Samuel Aranda image is World Press Photo of the Year

 

World Press Photo of the Year - Taken on October 15, 2011 in Sanaa, Yemen
42-31691226 by © Samuel Aranda/Corbis  |  View on Corbis  |  Copy

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February 14, 2012

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Corbis contributor Samuel Aranda’s poignant image of a veiled woman comforting an injured relative was named the World Press Photo of the Year. The photograph — shot in a Yemen field hospital during demonstrations against President Ali Abdullah Saleh — was noted for its depiction of human compassion in the midst of an enormous event. Samuel worked anonymously in Yemen for weeks, the only western photographer to witness the country’s volatile struggle against dictatorship.

The World Press Photo Contest honors outstanding photojournalism in a number of categories. An international jury selected Aranda’s winning image from more than 100,000 entries.

Originally from Spain, Samuel has spent many years covering conflict and social issues in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. He received the Spanish National Award of Photography in 2006, and his work has been featured at Visa Pour L’Image, at the Cervantes Institute, on the BBC, and in The New York Times. He is currently based in Tunisia.

CORBIS: ON FEBRUARY 13, 2012, THE YEMEN TIMES FOUND FATIMA AL-QAWS, THE WOMAN YOU PHOTOGRAPHED WHILST COMFORTING HER SON ZAYED AL-QAWAS. WILL YOU TRY AND MEET WITH THEM ON YOUR COMING TRIP IN YEMEN?

SAMUEL: This is one of the first things that I want to do, because they are the most important for this award – the ones who fight for a change – I´ll meet them at the end of this week in Sanaa. The New York Times is supporting me in everything since the beginning of this project, and is really important that media like the Times still support photojournalists.

CORBIS: ON OCTOBER 15, 2011, THE PRECISE DAY WHEN YOU TOOK THAT PICTURES, TWELVE PEOPLE WERE KILLED BY THE SECURITY FORCES WHILST PROTESTING THE RULE OF PRESIDENT ALI ABDULLAH SALEH. DO YOU REMEMBER THE CONTEXT ON HOW YOU GOT INSIDE AND THEN OUTSIDE OF THE MOSQUE CONVERTED TO A FIELD HOSPITAL?

SAMUEL: Yes, I´ll never forget this day, it was calm in the morning, but the demonstrations started and half an hour later the government snipers started to shoot the protestors, and also bombing near the square with mortars was horrible. Then I took shelter in the mosque that they were using as a hospital and Fatima arrived at the hospital with her son Zayed, they were waiting a few seconds at the entrance of the mosque for medical treatment.

CORBIS: LATER YOU WENT TO TAIZ WITH JOURNALIST LAURA KASINOF AND YOU CAME UNDER FIRE FROM GOVERNMENT SOLDIERS. WHAT HAPPENED?

SAMUEL: We were working in Taiz and driving to a government checkpoint. They were nervous because there was a demonstration nearby, and they started to shoot our car without any reason. We just drove away from the area, but at least one protestor was killed that day.

CORBIS: YOU ARE ONE OF THE RARE FOREIGN JOURNALISTS WHO HAVE BEEN ABLE TO ENTER AND TO STAY IN YEMEN FOR SEVERAL WEEKS. YOU ASKED THE NEW YORK TIMES FOR WHO YOU WERE ON ASSIGNMENT TO NOT MENTION YOUR NAME. NOW WITH THE FALL OF SALEH, ALTHOUGH DEBATE IS OPENED ABOUT HIS IMMUNITY AND THE COMING ELECTIONS, DO YOU THINK THE CONDITIONS OF WORK WILL BE BETTER?

SAMUEL: Well, we were really few photographers this year in Yemen, Yuri Kozirev, Antoine Gyori, Karim Ben Khalifa and Lindsay Mackenzie, the ones that I remember now…, and yes, in the beginning of the assignment I asked the NYT to not publish my name because I was working without permission, and yes, I hope now with the new government in Yemen it will be more open to the media.

CORBIS: DO YOU THINK THAT YEMEN IS NOW READY TO ENTER IN A DEMOCRATIC ERA?

SAMUEL: I think people in Yemen are one of the greatest people on the planet, so I hope that they can reach a fair democracy, because they deserve it.

See a gallery of winning images from the 55th World Press Photo Contest

See Samuel Aranda’s Yemen image set at Corbis

 

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A mother comforting her son, injured while protesting the dictatorship of Yemen. Living true commands a price from all of us. Freedom is worth that price.

You need a good idea. Startup cash can make a real difference. Business experience and savvy also help, of course. But to take advantage of the most powerful weapon an entrepreneur can have, find a mentor.

