fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Growing Your Online Presence Starts With the Right Vision
By: Jessie Van Breugel
Tags: Entrepreneurship, Creators, Writing, Marketing, Personal Branding

Growing Your Online Presence Starts With the Right Vision

Know where you want to end up, but focus only on the next step Jessie van Breugel Jun 4·3 min read

Photo by Amanda Dalbjörn on Unsplash

The path of an independent creator is not set in stone.

It’s vague, dark, and can be a lonely road. As a creator, it doesn’t make sense to nail down three, five, and ten-year goals. The digital environment we’re in is highly dynamic and always in motion.

Instead, have an understanding of your overall vision.

Your vision defines your future. It shapes your journey and the decisions you make. It prepares you for obstacles and when life throws you off track. Things that will evidently come.

These days, too many people get caught up in the way they should work towards their vision. They think about all the steps that they have to take to reach their end goal.

A beautiful way to overcome this challenge is the ABZ-framework:

A stands for where you are now, B identifies your next step, and Z is your end goal. It’s that simple.

Know where you want to end up, but focus only on the next, small step at hand.

This way, you remain focused. Every time you achieve your B, you identify a new B — one that’s aligned with your end goal. It’s the perfect combination of focus and overview, zooming in and out at the same time. A framework that’s suitable for any creator in a dynamic environment.

Knowing that, here’s a five-step approach to define your vision and create actionable steps.
Dawn of Conceptual Age
Tags: Modern Life, Lifehacks, Life, Life Lessons

In the age of abundance, the paradigm of the world is shifting from age of Information Technology to the Conceptual Age. With very high quality material things available at a cheap price, appealing to only functional needs is not enough. Products also need to be pleasing to eyes, invoking a sense of pleasure or attract senses.

The reason for this new age is the availability of education brought to world by internet which has led to a high availability of workers for almost every product as well as service. The quality and standard of lives is becoming better and better by time. The paradox of this advancement is that people, now free from the wants of material things, are becoming more inclined towards finding a meaningful life.

The new age is of creators and empathizers. While Artificial Intelligence continues to be important, the ability to create something that invokes the senses has become crucial. Abundance has relieved people from struggle of survival making them more focused on leading a quality life and catching on things they had missed in creating a career.

The products as well as services in this new era of creativity need to be aesthetic and provide a feeling of fulfillment in the customer. With the freedom from materialism, people will focus more on finding purpose and eventually this will hopefully help to make people more understanding of others and a better world for every person.

The reason for this new age is the availability of education brought to world by internet which has led to a high availability of workers for almost every product as well as service. The quality and standard of lives is becoming better and better by time. The paradox of this advancement is that people, now free from the wants of material things, are becoming more inclined towards finding a meaningful life.

The new age is of creators and empathizers. While Artificial Intelligence continues to be important, the ability to create something that invokes the senses has become crucial. Abundance has relieved people from struggle of survival making them more focused on leading a quality life and catching on things they had missed in creating a career.
How to create Azure account from Russia?
By: Yuriy Belonozhkin
Tags: Microsoft Azure Training, Cloud, Learning, Lifehack, Azure

Photo by ThisisEngineering RAEng on Unsplash

If you want to learn and try Azure, opened a training course and started creating a test account, you will have an unpleasant surprise: if you specify the region “Russia” during registration, you will receive a message that Azure subscriptions are not available in Russia at the moment. Judging by the forums, this message has been on for several months (if not years) now. Fortunately, it is easy to get around.

Disclaimer. Below I describe my experience. You act under your responsibility.

The way to bypass the message is simple. All you have to do is indicate your country is not Russia. Are you surprised? I was a little surprised, too.

To pass the identity verification you need to provide your phone number and credit card number. This is required to prevent some anonymous person will not use “training” resources for their malicious purposes. It turns out that regular Russian phone and credit card will do. My phone and credit card worked.

When asked for address I gave the address of the Apple office in California. I had to google Cupertino’s zip codes, but it was not a difficult task.

Beware: you can’t change the country/region for an existing account later. Microsoft support recommends creating a new account and migrate services to that new account. So during registration, I selected “Germany” as my country and it fits me perfectly.

After all registration steps are done you can use Azure sandbox and other features for testing and experimenting purposes and Microsoft has information for your identification.
Quick Daily Tips To Reaching Your Goals
By: The Angels Of Grace
Tags: Motivation, Reach Your Goal, Success, Lifehacks

In order to accomplish the tasks and have the success we want to achieve, we need to be able to reach the goals we set consistently and continuously. Failure to do this on a consistent basis will result in us falling short of our goals and not being as productive as we expect and want to be. The tips and information below will help you to reach your goals more consistently no matter what those goals may be.

First, a major key to reaching any goal is the focus. If you can remain focused, you can get more done in less time. If you tend to lose focus frequently, figure out why you do so. Are you not getting enough sleep at night? Are you bored with the work that you are doing? Are you worried about some issue, whether at work, home, or both? You need to overcome the issue that is causing you to lose focus, as the focus is a major key in reaching the goals you want to reach in the shortest amount of time possible.

