Fast Company reporter and Do-It-Yourself college education advocate Anya Kamenetz reports on Coursekit, a free online application that is positioning itself as a more student- and teacher-friendly alternative to market leader Blackboard.  Kamenetz focuses her December 5 article in Fast Company on the business model used by Coursekit.  Coursekit is available free and ad-free for the next year (its first year in operation).  After that, it will continue to be free (that’s its value proposition) but could feature ads as a means of generating revenue.  To provide background, Kamenetz notes that Coursekit was developed by some dropouts from the undergraduate program at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania to provide an easier-to-use experience than Blackboard.  (I had actually read this before; whomever is launching this company has hired a great PR firm.)That intrigued me, because when Blackboard first hit the scene a bit over a decade ago, its ease of use was the key to its success.  Instructors could easily create course websites without knowing anything about HTML or Dreamweaver.  All they had to do was upload Word, Powerpoint and Excel documents, and fill in a few templates.But after a semester or two of work, Blackboard looked clunky and I returned to writing my own course websites in HTML.  After it established itself in the market, other educational technologists, too, tired of Blackboard.  Blackboard and its then competitor WebCT dramatically raised their prices, added a host of features that only a few teachers needed, and drove many schools to the open-source competitor, Moodle.  Moodle operates similarly to Blackboard and offers similar functions, but the software is open source so organizations avoid licensing fees.  I use Moodle but mostly for its privacy capabilities or when I'm told to; my feelings about the application and its usability are neutral. So Kamenetz's article--the second I had seen in a week about Coursekit--piqued my curiosity.  I wanted to see whether Coursekit was easier to use.So I checked it out myself and created a simple course website.  Its interface is cleaner, using a social media feed rather than the announcement boards typical of its predecessors.  The gradebook and submissions processes look much simpler than Blackboard and Moodle.What I liked the best was the calendar function, which lets instructors present all of the materials needed for a single session together.  I also appreciated the privacy settings, that let instructors keep some parts public and others private.  In terms of usability, the product seems to live up to its promise (won’t know until I use it under the real pressures of a term).But, as Kamenetz notes, how Coursekit handles advertising could make or break the product.  Read her article at http://www.linkedin.com/news?actionBar=&articleID=961161750&ids=0TdzoOcPoOdzAIc3kTcjoNcjoVb3gUcPoRdPAReiMVcjkMdPwNdjAIcjsQc38Qc3oV&aag=true&freq=weekly&trk=eml-tod2-b-ttl-3&ut=3KxPl_oj62yR01.

Guest Post by Karen Voloshin, DesignArounds In their book Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go: Career Conversations Employees Want two of my favorite colleagues Julie Winkle Giulioni and Beverly Kaye stress that  compelling conversation is at the heart of  career development that moves and inspires others. They go on to introduce us to three kinds of conversations aimed at growth and development. The first are hindsight-conversations that help others look backward and inward to determine who they are, where they’ve been, what they love, and where they excel. The second are foresight-conversations that keep employees looking forward and outward toward changes, trends, and the ever-evolving big picture.  The third, and one that intrigues me the most, are insight-conversations, where hindsight and foresight collide into moments of, often sudden, understanding about one’s unique definition of career success and how to move toward it. Those moments where it all clicks, connects, and makes perfect sense. We’ve all experienced moments of insight…maybe you’ve called them "eureka" or "aha" moments, or the moment when "the light bulb went on." Fascinating work in neuroscience by people like Mark Beeman, Jonathan Schooler and David Rock reveals how the brain generates insights and what that means for leaders: We tend to notice insights when our overall brain activity is relatively low. This happens when we are exerting less mental effort, focusing on something repetitive, or are more relaxed (like when we first wake up I the morning…assuming you are not a raging insomniac like me). Our attention constantly flips between being externally and internally focused.  When people have insights they are focused inward, letting their mind wander like a daydream, not focused externally on what they are trying to figure out. It turns out that the non-conscious processing resources in our brains are greater than our conscious ones. So given those factors what can we do to instigate moments of insight for ourselves and others?  Here are five ways  to increase the chances that insights will occur. Stop trying to force insights or think they are going to strike when it’s convenient or when you want them to, e. g. during a pre-scheduled career conversation. No insight will happen before its time. Do whatever you can to reduce feelings of pressure or stress during career discussions. Insights occur more frequently in a relaxed mental state.  So listen, demonstrate patience, don’t judge or project your own expectations. Let the employee drive and enjoy being in the passenger seat. Pose provocative questions without the expectation of an immediate answer.  Encourage soak time, daydreaming, and keeping notes or a journal to capture insights when they occur. Think about the venue. How about a conversation while you walk, or while doing something repetitive and mundane like stuffing envelopes or shredding? Seriously.  Insights are more likely and you’ll help out at the same time. Let the insight initiate the conversation versus the other way around. Neuroscience also tells us that moments of insight bring a heightened state of motivation with them because of amped up chemicals in the brain. This more intense energetic state is relatively short lived. So encourage employees to come find you when they have an "aha" moment. In day-to-day interactions pay attention and begin to notice an insight brewing and seize the moment to tease it out and discuss it. What are you doing to instigate insights? Let the question incubate and let us know about your flashes of brilliance. We’d love to hear. The post Instigate Insight: A Constructive Conspiracy appeared first on Julie Winkle Giulioni.

