“
Trust is not formed through a screen, it is formed across a table. It takes a handshake to bind humans . . . and no technology yet can replace that. There is no such thing as virtual trust.
”
”
Simon Sinek (Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't)
“
Thom pulled nervously at his ‘Kings’ t-shirt. The Kings are a brutal West African gang that he follows onscreen. Such ‘tourist shows’, as I understand they are called, have become wildly popular in recent years, as global unrest makes actual travel less popular.
Armoured imaging teams, using tiny remote drone cameras known as ‘flies’, take the viewer inside the violent, gang-controlled regions of Nigeria and Cameroon. Using a touch screen, viewers (or ‘zoners’ as they are sometimes called) can follow the action from multiple angles while cheering on their favourite gang.
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Paul Christensen (Reveries of the Dreamking)
“
• Starting with trust and giving employees great autonomy and flexibility allows people to feel independent and empowered while still feeling like a part of something bigger. This leads to happy, loyal employees with a rich quality of life, which in turn leads to an amazing culture.
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Larry English (Office Optional: How to Build a Connected Culture with Virtual Teams)
“
Most peasants did not miss the school.
"What's the point?" they would say.
"You pay fees and read for years, and in the end you are still a peasant, earning your food with your sweat. You don't get a grain of rice more for being able to read books. Why waste time and money?
Might as well start earning your work points right away."
The virtual absence of any chance of a better future and the near total immobility for anyone born a peasant took the incentive out of the pursuit of knowledge. Children of school age would stay at home to help their families with their work or look after younger brothers and sisters. They would be out in the fields when they were barely in their teens. As for girls, the peasants considered it a complete waste of time for them to go to school.
"They get married and belong to other people. It's like pouring water on the ground."
The Cultural Revolution was trumpeted as having brought education to the peasants through 'evening classes." One day my production team announced it was starting evening classes and asked Nana and me to be the teachers. I was delighted. However, as soon as the first 'class' began, I realized that this was no education.
The classes invariably started with Nana and me being asked by the production team leader to read out articles by Mao or other items from the People's Daily. Then he would make an hour-long speech consisting of all the latest political jargon strung together in undigested and largely unintelligible hunks. Now and then he would give special orders, all solemnly delivered in the name of Mao.
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Jung Chang (Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China)
“
d. In designing your organization, remember that the 5-Step Process is the path to success and that different people are good at different steps. Assign specific people to do each of these steps based on their natural inclinations. For example, the big-picture visionary should be responsible for goal setting, the taste tester should be assigned the job of identifying and not tolerating problems, the logical detective who doesn’t mind probing people should be the diagnoser, the imaginative designer should craft the plan to make the improvements, and the reliable taskmaster should make sure the plan gets executed. Of course, some people can do more than one of these things—generally people do two or three well. Virtually nobody can do them all well. A team should consist of people with all of these abilities and they should know who is responsible for which steps.
”
”
Ray Dalio (Principles: Life and Work)
“
In popular culture, the term “butterfly effect” is almost always misused. It has become synonymous with “leverage”—the idea of a small thing that has a big impact, with the implication that, like a lever, it can be manipulated to a desired end. This misses the point of Lorenz’s insight. The reality is that small things in a complex system may have no effect or a massive one, and it is virtually impossible to know which will turn out to be the case.
”
”
Stanley McChrystal (Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World)
“
The key to culture is how you build relationships. It’s about the quality and types of conversations you have, not where you have them.
”
”
Larry English (Office Optional: How to Build a Connected Culture with Virtual Teams)
“
If it is humanly possible, you should plan to have one or more in-person meetings with your boss early on. It is essential to make face-to-face connections early on to begin to establish a basis of confidence and trust (the same is true if you’re leading a virtual team). So if this means you need to fight for the resources and fly halfway around the world, you should do it.
”
”
Michael D. Watkins (The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter)
“
It's virtually impossible to build a team-based organization without the necessary levels of trust, acceptance, and respect among co-workers that will allow them to be open to interdependent relationships.
”
”
Pat MacMillan (The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork)
“
To start building your remote culture, establish and share some basic rules. The first and most important rule is mutual trust between the company and its workers. The rules after that? As few as possible. Tell your employees they will be treated like adults with the flexibility to get the job done however is best for them.
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Larry English (Office Optional: How to Build a Connected Culture with Virtual Teams)
“
To master the virtual equation and make all the elements work together, you have to become the connector. In fact, your greatest role as a virtual manager is to link the various parts of his/her team to accomplish the goals that lead to its formation in the first place. You may need to shift gears, perform ream tune-ups, realign, and refuel your team's energy along the way.
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Yael Zofi (A Manager's Guide to Virtual Teams)
“
Living in Venice, it’s hard to determine the real parody of inhumanity. On the one hand, there are the homeless hordes, a teaming mass of virtual zombies swelling the streets whose daily business amounts to ruffling through trash, pissing on corners and chasing pets. On the other hand, there is the endless stream of bourgeois stiffs coming and going from home, restaurants and shops. They are zombies in their own right who pretend the homeless don’t exist.
”
”
Ryan Hyatt (Stay Younger Longer (Terrafide #3))
“
Technology and its isolating effects Technology in the form of computers, cellphones, and the Internet have increased productivity, access to information, and the ability to communicate. Personally, we love computers — they've enabled us to write more and to research with greater ease than ever. Sometimes we spend days at a time holed up in our offices, banging away on the computer and not speaking to other living beings. Yet, because we don't want to lose real, face-to-face communication, we try to monitor our isolation to make sure we don't go overboard with cyber communication. Unfortunately, some people find themselves drawn into a digital, virtual world that becomes more exciting than their real lives. They spend day after day socializing on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and online gaming sites. They lose contact with the people around them, and they become fully absorbed in their virtual selves. Consider the following ways in which many people choose to relate to others: Joining a World of Warcraft team rather than the soccer team Participating in live Webcasts rather than meeting up
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Charles H. Elliott (Borderline Personality Disorder For Dummies)
“
What I hadn't expected was to be blindsided by a history lesson that betrayed every hard-won experience I'd had as a player and now a coach at the same school I'd attended. . . Whoever was responsible for sending a championship team into virtual obscurity was either a serious egomaniac or just plain mean. It stung.
After all, wasn't the story told at today's funeral the stuff of legacies? Of school lore passed on to the next class, and the next, building institutional pride as well as magical identities that made every kid in the state want to play there?
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Jo Kadlecek (When Girls Became Lions)
“
Music written by teams makes the authorship of a piece indistinct. Could it be that when hearing a song written by a team, a listener can sense that they aren't hearing an expression of a solitary individual's pain or joy, but that of a virtual conjoined person? Can we tell that an individual singer might actually represent a collective, that he might have multiple identities? Does that make the sentiments expressed more poetically universal? Dan eliminating some portion of the authorial voice make a piece of music more accessible and the singer more empathetic?
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”
David Byrne (How Music Works)
“
My name is Professor Ben Fielding and I’d like to invite you to experience our ‘Game’.
It remains currently in a Closed Beta stage but will remain in a continual state of ‘live development’. As a dedicated spokesman for a certain kind of Game-world my team and I feel sure that you’ll accept our invitation to try it for yourself, along with the few others in number so far invited.
Possible errors and residual bugs together with any suggestions may be reported by vocal commands when you have ‘acclimatised’ to the surroundings.
Please ensure that you follow the tutorials for the Interface as you may find it makes potent use of its fully immersive features.
Despite anything you may have read or heard about it, we hold high hopes that you will experience it simply as yourself and without pre-conceived notions.
Instructions for Fountellion access are as follows…
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”
Ade M. Campbell (In THE SPIRAL: Connected Stories & Fragments from the Virtual Future)
“
Clients, I soon learned, could be very demanding; I still had limited direct contact with them, which suited me just fine.
From what I could gather, they would routinely be completely unable to articulate their requirements, at which point, in desperation, the designers would create some artwork for them based on the few vague hints they had managed to elicit. After many hours of work, involving a full team of staff, the work would be submitted to the client for approval. At that point, the client would say, "No. That's exactly what I don't want."
There would be several tortuous iterations of this process before the client finally declared his or herself satisfied with the end results. Inevitably, Bob said, the artwork that was signed off on at the end of the process was virtually identical to the first piece of work submitted, which the client had immediately dismissed as unsuitable.
”
”
Gail Honeyman (Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine)
“
In the face of the calamity, the Modi government froze.
In the seven months from March to September 2020, Modi made 82
public appearances—physical as well as virtual. In the next four
months, he made 111 such appearances. From February to 25 April
2021, he clocked 92 public appearances. From 25 April, after he
called off the Kumbh and his Bengal rallies, Modi disappeared. He
made no public appearance for 20 days.147 The prime minister of
India fled the field when his people needed the government most.
Through all of April and much of May, upper class Indians
flooded Twitter with calls for help to find hospital beds, oxygen
cylinders, drugs like Remdesivir and ventilators.148 The Union did
not think to set up a helpline to guide those who needed this help.
Into this space strode the youth Congress leader B.V. Srinivas
(@srinivasiyc) who, with a team of volunteers, began to help people
reaching out for aid on Twitter. He was so effective in the absence of
the State and any government presence that even the embassies of
New Zealand and the Philippines contacted him for help when
staffers fell ill with Covid.149 Focussed on the government’s image,
Jaishankar tweeted: ‘This was an unsolicited supply as they had no
Covid cases. Clearly for cheap publicity by you know who. Giving
away cylinders like this when there are people in desperate need of
oxygen is simply appalling.’ The New Zealand embassy staffer who had received oxygen
from Srinivas on 2 May died 18 days later.