Second, be sure you set realistic goals. If you set unrealistic goals and fall short of them, that’s only going to discourage you and hurt your self-esteem, especially if you continuously fall short of those hard-to-reach goals. “Reaching for the moon” is great, but we all have our limitations, and even the best of us can only do so much in so much time. Expect much from yourself, but don’t expect so much that you can’t possibly achieve it even if you put in 110% effort for hours every day. Be realistic in your goals, and the continued success of achieving them will help to push your confidence and self-esteem to new heights and levels of productivity.

Third, at the end of each day, review what goals you accomplished and what goals you missed. Determine why you missed the goals that you did. Was it because of a lack of effort and/or focus on your part? Did something come up that was unexpected when working on a task, thereby altering the realistic timetable for completing the task? By reviewing the goals you achieved and did not achieve each day, you become better at recognizing what goals you achieve easily and what goals you don’t so that you can adjust your actions and focus accordingly for goals you often miss and do a better job of regularly achieving those goals in the future.

Success Kit is an amazing crystal kit that helps everyone who is into healing and/or astrology to heal what has been holding you back to live the life of your dreams. You can feel confident that what you are keeping close to you is coming from the best source possible.
How Peter Reads a Book a Day. No skimming, full comprehension, 2 hour…
By: Cliff Weitzman
Tags: Productivity, Reading, Speed Reading, Knowledge, Lifehacks

How Peter Reads a Book a Day

My friend Peter has been reading a book a day for the past 30 days. Here is how he does it:

1. Find a PDF of Your Book.

Search google for “Name of book .pdf”

2. Drag the PDF into Speechify.

Speechify is a free text-to-speech platform that turns any pdf into an audiobook you can play at any speed.

Speechify will teach you to read fast. It also magically takes away the mental fatigue that normally accompanies reading. Without Speechify, reading feels like work. It’s mentally draining.

Remember when your mom read you books before bed and the story felt magical? Ya. That’s the magic of Speechify. It feels like less work because the app is literally reading the pdf to you. It’s like your mom. Thanks mom.

3. Ramp Up Your Speed.

Speechify will start you out at a cool 250 words per minute (wpm) — a “normal” reading speed. Get used to it for a bit. Let your ears adjust to the voice.

After you read a few pdfs, start to ramp up. Knock up the speed dial to 300wpm. Let your ears adjust.

Repeat. 350wpm. Rinse. Repeat. 400wpm. Repeat six more times.

That’s it. Eventually, you’ll be cruising at 700wpm. That means a book pdf will take you 1–2 hours. Here’s the math:

A typical non-fiction book has 50,000 words. 50,000 words / 700 words per minute = 71 minutes. That’s your transportation to and from work everyday. Or your daily workout. Or the time you spend laying in bed watching Netflix or YouTube.

As you ramp up, try to look at the screen. Speechify will highlight the word being spoken in blue, so you’re consuming the information audibly and visually. Double the retention. Double the fun.

4. Read Cool Stuff, Start a Book Club

Once your ears adjust to 700wpm, you can use the Speechify mobile app to read while doing other things.

Like biking. Juggling. Snorkeling. Whatever grills your chill.

When you unlock this superpower, you can do a lot of cool stuff.

Don’t take over the world too much. Seriously. With great power comes great responsibility.

*This post was written by Peter Deegan, a typical junior in college with nothing up his sleeve.

Find this post useful? Don’t forget to like, subscribe, send to your best friend :)
HTML5 Hacks #part- 1. Cool HTML hacks that every Web…
By: Vijay Raj
Tags: Web Development, Html5 Development, Html5, HTML, Lifehacks

HACK 1: Use Emmet to write your HTML5 codes.

What is Emmet ??

EMMET

Emmet (formerly Zen Coding) is a set of plug-ins for text editors that allow for high-speed coding and editing in HTML, XML, XSLT, and other structured code formats via content assist. The project was started by Vadim Makeev in 2008 and continues to be actively developed by Sergey Chikuyonok and Emmet users. Since 2015 Mikael Geletsyan is responsible for UX at Emmet. The tools have been incorporated into several popular text editors, as well as some plug-ins developed by the Emmet team and others implemented independently. However, Emmet is primarily independent from any text editor, as the engine works directly with text rather than with any particular software.

Expand abbreviations

Emmet uses a specific syntax in order to expand small snippets of code, similar to CSS selectors, into full-fledged HTML code. For example, the sequence

div#page>div.logo+ul#navigation>li*5>a

or

#page>.logo+ul#navigation>li*5>a

expands into

Tag balancing

The HTML Pair Matcher allows users to locate the matching open/close tag for the tag at the current cursor position. Unlike other HTML pair matchers, Emmet searches from the cursor’s current position rather than scanning the document from the beginning.
Four Psychological Life Changing Strategy to Increase Impact
By: Karki Kalyan
Tags: Strategy, Because, Pygmalion Effect, Psychology, Lifehacks

The effect of these psychology phenomenon is that our expectations of other people can be proven to ourselves because we unconsciously make them So” another word the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better they perform. It also states that high achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectations. The belief of Pygmalion effect will lead people to perform closer to the expectations that they set for themselves.

