Tag: modern culture

architecture · behavior · community · creativity · design

Route Planning For The Happiest Walk, Not The Quickest | Co.Exist | ideas + impact

Beth Kelley

I am often focused on efficiency walking from place to place. But cyclists, runners, and other athletes talk about taking the more scenic route on their commutes or exercise routes, and maybe we should all follow suite.

Route Planning For The Happiest Walk, Not The Quickest | Co.Exist | ideas + impact

We’ve all [probably] taken a detour because the path is pleasant and scenic, even if it takes longer. But Google Maps and the like aren’t set up for that. They’re solely about speed and efficiency.Recent research led by Yahoo Labs shows how a planner-for-happiness might work. Using crowdsourced impressions of streets, Flickr data, and survey responses, it looks for a balance between “people’s emotional perceptions of urban spaces” and getting them to a destination in a reasonable amount of time.

more via Route Planning For The Happiest Walk, Not The Quickest | Co.Exist | ideas + impact.

behavior · brain · creativity · culture · happiness · health · mental health · play · Social

Playing is good for work productivity

Beth Kelley

Editor’s Note: Hi! I just wanted to take a minute to acknowledge that this post is VERY similar to a  post this week on the blog of digital agency Plexipixel. That’s because they were BOTH written by me, but I didn’t want to plagiarize my own work. For the original version of this post, check out their site.

…

The title of this blog post sums up the entire concept. There’s no other way to say it: you need to play to be a productive member of society.

However, this idea doesn’t seem to be sticking. 

The perception in America is that the harder and longer you work, the more productive you’ll be. Especially now when jobs are scarce and companies are holding on by the skin of their teeth, people sacrifice play, exercise, and good old legitimate downtime, not to mention sleep (September 30th was National Coffee Day!), to get more work done.

But it turns out we weren’t built to work that way. We need breaks, we need downtime, and we most certainly need to cut loose and be a little silly every once in awhile. As biology professor Robert Sapolsky pointed out in his book “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers,” occasional stress is good – it makes sure we get that report in on time and we are aware of our surroundings in a new city. But constant stress just wears us down.

Several studies have found that play increases new ideas and overall productivity at work. Germans, and other European countries, have more vacation time than Americans, and yet have overall higher productivity, according to data presented in an article in Open Forum. The O.E.C.D. put Americans at 1,804 work hours a year on average and the Germans at 1,436 hours in 2006.Author Thomas Geoghegan believes that Americans weren’t always this overworked. In an interview, Geoghegan explains that in the 1960’s, Americans spent more vacation time than they do now, and many people in their 50s or 60s will tell you that they take less vacation time than their parents did. In the same New York Times article, another commenter noted that Americans view time as a currency in the workplace, as opposed to output, whereas Germans view results as the biggest indicator of results.

And it’s not just time away from work that’s rejuvenating. Repeated research has found that play increases new ideas and overall productivity at work. Psychology Today reports that telling stories and jokes makes us better writers. It also reports that even a little bit of physical play or just boring old exercise – a brisk walk around the block three times a week – fights depression. 

New business, products, and companies stem from play. The t-shirt company Threadless, for example, started off 10 years ago as a hobby. The company has since grown to employ 80 workers, but Jake Nickell, founder and chief strategy officer, “has made sure playtime remains a part of company culture. Shooting a potato gun at plastic parachute guys is a way to relieve stress.”

 Pamela Meyer, author of “From Workspace to Playspace: Innovating, Learning and Changing through Dynamic Engagement,” agrees that taking time out for fun is a good workplace practice.

“This idea of play space is very much a key part of business success” because it fosters dynamic employee engagement, said Meyer in an interview with the Chicago Tribune. “Companies that engage their workers by giving them space to create, try new roles or test new ideas benefit from higher employee retention, greater productivity and better financial returns.”

So, to re-re-emphasize my point: Go play, it’s good for your work.

community · Social

Building communities through online tools

Beth Kelley

It used to be considered sketchy to combine our online and offline worlds. With programs like Meetup and Foursquare, however, those days are long gone.

Lisa Gansky an author, instigator & entrepreneur, wrote a book about it, The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing. She also wrote an article for Boing Boing about 100k Garages “a Mesh-web-enabled sharing-platform that pairs people who want to make things (Makers) with digital fabrication tools (Fabbers).

“Many projects are small businesses that sell unique items. But 100k Garages, a team-up of ShopBot Tools and Ponoko, uses grass roots enterprise and ingenuity to help get us back in action — to modernize our public infrastructure, develop energy-saving alternatives, or simply produce great new products for our homes and businesses. There are already thousands of ShopBot CNC tools in garages and small shops across the country, ready to locally fabricate the components needed to address our energy and environmental challenges and to locally produce items needed to enhance daily living, work, and business.”

