SeaVoice Stories

Seasalt.ai

0.0 (0)
休闲
一日一更

SeaVoice podcast, including news, e-books and stories. Powered by Firstory Hosting

2022/02/04

[S2-E18] From Demo to Success: Implementing Microsoft's Modern Meetings and Beyond

Source: https://seasalt.ai/blog/3-modern-meetings/ From Demo to Success: Implementing Microsoft's Modern Meetings and Beyond Throughout this blog series, follow Seasalt.ai’s journey to creating a well rounded Modern Meetings Experience, starting with its humble beginnings, to optimizing our service on different hardware and models, to integrating state-of-the-art NLP systems and finally ending on the full realization of SeaMeet, our collaborative modern meeting solutions. Future of Modern Meetings At Microsoft Build 2019, Microsoft roused the audience when they unveiled the latest in their cloud computing solutions: the Azure Speech Services, more specifically their Meeting Transcription application. After its introduction, this conversation transcriber immediately landed on everyone’s radar and earned mentions among top tech blogs and periodicals. The demonstration, illustrated in the video below back in 2019, showed off a lot of muscle from the Azure Speech Services. Little did we know that it quickly became a prelude of how modern meetings would be held in a global pandemic and post-pandemic setting: going from physical to virtual to hybrid. Advertised as a conversation transcription platform, Microsoft’s showcase for Azure’s meeting transcription service, aptly introduced as “The Future of Modern Meetings”, established their new service as a robust, efficient speech-to-text (STT) platform suitable for all businesses looking for a way to quickly and neatly capture all of their important conferences. What makes this service the pinnacle of meeting transcription? First, Real-time performance. As technology becomes faster and faster, patience grows ever thinner where even a few seconds delay is more than enough to irk the average user. Yet Microsoft proved that their conversation transcriber is more than fast enough, providing accurate transcriptions faster than some closed captioning services, making it completely feasible to follow along with a concurrent conversation with the text alone. Next, Microsoft also displayed their speaker identification capabilities. Ending up with a mess of unorganized conversational text is frustrating and useless, but speaker identification automatically labels each utterance with the speaker creating an easily consumable format. Everyday, computing hardware grows more powerful by the day and companies look to squeeze every last core from the latest CPUs and GPUs. Oftentimes older tech drifts into obsolescence and customers are forced to upgrade every couple of years just to stay relevant in society. In “Future of Modern Meetings”, Microsoft optimized Azure Speech Service to run on consumer-grade hardware while keeping the heavy computation on their end, further expanding the already vast population who can benefit from this service. Azure’s meeting transcription service stands to optimize the way we conduct business. Every single organization would do well to incorporate a product like this in their workflow. On an average day, information is constantly flowing and every bit is just as significant as the last, whether it’s reminders, tasks, or updates. Too often things get lost in the cracks and that means wasted time and wasted profits. What Microsoft’s solution offers is a complete, automatically generated record delineating exactly what was said and who said it, so gone are the days of missing information and blindly hunting through lengthy audio recordings for a specific section. Now, all the information you need is neatly laid-out for you to reference as often as you need. This technology is more important than ever. If the year 2020 taught us anything it is the need for flexibility, especially in the workplace. People get sick and unforeseen events arise so it is virtually impossible to expect employees to attend every discussion. With Modern Meetings, we are one step closer to being able to accommodate these unexpected developments by essentially giving everyone the ability to be there without actually being there. Implementing Modern Meetings In mid 2020, we received a request for proposal from a government client in Singapore. Yes it was still pandemic. But Singapore had it under control so government meetings still happened in physical conference rooms. They wanted a modern solution that can transcribe speech from up to 12 different speakers. Furthermore, speaker identification would play an important role here. On speaker identification, one significant difference between what Azure offers and what the client needs is the voice “enrollment”: Azure requires some pre-recorded voice from all the speakers to enroll their voiceprint in the system. However, it is impossible to ask some presumably very important government officials to sit in front of a microphone to be recorded. We did some adaptation to the process by doing unsupervised speaker clustering first (also called speaker diarization). The idea is that if a speaker had spoken once in our system, we would recognize them the next time they speak. Then we quickly assembled our arsenal for the whole project. The first step was to source a high quality microphone array that would deliver crystal clear audio data to our recognition models. We were immediately allured by the Azure Kinect: a stylish, 7 microphone array housed in a full aluminum casing with the added bonus of a high definition camera and depth sensors. By the looks alone, this is a truly sophisticated device that would complement any conference room, but more importantly the powerful microphone array promised the quality we were after. With the circular arrangement, the seven microphones opened the possibility of using state-of-the-art signal processing techniques such as source localization and beamforming. This microphone was also the perfect pairing with our backend which utilized Azure’s Speech Services, an established speech-to-text platform giving our product the power it needed to be a top of the line meeting transcriber. While Azure did not make the final cut of SeaMeet, it gave us the start we needed to be able to realize our vision. Finally we tied this all together with a user interface. In our first iteration, we made do with a generic, Java-based design that, while plain, was perfectly functional. Because the Kinect device cannot run external code, all this had to run on an extra single Windows laptop. Even though it was a little rough around the edges at first, we were proud to say that we had a fully functional meeting transcription product. Deploying Modern Meetings In May 2021, our engineers arrived in Singapore to deploy our modern business solution as a proof of concept. Pitted against two other competitor companies, we were each tasked to demonstrate our vision of the future of meetings. Despite the fact that wireless had become the norm over the last decade, we found that our competitors still opted for a wired solution. As you can see from the picture, each of the 12 speakers were anchored to an individual microphone.. A speaker had to speak directly into the microphone in a close-talk setting for the system to pick up their voice. Not only does this severely hinder flexibility, but such a set up also multiplies the complexity with convoluted AV equipment. Our solution, on the other hand, is fully powered by far-field capabilities, thanks to the 7 microphone array and signal processing algorithms. To some extent, our solution was very much like “Alexa For Business”: one device covers the whole room, with only a power cable required. Compared to our competitors’ solution, our solution is generations ahead in the sense that we truly understand the needs of modern businesses while they are still fully strapped into the dated wired generation. The team was pumped seeing the huge difference. With a few hours of tuning, the final PoC went very smoothly. The team also enjoyed a tour in Singapore after the PoC, in a country where Covid-19 was strictly contained so that life and business ran as usual. Beyond Modern Meetings During our time in Singapore, our thoughts went beyond a successful PoC: compared to other competing solutions, ours was 10x better. But how could we do 10x even better than ourselves? Please follow our steps to the next blog in this series. Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.me/story/ckz7wlhpw0pvu0982fk2ma6q0?m=comment Powered by Firstory Hosting