A good mentor helps you think through a business idea, suggests ways to generate that startup capital and provides the experience and savvy you’re missing. You’ll get praise when you deserve it and a heads-up when trouble comes -- probably long before you would have noticed it yourself.

Related: Three Steps to Finding a Business Mentor

My grandfather who owned a memorabilia and antique shop in Vancouver, British Columbia, was a natural entrepreneur. He helped my brother Matthew and me launch our first successful venture: selling toy airplanes at a local festival when we were just seven and eight years old. With his help, we developed just the right marketing strategy -- putting on a show with the planes that created excitement and a "wow" impact. We sold out of planes in just two hours.

Our first mentor was someone whom we trusted and who cared about our success. He had the knowledge and skills to keep us focused, and he knew a small early success would spur us on to more entrepreneurial attempts. Looking back, I realize he really engineered our first foray into business to build our confidence and help us understand what it’s like to work for ourselves. Even now, nearly 30 years later, Matthew and I find ourselves remembering his advice when we’re planning or making decisions.

Although few entrepreneurs are fortunate enough to have a keen mentor in the family, it is possible to find one or two. Here are eight tips to getting the right mentor -- or group of mentors -- for you:

1. Determine your needs. Keeping in mind that your mentoring needs will shift as you start and build your business, take the time to determine exactly what kind of mentor you want now. Are you having trouble with the numbers, understanding your market or operations? Are you ready to ramp up production or still playing with concepts? Build a wish list for your mentor -- laying out what skills and support you need to get to the next step.
    
2. Take time to network. Networking isn't just important for finding customers. It’s also vital for finding a mentor. Who do you want helping you? Someone who sits in an office and thinks connecting with the business community means reading a couple of magazines a month? No, you want someone who’s out there, knows the market and can point you in the right direction.
    
3. Listen more, talk less. Given your youthful enthusiasm for entrepreneurship, it may be hard to stay silent. But to find a mentor, you need to listen -- a lot. Pay attention and you‘ll be able to separate the smart potential mentors from those who just use all the right words.
    
4. Be "mentorable." If you come off as someone who knows everything -- or thinks you do -- many people will back away. If you want to learn, be willing to consider ideas that may not match your expectations or opinions. Above all, don’t fall victim to your own hype. Your business may or may not have serious problems, but another viewpoint will help you sort things out.
    
5. Remain flexible. You may have mentors who stay with you over the long haul, but you will also benefit from people who provide just an afternoon of insightful ideas. If you are fortunate enough to get time with someone who is rarely available, absorb all you can and take notes. Your mentor may be skilled only in one specific area, but that’s okay. All help is good help.
    
6. Don't overlook nontraditional mentors. Some mentors may help you without their knowledge through books, seminars, speeches, videos on Ted, TV programs and the internet. My brother and I always looked to Richard Branson as one of our mentors. We don’t have to meet him in person to appreciate all he provides to entrepreneurs and others all over the world.
    
7. Thank your mentors. When people help you, intentionally or unintentionally, let them know. Mentors are not in it for the money; they just want to help others grow. Think about what you can do to let them know how much you appreciate them and their help.
    
8. Pay it forward. You may never be able to pay your mentors back, but you can recognize what they’ve done for you by becoming a mentor to others. That's one reason we started YoungEntrepreneur.com: to support those who share our dreams and goals.

Related: Are There Mentorship Programs for Product Developers?

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In these days of financial uncertainty, many consider becoming entrepreneurs; it's extremely important to find the support you need. One secret to your success may be in finding a mentor who's a good fit for you.

How much time do you spend each day getting better organized? Cut it in half.

When it comes to investing time, thought and effort into productively organizing oneself, less is more. In fact, not only is less more, research suggests it may be faster, better and cheaper.

IBM researchers observed that email users who "searched" rather than set up files and folders for their correspondence typically found what they were looking for faster and with fewer errors. Time and overhead associated with creating and managing email folders were, effectively, a waste.

By combining threading with search, technology makes an economic virtue of virtual disorganization. The personal productivity issue knowledge workers and effective executives need to ponder is whether habits of efficiency that once improved performance have decayed into mindless ruts that delay or undermine desired outcomes. Are folders and filing systems worth fifteen to twenty-five minutes a day of contemplative classification and sort for serious managers?

Obsessive Type As might insist hands-on organizational design is essential to getting a firm grasp on essential correspondence. More measured assessment argues that this is exactly the sort of administrivia where the energy literally isn't worth the effort. To frame the productivity issue more starkly: what would really prove more personally productive — folders that sort 15% faster? Or key phrase search capabilities that were 20% better?

