Soapbox Arts is twinkling, and not with an early display of holiday lights. Rather, the Burlington gallery's current exhibition, titled "Listening to the World,"

Christina Watka’s Installations at Soapbox Arts Dazzle the Eye and Mind

If you’ve been living under a rock for the past several years, you probably still know what a GLP-1 inhibitor is—at least by brand name. | If you’ve been living under a rock for the past several years,

ESMO: GLP-1s have taken over the cultural zeitgeist. 33,000 oncologists have something to say about that

Everywhere I turn there are conversations about someone dealing with extreme mental health issues. Friends, family, young people, older people who are struggling. People reaching out looking for services that sometimes aren’t available,

Mandy Nolans Soapbox: We’re not OK

Ksenia Svetlova is an executive director of the Regional Organization for Peace, Economics and Security (ROPES), a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs, and a former member of the Israeli Knesset.

Ksenia Svetlova

We have battled Netanyahu and the right wing for decades. And now we feel alienated from a global left that won’t see Hamas for what it is.

Why We on the Israeli Left Feel Hit from Both Sides

Warning: I’m about to climb on my soapbox. That’s because I spent the first hour of my day Friday on the street near Safford High School trying to find out if there had been an active shooter incident at the school. Observing the general appearance of ...

We can't keep dancing around the problem of mass shootings

The young striker has yet to make a significant impact in red and white, but he’s been bought as a long-term investment and should be given time to develop, writes Phil West

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Housing is the biggest issue that our city is facing. Bryce’s experience and knowledge of zoning and planning policy and his ability to see its importance in the economic growth of Manchester is one reason why I am encouraging my Ward 1 friends and family to vote for Bryce Kaw-uh for Alderman on Tuesday, November 7.

Ward 1 Alderman candidate, Bryce Kaw-uh: Experience is what Manchester needs

On November 7th, I look forward to casting my vote for Bryce Kaw-uh as our next Ward 1 Alderman.

Why I’ll vote for Bryce Kaw-uh for Ward 1 Alderman

Governor Ron DeSantis’s steadfast advocacy for parental rights underscores the fundamental principle that parents and teachers should be equal partners in a child’s educational journey.

The Soapbox: DeSantis encourages teamwork

Soapbox

soapbox

Virtual Besties: TV Shows, Social Media and the Evolution of Parasocial Relationships