Alan Cohen's blog post was featuredHow to Survive the Era of the Hack: 5 Things Every Enterprise Should KnowCommentators called 2014 the "year of the hack." Many companies (and individuals) were sorely pressed to counter a seemingly non-stop vector of cyberthreats, as the bad guys became smarter and more lethal in the damage they could inflict.With the rotation to all things cyber, there is less focus on core security capabilities that could have reduced much of the attack surface as well as the spread of breaches and malware.One key question worth positing is whether companies fundamentally changed their security posture vis-à-vis their infrastructure and applications during this period. If enterprises want to counter cyberthreats, they need to both invest in APT and anti-malware technologies and improve their overall security posture. Following are five approaches enterprises should consider.1. Ubiquitous Understanding of Computing in the Data Center and CloudIf you ask an IT team whether they know all of the computing images running inside their data center and public cloud, they are likely to say "probably." If you ask whether they know what ports each workload has open, the answer will change to "probably not." This is the equivalent of not knowing whether all the doors within an apartment building are locked when a cat burglar is lurking in the building. Because of the threat of lateral communications exposure, enterprises need comprehensive and continuous visibility to all of their computing assets.2. Shrink the Attack Surface, Reduce the SpreadThe rough segmentation and isolation presented by the data center perimeter—hard crunchy exterior, soft chewy interior—means, for the most part, once you are behind the firewall, things are pretty much in the clear. Building on ubiquitous understanding, it important to create finer-grain segmentation of applications beyond traditional networking approaches like VLANs, zones, and subnets to make it more difficult to get to specific computing assets. The secondary benefit of micro-segmentation is reducing the ability of malware to spread between workloads in the data center.3. Built In, Not Bolted OnToday’s standard operational model of building applications usually calls for security to be "added" to an application after it has been built. The very act of having a developer hand off her work to someone else to secure it dramatically increases the risk profile of protecting the application since they have to "discover" exposures. IT must move to a model where security is embedded into the development process and not just bolted on afterwards.4. Reducing Complexity Can Make You More SecureEverything in the computing world has become more dynamic, distributed, heterogeneous, and hybrid over the past 10 years. Yet the network-oriented security chokepoint is built on a hierarchical model that requires everything to be brought back to it. Enterprises have thousands to millions of firewall rules, ACLs, and zones, many of which serve no purpose, but IT managers are too afraid to take them down (not knowing the impact of doing so). The easiest way to reduce this complexity—and remove the primal fear of living in this regime—is to create a security architecture that adapts to the changing computing environment without the "policy debt" of IP addressing.5. Embrace Diversity: Data Center and Cloud, Bare Metal and SoftwareToday’s computing environment is a little like Rome: The current empire is built on top of the previous ones. The only way to thrive is to embrace the past and not simply add an additional layer of security. Said simply, security approaches must embrace both the data center and the cloud, and not bifurcate along infrastructure lines. Today, it is common to see an enterprise’s computing stack running on Linux, Windows, virtual machines, and increasingly containers, on premises or in an Infrastructure-as-a-Service environment such as Amazon Web Services.Charles Dickens noted that we "forge the chains [we] wear in life." No one should simply throw away the practices of the past, nor should they be bonded to them in a changing landscape.Alan Cohen is the chief commercial officer of Illumio.See More

