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To Give Better Feedback, Follow This Ancient Advice

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"Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind?"

Giving feedback is unquestionably one of the most challenging tasks for any leader, as it can be painful to both the giver and receiver. It is nonetheless invaluable: Research has shown that employees recognize the importance of feedback—whether positive or negative—to their career development.

Many even welcome it, provided it's given well. One study of nearly a thousand employees both in the U.S. and abroad found that 92% believed that negative feedback is effective at improving performance—"if delivered appropriately."

Unfortunately, most leaders are reluctant and uncomfortable providing negative feedback—and when they give it, they don't follow the "appropriate" advice above. In a study of 2,700 leaders, researchers found that a majority tend to avoid giving negative feedback, and 43% described doing so as a "stressful and difficult experience."

There are a host of reasons why this may be the case, most of which can be boiled down to the notion that humans are wired to avoid pain. So how can managers become better at providing their employees with negative feedback that successfully highlights problems and how to resolve them?

My experience in coaching executives on giving meaningful and effective feedback reminds me of a Sufi saying dating back to the 13th century.

"Before you speak, let your words pass through these three gates: At the first gate, ask yourself, 'Is it true?' At the second gate, ask yourself, 'Is it necessary?' At the third gate, ask yourself, 'Is it kind?'"

In other words, as long as managers always ensure their feedback is unbiased, essential, and civil, it's almost certain to be effective and help an employee grow. And it's a philosophy supported by existing research.

Overcoming Biases

Researchers have consistently found that bias—conscious and unconscious—influences our views of others. Personal bias clouds our perceptions so profoundly that employee performance ratings often reveal more about the person conducting them than the person being rated.

One of the most comprehensive studies on the topic examined the performance ratings of 4,492 employees. It found that idiosyncratic bias—such as the tendency to rate based on an overall impression (halo error) or assign higher/lower ratings than warranted (leniency error)—accounted for 62% of the variance in the ratings, whereas actual performance accounted for only 21%. Simply stated: It's more about the person giving the rating than the actual performance of the person being evaluated.

In another example, a study conducted at New York University found that men and women received different evaluations after demonstrating the same altruistic behavior, such as volunteering to help a coworker who was in a bind even though the employee would end up being late for another coworker's party.

The employees were then given performance evaluations and reward recommendations—that is, whether they should get salary increases, promotions, high-profile projects or bonus pay. Women were consistently evaluated more harshly than their male counterparts and were penalized to a greater degree if they were unwilling to help.

Similarly, research has shown managers are more likely to perceive women's accomplishments as part of the team effort, while men's were seen as individual efforts.

In these cases, actual performance is contaminated by the biases, emotions, and idiosyncrasies of the person making the evaluation. By carefully considering personal biases that could affect their evaluation of an individual's performance, managers can greatly enhance the feedback experience for an employee.

According to experts, a key to curbing biases is to develop awareness and insight into them. The Implicit Association Test, for example, is one such tool to help uncover unconscious beliefs. Many organizations such as Google, Microsoft, and Facebook have in fact developed training programs to help employees develop this insight.

Too Much Information?

As we all know, feedback is built directly into the corporate infrastructure—and that doesn't include the unsolicited kind.

Is this abundance of feedback necessary? Not always, researchers say. Studies conducted at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of North Carolina concluded that the more feedback a participant received in a management simulation, the lower his or her subsequent level of performance.

Similarly, University of Michigan researchers challenged the more-is-better notion when it comes to feedback, finding that performance improves when feedback is given, but only up to a certain tipping point, after which performance significantly decreases.

As a leader, it is important to pay attention to how often you are providing feedback, particularly negative feedback. Although you may be reluctant in delivering this type of feedback, when you do, it should be measured and rationed.

Additionally, the tainting factor of bias must be put in check as to its impact on feedback. Does your feedback reflect the requirements of the actual job or your personal preferences for how to do the job? Feedback in the latter category may be unnecessary and not helpful, as it is attached to a personal preference rather than what's required for successful performance.

[Photo: Flickr user Internet Archive Book

It's All In The Delivery

There is substantial evidence demonstrating the damaging impact of negative feedback on employee attitude, performance, goal commitment, and satisfaction. If this is the case, then why would employees want negative feedback, as the research suggests? The answer lies in how feedback is delivered.

Employees are motivated to improve job performance when feedback is delivered in a constructive and considerate manner. A study of 400 manufacturing employees examined negative feedback on employee motivation to improve performance. They identified feedback delivery as a critical factor. Feedback delivery (aka interpersonal consideration) significantly affected whether an employee was motivated to improve his or her job performance. Employees were most motivated to improve when they received negative feedback that was constructive and respectful.

Along the same lines, a study on workplace justice examined how fairness affects the acceptance of negative feedback. Fairness in the study was defined as the "extent to which the manager showed respect and consideration for their subordinate." The researchers found that criticism delivered with greater interpersonal fairness resulted in higher rates of feedback acceptance and invoked trust and satisfaction toward the supervisor.

As the old adage goes: It's not what you say but how you say it.

Sage Advice

Taken as a whole, the ancient wisdom still resonates.

Given that the point of feedback is to improve performance, research supports the components of this framework as providing a distinct advantage. Even if corporate America doesn't uniformly value advice from the sages, it certainly recognizes their potential byproducts: productivity and increased revenue.

Honest, balanced, and compassionate feedback has been shown to improve both.



Khatera Sahibzada is an adjunct lecturer in applied psychology, University of Southern California—Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences.

A version of this article appeared at theConversation.


How Facebook's Homegrown Data Centers Serve Billions Of Users, Now And In The Future

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Its apps and services are going to get more complex and demand more power. The company has to be ready.

Do you enjoy looking at your friends' Instagram photos? Cherish the Facebook updates about your cousin's new baby? Rely on Messenger to chat with your college friend living abroad? Or love the immersive nature of Oculus Rift experiences?

None of that would be possible without the people who've developed, built, and maintained Facebook's global data center infrastructure.

In 2009, when Facebook had just a fraction of the 1.8 billion users it has now, not to mention none of the other apps and companies it owns—Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Oculus—the company operated a single data center, really just a set of servers, at a location close to its Silicon Valley headquarters.

Soon, though, as Facebook vice president of engineering Jay Parikh explained to me recently, the company realized it needed to expand to a second location, on the East Coast. In short order, more expansion followed.

Everything Facebook does is "very, very interconnected," Parikh said. "It's not something where you can say, Hey, let's take our users in California, and put them on servers in California" and do the same for users in other geographic areas. All users are connected to everything the company does, and to all other users, and that presented the company with significant engineering challenges.

In those days, Facebook still relied entirely on third-party hardware and co-location facilities for its server infrastructure. Over time, though, it has abandoned that reliance on outside technology and facilities and starting in 2009, has built its own network of data centers, infrastructure that it believes is among the most energy-efficient in the industry and that's essential to delivering the daily experience of its gigantic user base.

Jay Parikh

The idea? To make it possible for Facebook's engineers, and those building its apps, to be able to develop new services and then quickly deploy them throughout the entire user base.

An example? Taking something like Facebook Live, which was originally developed as a hackathon project, and launching it to the full Facebook community within five months.

"We treasure that as a core part of our culture," Parikh said, "to move fast and deliver experiences to a very big community."

More Complex Apps Demand More Complex Infrastructure

As Facebook began building out its own data centers, it was tempting to simply "lather/rinse/repeat" the kinds of facilities like the one it had built in Prineville, Oregon in 2011. In fact, said Parikh, it became an in-house joke that that's all the company needed to do.

But as the company began offering more immersive experiences, both through the Facebook service itself and then through its other apps, it realized that it needed to to ramp up the power and energy efficiency of its new data centers in order to maintain economic efficiency, and to future-proof against further demands on the systems that might come from increased reliance on artificial intelligence and machine learning.

After all, systems set up to work well in 2014, Parikh pointed out, aren't likely to be ready for 2017.

"We don't want to play it safe and get conservative," he said, "and get complacent in how we're thinking about the technology."

Green Data Centers

While Facebook itself—the "big blue app"— has 1.8 billion users, the company's other apps serve at least 2.5 billion more. All of that computing demand requires a global data center network of unparalleled strength and efficiency.

Now, Parikh said, Facebook is "thinking about how to build the platform, make it scalable and reliable for all apps and services, and make it ready for new immersive [services] like live video and 360-[degree] video."

Today, Facebook has seven data centers around the world—five in the United States, spread across Oregon, Iowa, Texas, New Mexico, and North Carolina, as well one each in Ireland and Sweden. And that number is growing rapidly, though the company isn't sharing any future numbers. Parikh did say that it typically takes Facebook 12 to 18 months from ground-breaking to open a new data center.

As that network has grown, so has bandwidth demands. Facebook is "pushing very aggressively" for 100 gigabit per second interconnects between the data centers, and the company is already trying to figure out how to stretch that to 400 Gbps.

Even as that bandwidth demand ramps up energy usage, Facebook has committed itself to a data center network that relies on green power. Last year, the company said it expects to use 50% clean and renewable energy in its data centers by 2018. The plan, in fact, is that its facilities in Iowa, Texas, Sweden, Ireland, and New Mexico will all be 100% powered by wind, solar, or hydro-electric power.

One way that's possible is by limiting the amount of power used in the first place. To do that, Facebook said it has developed systems that waste, on average, just 6-8% of power, versus what it says is an industry standard of 50-60%. Google claims its number is about 12%.

The company is confident in its Power Utilization Effectiveness (PUE) numbers, to the point of showing them in real time for each of its data centers.

One major way it achieves that is with a facility design in which air is brought in from the outside to cool servers, rather than relying on expensive and power-intensive air conditioning systems. The heat from servers is then exhausted out of the buildings. In colder climates, or seasons, some of that warm air can be routed back into the buildings, reducing the reliance on heaters.

In the end, what this all means is that Facebook knows that its user base and the complexity of the apps and services it delivers will continue to grow over time, and that if it doesn't prepare itself for that growth, it won't be able to keep up.

The company's users expect high performance, no matter which tool they're using, and without an adaptable and extensible data center infrastructure, there's no guarantee it can succeed at delivering on Facebook's core mission: making it possible for people to share their lives with family and friends and for the entire world to be a more connected place.

This Dumb Year: The 67 Worst Moments In Tech 2016

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Apologies galore! Exploding phones! A company named Tronc! And other stuff that made the year in technology so memorably off-kilter.

"Awful." "Terrible." "Very bad." Even " heartbreaking."

To this bleak list of words that have been used to sum up 2016, we must add another: dumb. Especially when it comes to the year in technology.

Even if you set aside the major tech storylines—from Trump's tweets to Yahoo's leaks—2016 was just plain weird. In the fullness of time, we may forget that it was the year that Facebook told many users (including Mark Zuckerberg) that they were dead. And Twitter suspended its own CEO. And Apple accidentally let key details slip of not one but two major products before they'd been unveiled on stage. But it all happened, and it deserves to be commemorated.

(Editor's note: John Paul Titlow is alive and well.)

Herewith, a month-by-month chronology of moments in tech that were dumb, ill-advised, bizarre, or embarrassing—or, in more than a few cases, all of the above.

January

Just thinking about it was excitement enough.
The internet newsophere gets downright giddy over a report that the big news at CES will be a game-changing partnership between Google and Ford to build autonomous vehicles. The trade show comes and goes without any signs of such a deal.

The camera never lies, but people do.
In Singapore, Nikon awards a prize to a striking black-and-white photo of a plane in the sky behind a ladder. When people point out that the aircraft was pasted in via a badly done Photoshop job, the camera giant apologizes and rescinds the honor.

EFF you.
T-Mobile CEO John Legere, famous for expletive-laden tirades against other wireless carriers, apologizes after releasing a video featuring him getting salty with advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation over its opposition to T-Mobile's "Binge On" feature, which provides free streaming of some—but not all—media services. "I am a vocal, animated, and sometimes foul-mouthed CEO," he writes in a blog post

February

Sounds disruptive.
Parker Conrad, cofounder and CEO of HR cloud-service provider Zenefits, resigns over issues relating to its compliance with state insurance laws. The company admits that employees used software, supposedly written by Conrad himself, to complete mandatory California online brokerage classes in less than the legally required amount of time.

Bad company! Great investment!
Nonplussed over Apple's resistance to helping the FBI unlock the iPhone of San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook, presidential candidate Donald Trump calls for a boycott of the company at a South Carolina rally. FEC filings, however, show that he holds onto $1.1 million or more in Apple stock.

Share first, think later.
GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz fires his communications director for sharing a video of fellow candidate Marco Rubio on Facebook and claiming that it includes Rubio saying that there "weren't many answers" in the Bible. In actuality, the Florida senator had said that the Good Book includes "all the answers."

March

Tell me when they've taught it to shout and wave its arms at a rally.
Step one, build Tweet bot. Step two: Feed in language from Trump's stump speeches. Stir. That's what some MIT guys did, and the result, called @DeepDrumpf, has a way of composing tweets that sound eerily like the president-elect. "I'm what ISIS doesn't need," says the bot in one tweet.

Women in gaming, dancing on platforms.
At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Microsoft takes a stance for gender equality by holding a "women in gaming" lunch. But then it holds a party with entertainment consisting of female dancers in skimpy "schoolgirl" outfits—a move it apologizes for and blames on the venue.

Alt-right automaton.
Tay, a Microsoft AI chatbot experiment designed to talk like a teenager, goes horribly awry after she falls in with a bad crowd on Twitter that quickly teaches her to spout racist venom.



I'm fine, thank you. I'm also in Des Moines.
After a terrorist bombing in Lahore, Pakistan, Facebook's Security Check feature accidentally tells members in the U.S. and U.K. that it thinks they're near the site of the attack, and asks them if they're okay.

April

In the name of the almighty Colonel Sanders, cut it out.
KFC's Australian, um, wing, promotes new "Hot & Spicy" menu items by tweeting a photo of a woman grabbing at a (blurred) area near a man's crotch, hashtagged #NSFW. After complaints, the chicken purveyor says it "misstepped the mark," apologizes, and deletes the tweet.

Cool!
The Coolest Cooler, a high-tech ice chest that raised a record-breaking $13 million on Kickstarter, can't afford to send backers their coolers—so it sells them on Amazon to raise cash while asking backers to send more money to get the products they were promised.

May

The butler did it.
The Trump family's longtime manservant, Mother Jones reports, has been calling for the execution of President Barack Obama on Facebook. "I wrote that," he responds. "I believe that."

June

Keep on Troncin'.
Tribune Publishing, the venerable owner of the Chicago Tribune and Los Angels Times, changes its name to Tronc, gives itself a logo with a 1980s vibe, and declares itself to be "a content curation and monetization company focused on creating and distributing premium, verified content across all channels." On Twitter, hilarity ensues.