This interview series celebrates all the phenomenal . Congratulations! Well-Deserved, Champion.The HackerNoon community is excited to learn more about you! Startups of the Year Winners Wrangld is Startup of the Year in Richmond VA. https://hackernoon.com/startups/north-america/north-america-richmond-va-usa What does it mean for you to win this title? Being recognized as  the SOTY in Richmond VA is awesome. It’s tangible evidence of our hardworking team and meaningful work that we could get people behind us. The real win is the users we connect with, having a cool HackerNoon award to go with it is the icing on the cake! What sets you apart from the competition? At our core we are built around User Experience - it’s not just a buzzword or department - it’s a “way of life” at WRANGLD. Innovation - building a platform that not only solves problems for our industry; but delivering tools that enable and connect our users at the same time. What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem? Our team unites under a common vision/mission and this is reflected in the output of everyone every single day. Most of our current team has worked together at other successful startups/companies/and wanted to be a part of building something special at WRANGLD. You can’t buy or fake that kind of culture and that’s a team if you put any challenge in front of them - they’ll conquer it. If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing? If money didn’t matter - I’d probably be hitting up National Parks with my wife and dog and bike-packing on the Colorado Trail. At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics? We’ve built an amazing platform quickly. Seeing it gain traction and scale is the exciting part. Right now, every new user that comes on board and realizes how it can help them change their businesses is a huge metric for us. Establishing partnerships that help our mission to modernize the trades industry is another one - partners who see the big picture and want to be a part of driving that change now is another mark for us that reaffirms we’re on the right path. Tell us how your startup is changing the world. Blue Collar Jobs get overlooked and/or looked down upon by a lot of industries, especially tech. The crazy thing here is how much these companies drive our world! Consumer expectations change and industries have to rise to meet those expectations. We help the companies of the trades industry meet and exceed those modern expectations as well as streamline their operations to help them scale and grow their companies at the same time. If you’re enjoying your heat/ac, water, etc - don’t forget to thank the men and women who make our “comforts” possible! How do you or your company intend to embrace the responsibility of this title in 2024? We’re a little biased obviously to think what we’re doing here is a big deal - but holding the title as a SOTY - we want to show our users who trust us to be the backbone of their company’s operations, our partners who empower us to provide more for our users, and anyone who joins our team’s mission - there is a reason why we’re SOTY for Richmond, VA and we’re just getting started! What goals are you looking forward to accomplishing in 2024? Making WRANGLD a household name in our industry! Adding more members to the WRANGLDPack! Changing more business owners’ lives after they embrace our platform’s capabilities! Which trend(s) are you most excited about in 2024? Share your reasons. In our industry - seeing more companies modernize their operations by embracing technology. We’re pretty stoked to show off more of how we’re utilizing AI/ML to make our tools even better for our users. Being embedded partners with our Fin-Tech portion of WRANGLD Finance - we’re excited to see more contractors be able to enable their consumers with buying options that make sense for them. 2023 had been another crazy year, especially in tech, with layoffs and the Generative AI takeover! Which trend are you most concerned about? Be as brief or as detailed as you like. There’s always a new “buzzword” topic in tech that causes waves and ripples in the industry. I think AI in general is an amazing topic and is going to change the tech industry as a whole. The “concern” I have isn’t about AI taking over and ruling over us all - I think our bigger problem comes in the form of companies touting how their “AI-Powered <Insert Tool Name Here>” product is changing the industry, etc, etc, etc - and charging crazy prices because it’s the hot topic when in reality they have a simple if/else flowchart that developers could build as a fun side project. This makes the tech industry look bad and makes it harder for companies that are building cool stuff to advance when consumers become jaded from the other products that didn’t deliver. I’ll get off my soapbox on that one now… Share your biggest success so far. Hmm… That’s a tough one… Sure it’s easy to measure success by KPIs/metrics/Sales - but I’d have to say when I look at our current team and the advancements we’ve made as a company together this fast that no one else in our industry has done yet… That’s one I tip my hat to. We would love your feedback on HackerNoon as a tech publication! How has your experience been with us? So far it’s been awesome - I spend most of my time reading articles and I enjoy learning a lot from the contributors. Any words of wisdom you’d like to share with us? There are a lot of amazing quotes/books/etc on wisdom - I’ve always enjoyed the simple ones that still ring true. One that I feel applies to the startup world is from Confucius: "When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don't adjust the goals; adjust the action steps." Startups of The Year is HackerNoon’s Flagship community-driven event celebrating startups that survived and thrived in 2023. 30,000 startups across 4200+ cities and six continents participated this year to be crowned the best startup in their city. See our global winners announcement . here Companies that blog more get 67% more leads - Jumpstart your company’s blogging journey by purchasing our . Business Blogging Package The 2023 Startups Of The Year is sponsored by: . . The winners will get a free .Tech Domain, a HackerNoon NFT, and a Tech Company News Page. TECH Domains

