Category culture

The week@work – The Fed raises rates, Martin Shkreli is arrested, ‘The Big Short’ premieres and so does a small film about a galaxy far, far away

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

It’s that time of year when the world of finance takes center stage, only to be bested by the creativity of those who work in Hollywood. This week@work the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark rate, pharmaceutical executive, Martin Shkreli was arrested on securities fraud and the 2008 financial crisis originally chronicled by Michael Lewis, made its way onto the big screen in ‘The Big Short’. And that small movie from Disney? ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ set new records with a $238 million weekend opening.

On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported on the decision by the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates for the first time in seven years.

“The Fed’s decision today reflects our confidence in the U.S. economy,” Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen said Wednesday in a press conference after a two-day policy meeting. “We believe we have seen substantial improvement in labor market conditions and while things may be uneven across regions of the country, and different industrial sectors, we see an economy that is on a path of sustainable improvement.

New projections show officials expect the fed-funds rate to creep up to 1.375% by the end of 2016, according to the median projection of 17 officials, to 2.375% by the end of 2017 and 3.25% in three years. That implies four quarter-percentage-point interest rate increases next year, four the next and three or four the following. It depends on whether the Fed’s forecasts for the economy—which have frequently been wrong in this expansion—hold up.”

The Fed rate increase was one of the ‘Four Charts That Defined the World in 2015’.

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Vauhini Vara writing in The New Yorker listed the other three:

“For the first time, fewer than ten per cent of people in the world were living in extreme poverty.

Facebook took over the world.

Greece’s economy started growing again—and then shrank.”

On Thursday, Bloomberg Business noted the arrest of Martin Shkreli, the infamous pharmaceutical head, and everyone’s leading candidate for this year’s Scrooge. You may remember Shkreli from his multiple media appearances after raising the price of the drug Daraprim from $13.50 a pill to $750. Apparently he not only violated the golden rule, but also an unspoken pact among those in financial services, not to draw attention to themselves or their activities.

“While the 32-year-old has earned a rare level of infamy for his brazenness in business and his personal life, what he was charged with had nothing to do with skyrocketing drug prices. He is accused of repeatedly losing money for investors and lying to them about it, illegally taking assets from one of his companies to pay off debtors in another.

“Shkreli essentially ran his company like a Ponzi scheme where he used each subsequent company to pay off defrauded investors from the prior company,” Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Robert Capers said at a press conference.”

He was released on bail on Friday and did what we would all do after being publicly shamed, began live streaming, chatting with ‘supporters’.

“Which brings me to a new movie the enemies of financial regulation really, really don’t want you to see.” writes nobel prize winner, Paul Krugman in The New York Times.

“But you don’t want me to play film critic; you want to know whether the movie (The Big Short) got the underlying economic, financial and political story right. And the answer is yes, in all the ways that matter.

I could quibble over a few points: The group of people who recognized that we were experiencing the mother of all housing bubbles, and that this posed big dangers to the real economy, was bigger than the film might lead you to believe. It even included a few (cough) mainstream economists. But it is true that many influential, seemingly authoritative players, from Alan Greenspan on down, insisted not only that there was no bubble but that no bubble was even possible.

And the bubble whose existence they denied really was inflated largely via opaque financial schemes that in many cases amounted to outright fraud — and it is an outrage that basically nobody ended up being punished for those sins aside from innocent bystanders, namely the millions of workers who lost their jobs and the millions of families that lost their homes.”

Need a holiday escape from everyday villains and economic reality? The folks at the ‘house the mouse built’ offer a 135 minute visit to an alternate universe.

“Chewie, we’re home” teases the plot in the trailer for the new Star Wars movie. This week the cast of the seventh installment of the intergalactic saga walked the red carpet, four blocks long, at the Hollywood premiere.

Variety covered the opening weekend box office results.

“Director J.J. Abrams’ nostalgic take on the series of space operas George Lucas created four decades ago was a hit with critics and fans, earning strong reviews and an A CinemaScore. Its opening soared past the previous high-water mark of $208.8 million established last summer by “Jurassic World.” It more than doubles “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’s” December record debut of $84.6 million.

Globally, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” scored the second-biggest opening in history, earning $517 million worldwide, behind only “Jurassic World’s” $525 million bow. Unlike “Jurassic World,” the seventh film in the “Star Wars” franchise did not have the benefit of showing in China on its inaugural weekend. It opens there on Jan. 9.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

The week@work – End of the fossil fuel era, founders, introverts, college athletes and the one business book to read

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

The generational disruption continues. This week@work world leaders committed to cut greenhouse gases, ensuring the environment for future generations. MTV labeled the next of these generations ‘the founders’. Silicon Valley is quickly becoming the vortex for college consulting, making sure these ‘founders’ gain admission to the best universities. And a group of Clemson alumni have come up with a creative alternative to legally compensate college athletes via crowdfunding.

