Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?
My friends: Alistair Croll (Solve for Interesting, Tilt the Windmill, Interesting Bits, HBS, chair of Strata, Startupfest, FWD50, and Scaletechconf; author of Lean Analytics and some other books), Hugh McGuire (Rebus Foundation, PressBooks, LibriVox) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person “must see.”
Check out these six links that we’re recommending to one another:
- Rage Against The Ghost In The Machine – Linux Conference Australia 2017 – YouTube. “Lilly Ryan spins a great tale of ghostly tech. People have been trying to contact the dead via tech long before Poltergeist and Ring put the notion of spooky TV in our collective consciousness. But with the ability to train algorithms on a corpus of text – and then have those algorithms create new text in a form of statistical mimicry – we’re close to the day when Big Tech can let you chat with a decent simulacrum of your dead friends and relatives. As Hugh pointed out last time, when he included the Google Engineer who believes a chatbot is sentient, it’s not about whether the sentience exists, but rather, whether we believe it.” (Alistair for Hugh).
- Drop that fork! Why eating at your desk is banned in France – Rough Translation – NPR. “I eat most of my meals in front of a screen these days, if I do it at all. And setting aside the food in my keyboard, it’s not good for me. I recently started something I call Je Dis Lunch (a pun on Jeudi Lunch, or ‘Thursday lunch’ in French) where a few folks show up outside and have lunch together. Shared lunch is a casualty of the pandemic and our always-on lifestyle, and in the few weeks since we started doing it, it’s been a great way to reconnect. But what I didn’t know is that it’s illegal to eat at your desk in France. It was initially a health measure, and was paused in early 2021 – but by now, it’s so ingrained in French culture that the suspension has been lifted. Our native Quebec wants us to embrace French culture: This seems like a good start.” (Alistair for Mitch).
- Uptown Funk/Bruno Mars Featuring Mark Ronson – covered by Feng E – ukulele fingerstyle – Feng E – YouTube. “I’ve mentioned before that I started learning the ukulele as a Covid project, and continue to plunk away. I’m pretty good at strumming chords, but that’s about it. My daughter suggested I learn Uptown Funk, and so I went to YouTube – always a great place to find tutorials on just about anything. I found this vid. I’ll let you know when I can play like this.” (Hugh for Alistair).
- The Organization of Your Bookshelves Tells Its Own Story – The Atlantic. “I visited Mitch’s office a bunch of times on the way to lunch. His office was basically a desk, chair, computer and books. I have a few bookshelves at home, with a special shelf for my favourite novels. What do your bookshelves say about you?” (Hugh for Mitch).
- Small Actions Make Great Leaders – Harvard Business Review. “If we do, in fact, rely on the workforce, not executives, to lead change what does that mean for how our work evolves in this remote, hybrid or whatever we’re calling this moment in time? If we take that – and add in the idea that small actions also make the best leaders shine – how does that unfold when leaders today are looking to only bring people together when it’s something valuable (or big)? It’s amazing to read this article and then think about how a company can make these moments really happen, when everyone is hesitant to work in the same spaces. It also makes me wonder if work is going to change into something wildly different when these types of moments don’t happen on Zoom or in the random meetings that transpire when our people gather.” (Mitch for Alistair).
- TikTok Killed the Video Star – The Atlantic. “I know that there are many reasons why I should demonize TikTok, but I can’t. It’s simply the most entertaining, engaging and educational video platform that I have ever come across. I’ve said it before, and I will say it again: That algorithm is a sight to behold. It knows the types of things that I’ll find interesting… and these are things that I never thought I would find interesting. This is a fascinating read about how TikTok is evolving and, if I were YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, I would be paying even more attention to what TikTok is doing and how it’s capturing people’s attention.” (Mitch for Hugh).
Feel free to share these links and add your picks on Twitter, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.
Are you interested in what’s next? How to decode the future? I publish between 2-3 times per week and then the Six Pixels of Separation Podcast comes out every Sunday. Feel free to subscribe (and tell your friends)
Mitch Joel Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.