Everyone knew Vine's popularity was sliding, but its sudden end shocked a creative community now scrambling for a new platform.
Gretchen Lohse was just about to share her latest project with the world yesterday when her phone buzzed with some bad news. Vine, Twitter's social video app, was marked for death. For most denizens of today's social internet—addicted as they are to apps like Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook—the impending closure of Vine wasn't that big of a deal. But to people like Lohse, who serves as one half of the musical duo Carol Cleveland Sings, it marks the end of an era. Her band, which boasts more than 143,000 followers on Vine, has used the platform to post six-second clips of music videos created by her and coconspirator Thomas Hughes. Well, until now.
Carol Cleveland Sings' Vine account is by no means one of the most popular ones. The stories of artists and teen heartthrobs with followers in the millions have been well-worn, as have accounts of people who have used Vine to launch careers in television, movies, and other creative industries. But still, Lohse and Hughes represent a unique coterie of middle-class creatives who took to the service to express themselves in a way that only Vine allowed—in thoughtfully crafted and endlessly looping six-second clips served up to an audience bigger than they've garnered on any other social media outlet. And soon, that audience will vanish into thin air.
"Vine was its own art form," says Lohse. "It was really refreshing and different than the other apps that are out there. It opened up this whole new world of art for us."
Since its launch, Vine's minuscule time restriction struck many as silly. What could you possibly meaningfully express in a mere six seconds? A lot, as it turned out. It might be little more than a joke, a visual gag, or a snippet of a song, but the service quickly gave rise to a new kind of social media star, some of whom suddenly found themselves within striking distance of actual stardom. For Lohse, Hughes, and many artists like them, the time constraint presented a unique creative opportunity. And they used it, packing catchy melodies and slivers of bold, colorful imagery into these tiny videos and crafting them so that they would loop at just the perfect millisecond, delighting their followers and ensuring the each video's loop count—an engagement metric unique to Vine—kept climbing north. Since starting their account earlier this year, the band's endlessly entertaining Vines have helped them pile up new followers by the thousands.
"We're almost at 150,000, which is insane," says Lohse, who has played in several bands and performed as a solo artist in Philadelphia for more than a decade. "I never thought that 150,000 people would look at anything I did."
With Vine disappearing, artists like Lohse and Hughes have no shortage of other social platforms to choose from. But today, still somewhat shocked by the news of Vine's demise, they remain uncertain of where to focus they're energy next. They're already active in obvious places like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. But so far, no social network has offered the same creative experience as Vine—nor anything close to its massive audience.
While surprising to most of its users, Vine's death doesn't come completely out of the blue. The post-launch buzz had long faded as the hordes of users who rushed over to try out the latest hot social app had largely already trickled away toward services like Instagram, Snapchat, and—especially for the younger demographic that Vine still clung to—newer music-focused social video apps like Musical.ly. Twitter, eager to cut costs and sharpen its focus at it navigates a less-than-straightforward path toward a sustainable future, likely took one look at Vine's downward-sloping numbers and said something roughly to the effect of "ah, fuck it" and pulled the plug.
But just because Vine's user base wasn't huge doesn't mean the passion of those that remained is easily dismissed. Vine refugees will undoubtedly find their way to new creative homes online. Instagram, with the Vine-like video-shooting feature it just so happened to have launched shortly after Vine's arrival, is probably the next best option (and Instagram would be wise to court Vine's bummed-out expats and beef up its own video features). But while looping videos and social features are easily replicated, Vine offered one thing that's harder to replace: a community. As a company, Vine actively nurtured its relationships with creators on the platform and supported their efforts. As a community, Vine users often exhibited a unique camaraderie that took various forms, from digital reverence such as likes, re-shares, and comments to real-life friendships.
"When it first came out, it felt like the thing that I had always wanted from the internet—this weird, raw community of different people from all over the world," says Albert Birney, a filmmaker whose fictional gorilla alter ego Sylvio has more than half a million followers on Vine. "It really was a social thing. You met people, developed friendships. All of the sudden these introverted, quiet people were making friends and getting out there in the world."
Thanks to his Vine success and the support of his followers, Birney was able to make a full-length film featuring Sylvio, a project that is just now being wrapped up.
"I don't know why the community was so special to Vine," says Birney, although he admits that it lost some of its "weird, funky charm" when it became dominated by fresh-faced teenagers seeking social media stardom. Even so, "it felt like a special, safe place to make things," he says.
Although he knew that Vine wasn't seeing anything close to the overall usage it once did, Birney was still shocked by the news that it would be closing down. As many other Vine devotees pointed out online, Birney thinks the company could have found a way to fold Vine into Twitter itself, rather than shutting it down entirely.
"I always felt like I'd be able to quit Vine, not that Vine would be able to quit me," Birney says. "In the end, an app is a business and it's there to make its overlords money or whatever."
Like Carol Cleveland Sings and countless other creatives both big and small, Birney has no choice but to move on and find new online outlets for his work and hope that the audience will follow. As for whether or not his Sylvio character will live on via another social app, he isn't quite sure. For now, he's focused on putting the finishing touches on the film that Vine helped him jump-start. After that, he plans to get to work promoting it however he can.
"It's a bummer because I was getting some Vine ideas," says Birney. "It's going to be weird to all of the sudden not have that option."
Last-minute revelations, such as George W. Bush's drunk-driving arrest, don't always do much to change voters' minds.
It's been a perennial of presidential politics for almost half a century: the "October surprise," a damning revelation about a candidate leaked just weeks before Election Day. Today's news that the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server was being reviewed in the light of "new evidence" had headline writers using the term once again. And the revelation certainly fits the bill: Here we are just a week and a half before the election, and the potential for damaging news could upend Clinton's lead in the polls.
Already, rival Donald Trump is taking full advantage of the revelation, telling a cheering crowd in New Hampshire today that Clinton is corrupt. And after weeks of claiming that the system is rigged against him, he expressed new hope that things would turn his way.
"It might be not be as rigged as I thought," Trump told the crowd. "I think they're going to right the ship, folks. I think they're going to right this yet."
But if history is any guide, Trump may not benefit from the news as much as he hopes.
Though long-ago presidential elections were upended by last-minute revelations, the term "October surprise" only really came into popular use after the 1972 contest between GOP incumbent Richard Nixon and Democrat George McGovern, which was shadowed by the unpopular Vietnam War. Just 12 days before the election, Nixon's national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, announced that "peace is at hand," which some say gave Nixon a boost and helped him win a landslide victory that year.
In almost every election since then, there have been "October surprises." Most prominently, there were allegations that GOP nominee Ronald Reagan had cut a deal with the Iranian government in 1980 to delay the release of American hostages until after his campaign against incumbent Jimmy Carter. More recently, revelations emerged shortly before the contested 2000 election with Al Gore that then-candidate George W. Bush had once been arrested for drunk driving.
Yet according to some scholars, the October surprise doesn't always have much of an impact on the election. For example, Bush's drunk driving arrest made huge headlines and raised concerns about the candidate's prudence, but it barely moved the needle in the polls, noted Peter Hamby in a Shorenstein Center study: "While 83 percent of the public said they had heard of the story—a huge percentage—only 17 percent said they actually found the story 'informative.'" And, as we all know, Bush went on to squeeze past Gore and win the election.
And arguably one of the biggest factors in the 2012 contest—Mitt Romney caught telling a room full of donors that 47% of the population are just "takers"—actually happened in mid-September. Since the recording was made in May and not released for four months, some called it an "October surprise," but the author of the report explained that its late publication was due to negotiations with the anonymous man who recorded the comments.
Then there was the revelation in the final days of the 2008 election that Barack Obama's half-aunt had been living illegally in Boston—a story that came out amid plenty of speculation about Obama's birthplace. It cut his lead in the polls but didn't prevent him from winning a solid victory.
In his letter to members of Congress, FBI Director James Comey said that he "agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation." What made the decision even more dramatic was that, just three months earlier, Comey came under fire from Trump and Republicans for closing the probe without bringing any charges, even though he said that classified material had been exchanged on the server and that Clinton had been "extremely careless" in her handling of her emails.
But in this election cycle, there have already been several October surprises: The New York Times's publication of details of Trump's 1995 tax returns (revealing that he may not have paid taxes for up to 18 years) and the WikiLeaks dump of emails from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, to name a few. The tax returns were delivered to the Times anonymously in a manila envelope and the emails are suspected to be tied to hackers linked to the Russian government. Neither of them had much of an impact in the polls.
The one revelation that has arguably had the biggest effect was the Access Hollywood tape of Trump's groping comments, which shredded his support among independent women. The tape seems to have been leaked to the Washington Post by an anonymous staffer on the show and not likely due to Democratic opposition research or shenanigans.
Given that there have been so many startling revelations about both candidates this election season, it's hard to imagine the latest email probe significantly moving the needle in either direction. If it does, that would be the biggest surprise of all.
IBM is betting that automatically learning how you move the mouse will help detect unauthorized logins.
Traditionally, banking websites have relied primarily on passwords and PIN codes to make sure people logging in are really who they claim to be.
But users can be tricked by phishing attacks into entering their bank credentials into fake websites, or they can have their login information stolen by malware eavesdropping on their devices, letting thieves access their accounts and potentially steal funds. According to reports from IBM Security's X-Force team, almost 20 million financial records were breached last year alone, with each costing financial institutions an average of $215.
To help make it easier for banks to detect unauthorized logins, IBM is introducing what it calls behavioral biometrics to its Trusteer Pinpoint Detect anti-bank-fraud toolkit. The new feature will automatically use machine learning to build statistical models of how individual users move the cursor while using banking sites and flag unusual behavior.
"The system automatically learns normal user behavior," says Brooke Satti Charles, financial crime prevention strategist at IBM Trusteer, a formerly independent security company acquired by the computing giant in 2013. And since there's no new credential for a user to accidentally reveal, the system should be harder for fraudsters to fool than those based on passwords alone, she says.
"It's about what the user does, not what the user knows," she says.
When the new feature rolls out later this year, it will work in conjunction with existing Pinpoint Detect features that look for unusual changes in a user's location, device, or software settings. The software itself won't ever make the decision to lock a user out of an account, Charles emphasizes, but it will flag any suspicious findings for banks' own systems to review and use to take action.
The system should be sophisticated enough to learn multiple patterns of normal behavior for accounts with multiple users, like joint bank accounts, she says. Since it looks at overall patterns in how a user moves the cursor, not at what elements of the page they actually click on, it shouldn't penalize account holders who access new areas of their banks' sites, she says.
"The really cool, unique part is it's seamless and non-invasive to an end user, so it supports the online customer experience, basically stopping fraud—not productivity," she says.
It also won't be possible for fraudsters to simply capture users' exact mouse movements and replay them, since the system will detect that they're suspiciously identical, like a forged signature that matches too well. And the data and machine learning models that IBM will build in will be anonymized and won't be able to be used to extract account credentials or other confidential information, Charles says.
When it first rolls out, the new feature will focus on learning how users move laptop and desktop mice and trackpads, but the company may introduce comparable mobile tools in the future. Pinpoint Detect already offers tools to detect malware and compromised operating systems on mobile devices.
I'd bring back both Whitney Houston and Jeff Buckley from the dead to sing at my funeral. I'd also probably spend my last moments on this Earth worrying that no one else knew my online banking password.
That's some of what I learned about myself last Wednesday night in San Francisco, seated alongside an atheist chaplain, a divorce attorney, a married couple, a human longevity expert, and a musician. Rather than introduce ourselves by profession or startup idea, as is the norm with Bay Area dinner parties, we instead took turns sharing a story about a loved one who had passed away. Immediately afterwards, we lit a candle in remembrance. Dinner was served when all eight candles were lit.
Sound morbid? It's not. Welcome to Death Over Dinner, an idea that's grown into a series informal gatherings taking place across the globe. Anyone can host a dinner party by signing up online to access information like sample conversation topics ("What would you think about in your final minutes?" "When did you realize that you would die?"), cooking a meal, and inviting friends over.
The series was started by Michael Hebb, a former architect and teaching fellow at the University of Washington, with a goal to gather diverse groups of people to have meaningful conversations about end-of-life. Already, Arianna Huffington, Tim Ferriss, country music star Vice Gill, and hundreds of others have hosted events.