For introverts, there were hints for employers to maximize success. And if you only read one business book this year, the experts recommend ‘Rise of the Robots’ by Martin Ford.

The global story this week was reported from Paris by The Guardian.

“After 20 years of fraught meetings, including the past two weeks spent in an exhibition hall on the outskirts of Paris, negotiators from nearly 200 countries signed on to a legal agreement on Saturday evening that set ambitious goals to limit temperature rises and to hold governments to account for reaching those targets.

Government and business leaders said the agreement, which set a new goal to reach net zero emissions in the second half of the century, sent a powerful signal to global markets, hastening the transition away from fossil fuels and to a clean energy economy.”

In national news, The Atlantic’s David Sims summarized the MTV survey that resulted in a name for the children of the new millennium.

“The name “The Founders” comes from the kids themselves, according to MTV’s survey of more than 1,000 respondents born after the year 2000. America is still reckoning with Millennials (loosely classified as those born from the mid-1980s to the late-’90s) one thinkpiece at a time, but according to this survey, their fate is already sealed. As the children of indulgent baby boomers, Millennials are classified as “dreamers” who live to disrupt and challenge established norms. The Founders, by contrast, are “pragmatists” who will navigate a tougher world defined by 9/11, the financial crisis, and gender fluidity. Previous generations had to worry about getting into college and finding a job, but the next one is tasked with cleaning up their mess.”

Nathan Heller, writing in The New Yorker imagined how today’s fourteen year olds will impact the economy.

“When the teen-agers call themselves founders, they are not thinking of Roger Sherman or, for that matter, of Henry Ford. They are allying themselves with West Coast startup culture—a milieu that regards inventive business-building as the ultimate creative and constructive act…In embracing “founders,” it affirms the idea that creativity is essential—and performed through business enterprise.

“If the founders hold to their founding, it is not hard to extrapolate the economic model that their interests will support. A founder-friendly society is deregulated, privatized, and philanthropic in its best intent. (See ur-founder Mark Zuckerberg’s recent tax-incentivized pledge.) “Founders,” whose popularity as a Silicon Valley concept followed the 2009 recession, has become a stand-in for more charged, and less heroic-sounding words, such as “small-business owner,” “C.E.O.,” and “boss.” To found is not to manage; it’s to dream and to design. This is the new model for innovative business, scrupulously cleansed of the dank trappings of corporate industry. It’s business all the same, though, and it aims for growth.”

If you are working in the underpaid and undervalued world of college admissions, you have a future in the lucrative business of college consulting. Georgia Perry reported on the growing industry, fueled by parental anxiety, that helps high school students find summer internships, prepare applications and refine essays.

“Private college-admissions consulting is a rapidly growing industry across the U.S. According to the Independent Educational Consultants Association, the number of independent admissions consultants in the U.S. has grown from 2,000 to nearly 5,000 in recent years. In a nationwide study, the marketing firm Lipman Hearne found that of students who scored in the 70th percentile or higher on the SAT, 26 percent had hired a professional consultant to help with their college search. The San Francisco Bay Area has a higher concentration per capita of independent college-admissions consultants than “most cities,” says IECA communications manager Sarah Brachman, though the association doesn’t have specific numbers. The IECA’s most recent report found that nationally, $400 million was spent on college consultants in 2012. Hourly rates in the Bay Area can be as high as $400 an hour, and comprehensive packages with regular meetings throughout high school can add up to several thousand dollars.”

How student-athletes are compensated continues to be a topic in legal proceedings, but this week a group of Clemson folks have come up with an innovative approach that just might work and meet NCAA requirements. Ben Strauss provided the details in his article ‘If Colleges Can’t Pay Athletes, Maybe Fans Can, Group Says’.

“The answer to the riddle of putting money in the hands of amateur student-athletes, who according to the N.C.A.A. cannot be paid, is crowdfunding, said Rob Morgan, a Clemson business school graduate and an anesthesiologist based in Greenville, S.C. His new website, UBooster, started on Friday with the goal of soliciting payments for high school recruits from fans, and delivering the money to the athletes after their college careers end.

“We think this is the direction college sports is headed,” said Morgan, who has been helped in his venture by a former Clemson football player and the interim dean of the university’s business school. “At some point, there is going to be an opportunity for players to make money, and here’s how we can be a part of it.”

