Pimplomat

I had the opportunity to interview Temple Grandin this past summer, and it’s featured in the November issue of The Meeting Professional. Here’s a tease.

“For some people, a label can become the thing that defines them,” she writes. “It can easily lead to what I call a handicapped mentality. When a person gets a diagnosis of Asperger’s, for instance, he might start to think, ‘What’s the point?’ or ‘I’ll never hold down a job.’ His whole life starts to revolve around what he can’t do instead of what he can do, or at least what he can try to improve.”

Please read the whole article, and let me know what you think about it in the comments.

(Image: Jeff Loy)

Looks shouldn’t matter, but they do, especially in the workplace. That’s the conclusion two researchers came to in a study about counterproductive work behavior (CWB), defined as “behavior intended to hurt the organization or other members of the organization.” They wanted to know why particular employees are targets of abuse.

“Over the years, much attention has been devoted to understanding CWB and its related concepts,” wrote Brent A. Scott and Timothy A. Judge in “Beauty, Personality, and Affect as Antecedents of Counterproductive Work Behavior Receipt.” “We tested a model that positioned CWB receipt as a function of employees’ personality (neuroticism, agreeableness), their appearance (physical attractiveness) and the negative emotions felt toward those employees by their coworkers.”

Two studies showed that disagreeable and physically unattractive employees received more abuse from their coworkers, coworker negative emotion felt toward employees was associated with CWB receipt, and the relationship between employee agreeableness and CWB receipt was due, in part, to coworker negative emotion, the authors write.

“For managers, knowing who the targets of harmful behaviors such as CWB are likely to be may help them to monitor susceptible employees to prevent them from becoming victims or to provide counseling and social support if prevention attempts fail,” Scott and Judge wrote. “For employees, although it is difficult to alter one’s physical attractiveness and, presumably, one’s level of agreeableness, employees should realize that, whether fair or unfair, appearances and personality matter in the workplace.”

(Image via Flickr: Lin Pernille Kristensen/Creative Commons)

I’ve been learning French for the past few months. My method, via Memrise, is to learn 1,000 words, while also learning phrases. It’s a slow process, but it’s starting to stick.

Perhaps, though, I should set my language lessons to a tune. According to a new study in Memory & Cognition, singing in a foreign language can improve learning of the language.

Take it away news:

Adults who listened to short Hungarian phrases and then sang them back performed better than those who spoke the phrases, researchers at the University of Edinburgh’s Reid School of Music found. People who sang the phrases back also fared better than those who repeated the phrases by speaking them rhythmically.

Three randomly assigned groups of twenty adults took part in a series of five tests. The singing group performed the best in four of the five tests.

In one test, participants who learned through singing performed twice as well as participants who learned by speaking the phrases. Those who learned by singing were also able to recall the Hungarian phrases with greater accuracy in the longer term.

Hungarian was chosen because it is unfamiliar to most English speakers and a difficult language to master, with a completely different structure and sound system to the Germanic or Romance languages, such as Spanish and French.

Dr. Karen M. Ludke, who conducted the research as part of her Ph.D. at the University of Edinburgh’s Institute for Music in Human and Social Development, said: “This study provides the first experimental evidence that a listen-and-repeat singing method can support foreign language learning, and opens the door for future research in this area. One question is whether melody could provide an extra cue to jog people’s memory, helping them recall foreign words and phrases more easily.”

I’m sure there are plenty of French songs I can use to help with my learning the language. In fact, I’ll cue up some Serge Gainsbourg right this minute.

(Image: Jawbone Radio)

You can blame fish for why you gesticulate when you talk.

“We have traced the evolutionary origins of the behavioral coupling between speech and hand movement back to a developmental compartment in the brain of fishes,” said Cornell University Professor Andrew Bass….wait a minute….his last name….the subject….something fishy is going on here.

Nevertheless, carry on, fish expert.

“Pectoral appendages (fins and forelimbs) are mainly used for locomotion,” he said. “However, pectoral appendages also function in social communication for the purposes of making sounds that we simply refer to as non-vocal sonic signals, and for gestural signalling.”

