Month: May 2021

Wisdom From The Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries, With Danielle Burnstein of Sixense Enterprises

Trust your team and allow them to do what they do best. Leaders are at their best when they empower their team to do what needs to be done. If you micromanage, you’ll wind up piling more work on your plate, but if you empower your team, not only will things be much smoother, you’ll all be more enthusiastic and willing to share creative ideas.

As a part of our series about cutting edge technological breakthroughs, I had the pleasure of interviewing Danielle Burnstein.

Danielle Burnstein is the vice president of business development at Sixense Enterprises Inc., a leading developer of immersive computing solutions for companies across industries. An experienced strategist, Danielle comes from a diverse background in investing, entertainment, and technology. Prior to Sixense, Danielle focused on corporate strategy and strategic initiatives at Ingrooves, the media technology subsidiary of Universal Music Group. While there, Danielle spear-headed Ingroove’s VR/AR initiative where she developed strategies for implementation of immersive computing products for artists and independent labels that directly impacted the bottom line. Danielle joined the Sixense team in 2017 and is focused on finding ways to further expand the practical implementations of VR/AR — not only in assisting companies in bringing successful VR/AR solutions to the market — but in ensuring that these solutions improve lives.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory and how you grew up?

Like many other people, my path has not been linear. I started out focusing on something I was deeply passionate about, and that passion and ambition wound up leading me to something else entirely. I grew up in the East Bay, and beginning in middle school I played music for four hours every day. By the time I started at UC Davis, I was booking concerts. I studied Music and Anthropology there, and interned as an audio engineer for the Warner Music Group. From there, I was hired by INGrooves Music Group, an independent label and artists services organization, where I worked for three years. Eventually, an assignment in this role brought me into the world of Virtual Reality. I’d been asked to look into VR and its potential for music. Looking back, perhaps my boss at the time made a mistake by assigning this to me, because I found it so fascinating that I wound up completely pivoting, and pursuing my career in VR.

Is there a particular book, film, or podcast that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

In the 4th grade, I begged my mom for Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People — this was at the height of young girls starting to bully and be mean in school, and this book helped me to figure out how to navigate these situations wisely. More contemporarily, Jeremy Bailenson’s books Infinite Reality and Experience on Demand were also influential for me, and helped me to better understand the incredible potential of immersive technologies.

I’m also generally inspired by writers in Science Fiction, who are able to envision futures that bring hopeful (or cautionary) outlooks to the present. Working in the XR space often feels like inventing the future, and I draw particular inspiration from Ursula Le Guin, whose work incorporates sociology and philosophy to construct deeply compelling work.

Is there a particular story that inspired you to pursue a career in the X Reality industry? We’d love to hear it.

Before joining Sixense, while I was still working on my research assignment for IMG, I had a meeting with Bob Shaw, who is one of our Sixense board members. At this point I was still wondering about whether the excitement surrounding immersive computing technology was a fad or gimmick, or if the potential I kept hearing about was real. In the meeting, Bob mentioned that his wife, Deb, had suffered a stroke that resulted in a loss of cognition and motor function. He told me about the progress she had been able to make by coming into the Sixense office and using a prototype the team had created. The strides she had made in such a short time were profound, and any uncertainty I had about the potential for VR to improve people’s lives quickly vanished.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began this fascinating career?

It’s hard to pick just one — but that doesn’t mean there’s a shortage of material. Seeing the looks on people’s faces as they enter a virtual environment for the first time is always incredible. We’ve all seen those funny videos of people who are utterly convinced by the environment they’re in, so much so that they forget what’s going on in the real world and do something silly, like fall over or run into a wall. I’ve seen plenty of things like that happen first hand, and aside from the comic relief, they are reminders of the power of VR: if you can truly convince a person’s brain that they are in a different environment, there is so much you can teach them. At Sixense, we respect this power and are focused on using it wisely.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Wow, I have the perfect answer for this. When I first started at Sixense, I would frequently test out our products, but for some reason, I couldn’t quite master the movement, I couldn’t pick things up or trace effectively with the controllers. I figured there was just a learning curve, and everyone else just had the right muscle memory down. Of course, I was too proud to ask for help, or why it wasn’t working for me. This went on for over a month, until finally someone told me that I had been holding the controllers wrong the entire time.

At that moment I was embarrassed… But looking back, it was a good lesson that no matter how accomplished you feel, you’re never done learning, ever, and being too proud or shy about asking for help only gets in the way of your growth.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

Two people come to mind, and the first is Bob Shaw, our board member who I mentioned earlier. Getting to know Bob was one of my main motivations to become involved with this industry. Early conversations I had with him really opened my eyes to the potential of this technology — and with advice from all his years of success in business, he was very clear about the importance of looking at mistakes as opportunities to learn and grow.

The second has got to be Bob’s wife, Deb. She has had three strokes, and served as patient zero for the development of the prototype I mentioned earlier, which is now known as the REAL System. I can think of nobody who exemplifies resilience the way she does — not only by doing 8 hours a day of rehab and diagnostic work, which in itself is exhausting, but also by becoming a champion for other people who are recovering from strokes by providing resources and encouragement to them. She founded the organization Champion the Challenges, which provides resources for stroke survivors and helps them find the right fit in terms of resources, which ultimately helps to improve outcomes over a one-size-fits-all approach. I’m really inspired by both her personal journey and the way she has been able to give back.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

The things I’m the most excited about right now are the products we are developing for rehabilitation and training. Currently, we’re seeing a lot of real-world validation of our technology across our different platforms, which give people the tools they need to improve their health and learn new skills. There have been quite a few studies demonstrating the benefits of immersive technology for these applications, and they are broad: cost reduction, knowledge retention, more engaging rehabilitation outcomes, and increased consistency across the board.

Moreover, while improving outcomes — which to me is exciting on its own — the products we’re bringing to market also generate important data that can be used by doctors, teachers and scientists to improve immersive technology in the future.

A great example of this is the REAL System, which is an FDA-approved, custom VR solution for stroke rehabilitation. It is designed to improve outcomes simply by putting patients in a more engaging environment. It transports patients to a virtual world, then guides them through exercises with a therapist, all while precisely and accurately tracking the physical movements in 3D space much more precisely and accurately than has ever been possible with traditional analog therapy. This benefits providers, researchers, and of course the patients themselves.

Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. The VR, AR and MR industries seem so exciting right now. What are the 3 things in particular that most excite you about the industry? Can you explain or give an example?

First I think is the growing level of engagement. We’re seeing a lot of activity in the hardware space from bigger companies like HTC, Sony and HP, which points to a healthy amount of interest both from investors, companies and consumers. I think that once some of the more obvious barriers, such as consumer cost and current hardware limitations are overcome, we’ll begin to see adoption proliferating.

Second is of course in software, where we’re starting to see all sorts of new immersive tools that can help us improve our lives. Along with all the games coming out, we’re starting to see more and more things designed with wellness in mind, and I think that says a lot about the potential for immersive tech to have a positive impact.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, is the potential for immersive tech to bring more resources to more people. Being able to access things like skill training or a speaking event in a virtual environment makes it possible for people to learn and grow in a way that was not previously not possible.

What are the 3 things that concern you about the VR, AR and MR industries? Can you explain? What can be done to address those concerns?

At Sixense, we’re fortunate to have a culture that values ethics and the empirical process over quick profit. Our products are designed to make the world a better place, and we take that worldview seriously. In line with this, my main concerns are about the ethical use of immersive technology, the data it generates and the possibility that its potential could be wasted in exchange for profit. We can’t forget about the ultimate goal of healthcare, which is helping and protecting patients. When you have tools designed specifically to track their data for medical records, it becomes important that this is done in a way that is HIPAA compliant.

At this moment, there is potential for VR to democratize access to healthcare and training, simply by increasing access. With telemedicine and training for advanced skills, it could be possible for underserved populations to improve their health, increase socioeconomic mobility, and create more equitable foundations, but only if we approach this new frontier with that sort of equity as a top priority. At the moment, there are some practical barriers to this: consumer cost being the most prohibitive.

I think the entertainment aspects of VR, AR and MR are apparent. Can you share with our readers how these industries can help us at work?

Entertainment is clearly a driving factor in the XR industry, and it has a complicated effect on the rest of the space. This is neither unwelcome or unnatural: using a new technology to delight audiences and engage public interest is a long-lasting trend in media, from the Renaissance to streaming video. What this means, however, is that the potential for pure entertainment can overshadow some of the more practical use-cases like training, healthcare, and advanced skills. When I look at some of the skill training VR applications out there, such as the welding training platform we developed in collaboration with Lincoln Electric, I can’t help but picture the amount of resources that will be saved in the future: if students learn to weld by consuming only a fraction of the aluminum necessary for a welding certification today, that alone would have a huge impact on both efficiency and the environment. On top of that, I often think about the direction of the welding industry; with the average age of a welder at around 55 in the US and less than 20% under 35, it’s on the decline despite the fact that the need for good welders is only increasing. With a generation of master welders now entering retirement age, there is a huge wealth of knowledge that could be lost if we don’t find a way to pass it on. VR almost completely solves this issue by creating safe, repeatable and reliable content to help people enter an artful and lucrative career. If you expand this thinking to other advanced skill training, a cascade of possibilities emerge.

Are there other ways that VR, AR and MR can improve our lives? Can you explain?

Absolutely. One of the things that makes human beings so special is our ability to adapt — be it to cold weather, local food sources, or the demands of a modern world, we have enormous potential to grow and evolve, both within our own lives and as a society. What makes this possible is neuroplasticity. Our brains evolved to recognize patterns of animal behavior, weather, and other natural phenomena, to influence our surroundings for our betterment. Now, with modernity creating new challenges to our wellbeing, be it our health, our skills, or perceptions of our neighbors, XR presents us with a new way to quickly adapt, learn, and overcome some of our oldest adversaries, such as mental and physical illness and limited access to training. It can even improve our ability to show empathy.

Let’s zoom out a bit and talk in broader terms. Are you currently satisfied with the status quo regarding women in STEM? If not, what specific changes do you think are needed to change the status quo?

I think that in a lot of ways progress is being made, but there is of course more that needs to be done. It’s clear that this discrepancy between men and women in STEM fields is the result of a type of thinking that permeates all aspects of life, from the very beginning. Speaking from personal experience, when I was young and deciding between an advanced math course or an advanced art course, mentors or peers would say ‘pursue art! You don’t need math.’ This message would come from fellow students, teachers, even my guidance counselors. Looking back, it’s easy to see how omnipresent the conceptions of gender-norms are, and the effect they have on the choices you make.

Presently, I see a lot of progress in terms of women in leadership positions at a given company, but less of a presence on boards. Similarly, we see more women in marketing and commercial efforts, but less on the development and technical side of things. Even now, when asking why, I still hear that it’s a ‘question of inclination.’ Really? Well, perhaps we should take a look back at how we foster these inclinations from early childhood onward, and focus on making sure that young people feel empowered to pursue whatever interest they have, no matter who they are. In short, I believe that great strides are being made, but there is undoubtedly more to be done.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about working in your industry? Can you explain what you mean?

Frankly, the notion that it’s all an entertainment industry. Some of the most valuable tools that VR presents us with are in healthcare and training — the potential for VR to engage the plasticity of our minds and to help us learn and grow is huge, and it’s sadly overshadowed by the public perception of this technology as just video games. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy the occasional round of Beat Saber, I just see the platform reaching so far beyond that, and really touching people’s lives in a way that goes beyond entertainment.

What are your “5 Leadership Lessons I Learned From My Experience as a Woman in Tech” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. Lead with kindness and respect. I can’t stress enough how important a positive attitude is when leading a team to accomplish a goal.
2. Always ask questions. No matter the context, you’ll do a better job if you’re able to speak up, clarify and get a better sense of a situation. I promise that questions, no matter how dumb you may think they are, are preferred to silence.
3. Trust your team and allow them to do what they do best. Leaders are at their best when they empower their team to do what needs to be done. If you micromanage, you’ll wind up piling more work on your plate, but if you empower your team, not only will things be much smoother, you’ll all be more enthusiastic and willing to share creative ideas.
4. Do not frown upon mistakes — they are a sign that you and your team are developing and growing.
5. Continuously show your team the real meaning and value behind the work you are doing. Give real world examples of how it is improving lives. We all want meaning from our work — sometimes we get too bogged down with the details to remember it.
6. Have some fun! Life is short. We all need to have some fun. Encourage group bonding activities.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

I think democratization of healthcare would represent a huge leap in our ability to overcome inequity, in terms of culture, economics, and many other factors in life.

For an example of this, we need look no further than the recent transformations in healthcare brought on by the Coronavirus pandemic. In many cases, general practitioners and specialists have begun meeting patients virtually, which has had a streamlining effect on their appointments, increasing their availability. From the patient’s perspective there are also benefits — rural communities that might otherwise have to travel hours for healthcare can be seen immediately, or people seeking help with depression or anxiety can connect with a therapist from the comfort of their homes. Of course, there are many important parts of healthcare that must happen in person, but Covid safety protocols have had the unintended effect of showing what’s possible when we embrace telemedicine — and by extension, healthcare delivered in an immersive digital environment. What we’re seeing right now is that this kind of access is possible, and I think bringing healthcare to a place where it is more readily accessible to all could really change the world.

We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂

I know this is probably not exactly what you are looking for here, but I’m going to have to answer it this way: my brother, who just recently passed away. After the most courageous battle against physical disease and mental ailments, he took his own life. I would want him to know that I am fighting for causes that meant so much to him every single day. That his legacy- one that is rooted in providing care to those that need it most will continue to live on forever. I am eternally grateful that I get to dedicate my time to a technology capable of improving patient outcomes for people like my brother and many more.

I want my brother to know that he will never be forgotten, and that he will live on through the change my team and I are able to bring to the world.

Wisdom From The Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries, With Danielle Burnstein of… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Non-Fungible Tokens: Stephanie Menjivar of Menji Media On The 5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Highly Successful Career In The NFT Industry

Do your research: Make sure to understand things like the basics of the blockchain, and how crypto wallets work, Ethereum, and if you’re overwhelmed by all the info don’t be afraid to consult others that have minted and sold NFTs successfully.

Many have observed that we are at the cusp of an NFT boom. The thing is, it’s so cutting edge, that many people don’t know what it is. What exactly is an NFT and how can one create a lucrative career out of selling them? To address this, as a part of our interview series called “5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Highly Successful Career In The NFT Industry”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Stephanie Menjivar.

Stephanie Menjivar is the founder and Art Business Mentor behind Menji Media, a creative marketing and business development consultancy pushing artists and creative professionals to reach their highest potential. Her art business mentorship platform has programs that help artists magnetically attract their loyal buyers and collectors. From coaching visual artists of all levels with online training programs, to hosting creative workshops, and interviewing game-changing artists about their journeys, Stephanie opens the doors of new opportunities for creatives. Her mission is to make the art world more accessible by teaching artists how to build profitable independent careers and sharing their stories with everyday people outside of the art world.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory and how you grew up?

Thank you so much for having me! I was born and raised in Miami, FL and grew up in a multicultural household (my mom is from Dominican Republic and my dad was from El Salvador) where creativity and structure always co-existed. I like to believe that I got my analytical side from my mom who’s a nurse/healthcare leader and my artsy side from my dad who was a graphic designer and artist. Early on, my interest in design and art was ignited by my dad. Some of my earliest memories involve my dad bringing me scrap paper from work to draw on, visiting museums with both of my parents, and even designing my first birthday card on my dad’s Mac back in 1995!

Years later as a teenager, I was introduced to the world of Contemporary Art and my outlook of what art was changed forever. I was completely hooked by the conceptual ideas that art could represent, the political statements art could make, and the way the “art of today” set a precedent for our culture. My obsession for art led me to pursue an art degree in hopes of one day contributing to our culture.

After experimenting with a variety of mediums, I felt connected to digital media and design. This led to creating work inspired by fine art for myself and my clients. But creating work for others wasn’t enough… I realized that a large aspect of what I enjoy is solving problems while collaborating with creatives. That’s when I realized that marketing and fine art was the perfect fusion for me. So, one day I sat down and began writing my thoughts on what the art world is missing, what I can do to improve the lives of creatives, and how I can use my knowledge to empower artists to go further in their careers. Once it all clicked in my head, my purpose became clear.

Is there a particular book, film, or podcast that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

Definitely! The one book that impacted and inspired me to learn more about myself and psychology was The Confidence Gap: A Guide to Overcoming Fear and Self-Doubt by Russ Harris. Prior to reading this book I didn’t know how impactful or detrimental self-talk can be to one’s confidence. It made me realize that in order to succeed you have to be aware of your thoughts and believe in yourself before anyone can take a chance on you. Thanks to the lessons I learned in this book, conquering self-doubt and building confidence in your abilities is one of the core concepts I teach my clients.

The one podcast that gave me the courage to jump into entrepreneurship was NPR’s How I Built This hosted by Guy Raz. While driving home from my day job I would listen to the inspiring interviews from big name entrepreneurs like Sara Blakely, Kate Spade, the AirBnb Founders, and so many other amazing founders. I was always fascinated by the myriad of ups and downs they went through to build companies bigger than they ever thought possible. At the end of each interview I would feel so inspired and motivated to become an entrepreneur.

Is there a particular story that inspired you to pursue a career in this new industry? We’d love to hear it.

After working in the arts since 2006 everything came crashing down for me. The museum I worked at dismantled, then I was part of a gallery in Miami’s hot new arts district but it ended up closing down. I was back to square one and had no idea what to do next. After doing some freelance work and working for Apple for a year, I landed a job as the head of marketing for an artist-run textile company. That’s where my career took a turn into the world of marketing. Thanks to that career switch, I’m now able to combine my knowledge of art, marketing, psychology and technology by teaching artists about all the new business opportunities they can take advantage of like NFTs.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began this fascinating career?

One of my most interesting (and favorite) stories to tell is one about a client I had in Ohio. When we started working together he was focused on selling abstract paintings. But as he navigated through my program we realized that he could combine his other passions for music, mindfulness, and indian culture with his art. In the end he wrote and illustrated a children’s book inspired by one of his mentors and throughout the process he got acquainted with digital media to build, publish, and promote his book. Neither of us would have imagined that he was going to publish a book by the end of his journey. Perhaps he’ll even turn some of the book’s illustrations into an NFT.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

I have a private Facebook group called Artists Building Empires where I host live videos and quick workshops where artists can learn how to promote their art. At the time, Facebook had just switched their user interface so everything was in a different place. I consider myself a techy person so I quickly looked over the new features and just went live. As I was talking I noticed that no one was interacting with my video. I thought to myself “Maybe everyone is sleeping in since it’s Sunday…” and I just continued teaching.

20 minutes later I ended the stream and realized I was talking about art marketing to a random group that wasn’t mine! It was really silly… Luckily I saved the recording and was able to share my 20 minute lesson with my group later that day. This funny mistake taught me to always double check everything before going live. Seems obvious but on that slow Sunday morning, this completely slipped my mind.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I’m so grateful for my partner, Deniss. We’ve been together since high school and from the moment we met he always supported my crazy creative ideas. Deniss always pushes me to be better, is always ready to help me with anything, encourages me to learn topics that challenge me and he’s the best art show buddy. He is one of the biggest reasons why I jumped into entrepreneurship. Ever since I can remember, he encouraged me to start a business and one day I just decided to combine all my skills and go for it.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

Yes, I’m constantly improving my personalized online training programs and coaching frameworks. With each iteration I help artists and creative businesses build confidence in selling their art independently through deep introspection, digital marketing, and how to use their story as a competitive advantage. These concepts help creatives in so many ways because for years we’ve been taught to focus on creating beautiful work, but when it’s time to share and sell the work, self-doubt consumes us. One of the many ways that I do this is by educating creatives about how valuable their work is and how to connect with people who appreciate their vision.

Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. I’m sure you get this question all the time. But for the benefit of our readers, can you explain in your own words what an NFT is, and why people are spending so much money on them?

An NFT (Non-Fungible Token) is a unique digital token that holds a place in the blockchain. This “token” can be traded but not replicated because it has a code in the blockchain that makes it unique. That code that makes your NFT unique let’s people know who is the creator of it and who has purchased it. Think of it like a digital certificate of authenticity.

NFTs are often compared to rare baseball cards (or even pokemon cards). These cards are made in limited quantities, they showcase someone/something that’s in demand, and they are usually purchased with money rather than being exchanged. The fact that NFTs are like limited cards that can only be traded in exchange for currency like Ethereum is what makes them “non-fungible.”

I think that the people who are spending a lot of money on NFTs are early adopters who see value in digital art (which has been underrepresented for many years), others want to support the future of a decentralized cryptocurrency economy and make it mainstream, and others might just be buying a lot of NFTs because of the recent hype around them.

Regardless of people’s reasons for buying NFTs, I believe this is the beginning of a new movement that may lead to something we can’t even fathom right now (kinda like the dot-com bubble).

The NFT industry seems so exciting right now. What are the 3 things in particular that most excite you about the industry? If you can, please share a story or example for each.

Most of the things that excite me the most about NFTs revolve around the art world. The top 3 things I’m excited to see are:

1. The future of how art will be sold. One of my favorite things about NFTs is that when an artist sells one of their digital works, they receive royalties from the secondary sales of the NFTs.
2. I love how NFTs have encouraged artists to learn more about tech and the blockchain. I’m excited to see how artists that use traditional mediums will adapt their style to the digital world.
3. New ways that we’ll experience art. Since NFTs will make digital and interactive art more popular, I can’t wait to see the type of digital art experiences that will be available in the future.

What are the 3 things that concern you about the industry? Can you explain? What can be done to address those concerns?

The 3 things that concern me about the cryptocurrency/NFT industry are:

1. The environmental aspects of mining: As people become more aware of the benefits of using blockchain technology, the more computers we’ll need to compute the complex blockchain transactions and the more energy these transactions will use. In the future I would like to see energy efficient ways that can improve how we mine and transact cryptocurrencies.
2. Artists losing money: This concerns me because social media has made it enticing for anyone to jump on the NFT train. Many people are trying to release NFTs without considering the amount it costs to mint an NFT or doing their research. If you’re a creative who thinks it will be beneficial to release an NFT, I suggest talking to others who have sold NFTs successfully, know how much money you’re willing to spend to mint your NFT, and make sure you understand how it works before jumping in.
3. Digital bootlegs: I’m not sure if anyone else has thought of this but I’m concerned about people who might want to copy someone’s NFT, alter it a bit, and mint it as if it’s something new. Since the digital world is so vast and anyone can alter digital works. It makes me wonder how NFT marketplaces can prevent this from happening.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about NFTs? Can you explain what you mean?

One myth I would like to dispel for artists is the idea of making “fast” money when you release an NFT. Although many artists have released NFTs and sold them for thousands of dollars, that doesn’t mean it will work for everyone. If you’re looking to drop an NFT, don’t look at it as a quick way to get rich. No matter how tempting people’s social media posts are, always do your research and consider your audience.

The other myth is for people considering buying NFTs and that is that “NFTs are definitely a good or bad investment”. Since this topic is so new it’s difficult to determine whether buying NFTs will be a good or bad investment in the future. Whatever the case is, don’t take investment advice from anyone who isn’t qualified and make sure to do your research.

Personally, if I was considering buying NFTs I would take the art collector approach. I would buy the digital art piece (or whatever the NFT is) because I love it, believe in the artist, and want to support them and not because I’m looking to make quick cash in the future.

What are the most common mistakes you have seen people make when they enter the NFT industry. What can be done to avoid that?

Some of the most common mistakes I’ve seen people make when entering the NFT industry are:

1. Not understanding their audience — I’ve seen many creators release NFTs without thinking about who their audience is. For example, if the majority of people who support your work are part of an older demographic that doesn’t understand the blockchain, you probably won’t have much luck selling your NFT. So, to avoid the hardship of not having any bids on your NFT make sure to gage your audience’s interest.
2. Not understanding the blockchain — Many people are excited to release their NFTs but they have no idea where to start, so they get overwhelmed and just follow what everyone else is doing blindly. Before jumping into any new venture take time to learn a bit about the technology, how it works, and how much it will cost to mint your digital work. This will allow you to see whether it’s worth your time or not.
3. Not promoting their NFT — If you have a large audience that’s always engaged with what you share online it’s likely that you can release an NFT and instantly get feedback (and sales). For example, this is the case for the popular Instagram account @visualizevalue that has 230K followers. On the other hand, if you have a much smaller audience you’ll have to put more time into promoting your NFT as much as possible to encourage people to support it.

How do you think NFTs have the potential to help society in the future?

I think NFT’s have the potential to contribute to society in many ways. I believe that the new NFT craze is introducing people to new forms of art that they can appreciate and many creators will be able to support themselves with this new way of selling their art. This is great because for a long time the art world has been controlled by a small percentage of elite people, but with NFTs creators will have more autonomy and more people will be able support the arts.

NFTs have also made the concept of the blockchain a bit more mainstream. As a result, many people are excited to learn about this technology which can lead to new inventions. In the future I also think that NFTs will give rise to new companies that will result in more jobs for people.

Ok, fantastic. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Highly Successful Career In The NFT Industry?” (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. Do your research: Make sure to understand things like the basics of the blockchain, and how crypto wallets work, Ethereum, and if you’re overwhelmed by all the info don’t be afraid to consult others that have minted and sold NFTs successfully.
2. Know your audience: Analyze your audience/social media following and see if they are interested in NFTs. If your audience loves your work but isn’t tech savvy or is part of an older demographic they might not understand the value of your NFT. You can gage your audience’s interest on social media by asking them what they think about NFTs. You can even start hinting what you want to release so that they don’t take your NFT drop as a surprise.
3. Look at the NFTs that sold: See what kind of NFTs have sold and what aspects can be adapted to your work. Some of the most popular NFTs have 3D elements, are animated, or are looping gifs. Think about what would look best with your style and create something one of a kind for the digital world.
4. Find a marketplace with like minded creators: Mint your NFT in a marketplace that aligns with your work and audience. Some of the most popular NFT marketplaces are Nifty Gateway, Super Rare, Foundation and Makersplace. Each of these marketplaces has different requirements for joining and they attract specific types of buyers and creators. Look at the type of work that people are bidding on and decide which marketplace would fit your situation the best.
5. Spread the word: Once you’ve been accepted to one of the NFT marketplaces make sure to engage people on your social media platforms. It’s important that your future “NFT drop” is cohesive with what you’re sharing/talking about. Once you are ready to announce your NFT make sure to promote it as much as possible. The goal is to bring awareness to your new digital creation so that someone will invest in your NFT.