“The business model is simple. Fans pledge money to individual recruits, and can leave public notes on the site urging them to attend their favorite college. Morgan said all high school recruits — men and women in every sport from Division I to Division III — would be eligible, though it would seem obvious that most of the interest and money would be directed at top-flight football and basketball prospects. The accounts lock, and no more money can be pledged to players once they formally commit to a college. UBooster will then hold the money in a trust before turning it over to the athletes after their college careers.”

Quiet Revolution founder Susan Cain is an advocate for the introvert in all facets of life. And it’s her website’s section on work that provides insight into fostering career success. This week, Liz Fosslien and Mollie West offered an ‘Illustrated Guide to Introverts in a Start-Up’.

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“Famous introvert entrepreneurs include Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Marissa Mayer, and Mark Zuckerberg.

When we imagine our ideal workplace, it looks more like a library full of quiet rooms and isolated carrels than the ball-pit and bullpen situation start-ups are currently obsessed with. As introverts, we may be outnumbered by extroverts at start-ups. According to Laney, “The introvert is pressured daily, almost from the moment of awakening, to respond and conform to the outer world.” This need to conform can be tiring. But we promise, with just a few tweaks in the workplace, you could make us very happy.”

Finally, if there is only one business book you will read this year… and the clock is ticking…the experts recommend ‘Rise of the Robots’ by Martin Ford. Jessica Stillman reported:

“According to the Financial Times and consultancy McKinsey, there’s at least one title even the busiest business owners shouldn’t miss. They recently crowned Rise of the Robots by entrepreneur Martin Ford the very best business book of the year.

Hugely topical, the book discusses the much debated idea that advances in automation will soon radically affect the labor market. “The book reflects growing anxiety in some quarters about the possible negative impact of automation on jobs, from manufacturing to professional services,” explains the FT write-up of the award. This economic reshuffle may require “a fundamental restructuring of our economic rules,” according to Ford, who proposes a guaranteed minimum basic income as one possible remedy.”

Enjoy your week@work… the founders and robots are coming…

 

 

 

The Saturday Read – a selection of the best articles of 2015 from Jon Ronson, Oliver Sacks, Kathryn Schulz and Nikil Saval

Eileen Kohan 1 Comment

This week the recommendations for ‘The Saturday Read’ come from journalists who wrote some of the most popular long form articles of the year. Instead of a book, which might seem daunting in the midst of holiday shopping and celebrating, sample the writings of these four storytellers who tackled a range of topics including internet shaming, death, earthquakes and the origins of the white collar worker.

On Wednesday, ‘The Upshot’ covered ‘The Stories That Held You The Longest in 2015’. “We measured the favorite Times articles of 2015 in a new way — by the total combined time readers have spent looking at them. It’s a mix of ambitious investigative projects, big breaking news, features and service journalism.”

Number two on the list first appeared in the February 12, 2015 New York Times Magazine. Written by Jon Ronson, ‘How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life’ tells the story of the world of public ‘internet shaming’ through the experience of its victims.

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“In the early days of Twitter, I was a keen shamer. When newspaper columnists made racist or homophobic statements, I joined the pile-on. Sometimes I led it…

Still, in those early days, the collective fury felt righteous, powerful and effective. It felt as if hierarchies were being dismantled, as if justice were being democratized. As time passed, though, I watched these shame campaigns multiply, to the point that they targeted not just powerful institutions and public figures but really anyone perceived to have done something offensive. I also began to marvel at the disconnect between the severity of the crime and the gleeful savagery of the punishment. It almost felt as if shamings were now happening for their own sake, as if they were following a script.”

Number ten on the list was an Op-Ed piece by neurologist and writer, Oliver Sachs, ‘My Own Life’, on learning he had terminal cancer.

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“Over the last few days, I have been able to see my life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts. This does not mean I am finished with life.

On the contrary, I feel intensely alive, and I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight.

This will involve audacity, clarity and plain speaking; trying to straighten my accounts with the world. But there will be time, too, for some fun (and even some silliness, as well).”

A New Yorker article received a lot of attention when it first appeared in July. ‘The Really Big One’ was researched and written by contributor, Kathryn Schulz.

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“Most people in the United States know just one fault line by name: the San Andreas, which runs nearly the length of California and is perpetually rumored to be on the verge of unleashing “the big one.” That rumor is misleading, no matter what the San Andreas ever does. Every fault line has an upper limit to its potency, determined by its length and width, and by how far it can slip. For the San Andreas, one of the most extensively studied and best understood fault lines in the world, that upper limit is roughly an 8.2—a powerful earthquake, but, because the Richter scale is logarithmic, only six per cent as strong as the 2011 event in Japan.