”
”
Aakar Patel (Price of the Modi Years)
“
In the end, Putin won with the aid of Americans who had turned on their own values. The news media assisted greatly by elevating stolen innocuous emails from an insecure party server to a national crisis in which the victims were treated suspiciously. To Trump supporters it validated everything they ever suspected about Hillary Clinton—she hid emails, which meant she was a liar. No matter that Trump voters elected a man who openly embraced white supremacy, rejected diversity, abhorred global engagement, ignored his own corruption, and enlisted his own family and staff as royalty to be worshipped. Trump voters saw these traits as perks. They viewed nepotism, largess, and excess as virtues of a business and political shark. If he vocally stood against virtually all gains America had made in equality and global economic expansion since 1964 and it got him elected, then all the better that he hold those positions. By all means necessary was Trump’s apparent motto for the 2016 election. Russian intelligence lived by that motto too. The spies of the Red Square were shameless enough but the real scandal was that Team Trump saw nothing wrong with it. Trump voters had blindly elected him despite knowing that Russia had intervened in the electoral process. They cared not that Trump’s own surprising level of slavish devotion to Putin was suspicious. It. Did. Not. Matter. Trump had created a cult of personality in the white lower class so that they worshipped his every word and challenged the veracity of anything negative said against him. This worked out well for Putin. For the
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”
Malcolm W. Nance (The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West)
“
Mueller kicked off the meeting by pulling out a piece of paper with some notes. The attorney general and his aides believed they noticed something worrisome. Mueller’s hands shook as he held the paper. His voice was shaky, too. This was not the Bob Mueller everyone knew. As he made some perfunctory introductory remarks, Barr, Rosenstein, O’Callaghan, and Rabbitt couldn’t help but worry about Mueller’s health. They were taken aback. As Barr would later ask his colleagues, “Did he seem off to you?” Later, close friends would say they noticed Mueller had changed dramatically, but a member of Mueller’s team would insist he had no medical problems. Mueller quickly turned the meeting over to his deputies, a notable handoff. Zebley went first, summing up the Russian interference portion of the investigation. He explained that the team had already shared most of its findings in two major indictments in February and July 2018. Though they had virtually no chance of bringing the accused to trial in the United States, Mueller’s team had indicted thirteen Russian nationals who led a troll farm to flood U.S. social media with phony stories to sow division and help Trump. They also indicted twelve Russian military intelligence officers who hacked internal Democratic Party emails and leaked them to hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The Trump campaign had no known role in either operation. Zebley explained they had found insufficient evidence to suggest a conspiracy, “no campaign finance [violations], no issues found. . . . We have questions about [Paul] Manafort, but we’re very comfortable saying there was no collusion, no conspiracy.” Then Quarles talked about the obstruction of justice portion. “We’re going to follow the OLC opinion and conclude it wasn’t appropriate for us to make a final determination as to whether or not there was a crime,” he said. “We’re going to report the facts, the analysis, and leave it there. We are not going to say we would indict but for the OLC opinion.
”
”
Philip Rucker (A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America)
“
Even though the Internet provided a tool for virtual and distant collaborations, another lesson of digital-age innovation is that, now as in the past, physical proximity is beneficial. There is something special, as evidenced at Bell Labs, about meetings in the flesh, which cannot be replicated digitally. The founders of Intel created a sprawling, team-oriented open workspace where employees from Noyce on down all rubbed against one another. It was a model that became common in Silicon Valley. Predictions that digital tools would allow workers to telecommute were never fully realized. One of Marissa Mayer’s first acts as CEO of Yahoo! was to discourage the practice of working from home, rightly pointing out that “people are more collaborative and innovative when they’re together.” When Steve Jobs designed a new headquarters for Pixar, he obsessed over ways to structure the atrium, and even where to locate the bathrooms, so that serendipitous personal encounters would occur. Among his last creations was the plan for Apple’s new signature headquarters, a circle with rings of open workspaces surrounding a central courtyard. Throughout history the best leadership has come from teams that combined people with complementary styles. That was the case with the founding of the United States. The leaders included an icon of rectitude, George Washington; brilliant thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison; men of vision and passion, including Samuel and John Adams; and a sage conciliator, Benjamin Franklin. Likewise, the founders of the ARPANET included visionaries such as Licklider, crisp decision-making engineers such as Larry Roberts, politically adroit people handlers such as Bob Taylor, and collaborative oarsmen such as Steve Crocker and Vint Cerf. Another key to fielding a great team is pairing visionaries, who can generate ideas, with operating managers, who can execute them. Visions without execution are hallucinations.31 Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore were both visionaries, which is why it was important that their first hire at Intel was Andy Grove, who knew how to impose crisp management procedures, force people to focus, and get things done. Visionaries who lack such teams around them often go down in history as merely footnotes.
”
”
Walter Isaacson (The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution)
“
Across the ancient Roman Empire there were only four chariot teams, each designated by a color. By the fifth century, those had been reduced to two, the Blues and the Greens. At least once a week the gates of the Hippodrome would open, allowing thousands of Constantinople’s citizens to file in. To the left were the seats reserved for aristocrats and governmental officials. The closer that one could sit to the imperial loge, of course, the better. To the right were the sections for the regular citizens. Here, too, there were sharp divisions, first by team supporters and then by social status. And the divisions went deeper than that. The Blues and the Greens were not simply teams, but highly competitive clubs of sports fans, whose activities extended well beyond the games. They were, as historians refer to them, circus factions, and they had a clear organization. The faction leaders sat directly opposite the emperor; they were present for the award ceremonies and, in later centuries, took part in virtually all civic ceremonies inside and outside the Hippodrome. Emperors usually expressed a preference for one faction or the other (usually the Blues), and in later years the favored faction could occasionally provide an emperor with armed support against urban insurrections. It is not true, as one sometimes reads, that the factions were political parties. Instead, they were extremely enthusiastic fan clubs whose members, when unhappy, could become very, very dangerous.
”
”
Thomas F. Madden (Istanbul: City of Majesty at the Crossroads of the World)
“
All scientists, regardless of discipline, need to be prepared to confront the broadest consequences of our work—but we need to communicate its more detailed aspects as well. I was reminded of this at a recent lunch I attended with some of Silicon Valley’s greatest technology gurus. One of them said, “Give me ten to twenty million dollars and a team of smart people, and we can solve virtually any engineering challenge.” This person obviously knew a thing or two about solving technological problems—a long string of successes attested to that—but ironically, such an approach would not have produced the CRISPR-based gene-editing technology, which was inspired by curiosity-driven research into natural phenomena. The technology we ended up creating did not take anywhere near ten to twenty million dollars to develop, but it did require a thorough understanding of the chemistry and biology of bacterial adaptive immunity, a topic that may seem wholly unrelated to gene editing. This is but one example of the importance of fundamental research—the pursuit of science for the sake of understanding our natural world—and its relevance to developing new technologies. Nature, after all, has had a lot more time than humans to conduct experiments! If there’s one overarching point I hope you will take away from this book, it’s that humans need to keep exploring the world around us through open-ended scientific research. The wonders of penicillin would never have been discovered had Alexander Fleming not been conducting simple experiments with Staphylococci bacteria. Recombinant DNA research—the foundation for modern molecular biology—became possible only with the isolation of DNA-cutting and DNA-copying enzymes from gut- and heat-loving bacteria. Rapid DNA sequencing required experiments on the remarkable properties of bacteria from hot springs. And my colleagues and I would never have created a powerful gene-editing tool if we hadn’t tackled the much more fundamental question of how bacteria fight off viral infections.
”
”
Jennifer A. Doudna (A Crack In Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution)
“
When two companies flog their researchers around the clock to come up with a cure for the same disease, it is no accident when they arrive at virtually identical drugs, sometimes within days of each other. Often the margin of difference is so thin that, outside a courtroom, noone can say for sure which team produced the invention first. Alexander Graham Bell's competitor, Elisha Gray, got to the patent office on the same day as Bell, forcing Bell to prove that he invented the telephone first. And, like Bell, whoever reaches the finish line first not only gets the prize they were all competing for-a patent- but, with that patent, the power to stop anyone else, including the runner-up, from producing or selling the invention.
”
”
Paul Goldstein (A Patent Lie)
“
U4NBA News: Notice The Version Of NBA 2K18 Is For You
NBA 2K18 is scheduled to debut on store shelves until September 15th for those that who pre-order. It'll come to Xbox One, PS4, Windows PCs and mobile. You must have noticed some NBA 2K18 version informations to help you to decide which version of NBA 2K18 is the one to pre-order now or purchase on release day.
NBA 2K18 Standard Edition
NBA 2K18 Standard Edition is for mild fans of the series that don't care as much about Virtual Currency as they do getting access four-days before everyone else. Standard Edition is $59.99.
Buyers get 5,000 in Virtual Currency, 10 Weeks of MyTeam Packs and some MyTeam themed cosmetic items for use in the game.
This version will come to the Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS4, PS3, PCs and the Nintendo Switch. This version of the game gets you access to the NBA 2K18 Early Tip-Off Weekend, provided you place a pre-order before September 15th.
Also Read: Kyrie Irving Will Grace The Cover Of The Standard Edition Of NBA 2K18
NBA 2K18 Legend Edition
NBA 2K18 Legend Edition is the upgraded version of the standard game and the version is for big-time fans of Shaq. It’s also for anyone that loves MyCareer and wants an early jumpstart to their character. It doesn’t come with any exclusive features. Instead, it packs Virtual Currency that could make starting out in MyCareer a little easier. Legend Edition is $99.99.
