Personal MBA

The Personal MBA (PMBA) is a project designed to help you educate yourself about advanced business concepts. This manifesto will show you how to substantially increase your knowledge of business on your own time and with little cost, all without setting foot inside a classroom.

The PMBA is more flexible than a traditional MBA program, doesn’t involve going into massive debt, and won’t interrupt your income stream for two years. Just pick up one of these business books, learn as much as you can, discuss what you learn with others, then go out into the real world and make great things happen.

Check out the Personal MBA Recommended Reading List.

Can kids teach themselves?

Sugata Mitra talks about his Hole in the Wall project. Young kids in this project figured out how to use a PC on their own — and then taught other kids. He asks, what else can children teach themselves?

http://static.videoegg.com/ted/flash/loader.swf

Effective Listening Skills

There are always two sides in communication. Apart from being able to communicate your message, you should also be able to listen… The following slides pack some helpful tips that you might enjoy.

http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=effective-listening-skills-26128

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Visual & Creative Mindmapping

The written and/or oral part is only a slight part (7%) of the whole message. We’ve already learned that the brain rules show an increased recognition when using visuals. Combine this with the way the brain is wired, and you’ll get the concept of MindMapping.

Where “Visual & Creative thinking” meets mindmapping…

http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=visual-and-creative-thinking-1197429203117348-4

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The bottom line
Put down the (false) limitation where you might think you are not creative enough, and start trying! Start by using it for your own mindmaps; mindmapping is a great tool for remembering large pieces of information, but it’s the most effective when using visuals. And after a while you might even try implementing it on your presentations… 😉

Constrain Creativity

An old addiction
How strange it may be, recently I rediscovered an old addiction; it’s a game called “Football Manager“. I bet you didn’t see that one coming! 😉 Anyways it’s all about managing a soccer team without actually playing (“touching the ball”) yourself. Just like managing people “in real life”, you have to guide the players towards their objectives (victory). It contains a lot of HR management aspects (the full employee life cycle; hire, coach, manage, fire/retire) and it’s off course combined with the soccer specific tactical aspects.

What has this to do with creativity?
Okay okay… Where it boils down to is that when one builds a team, you have to be careful which players you mix into a team selection and which tactics you apply. One of the key aspects is “creativity”; where it is the main factor to creating opportunities. Yet if you would give everyone a full creative role, then they wouldn’t follow the tactics anymore. Which would lead to a weak backbone/structure of the team, where one would concise goals against.

Creativity Loves Constraint
The next clip is Google’s Vice President of Search Products & User Experience, Marissa Mayer, talking about constraining creativity.
http://edcorner.stanford.edu/swf/mediaplayer.swf

Description: In product development, Google’s Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products & User Experience, believes that a small amount of constraint – whether in file size, pixels, or speed – fosters a lot of innovation. The lesson she shares? Too much creative freedom can make creativity unfocused. A solution with a strict set of barriers yields more concrete solutions.

Are you the most adaptable to change?

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” Charles Darwin

Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina talks about leadership & capability. An interesting part in the presentations is where she makes a good point that your company’s vision should form from customer satisfaction feedback. Revenue & costs are lagging behind. They tell you how well you did on certain decisions, but they cannot guide you towards changes for the future. In comparison, it’s the customers who will be able to guide you there. They are mostly unable to tell what they want, but they sure as hell know what they do not want!

http://edcorner.stanford.edu/swf/mediaplayer.swf

Description

Carly Fiorina explains that leadership is about three things: capability, collaboration and character. She stresses the importance of capability, which is about asking questions and listening to answers. It is also about celebrating new ideas and taking initiative to try new things. She insists that a continuous learning process is important to strengthen an entrepreneur’s capability.

Pick The Best OS For Your Life

Often people react that OpenSource people hate Microsoft. Let me correct this; some might, but not all! In my opinion you have to use a given operating system in the area where it’s excels.

So I’m going to post an excerpt from the “OS Wars: The Battle for Your Desktop” (from PCmag):

• WEB SURFER
  Any OS. You don’t need anything fancy to browse the Web and send e-mail.
• OFFICE DRONE
  Windows. Get things done with minimal fuss.
• GAMER
  Windows. Millions of gamers can’t all be wrong. (Or buy a Nintendo Wii.)
• PHOTOGRAPHER
  Windows. All cameras work with it, and the imaging tools are plentiful.
• VIDEOGRAPHER
  Mac OS. It’s what the pros in -Hollywood prefer.
• ARTIST/MUSICIAN
  Mac OS. The other artsy people will laugh at you if you use anything else.
• TECH DO-IT-YOURSELFER
  Ubuntu. You’ll get the most satisfaction from taming this somewhat wild beast.
• OPEN-SOURCE SUPPORTER
  Ubuntu. Not lining the pockets at Apple and Microsoft just feels good.

If you’re interested in the scores they gave for each OS:

How does an email get delivered?

The basics
When asked for which purposes people most frequently use their computer, then the response often contains the term “email”. Yet in my experience most people have no clue how this digital letter gets from person X to person Y. This article will sketch a rough image of how email works.

Person X types an email in his/her mail client (to for example bob@example.com). This can either be a web based or locally installed client. After pressing the “send” button, the email will be sent towards an outgoing mail server (MTA). This server will queue the mail, and lookup the location where this mail should be delivered by using a DNS server. Imagine the DNS server as a catalog of the internet. It contains (or can lookup) the network locations of a certain domain name (like example.com). The MTA will ask the DNS server to give the location of the mail server (mx record) for bob@example.com.

Mindmapping

Definition by Wikipedia

A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central key word or idea. It is used to generate, visualize, structure and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing.
It is an image-centered diagram that represents semantic or other connections between portions of information. By presenting these connections in a radial, non-linear graphical manner, it encourages a brainstorming approach to any given organizational task, eliminating the hurdle of initially establishing an intrinsically appropriate or relevant conceptual framework to work within.
A mind map is similar to a semantic network or cognitive map but there are no formal restrictions on the kinds of links used. The elements are arranged intuitively according to the importance of the concepts and they are organized into groupings, branches, or areas. The uniform graphic formulation of the semantic structure of information on the method of gathering knowledge, may aid recall of existing memories.

In the real world