Just north of the San Andreas, however, lies another fault line. Known as the Cascadia subduction zone, it runs for seven hundred miles off the coast of the Pacific Northwest, beginning near Cape Mendocino, California, continuing along Oregon and Washington, and terminating around Vancouver Island, Canada. The “Cascadia” part of its name comes from the Cascade Range, a chain of volcanic mountains that follow the same course a hundred or so miles inland. The “subduction zone” part refers to a region of the planet where one tectonic plate is sliding underneath (subducting) another. Tectonic plates are those slabs of mantle and crust that, in their epochs-long drift, rearrange the earth’s continents and oceans. Most of the time, their movement is slow, harmless, and all but undetectable. Occasionally, at the borders where they meet, it is not.”

Longreads.com selected their ‘Best of 2015’ which included an excerpt from the book, ‘Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace’. The fifth most popular article was ‘I Would Prefer Not To: The Origins of the White Collar Worker’, written by Nikil Saval.

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“When does the office begin? It’s a question without an easy answer. One can associate the origins with the beginning of paperwork itself—until recently, the most common mental association with office work (think of the derogatory phrase “paper pusher”). In other words, since the invention of writing and the corresponding ability to keep records in a systematic manner, there have always been places that resemble offices: monasteries, libraries, scholars’ studies. Banking furnished an especially large amount of paperwork; the Uffizi, an incomparable gallery of Renaissance art in Florence, was also one of the first office buildings—the bookkeeping offices of the Medici family’s groundbreaking financial operations. Clerks, too, have existed for ages, many of them unclinching themselves from their desks to become quite famous: from Samuel Pepys, the British government diarist who reported on the gossipy world of seventeenth-century England, to Alexander Hamilton, who had cut his teeth as a merchants’ clerk before he became the first secretary of the Treasury of the United States; Benjamin Franklin, paragon of pecuniary restraint and bourgeois self-abnegation, started out as a dry goods clerk in 1727. Perhaps some of the tediousness of Franklin’s own writing was honed in the conditions of his first job: since clerks have had the opportunity to keep diaries, they have bemoaned the sheer boredom of their tasks—the endless copying, the awkward postures, the meaninglessness of their work. When not doing writing for the job, clerks have cultivated the habit of writing about the job—or literally around it…”

 

 

The week@work – Mark Zuckerberg writes a letter, equality comes to combat, 20 predictions/20 years, the November jobs report and terrorism@work

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

This week@work was dominated, until mid-week, by the story of the ‘Chan Zuckerberg initiative’ to set aside 99% of their Facebook wealth, and overshadowed a major shift in policy within the Pentagon, opening all combat jobs to women, without exception. The November jobs report continued the positive trajectory of the economy with the revision upward of September and October numbers. And the editor of Fast Company Magazine offered ‘Twenty Predictions for the Next Twenty Years’.

All of those stories pale in comparison to the return of terrorism to the workplace at a holiday party at 11 AM on Wednesday in San Bernardino, California.

Mark Zuckerberg wrote a letter to his new daughter and lots of attention was paid to the section on sharing his wealth.  Carmine Gallo of Forbes took closer look and noted that the letter read like a great speech.

“As you’ve probably read by now Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan welcomed a daughter into the world in a very big way – with the creation of a new initiative to donate 99% of their Facebook shares ($45 billion currently) to philanthropy. That’s the headline. I was struck, however, by how the open letter to their daughter read more like a speech than a letter. It was meant for the eye…and the ear. It was meant to inspire a generation to commit itself to giving and to making the world a better place.

“Like all parents, we want you to grow up in a world better than ours today,” the letter begins. Read aloud at an average speaking pace, the 2,200-word letter takes about twelve minutes to recite, the ideal amount of time for a good speech (many of the most notable speeches in recent history clock in at 15 minutes or less).

Zuckerberg’s hope for his daughter’s generation provides the theme of the letter, a headline that fits into one short sentence. In bold letters, Zuckerberg writes:

“Advancing human potential and promoting equality.”

Amanda Platell of The Daily Mail offered an alternate version.

“Let’s start with the ‘friends’ you may have on Facebook. Do not confuse them with the friends you should trust in the real world. Many will barely know you, plenty may be jealous, others will be insincere and spiteful…

If I have learned anything from running Facebook, it’s that there is no such thing as privacy any more. After all, that’s how I made our billions!

