question arises again: Where does power reside and circulate? Photograph of Obama and NYPD experts investigating the links of the suspect of a bombing attempt in Times Square. Image from an New York Times article “Police Find Car Bomb in Times Square”, May 1st 2010. Additionally, the state’s tactics in partnership with certain corporations to monitor its own citizens through what has been called “the big data”, the NSA leaks and so on and so forth have also attracted our attention towards an inaccessible but quite magical tool of knowing and predicting of what people want. This indeed was possible through understanding the interrelated or linkable structure of the information generated by many, but as said only open to the reach of a handful of institutions. In other words, network logic have been mystified in the eyes of the public. Only experts in certain fields have been aggregating large amount of data and using scientific tools for mapping and analyzing it on relational basis. Neither the relational data nor the mapping and analysis tools are accessible to the average user. Photograph from a Graph Commons workshop with NGOs. Representatives from two organizations in France and Turkey present the shared links between their organizations. However, it is a myth that common people has no access to data. We are the data for the governments and corporations who continuously sense our activity. In fact today, a wide array of people pursue projects containing complex data. All such people would benefit from structuring and interlinking their information. Connecting our discrete data sets would generate new knowledge, render complex issues visible and generate crucial discussions that impact us and our communities. The Graph Commons platform is a step to allow you to do so. Conceptual drawing for the idea of Graph Commons. Graph Commons Graph Commons is the first collaborative online platform for making and publishing interactive network maps publicly. It is dedicated to investigative journalism, civic data research, archive exploration, creative research, and organizational analysis. On Graph Commons, you can collectively compile data about the topics you are interested, define and categorize relations, and transform your data into interactive network maps, discover new patterns, and share your insight about complex issues using a simple interface. The platform serves both producers and consumers of graphs by linking entities together in useful ways and thereby creating a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Graph Commons members collectively experiment in the act of network mapping as an ongoing practice: Search across variety of graphs, invite collaborators to their work and ask to contribute to theirs. We believe everybody will find a unique way to use Graph Commons in their own connected world. We invite you to join us, and join one another in connecting partial information to explore complex relations that impact us and our communities.

https://medium.com/graph-commons/creative-and-critical-use-of-complex-networks-412fe9eddecb

['Burak Arikan']

2017-08-08 10:28:19.718000+00:00

['Productivity', 'Data Science', 'Creativity', 'Big Data', 'Data Visualization']

I Just Received the Smartest $1.5 Million Email (Case Study)