This particular Death Over Dinner was a special one: It was part of a series of events this week in San Francisco called "re-imagine," which aim to raise awareness about end-of-life issues, including the recent California law that allows terminally ill patients to seek a doctor's help to die on their own terms. In another session, longevity proponent Dr. Joon Yun (incidentally, seated to my left at Death Over Dinner) spoke with palliative care expert Dr. Ira Byock called "How Doctors Die." Surveys are finding that many doctors will resist the high-tech care that they dispense to their patients.
Michael Hebb
Hebb, a Portland native with floppy blonde hair, kicked off last night's discussion by sharing an oft-cited, but little-known statistic: 7 out of 10 Americans say they want to die at home, but around half spend their final days at a hospital instead. Hebb shared that he had the lightbulb moment for Death Over Dinner after a serendipitous meeting with two doctors on a train. They told him in no uncertain terms that the most broken part of the health care system is how we die. "I told them I had a potential solution," said Hebb. "People need to start talking about it."
The room where we talked, a converted library on the upper floor of the Battery, an elite San Francisco membership club, was packed with more than 60 attendees. It was startlingly quiet throughout the evening, with Hebb requesting that only one person at each table speak at any given time. "You'll surprise yourself by what you say," he told us.
He was right: A couple who had been married for 30 years learned about each other's wishes for their final days, a topic that hadn't come up in the flurry of starting businesses and raising children. They are far from alone: Nearly two-thirds of Americans do not have a living will, according to the American College of Emergency Physicians. Another study from the Pew Research Center found that despite the graying of America, 37% of American adults have not given a "great deal of thought" to their wishes for medical treatment at the end of their lives.
To ensure the conversation flowed, Hebb handed out a list of questions and assigned a moderator. We discussed how old we were when we realized we'd die, and how we'd react if we found out that we'd pass away in a matter of minutes. Occasionally, the conversation veered off course to other, more intimate stories, including other kinds of loss such as divorces and breakups.
I feared at these moments in particular that the conversation might become awkward and tense, given the diverse interests and beliefs of the guests around the table. Would the self-proclaimed Christian butt heads with the atheist chaplain, seated to her left? And how about the longevity folks? What were they doing at a dinner about death?
Dr. Yun, who started the $1 million Palo Alto Prize to "cure" aging, explained that mine was a common misconception, when I inquired about his interest in end-of-life. Dr. Yun didn't want to live forever; instead, he wanted to live better for longer. We also spoke in depth about some of the other impacts of life extension, including a future in which the nuclear family is less central, and the potential environmental impact.
Moments before dessert, Hebb asked us to share some gratitude for another person at the table. The hardest part of that experience was saying little else but "thank you," as we had been instructed to do. We acknowledged that it can be more challenging to accept compliments than criticism. The evening came to a close with a live performance; as you might expect, each of the songs were about mortality and death.
Over coffee the following day, I asked Hebb whether people assumed he was a morose or dark person when he shared his life's work. Hebb spends much of the year traveling around the country talking about death, a topic that is still taboo in our society. "My sunny demeanor helps," he joked.
Hebb believes that the tide is turning: The topic of end-of-life is now more mainstream than ever before. Films like the Twilight series and The Fault In Our Stars certainly helped, as well as the heightened media attention on the topic. Hebb is now working with 50 rabbis to create a Jewish version of the experience, as well as an edition specifically for medical professionals.
"People used to lean back and then lean in when they heard about the dinners," he explained. "Now they just lean in."
Correction: An article version of this article stated that sponsorship for the series came from Sutter Health, the Helix Center in the U.K., and the Ungerleider Palliative Care Education Fund. These are, in fact, the sponsors of a [i][i]related design challenge[/i] around end-of-life issues.[/i]
The service, with rentals starting at $6 an hour, is targeting non-car-friendly neighborhoods.
GM is expanding its Maven car-sharing service, a ZipCar/Uber/Lyft alternative, into Los Angeles. Maven, which launched earlier this year with rentals starting at $6 an hour, allows drivers pick up vehicles from pickup/dropoff points and then return them when they are done.
At GM's launch event on Thursday, GM vice president of Urban Mobility and Maven Julia Steyn said that "Los Angeles is a natural fit for Maven because of the city's incredible appetite for cars. We are excited to offer an elevated car-sharing experience with seamless connectivity in a fleet of luxury sedans, electric vehicles, and SUVs."
For its Los Angeles launch, which will include 60 initial vehicles for ride-sharing, pickup/dropoff points will be concentrated in downtown Los Angeles—the most pedestrian-friendly and arguably least auto-oriented area in the famously car-loving city. According to GM, Maven stations will initially be located in downtown Los Angeles, the South Park neighborhood adjacent to Staples Center, Little Tokyo, and around the University of Southern California.
GM gets one major benefit from leasing vehicles at $6 or $8 an hour—they expose customers to the automaker's newest (and option-filled) models. Customers have the choice of Chevrolet Cruze, Malibu, Tahoe, and Volt, GMC Acadia and Yukon, and luxury Cadillacs. All the cars include amenities like OnStar, SiriusXM radio, and unlimited 4G data—with insurance and fuel included as well. For GM, in essence, it's a way to get customers to test-drive their cars while also generating income for the automaker. Lyft drivers can also use Maven.
According to GM, more than 11,000 Maven members and Lyft drivers have made more than 12,000 reservations for the service and driven more than 23 million miles. Maven's Los Angeles launch follows a recent expansion into San Francisco, and the service also operates in Ann Arbor, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, New York, and Washington, D.C.
One company released an ambitious new product for a specific market while the other added a new feature to an existing mass-market product.
Like an old rivalry brought back to life, the two competitors faced off in the ring this week. Microsoft held a press event on Wednesday in New York City to announce its new Surface Studio desktop computer and a new input device called the Dial. About 24 hours later, Apple held a press event to announce new MacBook Pros featuring a new programmable Touch Bar to replace the function keys.
Comparing the two events, I'd say Microsoft won for pure innovation.
Microsoft announced a game-streaming service called Beam, some new communications features in Windows 10, a new VR headset reference design for Google's Project Daydream platform, and a souped-up Surface Book. About an hour into the program, it was time for the main event, the new Studio desktop PC and the Surface Dial. The Studio was demoed in grand style by Microsoft hardware chief Panos Panay on the stage in New York. It was kind of exciting.
The Studio is targeted at designers, illustrators, and other creatives. The 28-inch touchscreen of the device lowers to a drawing-board position on the desktop. Microsoft's Surface Pen is a big part of the way that users create on the Studio. And the new Dial rotary input method is supposed to play a supporting role for the Pen by calling up modes, or stroke thickness, or line colors, as the case may be. The Dial can be placed directly on the touch screen, and the OS and the app detect it and fashion menus around it.
Microsoft's Surface Studio[Photo: courtesy of Microsoft]
These are things most people haven't seen before on the desktop—new ideas designed to keep users completely engaged in creating.
Apple's event was a business-as-usual affair. The big news—new MacBook Pros—had already been leaked, as typically happens with their products. The company launched a new accessibility website for the disabled, announced a TV Guide-like app for Apple TV called TV, and teased some new 5K displays it built with LG.
Apple's new Touch Bar for MacBook Pro is innovative, but in a different way and in a different context than the Surface Studio. The Touch Bar is an OLED touch screen strip just above the keyboard where you'd expect the physical function keys to be. And depending on the app being used, the Touch Bar displays relevant shortcuts and content suggestions. So when the Safari browser is on the screen, the Touch Bar might display the user's most commonly used bookmarks. When Messages is open, you'll see emoji and word suggestions. And so on.
Apple also stresses that it is working to get third-party app developers to add Touch Bar support for their apps. For instance, Apple demonstrated Touch Bar shortcuts and other content for Photoshop users. We saw Touch Bar integration for Microsoft Office Suite products like Word and Excel.
The new MacBook Pros also offer significantly larger touch pads, thinner designs, faster processors, and individually lighted keys. In other words the MacBook Pros got all the normal component and design upgrades that any refresh of an existing line would get.
Apple's Macbook Pro[Photo: courtesy of Apple]
And that's how Microsoft's Surface Studio and Dial announcements are so different from the Apple news. Yes, you could say they are part of the "Surface" family, but they are also new kinds of tech products. The Studio is the first desktop computer Microsoft has ever made. The Dial is the first rotary input device offered as part of a major operating system.
The two products—the new MacBook Pros and the Surface Studio—will, at least at first, be judged by two very different communities of users after they become widely available.
Illustrators, designers, and architects will be the ones who make or break the Surface, who will assess whether or not it smooths their workflow and channels creativity.
The MacBook Pros, which will enter the marketplace faster than the Studio, will be used by the masses. After the holiday season, millions of them will be in use by lots of different kinds of people who do lots of different kinds of work. For some apps, the Touch Bar may end up being very useful and time saving. For instance, I use GarageBand for audio production, and shortcuts are essential (and hard to remember!). Photoshop—same thing. But, in general, it's impossible to know how the Touch Bar will fit into peoples' normal everyday computing workflow. It could end up being yet another thing that looked sexy in the demo, but wasn't that useful in real life.
The Surface Studio and the Touch Bar are different in another way too. The Dial gives a physical, tactile interface to functions that would normally be done on a touchscreen. It makes certain digital functions easier by making them feel analog. The Touch Bar goes the other way. It puts a digital touch screen interface in a place where a line of physical, tactile, analog function keys used to be.
The two products also fit into very different price ranges. The Surface Studio starts at $3,000 and ranges up to $4,200 for a fully loaded version. The MacBook Pro starts at $1,800 and ranges up to $2,400.
So the star of Microsoft's press event, the Studio (with the Dial in a supporting role) is a sexier product than the star of Apple's show on Thursday, the new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. But that's probably okay with Apple, which just may prefer to have fatter sales numbers than a highly innovative, category-breaking product.
Will we look back a year from now and see the Touch Bar as a landmark improvement or just a cool-looking feature that nobody uses that much?
Yesterday's big Apple event to announce a long-awaited refresh to its Mac line—a couple of new MacBook Pro 13-inch models and new 15-inch model—prompted big headlines, but will the buzz last?
You can think of the refresh in two ways: The new machines got the normal component upgrades (faster chip, better battery life, etc.) and a new shell design that's thinner and smaller than the last generation. That stuff happens with every refresh of an Apple product.
The thing that makes the refresh special is the addition of a new feature called the Touch Bar that replaces the row of function keys on the keyboard with a long, narrow OLED touchscreen. The Touch Bar contains a line of shortcuts and content keys that change depending on the program you're using. (Apple also added a Touch ID button for easier login and for using Apple Pay.)
The Touch Bar may be a first step into wider use of touch-screen technology in Macs, and it could lead one day to a MacBook Pro with a full touch-screen display. The Touch Bar can also be seen as the replacement of some physical, tactile controls (the function keys) with a digital interface like we have on our smartphones.
But on the day after the announcement (that "ooh that's cool" moment has worn off), I'm wondering if we'll look back a year from now and see the Touch Bar as a landmark improvement to the user interface, or as a cool-looking feature that nobody uses that much.
I do have my doubts about the Touch Bar's real usefulness. In apps that already rely heavily on shortcuts—like GarageBand and Photoshop—the Touch Bar might be very useful indeed. But in apps that have already evolved to work well with a pointer, I'm not sure people will be able to immediately integrate the Touch Bar options into their workflows. When you're in the zone cruising around the screen with the touchpad or connected mouse, are you really going to break away from that flow, look down at the keyboard, move your hand away from the touchpad (which, by the way, is twice as big on the new MacBook Pros), and look for the right button on the Touch Bar? Maybe, depending on the app, but it would take some getting used to.
People who use programs like Photoshop and Final Cut a lot might not need the Touch Bar controls, because they already have well-worn habits for completing tasks. The Touch Bar might be more helpful for people who are relatively new to those programs.
The most useful Touch Bar tricks I saw yesterday fit into two types. The first are controls, such as in the Photoshop Touch Bar, that can be touched with the left hand to select modes and styles, allowing the right hand to go about its business on the touch pad. The second useful tool I saw lets you adjust things, like the angle of an image or the degree of image opacity, by moving a slider back and forth on the Touch Bar. That's something that can't be done as easily using the touch pad.
Other Touch Bar uses I'm seeing today don't look that useful. Microsoft has built Touch Bar integration for its Office apps, but many of them just replicate the function buttons in the apps' command bar. These are things like the bold, italic, and bullet point buttons. Do I really need a new button for those so badly that I'm willing to change my long-used workflows in those programs? I have my doubts.
