To Communicate More Effectively, Use The Theory Of Seven | Forbes

June 26, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

My Theory of Seven says that anytime you have to communicate with a large group of people, you should do so as though everyone is seven years old. This doesn’t mean talking down to people; it means being so interesting, clear and simple that you hold their attention.

The Theory of Seven works in marketing, selling, speaking, education, and management.

We’ve all suffered through the speaker who drones on and on for an hour, assuming that adults have an infinite ability to pay attention. In reality, you probably started daydreaming before the guy finished thanking his host, colleagues, mentors, former teachers and long-lost relatives.

Future Soldiers May Wear Bulletproof Spider Silk | Livescience

June 26, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Ultra-strong spider silk, one of the toughest known natural fibers, could one day protect soldiers on the battlefield from bullets and other threats, one company says.

Spider silk is light and flexible, and is stronger by weight than high-grade steel. Its potential applications span a wide range of industries, from surgical sutures for doctors to protective wear for the military. But producing and harvesting enough spider silk to make these types of products commercially available has posed a challenge.

Google I/O 2014: Live Updates From Google’s Biggest Event of the Year | Mashable

June 25, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Google is kicking off its developers conference, Google I/O, with a keynote that’s sure to be jam-packed with news. Mashable will be reporting the news live from the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

Some of Google’s sessions this year are dedicated to adapting apps for wearables and the company’s Chromecast device. And just before the conference, Google-owned Nest opened its smart thermostat up to developers. Clearly, extending apps to new and emerging platforms will be a theme. Here’s what else we’re expecting.

What Cannes Lions Taught Us About Marketing To Millennials | Adrants

June 25, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

A panel of experts was assembled last week at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, who gave us their take on marketing to Millennials in 2014.

The panel, of course, agreed that brands must resonate with their target audience and have a realistic understanding of societal needs in order to have the kinds of conversations deemed to be relevant by millennial consumers.

In order to engage with Millennials, it was noted that brands must be willing to loosen up and give up control, which is a scary idea for most brands.

Diane Sawyer – ABC World News | Elle

June 25, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

With Katie Couric going to Yahoo, Barbara Walters retiring from The View, and Chelsea Handler moving over to Netflix, this has been The Year of Powerful Women Leaving TV. Then, today, ABC announced that their World News anchor, Diane Sawyer, would be stepping down, too. What gives?

Thankfully, as ABC president James Goldston asserted, Sawyer’s not leaving television entirely, or even ABC. Instead, she’ll be “stepping aside” from World News to lead “new programming tackling big issues and extraordinary interviews,” according to Goldston.

Creative Workspaces | Creatingminds.org

June 24, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Being creative in a dingy hovel with people shouting at you is probably not the best environment to encourage optimal creativity. In practice, you need a range of measures to help this fragile flower bloom.

Environments which are dirty, cramped, uncomfortable and noisy are not the best for encouraging creative thinking. If we can design our general working environment with care and concern.

A comfortable environment helps people forget about how uncomfortable they are and focus on the work at hand. Ergonomic chairs and desks. Good lighting. Clean and bright walls. Warm colors. Soft carpets. These and more help to create a sense of comfort. They also signal that our employers care about us, and hence motivate us further to extend ourselves in our work.

The real reason you’re broke | Squawkfox

June 24, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

I’d like to take a moment to be mean. I not going to be a bully-type of mean. But I do want to get a little mean with you. A friendly sort of mean. The type of mean where a good friend would take you out for a drink or coffee and chat you up in a concerned, caring way. We’re not squawking about an intervention here, but rather, some serious tough love.

Ready? Here goes … and remember I’m buying you that drink or coffee by taking the time to tell you the honest to goodness truth. I’ll stop stalling now … gulp!

Employees Who Stay In Companies Longer Than Two Years Get Paid 50% Less| Forbes

June 23, 2014June 23, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The worst kept secret is that employees are making less on average every year. There are millions of reasons for this, but we’re going to focus on one that we can control. Staying employed at the same company for over two years on average is going to make you earn less over your lifetime by about 50% or more.

Keep in mind that 50% is a conservative number at the lowest end of the spectrum. This is assuming that your career is only going to last 10 years. The longer you work, the greater the difference will become over your lifetime.

Meet a new generation of female tech entrepreneurs |Money.cnn.com

June 23, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

At age 17, Brienne Ghafourifar achieved a world record. She became the youngest college graduate to raise $1 million in venture funding for her business.

“I usually don’t talk about that,” Ghafourifar, now 19, says with a nervous laugh, hesitating to brag about her achievement. “I usually let my brother talk about that for me.

“Immediately after graduating from Santa Clara University with a bachelor’s degree in economics, Ghafourifar founded her first startup, Entefy, with her older brother Alston. The cross-device platform aims to aggregate and house all of your disparate forms of electronic communications — texts, emails, IMs, etc. — onto one interface.

Bond Market Has $900 Billion Mom-and-Pop Problem When Rates Rise | Bloomberg

June 23, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

It’s never been easier for individuals to enter some of the most esoteric debt markets. Wall Street’s biggest firms are worried that it’ll be just as simple for them to leave.

Investors have piled more than $900 billion into taxable bond funds since the 2008 financial crisis, buying stock-like shares of mutual and exchange-traded funds to gain access to infrequently-traded markets. This flood of cash has helped cause prices to surge and yields to plunge.

Now, as the Federal Reserve discusses ending its easy-money policies, concern is mounting that the withdrawal of stimulus will lead to an exodus that’ll cause credit markets to freeze up. While new regulations have forced banks to reduce their balance-sheet risk, analysts at JPMorgan Chase & Co. JPM are focusing on the problems that individual investors could cause by yanking money from funds.

There’s a bigger risk “that when the the Fed starts hiking in earnest, outflows from high-yielding and less-liquid debt will lead to a free fall in prices,” JPMorgan strategists led by Jan Loeys wrote in a June 20 report. “In extremis, this could force a closing of the primary market and have serious economic impact.”