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A lot of things slow down in the summer, like high profile speaking opportunities for executives/companies seeking to increase their visibility and build their thought leadership, but not everything has come to a screeching stop. I’ve been reading about some interesting ones in the top tier media that didn’t slow down. Two have already passed but good to keep an eye out for them next year. 2010 Aspen Ideas Festival, July 5 to 11 TED, July 13 to 16 Fortune Brainstorm: TECH, July 22 to 24After writing my last blog entry on a multicultural workforce, where I recommended that Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers is required reading for leaders and managers, my friend Roland asked me what about people who aren’t in positions of power. I had already been thinking about this topic, and here’s the response. The answer to his question actually goes beyond cultural differences and can potentially help anyone who has more analytical intelligence (the kind you learn in school) than practical intelligence (the kind you pick up along the way of life). For any individual with more analytical than practical intelligence, Outliers is particularly helpful, because reading the ...read more I have recently been thinking a lot about a potentially controversial topic, so it’s taken me a while to write about it—the complexity of a multicultural workforce—the pros/cons and the losses/rewards of nimbly managing it. When I read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, I thought I had a good low risk approach for writing about the subject, but compiling thoughts cohesively together and putting them into words has more of a challenge than I expected, but here’s a stab at it. The prospect of maximizing so much diversity is undeniably an extremely complicated challenge. Accordingly, those that can overcome it will reap the benefits and those that don’t will probably ...read more I follow the blogs of Fred Wilson and Brad Feld, two venture capitalists of media companies, to stay abreast of the latest media trends, so I thought it was interesting to see that they both joined an effort to create and promote Startupvisa.com. They established the site to raise awareness of the EB-5 visa, “which enables investors from other countries to get a visa in exchange for starting a business in the US with $1M in capital (or $500K for economically targeted areas) & the creation of at least 10 US jobs” and to support their proposal to “enable ...read more I was excited to hear the news about the F.C.C.’s (Federal Communications Commission) effort to expand Internet access across the country. During my Peace Corps service, I did a lot of work to close the digital divide in Panama, so I’m very familiar with the opportunities that access to technology can offer. Two students can have the same level of intelligence, but their opportunities can vary greatly if one has access to a computer and the other doesn’t. In fact, a less intelligent student with knowledge of how to use a computer would likely have more opportunities than a more intelligent one with no ...read more I went to my first book club meeting yesterday evening, and I have to admit that it’s a nice complement to day-to-day life for anyone who hasn’t tried it. This wasn’t always the case. My original reason for agreeing to the book club was that I wanted to support a friend’s initiative, my participation would make me finish a book more quickly and I was curious what it would be like. None of these reasons are great, so it felt really uncomfortable when the first book club meeting started and I felt like I had voluntarily returned to high school. As I heard the others reflect on Obama’s ...read more I took off for a long weekend thinking that I would disconnect a little technologically and hit the books like wrapping up Obama’s Dreams from My Father and Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth. Just when I was looking forward to reconnecting and writing, that little tech break became a long one. I forgot my charger and had to remind myself that a disconnected life is ok. Now that I’m back, more to come! With the new year, I wanted to refresh my “About” section, and now seemed like a great moment in time to do it. In addition, at the beginning of this month, I am embarking onto a semi-new adventure of doing a lot more media work than I have in the past, and I can’t wait! In my last “About” section, I started off with a quote from White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” At the beginning of 2010, that whole idea was sounding so stale, and a part of my life was ...read more Reading President Barak Obama’s Keynote Address to the Democratic Convention in 2004 at the end of Dreams from My Father reminded me of my speechwriting fantasy. Since part of Global Brain Candy is about doing things that I don’t get to do already, I thought I’d create a new “Speech Center” section. I’ve always loved the longish-form narrative structure of speeches with their imagery and power to ignite and mark pivotal moments in time, a lot like Obama’s speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention. On top of this, with my speechwriting fantasy as a backdrop, I have also coincidentally learned many ins and outs of high ...read more One area of inspiration that I’ve thought about for Global Brain Candy was past written work, particularly on economic development and immigration, and reigniting some of my commitment to exploring my interests in those areas. However, I recently saw a fellow co-author Stephanie Sewell King at a New Year’s brunch. While at Columbia, Stephanie and I were part of a team that penned “Corporate Social Responsibility: An Emerging Form of Risk Management in Europe,” for a Columbia University publication. Many of the key concepts in the piece really point to sustainable business practices, but I don’t think that was a buzz work when we wrote the piece. Or at ...read more |
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