My colleague Harry McCracken points out that Apple did a smart thing opening up the Touch Bar to developers right out of the gate. The value of the Touch Bar could increase if developers begin getting really creative about Touch Bar tools that save clicks and make apps more enjoyable to use.
"I think the TouchBar will offer some modest benefits to people—as long as enough application developers take advantage of it," says Technalysis president Bob O'Donnell, "because it keeps the screen clear of your hands, which can be difficult with a traditional touch screen."
Without using the new MacBook Pros for a few weeks with my favorite programs, there's no way of knowing for sure how useful the Touch Bar would really be. But lots of people who are coveting the new MacBook Pros today are in the same boat. My advice to new prospective buyers is this:
If you're going to lay the credit card down for one of the new MacBooks, and if the Touch Bar is a big part of why you're buying, think hard about how the new feature will fit into your normal work (and play). If you're simply due for a new MacBook Pro because yours is old, well, I'm not going to dispute that the new MacBooks are worth the money based on their power, design, functionality, and, yes, pure beauty. The new machines are a strong extension of a long tradition of laptop making at Apple, and they are as popular as they are for good reason.
It's interesting to me that Apple decided to offer one SKU of the new MacBook Pro without the Touch Pad. This means the company has identified a market segment that wants the design and component upgrades of the new MacBook Pro but doesn't attach enough value to the Touch Bar and Touch ID button to pay another $300 for them.
And these new machines aren't cheap. Apple pushed up the prices on this year's model significantly, relative to the last generation. The 13-inch version of the device with Touch Bar/Touch ID starts at $1,799 compared to the starting price of $1,299 for the 13-inch in the previous generation. The 15-inch model with Touch Bar/ID starts at $2,399.
Not everybody is as skeptical as I am. Long-time Apple analyst Tim Bajarin (Creative Strategies) believes the Touch Bar is right in line with Apple's approach to the user interface. "It reflects Steve Jobs design philosophy that with Macs and laptops it is much easier to use a mouse and keyboard to navigate through applications, and the Touch bar is the next logical implantation of his view on the role of touch," Bajarin says.
"I think we will look back and see that the Touch Bar and supported apps will really enhance the laptop experience and be viewed as an important evolution of user interface design."
Although it's home to some of the best hospitals in the country—New York City lags far behind San Francisco when it comes to funding digital health startups and, when compared against another tech hub like Boston, has seen far fewer IPOs in the health care sector since 2012. This despite a survey of thousands of early-stage startups by investment research firm CB Insights that found entrepreneurial interest in apps, social, and email is waning in favor of startups working on virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and health care.
"A lot of the growth we've seen in the tech sector has been in areas that might be described as lower hanging fruit with lower barriers to entry: tech, fashion, e-commerce, media," Haot tells Fast Company. "Obviously everything is regulated to some extent by the government," she points out, "but it's not prohibitive in the way that it is in the industries that we focus on."
Haot says that while there's been enormous growth in fashion, e-commerce, and the like, heavily regulated sectors from education and energy, food and financial services have been slower to expand. "That's surprising," she says, "because in addition to being a leader in tech, New York City is a leader in many of these legacy industries."
That's where 1776—which put down roots in N.Y.C. this summer—comes in. Founded in 2013, 1776 is a public benefit corporation that seeks to boost innovation in sectors like education, energy, food, fintech, and smart cities. Through its $12.5 million fund, 1776 has made 27 seed stage investments to date.
Haot, who is best known for her role as N.Y.C.'s first chief digital officer—and later the chief digital officer for New York state—has been tasked with shepherding 1776's expansion into the city, which includes a sprawling 30,000-square-foot campus being built in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. (1776 already has campuses in San Francisco, Dubai, and Washington, D.C.)
A cornerstone of 1776's operating philosophy is to open up channels of communication between entrepreneurs and regulators, policy makers, and investors. By forging partnerships with the likes of Microsoft, Comcast Business, and MedStar Health, 1776 hopes to broker the sharing of ideas between early-stage startups and corporations.
"What we see often is that when it comes to the mix of entrepreneurs, legacy business, and government officials, it can sometimes feel like everyone's speaking a different language and that they are not at the table together," Haot says. "So what we do, is we create this neutral forum where everyone is aligned in their interests of supporting innovation and job growth, and building products and services that change the world."
A key part of that, she says, is to match corporations with interested entrepreneurs and then facilitate communication. "It goes both ways because a startup may not be aware of the regulations that they're going to be facing," she notes, "or they may not be aware of the actual market conditions that they're entering."
Also, if a company is successful, Haot observes, it's going to have to interact with government in a significant way. "We want to make sure that at a minimum, whatever strategy or tactics they employ as they grow, that companies are aware of the regulations that surround their industries and what barriers they face," says Haot. "We want to help to really cultivate sophisticated entrepreneurs," she continues, "who are aware of the regulatory challenges they are up against."
All this meant building not only physical campuses, but also a digital network for everyone who interacts through 1776.
"The entire 1776 world is knit together digitally by a platform that we call Union," Haot says. "so Union is really like an operating system for entrepreneurs."
Through Union, entrepreneurs are granted access to mentors, curriculum, and events from across 1776. Union brings those outside the 1776 network into the fold as well. In fact, the organization works closely with other incubators and accelerators, and many of the events 1776 holds on its campuses are streamed or posted to Union.
You could say the work being done by 1776 and the work Haot did as chief digital officer are two sides of the same coin. The end goal is to bridge the gap between government and the tech sector, and to innovate by tackling the issues that most impact the residents of N.Y.C. On a more granular level, Haot says both jobs involved similar approaches. As CDO, her first assignment was to create the city's first digital roadmap, which would set the tone for what came next: introducing public Wi-Fi, followed by digital literacy programs and the open data portal.
"What was interesting was that as we were planning out the campus for 1776, a similar framework emerged for how we're going to support entrepreneurs," Haot explains. "It basically translates to a hierarchy of needs for the entrepreneur." Providing the infrastructure of public Wi-Fi, she says, was comparable to creating a space for entrepreneurs to work (which, of course, has to include fast internet access). After that is education, so as with the digital literacy programs, 1776 provided "classes, curriculum, everything an entrepreneur needs to succeed." The next step was to make data available and engage the community, which Haot likens to 1776's Union platform.
Another thing Haot continues to tackle at 1776 is corporations and organizations that, while not immovable, are slow or resistant to change. But it's not just government or legacy businesses that shy away from taking risks. Investors can be wary of backing startups that take on highly regulated industries.
"In the past, investors have been a little nervous about it," Haot says. "They've been apprehensive about having to wait 10 years for an exit, or being in a scenario where an unknown piece of legislation could make or break a company and not having control over that," she adds. "We see a huge opportunity where others may not want to get involved."
How to separate the possible from the probable, then act accordingly—even when it's risky.
I purposely don't tell my family about the "crazy" things I do when I travel. They only found out that I'd hitchhiked through Burma, motorbiked across southern India, or walked alone across the Egyptian-Israeli border at sunrise well after the fact. Because I know what they'd say: Can't you get kidnapped like that? Can't you get robbed? Or harassed? Or hurt? And they'd have a point.
Sure, all those mishaps are conceivable, but they aren't all that likely. It's within the realm of what's possible, but it's not probable, so my time and energy aren't best spent preparing too much for a very unlikely outcome. That's not to say there's no risk in these cases, just that it doesn't overdetermine my decision.
There are two converse principles I've learned to apply to my life whenever I'm contemplating taking a risk, but which one I choose to apply depends on whether the risk relates to my career or to travel:
For travel: Focus on what's probable, not what's possible.
For career: Focus on what's possible, not what's probable.
Over time, I've learned to be safe when I travel. I don't take unnecessary risks, but I don't worry about things that are so unlikely to happen that they'll prevent me from having a unique and serendipitous travel experience.
Night buses in countries with high, narrow, treacherous roads? Not a chance. Walking through a crowded street in Delhi where I'm likely to be harassed? No, thanks. But accepting an invitation to join a woman and her children for dinner in Muscat? Wonderful. Hitchhiking with a partner in a country known for its kind and gentle culture? Probably fine. For me, these are pretty reasonable guidelines to work within.
With travel, I'd do almost nothing if I only thought about what maybe, potentially, possibly could happen. I have to focus on what most probably is going to happen.
In my career, though, it's just the opposite; I'm a ruthless risk-taker. I quit a corporate job in New York with a leadership track so I could move to Nigeria with a global media company that promised on-the-ground international experience and rapid advancement—or so they said. I really had no idea at the time whether it would pan out that way. I left my last job for a year because I wanted to see if I could become a professional writer and build up a coaching business. Now I've been accepted to a fellowship in a completely new career arena, and I'm going to try that, too.
In these cases, I'm not focusing on what's likely to happen, and I'm not managing my risk taking by telling myself not to worry if the new job doesn't work or if I can't make it freelancing. On the contrary, I'm actively narrowing in on the best-case scenario that lies two standard deviations away from what usually happens: I find my dream job, I make a killing freelancing, I build my ideal international lifestyle that spans three continents, and I meet highly influential and inspirational people who play a role in my life for decades to come.
For me, it's not about setting unrealistic expectations, it's about deciding whether your life is going to be led by aiming for the bottom of the bell curve and trying to do everything in your power not to let that stuff happen (going broke, getting stuck, being ostracized from important communities, failing, and feeling ashamed) or eyeing the top of the bell curve and doing everything in your power to make that stuff happen (wild success, intense love and support from others, dreams coming true left and right).
Life falls somewhere in the middle, of course, but you can often push yourself toward one end or the other. I can't say I've necessarily achieved the top of my curve yet, but I'm soaring way above where I'd be had I just focused on the median all along, or let my fear of the worst-case scenario limit how hard I'd really try, how far I'd really go, or how deeply I'd really care.
If you ask me, this goes for personal relationships, too. Did you know every time you start something with someone, the likelihood of it working out is approximately 0.00009%—or something like that? It's low, anyhow. But does that mean you begin dating thinking that it's not going to work, or that this person has nothing valuable to add to your life because someday he'll have moved onto someone else? Of course not! That's a self-fulfilling prophecy every single time.
In fact, the outsize optimism that dating fundamentally requires may hold the key to managing expectations in other spheres of our lives, too—the ones where it's often harder to aim for what's possible than to settle for what's probable. Even if this particular romance or career move doesn't work out, you didn't undermine its potential by only giving it 50%. You set your sights high, acted with integrity and vulnerability, and eventually that formula will reward you.
Whether it's travel, life, career moves, or relationships, it all comes down to championing love over fear. So focus on the love, choose to move toward the big exciting things, and don't waste time maneuvering around the small scary stuff. Not all risks are worth the taking—but you always need to know which ones are, and why.
Elaina Giolando is an international sales director and digital nomad who's lived and worked in more than 50 countries. She writes about global careers, unconventional lifestyle design, and meaningful travel on Life Before 30.
Excuses, explanations, apologies—they're all different things. Here's when (and how) to use each of them the next time you mess up at work.
You just dropped the ball. But, here's the thing you want everybody to know: It absolutely wasn't all your fault.
Nope, those good-for-nothing folks in the marketing department were late in getting you the information you desperately needed. Or something weird happened with your calendar app and all of your dates got mixed up. Your alarm didn't go off. You didn't sleep well the night before. The sun was in your eyes. Whatever happened, it absolutely wasn't your doing that caused this misstep.
Sound familiar? We've all spit out excuses in the attempt to save face and shift blame, even if we know better.
But, every now and then, you run across those situations when you feel like added clarification is absolutely justifiable—however, you'd like to provide that necessary context in a way that doesn't make it sound like you're offering a flat-out alibi.
So, is there a way you can walk the dangerously fine line between explanation and excuse? Turns out, there is! Here's how you can provide that needed background information you're so eager to share—without any of those classic, "The dog ate my homework!" connotations.
Before we get into exactly how to navigate these murky waters, you need to take a good, hard, and honest look at yourself to determine if an explanation is really necessary—or if you're only trying to sugarcoat a good old-fashioned excuse.
Ask yourself this: What impact does sharing this have on the final outcome? Will failing to voice that information result in your team moving forward incorrectly on a project? Or will speaking up just serve to shift the spotlight away from your shortcoming and make you feel indemnified?
If you're falling into that latter camp, then it's not really an explanation you're looking to provide—you're still only trying to avoid responsibility. If you can't pinpoint one solid reason why one is warranted, then you're usually better off keeping your lips zipped altogether.