Un-carrier offers un-food.
T-Mobile's latest gambit to steal market share from AT&T and Verizon is "T-Mobile Tuesdays," a rewards program that, among other things, offers customers a weekly free small Frosty at Wendy's and free Domino's pizza. The accompanying app gets off to a rocky start and Domino's soon decides it doesn't like giving away pizza after all.

HBO Nah.
HBO Now, the cable channel's streaming service for cord-cutters, suffers an outage at a particularly inopportune moment: during the next-to-last Game of Thrones episode of the season.

July

Not anti-semitic—pro-sheriff.
On Twitter, Donald Trump shares an anti-Hillary Clinton image—apparently originated by a creator of racist memes—featuring a pile of cash and a Star of David. Though his campaign pulls the graphic and replaces it with a de-starred version, it also denies that it was anti-Semitic, maintaining that the meme merely showed a "basic star" such as those worn by sheriffs.

What a weiner.
Golden State Warrior Draymond Green posts a public photo of his private parts to Snapchat. After claiming that he was hacked—the standard explanation in such situations—he later admits that he goofed.

Such a great gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame.
In Encinitas, California, two men fall off a cliff while playing Pokémon Go.

Gotta crash 'em all.
Obsessive Pokémon Go players also start causing car accidents—110,000 of them in 10 days in the U.S. alone, according to one report.

Armed (with Pikachus) and dangerous.
Four Missouri teenagers are accused of committing a string of robberies by using Pokémon Go to lure victims to a Pokéstop.

Hey, many of the best Pokéstops are on hallowed ground.
Arlington National Cemetery, the 9/11 Memorial, and the National Holocaust Museum are forced to politely ask Pokémon Go players not to hunt for critters on their premises.

August

He tells it like it is. Except when it's somebody else telling it like it is.
It becomes clear that you can tell which @RealDonaldTrump tweets are from the real Donald Trump, and which are ghosted by his staff: the excitable candidate uses an Android phone, and the other, far more anodyne tweets come from an iPhone.

Data scientist David Robinson's analysis of @RealDonaldTrump tweets by platform

Just relabel it "Trending Fake News" and all should be fine.
Dogged by accusations that its human editors have a liberal bias, Facebook turns its trending-news section over to an algorithm. Three days later, it's spotlighting stuff like the "news" that Fox has fired Megyn Kelly for supporting Hillary Clinton.

Sadly, nobody ever leaks anything about Gizmodo to us.
Gizmodo reports on an analysis of Fast Company reporter Mark Sullivan and his work prepared for internal use by Microsoft. The document was apparently emailed to the gadget site by mistake during preparations for a meeting with Sullivan.

He's baaaaaaaaaack!
Anthony Weiner returns to the news by doing that thing that Anthony Weiner does, in even more lurid form.

Sometimes sneaky, anonymous pride is the best pride of all.
In a New York Times op-ed, entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel says he's "proud" to have funded Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker, which ends up forcing the shuttering of the gossip blog and the sale of its sister media properties. Thiel waged his vendetta for years, in secret, until it was uncovered by Forbes in May.

September

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how do you like your phone?
Samsung recalls its new, well-reviewed Galaxy Note 7 smartphone after a handful of reports of its battery exploding during charging.

It's not like it was a secret or anything.
Apple prematurely tweets about a major new iPhone 7 feature—its water-resistant design—before the company has revealed it onstage at its San Francisco media event.

The only good predictions are the ones you don't make.
A Forbes tech writer helpfully explains that not only is the idea that Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 forbidden on airplanes a misperception, but that the phone won't be kept off planes in the future, either: "There is no ban. There will not be a ban." Within weeks, taking one on board an aircraft becomes a federal crime.

Military intelligence.
The U.S. Army's official Twitter feed shares a story accusing Donald Trump of lying every three minutes and 15 seconds. It pulls the tweet, apologizes, and says that it's suspended the employee who meant to tweet it from her personal account.

Reality sucks.
You'd think that since the Oculus Rift launched this year, 2016 would have been great for founder Palmer Luckey. Instead, he essentially has to go into hiding after his secret financial support for an anti-Hillary Clinton "shitposting" meme machine is uncovered.

Everybody loves frogs.
Donald Trump, Jr., uses Instagram to share a "Deplorables" meme that features, among others, himself, his father, and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. It also depicts Pepe the Frog, a cartoon character adopted and popularized by anti-Semites on Twitter. Trump, Jr., says he's "honored" by the image.

Over 500 million disserved.
Yahoo, which is in the process of being acquired by Verizon, discloses that it believes a state-sponsored hacker has stolen information associated with a half billion of its user accounts, including names, email addresses, and security questions. The New York Times later reports that the company had been slow to implement tighter security for fear of making its products harder to use.

Big, inaccurate data.
Facebook discloses that for two years, it's been accidentally misstating a metric relating to video ads, making them look more popular among users than they really are.

You too may be a lucky winner.
In 2013, Business Insider reveals, Microsoft tried to keep its still-unannounced Xbox One secret by hiding secret prototypes where nobody would think to look for them: in a shipping facility. The strategy led the company to accidentally send one to a guy who'd ordered a laptop.

He's baaaaaaaaaack! Again!
Anthony Weiner is back in the news for the sleaziest version yet of that thing Anthony Weiner does—a story that eventually metastasizes into major trouble for Hillary Clinton shortly before election day.

Sometimes the apple falls very, very far from the tree.
At the first general-election presidential debate, while discussing cybersecurity, Donald Trump praises the computer skills of his 10-year-old son Barron: "He has computers. He is so good with these computers, it's unbelievable."

October

Targeting! Or is it profiling?
Propublica reports that Facebook lets advertisers filter out African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Hispanics when "targeting" ads on the social platform, pointing out that the tools can be used to advertise housing to whites only. Facebook says it's only trying to give marketers control over what content to show specific user groups based on cultural identity, but ends up eliminating the option for ads relating to housing, employment, and credit.

Silk Road redux.
Facebook members use the social network's new Craiglist-esque Marketplace feature to hawk animals, weapons, and drugs. The company says it created technology to police such postings, but that a glitch prevented it from operating properly.

Déjà vu all over again.
Samsung recalls the Galaxy Note 7 and gives customers new units that it says solve the exploding-battery problem. But one of the replacement phones catches on fire on a Southwest flight. Other replacement Notes also, um, flame out.

You could also try sewing one into a teddy bear.
After the Galaxy Note 7 is banned from air travel, a Gizmodo reader says that an AT&T rep advised that it could be smuggled home from an overseas trip in a sock.

No, no, no—it's her jeans that are acid-washed.
During the second presidential debate, Donald Trump accuses Hillary Clinton of having "acid washed" emails on her notorious private server. The charge apparently stems from her team having deleted messages using something called BleachBit, which is a software utility rather than a tiny vat of acid.

Curse you, "reply all."
The president of Wall Street Journal sister publication Barron's accidentally sends an email to the entire staff concerning upcoming, not-yet-announced layoffs.

If the Galaxy Note 7 is outlawed, only outlaws will have the Galaxy Note 7.
Samsung issues a takedown notice for a YouTube video depicting its Galaxy Note 7 phone as a usable weapon within a modded version of Grand Theft Auto V.

The walking racist dead.
Microsoft apologizes for the subject line of a promo email for its Dead Rising 4 game—which, though meant to sound like a moaning zombie, comes out sounding like it might be a racial slur.

One of these Time Warners is not like the other.
The Senate Judiciary Committee Anti-Trust Sub-Committee announces that it's calling Time Warner CEO Rob Marcus to testify about the company's planned acquisition by AT&T. But Marcus is actually CEO of Time Warner Cable, a different company that has already been acquired by Charter Communications. The senators apparently confused it with the Time Warner that makes movies and owns TV channels.

Too soon, too soon.
A Southwest flight attendant is spotted at Salt Lake City International Airport dressed for Halloween—as a flaming Galaxy Note 7.

November

Autonomous yes, driving no.
For its splashy San Francisco product launch, Chinese gadget maker LeEco builds a giant ramp, anticipating that its upcoming autonomous car will drive itself onstage. Instead, the company's CEO explains at length, one of its models got into an accident on its way to the event and the other was delayed after making a cameo appearance during the filming of a new Transformers movie. (At a similar event in April, reported BuzzFeed, a "self-driving" car had been piloted by remote control.)

Razer-sharp wit.
The guys at gaming computer maker Razer try to tweet a clever shot at Apple's new MacBook Pro. "You call yourself Pro? S my D," the tweet goes, pointing to the laptop's lack of an SD card slot. After scores of users, many female, complain, the company says that it merely wanted to point out that its machines do have SD slots.

They rinse and spin, they rumble and roll, they flip their lids and blow a hole through the wall.
Samsung recalls washers that may damage their surroundings and/or injure their owners. The top-loading models are part of the Korean giant's explosive 2016 product line, but the real explosion comes when the owner of the blown-up device hears that no refund is forthcoming.

Does not compute.
This American Life reports that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton doesn't know how to use a PC—one of the few things she apparently has in common with Donald Trump.

But that 1.8% chance of the exact opposite happening is a doozy.
One day before the U.S. presidential election, the Huffington Post declares that the odds are 98.2% that Hillary Clinton will defeat Donald Trump, and that her victory will be "substantial."

The intolerant among you should get the hell out.
After Donald Trump's surprise victory, GrubHub's CEO sends an email to employees decrying Trump as a hateful anti-immigrant nationalist, saying that GrubHub will fight for the dignity of any worker who feels scared, and ordering those who disagree to tender their resignations by return email. He later clarifies that he was not demanding that anyone who voted for Trump must quit.

All publicity is good publicity, except for terrible publicity.
Irate over the election results, the CEO of security startup PacketSled takes to Facebook and threatens to personally assassinate President-elect Trump. He apologizes, says he was joking (and drinking), and then—say it with me now—resigns.

It's not like it was a secret or anything, part deux.
An image inside the new MacOS Sierra depicts the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar and Touch ID—a computer that Apple hasn't announced yet.

As long as the pug was on staff, no problem.
Taxi-app startup Karhoo shuts down after burning through $250 million of funding. The CEO of the would-be Uber rival is said to have billed the company for expenses such as his pet pug's $6,000 vet fees.

If Facebook says you're dead, you're dead.
A bug briefly leaves Facebook compassionately declaring that many members—including Mark Zuckerberg—have died and that it hopes their profiles will be of comfort to their loved ones.

Hit the road, @Jack.
Twitter, which has a reputation for moving slowly to oust those who engage in harassment and other forms of troublemaking from its service, accidentally suspends its own CEO, Jack Dorsey, for about 15 minutes.

Nobody can troll like a CEO can troll.
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman apologizes for striking back at insults flung at him by members of the site's pro-Trump subreddit by editing them to replace his name with those of the subreddit's own moderators.

December

Organizing the world's fake news and making it universally accessible.
A Google redesign that emphasizes "top stories" pushes a U.K. tabloid's article about aliens sucking energy from the sun to the top of search results.

You're gonna need more cake.
1.2 million people RSVP for a Mexican girl's 15th birthday party after her parents accidentally make the invitation public on Facebook rather than limiting it to friends and family.

On the bright side, autocorrect silently fixed a number of other equally embarrassing typos.
It's revealed that Clinton campaign manager's John Podesta's email was hacked after an aide called a phishing attack "a legitimate email" in a message. He had meant to say "an illegitimate email," but his error prompted Podesta to click on a rogue link that led to the breach of the Democratic National Committee. The messages that got leaked as a result, via Wikileaks, often dominated coverage of the Clinton campaign.

Reality-show host/president elect/security guru.
President-elect Trump plays down the FBI's and CIA's suspicion that Russian hackers interfered with the U.S. election by breaking into DNC email servers—even arguing that it would be "very hard" to find the identity of the hackers without catching them in the act. Real security experts are quick to disagree.

Problem solved!
After complaints that the battery life of new MacBook Pro models is disappointing and unpredictable, Apple uses a MacOS update to remove the feature that states, in hours and minutes, how much time you've got left.

Double or nothing.
Less than three months after disclosing a leak of information on a half billion of its users—called the worst hack ever at the time—Yahoo reveals an earlier breach, in 2013, that affected a billion users. It says it believes that the same state-sponsored hackers were responsible in both instances. And this time around, unlike after the first disclosure, it forces users to change their passwords.

This is exactly why Bonnie and Clyde never snapped.
Florida police arrest a 19-year-old woman on suspicion of burglary and other charges after seeing a Snapchat post showing her, a 16-year-old, and wads of cash.

The Technology That Gets A Package From The Warehouse To Your House

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At UPS, holiday shipping means warehouse robotics, electric bicycles that bring packages to your home, and more.

This holiday season, UPS is working long hours to make sure that customers get the gifts they've ordered online. The shipper—the world's largest logistics company by some measures, with 440,000 employees—expects to deliver more than 700 million packages between Thanksgiving and Christmas in 2016. On average, that means approximately 28 million packages a day, double the normal rate. This is unprecedented volume: The National Retail Federation, a trade group, says 56.5% of customers they spoke to plan to buy gifts online this year. That's the highest amount they have seen so far, an increase of 6.8% from 2015.

In other words: "That forecast means it should be the busiest peak season in UPS history," said UPS spokesperson Dan McMackin. For the holidays, that means 15 new or expanded hubs and a plan to hire more than 95,000 temporary employees.

The season also means the company is relying on increasingly more complex technology to get packages to their final destination. The company, which alongside FedEx, the USPS, and DHL is among the biggest beneficiaries from the online shopping boom, uses everything from robots to complicated machine learning to smartphone apps to help the company's workers and drivers stay safe and on time. Most packages are arriving on time. Between December 4 and 10, according to Shipmatrix, a shipping software maker, UPS Ground had an on-time delivery rate of 93.1% versus 93.2% during that period in 2015. FedEx Ground's on-time delivery rate of 96.2% was slightly above last year's rate of 95.3%.

According to UPS, the average package that's shipped by air is handled by a package handler between six to eight times, and the average package that's shipped by land is handled between eight to 12 times. The decision to take packages by land or air depends on a number of factors—everything from how far away the point of shipping is from the customer to how busy individual airports are.

Puck sorters at UPS's Worldport facility in Kentucky.

The Worldport

The core of UPS's shipping operations is the Worldport, the company's global hub in Louisville, Kentucky. Located at Louisville's airport, the 5.2 million-square-foot warehouse facility can handle over 416,000 packages per hour, thanks to a mixture of human employees and high-tech automated systems. If you've received a package shipped by air via UPS, there's a good chance it has gone through the Worldport.