Technology and the schools has made the popular news on both sides of border in the past week or so.On the one hand, the Globe and Mail has run a special section on education, with a discussion of the need to re-design primary, secondary, and tertiary education to take advantage of the technologies now available for teaching. On the other hand, the New York Times has published a couple of articles raising the red flags about all-online schools.  The first appeared in Gail Collins' column, in which she raises a red flag about too much technology in primary and secondary education, specifically raising concerns about the tendency for many states to outsource online school programs to the for-profit company, K12 Inc.--and the lack of research evidence on the effectiveness for children of learning full-time in an online environment.She’s right to raise that flag. Although the research is clear that online learning is at least as effective as classroom learning, none of the studies were conducted in full-time, long-term environments.  Studies of long-term, full-time effects would, by necessity, need to look at side effects of learning, such as the effects on social development of spending most class time on the computer rather than with other children.She also raised a red flag about the sales pitch used to generate enrollments in these online programs, positioning "online learning as an alternative to a violent in-school experience."  See her column at  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/03/opinion/virtually-educated.html?src=recg.) The Times  followed with an in-depth of the for-profit charter school industry this Monday.  Profits and Questions at Charter Schools by Stephanie Saul provides an-depth exploration of online charter schools, suggesting that they perform better on Wall Street than Main Street.  Among the measures on which the schools are underperforming include student-teacher ratios, churn rate (numbers of students enrolling then transferring out), and all-important standardized tests. The article concludes that K12, one of the leading for-profit companies running these schools "a portrait emerges of a company that tries to squeeze profits from public school dollars by raising enrollment, increasing teacher workload and lowering standards." View the entire article at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/13/education/online-schools-score-better-on-wall-street-than-in-classrooms.html?src=recg&pagewanted=all.The common themes underlying all of these articles are that technology in the schools is still viewed as something separate and something to be viewed with suspicion, and that some of the implementations of technology--intended to promote its virtues--only deepen those initial concerns.  

Bernat Guitart's blog post was featuredMobile World Congress: IoT Cars Sans Mirrors, Wearables and Firefox OS DisappointsThe Mobile World Congress is back in Barcelona to present the edgiest technology in the sector. The crew from AppFutura went to discover what’s new from all the major companies in the mobile world. With the event expecting to break all attendance records, it’s satisfying to see the organization has put a lot of effort to making things run smoothly this year.Our trip was focused on the main products being presented over the 4 days of the event. Many announcements were already known and some firms even presented their products before the official event on Sunday afternoon local time. I’ll begin by saying that smartphones are not going anywhere and wearables are here to stay. Moreover, the Internet of Things is more real than ever with connected cars coming on strong, as we could see at the 2015 CES.Smartphones? We all agreed all devices are headed to a more sophisticated look. The announcements we were most excited about were the new Samsung Galaxy S6 (and S6 Edge) and the new HTC One M9. Samsung seems determined to compete with the iPhone and the new Samsung devices are definitely a step forward, saying goodbye to plastic shells and going into the metal and crystal league. These new materials and sophisticated one-piece look have come with another consequence: no more removable batteries. HTC One M9 (photo by Bernat Guitart) On the other hand, the new HTC One M9 looks quite similar to its predecessor. It seems HTC decided to keep what they knew was working and put a lot of effort in the areas where the M8 failed. In this direction, they improved the camera substantially with an outstanding 20-megapixel shooter and made some interesting UI changes.We gave Microsoft's new Windows 10 a test. It seems they have learned from their mistakes, and after all the heat on Windows 8's Metro, they have gone back to a more traditional Start button to access all main functions. Metro is not gone, but it is now optional. We wanted a first look at the very much anticipated Spartan browser, which is to replace the traditional (and infamous) Internet Explorer, but we’ll have to wait a bit longer - Microsoft has not presented it yet.The Nokia stand caught our attention. What are they up to after Microsoft purchased their Lumia line? We were actually very surprised to discover their new product, a fantastic 8-inch Android tablet with great design and feel, the Nokia N1. They decided to focus on the development of this new device, make something great and then move on from that. This only-Wi-Fi connection tablet is only available in China for now, for $230 and it is expected to be released in America and Europe later this year. Look out, iPad, there's a much cheaper and worthy competitor here.Talking about wearables, the Huawei Watch has become the first Android Wear device with a sapphire crystal display. The result is a beautiful piece that their creators are comparing to Swiss made watches. The look is amazing but the price remains unknown, which could definitely weigh into our final opinion on this device.Huawei presentation (photo by Bernat Guitart)Let’s move on to the Internet of Things. Just like at CES in Las Vegas, connected cars are becoming a regular at these events and they are certainly present at the MWC. We were surprised to not see more presence of Android Auto, but instead, customized solutions for every car. We spent a while looking at a Maserati the Qualcomm team was displaying. A fantastic piece of machinery with great features that make you think the future is here. Besides all the outstanding navigation features, be ready to say goodbye to all the mirrors on your cars - only cameras will prevail.Following with the IoT we noticed a booth dedicated to the up and coming 5G connections. While everything is at a purely theoretical stage, it was exciting to see what we should be expecting for future years. First prototypes of 5G technology applications are aimed to connect different machines and devices, making them have new and novel capabilities. That said, there are still no concepts of applications for more mainstream use.Finally, if we have to mention something that we were slightly disappointed about, that would be the HTML5-based Firefox OS. While the interface looked great and we were able to see the good intentions behind it, we think Firefox OS has a long way to go to be able to compete with the big OS in the mobile market.Good show. The MWC 2015 has lived up to its name. It’s where to go for the newest products in the market all in one place.Bernat Guitart is CEO of AppFutura.com.See More