Come to think of it, perhaps we won’t give you a computer until you’re 18, just to be safe. Love, Dad.”

On Thursday the Dan Lamothe reported on the groundbreaking change in staffing policy at the Pentagon.

“Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said Thursday that he is opening all jobs in combat units to women, a landmark decision that would for the first time allow female service members to join the country’s most elite military forces.

Women will now be eligible to join the Navy SEALs, Army Special Forces and other Special Operations Units. It also opens the Marine Corps infantry, a battle-hardened force that many service officials had openly advocated keeping closed to female service members.

“There will be no exceptions,” Carter said. “This means that, as long as they qualify and meet the standards, women will now be able to contribute to our mission in ways they could not before.”

Robert Safian, the editor-in-chief of Fast Company magazine marked the twentieth anniversary of the publication with ‘Twenty Predictions for the Next Twenty Years’.

“We celebrate birthdays to remember all that has gone before, and also what is to come. This month, with issue No. 201, we recognize Fast Company’s 20th anniversary by looking toward the future. The dynamic change of the past two decades is just a warm-up for what is still to come.

I have used the phrase Generation Flux to describe this era of transition. Because the changes are coming so fast, there is a rising premium on our ability to adjust, to be adaptable in new ways. This can be scary for some, but it is also undeniably exciting, and for those prepared to embrace this emerging reality, the possibilities are tantalizing.

What follows are 20 observations that we believe will hold fast in the years ahead. They are predictions and, as such, are fraught with limitation and supposition. None of them, on their own, is shocking. That is by design. In combination, though, they outline a world of tomorrow where work is still personal, computing is still social, and knowledge is still power. And where the rules for success will be ever-changing.”

Bouree Lam covered the optimistic economic report from the Labor Department on Friday.

“The November jobs report is out, and it’s meeting what were moderately high expectations. The figures from the Labor Department show that the unemployment rate remained at 5 percent and the economy added 211,000 jobs in November. Jobs were added in construction, health care, and “professional and technical services”—the Labor Department’s term for an assortment of white-collar jobs. Among those, the construction sector showing particularly strong growth, adding 46,000 jobs.”

On Wednesday morning a group of colleagues went to work at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California. As they were taking a break, preparing for a holiday celebration, one of their team and his wife, both heavily armed, entered the room and changed lives forever.

In 2014 there were 404 workplace homicides, 80% were shootings. The ‘mass shooting’ in San Bernardino was the fourth of this year.

Yesterday the editors of The New York Times published an editorial on the front page of the paper, ‘End the Gun Epidemic in America’.

I’m done with the retailers who give away guns to the first 200 customers on Black Friday. And I’m not comfortable with my cubicle mates carrying weapons to work. The workplace is a place to create, engage and perhaps follow a dream. Fear and hostility have never been a productive part of life @work. The last time leading by fear worked was in the mid-20th century Catholic grammar school classroom.

“It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency. These are weapons of war, barely modified and deliberately marketed as tools of macho vigilantism and even insurrection. America’s elected leaders offer prayers for gun victims and then, callously and without fear of consequence, reject the most basic restrictions on weapons of mass killing, as they did on Thursday. They distract us with arguments about the word terrorism. Let’s be clear: These spree killings are all, in their own ways, acts of terrorism.”

On March 4, 1933 newly elected President Franklin Roosevelt delivered his inaugural address. The familiar phrase, “…the only thing we have to fear is fear itself..” has been whispering from the back of my mind since Wednesday and I think it’s particularly relevant to our political conversation today.

“This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.”

 

 

 

The Saturday Read ‘Patience and Fortitude’ by Scott Sherman

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

In times of financial crisis, you start looking around the house for things you might sell off until you realize all you have left is the real estate under your roof. For the New York Public Library in the early years of the 21st century, the fine art had been sold at auction, the staff had been ‘right sized’ and all that was left to remain solvent were the private donors and the coveted real estate footprint of branch locations.

This week’s ‘Saturday Read’ is ‘Patience and Fortitude: Power, Real Estate, And The Fight To Save A Public Library’ by Scott Sherman.

“This is a book about a world-class library that lost its way in the digital age.”

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A public library is a community sanctuary that has historically offered immigrants a way to the middle class. In the Preface, author Sherman retells the story of former New York Senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan who was working as a boot-black in 1940s Times Square, visiting the main library at 42nd Street.  “It was the first time I was taught that I was welcome in a place of education and learning. I would go into that great marble palace, and I would check my shoeshine box. A gentleman in a brown cotton jacket would take it as if I’d passed over an umbrella and bowler hat.”