Alright, so you've decided that you absolutely need to chime in with some added clarification about what exactly caused you to come up short. This information is important, and you think your boss or your team needs to be looped in on it.
Now what? Before diving in with the details of what exactly happened, you're going to want to pay close attention to how you kickstart your spiel.
That means staying far, far away from qualifiers. Prefacing your explanation with things like, "I don't want to sound like I'm making excuses, but . . ." or even a seemingly innocent, "Just so you know . . ." ultimately send the wrong message.
So, do your best to stop them from flying out of your mouth and instead jump right in with the need-to-know, nitty-gritty information that's relevant and important to the other people involved.
"Wait, what?" you're likely thinking to yourself now, with a repulsed look on your face, "Apologize? I thought we already determined that this wasn't my fault!"
I get it—saying that you're sorry seems counterintuitive. But, regardless of what exactly happened to get you to this point, the moral of the story still remains the same: You came up short on your end of the deal. Things didn't go according to plan, and you weren't able to deliver what was expected of you—for whatever reason.
Like it or not, that warrants an apology. This doesn't need to be anything complex. Even something like, "I'm sorry that I'm a day late in submitting this report" before providing the added background information demonstrates that you accept responsibility for your role in the situation—even if there were other factors contributing to your tardiness.
Trust me, this key detail alone will work wonders in making it clear that you're simply trying to provide added context for everyone, rather than attempting to point fingers or play the blame game.
No, I don't mean this in a nonchalant, "Sorry this report is late—I accidentally burnt down the office when the copy machine set on fire. Whoops, no biggie! What's for lunch?" sort of way. Of course, you don't want to dwell on what happened—but you don't want to forcefully jam it all under the rug and act like nothing went wrong either.
Instead, what I mean by "move on," is that you should be prepared to share exactly how you'll move on from this experience. After all, what's even better than someone who's willing to acknowledge his mistakes? Someone who's willing to learn from them.
Place your focus on explaining how you'll avoid this same problem in the future. Using the example from above, this could look something like, "I'm sorry I'm a day late in submitting this report. I ran into some setbacks in getting the numbers I needed. I'm going to build in more of a schedule buffer the next time I work on one of these."
See how simple, brief, yet effective that was? In the end, it's not really what happened that your boss or your team will care about—it's how you react to it that matters.
You already know better than to spew out a bunch of lame excuses whenever the opportunity arises. But sometimes you find yourself in situations where providing reasoning is absolutely justified, yet you're unsure how to offer it without it sounding like you're trying to sneak away from any blame.
Put these four simple tips to work, and you're sure to delicately tiptoe on that fine line.
This article originally appeared on The Daily Muse and is reprinted with permission.
A booming segment of the vacation industry is catering to a stressed-out population looking to unwind in healthy ways.
"People are burning out a lot faster these days at work," says Melissa Bruno, founder of Invigorate Travel.
Bruno calls herself a "lifestyle travel consultant," not a travel agent. She sees herself as someone who not only books travel for you, but also offers you a way to change your lifestyle. Bruno sends groups to exotic locales like Bali and Peru for customized hiking trips and yoga immersions. She calls her getaways "transformative experiences."
"People need an outlet and it has to be a little different than what it normally has been," she says. Citing the traditional beach vacation of Mai Tais, suntans, and lazing around on a hammock, she says, "People aren't satisfied with that anymore—at least not for the younger people. The millennials want more. And they're willing to spend the money."
Bruno is one of many new entrepreneurs who specialize in wellness travel, which is now a $563 billion global industry. It is defined as vacationing while enhancing or maintaining one's well-being—physical, mental, or spiritual. So everything from yoga retreats to boot camps to healthy cooking tours in Italy fall under this umbrella. While overall tourism is growing at 6.9%, the wellness tourism sector grew 14% in the last two years and is now one of the fastest-growing tourism markets, according to the Global Wellness Institute. More than 690 million wellness-focused trips were taken in 2015 worldwide.
As a result, travel agents have enjoyed a comeback. Travel-industry firm MMGY reported a 50% increase in the use of an agent in the last three years, with 2016 hitting a six-year high. These aren't baby boomers picking up the phone, but millennials in their 30s who are tired of sifting through various websites to stitch together a cohesive itinerary. Couple that with an increase in wellness and you've got yourself a new generation of travel enthusiasts. What's more, the wellness traveler traditionally skews toward the more affluent and educated, but it's become more democratized with affordable retreats increasing across the globe.
Within the category, several trends have spiked in recent years. Spa travel is still popular, but more and more, Americans of all ages are looking to get active on vacation. A recent survey by the Destination Analysts found that fitness classes, yoga, surfing, and guided mediation (in that order) are some of the most popular activities for get-aways.
Currently, the U.S. is the largest wellness tourism market, and that's primarily due to our go-until-we-drop lifestyles, according to Beth McGroarty, research director at the Global Wellness Institute. Americans are vacation-deprived, sleep-deprived, more prone to chronic diseases, generally overworked, and overconnected to their devices. With so much daily stress and unanswered emails accumulating in our inboxes, our time off becomes even more important. "There is no end to work. You're constantly stressed," McGroarty says. "It's pushing people to want vacations that are restorative and actually make them feel better. They desperately need it."
McGroarty, as well as other travel specialists, repeatedly attest to hearing the same thing from travelers, from boomers all the way down to millennials: They're exhausted.
"The old model was 'party time,' and to let go," McGroarty says. "But that's changing. What you need to achieve now to stop feeling burned out is different."
Stephanie Tuck, head of communications at PopSugar, is already quite active in her daily life, but not to the degree she'd like. Her fitness goals are routinely thwarted. "Work gets in the way," she says.
When Tuck does have a chance to take time off, she joins Escape To Shape, an adventure travel/fitness company that caters to many women with high-pressure jobs. "Instead of just grabbing an hour here or there in the course of a week, you could be on a hiking trail for six to eight hours a day," she says. One recent trip took her to Istanbul, where she did yoga and early-morning jogs along the Bosphorus, followed by swimming in the Sea of Marmara and hiking on Princes' Island.
Tuck, who is a New Yorker, enjoys the exhaustion—the good kind—and clarity she feels at the end of an active travel day. It's a high she feels she's "earned." She's building muscles and able to think better due to the lack of distractions, giving her the energy to return to work. "You come back glowing, looking refreshed and feeling reset," she says.
Linden Schaffer, founder of the wellness travel company Pravassa, recalls how only seven years ago, there wasn't even a name for this sector. Now it's a booming business. This is due in part to cultural technological shifts, but also to society's growing love affair with healthy living.
"Living a well lifestyle is not a trend, but the current evolution of our society, one in which we used to look at smoking, drinking, and drugs as glamorous, and wellness outside the norm," says Schaffer.
Pravassa offers group and individualized itineraries for people and companies looking to restore their well-being, productivity, or even just break their bad habits. Their upcoming five-day trip to Costa Rica, for example, includes daily yoga, life-coaching sessions, meditation classes, fresh local gourmet food, and even a "clean living workshop."
In 2014, Pravassa enjoyed its first triple-digit percent growth in bookings, and this year they're on track to reach it again. Schaffer predicts future growth, based on the increasing demand for healthy vacations.
"With the lifestyle that people are living today, wellness travel has become so popular because people not only need that time off, but they need it to be effective when it comes to relaxation and stress reduction," she says. "Once people travel in this way, they wonder how they ever traveled any other way."
Pravassa attracts 85% women and 15% men, ages 30 to 70. Several agencies I spoke to relayed similar numbers, attesting to female-led trips, many of them including working moms who need a break. Nearly all put experiential-driven millennials at the top of their client percentages, with Gen Xers and retired baby boomers right behind them.
Millennials crave genuine cultural experiences as part of their healthy vacations. They demand more wellness travel than the boomers, and that will only increase as they grow into their spending power. But niche companies can cater to powerful niche demographics, as demonstrated by Strength In Numbers (SIN), a fitness concierge and travel service that boasts primarily male clientele.
Catering to high-income individuals who travel frequently, SIN offers a monthly membership that starts at $450 for fitness concierge services (rates for individual, one-time services are also available). Services include booking fitness classes, finding personal trainers, and even delivering green juice. These clients make up 86% of the wellness travel market and are considered secondary wellness tourists in that the healthy-living experience is not the primary purpose of the trip. To suit their needs, a plethora of mainstream hotel chains have gone the "healthy hotel" route, offering more nutritious breakfast buffets and healthy amenities like yoga mats or treadmills in the hotel room.
As the Global Wellness Institute's McGroarty notes, "It must be a worthy investment because every single brand is getting on the bandwagon." Showing they care for guests' well-being is also a good marketing strategy. "It projects a very good image for a hospitality brand."
SIN, founded in 2012, takes this concept one step further by truly catering to everything the healthy traveler could want, customized to their needs. They don't just book you a spin class when you're away from home: They research which instructor's class music would gel with your taste.
"There are so many experiences you can obtain now, whether it's numbers-driven or rising to a beat," says SIN founder and CEO Vanessa Martin. Eighty percent of SIN's clients are men who work in the finance industry, with Hollywood actors and actresses on location for movies comprising the next largest share. The company partnered with luxury hotel groups, such as the W and The Denihan Group (The Benjamin, The Surrey, The James) to offer one-off bookings for guests. In the past year, SIN has grown 39%.
The list of destinations has expanded as well. In the past, Americans tended to pick the same places over and over—Arizona or Hawaii, for instance—but today's traveler is headed to far-flung exotic locales like Nicaragua, Thailand, Vietnam, Bali, or Morocco. They're especially eager to experience the world before overdevelopment destroys it. "The world is losing its nature, so people are thirsty for it," she says.
Governments, both regional and national, have also caught on and adjusted their tourism advertising to attract the health-conscious tourist. Campaigns such as "Incredible India" are incorporating wellness imagery, while smaller cities like Santa Barbara are touting their "fresh air" and "outdoor fun."
"It seems unstoppable," says McGroarty, citing the industry's projected 7.5% growth between 2015-2020. It's expected to reach $808 billion, pushing toward a trillion. But what can you expect from the overworked American who needs to hit the refresh button?
"When you have such little time off, you really can't afford to come back from a vacation where you drank too much, stayed up all night, and ate really horrible food," McGroarty says. "You can't afford coming back feeling worse than you did when you left."
This month's top stories may help you put your stress to good use, write better cover letters, or even end the year with a promotion.
This month, we learned which cover letter gaffes turn hiring managers away, what kinds of work-related stress may actually be useful, and why the cybersecurity sector may want to consider recruiting musicians.
These are the stories you loved in Leadership in October 2016:
The days of the cover letter may ultimately be numbered, but they're still widely used to screen candidates. These are some of the most common immediate disqualifiers, according to one experienced hiring manager.
Got your eye on a raise or promotion by the end of the year? To get it, you'll need to make a case for what you're worth to your company. This month, one CEO shared the basic math he uses to make decisions like these, saying, "For every dollar that you hope to get in increased pay, you need to bring in three to five dollars to the business for your raise to make sense."
Chances are your to-do list is a bit of a jumble, right? You're not alone—the very act of prioritizing your daily action items sometimes doesn't feel like a top priority. But with this straightforward method, you can give your work tasks some much-needed structure, and all you need to know are your ABCs.
Chronic stress can be a workplace killer, but researchers believe that smaller doses of "acute" stress may actually help us develop our skills and boost productivity. Here's a look at a few ways to make limited amounts of job-related stress work in your favor.
The legacy carmaker isn't exactly known for its fast-paced, innovative culture, but CEO Mary Barra is trying to change that. With several key acquisitions under its belt, GM is picking up a few things from the tech world, hoping the best and brightest will take note.
Becoming a new manager isn't easy. For Buffer's Katie Womersley, it didn't help that she felt the people she was tasked with managing were better developers than she was. Here's what she says it took to shake that self-doubt and settle into her new role.
Paltrow told Fast Company this month that recent rumors she'd be leaving Goop, her lifestyle brand, are dead wrong. The company is growing fast, thanks in no small part to the "lean" startup methods that inform its new, curated product lines featuring just a handful of items at a time.
Email is only as effective as what it gets done, so this week we learned how to trim the inefficiencies out of our messages to make sure they accomplish more in fewer words.
Data breaches are becoming so commonplace that the cybersecurity sector can't seem to grow fast enough to help organizations defend themselves. In fact, the sector is at 0% unemployment, and the race to find qualified talent is driving up wages. That means looking for crossover skills in unlikely places, and some believe that musical training may be one of them.
