Coruscation

Frederick Peters, the owner of Warburg Realty Partners, had run his business well in the 30 years he had owned Warburg Realty. Now through no fault of his own he found himself in a financial crisis that threatened the future of his firm. This was the definition of a clutch situation. Over the next few months, he responded well because his actions were guided by the five traits of people who are great under pressure:

1. focus


2. discipline


3. adaptability


4. being present


5. a mix of entrepreneurial desire and fear of losing his business

He also avoided the three traps that cause most people to choke:

1. he took responsibility for what needed to be done


2. he did not overthink the situation


3. nor grow overconfident when his business stabilized.
   

Alec Haverstick II, a co-founder of Boxwood Strategic Advisers, provided a tool that could take the passion out of financial decision-making. His rule was that when you have less than 12 months of cash left to cover your debt payments, you need to start selling assets. His prescription applied to anyone because the advice was not based on having a lot of money so much as being smart with the money you have left.

Continue reading "Clutch" »

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#MTADEV: Build your own transit informatics for lower NY and NYC using MTA's data.

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O'Radar bounces off Education 2.0.

Once upon a time there was a notion to move from centering
education on teachers to centering on students (RRE):

A kind of instruction manual for a new
rhetoric, and it's the rhetoric that's destructive. Take the nebulous
opposition between "teacher-centered" and "student-centered" kinds
of learning. (One does not say "teaching" any more, on the grounds
that learning is a socially necessary activity and teaching is not.
If one does grudgingly recognize the role of a professional who sees
to it that people learn, one calls that person a "learning manager" or
some such foolishness.)

The idea is that, in the old world, teachers
just stood up and droned, and the whole thing revolved around them,
whereas in the new world each student will head off in his or her own
totally unique direction, according to his or her own unique interests
and needs.

Sounds good until you try it, and until you really ask
seriously whether the dichotomies describe the reality. You wouldn't
know from listening to the technophiles that any teacher in the old
world had ever run a discussion section, assigned loosely structured
project assignments, supplemented classes with individually directed
study arrangements, or ever provided students with a reading list.

Continue reading "Learning 2.0" »

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