The studies of the Pygmalion effect are difficult to conduct. However, the results show a positive correlation between leader expectation and follower performance, but it is argued that the studies are done in an unnatural, manipulated setting. The paradox of the Pygmalion Effect is that having high expectations of people will produce better results, but it’s also more likely you’ll be disappointed. In business, managers, bosses, and corporate superiors can often influence the work and success of employees by expecting them to either rise or fall.

The Pygmalion effect is very similar to the concept of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that directly or indirectly causes it to become true. The effect has both positive and negative outcomes — a person expected by his or her superiors to succeed will, but the opposite is also usually true. The main idea behind this psychology phenomena is that our expectations of other people can be proven to ourselves not because they’re actually true, but because just having those expectations changes our behavior such that we unconsciously make them true.

The “Because” Heuristic
For Gentlemen: The $77 mindset experiment to make you absolutely fascinating for a night
By: Jonathan Roseland
Tags: Social Dynamics, Shopping, For Men, Mindset, Lifehacks

Buy a funky suit

On Amazon, eBay, or Aliexpress purchase an outrageous-looking suit, I personally prefer white suits but green, red, blue, purple, or yellow are all options. Your suit+shipping on these sites will be $60-$80.

Go to a social event

Now pick out a social event coming up where you will stand out in your suit. I recommend networking cocktail parties, nightclub events, or house parties but really anything will do. If you have friends that will accompany you to such an event invite them. Make sure to invite them at least five days before so they can commit to going with you. Now, become the suit! Notice the following things…

How people stare at you as you pass through the crowd.

When you approach a group of people a slight pause occurs in the conversation.

How people pay you more attention when you are speaking.

How your jokes seem funnier and your anecdotes seem to enrapture your audience.

Note: This experiment will be more effective if you go to an event where people are friendly and inviting. To harken to 90’s pop culture, it’s a better idea to do this at Cheer’s (“Where everyone knows your name…”) than The Roxbury (“You’re not on the list!”) Don’t do this at a Halloween party, everyone has outrageous outfits at Halloween so you won’t stand out.

Step into your funky suit persona
Why Scheduling as a Filipino is Underrated, We’ve been using it in a wrong way.
Tags: Productivity, Filipino, Procrastination, Lifehacks, Scheduling

Why Scheduling as a Filipino is Underrated, We’ve been using it in a wrong way. Cypher Apr 25·2 min read

How does your activity on a daily basis instantiate itself day to day week to week month to month?

Is it Chaos or in Order

One thing about Filipino’s are why aren’t we using schedule throughout the day? it’s a great tool but nobody talks about it at all.

Well mainly because things like that aren’t thought in school and we judge it as only for those who have work, business, and appointment.

And for some of men they thought scheduling is only for feminine, because women are more orderly than men and that explains it all.

And that’s just wrong it’s for everyone, regardless of age, gender and, reputation.

When you ask yourself what am I scheduling for, well I have to do this and I have to do that and all those responsibilities are bundled in one together ,it’s like a boss ordering me around the house on what to do next.

But that’s not really how you use a schedule, you are setting up a schedule so you have the day you want! that’s the trick concept.

So if you set-up the day that you wanted to have, what would it looked like?

It would be less complain, more in order, less time consumption.

That’s not only the benefit to it it also eliminates procrastination because you have a goal you have a vision on what to do next, from point A to point B.

So you then go depth on breaking down everything you do on a daily basis, from waking up in the morning to going bed at night.

So write down all of your responsibilities and set them up in order at the best possible time so that you can have the day you want.

If you had enough of having a bad unproductive day then I recommend you setting up a schedule.
Recognizing Opportunity: How to find and use “Star Power” in your day
By: Bethany Crystal
Tags: Motivation, Lifehacks, Psycology, People

Finding moments of “Star Power” in your day

I never used to understand how new parents would tell me that having a baby made them more focused, more productive because they use the time available in smarter ways. While I’m yet to personally achieve that higher level of being, one thing that being a mom has taught me is how to recognize opportunity and seize upon tiny moments of freedom.

I first learned this when Lydia was only a few months old. As a COVID baby born in NYC last April, there was precious little to do. (Ironically, during her first month of life (arguably the time I needed it the most) even the local coffee shops were closed. Brutal.) So to pass the time, we’d spend hours outside in Central Park. Our routine outside was pretty similar to our routine inside: Feed her, change her, put her down for a nap. But I soon realized that those precious nap cycles — 45–60 minutes of slumber — meant that I could accomplish something else. Anything else.

