Group items tagged

Blog by Eric Barker, bakadesuyo.com, September 14, 2015 "Here's what you can learn about time management from very successful people: Do a time log. See how long things take and when your best windows are. Plan the whole week. Focus on your core competency and what makes you happy. Have a morning ritual that gets you closer to your long term goals. Set 3-5 anchor events for the weekend. Plan something fun for Sunday night."

interesting article by Cass Sunstein and Reid Hastie, November 4, 2014 on how to help groups make better decisions. Eight suggestions are made: 1. Silence the leader 2. Prime critical thinking 3. Reward group success 5. Assign roles 6. Appoint a devil's advocate 7. Establish contrarian teams 8. Delphi Method

good tips on blogging by Chris Brown, 12/2014, Digital Current, conversion driven SEO & digital marketing agency

Susanna Gebauer talks about Germans but the same misunderstanding may exist here about the usefulness of social media for increasing one's influence. Certainly, the more retweets, followers, favorites, comments we get, the more we get known.

"stop shaming our failures, the easier it will be to turn them to our advantage."

Precious response on pursuing something that isn't yielding financial success, visibility, appreciation, etc. We wake up very early in the morning, before the sun comes up, and we say to the world: I AM OLD AND I AM A NOBODY AND I LOVE WHAT I DO. You will be just like me someday. If you're lucky.

Lorenzo Grandi is founder of Startupbootcamp Amerstam. He outlines what makes a successful crowdfunding campaign. Ask: what do you or can you offer? Who is your competition? What has worked well for them? Feature a video - more likely to get funded if you have one. Although this is geared toward business, it has a lot of good tips and links to other blogs and sites (including Kickstarter and their help area), and is easy to understand and practical.

Advice from career consultant Alison Doyle, About.com's resident job search expert, about being specific in our resume for both ATS and human screeners

Jenny Mackness does it again: making important distinctions between curriculum led and community led learning within MOOCs; and how the balance may change based on successful formation of learning groups within the MOOC. She also asks about the difference between learning design and planning for learning. 1.14.23 on her blog.

Newsletter by Ann Mehl, a life coach, 1.26.13. Justifies Studio's raison d'etre. Excerpts: "The workplace has changed enormously in recent years. Gone are the days when some benevolent company would direct and manage your career for you, while you dozed off at the wheel. Now more than ever, it is incumbent upon every employee to proactively manage his own career. We have become in essence, a nation of free agents. A company of one. And all successful "companies" must identify and set their priorities in such a way that our goals can be achieved. In the humdrum of work, it's often easy to find yourself adrift, floating aimlessly downstream without clear intent or destination. The days blur into each other, until you have no idea where you are going, or what it was you hoped to achieve. But ask yourself this question: if you're not steering the ship, then who is?" ..."Are there any personal development classes that would make certain parts of my job easier? Should I be speaking with other industry peers in my field so that I remain current? Is there anybody I can identify who might be willing to mentor me while I navigate this tricky next phase of my career?"

Blog post by William Bowen, March 25, 2013, on movement towards online education. He would like more hard evidence to understand impact/success among other effects, tool kits (platforms), new mind-set to attempt online to reduce costs without adversely affecting educational outcomes, what we must retain in terms of central aspects of life on campus such as "minds rubbing against minds." Excerpts: "My plea is for the adoption of a portfolio approach to curricular development that provides a calibrated mix of instructional styles." ... "Their students, along with others of their generation, will expect to use digital resources-and to be trained in their use. And as technologies grow increasingly sophisticated, and we learn more about how students learn and what pedagogical methods work best in various fields, even top-tier institutions will stand to gain from the use of such technologies to improve student learning." Really like this comment for value of MOOCs for post-college graduates: "A quibble. I am intrigued by your comment about "minds rubbing against minds." While there is undeniable worthiness of the thought inside academic communities perhaps underestimated is the lack of such friction after graduation and how MOOCs can provide opportunities outside the alma maternal environments. To take courses at the local U. costs both in inconvenience of scheduling, transportation and monetary costs equivalent to constantly having a new Hyundai. Those requirements wind up as being unreasonable. Since January I have had the great pleasure of thinking about the thoughts of Dave Ward and colleagues from the University of Edinburgh and arguing about points in the forums. More recently, Michael Sandel on Justice from Boston. These opportunities are enormously better than nothing at all, clearly benefiting myself and probably also friends, colleagues and civil society. While these experiences do not provide the intensity of a post seminar argument in the Ree

