This year's education innovators are transforming how—and what—we learn.
Online learning used to involve little more than clunky e-book versions of standard textbooks. No longer. Today the most innovative companies in education recognize that the very substance of what we need to know has undergone a fundamental shift. For some of the companies on this year's list, that means supporting the development of newly relevant skills, like computational thinking (Microsoft's Minecraft) and critical thinking (Newsela). Others, like Pluralsight and 2U, give professionals a way to keep up to date on content and advance their careers without leaving the comforts of their sofa.
Click on a company name to learn more about why it made the list.
01. MICROSOFT
For building new worlds in the classroom
02. DUOLINGO
For letting friends compare notes as they learn a new language
03. GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
For becoming the nation's largest computer science master's program, while charging a fraction of the typical cost
04. ICIVICS
For using digital games to teach kids their rights and responsibilities as U.S. citizens
05. ADMITHUB
For using chatbots to improve college outcomes
06. NEWSELA
For helping kids make sense of the news—at their own reading level
07. PLURALSIGHT
For recognizing that on-the-job learning needs to be on-demand
08. OSMO
For designing educational games that magically integrate physical and digital
With President Trump both an antagonist and an undeniable ratings boon, NBC is in the political spotlight.
Few companies sit more squarely in the center of the country's political maelstrom than NBCUniversal, which has been both on the receiving end of Trump's Twitter attacks and a gleeful chronicler of his presidential follies. Here's how the network is charting a way through.
With his instantly iconic impersonation on Saturday Night Live, Alec Baldwin has become the president's look-alike bête noire. Trump has responded with Twitter tirades about the show, but SNL is barreling onward with ratings at a six-year high. The president has also bashed NBC News on Twitter, calling the network "biased, inaccurate, and bad." Things should get even more heated as former Fox News host Megyn Kelly launches her morning show on the network. Being on the president's bad side can be good business. Kelly is arguably the hottest name in media right now. And as one TV executive puts it, "When you're looking at the kind of ratings they're getting for SNL, they're not about to say, 'We better be careful.'"
While hot-button shows like SNL are drawing the attention of the tweeting class, the mainstays of NBC's prime-time programming—where the real money is—are geared squarely toward Red State audiences. These include family-friendly shows like The Voice, Chicago Fire, Celebrity Apprentice (for which Trump is, somewhat awkwardly, still an executive producer), and the breakout melodrama This Is Us, which is now the highest-rated show on network TV.
Comcast is a cable company and broadband provider with its own political agenda. Last October, Trump said that NBCUniversal's mega-merger with Comcast six years earlier never should have been approved. But the company may yet find an ally in the president. In 2015, Comcast spent $15 million on lobbying—more than any other tech company except Alphabet—to fight issues such as the FCC's net neutrality rules. On that point, at least, the administration seems to be supportive.
With SMS, Capital One can reach a larger audience and faces fewer privacy hurdles, but gives up modern chatbot conveniences.
A strange thing happens when Capital One sends out automated fraud alerts via SMS. A significant number of customers seem to believe the sender is human, and begin responding with natural language.
"We kind of launched a chatbot and didn't know it," says Ken Dodelin, Capital One's vice president of digital product development.
That behavior helps explain why Capital One is feeling confident in the actual chatbot that the bank is launching this week in a pilot test. Dubbed Eno—that's "One" spelled backwards—it's the first text-based chatbot from a U.S. bank. It'll allow users to check their balances and recent payments, look up their checking account's routing number, and transfer money between accounts. For more complex tasks, Eno will direct users to the appropriate section of Capital One's website when possible.
But instead of launching Eno through an app like Facebook Messenger or Skype, Capital One is sticking with plain old SMS. While Dodelin says the goal with text messaging was to reach the largest possible audience with the least amount of friction, forgoing Facebook could also help protect banking customers' privacy.
To explain why Capital One is launching an SMS chatbot, Dodelin claims that 97% of smartphone owners regularly use text messaging. (He's likely referring to a 2015 Pew Research Center survey that found texting was the most popular smartphone feature.)
"We want to go where the people are," Dodelin says.
Text messaging also presents less friction for people who don't have Facebook Messenger or other chat apps installed. During the pilot, Capital One will give certain users the chance to try Eno after they've logged into the bank's mobile website. But over time, Dodelin imagines referring people to the SMS short code for Eno after they've texted the bank about other things, such as fraud alerts.
Sandeep Chivukula, cofounder of chatbot analytics firm Bot Metrics, has another theory for why Capital One—and all other U.S. banks, for that matter—have avoided Facebook: The way the platform works could conflict with privacy laws for U.S. financial institutions, which require a clear record of how personal information gets accessed.
When a brand offers a Facebook Messenger bot, any Facebook Page administrator can view full transcripts of the bot's conversations, along with basic profile information for users who've interacted with the bots. While this does allow human representatives to step in when a bot conversation derails, it could expose personal data to the bank's marketing team or other employees who aren't supposed to have access, Chivukula says.
"That's not to say you can't have a banking chatbot on Facebook, but it just limits the kind of things you can do," Chivukula says. So while a bot that provided generic information about fees and mortgage rates would be fine, a bot for checking your account balance could be troublesome.
"Now, you're talking about personally identifiable information, because to get you your balance, I would have to verify that you are who you are, and then you start getting near the gray zone," Chivukula says.
Capital One's Dodelin, for his part, won't comment directly on whether privacy was a factor in choosing text messaging for Eno.
"SMS is the most widely used smartphone feature, with no need to download or even open an app to use the service—simply text and get the information you need," he says. "As we broaden access through third-party platforms, we will work to ensure the flow of customer information is protected, transparent, and under the customer's control."
Opting for SMS isn't without its sacrifices. Platforms such as Facebook, for instance, can offer interactive carousels, buttons, and quick-reply prompts that help guide users through a conversation. Dashbot, another chatbot metrics firm, has found that when chatbots include these buttons—in moderation, at least—users spend more time interacting and send more messages.
The flip side, according to Dodelin, is that by focusing on SMS first, Capital One can improve its natural language processing in ways it might not have if the bank had relied on buttons and quick replies at the outset.
"We feel like we have a very portable product now that can go lots of different places," he says.
Either way, Capital One expects to get a better sense of what people actually want to do with a banking bot once Eno goes live. That wasn't so much the case last year, when the bank launched a skill for Alexa, the spoken-word virtual assistant behind Amazon's Echo speaker. Though Dodelin says he's pleased with the feedback from Echo users, he notes that Amazon only shares data on specific capabilities that users activate. If users ask for something that the skill doesn't support—for instance, information about a home mortgage—Capital One never learns about that request.
"What's neat here for us is that we get the raw text from the user," Dodelin says. "You can imagine there's a lot of learnings that can be applied when you're seeing exactly what the customer asks, and you can build your product around that."
That knowledge could prove important as chatbots evolve. While the hype around messenger bots seems to have deflated in recent months, Bot Metrics' Sandeep Chivukula sees great potential, especially in banking. After establishing the basics, such as account transfers and balance checks, he imagines banking bots that help people avoid impending overdrafts by offering a quick transfer from savings to checking. From there, it's not a huge leap to envision a bot that can move more money into savings based on spending habits.
"The bank can't write individual rules for each customer, because that's just not efficient or effective," Chivukula says, "but an AI could do that, and then leverage the infrastructure that was created [earlier] to deliver that information to the customer."
Ricardo Martinelli, the ex-president of Panama facing extradition on corruption charges, helped him launch his first international property.
It was a big moment for Donald Trump.
On July 6, 2011, the future president was beaming as he celebrated the opening of his first international real-estate deal, the Ocean Club in Panama City, Panama. The flashy hotel-condo complex featured a 72-story tower that transformed the skyline of the city with its sail-shaped design. After a ceremony featuring dancers in traditional Panamanian dress, Trump stood at a podium, flanked by his two oldest sons, Don Jr. and Eric, paused during his remarks, gently leaned over and offered a special thanks to Ricardo Martinelli, the president of Panama."You're my friend. Great honor."
Standing next to Trump's children, Martinelli smiled back. The white-haired, stocky president was flattered, proud of the fact that the complex had the potential to transform his small country into a destination for the rich and famous. As they both delivered their remarks that afternoon, the sky broke open and a torrential rain flooded the streets, turning the peninsula on which the complex stood into a "swamp island." Trump and Martinelli had to ride out through the flooded streets in their separate chauffeured SUVs.
Panama City Skyline: Trump Ocean Club International Hotel & Tower under constructionPhoto: Flickr user Bruce Dailey
While the United States has codified policies to deny visas to foreign officials facing criminal charges in their home countries, and Trump's recent executive order on immigration enforcement targets for removal individuals with even unresolved criminal charges, Martinelli entered the U.S. in 2015 on a visitor visa as the criminal investigations around him and his inner circle were tightening and has reportedly remained since.
Now, the extradition request highlights the potential conflicts of interest that have swirled around Trump: A decision that is usually made on the merits by career diplomats could be complicated by the president's personal and business ties to Panama. Officials at the State Department could be inclined to approve the extradition, mindful of not antagonizing the current government of Panama, which exerts plenty of influence over the fate of a development that makes millions for the president's family—or to decline the request out of their awareness of Martinelli's support for the Ocean Club and his admiration and kind words for Trump.
The Panama skyscraper was the first building outside of America to bear the Trump name, in a licensing and management deal with local development company Newland International Properties. Trump's companies today "have business operations in at least 20 countries, with a particular focus on the developing world, including outposts in nations like India, Indonesia, and Uruguay," according to the New York Times. An analysis of Trump's global deals published on January 25 by the Washington Post found that the Trump name has been contracted out "to at least 50 different licensing or management deals." As the Post explained, "for his international projects, he has done a majority of his work through licensing—where a developer who is liable for the actual cost and responsibility of the contract uses Trump's name for their hotels. This allows Trump to spread his brand and image worldwide without actually being liable for the project." (In addition to real estate projects, Trump has also licensed his name in branding deals for a variety of consumer products such as Trump Vodka, Trump Steaks, and Trump Menswear.)
Trump has done branding deals ranging from a suite of private mansions in the United Arab Emirates, a luxury resort and golf course in Indonesia, a since-halted project in Azerbaijan that nevertheless earned him more than $2.5 million in fees, and a number of projects in India, where the Times found he had more projects in the works than anywhere else outside of North America. Several of the Trump projects in India "are being built through companies with family ties to India's most important political party," reported the Times. In the Philippines, Trump's partner in a $150 million tower in Manila was named a special envoy to the United States in October by Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, whose war on drugs has involved the summary execution of thousands of suspected drug users and sellers.
Michael H. Fuchs, who until recently helped to oversee American relations with the Philippines as deputy assistant secretary of state, explained to the Times that "the biggest gray area may not be a President Trump himself advocating for favors for the Trump Organization. It's the diplomats and career officers who will feel the need to perhaps not do things that will harm the Trump Organization's interests. It is seriously disturbing."
Ethics experts have raised concerns about the potential for these global deals to complicate international diplomacy and whether Trump will weigh his political actions against their impact on his business allies. Another concern is that foreign officials might take actions to benefit Trump's local business in order to curry favor with the White House.
Despite his global financial entanglements, as Trump and his inner circle have repeatedly emphasized, the conflict of interest laws that restrain other federal employees don't apply to the president. "As you know, I have a no-conflict situation because I'm president, which is—I didn't know about that until about three months ago, but it's a nice thing to have," Trump said at his January 11 press conference. Days after his inauguration, a group of ethics lawyers filed a lawsuit against Trump claiming that his holdings violate the Constitution's emoluments clause, which bars federal officials from taking payments from foreign governments. Trump also hasn't released his taxes or a list of his lenders, obscuring a complete picture of his potential global conflicts.
Though Trump announced at his January 11 press conference that he would not pursue additional foreign deals while in office and that he would move his assets into a trust controlled by his children, income from the Panama project will continue to roll in.
International extradition requests involve both executive and judicial processes, as the State Department receives the initial request from the foreign government in question and decides if it should be passed on to the Justice Department. If it is, and an ensuing court process finds the subject of the request to be extraditable, the case goes back to the Secretary of State, who is vested with the final decision-making power over whether to authorize the extradition. As explained in a recent article in Law360 co-authored by former Justice and State Department lawyers, "the Secretary of State has ultimate discretion to determine whether the subject should be released or surrendered. In making this decision, the Secretary may take into account 'any humanitarian or other considerations for or against surrender,' as well as 'written materials submitted by the fugitive, his or her counsel, or other interested parties.'"