Scanners And Pucks

Inside facilities like the Worldport, a complicated hub sorting system takes place. Automated preload uses conveyer belts, robot sorters called puck sorters, and sophisticated scanning equipment. A UPS spokesperson says, "Packages come down a belt lined with orange or black plastic pucks, and a specific number of them shoot at a package, sending it down the right chute to be sorted. It's designed to shoot out the exact number of pucks needed to move the box, based on size."

Although it's somewhat outdated, this Reddit AMA with a UPS package handler at the Worldport gives a fascinating look inside the work that's done there.

ORION's Belt

Once packages go through the warehouse and are on their way to their final destination, a lot of the most interesting technology UPS uses is invisible. ORION (On-Road Integrated Optimization and Navigation) is a highly complicated algorithm used to plan driver's routes that is designed to make sure the company saves as much time and money possible delivering and picking up packages. The platform is currently being integrated in the company's workflows; in 2015, UPS CEO David Abney told the Wall Street Journal he expects ORION will save UPS between $300 million and $400 million per year.

While ORION reduces the autonomy of drivers—it basically lets UPS create a detailed itinerary for each driver to follow day after day, down to what streets they turn their trucks on, it also generates significant fuel savings for the company and is designed to make sure customers get packages more quickly.

"New technologies such as ORION and more efficient sortation equipment like puck sorters allow us to move a higher volume of packages faster and with better accuracy," says McMackin.

Golf Carts And E-Tricycles

Fuel savings are also evident in new projects being tested out in Oregon and Florida, where UPS is experimenting with using new kinds of vehicles to make deliveries. In Tampa and in several other markets in Texas and California, UPS uses golf carts to make deliveries during the Christmas rush season; in Portland, the company is experimenting with electric tricycles with carts attached for deliveries. According to UPS, the e-bikes are being tested to see how they work in traffic; an earlier version of the initiative used electric bikes for delivery in Hamburg, Germany.

Someday, Drones By Land And Air

UPS is testing even more exotic tech tools such as drones for their delivery services as well. This past fall, UPS teamed up with a startup called CyPhy Works to make an experimental three-mile-long drone delivery to a children's summer camp on an island near Boston. The drone, which delivered an asthma inhaler, flew over the Atlantic Ocean for part of that journey.

Drones might also play a role inside UPS's warehouses: The company confirms that they have been testing drones in their facilities for tasks like checking on high storage racks and surveying for available space on shelves. Automated or remotely controlled robots have been experimented with in many other large warehouse and logistics facilities by other companies. Amazon, for instance, has a thriving robotics program of its own, and estimates that its warehouse robots have reduced operating expenses by about 20%.

Self-Driving Trucks? Self-Driving Trucks With Drones On Top?

But the biggest change is a larger shift toward electric vehicles. In 2016 alone, UPS purchased more than 300 electric-hybrid delivery trucks from a manufacturer called the Workhorse Group. Alternative fuel vehicles now make up 6% of the company's 100,000-vehicle global fleet, and have driven a 10% annual reduction in use of conventional fuel, the company says. (Workhorse and UPS have also worked on a proof-of-concept truck that uses drones to deliver packages along its route.)

While 300 trucks is a drop in the bucket when it comes to UPS's massive fleet, it's still one of the biggest bets on electric delivery trucks to date in the U.S. The company said in May that 6% of its 100,000-vehicle global fleet now runs on alternative fuels. And last month, UPS said it was investigating the potential use of self-driving trucks as well, the Wall Street Journal reported. The technology would not be used to "get rid of jobs," insisted the company's chief information officer, but to improve safety. For the hundreds of millions of Americans who receive packages from their UPS driver, those drivers are "the face of UPS," he said.

Looking To Give Back At The End Of A Rough 2016? Follow These Examples

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Finding meaningful ways to be generous with our time and money is helping a lot of us end a particularly divisive year on a positive note.

Many Americans decided to give peace a chance at the end of 2016.

In response to a discordant political season, lots of people have shown a desire to close out the year in a giving way. Planned Parenthood reported 80,000 new donations three days after the election. The ACLU announced the greatest outpouring of support in its history (even more than after September 11, 2001). New York Cares, a volunteer management nonprofit, and 826 Chicago, part of a nationwide children's literacy initiative, reported noteworthy surges of volunteer signups between November and December. Even Christmas card trends reflected a shift toward goodwill. The card company Minted reported that in the Washington, D.C., area, a design called "Floral Peace," which depicts a peace sign created out of greenery, was the first non-photo holiday card in the history of the company to become a top seller.

Businesses have also found ways of giving back. Patagonia announced that it would give away 100% of its Black Friday online and in-store purchases to environmental defense charities. "In these divisive times, protecting what we all hold in common is more important than ever before," read a company statement. The initiative beat company expectations, raising $10 million instead of the forecasted $2 million.

But companies don't need to be as massive as Patagonia to give back in meaningful ways, both to the country and to employees. This year, managers of businesses of all sizes are finding ways to make this holiday season in particular more meaningful. Here are a few examples.

Skip The Cliché

For Heather Kelly, CEO at the San Francisco public relations firm SSPR, it just didn't feel right sending out the company's usual holiday thank you gift to clients: chocolates. "We're buying these chocolates, we're shipping them all over the world, there's an environmental impact that sucks, and best case scenario: Our contact opens them, sticks them in the company kitchen, and maybe brings it up at a company meeting," she says.

So this year, SSPR sent clients an email stating that in the spirit of the season, the company would make a donation in their name to one of five charities SSPR employees chose, which included The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, the Environmental Defense Center, and a puppy mill rescue. For clients who didn't like this option, the chocolates were still available.

Kelly says her team was excited about this new route, and she received enthusiastic responses from her clients as well. In the first 24 hours alone, the email generated over a 50% open rate, with about 50% of those recipients replying to the email and selecting a charity. Companies that had responded for 20 years with radio silence to the chocolates promptly responded to the email. "Within minutes, I had nearly a dozen emails from clients saying, 'Wow this is so great,'" Kelly says. "It is relationship building and it is doing good."

So far, no clients have requested the chocolates.

Don't Just Ask Your Team To Donate. Get Them Involved

This year, Michigan-based M&O Marketing skipped its annual Christmas party. Employees felt it was time to do something bigger that would make a difference while raising company morale. So on November 9, the company began to raise money for Game on Cancer, the official charity of the Detroit Lions.

The collective effort was massive, thanks in part to the creative ways employees got involved in fundraising. Aimee Spencer, director of public relations, held an online contest to name her new dog, pledging a dollar for every vote cast (the pug mix ended up being named Gus). Lexxa Romano, new business annuity case manager, has a cosmetology license and auctioned off haircuts for her coworkers, eventually lining up 17 scheduled "clients" in five days and raising almost $400. "I was pretty busy," she says. The collective effort raised funds and morale: Prior to the challenge, Romano and Spencer, who work in separate departments, rarely interacted. After the challenge, Spencer says, "I got to know Lexxa a lot better. We're all working better as a team."

Compared to the couple of hundred dollars a month the company used to raise for Jean Days, M&O hit its goal of raising $5,000 for Game on Cancer in just one month. That was before company owner Dennis Brown announced that M&O would match all donations. The company ended up raising $11,000 and celebrated at Detroit's Ford Field, where, unlike previous holiday parties, employees' families were welcome.

The plastic IUDs that Voodoo Manufacturing made for NOW.[Photo: courtesy of Voodoo Manufacturing]

Be An Advocate

Voodoo Manufacturing, a 3D printing factory in Brooklyn, donated its services to the National Organization for Women by printing 250 plastic IUDs pro bono to be used in Christmas ornaments for NOW's NastyorNice holiday gala.

NOW's NastyorNice Choir

"This is all regarding the recent election and possible changes that are happening to the Affordable Care Act," says company cofounder Jonathan Schwartz. "A lot of people are concerned that after Trump makes changes to it, contraceptives may not be covered by insurance the way they are today." Schwartz also felt this was a way for his (currently) mostly-male company to help out women. "We took this as an opportunity to learn more about IUDs, and to further appreciate what is required of women to use them."

Sharebite

Be The Example

For every order placed on Sharebite, a New York food delivery startup that hopes to rival GrubHub, the company donates a meal to local kids who often go hungry. In December, the company announced the goal of feeding 1 million kids in 2017, pledging to donate five meals per order for the 2016 holiday season instead of the typical one.

Additionally, as Pakistani-Americans, Sharebite founders Mohsin Memon and Ahsen Saber hope that their company's mission—and their faces—serve as a bridge to the rest of their New York City community at a time when reports of Islamophobic hate crimes are on the rise. "Ahsen and I are both Muslim Americans," says Memon. "The best way to fight Islamophobia is continuing to be who we are. Hunger has no religion and no race."

What Smartwatches Lost With The Death Of Pebble

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As a business, Pebble was a failure, but its low-maintenance approach toward wearables deserves to live on.

Earlier this month, Pebble's smartwatch underdog story reached a tragic conclusion: Under a crushing mound of debt and with no clear path to profitability, the startup sold its software assets to Fitbit, canceled all hardware in development, discontinued active support for existing watches, and ceased daily operations.

From a business standpoint, Pebble has little to celebrate. Although it was first to the modern smartwatch market in 2013, the company only sold 2 million watches in three years. In contrast, analysts estimate 12 million Apple Watch sales in their first year alone. Smartwatches in general still haven't proved their worthiness to the masses, and Pebble never became more than a niche player in what is already a niche market.

But as a company, Pebble's principles were praiseworthy. At a time when rival smartwatch makers were trying to make devices that do everything, Pebble produced products that were refreshingly low-maintenance, which is why I always drifted back to Pebble smartwatches after owning and reviewing many others. Even if Pebble didn't produce mass-market hits, its attitude toward wearables deserves to live on, whether it's through Fitbit or any other company that happens to be watching.

Low Power, Less Burden

Wearing a smartwatch can be a big commitment. Most require a nightly recharge, and even the smallest ones, like the 38mm Apple Watch, are chunky enough that they look like statement pieces rather than subtle accessories.

While most of Pebble's watches were of similar heft, they mitigated the battery problem by using e-paper display technology, rather than full-color LCD or OLED displays. The main Pebble and Pebble Time watches lasted roughly one week per charge.

But Pebble's power efficiency had another advantage: It allowed for much smaller designs with comparable battery life to other smartwatches. We saw an example of this with last year's Pebble Time Round, whose battery only lasted a couple days on a charge, but was 33% thinner than an Apple Watch.

Part of me wishes Pebble had pushed the slimmer design from the start, and iterated on it sooner. Anecdotally, people around me usually seemed more curious about the Time Round than any other Pebble, including women who felt like their tastes were being ignored by the rest of the smartwatch industry. Although the e-paper technology had faults—it was tough to read without ample lighting, and could only display limited colors—it enabled hardware designs that were impossible for other smartwatches.

Less Looking, More Doing

While other smartwatch makers futzed around with digital crowns, twistable bezels, and touch screens, Pebble never strayed from physical buttons as the sole input method. The company understood that with smartwatches, any action that takes more than a few seconds wasn't worth doing, and the advantage of buttons was that you could execute those actions—deleting an email, skipping through music tracks, starting a timer—without even looking at the screen.

Pebble's four-button setup was especially conducive to these lightweight interactions. Each button could be mapped to a specific action by pressing and holding it down. That made it possible to have a button just for sending a text message, or one that launches an app whose sole purpose is dictating Wunderlist items by voice. What the buttons lacked in elegance, they made up for with muscle memory, and every other watch seems needlessly slow by comparison.

Smartphone Freedom

Every smartwatch today relies to some extent on a connection to your smartphone, but Pebble was the only one that didn't care whose smartphone you used. That freedom is liberating.

At the outset, the Pebble experience was roughly the same for iPhone and Android users. And while the Android version eventually became more useful with actionable notifications, over time Pebble tried to re-level the playing field. Support for text messages—with voice dictation, canned response, and emoji—arrived for iPhone users over the last year, as did Gmail actions and replies. As of October, Pebble was still working on iOS actionable notifications for other services.

With all other smartwatches, your options are severely limited by the phone in your pocket. The Apple Watch only works with iPhones. Early Samsung watches only worked with Samsung Galaxy phones, and newer models still require an Android phone. Some watches that run Google's Android Wear support the iPhone, but third-party apps, offline music, and actionable notifications (for all services except Gmail) don't work.

Granted, most people aren't switching between smartphone platforms on a regular basis, but a platform-agnostic smartwatch is one less thing to worry about if you do want to switch, and it's easier to recommend to others since you don't have to worry about what phone they use. Maybe this is part of what interested Fitbit in Pebble's software assets to begin with.

What's Next For What's Left?

The overarching theme here is that Pebble didn't ask much of its users. They didn't have to think much about battery life, or having an oversized lump on their wrists, or fiddling with a tiny touch screen, or pairing their watch to a particular phone.

Pebble's watches weren't perfect, and they never really shed the geeky aesthetic that might have held them back from broader acceptance, but I like to think that, with more time, the company's low-maintenance approach toward wearables could have paid off. Unfortunately for Pebble, the hype around wearables collapsed just as the company's products were hitting their stride, and the funding to keep Pebble going just wasn't there. Maybe it could have survived as a small niche company funded only by Kickstarter campaigns and sales. But I think they were expecting things to get bigger, and took on a lot of outside funding that quickly became a liability.

Reports suggest that Fitbit bought Pebble's assets for less than $40 million, far less than Pebble had been seeking from potential buyers. What's unclear now is what Fitbit intends to do with the acquisition, aside from keeping existing watches alive through 2017. We can only hope Fitbit sees the good in what Pebble created, and doesn't squander it.

How The Jetsons Can Help With Your Last-Minute Holiday Shopping

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If you want to impress everyone on your gift list, let the classic cartoon about the future be your guide.

In 1962, Hanna-Barbera unveiled The Jetsons, a cartoon that took a look at what the world might be like in the future. While we haven't quite gotten to the point where we're all zipping around in flying cars, a good deal of the tech in the show has actually made it, in some form, into the modern world.

If you're scrambling around looking for the perfect last-minute gift this holiday season, the original future family might be just the inspiration you need. From George's talking alarm clock to a smart elevator that can take you anywhere you want with the push of a button, we've rounded up a few of the gadgets and gizmos that made The Jetsons great that you can actually buy today. Even better, they're all available via Amazon Prime, so you can get them to your home almost as fast as Rosie the Robot could.

LG 65-inch 4k OLED TV—$2,997

The Jetsons had a super-thin television that would descend from their ceiling whenever they wanted to watch something. Today's TVs are arguably even thinner than the future family ever imagined. This 65-inch curved TV by LG is designed so it looks great from any angle in the room (we doubt the Jetsons' TV could pull that off), and has a 4k resolution, which is as lifelike as you can get on a television in our future. Smart TVs like this one also take things a step further than the Jetsons' set by offering built-in apps like Netflix and Hulu that put the world's movies and TV shows at your fingertips.

