Platform To Write Quotes

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The Fourth Sign of The Zodiac (Part 3) by Mary Oliver I know, you never intended to be in this world. But you’re in it all the same. So why not get started immediately. I mean, belonging to it. There is so much to admire, to weep over. And to write music or poems about. Bless the feet that take you to and fro. Bless the eyes and the listening ears. Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste. Bless touching. You could live a hundred years, it’s happened. Or not. I am speaking from the fortunate platform of many years, none of which, I think, I ever wasted. Do you need a prod? Do you need a little darkness to get you going? Let me be as urgent as a knife, then, and remind you of Keats, so single of purpose and thinking, for a while, he had a lifetime. Mary oliver
Mary Oliver
After It happens when I’m at bodegas. It happens when I’m at school. It happens when I’m on the train. It happens when I’m standing on the platform. It happens when I’m sitting on the stoop. It happens when I’m turning the corner. It happens when I forget to be on guard. It happens all the time. I should be used to it. I shouldn’t get so angry when boys—and sometimes grown-ass men— talk to me however they want, think they can grab themselves or rub against me or make all kinds of offers. But I’m never used to it. And it always makes my hands shake. Always makes my throat tight. The only thing that calms me down after Twin and I get home is to put my headphones on. To listen to Drake. To grab my notebook, and write, and write, and write all the things I wish I could have said. Make poems from the sharp feelings inside, that feel like they could carve me wide open. It happens when I wear shorts. It happens when I wear jeans. It happens when I stare at the ground. It happens when I stare ahead. It happens when I’m walking. It happens when I’m sitting. It happens when I’m on my phone. It simply never stops.
Elizabeth Acevedo (The Poet X)
Writing is hard…It gets harder when it becomes your career, your job, because it’s no longer a hobby, it’s no longer a manuscript hidden in your desk drawer. It becomes a platform from which the world can judge you. Your soul becomes target practice, and the critics hold the arrows.
Karina Halle (Smut)
A gifted storyteller should be able to tell their stories in different genres, mediums, and platforms. The art of storytelling is the same since civilization began. Only the way of telling it has changed because of technology. - Kailin Gow on Storytelling
Kailin Gow
I write love poems when I'm not rapping. It comes naturally." He winked at me. "If you start rapping, I promise you I'll throw myself off this platform.
Kristen Day (Forsaken (Daughters of the Sea, #1))
The successful writers continue to learn and grow in their craft—and also to grow their audience or tribe or platform.
W. Terry Whalin (10 Publishing Myths, Insights Every Author Needs to Succeed)
Often, people build stories in their mind which have no basis in the contours of reality. Those which build these images, are building such images which are based on their relatively limited sense of understanding about the particular subject or person. This is a "fill in the blank" reality, which often manifests itself into the hearts and the minds of those who have a "fill in the blank" mindset, not the person with the here said reality. The universe is designed in a way that reflects itself, just like a mirror, showing you exactly who you are to yourself, not who others are. Your largest and most concealed insecurities have their way of presenting themselves to you in a fashion that is relative to your self designed way of communication. This short writing is a reminder that your preconceived notions on a particular subject or person, are a construct of your inner mind and emotional-relational well being and not of others. This is one of the largest fundamental truths in which you must have large insight to carefully watch who and what you massacre with your personal thoughts. Having a keen sense of control on this subject will lead you to enlightenment in many platforms of life.
Will Barnes (The Expansion of The Soul)
Fantasy is an excellent platform to shine new lights on old truths.
James D. Maxon
Platform, simply put, is your visibility as an author.
Chuck Sambuchino
In the end of the day you make the rules. Base your Author Platform around the things you love to do, love to write about, and love to share.
Matthew Turner
Dive from a high platform, walk a country lane, watch your computer freeze, cross a finish line, hear your morning alarm, look for a parking space, toast on your anniversary, embrace a friend after a funeral. As you live your life, what do you feel? Terror, serenity, frustration, relief, groaning reluctance, patient endurance, pride, satisfaction, or a grief made bearable because somehow life will go on. We experience life as feelings.
Donald Maass (The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface)
Your book is a springboard and integral strategic part of your overall game plan. Being an author positions you strongly upon your platform. It is the passport which will start you on your journey to becoming the recognized authority in the niche or space that you work in or aspire to work in.
Kytka Hilmar-Jezek (Book Power: A Platform for Writing, Branding, Positioning & Publishing)
The book thief lay in bed that night, and the boy only came before she closed her eyes. He was one member of a cast, for Liesel was always visited in that room. Her papa stood and called her half a woman. Max was writing The Word Shaker in the corner. Rudy was naked by the door. Occasionally her mother stood on a bedside train platform. And far away, in the room that stretched like a bridge to a nameless town, her brother, Werner, played in the cemetery snow.
Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)
The out-dated imagery of sitting over a dusty typewriter staring at blank pages for years is a fallacy and probably designed to keep you from living up to your fullest potential.
Kytka Hilmar-Jezek (Book Power: A Platform for Writing, Branding, Positioning & Publishing)
The more you write, the better you will get.
Michael Hyatt (Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World)
You are your greatest product and behind every book lies an author who wrote it.
Geraldine Solon (Authorpreneur in Pajamas)
I am an author that likes to write in many different styles so to use the platform of expression to the absolute best of the ability that I have been given.
Calvin W. Allison (Standing at the Top of the Hill)
You have to consistently work at building your audience or platform.
W. Terry Whalin (10 Publishing Myths, Insights Every Author Needs to Succeed)
(P)latform must be paired with good writing.
Chuck Sambuchino (Create Your Writer Platform: The Key to Building an Audience, Selling More Books, and Finding Success as an A uthor)
Book buying studies have proven a reader has to hear about your book multiple times before they reach into their wallet and purchase a book. The number of exposures to your book is somewhere between six and twelve times before you collect a sale. A key part of your platform building process as an author is to give readers multiple exposures to your book and the availability.
W. Terry Whalin (10 Publishing Myths, Insights Every Author Needs to Succeed)
The first discipline is the realization that there is a discipline—-that all art begins and ends with discipline, that any art is first and foremost a craft. We have gone far enough on the road to self-indulgence now to know that. The man who announces to the world that he is going to “do his thing” is like the amateur on the high-diving platform who flings himself into the void shouting at the judges that he is going to do whatever comes naturally. He will land on his ass. Naturally. You’d think, to listen to the loudspeakers that surround us, that no man had ever tried to “do his thing” before. Every poet worth reading has, but those really worth reading have understood that to do your thing you have to learn first what your thing is and second how to go about doing it.
Archibald MacLeish
The real menace of our Republic is the invisible government, which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation. To depart from mere generalizations, let me say that at the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller–Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as the international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both parties, write political platforms, make catspaws of party leaders, use the leading men of private organizations, and resort to every device to place in nomination for high public office only such candidates as will be amenable to the dictates of corrupt big business.
John Francis Hylan (Autobiography of John Francis Hylan, Mayor of New York (Classic Reprint))
A good man would tell you to stop writing. A good man would say to you, “No, love, don’t wait for me. Live your life.” A good man would be happy that you were off somewhere in the world doing all the things you deserve. But, Miss Ada, I am no good man. I am, in fact, selfish, very bleeding selfish when it comes to you. Good man or no, I will tell you I believe a life lived without love is one not worthy of living a’tall.
Eden Butler (Platform Four)
Authority + Network=Platform. Authority to speak on a subject (self-help, spirituality, business, economics, etc.) is basically why you are the best person to write this book. And Network is whom you know who will buy the book.
Roseanne Wells
You could have a new product launch coming up and you don’t have a huge online community of potential customers to promote to. But you could write a blog post for an online platform that you know thousands of your ideal customers will read.
Lucy Sheridan (The Comparison Cure: How to be less ‘them’ and more you)
While someone might attempt a feeble carbon copy of those ideas you’ve spent years developing, they can never match the undeniably distinctive aspect of your work. Especially if it resonates across multiple platforms and in multiple formats.