Bonus Tip: Start by releasing just one NFT and see how people react. If it sells and people are interested in seeing more, that’s when you’ll know your audience is interested in seeing more NFTs from you.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

Many people believe that they need to know how to draw or paint to be creative, but I encourage everyone to practice any creative activity like cooking, dancing, or even building as a way of expressing themselves and getting in-tune with their thoughts. When people are in-tune with their own creativity they discover a whole new world within themselves that can inspire, attract, and connect others in a way that they don’t even realize. If I can get just one person to experience this feeling, I would feel like I achieved my purpose and that’s why I want to turn the giving of this creative connectedness into a worldwide movement.

We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂

Artist and activist, Shepard Fairey — I’ve always been a fan of his work, business savviness, and how open he is about the causes he believes in. He makes art that impacts so many people’s lives, inspires people to speak up, and I love how his art evolves with what’s happening in the world.

Thank you so much for these excellent stories and insights. We wish you continued success on your great work!

Non-Fungible Tokens: Stephanie Menjivar of Menji Media On The 5 Things You Need To Know To Create a… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Show workers how their actions tie in to the team’s goals, as well as their own. Feedback doesn’t feel critical when presented as a coaching tool to achieve goals. Get specific about your employee’s impact on the company. It’s important to use detailed examples of how their attitude, skills, and actions positively impact your organization. Also, be transparent with progress toward goals so workers can see momentum. Focus your conversation on the end goals, or objectives, workers are pursuing — not just the tasks or key performance indicators surrounding the goal.

As a part of our series about “How To Give Honest Feedback without Being Hurtful”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Melissa Miller.

Melissa Miller is the owner of Gratitude Investors, a company focused on increasing employee retention, engagement, and performance for individuals and companies through the implementation of gratitude and appreciation programs. Melissa’s educational background makes her uniquely qualified to work with businesses looking to take their recognition programs to the next level. With B.A. degrees in Economics and Psychology from Centre College, Melissa believes investing in employees creates the largest returns.

Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

I really enjoy people. I love meeting new people and forming a connection. I’ve made friends in the shoe department while shopping. The team at my favorite Atlanta hotel and I are on a first-name basis. I am fun to sit next to on a plane (however, if you fall in the camp of immediately putting your earbuds in, I’ll give you space). It boils down to I am interested in people’s life stories. A few years ago, two of my aunts and I created The 180° Letters, a letter-writing kit to make sharing stories and gratitude simple. I loved working in appreciation and was drawn to the business sector from my professional life and education. Because I love people and connection, helping companies foster happy, fulfilled individuals is my company’s mission.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

Gratitude Investors implements employee appreciation programs based in gratitude. I think the power of gratitude surprises people who are stepping into it for the first time. Their stories of how gratitude is changing things in their lives are heartwarming, and you can often hear a sense of wonder in their voices. Almost like “I didn’t expect this, but…”. Gratitude and appreciation are catalysts for changing work cultures and how we show up in our professional lives.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

When you are highly motivated, I learned that you can push out of your comfort zones and have great success. Fear of change will be there, but it is mixed with excitement as well. At the beginning of my career, I jokingly like to think I was similar to Olivia Pope, from Scandal, without the murder and intrigue. Essentially, I “handled” things. I took situations that called for creative solutions and made them happen. I found the hard-to-get items, pulled off the surprises, and made the impossible a reality. And although every day presented a challenge, I was comfortable there. When I started my business, it was intimidating to step into all the new roles I needed to master. I used gratitude to lessen my fears and forced myself to try new things. As an entrepreneur, I wear many different hats, and it falls on me to push out of my comfort zones to do jobs I’ve never done before. Building up the ability to take on a daunting situation, get creative, and handle it is essential. Great success never comes from comfort zones.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

The devil is in the details. And my geography skills are abysmal. I have verified both of these statements to be true. One snowy winter, I was booking a private plane for a client to fly to islands south of Florida. I called the aviation company, gave the name of the destination town, and booked the flight. The day before takeoff, I was going over the itinerary and noticed a Mountain Time Zone reference. When I called the company to clarify the seemingly impossible fact that the Caribbean is actually in the Mountain Time Zone, they explained the plane was set to fly to South Dakota. There is apparently a shared name between a town in South Dakota and the islands. Who knew? I could not stop imagining the train wreck of my life if I hadn’t caught that mistake. I could envision this group of people deplaning in shorts, flip flops, and cover-ups into fifteen feet of snow. And the blowback that would happen from my error. Now when I get swept up in moving quickly, I try to remember to slow down and go back over the details.

What advice would you give to other CEOs and business leaders to help their employees to thrive and avoid burnout?

Years ago, my best friend was in an extraordinarily stressful job and she was not feeling any sense of professional accomplishment to help buffer the emotional drain. Each day on the job looked like the previous one, and she did not see progress. So as soon as she opened her eyes on Sunday morning and knew the workweek was right around the corner, her entire day became one of dread. Workers, now more than ever, may have symptoms like this pointing to burnout. In 2020, 75% of workers surveyed by FlexJobs reported experiencing burnout. If you feel like a clock is ticking over your head on Sunday, you need to examine what is causing the stress. Is your work/life balance nonexistent? Can you speak with your manager to address concerns and see if there is room for adjustment? Are you delegating and outsourcing to move things off your plate? Does your employer provide the opportunities you need to achieve long-term goals and advancement? Find what work activities fuel you and work in your strengths to keep your energy levels up. Preventing burnout requires continuous check-ins with yourself.

How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?

Let’s start with what leadership is not. It’s not a title or a plaque on your desk. It’s not how big your salary is or how many people report to you. I think Brene Brown says it best, “A leader is anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes, and who has the courage to develop that potential.” We’ve all likely had bosses who operated in a scarcity mindset — there’s never enough work hours, effort, or money in the bottom line. A leader rooted in scarcity creates shame around people falling short. That approach creates fear and competition within the ranks. But the leaders who guide with abundance and vulnerability — those are the special ones. These are leaders who take the time to develop their team and offer growth opportunities. They are clear and transparent with their colleagues. These leaders admit when they don’t have all the answers and encourage everyone to be their best without being fearful of appearing weak. Great leaders balance asking for input with making the final decision. Leadership can be found throughout all levels of your business in people who respect and value others.

In my work, I often talk about how to release and relieve stress. As a busy leader, what do you do to prepare your mind and body before a stressful or high stakes meeting, talk, or decision? Can you share a story or some examples?

Stress shows up physically for me by wiping out my appetite, so I try to avoid letting it go unchecked. I control the things that I can. I work out and meditate most mornings, and that calms me physically. In addition, I try to overprepare, anticipate all possible scenarios, and repeatedly practice so I feel ready mentally. Once I’ve addressed the physical and mental aspects of stress, I can be excited about the opportunity.

Ok, let’s jump to the core of our interview. Can you briefly tell our readers about your experience with managing a team and giving feedback?

Gratitude Investors teaches leaders and companies the value of authentic feedback in achieving the company’s mission. Feedback helps employees see how their daily work is connected to personal and organizational goals. You can use it to help direct career advancement paths. Leaders can also use communication to prevent team losses with timely feedback. Despite all the benefits of using feedback, 44% of leaders say it is stressful, and 37% of managers say they avoid providing it (Harvard Business Review). I’ve found that by building connections and relationships first, having conversations centered around feedback becomes easier. It feels less like an annual review and more like two people coming up with best practice solutions together.

This might seem intuitive but it will be constructive to spell it out. Can you share with us a few reasons why giving honest and direct feedback is essential to being an effective leader?

Remember the days of taking a road trip with just verbal directions? You’d get in the car and head out only with a vague idea of the best-suggested route. Run into an accident? If you were lucky, you had a paper map in the backseat and could spend time making adjustments. However, you had no idea how far the traffic was backed up or where to find gas stations on the way. Trying to run your team without using honest feedback is just like driving without GPS. There is a lack of direction, and it is hard to make adjustments in the fast-paced work environment we face. Feedback works similar to having navigation on your phone. It yields clear directions to reach your destination, alerts you to potential hazards, and reroutes you as your course changes. Direct feedback allows teams to pivot when the project changes. Influential leaders use detailed, authentic assessments to drive behavior on their team.

One of the trickiest parts of managing a team is giving honest feedback, in a way that doesn’t come across as too harsh. Can you please share with us five suggestions about how to best give constructive criticism to a remote employee? Kindly share a story or example for each.

1.Feedback should not feel like an annual review but more like a conversation. That discussion is easier when you communicate frequently and build rapport before it’s time to offer feedback. The relationship becomes even more important with remote workers because of the reduced chances for casual interaction. Be intentional and check in regularly to build a connection. Harvard Business Review found when managers have a conversation — any conversation — with employees, worker performance improves. It doesn’t matter what is actually discussed. Face-to-face time builds connection and trust. As communication between team members becomes more frequent, it will make feedback feel less like an assessment and more like a part of daily work.

2.Learn what your employee’s goals are. Meaningful, personalized work breeds company loyalty. Once you discover their “why,” use coaching and feedback to align personal motivations to company goals. Feedback should be used in career development conversations as well as team objective discussions. Start the meeting by going through a colleague’s strengths, what they love about work, and their intrinsic motivations. Now you will know how to use feedback to tap into what fuels them. If a correction is needed, refer to the company mission as the guideline for decision making.

3.Show workers how their actions tie in to the team’s goals, as well as their own. Feedback doesn’t feel critical when presented as a coaching tool to achieve goals. Get specific about your employee’s impact on the company. It’s important to use detailed examples of how their attitude, skills, and actions positively impact your organization. Also, be transparent with progress toward goals so workers can see momentum. Focus your conversation on the end goals, or objectives, workers are pursuing — not just the tasks or key performance indicators surrounding the goal.

4.Be mindful of your ratio of positive to negative comments. Research has shown that feedback should be given at a minimum of 5 to 1 positive to negative comments for optimal performance.

5.Think like a coach. Gallup reported only 23% of employees strongly agree that their manager provides meaningful feedback to them. Managers should behave more like coaches with operational check-ins happening on a weekly or biweekly basis. Employee developmental conversations should occur every 6 to 8 weeks. Just like a coach getting her team ready for March Madness, sometimes a loss helps the group refocus and discover what they can do better before they get to the championship. If you want innovative employees, there is no such thing as failure — only teachable moments.

Can you address how to give constructive feedback over email? If someone is in front of you much of the nuance can be picked up in facial expressions and body language. But not when someone is remote.

How do you prevent the email from sounding too critical or harsh?

Every time you provide feedback, be specific and authentic. That is the case whether you are having a conversation in person or through email. Start your email by showing appreciation for your employee. If you are paying attention to your colleagues, you will be able to find at least one thing they are doing well. Even if that is as simple as, “Thank you for showing up every day — I know I can count on you.” Find something positive. Make sure you balance your tone and message. Emphasize individual and team progress and how to move forward with specific action items. Keep your feedback related to project and company goals to avoid making it feel like a personal confrontation. Finally, nail down a follow-up time to answer questions and review action items to move forward.

In your experience, is there a best time to give feedback or critique? Should it be immediately after an incident? Should it be at a different time? Should it be at set intervals? Can you explain what you mean?

Imagine if you made a note to tell your son in the first quarter of next year what a great job he did cleaning his room this past weekend. Or if you scheduled a time once a year to tell your partner how you feel about her. My guess is those relationships would suffer from a lack of appreciation and connection. Yet, this is precisely how many leaders use feedback in the workplace. In contrast, a Workhuman survey showed 60% of people want positive feedback as events occur, and 61% want constructive feedback immediately. Feedback should be timely and specific. Depending on the situation, waiting a couple of days may be best for everyone to step back and take a breath, but don’t hold off longer than that. To keep it fresh in your mind, jot down notes of specifically what worked and didn’t work for the conversation. You can always have set times throughout the year to touch base, but feedback should be part of a continuous conversation.

How would you define what it is to “be a great boss”? Can you share a story?

Statistics show people don’t leave companies — they leave bosses. Management and their leadership style play a huge role in company culture. Great bosses see more potential in us than we see in ourselves. Their goal is to help us learn to see it too. I have a friend who emphatically attributes her present-day success to her former boss and mentor. This manager showed her the ropes in every aspect of the business world, from handling six-course meals to dressing for the job she wanted. Her mentor paid the bill for a personal public speaking coach. One Saturday, when my friend was going to leave town for a football game, her boss reminded her there would be many games to go to in the years to come; this wasn’t the time to skip work now if she wanted to be successful. Those words kept her eyes on the goal and proved to be true. Great bosses connect with people’s personal lives. They coach up, set clear expectations and goals, reward progress, provide “face time,” and are safety in times of uncertainty.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

We spend one-third of our lives working. An outdated model of thinking is unprofessional to bring gratitude or compassion into the workplace. However, studies show appreciation and gratitude are vital to creating the very type of workplace environments people actually want to work in. One of our most fundamental needs as humans is to feel appreciated. Leaders and companies who understand this principle, and practice gratitude, create productive, engaged employees. I would love to see a corporate mentality where leaders implement this approach in all phases of work-life from the hiring process until retirement.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“I’m grateful but not complacent.” When I first came across this quote, I thought what a great way to sum up appreciating the present moment and going after your dreams at the same time. I think too often, being grateful can be misconstrued as being so happy you couldn’t want for anything more. That’s unrealistic. Gratitude helps relieve fear and anxiety in your head. The more I use gratitude, it helps me become braver to tackle parts of my life that need improvement. Just because I am grateful for my life doesn’t mean I’ve settled or stopped striving. I am thankful every day for many amazing things, but I know even greater ones are coming. It’s why I took a chance and started my business.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

We would love for you to stop by www.gratitudeinvestors.com and learn more about our gratitude-based employee appreciation programs. Catch up on daily information regarding gratitude in the workplace on Facebook and Instagram at @Gratitudeinvestor or LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/company/gratitude-investors. You can also find daily inspiration on all things related to gratitude @180degreesgratitude on Instagram.

Thank you for these great insights! We really appreciate the time you spent with this.

Melissa Miller of Gratitude Investors: Giving Feedback; How To Be Honest Without Being Hurtful was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Future Is Now: Ben Stallard of Hotspring On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up The Tech Scene

If you are a runner or in a similar junior position, and want to be Producer for example, be the best runner you can. When i saw someone who was always two steps ahead and not trying to be the best at the role they were in at the time, it raised alarm bells.

As a part of our series about cutting edge technological breakthroughs, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ben Stallard, Global Head of Production at Hotspring

Ben has 25 years experience at the forefront of commercial visual effects, having spent eight years at MPC and twelve years at The Mill as head of production, group production director and executive board member. Since leaving The Mill in 2019, he founded ArtclubVFX, a start-up VFX outsourcing business based in London. In 2020, Ben joined Hotspring as Global Head of Production to grow their network and help studios across the world work seamlessly with the best talent, wherever they may be located.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I have spent 25 years in VFX, producing all sorts of Commercials, music videos, title sequences and motion graphics projects, including 6 years as Head of Production at Mill London — the largest commercial Production team in the world. In my latter years I was involved in how The Mill (part of Technicolor) utilized its Bangalore studios to get work done efficiently and quickly. During that time I saw how sharing work in that way freed up artists locally, allowing quick scaling and also driving financial efficiencies. When I left The Mill in 2018 I set up ArtclubVFX to service work from the UK and US in India. Soon after the pandemic started I linked up with Jon and Varun, founders of TraceVFX, the largest VFX outsource company in India which they had sold to Technicolor, and they asked me to join them at their startup, Hotspring. It’s the perfect blend of what I have done in the past with what I believe the future in VFX will look like. Hotspring is reinventing VFX workflows and has the capacity to service a whole multitude of other industries.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

I can’t get it down to one story. When I look back, rather than individual stories, it’s more chunks of time that I remember most. There were two periods of time that stand out. The first was the mid 1990’s when I had just started working in Soho at MPC as a runner on Noel street. It was just so much fun in Soho then, the era of big name Directors, huge Productions with budgets to match, Britpop, house music and hedonism. We were in the final throes of being unencumbered by phones, apps and the internet. Anything seemed possible. The second period of time was being Head of Production at The Mill from 2010–2016. The Mill was a company at the very top of it’s game, winning everything, doing some really fantastic work and firing as a team. I did enjoy working with some great Directors along the way like Anthony Mingella, Jonathon Glazer and Frank Budgen. The stars were aligned at those points and I think that’s happened here again at Hotspring.

Can you tell us about the cutting edge technological breakthroughs that you are working on? How do you think that will help people?

The Hotsping platform automates the triple bidding, management and delivery of outsourced tasks. In the VFX industry, outsourcing is not new but it has always been a laborious, manual task which can lead to mistakes and inefficiencies that ends up being a big time waster for Production. Hotspring is a marketplace, a project management tool, a communication system and an operational scaling function all wrapped up in one package, and we have proven over the last year that it makes businesses more efficient. It centralises and consolidates what can be a fragmented and varied way of working, giving greater control and visibility to the whole company.

Using virtual machines hosted on AWS, Hotspring can be deployed on projects securely as the talent working on it never actually receives the material. They just login to our system, access a VM in the cloud, work on the pixels in front of them and log out. No material is ever uploaded, downloaded or shared. It is fast, secure and enables talent to work more remotely.

As a Producer looking to outsource work, it will dramatically speed up the outsource process, saving hours of time. Think about simultaneous triple bidding — an instant time saver. As a manager, scaling your business on demand through Hotspring delivers a cost effective way to take on bigger projects without having that cost baked into your business model. As an artist working for Hotspring, you can earn more money and work where you like — something unimaginable in VFX outsourcing even a year ago.

In fact, any industry that needs CG or VFX related tasks executed by remote teams can benefit from Hotspring — think CG assets for e-commerce sites, architectural assets, teaching assets or infrastructure project assets — the list is long, and as Hotspring is designed to execute manual tasks in an automated way, it’s very scalable.

How do you think this might change the world?

The world is becoming more and more decentralised. Technology is allowing industries to invent new ways of working, democratising the marketplace. Hotspring unlocks vast networks of remote talent, provides the stability needed in executing tasks remotely and frees up the artists actually doing the work to work from wherever they like.

Hotspring provides the infrastructure — the ‘roads and bridges’- for a new way of working globally, fairly and more efficiently. As we have very low overheads, our model also provides fairer pay levels to artists in low cost centres and allows traditionally migratory talent to work where they like — reducing global travel which is a positive for the environmental crisis, and crucially, serves the best interests of clients worldwide saving money and time.

Keeping “Black Mirror” in mind can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

If having more TV series and movies to watch is a bad thing, then yes — we should be increasingly conscious as a society of making sure we’re thinking about how much content we’re consuming, and providing alternatives — especially for children — that we know have a more constructive impact. I was happy playing with star wars figures as a kid, now young people expect photorealistic graphics and complex narratives!

Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this breakthrough? Can you tell us that story?

Jon and Varun build a very successful bricks and mortar outsource studio in India. They know that model better than anyone and saw firsthand that it was unsustainable. They also saw some really great talent in India that was unable to access the market (and vice versa) coupled with a growing demand for content around the world.

It became a simple question — how best to service VFX work in the future, knowing demand was increasing and dependency on outsourced tasks was also increasing. Build even bigger studios with thousands of people, managers, upkeep, travel, salaries? The answer was a clear no. The alternative was to build a platform that connects content creators to the huge network of talent, allowing a networked model of execution — meaning capacity is only restrained by the talent that exists, not the schedule of any given company.

What do you need to lead this technology to widespread adoption?

We are starting Hotspring in the VFX sector and have a strong presence in that market. Our short term goal is to move into adjacent industries like architectural and e-commerce asset creation.

We are underway with proof of concept in other industries and from there will scale organically or if needed, with further funding. Word of mouth is very important in the VFX industry, as is credibility. Beyond that bubble, targeted marketing strategies plus engagement of experts in targeted areas will all help.

What have you been doing to publicize this idea? Have you been using any innovative marketing strategies?

Reaching new clients outside your circle of influence is hard in any sales capacity. We have found, particularly as we are not travelling, having local, established specialists with great reputations showcasing how Hotspring can add value has really paid dividends. We’re in the midst of growing our online presence, having just launched a revamped version of our website and getting more active on social media. It’s part of our mission to put the artists centre-stage and celebrate them, so we’re looking at some marketing strategies to engage the VFX community and spark discussion.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

Occasionally in your career, you come across people who believe in you and trust your potential to grow and deliver, given the right support — the team at The Mill did that for me When I became Head of Production, that really gave me the self-confidence I lacked up until that point, even though I had been successful previously. Lots of people suffer from imposter syndrome to some degree but having someone else validate you is a great confidence booster. It taught me in turn to look for the potential in people and try, as a manager, to support my team to grow personally and believe in themselves and also that I had their back.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

I strongly believe the changes we’re making around leveraging cloud technologies to change VFX workflows will have a significant impact on the lives of people all around the world who choose to pursue a career as an artist, doing this type of work. We’re reducing the need for artists to physically relocate to creative hubs to work, so people can choose to stay in their community if they want and avoid inflated rents. Empowering individuals to be able to make decisions that are in their own best interests is really gratifying, as well as supporting artists, all too often an overlooked profession that is so fundamental to our general happiness and wellbeing.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. If you are a runner or in a similar junior position, and want to be Producer for example, be the best runner you can. When i saw someone who was always two steps ahead and not trying to be the best at the role they were in at the time, it raised alarm bells.
2. Growth is not going to be linear — it’s always reassuring to hear there will be dips along the way, and it’s not a reflection on you if growth doesn’t stay on the up..
3. Find someone you admire or want to emulate and learn from them. Watch how they interact and how they communicate with others. (without being creepy)
4. If you are working late every single day, something is wrong with the way you are working, your workload, your support structure (team) or the way you are managed. It is not a badge of honour to get burned out. I used to see Producers working late every single day as habit, because they thought they should be. With mutually supporting teams, regular workload catch ups and a grown up culture, people do what they need to do, then leave and see their families and friends, which is how it should be.
5. Take personal ownership of absolutely everything. Your relationships in the office (good and bad), the quality of your work, your timekeeping, your learning, your attitude and your ego. With humility and a strong work ethic, you will succeed.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

Like many people, I am very alarmed at the climate crisis. I think right now the absolute priority for individuals, businesses, institutions and governments should be to aim to be Carbon negative by 2030 or sooner. If i could inspire a movement it would be to push more businesses to take ownership of their carbon output. It is hard, no one is perfect, but it can be done if we all mobilise toward the same goal and there is some great work being done already, like B corp certification, but we are up against it. I think the pandemic has shown us we don’t need to travel anything like as much as we used to, for example. Also, rather than start a new movement, let’s encourage the readers, particularly in the Advertising sector, to join an existing one like the Advertising Association.

Some very well known VCs read this column. If you had 60 seconds to make a pitch to a VC, what would you say? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂

Hotspring is ultimately an ecosystem of people. The unique technology around it is a tool to let that ecosystem flourish in a global, flexible and decentralized way of working. We have proven its value in the VFX world and continue to scale at speed from advertising into episodic and film. Simultaneously, we are developing some marquee projects in the architectural world, especially through the use of Unreal experiences. In fact the growth potential at Hotspring extends through any industry or sector that requires transactional task based execution of certain services. Integrations into adjacent internal software will further increase our ability to capture large parts of the outsource market.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

You can find me on Linkedin or visit our website thehotspring.com. Alternatively, you can follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.

The Future Is Now: Ben Stallard of Hotspring On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Diverse employees can be ambassadors to communities of customers. One of the groups SWAB connected with, which already existed, was the Ford African ancestry group. Together, we started to think of some unique ways that the group could help Ford Motor Company speak to the Black community, and we realized we could help people understand why they should buy a Ford, given all the car options that were out there. We started an incentive program that extended our employee discounts to people in the African-American community and we were able to directly drive sales of vehicles.

As a part of our series about “How Diversity Can Increase a Company’s Bottom Line”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Sonia Jackson Myles.

Sonia Jackson Myles is an advisor and executive coach to Fortune 500 companies and private companies. Her firm, The Accord Group, LLC, works with CEOs and their teams on leadership development; DEI, unconscious bias training, and women’s initiatives; change management; employee engagement; and creating a culture where employees can thrive. Prior to starting The Accord Group, Sonia held leadership and executive roles at Ford Motor Company, The Gillette Company, and Procter & Gamble, where her last role was Director, Global Packaging Purchasing, managing $6 billion in spend.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive into the main part of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit more. Can you share a bit of your “backstory” with us?

Professionally, my back story is that I started my career at Ford Motor Company and was there for 13 years before I went to the Gillette company in Boston, Massachusetts. Then when Procter & Gamble acquired Gillette, I led part of the integration team and the company created a new role for me as the head of a global media sourcing organization. I was responsible for buying all of P&G’s media which was a big shift for the company because prior to my role being established, that was all done by marketing people.

I started to notice a lot about women in the workplace. I saw that my male mentees were coming to me and talking about things that were different than my female mentees. My male mentees would say, “Sonia, I’ve got this new business idea, I need you to help me flesh it out.” My female mentees were saying things like, “I don’t like working for women. I’m struggling with Tina, and I don’t trust her.” You have to remember, I had teams across the world and I was working with every demographic — people of every socio-economic background, every religion, every race.