Paddle boarding is my favorite summer pastime. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a cross between kayaking and surfing that involves standing on a long board and using an oar to maneuver around a body of water. Easy, right? Not always. On a recent outing during which weather conditions were a little challenging, I was determined not to fall into the ocean. So I focused squarely on the three most critical factors: the waves, the wind, and the wake of other vessels.  As long as I sustained that focus on those 3-Ws, I was stable and able to move in my desired direction. But then a fourth W crept in: What if…? As soon as I let my mind wander in that direction, I started to worry and wobble. As in paddle boarding, so it is in business. Stability, progress, and success demand a clear and sustained focus on the 3-Ws: Waves: This is the natural rhythm of the business, the consistent ebb and flow of activity, demand, and revenue. There may be little that you can do to change these waves, but there’s plenty you can do to anticipate, plan, and ultimately ride them toward your intended destination. Wind: These are the constantly shifting external conditions that sweep over and can easily take you off your plotted course if unchecked. Changing demographics. New government regulations.  Economic trends.  Technology break-throughs. Knowing that the wind is always out there, moving and swirling with change, allows savvy leaders to be ready to plot a new course, paddle differently, and actually use its energy to help move forward. Wake: FreeDictionary.com defines wake as the "visible track of turbulence left by something moving through water." This turbulence is more episodic and less expected than the effects of waves and the wind. It’s the new competitor entering the marketplace with a game-changing product. It’s the natural disaster that cuts off the supply chain. It’s the political unrest that closes a major market. These wake episodes may not be anticipated, and their effects can be completely unstabilizing. Just knowing they are inevitable and watching for signs can help. Developing a flexible, resilient workforce that’s ready to quickly pivot, shift strategies, and change direction can transform these dangers that might put others under water into challenges that can be overcome. In business - as on the water - it’s easy to become distracted by that fourth W: What if…? But, developing the discipline that allows for a clear and consistent focus on the 3-Ws is the key to staying balanced, stable, and upright. It’s also the key to enjoying the ride. What about you? How are the waves, wind, and wake treating you? How do you maintain a focus on these 3-Ws? Image: www.dreamstime.com The post Staying Afloat appeared first on Julie Winkle Giulioni.

The holiday season has Black Friday to kick-start in-store sales and Cyber Monday to pump online sales. Today must be Happy Holidays Thursday--a new event, 10 days before Christmas--when every organization to whom I have given money, conducted business, or just merely written for more information sends me a Happy Holiday card. But I'm not sure if they really care about my holiday or just want to make sure that the season doesn't end without my buying or donating.