While the Secretary of State and the executive branch are unlikely to get involved in requests to extradite the average alleged criminal, an extradition request for a former head of state will inevitably become tangled with international politics and diplomatic concerns. "It would have to get red-flagged," says John Parry, a professor of law at Lewis & Clark Law School who has worked on extradition cases. The United States generally tries to handle the average extradition request from close allies reasonably expeditiously through the judicial system, but for "the ones that have a diplomatic or political or foreign relations angle" like a former head of state like Martinelli, Parry explains, "the political people are going to want to be involved in some way, they just are."
If the subject of such a high-profile extradition request were a friend or associate of the president, Parry says you'd expect the president to recuse himself from the decision-making process, even instructing their Attorney General and Secretary of State not to discuss the request with him. "If the president were to get directly involved or if the president's close advisors on behalf of the president got directly involved with the extradition, sure that would raise a conflict of interest question, I think it definitely would," says Parry.
The Trump administration hasn't commented on the extradition request or whether the president has been in contact with Martinelli since his election, despite repeated requests from Fast Company. Shortly after his election victory, Trump had a phone call with current Panamanian president Juan Carlos Varela, who was Martinelli's vice-president during his 2009-2014 term, with whom he reportedly discussed regional security, commerce, and the fight against organized crime and drug trafficking. It is unclear whether they also discussed the extradition request, and Panamanian officials declined to tell Fast Company if the two leaders discussed the fate of Martinelli. When asked about the current status of the request, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would only say that the process is in American hands. President Varela's office did not respond to requests for comment. The U.S. Justice Department doesn't comment on extradition requests as a matter of policy. (On February 19, Trump called Varela for another conversation about shared security concerns, and invited him to visit Washington in the months ahead.)
Despite all of his troubles in Panama, Martinelli seems confident that he remains in Trump's good graces. The day after Trump's victory, Martinelli tweeted his congratulations on the "triumph," adding "God bless America." And days before Trump's inauguration, Martinelli tweeted an image of what he described as an "invitation" to the official Trump-Pence Inaugural Ball. (A few minutes later, after Twitter users in Panama took notice, he deleted the tweet and didn't mention the inauguration again until the day of the ceremony, when he tweeted about what a beautiful city Washington was and how many people were in town for the event, posting similar sentiments on Facebook.) It's not clear if Martinelli actually attended the inauguration or the inaugural ball and his spokesman declined to tell Fast Company whether the former president has been in touch with Trump or his staff since the U.S. election.
Soon after Martinelli took office in 2009, Trump became one of his biggest fans. Though there were already news reports detailing the Panamanian president's "lack of commitment to 'rule of law,'" per diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks in 2010, Trump anointed the Latin American leader a "great president" in 2011 and cheered the businessman-turned-politician's corporate style. "Frankly, we need some of that in the United States," he told the Christian Science Monitor in Panama City after inaugurating the Ocean Club. He lionized Martinelli as a "businessman with heart," whose leadership in Panama showed Trump "that's why the United States is doing so poorly, because it's not being run properly, it's not being run as a businessman would," he told the Monitor.
That summer, Trump's opening of the mixed hotel and condo development on Panama City's waterfront to which he'd licensed his name and that his management company would run marked a new frontier in his ambitions. With his name recognition exploding due to his successful TV show, The Apprentice, and dogged by a mixed record at home with some high-profile U.S. projects ending up in foreclosure or unfinished, Trump's decision to license his name overseas was a smart move. In Martinelli's remarks at the Ocean Club's opening event, he lavished praise on Trump, thanking him for "allowing this wonderful building to have his name," toured the hotel with him, told Trump that "everything you touch turns to gold," and invited him to go sport fishing.
Eric Trump told the crowd at another opening event in July 2011 that "first it takes an unbelievable government and you just heard it—'We'll do anything to support Trump in their mission.' It's not often that you hear governments say that and it's such a relief to come into a country that's so pro-development."
It was the Trump Organization's first international real estate deal, "the one by which the rest will be benchmarked," as Eric put it. Ivanka explained in an earlier interview with the Monitor in February 2011 that "this building is a very important bridge for us as we begin to expand internationally, not just through South America, but the world."
Trump posing with Ocean Club staffers and associates during the development's opening ceremony in Panama City on July 6, 2011.
Despite initial fears that Trump's inflammatory campaign rhetoric might hurt his brand, by the time he was elected president buyers were eagerly snapping up Ocean Club units in a rush—the last of the developer-controlled condos were sold at the end of 2016. The project's developer Newland International Properties had noted under "Risk Factors" in an October 2015 debt offering document that Trump's campaign "may negatively impact potential buyers' perceptions of Trump Ocean Club." But the concerns turned out to be unfounded, as "demand spiked in the weeks following Mr. Trump's election, with buyers betting that the Trump brand will surge in value," noted the managing director of Punta Pacifica Realty, a local sales and management company that handled many of the final deals and tracked Ocean Club sales data. In a recent press release titled "New Interest for Trump Project in Panama City," he wrote that "since the election, PPR has seen the trend continue, with inquiries high as potential buyers investigate the impact of the Trump Effect on the building's values."
The Trump family first met Martinelli back in 2006, when Ocean Club developer Roger Khafif invited him to an early meeting with Ivanka, Eric, Donald Jr., and a handful of local government representatives including the mayor of Panama City. "I was friends with Ricardo from way before he became president," Khafif says, adding that he's "known him for the last 20 years or so." "Panama is a small country, everybody knows everybody," Khafif says, describing that early 2006 meeting with Martinelli as more of a social networking event. Martinelli was then a prominent businessman who owned one of the biggest and most visible companies in Panama, the supermarket chain Super 99, and was also the leader of the pro-business Cambio Democrático party.
Donald Trump speaks with Panama's President Ricardo Martinelli during the inauguration ceremony of the Trump Ocean Club in Panama City on July 6, 2011.Photo: STR/AFP/Getty Images
Khafif says that he had previously sold Martinelli an apartment at a smaller resort project that he'd worked on in the past, but wasn't aware of any stake that Martinelli may have acquired in the Ocean Club.
Still, in the small world that is Panama, Martinelli's interest in the hotel was not just personal. He was a director of Global Bank, one of the largest banks in the country, whose subsidiary Global Financial Funds became the co-trustee for the project a couple of years after the complex opened in 2011. Global Financial Funds replaced the previous co-trustee, HSBC's Panama unit, in 2013, the same year that HSBC sold its Panamanian assets to a Colombian bank. Khafif says that Global Bank was "a bank we used to work with" before signing them on in 2013, and insisted that Martinelli "had nothing to do with" the bank's role as co-trustee of the Ocean Club.
As co-trustee, Global Financial Funds gained a view into the project's books and buyers, and was "supposed to make sure money was spent the right way," as Khafif puts it. Global Financial Funds was responsible for receiving funds coming in from rentals and sales accounts and for transferring it to a disbursement account, after having reserved or paid Trump's commission for the licensing of his name. As co-trustee, Global Financial Funds was also given custody of certain collateral related to the Ocean Club, such as the original stock certificates.
Global Bank declined to tell Fast Company if Martinelli still serves on the bank's board or in any other capacity. There is still a Ricardo Martinelli listed on the board of Global Bank subsidiary Global Valores, which offers investment products and services, on the company's website. (A few hours after Fast Company reached out to Global Bank and the former president's son Rica, the bank's webpage listing this Martinelli on the board began redirecting to another part of the company's website.)
The Trumps' admiration of Martinelli appeared to be unaffected by the cascade of international news about his increasingly authoritarian and vindictive behavior, blown open by WikiLeaks' 2010 release of U.S. diplomatic cables, in the year before the family publicly heaped praise on him. Mainstream news outlets like the Timescovered these revelations published by WikiLeaks—one of Trump's favorite sources during the U.S. election—about Martinelli in great detail starting in late 2010. According to the cables, Martinelli ruled by "bullying and blackmail," and had threatened to stop cooperating with the United States unless American officials helped him with a wiretapping program. The cables documented U.S. Embassy officials in Panama sounding red alarms over Martinelli beginning as early as the second week of his 2009-2014 administration. That's when, as McClatchy noted, the U.S. Ambassador to Panama presciently warned that he was "almost certain to spell trouble for Panama's democratic institutions."
Panama's anti-corruption czar Angélica Maytín Justiniani said that the amount lost to corruption in Martinelli's administration is "possibly in the billions of dollars," and that "it's obvious that a lot of the money is outside Panama," McClatchy reported in 2015. She added that "we're learning of midlevel [former] officials who have assets of $25 million and 10 properties. We never saw anything like this, even under the military dictatorship." A Panamanian law professor and human rights activist concurred in an interview with NPR that Martinelli "did more harm to the country than even the dictatorships of the last century," as "even the militaries, they were not able to develop the degrees and the practice of corruption like Martinelli did."
Trump's previous statements implying that overseas corruption was just another cost of doing business suggest that the allegations wouldn't have raised many red flags anyway. When Walmart's massive Mexican bribery scandal broke in 2012, Donald Trump said that the U.S. anti-bribery law that applies internationally, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, is a "horrible law and it should be changed." "Every other country in the world is doing it and we're not allowed to. It puts us at a huge disadvantage...the world is laughing at us," he said.
A glimpse into the magnitude of that alleged corruption was revealed in federal court in Brooklyn in December, where Latin America's largest construction company, Odebrecht, pleaded guilty in a case brought by officials in the United States, Brazil, and Switzerland involving a global bribery scheme spanning a dozen countries. Panama's current government says that the Martinelli administration was the recipient of Panama's share of these bribes (Martinelli's sons have denied any involvement to the local press). On January 12, Panama's attorney general said that Odebrecht had agreed to pay the Panamanian government more than $59 million in reparations for the bribes it allegedly paid to secure contracts between 2010 and 2014, while Martinelli was president. "The sum is the amount in bribes Odebrecht admitted paying to officials and intermediaries there in a plea agreement disclosed in December in a U.S. court," Reuters reported. Odebrecht, along with its affiliated petrochemical firm, would pay at least $3.5 billion in penalties in the global case, the biggest penalty ever for a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, reports the Times.
At the end of January, Panama charged and ordered the investigation of 17 people in the Odebrecht bribery case, reportedly including Martinelli's sons Rica and Luis Enrique. And on February 14 their government said thatInterpol had issued international "red notices" for Martinelli's sons Ricardo (Rica) and Luis Enrique in the Odebrecht case, at the request of Panama's anti-corruption prosecutor. Some of the money was allegedly laundered through Swiss bank accounts, and such Martinelli-controlled accounts containing $22 million were reportedly frozen in the process, according to Univision.
Since fleeing Panama, Martinelli has blamed his troubles on "rigged" circumstances engineered by political enemies who are a threat to his life. In response to the Panamanian Supreme Court's ruling demanding his detention to face the charges against him, Martinelli wrote in a letter in late 2015 that "like those now detained illegally, I'm a victim of rigged proceedings, of coerced or manufactured witnesses and it is ever more evident the violations to the presumption of innocence and due process."
Martinelli is just one of several foreign leaders suspected of corruption abroad who have found refuge in the United States. There are explicit government policies "designed to keep the United States from becoming a haven for corrupt officials," but a number of such officials fleeing their legal systems back home "have slipped through the cracks," reported ProPublica in a recent article co-published with the Miami Herald, calling Martinelli "one of the most prominent cases." Proclamation 7750, issued by George W. Bush in 2004, has the force of law and instructs the State Department "to ban officials who have accepted bribes or misappropriated public funds when their actions have 'serious adverse effects on the national interests of the United States.'" Under these rules, U.S. officials "do not need a conviction or even formal charges to justify denying a visa," and can do so "based on information from unofficial, or informal sources, including newspaper articles," noted ProPublica.
In response to the article, Martinelli's spokesman released a letter declaring that "it is wrong to say that former President Martinelli is in the United States to avoid facing these political processes. Actually having no accused status and haven't not being [sic] formally charged, he has faced each of this [sic] processes through his attorneys as granted by our laws and constitution." Martinelli's letter claimed that "in Panama his life is threatened by the political persecution of President Juan Carlos Varela," and even accused the current administration of using "torture" to extract false accusations against him. Martinelli's team added that "there is no documentary evidence or material that links former President Ricardo Martinelli in the alleged facts."
Despite several requests for comment, Martinelli declined to be interviewed for this story.