The Six Principles of Influence The six principles of influence are: Reciprocity Commitment and consistency Social proof Authority Liking Scarcity Let’s look at how the email follows each of these principles: Reciprocity — the $5 credit The principle of reciprocity was first outlined by the social anthropologist Marcel Mauss in his 1925 essay The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. Mauss’s key point was that a gift comes with an assumption of reciprocity. In other words, when you receive a gift from someone, you’ll likely feel obligated to give back. In the email above, I’m given a $5 credit in reciprocity for the fact that I already took an interest in the business (I backed one of their previous campaigns). Now the ball’s in my court: Will I return the favor by backing the new campaign? It’s a nice touch that encourages me to be loyal to their products. Commitment and consistency — the subject line Research shows that clickbait subject lines reduce open rates. The subject line of this email at first glance seems pretty ordinary, even bureaucratic: Yet it immediately arouses curiosity. I can see it’s from a gaming company, and I love games. So I wonder, “what credits have I been given towards a new game?” and I open the email. I’ve made a small commitment to finding out more. A small yes from a prospective buyer makes it easier to get a bigger yes. People act consistently with their previous commitments. I’ve made a commitment to open the email, which makes me more likely to read the email, then click the “claim your credits” call to action at the end of the email. This accumulation of small commitments means I’m more likely to take the final action the email senders want: back the project. Social proof — ‘every user’ The phrase “this is a gift to every user” adds social proof to the email, showing that I’m alongside a crowd of similarly minded people. When I click through to the campaign page, I see even more social proof in how much the campaign has raised: Screenshot provided by the author. Seeing how many backers are already on board with the campaign — and how much they’ve pledged — encourages me to open my wallet and back too. That’s the power of social proof. Authority — the branding and colors This is where it gets super smart. Awaken Realms are a highly successful board games publisher, who rose to success through raising funds for their games on Kickstarter. In total their games have raised tens of millions of dollars. So Kickstarter’s 8% fees would have hit them hard, to the tune of millions of dollars. That’s likely why Awaken Realms switched to Gamefound, a relatively new crowdfunding platform with lower fees, for this project. The downside of setting up on a new platform? Establishing trust. If you’re not careful, you’re starting from scratch with building a relationship with your customers. That’s covered in the email. The light grey and green colors in the email echo the branding colors of Kickstarter, while not being exactly the same color. That’s an easy way to create an immediate sense of familiarity and trust. What’s more, the whole tone of the email is one of quiet confidence, which adds authority. They’re not pleading “please give us money for our project” or shouting about “special offer.” They just state what’s on the table, in a straightforward way. Liking — mixing familiarity and novelty When you like someone, you’re more likely to be influenced by their requests. As I’ve backed campaigns previously from Awaken Realms, I’m familiar with their games, and neuroscience research shows that familiarity causes high levels of brain activation. Likewise, novelty activates the reward centers in the brain. This email invites me to celebrate the launch of a new project, so it hits the novelty button, too. An email that combines both familiarity and novelty is a heady mixture that gives me positive feelings towards the brand. Scarcity — the project deadline People are inclined to put off decisions until the last minute. That’s why scarcity can be helpful in selling products. If there’s a limited number of products available or a deadline for buying, customers take action because they don’t want to miss out. Crowdfunding campaigns have built-in scarcity since there’s a date by which backers need to make their pledge to be part of the campaign. Otherwise, they risk missing out on the new product. The email doubles down on this scarcity, by putting a time limit on the $5 credit: “This credit can only be used during the ISS Vanguard campaign.”

https://medium.com/better-marketing/i-just-received-the-smartest-1-5-million-email-case-study-3da80f54f18

['David Majister']

2020-12-22 17:30:38.910000+00:00

['Entrepreneurship', 'Writing', 'Marketing', 'Email Marketing', 'Case Study']