You know, so many of us are socialized as little girls to distrust each other. It shows up as early as the age of four, and continues all the way through high school, and then we take those behaviors into the workplace. And the patterns I was seeing at all of the companies I worked for were really a direct result of that. I knew that if women, in particular, stayed in these patterns, we’d never get to the C-Suite or boardroom.

I began to ponder what my role in changing this could be and I knew I couldn’t do it while I had my corporate role (by that time I was responsible for all packaging globally for P&G) and so I left a job that I loved. I established the Sister Accord Foundation to work on these issues with young women and then went on to establish my company, The Accord Group, LLC, which takes a similar message back to corporate America.

But I have to say that an important part of my backstory and what gave me the inspiration and made me brave enough to leave my job was my family. I am the youngest of four children and my siblings are 11, 12, and 13 years older than me. Growing up I essentially had three mothers and two fathers, and I didn’t like it. I was mad that there were so many people telling me what to do. I think that is one of the big reasons why I am a creator and a disruptor. From a young age I said, “No, I’m going to do it my way.”

Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? Can you tell us the lesson or take away you took out of that story?

I remember one session with one of my executive mentors when I was at the Ford Motor Company. He took me to lunch at a really nice, upscale restaurant in Dearborn. I like to eat. I like a good meal and I love eating out. I sat down and looked at the menu and my gut told me to order the salad, so that I could make sure I was paying attention and getting all of his wisdom and that I could easily talk. But then there was this other side voice that said, “No, get the pasta, this is your opportunity to eat something really great.” So, I got the pasta.

I was wearing a gray suit, which may have been a little snug in the waist in the first place, and I ate so much during that lunch that I had to unbutton my skirt. I was subtle about it and he didn’t notice, but by the end of lunch I had totally forgotten that I’d unbuttoned my skirt. I stood up and was about to leave the table, and felt the skirt falling down. Luckily, I realized it quickly and sat right back down to button the skirt. I was laughing so hard inside and my mentor didn’t notice anything.

I remember this story not because it was embarrassing but because it taught me to trust my initial instincts. I know myself deeply. The first thought I have is typically the right one. I may go through all of these other iterations and overthink it, but I have come to learn that I am better off when I go with that first thought. My internal GPS is usually spot on.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you tell us a story about how that was relevant in your own life?

“In the absence of information, people make stuff up.”

This is an important one because when they make it up, they typically go negative and then we have to spend time unraveling all of these untruths. What I’ve learned, and what I tell other people, is there’s no need to have people filling in the gaps of information when we can literally just tell the story.

I learned this firsthand when Procter and Gamble offered me the global media role. They explained that they been trying for seven years to centralize the operations, but hadn’t been successful. I was wondering why they thought I could make it work if no one else had been able to, and started to question if I was being set up for success. They had confidence that I had the skills to bring this thing to life.

As soon as I started talking to people within the organization, I began to understand what had been going on. The reason for the change had never been fully explained. No one understood fully why the company wanted to bring all of this purchasing into one place. So, people started to create their own narratives around the world because it’s a global organization, and they were all negative. “Oh, we’re going to lose our job.” “Oh, this is going to be a reduction in force.” “Oh, we have to totally change how we do our work.”

It was none of that. It was about being able to buy more effectively and efficiently. This was the largest advertiser in the world, but it wasn’t achieving efficiencies aligned with being the largest advertiser, so it couldn’t harness its collective influence. Now, put that all together in a group whose expertise is buying and it’s far more powerful.

It had not been explained in these terms over the years and so people filled in the blanks. My job was to simply tell the story. I went around the world to explain it. I showed up and was fully present and engaged and I told the story. And I think that was a big part of why we were able to be successful in establishing the organization within a little over a year.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are?

I think it has to be my parents. My older siblings thought I got away with murder but that wasn’t it. The notion my parents planted inside of me very early was “Sonia, if you are willing to do the work, if you are willing to operate in excellence, you can do anything that you put your mind to.” I carried that with me throughout high school and my college years and into the workplace. I think it prevented me from feeling like I was in a box. I know that sometimes other people will put you in a box. But if you stay there, it’s because you allow them to keep you there. I didn’t do that. And so, yes, I was an executive in purchasing, but I studied marketing and I had ideas and I was confident in sharing them because I wouldn’t stay in my proverbial box.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

I remember I was pitching what I wanted to do for a particular company and the CEO looked at me and said, “You are the only person in my entire career that has ever come to me and talked about love in the workplace.” I think this is what makes my company stand out — the values I founded it on and the values I bring to the work. Talking about leading with love from a business perspective and how this drives growth and profitability is unique, but I’m just bringing my authentic self and doing what I feel called to do.

When I think about my work on the integration of Gillette and P&G, which was the largest coming together in the consumer products industry, the most important thing I did was make sure that respect and love was the cornerstone of how we connected. I don’t have to know you, I can have just met you and care about you as another human, and that’s the reason I want to serve you with excellence.

This is the philosophy on which I founded my company, and this is what I work with executives to understand. What does it look like to serve with excellence and how can it engage and excite your workforce so that they move through to their own next level of excellence?

Are you working on any new or exciting projects now? How do you think that might help people?

My newest program is called the Power Hourish. We virtually go to a city and offer a six-week course, once a week for about 80 minutes, in which we focus on mental, emotional, and physical health. I launched it last May, toward the beginning of the pandemic, because I wanted to help people understand how to stay strong in the midst of something none of us had ever experienced. I partnered with two amazing women, Dr. Shantel Thomas and Iris T. London, because collaboration is a big part of what I like to do. Dr. Shantel works on the mental health (the mind), and she talks about how to have vision and sit in a quiet space. She helps people really envision what they want in their lives. I work on the emotional health (the soul), and talk about a lot of things, including forgiveness which is so hard for so many people, but necessary in order to move forward in our lives. And Iris does the physical (the body); we exercise together online. We’re on the fifth round now and the feedback has been fantastic.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

When I left the corporate world, even before I started my business, I launched a foundation called The Sister Accord®️. The three pillars of our mission are educating girls and women,

enlightening girls and women of the Power of Sisterhood, and eradicating bullying and violence against girls and women. This really grew out of my experience in the corporate world and what I said earlier about how women are socialized at young ages to be mean to each other. Mean girls grow up to be mean women and mean bosses. Nearly 50% of the U.S. workforce is female, and it’s essential to the viability and profitability of any company or organization to ensure that an environment of collaboration, not competition, is promoted. I wanted to help women, in particular, understand how to create this environment and live the values of sisterhood.

Our Tea Party Programs help young women understand the importance of strong, healthy, positive relationships with other women as part of their personal development and their development as exceptional leaders. Our goal is to have participants learn how to love themselves and each other through a combination of self-awareness exercises and leadership development training. Together we call this #theheartwork™️.

Participants in these events are a combination of younger women and those already established in their careers, and the results have been amazing. We’ve had people say it helped them overcome anxiety disorders and past trauma, we’ve had some come together and start businesses with each other, and we’ve forged so many ongoing mentor-mentee relationships. We don’t ask people to make this kind of commitment, it just happens because we give them the safe space to connect with each other. These events really do change the trajectory of women’s lives.

In addition to changing women’s lives and improving relationships, my goal is for these events to be a pipeline of talent for our partner companies in the form of co-op/internship opportunities during high school and college, and, ultimately, permanent positions upon graduation.

Ok. Thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the main part of our interview. This may be obvious to you, but it is not intuitive to many people. Can you articulate to our readers five ways that increased diversity can help a company’s bottom line? (Please share a story or example for each.)

I think these are the five things I would choose based on what I’ve seen in my career.

1. All boats rise. Oftentimes when you say equity and inclusion, people automatically start to shut down because they think that somebody else is going to be disadvantaged. I first noticed the issues with women not playing nice with each other when I was at Ford Motor Company which was, as you can imagine, a male-dominated industry. So, I started a group for women, an employee resources group, and we called it Sisters Who Are Buying, or SWAB (I know I probably could have picked a more attractive marketing name). I really just wanted women to be able to come together and share best practices and learnings. I asked a mentor of mine to help me so I could show support from leadership. The truth is that at first leadership was skeptical because they worried about singling out one group, but when I explained my vision, they understood helping one group is good for all of us. And, after a while, other people created additional employee resources groups.
2. Diverse employees can be ambassadors to communities of customers. One of the groups SWAB connected with, which already existed, was the Ford African ancestry group. Together, we started to think of some unique ways that the group could help Ford Motor Company speak to the Black community, and we realized we could help people understand why they should buy a Ford, given all the car options that were out there. We started an incentive program that extended our employee discounts to people in the African-American community and we were able to directly drive sales of vehicles.
3. Diverse employees can tap into additional talent. Another aspect of the work I spent a lot of time on when I was at Ford was recruiting more diverse talent. It was too easy for leadership to say, “we’re doing okay, we have Sonia, she’s a Black female” and check a box. But I didn’t want to be the only one and I wanted to leave a legacy. I started recruiting from Florida A&M University which is an HBCU that I had attended, because I wanted to show that there’s some really amazing talent out there, like, forget what color they are, these are just amazing people with amazing talent. I got the company to put some money into it and we started a relationship with the university. I actually took the CEO and some of the other leaders to Florida. As I moved on, I did that for all of the companies I went to as a way to get them engaged in how we can drive diversity, equity, and inclusion, and bring in different people with different experiences.
4. Diverse staff helps retain diverse staff. The other piece of this is retention. You want to attract great people, but if you have a revolving door because some people don’t feel that they can be successful there, that’s a problem. As I said earlier, I didn’t want to be the only Black female and feel like my employers were satisfied with having me on board. It’s important to create environments where everyone, regardless of who they are or what their background is, has the opportunity to win.
5. Working with diverse people brings innovation and creativity. My grandmother used to have a saying, “make a way out of no way,” which really means that when you don’t have resources, you have to be creative. I think when we don’t have diverse workforces and don’t partner with small women- and minority- owned businesses, we miss out on a lot of innovation. When I first started at Gillette, there was a gentleman who owned a temporary staffing agency. He told me that he had been trying for years to become an official vendor with the company but he kept getting turned down. I was new, so I asked around and people kept telling me that his agency did not have the wherewithal or the structure to effectively serve Gillette. I think they made a lot of assumptions that simply weren’t true. They wanted to stick with larger, more established staffing services. But here’s the thing, when I dug a little deeper and found out who had actually been sending temporary workers, it was his company. He was doing the work all along. With that information, I was able to get approval to officially bring his company onboard. It proved to be a very good decision because he was able to drive greater innovation, efficiencies, and savings.

What advice would you give to other business leaders to help their employees to thrive?

I think we spend too much time on weaknesses and what people aren’t doing instead of spending time identifying and strengthening their strengths. As a leader, you have to find a way to unleash each employee’s superpowers. People come with a lot of really amazing talents and skills, but oftentimes in structured organizations, they don’t know how to or feel like they can’t use those skills to drive success for themselves. As a leader, you have to be willing to engage with people deeply so you can recognize their strengths and leverage them. The truth is that a lot of people don’t even recognize their own superpowers — I ask people and so many will say “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure I have any.” Great leaders can see the greatness in others and inspire them to tap into it. When you identify something someone does well and tell them “you have a way with numbers” or “you have a lot of wisdom,” you actually speak it into them. Just sharing it can sometimes be the one thing that actually unleashes it.

What advice would you give to other business leaders about how to manage a large team?

Be present. Leaders are pulled in so many different directions and there’s so much going on. Trying to keep up with all of these things and then have your own life at home is very hard. What I have found to be most effective is being present in whatever I’m doing at that moment. If I was talking to the team in Spain, I made it all about the team in Spain. I learned how to be fully present and not thinking about two or three steps down the road. That really allowed me to engage with all of my team in a way that helped them to understand how important they were to me and led them to feel empowered to do great work. It helped that this was in the days before the pandemic when I could travel and be with people, but it’s a lesson we can all take with us even when we’re on the phone or Zoom. Make sure you are fully present and engaged with what they are talking to you about. We’re not good at multitasking. Once I learned to focus on one thing, it made a huge difference in terms of how I showed up as a leader.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC Funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this 🙂

Warren Buffet. He seems wise, humble, and kind. So many people think that to be successful or wealthy, you have to be mean and undermine others, but he’s just the total antithesis of that which is what I’m trying to teach through my foundation. And, he also has done so much with and for philanthropy. He seems to know when enough personal wealth is enough, even for his children. He really embodies the values that I try to live every day, so to be able to sit down with him would be a blessing.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

They can read about The Sister Accord®️ and see our upcoming programs on the foundation’s website and they can follow me on my website at http://soniajacksonmyles.com/.

Thank you for these excellent insights. We wish you continued success in your great work.

Sonia Jackson Myles of The Accord Group: How Diversity Can Increase a Company’s Bottom Line was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

You won’t be able to get it all done in one day, so set clear priorities. It’s important to have ambitious goals, but it’s just as important to understand the smaller steps that it will take to achieve those goals. Whenever I enter a new sector or company for the first time, I often find myself envisioning what we might be able to achieve in the longer term. But it’s critical to never lose sight of the process or get too far ahead of yourself.

As a part of my series about “Big Ideas That Might Change The World In The Next Few Years” I had the pleasure of interviewing Jason Few.

Jason Few is the President and Chief Executive Officer of FuelCell Energy, Inc. (NASDAQ:FCEL), a global leader in fuel cell technology and clean energy solutions. He has more than 30 years of experience leading Global Fortune 500 and privately held companies across the energy, technology and telecommunication sectors, and he has overseen transformational changes across these sectors. In addition to his work at FuelCell Energy, Mr. Few also serves on the Marathon Oil Board of Directors (NYSE:MRO), as a Senior Advisor to Verve Industrial, an industrial cybersecurity software company, and on the board of Memorial Hermann Hospital. He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer systems in business from Ohio University, and an MBA from Northwestern University’s J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you please tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I’m originally from Ohio, and while I’ve moved around quite a bit over the years, the Midwestern values I grew up with very much shaped who I am. Both of my parents had an incredible work ethic, never quitting a task until it was done. Their tenacity made a big impression on me, and I always strive to approach everything I do with that same work ethic.

One of five children, I was the first in my immediate family to graduate from college. I’m proud of that, but I also know that I might not have been able to do it without the support of the important role models in my life. For that reason, I’ve always tried to set positive examples for my siblings and other people in my life, encouraging them to strive to be the best that they can be. In my professional career, I draw inspiration from those around me, while also pushing them to reach their full potential.

I value my faith, my family, my personal and professional connections, and the challenges I’ve faced that have helped to make me the person I am today.

Can you please tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I’ve been involved in the energy sector for some time. In 2018, I was recruited to join FuelCell Energy’s Board of Directors, at a time when the company knew it needed to pursue a new strategic direction, aimed at bringing FuelCell’s energy innovations to a broader set of customers. My previous experience across the technology and energy sectors gave me a different perspective on FuelCell’s business, and I was excited to work with my fellow board colleagues and the management team to reimagine the company’s vision and strategy for growth.

Several months later, after serving as an independent board director, I was asked to take on the role of President and CEO. This was not my original plan, but I was honored to be given the offer, because I understand just how genuinely transformational FuelCell Energy’s work is. We don’t just deliver cleaner power — we’re developing and delivering systems that have the potential to radically transform the global energy landscape while positively impacting the environment. So, after discussing the opportunity with my wife of course, I happily accepted.

Can you please share with us the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

One of the most interesting aspects of my career is that it has given me several opportunities to be part of projects that would have a major transformative impact on the world.

The first one involved helping to launch the broadband business more than two decades ago. Last year, when the world had to very quickly shut down and adapt because of the global pandemic, the fundamental tool that allowed the seamless transition to remote work was our nearly global broadband internet network. Back in the 1990s, I was part of a team that launched broadband for what is now AT&T. Now, when I look back and think about how transformative access to broadband has been for the world, I get goosebumps knowing that I played a small role in making that happen.

More recently, my role in helping to advance a transformative clean energy platform has also been incredibly motivating — and I imagine that when I look back on this experience years from now, it will give me similar goosebumps. My current role at FuelCell Energy has given me the opportunity to be on the front end of the coming energy transition, contributing to a major world goal of mitigating climate change and addressing one of the greatest challenges that our planet has ever faced. Without a doubt, this energy transition is poised to be one of the most significant shifts in modern history, and FuelCell Energy is contributing in material ways. To me, that is really exciting, and I get up every morning fired up to be a part of a solution that will enable the world to live powered by clean energy.

Which principles or philosophies have guided your life? Your career?

My faith in God has been a guiding principle for me throughout my personal and professional life. I also deeply value my family and everything that family means. Faith, the support of my wife, children, and family at large serve as my main fuel. These are all things that give meaning to life and inform my sense of morality.

With regard to my career, the most important principles for me have always been integrity and meeting my commitments exactly as I make them. I try to act with what I call a high “say/do” ratio, meaning when I say I will do something, I will. Every day at work, I’m very focused on delivering results for customers, my team, our stakeholders and our shareholders. I also believe in developing teams and building relationships inside the workplace. I think it is critical to invest in other people, bringing the best of you to work every day, getting to know people on a human level and engaging with them in their lives. I believe in direct and honest communication. Candid, constructive, and direct dialogue is very important, and it has helped to guide me in my career and my life.

Finally, I try to spend time with people outside of work who add to my life and whose lives I can add to. Warren Buffet has been quoted as saying, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” I want my average to be amazing.

Ok thank you for that. Let’s now move to the main focus of our interview. Can you tell us about your “Big Idea That Might Change The World”?

I fundamentally believe that the right kind of fuel cell technology, deployed in the right way, can radically transform the energy landscape — delivering reliable baseload power to the world in a much cleaner way than it is currently being done in most places.

In case you’re not familiar with fuel cells, they’re a technology that allows us to cleanly and efficiently produce electricity from a fuel (like hydrogen, natural gas or biogas) without burning that fuel. Importantly, fuel cells are able to produce what the energy industry calls “baseload” power — meaning they can be relied upon to continuously power our lives 24 hours a day, 365 days a year — which is something that wind and solar, as intermittent technologies, unfortunately can’t achieve.

Within the context of our energy landscape, where we’ve typically been forced to choose between “clean” and “baseload,” fuel cells are something of a paradigm shift: Fuel cells mean we can deliver reliable baseload power without burning any fuel. We can reliably power a city or a factory, while outputting virtually zero NOx or SOx emissions. We can finally have it both ways, or as some might say, “have our cake and eat it, too.”

That’s pretty amazing in and of itself, but FuelCell Energy’s approach goes even further. Our carbon separation capabilities decrease CO2 emissions by about 70%, and we’re able to capture CO2 that’s pure enough to be used for carbonated beverages. The same fuel cell that generates electricity can also directly convert electricity (and water) into clean hydrogen, for immediate use or long-term energy storage. Our fuel cells can be configured to run on hydrogen, which is a zero-carbon energy source, generating only electricity, heat and water. And our “tri-generation” system — delivering electricity, hydrogen, water, and thermal energy, all from a single platform, is game changing. We have the platform technology to lead our customers and prospective customers on the path to decarbonization.

There are other advantages as well. Our entire system is extremely compact and power-dense, delivering 10 megawatts per acre (compared to an intermittent solar system that would require approximately 395 acres of land to produce the same amount of power), so our fuel cells can be situated close to where power is needed. And our systems are designed for the circular economy — we recycle 93% of the materials in our platforms and products and put them back into productive use. I could go on and on!

But what does this mean for the world? The bottom line is that we don’t need to choose between radically decreasing emissions and delivering reliable baseload power — we can do both, today. We don’t have to accept that decarbonization means deindustrialization or that developing nations have to miss out on their own industrial revolution to be “good” global citizens. We don’t have to redo our infrastructure to enable distributed hydrogen, since we can efficiently and effectively capture carbon, and we can leverage zero-carbon hydrogen as a fuel to help us achieve our climate ambitions.

How do you think this will change the world?

It’s difficult to overstate the impact of what we’re talking about here. We can deliver clean, reliable baseload power, virtually anywhere in the world. We can radically decrease emissions and decrease our impact on climate change without compromising on energy reliability or availability. That’s pretty amazing.

In developing nations, there are some particular advantages. Our platform’s fuel flexibility means we can leverage whatever energy source is most readily available, whether that’s biogas, natural gas, propane, LNG, or something else. If there’s no readily available fuel source, anaerobic digesters can be deployed anywhere in the world to convert food and wastewater into clean biofuels. There is food and water waste everywhere around the world, and our platform can use that fuel to create and generate baseload power.

The other advantage, which I alluded to previously, is that our fuel cells don’t just generate baseload power — they also generate hydrogen, industrial-grade CO2, water and thermal energy such as steam. That hydrogen can be used to generate additional power, or it can be stored for future use. That carbon can be used in products such as cement, concrete, PH water balancing, beverages, dry ice and more. And that thermal energy can be used for indoor climate regulation, district heating and cooling or other industrial processes. This is an all-in-one system that can address virtually every energy need, all from whichever fuel source happens to be most readily available. That significantly cuts down on the infrastructure that would typically be needed to support those kinds of applications.

Having spent time in the telecommunications industry, in both the landline and cellular business, I think there are some significant parallels to be drawn between energy and telecommunications. Today, in a market like India, telecommunication providers are not spending time building out poles and wires for landline service; instead, they’re deploying cell towers and 5G networks to enable wireless communication. I think about distributed generation the same way: We don’t need to build big, centralized power generation plants or expensive, high-risk, high-voltage transmission lines, with poles and wires, and we can significantly reduce above-ground risks associated with natural disasters. With fuel cells, we can put the power exactly where it’s needed — even in urban areas or on remote islands, and even in parts of the world that lack power infrastructure today.

Virtually anywhere in the world, we can deliver clean, reliable energy — without sacrificing one for the other.

Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this idea that people should think more deeply about?

At a higher level, we should think more deeply about the energy transition. I think it’s critical for all of us to realize that there’s not a single one-size-fits-all answer to the question of how we should decarbonize our energy infrastructure.

I don’t think the right answer is to simply say, “we need to do it all with renewable resources like wind and solar,” because that’s not reality. There are industries that simply do not lend themselves to electrification, such as cement, steelmaking, chemical processing, and glass, just to name a few. We can’t just stop making steel — and moreover, it would be incredibly unfair to tell a developing nation that they’re not allowed to make or use steel, when steel is needed to provide housing in highly populated communities, for example.

There is a potential for many unintended consequences given the rhetoric around energy and the way people are approaching the energy transition. It’s incumbent upon both industry and political leaders to take a very thoughtful approach to the energy transition; we need an approach that doesn’t lead with headlines but addresses the matter in a constructive way, without requiring deindustrialization or drastically changing the way we live.

Take a look at cars today that have rubber tires, a hydrocarbon; are we going to use wooden tires instead? Even an electric vehicle has rubber tires on it. So, the unintended consequence is that, in order to engage society in a conversation and to make progress, we must have open dialogue with all, including those that believe the answer is very binary.

I encourage you to take a picture of your favorite room in your house, print that picture, get a red Sharpie and draw an X through every item that is in full or part made using a hydrocarbon. You will be amazed at what is left if anything. The point is not that we shouldn’t, or that we can’t do things differently — the point is that real innovation, and real progress in transitioning away from hydrocarbons, is a complex task that will require a thoughtful, integrated approach.

Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this idea? Can you tell us that story?

I was always interested in the potential of fuel cells, but I really became convinced when I joined FuelCell Energy. I began to think much more deeply about the right way to drive an energy transition, and the role our company could play in enabling that transition.

It’s been interesting to me that different members of our team seem to have different opinions about which aspects or advantages of the fuel cell system they find most impressive or world-changing. For some, it’s the fact that we can create hydrogen. For others, it’s simply that we can deliver baseload power without burning any fuel.

For me, I think the fact that we can deliver fuel cells virtually anywhere in the world, even in places without much existing energy infrastructure, is most transformative. This same platform can help developing nations to industrialize while at the same time allowing them to be part of the global push toward clean energy. For me, that realization was the “ah ha” moment.

What do you need to lead this idea to widespread adoption?

The good news is that the world is increasingly committed to finding a way to take on climate change, and there is of course a desire to do so while maintaining abundant power. So from that perspective, there is already a huge appetite for a cleaner baseload power source.

There’s also already a strong desire for long-duration energy storage solutions, which again is another advantage of our fuel cells, given their ability to output hydrogen. That kind of storable energy is critical to support intermittent renewable resources. So on several fronts, the demand for exactly these solutions is already there. In many ways, the biggest catalyst that we need is educating the public about the opportunities that fuel cell systems offer. Ultimately, what we need is for business leaders, political leaders, and general consumers alike to think of fuel cells when they think of cleaner power and renewable energy.

Again, there’s already some good news here, in that many major business leaders have already recognized the importance of fuel cells. Just looking at FuelCell Energy in particular, some of our clients include Pfizer, which currently relies on our fuel cells for enhanced grid reliability and for steam in their manufacturing operations as they continue to work on the Covid-19 vaccine; ExxonMobil, who we’re working with to continue to push the limits of decarbonization; and global utilities who are working to decarbonize the electricity grid. So, the fuel cell movement is certainly gaining traction — but I’d love to see it accelerate even faster.

Finally, we need smart and clear policies so that companies like FuelCell Energy and others in the energy sector know exactly what the rules of the road are. In any business, the thing we need most is clarity. What are the rules? Once we know how we want to move forward, we will figure out how to be successful within that framework.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)

You won’t be able to get it all done in one day, so set clear priorities. It’s important to have ambitious goals, but it’s just as important to understand the smaller steps that it will take to achieve those goals. Whenever I enter a new sector or company for the first time, I often find myself envisioning what we might be able to achieve in the longer term. But it’s critical to never lose sight of the process or get too far ahead of yourself.

Change always takes longer than you expect, but stay focused on the goal. Many years ago, when I first learned about fuel cells, I thought, “This is amazing! If we can just get the word out, virtually everyone will want to transition to fuel cell-based power.” The reality is that, while we’ve made significant progress in helping to get our customers realize the advantages of fuel cells, we still have some work to do in reshaping the energy landscape.