Anaik Alcasas (Sending Signals: Amplify the Reach, Resonance and Results of Your Ideas)
I can weave thousands of words into moving syntax and powerful prose. But if I lay the pen down at the close of the final sentence, and if in doing so I myself have not acted on the words that I have woven, it would have been better had I said nothing.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
This story has been in my heart for a long time. These are human stories that hopefully shift the paradigm about how we think about power, authority and relationships. My book is truly one of fiction, but no one ever writes in a vacuum. We write what we know. As they say, art imitates life, and is often larger than life. Hence, my metafictional work was, of course, inspired by my career in the eccentric Reality TV world. We all know reality television is not real, but what it does provide is a wonderful platform to understand essential themes about identity, in all people.
Jay Manuel (The Wig, the Bitch & the Meltdown)
Are we the fool of the narrative? Whether we have tediously written out the narratives to explain our world, or allay our fears, or justify our agendas, or excuse our behaviors. Or whether we have given ourselves entirely over the narratives of others who write them for the same reasons. Are we the fool of the narrative?
Craig D. Lounsbrough
PLASTIC ANIMALS The modern day idols and animal gods Embrace higher platforms in the sky Than the statues of the gods of the ancients. They beam through our screens And we scream for them to be seen And we cry if they aren't covering the pages. We care more about a celebrity Than the man who saved An island of a million drowning men! Eliminate these plastic idols and bloated gods That represent nothing but shame. And shame on us for allowing them to be seen In a divine manner. No man is to ever be put on a pedestal, If he/she is not a prime example of the right way, Has nothing to say, Or simply has the money to buy A rotating banner.
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
Regulation-writers find it much easier to address safety than health hazards. The former are technically easier to find, describe, assess, and control than the latter. A worker falls from a platform. The cause is clear - no railing. The effect is clear - a broken leg. The cost is easily calculated - so many days in the hospital, so many days of lost wages, so much to build a railing. The directive is easy to write: "Install railings on platforms." But if a worker develops cancer fifteen years after starting work in a chemical plant, the cause of the cancer will be uncertain and controversial. The cost of the disease will be hard to calculate. The solution will be hard to specify:
James Q. Wilson (Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It)
Through my fiction, I seek to highlight the social and cultural rules that we accept without question. Sometimes, without even noticing. Fiction offers a unique platform to do this, with dystopia at the fore. By exaggerating these ingrained rules, or by reversing them entirely, we can start to examine them. And question them. And challenge those that are harmful.
Angeline Trevena
most memorable moment came when someone asked if Mr. Trump supported the Reform Party platform.”9 “Well. Nobody knows what the Reform Party platform is,” Trump loudly responded. A man offered Trump a copy of the platform as boos rang out from the crowd. The fact is that no one really cares about a party platform except those people who write it. Unfortunately, those were the exact people Trump was addressing.
Roger Stone (The Making of the President 2016: How Donald Trump Orchestrated a Revolution)
Literary genres are safe areas, solid platforms. There I can place a pale sketch of a story and practise with calm, wary pleasure. But really I am waiting for my brain to get distracted, to slip up, for other I's — many — outside the margins to join together, take my hand, begin to pull me with the writing where I'm afraid to go, where it hurts me to go, where, if I go too far, I won't necessarily know how to get back.
Elena Ferrante (In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing)
With the explosion of technology over the last 15+ years, we are in the process of a complete paradigm shift in regards to how we communicate in our marketing, public relations and advertising. Social Media has forever changed the way businesses and customers communicate and the beauty of it is that, through your channels, you can reach your audience directly and at lightning speed. Social Media has also changed the way customers make their buying decisions. Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook, have made it easy to find and connect with others who share similar interests, to read product reviews and to connect with potential clients. Within these networks there is an amazing and wide open space for your unique voice to be heard. As the web interacts with us in more personal ways and with greater portability, there is no time better than the present to engage with and rally your community.
Kytka Hilmar-Jezek (Book Power: A Platform for Writing, Branding, Positioning & Publishing)
quoting from Neil Kinnock, running against Thatcher in 1987: Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Why is Glenys the first woman in her family in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Is it because all our predecessors were thick? Did they lack talent? Those people who could sing, and play, and recite, and write poetry, those people who could make wonderful things with their hands? Those people who could dream dreams, see visions? Why didn't they get it? Was it because they were weak? Those people who could work eight hours underground and then come up and play football? Weak? Those women who could survive eleven childbearings? Were they weak? Anybody really think that they didn't get what we have because they didn't have the talent, or the strength, or the endurance, or the commitment? Of course not. It was because there was no platform on which they could stand.
Joe Biden (Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics)
The decision to create a book trailer is entirely up to you. I can remember when "video killed the radio star" on MTV and how excited I was with some music videos (the ones that lived up to or exceeded my imagined vision of the song) and the ones I disliked so much, I even stopped listening to the song (the imagery just ruined it for me!) Some people argue that in a visual landscape, a book trailer is a must, while others stand firm that books should be read and not seen; unless of course it gets made into a screenplay and then a film. The most practical advice is to trust your instinct. You know what you want to say with your book and if it aligns congruently with your brand, then for a non-fiction book it may be a strategic move. On the other hand, it may come off as too "salesy" and go in the opposite direction. As you can see, I still have a love / hate relationship with matching someone else's images to my own imagination. No matter what you decide, remember to keep it aligned with your brand.
Kytka Hilmar-Jezek (Book Power: A Platform for Writing, Branding, Positioning & Publishing)
Nouns now turn overnight into verbs. We target goals and we access facts. Train conductors announce that the train won’t platform. A sign on an airport door tells me that the door is alarmed. Companies are downsizing. It’s part of an ongoing effort to grow the business. “Ongoing” is a jargon word whose main use is to raise morale. We face our daily job with more zest if the boss tells us it’s an ongoing project; we give more willingly to institutions if they have targeted our funds for ongoing needs. Otherwise we might fall prey to disincentivization.
William Zinsser (On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction)
No doubt there was some time-wasting in coffee houses, as their critics claimed. But coffee houses also provided a lively intellectual and social environment in which people could meet and ideas could collide in unexpected ways, producing a stream of innovations that shaped the modern world. On balance, the introduction of coffee houses did far more good than harm, which should give those concerned about the time-wasting potential of Internet-based social platforms pause for thought. What new ideas and unexpected connections might be brewing in Twitter’s global coffeehouse?
Tom Standage (Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years)
social media is not new. It has been around for centuries. Today, blogs are the new pamphlets. Microblogs and online social networks are the new coffee houses. Media-sharing sites are the new commonplace books. They are all shared, social platforms that enable ideas to travel from one person to another, rippling through networks of people connected by social bonds, rather than having to squeeze through the privileged bottleneck of broadcast media. The rebirth of social media in the Internet age represents a profound shift—and a return, in many respects, to the way things used to be.
Tom Standage (Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years)
Love must correct. Lloyd John Ogilvie writes, "Affirmation of people does not have to mean advocacy for their wrongful lifestyle or behavior." Affirmation labors to earn a platform from which to challenge wrongful lifestyles and be heard in doing so. "The Holy Spirit does not counsel us to have a flabby, indulgent attitude. Nor does He encourage us to buy into our age of appeasement and tolerance where everything is relative and there are no absolutes. However, the Holy Spirit shows us that any judgment of people's infractions of these absolutes must be done with indefatigable love and willingness to help them.
Sam Crabtree (Practicing Affirmation: God-Centered Praise of Those Who Are Not God)
Let me remind you again that when you put a book out there, you are a published author in a space where you are an expert. Your book becomes the ultimate business card, not to mention a source of ongoing revenue. Did someone say “ongoing revenue?”. Who does not need to make some extra money on a regular basis? Realize that this book will take some work to complete once, but thereafter it exists forever – working to bring you royalty checks five, ten, twenty years from now. Money will be consistently flowing into your bank account. If you write a good book that provides real value, then you realistically have a revenue stream which will bring income for decades to come.