There's 100,000 in Virtual Currency included with Legend Edition. Again, you can use Virtual Currency to buy upgrades for your character in the game. The more Virtual Currency you have, the easier it’ll be to get extras in MyCareer. Character add-ons include a Shaq Championship Ring, Shaq Attaq shoes, Shaq Jerseys and Shaq clothing. There are 20 weeks of MyTeam Packs instead of the 10 that the basic version comes with. Physical copies of this game come with 5 Panini cards, Shaq MyTeam Stickers and a poster.
Xbox One, PS4, PCs and the Nintendo Switch will get this version. This version qualifies for Early Tip-Off Weekend.
NBA 2K18 Legend Edition Gold
NBA 2K18 Legend Edition Gold is for the player that enjoys the series year after year and will find themselves spending hours across MyCareer and MyTeam modes for a long time. It’s also for the fan that loves basketball games and doesn’t have a lot of free time to dump into the game to earn Virtual Currency. This version costs $149.99, the most that any version of the game does.
Shoppers get 250,000 in Virtual Currency when they buy Legend Edition Gold. There's 40 weekly MyTeam Packs. Developers guaranteed that players who own those packs can get at least one of Shaq and a TEAM 2K Card. Buyers also get the Shaq Attaq Shoes, the championship ring and Shaq Themed Jerseys and apparel. Physical add-ons include a poster, 10 Panini Cards, Shaq MyTeam Stickers and a lenticular printing.
Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Windows PCs and PS4 will get this version. The game qualifies for Early Tip-Off Weekend.
In order meet player's demand for NBA 2K18 MT during Early Tip-Off Weekend, we decide to bring forward the activity where offers coupon code "NBA2017". You can buy NBA 2K18 MT from now on to gain up to 5% off.
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Bunnytheis
“
Lopsang Jangbu Sherpa's description of Scott Fischer's condition in the evening hours of May 10 have strongly suggested that Fischer had been stricken with HACE, high-altitude cerebral edema . . .
Fischer died approximately five hundred vertical meters above Camp IV. The heroic efforts of Lopsang, who struggled single handedly for more than five hours to get his friend and mentor down the mountain, have gone virtually unheralded.
Both Beidleman and Boukreev have wished they'd seen some definitive sign indicating serious distress on Fischer's part. Both have said that they would have made every attempt to turn him around if they'd had any idea of what was to come. Lopsang, after hearing of Fischer's death, blamed it entirely upon himself . . .
Fischer's deteriorating health, complicated apparently by a lack of oxygen, the hour at which he was stricken, his position on the mountain, poor communications, the weather that arose and the conditions and abilities of his team members who could have offered help were, in combination, the factors that led to his death.
”
”
Anatoli Boukreev (The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest)
“
From the beginning, Bob and I believed in creating a meritocracy. EGI was entrepreneurial, based on transparency, initiative, creativity, trust, and the alignment of interests. We paid people enough salary to live comfortably, but all of their ups came from participation in the investments. In other words, the real money was in the deal residuals, the percentage of profits each deal earned, not from salary. There was no cherry-picking of projects, and rewards were found in each year’s accomplishments, not in deal-by-deal allocations. Virtually everyone on the team had a piece of everyone else’s deal, so while we always had a healthy level of lighthearted internal rivalry, everyone also went out of their way to make sure the other person’s deal succeeded. That basic principle has never changed over the decades.
”
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Sam Zell (Am I Being Too Subtle?: Straight Talk From a Business Rebel)
“
Managing when you are located far from your boss presents a different set of challenges. The risk is greater of falling out of step without realizing it. This puts the onus on you to exert even more discipline over communication, scheduling calls and meetings to be sure you stay aligned. It also is even more critical to establish clear and comprehensive metrics so that your boss gets a reasonable picture of what is going on and you can more effectively manage by exception. If it is humanly possible, you should plan to have one or more in-person meetings with your boss early on. It is essential to make face-to-face connections early on to begin to establish a basis of confidence and trust (the same is true if you’re leading a virtual team). So if this means you need to fight for the resources and fly halfway around the world, you should do it.
”
”
Michael D. Watkins (The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter)
“
Sample Quarterly Review Summary Successes Maintained peak-performance habits Stabilized the company and team Raised funds for next phase of growth Upgraded company-wide marketing Launched leadership development program Failures Worked too much, felt worn out Failed to follow-up on marketing project on time Missed language learning goals in Portuguese Extended two project deadlines unnecessarily Didn’t spend sufficient time with family and friends Insights Perfectionism is a big development opportunity Reading should be scheduled into the day The mind needs to be trained as much as the body Weekly reviews must result in new weekly commitments I want to become world-class at peak performance Actions Determine what are the non-negotiables in my life Increase output with a color-coded master calendar Bring the joy/be more intentional Hire a virtual assistant Create a weekly accountability checklist
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Eric Partaker (The 3 Alarms: A Simple System to Transform Your Health, Wealth, and Relationships Forever)
“
A team of scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) designed an ingenious experiment to determine if humans could detect energy fields similar to those of the earth. They hooked participants up to EEGs and confined them in a shielded room, screening out virtually all known sources of energy and radiation. They created a magnetic field generator that precisely mimicked the earth’s field. They then varied the direction of the magnetic field unpredictably, in very short bursts of one-tenth of a second. That’s too quick to be consciously detectable. The EEG recorded changes in brain wave amplitudes and frequencies throughout the experiment, which was repeated up to 100 times per subject. The investigators found drops in alpha waves of up to 60% whenever they changed the direction of the field. They conclude that “the human brain can detect Earth-strength magnetic fields, demonstrating that we have a sensory system that processes the geomagnetic field all around us.” The Caltech authors also noted: “We’ve known about the five basic senses: vision, hearing, touch, smell, and taste since ancient times, but this is the first discovery of an entirely new human sense in modern times.
”
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Dawson Church (Bliss Brain: The Neuroscience of Remodeling Your Brain for Resilience, Creativity, and Joy)
“
That’s what University of Pennsylvania’s Andrew Carton and his coauthors concluded after studying patients treated for heart attacks in 151 California hospitals. When a hospital had four or fewer values and used vivid imagery, patients were far less likely to be readmitted for further treatment within thirty days—a key indicator of the quality of care. Carton’s team found similar results in an experiment where they assembled sixty-two virtual teams to design new toys. Before designing the toy, team members learned their “company’s” values—and were instructed that their design should be “congruent” with the values. An “expert panel” of seven children was more enthusiastic about playing with toys designed by teams in companies with short lists of vivid values.
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Robert I. Sutton (The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder)
“
Resources required Flip chart paper and pens, virtual whiteboard/platform. A3 cards with the six logical levels (Dilts, 1990) headings printed on them as below (you can also use flip charts or display virtually): Purpose Identity Values and Beliefs Skills and Capabilities Behaviours Environment
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Lucy Widdowson (Building Top-Performing Teams: A Practical Guide to Team Coaching to Improve Collaboration and Drive Organizational Success)
“
Your passions are what you care most deeply about, have the highest expectations for, have powerful and compelling feelings about, or that give your life meaning. They may include your job, team, company, family, sports, school, hobbies, communities, faith, travel, investing, gaming, gadgets, or virtually any other subject or activity. Perseverance is persistence in purpose, ideas, or tasks in the face of obstacles or discouragement. Passion (an attitude) and persistence (a behavior) usually go together. But
”
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John Chisholm (Unleash Your Inner Company)
“
global virtual high performance teams revolve around four concepts: (1) relationships, (2) accountability, (3) networking, and (4) leadership.
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Michael Nir (Agile scrum leadership : Influence and Lead ! Fundamentals for Personal and Professional Growth (Leadership Influence Project and Team Book 2))
“
A powerful proposal gives the evaluators what they need to sell you when they go down the hall to make their recommendation. The minute they do that, they become virtual members of your business development team.
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David G. Pugh (Powerful Proposals: How to Give Your Business the Winning Edge)
“
AS IF THE abstracting qualities of numbers and scale aren’t enough to deal with when trying to run an organization, these days we have the added complication of the virtual world. The Internet is nothing short of awe inspiring. It gives the power to operate at scale or spread ideas to anyone, be it a small business or a social movement. It gives us the ability to find and connect with people more easily. And it is incredible at speeding the pace of commercial transactions. All of these things are good. But, just as money was developed to help expedite and simplify transactions by allowing payment to be rendered without barter, we often use the Internet as a means to expedite and simplify communication and the relationships we build. And just as money can’t buy love, the Internet can’t buy deep, trusting relationships. What makes a statement like that somewhat tricky or controversial is that the relationships we form online feel real. We can, indeed, get bursts of serotonin when people “like” our pictures, pages or posts or when we watch ourselves go up in a ranking (you know how much serotonin loves a ranking). The feelings of admiration we get from virtual “likes” or the number of followers we have is not like the feelings of admiration we get from our children, or that a coach gets from their players. It is simply a public display of “like” with no sacrifice required—a new kind of status symbol, if you will. Put simply, though the love may feel real, the relationship is still virtual. Relationships can certainly start online, but they only become real when we meet face-to-face.