There's plenty of advice out there for faking confidence, but the better approach may actually be to persuade yourself to actually feel the vibe you're trying to project. Here's a look at the latest psychological research on how to trick your brain into greater self-assurance.
Buffer created a mini in-house startup accelerator to let three employees build and test a new product. Here's what they learned.
What is it that the customer wants? What is the problem they face each day? What services are they hiring out for that we could meet with a bit of software? What if we could help people create better social media ads? What if that isn't quite the problem, but rather tracking and spending ad dollars wisely? What if? What if? What if?
Sometimes a series of "what ifs" or "whys" can lead to new and exciting places. For three Buffer teammates, an exploration of "what ifs" created a whole new venture—at least for a short while.
In determining the best possible path for our social media photo creation tool, Pablo, they embarked upon a nine-week journey that challenged and stretched them like never before—and ultimately created a new nine-week accelerator program at Buffer.
Roy, Phil, and James were quite familiar with working together—all worked together on Pablo, a quick and easy way to share images on social.
The team at Pablo, which had been functioning as a "startup within a startup" for some time, began to experiment with ways to grow faster in May and June of 2016. They were growing at about 4% week over week, but wanted to get to 25% to 50% growth instead.
Try as they might, they couldn't seem to get usage numbers to change on Pablo as exponentially as they hoped, no matter the marketing or product tweaks. So they dug in a bit more. How could they set Pablo apart as a product? One pain point that came up again and again for customers was Facebook Ads. What if Pablo could help people create more effective Facebook Ads?
This was the spark that lit the way to taking a new direction. James, Pablo's designer and front end developer, did a mockup of what this product, then called Ad Rocket, might look like as a quick side project—their attention was still focused on growing Pablo. Then they took this to Joel and Leo, Buffer's cofounders.
Their first week provided a ton of lessons and they moved into a second week of a sprint and then a third.
Here is an early prototype:
After a few weeks of these sprints, the Pablo team approached Joel and Leo again and shared that the idea definitely had some legs as a product separate from Pablo.
Joel and Leo gave the team the go-ahead with the framework of a lean accelerator program:
Nine weeks to work on the project
Goal to reach product-market-fit
At the end, they'd evaluate whether Buffer would continue to fund it
The team dove into more customer calls, product iterations, and brainstorming sessions. They learned a few key things that sent the product in a new direction. Originally, the Rocket crew postulated that people needed help creating images and crafting ads themselves. Second, most people and agencies struggled not with the creative but with optimizing ads and knowing where to target their advertising dollars. And third, people had reservations with third-party apps handling their ad money.
The iterations of Rocket then evolved in similar ways. The first version honed in on trust issues, featuring an extension in Facebook Ads Manager to help generate reports and analytics. Another idea was an auto-optimizer: Press a button and instantly an optimized ad is posted. However, most people wanted a bit more control than this.
Eventually, the key finding from the Rocket team was that many agencies, freelance consultants, and in-house ad managers were struggling to analyze the data from ads. Some were hiring people to put data from Facebook Ads Manager into spreadsheets in order to draw conclusions on what was and wasn't working.
So Rocket began to form more clearly as a dashboard to view your ads' performance.
The small team's roles all blended together as they jumped into customer calls, researched more about Facebook ads, and made product adjustments.
There was a deeper sense of pressure with the nine-week deadline and even a sense of isolation from the rest of the Buffer team. Days were longer, the responsibility for each person greater. There were fewer team members to fall back on if something was broken or needed to be done. It created a deep bond for the three teammates who were learning and growing on a much faster scale.
"It was the typical ride for a startup," said Roy of the roller coaster of emotions throughout. "One moment we're good, then, we're awesome, then, oh no, we're dead."
James called this the "summer of Rocket" as the nine weeks required him to work more than he ever had—and he learned more than ever. "There was so much motivation to make this work (with the nine-week deadline also looming), it didn't seem to matter that we were working more," James said. "Toward the end of the project, I realized my energy levels were really low and I had almost burnt out. I had to take a day or so off and then really set up a schedule where I was taking regular breaks."
As the end of the three months loomed, the team pushed for their minimum viable product to reach product-market fit and sought one of the biggest milestones they had yet to reach: paying customers.
They reached that goal on August 12, just before the end of the accelerator period, with Rocket's first paying customer.
The team knew Rocket was definitely solving a problem. But would it be enough?
The goal of the "Buffercelerator" was to validate a project in nine weeks with paying customers. This is perhaps one of the best signals of whether the product has "made it" as an MVP.
When the Rocket team pitched the product to Joel and Leo for further investment, they had at least one paying customer and knew there were people who liked the idea of Rocket.
James said, though, that when they showed customers the product itself, they were less enthusiastic. So as the Rocket team pitched the product to Joel and Leo for further investment, they had no idea which direction their "investors" would go.
Here's their full pitch deck:
After thinking things over, Joel and Leo decided not to move forward as an angel investor in Rocket—but they did leave the possibility open for the team to keep going if they chose to. Rocket's future, if the team chose it, would look like this:
Rocket receives $25,000 per founder, to last a four-month period.
Each team member receives 10% equity ownership of Rocket.
You'd present Rocket to us at the end of the year (early January), for true seed investment.
By that point we'd want to see very real traction and revenue growth.
Here's the whole note Joel and Leo shared with the team laying out the options:
After nine weeks at a breakneck pace, Roy, James, and Phil took some time to discuss whether to go forward with Rocket or return to the Buffer team. Roy remembers that Leo once told him you need to be prepared to crawl through the pit of hell for your startup to put in the work required to make it. And that feeling might last for years, so a passion for the product and mission is key.
They considered, "If the three of us met outside of working at Buffer, would we have formed this product?" The answer was, "Probably not." While they loved the experience of Rocket and all they'd accomplished together, they weren't as passionate about the product as they perhaps needed to be to continue.
"There's definitely a market." James said. "It's definitely a problem people face. Was it the right market for Buffer? That would make sense in the product line for Buffer? I don't know. It was such a narrow problem for such a small group of people that we would have had to charge a lot to make it profitable. Compared to Buffer's product line, we questioned whether it made sense to go that route."
The three of them sent this reply to Joel and Leo's offer:
And with that, the Rocket crew shuttered the project they'd spent more than nine weeks of total focus on.
James, Roy, and Phil have rejoined the Buffer team, with Roy as a customer researcher, James a product designer, and Phil an engineer. All three are quick to say that the program was a success in its own way, despite not continuing.
"For all three of us, we all have more confidence to do something new," Roy said. "Once you've walked through something like this once and had that experience, that muscle has been built." Phil shared that he had feared if the verdict from Joel and Leo was a "no," it would mean that they hadn't done things right. As the end came, however, he realized that the team had still reached the goals they set for themselves and even had paying customers. The timing might not have been right for Buffer to invest, but it was still a massive achievement.
Would they do it again? The answer for all three is a resounding yes. "In the busy-ness of building a product, there are a thousand things swirling through our minds, so learning what to prioritize is key," Roy said. "In an environment where everything is moving so quickly, you can spend your time doing lots of really good things, or you can find the most pressing need that you can fill to free up your teammates to do the things they're best at."
"This was overwhelmingly one of the most satisfying experiences I've ever had," James said. "We stretched ourselves more than we ever expected and operated with a lot of autonomy in the process. It was exhilarating."
This article originally appeared on Buffer and is reprinted with permission.
Can a machine design a better slide deck than you can? Several tech startups are betting on it.
Recently I was told that a TEDx talk I gave was inspiring, courageous, beautiful, funny, but a little unconvincing. Good feedback overall, I thought. But what was most memorable about that review was that it didn't come from a human.
In his lab at the University of Tokyo, professor Toshihiko Yamasaki has developed a machine-learning system that runs sentiment analysis on a presenter's words, voice, and tone. It then gives feedback by scoring the presentation against a database of how viewers have rated videos on TED.com. My speech was evaluated against the TED Talk archive, according to 14 separate categories Yamasaki has pinpointed, including how "courageous," "long-winded," and "jaw-dropping" it was.
Yamasaki originally developed the system to give speakers an opportunity to receive objective feedback in order to improve their delivery. Though he admits he may have had a personal motive, too. "I thought it would be great if AI could train new students for me," he explained. Yamasaki's goal is to ultimately make the system operate in real time, giving a speaker instant sentiment-analysis on how they sound over the course of a presentation.
But his platform is just one of a handful of machine-learning and artificial intelligence (AI) systems that are working toward that objective. In fact, there's a quiet revolution going on in the world of presentations and public speaking, and if it succeeds, it may be no time before we're all planning, designing, and fine-tuning our presentations with help from AI.
Presentation feedback probably won't just come after you've already delivered a dry run, either. After all, wouldn't it be great to feed a rough outline of tomorrow's sales presentation into an AI-driven platform and have it create the slides for you? Several startups are already working on this, using technology to replicate the expertise of a human designer and build more compelling slide decks.
I've tried out cloud-based AI systems like Zuru, from Haiku Deck, and SlideBot. Both take an existing PowerPoint file, then deploy different forms of AI to pull out key messages. Then they populate the slides with images they search for based on slide keywords, and automatically apply design rules to format them.
In my experience, the one thing that was consistent between the two platforms was their inconsistent results. One slide may get my message across beautifully, pulling correctly from the keywords in my presentation—great formatting, perfectly chosen images—and the next slide will be an ugly bullet-pointed list or a frighteningly inappropriate image.
They also share an aesthetic. The slides Zuru and SlideBot churn out tend to be of the "Presentation Zen" style—big fonts, minimal text, full-bleed photos as backgrounds. They also tend to have a certain sameness; visual variety isn't these tools' strongest suit. What's more, charts and tables need to be created manually in both platforms, and formatting options are limited. Fortunately, both Zuru and SlideBot allow you to export and download the slides for further editing.
But while machine-learning slide design may still be in its infancy, it's clear where the technology is heading. In the meantime, the best use of these applications is to create individual slides rather than full decks. They do a reasonable job of picking images and producing passable slides in seconds or minutes. Human intervention is still necessary, but both already save a lot of time on what's often a tedious process.
However, I've seen some AI-backed presentation tools improve even within the space of a few months. After all, they're supposed to. By definition, machine-learning platforms learn: the more often you use them, the better they get at their tasks. So the more a human user manually tweaks the slides that an AI tool spits out, the less they'll need to over time. The core AI and feature set are getting better, too. A new release of Zuru is imminent, which will be able to create slides from text documents or Wikipedia articles.
We're still in the early days of this technology. Haiku Deck has been around since 2010, but Zuru was born only in 2015, as was SlideBot. New startups are coming into this space, getting modest financing of a few millions of dollars apiece. But they all share a similar goal: to carve a space out of the enterprise productivity market, which has been forecast to clock in at some $58 billion by the end of this year. Whether smaller players focused just on the presentation niche can compete with AI heavyweights like Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google, and IBM is an open question, but so far, they're holding their own. Microsoft only recently added design automation features to PowerPoint, for instance, and so far it's quite limited.
On the other hand, it may be only a matter of time before Google hooks up Assistant to Slides, Apple connects Siri to Keynote, or Microsoft links Cortana to PowerPoint. Speak to it and tell it what you want your slides to look like, and the AI will create it for you. The race is already on, and the competition is tightening.
Adam Tratt, CEO and cofounder of Haiku Deck, says the actual technology to make these integrations already exists. "It's just a question of who puts the pieces together in a way that's elegant and transformational such that it feels like magic." Bringing users that magic will be a huge service, whoever does it first. If the all-too-familiar death-by-PowerPoint experience so many of us suffer is finally headed to a grave of its own, it may be a machine that puts it there.
Darren Menabney lives in Tokyo, where he leads global employee engagement at Ricoh, teaches MBA students at GLOBIS University, coaches online for IDEO U, and supports the Japanese startup scene. Follow him on Twitter at @darmenab.
When he left the Bush Administration in 2005 after serving as the first African-American secretary of state, Powell was perfectly positioned to take advantage of his new life in the private sector. A decorated military hero and politically moderate and well-respected official, he managed to avoid the bulk of the blame for the Iraq War. Just six months after resigning in January 2005, he joined one of Silicon Valley's most powerful venture capital firms, Kleiner Perkins, as a strategic limited partner. Two years later, he joined the board of directors of AOL cofounder Steve Case's new company, Revolution Health, and in 2014, he joined the board of buddy Marc Benioff's Salesforce.