Peter Miller's blog post was featuredEvolving Past the Innovation Status QuoA decade ago, the accepted approach to innovation in the healthcare/ pharmaceutical sector was a (relatively) straightforward one: invest heavily in R&D, discover new molecules, shepherd them through years of testing and regulatory approvals, and cross your fingers that in the end all goes well and you have a product that can generate a positive ROI. Consider that a recent Tufts Center study pegged the average cost of bringing a drug to market at just under $2.6 billion and the average success rate for a new molecule eventually receiving approval is approximately 0.01% -- significantly worse odds than succeeding as a restaurant entrepreneur, where just about everyone fails.Now to be fair, this model has delivered thousands of life-saving and life-improving drugs that have done wonders for patients (and made many of the pharma companies of the "blockbuster" era a lot of money). And there will surely be other drug successes that follow the traditional route. But innovation isn’t static or one-size-fits all - and this is what we are seeing in the world of healthcare today.Consider that Actavis, the tenth largest pharma company, with a market capitalization of more than $70 billion, recently said they will no longer discover drugs. Instead, they will focus on buying them via acquisitions and deals with smaller organizations. Capital expenditures will prioritize distribution, operations and marketing, far above research and development This type of approach would have been unthinkable in the past, and represents a true paradigm shift that is one example of redefining what innovation means in the space.A different route to redefining medical innovation is being followed by our team at OptiNose. Our team is made up of executives with decades of experience driving innovation the traditional way at some of the largest pharma and healthcare companies in the world. But what attracted all of us to leave the big players behind and embrace the challenge and excitement of a small young company was the recognition that we could make an incredible difference by leveraging a unique device technology to innovate in a new and elegantly simple way: by making good drugs better.Our unique nasal medicine delivery technology uses the natural power of a patient’s breath in a special way that dramatically improves the efficacy and efficiency of delivering medicines into the nasal passages. We realized that by starting with carefully selected molecules that were already approved, we could develop new products based on our technology that could significantly improve the current standard of care for patients - and of course, by using existing molecules in new ways we would also be able to do it exponentially cheaper than by "starting from scratch" - reducing the risk and speeding up the time on each product and increasing the ROI for our partners and OptiNose. The idea is in many ways a throwback to the approach of focusing on medications that deliver tangible value to large populations of unmet need. To date, we have out-licensed a product for migraine treatment, are in the last stage of trials for a product to revolutionize the treatment of chronic sinusitis, and have therapies for autism and other neurology applications in development.Healthcare has always had a unique relationship with innovation. After all, while the newest tech product or social media platform can of course be "life-changing," healthcare products can be truly "life-saving" - or at least greatly improve the quality of life for patients. With the stakes so high, it’s not surprising that many people’s first reaction is to be wary of deviating from the traditional path of drug innovation. But we believe that the direction the sector is going - and what we are showing at OptiNose - is that there is room for creative solutions that can benefit investors, companies and patients alike. And this is a time in the history of healthcare where the power of change should be embraced wholeheartedly.Peter Miller is CEO of OptiNose.See More

 Which of the following do you feel best defines the ‘gap’ in the US workforce skills gap? Lack of soft skills Lack of technical skills Lack of strong leadership skills Lack of computer-based technology skills NA - I don’t think there is a gap in the US workforce This is the question recently asked by Adecco Staffing in a telephone survey of 500 top executives. Disturbingly, 44% of those surveyed reported that the gap they most experience is in soft skills. Employees simply aren’t able to demonstrate sufficient communication, critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration to be optimally effective in their day-to-day work. Another 14% shared their concern that the greatest gap exists in leadership (which I count among the soft skills.)  That means that nearly half of the executives who participated in this study aren’t concerned about getting the technical dimensions of the job right; they’re worried about how employees and leaders interact with each other. We can engage in a debate about why this is, which institutions have failed, and who’s to blame… or we can roll up our sleeves and explore what can be done. Are your hiring models skewed toward technical experience and expertise or some of the softer competencies that are harder to teach but vitally important to the job? Where are your training dollars spent? If you’re like most organizations, the money trail follows technical and job-specific needs, leaving woefully little for cultivating soft skills. How are your leaders selected and promoted? Shining the light on those who exemplify communication, collaboration, and leadership skills sends a strong message to others about what the organization values. Does your performance review process give as much attention to leadership and other soft skills as to the technical dimensions of the work? What gets rewarded - the results or how the results were achieved? Continuing to recognize bottom line results without an eye to the behaviors (and possible wake) behind them actively undermines a focus on soft skills and leadership. For organizations looking to succeed in today’s hyper-competitive environment, it’s time to take a hard look at soft skills. Image: www.dreamstime.com The post Hard Data about the Soft Skills Gap appeared first on Julie Winkle Giulioni.

The experience of contacting companies through their websites about problems provides some interesting insights into their real attitudes towards customers. Who cares?La Quinta Inns. Cheesecake Factory.  Starbucks I reported issues to each of these companies over the summer and heard back from each within 4 business days—each offering an apology.  Starbuck’s sort of freaked me out (in a good way) because I sent the note at 6:30 pm and heard back at midnight.  I realized, at some point, that they must have an off-shore customer service team.  (Just a guess.)  Both the managers of the La Quinta Inn and Cheesecake Factory I wrote about personally contacted me, one by phone.  But other companies are another story:   Delta.Air France.LoblawsDelta responded within 48 hours, but offered an empty apology and made no effort to correct the situation (which was not a weather-related delay, which is beyond their control).  Air France outsourced the response to a concern about a letter with a refund check that contained no refund check to Delta.  Writing on behalf of Air France 6 weeks after I sent my note, Delta told me that they couldn’t do anything (why the person didn’t refer the issue to the appropriate person at Air France is beyond me.)At least these airlines had the decency to acknowledge the concern.Loblaws? Happy to take my money; could care less about responding to my concern.