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Simon Sinek (Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't)
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A group of Stanford scientists have recently shown that people who regularly multitask with several streams of electronic information do not pay attention, control their memory, or switch from one job to another as well as those who prefer to complete one task at a time.32 “We kept looking for what they’re better at, and we didn’t find it,” said Professor Eyal Ophir, the study’s lead author. “They’re suckers for irrelevancy,” added Professor Clifford Nass, one of the researchers. 33 Professor Nass continues: “Virtually all multitaskers think they are brilliant at multitasking. And one of the big discoveries is: you know what, you’re really lousy at it. It turns out multitaskers are terrible at every aspect of multitasking … they get distracted constantly. Their memory is very disorganized.… We worry that it may be creating people who are unable to think well and clearly.”34
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Shirzad Chamine (Positive Intelligence: Why Only 20% of Teams and Individuals Achieve Their True Potential AND HOW YOU CAN ACHIEVE YOURS)
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For example, AT&T—not known for innovation in the past twenty years—recently created five labs (AT&T calls them “foundries”), each employing forty to fifty interdisciplinary experts. Their task: testing new insights generated inside and outside AT&T. The foundries house marketing experts from the business units, experts in telecommunications technologies, and experts in design thinking. What’s more, AT&T has invited start-ups and established companies from many industries to participate in rapidly developing and experimenting with new technologies. Each new idea is run through a twelve-week project, where a team applies the kinds of tools we describe in this book to produce virtual or physical prototypes.
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Nathan Furr (The Innovator's Method: Bringing the Lean Start-up into Your Organization)
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How to locate find out on a Garmin GPS Device Complete Guideline
How about receiving message or email on phone that your son/daughter has reached school safely when they actually do so? Don’t you will be relaxed and concentrate more on your work? If you your question how can I do this? Then the answer is with the help of Garmin GPS device. And if next question comes like this How to locate find out on a Garmin GPS Device? Then read complete information mention on page.
What Is Garmin GPS Device?
Garmin GPS is a device that works on the concept of Global Positioning System. With this device you will not only be able to locate your position, but also you will be able to locate position of person or thing easily.
With Garmin there are multiple devices available that works fine to solve all your needs. Garmin GTU10, GPS locator works in same way.
This devise is attached to stuff whose location need to be tracked. Person can monitor the activity of items in their smart phone or computer.
Benefits of Garmin Locator
• You can attach Garmin locator device in your kid bag and draw a virtual parameter of area which you want to track. Once your child reach within the area or out of that area, you will get notification on your phone via mess or email.
• Similarly, the position of your pet, car, lovable things can also be tracked
• Have you seen in movies how the heroes track location of villain by sending a framed victim with GPS to their location? I am pretty sure devices of Garmin are used there.
• With the help of this device accidental bus, cars or any person’s location can be identified too.
Check Out Details with Garmin Team
So, if you are interested to know more about Garmin devices and How to locate find out on a Garmin GPS Device then give a call to Garmin tech support team. They will answer to all your concerns with perfection.
Among all GPS devices Garmin GPS are best. One can trust on accuracy of data present. There are time comes when devices face some hiccups but not often. Also, for that Garmin customer care is there to help users. They can be reached via all communication method i.e. through call, email and online chat. The details for same are mention on web page.
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Garmin Customer Service
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Few critical infrastructures need to expedite their cyber resiliency as desperately as the health sector, who repeatedly demonstrates lackadaisical cyber hygiene, finagled and Frankensteined networks, virtually unanimous absence of security operations teams and good ol’ boys club bureaucratic board members flexing little more than smoke and mirror, cyber security theatrics as their organizational defense.
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James Scott, Senior Fellow, Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology
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Soon thereafter, Al Davis, the late owner of the Raiders (who were in Los Angeles at the time) called me and said, “I’ll give you any seven players on our team for the rights to Jim Kelly. Name the players.” So I named Howie Long, an eventual Hall of Famer, and virtually every other star that they had. He said, “Well, I’ll call you back.” He never called back.
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Bill Polian (The Game Plan: The Art of Building a Winning Football Team)
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The reality is that small things in a complex system may have no effect or a massive one, and it is virtually impossible to know which will turn out to be the case.
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General S McChrystal (Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World)
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Algiz Technology
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Dinner progressed. Tyler brought our food in a moderately courteous manner but didn’t say much. Not that he could have, what with Marty’s constant anecdotes about the seedy underbelly of storage unit politics. In between stories, my date would ask questions, such as “how many gallons” was the largest breast implant I’d ever given a woman? “You know,” Marty said, screeching his knife across the plate as he carved up his virtually raw steak, “that gives me a phenomenal idea. You and I could team up on this and make a killing.” Typically, as a doctor, I tried to avoid that phrase. “Really, and what’s that?” He leaned forward, his face serious as bad news. “Saline-filled testicular implants. Boom!” He smacked his hands down on the table and sat up straight. “Think of it. Just like boob implants, only for the balls. ’Cause women like a good set of stones. Am I right?” No. He was wrong. No woman ever was attracted to a man because of his gargantuan balls.
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Tracy Brogan (The Best Medicine (Bell Harbor, #2))
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Collaboration by invitation rarely works. Considering that the professional learning communities process is endorsed by virtually every national teacher professional association, it is difficult to understand why a teaching professional would desire or expect the right to work in isolation. More importantly, if a teacher is allowed to opt out of team collaboration, then that teacher’s students will not benefit from the collective skills and expertise of the entire team. If the purpose of collective responsibility is to ensure that all students learn at high levels, then allowing any teacher to work in isolation would be unacceptable.
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Austin Buffum (Simplifying Response to Intervention: Four Essential Guiding Principles (What Principals Need to Know))
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Fourth and finally, I must point out that any philosophical view is unlikely to gain wide acceptance among either philosophers or the wider public. This is especially true of a view like cognitivist misanthropy.
Human beings excel at ignoring or denying unpleasant ideas, regardless of strong evidence in their favor—climate change, racism, evolution, heliocentrism, and so on. The idea that one’s own species is bad is especially unpleasant, so it is untenable to think that human beings would adopt the misanthropist view at any appreciable scale. To take an analogy, we might consider the epistemic standards of the home crowd at any sporting event. When judging the quality of the officiating, the crowd relies on the standard of whether or not the officials’ calls favor the home team. The crowd approves of calls that are to the benefit of its favored team while disapproving vehemently of calls that are to that team’s detriment. It matters not to the crowd whether the officials’ calls are, in fact, correct. Even if video replay clearly shows that the home team violated one of the rules of the game, the crowd will repudiate the officials’
“unfair” treatment of its team. I suspect that the public’s estimation of cognitivist misanthropy would be similar, in the unlikely event that anyone outside academia learns of it. The view would be rejected because it is unpleasant or perhaps because it does not fit with preconceptions. In that case, there is virtually no chance for cognitivist misanthropy to cause harm, because there is virtually no chance that it will be accepted by more than a few people.
One might object that my analogy is unfair. The behavior of a crowd at a sporting event should not be taken too seriously. It is merely in good fun that the crowd abandons reasonable epistemic standards for a few hours, and surely the individuals who comprise such crowds return to reason when it comes to serious matters. I wish that were true, but the analogy seems apt to me, at least in many arenas of human life. Politics is an obvious example. It is very difficult to look at elections, for example, as involving much in the way of epistemic reasonableness. Support or opposition to some candidate or policy seems to depend on cultural commitments to a far greater extent than considerations of facts, coherence, plausibility, the content of a candidate’s platform, and so on. For instance, when asked by pollsters, a high proportion of supporters of Donald Trump claim to believe many obvious falsehoods. This is puzzling if we assume that the respondents are behaving as genuine epistemic agents who seek to understand reality. How could persons capable of running their own lives believe in absurd conspiracy theories, for example? If we instead assume that the respondents are behaving as supporters of their favored “team,” their behavior makes much more sense. When it comes to politics and social issues, many people simply do not care very much about the truth. Instead, they are invested in promoting the “right” candidate, value, idea, or institution. This is not limited to false views.
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Toby Svoboda (A Philosophical Defense of Misanthropy (Routledge Studies in Ethics and Moral Theory))
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Trillions of dollars in homeowner equity…so are the best “captains” of “equity conversion airplanes” the homeowners themselves? No.
There is an impetus placed upon real estate professionals - as well as an implied responsibility - to honestly, to effectively and to accurately communicate reality to home sellers. An inability to do so? Fewer real estate listings. Lower sale prices for home sellers. Less equity converted into cash for home sellers. Less revenue for real estate companies. Inopportune…across the board.
Three years ago, American homeowners were custodians of an estimated $19 trillion in homeowner equity. Furthermore, over the past three years - even with these stubbornly-elevated mortgage rates - we witnessed an uninterrupted, further run-up in home prices. More equity gained, for American homeowners.
As mortgage rates ease downwards heading into the fall, unlocking trillions of dollars in homeowner equity - as a result of more homeowners deciding to either trade up to larger homes, or to downsize to smaller homes, circumstances permitting - will trigger a large-scale (and an upcoming) re-thinking of this following question by more and more homeowners: What shall we now do with this equity we have in our home?
So what’s the plan?
In real estate, the effective utilization of well-tested "tools,” such as 3-D tours and virtual staging, coupled to good marketing processes - I.e.: a Marketing Plan - deployed by successful real estate teams is a great way for homeowners to convert the equity they have in their homes into cash.
It works.
Ok, so if you are a for sale by owner home seller in 2024, data indicate that an over-reliance in - as well as, maybe, blind faith placed upon(?), “the Internet,” if you decide to sell your home yourself, FSBO, could lead to an entirely avoidable (and a costly) home selling misadventure. As well as to a saddened foray for home sellers into this unintended outcome: lower sale prices.
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Ted Ihde, Thinking About Becoming A Real Estate Developer?
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Imagine a world where your entire team was on the same page, spoke the same language, and referenced one document for virtually any problem facing the business—If everything was really as simple as looking at one process on a document together and nding the missing link, how much time would that save? How would that improve your communication? How would that improve the relationships inside the business? How would that improve ef ciency and productivity and cost savings? How would that improve the results for your customers and clients? How would that impact your culture? How much more time for FUN would there be if all you had to do was look up a page in a small document and point to the step
where improvement needed to be made?