Meet WRANGLD, Startups of the Year Winner in Richmond, VA

86 Stories To Learn About Startup

Let's learn about via these 26 free stories. They are ordered by most time reading created on HackerNoon. Visit the to find the most read stories about any technology. Meetings /Learn Repo 1. Discover the Truth About Time Management When you’re in a serious discussion with people who are beside you, make sure you turn off your cell phone. 2. Forget What You See on TV: Good Ideas Don’t Come From Brainstorming The reality of brainstorming sessions is far from the idealized scenes made to entertain us. 3. Make Time for Making: 7 Ways Builders Control Their Days You have many good intentions at the start of the day, but before you know it, one request comes on top of another and you have a day full of meetings. 4. 5 Ways AI Can Improve Your Next Meeting How to use AI to improve your meetings: Five ways to improve your team meetings through the use of AI meeting assistants 5. How to Behave during Video Calls: 9 Rules for Communicating with Colleagues These days most companies have asked their employees to stay at home and change their office work for a remote one. In such conditions, the issues of organizing video calls have become especially relevant. It seems that online conferences for dozens and even hundreds of people are a step towards a digital future without borders when people can work from anywhere in the world and get together for negotiations literally by click. But in reality, video calls are often not as good as you might imagine. Someone cannot install the necessary program, someone is nervous  because of the relatives in the background, and someone appears at an important conference call in his pajamas and using the nickname “DimonKiller666”. We have put together some simple rules for making video calls that will help make them comfortable for yourself and your colleagues. 6. Synchronous Communication is the New Cocaine in Silicon Valley This blog from Paul Graham beautifully articulates why meetings kill productivity for people in the "maker's schedule": 7. 3 Solutions for Sharing and Managing Your Zoom Recordings Recorded a Zoom meeting, now what? How do I efficiently share it with people around my organization? How do I restrict access to such a recording? I want my marketing team to only view this recording so how do I segregate access? 8. Daily Standup Meeting Is Wasting Your Time Here is how I saved my team 2200 hours annually not to do it. 9. There Are Only 5 Meetings: Standup, Demo, Plan, Reflect, and All-Hands There are too many agile meetings that tech teams use. Save by adopting the essential types of agile meetings I use on my teams. 10. 4 Zoom Tweaks To Improve The Quality of Your WFH Meetings The Coronavirus outbreak is no less than a fortune for Zoom. The cloud meetings app has seen enormous growth that roots from the disruption of normal routine due to lockdowns everywhere. From the surge of Zoom app downloads worldwide to the company almost doubling its annual revenue, 2020 may have a bad start for most of us but for Zoom it’s their heydays. 11. How to Do Meetings You Don't Hate Meetings keep increasing in length and frequency, to the point where executives spend around 23 hours a week in them. 12. The Joys and Sorrows of Corporate Meetings When was the last time you felt like bolting out of the conference room either bored to death or incredible frustrated and feeling like your time was carelessly and disrespectfully wasted? We bet it was as close as yesterday. What, is happening now? Well, get out now! 13. 10 Tips For Securing Zoom Meetings Nowadays, remote work has become widespread with the effect of coronavirus. Although online meetings provide great convenience, it brings with it large cyber risks. Zoom is often preferred especially for online meetings. It is very important to take measures against cyber attacks for online meetings. In this process, I prepared some precautions with the experiences I gained while using Zoom. Here are some precautions for cyber attacks. 14. Meeting Room Booking System: How to Manage It Efficiently In the present world, the work environment is characterized by any organization that is at a fast pace and has a large amount of exchangeable information. According to a research study, an employee spends their time in about 50 meetings per month on average. No wonder meeting rooms are completely booked up, and generally, an organization needs to have pre-bookings. 15. We Just Had Our First Virtual Reality Status Meeting Just about everyone who can is working from home now. And while we're lucky to work in an industry that already works from home regularly and easily, there are still some aspects of being in an office that are difficult to replace. One of them is the stand-up meeting. 16. 8 Tips To Reinvent Your Project Meetings And Win In a typical project meeting most attendees do not contribute but attend just to hear the conversation. A large amount of developer time is wasted. This drains resources from the project and can create a scheduling nightmare. 17. How to Lead More Productive Meetings When it comes to scheduling meetings, I am a firm believer in Maker’s schedule vs Manager’s schedule. In his essay, Paul Graham touches upon the topic of optimizing the number of meetings. In this article, I would like to talk about another related aspect of meetings, i.e. how to optimize the meetings themselves by establishing good meeting etiquettes. 18. 3 Ways to Share and Manage Zoom Recordings Recorded a Zoom meeting, now what? How do I efficiently share it with people around my organization? How do I restrict access to such a recording? I want my marketing team to only view this recording so how do I segregate access? 19. Successfully Change Collaborative Meetings With These Five Proven Methods of Facilitation The five methods of facilitation I use to create collaborative meetings from over a decade of experience as a software engineering leader. 20. Top 10 Questions Managers are asking during 1:1 Meetings I love 1:1 meetings. It’s a chance to swap feedback and make sure our company is working. It’s also one of the reasons we built SoapBox bot — a bot to help people have productive 1:1 and team meetings. The reaction has been overwhelming: Managers from over 500 of the best companies in the world (Adobe, Intercom, Wayfair, etc…) are now using it with their teams. 21. Just Your Average HackerNoon Product Meeting Notes [Feb 2022] This Slogging thread by andemosa, richard-kubina, David and Kien occurred in HackerNoon's official #meeting-recap channel, and has been edited for readability. 22. How To Use the "10/50/99" Approach to Give Feedback And how it reduces the odds you frustrate your team to the brink of leaving 23. How Live Streaming Is Helping Businesses During The Coronavirus Crisis? The World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 as a global pandemic, which means that it is an infectious disease passing from person to person in many parts of the world at the same time. The maximum cases have been reported in China where it originated and has more than 245,463 confirmed cases across the world. While China has quickly coped with the situation and reported zero new locally transmitted cases, Italy has become the epicenter with over 41,035 cases. As Governments have halted flights from affected countries, shut down businesses and entire cities, people are being insisted to stay at home to contain the spread. 24. End The "Not Another Meeting" Discussions: There's A Better Way To Hold Efficient Meetings It turns out there is a way to hold better meetings. If you want them to be more efficient and productive, there are a few simple things your meetings need to b 25. 5 Benefits of Hosting Online Webinars Webinars can help your search engine ranking, promote sales, reinforce your authority, and more. 26. Should You Enable Your Camera on Zoom Calls? I have a simple question: 📽 Should you enable your camera on Zoom calls? There is a lot of evolving etiquette around this. A #slogging water-cooler style story Thank you for checking out the 26 most read stories about Meetings on HackerNoon. to find the most read stories about any technology. Visit the /Learn Repo