Trump and Martinelli's mutual affection seems to be partly based on their status as wealthy men with political ambitions who appear to be unmoved by concerns over conflicts of interest. By 2015, Martinelli's net worth had risen to $1.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Aside from Super 99, he has other large holdings in media, real estate, banking, energy, and sugar, and owns a plane, two helicopters, and a yacht, according to Bloomberg. Martinelli was elected on the promise that he would run Panama as he ran his businesses. With his election in 2009, he had perfected the style of right-wing populism that Trump is selling to Americans today. Martinelli's massive personal wealth, the campaign sales pitch went, made him the only outsider immune to influence and able to dismantle an entrenched and corrupt political establishment.
Trump's campaign was so resonant with Martinelli's that many Panamanians today refer to Trump as the "American Martinelli." They even shared the same political operative, Republican strategist Alex Castellanos, who worked on Martinelli's campaign in 2009 and guided a pro-Trump super PAC in 2016. Castellanos, a high-profile political and corporate consultant, appeared regularly on Meet the Press and CNN during the campaign as a Trump supporter (though he was a Trump critic before the nomination).
Castellanos has said that the now-fugitive leader, whom he referred to as "Panama's version of Italy's Silvio Berlusconi," "was politically incorrect on the good days, ragingly out of control on others." As with Trump, "we couldn't hide his affluence so we celebrated it," Castellanos explained, adding that "we used his wealth without apology, as inspiration for every Panamanian's success."
The Trump Ocean Club tower that Martinelli helped to inaugurate in 2011 was heralded as the icon of Panama City's rapidly expanding skyline—50 skyscrapers have been built around the crowded shoreline since 2007. (There is also one of Martinelli's Super 99 supermarkets just a few blocks from the Ocean Club, to which the complex offers free shuttle service.)
The Ocean Club's official website explains that the goal was to build "the most spectacular development in Panama's history," and Trump called it "one of the most beautiful buildings in the world." Trump tweeted that the building had become "Central America's architectural icon," announcing that "excellence has arrived to So. America." The Ocean Club was supposed to be a kind of Elysium on the isthmus for rich expats drawn to Panama for its relaxed tax and immigration laws, and one of "the best retirement programs in the world," according to its promotional material. Ivanka Trump explained to the Latin Business Chronicle that Panama's incentives were "incredibly luring to international [investors], especially as we in America are being taxed to the hilt." Ocean Club condo units are exempt from property taxes through 2031.
Panama's long-term global strategic importance, due to the Panama Canal connecting the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, has also helped reassure Ocean Club buyers that the region has some degree of economic stability. Today, a third of trade coming from Asia to America passes through the canal. The country has been the key passageway for interoceanic trade going back hundreds of years to the days of the Spanish Empire, when South America's resources like the gold and silver of the Inca empire were shipped to Spain via Panama. Martinelli had also served as chairman of the board of directors of the Panama Canal Authority and as minister of Canal Affairs from 1999 to 2003.
Trump famously outraged many Panamanians in the year before the Ocean Club opening, when he lamented that the canal had just been given back to the Panamanian people. "We gave it to Panama. We didn't say, here, take us, pay us $100 billion over a 10-year period or 50-year period. Who are these people that are making these decisions? So, we have very bad decision-makers in this country. And this country didn't get great by having decisions like that made," Trump told Wolf Blitzer in 2010. In response, Panama City councillors voted unanimously to declare Donald Trump "persona non grata" in March 2011, just months before his project's grand opening there. Panama's Commerce and Industry Minister Roberto Henriquez said that "somebody who has 400 million dollars invested in Panama should not speak this way," and that "I think it was a political stupidity on the part of Donald Trump,"AFP reported. After the backlash, Trump issued a rare conciliatory statement and spoke to Panamanian press, insisting that he was simply criticizing the negotiating abilities of American politicians and that "if I were from Panama, I'd try and make the same kind of a deal, I respect that." "I paid Panama a great compliment," he explained.
To reduce the bottleneck effect at its gates as shipping traffic and the size of container ships increased over the years, Panama announced plans for a $5.2 billion expansion of the canal in 2006—on the same day that the Trump Ocean Club was launched in New York City. The canal expansion was another important marketing tool for the development, signaling Panama's continued economic desirability. "Panama is amazing. It's thriving. You know why? The canal is doing so well, and they're now expanding the Panama Canal," Trump told CNN. "Home to the number one shipping and trade canal in the world," Ocean Club promotional material explained.
Panama's location connecting South and Central America—and the vast, swampy and notoriously lawless Darién Gap border region with Colombia—has also raised persistent security concerns since it has served as a key conduit for smuggling for decades. Former U.S. Ambassador Barbara Stephenson noted the arrest of Martinelli's second cousin Ramon Martinelli in Mexico for his role in a drug smuggling ring that was transporting up to $30 million a month through Panama's Tocumen International Airport, McClatchy noted. President Martinelli later told Stephenson, according to the cable, that Ramon was the "black sheep" of the family and that his government would have arrested him if Mexico didn't.
Panama's status as a nexus of drug smuggling, money laundering, and strategic importance were notoriously embodied in former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, a paid CIA asset whose nefarious activities prompted President George H. W. Bush to launch Operation Just Cause, the invasion of Panama in late 1989 that involved tens of thousands of U.S. troops. Noriega was under indictment in Florida on drug trafficking charges before the invasion, and after his capture and arrest in Panama, he was taken back to the United States and sentenced to 40 years in prison (later reduced to 30) on drug trafficking, money laundering, and racketeering charges. He was the first foreign head of state to be convicted on criminal charges in a U.S. court. (In 2010, Noriega was extradited to France on further money laundering charges, where he received a seven-year sentence, but in 2011 was extradited back to Panama to serve a sentence there for the murder of opponents during his rule.)
While Trump constantly raged against "globalists" during his presidential campaign, the Ocean Club was meant to be a magnet for precisely the kind of borderless flow of money that he now loves to criticize. (Panama also has the second-largest free-trade zone on Earth, after Hong Kong, a fact highlighted in the Ocean Club's sales pitch.) Panama has been a pillar of globalization for hundreds of years, in recent decades known as one of the world's premier "money laundries" for its facilitation of opaque international financial transactions and corporate confidentiality laws. (The new government of Panama says that it is implementing greater transparency laws, though as President Varela admitted to the Times last year, "under previous governments, Panama was no doubt a target of money launderers.")
Real estate in Panama City was booming in part because of all the dirty money flowing in from around the world. As a U.S. Embassy cable from 2007 released by WikiLeaks noted, "ultimately, real estate projects financed by the proceeds of criminal activity distort the market for legitimate developers and create excess supply, which may be why 20,000 luxury apartments are projected to be available in Panama City between now and 2010." Pointing out the city's noticeably dark skyline, photographer Paolo Woods told the Times in 2015: "What's amazing is most of the skyscrapers are dark," adding that "they're just there to launder money."
As the BBC put it in 2014, "the Russian mafia is believed to control some prime real estate in Panama City while the Sinaloa Cartel— perhaps the most powerful drug-trafficking organization in the world—brings its cocaine from Colombia via Panama on its route north."
Some international buyers of Trump Ocean Club units were assisted by Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca with the creation of accompanying offshore shell companies set up to facilitate those purchases, according to emails released in last year's infamous Panama Papers leak. One of the firm's principals, Ramon Fonseca, also served as an advisor to then-President Martinelli. On February 9, Fonseca and the co-head of the firm, Jürgen Mossack, were taken into custody and denied bail by Panamanian authorities as part of the government's investigation into the Odebrecht bribery scandal. The firm is just one of many other law firms and lawyers who assisted buyers of Trump Ocean Club units with creating such offshore entities, according to Panamanian corporate records. The leaked emails show the Ocean Club development company's COO initiating contact with and offering to cover travel expenses for Mossack Fonseca lawyers, McClatchy reported.
(Panamanian shell companies have also been a popular vehicle for buyers of luxury Trump properties back home. As Forbes reported in a story about money laundering in 1986, "once the money enters the banking stream through shady banks, it is indistinguishable from other money. For example, fully one-third the apartments in Manhattan's super-expensive condominium Trump Tower are owned by foreign corporations, mostly from Panama and the Netherlands Antilles." Among these Panama-routed early Trump funds were those of Haitian dictator "Baby Doc" Duvalier, who famously acquired a foothold in Trump Tower in 1983, the year it opened, when his very close friend and family decorator purchased a unit. The condo, then worth $1.65 million, was paid for under cover of a Panamanian shell company, according to a 1986 lawsuit filed in the U.S. by the Haitian government.)
While marketing the Ocean Club to the global jet set crowd, the building's sales team put extra emphasis on Russian investors looking to park cash overseas, and held Russian marketing events around the world from Moscow to Mar-a-Lago. As the Times put it in an examination of Trump's Russian forays on January 16, "he discovered that his name was especially attractive in developing countries where the rising rich aspired to the type of ritzy glamour he personified." Panama City became one of the preferred Trump projects for Russian investors looking to move their money offshore, offering a more affordable South Florida-type lifestyle with relaxed tax and immigration laws, and stable property rights. (The Trump brand also became popular in places like "Little Moscow" in South Florida, where as the Post reported in November, "Russians helped Donald Trump's brand survive the recession.") As the Trump Organization's chief counsel told the Post, "there's newfound wealth in Russia," and "any developer is going to where you have a chance of selling your product."
The "newfound wealth" that he was referring to included the vast amounts of cash that had long been pouring out of Russia's chaotic post-Soviet economy, capital flight that is today estimated to have exceeded $1 trillion. This newfound Russian wealth became a valued part of the Trump Organization's sales of condos, with Donald Trump Jr. noting in 2008 that "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia."
Aside from global players, the Trump Ocean Club also became a favorite of Panama's domestic elite, and hosted a number of high-profile Martinelli-attended events. Wharton's Global Forum Panama featured a one-on-one discussion with Martinelli, and he attended Forbes magazine's launch party for its Central American edition as a VIP guest. "Panamanians still talk about the lavish wedding of Martinelli's private secretary, Adolfo 'Chichi' de Obarrio a year later [in 2013] at the luxury Trump Ocean Club," attended by Martinelli and members of the ruling party, reported McClatchy in early 2015. The reporter noted that "de Obarrio, who hadn't yet turned 30, was gatekeeper for nearly all government purchases and a friend of Martinelli's son," and that his wedding at Trump's Ocean Club featured a "massive fireworks display."
As the criminal investigations around his inner circle started to close in in early 2015, Martinelli fled Panama for his waterfront luxury condo in Miami, in a 20-story building made famous for its appearances in Scarface and on Miami Vice. Later that year, he set up a Florida company called White Shark Developments LLC. A few days after its incorporation, he tweeted that a visa was required to stay in the United States for up to 180 days, unless you invest at least $500,000 to get an investor visa.
Martinelli has remained an active presence on Twitter from his American sanctuary, where he has denied all wrongdoing. In an interview with Bloomberg reporters at a Miami cafe in 2015, he said that his political opponents "are so afraid of my tweets," warning, "look what happened in the Arab Spring." Martinelli was stripped of his immunity to criminal prosecution in 2015, and at the end of September the government of Panama asked the United States to extradite him to face the corruption and illegal spying charges.
Back in Panama, the Trump Ocean Club had its own legal meltdown. In 2010, Trump said that the units were "selling like hotcakes." But just a few months after the tower's 2011 inauguration, the project's developer defaulted on the debt and later declared bankruptcy. By 2015, the condo owners voted to fire the Trump management team, citing "more than $2 million in unauthorized debts, paying its executives undisclosed bonuses, and withholding basic financial information from owners," reported the Associated Press.
The condo owners' board said that the Trump team had pulled all of this off by what the AP described as "fine print chicanery." Trump's management company refused to accept being fired, then announced that it was quitting and demanded a $5 million termination fee. The AP then broke the news a month later that Trump had filed a confidential claim with the Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce arbitration court demanding up to $75 million, asserting that his management team had been wrongfully fired. (The Washington Post reported in January that the dispute had ended in a confidential settlement.) Trump's team is still managing the hotel portion of the Ocean Club, for which it has a 40-year contract.
As the AP put it, "the Trump Organization's adventures in Panama provide a window into how these traits have filtered into his business empire—and the style of management that could be expected in a Trump White House. Transparency and close attention to expenses are not strengths. Squeezing the most from contractual language is." One retired American doctor who had purchased a unit told the AP that "I thought it was pretty safe, because we had Trump involved," but that he'd since realized that "he's a predatory businessman."
The last time a member of the Trump family appears to have visited Panama City was in December 2015, when Eric Trump travelled there to attend the Ocean Club's fourth anniversary party and "to strengthen and support the plans to improve the property in the near future," according to a press release. In an interview with the AP that fall, the president's son dismissed the troubles inside the building as a sideshow to what the Ocean Club was really about—"an amazing icon and, frankly, a great testament to America."