8 分钟
2022/02/04

[S2-E17] AI-Enabled Contact Center Automation: Virtual Agent Collaboration with CRM

Source: https://seasalt.ai/blog/8-hubspot/ AI-Enabled Contact Center Automation: Virtual Agent Collaboration with CRM Integrating HubSpot with SeaX Easy and seamless access to both your contact center interface and your customer data in a CRM is vital to efficient customer support. In SeaX, Seasalt.ai’s collaborative contact center product, you can facilitate this by integrating a CRM like HubSpot directly into your contact center interface, giving you direct access to all of your information and tools. Many businesses are not taking advantage of the powerful automations made possible by integrating these platforms. Tools like AI-enabled virtual agents simplify your workflow and leverage your data in HubSpot. Empower Your Virtual Agents. SeaX’s omni-channel support means that you can interact with your customers across many platforms, all in one interface. Virtual agents connected to the Twilio platform can contact your customers across channels, providing basic support 24/7. These virtual agents handle routine tasks and queries, freeing up your live agents to focus on more complex calls and other tasks. Currently SeaX supports the following channels: Discord, SMS, Webchat, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Google Business Messages, Line Integrating HubSpot gives your virtual agents access to the same customer information as your live agents. Your virtual agent’s knowledge of your customers grows in real time as you record customer information in HubSpot. Streamline Workflow with Automations There are many routine tasks and customer interactions that your live agents handle on a daily basis. HubSpot has tools for keeping track of all of your tasks, and even automating certain things like sending marketing emails. SeaX’s omni-channel support adds the ability to automate messages to SMS, voice calls, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and more. Combined with the HubSpot Webhooks API, which allows you to track changes in your HubSpot objects, you can send a message to customers on any channel with a simple action like clicking a button or moving a support ticket. In addition, a virtual agent can handle the customer’s response, so the live agent only needs to start the conversation. Make Your Data Work for You Everywhere Integrating SeaX and HubSpot gives you straight access to your customer data directly in your contact center interface. It also gives automations and your virtual agents the ability to interact with and add to that pool of data as well. When you finish a conversation with a customer in SeaX, an automation can directly add the interaction to the customer’s contact in HubSpot, so the live agent does not need to waste time writing up the conversation. Virtual agents can add their interactions to a customer’s information too, as well as updating a customer’s contact information or appointment time based on their conversation with the customer. One Convenient Platform In short, the integration between SeaX and HubSpot simplifies your customer support interface and gives your live agents more easier access to your customer information. Employing AI-enabled virtual agents and automations that utilize this integration frees up your live agents to be more efficient and streamlines your workflow and CRM processes. Want to see how SeaX powered by Seasalt.ai can help your business? Book a demo today. Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.me/story/ckz7wkbkufp7q08592cnf92ke?m=comment Powered by Firstory Hosting

3 分钟
2022/02/02

[S2-E27] Tamara Wilson

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamara_Wilson Tamara Wilson. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Tamara Wilson is an American operatic soprano who has had an active international opera career since 2007. She has performed leading roles at the Canadian Opera Company, the English National Opera, the Houston Grand Opera, the Liceu, the Metropolitan Opera, and the Sydney Opera House among others. She is particularly known for her performances of heroines in the operas of Giuseppe Verdi. In 2016 she was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera and was awarded the Richard Tucker Award, an award described by Opera News as "one of the most prestigious prizes in opera". Early life and education. Born in Arizona, Wilson grew up in the Chicago area. Her mother is a retired choir director and accompanist and her father has a career in the railroad industry. She earned a Bachelor of Music degree in vocal performance from the University of Cincinnati – College-Conservatory of Music in 2004 where she was a pupil of soprano Barbara Honn. That same year she was a finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions; a competition she entered on a whim without any serious intent in pursuing an opera career. Her performance in the Met finals drew the attention of Diane Zola, the then General Manager at the Houston Grand Opera (HGO), and she subsequently joined the Young Artist Program at the HGO in 2005. Career. Wilson's big break came in 2007 when she made her opera debut replacing Patricia Racette for the entire run of the HGO's opening production of the 2007–2008 season as Amelia in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera to critical success. She has since returned to the HGO stage as two more Verdi heroines; Elisabetta in Don Carlos (2012) and Leonora in Il trovatore (2013). In 2008 she portrayed Countess Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro with the Berkshire Opera Company and was awarded a Sara Tucker Study Grant from the Richard Tucker Music Foundation. She was later a recipient of the Richard Tucker Career Grant in 2011. In 2009 Wilson portrayed the title role in Verdi's Aida at the Sydney Opera House for Opera Australia; the first of many performances of that role. Later that year she portrayed Alice Ford in Falstaff for her debut at the Washington National Opera; returning to the WNO in 2010 as Amelia. She also appeared at the Canadian Opera Company (COC) in 2009–2010 as Amelia Grimaldi in Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, and as Elettra in Mozart's Idomeneo. In 2011 Wilson made her debut at Carnegie Hall singing the role of the Virgin Mary in Honegger’s Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher with conductor Marin Alsop leading the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and made her debut at the Los Angeles Opera as Miss Jessel in Britten's The Turn of the Screw. That same year she made her European debut as Ada in Wagner's Die Feen at the Opern- und Schauspielhaus Frankfurt and performed Aida for her debut at the Municipal Theatre of Santiago. Her performance as Ada was recorded for the Oehms Classics label. In 2012 Wilson made her debut at the Théâtre du Capitole as Leonora, returned to the Canadian Opera Company as Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus, and made her debut at the Ravinia Festival as Elettra in Mozart's Idomeneo with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under conductor James Conlon. She later returned to Ravinia in 2014 to perform the role of Donna Anna in Mozart's Don Giovanni. In 2013 she returned to Carnegie Hall to perform the role of Malwina in Heinrich Marschner's Der Vampyr with the American Symphony Orchestra. In 2014 Wilson made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera as Aida. In 2015 she made her debut at the English National Opera as Leonora in Verdi's La forza del destino; a performance which earned her an Olivier Award nomination. Also that year she performed Aida at the Aspen Music Festival and the Teatro Principal de Palma de Mallorca. She is scheduled to perform the role of Amelia at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in 2016 and the role of Elisabetta at the Bayerische Staatsoper in 2017. Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.me/story/ckz60m8qqndpj0814daa6r6kx?m=comment Powered by Firstory Hosting