Kytka Hilmar-Jezek (Book Power: A Platform for Writing, Branding, Positioning & Publishing)
Here are the three things it will take to funnel hack social algorithms: Follow each of your Dream 100 and spend 10 minutes each day watching what they are doing. Write down the answers to these questions: What are they posting? How are they getting people to engage with what they post? What paid ads are they running? During these 10 minutes, try to comment, like, and engage with as many things they are doing each day as possible. Notice the pattern of what is working right now and model it for your posts (funnel hacking). This will give you a pulse on what is working in the market on that platform right now. It gives you the ability to see in real time what the algorithms are rewarding today.
Russell Brunson (Traffic Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Filling Your Websites and Funnels with Your Dream Customers)
When God Almighty blogs, then I blog, I put to writing what he says at any time and at any place. May God our Father bless the internet and all social media and public publishing platforms in the name of Jesus Christ. Through these Social Media and healing platforms, the Lord God Almighty has brought the message of healing, cleansing, protection, salvation and peace, ability and stability, joy and happiness, justice and peace to all people without bias....Father God, the Lord God Almighty says this to all his vessels he uses for his glory and honour, "You rise above in greatness for I am with you and in you. I will lift you up to the greatest heights, for you are mine all you innovative entities and people.
Stellah Mupanduki (Blogs From God Almighty: Books Of Strength)
Even more secretively, Lincoln took up his pen around this same time to write a deeply felt manifesto of principle that he shared with absolutely no one, certainly not sculptor Thomas Jones, in whose presence he likely composed it. Secret or not, it bracingly confirms Lincoln’s steadfast determination to preserve—and ultimately, extend—not only the permanence of the Union, but also its guarantee of liberty. He had thought much about these questions in recent days, pondering concepts that went well beyond the planks of the Republican platform he so often cited. The result was an appeal not just to reason but also to emotion, a heartfelt justification for resisting any compromise that reneged on the original promise of American freedom.
Harold Holzer (Lincoln President-Elect : Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861)
In the hard life of politics it is well known that no platform nor any program advanced by either major American party has any purpose beyond expressing emotion. Platforms are a ritual with a history of their own and, after being written, they are useful chiefly to scholars who dissect them as archeological political remains. The writing of a platform does indeed flatter many people, gives many pressure groups a chance to blow off steam in public, permits the leaders of such pressure groups to report back to their memberships of their valiant efforts to persuade. But in actual fact, all platforms are meaningless: the program of either party is what lies in the vision and conscience of the candidate the party chooses to lead it. Nevertheless,
Theodore H. White (The Making of the President 1960: The Landmark Political Series)
In life, we are all on the same journey, we are all struggling to get from point A to point B. Different people have different point A originations and B destinations, but the path we travel is the same. If you can take what you have learned; share the experience and shortcuts you've discovered along the way, offer time saving tips and how you finally made it - then you can lighten the load of those who are just beginning on a similar path. Getting paid for it is an added bonus. My hope is that you do not end your journey at “I wrote a book” but rather understand that your book is just the beginning. Imagine the products you can create based on the contents of your book. Imagine the opportunities to share your knowledge with more people by speaking, training, coaching. You have an important message to share and the world is waiting...
Kytka Hilmar-Jezek (Book Power: A Platform for Writing, Branding, Positioning & Publishing)
Most recently, Naess articulated the platform principles as the following eight points: 1. All living beings have intrinsic value. 2. The richness and diversity of life has intrinsic value. 3. Except to satisfy vital needs, humans do not have the right to reduce this diversity and richness. 4. It would be better for humans if there were fewer of them, and much better for other living creatures. 5. Today the extent and nature of human interference in the various ecosystems is not sustainable, and the lack of sustainability is rising. 6. Decisive improvement requires considerable changes: social, economic, technological, and ideological. 7. An ideological change would essentially entail seeking a better quality of life rather than a raised standard of living. 8. Those who accept the aforementioned points are responsible for trying to contribute directly or indirectly to the necessary changes.26
Arne Næss (The Ecology of Wisdom: Writings by Arne Naess)
Book authors are in high demand for speaking engagements and appearances; they are the new ‘celebrity’ and celebrities gain access. Authors not only make money from royalties or book advances but from their keynotes, presentations and strategically branded product lines. This includes entrepreneurial ideas for you to extend yourself beyond just writing and prepares you to add speaking and consulting to your revenue stream. You have to begin to look outside book sales and towards the speaking market. There are radio, interviews, news, television, small channel television keynotes, lectures, seminars and workshops. These types of events have the possibility to be much more lucrative than just selling books. In essence, the book builds and brands you in the public eye. It gives you credibility and the opportunity to be more than you are. It enables you to now be a voice, a teacher, a leader, an expert - after all, you wrote the book on it!
Kytka Hilmar-Jezek (Book Power: A Platform for Writing, Branding, Positioning & Publishing)
We live in the information age and the sheer volume of it being available everywhere, creates a need for information that has value. Yes, we can look anything up on Google but who has the time? Can we trust that the information comes from a trustworthy source? Your experience has given you a deep knowing of your subject matter. You have insights and ideas that others may not figure out on their own. You are holding a roadmap that has great value to someone. What has been stopping you from sharing your knowledge? Perhaps you have been afraid to put yourself out there because of a fear of rejection? Let me get straight to the point. Get over it right now! Ponder the following quote for a moment and then move on with the decision to write rather than not to write, because not to write is not “to be”. You deny yourself and your audience. You have had an incredible journey to get to where you are and have amassed experience and knowledge. Now combine that with your unique voice and be heard. You are already an expert. Accept it.
Kytka Hilmar-Jezek (Book Power: A Platform for Writing, Branding, Positioning & Publishing)
Memory is the essential cornerstone of humanity. There would be no spiritual platform for enactment of public policy directed at uplifting the poor without remembrance of our munificent traditions and customs. Without the ability to recollect the why and wherefores, there would be no tolerance or wondrous love. Without oral memories of the instructions issued by our prophets and patriarchs, there would be no reminder of their charitable calling. Memories prompt us magnanimously to provide for and protect our family, love our neighbors and enemies, and pray for unsavory souls whom persecute us. Without memories of our prior actions and omissions, there would be no confession, and no repentance. Without memories of our personal transgressions, there would be no tolerance for other people. Without memories of heroic action of our predecessors, there would be no sterling examples to exemplify and guide honorable human behavior. Memories are what we rely upon to understand what it means to be human. Shared memories of affection and kindness and recollections of selfless acts fuse the ties of families. Collective memories establish community culture.
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
I stroll to the platform and up under the awning, hands in pockets, stepping lively on my toes as if I'm expecting -- a loved one, a girlfriend, a best friend from college long out of touch. The two trainmen give me the mackerel eye and begin some exclusive talk they've been putting off. But I don't feel the least excluded, since I enjoy this closeness to trains and the great moment they exude, their implacable hissing noise and purpose. I read somewhere it is psychologically beneficial to stand near things greater and more powerful than you yourself, so as to dwarf yourself (and your piddlyass brothers) by comparison. To do so, the writer said, released the spirit from its everyday moorings, and accounted for why Montanans and Sherpas, who live near daunting mountains, aren't much at complaining or nettlesome introspection. He was writing about better "uses" to be made of skyscrapers, and if you ask me the guy was right on the money. All alone now beside the humming train cars, I actually do feel my moorings slacken, and I will say it again, perhaps for the last time: there is mystery everywhere, even in a vulgar, urine-scented, suburban depot such as this. You have only to let yourself in for it. You can never know what's coming next. Always there is the chance it will be -- miraculous to say -- something you want.