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Jessica Holsapple (Have Fun in the Process: Let Processes Run Your Business So You Don't Have To)
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Imagine a world where your entire team was on the same page, spoke the same language, and referenced one document for virtually any problem facing the business.
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Jessica Holsapple (Have Fun in the Process: Let Processes Run Your Business So You Don't Have To)
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Although they could all work remotely, meeting only in virtual environments, something about physical proximity tended to foster the creative process, resulting in improved team cohesiveness and more innovative project outcomes.
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Anna Zaires (Mia & Korum (The Krinar Chronicles, #1-3))
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Singapore Why should I book a live band for my wedding?
Merry Bees
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If you want to construct the perfect virtual team, there are a number of elements that you need to consider. The first is how many staff members will you require? If you have several employees, you may require more than one team to complete various jobs. If you are working with individuals from various histories, it will be harder to examine their capacities. If you employ people with varying degrees of experience, the team will be less efficient as well as will only wind up developing even more irritation.
The 2nd aspect is the ability degree of each member. This is necessary since you will certainly require to produce a sense of neighborhood among employees. A virtual team-building video game will certainly aid you to attain this. A virtual team-building game called the 100 Information Obstacle is fun and also can make everyone included really feel even more connected. You can locate an assisted-in virtual team structure game with a business such as a Tag. If you do not intend to employ a team leader, you can attempt the 100 Things Challenge to discover exactly how you can develop a community within your business.
Another attribute of a virtual team monitoring device is the capability to take care of digital teams from throughout the globe. This device makes it less complicated to take care of online teams from anywhere. As an example, if you have a remote employee, you can use the ClickUp app to appoint jobs and timetable meetings. You can even use it as a style accessory, which has been hailed by Path magazine. And also if you're seeking one more virtual team-building tool, it deserves to think about Donut.
Virtual team structure video games are enjoyable ways to create a connection and also construct team comradery. Gamings like online retreat areas, murder mysteries, tests, as well as facts video games can also be an enjoyable way to connect with a staff member.
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perfectvirtualteam
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Anti-Network Effects Hit the Google+ Launch A charismatic executive from one of the most powerful technology companies in the world introduces a new product at a conference. This time, it’s June 2011 at the Web 2.0 Summit, where Google vice president Vic Gundotra describes the future of social networking and launches Google+. This was Google’s ambitious strategy to counteract Facebook, which was nearing their IPO. To give their new networked product a leg up, as many companies do, it led with aggressive upsells from their core product. The Google.com homepage linked to Google+, and they also integrated it widely within YouTube, Photos, and the rest of the product ecosystem. This generated huge initial numbers—within months, the company announced it had signed up more than 90 million users. While this might superficially look like a large user base, it actually consisted of many weak networks that weren’t engaged, because most new users showed up and tried out the product as they read about it in the press, rather than hearing from their friends. The high churn in the product was covered up by the incredible fire hose of traffic that the rest of Google’s network generated. Even though it wasn’t working, the numbers kept going up. When unengaged users interact with a networked product that hasn’t yet gelled into a stable, atomic network, then they don’t end up pulling other users into the product. In a Wall Street Journal article by Amir Efrati, Google+ was described as a ghost town even while the executives touted large top-line numbers: To hear Google Inc. Chief Executive Larry Page tell it, Google+ has become a robust competitor in the social networking space, with 90 million users registering since its June launch. But those numbers mask what’s really going on at Google+. It turns out Google+ is a virtual ghost town compared with the site of rival Facebook Inc., which is preparing for a massive initial public offering. New data from research firm comScore Inc. shows that Google+ users are signing up—but then not doing much there. Visitors using personal computers spent an average of about three minutes a month on Google+ between September and January, versus six to seven hours on Facebook each month over the same period, according to comScore, which didn’t have data on mobile usage.86 The fate of Google+ was sealed in their go-to-market strategy. By launching big rather than focusing on small, atomic networks that could grow on their own, the teams fell victim to big vanity metrics. At its peak, Google+ claimed to have 300 million active users—by the top-line metrics, it was on its way to success. But network effects rely on the quality of the growth and not just its quantity
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Andrew Chen (The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects)
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Making things better requires that you understand how people feel in response to what you do.
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Betty Johnson (Making Virtual Work: How to Build Performance and Relationships)
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Workers are begging us to lighten their load, to remove the burdens, the hassles, and the irritants that come with video meetings.
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Betty Johnson (Making Virtual Work: How to Build Performance and Relationships)
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If you say, I know just how you feel, you show the other person you’re thinking about how you feel, and you’re assuming your experience is the same as theirs.
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Betty Johnson (Making Virtual Work: How to Build Performance and Relationships)
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The first part of empathy, the first requirement for action on their behalf, is to understand how they feel.
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Betty Johnson (Making Virtual Work: How to Build Performance and Relationships)
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Self-other awareness enables you to show respect for their feelings instead of being overwhelmed by their feelings, your pity, or your intolerance.
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Betty Johnson (Making Virtual Work: How to Build Performance and Relationships)
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Savvy leaders use empathy to relieve that emotional strain. They use it so that video meetings are beneficial for everyone.
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Betty Johnson (Making Virtual Work: How to Build Performance and Relationships)
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Empathy greases the wheels of productivity.
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Betty Johnson (Making Virtual Work: How to Build Performance and Relationships)
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In an ever-changing, hyper-competitive workplace and marketplace, for you to truly be of worth as a leader, you therefore know: you must develop your capacity for empathy.
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Betty Johnson (Making Virtual Work: How to Build Performance and Relationships)
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When what they feel evokes something familiar in you, you’re likely to mimic their emotions unconsciously.
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Betty Johnson (Making Virtual Work: How to Build Performance and Relationships)
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You’re careful with your Wi-Fi network?” “I take all the usual precautions. But I am also well aware of the fact that it is virtually impossible to fully shield one’s communications from the various agencies of state surveillance, including Britain’s GCHQ. Besides, the Russians aren’t terribly discreet. They sometimes post a team outside my apartment, just to let me know they’re always watching. They also leave threatening messages on my voice mail.
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Daniel Silva (The Cellist (Gabriel Allon, #21))
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The growing team also bonded over computer games. Following a long day of work, most of the employees in the office would put the phones on their desks into conference mode. The office would come alive with banter and bravado as the SpaceX employees loaded the computer game Quake III Arena, a first-person shooter that allowed multiple players to join, and battle one another in death matches. Each participant would choose a playable character and a weapon, and look for targets on the virtual playing field.
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Eric Berger (Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX)
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the software team needs some way to validate their work before the responses from actual hardware are available. Simulators model behaviors from subsystems through the full system in virtual space — including user behavior. An emulator is a physical device that imitates the behavior of one subsystem, providing realistic inputs and outputs so that another subsystem can be developed independently.
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Katherine Radeka (When Agile Gets Physical: How to Use Agile Principles to Accelerate Hardware Development)
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When a group is higher in psychological safety, it’s likely to be more innovative, do higher-quality work, and enjoy better performance, compared to a group that is low in psychological safety. One of the most important reasons for these different outcomes is that people in psychologically safe teams can admit their mistakes. These are teams where candor is expected. It’s not always fun, and certainly it’s not always comfortable, to work in such a team because of the difficult conversations you will sometimes experience. Psychological safety in a team is virtually synonymous with a learning environment in a team. Everyone makes mistakes (we are all fallible), but not everyone is in a group where people feel comfortable speaking up about them. And it’s hard for teams to learn and perform well without psychological safety.
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Amy C. Edmondson (Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well)
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Most important, the PayPal team realized that getting users to sign up wasn’t enough; they needed them to try the payment service, recognize its value to them, and become regular users. In other words, user commitment was more important than user acquisition. So PayPal designed the incentives to tip new customers into the ranks of active users. Not only did the incentive payments make joining PayPal feel riskless and attractive, they also virtually guaranteed that new users would start participating in transactions—if only to spend the $10 they’d been gifted in their accounts.
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Geoffrey G. Parker (Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy and How to Make Them Work for You: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy―and How to Make Them Work for You)
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A TikTok clone app script is a pre-built software solution that allows you to create a short-form video sharing app that is similar to TikTok in terms of features and functionality. TikTok clone scripts are typically much less expensive than developing a custom app from scratch, and they can be deployed quickly, allowing you to launch your video sharing app in a short amount of time.
TikTok clone scripts are highly customizable, allowing you to tailor the platform to your specific needs. For example, you can change the branding of the app, add or remove features, and integrate your own monetization strategies.
Here are some of the key features that you should look for in a TikTok clone app script:
• Video recording and editing: The script should allow users to record and edit short-form videos. Editing features should include trimming, cropping, adding music and effects, and more.
• Social features: The script should include social features such as following other users, liking and commenting on videos, and creating and participating in challenges.
• Content moderation: The script should have robust content moderation systems in place to prevent the spread of harmful or offensive content.
• Monetization options: The script should support a variety of monetization options, such as in-app advertising, subscription fees, and virtual goods.
Once you have chosen a TikTok clone app script, you will need to work with a development team to customize the script and deploy your app. The development team will also help you to set up your monetization strategies and launch your app on the App Store and Google Play.