4 分钟
2022/02/02

[S2-E15]T-Mobile and other carriers still haven't covered rural areas, regardless of what they say

Source: https://www.androidcentral.com/t-mobile-and-other-carriers-still-havent-covered-rural-areas-regardless-what-they-say T-Mobile and other carriers still haven't covered rural areas, regardless of what they say I wrote a plea in December 2020 for 5G to be the technology that saved my rural broadband situation in 2021, that situation being that it is essentially non-existent. While there was a brief period in which I was able to use T-Mobile Home Internet to bolster my connectivity situation, ultimately, my internet salvation is beamed to my home from space thanks to SpaceX Starlink Home Internet. Even with 2021's 5G expansion, it's a struggle to get even 4G LTE outside metropolitan eras despite seemingly comprehensive carrier coverage maps. In these ads that sprawl across our TVs, webpages, and social media, we constantly see how one carrier is the fastest or covers the most people—usually accompanied by a map of some form displaying brand colors shading essentially the entire United States. This is to persuade consumers to pick that carrier because it has the best coverage. If you hadn't noticed, all of these ads look eerily similar in that each of the carriers says they have nationwide coverage. Yeah, that's not entirely accurate. I spoke with Roger Entner, a telecom analyst and founder of Recon Analytics. When I asked him about the requirements for a carrier to state its coverage in an area, he told me, "mapping that is provided is for information purposes only and is not representative of actual things on the ground. In rural America, the map is approximated by a calculation." As someone who lives in rural America, this calculation is frustrating because it's largely inaccurate. Entner told me that as long as a carrier covers at least 200 million people, it can state nationwide coverage in its marketing. I reached out to cell providers for clarifications but haven't heard back at the time of publication. I'm a T-Mobile subscriber on my personal phone, and according to the map, I should not only have a good 4G LTE signal at my home, but I should also have good 5G coverage. This is simply not true. When I'm in my yard, my signal will quickly fluctuate between two bars and none at all. Inside of my home, I'm lucky to get any reception. Results are the same whether I'm using my Pixel 6 Pro, recently crowned the fastest Android smartphone, or with my Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3. The Federal Communications Commission is attempting to give a bit more clarity to these coverage maps by offering maps of its own. These seem to be slightly more accurate than what the carriers themselves provide. However, much of the data used by the FCC is self-reported directly from the carriers, so real-world results are still fuzzy. It's 2022 in America, but fast, consistent cellular coverage is still a crapshoot. I have tried every carrier available to me — Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and US Cellular. The only one that gets me an excellent signal is AT&T using its FirstNet service that I have through my day job as a technical analyst for a natural gas utility company. The service quality lines up with what Roger Entner said when he told me, "The carrier that will provide the best coverage in rural areas is ATT because of FirstNet." It's just unfortunate that everyone can't have access to its excellent service quality. Yes, I know this is a pie-in-the-sky dream that I have, but really — is it so hard to provide reliable service to everyone? Well, yes and no. In the United States, we are down to three major wireless carriers that maintain a stranglehold on the bulk of the spectrum available for cellular usage. These carriers spend billions of dollars each time more of this precious frequency is auctioned off, with smaller carriers left to fend for scraps. While these radio waves that provide connectivity to our devices aren't tangible, the hardware used to transmit them is. To expand the signal to more people, it takes more towers. Carriers are balancing the need for more frequency to bolster their service with building new towers that broadcast that signal — and neither is cheap. I asked Bill Ho, a principal analyst at 556 Ventures, what could be done to help relieve dead spots in coverage across rural areas; he told me, "It does come down to money and deployment. From a carrier's view, the cost to serve a smaller population relative to material and operational costs may be a money loser. That's why there are federal rural subsidy programs that service providers help defray some of that cost." The cost of a tower is expensive, and so is its cost of operation, but the money required to get fiber to the building is another story. These programs that Bill speaks of are out there and can help those entities that take advantage of them. But even in conversations that I had with my local electrical and internet companies asking what they were doing to access these programs to bring internet to their customers, I was told that there were many roadblocks in the programs. Aside from those, the main hurdle was the high cost of bringing in fiber to serve the homes. The problem of bringing fiber to serve broadband customers is one and the same for cellular providers. Currently, the costs to build a cell tower, get fiber to it, and its regular operation are so high that it's hard for carriers to justify their construction without significant users to support it. But, it could be a case where companies like SpaceX and its Starlink do more than just save my home broadband. In continuing his response as to what could be done to help relieve dead spots in coverage across rural areas, Ho said: "Also, many carriers, if they don't have their own equipment, count on rural carriers to roam on those networks. Some dead spots could be terrain-related. At least addressing mobile coverage in the US, that's partly why Verizon (Amazon Project Kuiper) and AT&T (OneWeb & AST Mobile) have looked ahead and forged pacts with satellite players. The satellite tech is looking to address the fixed and mobile equation. As we have seen, Musk's Starlink doesn't use 5G but looks to address fixed rural connectivity." Removing one of the high-cost barriers to building a new cell tower is a big step towards bringing coverage to rural areas that more closely resembles what the carrier maps show where they all try to claim the best 5G network. However, while this is a good start, it will be up to these cellular providers to realize that even though these towers won't be covering millions or even hundreds of thousands of users, they will be helping solve a major pain point that a lot of rural Americans face. Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.me/story/ckz57w4w7057z0858lium930p?m=comment Powered by Firstory Hosting