Listen more than you talk. I’ve been fortunate to have been surrounded by some very impressive colleagues throughout my career, but I’ve also been struck again and again at the fact that a critical insight or revelation can come from virtually anywhere. Always be ready to listen.

Know the difference between a mentor and a sponsor. In my professional journey, I’ve had several excellent mentors who offered me sound advice that has helped to shape my success. But my career has also been greatly shaped by my “sponsors” — those individuals who used their position not only to advise or mentor me but also to help me grow my career, to recommend me for the next opportunity, and to speak up for me when it mattered. I’ve benefited from both mentors and sponsors, and I’ve played both roles myself, so I thoroughly understand the value that each role brings. But it’s critical to know the difference and cultivate both.

Dysfunction is corrosive; make decisions quickly. As a leader, it’s critical to keep your teams moving. In many cases, indecision can be just as problematic as making a bad decision. Don’t be rash or jump to an answer without thinking it through, but trust your instincts and act decisively.

Can you share with our readers what you think are the most important “success habits” or “success mindsets”?

Meet your commitments; focus on outcomes and results; and build great teams that empower you to be a great teammate.

Some very well-known VCs read this column. If you had 60 seconds to make a pitch to a VC, what would you say? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂

We’re not actively pitching VCs, since we’re already publicly traded, but I’ll take any opportunity I’m given to hammer home the opportunity for fuel cells.

Fuel cells are the most important energy source that almost no one is talking about — and FuelCell Energy’s portfolio of dynamic, scalable energy solutions delivers the options that the world needs to effectively build a path toward decarbonization.

The FuelCell platform delivers clean, dependable, megawatt-scale baseload power for markets across the globe. Our fuel cells are fuel-flexible — running on hydrogen, natural gas or biogas — without burning/combusting the fuel, thereby releasing virtually zero NOx or SOx emissions. And our tri-generation system delivers electricity, hydrogen and thermal energy — all from the same single platform, using the same fuel source.

FuelCell Energy delivers more than just cleaner power — we deliver platforms that can transform the global energy landscape.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

You can find me on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/jasonbfew. You can also find FuelCell Energy on Twitter at @FuelCell_Energy, and on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/company/fuelcell-energy/

FuelCell Energy: Jason Few’s Big Idea That Might Change The World was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Non-Fungible Tokens: Christophe Verdot On The 5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Highly Successful Career In The NFT Industry

Create a relationship with collectors. Once you have your first few collectors, it means you are on the right track and it is an incredibly positive thing. Try to get in touch with your collectors and thank them and eventually airdrop them some special NFT too. If a collector purchases more than one artwork from you, that speaks a lot. Most importantly, it is a sign of trust. Build a relationship with your collectors. They trust you with their money because you give them value in exchange.

Many have observed that we are at the cusp of an NFT boom. The thing is, it’s so cutting edge, that many people don’t know what it is. What exactly is an NFT and how can one create a lucrative career out of selling them? To address this, as a part of our interview series called “5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Highly Successful Career In The NFT Industry”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Christophe Verdot.

Christophe Verdot is a freelance developer for nearly 2 decades. He is the Founder and Lead Developer of Signature Chain, an entity building dApps on the Waves Blockchain. Christophe’s most recent and popular brainchild is SIGN Art, a Digital Art Gallery and NFT Marketplace on Waves Blockchain

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory and how you grew up?

I was born in Bordeaux, France, and grew up in Ares — a small town in the southwest seaside of France. Growing up, I was into street art and skateboarding.

I went to an art school in Bordeaux and worked as a full-time Web Designer, switching from agency to agency. After a while, I decided to switch to freelancing, initially and primarily into web design, and eventually into web development.

I moved to the Philippines in 2009 and am now living there with my wife. I started my own Filipino Martial Arts school and spends most of my time working and training.

Is there a particular book, film, or podcast that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

The podcast that kind of changed my life was the speech of Gary Yourofsky about Veganism. I watched it 7 years ago and have been vegan ever since.

Aside from this, I play a lot of video games. Dark Souls had a significant impact on me, similarly from years of Martial Arts training, to never give up.

Is there a particular story that inspired you to pursue a career in this new industry? We’d love to hear it.

For the last 8 years, I regularly work on developing Metadata Registries for Carbon Unit Management. The registries were mostly financed by the European Union or by banks.

While working on one of these registries, I was asked to incorporate Blockchain-Based Document Certification. At that time, I did not know about Blockchain.

In early 2018, I started to read and study Blockchain. After a year later, I started Signature Chain and launched its first project — sign-web.app, a File and Document Certification tool on the Waves Blockchain

Following this, I decided to combine both things I loved — Art and Web Development. After a year of development, in February of 2021, I launched my second project under Signature Chain — SIGN Art (sign-art.app), the first and only Digital Art Gallery and NFT marketplace on the Waves Blockchain.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began this fascinating career?

First, I would say, are the Grants I received from Waves Blockchain to develop these projects. I received a few, including 10,000 Waves in December 2020, which allowed me to work full-time on SIGN Art.

More interestingly, a few days ago, was a record-breaking sale on SIGN Art which reached $1 Million. Such achievement reminds me that hard work always pays out.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

I think I did a few, not sure which could be considered the funniest. I would say my biggest mistake and it happens still, is doing and handling everything alone.

I learned to delegate work, especially in fields that I am not 100% confident in. Leaving it to experts helps to ease a lot of stress, gives me more time for my self and is overall better for the project.

None of us can achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

As the sole developer of SIGN Art, I did everything alone in terms of development, but I had huge help from some community members that ended up being SIGN Ambassadors and are continuously doing an amazing job every day — managing community and things I don’t have much time to do. This was very important as it allowed me to focus on the development of the SIGN Art web application.

Recently, I started to open more opportunities for people to get involve and take part in the project. I have outsourced web development for improving our infrastructure and for building important tools to scale better. I, now, delegate more and I regret not doing it sooner.

I’m also very grateful to Sasha Ivanov (Waves Blockchain Founder) and the Waves Association members for their constant support of my project.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

Currently, all my focus is on SIGN Art. The NFT platform was released almost 2 months ago, and the result is amazing! I am working on the secondary market, aside from several updates, which are planned for release this quarter.

SIGN Art helps digital artists by offering fixed and low transaction fees (no gas), and also an important feature — creation source certification, as compared to other NFT marketplaces.

Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. I’m sure you get this question all the time. But for the benefit of our readers, can you explain in your own words what an NFT is, and why people are spending so much money on them?

NFT or Non-Fungible Tokens are unique and indivisible tokens linked to something unique. In the digital art field, for example, each NFT will be associated with unique art. What makes a creation original and unique are two things: 1) The artist’s intent and 2) the number of original copies in limited quantity or edition. What is the advantage of this? It’s about giving ownership and right, based on who owns this token.

The problem with digital files is that you can easily duplicate them, and they would all look exactly alike, with no way to know which one is the original — and this is where NFTs kick in. By creating NFT and linking it to unique artwork/s, artists can indicate which one is the original and whoever owns the NFT is the owner of the original artwork.

The NFT industry seems so exciting right now. What are the 3 things in particular that most excite you about the industry? If you can, please share a story or example for each.

1. What excites me the most is that it starts to become a thing even outside the initially small circle of NFT users. The technology is reaching well-known traditional artists that want to switch to the digital art scene. It is such a great honor to have these great artists onboard the NFT scene.
2. Also, as the NFT industry is constantly evolving as is Blockchain technology, a lot of interesting things around NFTs will come out in the coming years. Cross-Chain Technology is being developed by Gravity. I love to see how this will bring a new generation of artists and collectors, and communities from different blockchains.
3. NFT is currently focusing on digital art. Another exciting thing for me is the opportunity of NFT to branch out into the different industries, where applicable. NFTs give more power to the people and give access to things that were unreachable before. It would be awesome to see NFT getting applied to common and practical aspects of life, e.g., Ticketing and Property Real Estate.

What are the 3 things that concern you about the industry? Can you explain? What can be done to address those concerns?

1. People often describe the NFT as a being in a bubble. It has been a constant debate and people worry that the bubble will pop soon and the hype will disappear. As long as there are artists and collectors that support the digital art movement, NFT marketplaces will not die. SIGN Art supports the community by releasing new features and regular improvements to the platform. Even with a small but strong group base of enthusiasts, with a common interest in Blockchain and Digital art, the industry will never die. As with Cryptocurrency, which up to now, some people are still calling a bubble. Haven’t we proved it otherwise?
2. Another issue that concerns me is that these NFT marketplaces are getting populated by “so-called” artists that get random images online, putting them together using a mobile app that does all the job. A couple of screen touches after, it sells for several hundred dollars. We try to keep SIGN Art exclusive for legitimate digital artists. We find it important to clean up the space by checking the background of all applications and randomly verifying the authenticity of artworks minted on the SIGN Art platform.
3. I see a few artists that are reluctant to use non-ETH marketplaces and it is of important concern for me as the lead developer of SIGN Art. Cross-Chain Technology is an interesting development and implementation, one that our platform can greatly benefit from. By implementing Cross-Chain, users can freely use $ETH on SIGN Art, and vise versa.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about NFTs? Can you explain what you mean?

The biggest myth for me is that because you can put 2 images together and add some automatic effects to it, you are suddenly an artist. Our team at SIGN Art tries to screen the artist that we onboard the platform. We require a certain number of digital art/portfolios, to qualify as a digital artist.

Also, NFTs does not work for everything. People start to tokenize every random stuff. Many of them do not need a token, to begin with.

What are the most common mistakes you have seen people make when they enter the NFT industry? What can be done to avoid that?

Many artists want to sell right away. People see the hype around NFT, they try to post as many artworks as possible, instead of taking their time and work on high-quality art. A common mistake I see in the Digital Art NFT field is posting to many instead of a few of higher quality. Having 50 low-quality unsold NFT will not help you, versus 3 top-quality ones.

Also, it is sometimes better to wait and improve, before starting to sell. If you are a beginner, then work on getting better first. Once you start posting, it stays, and your image will be attached to these drops.

How do you think NFTs have the potential to help society in the future?

As of now, NFTs can be applied to collectibles, gaming, art, virtual worlds. I believe NFT has real-world asset and documentation use, however, the legal base needs to be determined thoroughly firstEspecially if we start to link them to physical counterparts. Once this happens, then it will help society, based on their immutability and transparency.

Ok, fantastic. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Highly Successful Career In The NFT Industry?” (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. Do not start too early!

We see a lot of users that want to be an artist, legitimately or simply because of the NFT hype. People are getting an epiphany and want to change their career to become an artist. The thing is, while we understand everyone deserves a chance and must start somewhere, it does not make any sense to us to apply on a marketplace if you are not an established artist yet.

Perfect your art! Do not sell mediocre art or experiments. Strive to excel, rather than simply being good.

An NFT marketplace is a place where established artists sell their best creations. If you do not have a portfolio, no previous quality creations to show, or just a couple that you made following a tutorial — chances are that either you will get rejected by the platform and if not, then you’ll simply take the high risk of associating your name to a complete beginner and when you give such first impression to potential collectors, it is always very difficult to change it.

On SIGN Art, we assess and arbitrate our Approved sets of artists.

Learn first, get good at it then eventually consider joining a marketplace. Not the other way around.

At some point, the state of Crypto Art will correct and when this happens, only high-quality artists will remain in the space. Be one of them!

2. Quality over Quantity.

Many artists seem to think that the more they post, the higher the chances for them to make some sales.

While there is no golden rule about it and some top-selling artists happen to also drop new artworks regularly and are often sold out most of the time. However, for many others, they are just overloading their portfolio and sending a red flag to their visitors that no one is buying their creations.

If you can create a new artwork every day and have 50 unsold pieces in your portfolio, most probably you should consider create less and spend more time and improve each new creation. From a collector’s point of view, seeing an overloaded portfolio with very few to no pieces sold at all is not going to appeal to me at all.

Spend more time on your creation, post only the best of them and think about scarcity, as well. Better sell a 1/1 or 2/2 polished piece at a higher price, rather than rushed artworks made 10/10 at an exceptionally low price.

Also, avoid selling photographs of artworks. Many newcomers tend to just take a picture of their old hand-drawn physical art and try to stretch it out on a digital market, to sell it once again. While you are free to do that, unless it is an enhanced version with some digital post-treatment that makes it a digitally extended version of the physical version, this has little to do with digital art. Experienced collectors know that.

3. Price yourself correctly.

Pricing is an important part of the process. We notice that many talented artists have quite a hard time pricing their work and it is not rare that you will come across artworks that are sold at a certain price, with several bids, and eventually getting sold at 10 times lower the indicated price.

This could be double-edged, as basically, you are telling collectors that you have no idea what your art is worth to you. Some artists put a random price, but accept bids at any price.

The takeaway is that you should take the time to think about the price of your artworks. Define the price that makes sense to you and place a limit in terms of accepting offers.

4. Be active with the community and promote yourself.

If you just entered the space and were able to join a marketplace, you would have to make a name and connect with the community to maximize your exposure and the chance to attract collectors.

Be active on Twitter Instagram, Telegram, and Discord as these are among the most used social media and messaging platforms in Crypto Art.

Joining these groups will be extremely beneficial, as you get the chance to connect with fellow digital artists and collectors. Consider collaborating with other artists that share your passion and creativity. Share your work, receive feedback, and learn from seasoned artists.

Creating a bond with a community of both artists and collectors is extremely important. You are not competing here, you are sharing and thriving together. The most active and best-selling artists are often the ones active within a community — helping others. Connecting helps you build a large, reliable customer base, and strengthens the pool of collectors you can count on to repeatedly purchase NFTs from you.

Also, it is important to know that no one can appreciate art more than artists themselves. Unsurprisingly, artists are among the most active collectors.

Make sure to also have a fully completed profile on the marketplace and give as much information about you and your art, including links to your social media and portfolios to build trust among collectors. From a personal point of view, as a collector, if a profile has none of these and I have no way to do my research about the artist, I am unlikely going to buy any of his pieces.

5. Create a relationship with collectors.

Once you have your first few collectors, it means you are on the right track and it is an incredibly positive thing. Try to get in touch with your collectors and thank them and eventually airdrop them some special NFT too. If a collector purchases more than one artwork from you, that speaks a lot. Most importantly, it is a sign of trust. Build a relationship with your collectors. They trust you with their money because you give them value in exchange.

Some collectors will remain anonymous, but you know their blockchain address, so it is easy to airdrop them something from time to time or just post a general tweet to thank the anonymous buyer.

What is also important is to share with the collector some information and history about the creation you sell, why you made it, how you made it and what story you are telling through it. Art should try to tell a story, send a message, and create some reaction. Who knows, the collector may relate to these stories and come back for more.

Do not be too aggressive in selling, which I often see. Find the balance between promoting and being too pushy.

Consider the following:

You had your first sale, and you know who the collector was and did thank him for this, perfect.

On your next drop, you may tag him and call him out to have a look. Fair enough but please, stop there! Do not insist or call him out on every of your drop, asking him to buy just because he collected once and is maybe your only collector. This will make you look cheap and make him unlikely to want to get more from you if he feels constantly called out. Do not rely on one collector and make sure to focus on attracting more of them.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

I would love a movement around quality NFT. Currently, where everyone tokenizes almost anything and everyone suddenly labels themselves as artists, it becomes hard to find artists as they tend to be like a hidden gem.

Most importantly, protect the planet. We only have one, Consider less meat and less plastic. Strive for a healthier lifestyle ?

We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂

I would love to finally meet with Sasha Ivanov and Aleksei Pupyshev, Sasha to thanks him for all the help he did provide to my project, and Aleksei for his support on making SIGN cross-chain through his Gravity project. I would ask for their advice on how to make the project even better. Must be a vegan lunch of course ?

Thank you so much for these excellent stories and insights. We wish you continued success in your great work!

Non-Fungible Tokens: Christophe Verdot On The 5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Highly… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Non-Fungible Tokens: Vladislav Ginzburg On The 5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Highly Successful Career In The NFT Industry

In order for NFTs to do anything we want them to do they need to run on a smart contract. If this movement makes sense, then we don’t just talk about the charities we support, but we actually put our money where our mouth is and write what our mouth is saying with smart contracts. With all the money flying around in blockchain, I’m dedicated to utilizing smart contracts to route some of the money directly into charity.

Many have observed that we are at the cusp of an NFT boom. The thing is, it’s so cutting edge, that many people don’t know what it is. What exactly is an NFT and how can one create a lucrative career out of selling them? To address this, as a part of our interview series called “5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Highly Successful Career In The NFT Industry”, we had the pleasure of interviewing CEO, Co-Founder — Vladislav Ginzburg.

Vlad serves as Chief Operating Officer of Blockparty. Earlier he ran an art hedge fund and was a former director at Rock Paper Photo, a LiveNation backed photography marketplace. He also previously managed a blue-chip artwork investment fund and individual artists, during which he closed $100mm in art transactions.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory and how you grew up?

I was born in Kyiv in 1987, left the Soviet Union with my family when I was young and came to America by way of Austria and Italy, eventually ending up in Brooklyn. After I graduated college, I was looking for a career in finance and ended up getting into the fine art industry. I did some odd jobs for auction houses and realized that the art business was a financial market but was lacking in the tools and analytics that financial markets rely on, and felt I could make an impact there. Combining that knowledge with my love for music and art and experience working as an art dealer and managing art collected by musicians, I found myself at the intersection of music and art. I stepped away from art briefly to focus on and pursue technology until I met Blockparty co-founder Shiv Madan. We worked hard on creating a ticketing use case for NFT’s, eventually expanding our scope to NFT’s for music, art and culture collectibles. Given my experience in the art world, I stepped in as CEO to lead the expansion.

Is there a particular book, film, or podcast that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

I think that Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is a book that resonates with a lot of people in the industry, myself included, because of how much it ties retro futurism into a future that is largely lived online and tying into things like the Metaverse, and how important of a role gaming plays into the development of exciting products.

As for other books, I get asked a lot about the fantastical prices being made in NFT’s in this early hype cycle and if there’s any precedent in the Contemporary Art market. While I wouldn’t say that this book necessarily impacted me, nor do I agree with many of it’s assessments, I recommend The 10 Million Dollar Stuffed Shark by Dan Johnson to folks trying to understand the parallels of the art market to what’s happening now with NFT’s.

Books like the Truth Machine and The Age of Cryptocurrency by Michael Casey were instrumental in turning my blockchain/bitcoin hobby into a legitimate career interest.

Is there a particular story that inspired you to pursue a career in this new industry?

Most tech companies or founders largely build products for ourselves, something that we would use or something that would matter to us. I’ve always been a fan of music and art and wanted to be a part of and give back to the industry. I also spent my career studying the psychology of collectorship, so with that knowledge and my passion for music and art I was able to better understand the intersection of the two and help create something authentic.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began this fascinating career?

The first time we ticketed a music festival end to end we came into it from the perspective of solving the market problems (ticket scalping, fake tickets, etc.), all of which NFTs did solve, but what we realized is despite the problems with incumbent ticket platforms, people didn’t understand NFTs yet, and were used to convenience and habit, so we had to learn how to add value to the market while also creating a platform and service that is easy to use. Confirmation times, requiring one ticket (NFT) per wallet, non allowance of 3rd party marketplaces confused the consumer, leading to some frustrated interactions at the entrance to the festival. I laugh when I remember that day, thinking about how the consumer didn’t exactly feel better about their customer service needs because they were among the first to use an NFT for a ticket. Lesson learned that we continue to carry with us to this day as an organization.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Early in my career I met a massively significant artist named Astrid Kirchherr. We met shortly after the fine art investment fund I managed acquired the copyrights to her iconic first-ever photographs of the Beatles, in order to begin creating prints that she would sign and sell to collectors via galleries and exhibit in museums around the world.

That day, I arrived to meet her at her attorney’s office in Hamburg, DE. I flew in from New York with a portfolio box containing prints of her photographs that I had made at a leading photography print studio in Manhattan. I also flew with a ceremonial pen I purchased as a gift. I thought presenting her with the first run of high-quality prints, and a ceremonial pen for the first signing was the right move.

Quite quickly, she let me know that the prints were not created with the correct attention to detail that she demands in prints of her work, and that she never, ever signs in pen. What a faux pas, and a tremendously embarrassing moment to say the least.

Fortunately, I would go on to have commercial and cultural success with her archive of works, and she and I would laugh about that moment later on.

However, that day (and that feeling) has stuck with me every day since and reminds me never to fall into the trap of mistaking artworks (or NFTs now) for assets first and foremost. These are artworks, and above all else the art and artists perspective must be respected to be truly authentic — and the authenticity is the value, and authenticity often means more than just real.

That’s an ethic I bring to work every day at Blockparty and to the artists that trust us with their artworks.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

My parents first and foremost have had a big impact on my success. They’ve always instilled the ‘immigrant mentality’ of never giving up, even if the odds are stacked against you and that definitely is something that has driven me throughout my career. My wife has also been an integral part of my success — she was extremely supportive in 2016 when I decided to change career paths and has been a support system throughout. As a highly accomplished marketing and brand professional, she’s taught me a lot about brand and how critical the mission and story is in the business I run, and how living that mission is vital to the success of the company and brand. There were also quite a few people who took the time to explain the music industry to help me become more thoughtful about the industry, which was important for me as well.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

Yes, we recently launched a refreshed platform, which offers a variety of tools and options for creators including bespoke and customizable storefronts, auction functionality, tooling, and multi chain-support. This updated platform provides a more personalized experience for artists and musicians, allowing them to manage and conduct their own drops, direct sales, auctions and reach new audiences with their authentic NFTs.

For the benefit of our readers, can you explain in your own words what an NFT is, and why people are spending so much money on them?

NFTs are a type of cryptographic token initially made possible by the Ethereum blockchain, which is a decentralized and open-source blockchain that allows developers the freedom and tools to create custom tokens for whatever purpose they see fit. In this case, each token is fully unique and therefore its value is derived only from the characteristics that make it unique.

It is therefore easiest to think of an NFT as a digital certificate of title. Owning the NFT means you own the media that is connected to it (just as the certificate of title you have on a car means you own the car that is connected to the certificate).

Digital art has existed for many decades, but faced a great challenge to develop a culture of collectorship: It’s hard to prove ownership of a digital asset. NFT’s help by establishing a digital certificate of title that is linked to a digital artwork, and ownership is guaranteed, and tracked throughout resale.

One of the main benefits of owning a digital collectible versus a physical collectible is that each NFT contains distinguishing characteristics that make each unique and easily verifiable. This is a major selling point for collectors, because it means that their investment is protected since the original can be traced back to the original creator, so any fake collectibles won’t hold up.

The NFT industry seems so exciting right now. What are the 3 things in particular that most excite you about the industry? If you can, please share a story or example for each.

One thing I’m excited for is when the industry gets out of the pandemic. Right now, the great equalizer of NFTs is that we’re all on our screens 24/7, but once we’re back in the world there’s an opportunity for NFTs to be usable in the real world and to continue to deliver value.

On the flip side of that, I’m excited to see how digital solutions will continue to have an impact post-pandemic. As virtual experiences become more robust and high quality, digital ownership within those things will really start to matter and we have to step out of our defaults and think about reaching a digital generation.

What are the 3 things that concern you about the industry? Can you explain? What can be done to address those concerns?

Celebrity Takeover: with the influx of celebrities coming into the NFT space, it might take audiences away from entering creators.

Data Security: creators and fans not using established platforms that have clear security guidelines when it comes to collecting personal and financial information.

NFT’s becoming a ‘fad’: people may try to jump on the bandwagon and invest in NFTs or creators that they’re not passionate about.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about NFTs? Can you explain what you mean?

NFTs are complicated

NFTs may sound complicated, but they’re not. Logically, it’s no different than two rectangular sheets of canvas. If I paint on it, thus making that canvas completely unique to characteristics I applied, it’s only worth something to my mom. If Andy Warhol does it, it’s a commercially-viable asset. The same goes for NFTs.

NFTs are a bad investment

If you are passionate about the industry and creator that you’re investing in, NFTs are a great investment because they have the potential to exponentially increase their value, which not only benefits the investor but also the creator who developed the work.

NFTs are pointless

Crypto art is the future as it enables traditional artists — who still prefer canvas and paintbrush — to create new digital features of their works. By allowing these artists to expand their creative mediums, they’re able to create a more well rounded experiences for fans and collectors and open up a new revenue stream.

NFTs promote forgery and misattribution

While NFTs do guarantee ownership of an asset, they do not guarantee that the creator of the asset isn’t knocking it off. My advice to consumers looking to purchase NFTs is to buy from a legitimate NFT platform that vet creators to ensure their work is legit.

NFTs are bad for the environment

The problem that must be solved here is not NFTs being bad for the environment, it is the energy consumption associated with proof of work mining. This is actively being worked on by the Ethereum community with various solutions, including new approaches to mining and scaling solutions. Also, we must not assume that all NFTs are made on Ethereum.

What are the most common mistakes you have seen people make when they enter the NFT industry. What can be done to avoid that?

The most common mistake people make when they enter the NFT industry is investing in an NFT as a way to make money. While many NFT’s are going to skyrocket in value, an overwhelming majority will not. My main piece of advice to avoid that is to invest in quality NFTs that you love and that are from a reputable source.

How do you think NFTs have the potential to help society in the future?

NFTs tap into culturally relevant trends and moments that are present in society and therefore have the potential to open up different aspects of culture to various groups of people. NFTs also provide an engagement opportunity for both creators and fans to connect over their love of art, music and more.

Ok, fantastic. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Highly Successful Career In The NFT Industry?” (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. Be Authentic with what you have to offer

2. Have passion for what you’re creating/what you’re buying

3. Give time to build up your audience

4. Take advantage of the NFT marketplace to build your network

5. Don’t force blockchain to do something it can’t do, instead, adapt to what the technology will allow us to do

If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?