Related Video: Co.Design's Best Designed Gifts Of 2016

Oral-B Pro 7000 Electric Toothbrush—$114

George Jetson had a team of toothbrushes that handled the dirty work for him. We're not quite at a point where we all have automated toothbrushes installed in our bathrooms, but brushing technology has come a pretty long way. There are a ton of "smart" brushes out there that offer functionality far beyond what was we saw in the cartoon. Oral-B's Pro 7000 SmartSeries electric toothbrush, for instance, offers real-time feedback on how you're brushing, tracks your brushing habits over time, and offers tips on how you can improve your technique.

Amazon Echo—$140

We don't all have robot maids and butlers in our homes just yet, but you can get a lot of the functionality the Jetsons got from Rosie from much smaller devices. For instance, Amazon's Echo can play that song you want to hear, order your groceries for you, and even control some aspects of your smart home. Everything is done with your voice, so like with a true robot butler, you'll never have to lift a finger.

Smartphone—Varies

Jane Jetson could simply ask to "call Mom" and then get her on video chat instantly. With things like Skype and Google Hangouts, video chatting with loved ones is just a click away. The iPhone and most Android devices, such as Samsung's Galaxy S7, also have built-in personal assistants Siri and Google Now that can handle your request to call Mom and a whole lot more.

Smartwatch—$300

Elroy Jetson used his smartwatch to watch episodes of The Flintstones and talk to his family. While smartwatches with video capabilities aren't quite ready for prime time just yet, today's smartwatches, such as the Apple Watch, can allow you to call home, view photos, and even track your latest workout.

Asus Chromebook—$211

Elroy's quick access to information while doing his homework offered a glimpse into our potential future. Today, kids have the internet at their fingertips. If you want to keep those fingers off your expensive laptop, then something like this Chromebook by Asus can be a great solution. Nearly everything is done using Chrome, which means your child can log in on the laptop and a desktop at school and have an identical experience. At under $250, the computer is also inexpensive enough that it won't break the bank, or destroy your patience in the event it gets damaged.

Talking Alarm Clock—$51

The Jetsons had alarm clocks they could talk to, and so do we. Moshi's voice-controlled alarm clock allows you to set your wake-up time by talking to it. Beyond setting an alarm, the handy clock can also tell you what the weather is outside while you're rolling out of bed, and tell you the time while you're getting ready on the other side of the room.

iPad Pro—$500-plus

George got his news each morning from a digital paper. Today, not only do we have digital versions of most newspapers, we also have websites like this one where you can get caught up on the day's news. If you're hankering for a larger screen to get that reading done, the iPad Pro can be a great solution. The light device allows you to bring your morning reading with you during your commute, and it's good for a whole lot more than just reading.

Uber Gift Card

The Jetsons could travel by simply pressing a button and telling the elevator, tube, or car where they wanted to go. We're not quite at a smart elevator status just yet, but Uber works in an exceptionally similar way. Just launch the app, type in where you want to go, and a car will arrive to take you there. Uber gift certificates can be a great way to give that gift of easy travel to a loved one.

Robot vacuum—$429

Vacuuming is one of those things very few of us enjoy. The Jetsons owned a robot vacuum that was surprisingly similar to iRobot's Roomba. The Roomba can be programmed to do the deed while you're at the office so you always come home to a clean house. The vacuum can handle multiple rooms (as long as they're on the same floor) and docks itself when it's done cleaning, so you don't ever have to worry about charging it up.

Smart Blood Pressure Monitor—$100

Does Dad have to check his blood pressure every day? Keeping up with those results can be a pain, and sending them to your doctor in a meaningful way can be even worse. Withings' smart blood pressure monitor connects to Dad's mobile phone and automatically logs each reading. The device's mobile app will let him know if a reading is high, and will store every reading automatically. When Dad needs to share information with his doctor, the app emails those results in just a few seconds. The app also works with Withings' fitness trackers and scale to store all your health data.

10 Last-Minute Gift Ideas That Can Help Make The World A Better Place

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How you can put your money toward more than just more stuff—and nudge your friends and family in the right direction, too.

If ever there was a year to give back, this is it. As 2016 comes to a close, so many communities the world over have found themselves increasingly marginalized and disenfranchised. Idle slacktivisim won't cut it. Here are a few ways you can put your money where your tweets are:

A young Syrian family finds relief in a large, breezy tent at the Diavata camp in Thessaloniki, Greece, where temperatures often exceed 100 degrees.[Photo: Jessica Dimmock]

1. International Rescue Committee: You could, of course, donate to the IRC the usual way. But a more meaningful contribution might be to give a rescue gift. For a little over $50, you could cover the costs of a year of schooling for a girl in Afghanistan or pay for four temporary shelters to help house families in refugee camps.

2. DonorsChoose: As a crowdfunding platform dedicated to education, DonorsChoose lets public school teachers across the U.S. raise money for classroom supplies and other student needs. Choose from thousands of classroom projects and help one—or a few—come to fruition.

Black Girls Code founder Kimberly Bryant[Photo: Nichole Washington for Fast Company]

3. Coding nonprofits: As not-for-profit organizations that focus on empowering black, Latino, and female workers in the tech sector, Code2040, Black Girls Code and Girls Who Code are always seeking donations. Another way to help out, albeit free of cost: volunteer to lead curriculum, teach workshops, conduct mock interviews, review resumes, and more.

4. Charity: water: The clean water nonprofit has a selection of branded gifts in its online store, the proceeds of which go toward Charity: water's operating costs. If you'd rather put your money directly toward well building, you can donate and track how every dollar you give is spent via Charity: water's map of completed projects—or start your own fundraising campaign to raise money for the organization.

Nobel Peace Prize–winning education activist Malala Yousafzai[Photo: Samantha Casolari]

5. Malala Fund: As with Charity: water, the Malala Fund gives you the option of fundraising on your own, donating, or making a tribute gift to champion girls in Pakistan, Nigeria, Kenya—as well as Syrian refugees—and help them get the secondary education they deserve. (Also worth checking out: Pencils of Promise.)

6. Crisis Text Line: A free 24-hour hotline largely for troubled teens and young adults, Crisis Text Line offers counsel via text. Donate to the cause or, better yet, apply to become a crisis counselor yourself.

Sama Group founder and CEO Leila Janah brings a Silicon Valley–style mentality to poverty relief.[Photo: Chloe Aftel]

7. LXMI: Founded by Sama Group founder and CEO Leila Janah, LXMI is a for-profit skin care line that employs poor African women to grow and process the natural ingredients in its products in exchange for at least three times the local wages. Part of the proceeds from LXMI's sales go toward the Sama Group, which pairs communities in poverty with digital work opportunities.

8. Watsi:This is a crowdfunding platform in the same vein as DonorsChoose, but for medical procedures. Watsi connects donors with patients who can't afford to pay for, say, a surgery they need. And by giving friends and family a Watsi gift card, you can encourage them to support a patient of their choice.

9. FWD.us: Led by Mark Zuckerberg and other tech industry heavyweights, FWD.us continues to push for comprehensive immigrant reform. Donate, or join your local FWD.us chapter and volunteer for events.

Change agent: "These issues impact all of us," says Rashad Robinson. "Not just black people."[Photo: Gus Powell]

10. Color of Change: If, like many others did after the election, you've already donated to the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, you might turn your attention to online racial justice organization Color of Change. If you want to go beyond just donating, you can sign up to lead your own digital campaign on issues impacting the black community. (Another organization doing great civil rights advocacy work, particularly when it comes to hate speech and intolerance in the aftermath of the election, is the Southern Poverty Law Center.)


Amazon's Holiday Shipping Rush Brings Growing Pains

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Pilots working for Amazon's shipping subcontractors are complaining of missing birthdays and funerals due to their workload.

This holiday season, Amazon is dealing with an unprecedented number of orders. Although sales figures haven't been released yet, the e-commerce giant announced in November that it expects record-setting sales for third-party sellers on Amazon. In addition, ShipMatrix, a shipping consultancy, estimates Amazon will send out more than 7 million packages daily during the pre-Christmas season in the U.S. alone, with a total of approximately 220 million packages—a 27% increase over last year.

That high shipping volume is taking place at the same time that Amazon is building an ambitious package delivery network of its own to wean itself off carriers like UPS, FedEx, and the U.S. Postal Service, and perhaps even compete with them. That combination is putting strains on the e-commerce giant.

Prime Air: Fifteen 767s

Over the past six months, Amazon has taken huge steps toward building a global flight network of its own. The Financial Times's Leslie Hook and Claire Manibog recently crunched the data of flights from Amazon's largest subcontractor, Air Transport International (ATI), and found it has more than doubled its air operations over the past six months. As of December 2016, Amazon has agreements in place to lease as many as 40 Boeing 767 cargo jets from its various subcontractors. (This is still a fraction of the global fleet sizes of FedEx at 643 and UPS at 650. According to J.P. Morgan analyst Brian Ossenbeck, if Amazon wanted to build out a rival network, it would need to lease or buy about 500 more planes—or "a fleet over twice the size of JetBlue's.") Fifteen of Amazon's jets are already in use, with others being made available next year.

Much of this growth is tied to a new delivery system Amazon is launching called Amazon Prime Air. The company's public-facing website exclusively touts Amazon's efforts at drone delivery, calling Prime Air "a delivery system from Amazon designed to safely get packages to customers in 30 minutes or less using unmanned aerial vehicles." Prime Air, says the company, "has great potential to enhance the services we already provide to millions of customers by providing rapid parcel delivery that will also increase the overall safety and efficiency of the transportation system."

However, Prime Air's fleet mainly consists of conventional Boeing 767 cargo jets. And the rapid growth of that fleet—amid an ongoing pilot shortage—is causing clashes with the unionized pilots flying those planes.

[Photo: courtesy of Amazon]

Pilot Dissatisfaction

This past November, about 250 unionized pilots for ABX, a cargo airline that Amazon subcontracts with for deliveries, went on strike before Black Friday over complaints that they are short-staffed, overworked, and underpaid. The strike grounded as many as 75 Amazon and DHL flights and 1.3 million pounds of cargo before a federal judge ordered that the pilots return to work.

Last week, the Teamsters local representing both ABX and Atlas Air, another Amazon subcontractor, launched a website and social media campaign called Can Amazon Deliver, warning of late deliveries and claiming that pilots are being ordered to handle extra shifts and forgo time off. Understaffing has gotten so bad that at ABX, according to the union, pilots are "stretched thin and regularly missing birthdays, anniversaries, funerals, and other important family events." The site urges customers to email Amazon executives and ask them to pressure the airlines to improve the pilots' arrangement.

In the Teamsters' last public statement, issued on December 16, the union says they are seeking for "contracted pilots (to) have a fair contract to prevent turnover and make deliveries on time." They also add that "in addition to staffing issues, the threat of a strike continues to loom. Earlier this year, pilots at ABX Air and Atlas Air voted with 99% support to strike should it become necessary."

A survey of more than two-thirds of Atlas Air's pilots, along with pilots at Atlas subsidiary Southern Air, released this December found 69.3% of Atlas pilots believed the airline did not have enough pilots to meet the long-term needs of Amazon and DHL, another major client. A similar number, 65.3%, said they planned to find a new job over the next year.

Amazon remains confident in its ability to deliver packages on time. In a statement to Fast Company, a company representative said, "Several weeks ago we rebalanced capacity across our network of carrier partners to ensure there are no disruptions through the busy holiday season, and this rebalancing remains in effect—we are confident in our ability to serve customers."

Pressure To Lower Shipping Costs

Dissatisfaction among the unionized, highly skilled pilots who play a crucial role in Amazon's holiday season operations point to a larger theme: Amazon's delivery network has seen dramatic growth. The company has been building new fulfillment centers at rapid clip: JP Morgan's Ossenbeck says Amazon has "at least 90 facilities across 21 states, most of which were built within the last six years," and is "opening nearly 30 fulfillment centers in 2016, accounting for roughly a 30% jump in square footage." This week alone, it announced two new fulfillment centers in Aurora, Illinois, that will create over 1,000 new jobs. Amazon also recently launched an app that matches truckers to Amazon hauls that has added to speculation that the company is eventually interested in autonomous shipping trucks.

[Chart: via Azarium]

The rapid growth of Amazon's delivery network has also cut into shareholders' profits; although the company is doing massive amounts of business, its investment into the company's infrastructure has led to a smaller-than-expected profit margin in the last quarter. In the past year, Amazon's net losses from shipping alone amounted to $6.4 billion—losses whose growth has outpaced sales.

But as customers order their holiday gifts on Amazon at an increasing pace—and Amazon seeks new efficiencies in its network—the shopping spree is putting added pressure on those who handle its packages. The Los Angeles Times's Natalie Kitroeff, for instance, recently reported that delivery drivers for Amazon's local subcontractors routinely work unpaid overtime and are not given legally mandated meal breaks.

The holiday rush has also put added strain on Amazon workers in Germany, the company's second-biggest market after the U.S., with 11,000 warehouse staff and thousands of seasonal workers. On Monday, workers at Amazon's warehouse in Koblenz launched a strike amid a long-running dispute over pay and conditions, and on Wednesday, workers at three other German warehouses were called out on strike by labor union Verdi. An Amazon spokesperson told Fortune that the strike, which will run until December 24, would not lead to delays in Christmas present deliveries.

For customers, the important thing is making sure their holiday gifts arrive on time, and that packages show up at their destinations in a timely fashion. But Amazon is learning something that it and many other companies of its size have also encountered: Rapid growth doesn't come without some growing pains.

This Startup Will Sequence Your DNA, So You Can Contribute To Medical Research

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Will the opportunity to contribute to disease-ending medical research convince more people to get their DNA sequenced?

The price to sequence the human genome has dropped from $100 million in 2001 to just a few thousand dollars today. It's now cheap enough that some people are starting to get sequenced out of sheer curiosity about what they might uncover.

But DNA sequencing is still far from mainstream. The number of people who have this level of insight into their genetic code is probably in the "five-digit range," according to Leslie G. Biesecker of the National Human Genome Research Institute. Part of the problem is that many people are not aware of genomics, while others fear that they will not receive an "actionable" result or learn anything much at all.

Some of the largest genomics companies are hoping to change that. One new approach, from Complete Genomics' spinout-company Genos, is making a bet that personal genomics will take off if consumers have the opportunity to contribute to important medical research, rather than to learn about their ancestry or lifestyle preferences. For $499, the company sells an FDA-approved home-testing kit. In exchange for a spit sample, Genos will share a web-based visualization for its users to explore their genetic code. Those that opt in to the service will need a prescription from their doctor, as users do learn about some health traits. The test isn't covered by insurance.