7 分钟
2022/02/02

[S2-E14]Disney Mickey and Friends NFT Collection

Source: https://medium.com/veve-collectibles/disney-mickey-and-friends-nft-collection-3de468cfe5e6 Disney Mickey and Friends NFT Collection The Mickey and Friends NFT Collection Featuring First Edition character lenticular-style interactive cards, we’re celebrating some of our favorite friends: Goofy, Pluto, Daisy Duck, Donald Duck, Minnie Mouse, and of course, Mickey Mouse! The faces of these cards, which were designed and hand-painted by Disney artists Morgane Keesling and Naty Kosloff, feature backgrounds dreamed up specially to fit this grand occasion. Each room is personalized to match every character, and lenticular technology allows you to get a closer look at the character on the card by viewing it from a new angle. Discover custom music for each character within the space, and flip the card over to see a special autograph. These cards will make a colorful and imaginative addition to your showroom! Blind Boxes Get ready to add to the excitement of drop day with our blind box offerings! This drop is available for purchase as a blind box, meaning you won’t know which amazing rarity you have acquired until after your successful purchase. From there, you can continue to expand your collection with additional blind boxes, or interact with other users in the Market to complete your set. Mickey Mouse Drop Date: 29 January, 2022 at 8 AM PT; List Price: 40.00; Editions: 13,928; Edition Type: First Edition; Rarity: Common; License: Disney; Brand: Mickey and Friends NFT Collection; Series: Mickey and Friends — Series 1; Available: Globally. Minnie Mouse Drop Date: 29 January, 2022 at 8AM PT; List Price: 40.00; Editions: 13,928; Edition Type: First Edition Rarity: Common License: Disney Brand: Mickey and Friends NFT Collection; Series: Mickey and Friends — Series 1 Available: Globally. Disney Parks, Experiences, and Products. Disney Parks, Experiences and Products brings the magic of The Walt Disney Company’s powerful brands and franchises — including Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, ESPN, Twentieth Century Studios and National Geographic — into the daily lives of families and fans around the world to create magical memories that last a lifetime. When Walt Disney opened Disneyland in Anaheim, California, on July 17, 1955, he created a unique destination built around storytelling and immersive experiences, ushering in a new era of family entertainment. More than 60 years later, Disney has grown into one of the world’s leading providers of family travel and leisure experiences, with iconic businesses including six resort destinations with 12 theme parks and 53 resorts in the United States, Europe and Asia; a top-rated cruise line with four ships and plans for three more to be completed in 2022, 2024 and 2025; a luxurious family beach resort in Hawaii; a popular vacation ownership program; and two award-winning guided tour adventure businesses. Disney Imagineers are the creative force behind Disney theme parks, resort hotels and cruise ships globally. Disney Consumer Products, Games and Publishing includes the world’s leading licensing business; one of the largest children’s publishing brands globally; one of the largest licensors of games across platforms worldwide; and consumer products at retail around the world. Secondary Market Fees A 6% licensor fee will be applied to Disney sales in the secondary market in addition to the existing VeVe 2.5% secondary market fee. Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.me/story/ckz57uzqr19v90a10368az3dt?m=comment Powered by Firstory Hosting