In order for NFTs to do anything we want them to do they need to run on a smart contract. If this movement makes sense, then we don’t just talk about the charities we support, but we actually put our money where our mouth is and write what our mouth is saying with smart contracts. With all the money flying around in blockchain, I’m dedicated to utilizing smart contracts to route some of the money directly into charity.

Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why?

We have been quarantined in a pandemic for over a year. I would love to host my friends and family for lunch.

Non-Fungible Tokens: Vladislav Ginzburg On The 5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Highly… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

To stimulate the physical activity of people with severe dementia, I designed the Tovertafel. It is an original interactive light projection system that entices those with cognitive challenges to interact and have fun together. The Tovertafel means ‘magic table’ in Dutch and is an innovative device with infrared sensors that project interactive games and vibrant images onto a surface such as a table to promote play. The games also help loved ones and caretakers better connect with patients, and are adaptable to social distancing guidelines.

We show the world what technology can bring to the quality of life in terms of long-term health and the shift in primary care to wellbeing. There is nothing more important than a patient’s quality of life and happiness.

We contribute and design products that show the more beautiful moments in the dementia journey with those two trends.

As a part of my series about “Big Ideas That Might Change The World In The Next Few Years” I had the pleasure of interviewing Hester Anderiesen Le Riche, CEO and founder of Tover.

An engineer by training, Hester Anderiesen Le Riche is the CEO and founder of Tover and the creator of a pioneering cognitive stimulation system — the Tovertafel. Hester has a PhD in Industrial Design Engineering from Delft University of Technology. She found her passion during design projects that influence people’s behaviour and contribute to their health. Her dissertation ‘Playful Design for Activation’ entails an evidence based approach of developing a product service system to stimulate physical activity of people with severe dementia. During her PhD, she designed the Tovertafel: the original interactive light projection system that entices those with cognitive challenges to interact and have fun together.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you please tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

Two parts of my life were crossing. On the one hand, I graduated studying industrial design engineering from the Delft University of Technology, where I was tasked with a six-month graduation project. That’s when I designed a conceptual product for the elderly of the future to uncover how we can look after each other from a technology standpoint. I was in the mindset of designing an engaging product with a social tenant for the elderly generation.

My other track was as a professional windsurfer in the Canary Islands, and I was always involved in healthy living and activity. That’s when I met a woman intrigued by my sports and design background, particularly for those of the silver age. She encouraged me to meet her professor at the University of Amsterdam, enthusiastic about stimulating everyone’s minds and bodies, particularly those who have dementia. Within an hour, he convinced me to use my design background and ideas along with my healthy living and active mindset to encourage the older generation to become more active themselves. Ultimately, he was the inspiration and person who led me to this career path.

Can you please share with us the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

One of my most memorable experiences was meeting the queen in the UK and presenting the Tovertafel during a state visit. During this time, entrepreneurs had the opportunity to share their products, and I was so engrossed by her personality. She has this incredible balance between being approachable and exceptionally well-informed.

She asked spot-on questions, and I thought how wonderful it was; after seeing fifty people a day who all want to share their idea and company, she was able to ask these perfect questions. She was incredibly generous with her headspace that she could have an open meeting, and there was no feeling of it being fake or a setup. From a female point of view, I was like, “wow, that’s power.”

Which principles or philosophies have guided your life? Your career?

What brought me this far is curiosity and an eagerness to learn.

From creating the Tovertafel for an untapped sector to competing in windsurfing competitions, my hunger for knowledge through experience has been a constant theme in my life. I have noticed that discovering bits of wisdom from unexpected mentors and reflecting on my failures has fueled my desire to work harder.

Even in windsurfing world tour competitions, I never did very well, but it allowed me to travel anywhere and meet the best training partner and friend. We had an excellent time training and filming each other to prepare for the competitions. Although we did poorly in the competition, it never killed my spirit in the sport, which translates to how I see business.

When entering my career, I had an engineering background and was a designer, but I had zero theoretical knowledge or experience running a business. However, I was curious and eager to learn. There are so many people you bump into and meet throughout your life that have a unique type of knowledge that you can use — these people quickly become your mentors. Just by asking questions, you can learn a lot. I pride myself in staying curious and eager and ensure I always continue to ask questions — you will be surprised who will share their knowledge and enthusiasm within their respective niche.

Ok thank you for that. Let’s now move to the main focus of our interview. Can you tell us about your “Big Idea That Might Change The World”?

To stimulate the physical activity of people with severe dementia, I designed the Tovertafel. It is an original interactive light projection system that entices those with cognitive challenges to interact and have fun together. The Tovertafel means ‘magic table’ in Dutch and is an innovative device with infrared sensors that project interactive games and vibrant images onto a surface such as a table to promote play. The games also help loved ones and caretakers better connect with patients, and are adaptable to social distancing guidelines.

I don’t think the Tovertafel itself will change the entire care sector, but I think we present and are revolutionizing a new product category. We show the world what technology can bring to the quality of life in terms of long-term health and the shift in primary care to wellbeing. There is nothing more important than a patient’s quality of life and happiness.

We contribute and design products that show the more beautiful moments in the dementia journey with those two trends.

How do you think this will change the world?

Most people are absolutely terrified by the idea of dementia. With the Tovertafel, we prove that you can still have that intense moment of happiness and moments of contact despite challenges with the mind. If we can explain and show that it’s possible and that patients’ memories are still there, we hope that people will realize the dementia journey is not your worst nightmare. If we have a less terrifying expectation, we can help change how people perceive the journey itself. Though there are some things patients can’t do, we are showing them what they can do.

Leading by example, we are changing the world by using technology for wellbeing in dementia care. I hope we inspire caregivers and companies to see it as a category that is worth designing for.

Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this idea? Can you tell us that story?

My Ph.D. assignment was to design a playful product that would stimulate more physical activity. My idea was to stimulate activity in daily living with the added value of giving patients independence.

As a case study, I projected taking coffee around the dining table, and it had a beautiful secondary goal of getting patients to drink more. I imagined more physical activity and more self-efficiency would create awareness of what patients were capable of while having them drinking more in a day.

We used projections as our playful experience and sensory stimulation to attract their attention to the cup of coffee to give them a subconscious reminder to take another sip. At first, it was very subtle; we were careful not to overstimulate them and then added a little bit of light and stars.

I projected around the cup, “are you thirsty” and the entire group answered yes, and no one took a sip.

I was distraught with my projections and my confidence as a designer. However, it taught me the strength of co-design and adding your target audience in the creative process of design.

So we went back to the drawing board and tried to take it to the furthest extreme to see if this concept could work with the help of outsider behavior. We wanted them to see something but transfer that experience to take an actual sip of coffee.

Even though I was studying dementia patients’ brains and environments for years, I could not anticipate their behavior. In my car ride back, I reflected and realized that one of the patients picked up her coffee cup and played with the lights that went back to my goal of stimulating physical activity. I figured if that was my goal and the prototype had been constructed, I could play with the lights and respond to when they laughed, smiled, or displayed emotion. That’s when we began exploring how we can play with life (i.e., what is fun, what is enjoyable, what doesn’t make any sense).

It was a tipping point because it was never the goal to make serious games; it was just to use the light for serious activities.

What do you need to lead this idea to widespread adoption?

We need awareness, space, and budget. Tover needs the space to explain our product, so someone can entertain the idea that physical activity via games is vital for people with dementia. In some countries, it is not a high priority on the agenda.

In some areas, professionals are even offended that we would introduce a game instead of their traditional tools. Once the caretakers are on board, the financial system in care needs to allow for these types of inventions. We are in the budget of additional activities, but the quality of life should be the primary caretakers’ concern, so we should be in their budget stream. Also, we need to build awareness around the product category, which revolves around healthcare transition. There’s movement but, every country is in a different stage of acceptance and implementation.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. Refer to Words of Wisdom. You don’t always understand the significance of what someone is saying. Later on, we realize how true and beneficial a piece of advice was. For example, rereading a book such as “Good to Great” by Philip Collins, I will learn different lessons each time and pick up on specifics I had not initially.
2. Learn the Operational Side. I realized later that implementing a new financial system is very time consuming, expensive, and requires dedication and focus. Figure out what your company needs so you do not have to switch.
3. Work with Opposites. The people I have hired are always the opposite in terms of focus and knowledge. In hindsight, I realized how important it is to engage complementary partners for business. They offer different advice and enhance your strengths. Of course, you will bump heads, but that’s fine.
4. Find your Mentors. People are eager to share their strengths. When you meet someone, ask questions and see how you can learn from them.
5. Trust your Gut. If you view your product as servicing one audience, do not let others convince you otherwise. Welcome outside opinions and advice but do not let it deter you from your goal.

Can you share with our readers what you think are the most important “success habits” or “success mindsets”?

• Be stubborn in the pursuit of getting where you want to go.

• Don’t get sidetracked from your goals.

• Stay passionate about your business.

• Stick with the clear vision for your company.

• Listen more, talk less.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

Follow us on YouTube @Tover, Facebook @ToverCareGlobal, and #Instagram and Twitter at ToverCareUS!

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.

The Tovertafel: Hester Anderiesen Le Riche’s Big Idea That Might Change The World was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I think the main goal for a leader, aside from setting a main direction and arbitrate, is to spread team spirit. If someone works just because they have to and not for an idea or a project which is close to their heart, then it’s delusional to expect the best from them. On this same topic, treat your colleagues with the same respect, there is no place for favoritism or affection unless you want to institute an unfair system. I’m not saying it’s bad to be friendly, I just think there is a time for everything and when it’s time to work, don’t get loose.

As a part of my series about “Lessons From Inspirational Women in STEM and Tech”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Kim Savaroche.

Kim is a research engineer with expertise in computer science, computer vision and data science. She contributes to Clay AIR research and development lab as a PhD candidate with a focus on machine learning and object annotation in a 3D space and image reconstruction. She is passionate about manga, novels and comics, and is a tennis player.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory and how you grew up?

Thank you for your attention. As I am an adopted and only child, my “family” and my friends are my bearings. I grew up in a small town in the South West of France, reading books (novels, comics or manga), playing video games and tennis. I try to improve myself or learn something new everyday. Balance, perseverance and regularity are my keys.

Is there a particular book, film, or podcast that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

The animation Revolutionary Girl Utena from the late 90s has a special place in my heart. When I first watched it, I was very young, I did not understand all the metaphors or the serious subjects, and the end was a little confusing. However, the drawing style was unique, the narration was excellent, the swords fighting and the soundtrack were epic. The universe (reversed castle in sky, infinite staircase, time loop, witch tale, etc.) are still unmatched for me. I am aware that this piece of art can be disturbing and I would recommend that you inquire a minimum before watching it.

On a more serious note, Kohler (Figures Du Savoir) Victor Rosenthal and Yves-Marie Visetti was the first book that resonated while working on the computer vision part of the Clay solution and beginning my thesis. It addressed the question of “what is a shape ?” In the latter, it explains that in the act of perception we do not just juxtapose a host of details but we perceive global forms (Gestalt) which bring the elements together. To illustrate this idea let’s take a musical example: when one remembers a melody, one remembers a global structure of music and not a successive series of notes taken in isolation. To link this notion with my work, the question was “how is it possible to group a cluster of pixels into a harmonious shape?” To answer this question, Wertheimer proposed laws that helped me to craft and refine the rules written in my code.

Is there a particular story that inspired you to pursue a career in the X Reality industry? We’d love to hear it.

I love video games so naturally I was quite curious about the challenge represented by the Clay AIR project: locate and follow the hands of users in real time so that they can interact with the virtual world without adding any accessories (controller, joystick, glove, exoskeleton, etc.). From an UX perspective, becoming aware of the limitations related to AR or VR settings makes me look forward to what ingenious solution the XR industry will opt for.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began this fascinating career?

I think it would be the patent process: looking for the state of the art, finding why each solution does not suit my problem and creating a new solution. Finding there was the possibility to write a patent about an home made tool was the cherry on the top, I felt blessed.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

The story is linked to the cognitive bias named “inattentional blindness”, it happens when we’re failing to notice a stimulus that is yet perfectly visible. In my case, and every software engineer can relate, I was editing my code and testing it on a VR device. Without a doubt, I began to draw conclusions : it’s better when i do this but still not fine for that.. No need to describe how disappointed I was when I found out my work was not in what I was testing, no update, absolutely nothing has changed. To avoid this error, I rely on test-driven development methods : set up unit tests before writing a solving code.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

Jean-Baptiste Guignard is my thesis supervisor so I can only be thankful for introducing me to cognitive science and helping me through this academic journey. I know how tedious proofreading is… At the time Clay AIR was still a startup and putting together a team, I am really grateful he gave me his trust as I was just out of my engineering school so I‘m doing my best to contribute to the project.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

As Clay AIR allows us to locate and follow the hands of a user in real time from a 2D camera provided by AR / VR / MR devices, I’m working on how we can improve our machine learning procedure to be more precise on estimating how far the hand (adding the Z dimension). Once the hand has been spotted and the gesture has been identified, it is possible to link it to an action / instruction: increase or decrease the volume of a sound file, enter a 3D object, activate commands in a car interior or airplane, etc. The experience will be more immersive, just playing with 3D elements with your bare hands is amazing.

Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. The VR, AR and MR industries seem so exciting right now. What are the 3 things in particular that most excite you about the industry? Can you explain or give an example?

As touch screens have revolutionized our daily lives, I’m curious to see what the new UX standard will be, how menus will be designed, which gesture will be democratized for such and such an action (like closing an application for example).

The video game industry is beginning to test VR gameplay. On one hand, I can easily see how narrative and puzzle solving can incorporate users’ actions so that their choices are more subtil than selecting a special dialogue. On the other hand, any games that need players to move precisely in a virtual world, like in adventure and platform games, do not seem to be easily adaptable. I’m skeptical about how varied the game catalog can be without the constraints of suits or treadmillssuit, treadmill, etc.).

I am convinced that the educational scope is substantial. Wearing a headset to observe a 3D model, interact with it while listening to a detailed description, you can’t find more pedagic tools. Moreover, you can still visit museums, art galleries or any educational places, which is quite convenient nowadays.

What are the 3 things that concern you about the VR, AR and MR industries? Can you explain? What can be done to address those concerns?

My first concern is about how energy consuming XR hardwares are. Batteries are drained quickly, in particular if you are outside, which is the worst setup for AR glasses by the way as video feedback on the screens are not strong enough. If the power comes from your smartphone, and not from the glasses, its autonomy is drastically shortened.

The second one is my uncomfort while wearing glasses or bigger headsets : my forehead is burning. Temperatures increase briefly and you naturally want to put down the device just to get fresh air.

The last one depends on the quality of the six degrees of freedom (6DoF) which refers to the freedom of movement of a rigid body in 3D space. When you are not moving and the virtual world is drifting away, you can be subject to motion sickness. Combined with how hot your head feels, hardware will be a negative association with nauseous symptoms.

I think the entertainment aspects of VR, AR and MR are apparent. Can you share with our readers how these industries can help us at work?

I would say the main advantage is the 3D modeling. A mock-up is ideal to convey ideas. On a taller scale, production chains can be checked with a layering process : put the virtual object with requested measures on the real products so that we can compare them and spot differences. Quality assurance is impacted but XR devices are not yet democratised.

Are there other ways that VR, AR and MR can improve our lives? Can you explain?

With this technology, it’s easier to project ourselves in another environment or to represent an object. Visiting an apartment or a house, alternating the placement of furniture in an empty area, choosing the colour for an object are great examples of what we could explore before making a decision. Still on a pedagogical level, tutorials, furniture assembly kit or recipes could be followed step by step, we only have to reproduce the actions. It would be easier than reading instructions and imagine what the right move is.

Let’s zoom out a bit and talk in broader terms. Are you currently satisfied with the status quo regarding women in STEM? If not, what specific changes do you think are needed to change the status quo?

Well, I didn’t work with many female software engineers, and in my cursus we were only 3 women in a class of 35. Computer science is not really popular… So let’s say that I’m satisfied in the way that if a girl wants to learn about STEM, the educational system will not deter her. What I’m a little bit more impatiente about is the cultural evolution regarding what is considered to be a job, a school subject or a quality more attributed to women or men. To be clear, I’m against either negative or positive discrimination, skill evaluation should be genderless.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about working in your industry? Can you explain what you mean?

In fact, AI products are only highly specialized tools. They can be compared to cogs and springs in mechanical devices, they cannot magically modify themselves or improve their autonomy. AI models are not smart; they are static systems trained by human hands. Even if they are efficient, the product is perceived as dumb as it fails to answer the client’s needs.

I invite you to read the article “HAI as Human Augmented Intelligence: from Cognitive Biases to the Nature of Cognitive Technology”, the full argument repositions AI ethics within the framework of actual AI development and human decision-making. This inevitably involves demystifying some of the myths surroundingAI, and explaining and critiquing the underlying assumptions about human cognition from a philosophy of science perspective. It helps to understand how AI can not self-modify itself or surpass humans or become independent if you are interested in this subject.

To sum up, the design of a computer program is inevitably biased. It reflects the values of the designer and the choices for the target audience. Development is not a neutral activity, at any stage of writing code, the developer does not have the ability to make objective choices. His choices are written down and frozen in the code. In the case of machine learning algorithms, the training product changes without changing the code. The result may be different from one trial to the next by leaving the hyper parameters as they are and not changing the learning base. The influence of the creators will be visible in the choice of the learning base, the categories of outputs and in the architecture of the model. In both cases they are only reflections of human biais and contextual constraints.

What are your “5 Leadership Lessons I Learned From My Experience as a Woman in Tech” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)

The first is the most difficult for me : you can say “no”. I am very anxious when I answer with a negative response, even if I am entitled to do it or even if it’s a logical choice. I would feared my interlocutor takes it badly or think I am incompetent. Now, I don’t consider it so bad anymore, I firmly answer and take time to explain my choices.

Your colleagues have got very different skills from you so suggesting if there are some volunteers to share their knowledge, assure them there is always time for formation. The more you know and the more you can understand. A new constructive point of view is always welcome, whether you want to organize your thoughts or test your knowledge.

I think I will state the obvious with this one, but I saw too many enterprises with this default to not borach it: communication is the key. Let down your ego, it won’t help you progress or navigate through a toxic environment. Be limpid with your intention, your success and mostly your failures so you can learn from them.

Problems need to be solved, whatever the cause is. The worst case is ignoring one until it turns into an omerta. I know the best solution sometimes implies to do something you dislike profoundly but avoiding a snowball effect is worth it.

I think the main goal for a leader, aside from setting a main direction and arbitrate, is to spread team spirit. If someone works just because they have to and not for an idea or a project which is close to their heart, then it’s delusional to expect the best from them. On this same topic, treat your colleagues with the same respect, there is no place for favoritism or affection unless you want to institute an unfair system. I’m not saying it’s bad to be friendly, I just think there is a time for everything and when it’s time to work, don’t get loose.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

I’m quite fond of politeness, exchanging a kind greeting or being the author of a gentle attention for example, so I can only invite readers to stay delicate. We all have our bad days but we can still temper our mood. In particular on digital platforms, it’s not because we don’t see others that we can slacken and become rude. Even more in this pandemic time, the more responsible we act, the less damage we’ll do.

We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂

That’s a very good question… I can’t stop listening to Brigitte Lecordier and Dorothée Pousséo’s voices, I have a deep respect for their dubbing work… However, to stay on topic I would really like to meet madame Pénélope Bagieu, the French illustrator and comic designer known for Culottées or Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World for the English title if I’m not mistaken. Her work consists of thirty short biographies (5 to 10 plates), each one centered on a girl or a woman who, during her life, defied prohibitions or social norms relating to sexism or patriarchy. Her style and her humour do not detract from the seriousness of the subjects discussed. I would love to learn how she chose her ladies, which one is her favourite and why she chose to focus on this part of one story rather than another. I highly recommend this book if you didn’t have the pleasure to read it yet.

Wisdom From The Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries, With Kim Savaroche of Clay AIR was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Heroes of The Homeless Crisis: How Kim Rockwell is Helping To Support Some Of The Most Vulnerable People In Our Communities

Get involved. Whether you put boots on the ground and help a homeless person or just donate money to a cause that helps them. Be active in solving this crisis. We tend to dress up and attend balls and gala charity events thinking that is all that is needed. It’s good to donate money but try to step out of your comfort zone and really see if there is one step more you can take to help out an individual.

As a part of my series about “Heroes Of The Homeless Crisis” I had the pleasure of interviewing Kim Rockwell.

Kim Rockwell worked in the pharmaceutical industry for over 22 years. She is now retired and lives in Del Mar, California with her husband Ken and her two children.

Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to ‘get to know you’ a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your personal background, and how you grew up?

I grew up in Laguna Hills, California. I graduated from UC Santa Barbara with a degree in Psychology and Sociology. I worked in the pharmaceutical industry for 22 years with companies like Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Johnson and Johnson. I am currently retired and volunteer my time to different causes. I currently live in Del Mar, California with my husband Ken and our two children.

Is there a particular story or incident that inspired you to get involved in your work helping people who are homeless?

I had a friend that I was very close to that had a father that struggled being bi-polar. We were on a trip to Italy when she shared with me that her dad would get off of his medication and end up on the streets from time to time. When he was medicated he was healthy and fine. I never looked at the homeless the same way. When I saw someone homeless, I saw someone’s brother, dad, mother etc. I had another friend that inspired me that unfortunately passed away from cancer. She was very giving.. To honor her on her birthday, we help others with a note telling her story and how she was always so kind. We try to carry on her legacy of kindness to strangers. My kids have now adopted this way of living and help me give back to the homeless in our community.

Homelessness has been a problem for a long time in the United States. But it seems that it has gotten a lot worse over the past five years, particularly in the large cities, such as Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, and San Francisco. Can you explain to our readers what brought us to this place? Where did this crisis come from?

You are exactly right. I especially remember living in San Francisco and seeing this number grow. I have a friend that works for a pharmaceutical company that promotes anti-psychotic pharmaceuticals. She said the homeless population is often just in need of strong mental care. The majority of patients that have illnesses such as schizophrenia either cannot get access to medical care because of a lack of medical insurance or choose not to take the medication. They need an advocate to help keep them on their meds. Also, the treatment for substance abuse is lacking or ineffective. My brother is an ER doctor. I remember him mentioning someone that was young and a genius student at MIT but he developed severe paranoia and became homeless. It ruined his whole life. Many times, these patients may not even trust their own families that try to help.

For the benefit of our readers, can you describe the typical progression of how one starts as a healthy young person with a place to live, a job, an education, a family support system, a social support system, a community support system, to an individual who is sleeping on the ground at night? How does that progression occur?

There is a 79 year old man I am trying to help get back on his feet that could help illustrate this. Les was a very successful businessman. He had a wife and a home in front of the water and living the American dream. He and his wife divorced. Then he had to sue a large corporation because they didn’t keep their side of the agreement and as the case dragged on, he ended up losing everything and having to move into his car. He had wonderful friends but everyone had their own families. His best friends had already passed on. His step-brother was in a different state and had his own family to take care of.

In this year of the pandemic, we can all see how life can turn on a dime. Very successful people lost their businesses and livelihood almost overnight. Even a medical illness could wipe someone out. In addition to mental illness, a lot of cities are short affordable housing. Imagine a family relying on just one income.

Les was very smart and loved to read but had no idea how to apply for Medicare or Medi-cal. He did not know where to access social services. He could not even apply for the vaccine shot as he needed to “sign up online”. He has a flip phone without text messaging. My parents are the same age and they needed my help signing up for the vaccine. Consider the homeless person who probably does not even have a phone. They have no access to the internet and no idea what resources are out there or how to access them.

A question that many people who are not familiar with the intricacies of this problem ask is, “Why don’t homeless people just move to a city that has cheaper housing?” How do you answer this question?

If they have no money then they have no money. So living in sunny southern California on the street beats the cold streets of somewhere like Detroit, Michigan. Also, maybe being in an affluent neighborhood, like Del Mar, they can get more money (or help) from the affluent people in the area. Les had numerous people that stopped in at his hangout (McDonalds) that helped him with car repair bills and even paying for his cell phone.

If someone passes a homeless person on the street, what is the best way to help them?

First and foremost, remember that we are all human beings. Some may have mental issues so be aware and stay safe. Ask them if there is something they need. Don’t just assume they want food or money. In the case of Les, he needed someone to help him find and access to resources and medical care. Just talk to them. I plan to carry around a flyer now with numbers of resources on them. I will give it out to a homeless person in case they do not know that there are community resources available in the area. Les did not even know there was free medical care for the indigent. He could have treated his skin cancer on day one five years ago. Now he has a life threatening tumor. He could have had social security money and Medicare. He did not know how to apply or get these services set up. He had no one to help him.

What is the best way to respond if a homeless person asks for money for rent or gas?

I usually do not like to give money. I ask what they need in terms of clothing, blankets, pillows or help with resources. I also like to tell them I will buy them a meal. Then I always follow up. If they need a blanket, I make sure to get them a blanket.

Can you describe to our readers how your work is making an impact battling this crisis?

I’m trying to make a difference one person at a time. If we each did this, imagine the world we would live in. Some cities have so much homelessness that it’s easy to become numb and not see them as human beings. One may think they are in this situation by choice because of drugs and alcohol. But most are people like you and I that have been dealt a bad hand in life. We need to hear their stories and humanize them. Be an advocate if even just for one person. Many people told me the homeless just don’t want help. That is not true. Some may not, but the majority are begging (literally) for someone to help them. That is someone’s family member and we are fortunate to have the means to help them. My parents are lucky they have 3 kids to care for them but many elderly are not so lucky.

How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected the homeless crisis, and the homeless community? Also how has it affected your ability to help people?

It is already scary living on the street and I think this added another layer of fear. I liked hearing about the hotel voucher system where someone can stay clean and get a 28 day voucher to a hotel room. I have to admit that until I was vaccinated, I was a bit wary of talking to anyone or getting close. But I still tried to help Les because I saw him as a fellow human being. Every day of life has risks involved but the feeling you get from helping someone is unlike any other. It just feels like it’s the right thing to do.