Timed correctly, for instance, I could arrive at my nearest park bench, slow her stroller down just enough to not disturb her, and then plop down to dig into a book. Or put on the stroller cover, plunk my earbuds in my ears and enjoy some music to myself while wandering to another park. Once I treated myself to a fancy French salad on the Upper East Side and took a glass of Sancerre to go. As soon as she was out, I was ready, blanket and all, for un petit pique nique for one.

My husband and I started referring to those moments as, “Star Power,” referring to the thing that happens in old school Mario games where your avatar collects the superstar power up and gains invincibility from all the bad guys for a brief time. (Much like baby naptime, it always seems to end much too soon.)

Over the past year or so, I’ve learned a lot about how to optimize these little moments of spontaneous free time. Whether or not you have a baby at home holding you back, I’m sure you’ll find some Star Power in your day if you look for it.
What does it take to be a CEO?
By: Adrienne B. Haynes
Tags: Ceo Skills, Entrepreneurship, Leadership Skills, Coaching, Chief Executive Officer

Sustainable Business Series

By Adrienne B. Haynes, Esq.

Lead Consultant, SEED Collective

Running a business or nonprofit is not for the faint of heart. At SEED Collective, we have provided in-depth business coaching services since 2013 for early and second stage businesses. We work with owners and leadership teams to help streamline business models through systems and refined operational processes. We’ve had clients that love the entrepreneurial journey, and others who find out quickly that it may not be for them.

If you’re looking for a list of critical skills and characteristics of a business leader, look no further! This checklist considers essential qualities and the eleven skills of critical importance are followed by an asterisk. Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

Managerial Skills

· Developing others

· Directing others

· Group management

· Strategic thinking*

· Motivating others

· Organizing ability

· Ability to delegate*

Social and Communication Skills

· Verbal fluency

· Listening skills

· Presentation skills

· Negotiating skills*

· Cooperation

· Empathy

· Developing rapport

Influence Skills

· Interpersonal sensitivity

· Concern with personal impact

· Organizational awareness

· Direct persuasion

· Use of influence strategies*

· Relationship building*

Achievement skills

· Achievement drive*

· Initiative*

· Concern for order

· Efficiency orientation

Problem Solving Skills

· Use of concepts

· Analytical thinking*

· Pattern recognition

· Technical expertise

· Causal thinking

· Creativity*

· Information seeking

Personal trait skills

· Enthusiasm

· Decisiveness*

· Stress tolerance

· Self-motivation

· Calculated risk taking*

Do you think this list covers it? How did you fare? Let us know!

If you’d like to talk with a team member at SEED Collective, we start with a consultation to learn more about your program and consulting areas of need. If we’re able to help, we’ll outline a consulting plan and prepare a formal proposal.

To schedule a consultation to learn more, find a time that works best for you here.
Difference between a boss and a leader
By: Shumail Arif
Tags: Bossy Nature, Teamwork, Leadership Skills, Be A Leader, Be Creative

Difference between a boss and a leader

Boss and Leader, are two different personalities because they think differently, they visualize the things according to their own perspectives.

When we talk about the boss, then we can say that, the dominant force in the office, who manages their business affairs and employees by giving them orders or deadlines where as a leader inspires them to innovate, think creatively, and strive for perfection.

The important point is that bosses can become leaders if they adopt the following leadership qualities because these are the major differences, like:

Leaders Lead, Bosses Push Leaders don’t command, They inspire Leaders Listen, Then Speak Leaders are Transparent and Open Leaders offer Equality Leaders take Responsibility Leaders invest Time Leaders listen to their Employees

Understanding the differences between bosses vs. leaders will help you become a good manager, business owner, teacher, trainer and coach.

Be a leader, not a boss!

https://youtu.be/wmBmklkiZ6M
Proving v. Improving
By: Kristen Schmitt
Tags: Imposter Syndrome, Leadership Skills, Authentic Leadership, Leading Teams, Leadership

Recently, I was chatting with a highly regarded, thirty-something business leader. During our conversation, she told me that she had made a conscious decision to improve herself rather than worrying about proving herself.

Our interaction took me back to my own tenure as a senior leader when I was of a similar age. As the youngest person at the table by at least five years, I suffered from imposter syndrome, fearing that if I did something the slightest bit wrong, someone would call my bluff, and I would be declared a phony, or much worse.

Sure enough, my boss at the time saw right through me, although not in the way that I had feared.

“Don’t let the fear of losing your job get in the way of doing your job,” he so wisely told me.

My quest to appear as a perfect leader was getting in my way of leading my team. I was trying to prove myself rather than working on growing and improving my skills.

Fast forward 15 years, and I have learned a few things. These insights would have significantly benefitted me, had I had them earlier in my career.

Lead as yourself. Knowing who we are and leading from that place, rather than trying to “be a leader,” allows us to show up authentically and connect with others naturally.