Throughout the 11 years he's been in the private sector, he's straddled the worlds of government and technology, advising future administrations on military issues and consulting with top venture capitalists on what high-tech startups to invest in. His Gmail account from 2014 to August 2016 is full of correspondence with top investors, leading politicians and government officials, and former military colleagues. Among the most revealing moments are Powell's efforts to avoid running into Hillary Clinton at a fundraiser thrown for her by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, an internal study in which some Salesforce employees complained about gender bias at the company, Powell's efforts to get Kleiner Perkins to improve its diversity in the wake of the Ellen Pao lawsuit, and Powell's strenuous efforts to get AOL cofounder Steve Case into one of world's most exclusive and powerful social clubs.
Just six days after Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email server was first revealed in a story on the front page of the New York Times on March 2, 2015, Benioff invited Powell to a small dinner he was hosting at his home for Clinton. He excitedly told Powell, "I'm sure she would be thrilled to say hello to you!" Benioff intended to raise about $500,000 for the Clinton Foundation, which he thinks "does very good work in the world." Powell immediately forwarded the invite to his personal assistant with a laughing emoji.
Powell's response to Benioff was blunt: "We can shake hands if we pass each other, but no real need. Don't want to generate another 'emailgate' story and don't want to be at a Foundation fundraiser. Don't push to make it happen." He also explained that though he and Hillary "are very close and have been for years," he is annoyed at her team for linking his private email use with her situation. He also snapped that Hillary "once said she voted for the 2003 war because of my U.N. speech. I had to remind her that she voted for it three months before my speech. :)"
In between, Powell was hurriedly emailing his assistant, who replied: "Good lord. She's the last person you need to see right now." The assistant suggested that Powell leave Benioff's house right before Hillary's arrival, claiming that he needed to catch his flight home, even though it didn't leave for another three hours. She tells him, "But that still has you waiting at the airport for a few hours." Powell doesn't mind, seeming to prefer waiting at an airport to talking to Clinton: "I usually wait a while." He adds, "I've told Marc most might be a hello on the way out if she is on time. I doubt she'd want me around as she tries to hustle Marc, nor would I want to be." It's not clear if Powell ever stayed around to meet Clinton at the dinner.
Multiple emails show Powell and Benioff's touching bromance—often emailing each other with the most casual observations, sharing stories about their newest sports cars, and always signing off with "Aloha." As a board member, Powell was obviously privy to some of the most intimate dealings of the giant company, including letters from regulators, potential acquisitions, and the status of litigation. Among the revelations is that Salesforce considered acquiring Adobe and business-automation software giant Pegasystems, among 12 other companies (with the notable exception of Twitter, which Salesforce considered buying in recent weeks before stepping back) listed on a 60-slide presentation sent to board members back in May 2016, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.
When Salesforce lost its bid to acquire LinkedIn due to Microsoft's higher offer, Benioff emailed Powell that maybe the company wasn't prepared for the intensity of that competition: "We were closer than we realized—maybe a $105 cash plus $105 stock would have done it! But we were definitely over our skis!!!!"
Among the documents shared with Powell was a "Salesforce Culture Retention Study," which the company commissioned to learn more about why employees choose to stay or leave Salesforce. Many of the 73 current and former employees interviewed had positive responses, citing the alignment between their own personal values and the company culture, and often praising Benioff for his generosity and his reputation for taking a stand on social issues. "It's nice to be working for a CEO that stands up, vocally, for a lot of the things I personally believe in," said one employee. "Like the philanthropic model—I've never had that; I think that's pretty amazing. I don't know why I would leave, you know? I'm excited to be here."
Other current employees raved about the opportunities to grow at the company: "Oh, the ability to grow and change in my responsibilities and roles, yeah. That's exactly—that's exactly why I see myself staying."
But there were also descriptions of some women who had "extremely negative experiences" that they attributed to gender bias at Salesforce. They cited the "boys' clubs" and "extremely misogynistic nature" of Salesforce as a significant barrier to career advancement. Other women cited "derogatory labels" used at the company, and one woman recalled being told that "women don't belong in the tech industry." The report noted that since Salesforce was considered a leader in equal pay and treatment, "these discrepant experiences were alarming." The authors noted that they lacked "sufficient data to fully understand the dynamics" surrounding these topics and called for further discussion.
Other employees reported a torturous workplace where they were under pressure to "antagonize customers," resulting in a "churn and burn" feeling and a dynamic of "do your fucking job." And some employees reported incessant cursing, "table pounding," and condescending micromanagement in which you were "made to feel stupid."
Reached for comment, Salesforce's EVP for Global Employee Success, Cindy Robbins, emailed the following statement to Fast Company:
There is no finish line to equality and fostering a culture of trust, transparency, and wellbeing. Salesforce continues to be one of the best places to work because we continuously solicit feedback from our employees. We routinely commission third-party studies to evaluate key areas of our culture, and we shared the findings of this report in a webcast to our entire workforce as part of our commitment to transparency and to spark meaningful dialogue around areas for improvement.
Other emails discuss regulatory concerns about elevated trading activity in advance of Salesforce's $2.8 billion acquisition of e-commerce service provider Demandware on June 1, 2016, which was the subject of an inquiry by Wall Street regulator the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). Upon the announcement of the deal, shares of Demandware, which went public in 2012, shot up 55% on that day. The agreement to buy Demandware was for an offer of all its shares at $75 a share, a 56% premium to its closing price on May 31. Thus, investors who bought the stock in the days before the acquisition could have made a lot of money. And FINRA seems to suspect that there were more than a few of those savvy investors.
In an email to Powell, Salesforce's general counsel passed along a list sent to the company by FINRA of about 100 individuals and groups, from a Moscow-based investor to prominent Wall Street firms like Renaissance Technologies and Elliot Capital Management. In the email to Powell, the counsel wrote:
Please review the highly confidential attached list of individuals and entities. If you know or have a relationship with any of the persons or entities on the list, please contact me immediately so I can make arrangements to follow up with you for additional information. It is critical that you do not contact anyone on the attached list yourself. If you do not know or have a relationship with any person or entity listed, please reply to this email confirming "NONE" by Friday, July 29th.
Powell replied that he did not. In a similar letter sent to Powell regarding trading activity in 2015, he explained that he did know one of the people who had traded in Salesforce stock, but that he hadn't communicated with him in recent years.
Such inquiries by the regulator are fairly routine in the wake of major mergers and acquisitions. FINRA has the ability to fine companies and individuals for insider trading violations, though it emphasized in both letters to Salesforce that the inquiries should not necessarily be "construed as an indication" that the agency has determined that any FINRA rules or federal securities laws have been violated. A spokesperson for FINRA declined to comment about the inquiry when contacted by Fast Company.
The emails also reveal some of top investors' strategies and regrets when it comes to the tech sector. One of Powell's friends is David Rubenstein, the billionaire investor who cofounded the Carlyle Group. In their correspondence, when Powell mentions his board membership with Salesforce, Rubenstein reveals his regret that he didn't invest earlier in Salesforce, saying that they looked at it "in the venture stage and stupidly passed on the investment. One of many mistakes."
Though Powell was inundated with invitations to events, conferences, and private dinners, he turned down most of them, except when Mark Zuckerberg came calling. Powell was extremely eager to have a private dinner with the Facebook CEO and his wife, Priscilla Chan, and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg at Zuckerberg's home. When Zuckerberg's assistant reached out to Powell because "Mark is interested in meeting and spending time with interesting people that he can learn from," Powell eagerly responded. After numerous emails back and forth, Powell gets frustrated with the response that it won't happen due to a Sandberg scheduling conflict: "I didn't know she was essential to this dinner," he wrote in an email to his assistant.
One of the most ironic aspects of the email trove is that dozens of hacked emails discuss email security, with Powell emphasizing the measures he's taken to improve such security. In an email to Shane Harris at the Daily Beast, Powell's assistant noted:
General Powell was hacked by [Romanian hacker] Guccifer, along with numerous other political and celebrity figures a few years ago. At that time, he immediately took appropriate measures to protect that account which had been inactive for several years. As you know, Guccifer was arrested by the Romanian authorities and is now in jail. To the best of our knowledge, that was the only compromise of that account. As regards to your second question, see the statement we provided a few days ago. The only thing that I would add is that he did have a State Department computer.
Soon after reports that Clinton's private email server was hacked in July 2015, Powell reached out to an investment adviser who cautioned him: "Email does scare me because people seem to get their hands on things. Happy to discuss alternative ways of communication if need be."
And on October 20 2015, just days after CIA Director John Brennan's AOL email account was hacked, Salesforce's Benioff reached out to Powell, saying, "I hope you have shut down your old AOL account." Powell responded, "Years ago. On gmail with multiple screens."
As a strategic adviser to Kleiner Perkins, Powell was in regular contact with Chairman and Silicon Valley investing legend John Doerr to express his support while the firm defended itself from a headline-making gender discrimination lawsuit filed by former junior partner Ellen Pao.
When Pao lost her case, Powell congratulated Doerr but strongly recommended that the firm do more to increase racial diversity, too. In a July 2015 email after the verdict, he told Doerr: "Next time I see you I'd like to discuss racial diversity and not just gender and ethnicity." To which Doerr responded: "Yes, the tech industry and we have a long way to go wrt to diversity. But we'll do better, and more." And KP General Partner Beth Seidenberg responded: "We are focused on both gender and ethnicity, and when you are in town next we would love to get your input. Our goal for our Fellows program is that in 2016 we will have a class that includes 50% women + underrepresented minorities. We are expanding our outreach to make sure that we accomplish this."
In the email, Doerr told Powell: "As a father of two daughters, this is personal. I am committed to help get to a 50/50 world, one with opportunity for them and everyone. This is important for social justice, and because it is better for business. And because diversity is a core value at Kleiner, a partnership I love and am proud of."
Powell and his aides were well aware of a culture clash with Silicon Valley, especially when the retired general visited the firm's offices on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park. When Doerr's assistant kept calling Powell by his first name, Powell's aide was infuriated: "I know CA and Silicon Valley is [sic] laid back, but it's just so unprofessional and says something about her and her judgment. So whenever you pass her desk out there, you had BETTER refer to yourself as General Powell around her!"
That December, Powell got KP's annual Christmas card, which included the following greeting:
In 2015, we all got more familiar,
Up close and personal, nearly familial
With design sessions, reports, leadership salons,
Meetups, workshops, cheese plates and prawns.
We hope you benefited with an idea or two,
Fresh motivation, met someone new.
The network may be the computer, in tech,
But in life, your network makes intros and clears bottlenecks.
At your brilliance and accomplishments, we couldn't be humbler,
And so you expanded our proverbial Dunbar number.
2015 was an absolute accelerator:
NASDAQ stayed high, and the Valley didn't crater.
May your 2016 be even that much greater.
And we hope we get to work with you all, sooner or later!
The emails also show the enormous sums given by KP to its partners and advisers. On May 1, 2015, Powell received a notice that he would receive a share of the $240 million that KP was distributing as a result of Bristol-Myers Squibb Company's acquisition of Flexus Biosciences. And in March 2016, he received another notice about his portion of 446,075 shares of common stock of Aerohive Networks, which had doubled in value since being purchased in 2010.
Not all of Powell's former diplomatic and military colleagues were impressed with the values and mores of Silicon Valley's biggest heavyweights. In one email, longtime friend Marybel Batjer, who now runs California's state operations agency, emails Powell her strong displeasure with Amazon's work culture in the wake of a tough New York Times story about the company in August 2015:
I do not "dig" this easy acceptance of Amazon's culture just bc/ they are transparent about it and state clearly to everyone "if you don't like it, don't come work here!"
The behaviors "they teach" and the human interactions that are cruel that they condone, if not celebrate stay with individuals far beyond Amazon. I don't care to be in a community that acts and reacts to such prescribed competition and material gain at the expense of heart and soul—care for fellow-person!
I'm sorry there is such general acceptance of Bezo[s] and Amazon, especially in Silicon Valley. I guess I should not be surprised.
And despite years of investments in technology companies, Powell was often skeptical of the hype surrounding innovation. In one August 2015 email to a friend, he expressed his displeasure that the Pentagon, under Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, seemed to be enraptured with new gadgets while troop levels get cut:
As I used to say to the Chiefs as the Cold War was ending, "What will all the preachers do now that the devil has been saved." We focused on capabilities for possibilities, and not singularly on threats. But the Pentagon machine has no fuel but threats. And there is no oversight; not in OSD, OMB, WH, or Congress. Ash is creating another organization of Silicon techies to develop sensors to sew into troops uniforms and similar electronic RMA. They will get $75m. I hope there will be troops left to wear the stuff.