4 分钟
2022/02/02

[S2-E13]Your Boss Doesn’t Give a Damn About Your Career Growth

Source: https://medium.com/@slimewire/eulogy-for-a-gambler-5985e5c659e3 Your Boss Doesn’t Give a Damn About Your Career Growth A boss can rob you of your most precious resource. Let me explain. Bosses don’t work for you. Leaders do though. But, unfortunately, many of us work for a boss, not a leader. A boss cares mostly about the numbers, and getting their next promotion. Oh … and a big, fat, juicy bonus. The biggest mistake I saw in my corporate career was good employees waiting for their boss to elevate them in their careers. So what happened? They wasted years of their life — their most precious resource. One guy I worked with waited for his boss to move on for 5 years. They promised him he was the likely replacement. It was supposedly a done deal. Then in that 5th year upper management changed. His boss got fired and the new leaders recruited one of their own. There was a changing of the guard. My colleague didn’t get chosen. He’d never get chosen at that company. What he did wrong was rely on his boss. Why don’t bosses care about our career growth? They’re too busy with their own career to give a damn about yours. That’s the first harsh truth you must accept to experience phenomenal career growth. Here are six more. Get what you want or make a switcheroo immediately Employers used to have all the power. Now they’re the suckers. The tables have turned. The workforce has changed. Millennial and Gen Z badasses have rewritten the rules. Offering beer and pizza on a Friday so you’ll stay back until 10pm to do events/learning you should have done during work hours doesn’t fool anyone anymore. Pizza and beer = We’re underpaying you for this time The good news is it’s easy to make a switcheroo. Either get what you want from a job or move on. Don’t pissfart around and waste your precious time. There are so many companies that can give you better options. All you have to do is go out there and talk to them. Pro tip: look on LinkedIn. Even better, check your LinkedIn inbox. Recruiters and hiring managers are flooding us with new opportunities. Don’t be a dork. Have a talk. New mantra: If your company doesn’t give you career growth, smell ya later. This forgotten thing matters most in your career I’m just going to go ahead and say it… Your mental health matters more than your: Job title, Salary, Reputation, Employability, Chance of promotion, Impressing your boss, A bonus, A pay rise. If your mind gets messed up, your career gets messed up. Prioritize your mental health above all. Good leaders are worth more than a high salary Looking at the salary on the job ad is the worst way to choose a job. Why? Think of it like an iceberg. All salaries aren’t equal. There are hidden workloads you can’t see before you take the job. There are a**holes you haven’t met that you may have to deal with daily. If making more money in your career is a goal, choose a better leader. Notice how I said leader, not boss. Bosses are dumbasses. They operate on the industrial revolution model of carrot and stick. Doesn’t work anymore. You want to work for a leader even if they don’t pay you the most. Because a good leader will help you: Pursue passions Access hidden opportunities Attend leadership meetings Create a thriving culture around you And have plenty of 1–1 chats over coffee Once you experience these things, you may never want to leave. They’re far better than any amount of money. I experienced this with my former boss. He became a best friend, and changed my entire life. At the time, I got offered $20,000 more to quit him and go elsewhere. No way amigo. Ain’t going to happen. I politely told the other offer to stick it where the sun don’t shine. They got the message. A good leader will change your life. We hate our jobs because we’re bored That’s what causes a lot of our career problems. We want more. We desire promotions or pay rises. Yet often, we don’t know why. The reason is boredom. When you do the same work every day it becomes a brain drain. Especially if you work for one of those companies that has a fluffy HR department that spread corporate p*rn, and has a team full of woke bosses that say all the right things … but do none of them. There are a few solutions: 1. Secondments produce alternate career paths At one job in a bank I worked for, the leader threw me into the innovation lab for a few months. I learned about agile software development and lean startup principles. I had the freaking time of my life. Then he threw me into the social media team to learn about all the platforms and how they work. I got to sit in the room with some of the biggest brands in the world and learn about how they did social media. I wouldn’t be writing online if these two secondments hadn’t existed. Here’s the thing: neither got advertised. Both were favors to the leader I worked for. And why did I get those secondments? Because I knocked it out of the park in my regular duties. Even more so, I turned customers into raving fans. These wild customers would even argue with GMs on my behalf to make sure I got generous bonuses. I didn’t even ask them to. 2. Start an after hours side hustle Side hustles spark your curiosity. They allow you to explore your creativity. When I got bored working in a call center, I started writing on a Wordpress blog and on LinkedIn. I found I wasn’t bored at work anymore. Every spare minute I had I’d use my phone to publish my writing. I’d think about it all day. Every call I answered was a step closer to going home and working on my side hustle. Then I did something weird … I bought my side hustle to work. They asked me to run LinkedIn workshops. So I did, for free. They flew me all over Australia to run them. Pretty soon I wasn’t the monkey in the call center anymore. Nope. I was some weird kind of thought leader at work. A career is a team sport The traditional model of business teaches us to compete. Workplaces can be incredibly selfish. Everyone trying to outdo each other. The blind following the blind to reach empty revenue numbers. The harsh truth is if you see everyone and everything as competitors, you’ll lose your way. Those who unite others become leaders. Those who can connect the dots across entire companies, industries, and groups of people go on to have fabulous careers. Become a connector instead of a competitor. Teams build business empires, not individuals. There’s an alternative to following the rules of the career ladder You don’t need to act like a domestic dog and jump through hoops. The career ladder is a fantasy in most companies. When they pretend there’s a certain path to becoming a leader or getting a higher job title, they’re lying. What company has their career ladder documented exactly? Zero. Instead, you can make up your own rules by earning money online. That’s what I decided to do in my career after many side hustle experiments. Now I make the rules. If I want more money… If I want more clients… If I want more growth opportunities… I get to decide. I open up Zoom or email and make it happen. Too many people are playing the wrong career game. Don’t wait for permission. Write your own damn permission slip. Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.me/story/ckz57u3uaakeu0832xfj086qn?m=comment Powered by Firstory Hosting