Article by Joanne Fritz at About.com Nonprofit Charitable Orgs on managing social media. She suggests "high activity on a limited # of networks." She uses Twitter (#1), Facebook, Google + (because it is growing rapidly and counts a lot toward SEO), and Hootsuite as her dashboard for social activity. Also recommends sharing reciprocity as indicated below: "I generally try to maintain a ratio of one for me to two or three of everyone else. One recent blog post suggested using the rule of quarters: 25% your content, 25% interaction, and 50% others' content. Of course, there is a reason for that. It's called reciprocity. When I promote someone else's blog posts or articles, that someone is likely to return the favor. When someone else endorses my work, that is much more effective than when I do it. My system for sharing revolves around my RSS Feed (I use Google Reader). The key to success with RSS is to get into the habit of checking it often. Otherwise it becomes a mess. "

Interesting blog post bu Elizabeth MacBride, April 5, 2013, on virtual partnerships, 5 secrets 1. must have the same agenda 2. you actually like the person 3. complementary skill sets or traits 4. open lines of communications 5. good legal underpinnings Excerpt "Our number-one rule - and the glue that holds our partnership together - is keeping the workload manageable. We don't take on too many clients, and we don't hold ourselves to unrealistic standards for production. "Our business is focused on helping people navigate a big, ongoing trend-the shift from traditional jobs to an economy built around freelance, contract and temporary work. Pulling all-nighters at the business and cutting ourselves off from the rest of the world, as we might at a venture-capital backed startup, doesn't seem like the right way for us," Pofeldt says. "Why not enjoy one of the best parts of freelancing: the freedom to have an active life outside of work without apologizing for it?" Barry "CB" Martin and Larry Gaian are food writers and marketers-for-hire who met via their common networks. "This year I started several new ventures," Martin wrote via email. "I asked him to be a sounding board. On one of the ideas, he was thinking along the same lines so we decided to combine forces." They're working together under the moniker Guys In Aprons, asking food companies to hire them to write recipe posts and interview expert chefs."

Video on YouTube, posted May 9, 2013. "Style and aesthetics cannot rescue failed content." "Google Maps are visualization" helping people do something. "History of visualizing data is history of science" Not an aerie-faerie "Three things to inform your design--what you have to say and communicate, reader is not you and they will come with their own bias and assumptions, and data itself and what it has to say." Can communicate a lot of information very quickly--emotional impact, react to aesthetics of piece, presenting information in visual format is fastest way for them to engage with information." "Successful infographic tells a story. "Hero is one key element of piece." "Take complicated data and convert to something simple. Hours to seconds..." "Data are measurements of something" "Revelation--show us something we haven't seen before"

Blog post by Chris Collison on 2.26.13, that discusses reciprocity in fostering a learning atmosphere and adoption of best practice in an organization. Excerpt: "Reciprocity is an important principle for knowledge management, and one which underpins the idea of Offers and Requests. Offers and Requests was a simple approach, introduced to make it easier for Operations Engineers at BP to ask for help, and to share good practice with their peers. The idea was for each business unit to self-assess their level of operational excellence using a maturity model, and identify their relative strengths and weaknesses. In order to overcome barriers like "tall poppy syndrome", or a reluctance to ask for help ("real men don't ask directions"), a process was put in place whereby every business unit would be asked to offer three areas which they felt proud of, and three areas which they wanted help with. The resulting marketplace for matching offers and requests was successful because: i) The principle of offering a strength at the same time as requesting help was non-threatening and reciprocal - it was implicitly fair. ii) The fact that every business unit was making their offers and requests at the same time meant that it felt like a balanced and safe process."

An article view by Jenna Wortham at the New York Times of different online learning sites for mastering computer codes and programming, March 27, 2012. Mentions Codecademy, Girls Develop It, Treehouse, General Assembly, etc. Excerpt: "Peter Harsha, director of government affairs at the association, said the figure had been steadily climbing for the last three years, after a six-year decline in the aftermath of the dot-com bust. Mr. Harsha said that interest in computer science was cyclical but that the current excitement seemed to be more than a blip and was not limited to people who wanted to be engineers. "To be successful in the modern world, regardless of your occupation, requires a fluency in computers," he said. "It is more than knowing how to use Word or Excel but how to use a computer to solve problems." "

Very powerful blog post in the Leadership Learning Community by Deborah Mehan, June 28, 2013, on collective leadership through networks, and how customized supports such as coaching can help these groups learn and take successful action.

interview with Angela Duckworth on leadership qualities that make up grit--passion and perseverance, 29 minutes long

by Taunee Besson, CareerCast.com senior columnist about David Bell who successfully used networking to land a new job. His 6 tips: Ask people for info, not a job; start with people you know, then who they know, and finally strangers after you have practice; know what you want to say ahead of time, but don't have a canned speech; recognize you will have good and bad days; prepare a specific topic for each discussion; if your contact refers you to other people, let them know how it turned out.

interesting, short blog post on positioning yourself for success