Tony Hsieh is Dead and Nobody Knows What to Say

You can tell by the things they are saying. The major outlets talk about his legacy of business successes and huge parties, and his “tragic downfall at the end”. The personal essayists and bloggers are looting that legacy for inspiring leadership quotes. And WaPo is turning him into a cautionary tale for rich people even before his body has gone cold. On the surface, it looks like nobody wants to understand why Tony Hsieh is dead. I think everybody privately understands anyway. Most just don’t have the right language for it. I think Tony Hsieh, as a public figure, spent decades trying to tell us something important about himself that nobody wants to hear. It’s something about all of us, especially the “visionaries” and “leaders,” that the postmodern world blinds us to while we drive ourselves insane. Specifically, the lay concept of mental health is incomplete: the differences between how human minds are commonly thought to work, and how they actually work, creates and perpetuates the suffering that makes business, economics, and modern life unbearable to gifted people. First, Some CYA Maneuvering Before I dive into this, I need to make two things very clear. I am not a licensed mental health professional. I work as a coach for leadership and, consequently, life. I facilitate people’s personal change processes; doing that effectively requires lots of study and training in psychology and supportive relational practices, which I have. But I don’t hold a license from any board of health. This means I’m not bound by the handcuffs licensed professionals wear and can speak my mind pretty freely about mental health topics, so long as I don’t solicit services regulated by healthcare licensure boards or construe myself as a certified practitioner. But this isn’t about me. It’s about Tony Hsieh. I’m going to talk about Tony Hsieh the public figure. This is the Tony Hsieh whose story is told in magazine articles, press releases, and newspaper editorials. He is distinct from Tony Hsieh the private citizen. I don’t know that person; I could never know that person; I’m not going to presume anything about that person’s life or mind. Besides, this isn’t about Tony Hsieh. It’s about you. How We’re Taught to Talk About Dead Visionaries Sifting through a few dozen articles and blogs about Tony’s death shows common trends for discussing high-profile visionaries. Depending on our (lack of) relationship to them and to structures of social power, we vary in how much we’re willing to see them as bona fide human beings. Most people are satisfied with counting trophies and projecting their own aspirations onto the blank canvas of a public figure. If your epigraph includes “but,” you need to get clear on whether you’re talking about the deceased or yourself. This is what I mean. The author can’t see Tony through the fog of The Business Icon. Their confusion even shows in the title, which lexically broadcasts two ideas: Tony Hiseh’s Death [Reminds] How to Build a Great Company Tony Hsieh’s Death [Reminds] How to Build a Great Life First, note that Company came before Life. Then look at that second sentence and tell me how it makes any kind of sense. A guy descends into drug-fueled madness for months, flees to the mountains with a cadre of sycophants, and dies in a fire while locked inside a house. The article doesn’t even talk about Tony’s life. Instead, it cherry-picks factoids from Hsieh’s business legacy to support its premise that a culture-forward HR policy is the best way to do business. The author sprinkles in assumptions about Hsieh’s inner life, like “Looking at some of the pictures and comments around these events [note: ‘adventures away from the office’], you just can’t fake that kind of gratitude and happiness.” He doesn’t give a damn about Tony Hsieh. He wants to feel inspired by a set of culture polices that promote his idealized work environment. The closing argument proves it: Reading and practicing what Hsieh wrote made me a better teacher and a better person. In this regard, Hsieh left something really great behind for people who knew him and complete strangers like me. We honor him by following his timeless advice about business and life. I believe we dishonor Hsieh when we only honor the ideas and works he left us. The man himself never mattered to people like the author. This might be forgivable since the author never worked for Hsieh and never met him in real life. But reducing a person to public figurehood — no, to iconography — indignifies them. And for many, many people that indignity creates a steep slippery slope between a healthy sense of self and identity confusion. How can someone know who they are, or what they need to feel safe and fulfilled, when they’re only known by their roles and achievements? That goes for Tony and for the author. This, as I’ve highlighted, was published before Tony died. It’s a response to his stepping down from Zappos, the event that demarcated his flight from familiar surroundings and people in Las Vegas. The 3-min read is little more than a PR statement from one Zappos employee to others. Its thesis: We lost a leader. But we have also gained an opportunity, to change. Though I recognize the shock of this change, and we will be OK in the long run. Everyone will lift each other up, it is already happening. Rarely is anyone at a company because of simply one person, and I believe that to be the case now. This is the thing about businesses and professional organizations: people are only part of them because of the mission or for personal gain (read: salary/commission/dividends). So much of what’s said about Tony isn’t even about Tony; it’s about what he did for the institutions of Zappos and Downtown Las Vegas. What members to those entities got from him. Where are the articles