7 分钟
2022/02/02

[S2-E12]Sienna Mae Gomez: Reflections from an 18-Year Old Me

Source: https://medium.com/@management_57099/sienna-mae-gomez-reflections-from-an-18-year-old-me-ea0ad79a1b19 Sienna Mae Gomez: Reflections from an 18-Year Old Me I haven’t even been 18 a whole week yet but the decisions I’ve had to make as a new adult are challenging me in ways that make me wish I could just go back to being a kid. If you’re here, you probably know about my situation. I’m going to assume that you already know that for the last almost eight months I’ve been fighting a very public battle that involves topics I didn’t know much about until recently: [Trigger warning] — sexual assault, boundaries, consent. For eight long grueling months I’ve been fighting to save friendships, to save business relationships, to save my own mental health. Up until this week, I was so proud of the progress I made, like being on my phone less and learning to surf and cook with friends, and value things that really matter. Four days after turning 18, my former friend Jack Wright — the one I’ve been tangled with in a toxic web of accusations and internet “tea” — posted a 17-minute video about me. Yesterday, five days past turning 18, I had to say “okay” to a media statement written by my publicists in response to that video. Shortly after that, my legal team sent his legal team a letter threatening a lawsuit for defaming my character because that “is the best next step to clear your name.” I’m sure it’s all hitting the media now. I’VE NEVER BEEN SO SCARED IN MY LIFE. I thought turning 18 would be amazing and so far it honestly just sucks. I have three choices that I can see: 1) go read the millionth “I hope you kill yourself” message in my DMs 2) let my well-meaning parents and team dictate next steps and tie us up for what could be years in a legal battle with people who I once considered my closest friends or 3) write down everything from my heart and use my newfound adult status to take accountability and share the whole truth with anyone who will listen. To be honest, it’s hard not to choose number one and to actually follow it through. I told my parents last night that I just want to die. I’m so tired of fighting. I’m so tired of seeing the hate and people taking sides. My heart hurts for my friends, my family and people I associate with who are getting bullied on their own social media accounts just because they know me. So I’m going to choose number three for the sake of the people I love. I’m just going to get real and bare my soul and have faith and trust that I will land where I’m meant to be. The beginning of “Jack & Sienna” When I was just 16 years old, one of my TikTok videos went viral on social media, then another then another. I asked my hometown friend James Wright to do my first big interview with me in Los Angeles. He was out of town so he asked his twin brother Jack to go with me. I was friends with Jack but knew James better — both of them had blown up on TikTok a few months earlier than me. From that day on, my life would never be the same. Jack introduced me to people in LA, to new friends that I had been watching online for months, to a new fast-paced lifestyle that was so different than the one we lived in our small town. We instantly connected. He was my person. We got each other safely home after parties. We had each other’s backs. People noticed a spark between us and our videos together went viral. Suddenly, we were America’s favorite teenage “ship” and it all happened so fast that neither one of us really knew what it meant. We were thrown into a crazy, exciting relationship because the public demanded it. We couldn’t make enough content together. If we went just a few days without the other in our videos, the press would run stories like, “Did Jack and Sienna break up?” and people would comment things like, “If they don’t get married I don’t believe in love.” Major companies were reaching out with brand deals for us and Jack even switched agents to make it easier for work opportunities. Somewhere along the way, and in a very confusing state of not knowing what was fake and what was real, I started to fall in love with him. Hype House In December 2020 after four incredible months of TikTok fame, more fun than I’ve ever had, and what seemed like the perfect life, I got a call from the producers of the Hype House show asking me to be one of the featured influencers headlining the series. They also told me they didn’t plan to have Jack in a lead role. To me, that felt wrong. He was the one who introduced me to all those people and I wasn’t even an official member of the Hype House (Thomas Petrou asked me to join but my parents said no). So I decided to be on the show but only if Jack was in a lead role too. They agreed. From February through April 2021, we filmed for the show. They filmed us both in our hometown. They filmed scenes with our family and friends at my house and at his. They even filmed us in Hawaii! While a lot of it was fun, what wasn’t fun is that producers and other Hype House members kept pressing us to define what we were. Two 17-year olds being pressured again and again to answer questions like, “Are you more than friends?” and “What do you love most about him/her?” It was so confusing and emotional as we both started to realize that uncovering the “truth” behind our relationship — which we agreed not to put a label on — was a major storyline on the show. The more they pressed me on camera, the more emotional I got because I wasn’t sure if we were friends or more. We would agree to be just friends and then he would gift me expensive or even matching jewelry or plan elaborate outings. We would talk in a quiet place and say we were just friends and then the next day be making out with each other for the cameras. I didn’t know what was being set up by producers and if it was real or fake. I told him I loved him and he said he loved me too. I would ask if he wanted to be more than friends and he would say, “not yet.” Rejection isn’t comfortable, but it’s honest. The show had to go on so I kind of just went with it. Hawaii and “the video” In May, we took another trip to Hawaii. Though Hype House filming had wrapped, at this point, the internet was going crazy for our content, especially since we hadn’t posted a lot during filming because it had to be exclusive to the show. We both felt pressure. I wasn’t originally supposed to be on this trip but to be clear, he said I could come a few days before going. Looking back now, I see that it was to make content. Something on this trip was different. Everywhere we went he introduced me as his “girl” but then take pictures and blatantly flirt with other people. I was jealous, but more than that I was confused — why was I here? Why was he introducing me as his counterpart, telling me to wait patiently to be together, if he didn’t really want any of it? And then — without producers and cameras around for the first time in months — it really hit me. He liked me when he needed me for a video or for work, but he didn’t like me otherwise. I asked him to make a video with me explaining to our fans that we were truly just friends. I told him that if he didn’t have real feelings for me, I wanted to set the record straight publicly about our relationship (as explained and shown in my response video from last year). He told me we had brand partnerships riding on our fake one, and that it wasn’t fair to him. I couldn’t believe that someone who I had created with, laughed with, and cried with could so easily disregard my feelings for the sake of money. He apologized and I appreciated that, but I needed time away from him and our public persona to think and heal. So I went home and took time away from him and his family. I received multiple texts from James, Jack’s twin, asking why I wasn’t responding to them. Two weeks later, they started posting Instagram stories targeted at me. One day later, their friend Mason put up a tweet implying that I physically and mentally abused Jack. A few days after that their friend Lachlan released a video taken from a November 2020 party showing Jack and me kissing. He narrated the whole thing to make it look like it was something it wasn’t. To be clear, James took the video as a joke on his Snapchat seven months earlier and they decided to resurface it. I would like to think that neither Mason nor James realized the impact that their tweets and the taken-out-of-context-video would have. Though they took it all down, it really didn’t matter. The damage had been done. My character became a topic of public opinion. I lost friends. I lost brand deals. My reputation was damaged. I went from being one of the most loved girls on the internet to one of the most hated. I went quiet. I lost my will to live and had to be saved. I spent months healing and getting better. My team asked Hype House producers to remove me from the show so that I did not have to re-live the online bullying in light of the crazy “Team Jack” and “Team Sienna” sentiment online as they knew people would pick apart every interaction between us. Netflix also did not want to be liable for my mental health. That’s why I wasn’t in the show. That’s why producers had to figure out what to fill without months of Jack and Sienna footage. I’m sure the Hype House members are mad at me; I would probably be mad at me too. I’m sorry, especially to the cast and crew who worked so hard on this show. Jack: Setting the record straight I’ve had three relationships in my life. My first boyfriend was so sweet to me and although I was just turning 14 when I started dating him, he was supportive, and caring and communicated his feelings, like how he preferred my time over public affection. In his YouTube video, Jack brought this relationship up, even though it happened fo