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Tittokclone
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TAKING STOCK Imagine that you have been invited to prepare and deliver a speech describing your vision for your career a few years down the road. Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to step up to the microphone and inspire a roomful of strangers with a stirring presentation, but I do want you to take a sheet of paper or open up a fresh Word document and outline a ten-minute talk about how you see yourself working and living five years from now. Use the four essential ingredients—think long term, serve others, communicate your vision, and choose the right tools—as the major heading in the outline of your speech. Under each heading write at least three or four major points you would make as you present your speech. Under “Think Long Term,” you should list four or five specific objectives you wish to accomplish for your work and life (Carla might begin with “A business of my own that enables me to make a comfortable living using my artistic talent”). Do the same for “Serve Others” (Carla might include “Making people happier by brightening their homes and offices”). Keep going with “Communicate Your Vision” (Carla never stopped talking about her vision with the people she invited onto her virtual team) and “Choose the Right Tools” (Carla stayed abreast of the latest trends for consumer product goods entrepreneurs).
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Katie C. Kelley (Career Courage: Discover Your Passion, Step Out of Your Comfort Zone, and Create the Success You Want)
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Many new remote workers worry they’ll be distracted by their home life and lack the discipline to get work done. Instead, the exact opposite usually occurs: remote workers become more productive once they’re freed from a traditional office environment. Perhaps this shouldn’t be a surprise, because working remotely means fewer distractions, no commute, and the opportunity to take real breaks. Instead of the dreaded afternoon slump, you can stay fresh and energized all day.
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Larry English (Office Optional: How to Build a Connected Culture with Virtual Teams)
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huge conference called BlogWorld? Why don’t they meet online? Because nothing can replace face-to-face meetings for social animals like us. A live concert is better than the DVD and going to a ball game feels different from watching on TV, even though the view is better on television. We like to actually be around people who are like us. It makes us feel like we belong. It is also the reason a video conference can never replace a business trip. Trust is not formed through a screen, it is formed across a table. It takes a handshake to bind humans . . . and no technology yet can replace that. There is no such thing as virtual trust.
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Simon Sinek (Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't)
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Are you doing multiple tasks in your business? Doing all tasks of your business on your own is difficult to do, you need some helping hand for you. So why not to hire a virtual assistant. You can hire from us we have a team of experienced virtual assistants they will do all your tasks with very perfection. This results in your business will grow and then you will get some free time. So what are you waiting for? Contact us on our toll-free number. Hire them at affordable prices. You can pay them on an hourly basis or project basis
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Maria Miller (Dandelion Project)
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Will your infrastructure require a human to manage? Will you need a fully staffed DevOps/SRE team to support your operations? How much will it cost to run the system at full scale? Can you save $$ while you are running the proof of concept for the first 6 months before you get funded? How costly will it be to handle the occasional traffic spikes? How well will your system protect the customer’s data? How can you best support the future development and testing efforts? Most of these questions are answered by selecting your hosting model. Several options exist: Use your own dedicated hardware Provision dedicated hardware from a cloud provider Provision virtual hardware from a cloud provider Install a container solution on dedicated or virtual hardware Rely on fully managed container orchestration solution Go serverless
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Anatoly Volkhover (Become an Awesome Software Architect: Foundation 2019 (#1))
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Why can’t we create a place that we love to work? Why can’t we create a business that doesn’t kill people for profit? We began dreaming up a company where we could do great work but still have a life, a company with a fun culture that treats everyone like family and operates with honest and deep relationships. This was the start of the Centric business model and the underpinnings of the culture we have today.
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Larry English (Office Optional: How to Build a Connected Culture with Virtual Teams)
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If you are serious about having a virtual company with excellent culture, you must have the discipline to develop a hiring process that screens for culture matches and for the attributes of successful virtual workers. You can’t just hire for skills—that never translates to great culture.
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Larry English (Office Optional: How to Build a Connected Culture with Virtual Teams)
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The output of a manager is the output of the organizational units under his or her supervision or influence. The question then becomes, what can managers do to increase the output of their teams? Put another way, what specifically should they be doing during the day when a virtually limitless number of possible tasks calls for their attention? To give you a way to answer the question, I introduce the concept of managerial leverage, which measures the impact of what managers do to increase the output of their teams. High managerial productivity, I argue, depends largely on choosing to perform tasks that possess high leverage.
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Andrew S. Grove (High Output Management)
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Johnson’s team identified similar control parameters for the virtual terror cells on the Russian website. The number of clusters was like the density of trees. The rate at which one follower linking into a node inspires another follower to link into a node—the “infectability” of the cause—was the equivalent of the rate at which fire hops from tree to tree, the “virality.
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Safi Bahcall (Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries)
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Can you escape? You are given a task to escape a locked room in less than 60 minutes. Our San Ramon escape rooms offer amazing quests to see if you are up for the challenge. Come in for great corporate team-building experience or a birthday party. During this time you will be solving puzzles and discovering clues that will allow you to escape the room. Our San Francisco Bay Area escape rooms are so much fun & we also offer Virtual Reality escape room options at our San Ramon location.
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ZScape Games
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There was virtually nothing from some shows in which Fosse developed his history—the erotic Dream Ballet from New Girl in Town (1957), for whose integrity he had to fight the entire production team; the “Uncle Sam Rag” from Redhead (1959), in which Fosse embodied the music’s counterpoint in groupings of “counterpointed” dancers; “Coffee Break” or “A Secretary Is Not a Toy” from How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1961);2 “Rich Kids’ Rag” from Little Me (1962).
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Ethan Mordden (The Happiest Corpse I've Ever Seen: The Last Twenty-Five Years of the Broadway Musical (The History of the Broadway Musical Book 7))
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2D Game Comic Book Concept Art Service by 3D animation Studio – Austin, Texas
CLIENT: THIBAUD
PROJECT: CONCEPT ART
CATEGORY: CONCEPT ART
Concept art is a visual representation that tells a story or conveys a certain look. It is commonly used in film and video games to convey a vision and set the tone for an entire game or movie. 2D/3D Concept Art provides a strong reference point that helps align the creatives working on the project. Generally the Concept Artist must be adept at any style, any genre and any element, be it character design, creature design or setting.
GameYan Studio – game art outsourcing studio for feature films and could work as a production house to do entire 3D development for any animated movie. Our professional team of Concept Artist can develop a variety of 3D art content for movie and video games along with low optimized characters for mobile and virtual reality interactive games by 3D Production Animation Studio.
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GameYan
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Character Concept Art Services by 3D Game Art Studio, Denton - Texas
CLIENT: AHMED
PROJECT: CONCEPT ART
CATEGORY: CONCEPT ART
Concept Art Service doesn’t have a specific format — it means the creation of virtual ideas transformed into simple sketches, elaborate computer-edited drawings. All 2D/3D Concept Art for 2D/3D Concept Artist shares two things in common: it’s comprised of 2D still images, and it’s used to speed up modeling. It serves mainly as a way to save time when making the visual material in a game and movies.
GameYan Studio – game art outsourcing studio for feature films and could work as a production house to do entire 3D development for any animated movie, Our professional team of artists can develop a variety of 3D art content for movie and video games along with low optimized characters for mobile and virtual reality interactive games by 3D Production Animation Studio.
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GameYan
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3D Character Modeling & low poly game character by 3D Game Art Studio
Low poly game character are three-dimensional models based on a small number of polygons. An important condition is that this amount is enough to understand what the visualizer wanted to demonstrate. Since one of the relevant areas where 3d low-poly character developers are involved in the gaming industry, consider the process of work on the example of creating a Game Character Modeling Services. Work on other low poly character is similar. Each game must be unique in its own way.
Character Modeling is the process of creating a character within the 3D space of computer programs. The techniques for character modeling are essential for third - and first - person experiences within film, animation, games, and Virtual Reality. It is important to bear in mind that low poly objects have less definition and are made with fewer polygons, spheres, cylinders, or cubes. By using flat lighting, the models will get the desired flat-shaded blocky look. low poly modeling requires a high degree of creativity, as you need to make the most of limited resources to create complex compositions. It has the power of simplicity.
Low poly character also has its uses. The most important use is game engines since a computer can only handle many polygons in real time. Low poly keeps everything as low as possible applying normal mapping everywhere. Other uses of low poly include:
• Subdivision modeling
• Low-polygon proxy geometry for animating and rigging
• Low poly style
High poly character are preferable in Movie Character Modeling for the film industry since a large number of polygons are needed there for optimal detail. However, their 3d Rendering & Animation can sometimes take several days. But for games, low-poly character are often used: visualization of 3D characters is carried out directly in the course of the game process.
GameYan Studio is a Game Development and Movie Animation company offer an animation 3D Character Modeling Services with a wide range of 3d character design services and animation with a specialized team of highly skilled designers & animators are having a capable to transform any characters to virtually animated characters. GameYan Studio is one stop solution for 3D Character Development - 3D Modeling Company. Whether you have concept or not, our creative team can convert your visualization into Sketches and 3d Character Modeling Design. We can deliver the final model with specific technical requirement like Low Poly, High Polygons and many technical detail will be follow by our 3d artist in realistic game character.
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GameYan Studio
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To facilitate the exchange of direct and reflected knowledge among virtual team members, leaders must proactively create a group culture for virtual interactions not explicitly related to work tasks.