Powell has a reputation as a reserved and sober personality, but in private emails he displays a sharp wit and plenty of snark. Once when he and New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd discussed a column by her colleague David Brooks, she quipped that Brooks "keeps writing about hotels because he's having sex again after 25 years." To which, Powell replied, "Umm, God, I am so tempted, but I will not touch that line."
When a friend asks Powell for his opinion of Atlantic writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, Powell replies, "He is the new senior black intellectual replacing Skip Gates, Cornell West, et al. The kind Aspenites love," referencing the upper-class elite who vacation at the Colorado ski resort town. Later, he adds: "Sounds like the latest White Black celebrity. :) Seriously, I will read some of his stuff. I tell kids to stop the whining, blaming white folks and wanting reparations."
The emails also reveal how the chummy network of investors would pass along tips and ideas, most of which were not available to the average day trader. Powell would often pass along investment ideas suggested by old acquaintances and colleagues. When the son of former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney forwarded him info on 3D hologram technology, Powell sent it to his colleagues at Kleiner Perkins: "I thought you would find this technology interesting."
Investment opportunities often fell into Powell's lap through his extensive network of contacts. In a group email to Powell and fellow board members of an energy company, he was invited to join a new VC fund started by former 49ers quarterback Joe Montana and advised by Y Combinator's Paul Graham.
One of the perks of his post-government life was membership in the super-secret Bohemian Club, a group of the world's most rich and powerful men who attend the infamous Bohemian Grove every year at a campground in California to drink, talk, and worship the redwoods, among other rituals. Powell tried several times to get his buddy, former AOL founder Steve Case, into the club, but to no avail.
At one point, the club's Bob Cohn informs him of the latest rejection of Case: "For the last two years, you were kind enough to write a letter supporting Steve Case for preferential admission to the Bohemian Club. Unfortunately, the Committee did not approve his application last year (technically the application was withdrawn at their suggestion). I'll be happy to explain the reasons he didn't make it last year on the phone with you—I'd rather not write them. Steve took it all very well and has been a champ at continuing the process (I probably would have told the Club to stuff it)."
That exchange—and other emails about vacations in Aspen and private Council on Foreign Relations dinners—seem to confirm every conspiracy theory told by both left-wing and right-wing populists: That a secretive cabal of the world's most powerful men runs the world, while maintaining the pretense of democracy, just as they've been doing for centuries. And that despite slightly more gender and racial diversity, that elite club still pulls the levers—it's just that the center of power has shifted to Silicon Valley. Powell may sometimes look down on the tech world's priorities and peculiarities, but he can't help being drawn to its energy and vitality and luxurious perks.
Here's what "personal branding" looks like when you don't have much work experience to draw on.
If you're kicking off an entry-level job search, standing out in a sea of qualified candidates can be tough. After all, your work experience is likely limited to internships, and your academic credentials may be a hit or miss as far as an employer's needs are concerned.
So how do you break through? It's all about positioning. You simply need to create an identity for yourself that not only sets you apart but that prospective employers find desirable. But what makes that challenge different from the typical advice on personal branding is that new jobseekers don't have much of an employment record with which to build their profiles. Here's what to do instead.
When I interview entry-level candidates, almost all of them who show up are capable of doing the job. That's because I've screened out applicants who don't have the basic skills required for the position. So most candidates who make it over that first bar are pretty similar to one another.
Getting from that initial pool of interviewees to actually landing a job offer takes more than just researching the company or doing some mock interviews. You also need to think about how to sell your skill set for the job you're interviewing for. While that sounds intuitive, it's part of the interview preparation that many candidates overlook—possibly because to them, their credentials may seem self-evident, especially for an entry-level role that may involve a good deal of grunt work.
But companies aren't just looking for any old pair of hands to do a low-level job. They're investing in someone with the potential to stick around and, hopefully, do higher-level work. So in order to drive home what makes you appealing and distinctive in an interview, you first need to understand what the employer considers appealing and distinctive.
The best place to start is to figure out what makes employees in that job successful. All you have to do is ask. Entry-level jobseekers may think it's overkill to sign up for LinkedIn Premium, but it can help. This way you can search for alumni from your school who already have the type of job you're interviewing for. (Sometimes universities' own alumni databases aren't all that up to date or comprehensive, whereas most people are pretty good about keeping current on LinkedIn.)
Get in touch and ask questions about what skills, qualities, and characteristics an entry-level candidate needs to possess in order to succeed in that role. You can reach out to fellow alumni or even just with connections you have in common on LinkedIn. Ask them if they remember which traits they themselves touted most on their job interviews. And be sure to ask what will get an employee promoted to the next level up from there later on.
Since most employers are hiring entry-level candidates to fill immediate positions and advance over time, it's important to have a big-picture understanding of the type of candidates your interviewer is looking to hire.
Now that you've pinned down the role's major success factors, it's time to have a closer look at your skills. Remember: An interviewer doesn't really expect you to have much experience for an entry-level job, so it all comes down to skills.
Break those down into a list of your hard and soft skills. Find the common denominators, then turn that into a coherent narrative, not just a series of qualities.
So for instance, if you've learned that the junior art director job you're interviewing for requires you to be creative and a little edgy, that's how to position yourself. Make sure your portfolio includes work you've done in school or during an internship that reflects that attitude and shows your technical competence, too. Let your interviewer know that your art professors and other students appreciated your ability to think ahead of the curve and find solutions to visual or design challenges on the fly. And offer an anecdote about a time that actually happened, don't just assert that it's true.
Whether or not your interviewer remembers all the specific details doesn't really matter; if you've positioned yourself well, they'll certainly remember what you stand for.
You can reinforce your positioning in your follow-up, too. If you just interviewed for an entry-level sales role and presented yourself as someone with great closing skills, demonstrate that. Go beyond the typical thank-you email and highlight what makes you such a strong closer.
It doesn't hurt to expand on a point you didn't get to touch on that much on the interview, as long as it's relevant. You might mention that, since you're now at the end of the interview process, you hope you've managed to close the deal—and that that's a skill you've been working on. Maybe you picked up some closing techniques in your summer internship or during mock sales calls in a class during your senior year. Or you could simply link to an article you just read on the subject.
Whatever your approach, you're using that last interaction with an interviewer to extend a point you've already built up during the interview process—and, hopefully, proving that the way you positioned yourself actually had substance. Validating that in your follow-up email can go a long way to landing you the job you want. And best of all, you don't need a long resume with impressive experience to do it.
Take complete ownership—even if it wasn't all your fault. Here's how.
In interviewing hundreds of people, I've found that the way a candidate answers one key question tells me more about them than any other. I'll usually wait until the candidate has relaxed somewhat and begins to open up. Then, about halfway through the interview, I'll ask, "What has been a moment of significant professional disappointment or failure, and what caused it?"
Straightforward enough, right? Yes, but I'm listening for a few key things. First, it asks an interviewee to come up with a specific moment. Rather than the standard "What are your weaknesses?" question, which more often provokes groans from jobseekers, it asks for a concrete professional incident. But this gives a candidate plenty of options: Do they focus on a lost promotion, or a failed project? Do they make it about themselves, or about their company? You can see a lot of their personality by how they interpret the question.
What's more, by asking what caused the failure, the question doesn't require an applicant to take responsibility for it, though they might choose to. In my experience, these are three types of answers I typically hear—with some responses earning better marks than others.
I once spent too much time on a project because I refused to hand over something that I couldn't be proud of.
This is the answer that induces silent yawns from hiring managers. It's a candidate's attempt to convey a strength wrapped in the veneer of a weakness. You'll often get this answer from people early in their careers who aren't yet comfortable with the idea that failure and weakness are part of any job.
If a candidate who's still early in their career answers this way, I'll often give them a second chance: "That could also be interpreted as a moment of strength and having high standards. Do you have another example?"
If the candidate is more experienced, though, this answer worries me. It implies they still haven't learned to be comfortable with their own shortcomings. Acknowledging your weaknesses is critical to making career progress—you first need to know when you mess up and then think critically about why.
So as an interviewer, if you can only get a "non-failure failure" from a candidate, it may be time to move on.
I once was due for a promotion, but my manager didn't give it to me because there was another candidate who was my boss's favorite.
This answer upsets me the most. It shows that the candidate doesn't focus quite enough on the things that are actually within in their control, choosing instead to rationalize their disappointments by putting responsibility on someone or something else.
This type of employee may not be looking (or ready) to grow outside their current role; they're simply expecting to get promoted just for doing their job and nothing more.
But not necessarily. Sometimes life is really is unfair. Maybe they were slighted! While this might be true, when you're hiring, you want to find people who view any situation as an opportunity to assess how they might've done things differently to achieve a better outcome—even if they weren't at fault. You want people who put the burden of responsibility on themselves, even if others may share in it, too. These are likely to be the hires who will surprise you by going above and beyond.
I was once working on a project, and the client hated the result. I realized that I could've put more effort into the project and worked to better understand their needs up front. It taught me a lot about my approach to kicking off new projects going forward.
This is the ideal answer. When someone says this, I often have to stifle a grin.
Make no mistake: There are multiple people or systems at fault in pretty much any failure situation. The point isn't to ask a jobseeker to pretend otherwise; in this example, it's more than likely that the client didn't do a perfect job of explaining what they wanted, or maybe they changed the scope of the project after it started. Even so, it's still critical for a candidate to take complete ownership of a problem. That's the starting point for finding any workable solution.
So yes, complete ownership might seem extreme, but the people who default to that tendency may have some serious advantages over those who don't. First, they may be more likely to view situations through the lens of, "How can I improve this?" Rather than wait for others to change, they quickly take action within their span of control to improve a situation—including persuading others to act. They realize that their role in the company isn't just their narrow job description, but includes doing whatever it takes to get a successful result.
Second, they're the ones who are most likely to improve their own skills by choice. Rather than waiting for formal training, they spend their downtime teaching themselves the ins and outs of a new marketing technology, for instance, or how to program in a new language. They're passionate, and they're problem solvers. They realize their own potential and constantly pursue a better version of themselves.
Finally, taking complete ownership of your failures shows you're someone who avoids politics. Rather then expending emotional energy complaining about other team members, these people realize their own ability to influence a situation and address interpersonal issues head-on.
So while it may seem a little reductive, try testing out this interview question as a hiring manager. It may help you build a team of people who shirk petty politics and are always striving to improve their own skills. And if you're a job seeker and an interviewer asks you to discuss your failures, don't hold back—own up to what went wrong and how the experience taught you to switch up your approach. That just may improve your chances that the interview itself will turn out a success.
Allen Gannett is the CEO of TrackMaven, a content and social marketing analytics company. He is based in Washington, D.C., and can be followed at @Allen.
Sure, you want everyone to get along. But trying to make everyone happy can ruin your reputation.
Over a decade ago, business performance consultant Ryan Estis transitioned from being a salesperson out in the field to being a manager. He moved from an environment where it was his job to make customers happy to one where it was critical for him to hold his team accountable for results.
"Going from top producer to manager was literally the toughest career transition I've ever had to make. They're two entirely different jobs," he says. In professional selling, you're even trained in ways to make people like you, such as mirroring body language.
He says that he initially failed to hold people accountable for goals out of a desire to be popular. He dodged some tough conversations. And overall, that avoidance created inconsistencies that affected performance. His team didn't always know what to expect from him. After a number of such missteps, Estis says he overcame his people-pleasing ways by systematizing his approach, which let him take some of the emotion out of managing.
By mapping out clear goals and responsibility and accountability mechanisms, managing became more about performance. He could look at the goals and responsibilities and ensure that people were doing their jobs. When they weren't, he could address specific actions that could be taken to improve the situation, whether an employee needed additional training or resources, or whether there were other obstacles in the way.
Everyone wants to be liked, but there's a line between being the strong manager that everyone loves and being a people pleaser. Good managers cross it at their peril, says workplace consultant Ilene Marcus, founder of Aligned Workplace.
People pleasing includes a variety of behaviors, such as saying "yes" when you don't mean it, using empty platitudes to ingratiate yourself to others, and avoiding difficult conversations and conflict, Marcus says. Instead, people pleasers take the path of least resistance.