Meanwhile, Martinelli spends his time in Miami meeting friends, posting photos of himself working out at the gym, mocking current Panamanian president Varela, sharing his favorite songs like the Bee Gees' "How Deep Is Your Love" on Facebook, and fulminating on social media about his political enemies. But he hasn't mentioned Trump on Facebook or Twitter since the inauguration.
Like Obamacare, the 2015 Open Internet Order may be harder to repeal and easier to scale back.
Many in the media are already writing the epitaph for net neutrality in the Trump era. And it's true that with every new press release and statement out of the Federal Communications Commission (and they're coming fast and furious) it's become pretty clear that new chairman Ajit Pai is aligning the agency with Donald Trump's business-friendly and less consumer-friendly agenda.
But six weeks into the new administration, it seems less and less likely that Pai has it in mind to completely kill the network neutrality principles embodied by ex-chairman Tom Wheeler's 2015 Open Internet Order. The commission approved the order with a 3-2 vote along party lines, with Pai dissenting.
The order effectively classified broadband as a public utility, and restricted big ISPs like Comcast and Verizon from selling online "fast lanes" to big internet companies. It also prohibited the ISPs from slowing down (throttling) or blocking (legal) internet traffic based on the content of the data packets.
Ted Cruz once characterized network neutrality principles as "Obamacare for the Internet," and he may have been more right than he knew. In fact, Republicans might try the same reduce-not-replace approach to the order that they're now proposing as an answer to Obamacare. Pai and his GOP friends might favor an Open Internet Order "Lite."
Pai is more likely to to scale back the effects of the order, rather than pushing the commission to withdraw it or asking Congress to pass legislation that overrides it, two commission insiders who insisted on anonymity told Fast Company.
Pai may "soften" the order by allowing broadband carriers some kinds of web traffic prioritization or throttling under clearly defined conditions, one source said. For example, if a broadband customer is paying for 100 megabit-per-second broadband service, the provider might be allowed to prioritize some kinds of bandwidth-sensitive traffic (like video) in order to meet the speed promise.
Because the net neutrality order is now final, and because it's already survived a legal challenge in federal appeals court, it would be hard to reverse, says a lawyer familiar with the workings of the FCC. It might take action in Congress to do it, and, the source pointed out, neither Congress nor the Trump administration have indicated that that is a high priority right now.
Opponents of the Open Internet Order have always argued that denying broadband carriers the right to charge internet companies for expedited carriage takes away their incentive to invest in the speed and capacity of their networks. (Although they've had trouble proving that such a "chilling effect" has actually occurred.) By the same logic, one source pointed out, big internet companies like Netflix and Amazon might argue that a return to internet toll booths and increased traffic delivery costs might stifle investment in new "over the top" internet services.
The broadband carriers have very real financial incentives to lobby for fast lanes. They're currently riding the wave of hype around the next big thing in network service, 5G, and eventually the carriers are going to have to pay for the network upgrade. Network-wide upgrades require a big capital expenditure, and, traditionally, Wall Street hates it. The carriers might have an easier time maintaining their stock prices during such an upgrade if they're collecting internet tolls.
There are other ways to "lighten" Wheeler's order. Regulatory agencies like the FCC can write new rules, and they can decide how vigorously to enforce existing ones. The FCC under Pai might do a little of both. With the current Republican majority, it may be possible to administratively reverse specific parts of the Open Internet Order within the agency, without the involvement of Congress. The FCC may have even more room to move when it comes to deciding how to enforce parts of the order.
Such "selective enforcement" can also be applied to carrier practices that seem to exist in a gray area between network-neutral, and those that are not so neutral. A case in point is "zero-rating," an ISP marketing practice that allows end users to use certain carved-out services (like Facebook or some music streaming service) without counting the data use against their monthly cap.
There's been lively debate over whether zero-rating tacitly favors one type of traffic over another. The Republican commissioners, Pai and Michael O'Brien, have been outspoken in their belief that zero rating is pro-consumer and essentially network-neutral. The commission under Pai might specify in a ruling that zero rating doesn't violate network neutrality. Or, more likely, it will stay silent on the issue, allowing the carriers to "self-regulate" the practice.
Whatever Pai has in mind, we're not going to see anything big happen at the FCC until the current spectrum auction is over. Meanwhile, Congress remains distracted by Trump drama, and will be consumed by the fight over the Affordable Care Act for some time.
So yes, for now at least, the reports of net neutrality's death may indeed be greatly exaggerated.
This week's top stories may help you kick work habits that hold you back, hone your most in-demand skills, and fight "microaggressions."
This week's top stories may help you curb those bad work habits, rethink just how marketable your leadership skills might be, and deal tactfully with unintended slights in your workplace.
Most of us think our work habits—like our talents and abilities in general—are above average, but that's just not possible. According to a recent survey of managers, there are five leading behaviors that prevent people from working well on teams and are difficult to change. This week we learned what they are.
One business school professor recently asked MBA students to rank their most marketable skills, then asked recruiters to rank the traits they look for most. The grads put leadership skills at the top of their lists, while the recruiters shoved it to the bottom. Here's why.
Your colleagues may have the most unimpeachable intentions yet still leave you feeling slighted. This week we explored a few tactics for navigating the potential minefield of "microaggressions" in the workplace.
Marcos Chin earned an impressive award when he graduated from art school, then spent more than two and a half years cobbling together freelance work before quitting his retail job to become an illustrator full time. This week he recounted what he went through before finally getting a call from Rolling Stone.
Decades ago, it was believed that we all pretty much reached a certain level of cognitive maturity when we reached adulthood, and that was that. But research on brain plasticity suggests it isn't that simple, and as automation reshapes the workforce, we may need to develop what two psychologists call "self-transforming minds" in order to stay competitive. Here's what that means and how to get there.
If you've been fired or laid off, your gut instinct may be to keep mum about it. But that won't do you any favors.
Ever since I've started working at The Muse, I've gotten cornered by people at social gatherings who whisper in my ear, "Hey, I'm looking for a job, I heard you can help."
I typically respond by pulling the person into a back alley, opening up my trench coat, and asking if the person's looking for fully tailored resumes or cover letters with witty openers—or, for an extra cost, offer letters that only need their signature.
Just kidding. The lighting in back alleyways tends to be horribly unflattering.
Instead, I typically respond with something about letting their network know they're looking, since that's the best way to get a foot in the door. To which they almost always say, "Oh, that's nice, but I'm trying to keep this pretty low-key right now."
I get it. When I started my last job search I did the same. I had this fantasy of waltzing into dinner and announcing the news to my friends and family that I landed this amazing new position.
They'd say, "I didn't even know you were looking." And I'd casually reply, "Oh, it just fell into my lap." Then they'd all simultaneously think, "Wow, Jenni must be really good at what she does to leave one great company for another." Then I'd say something fancy like, "Next round is on me, old chaps."
How did that fantasy play out in real life?
I got a few interviews, zero offers, and eventually laid off. The good news is that being unemployed left me with no choice but to confront two truths:
I was unhappy in my current situation.
I needed help.
These facts are easy for me to type out now, but they felt so hard to admit when everyone else around me appeared to be thriving in their careers. No one else I knew needed help from their network, so why did I?
However, as soon as I started being honest about my situation, the opportunities started rolling in. Turns out people want to help you! But they can't if you don't clue them into what you need.
Think about it: Have you ever turned to a friend in the middle of a conversation about The Bachelor and said, "Hey, would you like me to proofread your resume?" or "My cousin's company is hiring if you'd like me to connect you two."
That means that rather than trying to pull this off all by yourself, tell your friends, tell your former colleagues, and tell your family. While you don't want to shout it from the rooftops (mostly because that's a wildly ineffective way to communicate), you should clue your network in to the fact that you're looking. It's honestly as easy as sending this "help me find a job" email.
The majority of the interviews I went on after being laid off came from friends-of-friend leads. Leads I never got before I lost my job because no one knew I wanted them. And the position I ended up getting at The Muse? That "in" came from a former manager's friend.
So, if you're serious about looking for a new role, stop treating it like a stealth mission. You're not in the CIA (unless you are, and in that case, you do you). You're just someone who's looking for a new opportunity—and who's smart enough to know it's a lot easier to find it when other people are keeping an eye out, too.
This article originally appeared on The Daily Muse and is reprinted with permission.
Snap, Facebook, Tencent, and others are changing how we share and express ourselves online.
Gone are the days of managing regularly updated Facebook profiles or Twitter accounts and calling it "social media." Our very means of social connectivity have transformed in the last year, demanding that users and companies alike adapt to new platforms and ever-changing trends. As lines between competitors start to blur—hello Snapchat and Instagram!—and new ways of communication crop up from unlikely brands, it's clear that how we connect online will continue to evolve.
Below are 10 companies that have changed the way we think of social media—and will continue to do so into 2017.
Click on a company name to learn more about why it made the list.
Here are our recommendations for which events you shouldn't miss—including highlights from the Fast Company Grill.
So you're in Austin this weekend and overwhelmed by all that SXSW has to offer. Fear not: We've put together a cheat sheet for you, which includes a sampling of events Fast Company is hosting. If all else fails, head to the Fast Company Grill, where we'll have programming through Monday.
Dawn of the Labs: The Next Gen of Tech Innovation 11 a.m.-12 p.m.
Featuring Fast Company's own Chuck Salter, this panel will touch on why labs programs like PARC, Acquia, and HubSpot are crucial to developing new technologies, from artificial intelligence to virtual reality.
Biometric Social Storytelling on Mt. Everest 11 a.m.-12 p.m. Recommended by Neal Ungerleider, writer
Mountaineer Adrian Ballinger will talk to Andrew Vontz of Strava, the social network for athletes, about his experience using the app to document his expedition to Mt. Everest, and how biometric data can enhance that kind of storytelling.
Most Creative People LIVE! 12-12:40 p.m.
Gather 'round as Fast Company writer Diana Budds leads a lively conversation at the Fast Company Grill with members of our Most Creative People in Business community: Beautycon Media CEO Moj Mahdara; Candice Morgan, Pinterest's head of diversity and inclusion; Sama Group founder and CEO Leila Janah; and Sundial Brands cofounder Richelieu Dennis.
Covering POTUS: A Conversation with the Failing NYT 9:30-10:30 a.m. Recommended by Harry McCracken, tech editor
How do you cover a president who has dubbed news organizations the "opposition party" and the "enemy of the American people"? New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet and media columnist Jim Rutenberg talk journalism in the age of Trump.
Vint Cerf: An Internet For And By The People 11 a.m.-12 p.m. Recommended by Harry McCracken, tech editor
Tune into this session with one of the founding fathers of the Internet, Vint Cerf, to learn what the future Internet will look like.
The Boomer Millennial: A Retiree Becomes an Intern 11 a.m.-12 p.m.
After watching the movie The Intern, Pfizer exec Sally Susman was inspired to hire 70-year-old Paul Critchlow as an intern. Here, Critchlow and Susman talk about the experience and are joined by Fast Company writer David Zax.
World Changing Ideas: Meet Leaders Reexamining the Ways We Live, Work, Help, and Learn 12-12:45 p.m.
In a conversation moderated by CBS News correspondent Vladimir Duthiers, leaders who work on challenges as diverse as global poverty, immigrant rights, and economic justice will offer answers to questions like: Where do you start when you want to change the world? How do you stay motivated in your work when faced with what can sometimes seem like insurmountable challenges? Head to the Fast Company Grill to hear from Ai-jen Poo, director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance; Richard Wolffe, the chief marketing and digital officer of Global Citizen; and Jean Case, CEO of the Case Foundation.
The Urgency of Now: Launching the Biden Cancer Initiative 3:30-4:30 p.m. Recommended by Harry McCracken, tech editor
Don't miss this keynote by former Vice President and eternal Obama bro Joe Biden, in which he'll reiterate his commitment to fighting cancer through the Biden cancer initiative.
GAFA: The Relentless Rise of the Tech Giants 12:30-1:30 p.m. Recommended by Harry McCracken, tech editor
We Grow Startups founder James Schad on how Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon came to dominate so many industries, what that means for competition and privacy, and how it affects you.
Ray and Amy Kurzweil on Collaboration and the Future 12:30-1:30 p.m. Recommended by Neal Ungerleider, writer
This daughter-father duo will talk about their respective work in cartooning and engineering, as well as writing, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and the future of storytelling.
Innovation by Design: What's Next? 3-3:40 p.m.