Richard Ford (The Sportswriter (Frank Bascombe, #1))
On the train I had a lot of time to think. I thought how in the thirty years of my life I had seldom gotten on a train in America without being conscious of my color. In the South, there are Jim Crow cars and Negroes must ride separate from the whites, usually in a filthy antiquated coach next to the engine, getting all the smoke and bumps and dirt. In the South, we cannot buy sleeping car tickets. Such comforts are only for white folks. And in the North where segregated travel is not the law, colored people have, nevertheless, many difficulties. In auto buses they must take the seats in the rear, over the wheels. On the boats they must occupy the worst cabins. The ticket agents always say that all other accommodations are sold. On trains, if one sits down by a white person, the white person will sometimes get up, flinging back an insult at the Negro who has dared to take a seat beside him. Thus it is that in America, if you are yellow, brown, or black, you can never travel anywhere without being reminded of your color, and oft-times suffering great inconveniences. I sat in the comfortable sleeping car on my first day out of Moscow and remembered many things about trips I had taken in America. I remembered how, once as a youngster going alone to see my father who was working in Mexico, I went into the dining car of the train to eat. I sat down at a table with a white man. The man looked at me and said, "You're a nigger, ain't you?" and left the table. It was beneath his dignity to eat with a Negro child. At St. Louis I went onto the station platform to buy a glass of milk. The clerk behind the counter said, “We don't serve niggers," and refused to sell me anything. As I grew older I learned to expect this often when traveling. So when I went South to lecture on my poetry at Negro universities, I carried my own food because I knew I could not go into the dining cars. Once from Washington to New Orleans, I lived all the way on the train on cold food. I remembered this miserable trip as I sat eating a hot dinner on the diner of the Moscow-Tashkent express. Traveling South from New York, at Washington, the capital of our country, the official Jim Crow begins. There the conductor comes through the train and, if you are a Negro, touches you on the shoulder and says, "The last coach forward is the car for colored people." Then you must move your baggage and yourself up near the engine, because when the train crosses the Potomac River into Virginia, and the dome of the Capitol disappears, it is illegal any longer for white people and colored people to ride together. (Or to eat together, or sleep together, or in some places even to work together.) Now I am riding South from Moscow and am not Jim-Crowed, and none of the darker people on the train with me are Jim-Crowed, so I make a happy mental note in the back of my mind to write home to the Negro papers: "There is no Jim Crow on the trains of the Soviet Union.
Langston Hughes (Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings)
There are three key things that matter in having a voice: audibility, credibility, and consequence. Audibility means that you can be heard, that you have not been pressed into silence or kept out of the areas of where you can speak or write or denied the education to do so or in the age of social media, been harassed and threatened and driven off the platform as so many have. Credibility means that when you get into those arenas, people are willing to believe you, by which I don't mean that women never lie, but that stories should be measured on their own terms and context, rather than patriarchy's insistence that women are categorically unqualified to speak. Emotional, rather than rational. Vindictive, incoherent, delusional, manipulative. Unfit to be heeded. Those things often shouted over a women in the process of saying something challenging. Though now death threat are used as a short-cut, and some of those threats are carried out. Notably with women who leave their abusers, because silencing can be conversational or can be premeditated murder. To be a person of consequence is to matter. If you matter, you have rights, and your words serve those rights. And give you the power to bear witness, make agreements, set boundaries. If you have consequence, your words possess the authority to determine what does and does not happen to you. The power that underlies the concept of consent as part of equality in self-determination. Even legally, women's words have lacked consequence. And only in a few scattered places on earth, could women vote before the 20th century, and not so many decades ago, women rarely became lawyers and judges.
Rebecca Solnit (Recollections of My Nonexistence: A Memoir)
As I write this, I know there are countless mysteries about the future of business that we’ve yet to unravel. That’s a process that will never end. When it comes to customer success, however, I have achieved absolute clarity on four points. First, technology will never stop evolving. In the years to come, machine learning and artificial intelligence will probably make or break your business. Success will involve using these tools to understand your customers like never before so that you can deliver more intelligent, personalized experiences. The second point is this: We’ve never had a better set of tools to help meet every possible standard of success, whether it’s finding a better way to match investment opportunities with interested clients, or making customers feel thrilled about the experience of renovating their home. The third point is that customer success depends on every stakeholder. By that I mean employees who feel engaged and responsible and are growing their careers in an environment that allows them to do their best work—and this applies to all employees, from the interns to the CEO. The same goes for partners working to design and implement customer solutions, as well as our communities, which provide the schools, hospitals, parks, and other facilities to support us all. The fourth and most important point is this: The gap between what customers really want from businesses and what’s actually possible is vanishing rapidly. And that’s going to change everything. The future isn’t about learning to be better at doing what we already do, it’s about how far we can stretch the boundaries of our imagination. The ability to produce success stories that weren’t possible a few years ago, to help customers thrive in dramatic new ways—that is going to become a driver of growth for any successful company. I believe we’re entering a new age in which customers will increasingly expect miracles from you. If you don’t value putting the customer at the center of everything you do, then you are going to fall behind. Whether you make cars, solar panels, television programs, or anything else, untold opportunities exist. Every company should invest in helping its customers find new destinations, and in blazing new trails to reach them. To do so, we have to resist the urge to make quick, marginal improvements and spend more time listening deeply to what customers really want, even if they’re not fully aware of it yet. In the end, it’s a matter of accepting that your success is inextricably linked to theirs.
Marc Benioff (Trailblazer: The Power of Business as the Greatest Platform for Change)
The archaeologist attached to the Bayard Dominick’s Marquesan team had reported in 1925 that the Marquesas offered “few opportunities for archaeological research.” But in 1956, a new expedition set out to reexamine the possibilities in these islands at the eastern edge of the Polynesian Triangle. An energetic Columbia University graduate student named Robert Suggs was sent ahead to reconnoiter, and he quickly discovered that the previous generation had gotten it all wrong. Everywhere he looked, he saw archaeological potential. “We were seldom out of sight of some relic of the ancient Marquesan culture,” he writes. “Through all the valleys were scattered clusters of ruined house platforms. . . . Overgrown with weeds, half tumbled down beneath the weight of toppled trees and the pressure of the inexorable palm roots, these ancient village sites were sources of stone axes, carved stone pestles, skulls, and other sundry curios.” There were ceremonial plazas “hundreds of feet long” and, high on the cliffs above the deep valleys, “burial caves containing the remains of the population of centuries past.” The coup de grâce came when Suggs and his guide followed up on a report of a large number of “pig bones” in the dunes at a place called Ha‘atuatua. This windswept expanse of scrub and sand lies on the exposed eastern corner of Nuku Hiva. A decade earlier, in 1946, a tidal wave had cut away part of the beach, and since then bones and other artifacts had been washing out of the dunes. Not knowing quite what to expect, Suggs and his guide rode over on horseback. When they came out of the “hibiscus tangle” at the back of the beach and “caught sight of the debris washing down the slope,” he writes, “I nearly fell out of the saddle.” The bones that were scattered all along the slope and on the beach below were not pig bones but human bones! Ribs, vertebrae, thigh bones, bits of skull vault, and innumerable hand and foot bones were everywhere. At the edge of the bank a bleached female skull rested upside down, almost entirely exposed. Where the bank had been cut away, a dark horizontal band about two feet thick could be seen between layers of clean white sand. Embedded in this band were bits of charcoal and saucers of ash, fragments of pearl shell, stone and coral tools, and large fitted stones that appeared to be part of a buried pavement. They had discovered the remains of an entire village, complete with postholes, cooking pits, courtyards, and burials. The time was too short to explore the site fully, but the very next year, Suggs and his wife returned to examine it. There
Christina Thompson (Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia)
Writers are tough sons-of-bitches. It’s hard enough to write a book. Then you have to wade into this street fight we call the publishing industry and start pitching your project. The tweed jacket crowd is gone, replaced by Darwinian corporate mergers, staff churn, the e-book earthquake, anti-trust pricing scuffles, and book platforms multiplying like rabbits. You have to sort through too much personal information on too few agents, searching for a hook, parsing what they love, and what they want, and exactly how they want it presented. Your pitch letter has to be pitch perfect, a polished gem. You gotta sell more than a well-wrought paragraph; only Clancy and Cussler get a promo budget. You gotta show them you’ve got a social media game – tweet, facebook, link-in, chat, blog. You gotta help them sell your book. So what. I wouldn’t trade this trade for anything. Thanks, Gutenberg, for inventing this game I love.
