For the next book club, we’re reading Zeitoun, which is a story about Syrian-born Abdulrahman Zeitoun’s experience after Katrina. I will limit detailed discussion of the book to the book club meeting, but I wanted to mention it since it’s an interesting example of how times of disaster relief impact both physical infrastructure and structures of a civil society. In my work with disaster relief on how companies can help to relieve the damage, we tend to focus on the physical. Reading Zeitoun highlighted the different facets that disaster relief can take and that there’s far more needed help beyond just physical needs of infrastructure, food, and shelter.

In late July/early August, I guess I could also say that I was busy getting quoted. Within the span of just a few weeks, a blogger credited me for inviting her to a real estate/art event and Portfolio.com quoted me regarding some advice to small businesses on maximizing their media relations on limited budgets. The real estate/art event was noted as a collaboration to ride out the recession, so it harked back to my Recessionwire days .

Lastly, I’ve been contacted a lot for career advice on getting into PR lately, and I’m always thrilled to help however I can for whatever my insights are worth. Time Out has a useful ranking of top headhunters broken down by industries, and PR is one of them.

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 24

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 book offers a more academic understanding of practical intelligence. Gladwell’s real life examples of practical intelligence helps to not only understand it better but also recognize it in action and better manage it in daily life. Gladwell offers so many examples in the book that any reader would have a hard time finishing it without having a heightened awareness of practical intelligence in action. For example, now that I have read the book, I can and often gauge practical intelligence during my interactions throughout the day. In every day conversations, I have become more cognizant of practical intelligence in play. With this knowledge, I not only recognize when others are working their practical intelligence, but I also have a better understanding of where I am and am not applying it myself.

One recent example is that I was talking to this guy who was telling me a story about one of his failures. However, he was recounting it as if it had been a success, since he supposedly did all the right things and it was the external force that held back the final result.

As he was telling me this story, I was shocked on the inside. With the practical intelligence (or mores) that I learned in life, we’re supposed to be humble. When we are recognized for accomplishments, we are supposed to be humble. During the conversation with this guy, I was thinking to myself that he’s telling me a whole story about one of his work experiences as if it had a tangible result, and I have a hard time talking about my own results, much less experiences that didn’t end up with a tangible result. Humongous lesson learned. Part of life is learning not be shy about accomplishments or failures.

Basically, Outliers helps put individuals who have more analytical than practical intelligence into the driver’s seat of life. It sheds some structure to understanding the nuances of life that lead to progress/success.

In addition to recognizing practical intelligence in my own life, I have also recognized it in pop culture. Two major examples stand out. One is this year’s Celebrity Apprentice winner Bret Michaels, the other is Grey’s Anatomy “Time Warp” episode where we get snapshots of the way medicine was practiced in the early 1980’s and see Dr. Bailey’s start into medicine as a “nice” person. Watching the whole episode is necessary to get the full impact, but it is jammed with examples of practical intelligence in action.

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 lose out big time. In an incredibly competitive world, managing a multicultural workforce is a challenge that can’t be ignored. (All of this may be obvious to people who think about it all the time, but I just recently started.)

When reading Outliers, I was surprised that it would be a key to better understanding a multicultural workforce. In Outliers, Gladwell introduces the ideas of analytical and practical intelligence. Analytical intelligence is academic, what you learn in school. Practical intelligence is knowledge that helps you read situations correctly and navigate ambiguous situations to get what you want, and it’s learned from life experiences growing up. The bulk of his book is dedicated to demonstrating the importance of practical intelligence in getting ahead.

Analytical vs. practical intelligence is huge when you think about how that plays out in a multicultural workforce, and a lot of Gladwell’s examples reinforce this. The implications mean that if someone grew up in a family that’s part of a dominating culture in the workforce, he/she has an inherent advantage in “getting ahead” and advancing in his/her respective career vs. someone who did not grow up in the dominating culture. In fact, Gladwell cites numerous cases where individuals can have superior analytical intelligence but lack the practical kind, and this variation can hold them back severely. As he notes in the book, it’s a shame since there’s so much severely underutilized talent. He makes the point that we need better social mechanisms to unleash this talent vs. let it wither away. Returning to how this applies to a multicultural workforce, the best organizations will be sensitive to these differences and maximize the diversity to be a benefit for the greater organization vs. letting talent stay latent. However, not surprisingly, there are many that don’t do that automatically and hence the need for initiatives like affirmative action.

Again, I’m sure this is so obvious to people who think about the challenges of a multicultural workforce a lot, and admittedly, it has been a little hard to start thinking about these topics from a libertarian standpoint since it doesn’t align with recognizing cultural benefits/disadvantages (note, I think cultural diversity is a BENEFIT, but I also realize that maximizing the upside is really complex). However, these issues are very real, and it’s better late than never to start thinking about these forces if I hope to handle them in a positive way myself.