Can you share something about your work that makes you most proud? Is there a particular story or incident that you found most uplifting?

My kids encouraged me to talk to Les and hear his story. It started a chain of events. I helped a stranger, then strangers helped me. I posted on an app called “nextdoor” that I was trying to help this homeless man and I was in a bit over my head. Within minutes, 200 people replied wanting to help. It made me proud of my community and my kids. I also met some wonderful like-minded friends along the way. My kids now consider Les as their “adopted grandpa”.

Can you share three things that the community and society can do to help you address the root of this crisis? Can you give some examples?

1. Get involved. Whether you put boots on the ground and help a homeless person or just donate money to a cause that helps them. Be active in solving this crisis. We tend to dress up and attend balls and gala charity events thinking that is all that is needed. It’s good to donate money but try to step out of your comfort zone and really see if there is one step more you can take to help out an individual.
2. Never be afraid to talk to the homeless. You will be amazed at the stories you will find. When I saw Les’ pictures of his childhood, it brought me to tears. To think of his life and where he ended up. It is such a tragedy.
3. Make access to social services readily available. Community outreach is needed so the homeless know where to go for help. I found numerous resources just by doing one simple post on a community app called Nextdoor.com. The homeless do not have the ability to learn where these resources are. Most do not have access to the internet. When I tried to help Les, the 211 resource center told me Les had to call himself. I think they should allow advocates to help. Community resource centers need people promoting their services to the homeless community.

If you had the power to influence legislation, which three laws would you like to see introduced that might help you in your work?

1. Better mental health coverage
2. Hotel voucher programs beyond the pandemic
3. Advocate program like they have for foster parents but for the homeless.

I know that this is not easy work. What keeps you going?

Les was so grateful. My kids were so happy we got involved. The amazing group of people that came forward to help me were so wonderful that it all motivated me to keep going.

Do you have hope that one day this great social challenge can be solved completely?

I am ever hopeful but realistic. We instituted great plans when the pandemic came around. This is needed all the time and not just during the pandemic.

What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why. Please share a story or example for each.

1. Do not try to do it all yourself. You will burn out. Learn to ask for help and delegate. Many times, people want to help but just don’t know how.
2. Do not let it be all consuming. You need to balance family and your work.
3. Always have an end goal or plan for the person you are trying to help.
4. Never give up on trying to help them — you are all they have.
5. Take a leap of faith. Just know that doors will open to help you once you begin your journey of helping someone in need.

You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

I would love to see people “adopt a homeless person”. It doesn’t have to be literally into their home. Be an advocate for someone. Social workers have thousands of people that check in with them. If we could all be assigned one person to care for, be and advocate for, I bet we could change a lot in terms of the homeless population.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“Give a man a fish he eats for a day, teach a man to fish he eats for a lifetime”. I think of the quote as “Don’t just give money but help the homeless to stand on their own two feet again”.

Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂

Bill Gates. He has been extremely successful and he always gives back. He spent the first half of his life creating ideas for the general population. Rather than just sit back and live the good life, he put a ton of time and effort into helping the underprivileged. I have watched numerous documentaries on him. He inspires me to be more giving and generous. The kids watch “Mr. Beast”. He is a good example of how giving back can make you feel good.

How can our readers follow you online?

I am on Linked-in.

This was very meaningful, thank you so much!

Thank you for having me! If you could, I would appreciate it if you could include Les’ GoFundMe link:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-les-get-back-on-his-feet

Heroes of The Homeless Crisis: How Kim Rockwell is Helping To Support Some Of The Most Vulnerable… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you can, go work at a startup first. The experience you gain could make your own startup a success rather than a failure, based on learning from the mistakes you will see first hand by working at another startup.

As a part of our series called “My Life as a TwentySomething Founder”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Brian Gallagher.

Brian Gallagher is a council member at Partisia Blockchain, a Web 3.0 public blockchain built for trust, transparency, privacy, and speed-of-light finalization.

A serial entrepreneur, Brian has founded numerous startups over the last decade, including Underground Cellar, the online wine marketplace for discovering and buying premium wine. Brian was also Chief of Staff at Grubmarket. Inc, the digital food marketplace which he scaled from 16 full-time employees to over 120 full-time employees. Brian is also the Co-founder of Insights Network, a conglomerate of consumer applications based on mobile and web specializing in the collection of targeted consumer data that rewards users in digital currency for participating. An alumnus of Y-Combinator, a world renowned startup investment accelerator, Brian obtained a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) focused in Finance and Entrepreneurship from Arizona State University, W. P. Carey School of Business in 2012.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! What is your “backstory”?

Thanks for having me. My name is Brian Gallagher, I am 31 years old, and have been launching and operating startups since I was 23. Things really changed for me when my first startup was accepted into Y-Combinator in 2015 and we were given the three month education of a lifetime on how to launch and operate your startup. Our company is still going, and I’ve since moved on to launch a couple more startups as well, most recently as co-founder and CEO of instars.com and participating as a Council member of the Partisia Blockchain Foundation based in Switzerland.

Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that happened to you since you started your company? What lessons or takeaways did you take out of that story?

I’m not sure if it’s the funniest or most interesting, but it’s a story of how one random act of kindness and aggression ended up leading to us getting Venture Capital investment. Long story short, relationship building over time is one of the most valuable traits a founder can have. The only way to truly get investment from some of the top venture capitalists is to build relationships over time. For example, when your metrics hit their targets, and you let them know, they’ve already been following your progress, seeing your growth, and beginning to trust you as a founder. Outside of the movies or one-off stories of insane growth like Facebook where the VC’s find you and beg you to invest, the reality is that you need to build solid relationships first. In our story, my Co-founder went and sat in the front row at a startup event with some notable speakers. Our Co-founder at the time rushed the stage with bottles of whiskey and introduced himself as new to the Valley and was able to get their email addresses. Over the next year and a half, he sent quarterly updates to keep them apprised of our progress. They always remembered him as the friendly whiskey guy and ended up reading each of the updates. After we posted a great month of revenue, the division was easy, and they ended up investing in our company. Build relationships over time — take kind actions that stand out from the crowd and you will be remembered!

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

What makes Partisia Blockchain and instars.com stand out is that we’re one of the first live public use cases combining the privacy-preserving capabilities of Multiparty Computation (MPC) and blockchain. Instars.com is just one use case, addressing user privacy in a social network and ad/survey targeting setting. Partisia Blockchain’s scope is unseen in the industry today. It is an end to end dedicated solution that merges the transparency and security of blockchain with MPC and the privacy-preserving capabilities it can offer. This allows for a nearly endless amount of use cases to build on top of this infrastructure. Beyond the technical innovation is the foundational innovation We launched Partisia Blockchain as a Swiss Foundation with a publicly stated purpose to open source this amazing technology for the public benefit, where all of the users are welcome to download the software and create their own use cases and applications. This is going to be a major point of disruption to the traditional private company model, where private ownership is usually consolidated to the founding upper management and Venture Capital firms who back the project in the early stages. With the foundation model, not only can any of the users code their applications and use cases, but they can also receive the long term benefits of holding the tokens and operating nodes on the network, which de facto makes them the earliest backers of the project since they’re the ones who power the nodes and keep the network running.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

My first Co-founder Jeff Shaw when I was 23. I was right out of university and helped out with a marketing video for my first startup, undergroundcellar.com, an online wine marketplace backed by investors such as Y-combinator, Jason Calcanis, and Barbara Corcoran. Jeff was 26 at the time, which felt at the time a lot older and more experienced, even though in hindsight he was just another young 20’s founder himself! He had already sold a small startup of his, and was very experienced at a young age in creating, launching, and scaling business models. After I completed the marketing video for him, it was a huge success, garnering almost 100k YouTube views right away (keep in mind this was back in 2013 when that number was a much greater milestone). Revenue went from $1,200 per month to 12k, to 27k, to 80k in the few months following. The next thing I knew, I was thrust into a Director of Operations role. Within a few months, we got into Y-Combinator, I was promoted to COO of the company, and recognized as a Co-founder. This is why I tell everyone I meet right out of university who is thinking of going into the business world, skip consulting gigs at Deloitte and go straight for the startups! You will never get the same type of opportunities and rapid learning curve as you will at a good startup.

Do you have a favorite book that made a deep impact on your life? Can you share a story?

Harry Potter was my favorite series. There are many life lessons based on love, friendship, determination, and morals that are baked into almost every page. Diversity, how to act, and how to compose yourself under pressure. It may sound childish but honestly, if you haven’t read the series you have no idea what you’re missing out on!

What are the main takeaways that you would advise a twenty year old who is looking to found a business?

If you can, go work at a startup first. The experience you gain could make your own startup a success rather than a failure, based on learning from the mistakes you will see first hand by working at another startup.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might see this.

Elon Musk or Michael Jordan. One of the hardest things in a startup is to “keep going” — meaning there are anxious moments, lonely moments, and moments of burnout, where you start to think it’s time to give up or that you can’t do it anymore. Whenever you hear Elon Musk or Michael Jordan talk, they constantly remind their viewers to never give up, and that’s the way to success. I don’t think there would be many more motivating breakfasts than meeting with one of these two individuals, who are the greatest of all time at their craft. It would make everything you’re doing as an entrepreneur feel so much more worth it and accomplishable.

What is the best way our readers can follow you on social media?

You can follow me on instars.com @brianinstars. I believe it is extremely important to use your own product and engage with your own users to get their feedback and understand what is or isn’t working on your platform.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!

Brian Gallagher of Partisia Blockchain: Five Things I Learned As A Twenty-Something Founder was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Future Is Now: Tomer Shalit of ClimateView On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up How Cities Take Climate Action

The one thing I wish someone had told me before I started would be to surround myself with a core team of people who think about scaling from the beginning. It’s so easy to go deep into the technology and problem area, and to get caught up in product development, but at the same time, you’ve got to also keep an eye on the bigger picture at all times.

As a part of our series about cutting edge technological breakthroughs, I had the pleasure of interviewing Tomer Shalit, CEO and founder of ClimateView (www.climateview.global), the Swedish climate tech company behind ClimateOS™ the world’s first platform designed for cities serious about tackling climate change.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

My background is in agile development and I spent the first half of my career as a coach and consultant in agile transitions, working to drive change in the corporate world. During this time, I guided businesses and improved their capacity to tackle complex projects and problems using agile strategies, and yielded great results. But I couldn’t shake the notion that we could be using the very same tactics to move beyond corporate profit margins and solve bigger problems, such as those of a nation attempting to transition to a fossil-free economy. It was this disconnect between all the powerful methods we have at hand already, and how little we make use of them to solve some of society’s most pressing issues, that led me to start looking at Sweden’s climate transition as one big, agile project.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

My career in climate all started with a 16.5 foot long poster summarizing Sweden’s transition to a fossil free transportation sector. The fact that what once was a piece of paper has now become a powerful and intelligent digital dashboard for the nation of Sweden — endorsed by the Swedish Climate Policy Council — that is playing a pivotal role in Sweden’s path towards net zero is without a doubt the most interesting thing that happened to me!

Can you tell us about the cutting edge technological breakthroughs that you are working on? How do you think that will help people?

We recently launched ClimateOS, a first-of-its-kind platform designed specifically for cities to build Living Climate Action Plans. For a long time, cities and others have tried to create climate action plans in isolated silos, trying to solve an interconnected problem with disjointed solutions. What we have done with this platform is create a fully integrated tool that responds dynamically to each city’s local climate journey, while putting collaboration and interdependencies front and center. This is made possible through powerful visualizations, community building and a balancing feature, which allows cities to instantly see how policy choices are interdependent on each other and to recalculate their role and impact in the transition. In doing so, we are helping turn month-long flawed assumptions into fast, verifiable collaborative calculations.

Another problem in climate action is the lack of certainty surrounding data. What we are providing cities is a turnkey dashboard, pre-populated with data in order to take the guesswork out of climate planning, and enable them to act from the get-go.

We constantly hear from cities all over the world that they feel as though there are gaps in their action plans, whether it’s in their data or methodology. The fact is, climate strategists do not want to be data officers. As such, we take the complexity out of climate planning, make it easy for them to assess targets and goals, as well as how the city is doing relative to them, so that the focus remains on implementation and acting fast. When we’re talking about something as pressing as inciting climate action, there really is no time to lose.

How do you think this might change the world?

The world already knows what needs to be done but, collectively, we’ve been stuck. At ClimateView, we are firm believers that our solution can help overcome this, and change the world by giving cities — that are responsible for more than 70% of the global CO2 emissions — the tools and the methodology needed to finally act, and do so before it’s too late.

Above all else, we think our solution proposes a mindset change, which we, as a society, have been lacking all along: it moves away from siloes, towards collaboration, across all scales and disciplines. It also moves us away from the constant need for certainty, and encourages us to embrace uncertainty, approximations and iteration, which are all characteristic of the climate transition, and are better seen as allies, than elements to fight against.

Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this breakthrough? Can you tell us that story?

We have been working with the Swedish Climate Policy Council since 2018, on a way to visualize the climate transition for the Nation of Sweden, which led to the creation of Panorama, the Swedish dashboard.

Throughout our work with them and several other European cities, we came to the realization that visualizing was a good first step, but that it was not enough. We then embarked on a journey to create an operating system that would enable more than visualization, that could handle all the technical and social interdependencies involved in climate action and make the most of the potential for collaborative intelligence. So we set out to find a new process, starting with Transition Targets, which we launched last year as building blocks of a successful transition, and culminating in the launch of ClimateOS, which offers all the tools and functions necessary for climate strategists to define and execute their plan to net zero.

For us, the true tipping point is when a city understands the power of the approach behind the Transition Targets. When that penny drops, a new world of possibilities opens. It is deeply rewarding when I have that kind of conversation with a city climate officer, and am able to see them see the potential.

What do you need to lead this technology to widespread adoption?

We are already operating in the U.K., Canada, Germany, Switzerland, and Spain, and around 26,000,000 global residents are currently benefiting from our technology, and this number is set to grow fast as we look to expand further into North America.

However, given that money talks louder than good intentions alone, we understand that for the transition to occur — not just faster, but at all — we have to make it about the bottom line. This means governments and their taxpayers must see the returns on their zero carbon investments, which is impossible if you don’t connect the necessary shifts required to the economic realities of making those shifts.

Everything before ClimateOS was about guesswork: top-down estimates by big nation states. At ClimateView, we knew we had to go from the bottom, up through every shift necessary, and begin to calculate the economic impacts as precisely as the carbon mitigation impacts.

We’re proud to say we’ll be the first company we know of to undertake this feat in this manner, and we look forward to making our first ROI visioning feature this summer.

What have you been doing to publicize this idea? Have you been using any innovative marketing strategies?

Word of mouth is very important to us. With our target audience being city governments, who are by nature quite collaborative, and open to sharing ideas and solutions, we try to harness these network effects and encourage cities to talk to each other and tell their colleagues about our tool. It is also a win-win situation as, globally, we can solve issues better together by learning from each other, and more importantly, the more our user base scales, the sharper our data and model become.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

With ClimateView, the aim was never to fight battles against climate deniers. The aim was always to work with and compound the goodness that already existed, because I’ve realized that there’s plenty out there. As such, I’ve really focused on empowering those who want change, but who don’t really know how to make that change happen. My way of bringing goodness to the world has really been by lifting and empowering change makers to perform change better and faster.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. The one thing I wish someone had told me before I started would be to surround myself with a core team of people who think about scaling from the beginning. It’s so easy to go deep into the technology and problem area, and to get caught up in product development, but at the same time, you’ve got to also keep an eye on the bigger picture at all times.
2. On another level, don’t be scared to continue looking at things at the micro-level. Things are super complicated at the macro level and when they interact, but if you dig deep enough, if you persevere and seek to carefully understand how things work one by one, it’ll be super rewarding. And that’s exactly the approach I took with the climate challenge.
3. Diversify the way you communicate. The pandemic and the changes it forced upon us in terms of the way we work has actually taught me the value of mass broadcasts and sharing information more productively. There’s a lot of value in mixing written communications with short videos, and short meetings, as opposed to never-ending meetings.
4. Be more protective and efficient with your time. Commuting can take a lot of time away from deep concentration and thought. There’s a lot of value in working in phases and focusing on one task at a time.
5. Be patient.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

At the risk of being redundant, the movement that I would like to inspire is a collaborative one, a movement that enables us to pull together all our learnings, knowledge and intelligence about the climate challenge. We need to share everything: our models and simulations, our data and insights on cost, our policies and implementations and our reasoning. The reason being that all these things, when brought together, can take us closer to our goals, faster.

Some very well known VCs read this column. If you had 60 seconds to make a pitch to a VC, what would you say? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂

Trillions of dollars are being deployed globally to manage the transition to a low carbon economy, with little guidance, accuracy and transparency.

We have created an antidote to that in the form of a machine learning platform that powers the transition to a low carbon economy. The proprietary carbon abatement model behind ClimateOS precisely predicts and recommends the optimal transition pathway for each customer, whether they are a small town or an entire nation.

Cities house most of the global population, are responsible for the majority of emissions, and face unexpectedly symmetrical challenges. This initial core market creates network efforts that improve data, collaboration and outcomes for all stakeholders.

Our platform was developed with the nation of Sweden and is now used in 30+ cities across Sweden, UK, Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Canada.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

Follow ClimateView on Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/company/climateview) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/climateview?lang=en)

The Future Is Now: Tomer Shalit of ClimateView On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Interactive and fun — Few technology providers realize that any technology is only as valuable as its ability to be adopted by users. Make it useful, interactive and fun for users and they will come back and spend more.

As part of our series about the future of retail, I had the pleasure of interviewing Stefan Hauswiesner, CEO and co-founder of Reactive Reality (www.reactivereality.com), the Austrian augmented reality leader enhancing the e-commerce experience for retailers and consumers

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

During my research and PhD studies at the Graz University of Technology, I worked on creating a virtual fitting room. It was a room-sized box with multiple cameras which allowed users to step in and see themselves wearing virtual outfits on a large TV screen. Around this time, I met my co-founders Philipp Grasmug and Philipp Pani. We quickly realized that software allowing consumers to try on outfits before buying them online had huge market potential, but that the existing technology was geared primarily towards laboratory use and was far too expensive for wide-spread adoption. We saw the need to scale up the technology, bring the functionality to mobile devices and lower the bar to entry for e-commerce businesses of all sizes. This is when Reactive Reality was born.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

The most interesting story we have to tell is something fascinating we have learnt about consumer behavior. We set out to solve the return rate problem of e-commerce, caused by online shoppers being unable to try on and experience the products before buying, leading to return rates of up to 50%. Our virtual try-on solution, PICTOFiT, helps to solve this problem of high returns by letting shoppers pick the right size and styles, leading to lower returns; however, what we hadn’t anticipated is how fun and addictive consumers would find this. As soon as our PICTOFiT became available publicly to users, they started to mix & match thousands of outfits and spent hours doing so every month, leading to significant increases in sales and user loyalty, and engagement. This ‘fun factor’ was a big surprise to us back then, and has now become a major focus for us. We now know that a frictionless, fun experience is just as important as e.g. accurate size recommendations.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson or takeaway you learned from that?

There is no typical workday of a founder, and every stage of the company comes with new and different challenges. The beginning was dominated by technical developments and a lot of testing, and when working with early adopters of our technology, we learnt that, often, their creativity knew no limits. People came up with hilarious combinations of clothes, such as putting a swimsuit over a coat, to see what was possible. Naturally, this really stretched the technology’s limits and triggered intense development cycles. Often, it was challenging but also funny. In the end, all this helped us to make PICTOFiT what it is now — a robust solution scalable to millions of products and users.

Are you working on any new exciting projects now? How do you think that might help people?

We are working on exciting developments all the time. For example, advanced rendering methods which can reproduce the appearance of products at an unprecedented level. It shows the reflections on a shirt button, and complex reflective materials like satin and leather. Another great example are interactive user avatars, which can not only be used in virtual try-on applications but even in 3D teleconferences, gaming and health & fitness.

These developments help people to enjoy their days even during the pandemic, when friends are far away or time is too short to go to stores, cafes, gyms and other places. The world is fast becoming more and more digitalized and people will increasingly look for personalized, virtual embodiments of themselves for communication and interactive shopping experiences.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person to whom you are grateful, who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

Professor Dieter Schmalstieg, head of the Institute for Computer Graphics and Vision (ICG), has been a long-term supporter of our development as a company and of our invention of new technologies, and is a real inspiration to all of us. He is a world-renowned researcher in the field of AR/VR, who has been awarded for his achievements, and is the author of the definitive book on AR. We still work closely with Dieter and the institute on solving some of the most challenging problems in computer graphics, vision and deep learning.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

In recent years, online shopping has delivered great benefits to consumers in terms of cost and convenience. However, the huge increase in items being returned, as consumers deliberately purchase several of the same item in different sizes and turn their bedrooms into fitting rooms, means that this shift is unsustainable. It is not only having a very negative impact on the environment, as billions of kilos-worth of returned items end up in landfill, but also on retailer profits, as many are poorly equipped to deal with the complex logistical challenges posed by returns.

With PICTOFiT, we are preventing the need for consumers to over-order by enabling them to create avatars of themselves together with true-to-life products that can be tried on in a ‘virtual fitting room’, giving a clear indication of what a product will look like when worn by the consumer. According to customer surveys, our technology is highly effective in enabling frequent and well-informed purchase decisions.

Ok super. Now let’s jump to the main questions of our interview. The Pandemic has changed many aspects of all of our lives. One of them is the fact that so many of us have gotten used to shopping almost exclusively online. Can you share a few examples of different ideas that large retail outlets are implementing to adapt to the new realities created by the Pandemic?

More and more companies are implementing consumer engagement technologies like AI, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), accelerated by the pandemic. We have multiple projects helping brands and retailers present their collections at virtual fashion shows, virtual shopping malls, or directly in online e-commerce shops: for example, our PICTOFiT platform enabled the digital shows of young fashion designers during the Milan Fashion Week last fall. Another great example showing the power of AR in retail is our recent collaboration with Microsoft and the London College of Fashion on the Digital Human Stylist. It is a lifelike digital twin of the online shopper, animated and voice-controlled through AI, which understands what the shopper needs to make their daily outfit decisions, not only in terms of fit and size but also taste, style and occasion.

These developments are not only exciting to us — our customers reported that shoppers spend 5x more time with the brands and products, and make up to 6x more purchases through PICTOFiT, our AR-enabled fashion shopping platform. These are extraordinarily good results, and show that online shoppers will adopt and welcome these new technologies.

In your opinion, will retail stores or malls continue to exist? How would you articulate the role of physical retail spaces at a time when online commerce platforms like Amazon Prime or Instacart can deliver the same day or the next day?

We already know the traditional model of retail will not completely return. Bricks and mortar stores need to find new ways to attract consumers, as many have discovered the convenience of online shopping during the pandemic and will be reluctant to switch back.

Brick and mortar stores will be centered around customer experience i.e. less about a purchase process and more about shoppers’ engagement and brand loyalty. Retailers will provide services to connect online and offline channels, and shoppers will expect a consistent level of service between digital and physical. To vastly improve shoppers’ omnichannel experience, retailers could implement AR allowing, for example, brick and mortar customers to view & try on clothes that are not currently available in stores on their own avatar. The shopper could then leave the store with their own online sign-in credential, where all the experiences from the store and their own avatar would be captured, allowing the shopping experience to be smoothly picked up later at home.

The so-called “Retail Apocalypse” has been going on for about a decade. While many retailers are struggling, some retailers, like Lululemon, Kroger, and Costco are quite profitable. Can you share a few lessons that other retailers can learn from the success of profitable retailers?

We would advise that retailers get out on the front foot by innovating and differentiating before their competitors do so. We often see in fashion retail that the adoption of the new technologies is rather slow, with retailers behaving conservatively and waiting for the first mover. However, those first movers then ultimately secure a significant advantage for themselves, while others play catch-up.

Amazon is going to exert pressure on all of retail for the foreseeable future. New Direct-To-Consumer companies based in China are emerging that offer prices that are much cheaper than US and European brands. What would you advise to retail companies and e-commerce companies, for them to be successful in the face of such strong competition?

Despite the cost-competitiveness of these new Chinese companies, U.S. and European retail companies can take heart from the fact that online shoppers are not solely motivated by getting the lowest possible price. Therefore, these companies can gain the upper hand by offering the most enjoyable and frictionless online shopping experience possible. All too often, today’s online shopping experience is transactional and repetitive, with most online stores essentially appearing the same to shoppers. Integrating things like AR and interactive virtual dressing rooms into the e-commerce experience allows online shoppers to have more fun while gaining confidence in the buying decision, with the ability to try garments on their own body virtually, share on social media, hear the feedback, and more, before buying. Our customers reported extraordinary user engagement numbers after integrating PICTOFiT into their shopping apps, with average users spending over 3 hours every month — a 5x increase.

Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things one should know in order to create a fantastic retail experience that keeps bringing customers back for more? Please share a story or an example for each.

Interactive and fun — Few technology providers realize that any technology is only as valuable as its ability to be adopted by users. Make it useful, interactive and fun for users and they will come back and spend more.

Frictionless — E-commerce experiences should not distract shoppers from making purchases. They should facilitate the process by providing value to the shopper.

Seamless — Not all AR/VR technologies work together seamlessly. They may be compatible, but have different visual styles, leading to an incoherent result.

Scalable — Solutions for e-commerce need to be scalable. Shoppers only benefit from the technology if a large quantity of products are available for viewing, virtual try-on etc.

Photo-Realistic — AR/VR assets, such as avatars of shoppers and virtual representations of products, need to be photo-realistic. People are particularly sensitive to inaccuracies in their own depiction. Product visuals need to be realistic to enable users to shop with confidence.

Since we founded Reactive Reality in 2014, we worked with numerous retailers, brands and shoppers to figure out these core attributes. Needless to say, our journey was full of hard work and dedication, setbacks and progress driven by continuous development and verification, to bring us to where we are today. PICTOFiT incorporates these 5 core attributes in a single solution.