Michael Schmicker
Your intention is for readers to benefit from your experiences and avoid the costly and time consuming mistakes you may have made. You want to help your readers know the short cuts and what you would have avoided, and why. As you write, keep a clear sense of why writing this is important to you, but also share your why within the body of the book. Why do your readers need to take the steps you describe? Are you saving them time, money, resources? Why did you start your journey to begin with? Did you want to change the world or get from point ”A” to point “B”? Why did you keep going even when it was difficult? Was there a light at the end of the tunnel, a reward at the end? Why should they hang in there? All of these things will work magically if implemented correctly and consistently.
Kytka Hilmar-Jezek (Book Power: A Platform for Writing, Branding, Positioning & Publishing)
Your brand is the unique persona and identity of you, your company, product or service that sets it apart from others in the same market space. It is the image you or your business present to the world. A brand is composed of many different pieces which, together, capture the attention of your buyers. Some of the pieces are physical, but much of branding is intangible; ideas and thoughts put into words, pictures and videos. When small business owners ask themselves “What is branding?” the answer is, “the essence of the business, products or services.” Your personal brand conveys the way you are perceived; and how you want people to see and feel about you, your business and your products or services. You may want to sound very dignified and reinforce your ‘expert status’ and credibility depending on your products or services. Or you may want to sound approachable, edgy and smart. Whatever voice you choose, carry it into all your messaging, marketing materials, and web presence (your platform).
Kytka Hilmar-Jezek (Book Power: A Platform for Writing, Branding, Positioning & Publishing)
The easiest way to write a book is to use the Table of Contents as an outline. People get stuck when they think in terms of writing a book. Do not let this delay you. There are a lot of book outline writing software’s available today, but I personally believe they have the potential to cause more distraction then assistance. The best possible outlines have come from pure "flow". I advise my clients to do a simple process of setting the timer for 2 minutes and just writing. I ask that they write everything that pops into their heads without thought or judgment on the subject. The questions I ask are: What is most important to you? What do you know a lot about? Tell me 12 things that fall under that subject that are valuable to know. Under each of the 12 things, give me 3 things that are a "must" in that category. Using index cards to write your answers on is a useful way to arrange chapters and sections of your book. Believe it or not, my students have come up with a Table of Contents/outline in less than 10 minutes using this method. Our greatest block is that we tend to over think things too much. We over analyze and what happens is that we get into analysis paralysis. Our creativity and ‘flow’ freezes up and all spontaneity and creativity just exits out of the thought process. When we stall the creative flow by trying to be correct, proper and appropriate, we end up talking ourselves out of what we intuitively know that we know and into a space of doubt, or what we think we do not know.
Kytka Hilmar-Jezek (Book Power: A Platform for Writing, Branding, Positioning & Publishing)
Writing your book is not the end all of your strategy. It is a powerful catalyst that will push you to the top of your game. You see, something magical happens when you write your book and this is the best place to mention it because a sale happens when your book is complete. You sell yourself on the idea that you are more than you previously believed yourself to be. You get to experience that “I did it” moment where your mind releases these wonderful stimulators that make you feel awesome. You see yourself in a different way and this opens up a greater opportunity for accomplishment, achievement, and success.
Kytka Hilmar-Jezek (Book Power: A Platform for Writing, Branding, Positioning & Publishing)
Selling is crucial to your success because without the sale, you do not make any money. The great thing about writing a book to position yourself is that the book does a lot of the selling for you. People read the book and come to you for more answers. If you have products created to match the theme of your book, your platform (website) will do the selling for you. Automate as much of the process as you can with opt-in boxes, video sales landing pages and special offers. Make it as easy as you can for your fans and followers. Once your products are created, simply write about them, talk about them, and create articles from the content and say, “Yes” to interviews. The buzz created will point people back to your site where your automatic sales team is ready to take orders 24 hours a day.
Kytka Hilmar-Jezek (Book Power: A Platform for Writing, Branding, Positioning & Publishing)
The final option to have your book completed is to hire a ghost writer. The challenge with this option is that it is important to note that your voice IS an integral part of your branding. When you hire someone else, what your readers will ultimately get is their voice. When they see you later at your website or on your social media, your voice will not be the same. This will trigger a feeling of inconsistency when relationships need to be built upon trust and authenticity. Your audience will eventually come to think you are not the “real deal” and will find another to replace you. Finally, your book is a springboard and launching pad to greater things such as speaking, interviews, a product line, etc. Will your ghost writer be available for all of that as well? How will you be able to “ghost write” your way through an interview? Hence the reason I stress speaking in your own voice. You may think you are not perfect, but your authenticity will speak in volumes to your followers and they will be customers for life if they see your true being.
Kytka Hilmar-Jezek (Book Power: A Platform for Writing, Branding, Positioning & Publishing)
I hope you have a book telling others how you do what you do. If you answered no, then I challenge you to spend the next couple of hours reading this book and then, in the next ten days implementing what you’ve learned here. When you realize the value of the impact your book will make, your decision to write will be a no-brainer! Using this very simple, powerful system you will soon be thinking about your second book, and third book. You will want to recruit your spouse, children and parents to write. You will understand that everyone has a unique voice whose legacy is to be forever captured in print. They key is to begin. Dreaming about getting started is not going to make it happen. Action is everything so make a promise to yourself to commit and take action.
Kytka Hilmar-Jezek (Book Power: A Platform for Writing, Branding, Positioning & Publishing)
Maybe you have already been writing, but never considered a book before. What you have contributed to websites, discussion groups, blogs and membership communities can lead to books. These are great places to flesh out ideas, get reader feedback, and sometimes even catch the attention of an agent, publisher or larger audience. If anything, a well branded presence on the internet positions you in a way where you have the opportunity to become the authority or expert. Do not let any of what you have written online go to waste. Make files and collect all of your information because you may have enough content already written to fill two books!
Kytka Hilmar-Jezek (Book Power: A Platform for Writing, Branding, Positioning & Publishing)
An increasing number of people are taking advantage of having a leg up on their competition by branding themselves as "the expert" in their particular niche. Call it a business card, a resume, a billboard, or whatever you choose, but the long and short of it is that books are no longer just books. They are branding devices and credibility builders, not to mention door openers. Books are the reason that authors command large speaking and consulting fees.
Kytka Hilmar-Jezek (Book Power: A Platform for Writing, Branding, Positioning & Publishing)
Yes, there are many ways to collect content, but in my experience - the best and most authentic content is one which you speak when you are in moments of flow. You can use any recording device. Do not let the lack of understanding technology slow you down. Ask someone how to turn the damn thing on and record yourself. Remember, you are on a mission to complete the levels within and win a better life for yourself and your family. You owe it to them to overcome these obstacles and to see your way through, not to create excuses.
Kytka Hilmar-Jezek (Book Power: A Platform for Writing, Branding, Positioning & Publishing)
I’ve met so many authors who had professional covers, top-notch editing, and robust author platforms, but still weren’t selling any books.
Emlyn Chand (Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors (Novel Publicity Guides to Writing & Marketing Fiction 1))
one brand, one name. Determining your brand and building an author platform take a lot of work, so it’s best not to recreate the wheel.