Each year with Fast Company's Innovation by Design issue and awards, we seek to answer the question: Where is design headed next? Fast Company tech editor Harry McCracken will talk to designers working in graphic, experiential, and digital about where design and design thinking are having the most impact right now—and where it isn't being put to use. Featuring Imaginary Forces director Karin Fong, Argodesign founder Mark Rolston, and John Couch, Hulu's VP of UX and design.
The Building Diet: Social-Onus in the 21st Century 3:30-4:30 p.m.
We often think about what we put into our bodies by way of food or drink. But what about the things we consume through our environment—specifically, the buildings we frequent? Fast Company's Diana Budds joins a panel with Josh Wise, Etsy's director of workplace ecology and design; Gensler Architects partner Amanda Carroll; and EvensonBest project director Gary Wilkin.
Kimbal Musk on Trust: The Currency of Our Generation 3:30-4:30 p.m. Fast Company's Amy Farley chats with Kimbal Musk, cofounder of The Kitchen, a network of farm-to-table restaurants. (You might also know him as the brother of Elon Musk.)
How an Emoji Becomes an Emoji: The Unicode Process 11 a.m.-12 p.m. Recommended by Harry McCracken, tech editor
Need we say more? Find out how your favorite emoji became an emoji, and how you can submit your own emoji proposal.
Media War: Publishers vs. Platforms & Influencers 12:30-1:30 p.m. Recommended by Harry McCracken, tech editor
Do publishers stand a chance against big-name influencers and platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn? Hear from Fast Company's Harry McCracken, along with Blendle senior editor Jessica Best; Contently editor-in-chief Joe Lazauskas; and Jay Acunzo, VP of platform at NextView Ventures.
Beyond Driverless Cars: Our Transportation Future 3:30-4:30 p.m. Recommended by Neal Ungerleider, writer Fast Company's Neal Ungerleider digs into the future of autonomous tech, ride sharing, and connected cars with former secretary of transportation Anthony Foxx; Don Civgin, president of emerging businesses at Allstate; and Chandra Bhat, head of transportation research at the University of Texas at Austin.
Some of the blame for high employee turnover can be traced right back to their first day on the job.
Your new hire's first day usually involves a lot of paperwork, setting up passwords and logins, meeting new people whose names they'll inevitably forget, and similar odds and ends. They're all necessary but may not create the most exciting first impression—and as the saying goes, you never have a second chance to make a good one.
Why does it matter how well you onboard your new employees? Well for one thing, because many are jumping ship at alarming rates. By one recent estimate, nearly half the world's workers will be at a different employer by the time 2018 rolls around. So the same old onboarding practices you're used to may no longer cut it. But the good news is that there are small changes you can make—no matter the size of your organization—to make new hires' first few days as smooth and positive as possible.
Here are a few common mistakes you should avoid after hiring a new employee.
If the next time your new hire hears from you after accepting the position is their first day on the job, that's a mistake. Don't just tell them a time and a place to show up and leave it at that.
Email them one week before their start date, saying that you're looking forward to working together and giving them an overview of what to expect. Then email them again the day before they start, with a brief itinerary of what their first day will be like. This early communication provides the security they need to feel good when they show up on the job for the first time.
First days should be well structured. Don't just have them read the manual, sign some forms, and then sit around the rest of the day. New hires need to feel accountable right from the beginning. Not knowing what to do when you start a new job isn't a good feeling. Draw up a full schedule and share it beforehand. Not only does this help your new hire feel like they're being paid attention to, it'll also help them to be productive as soon as possible.
Having a brief celebration can be a nice touch to make your new employee feel welcome. In the shuttling back and forth between the HR and IT departments, you may not feel like you have the time. But all it takes is 30 minutes at the end of the day.
At my company, we welcome new employees with a half-hour cake party. But we don't just set food out and let people take some as they please. We try to make it more personal by sitting around a table together and chatting. I ask everyone to go around and introduce themselves, briefly explaining what they do for the company. This exercise is great for people who work in small organizations, but you can do this just as easily with your team if you work for a big company.
Organizing a full-on lunch outing with everyone on your team can be a headache; sometimes it's weeks before you'll have a chance to do that with your new hire. But you don't actually need a major event to show people you're excited about them joining your team—a brief celebration will do just fine, and you don't have to wait to have one.
Many employers don't realize that they're dumping way too much information into new hires' laps. In the haste to bring people up to speed, they wind up trying to get new employees to learn everything about the company at once. They won't have any context for the information they're receiving, and they won't be able to relate to what you're telling them until later on, once they've settled in. While there will obviously be some administrative issues you need to take care of, try not to overwhelm them with too much, too fast.
Instead, try to create an engaging exercise to deliver whatever your new hire really does need to know right away. I once worked with the head economist for a large multinational on his presentation to new employees. Rather than giving a grand lecture about who he was and how he delivered value to the business, I helped him develop an exercise that was more interactive. He handed out newspapers to everyone in the audience and asked them to pick out stories they found interesting. Then he explained how each story was connected to the company in some way. That helped give new hires a memorable introduction to his role, plus the context for understanding it.
When you're bringing in new people, it's critical to set a positive tone. By using these strategies, you'll make your new hires feel confident they made the right decision when they joined your team.
Companies love to hire from within, but is it always good for your career?
Here's a riddle: How do you get a new job without some of the stress that comes with a traditional job search? Answer: You get a new job within your current company.
Both you and your company can benefit from this scenario. Many companies love to promote from within and develop their talent pool—you're their most valuable asset, after all—as opposed to roll the dice and hire externally.
But is it really what's best for your career? Or is it just a turn down a dead-end road? Here are three questions to consider before making an internal move.
"This move isn't just about the [job] title or your next direct deposit," says Mark Babbitt, founder and CEO of YouTern, a Colorado Springs, Colorado, firm that provides young professionals with career advice, internships, and mentors. "This move could have a serious impact on the next three to five years, and perhaps your entire career."
If you like your company's culture, your coworkers, and the leadership, and this is a place you enjoy working, an internal move can allow you to keep all of that and still try something new.
That said, "Liking your manager or coworkers isn't enough if that means stifling your career growth," says Tim Toterhi, an executive coach and author of The Introvert's Guide to Job Hunting. So it's best not to use such a move as a short-term answer if you know you really want to move on.
Plan to stay with the new position for at least 18–24 months, says Toterhi, and consider whether you're willing to commit to that amount of time with the organization. Your interests might be better served searching for your dream job instead.
It's easy to feel like you're getting ahead when you get a promotion—any promotion!—but an internal move should also give you skills that push you forward in the long run.
Think about what you really want in your career—is it to be promoted up the ladder? Do you want more money? Are you looking for more intellectual stimulation? Once you know what you want, you can determine whether the move will inch you closer to those goals, says Stan Kimer, president of Raleigh, North Carolina, based Total Engagement Consulting, which offers diversity and engagement consulting for corporations.
Taking calculated risks is how you move forward, and the important thing is to weigh what you'll gain from the new role against the sacrifice of leaving your current job, Kimer says. The chance to deepen your skills or learn a new functional role could be worth the risk. But if the move offers little to nothing new to add to your repertoire of skills, it might be wiser to take a pass.
Your company should be helping you develop your skills with the goal of promoting you every few years. That said, if you've been at your job for several years and have tried other internal moves but received no promotions, it's definitely time to look for a job at a company that will allow your career to grow.
"Over time, getting strung along by an employer with one lateral move after another can be like living in a loveless relationship," Babbitt says. "Depending on how ambitious you've been with your desired career trajectory, give yourself maybe two lateral moves in three to five years. After that, if no promotion is on the horizon, start to build a new professional relationship with a company that loves you back."
This article originally appeared on Monster and is reprinted with permission.
Talking yourself up is a useful job skill, not a liability. It just takes some emotional intelligence to do well.
While "Here are the top three reasons why I'm amazing . . ." is no way to start a conversation, bragging often gets a bad rap.
But that's not fair. Bragging in itself isn't bad, but how people go about it can be. So with that said, if you learn to go about it the right way, it can be undeniably helpful in your career—specifically in these three situations:
Common mistake: sounding insincere. One of the top complaints people have about networking is that it feels transactional. That's because, too often, they think the only way to mention their strengths is in a memorized, robotic-like speech.
So they brag at the expense of being able to genuinely connect with anyone else—and then leave feeling drained and disappointed.
Get it right: Muse writer Amanda Berlin advises answering, "What do you do?" by highlighting your talents. But, as she explains, this shouldn't feel selfish or awkward: "You're actually doing everyone a favor by being honest about what you're good at and what lights you up."
In other words, when you view bragging as sharing something honest and meaningful (as opposed to a sales pitch), you can do it without sacrificing the ability to connect.
Instead of "I'm an award-winning photographer," you could say, "I'm a photographer. I always loved taking pictures, and then after winning a few competitions, I gathered the courage to quit my day job and pursue it full-time."
Since you're there to build a stronger base of contacts, you want to put forth why you're worth staying in touch with—and be likable enough that people will actually follow up. So share your strengths in a friendly way, and follow up by displaying the same amount of interest in what the other person does, too.
Common mistake: making it a nonstop brag-fest. You know it's important to talk about your strengths and demonstrate how qualified you are. But don't go so far as to make every line you speak a glowing self-endorsement.
Case in point: I interviewed someone who had no reply to, "Tell me about a time you failed." After several minutes of silence, he told me he couldn't think of one time in his entire life when he'd ever done anything wrong.
Get it right: In interviews, the trick is to make sure you don't confuse bragging with acting like you're incapable of making a mistake. If you pretend like you've never dealt with a challenge, the hiring manager won't assume you're perfect, but will instead assume you don't have the skill set to handle it.
So keep your answers in a positive light, but strive to demonstrate self-awareness. too. When asked about your greatest strength or accomplishment, go on and discuss how creative you are. But when you're asked a question like "What's your greatest weakness?" don't give a stereotypical response like: "I don't have any," or "I'm a perfectionist . . ."
Instead, point to something you've genuinely needed to work on and then share how you're working to improve. For example, "Delegating didn't come naturally to me, and initially, I struggled with it. So I reached out to my supervisor for advice and learned how important it was to assign meaningful tasks and give clear instructions. It's improved my relationship with my employees and helps our team get more done."
Common mistake: being unprepared to back it up. You come to your performance review with a goal in mind. You want a promotion, or at the very least, you want your boss to know what a great job you did over the past six months (or year).
But people get themselves into trouble when they come with a list of things to they excel at (e.g., "I'm great at managing client relationships") but then don't have any examples or statistics to back it up.
Get it right: The trick to successfully bragging in your performance review is to follow up every positive assertion with a statement that essentially says, "Here's why." That way, you're not just tooting your own horn; you're recounting your work.
To prepare, keep a running accomplishment list throughout the year, so you'll know what areas you've improved in. This way you could say, "I've really grown in my time management skills. For example, I started keeping a weekly schedule, and had the monthly newsletter ready one week early the past three months."
Along with anecdotes, look for any data you can pull in, as that'll be most convincing. By what percentage did you grow sales (or your user base or donor list)? Saying, "I grew our donor list by [number of people] resulting in [amount] more donations" isn't seen as bragging, but rather you sharing an important (and impressive!) fact.
Sometimes it can be hard to know where exactly the professional line is. Are you being confident or cocky? Blunt or rude? Proud of your hard work or arrogant? As with any of these fine-line situations, your approach can make all the difference.
Don't make it your goal to stay away from bragging altogether, because after all, you're your own best advocate. Just make it a point to do it the right way, so it's well received.
This article originally appeared on The Daily Muse and is reprinted with permission.
What it's like to quit your day job and turn your podcast-listening hobby into a business.
Nick Quah knows a lot about podcasting. He knows what's new in the industry, how people are making money, and what people who are interested in podcasting should be focusing on. But he got into podcasting as a side project while working at a totally unrelated job. In 2014, he was working in media and analysis as a research associate. He decided to start a side project to pass the time. That undertaking is now an LLC and has earned him a name in the podcasting industry as a trusted analyst.
Quah writes the newsletter HotPod, a weekly source for podcasting industry information. It began, at first, as just an email newsletter Quah wrote for fun for his peers. Eventually it snowballed into a digital source for people in the industry. Now it's a standalone business, thanks to a subscription and ad-based model for the weekly digest.
Quah was able to do what a lot of people dream about: Take a hobby and turn it into a side project and then turn that side project into a full-time job.
I talked to Quah about the process of quitting his day job to pursue his dreams.
(Full disclosure: Quah and I worked together a few years ago when he first started the HotPod newsletter.)