This is a New York story, but one that illustrates the fate of the non-profit organization in an economic downturn. In the case of the NYPL, originally founded by bankers and corporate titans, the seismic shifts in the economy forced the influential board, of modern day financiers, to engage big name consultants in an attempt to apply “free-market solutions to complex institutional problems.”

The central narrative of the book was first reported by author Sherman in the December 2011 issue of ‘The Nation’. ‘Upheaval at the New York Public Library’ made public a four year old ‘Central Library Plan’, conceived and ratified by the NYPL’s trustees.

“The core trustees – led by the developer Marshall Rose – did what came naturally to them: they sold the NYPL’s land and took steps to shrink an institution they may have viewed as bureaucratic and inefficient…Personal enrichment was certainly not the trustees’ intention; they were sincere in their desire to assist the Library. It was hubris that drove them forward, and which ultimately led them astray: they believed that corporate logic could be effortlessly applied to a sprawling, decrepit library system.”

Consider this the first shot across the bow, as the Sherman chronicles the response from writers, researchers, NYPL employees, politicians and library patrons.

A 2012 Op-Ed piece written by Theodore Roosevelt biographer, Edmund Morris for The New York Times offers a sample of the opposition.

“I read newspaper reports about the determination of Anthony W. Marx, the president of the library, to spend $300 million to transform the main building, long devoted to reference, into what sounds like a palace of presentism. He wants to close the library system’s biggest circulating branch, the Mid-Manhattan (located just across the street) and the Science, Industry and Business Library (also in Midtown) and somehow wedge their contents into the already overstocked central research library.

For that he will need all the spatial ingenuity of his trendy architect-designate, Norman Foster. But something’s going to have to give, and you can be sure that what is new and hard and digital will prevail over what is old and papery and transportable elsewhere.”

On May 7, 2014 Robin Pogrebin reported that the NYPL has abandoned its renovation plan.

Last month, Tom Mashberg of The New York Times reported on the new plan to create a high-tech space under Bryant Park to house 2.5 million research works from the original stacks.

“This was not, of course, Plan A. That plan entailed a makeover of the flagship Fifth Avenue library that would have sent the research books to Princeton, N.J. But it set off a virtual Fahrenheit 451 of outrage among scholars and others for whom the library’s role as a research mecca seemed endangered. Critics, who hoped the old steel stacks could stay in use, remain apprehensive about the new stocking and retrieval system, which they say is impressive but has not been tested.”

To be continued…

And while you wait, catch up on the history and the cast of characters who bring ‘Patience and Fortitude’ to life.

 

 

 

 

 

Does your resume reflect your values?

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

Yesterday was #GivingTuesday, a day to give back after the frenzy of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Let’s start a new tradition, #ValuesWednesday and do a quick audit of our community involvement activities over the past year, and update our resumes to reflect our values.

It’s not just our individual contributions to our local area, but the activities aligned with the places we work. As a new employee at Salesforce you spend your first day outside the office working for a community non-profit organization. It’s a clear message that ‘giving back’ is part of the corporate DNA.

“Salesforce operates on what it calls a “1-1-1” philanthropy approach, in which it supports local nonprofits by giving 1 percent of its products, 1 percent of its equity and 1 percent of its employees’ time.

As an added incentive, employees get six paid days off a year to volunteer. If they complete that, they receive a $1,000 grant to donate to a nonprofit of their choice.”

Most folks forget to include a community involvement section on their resume and omit a key component of their work narrative.

Your resume should communicate what’s important to you. It’s a living document that reflects your commitment @work and in your community.

Conducting a ‘values audit’ is not only an exercise to build your resume, it’s a way to evaluate how you set your priorities over the past year. If you notice your perception is out of balance with reality, you may want to consider the work/family pressures that redirected your plans. If work and values are coming unglued, expand your audit to take in the bigger picture of career/life decisions.

Po Bronson wrote an article for Fast Company magazine 13 years ago. It’s a piece that continues to resonate over time as it applies to our life @work.

“Every industry has a culture. And every culture is driven by a value system.

One of the most common mistakes is not recognizing how these value systems will shape you. People think that they can insulate themselves, that they’re different. They’re not. The relevant question in looking at a job is not What will I do? but Who will I become? What belief system will you adopt, and what will take on heightened importance in your life? Because once you’re rooted in a particular system — whether it’s medicine, New York City, Microsoft, or a startup — it’s often agonizingly difficult to unravel yourself from its values, practices, and rewards. Your money is good anywhere, but respect and status are only a local currency. They get heavily discounted when taken elsewhere. If you’re successful at the wrong thing, the mix of praise and opportunity can lock you in forever.”