about his relationships? His personhood? I think this is a serious problem in executive leadership roles. The structure of the job demands someone who trusts others very little, who believes they are in a constant struggle for survival against the world. The work hours and constant power-jockeying with vendors, competitors, shareholders, and even teammates creates an impossibly isolating lifestyle. How is a human being supposed to find happiness, fulfillment, and life satisfaction while working as a business leader? Especially if they have the kind of personality (read: developmental psychology) that makes them less likely to trust others than normal? Everybody wants to be safely connected to other people. “Safe” is determined by the unconscious mind and its authentic needs. When we repeatedly experience violations of trust — power games, backstabbing, politicking — we learn to keep our guard up. We deny ourselves authentic self-expression, and the only way to do that is to stuff our authenticity down inside ourselves, to lock away our unconscious minds so they don’t slip out. This kind of self-disconnection, when it becomes chronic, leads to all sorts of physiological and psychological problems… …which start to show up in your work. This article is a summary of some tribute given to Tony by “people that knew and loved him including TED speaker Nic Marks.” Because being a TED speaker matters even more than having known and loved Tony; it merits special mention. That’s what readers of The Happy Startup School really want to hear: the opinion of someone successful enough to have spoken at TED. The rest of Tony’s lovers can come too, we suppose. 1. “Live your values, don’t laminate them”: Zappos’ core values were important to building a strong company culture 2. “Never put money before your happiness”: Tony walked away from his first company because it made him so unhappy. He couldn’t bear going into work every day. 3. “Aim to create an emotional connection with everyone you talk to”: One of Zappos’ customer service metrics was making two emotional connections on a call. This was personally important to Tony. 4. “Surprise and delight your customers at every turn”: Each rep was given freedom to make customers happy, even sending flowers and recommending pizza. 5. “Encourage your team to be themselves at work”: Individuality was encouraged at Zappos and staff were empowered. They had a full-time life coach for work or personal sessions. 6. “Don’t let money or success change you”: Tony was worth $1bn but had a normal desk and lived in a trailer 7. “Your brand and culture are two sides of the same coin” 8. “Use your company as a vehicle for your mission”: Tony inspired others to put people before profit 9. “Never stop taking risks”: Tony kept pushing himself to try new things. He could have played it safe. 10. “Make your mark in the precious time you have”: Tony died early, reminding us to act now Great. We have a collection of banal platitudes for making a business that cares about people. But why is this important? Why is it distinct enough to merit a TED speaker’s consideration? Why isn’t this just business-as-normal? You know the answers. They’re solid answers. And they aren’t the point. They just tee up the real question: Why did Tony spend every waking moment struggling against those answers to build a different kind of work environment anyway? What demon possessed him to swim upstream against the entire world? The above list tells a story about Hsieh. Here’s a retelling of that story with more focus on character development: “Tony walked away from his first company because it made him so unhappy. He couldn’t bear going into work every day. At Zappos, he told people to make emotional connections as part of their job role. This was personally important to him. He even insisted that his employees make people happy by whatever means they could drum up. Everybody around him was allowed individuality and empowered: he hired a life coach for his employees and gave them free access to that person. Tony didn’t show himself much care through the luxury his success afforded him. He kept pushing himself. He could have played it safe but for some reason wouldn’t allow safety into his life. Tony died early.” I assert that Tony Hsieh, the subject of all these essays and remembrances, was not actually a happy man. He was chronically troubled all his life and, as humans do, tried to construct an outer world that wouldn’t reflect his intensely distressing inner world. He couldn’t find the help he needed to make his inner world more peaceful, and he finally succumbed to what we callously label “mental illness”. And I think the writers of Forbes’s memoir agree with me, even if their audience won’t let them come out and say it. But while he directly (by the tens of thousands) and indirectly (by the millions) delivered on making other people smile, Hsieh was privately coping with issues of mental health and addiction. Finally, a breath of fresh air. Forbes has interviewed more than 20 of his close friends and colleagues over the past few days…reconciling their accounts, one word rises up: tragedy. According to his friends and family, Hsieh’s personal struggles took a dramatic turn south over the past year, especially as the Covid-19 pandemic curtailed the nonstop action that Hsieh seemingly craved. Anxiety creeps into my belly. This account is taking its own precipitous turn. According to numerous sources with direct knowledge, Hsieh, always a heavy drinker, veered into frequent drug use, notably nitrous oxide. Friends also cited mental health battles, as Hsieh often struggled with sleep and feelings of loneliness — traits that drove his fervor for purpose and passion in life. By August, it was announced that he had “retired” from the company…friends and family members, understanding