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Tsedal Neeley (Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding from Anywhere)
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PayPal’s big challenge was to get new customers. They tried advertising. It was too expensive. They tried BD [business development] deals with big banks. Bureaucratic hilarity ensued. … the PayPal team reached an important conclusion: BD didn’t work. They needed organic, viral growth. They needed to give people money. So that’s what they did. New customers got $10 for signing up, and existing ones got $10 for referrals. Growth went exponential, and PayPal wound up paying $20 for each new customer. It felt like things were working and not working at the same time; 7 to 10 percent daily growth and 100 million users was good. No revenues and an exponentially growing cost structure were not. Things felt a little unstable. PayPal needed buzz so it could raise more capital and continue on. (Ultimately, this worked out. That does not mean it’s the best way to run a company. Indeed, it probably isn’t.)2 Thiel’s account captures both the desperation of those early days and the almost random experimentation the company resorted to in an effort to get PayPal off the ground. But in the end, the strategy worked. PayPal dramatically increased its base of consumers by incentivizing new sign-ups. Most important, the PayPal team realized that getting users to sign up wasn’t enough; they needed them to try the payment service, recognize its value to them, and become regular users. In other words, user commitment was more important than user acquisition. So PayPal designed the incentives to tip new customers into the ranks of active users. Not only did the incentive payments make joining PayPal feel riskless and attractive, they also virtually guaranteed that new users would start participating in transactions—if only to spend the $10 they’d been gifted in their accounts. PayPal’s explosive growth triggered a number of positive feedback loops. Once users experienced the convenience of PayPal, they often insisted on paying by this method when shopping online, thereby encouraging sellers to sign up. New users spread the word further, recommending PayPal to their friends. Sellers, in turn, began displaying PayPal logos on their product pages to inform buyers that they were prepared to honor this method of online payment. The sight of those logos informed more buyers of PayPal’s existence and encouraged them to sign up. PayPal also introduced a referral fee for sellers, incentivizing them to bring in still more sellers and buyers. Through these feedback loops, the PayPal network went to work on its own behalf—it served the needs of users (buyers and sellers) while spurring its own growth.
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Geoffrey G. Parker (Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy and How to Make Them Work for You: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy―and How to Make Them Work for You)
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For Phoenix, it takes us three or four weeks for new developers to get builds running on their machine, because we’ve never assembled the complete list of the gazillion things you need installed in order for it to compile and run. But now all we have to do is check out the virtual machine that Brent and team built, and they’re all ready to go.
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Gene Kim (The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win)
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5 Thumb Rules to Follow for Outsourcing 3D Character.
Outsourcing has become one of the basic requirements of the digital industry. Be it software, websites, architecture rendering or 3D character modelling, companies look forward to outsource these tasks to reliable names. Reason is simple. When it comes to value for money, 3D Art Outsourcing Service stands to be the most viable option as setting up in-house production often isn’t considered a wise ROI choice.
But, this necessity has also given rise to possible frauds. There are countless companies waiting to gulp your money in the blink of an eye. There are many more who are ready to lure you with lucrative offers when it comes to 3D character modelling concept. Since not everyone is familiar with the technicalities of this field, companies can easily get trapped with fake promises of giving top notch services well within their reach, only to find out that the whole thing was neither worth their time nor money.
However, all the sham can be avoided if companies follow the six thumb rules while Game outsourcing character modelling tasks to animation studios as these will lead them to the right names.
1) Take a Tour of the Website
Although you will find expert comments on not to judge a company by its cover, there is no denying the fact that website plays a decisive role in company’s credibility, especially when it comes to art and animation studios. A studio that claims to offer you state-of-art results must first focus on its own. A clean, crisp website with appropriate content can actually say a lot about the studio’s work. A poor design and inappropriate content often indicate the following things:
- Outdated and poorly maintained
- Negligence towards its virtual presentation
- Unprofessionalism
- Poor marketing
A sincere design and animation studio will indeed feature a vibrant website with all its details properly included.
2) Location Matters
Location has a huge impact on hiring charges as it largely decides the price range one can expect. If you are looking forward to countries like India, you expect the range to be well within your budget chiefly because such countries have immense talent, but because of the increasing demand and competition in the field of outsourcing, hiring charges are relatively cheaper than countries like UK or USA. This means that once can get desired expertise without spending a fortune.
3) Know Your Team Inside Out
Since you will be spending your hard earned money, you have every right to know the ins and outs of your team. Getting to know the team can assist you in your decision. Do your part of homework and be ready with your queries. Starting from their names to their works, check everything you can, and if need be, go for one-to-one conversation.
This will not only help you to know them better, but will also give you an idea of their communication, their knowledge about their work and their sincerity. A dedicated one will always answer you up to the point while a confused one with fidget with words or beat around the bush.
4) Don’t Miss Out on the Portfolio
While the website of a studio is its virtual representative, it’s the portfolio which speaks about its execution. Reputed names of 3D modelling and design companies house excellent projects ranging from simple to complex ones. A solid portfolio indicates:
- commitment of the studio towards its projects
- competency of its team
- execution and precision
- status of its expertise
Apart from the portfolio, some animation studios even feature case studies and white papers in their websites which indicate their level of transparency. Make sure to go through all of them.
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Game Yan
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In several conversations I had with former Amazonians, one of the cultural distinctives at Amazon is the ability for virtually any employee to come up with an idea, pitch it to their manager, and if the idea is good enough, receive permission to experiment to validate the premise. If it works, the idea will be implemented throughout the unit, team, group, or division. Amazon’s culture is one where everyone has a chance to innovate and see innovations through to implementation.
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Steve Anderson (The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon)
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Why test a DR plan? Disaster recovery plans contain lists of procedures and other information that an emergency response team follows when a natural or man-made disaster occurs. The purpose of the plan is to recover the IT systems and infrastructure that support business processes critical to the organization’s survival. Because disasters don’t occur very often, you seldom can clearly tell whether those DR plans will actually work. And given the nature of disasters, if your DR plan fails, the organization may not survive the disaster. Testing is a natural part of the lifecycle for many technology development efforts today: software, processes, and — yes — disaster recovery planning. Figure 10-1 depicts the DR plan lifecycle. Figure 10-1: The DR plan lifecycle. When you test the DR plan, note any discrepancies, and then pass the plan back to the people who wrote each section so they can update it. This process improves the quality and accuracy of the DR plan, which increases the likelihood that the organization will actually survive a disaster if one occurs. Another great benefit of DR plans and their tests is the likelihood that, by undertaking them, you can improve the organization’s everyday processes and systems. When teams closely scrutinize processes and figure out how they can protect and recover those processes, often the team members discover opportunities for improvement. Sometimes the question, “How can we recover this system?” gives people the opportunity to answer the question, “How can we improve the existing system?” Be open to those opportunities because they’ll come, sometimes in droves. The types of testing that I discuss in this chapter are Paper tests Walkthrough tests Simulations Parallel tests Cutover tests These tests range from the simple review of DR procedure documents to simulations to running through procedures as if you’re experiencing the real thing. Developing a test strategy DR testing in all its forms takes considerable effort and time. To make the best possible use of staff and other resources, map out a test strategy well in advance of any scheduled tests. Structure DR testing in the same way you structure other complicated undertakings, such as software development and associated testing. Just follow these steps: 1. Determine how frequently you should perform each type of test. 2. Test individual components. 3. Perform wider tests of combined components. 4. Test the entire plan. When you perform DR testing as outlined in the preceding list, you can identify many errors during individual tests and correct those errors before you do more comprehensive tests. This process saves time by preventing little errors from interrupting comprehensive tests that involve a lot of people. Virtually every enterprise that builds actual products performs testing as outlined in the preceding list. Businesses have found this test methodology to be the most effective way to ensure success in a reasonable timeframe. Figure 10-2 shows the flow of DR testing.
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Peter H. Gregory (IT Disaster Recovery Planning For Dummies®)
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Three inward innovations illustrate Amazon’s workplace culture: Career Choice, Pay to Quit, and Virtual Contact Center. Amazon is also at the forefront of continuing education for its team, implementing a program called Career Choice, where it prepays 95 percent of tuition for employees to take courses for in-demand fields, such as airplane mechanic or nursing, regardless of whether the skills are relevant to a career at Amazon. For some, Amazon will be their long-term career of choice. For others, Amazon recognizes it might be a stepping-stone on the way to a job somewhere else and they might need new skills to get that job. Amazon is more than willing to help them attain those skills, even if another company will benefit from Amazon’s investment in education.
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Steve Anderson (The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon)
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Stheno – Fantasy Female 3D Character Dallas - Texas
CLIENT: ART
PROJECT: LOW POLY CONCEPT CHARACTER
CATEGORY: 3D GAME CHARACTERS
STHENO IS THE CONCEPT OF THE GORGON SISTERS
We develop Low Poly Character With Micro Detail Texture for CGI Open World Game. It's a Fantasy Female 3D Character of GORGON SISTERS.
Gameyan is movie and game art outsourcing studio in India provide 2D and 3D model, texture, shading, rig and animation for all games (mobile, PS, Xbox, Desktop) and feature movie film animation, cartoon series, TV commercial.
Our professional team of artists can develop a variety of 3D art content for movie and video games along with low optimized characters for mobile and virtual reality interactive games.
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GameYan
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Trust in your employees is essential for remote work success. It also forms the underlying foundation of a great virtual culture.
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Larry English (Office Optional: How to Build a Connected Culture with Virtual Teams)
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The key to scaling your culture lies in leadership. Specifically, you must hire leaders who embody your culture and train them to lead in a way that aligns with your culture and values.
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Larry English (Office Optional: How to Build a Connected Culture with Virtual Teams)
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Ganesh Chaturthi is one of the major festivals in India and is celebrated on a large scale in many states of India. This popular festival is approaching and these celebrations are done all over with a lot of enthusiasm. During the pandemic, the celebrations are set to be different as the mode of celebrations has become somehow reformed.
The widespread celebrations across 11 days of the festival might turn out to be great for you. The good times might bring the best for your life. The government has insisted on various measures for safeguarding the general health and well-being of people and with this approach, the virtual world has become quite open to new ways of getting various services. There are some of the important tips to follow for finding your best match during this phase.