12 分钟
2022/02/02

[S2-E11]The Best Board Games to Play at Home on Halloween (or Any Other Night)

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/halloween-board-games/ The Best Board Games to Play at Home on Halloween (or Any Other Night) If your knowledge of sinister board games begins and ends with Clue, allow me to be your guide. As a kid, I lived for three-dimensional horror-themed games like Which Witch (video), a Mouse Trap–style haunted house full of booby traps, and I Vant to Bite Your Finger (video), which is based on a questionable premise that asks children to stick a finger in Dracula’s mouth whenever he opens his cape. These days, you can find plenty of less creepy, but still spooky, games to choose from. Although my current favorites are mostly appropriate for teenagers and adults, kid-friendly options are easy to search out. We’ve already reviewed a great one, Go Away Monster!, in our “Board Games We Love for Kids” guide, and Disney has created dark spins on classics such as The Game of Life: Haunted Mansion Disney Theme Park Edition (cruise through the afterlife picking up ghosts) and Monopoly: Disney Villains Edition (steal and scheme your way to success in what is probably a more accurate portrayal of real estate development than the original). Prove you’ve got the most braaaaaains Trivial Pursuit: Horror Ultimate Edition ($55 at the time of publication) Who it’s for: cinephiles, anyone who knows Jason wasn’t the real killer in Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning Player count: 2 or more Duration: 60-plus minutes Rules (PDF; same gameplay as in the original) Ages: 17 and up Originally sold as a quick-play game with only a pack of 600 horror-themed question cards and a die, Trivial Pursuit: Horror Ultimate Edition comes with its own board that looks like a devil-summoning chalk circle and player discs featuring eerie three-dimensional centerpieces such as a cracked doll head or a zombie hand erupting from the ground. Its expanded roster of 1,800 questions comes slotted into the categories Gore & Disturbing, Psychological, Killer, Monster, Paranormal, and Comedy. You don’t need to be a scary-movie expert to play, but it obviously helps. Queries range from guessable multiple-choice entries for fans of general pop culture (“In The Exorcist from 1973, the demon Pazuzu does not possess which character: Chris MacNeil, Regan MacNeil, or Father Damien Karras?”) to questions so micro-detailed that even a die-hard horror head might stumble on the answer. I own a limited-edition, 4K-restoration Blu-ray of The Bird with The Crystal Plumage, for instance, but I still drew a complete blank when asked about the titular bird’s country of origin. (Serbia, if you were wondering.) Nostalgia-fueled nightmares Mixtape Massacre ($50 at the time of publication) Who it’s for: fans of ’80s franchise films Player count: 2 to 6 Duration: 40-plus minutes Rules (PDF) Ages: 17 and up Horrified ($35 at the time of publication) Who it’s for: OG monster enthusiasts Player count: 1 to 5 Duration: 60-plus minutes Rules (video) Ages: 10 and up This tamer—and officially sanctioned—game pits players against Universal Studios’s legacy monsters: Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, and Gill-man (more commonly known as the titular character in Creature from the Black Lagoon). Horrified is a cooperative game, meaning all the players work together to overcome the villains, and the number of fiends you battle depends on how hard you want the game to be. The rules suggest starting off with Gill-man and Dracula the first time you play, then building up the difficulty by adding monsters as you grow more familiar with the rules. Methods of defeating the monsters differ depending on which ones are on the board, and in a family-friendly twist, none are actually killed off. Goals include finding a cure for the Wolf Man’s lycanthropy, breaking the Mummy’s curse and returning him to his tomb, and—my favorite—teaching Frankenstein’s monster and the Bride what it means to be human so they can live happily ever after. Consider incorporating a little rule of my own when you play, and give the Bride an actual name. Contact the other side (or fake it) Consider this game firmly in the “or any other night” category of our article’s title, since it’s currently out of stock, but the publisher is accepting pre-orders now for a “Director’s Cut.” It’ll be worth the wait because the game gives you a chance to step into the shoes of your favorite ’80s horror villain! Sort of. The 10 playable characters in Mixtape Massacre are different enough from those in existing intellectual properties to avoid a copyright lawsuit, but barely—your options include a murderous doll named Buddy, a white-masked killer simply known as The Legend, and Dr. Ravenous, a cannibal who loves classical music. (Clear stand-ins for Chucky, Jason, and Hannibal Lecter, respectively, but shhh, don’t tell anyone.) Players stalk a board laid out like a small town, collecting souvenir tokens in the form of gory goodies such as eyeballs, skulls, and severed hands. The first to gain 10 souvenirs wins, and you earn them by battling other players and potential victims made up of genre tropes like the prep, the stoner, and “the girl who picks up a phone but there’s no dial tone.” You’ll also go up against suspiciously familiar figures straight out of popular ’80s teen movies, so if you ever thought The Breakfast Club should have ended with a gremlin devouring Bender right after his iconic skyward fist pump, this is the game for you. If you have no idea what any of that means, move forward one space to my next pick. Defeat Universal Studios’s scariest stars Ouija Board ($20 at the time of publication) Who it’s for: pranksters, ghost hunters Player count: 1 or more Duration: Your call, unless you really contact a spirit. Then all bets are off. Instructions (PDF) Ages: 8 and up (Hasbro’s trademarked version) Technically, Hasbro owns the trademark for the Ouija Board, but the name gets casually tossed around for any form of spirit board—a flat surface with letters of the alphabet, the numbers 0 through 9, and the words yes, no, and goodbye on it. The goal is communication with a paranormal entity using a planchette, a small elevated plank that everyone places their fingertips on, supposedly allowing a ghost to take over and move it around the board, spelling out words and signifying ages and dates. You’ve likely encountered this Victorian-era parlor game at slumber parties past, accompanied by a chorus of You’re moving it! / No I’m not! / Yes you are, I saw you! I highly recommend giving it another shot. Relaxing into your ideomotor response—unconscious muscular movement—once the planchette starts to glide can be a fun imagination exercise or thought experiment. Get everyone to make up a short story based on the experience afterward! And here’s a tip: If you have an urge to lift the veil between the living and the dead but don’t own a Ouija Board, you can DIY one just by ordering a pizza. Cut off the box top, use a marker to write out all the necessary letters and numbers, and use the little round pizza saver that comes in the center of the pie as your planchette. It’s an instant Halloween party. And don’t forget to offer a slice to any invisible guests that show up. Role-play the wolfen way Werewolves of Millers Hollow ($10 at the time of publication) Who it’s for: larger families or friend groups quarantining together, excellent liars Player count: 8 or more, but consider that a suggestion (I’ve played with less) Duration: 20 to 30 minutes Rules (PDF) Ages: 14 and up This one isn’t a board game, but it’s too fun to leave out, and if you’ve ever played the whodunit murder mystery game Mafia, you’ll catch on fast. Werewolves of Millers Hollow is essentially the same thing but with toothy shape-shifters as the killers. As in Mafia, you could play this game using a normal deck of cards to designate each player’s role, but I love this version because of its more in-depth storytelling and tarot-esque illustrations. In a nutshell, a moderator (elect the most theatrical person in the room) deals out individual character cards, but no one reveals who they are. Options in Millers Hollow include townsfolk and the werewolves, and depending on the number of players, a peppering of additional characters with special abilities. Once everyone knows their identity, the moderator tells players that it’s nightfall and instructs them to close their eyes. The werewolves reveal themselves to each other and the moderator, and then silently decide whom in the group to kill. Additional actions can also happen at night—for example, if The Little Girl card has been mixed into the shuffle, that player can peek at night to try to see who the werewolves are, but if caught they’ll die of fright. Once the werewolves decide on their victim, the moderator tells everyone to open their eyes and reveals who has been clawed to bits, after which the survivors attempt to guess the werewolves’ identities by agreeing on a vote before night falls once more. But beware: You might sentence an innocent person to death, and the werewolves will strike again. Therein lies the fun—everyone starts vehemently accusing and denying, and it can be a great way to vent simmering frustrations in a packed home. Are you a werewolf? Maybe your first kill should be the person who keeps leaving wet towels on the bathroom floor. Or if your knockabout sibling suddenly shows a talent for swaying the room to his vote, nudge them into pursuing politics. Just be warned that you might end a game suspecting that the cousin crashing in your mom’s basement is a sociopath after they successfully pick everyone off without once drawing suspicion. Fear is where you find it