Not a single colleague or client I know would pick the former. Their personal productivity paradigms have shifted. The notion of "getting organized" has the aroma of anachronism. Ongoing improvement in email/document/desktop and cloud-centric search frees them from legacy information management behaviors like filing.

Similarly, they want meeting invitations and schedules with embedded links that instantly trigger — and sync — commitments on their calendars. They don't want to spend more time overseeing scheduling logistics; they expect their technologies to smoothly structure time slots and highlight — and even anticipate — conflicts in advance. They're "organizing" for flexibility, adaptiveness and immediate response. More accurately, their technologies exist to give them greater speed and flexibility. Their personal organizational ethos reflects a Toyota Production System "just-in-time" attitude. The technical configuration facilitates a pull — not push — time management. Organization has given way to improvisation.

Siri offers a lovely honey-voiced example. Watching — or rather, listening to — how people use Apple's voice-recognition interface/assistant is remarkably revealing. A cynic would say she's a procrastinator's delight; the questions she answers and the requests she accommodates are overwhelmingly of the "last minute/on-the-go" variety. In the knowledge worker community I observe, Siri responds to and tracks personal organization on the fly. She's treated like a person whose job is to spare her boss from the mechanics and frictions of organizing. People don't use her to automate their personal organizational tasks like filing; they use her to do the task. (What's particularly fascinating is the look of horror/anger/irritation/panic if, in fact, Siri can't understand, find or make the requested change.)

Instead of better tools for better organizing, people want their organization done for them. Organizing is wasteful; getting its benefits is productivity. Consequently, people I work with want their email to recommend who should be added to the list of colleagues getting a document for review and comment; or have their calendar suggest additional invitees for a planned project review; or give them a reminder that they have a relevant Excel spreadsheet macro when they're revising a financial plan. They want what I've described earlier as "promptware" — a cue and intervention that creates measurable value in the moment, rather than promised efficiencies in the future.

The essential takeaway is that the new economics of personal productivity mean that the better organized we try to become, the more wasteful and inefficient we become. We'll likely get more done better if we give less time and thought to organization and greater reflection and care to desired outcomes. Our job today and tomorrow isn't to organize ourselves better; it's to get the right technologies that respond to our personal productivity needs. It's not that we're becoming too dependent on our technologies to organize us; it's that we haven't become dependent enough.

What are your thoughts? Do you think we need MORE or LESS organization?

What goals will you achieve in 2012? What's Stopping You? What's Your Excuse?

I recently got back from a month's vacation — the longest I've ever taken, and a shocking indulgence for an American. (Earlier this summer, I was still fretting about how to pull off two weeks unplugged.) The distance, though, helped me hone in on what's actually important to my professional career — and which make-work activities merely provide the illusion of progress. Inspired by HBR blogger Peter Bregman's idea of creating a "to ignore" list , here are the activities I'm going to stop cold turkey in 2012 — and perhaps you should, too.

1. Responding Like a Trained Monkey. Every productivity expert in the world will tell you to check email at periodic intervals — say, every 90 minutes — rather than clicking "refresh" like a Pavlovian mutt. Of course, almost no one listens, because studies have shown email's "variable interval reinforcement schedule" is basically a slot machine for your brain. But spending a month away — and only checking email weekly — showed me how little really requires immediate response. In fact, nothing. A 90 minute wait won't kill anyone, and will allow you to accomplish something substantive during your workday.
2. Mindless Traditions. I recently invited a friend to a prime networking event. "Can I play it by ear?" she asked. "This is my last weekend to get holiday cards out and I haven't mailed a single one. It is causing stress!" In the moment, not fulfilling an "obligation" (like sending holiday cards) can make you feel guilty. But if you're in search of professional advancement, is a holiday card (buried among the deluge) going to make a difference? If you want to connect, do something unusual — get in touch at a different time of year, or give your contacts a personal call, or even better, meet up face-to-face. You have to ask if your business traditions are generating the results you want.
3. Reading Annoying Things. I have nearly a dozen newspaper and magazine subscriptions, the result of alluring specials ($10 for an entire year!) and the compulsion not to miss out on crucial information. But after detoxing for a month, I was able to reflect on which publications actually refreshed me — and which felt like a duty. The New Yorker , even though it's not a business publication, broadens my perspective and is a genuine pleasure to read. The pretentious tech publication with crazy layouts and too-small print? Not so much. I'm weeding out and paring down to literary essentials. What subscriptions can you get rid of?
4. Work That's Not Worth It. Early in my career, I was thrilled to win a five-year, quarter-million dollar contract. That is, until the reality set in that it was a government contract, filled with ridiculous reporting mechanisms, low reimbursement rates and administrative complexities that sucked the joy and profit out of the work. When budget cuts rolled around and my contract got whacked, it turned out to be a blessing. These days, I'm eschewing any engagement, public or private, that looks like more trouble than it's worth.
5. Making Things More Complicated Than They Should Be. A while back, a colleague approached me with an idea. She wanted me to be a part of a professional development event she was organizing in her city, featuring several speakers and consultants. She recommended biweekly check-in calls for the next eight months, leading up to the event. "Have you organized an event like this before?" I asked. "Can you actually get the participants? Why don't you test the demand first?" When none materialized, I realized I'd saved myself nearly half a week's work — in futile conference calls — by insisting the event had to be "real" before we invested in it. As Eric Ries points out in his new book The Lean Startup , developing the best code or building the best product in the world is meaningless if your customers don't end up wanting it. Instead, test early and often to ensure you're not wasting your time. What ideas should you test before you've gone too far?