26 Stories To Learn About Meetings

327 Stories To Learn About Leadership

Let's learn about via these 54 free stories. They are ordered by most time reading created on HackerNoon. Visit the to find the most read stories about any technology. Employee Engagement /Learn Repo 1. Startups: Pulse Surveys are Dumb. There’s something I’ve been saying since SoapBox was first born: employee surveys are dumb. They’re really, frustratingly dumb. They’re not the solution to the employee engagement crisis. They’re part of the problem. 2. Productivity Hacks: How to Keep Your Employees Motivated Employee wellbeing is a challenge in this world as i89% of employees have worked while feeling unwell. 3. How to Create an Employee Engagement Plan: The Key to a Happy Staff Make your employee incentive plan focused on each team member because your staff can only succeed when the incentives resonate with them. 4. How Management Software Helps Boost Productivity in Coworking Spaces Boost Productivity in Coworking Spaces with Management Software 5. 4 Strategies to Enhance Employee Engagement With everything that’s going on in the world right now, the morale at the office – whether you’re able to meet in person or virtually – might be a little low. There might be uncertainty about the future of jobs or the company as a whole, which could be having an impact on employee productivity. 6. 4 Corporate Benefits that Improve Employee Mental Health and Engagement The benefits of mental health support programs are numerous. Some of these programs include free therapy and healthy eating and physical activity. Others provide financial assistance to employees who need it. Whatever the case, there are three main reasons why you should care about your employees' mental health. Read on for more information. Here are some examples of mental health benefits offered by companies. All three promote a healthy work environment. Having a positive company culture is one of the most important factors in preventing mental health problems. 7. How To Convince Your Employer to Host An Internal Hackathon Tech Companies are running internal hackathons to design new features, build new products, and increase employee and talent engagement. 8. Employee Wellness 101 Businesses have been overlooking employee wellness for a long time. As organizations started re-opening, they must have actionable employee well-being. 9. Making Your Employees Feel Valued & Appreciated Valued employees are good employees. Simple things like public acknowledgement and being considerate of their needs are all you need to make them feel great. 10. Diversity in the Workplace: A Challenge for HR Increasing diversity among leadership teams is a critical component of company culture. Studies show that people feel more comfortable around leaders who are not like them. Therefore, having a homogenous leadership team can be harmful, sending a bad message to other employees. Furthermore, insufficient inclusion efforts can alienate employees from outside the company culture, resulting in stagnant organizational growth and disengagement. A diverse leadership team is critical to company success; it is also associated with higher innovation, productivity, and revenue per employee. 11. Why Measure EX Through an Organizational 360º Approach? Productivity comes from an engaged workforce. HR needs a 360-degree solution that measures EX to understand make the environment for a productive workforce 12. Empowering Employees: The Power of Empowerment! The success of a business is a journey, not a destination. It is a road that entails unconventional thinking and extraordinary measures. Several entrepreneurs opt for a startup each year, but only a small number of them manage to thrive. Most of us might anticipate the essential ingredients of a successful business. Though, the key lies in identifying the actions and proceedings required to implement that course. 13. Performance And Productivity Management Software Industry Research [Part 1] Hi there! My name is Vitalii Berdichevskyi, I’m a Product Manager. I want to share with you HR Management industry research I conducted in March 2019. 14. 5 Powerful Employee Upskilling and Mentoring Tools How to boost your employee's skills and performance? Read my new post to find a list of several handy software tools that solve this task. 15. 23 Creative Ideas to Boost Employee Retention at a Low Cost Here are 23 employee incentive ideas that small businesses can start using today including letting employees listen to music, sending thank you notes, and more. 16. Implement These 21 Employee Wellness Program Ideas For Better Retention Employee wellness programs have become a staple in many companies as a way to attract top talent, keep them happy and productive, and decrease employee turnover. 17. 20 Best Virtual Team Building Activities for Remote Teams Looking for some effective team-building activities to bring your remote team together? 