On this #ValuesWednesday, ask yourself, Who’s driving the values bus? Are you morphing into a corporate clone or maintaining the integrity of your personal value system? We’re not talking mutually exclusive terms here, just taking an annual values audit.

‘The Tables Turned’ a poem by William Wordsworth

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

Today is the day to #OptOutside, a campaign initiated by the U.S. retailer REI. In contrast to it’s competitors, their stores will remain closed today and they are encouraging all of us to join them and post our outdoor experience on social media.

“REI believes that being outside makes our lives better. That’s why this Black Friday, we’re closing all 143 of our stores and paying our employees to head outside.”

The Friday poem was written by William Wordsworth in 1798, carrying a similar message,”Up! up! my Friend…” and #OptOutside.

THE TABLES TURNED

Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books;
Or surely you’ll grow double:
Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?

The sun, above the mountain’s head,
A freshening lustre mellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.

Books! ’tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There’s more of wisdom in it.

And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher:
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your Teacher.

She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless—
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:—
We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.

William Wordsworth 1798

 

 

#TheGreatListen 2015

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

What if you could capture a generation of American lives and experiences in one holiday weekend? That’s the vision of StoryCorps founder, Dave Isay, and he plans to fulfill his mission this Thanksgiving weekend through a combination of an app and an educators toolkit to enable DIY interviews to gather the wisdom of others. It’s the #GreatThanksgivingListen and you are invited to attend.

StoryCorps recently celebrated twelve years of conducting and recording oral history interviews, beginning with a booth in New York’s Grand Central Station and later taking the booth on the road to all 50 states creating the largest single collection of human voices ever gathered. The next step is to grow the archive of 100,000 to tens of thousands.

Dave Isay and his organization are the recipients of the 2015 TED Prize, and it was in his presentation to the annual conference in April that he outlined his proposal for a “national homework assignment”.

Here’s the plan. Download the app, select ‘helpful hints’ for a short tutorial. Select ‘browse’ to view previous StoryCorps recordings. Go to ‘my interviews’ to outline and record your interview. You can choose  from a list of sample questions by categories. Next step –  record!

“Who are they? What did they learn in life? How would they like to be remembered?”

And here’s the magical part. You can keep your recording for yourself or opt to upload it to the StoryCorps archive at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. Imagine the story of your family intertwined with other American voices building upon a historical record of their time.

In his April TED talk, Isay described the power of “…everyday people talking about lives lived with kindness, courage, decency and dignity…it sometimes feels like you are walking on holy ground…”

If you believe that you learn from the wisdom of others, this holiday offers an opportunity to join “…a global movement to record and preserve meaningful conversations with one another that results in an ever growing digital archive of the collective wisdom of humanity.”

 

 

The Saturday Read ‘Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It’ by Daniel Klein

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

A U.S. Senator, a philosophy student and a welder walk into a bar…maybe not. In a debate last week U.S. Senator Marco Rubio questioned the value of a philosophy major in a world that needs more welders.

“I don’t know why we have stigmatized vocational education, welders make more money than philosophers. We need more welders and less philosophers.”

I can understand those who seek to define college as an extended vocational school experience, given the cost and potential for significant debt, but to limit the aspirations of 18 year olds diminishes the value of higher education. I think we go to college to figure things out. Part of that is the career decision, but the larger experience incorporates learning how to think, question, listen, reflect and argue in a quest to live our best life.

In defense of philosophy majors, and the politicians and welders who might benefit from their wisdom, The Saturday Read this week is ‘Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live’ by Daniel Klein.

Like many college students, Klein “didn’t have a clue as to what I wanted to do after college; basically all I knew was that I didn’t want to be a doctor, lawyer, or businessman, eliminations that put me in a distinct minority of my classmates. I figured studying philosophy would be just the ticket to give me direction.”

His father, like Senator Rubio, let him know that “studying philosophy was simply a wast of time.”

Fortunately for the reader, Klein continued his studies, recording selected ‘Pithies’ in a notebook hoping “to find some guidance from the great philosophers on how best to live my life.” These quotes and current reflections form the structure of the book.