After receiving their results, users can opt to share their genomic data with up to four initial research partners to participate in studies: Broad Institute (for research into protecting against Prion diseases, a group of neurodegenerative conditions), Utah Center for Biomedical Research (for a study on the genetic variances of common neurological and psychiatric disorders), NantBioScience (for a clinical trial for lymphoma, and a study of a breast cancer vaccine), and NantKwest (for a study of a therapy for Merkel Cell Carcinoma).

Those that embark on an informed consent process will be compensated a small amount: $50 to $200 depending on the study. There's also an option to pay it forward to help others who can't afford to get sequenced.

Some experts say that Genos has a good shot because it assumes people are motivated by altruism. "I believe that the tipping point will be when people realize how valuable it is (getting sequenced) for themselves and for society," says George Church, professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and an advisor to Genos. "Think of genomics as a precautionary measure like an airbag," he adds. "Most of us wouldn't dream of driving a car without it."

Getting Paid For Your DNA

Genos is among the first companies to offer financial rewards to consumers in exchange for their genetic data. This might seem like a no-brainer, but it is actually a hotly debated topic among bio-ethicists. Some believe that consumers should get paid for their health data, especially given that companies like 23andMe are getting compensated by pharma companies for access to their database of more than 1 million people's genomes. Others argue that offering financial rewards to people would be an act of manipulation.

Genos CEO Mark Blumling stresses that it's not about the money (after all, users are paying more to get sequenced than they receive in compensation). The company says that about 97% of its beta users surveyed would be willing to share their data with medical researchers free of charge. That's a finding that research firm Rock Health also uncovered in its annual study of consumer behavior: It found that 62% of people would share their data to bolster medical research versus 42% to receive a financial reward.

Another unique aspect to Genos' service is that users will be able to visualize their genome, rather than seeing some high-level insights. "Our pitch is that you can drive research and control your data," says Blumling. The company is also hoping to build a strong community, which will provide feedback on future studies. One problem that Genos will likely face in the future is that medical research is lacking in diversity. Groups like minorities, women, and low-income communities are vastly underrepresented in clinical trials. With a $500 price tag for its test, it remains to be seen whether Genos will be able to make an impact in this regard.

What Will Motivate Us?

Genos is far from the only company that sees enormous potential in personal genomics. It is hoping that it will stand out from established players like 23andMe and Ancestry, as it offers a much greater depth of coverage. Genos isn't sequencing the whole genome—all 3 billion base pairs—but is specifically looking at the "exome," the part of the genome that contains most of the known variants associated with disease. Meanwhile, 23andMe and Ancestry "genotype" their users, meaning they only look at the small number of positions on the genome that are very variable between individuals.

Similarly to these services, Genos won't diagnose its users with a disease. However, they can connect users' with a genetic counselor for an additional $150.

Genos's closest competitor is Helix, a spinout of San Diego-based DNA-sequencing behemoth Illumina. These companies both offer sequencing at less than $1,000, but are taking a markedly different approach.

Helix assumes that people will pull the trigger to get sequenced in exchange for a specific set of results delivered by a well-known consumer brand. One of the first applications was developed in partnership with National Geographic, which is offering its users insights into their family tree for $149. Another partner, Vinome, makes wine recommendations based on an individuals' taste and smell preferences (the science is so-so on this front, at best) for those that are so inclined. The minimum purchase is three bottles—plus genetic testing—for $199.

For geneticists like Church, it's a good thing whether consumers opt to get sequenced by Helix, Genos, or some new startup around the corner. It remains to be seen whether consumers will be most intrigued to learn about their ancestry; their athletic performance and susceptibility to injuries; their disease risks, or a combination of the above. Or perhaps, the majority of people will be motivated by participating in something bigger, like a scientific research study.

"I think there will be a moment like there was with the internet where no one really cared and then we saw a tsunami of interest," he says. "That could happen to genetics."

Naughty And Nice Unicorns: Which Startups Are Getting Coal In Their Stockings In 2016?

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Billion-dollar startups were chock-full of kindness and controversy this year. These are our picks for the best deeds and worst offenses.

Every year, we cook up a list of who's been naughty and who's been nice among the billion-dollar startups known as unicorns. This year was a relatively quiet one, but it wasn't without its fair share of goodwill toward consumers, in addition to the usual malfeasance and misconduct. Fast Company looked at the latest ranking of 183 unicorn startups provided by CB Insights and cross-referenced it against some of the year's biggest startup news.

Below is our list of the best deeds and worst offenses of 2016, committed by the most hotly followed companies. (Don't worry—we've checked it twice.) Read on to see who's getting coal in their stocking this year.

NICE

Vice Media: Known for underpaying its fleet of trust-fund millennial writers, last year Vice Media agreed to voluntarily recognize the union of its editorial workers as they sought collective bargaining. This year, Vice has continued on the nice track, offering up a plan to hire former inmates into apprenticeship positions across its editorial and production divisions. Vice will partner with the Center for Employment to help seed workers into the program. The announcement comes as the media unicorn is diving into the "Future of Incarceration" through a series of videos and articles devoted to exploring the prison system and the difficulties of trying to change it.

Airbnb: Last year, Airbnb caved to pressure to pay its taxes (and subsequently launched a tone-deaf advertising campaign telling various public institutions how they should spend that money). This year and next, it is seeking out 700 tax deals in order to make filing taxes easier on its users, according to the Financial Times. The agreements allow Airbnb to collect and send in taxes on behalf of its users. As of the end of November, the home-rental service had 200 such deals locked down. There is some concern from the organization American Family Voices, according to the Huffington Post, that these agreements are too opaque and offer more tax breaks to homeowners than they do to hoteliers. (After all, owners of commercial spaces get taxed more heavily than personal homeowners.) But we're willing to give Airbnb a "nice" rating for attempting to usher in a more fluid tax preparation process. Also this year, Airbnb joined a campaign with the UNHCR to raise awareness about the refugee crisis. The company offered to match contributions up to $1 million.

Stripe: This year, the payments platform Stripe launched Atlas, which allows overseas businesses to incorporate as Delaware companies. Very quickly after launching, it struck up a deal with Havana-based Merchant Startup Circle and extended the service to Cubans. The announcement came nearly immediately after President Obama loosened the constraints around Cuban-American relations. Though very few Cubans have internet access at the moment, opening this opportunity to Cuba now allows businesses to join as they crop up. The move will essentially help facilitate access to the U.S. economy for Cubans, and that's good news for both countries.

Chobani: Though not on CB Insights' list, the Greek yogurt startup Chobani is estimated to be worth $3 billion, and its deserves a "nice" mention. This year, its CEO, Hamdi Ulukaya, gave the company's 2,000 employees a 10% stake in the business. On average, employees were granted $150,000 worth of stock, but those who had been there longer were given larger shares. You can buy a lot of yogurt with that.

NAUGHTY

Uber: Ever a scrooge, Uber has made our Naughty list yet again, but not for flouting regulations and ignoring bans in various cities and countries. This year, Uber is getting coal because its employees may have used the platform to spy on celebrities and ex-significant others. A former forensic investigator for Uber says he was fired for calling out a lack of consumer information security at the company, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting. He said that employees at Uber were known to make use of a function called "God View," which allows someone to tap into a user's trip and see where they are. The "God View" feature was first reported on by BuzzFeed in 2014, but at the time, no one knew about any actual abuses, only the potential for misuse.

The Honest Company: This year, the not-so-honest company got slammed with lawsuits saying its products are not as natural as it claims. In 2015, the company was accused of having ineffective sunscreen, but in 2016, the complaints grew louder. A suit filed in New York District Court accused Honest Co. of putting toxic ingredients in supposedly plant-based shampoo and body wash. Another suit, this one from the Organic Consumers Association in California, accused the company of putting non-organic ingredients in its baby food, although that one was dismissed. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journalfound a "significant amount" of sodium lauryl sulfate in the company's detergent, an ingredient it promised not to use. Of course, Honest initially condemned these accusations, but a report from September says the company may be working on a new formula that avoids the use of SLS.

Magic Leap: The secretive augmented reality company is either way behind schedule or its technology just isn't very magical. Last year, Magic Leap promoted the idea that its headset allows people to enter a "mixed" reality (as opposed to virtual or augmented). Supposedly, that means its headset creates imagery that is so lifelike, it really becomes believable. It further cemented this notion with a video of a child's hands holding a lifelike miniature elephant. It's not a demo, but it's been used as such to stir wonder around its product. But a report from The Information says that the company's misleading product demonstrations and YouTube videos don't accurately reflect what the actual technology looks like or does. The company's headset is more helmet-like than goggles. Furthermore, Magic Leap still hasn't launched a product, while Microsoft already has an AR headset on the market.

Lyft: Like other on-demand platforms, Lyft classifies its drivers as contractors, not employees. But this year we learned, at least in part, what Lyft saves by doing business this way. Reuters reported in March that drivers could have claimed $126 million in expense reimbursement if they had been employees. Lyft settled that class-action lawsuit for $27 million—a fraction of what its drivers were potentially owed—but what the plaintiffs really wanted was to be made employees. So it's coal for you this year, Lyft.

The 10 Best Business Books Of 2016

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From leading with grit to practicing deep work, these page turners introduced us to some new ideas this year.

Whether you wanted new ways to think about your business, insightful advice to manage your career, or analysis of the changing business landscape, 2016 offered up just the books you needed. Within that playing field, there were definitely some standouts. Here are 10 of the best business books published this year.

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth
For years, Angela Duckworth's research on grit—the tendency to sustain interest in and effort toward very long-term goals—and self-control have offered valuable insights into why some people are able to stick with their vision while others let goals and plans fall by the wayside. This highly anticipated book by Duckworth, a 2013 MacArthur fellow and University of Pennsylvania psychology professor, doesn't disappoint and landed on the New York Times best-seller list when it was released. This thorough examination of the power of grit is an inspiring look at the true "secrets" to success that are available to most of us.

Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice by Clayton M. Christensen, Karen Dillon, David S. Duncan and Taddy Hall
Called "the father of disruptive innovation theory," Clayton M. Christensen is at it again. With his coauthors, Christensen makes the case that companies shouldn't be selling benefits. Instead, they should be selling themselves for hire. Customers are looking for products and services to do specific jobs. When companies focus on the job at hand, they can innovate more effectively to win market share and customer loyalty. Using real-world examples like Amazon and Airbnb, the book makes it easy to translate this new way of thinking to your business.

Here's the Plan: Your Practical, Tactical Guide to Advancing Your Career During Pregnancy and Parenthood by Allyson Downey
Even as more workplaces pride themselves on being "family-friendly," women still face difficult choices when it comes to pregnancy and parenthood. Allyson Downey blends practical advice from her time writing about the intersection of work and family with real-world insights as an entrepreneur and mother of two small children. The result is a fresh, practical, and honest book that provides reassuring guidance for women—and men—who are about to become working parents. It's a rare book that speaks to the concerns many have—but are often afraid to express—about starting a family while on the career track.

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
Just as the backlash against multitasking reaches a fever pitch, Cal Newport steps up with a guide to getting our focus back. He explains how the "residue" left by multitasking makes us less cognitively efficient. Without scolding—he gets that we're all busy—Newport guides readers through a training regimen to strengthen focus and become more effective and better at our work by immersing ourselves in what we're doing instead of flitting from one task to another. Dive into Newport's book to reclaim your mental clarity and deepen your ability to focus on the task at hand until it's done, and done well. The book racked up awards from the Wall Street Journal (business best seller) Amazon (best business book, January 2016), and others.

Disrupted: My Year in the Startup Bubble by Dan Lyons
When was the last time a business book was a page-turner? Journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and Fake Steve Jobs creator Dan Lyons brought his multitalented A-game to this bold, forthright look at the world of tech startups. From the moment his boss and old friend, Abby, unceremoniously fires the fiftysomething Lyons from his beloved job at Newsweek, it's hard not to root for him. Where he actually lands is at inbound marketing and sales software company HubSpot, where most employees are half his age. In this New York Times best seller, he recounts his year at the startup with laugh-out-loud descriptions and important observations about culture, while also sharing his own lessons about reinventing one's career in the technology age. (HubSpot responded to the book here.)

The Signals Are Talking: Why Today's Fringe Is Tomorrow's Mainstream by Amy Webb
When Amy Webb's Future Today Institute posted its December 2016 trends report, the firm's website crashed from demand. The popular futurist and author last made a big splash with her TED talk and book about using data to hack online dating. Now, she's applying her skeptical, no-nonsense style to looking at how fringe elements in society become widely accepted and commonplace. You can't pay attention to everything. Webb's engaging style uses detailed examples of successes (Nintendo) and failures (BlackBerry) to provide accessible guidance about where you should be focusing attention to spot the trends and movements that are going to stick. In the shadow of an election where so many missed the signals, Webb's book explores important issues at an opportune time. It is the recipient of an Amazon Best Book of December 2016 award.

Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future by Joi Ito and Jeff Howe
While it feels like change is happening faster than ever today, that's hard to quantify. But Joichi "Joi" Ito, director of the MIT Media Lab, and veteran Wired editor and writer Jeff Howe (who is, in part, credited with coining the term "crowdsourcing"), believe that humans always have a set of beliefs and assumptions. The problem is those beliefs and assumptions mask what you don't know. Using a framework of nine principles, Ito and Howe attempt to get us to question these underlying belief systems to help us be more open to learning, adapting, and changing. As you get further into the book, you may start to feel a little less sure of what you "know." But that's okay. You'll finish it a little wiser for the experience.

The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
Imagine a world where machines free us to work on our passion projects without the worry of rote task and routines that drag down our creativity. Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Digital Business show us the possibilities of innovation in robotics, artificial intelligence, and other technologies. Theirs is a utopian vision, to be sure, with less emphasis on the "hollowing out" of the workforce by automation and more on realizing individual potential. However, they provide insight into how technology will revolutionize the way we work, and soon. The book was a New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal best seller.

The New Alpha: Join the Rising Movement of Influencers and Changemakers Who Are Redefining Leadership by Danielle Harlan
Danielle Harlan's book makes you want to be a better leader. Eschewing the gimmicks and curated image development that some leadership books push, the founder of the Center for Advancing Leadership and Human Potential advocates a more broad-based and authentic approach to developing your leadership chops. This is a thinking person's motivational book, and it works. She gives you permission to develop your own style. You'll have to wade through some of the holistic advice, like taking care of yourself and getting exercise, but the book effectively combines solid guidance with a dose of self-help.