18. Hey Employers: Do Black Lives Matter? As you know (I hope), the murder of George Floyd has caused protests and violent riots in Minneapolis, and many other cities around the United States. Yet again, another Black man was murdered by those hired to protects us. Four policemen pinned George to the ground after being called by a store clerk about disorderly conduct. An officer, by the name of Derek Chauvin, kneeled into George’s neck with extreme pressure, digging it into the ground to the point that he struggled to breath. As George was suffocating, he stated that he could not breath multiple times, but Chauvin did not let up. The other officers just stood by allowing it to happen, which makes them just as guilty. George died later that day. It took days just for Chauvin to even be arrested. He’s now been charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. If you’re unaware of the story, please head here. 19. How Employees Can Help Prevent Cybersecurity Threats Employees need to be aware of the significance of cyber security because cyber dangers have persisted since the creation of the internet. 20. 5 Ways to Improve Employee Well-Being Encourage a better sense of well-being among your direct reports with these proven strategies. 21. Valuable Employee Training Programs To Get Back on Track in 2021 In 2021, there’s both a need and an opportunity for employee training. Here is a reflection on what actually motivates employees to complete the training. 22. The First Major Challenge HR Managers Face is Retaining Top Talent A major challenge for startup HR is attracting and retaining top talent. Many startups focus on output instead of employee performance, which results in a lack of engagement and motivation. When employees feel that their work is not valued, they often leave the company for better opportunities elsewhere. Developing and nurturing a talent pipeline can solve these challenges. Startups must also take care to ensure that their employees are aligned with the company's vision. This requirescareful planning and in-house training programs for all employees. 23. How to Build a Compliance Culture by Improving Employee Engagement in Your Company Creating a culture of compliance means that the organization understands that compliance is critical. 24. How Happy Employees Lead to Happy Customers While most businesses focus on customer satisfaction, they often overlook employee satisfaction. Studies show that highly engaged teams outperform unengaged ones by 21%. What's more, happier employees offer better service to customers. That means happier customers. Let's look at some ways to increase employee satisfaction in your business. Here are some tips to improve customer experience: 25. Performance Anxiety Amongst Employees and How to Overcome It Performance anxiety amongst employees can be a serious issue. It may have a serious effect on a person’s health, sleep, mood, and even self-worth. Let’s look at 26. How To Be a Responsible Employer and a Leader in Times of Workplace Crisis Based on the type of work you are doing and the capacity in which your workers operate, any or more of the following occupational injuries can occur to your employees. 27. Kindness Is A Hidden Engineering Superpower Kindness is a hidden superpower for software engineers. It helps your peers feel safe so they can take risks that enable efficiency and honesty. 28. How to Make Your Company "The Best Place to Work At" When you hear the phrase “Best Place to Work,” what companies come to mind? Does your company make that list? If not, you may want to reconsider your company culture to attract top talent who are looking to work at Best Place to Work companies. 29. Employee Education: A Guaranteed Way To Supercharge Your Business Google reportedly has allowed its employees to spend 20 percent of their paid work time to pursue personal projects that they think will most benefit the company. The objective of this program is to empower and inspire innovation in participating employees. Many of Google's notable advances have resulted in this manner, including the development of Google News, Google Maps, Gmail, and even Adsense. 30. 10 Things to Do in a Professional Email Signature (With Examples) This article will share ten tips to help you create an informative and effective professional email signature to improve your communication - with examples. 31. Thoughts on Organizational Health: A Take on Pulse Over-reliance on Pulse surveys as the only practice for employee feedback and management accountability will hurt the organization. here are some alternatives. 32. How To Onboard New Staff Effectively In The Post-Pandemic Workplace What will be the safest way to onboard new employees after the pandemic is over, and in what will be a blended work environment? 33. 5 Advantages of Automating Expenses for Your Small Business It's common for small business owners to use traditional methods in their processes, thinking it's more efficient and cheaper. However, this isn't always the case. 34. 6 Creative Employee Reward Ideas That Your People Will Love Wondering how you can show employee appreciation? Here, you’ll discover six amazing gift ideas for your employee recognition program. 35. 