“I now realized that those how-to-live questions were still very much alive in my mind. Sure, time had crept on and my life, with its ups and downs, had simply happened, as lives tend to do, by my appetite for philosophical ideas about life had not diminished in the least. In fact, as I look at life from the vantage point of my eighth decade, my hankering for such ideas has only increased. Late in the game as it may be, I still want to live my final years the best way I can. But more compellingly, I find myself at that stage of life when I want to give my personal history one last look-through, and I am curious to see how it measures up to fully considered ideas of a good life.”

Why this book? Because legislating, welding and philosophy should not be mutually exclusive terms. As the Thanksgiving inter-generational conversation turns to the big ‘vocational’ questions of choice and what you are doing with your life, it’s the central question of philosophy being posed, how to live the best possible life.

‘Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It’ is an accessible, often humorous, tutorial, presenting a pageant of philosophy’s luminaries and author commentaries.

One quote in particular, resonated with me in light of the domestic and international scene this week, from British philosopher, Bertrand Russell.

“The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of deliberate reason. To such a man the world tends to become definite, finite, obvious; common objects rouse no questions, and unfamiliar possibilities are contemptuously rejected…(But Philosophy) keeps alive ours sense of wonder by showing familiar things in an unfamiliar aspect.”

The Saturday Read ‘Pacific’ by Simon Winchester

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

While the events of the past 24 hours have turned our thoughts to Paris, another headline scrolled across screens last night, warning of a possible tsunami off the coast of Japan.

News stories of the Pacific Ocean and her terrestrial neighbors continue to occupy a significant amount of news coverage: growing concern of El Nino and the bell weather ‘surprise’ of hurricane Patricia, mapping of marine debris that continues to traverse the ocean four years after the Japanese earthquake, and most recently, the expansion of reefs into Chinese military facilities, establishing claims in contested territorial waters.

In advance of President Obama’s trip to Kuala Lumpur next week to attend the Asia summits, the ‘Saturday Read’ this week is  ‘Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World’s Superpowers’ by Simon Winchester.

“For all its apparent placidity, the Pacific seems today to be positioned at the leading edge of any number of potential challenges and crises – whether they relate to politics or economics, to geology, to weather, to the supply of food, or to the most basic questions about the number of people that this planet can support.”

What do we know about this vast expanse of water? Stories from veterans of WWll, the Korean War or the Vietnam war? Shared experiences of vacation trips to Hawaii, the South Pacific, Australia or New Zealand? Or, impressions from the novels of  James Michener; ‘Tales of the South Pacific’ and ‘Hawaii’?

Consider the impact of a port strike in LA; container ships lined along the coast filled with a wide range of holiday gifts that may never reach shore in time for Christmas. The Pacific is a vital artery connecting us to the consumer goods of our daily lives.

Winchester begins his narrative aboard United Airlines flight 156 which leaves Honolulu three times a week on the way to Guam, traversing almost six thousand miles, with five stops along the way.

“The ocean beneath is almost unimaginably vast, and illimitably various. It is the oldest of the world’s seas, the relic of the once all-encompassing Panthalassic Ocean that opened up seven hundred fifty million years ago. It is by far the world’s largest body of water – all of the continents could be contained within its borders, and there would be ample room to spare. It is the most biologically diverse, the most seismically active; it sports the planet’s greatest mountains and deepest trenches; its chemistry influences the world; and the planetary weather systems are born within its boundaries.”

The author has structured his story to fit the timeline of the sixty-five years since 1950. He sifted through the lists he prepared to focus on “truly pivotal moments the story of this vast acreage of ocean’ and poses timely questions to emphasize the Pacific’s significance.

“It is the most turbulent ocean in the world, and an expanse of sea that should be central to all our thoughts. Is the ocean to be the place of coming war? Is it to be our eventual savior, a places so beautiful and fragile that its sheer vastness will one day demand that we pause in our careless and foolish behavior in the rest of the world? Or will it be something in between: a pillar of hope and example and good sense poised between East and West, on which, for good or ill, we construct humanity’s future?”

The reader will tour “the great thermonuclear sea” and stamp their virtual passports in Japan, Hong Kong, the Great Barrier Reef, Korea, the Philippines and California. Each chapter reads as a short story, which allows the reader to time travel in small bites. The strength of the book is the geological and meteorological insights. ‘Pacific’ is required reading and Simon Winchester provides a persuasive argument.

“The future, in short, is what the Pacific Ocean is now coming to symbolize. For if one accepts that the Mediterranean was once the inland sea of the Ancient World: and further, that the Atlantic Ocean was, and to some people still remains, the inland sea of the Modern World: then surely it can be argued that the Pacific Ocean is the inland sea of Tomorrow’s World. What transpires across these sixty-four million square miles of ultramarine ocean matters, and to all of us.”