Leaders are human, and that is a good thing. We all have superpowers, but we also trip ourselves up. An awareness of our shortcomings, when acted upon, will keep us on course and prompt us to ask for help when we need it.

Leaders make mistakes. Owning and learning from our missteps can heighten our influence and credibility. Willingness to be vulnerable and accept responsibility paves the way for others to connect with us and trust us more deeply.

When we are proving, we are not improving. As leaders, we have a responsibility to ourselves and others to continue to develop and stretch ourselves. There is no magic line that we cross in achieving greatness as leaders.

If we focus on improving, we will build trust, inspire others, and make a difference for those around us. Ultimately, the proving will take care of itself.
WHAT HAPPENS TO NICE GUYS?
By: Pravin Shekar
Tags: Leadership Skills, Outliers, Marketing, Support, Alternative Learning

THE NICE GUY

Anand. Our protagonist.

Always the nice guy. Doing the things he felt were right.

That was the culture and family setup he was brought up in. Not to question, to conform. To be there for others. Whether they wanted it or not.

Such things are ingrained. Deeply. They do start showing up their effects as one grows older. Anand moved on to

College. A culture shock. A totally new set of strangers to deal with. The same ones identified Anand to be the sucker they thought he was. He was. And so Anand was outsourced all the homework and record work to be done. Anand did it wholeheartedly, as it was his own work. Such work is slays rewarded by…. more such work.

In his desire to be the nice guy and an all-pleaser, his grades started to fall. That left him quite worried.

Anand’s favorite spot was the small hill near the college campus. That was his space, and he walked up to it whenever he had questions within. Sitting on the top, the wind whipping his hair around, Anand was searching for answers. To questions that were yet to be formed. It was as if he searched for a destination but knew not where he stood on the map.

Lost in such thought, he did not notice the footsteps of Nirmala. She sat down silently next to him and put her hand on his shoulder. They were in the same college. She was from a different class. They hadn’t spoken much but were regular “smilers” when they met. They had moved on from a shy, hesitant smile to a more confident one.

Nirmala had been observing Anand. She knew what he was going through, having gone through it herself. There’s something about shared cultures and upbringing. Some things remain the same across years.

They sat silently for a long time.

She then whispered to Anand.

“It’s good to a nice guy. Starting now, be a nice guy to yourself. Learn to say no, and mean it.”

And you can imagine what happened afterward.

**

Who is Nirmala in your life?

Will you be a nice guy/gal to yourself?

Can you and I be wisely selfish…putting on our oxygen masks first before helping others?

This is a marketing post, folks, so please relate the learning to your business and work.

**

All stories in this “52” series:

1. The Cycle Wheel

2. The strong polish their fangs and the weak….

3. Expectations

4. Connecting through
You Are the Example
By: Dennis Mossburg
Tags: Lead By Example, Emergency Response, Leadership Coaching, Leadership Skills, Management

There was a moment during one of my deployments that we were in a pause in the action, but it was going to get very busy for the rest of the day. These were one of the few moments of peace we were going to get.

There wasn’t anything to do. We had to wait for instructions. It was a little early for lunch, but I decided to eat while I could. I knew from experience that when things get busy, you don’t take time to eat, you forget to eat and you feel guilty when you eat. Your self care should not take a back seat, but it does. I didn’t say anything, I just started preparing my lunch.

My deputy said it was smart eating while I could. Before long, everyone else in the incident command post was eating.

Leadership need not be loud and brash. Leadership can be the quiet moments when you are the example.

When everyone had taken care of themselves. I checked in with them, finding out where their head was at for this long day. Your people will tell you how they are feeling if you ask them and they trust you.

There was some concern; we had been putting in long hours, this day was going to be more of the same. The team had accepted it and were determined to get the job done.

When I was satisfied everyone was in the right frame of mind, we made plans for what we could do.

Though it was a long day, taking that moment to be the example by showing people how to take care of ourselves and each other, we made it through as a team.

You can be the leader your followers deserve. Check out my book.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1734470925
Need tips to Apply for the Mandela Washington Fellowship (MWF)? Here’s The Ultimate Guide to Answering the essay questions!
By: Ogunbowale Olugbenga
Tags: Leadership Development, Leadership Coaching, Leadership Skills, Mandela Fellows, Leadership

Need tips to Apply for the Mandela Washington Fellowship (MWF)? Here’s The Ultimate Guide to Answering the essay questions! Ogunbowale Olugbenga Sep 9·3 min read

Yours truly at Kellogg School of Management

At my 4th attempt, and 2nd interview, I was selected as 1 of 55 outstanding young leaders out of 11,000 applicants from Nigeria and as part of 700 Africans out of 55,000 applicants from Africa.

The Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders is the flagship program of the U.S. Government’s Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI). YALI was created in 2010 and celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2020. Established in 2014, the Mandela Washington Fellowship has brought nearly 4,400 young leaders from every country in Sub-Saharan Africa to the United States for academic and leadership training. The Fellows, between the ages of 25 and 35, are accomplished innovators and leaders in their communities and countries.