When did you first start getting into podcasting?
I started getting into podcasts at the end of college around 2011. But I really got into it in 2013 when I was in graduate school and I hated it. I just needed something to kill the time. It was also a bad mental-health period for me. Podcasting ended up being like a therapeutic crutch because I couldn't afford a therapist. And they just stuck around ever since.
At the beginning, were you more interested in the storytelling or the business behind it?
As a fan I was interested in almost everything about it. I enjoyed the narrative stuff like This American Life, Radiolab, On the Media. I really liked the interview stuff like WTF with Marc Maron. And also the conversational podcasts like three people sitting around talking about stuff. I consumed a ton of those kinds of podcasts, whether they were about politics, news, video games, or design.
I went through the iTunes charts and got everything I could get and shoved it into my ears. I needed them to fill the silence. The fascination with the ecosystem came much later.
So how did you come to that realization that you were interested in the business angle, too?
I think it was partially because I was working at Business Insider at the time. I was a research associate. It was in 2014 when the Serial phenomenon happened.
I was just really fascinated that there was this thing that millions of people were listening to, and very few had figured out how to make money. And then suddenly there were people trying to figure out how to make money. It was the birth of a new creative industry. That was really interesting to me. It felt like we were watching chapter one or chapter two in the history book.
[Author's note: Podcasting has been around for well over a decade, and there certainly have been successful independent podcasts for years. The second "podcasting boom" really began in 2013, according to Pew, which is when digital audio shows became more mainstream. Quah first began HotPod in 2014, a short time after that.]
What led you to the newsletter?
A lot of people in my life knew that I was the person that was really into podcasts, and they were really into Serial. They asked, "What should I listen to?" So I started the newsletter largely to write for [my friends]. I would just send it out to about 10 people and that was about it.
At my day job, I wasn't getting the reporting training that I thought I was going to receive. So I started trying to do a bit of that on my own, to teach myself. So the reporting came out purely because nobody else was doing it and I was interested.
I saw a lot of people trying to write about Serial, but it just felt that nobody quite understood what podcasting was, or what the culture was, or what the industry was. I decided that I could fill the gap, do something fun, and make this a side project. Maybe it'd look good on my resume. But then the thing just kept growing.
I was deeply inspired by Ben Thompson's Stratechery technology newsletter. I essentially looked at what he was doing; I thought I could adapt a bunch of that to this publication.
At the time, did you think it would lead to a standalone business project?
No, not at all. At the time I really thought I was going to work in digital and newsrooms for a bunch of years; try to learn my way through that system. I started the newsletter because it was fun and I needed something to do on the weekends that wasn't grocery shopping. I'm not great with downtime.
When did you realize it was becoming bigger than you anticipated?
I started to realize soon after it launched. There were a lot of subscribers that had the @WNYC.org and @npr.org email addresses. I was fascinated by the fact that they were interested in what I was writing. I realized that there hasn't been a trade industry newsletter for that industry.
And that's when I understood that I had a responsibility. A few months in, I reached 1,000 subscribers. Not long after, I reached 2,000 subscribers. Within a year I had 5,000. I thought, "I think there's something there." It isn't big, but it means something to some people.
[Author's note: Twitter played a crucial role in getting subscribers. Media people love to share what they're reading, which was very helpful for HotPod.]
How did you teach yourself how to run a business?
I was building the ship as it was sailing. I had little reporting experience. I had no industry and analysis experience. And I had no entrepreneurship experience. I figured that if I could do the reporting and analysis, I could try to do starting the business, and maybe it would make sense.
I started to build the newsletter while I was at Business Insider, then I went to BuzzFeed for a while, and then I moved to Panoply, which is a podcast network. It felt weird that I was writing a newsletter about the podcasting industry while working at a podcast company. I thought if I was going to pick one or the other, I'm going to bet on myself. And the only way I could feed myself was if I was to build a business around it.
If I could have had a choice, I wouldn't have built a business around it. I would've tried to find somebody to take a chance on me and hire me to do this work. But nobody was going to do it because I still don't think anybody saw value in a podcast publication. So I thought, fuck it, I'm not going to wait. I built this thing—it's weird, it's bizarre, but it's given me some momentum. I'm going to try to make money out of this thing. If I don't, then I'll just blow this up and go do something else.
So I formed the LLC. I figured out that it was probably better if I had some sort of supporter/subscriber/membership-oriented business [which gives exclusive content to subscribers who pay a monthly price]. When I put those in place, the initial signups were good enough to get me through the first couple of months. Then it grew into a nice size, which provides me with a not particularly comfortable living. But it's a solid baseline. I also sell classifieds [in the newsletter].
Are you happy that you started the business this way? Going at it on your own?
I do think that, at this very specific point in my life, I made the right choice. I don't think it would have worked if I worked for anybody else in the podcast industry.
The freedom has given me a lot more perspective. I wonder about my capacity to work with an editor or a person who is supposedly more senior than me because of my writing vantage point. I have inroads and ears and eyes [into the podcasting industry]. I would rather have autonomy.
Is there any sort of advice that you would give to someone who wants to expand their side project into something bigger?
The way I did this fits a very specific kind of human being. And it just so happens that I'm the kind of person that fits that model. I don't like people telling me that they know better than me.
But I know how hard it is. It's incredibly hard to go about it this way. If it's not the mechanics and problem-solving aspect of the project, it's how do you build a business? It's the medium- to long-term plan with your weekly production of creating a newsletter. It's creating a product and making sure that you are disciplined enough to sit within that production timeline.
It is unimaginably hard to work by and for yourself. It's a little different because the classic startup story is that you have a group of founders that rely on each other. But all I have is myself.
It's really important to become comfortable with the fact that nobody is coming to save you. If there's something wrong—if you have no idea what the future looks like, you have no idea what the endgame is—nobody is going to come tell you what it is. You're on your own. Either bail yourself out or give up.
I see this very much as a position of insecurity. It's a weird posture because I also don't know what the endgame is for me. I have long enjoyed writing about this industry. I do believe that it's going somewhere. But in the off-chance that it completely blows up, I will leave it and find other things to do. For now, it's a chapter in my life.
"I never really got into Trello," says one digital nomad. These are the apps, platforms, and devices she relies on most.
Working remotely sounds like fun (and it is!), but it can be a logistical nightmare sometimes. Occasionally, something as simple as your phone dying while you're on the go can set off a chain reaction: your plans for that afternoon go sideways, your productivity sinks, your brain gets overwhelmed, you're already straining your budget—what are you even doing here in the first place!?
Trust me, I know.
I spent four months working and traveling through Southeast Asia. That may not sound like much to you, but when you're a digital nomad who's flying solo, every day can present unexpected adventures—some more welcome than others. You've got to be extra prepared to face all sorts of contingencies and cope with stress while you're overseas.
I've come to rely on a few essential tools. If you ask me, these are the devices, platforms, and apps you'll want to have right at your fingertips before booking a trip.
Whenever my phone drops below 50% battery life—whether that's on the streets, on a plane, someplace rural on the edges of town—I worry. So much, in fact, that I can no longer think about getting any work done. It's a major problem, not just for me but for anyone who's constantly on the move, trying to hunt down coffee shops or a coworking space where they can do some work before leaving for another country.
A simple solution is simply to bring a portable charger everywhere you go (here's mine). You won't use it every day, but you'll be glad you have it on you for the times when you need to power up on the go.
I never really got into Trello. Most people say it's the best project management tool and personal tab keeper there is, but to me, it's too overwhelming for the individual user. I don't use half the features, simply because I need to dig deep before understanding how everything works.
Buckets, on the other hand, is more minimal. You can manage tasks in color-coded boxes, create multiple projects, delegate tasks to team members, make checklists, and connect with your team. And the best part? It's completely free! The only investment you're really putting in is your time and patience to set up your daily and weekly to-dos.
Often during my travels I found myself too busy to read—especially when I was trying to figure out where to go next and what needed to get done that day. That's where Pocket came in handy. The app lets you easily save articles from the web and read them on the go — whether that's waiting for the train, standing in line at the supermarket, or sitting on the toilet. And because they're saved to the app until you choose otherwise, you can do all that without an internet connection.
When I worked overseas, I discovered and tried dozens of apps and tools in order to keep me productive. Some I discarded days or even hours after downloading them, and others (like the six here) I relied on heavily. But cycling through so many apps meant I had more than a few of those "oh-wait-what-was-my-password-to . . . ?" moments.
Don't be like me and wreck your brain. Get Dashlane. It stores all of your passwords and automatically fills them in for you. You can also store your credit card, driver's license, passport, bank account, receipts, notes, and company information—you know, all those personal details you probably wouldn't even share with a business partner.
Bonus: If you sign up here, you can get Dashlane Premium for free for six months, which lets you sync passwords across all your devices and in the cloud.
There are loads of coworking spaces, coffee shops, and cafes to work from all over the world. But which ones have reliable Wi-Fi? Which have plenty of seats and electrical outlets? I was left guessing until a good friend of mine introduced me to WorkHard Anywhere.
The app pinpoints over 7,800 places to work from, all crowdsourced from freelancers, entrepreneurs, and digital nomads around the world. Each location is evaluated on a linear scale based on a handful of criteria: how fast the Wi-Fi is, the availability of seats, outlets, and parking, and the relative price of the food and drinks. So if you ever need to work someplace on the fly, this handy app can help you sidestep that popular tourist cafe that Yelp recommends, and find the one you're really looking for—where you can get some work done.
Nothing frustrates me more than getting charged a $5 fee from the bank every time I withdraw cash overseas. Thankfully, there's a new debit card out there that doesn't charge international ATM fees—not even for overdrafts or card replacement!
Called Simple, it's a fully online-operated bank. This is really nice for digital nomads, because you can go to any ATM to withdraw cash without getting fleeced by hidden fees. Not only can you monitor your spending habits by setting up "Goals" inside the app, you can also instantly transfer money to family and friends who have Simple, too (and vice-versa). In my experience, this was super convenient whenever I was low on cash and needed some fast.
Just apply here and you'll also get a free minimalist wallet along with your card. There's one important catch, though: Simple only lets you spend up to $1,000 a day overseas. If your charges go higher than that over 24 hours, you'll need to contact Simple to increase your spending limit, which can go as high as $6,000.
It takes some trial and error to figure out which tools make working remotely manageable. But at the end of my last stint as a digital nomad, these where the ones I depended on the most.
Tiffany Sun is a writer, gym addict, and the creator of an email newsletter tool called Rabbut. She doesn't work to travel, but rather travels to work.
From turning Trello boards into slide decks to sharing to-do lists, these insider tips can keep your whole team in sync on the platform.
At Trello, we have a "don't do nothing" mind-set, which is pretty much what it sounds like: If you see a problem that needs to be addressed, just go ahead and make a decision. That decision could be to do nothing at all, but the spirit of the principle is to never assume someone else has it covered.
In fact, collaboration doesn't really work any other way. If you're going to commit to working on things together, with all hands on deck, you've also got to commit to never sit on the sidelines. But it's really about empowerment, not reactivity. Here are a few of the ways our own employees ("Trellists," if you will) use Trello every day with that in mind.
Who has time for repeating themselves? We have a few ways of keeping everybody at Trello up to date. First, we automate the communication of once-weekly team updates through an active Company Overview board that everybody at Trello can access. Every Friday, each team is responsible for commenting on their own project cards with a few bullet points about their progress on whatever they're working on.
This makes for a continuously updated one-stop shop for everything that's going on at the company. And for those who don't have a chance to scan that board for the latest news, there's a Slack integration that automatically sends those updates to a public #company-overview channel inside Slack. This way anyone can catch up on the feed throughout the day.
We've built Trello in order to make every project, plan, and task completely transparent. Cross-team collaboration is a must, so we want to avoid the silo effect of keeping people from entering other teams' workflows. That's why most of our team boards have an "Incoming" list where people can drop a question or request about something they're unfamiliar with, yet considering jumping in on.
Many times, they'll assign a priority label (green, yellow, or red) to visually indicate urgency. To help get newcomers started, we also equip team boards with "how to use this board" lists, filled with documentation and contact names and roles. These resources all matter. You can't just make everything open to the whole company and hope people just figure it out on their own; the whole point of transparency is to help get things done. No one should ever feel like they can't ask a question about somebody else's project or get involved in it themselves.
Most Trellists would agree this is a serious scroll- (and sanity-) saver: The Trello Chrome Extension lets you pull up a Trello board with a simple keyboard shortcut simply by typing "T" + "Space" into the address bar. Then it autofills the board name as you start to type it.