Eliminating these five activities is likely to save me hundreds of hours next year — time I can spend expanding my business and doing things that matter. What are you going to stop doing? And how are you going to leverage all that extra time?

Extra time...couldn't we all use some of THAT in 2012?

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The trap of social media noise

If we put a number on it, people will try to make the number go up.

Now that everyone is a marketer, many people are looking for a louder megaphone, a chance to talk about their work, their career, their product... and social media looks like the ideal soapbox, a free opportunity to shout to the masses.

But first, we're told to make that number go up. Increase the number of fans, friends and followers, so your shouts will be heard. The problem of course is that more noise is not better noise.

In Corey's words, the conventional, broken wisdom is:

• Follow a ton of people to get people to follow back
• Focus on the # of followers, not the interests of followers or your relationship with them.
• Pump links through the social platform (take your pick, or do them all!)
• Offer nothing of value, and no context. This is a megaphone, not a telephone.
• Think you're winning, because you're playing video games (highest follower count wins!)

This looks like winning (the numbers are going up!), but it's actually a double-edged form of losing. First, you're polluting a powerful space, turning signals into noise and bringing down the level of discourse for everyone. And second, you're wasting your time when you could be building a tribe instead, could be earning permission, could be creating a channel where your voice is actually welcomed.

Leadership (even idea leadership) scares many people, because it requires you to own your words, to do work that matters. The alternative is to be a junk dealer.

The game theory pushes us into one of two directions: either be better at pump and dump than anyone else, get your numbers into the millions, outmass those that choose to use mass and always dance at the edge of spam (in which the number of those you offend or turn off forever keep increasing), or

Relentlessly focus. Prune your message and your list and build a reputation that's worth owning and an audience that cares.

Only one of these strategies builds an asset of value.

Posted by Seth Godin on December 11, 2011 | Permalink

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In developing your brand and content, what are you focused on? Pushing your message to the masses or pulling the masses to your message?

November 14, 2011

Top-secret Google X lab rethinks the future

Google reportedly has researchers working on robots, elevators to space, and smart light bulbs at the Google X research lab

By Sharon Gaudin | Computerworld

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Google is running a secret research lab in the San Francisco area where they're building robots and re-imagining the future, the New York Times reported yesterday.

The lab, dubbed Google X, gives researchers an opportunity to work on developing technologies that might lead to people riding elevators into space some day or have a dinner plate report one's dinner menu to Google+.

[ Keep up on the day's tech news headlines with InfoWorld's Today's Headlines: Wrap Up newsletter. ]

Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, reportedly are "deeply involved" with Google X. According to the report, Page worked on Google X before he took over as the company's top executive this spring.

Citing unamed sources, the report said scientists are working on some 100 projects at the lab.

Many of those projects are focused on robotics, such as developing robots that could go to work while their owners stay home, or ones that care for humans.

The lab also is reportedly working on light bulbs and coffee makers that could be turned on and off remotely with an Android phone.

According to the New York Times report, Google's self-driving car that was introduced to the world last fall was developed in the Google X labs. The car has since driven hundreds of miles across California.

A robotic self-driving car seemed fairly far-afield for Google researchers, which are best known for creating the company's ubiquitous search engine, along with services like Google Maps, the Google+ social network and Android.

But Google has also long made it clear that it's looking to go down other roads.