The Content Trap: A Strategist's Guide to Digital Change by Bharat Anand
If you think a book about content is a snooze, think again. Harvard Business School Professor Bharat Anand makes the case that we all create content. But what we're prioritizing needs an overhaul. Anand discusses how to create connections through content rather than spending time and resources on having the best content. He shows us with vivid stories and examples how the digital age has brought unprecedented opportunities for those who can master those connections to bring enormous benefits to their businesses and brands. The Wall Street Journal called it ". . . a call to clear thinking and reassessing why things are the way they are."

7 Ways Emotional Intelligence Can Help You Handle Year-End Stress

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The holiday season may be all about selflessness, but a little self-awareness still goes a long way.

It's no secret that the holiday season can be pretty stressful. Health experts at the Mayo Clinic note that the stretch between Thanksgiving and New Year's tends to find people's usual stress levels spiking. But what's less widely understood is that highly emotionally intelligent people may have some more coping tools than others.

In one study by Athens University of Economics and Business researchers, at the University of Greece, higher levels of emotional intelligence were linked with with lower levels of work-related stress. And there's little reason to believe that those same skills can't come in handy for dealing with seasonal pressures, too. Here's a look at some of the ways emotional intelligence can help.

1. Be Aware Of Yourself

People with higher levels of emotional intelligence are more aware of their feelings, what causes them, and why. This awareness helps them recognize stressors earlier and come up with techniques for coping with them.

Self-awareness can be cultivated, though. If you're feeling stressed, take a moment to think about which situations tend to bring out your strongest negative emotions. Simply recognizing that can help you prepare coping mechanisms ahead of time, preventing those feelings from totally commandeering your rational thought.

Knowing how they react to stress gives highly emotionally intelligent people advance warning that something is wrong before they get overwhelmed.

2. Be Aware Of Others

The higher our emotional intelligence, the more we're tuned into others' emotional states—not just our own. This makes it less likely that we'll take signs of other people's stress personally. People with high emotional intelligence can put things into perspective and avoid getting caught up in a stressful situation they have no control over.

Practicing a little more awareness is a powerful thing. And trying to understand what may be causing stress in others can help you have a little more empathy, too—at a time of year when that's extra important.

3. Respond, Don't Just React

When we feel threatened or verbally attacked, our initial reaction is usually to lash out at the source. But not giving in to that initial impulse is the first step toward defusing the situation. It's easy to merely react. It's a lot harder to think about the problem first and then respond thoughtfully. Instead of just getting stuck and stressing ourselves out even more, emotionally intelligence helps you press pause long enough to consider some solutions.

4. Listen Deeply (Even When That's Hardest)

Everyone has a need to be understood. Some of the worst clashes during the holiday season simply result from people feeling that they aren't being heard. It's one thing to disagree, but it's essential that everyone be listened to.

This is true all year round, but the hectic, distracting atmosphere of the holidays makes deep listening harder than usual. People with higher emotional intelligence know it's worth putting the extra time and effort into trying to understand others' feelings, worries, and frustrations—knowing it'll help reduce their own.

5. Boost Your Emotional Vocabulary

In fact, the ability to accurately identify and express what we're feeling helps us to cope better. For example, just by saying you're feeling frustrated helps you settle those feelings and move ahead—it goes hand in hand with self-awareness. You need to be able to identify your feelings before you can make choices about how they'll deal with them. And that can take some precision. Being able to distinguish one negative emotion from another is more useful than you might think.

6. Consider Multiple Perspectives

Emotional intelligence increases our ability to see situations from more than one point of view. The end of the year tends to push us into contact with more people than usual—family members, friends of friends, colleagues, and so on. All that extra socializing and interaction can be exhausting. And the stress it causes can lead to conflict.

But emotionally intelligent people know that while they may not agree with someone, they can still try and see things from their perspective. This allows them to step back from judgment and avoid getting drawn into a dispute. If stress shortens everyone's fuse, emotional intelligence blows out the match that's about to light it.

7. Ask For Help

When you're feeling an unusual amount of stress, it's always important to reach out for support. Highly emotionally intelligent people are aware of their limitations; they know when they can manage and when they need help. But even when the stress is too much, they have no problem reaching out to others.

The holiday season may emphasize selflessness and community, but there's nothing selfish about admitting when you're struggling. You need to know when it's time to draw on your support network or even get professional help. This time of year is supposed to be joyful, but the reality for many of us is different—and that's okay. Simply recognizing when there's an added load of stress on your shoulders is a sure sign of emotional intelligence to begin with, and a great first step toward lightening it.

These Are The Five Key Battlegrounds For The Big Tech Platforms In 2017

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Technology companies will increasingly invest in artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and other emerging tech next year.

Large platform companies like Amazon, Apple, Google, Samsung, and Microsoft want to provide the operating system for our lives, and they will fight hard in 2017 to establish their foothold in the emerging technologies we will likely come to rely on in the future.

Who will succeed? Those with the most complete product offerings have an advantage. Since people like to buy products that play well with the other products they already own, a platform company risks losing customers by not having a product in a hot category. These large companies already have an advantage over smaller companies due to their massive R&D budgets and their ability to hire the best people to build the stuff we want now and to anticipate the technology we'll want in the future. And if a hot product is developed by some ambitious startup, these giants can easily swoop in and acquire both the product and the people who created it.

These categories, while not new, will be the front lines of the platform wars in 2017.

Smart Bluetooth Speakers

Amazon brilliantly hit upon a whole new product category with its Echo home personal assistant device. While other platform companies like Google and Apple were limiting their respective personal assistants to smartphones, Amazon saw that people wanted a personal assistant that stood on the countertop, could hear and understand voices in the room very well, and contained a speaker that actually sounded good.

Google has since created a competing device called Google Home, and there is plenty of speculation that Apple and Microsoft have something in the works as well. Amazon wisely opened up its personal assistant (called Alexa) to third-party developers, and thousands of them are now creating new "skills" for the home assistant. This trend will continue to escalate throughout 2017, and we will soon begin to see a new wave of skills that are more useful and easier to call up at your command.

As more personal assistant devices find their way into homes in 2017, the platform companies that sell them will increasingly compete to get developers to create better and better skills for the devices. And the platform companies themselves will try to integrate more of their own services through the devices. For instance, Amazon might offer more useful shopping services through the Echo, while Google will try to offer new search and productivity services.

Virtual Personal Assistants

Home assistant devices are just one vehicle for the natural language assistants of the platform companies. Assistants like Apple's Siri, Google's Assistant, Microsoft's Cortana, and Amazon's Alexa will begin showing up in new places, and in more useful ways, in the coming year. (Samsung has something called S Voice, but it this year acquired the company that developed Siri, so we may be seeing a new assistant technology from the company in the next year).

The platform companies are already investing heavily in the research and development that will make these assistants better listeners and more suited to completing tasks. Natural language assistants must understand our words, but also the meaning and intent behind them. That first part is easier than the second: Microsoft said in October that its Cortana assistant can now understand language roughly as well as a human transcriptionist.

The problem of teaching assistants to learn more about the user (identity, preferences, habits) is harder, but assistants will show improvement in this area in the coming year. Some will begin learning about the emotion expressed in the user's comments and commands, which is harder still. They'll begin to display what seems like "common sense," which will enable them to communicate and interpret commands and requests in a more natural (and accurate) way.

And assistants will become more knowledgable about more things. They'll be harder to stump when asking random questions that you might normally use a search engine to answer. They'll say "I can't help you with that" less often.

But assistants are in general not ready to learn in an open-ended, autonomous way; rather, they're being taught to learn in a highly structured way within well-defined contexts. An assistant, for example, may be tasked with learning what it can about a user's habits based on calendar usage.

Assistants are a prime example of a product that is increasingly linked to other products and services offered by the platform. They're increasingly the thing we'll use to call up all kinds of data and services, and they'll show up in more and more contexts. If a consumer sees one assistant as clearly better than others, they might be very tempted to adopt the services the assistant is able to call up.

Car Brains

Automakers have been building platform companies' infotainment systems into new models for some time, but the integration will soon go much deeper, and it will heat up the competition once again.

Google and Apple each have a platforms (Android Auto and CarPlay, respectively) for extending the set of apps and services (messaging, music, navigation, phone calls, etc.) in Android and iOS to the car. They're generally regarded as superior to the stock infotainment systems in cars.

But now the platform war for the car extends way beyond the dashboard. Google, for example (and very likely Apple, too) has built a software central nervous system for the car, an operating system that will control the semi-autonomous or autonomous operation of the vehicle. Google may have first intended to sell an autonomous vehicle, but the company refocused efforts on creating the software brains for the vehicles, which could be used in the vehicles of more traditional car companies. Apple has very likely taken the same path.

Google recently formed a new company called Waymo under the Alphabet parent company to market its auto software. Fiat Chrysler will be the first partner to use the system in its vehicles; it said in may it will first use it in 100 of its minivans.

Apple has never formally announced its "Project Titan," but Uber, Tesla, and various automakers are furiously developing self-driving systems. And other platform players like Samsung may eventually jump into the fray.

Microsoft HoloLens

VR/AR Headsets

Virtual reality and augmented reality products and experiences are new to many consumers, and it's yet to be seen how popular the technology will be.

Virtual reality, at least in the consumer space, may be the more mature technology. VR headsets like Oculus Rift and HTC Vive cover close out the outside world and create a 360-degree 3D world for the user. Companies like Facebook's Oculus, Google, and HTC are already well down the road with the development of VR headsets and will continue to refine the technology during 2017. A growing number of phone makers are readying their devices to power the VR experiences in headsets based in Google's new Daydream platform.

Apple has so far stayed out of the virtual reality space. This may be because the company is more interested in augmented reality, as CEO Tim Cook has suggested in his comments. Augmented reality superimposes digital data and images over the real world as seen through the camera lens on a mobile device or headset.

Microsoft's HoloLens AR headset has been available to developers (and, technically, anyone else) for some time now, but augmented reality arguably had its coming out in 2016 with the Pokemon Go phenomenon in July. But that app requires viewing the overlaid content on the screen of a mobile device, which can be a clunky experience. The same type of experience is being used by toy makers to overlay digital imagery over dolls and action figures to make the play more interesting and to sell add-on products (accessories, media, etc.).

Perhaps the biggest name in the consumer AR space is Florida-based Magic Leap, which says it has a new kind of headset lens to create sharper digital imagery. The company's investors have put more than a billion dollars behind the product, but a 2017 release looks less and less likely. Two sources in the AR space have told me that if Apple releases some kind of AR product, it won't be until 2018. So 2017 may be more of a warmup year for AR. If the technology captures the imaginations of consumers, the platform war may ensue in 2018 and 2019.

Artificial Intelligence And Natural Language

I saved this one for last because AI is now finding its way into many of the products and services sold by the platforms. Personal assistants (like Siri or Alexa) may be the first context in which many people encounter a conversational AI, but the technology will begin showing up in lots of different contexts across the platform in the coming years.

Google and Apple already use AI in photo apps to automatically identify and tag images. Apple uses the same technology in the iPhone camera to recognize objects in the frame, and make adjustments accordingly. Microsoft, Google, and Apple are using AI in bots that can act as customer service reps on behalf of businesses.

Eventually, more advanced versions of the neural networks we see today will be used as the means of processing virtually all kinds of complex data. Where today's AI needs lots of human training, the technology will become increasingly able to learn on its own. We'll eventually stop thinking about computers as input/output if-this-then-that machines, and more like huge systems arranged like the neurons in the human brain. They'll process data more like the brain does.

We're also in the early stages of a shift toward voice interactions with computers and applications. In the next year we may see some leaps forward in the machines' ability not only to understand our words but also understand the real intent behind the words. We'll increasingly be able to speak commands to the devices in our lives. We'll tap screens less.

The good news in all this is that as these big, well-monied companies battle it out, specific products naturally get better, and whole platforms get more complete. Today, no one company can provide everything we need throughout the day. This may become less true as the major platforms increasingly extend new products and services into our work, home, entertainment, and personal lives.

Displaced But Determined: How One Syrian Software Developer Restarted His Career

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Five years ago, Adham Rchwani left Syria to rebuild his life in Germany. In his own words, this is what it's taught him.

I know what it feels like to be the subject of a global debate, and so do 11 million people like me. As the world continues to wrestle with the challenges of accepting and assimilating the millions of Syrian refugees migrating into Western nations, the luckiest of us are working hard to make new lives in our new homes.

Five years ago, I could never have imagined I'd be living and working in Germany. Here's how I got here and what I've learned along the way.

The View From The Bottom Of The Mountain

We have a saying in Syria that loosely translates as, "Don't only look at the people on top of the mountain. Look at everyone around you, because one day, you will not be what you are today."

You could say that my family and I once lived close to the "top of the mountain." After I graduated and got my bachelor's degree in computer science, I joined our family business. We owned several restaurants in Damascus and employed dozens of people. But we always had devoted employees because we tried to treat all of them equally.

Four years ago, things changed quickly. I was forced to leave Syria for Lebanon, then Turkey, then Germany. I arrived alone and with little, so when I started at my current job after completing my master's degree in business administration, I found myself on the other end of the hierarchy. In fact, it was my first job where I didn't own the business. I didn't know what to expect.

But to my relief, I found that everyone treated me fairly and equally. Being on the other end of the management structure for the first time in my life, this culture of equality really resonated with me. It empowered me to give my job everything I had, and I understood how motivating it is to be valued regardless of your level.

Learning More Languages Than One

When I arrived in Germany, I knew virtually nothing about the German language or the country's culture. I could communicate in English, but not knowing German restricted me from understanding customs and basic principles of living. For example, we don't have a national postage service in Syria, so I didn't know to expect my government ID card to arrive in the mail.

It might sound simple to some, but fluid communication helps you truly understand your surroundings. In my experience, learning to speak the local language has even shaped my personality here. I made it my first priority to learn German, and it's meant everything to me. I made real friendships, joined groups, and interacted on a deeper level with my coworkers. Now that I'm fluent in German, the roles are reversed, and I'm teaching my colleagues Arabic.

Learning the language wasn't only important in the most practical sense, though—there was a new language of business to pick up as well. I've found that every company, everywhere in the world, has its own values and principles that dictate how things are done. If you can't become fluent in those, then you may find a job but probably won't succeed in it. Once I started picking up German, I was able to tune into those subtleties, connecting more deeply with people inside my company to understand everything that was going on around me.

Innovation Starts With Diversity

I was fortunate to find an employer that a special internship program for Middle Eastern refugees. When that internship ended, though, my chances for a full-time job were just about the same as everyone else. But when I got a full-time offer, I joined a team where I was the only person with a substantially different background was different from everyone else on my team.

That hasn't put me at a disadvantage, though. Instead, my experiences have helped my team develop new ideas and new ways of thinking and vice versa; I'm working with some colleagues who have 20–30 years' experience in our field, and learning from them as well.

