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Becoming Antifragile – How To Gain From Disorder

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Image Credit: Andre Faria Gomes

Image Credit: Andre Faria Gomes via Slideshare: Antifragile: Lessons Learned

“Wind extinguishes a candle and energizes fire. Likewise with randomness, uncertainty, chaos – you want to use them, not hide from them. You want to be the fire and wish for the wind.”

-Nassim Taleb

Last week I gave a talk at the monthly Catalysts Collective event here in San Francisco on the topic of antifragility. The following points are highlights from my talk.

To understand the premise of Antifragile – Things That Gain From Disorder there are three key areas to consider.

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Beyond Meditation: Improving Brain Health And Performance

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Brain health is a fascinating topic. We know so little about our brains yet they drive everything we do. Meditation and the concept of mindfulness are popular topics, yet we don’t understand how we arrive at the benefits that everyone talks about. It’s probably safe to say that the majority of us don’t know how our brains actually work.

The good news is that we’re in new period of health and wellness where doctors can accurately see how our brains function, and even pinpoint the specific areas where our brains malfunction. This is very different from the traditional, assumption-based approach to making diagnoses in mental health. We are also learning that in many cases, real treatment doesn’t require the help of chemical drugs in order for us to find balance or heal.

 The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge, M.D. is an informative read that focuses on brain elasticity. He presents the concept that that we can redesign our brains by understanding how they work from a mechanical perspective.

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Smart Watch Review: The Vector Luna

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Vector Smartwatch synced to iPhone app

As far as smartwatches go the Vector excels in both design and technical prowess.

It does exactly what ones assumes a smartwatch would do. It notifies the wearer of the info he or she wishes to receive. It also serves as an elegant and reliable timepiece — nothing more, nothing less.

People tend to converse about smartwatches in the same way they do about Google Glass. What’s a smartwatch other than another digital device stealing our time and attention? Do we really want another barrier to real human connection, especially one that from the very beginning appears to be somewhat gauche?

In our information-crazed society where FOMO is a real thing, aren’t we distracted enough?

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How To Build A Successful Marketing Stack In The New App Economy

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Photo by Ron McClenny on Unsplash

There are many ways to drive users consistently to your app while delivering exactly what they want in the form of an entertaining and – if you’re lucky – addictive in-app experience. Based on your initial target market along with what you learn about your users, all it takes is a series of steps that are tactical, measurable, and scalable in methodology.

While your business needs must always be tied directly to your implementation plan, there are many things you can do to interact directly with your core user base while simultaneously reaching target market groups.

Here are 5 key steps to get there.

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Summertime Reads: The Element, at Work

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There are many books written and released around this time of year to entertain us on a hot, sunny, leisurely day at the beach with an ice-cold bevvy at hand. Some of these are written to educate, examine, and create dissent around current affairs, while others are written to inspire, entertain, or encourage us to think outside the box to better make sense of the world around us. Some books even manage to move the reader on a deep and profound level.  I recently devoured a book that for me, accomplished all of these.

The Element, by acclaimed speaker and thought leader Sir Ken Robinson, discusses the basic desire for us as human beings to connect to our individual “element.”  The Element, in essence, brings us to the core of our talent and as unique individuals, what we’re most optimized to do as a productive member of society.

The theme, admittedly au courant, is reminiscent of authors like Chris Guillebeau who encourage a similar aesthetic that our prime place of happiness and productivity exists where passion meets purpose.

In a reverse Marxist twist, Robinson taps into the education system and breaks apart the very formulaic systems created to educate, take stock of our talent, and train us for the job market. He explains that our element cannot be established with the current systems in place. He explains why standardized testing is a fluke on so many levels and convincingly provides reasons why the system’s measurements of strengths and intelligence are broken.

According to Robinson, unlimited variables exist that we do not acknowledge. From the importance of creative intelligence along with other possible “senses” – kinetics, intuition, and balance, to start – we cannot possibly come close to ascertaining a true path for each of the six billion human beings on earth with the methods currently employed.

What struck me repeatedly were the similarities between the flaws in our education system — and the unaddressed flaws in the construct of the present day working environment.

Robinson says:

“The current processes of education do not take account of individual learning styles and talents. In that way, they offend the principle of distinctiveness.”

In the prevailing 21st century business model of start-up culture and the race to IPO the next product, how does this fit in?

In many ways.

We hire programmers as modern-day line workers. They serve as mechanics, tasked with developing solutions and moving repeatedly in a reactive basis rather than a proactive one. Little regard is given to the creativity and underlying passion that this person may have as an individual.

We do not inspire our programmers, developers, managers, salespeople, and even designers to be proactive, to be curious, to learn, challenge, and be challenged. At a hot organization today’s talent is underpaid, uninformed,  yet highly in-demand for the technological advancement they afford.

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Top 5 Gift Ideas For The Music Geek On Your List

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Syndicated from Yahoo! Music Blog: As Heard On…

When it comes to holiday shopping, many of us freeze at the mere prospect of trolling a mall with hundreds of others in search of that perfect and unique holiday gift. Particularly when it comes to tech toys, why scour the shelves when we can make our purchases online at the last minute instead? I don’t know about you, but I love shopping in my PJs – and have the items delivered directly to my doorstep!

Whether you’re shopping at home or in the mall, for yourself or someone else, here are five ideas guaranteed to satisfy the music lover in all of us.

1. The Portable Player, a.k.a. The Boombox

If you’re looking for a dock for your iPod or iPhone, the On Stage IV from JBL is your match. The portable speaker system plays music from your device while simultaneously charging it. It travels easily and packs a punch for it’s small size.

If you can hold out until January, TDK is back in the game with the TDK Boombox, an excellent reinvention of the classic ghetto blaster. Both a two and three-speaker option will be available (the third speaker hosts a dedicated sub-woofer!). The boombox comes with USB support including input for a USB stick, AM/FM radio, and RCA, minijack, and ¼ inch inputs. Settings have illuminated touch controls with two oversized aluminum knobs for volume and radio tuning support. How cool is that!?

However, if you prefer to keep it real with an authentic ghetto blaster, never fear! EBay has an excellent selection spanning different styles and decades.

For some, it’s more important to ditch those bulky D batteries and play it green. The recycled boombox makes an excellent stocking stuffer or gift exchange item (and it ain’t too shabby at $18 a pop).

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Miro and the Enabling of Community Media

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One of my favorite online video platforms to emerge in the last few years is the open-source service Miro.

Formerly known as the Democracy Player, Miro is an Internet tv application developed by the Participatory Culture Foundation.

I’m a big proponent of open-source.  It drives innovation by allowing developers to build on each others’ work,  and makes creating and sharing content easy for everyone (and to support the service, you can adopt a line of code. How clever is that?!).

You can imagine how stoked I was to find out about  Miro Community, an ancillary service created for publishing videos.

Dubbed “The easiest way to make a video website”, Miro Community provides groups like local media organizations and schools with the templates they need to create their own video-based experience.

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