For repeat tasks like publishing blog posts, processing new job listings, or scheduling emails, we create a checklist of steps to take for each process. Then we'll copy it over to each new task card to make sure nothing gets missed. (This is extra helpful when you're filling in for someone on vacation!) Once all the items are checked off, we just mark the due dates as done, which turns them green. That gives users who are scanning the board a visual cue that the task has been completed.
We often use a board to organize conference notes and images, especially when we have a group attending a major event. A new addition to Trello's Google Drive integration (we call our integrations "Power-Ups") lets you generate a presentation in Google Slides based on all the cards on a Trello board—with a single click.
Once your company or team is committed to using a collaboration tool to get things done, the best way to avoid constant (and annoying) context switching is to figure out just how many ways that one tool can be used. We might use our Editorial Calendar every day, for instance, but the Package Tracking Power-Up can turn a Trello board into a swag-shipping center.
We've found ways to use Trello for everything from meal planning to employee onboarding, and whenever we hear about creative ways other people use the platform to get things done, we often share them with all our users. The more people, teams, and companies that don't do nothing, the better.
Michael Pryor works for Atlassian as the head of Trello and is cofounder of Fog Creek Software. He lives in New York with his wife and two daughters.
"So what's the workload like?" isn't the most tactful thing to ask. These are some better ways to find out how stressful a job might be.
When the majority of Americans experience stress symptoms every day, it's no wonder that more and more job seekers are searching for jobs that pay well but offer a low-stress or low-pressure day-to-day. If you've already tried to balance work and life at your current job, it may be time to start interviewing for a new one.
Unfortunately, sometimes asking questions about workload can give the impression you want to slack off, which is not true. So the trick is to find out whether or not this will be a stressful job without giving the impression that you plan to bring less than your best to your new job.
So try asking the following four interview questions to determine whether or not a job is comparatively low-stress.
Why it works: Asking this questions positions you as a thoughtful, big-picture job candidate who wants to know how the business is growing. Asking this question will also let you understand the context for the job. Jobs come open for two reasons: Either it's a newly created position, or someone left the job. Neither reason is better or worse than the other—jobs are created and people leave positions for good reasons, not just suspicious ones—but you do want to look out for warning signs.
What to look out for: If a new position was created because someone else is overworked and needs support, be on high alert. Companies usually wait to hire an extra position until the person is working 1.5x their capacity. This often means the new position will be made up of random, disorganized tasks that someone else can't get to—and there may be more things on your to-do list than you expect.
If the position is open because someone left it, ideally it's because they were promoted. If they took a new job somewhere else or the interviewer gives negative feedback about the person, those can be warning signs that the person left because of overwork.
Why it works: Not only is this interview question a great way to see if the job will line up with your skills, but it also will give you an idea of who you'll be interacting with and what you'll be doing on a daily basis.
For example, if placing phone calls is a stressor for you, finding out that your day-to-day responsibilities will involve interviewing subject-matter experts and coordinating business meetings may be a deal-breaker. On the other hand, if the interviewer indicates you'll be working independently with spreadsheets and documents for the majority of the day, you'll be more confident about the fit.
What to look out for: If the day-to-day job description starts with, "It depends . . ." there's a good chance that your schedule will not be as regular and controlled as you'd like. Whenever your job's duties depend on other people's actions, you have less control over your day and, therefore, more stress in it. What you're looking for in this answer is a clear list of tasks and responsibilities that aren't contingent on other people's actions.
Why it works: This is an all-around exceptional question to ask a prospective employer because it allows you to clearly identify the expectations for the job. However, it also works to scan for a stressful job because it allows you to assess how stressful the clearly defined goals will be to achieve.
Stress in the workplace occurs when you're responsible for things you aren't in control of. Understanding what defines success for the position will allow you to assess whether or not that role is empowered to actually achieve those results.
What to look out for: The answer to this question should be a list of clearly defined deliverables. If the answer incorporates a lot of intangible results, such as, "coach employees for increased department-wide teamwork," or "better processes for all of our deliverables," you may be setting yourself up a job in which you'll be responsible for other people's behavior—and that's stressful.
You won't know if you want the job offer if you don't have a sense of how stressful the job will be. In your next interview, be sure to ask these interview questions to gauge just how stressful a new job might be.
This article originally appeared on Glassdoor and is reprinted with permission.
A new era of immigration enforcement is coming. Here's how employers can follow the law, protect themselves, and support their workers.
President Trump's second attempt at a travel ban arrived this week, with provisions intended to prevent it from being blocked in court, as the first one was. On Wednesday, Hawaii became the first state to challenge the new immigration order in court, but there's no sign Trump plans to relent. He has promised to increase the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) force by 15,000 officers, many of whom will be tasked with ensuring employers' compliance with immigration law.
There are approximately 11 million people living in the U.S. without documentation, meaning the likelihood that an employer has undocumented workers on staff is considerable, especially in industries like manufacturing, agriculture, hospitality, and construction. Companies in and outside those fields are already gearing up for ICE raids on their worksites. Here's what you need to know to prepare.
Form I-9 is the ICE's main enforcement tool. Since 1986, it's required employers to confirm their employees' ability to work in the U.S., and ICE in turn has the authority to inspect employer records to make sure that's the case. When employers are found to not be complying, ICE can fine them thousands of dollars for each instance of violation. For federal contractors, immigration violations can also mean lost contracts, and publicly traded companies may be required to report their violations to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which can cause stock prices to tank.
But employers have rights, too. To initiate an investigation, ICE must supply a subpoena in the form of a Notice of Inspection. An employer that's been subpoenaed then has at least three business days to provide ICE with Form I-9s and related documentation. Since employers can never know whether they'll be inspected, their best protection is preparation.
And since employers don't always know when employees present false documentation, protection from an ICE audit starts with an internal audit. I-9 audits can be done quickly and at reasonable costs compared to the potential liabilities that violations can cause. Employers should designate somebody who's trained to conduct the audit to carry it out, whether internally or an outside HR consultant or attorney.
At minimum, a good audit should cover every current employee, but it's worth looking through recently terminated employees' records, too. An I-9 audit should also follow a checklist that sets the standard to which all employee documentation will be reviewed; the Department of Justice offers some guidance on what that should entail.
If your audit turns up no irregularities, great—but if you do find that some forms need to be corrected, tread carefully. Section 1 of Form I-9 must be corrected by the employee, which means it falls to employers to let their employees know whenever that's the case.
Some states, like California, impose strong sanctions for employers that improperly discipline employees for immigration compliance issues, and unions can be fiercely protective of their members when employers inquire about immigration status. In fact, it isn't uncommon for efforts to fix I-9s to trigger claims of discrimination. For example, an employer with employee populations spread out across the country may have different standards of I-9 execution, and trying to remediate those issues could lead to treating a subset of employees in one location differently than another. That's a no-go. Anytime you're conducting an internal audit or discussing I-9 issues, it's crucial to treat all employees consistently.
If an employer learns that an employee is undocumented, the company is required by law to terminate that employee. However, many employers want to offer support to valuable team members who may be undocumented. One proactive thing to do if you suspect you may have undocumented workers on staff is to set up relationships with attorneys who can offer qualified advice confidentially. This way your employees can get support without revealing their identities to management. As an employer, there's also nothing preventing you from pointing your team members toward legal resources online or through nonprofits like the American Immigration Counsel.
ICE generally comes unannounced to a worksite to start an investigation, which can precede the issuing of a subpoena. These visits can be extremely disruptive and can frighten employees needlessly. To minimize any fallout, employers should get a protocol in place.
Appoint people on staff to interact with ICE agents should they arrive, and train them on how to be cooperative without putting staff at risk. They'll be in charge of keeping ICE officers in a location where they won't interact with customers and employees. In addition, the selected point people should know how to contact the company's human resources and legal departments as well as outside counsel immediately.
Just because an ICE officer visits doesn't mean they have permission to talk to employees or walk the premises without a proper warrant. You don't have to be combative in order to prevent that from happening. Nor are employers required to turn over documents without a subpoena or warrant.
The Trump administration's new era of immigration enforcement is less than 100 days old. Immigration remains one of the most complex, misunderstood, and emotional issues today—and for good reason. But politics aside, employees need to get to grips with the importance of immigration compliance or else face the consequences. They can protect themselves and their employees by getting their own house in order, before ICE officials do it for them.
Davis Bae is the regional managing partner of the Seattle office of Fisher Phillips, a national labor and employment law firm that represents employers.
Given that everyone has this natural "negativity bias" against email, it's important to pay close attention to your phrasing. For the most part, we use email either to remind people about things they said they'd do, or to ask them to do something for us. In the absence of social cues, this is a delicate task. With that in mind, here are a few tips for making your emails friendly and appealing—without running on too long or coming off as ingratiating.
If you've forgotten your grammar lessons, the imperative is the mood I just used in that subheading. It's essentially a command: "Do this, go there, finish that." In general you want to avoid using the imperative in email. People like to feel they have agency in their work, and the imperative turns them into peons following orders. (And if you're speaking to someone above you, it sounds downright presumptuous.)
Rather than using the imperative, try to make a habit of using the conditional—"Could you? Would you?"—when asking someone to do a task. Instead of saying do this, ask them if they could do this. It's a subtle shift in phrasing, but it conveys a big shift in perspective: you're putting the ball in their court and respecting their right to make decisions about what they will do and when.
If you're sending an email to someone, you probably have a good reason why—that is, there's some benefit to you. But what's in it for them? People like to have a reason for doing things. If you want to get a positive reaction to your message, it's helpful to provide some greater context for the request. The "why," if you will.
You could frame the benefit in terms of quality:
I know this is frustrating, but it will make the product even better.
Or in terms of progression:
We're so close to meeting the deadline; we'll be just about there after this one last push.
Or even in terms of gratitude:
If you could just make this one tweak, it would really help me out, and then we'll be done.
As you no doubt noticed in the previous examples, I chose to emphasize the fact that the task was "almost done" in multiple instances. The human brain likes to feel a sense of completion, as we covered earlier in the book; people are always more motivated when the end is in sight. Even if you're not near the end of a project, framing a request in terms of completing a milestone or some other small step can be helpful. The happy sense of completion could even come from the promise of not getting any more email from you, such as:
Once you wrap up this task, I can take over the next stage of the project, and you won't have to get all these emails from me anymore!
The point is to put the request on a timeline and show progress so your recipient understands, "If I do this, we will be moving forward."
A little consideration goes a long way. I've found that people are much more receptive to requests if you take the time to acknowledge that you recognize they're busy, as in:
I know you have a really hectic schedule, but let me quickly explain why I think this opportunity is worth your while . . .
Or you can close an email with:
Thanks for taking time out of your no doubt busy schedule to consider my request.
By empathizing with their workload, you cut off the possibility of a, "They think I have time for this?!" type of reaction to your email, and communicate to them that you understand the context of your request. Explicitly indicating that you are aware of—and respect—other people's time is always a good idea.
Email is the last place you want to play it cool. In fact, it's hard to go wrong if you always focus on conveying a super-positive, hardworking attitude in every message you write. You might think you sound overly earnest or even chirpy when you read back your email, but remember that the negativity bias will immediately take the language down a notch when it hits that person's inbox.
I used to be staunchly against exclamation points and emoticons, but I changed my tune as soon as I had to manage a bunch of moody creatives via email. Upbeat punctuation makes your enthusiasm and support palpable to the reader, supplying the social cues that are generally absent. And so what if you sound like a cheerleader—couldn't we all use a little more support at work?
You have probably received emails from very successful and busy people that were extremely terse. Perhaps it was from your boss or from a successful entrepreneur or investor. Regardless, do not take these emails as cues for how you should write emails. With power and renown come benefits, and one of those benefits, in some people's minds, is the chance to not mince words. It works for them, because in most instances, the people they are emailing have no choice but to accept their curt style of communication. It does not mean such an approach is advisable for you or for anyone who values kindness and consideration.
Don't let your impatience turn into passive aggression. Here are four productive steps to take instead.
Getting antsy? Of course you are. You're overdue for a raise or promotion. You know it and your boss knows it, because you discussed it together at your last performance review—which was months ago. It's just that the company's budget is still being finalized, or maybe the payroll department is behind the ball—who knows? In the meantime, your landlord just hiked the rent and your student loan payments aren't exactly lightening up anytime soon.