I like to think that my perspective has helped our team become a little more innovative. Bringing people from diverse backgrounds leads to fresh ideas, which can lead to new products and new ways of thinking. While I'm burdened with memories of my past, they've shaped who I am today. So I don't try and forget—I use my experiences to improve my future and all the people in my life who share a stake in it.

Holding Fast To Long-Term Dreams

When I arrived in Germany, there was a lot that I didn't know, but I still had a long-term plan to pursue an education in technology. And looking back, that decision helped set me up to succeed. I tried constantly to keep my dreams and goals squarely in front of my eyes, telling myself, "If I'm not working for it, I'm not getting it." That plan kept me going when I felt isolated and challenged—first at school, then at work.

Planning is critical, I've learned, especially when faced with so much uncertainty about the future. It helps you identify what you want to accomplish in life, and provides clarity on what you need to do to get there. It also helped me stay focused and motivated when that was hardest.

I've now been in Germany for five years. I'm a software engineer at a large technology company. And I'm as firm a believer as ever in the kindness of humanity, and that anything is possible.

Ours is a world divided, in countless ways. But in business and in life, we can all contribute to narrowing those divisions, even if by degrees. Creating environments that motivate and value all employees is a foundation for success, both collective and individual. In organizations like that, contributions transcend culture. Great things can come from anywhere—however unexpected, and whatever the adversities. We just need to believe they can.


Adham Rchwani is a software engineer for SAP.


8 Must-Download Apps For Your New iPhone Or Android

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Just unwrapped a new smartphone? Here's a little help navigating the ocean of apps that await you.

If you just unwrapped a new smartphone or are thinking of using that envelope of holiday cash to run out and buy one and you're eager to fill it up with new ways to distract yourself, then read on. Amid all the other year-end retrospectives, future predictions, and service-y listicles pumped out by every media outlet on the planet at this time of year, this story might be for you.

There are literally millions of apps. Apple's iOS and Google's Android each offer more than 2 million apps in their respective download stores. Each app store has its own top charts and recommendations, where you'll find the usual suspects—Facebook, Netflix, Spotify, Snapchat, YouTube, and other well-known social networks, media services, transportation tools, and games. But there are plenty of other excellent apps out there, from the obscure to the hard-to-pronounce, whose names might not be on the tip of your tongue when you fire up your new gadget.

Last year, we published a list of seven lesser-known, but very worthwhile apps. We suggested (and still highly recommend) Dark Sky for weather, Stitcher for podcasts, Giphy Cam for making fun animations, and Afterlight for photo editing, among others. The traffic on that post was totally bonkers, suggesting that guides like this one are exactly the type of thing you're looking for right now. So here's another one. This time, we've rounded up eight more especially useful, fun, or otherwise download-worthy apps that we've come across this year.

1 Second Everyday

(iOS and Android)

In the smartphone era, just about every moment of our lives has been thoroughly documented, but most of the images we share slide invisibly into the past under a deluge of new posts on Instagram or Facebook. Or in the case of Snapchat, they literally disappear forever. 1 Second Everyday approaches things differently. The app is designed to do exactly what its name suggests: Capture one second of video every day—or as many days as you happen to remember to use it. The end result is a rapid-fire burst of brief moments that, as they add up, offer a high-level, but insightful glimpse of what your day-to-day life looks like. It may be light on context, but the series of clips tells a story that's otherwise hard to capture in meticulously filtered and deliberately curated photos and videos posted elsewhere one at a time—and then immediately forgotten. With 1 Second Everyday, you can export the composite video and share it on your social networks of choice or just keep it to yourself as a sort of personal video diary. If nothing else, it's a useful internal reminder that a given year is more than the major life milestones, vacation pics, and cringeworthy news headlines that may come most readily to mind; Life is actually composed of many many types of moments; It's just a question of which ones we capture and remember. Download 1 Second Everyday here.

Hopper

(iOS and Android)

The last time I wanted to flee the East Coast for the warmth of California, I used an app called Hopper to help me figure out the best time to fly. Within minutes, my flight was booked. While there are countless flight-watching and travel apps out there, few offer a combination of simplicity and data-powered predictive prowess quite this effective. The color-coded calendar layout of its search results give you a clear, at-a-glance view of what days, weeks, and months are the cheapest time to fly. If a given flight is statistically likely to get cheaper (or more expensive) in the future, Hopper will tell you, spelling out the odds of various potential price fluctuations and when they're likely to happen.

You can also keep track of searches and opt in to get notifications when deals pop up or when Hopper finds another locale you might be interested in traveling to, based on your previous searches. For instance, perhaps your search for a flight to Miami yielded pricey results, but if an insane deal on a flight to Ft. Lauderdale or Orlando pops up, you'll get a push notification right away. So whether you're planning business travel around specific dates or just trying to scratch that wanderlust itch on a whim, Hopper is one of the easiest ways to plot the most ideal possible trip. Download Hopper here.

60db

(iOS only)

The podcasting renaissance is still barreling forward, but it has a long way to go: Only 20% of Americans say they have listened to a podcast. 60db hopes to make digital audio consumption feel more like radio (a century-old medium that's still going strong) but also inject it with the more personalized, digestible flavor of modern digital media services. The result, notably built by veterans of NPR and Netflix, is something that feels like radio, but with sort of the algorithmic smarts and new content initiatives that have changed the way we now define and consume "TV."

60db allows you to subscribe to most of the standard, publicly available podcasts you can think of, but its primary focus is on shorter-form audio stories that cater to more specific interests than a general interest podcast can. These "quick hits," often produced by 60db's staff in concert with established media brands, offer 10 minutes or less of audio storytelling about an ever-expanding array of topics. And as we've come to expect from services like Pandora and Netflix, 60db learns as you listen—the more you use it, the smarter it gets. There's an ever-growing selection of noteworthy podcasting and radio apps, like NPR One, Stitcher, and RadioPublic (another new offering from public radio vets), but 60db goes out of its way to be especially effortless and addictive. Download 60db here.

Headspace

(iOS and Android)

The scientific case for mindful meditation is beyond well established. And between our growing addiction to apps and screens and the anxiety of an endlessly chaotic news cycle, you could argue that our brains could use a rest now more than ever. Many experts advocate minimizing screen time altogether, but for those moments when you can't manage to untether yourself from your phone, you might as well have digital tools to help restore your sanity. Headspace is a popular one. The app uses a combination of cutesy design, programmable reminders, and the soothing British accent of a guy named Andy to lure you away from your mindless digital distractions and into a focused, more calming state. Headspace is (fair warning) a paid subscription service that offers guided, audio-based meditation exercises for a variety of circumstances, but it does offer enough free sessions to give you a proper feel for how the service works and whether or not it's worth paying $13 per month (or $8 if you're willing to pay a lump sum for a whole year of access). There are, of course, several meditation-focused apps out there, such as Meditation Studio and Sattva. If you happen to own an Apple Watch, Apple's own Breathe app is worth checking out as well. Download Headspace here.

PinOut Pinball

(iOS and Android)

Even if you're not much of a gamer, you may find it hard to stop playing this one. PinOut is an '80s-themed retro-style pinball game for iOS and Android. Indeed, the more susceptible you are to nostalgia for the 1980s (or otherwise appreciative you may be of neon design and synth-heavy music), the longer you'll be glued to it. Its retro-electronic soundtrack sounds like it was ripped right from the intro to Netflix's mega-hit Stranger Things and its pulsating, neon-laced game layout feel like Tron exploded in pinball form. Download PinOut here.

Quartz

(iOS only)

There are easily hundreds of different ways to read news on your phone—whether it's from your friends on Twitter and Facebook or through more news-specific apps, from aggregators like Google News, Clipboard, Feedly, and Reddit to publishers like BuzzFeed, New York Times, or the BBC. But almost never do these apps break out of the traditional, headline-based paradigm of news consumption. Quartz, the business-oriented news media brand launched by The Atlantic four years ago, had a different idea. The app it launched in early 2016 eschews the familiar format of news in favor of a conversational interface. Instead of reading news stories, you chat with them. The app's pre-composed, often emoji-laden replies ("tell me more" or "next?") allow for a name-your-adventure style of navigating the latest and most important world events. In an age of clickbait headlines and uncertainty over which news articles are even real, what could be more refreshing than talking about the news with what feels like a very well-informed friend—even if it is just a soulless bot? Download Quartz here.

Nuzzel

(iOS and Android)

If you want to keep track of our strange new reality, but aren't in the mood to chat with a newsbot, Nuzzel is another virtual newsstand with a modern spin. The social news app shows you the articles most shared by your Twitter friends right now (by default, within the last hour—but you can filter it by 24 hours or travel back in time to previous days). What Nuzzel may lack in originality (Flipboard has offered Twitter-powered news since 2010) it makes up for with smart design and flexibility. The app lets you step outside your Twitter bubble and see news shared by friends of friends and browse even more broadly in its Discover tab. It also helpfully suggests news stories you may have missed. Nuzzel definitely caters to news junkies first, but that doesn't mean it doesn't serve people prone to more casual headline scanning. In fact, it's not even just for Twitter users anymore. Last year, the news app redesigned its service to open it up to everyone. This way, we can watch civilization unravel at the seams the way we do everything else: by silently staring into our phones together. Download Nuzzel here.

Bandcamp

(iOS and Android)

Listening to music is one of the most obvious and common uses for our phones and accordingly, apps like Pandora and Spotify always get high rankings in the app stores. But unless you're a bona fide, crate-digging music snob, chances are you're missing out on some of the newest and best music that's being created. That's because before budding artists get signed to a label or pay to self-distribute their music to major subscription services, they take matters into their own hands first on services like Bandcamp and SoundCloud. And more so than most music services, Bandcamp is able to rightfully make a rare claim: It actually helps independent and smaller label artists get paid. The service's primary focus is on selling physical albums, downloads, and other merchandise like T-shirts. But even though it's not a streaming service in the traditional sense, Bandcamp lets you listen to music, follow artists, and increasingly discover new music. Simply keeping an eye on the app's "best selling" and genre-specific tabs is guaranteed to unearth something new and delightful. By all means, check out SoundCloud and subscribe to a streaming service too—Apple Music has amazing playlists and Spotify's data-driven music discovery features are both innovative and addictive. But don't think for a minute that your music library collection is complete until you download the Bandcamp app. Do it.

How CEOs Will Make The World A Better Place In 2017

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We asked six CEOs from across industries how they plan to positively impact the world in 2017.

Fast Company asked CEOs across industries—social good, sexual health, beauty, tech, and more—about how, in the face of uncertainty, they will seek to improve the world around us during the coming year. Here's what they had to say.

Create More Opportunities For Underrepresented People Of Color In Tech

Laura Weidman Powers, cofounder and CEO of tech diversity nonprofit Code2040 (currently also a senior policy adviser to U.S. chief technology officer Megan Smith):

[Photo: courtesy of Code2040]

"We're working on deepening our impact through growing the Fellows Program, iterating on our student programs Tech Trek and TAP, and broadening our offerings for our company partners committed to diversifying their workforces. We're also working with Google for Entrepreneurs on bringing the Code2040 Residency to its eighth city, Atlanta. And you'll see a lot more from us around sharing our learnings in order to enable others to lead on closing the wealth gap for Blacks and Latinos, while creating more opportunities for underrepresented communities of color in tech."

Recruit Women-Led Startups To Donate Profits To Planned Parenthood

Meika Hollender, cofounder and co-CEO of female-friendly condom brand Sustain Natural:

[Photo: courtesy of Sustain Natural]

"This is a really critical time for the women's sexual and reproductive health industry. With a political climate that's threatening to move women's health backward, it's up to businesses to keep women's health moving forward. As we gear up for a year where access to reproductive health care services and birth control are likely to become less accessible, it's companies like Sustain that become tasked with educating, empowering, and providing products to all women throughout this country. Additionally, Sustain has always donated 10% of its profits to organizations like Planned Parenthood through our 10%4Women program. In 2017, we aim to get other women-led businesses to join this program, similar to 1% for the planet, as the funding for many of these organizations is at serious risk."

Parse DonorsChoose Data To Help Inform Education Funding

Charles Best, founder and CEO of education nonprofit DonorsChoose:

[Photo: courtesy of DonorsChoose]

"Beyond the classroom materials, we see three opportunities for DonorsChoose.org to make the world a better place in 2017: 1) We can use our data about what teachers need for their classrooms—data that we've opened to the public—to uncover trends that could help make education spending smarter. 2) We can partner with creators and innovators to bring cutting-edge technology into the classroom, like we've done so far with MakerBot and OpenROV. 3) We can reward teachers who bring new learning opportunities to their students (advanced courses, coding, financial literacy, etc.) with DonorsChoose.org funding credits to help them continue to excel. "

Promote High-Quality Food, From Production To Consumption

Nicola Farinetti, CEO of Eataly USA, the U.S. branch of Italian food market Eataly:

[Photo: courtesy of Eataly]

"Promoting the benefits of high-quality food through the entire process—from production to consumption—is at the core of our values and the base of our company manifesto. We want everyone to realize that what we put inside our body is more important that what we place on the outside.

"We follow the Slow Food mantra of 'Good, Clean, and Fair.' GOOD: quality, flavorful, and healthy food; CLEAN: Production that does not harm the environment; and FAIR: Accessible prices for consumers, and fair conditions and pay for producers. This is the goal we strive to achieve every day: Creating a better world by promoting the best quality food."

Support Local Farmers And Scientists

Karen Behnke, founder and CEO of organic skin care and beauty brand Juice Beauty:

[Photo: Karen Behnke]

"As much as possible, we will continue to support West Coast farmers first before going elsewhere. We will continue to work closely with teams of PhDs, chemists, microbiologists, and physicians at both University of California, San Francisco and University of California, Berkeley, to solve complex formulation challenges. We believe that by tapping into our local environment, resources, and talent, it is better for both our community and our ecosystem."

Turn The Act Of Giving Into A Habit

Scott Harrison, founder and CEO of clean water nonprofit Charity: water:

[Screenshot: courtesy of Charity: water]

"We're committed to helping reach a day where every single person on the planet has clean and safe water to drink. Currently, 663 million people lack access to this basic need. We've just launched a new monthly giving community called The Spring. It's the first time we've promoted a monthly giving or subscriber membership program, and the growth this year has been phenomenal. We'll continue to inspire people to join the community, and find innovative ways to connect our Spring members to the impact on human lives their monthly gifts make around the world. "

10 CEOs Share Their Leadership Goals For 2017

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CEOs across industries share the leadership lessons they learned in 2016 and the leadership goals they plan to pursue in 2017.