The Mandela Washington Fellowship truly changed my life. You can read all about my experience as a 2019 fellow in America here.

You can find out more about me here.

I’m paying it forward by compiling the ultimate guide to help you nail your essays at one sitting. Initially, I wanted to write a guide but I figured a lot of fellows already did justice to it, so why not share the best of the best guides in one place?

Here is a compilation of the best guides I have come across written/shot/produced by either MWF or YALI or Mandela Washington fellows. Here you go:
Exposure Matters.
By: Ahmed Soliman
Tags: Self Improvement, Leadership Skills, Careers, Career Advice, Workplace

The PIE Method

Harvey Coleman in the book Empowering Yourself: The Organizational Game Revealed — affiliate, explored a career progression method called PIE. The PIE method looks at the 3 key elements that help people to progress in their careers, The 3 elements and their percentages to the career growth contribution — as he explained — are:

1. Performance — how good you are at your job and how good the results are of what you do. → 10%

2. Image — is about you and how you are perceived. In the 1990s, the term ‘personal brand’ was even more used than it is today. → 30%

3. Exposure — is all about how well people know about what you do i.e. not just your boss but your boss’s boss and the leaders and partners of other departments. → 60%

Maybe most of us wondered sometime: Why am I being over-looked? I’ve worked just as hard, maybe harder, than others. This is grossly unfair. Surprisingly, how well you do your job has very little to do with how will you progress in your professional career.
#DataBlogSpp7: How to use TotalMTD/QTD/YTD #DAX function in #powerbi.
By: Soorya Prakash Parthiban
Tags: Datasciencecourse, Machine Learning, AI, Data Science, Power Bi

By Soorya Parthiban — Data analyst, Blogger and Power BI Dev.

If Others Can do it, why Can’t We!

Hi everyone, I’m very happy to meet you all on another blog.

This blog practically explains:

Take a look at this imaginary pizza sales dataset:

We can see that we have the date-wise pizza sales and the delivery driver’s salary for those respective days. This is an imaginary dataset that holds values from the 1st of January,2020 to the 30th of April,2021.

As a data analyst, we’re asked to analyze this dataset to show how much money is used to pay the delivery drivers and how much money is left out with the store manager and to extract some important insights from this dataset.

We can achieve our objective by using the correct DAX functions in our dataset. Today we’re going to use the TOTAL MTD/QTD/YTD function.

1. What is the syntax for these DAX functions?

2. What do the above syntaxes mean?

Expressions: This is where we can perform arithmetic operators on the columns of our dataset.

Dates: Input the column from our dataset which has date value in it.

Filters: We can filter out any particular values here. For instance, if we have the same data with two branches, we can filter out by typing [branchName] = ‘Lower Hutt’.

year_end_date (Only for TotalYTD): This dataset has data from 01–01–2020 to 30–04–2021, if we’re asked to calculate only for one year, then we can type the last date till which we wish to do the calculations.

3. Where do we write the DAX functions?

Clicking the three dots near to the table name will show a drop-down list where we have to choose the option named as “New measure” to write the DAX formula/function.

4. Creating a table visual with the existing data and adding DAX functions.

The visual used here is the “Table” visual:

As we see here, we have the date of the sales, the total sale for each day, and how much did the delivery drivers earn that day. When we look up at our objective, we want to show much much did the store owner had in their hand, right?

4.1 Typing the DAX code and executing it.

Here we are summing up the total sales and subtracting it with the delivery driver’s salary which will give us the balance money which the store owner has at the end of the day. As I said above, any arithmetic functions can be used in the <expression> parameter.

4.2 Where to find the created measures.

The measure can be found under the “fields”.

4.3 How to add the created measure to the visuals?

To use the created measures in the visuals, drag it from the fields to values.

5. Understanding the visual.

The above visual clearly shows:

Every day’s total sales, delivery driver’s salary and the balance amount which the owner had at the end of the day.

The cumulative closing balance for each month and for each quarter.

6. Analyzing the trend.

The End!

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© Soorya Prakash Parthiban.
How To Remotely Manage Office Dashboard Screens
By: Cheyne Wallace
Tags: Productivity, Dashboard, Analytics, Data Visualization, Power Bi

Office dashboard screens are common in every workplace, whether it be an air conditioned office or a factory workshop floor, we need these dashboards to keep us informed with the average office display rotating through 6 to 8 dashboards, so why is it such a pain to manage them once you have a handful spread around the workplace?

Traditionally, we’ve used some free tool or script that simply cycles through web pages in browser tabs. This works for a short period of time until you find yourself constantly walking around to screens, fumbling around trying to find the keyboard and mouse that’s gone missing (again) and endlessly adding new URLs to the rotation on screens across your office, frequently having to restart the browser because the machine rebooted for patching or whatever reason.