Emlyn Chand (Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors (Novel Publicity Guides to Writing & Marketing Fiction 1))
scripting language is a programming language that provides you with the ability to write scripts that are evaluated (or interpreted) by a runtime environment called a script engine (or an interpreter). A script is a sequence of characters that is written using the syntax of a scripting language and used as the source for a program executed by an interpreter. The interpreter parses the scripts, produces intermediate code, which is an internal representation of the program, and executes the intermediate code. The interpreter stores the variables used in a script in data structures called symbol tables. Typically, unlike in a compiled programming language, the source code (called a script) in a scripting language is not compiled but is interpreted at runtime. However, scripts written in some scripting languages may be compiled into Java bytecode that can be run by the JVM. Java 6 added scripting support to the Java platform that lets a Java application execute scripts written in scripting languages such as Rhino JavaScript, Groovy, Jython, JRuby, Nashorn JavaScript, and so on. Two-way communication is supported. It also lets scripts access Java objects created by the host application. The Java runtime and a scripting language runtime can communicate and make use of each other’s features. Support for scripting languages in Java comes through the Java Scripting API. All classes and interfaces in the Java Scripting API are in the javax.script package. Using a scripting language in a Java application provides several advantages: Most scripting languages are dynamically typed, which makes it simpler to write programs. They provide a quicker way to develop and test small applications. Customization by end users is possible. A scripting language may provide domain-specific features that are not available in Java. Scripting languages have some disadvantages as well. For example, dynamic typing is good to write simpler code; however, it turns into a disadvantage when a type is interpreted incorrectly and you have to spend a lot of time debugging it. Scripting support in Java lets you take advantage of both worlds: it allows you to use the Java programming language for developing statically typed, scalable, and high-performance parts of the application and use a scripting language that fits the domain-specific needs for other parts. I will use the term script engine frequently in this book. A script engine is a software component that executes programs written in a particular scripting language. Typically, but not necessarily, a script engine is an implementation of an interpreter for a scripting language. Interpreters for several scripting languages have been implemented in Java. They expose programming interfaces so a Java program may interact with them.
Kishori Sharan (Scripting in Java: Integrating with Groovy and JavaScript)
The enthusiasm for pirate politics keeps spreading, particularly through academic circles, with a number of scholars writing elegies to “pirate philosophy.” Pirate “practices exceed the limit of individual production and succeed in so far as there is a collective accumulation of knowledge to be shared” and “offer an alternative way to relate to the cultural artifacts,” says one media theorist.
Astra Taylor (The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age)
They're applying a variety of tactics—blogs, videos, webcasts, podcasts, and the like—12 tactics on average for B2B companies, 13 for B2C. They're using, on average, six social media platforms.
Ann Handley (Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content)
When I came to the Middle East, journalists had a kind of immunity that allowed us to travel freely and meet with militants who hated Israel and the United States. In 2000, when I was working for Agence France-Presse, I didn’t feel fearful when I went to Gaza to meet with Hamas leaders or to the West Bank to speak to Palestinian gunmen. These men didn’t much like me. We didn’t have anything in common. But they felt that they had to treat me with common decency and a modicum of respect because I was a journalist and I was writing about them. They wanted to spin me so that I would give the world their version of events. They were never completely happy, of course, because my pieces didn’t make them look as perfect as they looked to themselves. But they needed to talk to me and other reporters because we were the only way they could get their story out. Now jump ahead to 2006. Zarqawi was on his killing spree in Iraq, and suddenly the Internet had become ubiquitous, and uploading videos on YouTube and other platforms was literally child’s play. So Zarqawi and his henchmen said to themselves, “Why should we let reporters interview us and filter what we say? We can go straight to the Internet and say exactly what we want, for as long as we want to say it, and we can post videos that Western journalists would never show.” Journalists became worthless, at least as megaphones. But we became valuable as commodities to be stolen, bought, and sold, traded for prisoners, or ransomed for millions.
Richard Engel (And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East)
It is important to remember that although it is relatively easy to write code, it is very difficult to create a sustainable platform.
Gary Gruver (Practical Approach to Large-Scale Agile Development, A: How HP Transformed LaserJet FutureSmart Firmware (Agile Software Development Series))
Seriously, what does the publisher really want? A great idea, expressed through great writing, by an author with a great platform. And, of course, what they really want are books that make money, from authors who work hard and are easy to get along with during negotiations, editing, and marketing.
Chip Macgregor (HOW CAN I FIND A LITERARY AGENT?: AND 101 OTHER QUESTIONS ASKED BY WRITERS)
it enjoys strong network effects from its content ecosystem: thousands of developers write software for Apple devices because that’s where hundreds of millions of users are, and those users stay on the platform because it’s where the apps are.
Peter Thiel (Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future)
THINK OF THE WAY a stretch of grass becomes a road. At first, the stretch is bumpy and difficult to drive over. A crew comes along and flattens the surface, making it easier to navigate. Then, someone pours gravel. Then tar. Then a layer of asphalt. A steamroller smooths it; someone paints lines. The final surface is something an automobile can traverse quickly. Gravel stabilizes, tar solidifies, asphalt reinforces, and now we don’t need to build our cars to drive over bumpy grass. And we can get from Philadelphia to Chicago in a single day. That’s what computer programming is like. Like a highway, computers are layers on layers of code that make them increasingly easy to use. Computer scientists call this abstraction. A microchip—the brain of a computer, if you will—is made of millions of little transistors, each of whose job is to turn on or off, either letting electricity flow or not. Like tiny light switches, a bunch of transistors in a computer might combine to say, “add these two numbers,” or “make this part of the screen glow.” In the early days, scientists built giant boards of transistors, and manually switched them on and off as they experimented with making computers do interesting things. It was hard work (and one of the reasons early computers were enormous). Eventually, scientists got sick of flipping switches and poured a layer of virtual gravel that let them control the transistors by punching in 1s and 0s. 1 meant “on” and 0 meant “off.” This abstracted the scientists from the physical switches. They called the 1s and 0s machine language. Still, the work was agonizing. It took lots of 1s and 0s to do just about anything. And strings of numbers are really hard to stare at for hours. So, scientists created another abstraction layer, one that could translate more scrutable instructions into a lot of 1s and 0s. This was called assembly language and it made it possible that a machine language instruction that looks like this: 10110000 01100001 could be written more like this: MOV AL, 61h which looks a little less robotic. Scientists could write this code more easily. Though if you’re like me, it still doesn’t look fun. Soon, scientists engineered more layers, including a popular language called C, on top of assembly language, so they could type in instructions like this: printf(“Hello World”); C translates that into assembly language, which translates into 1s and 0s, which translates into little transistors popping open and closed, which eventually turn on little dots on a computer screen to display the words, “Hello World.” With abstraction, scientists built layers of road which made computer travel faster. It made the act of using computers faster. And new generations of computer programmers didn’t need to be actual scientists. They could use high-level language to make computers do interesting things.* When you fire up a computer, open up a Web browser, and buy a copy of this book online for a friend (please do!), you’re working within a program, a layer that translates your actions into code that another layer, called an operating system (like Windows or Linux or MacOS), can interpret. That operating system is probably built on something like C, which translates to Assembly, which translates to machine language, which flips on and off a gaggle of transistors. (Phew.) So, why am I telling you this? In the same way that driving on pavement makes a road trip faster, and layers of code let you work on a computer faster, hackers like DHH find and build layers of abstraction in business and life that allow them to multiply their effort. I call these layers platforms.
Shane Snow (Smartcuts: The Breakthrough Power of Lateral Thinking)
Have you ever asked yourself this question "what can God do through me?" The preacher has no platform if the people has no sense of mission.
Patience Johnson (Why Does an Orderly God Allow Disorder)
Great documentation makes new hires productive in days instead of weeks, prevents thousands of calls to customer support, is the difference between crippling downtime and rock solid stability, and inspires true, fervent love of development platforms.