13. Thank you for all of that. We are nearly done. Here is our final ‘meaty’ question. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

Our PICTOFiT platform has a positive impact on the environment by bringing down product returns. This is important to us, but we find it equally important to create an excellent user experience. Any technology is only as valuable as its adoption, which is driven by the quality of the experience. We are dedicated to, and take pride in driving AR forward and making it an everyday technology. First in e-commerce, and then later in gaming, teleconferencing, health & fitness. There will be a big shift away from flat screens to entirely immersive visuals, and the early adopters of today have the opportunity to shape what this future will look like.

How can our readers further follow your work?

They can visit our website (www.reactivereality.com) to find out more about the company, and they can follow us on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/reactive-reality/) to hear our latest company news and updates.

Stefan Hauswiesner of Reactive Reality: The Future Of Retail In The Post Pandemic World was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Future Is Now: Laurence Newman of Coinmama On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up The Tech Scene

Setting people free is the ultimate goodness we can bring to the world. By getting bitcoin into the digital wallets of as many people as possible, we are helping to ensure people are financially empowered with control over their own value around the globe. Not only myself, but a vast majority of the Coinmama team come to work in the morning with a sense of mission to help onboard as many people onto the Bitcoin lifeboat as possible.

As a part of our series about cutting edge technological breakthroughs, I had the pleasure of interviewing Laurence Newman, Co-Founder of Coinmama, a serial entrepreneur and a veteran in the Bitcoin space. After struggling to buy Bitcoin himself, Laurence set out to create a seamless, secure and engaging buying experience for one and all, and hence Coinmama was born. In addition to serving on its Board of Directors, Laurence heads up marketing and strategic partnerships at Coinmama and is passionate about educating the mass of newcomers about Bitcoin and its potential.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

A friend sent me an article about the new currency threatening Europe’s monetary system: bitcoin. Learning that there was an alternative to the flawed, central bank-driven financial system was exhilarating because it meant an opening up of novel opportunities to improve access to finance. Ensuring that everyone has the chance to participate in the cryptocurrency revolution is a big part of what inspired me to start Coinmama.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

At one point, my bank told me that I couldn’t buy bitcoin. The level of control exerted by financial institutions like in this scenario helped me realize how important Bitcoin is as a harbinger of financial freedom. People should be able to make their own financial decisions without an overseer from a centralized institution telling them what they can and cannot do with their own value.

Can you tell us about the cutting edge technological breakthroughs that you are working on? How do you think that will help people?

As the co-founder of Coinmama, a global crypto exchange used by over 2,700,000 people across 188 countries, our goal is to make buying crypto as easy as possible. I firmly believe that Bitcoin is the future, and so it’s essential for financial well-being that people acquire bitcoin. Bitcoin isn’t here to make people rich, it is here to set them free. Coinmama’s mission is to help people get hold of Bitcoin in a smooth and secure way, and everything we do is geared towards improving the experience of buying and holding Bitcoin. For example, Coinmama leverages machine learning-driven risk mitigation on every transaction to offer a secure onboarding experience at scale.

How do you think this might change the world?

The financial system is experiencing a tectonic shift. Money as we know it is changing as more and more institutions and individuals wake up to how decentralized, borderless currency like Bitcoin will change the world by giving people control over their own value. Additionally, with the rise of DeFi, the unbanked are gaining access to financial services like lending, borrowing, insurance, and savings that were not previously available to them. Coinmama supports people from around the globe to acquire their first piece of bitcoin and Ether, gain access to DeFi, and everything crypto has to offer. Finally, the rise of the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) as a way to manage assets and projects collectively using blockchain is changing industry as we know it. We could see an increased shift from shareholder management to community-managed enterprise as the decade progresses.

Keeping “Black Mirror” in mind can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

Personally, I believe there are only positives to bitcoin adoption. However, the benefits of being your own bank comes with added responsibilities such as securing the keys to your wealth. We’ve heard the horror stories of people being locked out of vast sums of Bitcoin, and that’s why we prioritize education and close customer support. On a macro scale, organizations and states can co-opt the underlying blockchain technology in a way that replaces decentralization with domination by making the blockchain private.

Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this breakthrough? Can you tell us that story?

It took me fourteen days to first buy bitcoin. The fact that the process was so arduous frustrated me immensely, because I wanted to encourage my friends and family to participate in this growing digital currency revolution, but how could I motivate them to join in when the process was so challenging? This struggle was what led me to found Coinmama with the mission of making it as easy as possible for people around the globe to purchase bitcoin.

What do you need to lead this technology to widespread adoption?

Mass adoption is unfolding as we speak via the network effect. More people are joining than ever, including industry heavyweights like Elon Musk, Visa, and Paypal. As the regulatory fog continues to disappear and the on-ramps into the crypto economy become more easy-to-use and familiar, the adoption of Bitcoin will accelerate along its trajectory.

What have you been doing to publicize this idea? Have you been using any innovative marketing strategies?

Our community loves us. A big portion of our users comes from people referring us to their friends and family, and we continue to foster a trustworthy brand. We are also participating in virtual events, speaking on podcasts and youtube channels, and publishing op-eds on our perspectives.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

First of all, I’m grateful to Ilan Schuster, who sent me the article about Bitcoin, which set me on this course of being immersed with cryptocurrency and who later became my co-founder. I’m also grateful for Nimrod Gruber, my third co-founder, who never gives up no matter what, and to all of the amazing Coinmama team members, who have so much care and dedication to what they do and how they keep pushing the needle forward.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

Setting people free is the ultimate goodness we can bring to the world. By getting bitcoin into the digital wallets of as many people as possible, we are helping to ensure people are financially empowered with control over their own value around the globe. Not only myself, but a vast majority of the Coinmama team come to work in the morning with a sense of mission to help onboard as many people onto the Bitcoin lifeboat as possible.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. Learn how to say “no”
2. Learn how to ask for help
3. You can’t do it all alone
4. Don’t change you; be more you
5. Curiosity is powerful

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

Bringing bitcoin to the masses is my mission. Bitcoin can free people from financial censorship by giving them control over their own value. Bitcoin can give people without bank accounts the ability to participate in the global economy — to save their earnings and generate wealth. Bitcoin is changing the world.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“Time in the market beats timing the market.”

Lots of people reach out to me and ask if now is a good time to buy Bitcoin. Most of them end up saying that they’ll wait for the price to go down, some have been waiting for it to go down since it was $1,000 😉 The same is true for those looking to save on fees, while they wait days for a broker to verify their account or to fund it. Don’t worry about saving a percent here or there; just get in the market. Sometimes, and perhaps especially with Bitcoin, time in the market beats timing the market big time!

Some very well known VCs read this column. If you had 60 seconds to make a pitch to a VC, what would you say? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂

Coinmama is a financial service company that makes it fast, safe, and fun to buy digital currency anywhere in the world. Trusted by over 2,700,000 people across 188 countries since 2013, Coinmama makes it easy for anyone to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies with a credit card, bank account, or Apple Pay. Coinmama aims to bring the billions of people currently outside of crypto into the fold. By supporting users with world-class customer service and education, Coinmama ensures no one is left behind when it comes to financial freedom and the opportunity to participate in the rapidly-growing crypto economy.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

You can visit our website to get started buying crypto: https://www.coinmama.com/

And you can follow us on our social media channels:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/coinmama

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coinmama/

Telegram: https://t.me/coinmamanews

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.

The Future Is Now: Laurence Newman of Coinmama On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Jeff Martinovich of MICG Investment Management: Giving Feedback; How To Be Honest Without Being Hurtful

Study leadership. Inspire people. Give your teammates someone to look up to. Take great pride in not your own achievements, but in the success of your subordinates, and you will be rewarded both financially and personally beyond what your ever dreamed possible.

As a part of our series about “How To Give Honest Feedback without Being Hurtful”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jeff Martinovich

Jeffrey A. Martinovich is a First Gulf War Veteran, MBA, and Founder and CEO of MICG Investment Management, a billion-dollar wealth management firm. After the 2008 Financial Crisis, Jeff rejected three government plea offers, resulting in a 14-year prison sentence. Yet the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed twice, two U.S. District Court Judges were removed, and after nearly 7 years, he was released to home confinement in May 2020 to begin rebuilding his life. His book is Just One More: The Wisdom of Bob Vukovich. Learn more at jeffmartinovich.com.

Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

I was extremely fortunate to attend the United States Air Force Academy, earn an MBA at night from The College of William of Mary, and serve our country in the First Gulf War. These opportunities built a strong work ethic and confidence in my abilities. They gave me the courage to be an entrepreneur and not be afraid to fail.

Entering the business world, I was lucky to have successful mentors and role models who were gracious with their time and wisdom. They, along with a voracious appetite for studying leadership, economics, and organizational psychology, enabled me to begin to build a small enterprise of startup ventures. With my growing team of A-players, we built companies in asset management, investment banking, insurance, real estate, financial planning, and three hedge funds. We also consulted in software sales, medical distribution, and green energy.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

Our current consulting-incubator firm is JAM Accelerator, which is basically a holding company for our business advisory, M&A, publishing, and speaking businesses. We are currently helping build a small portfolio of firms in the defense industry, as well as assisting a few clients on targeted acquisitions.

I believe the great value we bring to the table is the past three decades of success, but probably more importantly, is founded on mistakes and failures as well. I always tell my team, “Don’t worry about making a mistake, I’ve made a thousand more!” The ups and downs of business have given us tremendous real-world experience, much different from many consultants and academics — The Man in the Arena, if you will.

Since we have built companies from the ground up, we have had to wear all hats — operations to HR to legal to finance. So we have a holistic view of where an organization is today and what needs to happen to grow significantly. One of my junior associates told me a few years ago, “Working here is like getting an MBA for free!”

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

Are you ready for this one? Following the 2008 Financial Crisis, our proprietary hedge fund business experienced regulatory scrutiny and allegations. As CEO, I vigorously defended our firm, refusing multiple settlement offers and instead choosing to defend my employees and myself in federal court. In a bizarre narrative, I was convicted and sentenced to 14-years in federal prison. The trial court was reversed twice by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, two separate U.S. District Court Judges were removed, and my successful federal suit uncovered wrongs holding me at a higher-security, violent prison. After nearly seven years, I was released to home confinement and began this journey of rebuilding, restoring and turning disadvantages into advantages. I bet you don’t get that answer too often!

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

I wish I could be like Michael Jordan and not really remember all the shots I’ve missed, but I must admit that my embarrassing moments stay with me, and there are so many! To name a few:

For my first educational workshop presentation, I spent two months mailing a zillion flyers, making invite phone calls, bartering with the caterer, and cleaning the library auditorium. One person showed up, clearly just for the sandwiches, and I was compelled to give my hour presentation to the echoing room, determined to quit this business as soon as I finished!

The first time I gave a keynote speech in front of an audience, I was so nervous that I perspired more than any man ever has in a suit. The audience could certainly tell how nervous I was, and I quickly ran through the entire box of Kleenex wiping my brow!

What advice would you give to other CEO’s and business leaders to help their employees to thrive and avoid burnout?

I agree with Confucius: “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” It is truly sad that most people do not like their J-O-B’s. I always make it very competitive and arduous to get a position in our company, which filters out the casual workers and ensures everyone on the boat is rowing together. Everyone must be passionate about our mission. Then, there is no burnout. I believe in good stress instead of bad stress: good stress gives you energy and empowers you to outproduce your competitors, but you must align your self-interests with the goals of the organization to achieve this state. Otherwise, your id and ego are always in conflict. Alignment is key. People simply want to be inspired. Everyone wants to be part of something special.

How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?

I believe the only true and effective form of leadership in the world today is Leadership by Example. Position Leadership is dead, and Servant Leadership has failed to perform. It’s clear that the great majority of business associates and citizens are craving effective leadership. And the most effective leadership style has always been by example.

It is popular today for everyone to have a coach, but what truly inspires people is a captain. Anyone can stand on the sideline, or behind the desk, and tell people what to do, but the captain shows them how to do it. The captain instructs them, does it with them, encourages them, and takes the front position when times are the toughest. They roll up their sleeves to do even more work than their subordinates, while giving their team all the credit for success and taking all the blame for failures.

This leader engenders great loyalty and conviction from their organization while creating an army of new leaders by example to enable exponential growth inside an organization or among a community. If we want everyone healthy to reduce the skyrocketing healthcare premiums, we run the 5k’s and the half-marathons right alongside them. If we want our associates to handle problems with class and grace, we never lose our cool or correct others in public. If we want everyone to the office early and being wildly productive, we beat them there every single morning and produce, ourselves, more than they thought humanly possible. You cannot lead A-Players unless you, yourself, commit to being an A-Player at all times.

In my work, I often talk about how to release and relieve stress. As a busy leader, what do you do to prepare your mind and body before a stressful or high stakes meeting, talk, or decision? Can you share a story or some examples?

Perception is reality. We must change, and control, the lens on our camera. Also, using the proper language is vitally important. What appears as scary and terribly stressful to one person may be a fun and exciting opportunity to another. The only reason some people show no fear is they simply have had more of these experiences. Tony Robbins teaches us how to create the feeling in our mind, in our emotions, that we are trying to achieve prior to actually experiencing that success.

Many of us have experienced this same story. For years I could not get my son Cole near a rollercoaster. One summer we made a commitment together to get over this fear. Standing in line was quite a spectacle, as young Cole was having a meltdown for the ages, but after the ride he could not wipe that smile off his little face. Of course he yelled out, “Can we go again?”

Can you briefly tell our readers about your experience with managing a team and giving feedback?

Over the last thirty years, I have had the pleasure of leading and managing teams from 1–2 to more than 100, striving to get better at giving constructive feedback. Plus, I have worked to be more approachable and let others know I am available for reverse-feedback up the chain.

Can you share with us a few reasons why giving honest and direct feedback is essential to being an effective leader?

As Dale Carnegie taught us nearly one hundred years ago in How to Win Friends and Influence People, all success boils down to our ability to communicate. We live on a planet full of humans, and humans have survived and thrived through effective communication which enabled communities to foster mutually-beneficial interests. Without effective communication, success is nearly impossible, and since we all see the world in 8 billion different ways, we must have feedback. To make things even more difficult, 70–93% of all communication and feedback is non-verbal!

One of the trickiest parts of managing a team is giving honest feedback, in a way that doesn’t come across as too harsh. Can you please share with us five suggestions about how to best give constructive criticism to a remote employee? Kindly share a story or example for each.

1. The Sandwich Theory is mandatory. If your employee cannot hear you (figuratively, not because the Zoom mute button is on), then they will never be open to your viewpoint and ultimate objective. We open them up with a sincere compliment, bringing down their defenses. Then we address the issue in a productive manner. Finally, we wrap up the conversation with encouragement and a show of confidence in their ability to achieve more: “John, I want to thank you for spending all weekend on this report for our new acquisition. The entire team always appreciates your work ethic. On this particular project, I think you missed the mark and I’ve highlighted the areas in your report. So, I’m going to need you to prepare a stronger analysis for the clients. But, before I let you go, I want you to know I also highlighted a few sections with the great recommendations you came up with. I had never even considered those possibilities. Thank you.”
2. Sit on the same side of the table, even remotely. My personal offices always include a small circular table where I meet with clients or team members. We must get up from our power desks and spend the five seconds to situate alongside each other. This simple act erases 80% of the defense mechanisms and posturing misperceptions that cloud our interactions. It expresses, “We are in this together.” Therefore, in today’s decentralized workspace, when at all possible, we should embrace our video-conferencing options so that we better express our excitement and empathy in meetings, especially when constructive criticism is required. Just your smile has massive communication power. Aren’t you totally thrown off balance by the frowning, brooding associate during your Zoom? You can’t stop focusing on what the problem may be. Most importantly, your language gets you and your subordinate rowing together from the start. I always say “we” and not “you.” I always first point out my plethora of mistakes first to show my humanism. I may even allow emotions to be expressed to show my own vulnerability. We have to connect first, be on the same side of the table, for my teammate to hear and understand my message.
3. Provide as many specifics and details as possible. Communication is difficult to begin with, but even much more so when giving criticism and corrective action. Many managers skirt the true issue, do not use candor, and simply make the issue worse by upsetting the subordinate and leaving them with no clear understanding or positive action plan. Once opening up a positive line of communication, address the issue in the most-direct manner possible. Your subordinate deserves this respect. They will appreciate your character and leadership — trying to help them succeed so everyone succeeds. Speak of exactly what needs to be fixed and help your teammate visualize the solution. In my earlier years, I was terrible at this part because I’m a Meyers-Briggs ENTJ and I just want everyone to like me and get on board! But I got better at it, and so will you with practice.
4. Tell people about all the mistakes you, yourself, have made. As noted earlier, opening yourself up to show others your silly mistakes and great failures tightens the bonds among your team. I love Michael Jordan’s Nike commercial, “I have failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.” This allows your associates to not catastrophize over the current failure. They see you have done even worse and now you are extremely successful. This strategy aligns with all the current business psychology telling you to fail fast, early and often so that you will sooner find great success. In our organizations, we never punish for mistakes, yet we are unforgiving for lack of effort, for lack of trying. Show people your crash landings, and you will give them permission to soar.
5. Show your teammates the path to success. Without the path to success, constructive criticism is useless and certainly not constructive. Unfortunately, most people have ascended to management positions through tenure or unintended circumstances and have never understood leadership fundamentals, much less committed to learning them. Most criticism in corporate America is meant to give the boss more power and protect their own insecurities and, likely, their own tenuous position in the company. Don’t be that manager. Study leadership. Inspire people. Give your teammates someone to look up to. Take great pride in not your own achievements, but in the success of your subordinates, and you will be rewarded both financially and personally beyond what your ever dreamed possible.

Can you address how to give constructive feedback over email? When someone is remote, how do you prevent the email from sounding too critical or harsh?

Language is everything, yet most of us do not take the extra moment to ensure our message is communicating exactly what we want to convey. My wife, Ashleigh, always makes fun of me when I’m reading my emails or texts over and over before I hit send (it actually is a problem!).

Of course, the Sandwich Theory is even more critical when using email in place of in-person communication. Most of us, though, don’t want to take the time for this extra effort. Try to never type “but” because everything you just typed before the “but” has been erased in the mind of the receiver. Always say “and.” Practice your social graces by politely asking for the desired result instead of demanding it. Your associate knows it means the same thing, but the delivery is better when phrased, “May I request that before you send out the next newsletter, you give us a chance to review this together?”

In your experience, is there a best time to give feedback or critique? Should it be immediately after an incident? Should it be at a different time? Should it be at set intervals?

I believe the optimum time, if possible, is to give the critique not after the failure, but before the next one occurs. After mistakes and mis-steps, emotions are running high and our disappointment can be easily communicated without World War III. Most people are aware of their mistakes and certainly want to be an overachiever (if not, they shouldn’t be on your team to begin with), so allow emotions to cool and find that productive window to communicate the path forward.

On top of that, regular reviews allow this communication to get easier and easier. I prefer quarterly huddles, and I really want reverse-feedback so I have the opportunity to get much better in my own role.

How would you define what it is to “be a great boss?”

A great boss ensures their organization is wildly successful and that their team has grown and found fulfillment in the process. Without both, the great boss has not achieved success. Our mission is not to have a good time with office ping pong tables and free lunches, but to that achieve greatness in our space that everyone else thought was impossible. At the same time, if each associate has not personally realized tremendous growth and development, then we did not achieve greatness.

People want to be part of something special, something difficult. They want to overcome fears and for the world to believe they made a difference. They won’t first tell you this, and many don’t even know they are capable of this, but this is what truly makes them happy and fulfilled.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement what would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

I would like to inspire a movement to bring power back to the people, if that doesn’t sound too dramatic. Our amazing nation, the greatest political and economic experiment in the history of the world, is now suffering from its own success. All organisms develop and expand to further their own interest, just as the natural evolution of governments and corporations is to further expand their power and bureaucracy. We, as individual citizens and business owners, then naturally accept this environment as homeostasis. We think it is natural.

We hold 5% of the world’s population but 25% of world’s incarcerated individuals, and my own bizarre experience proved to me that a great percentage are truly innocent. Government regulators learn their trade on tax-payer-funded salaries then transition to significant paychecks at the very Wall Street firms they were supposedly regulating. The national debt is $28 trillion (actually more), and we have no idea what that even means.

I am inspired to help people become more educated and aware, and most-importantly to take back control of their own lives and destiny.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

My favorite all-time life quote is from the Man in the Arena speech President Theodore Roosevelt gave in Paris in 1910. I even put it in the front of my recent book. I relate to it well since it seems my life has been a series of great achievements followed by great disappointments and failures and, at least so far, strong comebacks. Roosevelt said the “credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood … not with the critics … not with the timid souls who neither know victory or defeat.” His words have given me strength when I have let down my employees, my shareholders, and my family, even repeatedly on the front page of the newspaper for all the wrong reasons.

At 5’9” I achieved a Division I basketball scholarship, only to be cut from the team the next year. I built a billion-dollar investment company from zero, only to watch it implode back to zero. Terrified, I chose to stand up for the truth and go to trial against the federal government, only to be sentenced to fourteen years in prison. The list goes on, but what I believe is important is that we get off the canvas just one more time than being knocked down, and only then will we have lived our best life.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

My book, Just One More: The Wisdom of Bob Vukovich, has been recently published by Ash Press and is available at Amazon Books, Just One More: The Wisdom of Bob Vukovich: Martinovich, Mr Jeffrey A: 9781790554850: Amazon.com: Books

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Jeff Martinovich

JAM Accelerator, LLC

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www.jeffmartinovich.com

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Jeff Martinovich of MICG Investment Management: Giving Feedback; How To Be Honest Without Being… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Never forget yourself; try to allocate time for things you are passionate about, even if it appears like there is no time at all: I really wanted to learn and work on a new technology, but it never felt like the right time. In the end, I decided to take some university courses (and pay for them!) and do all the homework and submissions. It wasn’t easy, but since I had strict deadlines and commitments, I had to find some time in between everything else, and I managed to do that.

The Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality & Mixed Reality Industries are so exciting. What is coming around the corner? How will these improve our lives? What are the concerns we should keep an eye out for? Aside from entertainment, how can VR or AR help work or other parts of life? To address this, as a part of our interview series called “Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Adi Raz Goldfarb.

Adi Raz Goldfarb is an AI researcher, developer, and the leader of the Augmented Reality team in IBM Research — Haifa in Israel. Together with other great minds from all over the globe, she is driving the adoption of augmented reality technology among enterprises, while trying to change the way technicians and workers interact or access knowledge.

Adi is also active in exposing teens to technology and helping young women at the beginning of their academic and professional careers.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory and how you grew up?

I grew up in Akko, a town in northern Israel. My parents both immigrated to Israel as children; my mom is originally from Latvia and my dad from Morocco. They are very different from one another — my mom is a social worker and my father is an electrician — but they are both hard workers and very diligent. I’m sure I got the drive to work and excel from them. I think I’m a good combination of the two of them — I have the interpersonal skills of my mom and the technical skills of my dad.

Growing up, I was a good student with good marks. I skipped a grade and graduated from high school at the age of 16, but I hated it. I really wanted to be like everyone else; social aspects of life were very important to me. I was very good in math, but science was not on my agenda, even though I had studied physics, but only because my dad literally forced me to do so. Today, I know that my resistance to science wasn’t entirely my fault. The idea of girls studying and working in the sciences was not really spoken about back then, especially in more rural or outlying areas of the country. None of my friends’ parents were in the STEM fields, I had never met an engineer, and I had no idea what it really meant to be one. I just knew I might have the skills to become one, but back then I wasn’t even certain I wanted to.

Is there a particular book, film, or podcast that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

That would be Sheryl Sandberg’s book “Lean in”. Before I came to IBM, I was sure I wasn’t ready for leadership positions, even though it was always part of who I was. Since I was young, I always found myself leading and managing in different situations. I even served as an officer in the Israeli army. But I always had the feeling that I was just lucky to be at the right spot at the right time. When I read Sheryl’s book and learned about the impostor syndrome, it felt like she was describing exactly how I felt. I also understood that I would never feel quite ready for the next challenge, and perhaps if I did, it would probably mean that it was too late. That’s why I accepted the challenge when my manager offered it.

Is there a particular story that inspired you to pursue a career in the X Reality industry? We’d love to hear it.

I’ve always loved makeup, but it’s a tricky thing to buy because you can never quite tell what the right color is for you. I remember thinking ten years or so ago how cool it would be if you could try out any makeup you wanted virtually and then decide what to buy. It seemed so futuristic at the time. Later, I learned that AR can actually address that.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began this fascinating career?

A little while ago, I went on a business trip to a client site in Texas. That was the first time I saw how our AR technology was being used not just for fun or testing, but for actual, real-world industrial use cases.

For example, when working on some maintenance procedures, the technicians were following printed instruction from a printed manual. It looked so tedious. We gave them the option to get all those instructions on AR; by pointing their iPad at the machine, they could see exactly where to tighten a screw or which piece should be removed and how. They were also using AR with a remote expert for troubleshooting. Instead of just trying to explain the problem on the phone, they could show the expert what they saw in real time, and he could instruct them by annotating the video.