the emerging crisis, attempted interventions over the past few months to try to get him sober. Instead, these old friends say, Hsieh retreated to Park City, where he surrounded himself with yes-men…He would double the amount of their highest-ever salary. All they had to do was move to Park City with him and “be happy”. And there we go. The interventionist historical fiction. He fell into crisis and we tried to change his behavior, but he fled us and dug deeper into the only thing he knew. It’s such a shame that he wouldn’t take the medicine. This schizoid article struggles with itself the whole way through. I think the writers want to tell the truth about Tony’s lifelong struggle with inner demons, but Forbes is a magazine for business aspirants. Fortunately, famed singer-songwriter Jewel stands in nicely as a foil: the writers use the humble and heart-forward bohemian — who in no way threatens the identities of Forbes’ readership — to deliver their message so they can tell the truth without getting run out of town. And the editor gets to stamp his logo above the dead man’s head and use the title to blame him for “self-destruction.” (Bad Tony, scratching up the perfect image of an exuberant, people-centric, visionary leader we want to see. We trusted you to carry the banner.) Tony Hsieh, like most visionary business leaders, only knew one way to handle his constant psychic distress: craft an outer world that doesn’t in any way reflect his inner world. When the pandemic shut down city life, he must have been left with a lot of time on his hands. Then Zappos was taken from him, according to insinuations in the article. And a troubled man exhibiting several markers of constant distress (heavy use of dissociative drugs like alcohol and whippets, chronic sleeplessness, chronic loneliness and depression, ‘an addictive personality’) had none of his tools for avoidance left. The Language We Really Need The normies around Tony saw him fall through the gaps in his constructed world and tried what they know: a behavioral intervention. Tony, they said, you have to stop drinking and using drugs. These outside-things are messing up your inside-world. Stop using them so your inside-world fixes itself. This is what they were probably taught by TV sitcoms growing up. It’s what we’re all taught through a million mass-cultural interpretations of behaviorist psychology. Behaviorists love to look at humans like opaque “black boxes”: since you can’t know what the inside looks like, just change the outside of the box and wait for the inside to adapt. It works well enough when a human is capable of adapting, which is why the American Psychological Association (which governs mental health treatment in the USA) requires all psychiatrists to be trained in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). CBT is so heavily used here that its ideas and assumptions about human psychology have worked their way into normal society. But — this is one of those things I can say because I’m not a licensed healthcare worker — in my experiences as a therapy client, an emotional intelligence trainer, and a coach, I’ve seen how behavioral intervention doesn’t work very well in the face of psychological trauma. Trauma is the rearrangement of one’s entire mind to isolate the memory of a life-threatening event. When something happens that makes the unconscious parts of our mind believe we’re going to die and can’t do anything about it, the brain records a special memory of that event that includes everything we did to survive it. If we survive, the memory is kept as an immutable record of stimuli from right before the event happened and physiological responses to it(nervous system, endocrine, and motor responses). Because obviously one or more of those responses cause us to avoid dying (or so the mind thinks). When the stimuli reappear in present-time, the memory is triggered and the responses are replayed automatically, unconsciously, and immediately to help us survive again. Trauma is designed to be immutable. This is why behavioral interventions don’t work very well at healing it. You can’t just tell someone using alcoholism to avoid their PTSD, “knock it off with the drinking.” They’ll just drink when you aren’t watching, or they’ll switch to another intoxicant with a similar effect, like harder drugs or sex or cultism. It’s a mostly unconscious psychological process. What you have to do is heal the trauma first, and then they’ll stop needing to escape their own mind. Effective trauma healing uses body-centric mindfulness to track autonomic trauma responses while staying aware of the present moment in which you are not actually about to die. You might have heard of EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, NARM, or Hakomi. Those are non-behaviorist methodologies with decades of clinical evidence and biological theory backing them. They can completely heal trauma by working with the unconscious mind. Behavioral therapy, hypnosis, and psychoanalysis — as well as coaching methodologies derived from them — do not. (Citations for such a wide-reaching argument are impossible. You can find a better explanation of almost all of this in Trauma and Memory by Peter. A. Levine PhD and The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk MD.) The public figure of Tony Hsieh smacks of complex PTSD (C-PTSD). The failure of behavioral interventions. The booze and partying and biohacking. The lifelong frenetic drive to create a fantasy world that doesn’t actually align with the real world’s constraints. This is a person who very likely suffered C-PTSD, and it seems nobody in his environment was able or willing to recognize it. What we know intuitively is that people like Tony — brilliant, big-hearted, lost in the adult world, and almost constantly dysfunctional — are struggling