Andrew Etter (Modern Technical Writing: An Introduction to Software Documentation)
When you come down to it, alignment is about helping people understand what you want them to do. Most contributors will be motivated to ladder up to the top-line OKRs—assuming they know where to set the ladder. As our team got larger and more layered, we confronted new issues. One product manager was working on Premium, the enhanced subscription version of our app. Another focused on our API platform, to enable third parties like Fitbit to connect to MyFitnessPal and write data to it or applications on top of it. The third addressed our core login experience. All three had individual OKRs for what they hoped to accomplish—so far, so good. The problem was our shared engineering team, which got caught in the middle. The engineers weren’t aligned with the product managers’ objectives. They had their own infrastructure OKRs, to keep the plumbing going and the lights on. We assumed they could do it all—a big mistake. They got confused about what they should be working on, which could change without notice. (Sometimes it boiled down to which product manager yelled loudest.) As the engineers switched between projects from week to week, their efficiency dragged.
John Doerr (Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs)
Mind-mapping involves drawing a visual outline of your book on a large sheet of paper. You start in the middle with the core topic and then spider out to all of the sub-sections. For instance, with this book, I’d put Buy Buttons in the middle with lines connecting to Sharing Economy Platforms, Marketplaces to Sell Your Skills, and Marketplaces to Sell Physical Products. From there, I’d add the next layer. For instance, I’d add Ridesharing Platforms and Home Sharing Platforms and connect those to Sharing Economy Platforms. Off Ridesharing Platforms, I’d connect Uber and Lyft. In this way, you can create a visual map of your entire book before you even write your first words.
Nick Loper (Buy Buttons: The Fast-Track Strategy to Make Extra Money and Start a Business in Your Spare Time [Featuring 300+ Apps and Peer-to-Peer Marketplaces])
By having no affiliation with “coin” in its name, Ethereum was moving beyond the idea of currency into the realm of cryptocommodities. While Bitcoin is mostly used to send monetary value between people, Ethereum could be used to send information between programs. It would do so by building a decentralized world computer with a Turing complete programming language.11 Developers could write programs, or applications, that would run on top of this decentralized world computer. Just as Apple builds the hardware and operating system that allows developers to build applications on top, Ethereum was promising to do the same in a distributed and global system. Ether, the native unit, would come into play as follows: Ether is a necessary element—a fuel—for operating the distributed application platform Ethereum. It is a form of payment made by the clients of the platform to the machines executing the requested operations. To put it another way, ether is the incentive ensuring that developers write quality applications (wasteful code costs more), and that the network remains healthy (people are compensated for their contributed resources).
Chris Burniske (Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor's Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond)
Distressing as they were, the calamities experienced by Ruth and Naomi were not ultimate. At times these grieving women must have felt that their story was over. But their losses actually set the stage and provided a platform for God to continue writing His Story of redemption, as He does in all our losses and sorrows.
Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth (You Can Trust God to Write Your Story: Embracing the Mysteries of Providence)
I really don’t have much of a platform
Andy Ross (The Literary Agent's Guide to Writing a Non-Fiction Book Proposal)
My dual role gives me a wide ranging author’s platform.
Andy Ross (The Literary Agent's Guide to Writing a Non-Fiction Book Proposal)
What is Platform?
Andy Ross (The Literary Agent's Guide to Writing a Non-Fiction Book Proposal)
The words, tone, and style you use in your writing say a lot about it. You need to be consistent in the voice you project across different content pieces and even platforms.
Meera Kothand (The Blog Startup: Proven Strategies to Launch Smart and Exponentially Grow Your Audience, Brand, and Income without Losing Your Sanity or Crying Bucketloads of Tears)
Our idea was to provide a platform for aspiring poets who can go on to say that they have been published alongside so and so. Often first-time writers are told that they need to experience life and write more. Putting the works side-by-side was to give young talent an edge. For instance, an 18-year-old’s works went alongside Gulzar’s, she (Fouqia) points out. - The New Indian Express
Fouqia Wajid (Aatish 2)
Like most visionary utopias, though. IDN (Integrated Data Network) was never to be. Perhaps it was simply too ambitious a project: infrastructures seldom respond to a single vision or a master plan, as Paul Edwards (2010) writes, and conjuring up a platform that would serve the entire marketplace was an almost Quixotic task. Infrastructures emerge not through planning and calculated foresight, but through the meandering paths of history, in the mangle of making, tinkering, and wrestling with the obduracy of organizations, practices, and their installed base. The system eventually introduced for Big Bang reflected this fragility and contingency of infrastructures: it was the creative result of reshaping legacy devices into a system that did the job for the time being. A band-aid. A product of creative, recombinant bricolage.
Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra (Automating Finance: Infrastructures, Engineers, and the Making of Electronic Markets)
A platform is a raised, level surface on which people or things can stand. A platform business works in just that way: it allows users—producers and consumers of goods, services, and content— to create, communicate, and consume value through the platform. Amazon, Apple’s App Store, eBay, Airbnb, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pay- Pal, YouTube, Uber, Wikipedia, Instagram, etsy, Twitter, Snapchat, Hotel Tonight, Salesforce, Kickstarter, and Alibaba are all platform businesses. While these businesses have done many impressive things, the most relevant to us is that they have created an oppor- tunity for anyone, even those with limited means, to share their thoughts, ideas, creativity, and creations with millions of people at a low cost. Today, if you create a product or have an idea, you can sell that product or share that idea with a substantial audience quickly and cost-effectively through these platforms. Not only that, but the platforms arguably give more power to individuals than corporations since they’re so efficient at identifying ulterior motives or lack of authenticity. The communities on these platforms, many of whom are millennials, know when they’re being sold to rather than shared with, and quickly eliminate those users from their con- sciousness (a/k/a their social media feeds). Now, smaller organizations and less prosperous individuals are able to sell to or share their products, services, or content with more targeted demographics of people. That’s exactly what the modern consumer desires: a more personalized, connected experience. For example, a Brooklyn handbag designer can sell her handbags to a select group of customers through one of the multitude of fashion or shopping platforms and create an ongoing dialogue with her audience through a communication platform such as Instagram. Or an independent filmmaker from Los Angeles can create a short film using a GoPro and the editing software on their Mac and then instantly share it with countless people through one of a dozen video platforms and get direct feedback. Or an author can write a book and sell it directly from his or her website and social channels to anyone who’s excited about it. The reaction to standardization and globalization has been enabled by these platforms. Customers can get what they want, from whomever they want, whenever they want it. It’s a revised and personalized version of globalization that allows us to maintain and enhance the cultural connections that create the meaning we crave in our lives.
Alan Philips (The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential)
They are loud and boisterous, skylarking in the way that so many men in their twenties do – only just making the train, with the plumped-up platform guard blowing his whistle in furious disapproval. After messing about with the automatic door – open, shut, open, shut – which they inevitably find hilarious beyond the facts, they settle into the seats nearest the luggage racks. But then, apparently spotting the two girls from Cornwall, they glance knowingly at each other and head further down the carriage to the seats directly behind them. I smile to myself. See, I’m no killjoy. I was young once. I watch the girls go all quiet and shy, one widening her eyes at her friend – and yes, one of the men is especially striking, like a model or a member of a boy band. And it all reminds me of that very particular feeling in your tummy. You know. So I am not at all surprised or in the least bit disapproving when the men stand up and the good-looking one then leans over the top of the dividing seats, wondering if he might fetch the girls something from the buffet, ‘. . . seeing as I’m going?’ Next there are name swaps and quite a bit of giggling, and the dance begins. Two coffees and four lagers later, the young men have joined the girls – all seated near enough for me to follow the full conversation. I know, I know. I really shouldn’t be listening, but we’ve been over this. I’m bored, remember. They’re loud. So then. The girls repeat what I have already gleaned from their earlier gossiping. This trip to London is their first solo visit to the capital – a gift from their parents to celebrate the end of GCSEs. They are booked into a budget hotel, have tickets for Les Misérables and have never been this excited. ‘You kidding me? You really never been to London on your own before?’ Karl, the boy-band lookalike, is amazed. ‘Can be a tricky place, you know, girls. London. You need to watch yourselves. Taxi not tube when you get out of the theatre. You hear me?’ I am liking Karl now. He is recommending shops and market stalls – also a club where he says they will be safe if they fancy some decent music and dancing after the show. He is writing down the name on a piece of paper for them. Knows the bouncer. ‘Mention my name, OK?’ And then Anna, the taller of the two friends from Cornwall, is wondering about the black bags and I am secretly delighted that she has asked, for I am curious also, smiling in anticipation of the teasing. Boys. So disorganised. What are you like, eh?