10 分钟

查看全部 42 集

SeaVoice podcast, including news, e-books and stories. Powered by Firstory Hosting

创作者

Seasalt.ai
活跃年份

2022年
单集

42
分级

儿童适宜
节目网站

SeaVoice Stories

SeaVoice Stories

[S2-E18] From Demo to Success: Implementing Microsoft's Modern Meetings and Beyond

[S2-E17] AI-Enabled Contact Center Automation: Virtual Agent Collaboration with CRM

[S2-E27] Tamara Wilson

[S2-E15]T-Mobile and other carriers still haven't covered rural areas, regardless of what they say

[S2-E14]Disney Mickey and Friends NFT Collection

[S2-E13]Your Boss Doesn’t Give a Damn About Your Career Growth

[S2-E12]Sienna Mae Gomez: Reflections from an 18-Year Old Me

[S2-E11]The Best Board Games to Play at Home on Halloween (or Any Other Night)

关于

信息

SeaVoice Stories

单集

[S2-E18] From Demo to Success: Implementing Microsoft's Modern Meetings and Beyond

[S2-E17] AI-Enabled Contact Center Automation: Virtual Agent Collaboration with CRM

[S2-E27] Tamara Wilson

[S2-E15]T-Mobile and other carriers still haven't covered rural areas, regardless of what they say

[S2-E14]Disney Mickey and Friends NFT Collection

[S2-E13]Your Boss Doesn’t Give a Damn About Your Career Growth

[S2-E12]Sienna Mae Gomez: Reflections from an 18-Year Old Me

[S2-E11]The Best Board Games to Play at Home on Halloween (or Any Other Night)

关于

信息