"We've always been optimistic about technology's ability to advance society, which is why we have pushed so hard to improve the capabilities of self-driving cars beyond where they are today," Sebastian Thrun, a distinguished software engineer at Google, wrote in a blog post last year.

Thrun reportedly is a top executive at Google X. The New York Times also noted that Google may manufacturer the autonomous cars themselves instead of turning to automobile manufacturers.

Google did not respond to a request for comment on the Google X report.

Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld. Follow Sharon on Twitter at @sgaudin, or subscribe to Sharon's RSS feed. Her email address is sgaudin@computerworld.com.

Read more about emerging technologies in Computerworld's Emerging TechnologiesTopic Center.

Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.

I used Google search to find this story about Google and then sent the story to my Google-built Android phone. I guess all that's left is to add this to my Google+ profile....

What's a digital wallet?
A digital wallet refers to an electronic device that allows an individual to make electronic commerce transactions. This can include purchasing items on-line with a computer or using a smartphone to purchase something at a store.Increasingly, digital wallets are being made not just for basic financial transactions but to also authenticate the holder's credentials. For example, a digital-wallet could potentially verify the age of the buyer to the store while purchasing alcohol. It is useful to approach the term 'digital wallet' not as a singular technology but as three major parts: the system (the electronic infrastructure) and the application (the software that operates on top) and the device (the individual portion).

How was this information gathered?
Primarily, articles were found on popular tech sites using Google Search and Google News. We also used search queries such as “digital wallet” and “mobile wallet”. A few sources, e.g. mFerio, were found by searching through peer-reviewed, academic journals. In terms of organization, this overview does take some editorial decisions. Section two has been divided into a) systems and b) applications because the sources refer to the development of a mobile payment system but do not necessarily specify the digital wallet application(s) associated with that system. When it was clear to us that a specific digital wallet application was being discussed, then we placed that technology in the applications section. If you feel that something should be changed or added to this overview, please e-mail Grant Patten.

Why does it matter?
As we increasingly depend on digital mediums to identify ourselves to governments, businesses and each other, critical questions arise: who is designing these technologies, for what motives, and how do these technologies operate? While there are benefits of digital wallets (e.g. the ease of transactions for customers and the possibility of a more fraud-proof ID system), there are various concerns. Digital exchanges can provide citizens the disservice of hiding what information is being exchanged; should an organization be able to collect your name, address and gender while it only needs to verify your age? Are they allowed to keep this information perpetually, possibly tracking how many times you visit them?

How can Prop-ID Contribute?
This research project can contribute by reminding the digital wallet market that increased efficiency is not the only goal here. The public interest must also be served. There has not been much discourse in the press around how digital wallet technologies could actually be used to help citizens regain some modicum of control over their personal information. Mobio Identity Sytems from Vancouver purports to enable selective disclosure but there hasn't been much discussion about that feature in the reviews of the program. Instead, its ability to facilitate financial transactions has been frontlined. Perhaps the most similar project to ours, then, is the one that Mydex is developing called Personal Data Stores. Mydex is a community interest company (CIC) that seems to have a mandate similar to Prop-ID. CICs were setup in the UK to develop solutions primarily with the public interest in mind, rather than for private benefit.

Use the link to read the full explanation and learn more about digital/E-wallet technology.

How HP Uses Social Media Science To Make Predictions

By Michael Stelzner
Published September 23, 2011

In this video I interview Bernardo Huberman, director of the Social Computing Research Group at HP Labs and author of The Laws of the Web: Patterns in the Ecology of Information.

Bernardo shares why HP is studying social media as portal to understanding their customers and consumers. You’ll discover how HP is able to predict sales weeks before a product is released thanks to social media research.

Be sure to check out the takeaways below after you watch the video.

Here are some of the things you’ll learn in this video:

• What you can learn about social behavior on social media
• How social media monitoring and research can help you learn more about your customers
• What you need to know about how people pay attention
• How to measure the degree of the interest people show in your product or service on social media
• How to analyze people’s behavior on the social web
• How you can predict the success of new ideas and new products
• How to determine how influential are you and how this correlates to the number of your followers
• How to understand the passivity of your followers and how this impacts social shares
• Why the “winner takes all” phenomenon impacts social media

Connect with Bernardo on Twitter @bhuberman and check out HP’s Social Computing Research website.

Do you monitor or research what social media tells you about your business? What are your thoughts on this? Please leave your comments below.

Tags: bernardo huberman, hp labs, michael stelzner, sales predictions, social computing research, social media research, social media science, social research, the laws of the web

Do you think it's interesting or frightening that social media behavior can be categorized, analyzed, predicted and leveraged?