Teresa Driscoll (I Am Watching You)
It took me a couple of years after I woke up in that cold sweat to figure out what flag I was going to plant, and then how to do something with it. Using the process in Step 1, I found the things that I wanted to be known for and the work that I was passionate about. And then I started telling my story all the time to anyone who would actually listen. For me, this story was around Lean UX because of who I was at the time. I created a pitch based on design for designers, by designers, to change the way that they were working. And I honed that voice and that tone and that dialogue by telling the story over and over and over again using blog posts and articles and eventually in-person talks. The first talk I ever gave as a part of my new professional trajectory was on August 12, 2010. I told the story about how we solved the problem of integrating UX into Agile at TheLadders. And then the timeline started to accelerate from there. A month later, on September 24, I gave my first talk about Lean UX and it was in Paris. I was communicating about this topic publicly, and people were saying, “Hey, come give us a talk about it.” And I was writing about the topic in any publication that would actually listen to this kind of thing. I kept speaking and writing and making presentations, and as I got my ideas out into the world and put them into play in any way I could, on March 7, 2011, I finally hit the jackpot. This was three years after I had my 35th-birthday epiphany and the pressure was on—I knew I had just two years left before I was going to become obsolete, an also-ran. I hit the jackpot when I managed to get an article published in Smashing magazine. At the time, Smashing had a million readers online, and so the scale of my conversation was growing and growing because I was becoming known as the guy who had some answers to this question. That was a massive break for me because the article provided me with a global audience for the first time. Obviously, anything you publish on the internet is global and distributed, but the bottom line is that, if the platform you choose or that chooses you has a built-in audience, you stand a much bigger chance. Smashing magazine had an audience. The article, titled “Lean UX: Getting Out of the Deliverables Business” became very successful, and that’s where I planted my flag—providing solutions to the Agile and design problem with a real-world tested solution nicely packaged and labeled as Lean UX.
Jeff Gothelf (Forever Employable: How to Stop Looking for Work and Let Your Next Job Find You)
Bitcoin isn’t the only cryptocurrency in town. There are well over 2000 competing cryptocurrencies, known as altcoins,[410] each with its own features, mining algorithms, and (in some cases) blockchains. Some are specialized for particular kinds of payments, others aim to build a platform for apps, and others just seek to improve on Bitcoin’s flaws. Altcoins have gotten bigger and bigger over time — Bitcoin controlled 90% of the cryptocurrency market back in 2015 but just over 60% at the time of writing.
Neel Mehta (Blockchain Bubble or Revolution: The Present and Future of Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies)
We have our own internal experimentation platform called “Weblab” that we use to evaluate improvements to our websites and products.
Jeff Bezos (Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos)
Compliance of Student Loan consolidation by The Student Loan Help Center The Student Loan Help Center firmly believes in strict compliance with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). The Student Loan Help Center has a zero tolerance policy in regards to violations of the FCC’s TCPA regulations. The Student Loan Help Center does not include unsolicited advertisements or unsolicited calls. We do make solicited calls prior to obtaining written consent via a website form. Refer to the “Small Entity Compliance Guide” for information. In adopting the written consent requirement, however, the FCC will recognize prior express written consent secured under the methods described in the E-SIGN Act. Permission obtained via an email, website form, text message, telephone keypress, or voice recording, as provided in the E-SIGN Act, will suffice as prior express written consent. The Student Loan Help Center does not include any cell phone text messaging platform, robocalls, autodialers, voiceblasting or any other device that can be considered automated telephone equipment without written consent. The Student Loan Help Center has a clearly written privacy policy, available to anyone upon request. We limit our calls to the period between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m., local time. The Student Loan Help Center assists consumers with federal student loan consolidation preparation and filing services. We are not affiliated with or endorsed by the U. S. Department of Education. Like filing a tax return, you can file a consolidation without professional assistance and without charge at loanconsolidation.ed.gov The Student Loan Help Center has no tolerance with misrepresentations. In our efforts to avoid confusion we have placed disclaimers at the bottom of every page of our websites. The Student Loan Help Center shows a Caller ID on every outbound call (8137393306, 8137508039, 8138038132, 8135751175 & 8133454530). The Student Loan Help Center is a private company. As such The Student Loan Help Center requires a FEE. That fee is disclosed to the client, in writing, before any billing is performed. The Student Loan Help Center has a very specific fee schedule. The Student Loan Help Center keeps the client’s records for a minimum of two years.
The Student Loan Help Center
H. Srikrishnan, then head of transactional banking and operations, gave me an example, ‘We looked at funds transfer—which was manual—such as MTs (mail transfers) and TTs (telegraphic transfers). When we implemented a centralized banking solution, the key things we could do were to sweep across multiple locations and get the balances of customers or transfer funds from one location to another using core banking. Those were big problems we solved.’ HDFC Bank was thus the first among Indian banks to have a centralized system. Whilst foreign banks like Citibank had centralized systems, they lacked the branch strength to fully leverage them. It is worth remembering that in the mid-1990s, banking didn’t really exist in the form that we know of today. Customers could open bank accounts, but the whole gamut of products (home loan, car loan, etc.) and services (Internet banking) was just not available. Salaries would still be paid by cheque and employees would have to take time off from their jobs to go to the bank, write a deposit slip, hand it over to the teller and then wait for the cheque to get cleared. Also, the employer would have to take time off to sit and sign numerous salary cheques to be given to all the employees. Compare this to the instant, online credit of salary today and a notification by SMS and email at the end of every month! HDFC Bank’s centralized technology platform allowed it to kick-off a revolution in how employees were paid their salaries.
Saurabh Mukherjea (The Unusual Billionaires)
Find indirect, long term marketing strategies that center on building an author brand and platform.
Derek Murphy (Guerrilla Publishing: a sleaze-free guide to writing and book marketing)
Me and my team was in search of a rarely found platform which can help us for our new assignment. We are writers and its been a long time we are in this writing field. So we would appreciate help of this blog.
ritzy.net
Google released the basic algorithms for a program called TensorFlow for public consumption by the open-source community. TensorFlow is a set of algorithms that enable fast computers to do “deep learning” with big data sets to perform tasks better than a human brain. “By January 2016 we had a course online on how to use the TensorFlow open-source platform to write deep learning algorithms to teach a machine to do anything—copyediting, flying a plane, or legal discovery from documents,” explained Thrun.
Thomas L. Friedman (Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations)
With Hitler, too, we see a dedicated socialist who, shortly after assuming the leadership of the German Workers’ Party, changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP). In statement after statement, Hitler could not be clearer about his socialist commitments. He said, for example, in a 1927 speech, “We are socialists. We are the enemies of today’s capitalist system of exploitation . . . and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions.”36 The Nazi Party at the outset offered a twenty-five point program that included nationalization of large corporations and trusts, government control of banking and credit, the seizure of land without compensation for public use, the splitting of large landholdings into smaller units, confiscation of war profits, prosecution of bankers and other lenders on grounds of usury, abolition of incomes unearned by work, profit sharing for workers in all large companies, a broader pension system paying higher benefits, and universal free health care and education. If you read the Nazi platform without knowing its source, you could easily be forgiven for thinking you were reading the 2016 platform of the Democratic Party. Or at least a Democratic platform drafted jointly by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Sure, some of the language is out of date. The Democrats can’t talk about “usury” these days; they’d have to substitute “Wall Street greed.” But otherwise, it’s all there. All you have to do is cross out the word “Nazi” and write in the word “Democrat.
Dinesh D'Souza (The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left)