Fast Company asked CEOs across industries—social good, sexual health, beauty, tech, and more—about how they would like to bolster and improve their leadership style in 2017. Here's what they had to say:

[Photo: courtesy of Code2040]

Leadership Lesson: Stepping Away Can Help Your Team Tackle New Challenges

Laura Weidman Powers, cofounder and CEO of tech diversity nonprofit Code2040 (currently also a senior policy adviser to U.S. chief technology officer Megan Smith):

"One of the joys of 2016 was the way the Code2040 leadership team has stepped up in amazing ways to steward the organization's growth. I took a six-month quasi-sabbatical to join the Obama Administration, and during that time everyone at Code2040 took on pieces of my role in order to make it work. The executive team and program directors in particular not only stepped up but spread their wings in ways that were so inspiring. I know that for all of us, this experience has and will reshape how we share responsibility, work together, and exercise our collaborative leadership, and honor the variety of strengths on the team."

[Photo: courtesy of Walker & Company]

Leadership Lesson: Make Room For Leadership Styles That Diverge From Yours

Tristan Walker, founder and CEO of Walker & Company Brands, a health and beauty company for people of color:

"One thing I've learned recently is to slow down—especially for us. We're working on something that I believe to be pretty special, with a team that's pretty special. We found our product and market, and I'm always the type to want to do something important and improve lives in a step function kind of way. And one thing that I thought about—particularly as CEO of a company—is not everybody is like that. And that's not a bad thing, but you have to be able to manage folks who aren't like that when you are like that. I need to prove my own kind of leadership style to accommodate multiple other styles."

[Photo: courtesy of Sustain Natural]

Leadership Goal: Seek Out Perspectives From The Entire Political Spectrum

Meika Hollender, cofounder and co-CEO of female-friendly condom brand Sustain Natural:

"I want to be a better listener. This past election highlighted how divided our country is—much more than I had realized—and that means that in order for Sustain to succeed, I need to better understand how all women are dealing with their sexual and reproductive health, regardless of their political beliefs. Because reproductive rights are still such a polarizing issue, listening to both sides is a priority of mine for 2017."

[Photo: courtesy of DonorsChoose]

Leadership Goal: Be More Forthcoming With Constructive Feedback

Charles Best, founder and CEO of education nonprofit DonorsChoose:

"I'd like to get better and quicker at giving constructive feedback—no small task, given that I have amazing colleagues."

Leadership Lesson: Being Adaptable Is Key Early On

[Photo: courtesy of PolicyGenius]

Jennifer Fitzgerald, cofounder and CEO of online insurance marketplace PolicyGenius:

"As the CEO of a growth-stage startup company, every new year presents the challenge of leading a company that will look incredibly different between the start and end of the year. I hope that my leadership abilities will keep up with the growth of my company."

Leadership Lesson: A Clear Vision = A Realistic Road Map

Linden Tibbets, cofounder and CEO of task automation service IFTTT:

"I'm focused on increasing my clarity. You can't inspire someone if you can't articulate your vision, exactly where you're going—and why they should join up. Every time we've been able to paint a distinctly clearer picture for IFTTT's future, we've been able to take a huge step toward it. Simplicity is hard, but I'm ready to put in the long hours to make sure our opportunity can be understood and communicated in just a few seconds."

[Photo: Marla Aufmuth/Getty Images for Pennsylvania Conference for Women]

Leadership Goal: Make The Right Decisions, Not The Most Popular Decisions

Aria Finger, CEO of social change nonprofit Do Something:

"I'm going to have to make more tough decisions. It's always good to be reminded that the right decision isn't always the popular one. As a leader you sometimes (often?!) need to make decisions for the good of your organization or sector that everyone may not like. And that's okay."

[Photo: courtesy of SoFi]

Leadership Goal: Be Present And Engage With Your Employees

Mike Cagney, cofounder and CEO of marketplace lender SoFi:

"I want to spend more time in the office. I was on the road for what seems like most of 2016—Asia, Europe, North America. I miss the time with our team. I used to make an effort to have lunch with everyone in the company—I want to get back to that routine. As we've grown from four people in a room to more than 750 across the country, it's important to maintain honest and open dialogue across the organization, and these lunches help with that."

[Photo: Maja Saphir for Fast Company]

Leadership Lesson: Hire Slow, Fire Fast

Miki Agrawal, founder and CEO of period-proof underwear startup Thinx:

"Lessons that will continue to inform my leadership for next year: Hire slow, fire fast. My job is not to spend my time policing people and their work ethic, positive attitude, and focused execution—it's to bring in people that just have it in them. Then we can simply focus on what matters: growing the business!"

[Screenshot: courtesy of Charity: water]

Leadership Goal: Do Less, But Do It Better

Scott Harrison, founder and CEO of clean water nonprofit Charity: water:

"I can too easily fall into the trap of trying to do too much, and not spend enough time in deep concentration or focus. I'd like to do fewer things with greater excellence, and carve out more time away from devices and screens to think about the future, and solving some of the hard problems we're often presented with."

The Real Reason Your Crowdfunding Campaign Tanked This Year

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Crowdfunding is really just another word for networking.

A successful crowdfunding effort requires more than a sharp video and a bunch of tweets. It requires something decidedly low-tech: already having and tapping into a network.

That's something even the savviest entrepreneurs often get wrong. Whether it's Kickstarter, Indiegogo, GoFundMe, or any of the other thousands of sites out there, no crowdfunding platform can source funders or market a new product or service all on its own. The crowdfunding campaign can do that, but the platform can't.

It's a subtle yet crucial distinction—and one reason so many crowdfunding efforts fall flat. The sole purpose of the platform itself is to facilitate payments! The rest of it is good, old-fashioned networking. Here's how to get it right.

What Asking For Money More Often Leads To

In the final week of their crowdfunding campaign, the founders of a social-commerce fashion company emailed me. The startup, founded by college classmates, focused on bringing chic, ethically made ready-to-wear products to market. The founders decided to crowdfund the $10,000 dollars they needed to produce the first collection, made from artisan-designed fabrics. They were falling short of their funding target and, in desperation, had begun to reach out to complete strangers for help (and money).

I suspected right that the startup hadn't done everything it could to connect its existing networks to its fundraising efforts. There's a saying in the startup community: When you ask for money, you get advice, and when you ask for advice, you get money. You know where this is headed.

As much as I'm sure they appreciated my advice, these founders were really seeking a donation—sprinkled with a little social influence. Here's the advice I gave them to get their crowdfunding effort over the funding-success line. (They ultimately raised the $10,000 they needed from 32 funders.)

Tap Into The Networks You Already Have

I quickly concluded that this founding team was not lacking in networks to tap into: The core team consisted of six people with professional experience in fashion, higher education, banking, not-for-profit, and tech startups. The key to fundraising success is to ask and activate existing networks.

These founders had overlooked the large, diverse network they already had at their fingertips. To reach their funding goal, they simply had to communicate their need to their existing network! Ultimately, the challenge in the remaining days of the crowdfunding campaign was to come up with a three-part communications strategy to quickly reach a wider network of potential funders/donors sourced exclusively from within their existing network:

  1. Reach out to overlooked contacts within the funding team's existing networks and ask for financial support.
  2. Send additional communications to close contacts updating them on the campaign (and funding goal).
  3. Inspire contacts to share their support of the crowdfunding campaign with their friends and colleagues.

The Tool Is Only A Tool

Crowdfunding is an example of how people in your network can help you reach a goal, and how by focusing solely on the functionality of a tool or promise of technology you risk missing out on an achievable goal.

If you're considering a crowdfunding campaign, remember that your success depends on mobilizing support from people who already know you. So before you start planning your campaign, get down to brainstorming, and don't stop until you've managed to list all the networks you can possibly turn to for financial support.

Put your ego aside (you're asking for money after all!) and be prepared to reach deep into your networks for help. Get creative about how you can activate those weak connections—like the second cousin you haven't talked to since the last family reunion, or the boss from your job two summers ago.

Then plan a 30-day communications strategy—not just a day-of-launch strategy. Think of multiple ways to update your network (though emails, calls, Facebook posts) to keep them involved and supportive. Make sure you plan a post-campaign strategy, too; completing a crowdfunding campaign is just the first of many challenges your project faces, which you'll need to keep this community active and energized with ongoing updates about your efforts.

On a practical note, especially if you're building a lifestyle brand, keep in mind that it takes a lot of content and a whole lot of community—and a lot longer than a 30-day crowdfunding campaign—to captivate new hearts and minds.

Say Thanks, Then Keep Saying It

A final note: Throughout your campaign, make sure you acknowledge the support you've received from people in your network. Reach out to them individually and personally (whether it's a phone call, a handwritten note sent by post, or a personalized electronic note using Red Stamp or Paperless Post).

Don't leave the community cold once your crowdfunding campaign is over! These are the people you'll need most once you're ready to launch your product.

To keep them hooked, you need to continuously express your gratitude, and that can simply come in the form of updates on your progress, reminding them that they helped you get to each new milestone. After all, these people believed in you enough to rally behind you from the get-go. Make sure they know you'll never forget it.


This article is adapted from Build Your Dream Network: Forging Powerful Relationships in a Hyper-Connected World by J. Kelly Hoey. It is reprinted with permission.

Why I Can't Wait To Work In VR

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The tech isn't quite there yet, but this CEO foresees improvements to productivity and work-life balance once it is.

Startups run into countless problems, but my company recently hit one plenty would consider themselves fortunate to have. We spent millions renovating our office to accommodate up to 185 people, the highest headcount we thought we'd ever hit. Less than a year later, we now have 160 staffers and are looking at costly expansion options—at a cost of several million more.

But what if we didn't have to pay that price, or could at least reduce it? Vidyard is in the video industry, and as its CEO and a pretty big tech nerd, I'm especially drawn to virtual reality. So I started to wonder if there'd ever come a point when our office could ditch physical walls and open up virtual workspaces instead?

For now, the answer is a definitive no. We keep hearing how VR is changing gaming, entertainment, and even marketing. But real VR innovation has yet to hit the modern workplace. Even early adopters are hard to find.

But that doesn't mean the potential isn't real, or that we don't have a pretty good sense of what it might look like when VR really does come to the office. And based on that forecast, at least, the obstacles seem to me to pale in comparison to the benefits. Here are a few of them that I'm looking forward to.

Virtual Reality, Real Advantages

In tech-supercharged San Francisco, office rents passed Manhattan as the most expensive in the U.S. this year, at $72.26 per square foot. In fact, the cost of physical space is pushing more startups out of traditional hubs in the Bay Area, New York, and Seattle. Having virtual "office space" would slash this enormous line item out of the budget, freeing up funds to invest in growth and human talent. It's hard to overestimate how transformative this could be.

The virtual workplace could also revolutionize employee engagement and retention, the single biggest human capital concern identified by a Deloitte survey across 106 countries last year. This isn't mere speculation; at my company, we've already started to see some of the benefits that remote-work technology has already created, even without virtual tools.

While our offices are outside Toronto, our executive team is scattered across North America. So we've put Google Chromeboxes in every meeting room and added Google video Hangouts to all our meeting invites. Yes, the tech is still pretty clunky, but it lets us tap a level of talent that would otherwise be unavailable in our home base. With full VR, the experience would be even more seamless.

Some office-politics issues could be erased as well. As an introvert, I find it's difficult in my office to find a few moments alone to get work done without interruption. With VR, it's possible to join in social settings like meetings but keep control over when to engage and when to unplug. Since you're not actually there, there's no busy, distraction-riddled office space for you to escape from.

Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg. When physical space is deprioritized and employees can live anywhere, all kinds of pressures can be relieved. We'd no longer have to cram into cities, which could reduce housing costs and reverse the kinds of gentrification that so many tech centers beget. Workers would no longer have to commute into the office each day with potentially huge environmental upsides, and thus might relieve the need for massive government spending on infrastructure.

Plus, less commuting and more efficient workplaces might even mean more time to spend offline—with friends and family, in quaint, old non–virtual reality. Sure, we've been hearing forecasts of a future with ever more leisure time since at least Keynes, but it's not hard to envision the kind of virtuous cycle that a VR workplace could set in motion.

Not Yet Ready For Liftoff

If VR has so much revolutionary potential, why aren't workplaces embracing it already? For starters, the technology isn't good enough yet. From plenty of firsthand trial and error, I can confirm that the headsets are too bulky to wear on your head all day, or even through a meeting lasting more than an hour. The screen resolution on popular models is generally too grainy, and the associated apps and tools for the office are all still in their infancy.

Facebook has made some headway here, though. In October, Mark Zuckerberg demonstrated to Oculus developers his company's ideas for social interaction via VR, featuring avatars that could show facial expressions and other details. When combined with a platform like AltspaceVR, people could use these avatars to meet inside realistic virtual environments in order to work or socialize.

Those changes are already coming—the question is when. And in the meantime, augmented reality (AR) is offering a stand-in for full VR. With AR, you're not digitally re-creating a scene but adding digital elements to the real world. Thyssenkrupp plans to use Microsoft's Hololens to enable technicians to visualize an elevator-repair job before they arrive onsite, for example. IKEA is already using AR to help customers visualize how furniture might look in their homes. It's only a matter of time before these tools are workplace-ready.

But it may not matter how far along the technology is if companies aren't ready to embrace it. It was only three years ago that Yahoo famously started an uproar when it ordered its remote workers back to the office. This wasn't a technological issue as much as an old-fashioned prejudice against remote working that may be expanding in practice faster than it's gaining popularity.

Fears are often as vague as they are unfounded, though—the worry that people will slack off if left unsupervised, that the camaraderie of an office can never be re-created digitally, and so on. In fact, as VR improves, efficiency and productivity may well improve with it. In a virtual environment, we'll have access to instant information. We'll be less likely to squander time racing to meetings—there'll be nowhere to race to. To some extent, we may even be freed from some of the worst aspects of petty office politics—and, as some experts claim, even racial prejudice.

But for VR offices to truly take root, organizations need to get over their existing hangups and start normalizing the processes—right now—that make remote work possible. That's a cultural matter, not a technological one. At Vidyard, for example, there's a clear understanding that remote work is just as valued as in-person work. And we do simple things, like ensure every meeting invitation includes a link to a video Hangout. These are small steps, but they're moving us steadily in the right direction.

VR's benefits may seem like science fiction, or even utopian: affordable homes, roads free of cars, and employees merrily working wherever they want with more free time on the side. The actual future promises to be messier, less idyllic, and shaped by circumstances (and technologies) we can't possibly envision.

Then again, much of what we do now on the internet—shop, socialize, access endless libraries of information—seemed equally utopian just a few decades ago. And while the internet is a very far cryfrom a digital utopia, there's no denying some of the most transformative good things it's enabled.

For my money, far more than autonomous cars or even the Internet of Things, the virtual workplace is poised to reshape the way we live in the years ahead. That's a reality I can't wait for.


Michael Litt is cofounder and CEO of the video marketing platform Vidyard. Follow him on Twitter at @michaellitt.

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