Any manager who wants to unleash the benefits of a diverse workforce should consider Outliers a must read. Gladwell cites examples and builds arguments that may not be part of a typical multicultural workforce training, but they provide a unique and meaningful backdrop for sensitivity training for any leader and manager who really wants to improve this part of his/her skill set and get the corresponding results. An added bonus is that Gladwell’s observations go beyond a multicultural workforce and any reader will reap the benefits of these analyses too. I also hope to continue learning more, and I really look forward to delving into his other books, Blink and Tipping Point.

Given that I look to both of them as pioneers in paving the direction for where the media world will go, their decision to dedicate so much of their efforts and respective blog real estate to this topic underlines that immigration and the corresponding introduction of new ideas and new initiatives are key to future innovation and constant evolution.

In the US, access to technology is so abundant that it’s easy to forget that it isn’t ubiquitous. Part of my work in Panama included teaching computer classes, starting with really basic tasks like how to bold and how to italicize letters. After the Peace Corps, I periodically volunteered to teach several computer classes but mainly at schools or libraries for either underprivileged students or new immigrants. Their lack of computer skills wasn’t a surprise. In one situation, I was asked to teach more advanced Word and Excel skills for some NGO professionals. I was happy to help since I know that more advanced skills on both can be underutilized and could also bring a lot of efficiencies for the NGO.

When I taught the class, I was SURPRISED. I felt like I had returned to my days of teaching computer classes in Latin America. The students’ skills were a small notch above basic, and it was hard for me to imagine that we lived in the same society with so much access to technology. They were enthusiastic to learn and looked forward to some of the efficiencies they could gain from more advanced computer skills, but they really needed more than one class. The experience highlighted to me that we have our own digital divide in the US and face the similar challenges to the ones I faced in Panama–enthusiastic students and lacking resources. Hopefully, the F.C.C.’s initiative will help bring opportunities to students, who may have the inherent inclination to succeed but lack the option of learning the necessary skills of today’s modern economy.

But like a lot of things in life, if you give it a chance (or in other words, I couldn’t really leave that early politely), and then you realize that it’s not that bad and is even a little good. I didn’t agree with a lot of things I heard, but it was interesting to hear diverse views. It was also interesting to talk about specific parts of a book with people who could almost immediately identify. Without a book club, this is almost impossible to do if people haven’t read a piece at around the same time. And it’s also true that there were a handful of parts that I could appreciate better when not peeling through a 400-page book. 

Even though I heard diverse views on Dreams of My Father, my original perspective remained the same. For me, the strongest points of the book resonate in the subtitle, “A Story of Race and Inheritance.” It’s pubic knowledge that Obama’s maternal family played a large role in who he is today, but it’s almost impossible to truly appreciate his grandparents’ openness and sacrifices without the details of their lives in a pretty segregated part of the country, their trials and tribulations that led them to Hawaii and their commitment to raising their grandson. This is only one side of the book, and his journey in Kenya to learn more about his family’s history is a majestic story of returning to roots. 

A book club adds so many dimensions to reading a book that the pros outweigh the cons, and as the book club organizer noted, “it’s nice to talk about something other than work.” I’m looking forward to the next book and meeting. New ideas are almost requisite for constant reinvention. While book clubs can be great ways to sparking new ideas, they are also great for brain candy.

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 about to take a new direction, so I wanted my “About” section to reflect that. Nothing in the news cycle caught my eye like Rahm Emanuel’s quote did last year, so I searched some from my favorite authors—Isabel Allende, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jhumpa Lahiri. However, reading quotes selected by someone else and in isolation wasn’t inspiring me.

Around this time, I coincidentally looked up a chorus from a song I heard in yoga class, “Be the change that you wanna be, just like Gandhi.” Since I had read Gandhi’s biography in the Peace Corps, hearing this phrase and song spurred the inspiration I needed for the “About” section refresh.

I am not going to lie. Conan O’Brien was pretty tempting with “Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.” His quote captures the philosophies driving the “Entrepreneurialism & Reinvention” section of Global Brain Candy, but Gandhi won out in the end. Check out my new “About” section for a better sense of why he won, and here’s another potential runner-up for a little more inspiration, “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” -Goethe (1749-1832)

On top of this, with my speechwriting fantasy as a backdrop, I have also coincidentally learned many ins and outs of high profile events (as part of my day job) where highly influential leaders give speeches and get quoted in the media like the World Economic Forum (Davos), World Business Forum and the Wall Street Journal CEO Council to name a few.

“Speech Center” is going to be about different dimensions of speeches and the stories they depict through notable anecdotes, quotes and imagery and the venues where they have the potential to change the world.