In fish, a single compartment in the hindbrain controls the pectoral muscles as well as the muscles used to produce sound. You can find the same close coupling of neural networks in mammals.

“Coupling of vocal and pectoral-gestural circuitry starts to get at the evolutionary origins of the coupling between vocalization (speech) and gestural signalling (hand movements),” Bass said. “This is all part of the perhaps even larger story of language evolution.”

Great, now every time I see someone gesticulate I’m going imagine that person as a fish. Thank you, science.

(Image via Flickr: Caroline / Creative Commons.)

Now this looks cool. Carnegie Mellon University researchers recently developed an interactive touch interface. It’s called “World Kit,” and a user can project it on to any flat service. It’s currently bulky, as you’ll see in the video; however, the researchers are working on getting it down to the size of a light bulb.

How would you use something like this in your home or business?

Seth Godin spoke last month at CreativeMornings, a monthly lecture series in New York, about the way you view your work. He said that everyone (including your boss) is a client, and that you should ask yourself, “What change am I trying to make in the people I work with?”

So then, let’s talk about meetings and events, because Godin does in his talk. He brings up technology and the ubiquitous connections available to everyone.

We’re in the connection economy, and connection creates value.

Meeting and event planners often want a quick elevator pitch to define their professions. What Godin just said is the best job summation I’ve heard in my 10 years in the industry. You don’t need any more than that. If you’re a meeting planner and someone asks you what you do, then recognize that you’re being asked the wrong question. Correct it by saying why you do what you do. It’s part of the perception change you’re trying to make in people.

What’s important is, did it make a change happen? Did it make someone cry? Did it save a life? Did it connect two people in a way they wouldn’t have been connected?

Godin’s main point is that you bring value to the world. You’re the master of your own fate, because of the connections that technology offers.

Everyone owns a media company if you want to. If you want to put on an event and have 500 people come, you can. If you want to write something online and have a million people read it, you can. If you want to be in the connection business, you can. This is really bad news for people who are insisting on being picked, because you’re not going to get picked.

I agree with Godin. Too often, people sit around and wait for someone else to handle a challenge. For example, when the mainstream press writes about the meeting and event industry in a negative light, the first thing heard from planners is, “What is my association doing about this?”

Your association, I’m sure, is doing something about it, but you have to remember that most large associations are just that: large and cumbersome. By the time they get around to addressing a challenge, a new one has popped up. Individuals, though, can address challenges much quicker by going back to that question, “What change am I trying to make in the people I work with?” (In this instance, the people you work with are reporters.)

Godin concludes his talk with a story about the 1927 Solvay Conference. Seventeen Nobel Prize in Physics winners attended the conference. However, most of them won the prize after 1927.

The person who organized the conference didn’t just go down the list of Nobel Prize winners. What he did was he created a platform and expectations. And when you went to that conference, you looked around and said, “Wow, I need to raise my bar.” Then you looked around and you said, “There is potential here because some of these people aren’t even as smart as me, and if I push myself even harder, there’s a lot of open territory ahead.”

There is a lot of open territory ahead. The question is, are you going to take responsibility for your own destiny?

(Image via Flickr: Lauren Manning/Creative Commons.)

I’ve been writing articles for work, and that’s why I haven’t updated this in a bit. My latest article is a feature profile of Jason Roberts, a tireless advocate for city development, a musician, and an overall great guy. Here’s the intro to my story:

Shannon Driscoll and Kayli House Cusick met on the street, became friends and started a business together. This is Jason Roberts’ doing.

In 2014, after a more than 50-year lapse, Dallas visitors and residents will once again be able to take trolleys from downtown to the hip and historic Oak Cliff district for shopping, eating and entertainment. This is Jason Roberts’ doing.

Every year, a group of North Texas artists gather to auction off their art, raising thousands of dollars for charity. This, too, is Jason Roberts’ doing.

Roberts has helped spearhead such life-changing projects as Better Block, the Oak Cliff Transit Authority and Art Conspiracy, but he’s also a tireless bicycle enthusiast, a father, a cancer survivor and a musician with three albums released. He is one of Dallas’ best-known community advocates, and he believes everyone can help create a better world. The key is starting small.