Here's the thing, though. Great bosses understand all that, whether explicitly or implicitly. They also grasp that in order to hang onto great talent like you, they'll need to pay you properly. If you're lucky to work for a good boss, she'll communicate your progress clearly, giving you accurate timelines for bonuses, promotions, raises, and the like. She'll also be clear about her expectations for what it'll take on your part to get there, offering plenty of feedback along the way.
Unfortunately, not every supervisor does that. Sometimes they're waiting on their own higher-ups for more information and approvals; other times they're just negligent. All this can add up to lots of frustration on your part. What's taking so long? More importantly, what can you do about it?
Your impatience can steer you toward making some less than strategic moves. So it's important to find some more productive, tactful ways to wait things out.
One way to do that is to keep an accurate record of your progress at the company. Whenever you get a raise or promotion, write down the date that it took effect. Keep notes on the feedback you get about your job—both positive and negative—along with the dates that you got that feedback. If a raise or promotion is promised or implied, take note of when that happened, too.
The reason for all this record keeping is that our perception of time is malleable. There's a great local restaurant here in Austin, called El Arroyo, which puts a sign out front with a rotating handful of silly aphorisms to amuse people who drive past. In December it said, "I wish vacation minutes were like microwave minutes."
There's truth in that. When you pay attention to the passage of time—as you do while you're waiting for dinner to reheat or your raise to come through—the time seems to pass much more slowly than when you're busily engaged doing something you love. The time between hearing about a possible promotion and actually getting it may feel like it's stretching out longer than it actually is, so keeping a record can help you keep some perspective.
Next, you can focus on honing the skills you'll need to take on more responsibilities at work. Nobody is truly "ready" for any promotion; there are invariably new things you're asked to do that require learning on the job. Nonetheless, the more time you spend preparing for whatever is coming, the better you'll be able to step into a new role as soon as it comes.
But there's another reason to level up, too. By improving your skills, you'll catch your boss's attention. You're likely to start doing things in your current role that are noticeably better or more advanced than what you'd done before. That improvement will also remind your boss and other people on your team that it's well past time for you to move further, otherwise they may risk losing you.
At the same time, keep having conversations with your boss about what you can do to improve your performance. You may think that task is now behind you, since it's what landed you the assurance of an impending raise or promotion in the first place. But that should really be ongoing.
Often, people who are trying to get promoted spend time making their accomplishments at work visible. While it certainly matters that others in the organization know what you've already contributed, it may be more effective to show people that you're ready to push ahead and do even more. So seek out mentors and keep asking for input in order to continue demonstrating your commitment to improving.
Finally, if your promised raise or promotion really has taken months and months to materialize, it may be time to have a more forthright chat with your supervisor. The relationship between you and your employer is a two-way street. They certainly have to trust that you have the best interests of the organization at heart, but you also have to feel like they have your back. It's easy to lose faith in the organization if you feel that it hasn't delivered on a key promise.
Rather than stewing over what you may see as a broken promise, sit down with your boss and have an open discussion about your expectations. It's very possible that a change in the budget or some other situation has delayed things and they forgot to loop you in on it. The last thing you want to do is express your frustration before knowing the full situation.
And after all of this, if you feel like your employer isn't being truthful with you, well, that's valuable intel, too. Maybe it's time to plan the next steps of your career under somebody else's roof.
Pandora is taking on Spotify with sleek design and data science muscle. But can it compete this late in the game?
In a way, opening the new Pandora app feels like running into an old friend. For one thing, I haven't been using Pandora much for the last few years, opting instead to binge on music via Spotify, SoundCloud, and vinyl, dipping into Pandora only rarely. But just like someone from an earlier phase of life, Pandora seems to know me and we pick up right where we apparently left off: listening to Slowdive, the dreamy English shoegaze band from the 1990s. I didn't ask Pandora to take me down this road, but it suits my mood just fine on this chilly March afternoon.
Of course, Pandora has always been able to dive into a personalized radio station like this. But now the app has a new trick: Its brand-new on-demand music subscription tier, built to rival Spotify and Apple Music, is layered seamlessly on top of its famous people-and-data-powered playlisting engine. Pandora Premium is here. So far it sounds pretty good, but I can't help but wonder whether or not it's too late.
Tim Westergren, the Pandora cofounder who became the company's CEO last year, insists that there's still time: "One of the reasons we're doing this is because we think people haven't done this right yet. Right now, subscription services are 30 million songs and a search box. It's the equivalent of handing somebody the keys to the record store and saying, 'Good luck!'"
Indeed, the new Pandora puts curation and discovery first in its design, pushing listeners toward playlists and stations and making it effortlessly easy to create their own. It also goes to great lengths to solve what Westergren terms "the cold start problem" of music services by jumping right into a song when you open the app rather than waiting for the listener to make a decision.
Scrolling through the app, there's another thread to my digital nostalgia. The app's design recalls the sleek, minimal interface of Rdio, the on-demand music service I used briefly before Spotify landed in the United States in 2011. It's no coincidence: Pandora acquired Rdio and its team in late 2015 to build out its foray into the music subscription market now firmly dominated by Spotify. That move, along with its acquisitions of TicketFly and NextBigSound, was made to reposition Pandora in the streaming space, wooing both artists and listeners, and reengineering its business model.
It's not just design and talent that Pandora absorbed when it bought Rdio. As my Slowdive radio station flows onward, hitting just the right spot with bands like the Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, and Interpol, it goes somewhere I wasn't expecting—a song by the Stone Roses that I'm familiar with but hadn't saved to my virtual music collection on Spotify or anywhere else. For the first time since Pandora launched its music streaming service 12 years ago, I can save the song and even explore the album it's on. Until now, I would have had to jump over to Spotify or another music app to do that. This moment—when people like me close the app—is the one that Westergren has long hated. Starting this week, he's hoping we'll stop.
This, in a nutshell, is why Pandora is shifting courses. As hugely innovative as its internet radio model and the underlying algorithms were when they debuted, music listening has since changed irrevocably. Now we expect instant access to almost any song we can think of—and more than 100 million of us now pay for that luxury. Streaming is now where a majority of the music industry's revenue comes from and—while the economics of it all are still shaking out for many artists—virtually everyone agrees that these trends will continue well into the future.
So what is Pandora Premium? In a sentence, it's a souped-up version of Rdio woven very seamlessly into the Pandora that its 78 million active listeners already know and love. Like its on-demand competitors, the new Pandora offers access to tens of millions of songs for $10 per month. The company's executives have talked about the possibility of launching additional tiers and charging more for additional features for super-fans, but this is where they're starting.
The music selection is more or less what you'd expect from a subscription service, with some noticeable omissions. Few will be surprised to learn that Taylor Swift's most recent album 1989 is not available, but the rest of her catalog is. At the time of publication, the Beatles' catalog is not available either. That's not a shock considering the band only landed on other subscription services 15 months ago, after years of holding out. But details like this are a small competitive setback at a time when the competition is already so fierce.
When music is missing, Pandora is able to offer listeners a small compromise that other services can't: Because its original internet radio service is based on a compulsory licensing model (rather than the direct deals with labels that on-demand music requires), you can still start a radio station based on those songs and, in theory, hear them in that context. You just can't pick and choose which of those missing songs you hear or when. So even when an album is missing, Pandora will still show a grayed-out listing in search results hoping that listeners will opt to start a station or keep exploring rather tap out of the app. And presumably, Pandora must hope, future negotiations with rights holders will fill in many of these blanks.
The main entryway into the listening experience on Pandora is the "My Music" tab. It's here that Pandora blends your recently played stations and playlists with the music you've saved for on-demand playback. Like the company itself, Pandora's new design is curation-first, giving slightly preferential treatment to playlists and discovery over pick-and-choose, album-oriented listening. But both modes—"lean back" and "lean forward," in tech industry parlance—are easily accessible from this screen. The "Browse" subsection is where you'll find personalized, daily-updated new releases and recommended artists, as well as a selection of playlists curated by things like genre, decade, and activity.
Pandora may be a straggler in the music subscription space, but it's dragging some distinct advantages over the app launch finish line. Foremost among them is data. After 12 years, over 250 million accounts opened (many listeners have obviously come and gone), and 75 billion thumb button taps, Pandora has amassed a mountain of intelligence about people's music preferences. This is the company's bread and butter. Having trained the Music Genome Project with flesh-and-blood musicologists for 17 years (this initiative predates even its radio service), the company has scaled up its music discovery and curation chops with a sophisticated blend of data science, machine learning, and, yes, human music experts.
Not surprisingly, Pandora flexes its legacy muscles throughout its new service. The act of thumbing songs up or down is still prevalent, but now hitting the "thumbs up" button also saves each song to a playlist for later indulging. Bonus: If you're a longtime Pandora user (even if you've abandoned it in recent years), you can go back and listen to the songs you thumbed years ago. This can resurface old gems you'd forgotten about—or perhaps remind you that taste is a nuanced, ever-evolving thing that sometimes refines as we get older. It's fine.
If you are returning to Pandora after some time away, you may be pleasantly surprised to find original programming like its Questlove Supreme radio show and new features like personalized concert ticket recommendations and seamless ticket buying (for select shows) through its integration with TicketFly.
As one might expect, Pandora injects its data science and personalization prowess into other places inside the app as well. When you're building a playlist, for instance, a button at the bottom of the screen invites you to let Pandora's algorithms suggest songs to add, effectively mining the wisdom of the crowd to help ensure you don't add to the millions of orphaned playlists already floating in the ether. More than anything, this little trick aims to keep you listening longer, as Pandora's designers try to ward off distractions and keep the app's engagement metrics palatable to shareholders. From the music that auto-plays when you first launch it to personalized details like this, Pandora Premium seems designed to be as sticky and easy to use as possible.
"Sometimes you want to listen to Dark Side of the Moon from beginning to end," says Westergren. "Most of the time, that's not what you want to do. The much harder thing is, when you're tired of those things, how do you create ongoing engagement? We're masters of engagement."
The idea of launching a new music subscription service in 2017 would be utterly insane if it weren't for one detail: Pandora already has 78 million monthly active listeners. If the company has a shot at competing, it will come primarily from its ability to upsell some of these listeners to its new $10 subscription tier. The rollout of Pandora Premium will be iterative and targeted. It begins this week and will continue through mid-April in phases, selectively coaxing existing Pandora users that might be likely to sign up based on their listening activity. People who hit the song-skipping limit or frequently thumb-up songs by the same artist, for instance, are prime targets for the new service.
Pandora is peddling a very polished, well-designed product, but it's unlikely to reel in many people who are already committed to a service like Spotify or Apple Music. That's because there's very little here, aside from aesthetics and a legacy of smart music curation, that can't be found on other services. Even perks like personalized new releases and the "add similar songs" button found their way into Spotify in the time that's passed since Pandora acquired Rdio. Unfortunately for Pandora, Spotify has vastly improved its own curation and discovery features over the last year and a half. Pandora is still arguably better at the artist-based radio stations, but Spotify has made itself much more addictive through personalized music features like Discover Weekly, Release Radar, and My Daily Mix, as well as hand-curated playlists. Features like this have helped propel Spotify past the 50 million subscriber mark. Apple Music, also famously heavy on good music curation, is catching up fast with 20 million subscribers. Pandora Premium is solid, but if you're already invested in another service, you're likely to find enough here to justify abandoning your music collection and playlists to start fresh.
Of course, that may change. This is only version one of Pandora Premium. Features like more original programming and smarter targeting of super-fans could make Pandora more alluring. It's also worth noting how much Pandora—and its future product development efforts—stand to gain from all the extra data they're getting by going into on-demand streaming. Pandora's music recommendation brain is remarkably smart considering it only learns from signals like the thumbs-up button, which songs and artists you use to start radio stations, and which tracks you skip. Starting this week, Pandora's algorithms will start learning about people's music preferences in much more detail and they can only get smarter as a result.
It's also early in the music subscription game. For people who haven't yet taken the plunge by paying for Spotify or another service, Pandora is a pretty compelling option. Pandora undoubtedly would have been better off had it entered the on-demand music market two or three years ago. Now that it's here, we'll see if brand seniority, good design, and smart curation are enough to keep bigger competitors at bay.
When it first launched its internet radio service in 2005, Pandora had very little competition to speak of. The landscape is quite different today as Pandora extends its service into the crowded on-demand music market. Considering how fierce the competition is, Pandora has to be pretty ballsy to not only jump into the game this late, but to base its experience so heavily on its own curation—assuming, for instance, that I'm ready to listen to Slowdive as soon as I open the app.
"People are unforgiving when it comes to music," says Westergren, seemingly aware of how audacious this curation-heavy foray into a crowded marketplace truly is. "You don't wait. You pass judgement. You switch stations."