Regardless of the reason, trying to please all of the people all of the time is a recipe for career disaster. Here are ways that being a people pleaser is undermining your effectiveness as a manager and how you can turn around such behavior.
"It's a trap to be constantly filling people with platitudes," he says. Expecting excellence from others is the real compliment, because it shows you believe in them. But if you're constantly saying that people are doing a "great job" when they're not, your encouragement will ring hollow at the times it's really necessary, and they won't believe you have the strength to go to bat for them when it's needed. Being a "yes person" to upper management can be even worse, as they may not believe you have the fortitude to advance in the company, he says.
Let's face it: No one likes to feel like a doormat. If you're constantly avoiding asking for what you need or saying "yes" to projects or requests simply because you're avoiding conflict, it's probably taking its toll on you, Marcus says.
She recommends doing a gut check after you accept certain tasks and responsibilities. How did you feel after you did so? Did you start the conversation with the intention of refusing, but accepted anyway? Do you regret that you accepted the task or role? Then it's time to start saying "no" more, she says.
"If you people please by always saying 'yes,' then start saying 'no,'" she says. "You have to practice it. It doesn't come easy." However, it will help you start getting back in touch with how you should be spending your time or devoting your resources.
Instead, focus on results. Work on getting your validation from challenges overcome and goals achieved. When you prioritize the factors that matter to the team's success, you'll gain more trust from your team because they know you're creating an environment to make them all more successful.
As a manager, you set the tone for your team. If it's clear that you don't like conflict, your team is likely to avoid it as well, Hunter says. That gets in the way of provoking people to exhibit more authenticity, share feelings, and express genuine opinions and ideas for fear of rocking the boat. Together, such hesitation creates a culture of homogeneity that stifles innovation and makes it hard for people to be themselves.
"You're not encouraging people to be more genuine and authentic at work, and exhibit deeper and more powerful and creative attributes of their selves that could accelerate the business," he says.
Hardware makers now have a cheaper and simpler path to hands-free voice commands.
If you want to peer into the future of Amazon, don't stop with the Echo connected speaker.
Instead, consider all the other devices Amazon wants to imbue with Alexa voice controls, from thermostats and light bulbs to smart TVs and connected cars. The goal, presumably, is to make Amazon's virtual assistant ubiquitous, even when there's no Amazon hardware in sight.
But so far, that vision has been slow to materialize. Although Amazon first announced Alexa's availability for third-party devices in mid-2015, you can count on one hand the number of products that take advantage—including an intercom, a smartwatch, and a jumbo-size tablet. (GE also just announced an Alexa-enabled desk lamp, available next year.)
Even for the devices that have arrived, hardware makers haven't received much guidance on the challenging task of supporting Alexa voice commands from across the room—rather than by making users push a button on the device—so for the most part they haven't bothered. And Alexa is a much less compelling experience if it isn't hands-free.
All this could change now that Amazon is partnering with Conexant, a maker of voice processor chips and software, on a development kit for Alexa devices. By hooking up a Raspberry Pi mini-computer with one of Conexant's dual-microphone kits, hardware makers can start prototyping Alexa-ready gadgets in a matter of days, rather than months, and they won't have to figure out the tricky technology of far-field voice recognition on their own.
"In the past, there were disparate components that [engineers] had to put together to determine what the right audio front-end was for them to connect to Alexa," says Priya Abani, the director of Amazon's Alexa Voice Service program. "This basically will make it easier for device manufacturers to enter Alexa into their products, by providing a good-quality, cost-effective reference solution."
The voice processor inside the Alexa developer kit has been available for about a year, but Conexant president Saleel Awsare says the company has now fine-tuned the microphone placement and voice recognition algorithms for Alexa, which should help separate voice commands from music and background noise.
Conexant is also working with Amazon on a certification program to ensure that products meet Amazon's voice recognition accuracy standards, and is setting up a process for hardware makers to turn their prototypes into commercial products. The details are still a bit murky, but Awsare expects that we'll start seeing a lot more Alexa-enabled product announcements in the next few months.
"It's the first step of a multi-step process, but having an Amazon-certified, two-microphone, hands-free kit available for the market is huge. It's a game-changer," he says.
That's not to say Conexant's development kit will address all potential Alexa products. Awsare says it's mainly aimed at devices that connect to outlet power—think smart home hubs, high-quality speakers, and connected appliances—rather than battery-powered devices such as smartwatches and portable Bluetooth speakers.
"We have a different product offering, and we won't go into it today, for a very low-power application," Awsare says. "That is something you will see—maybe for Alexa—in the next six months or so."
Amazon is also working on other ways to speed Alexa's adoption. Last week, the company announced a partnership with Intel on a smart speaker reference design, which can also include various radios for controlling other smart home devices. The two companies are still ironing out the details, but Abani says the goal overall is to make sure hardware makers have a path to market regardless of whose chips they decide to use.
"For us, the magic is to offer this portfolio, so that when other [device makers] decide to add Alexa to their device, it should not be for the lack of Amazon working with that partner that they were not able to do that," she says.
Amazon isn't alone in its pursuit of hands-free voice assistant ubiquity. Google has also been talking to hardware makers about integrating its own Assistant tech into more devices, following last month's launch of the Google Home connected speaker. But as we're seeing now with Alexa, that hardware can't proliferate unless there's a system in place for easy prototyping and development.
When I ask Awsare if Conexant's development kit work might eventually benefit Amazon's rivals, he says the focus is really on Alexa.
"This did not happen in a month or a week," he stresses. "We've been working together for nine months, and we are very excited as to how far [ahead] Amazon is compared to anybody else in creating this ecosystem."
The Boy Scouts have been piloting a co-ed program to teach kids STEM skills. But is that enough to bring the aging organization forward?
Michael Jurkowitz is a fifth grader in Tucson, Arizona. He—like most other kids his age—enjoys hands-on projects well enough, but probably isn't the geekiest or most science- or math-heavy kid of the bunch. Two summers ago, he attended a summer science weeklong camp, which looked like a fun summer activity. That weeklong program piqued his interest in the STEM field. So Michael's father, Daniel, signed him up for a newly formed Boy Scout STEM lab and even offered to be an assistant lab leader (the modern version of a troop leader).
Daniel was happy to have his son participating in a program that delved into science-like activities and didn't come across like boring school subjects. "The learning was a dose-of-sugar kind of thing," he says, which he was happy to instill in his son. Michael liked the activities. When I talked with him he rattled off a few experiments he'd done the last year, including studying bugs, shaking eggs in bags trying to get them not to break, something else involving milk, along with numerous other fun-sounding tasks. Where Michael just enjoyed this new way to learn, his father saw the program as an overall way to "grow a new generation of scientists out there."
The program, called STEM Scouts, is an offshoot of the Boy Scouts. Beyond just getting young kids interested in science, technology, engineering, and math careers, the hope is that STEM Scouts will also reinvigorate the century-old institution that has been heavily criticized in recent years for being behind the times.
The Boy Scouts have been a ubiquitous American organization and a rite of passage for millions of boys for over a hundred years. But, while focusing on building leadership skills through outdoor and community service activities, they also embodied a values system that didn't survive the 20th century. While some say that the changes toward inclusivity have been incremental and overall not enough, STEM Scouts aims to bring in those who traditionally don't fit under its umbrella—even girls.
It's been over a year since the program first began, will the STEM Scouts be enough to keep the organization relevant for future years?
The thesis behind STEM Scouts was to "replicate in the lab environment the things that had been proven and tried in the Cub Scout and Boy Scout programs," says Mike Surbaugh, the CEO of the Boy Scouts of America. As he explains it, Boy Scouts is an outdoor activity program that fosters individual leadership skills. This new science-based program would be similarly focused, just in a new environment. The ultimate goal of both program is "developing character and leadership."
The model for STEM Scouts looks an awful lot like other after school programs. Volunteers such as parents or teachers lead a cohort of kids from elementary to high school ages in weekly activities. The idea was to a build upon what April McMillan, one of STEM Scouts' national directors, called "the framework of scouting," which would theoretically differentiate it from other programs.
Many after-school STEM organizations work like codeathons or science- and math-heavy bootcamps, focused on teaching students specific skills to perform various tasks; STEM Scouts would perform similar activities, but the primary component, as the leaders explained it, would be to teach students to take the reins of projects and learn lessons beyond the rote skills taught.
Often experiments would fail, but if the participants were able to work around the constraints and work with the others in the room, they would be considered successful. The idea is more to get kids excited in the STEM field, and less about giving them hard job-training skills.
According to Surbaugh, inklings of a different, more inclusive program have been around for years. The organization was looking into ways that could bring in students who may not be interested in the more outdoorsy side of Boy Scouts.
Activities included anything from making play-doh or conducting various observation and science experiments. As more groups were added to the mix, programs were refined. While the program is anything but set, the last year has been the real testing ground to see if the Boy Scouts can build a STEM pedagogy that can scale.
The program's leaders haven't crunched any formal numbers on the impact of STEM Scouts, but pointed to anecdotal data they've received from teachers and principals who saw increases in kids' test scores. One teacher McMillan talked with "attributes a test score increase of nearly 20%," she said.
Since its inception over a year ago more than 200 labs have been formed with more that 2,000 kids between grades 3 and 12 participating. Each lab follows a methodology set out by the Boy Scouts every week to perform science experiments. All of the labs are run by volunteers—most are parents or local teachers. Deborah Vasquez, a teacher who leads a STEM Scouts group in southern Texas, says that she does the program because it provides extracurricular STEM programs that the school would otherwise be unable to afford. Most labs have a tuition of about $200 a year, but many of the students Vasquez instructs are able to participate thanks to scholarships.
Most important, says Surbaugh, is that leadership and character building would be the number-one priority for STEM Scouts. He made sure to include that in every lesson plan. "A component of scouting is service," says McMillan. "That too is incorporated in STEM Scouts." She pointed to labs whose assignment was to build a game and then go out to children's hospitals and retirement homes and teach it.
Vasquez views the program as a motivator, a way to bring in students "who aren't really motivated during the regular school day but have a lot of potential." The school district she works for, she explains, is represented of more than 80% economically disadvantaged students, many of whom speak English as a second language. Few have access to these types of programs. The STEM Scouts, she says, has become a new way for them to pursue more educational projects outside of the classroom. One year out, Vasquez says the students enjoy it and have been asking about when the next session will begin. "I know they're waiting for it," she says.
Of course an extracurricular STEM program is no revolutionary idea. There are hundreds out there, most purporting to do similar things of exciting young minds and showing them the possibilities of STEM-like career paths. The Girl Scouts have been investing in getting girls more involved in science, math, and technology for five years, and in 2011 began including Science and Technology badges, which can be earned for performing trips and services in those fields.
In many ways, STEM Scouts can be seen as an attempted optics shift. I asked Surbaugh about the last years' controversy, and he admitted that the last while has been a time for transformation for the organization. When faced with opposition, the Boy Scouts leadership came together to figure out what called an "effective approach," which resulted in them "[becoming] very inclusive." He added that "STEM Scouts did not factor into [the new policy]."
At the same time the Boy Scouts can still seen as the traditional organization it's always been. When asked why STEM Scouts is co-ed, he said the model fit better for both young men and women. The Boy Scouts' activities, said Surbaugh, work better with a group of the same gender; "We feel the structure and outdoor element [of Boy Scouts] ... lends itself to single gender." The Boy Scouts of America didn't think that differentiation was needed for the STEM program; "It was really based more on the educational pursuit more than the gender," Surbaugh said.
And for now, the program will continue to test the waters. Surbaugh considered the last year to be a success and sees an opportunity to grow. The Boy Scouts of America has plans to have as many as 320 labs up and running by the end of 2016.
Will this help bring the organization toward more progressive policies? At the very least, it will allow both boys and girls the opportunity to be exposed to the subject matter. For Vasquez, the opportunity has been to give students a chance to experiment. They were able to try things out—many of which didn't work—but gain a better understanding of the underlying subjects. And this, she says, taught them to be more independent and begin thinking for themselves. "We helped them facilitate the learning,' she says. "But the kids took over."
For Daniel Jurkowitz, he's happy to take part in a program that gets his son excited in science. Last year was "a really good first effort," and he's happy that it's back up and running. Michael too is excited. The fifth grader doesn't know what he wants to be when he grows up, but he's already thinking about the future. STEM Scouts, he says, is teaching him "different kinds of skills we can use in life."