Please check out “Creating Community” to read the rest of the story. Thank you.

I received a comment on here last month from Scott Bradfield, telling me that his first novel is now available as a Kindle download, with a cover designed by his son and a new afterward. I’m a huge Bradfield fan (see my review of another of his books), and this is great news. His writing style and themes just click with me, and I’m happy that more people will now be able to read him via tablets and smartphones.

The History of Luminous Motion is the story of an 8-year-old boy…wait, let me just tell you what it says on the back of the book, because that’s perfect: “An astonishing first novel–Blue Velvet meets Oedipus Rex–about an eight-year-old whose needs and intelligence are light-years beyond–and outside–the norm: a boy obsessively, inexorably, fatally attached to his mother.”

I remember thinking when I first read the book, “This narrator is eight years old?!” And then, “Damn, this book is phenomenal.”

Because of Bradfield’s comment, it’s made me want to read it again. I admit I won’t read it on a Kindle, since I have a couple of printed editions (why, yes, I do have the advanced reader’s edition, thank you for asking). However, if you don’t have it, download it, and fall in love with one of America’s greatest underrated writers. It’ll be the best $5 you spent this week. And while you’re at it, download his e-book, Confessions of an Unrepentant Short Story Writer, for 99 cents.

Scott Bradfield may not be on everyone’s lips at the moment, but once you read something by him, you’ll never forget it.

– By Jason Hensel

“I’m not sure what I’ll do, but — well, I want to go places and see people. I want my mind to grow. I want to live where things happen on a big scale.”

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

Eesha Khare, an 18-year-old high school student from Saratoga, Calif., just may have solved the cellphone charge challenge. Her energy-storing device, a supercapacitor, fully charges in under 30 seconds. In the future, cell phones could house the device.

“It is also flexible, so it can be used in rollup displays and clothing and fabric,” Khare told John Roach of NBC News. “It has a lot of different applications and advantages over batteries in that sense.”

She was awarded $50,000 for her invention at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Phoenix, Ariz. However, she wasn’t even the top winner. That $75,000 prize went to Ionut Budisteanu, 19, of Romania for creating an affordable model for a driverless car.

More than 1,600 students competed in this year’s science fair, which honors the “world’s most promising, rising student entrepreneurs, innovators and scientists.”

“All the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair finalists here this week show great promise in harnessing the power of science and innovation to solve problems and create opportunity for our global community,” said Elizabeth Marincola, president of the Society for Science and the Public, in a press release.

It’s great that students are solving science’s challenges. I wonder if students could solve some the most pressing problems in the meetings and events industry, too.

I read articles and see tweets everyday on how to better plan meetings, whether in design or content or hybrid…whatever the flavor of the month is. And there are a lot of great ideas offered by industry veterans. Over time, though, those ideas get lost in an echo chamber and nothing ever gets done (seriously, I can’t believe no one has figured out the great ROI problem!).

Let’s make it rewarding to students to help fix our challenges. Rather than just scholarships and discounted memberships, let’s give them a meaty reason to get involved in associations and the industry. Forget writing essays; let them get their hands dirty.

Take the two largest meeting professional associations for an example. MPI (reader note: I work for MPI) and PCMA should come together, pool their foundations’ resources, and offer a prize for industry innovation to students. Offer less membership and event scholarships, and tie those funds to winning industry inventions. Student clubs could host their own fairs, with the winners moving on to regional and then international competitions. Industry veterans could judge the final results.

Hackathons are a good start, and I applaud the effort behind those. However, let’s expand the scope to more than technology. For example, maybe a student can invent a new way to get people excited about strategic meetings management. Perhaps a student can create a better event evaluation form. Or maybe a student will figure out a way to budget an event where everyone gets paid, including session speakers.

I see these science fairs and I think, why not our industry? Either we do something drastically different or we talk ourselves to death. Lately, it’s been looking more like the latter than the former.

– By Jason Hensel 

(Image via Flickr: Phil Roeder/Creative Commons)