Find your soulmate
The people planning to get the best matches for their life can find this as the most auspicious phase to search for the prospective match and make proceeding to have them in their life. Lord Ganesha gets the prime worshipping place and this festival will allow growing your life’s scope with finding the most loving soulmate. TruelyMarry can make the occasion of Ganesh Pooja to accomplish the most important event in your life, i.e., your marriage.
· Virtual Selection
In this Covid struck phase, the virtual selection of your life partner could be done with the sophisticated website platform and application. There is no longer any worry and you can choose the best matches by shortlisting the different matches. It is no longer difficult to find your better half as the online platform can make it obtain with ease.
· Following social norms
TruelyMarry platform assures that there are only valid profiles available on their platform. They make sure that the social norms are followed and you get the most amazing matches for the distant relationships. You can choose your interests and the profiles with similar matches will be revealed to you.
This Ganesh Chaturthi can bring a lot of happiness to your life. It is the motive of every person to find the perfect life partner and TrulyMarry.com will be your assistance in becoming your associate for the same. You can find every profile with details through the enhanced research and the membership assures being capable of knowing all the details in the most responsible way. The list of handpicked profiles will be presented to you to make the right selection. The initial registration is free of cost followed by an option to choose the membership plans. There are several ways for making the selection, by applying filters or making the selection based on community, religion, caste, and profession.
TruelyMarry.com majorly focuses on the Indian community Matrimonial Services and is a unique portal for finding the perfect soulmate. May the blessings of the Lord on Ganesh Chaturthi make you successful in obtaining your best match through online or offline consultation. Our team is highly efficient and would assure you meeting your life partner at our matrimony platform.
Bappa will be with you for every new beginning in life..!! Wishing you & your family a very Happy Ganesh Chaturthi.
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Rajeev Singh (Distributed Denial of Service Attacks: Concepts, Mathematical and Cryptographic Solutions (De Gruyter Series on the Applications of Mathematics in Engineering and Information Sciences Book 6))
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Most anyone can learn to be a great virtual employee. The top skills to learn are setting healthy boundaries between your work life and personal life and building relationships virtually.
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Larry English (Office Optional: How to Build a Connected Culture with Virtual Teams)
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the shadows. “Why do you think they invented chess?” “He’s got you there,” said the captain, following Fletcher. Jake jogged slightly to catch up as Captain Chenoweth continued. “These guys are exactly who we need to get you to your destination. They’ve got contacts throughout the area, and we should be able to slip through without anyone even knowing we’re coming.” “But why should anyone care?” Captain Chenoweth pointed back the way they’d come, toward the coastal village. “Those people down there didn’t know us, but they were ready to kill you. Now, no matter what started this little conflict, don’t think for a second anyone here cares which side you’re on. In their eyes America is their enemy, and they’re likely to kill us all simply to vent their frustration. Either that, or they’ll capture us and hold us for ransom – maybe do what those wannabe terrorists did and chop our heads off, posting it on the internet for shits and giggles. We’re not sitting in your little ivory bubble anymore. Highly polished principles won’t wash well here.” The words felt like a slap in the face. “You think I’m that naive?” he eventually mustered after an awkward pause. Captain Chenoweth gave a short whistle, and the SEAL team dropped back from their defensive positions, jogging up the short hill and clambering into the rear of one of the virtually invisible trucks. “I think it’s time to go, sir.” And with that simple statement, Captain Chenoweth relayed volumes to Jake, who nodded silently and walked toward the large truck, its back tray covered by a canvas roof stretched over a high, metal frame. Jake saw the SEAL team seated alongside Fletcher and three of his men, two bench-seats running the length of the tray. He climbed awkwardly into the back of the truck as its engine roared to life. The tray reeked of livestock; the musky scent of animal feces mixed with grass or hay and wet fur. Jake gagged, but otherwise remained silent, still stinging from the captain’s indirect rebuke. Complaining of the stench would only serve to lower him further in their esteem. Captain Chenoweth climbed in alongside
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Russell Blake (9 Killer Thrillers)
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The electronics effort faced even greater challenges. To launch that category, David Risher tapped a Dartmouth alum named Chris Payne who had previously worked on Amazon’s DVD store. Like Miller, Payne had to plead with suppliers—in this case, Asian consumer-electronics companies like Sony, Toshiba, and Samsung. He quickly hit a wall. The Japanese electronics giants viewed Internet sellers like Amazon as sketchy discounters. They also had big-box stores like Best Buy and Circuit City whispering in their ears and asking them to take a pass on Amazon. There were middlemen distributors, like Ingram Electronics, but they offered a limited selection. Bezos deployed Doerr to talk to Howard Stringer at Sony America, but he got nowhere. So Payne had to turn to the secondary distributors—jobbers that exist in an unsanctioned, though not illegal, gray market. Randy Miller, a retail finance director who came to Amazon from Eddie Bauer, equates it to buying from the trunk of someone’s car in a dark alley. “It was not a sustainable inventory model, but if you are desperate to have particular products on your site or in your store, you do what you need to do,” he says. Buying through these murky middlemen got Payne and his fledgling electronics team part of the way toward stocking Amazon’s virtual shelves. But Bezos was unimpressed with the selection and grumpily compared it to shopping in a Russian supermarket during the years of Communist rule. It would take Amazon years to generate enough sales to sway the big Asian brands. For now, the electronics store was sparely furnished. Bezos had asked to see $100 million in electronics sales for the 1999 holiday season; Payne and his crew got about two-thirds of the way there. Amazon officially announced the new toy and electronics stores that summer, and in September, the company held a press event at the Sheraton in midtown Manhattan to promote the new categories. Someone had the idea that the tables in the conference room at the Sheraton should have piles of merchandise representing all the new categories, to reinforce the idea of broad selection. Bezos loved it, but when he walked into the room the night before the event, he threw a tantrum: he didn’t think the piles were large enough. “Do you want to hand this business to our competitors?” he barked into his cell phone at his underlings. “This is pathetic!” Harrison Miller, Chris Payne, and their colleagues fanned out that night across Manhattan to various stores, splurging on random products and stuffing them in the trunks of taxicabs. Miller spent a thousand dollars alone at a Toys “R” Us in Herald Square. Payne maxed out his personal credit card and had to call his wife in Seattle to tell her not to use the card for a few days. The piles of products were eventually large enough to satisfy Bezos, but the episode was an early warning. To satisfy customers and their own demanding boss during the upcoming holiday, Amazon executives were going to have to substitute artifice and improvisation for truly comprehensive selection.
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Brad Stone (The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon)
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It’s getting-up time,” Alessandro declares. “Today is the day.”
“What day?”
“The release date.”
“What are we talking about?”
“Daa-add. The new XBOX game. Hunting Old Sammie.”
Armand opens his eyes. He looks at his son looking at him. The boy’s eyes are only inches away. “You’re kidding.”
“It’s the newest best game. You hunt down terrorists and kill them.” Lifting his voice, “‘Deploy teams of Black Berets into the ancient mountains of Tora Bora. Track implacable terrorists to their cavernous lairs. Rain withering fire down on the homicidal masterminds who planned the horror of September eleven, two-thousand-and-one.’” The kid’s memory is canny.
Armand lifts Alex off his chest and sits up. “Who invented it?”
“I’m telling you, dad. It’s an XBOX game.”
“We can get it today?”
“No,” Leah says. “Absolutely not. The last thing he needs is another violent video game.”
“Mahhuum!”
“How bad can it be?” says Armand.
“How would you know? A minute ago you hadn’t heard of it.”
“And you had?”
“I saw a promo. Helicopter gunships with giant machine guns. Soldiers with flamethrowers, turning bearded men into candles.”
“Sounds great.”
“Armand, really. How old are you?”
“I don’t see what my age has to do with it.”
“Dad, it’s totally cool. ‘Uncover mountain strongholds with thermal imaging technology. Call in air-strikes by F-16s. Destroy terrorist cells with laser weaponry. Wage pitched battles against mujahideen. Capture bin Laden alive or kill him on the spot. March down Fifth Avenue with jihadists’ heads on pikes. Make the world safe for democracy.’”
Safe for Dick Cheney’s profits, Armand thinks, knowing all about it from his former life, but says nothing. It’s pretty much impossible to explain the complexity of how things work within the greater systemic dysfunction. Instead, he asks the one question that matters.
“How much does it cost?”
Alessandro’s mouth minces sideways. He holds up fingers, then realizes he needs more than two hands.
Armand can see the kid doesn’t want to say. “C’mon. ’Fess up.”
Alex sighs. “A one with two zeros.”
“One hundred dollars.”
Alex’s eyes slide away. Rapid nods, face averted. “Yeah.”
“For a video game, Alex.”
“Yhep.”
“No way.”
“Daa-add! It’s the greatest game ever!” The boy is beginning to whine.
“Don’t whine,” Armand tells him.
“On TV it’s awesome. The army guys are flaming a cave and when the terror guys try to escape, they shoot them.”
“Neat.”
“Their turbans are on fire.”
“Even better.”
“Armand,” Leah says.
“Dad,” says Alessandro.
He will not admit it but Armand is hooked. It would be deeply satisfying in the second-most intimate way imaginable to kill al Qaida terrorists holed up along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border—something the actual U.S. military cannot or will not completely do. But a hundred bucks. It isn’t really the money, although living on interest income Armand has become more frugal. He can boost the C-note but what message would it send? Hunting virtual terrorists in cyberspace is all well and good. But plunking down $100 for a toy seems irresponsible and possibly wrong in a country where tens of thousands are homeless and millions have no health insurance and children continue, incredibly, to go hungry. Fifty million Americans live in poverty and he’s looking to play games.
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John Lauricella (Hunting Old Sammie)