One of the most interesting aspects of that visit was to see the challenges the enterprise world is facing in this area, as opposed to consumer apps. The end users for enterprise AR are often not teenagers. For them, embracing new technologies after working for so many years in a certain way is not always natural.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

When I was 15, I volunteered as a counselor at a summer camp in the Jewish community center in Canton, Ohio. That was the first time I had ever been in the US. One day, I called my parents from the community center office. During that call, I remember I saw a small blue button under the desk. I don’t know why, but I decided to press it. I guess I thought to myself, what could possibly happen? Well, as soon as I ended the call, two police officers suddenly showed up. Apparently, I’d pushed some emergency alarm that directly notified the police. That was very embarrassing, not just because the community center needed to pay for this emergency service, but also because those cops refused to leave before they were 100% positive that I did it by mistake and there was no actual emergency that someone was now trying to cover up. What did I learn? First, that American rules are very serious! I couldn’t imagine something like that happening in Israel. Israeli cops would probably laugh or yell at me and then quickly leave, but those cops were very serious and really cared about our safety. I think it says a lot about the cultural differences. Second, I learned not to press (or click) any button without knowing what it does first ☺. I think that really helped me in my software development career — never leap before you look.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

Today I’m confident enough to say that I’m the person who helped me the most, by being motivated, hardworking, and focused on my goals, and I don’t feel like I owe it to anyone else. It’s also important to me to convey this message to other young women: Don’t wait for someone else’s recognition; push yourself forward. (Although I’m pretty sure if I had to respond to this question just a few years ago, my answer would be entirely different.) However, I do appreciate my managers along the way who placed their trust in me, even though I wasn’t the exact profile they were looking for.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

Actually I am, but I can’t say much about them because they’re still confidential. Let me just say that we are working on the next generation of AR applications for enterprises.

Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. The VR, AR and MR industries seem so exciting right now. What are the 3 things in particular that most excite you about the industry? Can you explain or give an example?

• First, I think the entire industry is straight out of science fiction movies. This technology is really something we’ve all dreamed about, and now it’s actually becoming accessible reality. That’s just incredible to me.
• Second, even though it’s not here yet, the day that everyone will have AR glasses just like smartphones is not far off. We know many companies are working on that currently. It’s going to change the way we consume content.
• Third, and maybe the most important thing, is that the COVID-19 pandemic put remote collaborations and virtual communications in the spotlight, so the need for AR and VR is stronger than ever.

What are the 3 things that concern you about the VR, AR and MR industries? Can you explain? What can be done to address those concerns?

• My biggest concern is the adoption rate. Technology is not always embraced by everyone so quickly. In the XR industry, there is a huge dependency on devices and hardware, and not just the software. And while it looks like the software is mature enough, the devices are not yet there, and that effects the willingness of users to buy it and try it, as many products are also still quite expensive.
• Another thing that concerns me is a possible outcome of people using AR/VR on a daily basis. This of course is a problem connected with every new technology — how do we maintain and even strengthen our interpersonal connections? When we don’t have reasons to meet people face-to-face (you can play remotely in VR, meet your team members in a virtual meeting room, and so on), what might happen? If you watched any “Black Mirror” episodes, you probably get the idea.
• Finally, as in other tech areas, we also have to be very cautious about privacy in the AR/VR space. Working with these amazing technologies usually involves a lot of data, and it can often be very personal (such as knowing where users are or what they see) or confidential corporate information (such as hardware specification or defects). Along with all of our research and development efforts, privacy continues to be a central area of focus.

I think the entertainment aspects of VR, AR and MR are apparent. Can you share with our readers how these industries can help us at work?

The potential is enormous, especially around technical work where technicians can use AR or VR to simplify procedures or easily access information in real time from IoT sensors (temperature, pressure, etc.). There is also a lot of potential in the medical world. For example, doctors can be trained on VR simulators. While many people are familiar with the visual aspects of this technology, haptic technology that uses VR is perhaps even more exciting. That VR application can allow a doctor located in Seattle to perform a surgery on a patient in New York by transmitting his hand movements to a robot while he is watching the patient in VR! Isn’t that fantastic?

Are there other ways that VR, AR and MR can improve our lives? Can you explain?

Think about all the things you do today with your mobile device. Now imagine it in front of your eyes, without needing to hold something or shift your gaze. For example, imagine seeing driving instructions on the road itself instead of on a map. The most interesting potential surrounds the connection of AR with AI. Imagine tech that can not only learns your preferences and habits, and gets online information about your current environment, but that presents you with relevant, customized information at the exact right place and time, such as promotions for your favorite dairy product when you walk by it in the supermarket.

Let’s zoom out a bit and talk in broader terms. Are you currently satisfied with the status quo regarding women in STEM? If not, what specific changes do you think are needed to change the status quo?

No, I’m not satisfied with the current situation. When we try to hire new developers, we rarely get females applicants. That’s truly frustrating. Our research lab is doing a lot to help improve that, as is IBM overall. I recently saw in an IBM report, for example, that the company’s efforts to promote diversity resulted in the hiring of more than 38% women in the U.S. last year. But we still have quite a way to go. I’m also active in Facebook groups for women in tech and academia and try to help female students and young developers as much as I can to find jobs to improve their CV and build their self-confidence in general. The changes must start at a young age. Girls need to be exposed to technology from childhood. When we buy spaceship toys for boys and dollhouses for girls, we perpetuate the inequality.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about working in your industry? Can you explain what you mean?

People sometimes think that if you are an engineer or a software developer, that’s your only interest in life. Well, most of us have a lot of other passions, such as cooking, traveling, or music. So, no, we are not robots.

What are your “5 Leadership Lessons I Learned From My Experience as a Woman in Tech” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. Don’t be afraid to do something you never did before: Our mind usually tends to freak out when something new comes along that we never did before. I usually take such unfamiliar tasks and try to break them down into small items. That’s how I get better clarity on how to address it.
2. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes; that’s the best way we learn: Every time I say or do something wrong — it stays in my mind for a while and makes me think and analyze the situation again and again. In this way, I get a lot of good ideas on how to improve for the next time.
3. Don’t try to be the smartest person in the room. Listen to others: If someone knows something better than you, it doesn’t mean you can’t lead him. Ask for advice; the more opinions you get, the smarter you become. When I started my current job, I felt like I knew nothing! I remember I had a notebook with me at every meeting and I was writing down a huge number of technical terms that I had never heard before. After the meeting, I would review those gibberish terms, search for them on the Internet, or ask friends what they mean. I had much more experienced developers on my team when I became a team lead, and I never made a decision without first asking their opinion or understanding what they thought. I think that’s what really allowed me to grow.
4. Never forget yourself; try to allocate time for things you are passionate about, even if it appears like there is no time at all: I really wanted to learn and work on a new technology, but it never felt like the right time. In the end, I decided to take some university courses (and pay for them!) and do all the homework and submissions. It wasn’t easy, but since I had strict deadlines and commitments, I had to find some time in between everything else, and I managed to do that.
5. Invest time in transferring knowledge to others, and “let go” when you can; you don’t need to control everything: I think this is extremely important. It helps me to become more focused and keep my sanity. You don’t want to be overloaded with meetings, tasks, and responsibilities because usually it just creates frustration. It’s also important to empower the people you work with; let them feel independent and responsible.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

I’m really concerned by educational inequalities as a byproduct of the wealth gap, which lead to fewer opportunities for children from underprivileged or disadvantaged families or for kids who live in rural or more outlying regions. Children from wealthier families from major urban centers benefit from greater and easier access to aid with their studies, and more access to technology and science. I want our political leadership to increase investment in public education to close that gap and give these kids equal opportunities.

We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂

I’d love to sit down with Kamala Harris if I ever had the chance. She’s so charismatic, smart and talented, and of course I’m so impressed with her as the woman who has reached the highest office yet in the history of the US. She really inspires me and a lot of women around the world.

Thank you so much for these excellent stories and insights. We wish you continued success on your great work!

Wisdom From The Women Leading The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries, With IBM’s Adi Raz Goldfarb was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Non-Fungible Tokens: Andy Alekhin of SnarkArt On The 5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Highly Successful Career In The NFT Industry

Communicate — In the NFT space there are no middlemen — no galleries and art advisors. At least for now. This means that artists are now responsible, not only for creation, but also for promoting and selling the work. It requires a slightly different skill set.

Many have observed that we are at the cusp of an NFT boom. The thing is, it’s so cutting edge, that many people don’t know what it is. What exactly is an NFT and how can one create a lucrative career out of selling them? To address this, as a part of our interview series called “5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Highly Successful Career In The NFT Industry”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Andy Alekhin.

Andy Alekhin is CEO and co-founder of Snark.Art. Snark.art collaborates with international artists exploring the creative possibilities of blockchain and other emerging technologies, developing projects in the fields of art, performance, music and literature. In 2020, Snark.art also launched a platform for selling digital art on the blockchain.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about your background story and how you grew up?

I was born and grew up in Moscow, Russia. Studied mathematics in Moscow Aviation University and planned to become an astronaut (actually some of my classmates are already active astronauts). But an entrepreneurial spirit brought me away from building spacecraft and I started building companies instead. My interests ranged from IT to finance to digital arts. I built a couple of small startups and even launched a digital arts and music festival in Russia.

Several years ago I moved to NYC and decided to launch an art & tech production company there.

Is there a particular book, film, or podcast that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

Except my passion for arts, I was a huge fan of science fiction — everything from Ayzek Azimov to Phillpe Dick to William Gibson. So, when blockchain, virtual worlds, and digital goods ideas started coming into reality — I was not surprised at all. All these things already existed in my imagination, in my world, for many years.

Is there a particular story that inspired you to pursue a career in this new industry? We’d love to hear it.

I was fascinated with the ideas of Marcel Dushamp and his ready mades. Such a simple and powerful concept made me think that anything is possible in this world, if only you can think of this. Imagination is the most powerful thing in this universe and people are actually gods as they can imagine new things. Everything we can imagine sooner or later turns into reality.

And this is what true artists are doing — inventing things that never existed before: they are building our universe.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began this fascinating career?

A lot of cool things happened. I met some great artists and helped them realize their vision using new technology. We experimented a lot and sometimes months of work brought us to nothing, but some results were interesting and definitely worth the effort. Sometimes things we did were so new that we didn’t have the right words yet to explain what we are actually doing and why. I remember after we launched 89seconds Automized with Eve Sussman, my partner and I were invited to Chadder TV: this was a complete disaster as I was not able to explain the nature of the project I worked on for 8 months day and night

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

I make a lot of mistakes. That is the nature of experimenting — trying new things, trying something that nobody else did before you. The biggest lesson I learned — you not only need to believe in what you are doing, you need to bet on it. High bets increase the likeliness of success, of turning new ideas into a reality.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

Sure. My partner Misha Libman, my wife Anya, and of course our early investors — who believed in what we are doing and trusted our vision.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

Yep, we are developing some cool projects right now. From something simple but extremely cute collectibles Ksoids.com that aims to preserve wild life to serious NFT projects with world leading artists like Kabakovs and Joanna Vasconchelas.

Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. I’m sure you get this question all the time. But, for the benefit of our readers, can you explain in your own words what an NFT is, and why people are spending so much money on them?

NFTs are scarce digital objects. Just like for scarce physical objects their value depends on the creator, content, and the total number of copies created.

If there is a unique painting that was created by Diego Velazquez and considered to be the first selfie in the history of art (I am talking about Las Meninas of course) — it might become very expensive. Same for NFTs: if a digital object was created by a famous artist and has some revolutionary content — it might be worth millions.

NFT technology makes digital files unique, but creators make them valuable (or not).

The NFT industry seems so exciting right now. What are the 3 things in particular that most excite you about the industry? If you can, please share a story or example for each.

The ability to own digital objects is extremely powerful. It makes art close to regular people. You can now have your collection right on your phone and experience it while commuting for example. I hope this technology will not only turn more people into collectors, but make this world a bit nicer place to live.

Because of NFTs art can become more interactive right now. It is not happening yet, but it will. Imaging artworks that mutate with a change of ownership or appear in full only in 100 years from now. With NFT technology all these things become possible — it is a new medium for experimentation for artists.

Global aspect. As digital objects can move at the speed of light there are no borders for collectors anymore. We all become one global village.

What are the 3 things that concern you about the industry? Can you explain? What can be done to address those concerns?

Hype and marketization of art. We are seeing a huge inflow of new artists into the space, but surprisingly, most new projects are copy/pasting each other. New mediums provide so many opportunities, but almost nobody is using them so far.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about NFTs? Can you explain what you mean?

Myth 1: NFT will eliminate forgeries. While NFTs give some additional transparency — they will not solve this issue completely.

Myth 2: Secondary royalties for artists. While NFT tech allows to embed secondary royalties into artworks, there are (and always will be) many ways for collectors to avoid paying these royalties. So the problem cannot be completely resolved with technology and should always imply a collector’s willingness to pay these royalties

What are the most common mistakes you have seen people make when they enter the NFT industry. What can be done to avoid this?

People think that tokenization and NFTzation will make their art better or higher priced. But it is not about that -NFT is a new canvas, new medium, but art is still about ideas and imagination — only these things are really important.

How do you think NFTs have the potential to help society in the future?

NFTs will make art more accessible to normal people. Art will not be a niche elite market anymore. I think this will help to heal society faster, but we’ll see

Ok, fantastic. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Highly Successful Career In The NFT Industry?” (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. Bring fresh ideas — Adding to conversation, not just repeating somebody’s else thoughts or approaches
2. Experiment — Be brave — try new things and don’t afraid to fail hard
3. Know your medium well — Blockchain technology is the basis for NFTs, if you know how it works, its strengths and weaknesses, you can create many more things
4. Collaborate — NFTs came from startup/silicon valley culture that knows, and collaboration is more powerful than competition
5. Communicate — In the NFT space there are no middlemen — no galleries and art advisors. At least for now. This means that artists are now responsible, not only for creation, but also for promoting and selling the work. It requires a slightly different skill set.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

We need to start creating multiple decentralized government systems. The idea that each territory has only one government at one moment of time seems ridiculous to me. I want to have a choice at any moment of time and want governments to compete with each other constantly just as insurance companies are. I don’t want to choose between democrats and republicans once every 4 years — I want them both active with people paying taxes to the government of their choice. In an ideal world I can switch from one political system to another a few times per day without going out of my apartment.

We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂

I’d love to have lunch with David Hockney. I want to live in the world he creates in his paintings. Can you please help me with that?

Thank you so much for these excellent stories and insights. We wish you continued success on your great work!

Non-Fungible Tokens: Andy Alekhin of SnarkArt On The 5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Highly… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Non-Fungible Tokens: Bruno Fruscalzo of NFT Inc On The 5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Highly Successful Career In The NFT Industry

Be involved and pay it forward. The NFT space is still in its infancy, and there’s plenty of time to gain traction and establish yourself. In the meantime try to inspire others, and collaborate. Be aware of the great many issues and frustrations buyers and sellers have, and of who has ideas to solve those, then try to introduce those who wish to action those solutions.

Many have observed that we are at the cusp of an NFT boom. The thing is, it’s so cutting edge, that many people don’t know what it is. What exactly is an NFT and how can one create a lucrative career out of selling them? To address this, as a part of our interview series called “5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Highly Successful Career In The NFT Industry”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Bruno Fruscalzo.

Bruno was an early adopter of bitcoin, below $500, and bassist / bandleader for Carly-Rae Jepsen (“Call Me Maybe”) from her first rehearsal to the doorstep of global stardom. He is an NFT curator and creator, and has over 23 years’ experience in capital markets as a director and officer of publicly listed companies. IG: @nftcurations

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory and how you grew up?

I grew up in small-town Western Canada, the son of European immigrant parents — a hard working former athlete and exceptionally kind father, and a super-smart, fierce mother who highly valued and encouraged individuality.

I moved out at age 17 and have lived a generally care-free, active and happy life marching to my own drum and pursuing my passions ever since, while seldom answering to anyone.

After studying economics in university, a brief career in a major bank’s head office led me to burning that bridge and never looking back. Afterward I had stints in film & television and IT, which were fun but I discovered what works for me is working for myself and moving ideas forward.

Is there a particular book, film, or podcast that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

“Into Thin Air” by Jon Krakauer. It’s absolutely fascinating, thrilling, and an extremely rare event that such a skilled writer very familiar with high-altitude climbing happened to have been part of, and survived, one of the most infamous mountaineering disasters of all time.

For me it resonates as a strident reminder that no matter how good you are at something if you waver from the proper path calamity can ensue, and that success isn’t getting to the top; it’s surviving being at the top. In that light, I view it as one of the best, if inadvertent, books ever written on investing, which is a big part of my life.

Is there a particular story that inspired you to pursue a career in this new industry? We’d love to hear it.

My involvement in the NFT industry is mostly blind luck. I landed at the right place and time where the perfect nexus of my skills and passions defines the NFT space: art, finance, music, commerce, collaboration, abstraction and absurdity. It’s a triumph of the underdogs writ large, and most of all so much fun! I was hooked from the start.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began this fascinating career?

The first day I became aware of NTFs I happened to be present in a Clubhouse room for the ground-breaking 3LAU drop. He was present with his family, as were famous and influential people such as Kim Dotcom and music industry bigwigs.

I believe no one who experienced that auction will ever forget it. For me it was like listening to “War Of The Worlds” as it was broadcast live, yet with the awareness something was happening that would change history for artists and musicians.

I stayed up all night in excitement, pacing and thinking, the next day calling any friends and colleagues who would entertain my ranting about it. Within days I’d incorporated a company dedicated to the NFT space, which should be publicly trading later this summer. There are exciting projects going into it and a diverse NFT collection initially comprised of works by many wonderful people and skilled artists who helped me navigate the cryptocurrencies, wallets, and marketplaces necessary to acquire NFTs.

Since then in the NFT community I’ve met some of my favorite artists from the physical world and forged friendships with creators and curators whom I’ve come to admire and respect. For me the NFT scene has been an excellent antidote to the toxicity prevalent in social discourse today and to the psychology of pandemic lockdowns; in the NFT space creativity, cooperation and commerce are moving ahead at warp speed.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

The mistake that led to me discovering the NFT space was losing access to my bitcoins in early 2014. Despite having a past life in IT and network security, I’m one of the people you’ve probably read about who took such great pains to secure their crypto that it became inaccessible.

I regained access to it in early 2021 and thought I should diversify. Learning about the use cases of different alt-coins led me to NFTs.

Without giving too much away, I’ll say that the lesson I learned was that you can have the right key but if the lock has changed then it’s not much use.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I’m blessed that so many people have had so much influence on me in so many ways — personally, professionally, musically, spiritually and more.

My mother is chief among them, and no one in my adulthood comes close to the encouragement and support that my business partner has given me. Plus if it weren’t for her I wouldn’t have recovered my bitcoins and this interview wouldn’t be taking place.

When I told her I had lost bitcoins, she did some research and kept reminding me to explore the different avenues of recovery which resulted in my regaining access after 7 years.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

I have a pre-IPO crowdfunding platform going live later this summer in Canada, made possible under new SEC regulations. A top branding and development firm in the States is working on it, and it’s looking fantastic.

It’ll make certain listing requirements much easier to comply with for companies wishing to go public, and will facilitate more creative and entrepreneurial people getting their ideas funded then taking those to public markets. People who didn’t have access to such investments in the past will be able to get in at the pre-IPO stage.

The developer of the NBA Top Shots NFT marketplace — Dapper Labs, now valued at $7.5 billion — is based in Vancouver, Canada. The hotbed of tech there could see the city emerge as “Silicon Valley North”, and my portal will be perfectly placed to be part of that boom.

Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. I’m sure you get this question all the time. But for the benefit of our readers, can you explain in your own words what an NFT is, and why people are spending so much money on them?

NFT is a new medium with some unique and compelling features. It’s fascinating and fun, and the NFT community is a welcome contrast to insular lockdown life.

People are increasingly living digital lives, so creating and collecting digital art and making new friends in virtual communities makes sense.

The reasons for spending varies widely. Some wish to support their favorite artists and the greater NFT community. Many were making relatively easy money selling NFTs, plus the value of cryptos exploded this year, and as a result some have the means to spend big on art for the first time in their life. That’s a powerful feeling in a time of such widespread chaos and uncertainty.

There’s a speculative mania going on in virtually all economic sectors, and there’s been a lot of media focus on NFTs in particular which attracted plenty of new participants.

It’s an exciting new asset class with such a vibrant community, and opportunities exist for artists to get royalties on future resale of their work — which in the past wasn’t possible. People want to be part of the conversation and feel they’re a part of moving the art form and technology forward.

The NFT industry seems so exciting right now. What are the 3 things in particular that most excite you about the industry? If you can, please share a story or example for each.

The pervasive culture of collaboration is very exciting. Within my first few days in the NFT community I was lucky to be part of the world’s first group NFT creation in real time.

A discussion led by actor/musician Drake Bell (“Drake & Josh”) about how best to present his future NFT project turned into a discussion about how to present a single song, then emerging superstar NFT artist Eddie Gangland suggesting we do it immediately. A few dozen people sent their art to Eddie who turned it into an animated collage in his style, Drake’s producer added some of his music to the image, we collectively recorded some vocals to add to it, and within hours we had a result that I’ll always cherish being part of.

As for its “value” or whether it’s “art”: it makes me happy and makes me laugh every time I view it and that’s priceless art to me. It inspired me to commission Eddie to mint my first NFT purchase, and the creative energy that process lit within me was indescribably exciting and productive.

The ability for artists, musicians, dancers and others, and I hope someday fans and behind-the-scenes workers in those disciplines too, to collaborate remotely, and profitably, and be paid royalties in perpetuity is a very big deal. That’s uniquely possible thanks to NFT “smart contracts”.

I’m evangelical about bringing new artists into the NFT space, especially musicians who now have a new creative outlet and the hope to earn money after their plans, careers and earnings were derailed by the pandemic. At the same time fans have a way of participating and interacting directly in ways that are unprecedented.

What are the 3 things that concern you about the industry? Can you explain? What can be done to address those concerns?

The marketplace-gallery experience is generally abysmal and has a very long way to go. Buzz-kills, confusion and security issues are legion, and solutions will come naturally in time through new entrants into that space and healthy competition.

I worry about artists suddenly coming into money in a “wild west” speculative atmosphere who aren’t well equipped to handle their business affairs. It’s a new medium, but the same old laws of income and capital gains and intellectual property apply. The wild gyrations in cryptos makes it that much tougher to keep track of things. Sharing resources and educating people is the simplest solution.

A major concern is what happens to your crypto holdings after you die. Given decentralization and the security measures inherent in crypto, when someone passes away it’s not going to be as simple as asking a bank or other institution to hand over a deceased person’s holdings.

If there’s a chance to help fund and bring solutions to such issues forward, I’m keen.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about NFTs? Can you explain what you mean?

The biggest myth is that NFTs or digital art is “not art”, or that it’s easy to do.

Try it. Make a compelling work, mint it as an NFT, then promote and sell it at a profit. Do that repeatedly for awhile, then you’ll know what I mean.

There’s enough hating and negativity in the world. Instead of bringing it into the NFT space, try bringing something positive and creative or feel free to carry on complaining while those who “get it” are engaging in exhilarating discussions about art, currencies, and future technologies, while being part of making it happen and having tremendous fun in the process.

What are the most common mistakes you have seen people make when they enter the NFT industry. What can be done to avoid that?

Same as in any boom, people get a quick taste of success and extrapolate that it’ll never end. Some are spending before saving, or quitting their jobs before they’re truly established, or not getting their business affairs straight in re: taxes, etc.

Others are missing tremendous business opportunities for fear of missing out on future revenues that will never happen if they let others rush to market first with the same idea, or instead of seeing the benefits of long-term relationships they’re burning their audience by supersaturating the market for quick sales.

Truly nothing can be done to avoid it. It’s just no fun to hear about pragmatism while the party rages.

Those who’ve been through it before will hopefully not re-learn that valuable lesson since it’s not specifically an NFT thing; it’s human nature. The medium is different but mania behavior remains the same.

How do you think NFTs have the potential to help society in the future?

When people create, market and sell something of their own they taste autonomy and develop a much greater interest in their finances and future. They see an upside that isn’t possible in typical day-to-day wage earning.

In the process they’ll hopefully gain empathy for people who run businesses rather than demonize them all out of habit, and they’ll gain an awareness of the massive fraud that is currency devaluation via global central bank actions and populist policies.

Participating in crypto transactions requires a level of personal responsibility and consequence that’s too rare today, and that’s very healthy.

Ok, fantastic. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Highly Successful Career In The NFT Industry?” (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. Be involved and pay it forward. The NFT space is still in its infancy, and there’s plenty of time to gain traction and establish yourself. In the meantime try to inspire others, and collaborate. Be aware of the great many issues and frustrations buyers and sellers have, and of who has ideas to solve those, then try to introduce those who wish to action those solutions.

2. Stay positive and be unique. I hear a lot of guessing what buyers want. If you’re a creator, just do what you do and focus on offering something unique. Don’t pander or get stuck in a trend. Stick to your vision, develop your most unique traits, and gear down for the long haul as there will be terrible droughts in sales, wild fluctuations in cryptos, and no end of naysayers, cynics and critics.

3. Stay in touch. Be an active part of the community on social media. If possible go the extra mile and provide a receipt and contact info. to your buyers. That’s largely if not completely absent in the current marketplaces. Stay in touch but don’t dehumanize your collectors by making them feel like a wallet. Learn the basics of subtle, successful marketing.

4. Handle your business. Be aware that real-world laws fully apply with respect to taxes, capital gains, trading cryptos, and intellectual property copyright. Martyrs will be made by IP lawyers and agents of “The Man”. Unless you’re looking to prove a point, potentially at great expense, know where the line is and avoid crossing it. Know that just because others haven’t been sued for something doesn’t mean you can’t be. Even if you’re in the right, is it worth a 2-year court battle and $250k in legal fees to achieve that verdict?

5. Think about the future. Don’t be overexposed to any one asset class, and plan for what happens to your crypto and NFTs not just when you die someday but if you die tomorrow.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

Compassionate accountability at the personal and local level. There’s good in everyone, but Big Brother is never your friend. Centralized power absolutely and always corrupts.

We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂

WhaleShark. He’s the most famous NFT curator, an enigma and a renown crypto “whale”. I admire his approach, tone, tremendous positive energy and ideas, and his gentle voice is a joy to listen to. He’s an inspiration for my own NFT curation and business.

Thank you so much for these excellent stories and insights. We wish you continued success on your great work!

Non-Fungible Tokens: Bruno Fruscalzo of NFT Inc On The 5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Highly… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.