Tools like Microsoft Power BI, Klipfolio, Tableau, Plecto and Geckoboard often provide some basic options to display a full screen view of our shiny dashboard and sometimes the ability to loop through these web pages at different intervals although more often than not we have multiple tools from multiple vendors that display different sets of data for different teams in our organisations.

Microsoft Power BI Dashboard

Combine this with the fact that maybe these different teams are spread across multiple locations, on multiple floors in multiple buildings, not to mention patching causing these machines to restart every few days which kills the browser windows that display our dashboards.

How do you manage this? Are you still walking over to these screens manually? Better yet, how do you enable these individual teams to manage it themselves so you don’t have to waste your time walking across the building to add another URL to the sales or management departments big screen TV dashboard?

Ideally, we need:

Something that automatically starts looping through our dashboard web pages when the machine boots up A centralized interface to manage all our machines and their attached screens A centralized interface to manage the dashboard rotations. Be able to add, remove and update dashboard URLs The ability to display multiple dashboards on multiple screens from a single dashboard machine

There’s a common theme here, we want to be able do all this without leaving our desk (for productivity reasons of course)

Sound like you?

Well, VuePilot (https://www.vuepilot.com) was created for people like you to solve these exact same problems.

A few minutes is all it takes to get up and running with VuePilot and never again go searching for the keyboard and mouse.

Here’s a quick guide to getting started
Four Reasons to Consider a Cloud Migration
Tags: Cloud Migration, Power Bi, Financial Data, Power Apps

Almost 70 percent of all companies in the United States use cloud computing in some capacity.

If your business still avoids the cloud, you may want to think about switching to cloud systems in the coming months. Many business owners believe that only large companies can benefit from going with a cloud setup, but that is not the case.

Below are four reasons why a cloud migration is right for any business.

Costs

If you were to add up the money you have spent on your computers and servers, along with the funds you would have to free up for routine maintenance and upgrades, you are looking at a very significant investment.

While your employees would still need some devices with a cloud-based setup, even affordable laptops could be effective as their work computers. Everything else would be happening on the cloud, which brings down your total expenditure significantly.

Scalability

One of the biggest problems when you are hardware based is that you cannot scale your operations without a massive investment. Small businesses would find it very hard to justify spending tens of thousands of dollars on new hardware.

Scaling your cloud setup is so easy that it can be done in minutes, with the only cost being a slightly higher monthly service fee.

Flexibility

Cloud computing makes life so much easier for your employees because they no longer have to use specific devices to access your network, files or programs. They can access the relevant information on their laptop or tablet, even when they are out of the office.

Moving to the cloud can help some or all of your employees work remotely, whether part time or full time. You can even have many different people in various locations accessing the same data or tools.

Security

Data on the cloud is a lot more secure than it would be on your servers, because major cloud service providers have many more security measures in place to protect your financial data.

They ensure that your data is 100 percent safe, stored in multiple locations, and easily wipeable if there is ever any threat from a hacker or malicious actor.

Switch Today

Find a reliable cloud storage provider and then determine how you will transfer your existing data and systems to the cloud. Then you can begin to make the migration. Within a few months, you may be entirely cloud-based from a technology standpoint.
8 things Tableau & Power BI don’t want you to know
By: Hyper Anna
Tags: Bi, Data, Analytics, Tableau, Power Bi

Is there a better way to get insights?

Yes! With the introduction of augmented analytics and self-service business intelligence, people can now easily self-service insights about which teams, regions or industries outperform others — information they would have struggled to get without leaning on a data analyst.

Traditional BI tools, Tableau and Power BI, are synonymous for enabling data specialists to build dashboards: helping businesses track high-level KPIs and get a feel of their data through charts and visualisations. As these tools have been around 18 years (Tableau) and 7 years (Power BI), there’s a quite community of dashboard developers happy to build bespoke solutions. But, the solutions — the end deliverables — are predefined, not personalised, and require specialists to build and maintain (which comes with a high price). So while traditional BI tools are used as a source of top line numbers, they aren’t suited to a manager or salesperson needing insight, answers to their questions today. In fact, there’s a question of whether the future of dashboards is dashboardless…

In contrast, tools like ThoughtSpot and Hyper Anna are part of a new generation of BI tools, designed to augment the business intelligence function.

ThoughtSpot was built to solve a Google Search-like use case: “I want to ask my data questions & get answers.”

was built to solve a Google Search-like use case: “I want to ask my data questions & get answers.” Hyper Anna was built to solve the problem: “I need insights. So if there’s insight in my data, I want to know about it ASAP. Without waiting. Without relying on specialists. Without asking a question.”

We’ve summarised key differences in the table below.
Understanding Ribbon Chart in Power BI
By: Padma Priya
Tags: Ribbon Chart, Power Bi, Power Bi Charts, Padmapriya

This article helps in understanding when to use Ribbon chart, advantages and explanation with example for an Ecommerce case study.