with inner demons common to the heart of mankind. What we don’t know is how to talk about it, how to model the experience with a common language, or how to alleviate the suffering. The language of psychological trauma, particularly complex/developmental trauma, is what we need. Tony didn’t get the help he actually needed. While he developed an inspiring persona modeling an idealistic fantasy we’d all rather live in, he didn’t develop a resilient personality for living in the real world. He didn’t find inner peace, not ever. He didn’t live another 40 years to make his utopia more viable and inspire even more visionaries to build it. Hsieh is the Everyman for Leaders There’s so much complexity in this story that could be explored, but I’m staying focused on part of it that never gets told clearly. Because when the details are abstracted, it’s the same story I see in most of the senior leadership, startup founders, and entrepreneurs I’ve met as a coach/trainer. The same psychology that makes one stand out from the masses also makes one incredibly vulnerable to chronic dysfunction. In banal cases, it just means you’re a heavy partier on business trips and work insane hours. In many of the cases I’ve seen, it means you’re a lowkey terror to people on your team, and they spend too much of their personal energy managing yours. In Tony’s case, it means you lose control of your company, lose touch with your humanity, and die in mid-life. From Forbes: Toward the end of 2014 he stepped away from leading the Downtown [Las Vegas] Project and moved from his high-rise condo into an Airstream park, complete with an LED-lit stage and a roaming alpaca. Here, the revelry continued in a scene where recreational drugs were mixed with an evolving group of thinkers, creatives and entrepreneurs who sought Hsieh’s advice…Over this period, many of Hsieh’s longtime peers found themselves on a divergent path from him. Their definitions of happiness had changed — a feeling echoed by several Hsieh friends, who said that they had married and started families, while Hsieh remained an extremely rich Peter Pan. Tony Hsieh needed attunement, validation and nurturance. He needed people he could trust to see his full childlike authenticity, welcome it, and protect him from a callous world. He kept unconsciously trying to create these experiences around himself, for himself, but people just showed up to soak it in and encourage him to lay more golden eggs. This is a pattern of the traumatized mind: we unconsciously recreate the situation that led to the trauma for the rest of our lives, hoping to ‘win’ this time against the threat or stressor. The Tony I see between the lines of all these articles surrounded himself with people who “valued him” but didn’t validate and build his sense of worth. Businesspeople need the capacity to point to the root causes of dysfunctional leadership and toxic culture. Nobody is telling the real story, despite the thousands of pages of biz lit published every year, because those who analyze leadership don’t really understand psychological trauma, and those who really understand trauma could lose their therapy license if they say too much about anybody’s psychology. It’s a catch-22 that keeps the deep healing magic locked behind a one-way gate. Outside the gate, we’re left with pitiful imitations of real thing: Big-5 Profiles and Unconscious Bias Training. People with “strong personalities” keep being put into leadership positions where they are driven to their physical and mental limits to create value for everyone around them. In exchange, they’re allowed leeway to shape the lives of others through social power, which they always unconsciously use to make their inner worlds less painful. If the visionary is Tony Hsieh, people love it but he implodes and crumples. If the visionary is Steve Jobs, people hate it but deflect their misery with the material comforts they gain. What are the costs of letting your eccentric leadership continue to live in ignorance of complex trauma? Are they toxic to their coworkers? To their organizational systems? To themselves? Do you have to build social firewalls around them at the Director level to filter their communications and influence their decision-making? If you’re the leader in your company — maybe a startup or an entrepreneurship — how sustainable and fulfilling is your life in this role? Do you feel intimately connected to the people in your life? Do you trust your own instincts? Can you take directions, receive hard feedback, and say things like “I’m sorry”, “I need help”, and “I was wrong”? How much pigmented hair is still on your head? It’s okay to be affected by trauma; every single person on Earth is. It’s the human condition. But it doesn’t have to be nearly as hard for many of us as society makes it. We are not a compassionate people to one another or ourselves. We have the innate ability to be, but our culture teaches us its opposite. Tony Hsieh, as described by the post mortem rags circulating this week, is another wake-up call to all of Western business. Trauma runs deep in our individual and collective psyches, and we have been ignoring it for generations. The complexity of the matter is only getting worse. If we don’t immediately start popularizing effective and compassionate conceptual models of the twenty-first century human mind, we’ll lack the language needed to understand the suffering and misery we cause with business-as-usual. We’ll only going to use up and throw away more Tony Hsiehs while they try, desperately but futilely, to change the world when they can’t find peace inside themselves.

https://starlingdavid.medium.com/tony-hsieh-is-dead-and-nobody-knows-what-to-say-d097abc570dc

['David A Staab']

2020-12-08 18:14:48.024000+00:00

['Business', 'Startup', 'Mental Health', 'Leadership', 'Psychology']