There are other non-business examples too; the sport Parkour spread internationally thanks to YouTube and online forums. People donated to the Haiti Earthquake relief fund in record numbers because they could do it via text message. People have Meetups and Tweet ups all the time. Foursquare is based entirely on allowing people know virtually where you are physically. However, security and safety are still a major concern, and some people still feel odd sharing these kinds of details online where anyone can access them, not just the community members they intended.

How do online communities translate into interactions in the real world and vice versa? What has your experience been with the navigation of having specific communities that exist both online and in-person? Does one seem more real than the other? Comment below.

play · Social

Innovation, Education, and Making stuff

Beth Kelley

I am so excited to share! My friends Janine and Willow were quoted as part of a workshop this past week about the Maker culture that has been growing dramatically over the past ten years and is really starting to bloom. My friends are part of the Jigsaw Renaissance, based in Seattle. The article appeared on the O’Reilly Radar article (excerpt below, with my friend’s quote in bold):

From a social perspective, vibrant communities are organizing around projects, technologies, and physical places. For example, one community called DIYDrones has developed a $500 unmanned aerial vehicle using open source chip sets and gyroscopes. Hacker Spaces and Maker Spaces are springing up around the country — like Jigsaw Renaissance in Seattle, which seeks to encourage:

Ideas. Unfiltered, unencumbered, and unapologetically enthusiastic ideas. Ideas that lead to grease-smeared hands, lavender sorbet, things that go bang, clouds of steam, those goggle-marks you see on crazy chemistry geeks, and some guy (or girl) in the background juggling and swinging from a trapeze … Walk through our door with an open mind, and you are liable to be whisked off your feet and into a project you’d never have thought up. We encourage communal learning, asking questions, and pushing that red button. Go on. Do it. If you stick around long enough, you’ll end up being the one creating projects and doing the 3-2-1 countdown for some new toy. Which is exactly what we hope will happen.

Technologically — we are moving towards what MIT‘s Neil Gershenfeld has called personal fabrication. Consider how Moore’s Law has enabled the transition from the expensive and remote mainframe to the personal computer to the smartphone that fits in your pocket to the Internet of things. We are seeing the same phenomena with the dramatic reduction in the cost of the tools needed to design, make and test just about anything — including $1,200 3D printers, CAD tools, machine tools, sensors, and actuators. Remember the replicator from Star Trek? It’s rapidly moving from science fiction to science fact. What will happen as we continue to democratize the tools needed to make physical objects that are smart, aware, networked, customized, functional, and beautiful? I have absolutely no clue — but I am confident that it will be awesome. As one maker put it, “The renaissance is here, and it brought ice cream.”

Economically — we are seeing the early beginnings of a powerful Maker innovation ecosystem. New products and services will allow individuals to not only Design it Yourself, but Make it Yourself and Sell it Yourself. For example, Tech Shops are providing access to 21st century machine tools, in the same way that Kinkos gave millions of small and home-based business access to copying, printing, and shipping, and the combination of cloud computing and Software as a Service is enabling “lean startups” that can explore a new idea for the cost of ramen noodles.

Makers are also becoming successful entrepreneurs. Dale just wrote a compelling story about Andrew Archer — the 22-year-old founder of Detroit-based Robotics Redefined. As a teenager, Andrew started off entering robotics competitions and making printed circuit boards on the kitchen table. He is now building customized robots that transport inventory on the factory floors of auto companies. With more entrepreneurs like Andrew — we could see a bottom-up renaissance of American manufacturing.

The article even goes on to talk about why the Obama Administration is behind DIY-ers and Makers. Exciting stuff! Read the whole article on O’Reilly Radar.

Mental · psychology

Design*Sponge best of: Offices

Beth Kelley

Grace Bonney at Design*Sponge is creating a design book, but as a business owner also appreciates the need for your own creative/productive space. Hence, two blog posts (and hopefully book sections) dedicated to creating spaces that are good for productivity and innovation:

…there are over 20 amazing offices in this final group, ranging from simple, minimalist desks to colorful offices that will wake you up with bright paint and hot pink piping. Visit here for Part One.

[image above: i love the matisse print above d*s editors (and horne owners) ryan and alissa’s beautiful home office in philadelphia]

[image above: i love all the green (and the cute paris print!) in julie murphy’s home (founder of jack and lulu)]

more at DesignSponge » Blog Archive » sneak peek best of: offices part two.

education · school

The new economics of college vs. trade school…or no school

Beth Kelley

This is something that people have been struggling with for awhile, but as this article from the New York Times says, the current economic crisis is putting it into sharp perspective: a lot of kids are being pushed to go to college when in fact it may not be the best choice for their future.

College degrees are simply not necessary for many jobs. Of the 30 jobs projected to grow at the fastest rate over the next decade in the United States, only seven typically require a bachelor’s degree, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Among the top 10 growing job categories, two require college degrees: accounting (a bachelor’s) and postsecondary teachers (a doctorate). But this growth is expected to be dwarfed by the need for registered nurses, home health aides, customer service representatives and store clerks. None of those jobs require a bachelor’s degree.