Ribbon chart plays an important role in the field of Sales to understand the Ranking system for a category.

Ribbon charts are used to identify the Ranking system and Difference in sales or profit and percentage difference.

Let us understand the following XYZ ecommerce data.

Example -

(Please note the data set used here is from superstore)

Consider the below XYZ store dataset

The dataset contains all the order details, purchased customer details, location, region, product details, category, subcategory, sales and profit details during the year 2016 to 2019.

In this example, XYZ company would like to understand the sales of each category w.r.t other categories across ever year so that they can take necessary steps to improve the business.

In this dataset, we have 3 categories — Furniture, office supplies and Technology and our aim to identify the rank of each category across each year and percentage difference in the sales.

The below is the visual representation of Ribbon chart for the sales of categories furniture, office supplies and technology during the year 2016 to 2019.

Using the tool tip, below are some quick insights on the sales information for the categories Furniture, office supplies and Technology across the years 2016 to 2019 by providing ranking for each category and sales difference and percentage difference.

· For the category Technology, the sales are 1,75,278.23k during 2016 and sales is 1,62,780.81k during 2017. The Technology sales is decreased from 2016 to 2017 with a difference of 12,497.42k which pertains to 7.13 % decrease in the sales percentage. Hence the Rank is dropped from 1 (during 2016) to 2 during 2017.

· For the category Furniture, the sales are 1,57,192.85k during 2016 and sales is increased to 1,70,518.24k during 2017. The Furniture sales is increased from 2016 to 2017 with a difference of 13,325.38 which pertains to 8.48% increase in the sales percentage. Hence Rank is improved from 2 (during 2016) to 1 during 2017.

· For the category office supplies, the sales are 1,51,776.41k during 2016 and sales is 1,37,233.46k during 2017. The office supplies sales are decreased from 2016 to 2017 with a difference of 14,542.95k which pertains to 9.58% decrease in the sales percentage. During both the years the office supplies provided least sales compared to other two categories and hence holds the rank 3 (last rank) during 2o16 and 2017.

Similarly, we can use the tool tip information to find the sales value, percentage difference and ranking for the categories across other years. (2017 to 2019).

Conclusion -

A simple way to represent the Ribbon chart with a sample ecommerce data set to understand the ranking of the categories w.r.t Sales across the years. This is one of the best used visualization charts to provide the ranking systems and Percentage difference of sales w.r.t each category.
7 UX tips for better online forms
By: Etienne Donzelot
Tags: Forms Design, User Experience Design, UX Design, User Experience

1. Field labels should always be visible, so users do not lose track of them

You can still have fun interactions such as turning the placeholder text into the field label, but it should still be obvious which labels and fields go together. Keep accessibility in mind.

2. Fields should have the correct formatting (especially on mobile)

Number-only fields should not pull up the main alphanumeric keyboard.

Date fields should make it obvious which date format the form is using. When in doubt, use YYYY / MM / DD.

As a rule of thumb try not to have more than 5 fields per ‘section’ and no more than 3 ‘sections’. Not sure how to start? Group related fields together: [Name, email, address] as one section, [education, training, skills] as another.

4. Long forms should let you save your progress

If you are going to have more than 3 ‘sections’ on your form, let your users save their progress at the end of each ‘section’ so that they can take a mental break and come back.

Everyone hates having to scroll between the error message and the problem field, let alone figuring out which field is causing the problem.

Stay away from jargon as much as possible and use examples of what kind of input you were expecting (where you can).

7. (Re)validate each field individually, as well as a whole

Validate the input once your user moves on to the next field. Whilst this might interrupt their flow it will mean filling out the form will take less time than if you only validate each time the ‘submit’ button is pressed.

Never validate as the user types. It leads to increased frustration and a feeling of ‘pressure’ as they fill out the field.
How we began a conversation with our users
By: Danna Wulf
Tags: UI Design, UX, User Experience Design, User Testing, User Feedback

Getting crafty: starting from zero

We ran our first design sprint in the fall of 2018. It was both an exciting and intimidating process. The process typically requires prototyping ideas and testing them with real users. But a few things stood in the way towards implementing this process: we didn’t have a budget for a research team or dedicated platform to engage with our users.

But we had to start somewhere. We began soliciting colleagues’ friends and family members by a simple company-wide Slack request. We were searching for those who we knew enjoyed Insider and would be amenable to providing feedback on improving their experience of our brand. Soon, we were able to video interview some of our most passionate Insider readers via Google Meet.

This specific set of users were highly invested in our product and excited to share their experiences. The passion with which they shared their experiences only increased the motivation we had to continue these types of conversations.

Going forward, we knew we needed to eliminate potential biases in test groups by expanding the group of participants beyond just friends and family.

Lesson: Just start! Identify what’s holding you back, whether it’s how best to communicate with users, some financial barrier, or bandwidth issues. Be resourceful and use what you do have available. You’ll find that perceived hurdles aren’t as insurmountable as you may think.