Nicolas Lin @nicolas-lin - Tumblr Blog

Two design prototypes for 2017′s International Conference on Social Media & Society marketing material.

Rachel Gillett looks at the hardest and most useful skills to learn.

#positivity #routine #skills #sleep #time management

An unexpected invitation that turned into to an even more unexpected result

The #HackingConflict Hackathon that took place in the Canadian capital, Ottawa from May 27 -28, was co-organized by the Government of the Netherlands, the SecDev Institute, the Canadian International Council, and the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada. Six multi-disciplinary teams with bright young minds were selected to undertake an important challenge: "How to leverage social media, big data and new technologies to hack through the fog of war and empower non-violent actors seeking to transform their national or regional conflicts." It all began in mid-May, 2015, a week before the event. Anatoliy Gruzd, a professor from Ryerson's MBA program, invited me to join his Social Media Lab team to compete in Ottawa. I'm no stranger to hackathons given Toronto's thriving startup community and Ryerson's unique support network in the entrepreneurship space. I've always loved the multi-disciplinary teams and the rapid ideation and prototyping culture seen in hackathons that encourage strangers from all walks of life to come together and create change. The #HackingConflict Hackathon was unique in its cause, objective, and the composition of the teams. The challenge itself is not one that many of us have immediate experience with but can certainly develop an empathy for. During a short period of 2 days, our team developed a deeper understanding of the challenge environment and became deeply rooted in the cause to help educate youth and reduce misguided tension in conflict zones like Ukraine. We developed the TruthDetective concept as a means to battle disinformation. My team received the Compatriots Award, an award selected by the participants in the challenge, which was a huge honour. Like most Hackathons, there are judges, prizes, and as a result 'winners'. Although this may sound cliché, every team that participated in the #HackingConflict Hackathon is a winner. What each of us won was the foundation to create change. Real change. The recognition from our peers and the opportunity to create real change have encouraged us to forge ahead. This is my biggest takeaway: that there is life for every idea after a hackathon. And it's simply a choice of whether a team wants to pursue it. And we do. For the next few months, my team will be exploring funding opportunities and developing an implementation plan. We are optimistic and determined to make our idea TruthDetective into reality. If you have any thoughts about our idea and approach, please do leave me a comment!

What is Design Thinking?

DevOps

As MBA graduates, we have amazing opportunities and choices available, even if we don't realize it. All we have to do is take some of that entrepreneurship and research ability learned in the program and apply it to our own lives as if it were a star...

This article if very helpful for those of who are thinking their next step after the MBA program.

Start with why - how great leaders inspire action | Simon Sinek | TEDxPugetSound

I’ve watched Simon Sinek’s Start with why TED talk many times already, but I can’t stop watching it over and over again. This TED talk is truly inspiring and completely changed the way how I process my thinking.

#start with why

Stanford Design Thinking Virtual Crash Course

http://dschool.stanford.edu/dgift/

#design thinking

What is virtualization anyway?

Throughout my MBA program in the past year, I’ve made a lot of new friends during networking events. Of course, quiet often the first thing you’ll be asked when you meet a new person is “What’s your background?” or “What were you doing before MBA?” I get excited whenever someone asks me that question. - “I specialized in computer virtualization!” “You know! The technology that powers the Cloud!” Every time in the networking event, there will be at least one or two person scratch their heads and sincerely ask me to explain the technology further. As usual, I start spiting out technical jargon and assume my audience would understand:

“Normally your computer can only run one operating system on a single hardware (computer), but with virtualization, you can run multiple virtual machines on that single hardware with isolated environment and each VM has its own RAM/Disk/OS.”

As a result, 99% of the time that they have no idea what I was talking about because of the assumption I made. So I figure that I should come up with or find a better analogy that even my parents would understand what exactly does virtualization do. I came across to David Beaumont’s blog and found this wonderful Matrix analogy of virtualization:

“There is a scene where the main character Neo is surrounded by hundreds of Mr. Anderson clones (the bad guys). Though the Mr. Andersons were all copies, they did different things and they were not limited to one task. They took one Mr. Anderson and divided him into multiple ones. This is kind of like that creation of many virtual or artificial resources from one physical resource that was mentioned earlier.”

If this analogy still confuses your parents, David offered another one:

“You could possibly think of virtualization like growing a plant. If you think about how a plant grows, you will see that the plant often starts off as seed or single shoot where a piece has been cut off and placed in water. Within a few weeks you begin to see multiple leaves from a single shoot or even from that seed if it has been planted and watered correctly. Again, this goes back to that creation of many virtual or artificial resources from one physical resource. You get many leaves or shoots from that one initial seed or shoot.”

I also love this one comment from David Beaumount’s post:

“ We each drive to work each day occupying 1 seat in our car, along with other drivers occupying one seat in their car. Servers performing just one task are equally inefficient. Virtualization is the process by which we fill those extra seats, and run in the most efficient configuration. It's carpooling for servers. You can go so far as to expand the idea to towing one of the riders car behind in case you break down in an emergency (SRM).” - Rick

For sure, I will give these analogies a shot next time if I ever encounter such situation again.

#cloud computing

Potash Corp

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/potash-corp-profit-soars-77-on-higher-prices-hikes-payout/article22695980/

When Uralkali killed the Russian-Belarus potash cartel in the summer of 2013, prices dropped and the fertilizer market became more competitive.

The slump in prices underpinned Potash Corp.’s weak performance that year and threw into question the Canadian company’s strategy of pursuing price over volume.

Now, the miner is learning to live with the lower potash price. It cut jobs to reduce costs. The company raised its dividend to 38 cents (Canadian) a share from 35 cents citing improved cash flow.

A surge in demand from its customers in China, India and Brazil, as well as problems at one of its rival’s mines. Russia’s Uralkali had to suspend one of its main potash operations when brine flooded the mine.

Should I say Potash Corp is lucky? Uralkali's geographic location is closer to China.

Rogers Q4.2014

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rogers-profit-beats-estimates-as-customers-monthly-bills-rise/article22696128/

Rogers lost 58,000 postpaid wireless customers and 58,000 cable subscribers.

Should Rogers be worried?

Management consulting is a method for improving management and business practices, by providing advice - Ron Babin.

Definition of consultant and manager

A consultant is a person in a position to have some influence over an individual, a group, or an organization but has no direct power to make changes or implement programs.

A manager is someone who has direct responsibility over the action.

A client is a single individual, a work group, a department, or a whole organization, whom the consultant wants to influence.

The cloud refers to the virtualization of many computing resources into a single logical computing entity whose resources can then be re-virtualized into any number of logical computing entities. Advances in software rather than hardware largely drive the push toward cloud computing. Virtualization software is a major component, but so are new file systems and database management systems designed to take advantage of this style of server architecture by distributing data and the examination of data across multiple computers. Software of this type includes Hadoop and NoSQL, as well as commercial offerings by companies like Oracle and EMC.

IBISWorld.ca

What's the take-away in your life today?

Everyday we face different issues and bombarded with tons of information from your school, your work or your friends. But we never really pause and ask the question - 'why are we doing it?' It is important to hit the replay button and reflect what you have learned today. Reflection is not an easy skill to acquire but it is definitely something that everyone should work on.

Sometimes they go just to go. They don’t go to buy. There are so many reasons to go.

http://www.cultofmac.com/286791/former-apple-retail-chief-interview/

Liberal democracy is a form of government in which representative democracy operates under the principles of liberalism, i.e. protecting the rights of minorities and, especially, the individual.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_democracy

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