Professor Vedder likes to ask why 15 percent of mail carriers have bachelor’s degrees, according to a 1999 federal study.

“Some of them could have bought a house for what they spent on their education,” he said.

Read the article…

Even though I was someone who excelled in college, and even went to graduate school, I am in fact a strong proponent of the idea that college is unnecessary for a lot of people. I think this was brought home even more for me the year that I worked as a college teaching assistant. The push for four-year colleges is almost starting to feel like a racketeering job.

I think we in the U.S. need to move past the stigma of not having a college degree being equivalent to being a slacker or stupid or unmotivated. If anything, they are smarter for not automatically buying into the system, they are more motivated to start contributing to the workforce, and more goal-oriented than their college-bound counterparts who often view college as an extension of high school.

gender

How women should ask for a raise

Beth Kelley

A couple of years ago I read the study that discussed how women who ask for raises are seen as pushy and it usually doesn’t go so well as for men. So how do we not come off as pushy, but still receive equal pay, I thought. FINALLY someone has done a study to try and figure out the answer. From the New York Times:

The work by Ms. Riley Bowles and her peers suggests that women in the work force can use specific advice. Here are some of their suggestions:
BE PROACTIVE If you believe you deserve a raise, don’t sit around and wait for someone to notice. “A lot of women, and this is quite commonly found, think, ‘As long as I work really, really hard, someone will notice and they will pay me more,’ ” said Karen J. Pine, a psychology professor at the University of Hertfordshire in Britain and co-author of “Sheconomics” (Headline Publishing Group, 2009). But “people don’t come and notice.”
You also want to think about the best time to approach your boss. It may make sense to approach him or her after an annual performance review, said Evelyn F. Murphy, president of the WAGE Project, a nonprofit organization, who runs negotiation seminars for women. “Or, if you just took on a major responsibility or won an award.”
BE PREPARED Doing your research pays, literally. A study found that men and women who recently earned a master’s degree in business negotiated similar salaries when they had clear information about how much to ask for.
But in industries where salary standards were ambiguous, women accepted pay that was 10 percent lower, on average, than men. “In our experiments, we found that with ambiguous information, women set less ambitious goals,” said Ms. Riley Bowles, who ran the study. “They asked for less in a competitive negotiation and got less.”
That theory also holds in other areas where there aren’t set expectations, like executive bonuses and stock options. “You get bigger gender gaps in those less standard forms of pay,” she added.
Uncategorized

Possible male contraceptive in ultrasound

Beth Kelley

A research team thinks it may be able to stop sperm production for up to six months using ultrasound, the same instrument used to look at fetuses in the womb, an often-occurring side effect of sperm:

University of North Carolina researchers, working with a $100,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, think that delivering a single dose of ultrasound to the male reproductive organs can stop sperm production for six months, after which time production fires up again.

Perhaps the best part: it’s non-hormonal, low-cost, and once treated the man has to do/remember absolutely nothing to remain infertile for up to half a year. Such an inexpensive and widely available method of stopping sperm production long-term — but not permanently — has plenty of appeal in the first world, but could be a serious boon for developing nations dealing with overpopulation and poverty.
The work is still preliminary, but the team is pushing forward with more clinical trials aiming to tweak the technique for optimum safety, as well as the greatest effect. In the meantime gents, we don’t recommend any attempts at self-medicating with unattended ultrasound machines. As with any experimentation that requires you to take off your pants, we recommend you let the professionals get a bit further along in the lab before trying this at home.
Uncategorized

I love political puppets!

Beth Kelley

I mean the kind of cloth-and-stick puppets that people make to protest or poke fun of politics and politicians.

One example from Kenya:

At a recent prayer breakfast in Kenya, religious matters were pushed aside and instead gluttony was the order of the day.
President Mwai Kibaki struggled to eat a whole chapatti in one go, Prime Minister Raila Odinga spilt tea down his suit and Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka struggled after getting a sausage stuck in his mouth.
Luckily, these were just puppets being filmed in the cramped dining room of a Nairobi home for the latest of 13 episodes of the XYZ show.
The satirical puppet show, which was influenced by the British 1980s show Spitting Image and France’s Les Guignols, is a chance for a group of scriptwriters and puppeteers to delve into the murky world of Kenyan politics.

Read full story…

Uncategorized

2009: The Year of Cute

Beth Kelley

I could go into the social and biological implications of why we’re turning away from sex to cute to sell things because it’s the latest trendy thing to do, or because both sex and cute are biological impulses ingrained in us and we as humans react to sub-consciously. But, eh, I just like this post because Cute Is Back.! 

Kia Hamsters (Vid)

To check out all the cute vids, go to CuteOverload.