4 Ways to Introduce New Technology to Work Every day, there are new tools that come into the market to make us more productive. More so since the global pandemic took hold. 36. Who Should Be Awarded Employee Of The Month? There is a sense of joy when you walk past your picture hanging next to the wording 'employee of the month'. But how do you go from being an ordinary employee to the month's best? 37. "The 4-Day Work Week" and other Insights on Bootstrapped Business with GooseChase CEO Andrew Cross Inspired by scavenger hunts, GooseChase is an online platform that enables you to create exceptional experiences for your communities. Meet CEO Andrew Cross. 38. Retention tips from the Internet vs 56 software developers We've collected 56 retention tips from software developers and compared them with the ones from the Internet. Check out what the conclusions are! 39. Employee Training: How to Make Data-Driven Business Decisions According to PwC research, highly data-driven organizations are three times more likely to witness considerable improvement in decision-making. Unfortunately, a whopping 62% of executives still rely more on experience and gut feelings than data to make business decisions. 40. The Importance of Business Communication Software in 2020 Business communication software is the beating heart of the world's most successful and enduring organizations. Gradually introducing itself into the workplace over the course of a few decades, this sort of technology has become more indispensable to our working lives than ever before. From Zoom, to Microsoft Teams, we're incredibly reliant on communications software to help us stay connected and maintain productivity on a day-to-day basis. 41. Managers, Do You Wait for the Doorknob Effect? If you are not sure what a Doorknob effect is, you probably want to keep reading. Either you’ve seen it before and didn’t act properly, or worse you just missed it. 42. 17 Skills Improve Managerial Communication in The Workplace In this article, you’ll discover why communication is a critical skill for a manager and seventeen skills to improve communication at work 43. "Challenge Our Comfort Zones, Indulge in Our Passions" Taylor Smith, Cofounder and CEO at Blueboard Meet Taylor Smith, Cofounder and CEO at Blueboard - a rewards & recognition platform sending top talent on awesome experiences - like learning to surf. 44. How to Administer Employees Rights At Workplaces You can be entitled to other legal protections in the workforce, including: based on the role of the employer, the country in which you operate and the occupation. 45. How To Retain High-Performing Talent Talent retention has always been a challenge for HR. The challenge is made even more difficult by a high turnover rate. While it can be difficult to keep top talent, there are some key strategies you can use to retain top performers. Here are some of them: 46. Addressing the Dissonance of Workplace Diversity and Inclusion There is confusing dissonance in the workplace when it comes to diversity & inclusion. Companies claim to foster inclusive culture but is that truly the case? 47. Methods of Preventing Repetitive Severe Injuries in the Workplace Environment In a period when deaths and serious injuries arise almost regularly in the workplace, employees will contend with at least three very distinct audiences. A fatality or traumatic injury at the workplace triggers the desire to connect with mourning people, including family members of the victim, eye witnesses of the tragedy, or co-workers who experience a sense of loss. 48. How to Build Loyalty and Motivate Your Employees Faced with the disastrous consequences of a voluntary departure of employees for the company, keeping its teams as long as possible becomes a major issue. To gain in productivity, you must as a business leader, find the ways and means necessary to motivate and retain your employees. 49. An Anthology of Compensation Management Software Companies spends millions of dollars to record the wages, bounces, and performance of employees. To reduce this cost, compensation management software helps organizations to plan, manage and execute a
compensation strategy. 50. How to Deal With Accusations in the Workplace Employee deceit comes as a serious stun, especially when you put
time and cost in offering comfort and direction during the employer and employee business relationship. The double-crossing can be destroying both by and by and inside the setting of organization resources. At the point when charges of employee deceptive nature surface, make quick move to decide the veracity of the cases and the degree of misfortunes the organization may endure. In any case, don't come to untimely end results until a full work environment investigation is finished. 51. Managing Diversity in the Workplace: Building an Inclusive Organizational Culture Diversity in the workplace is increasingly becoming a top priority for all organizational leaders. Initially, workplace diversity was merely a tick in the box with a narrow focus on just hiring professionals from different age, geographical and gender groups. The conversation has now matured significantly, with expansion not only in the scope of what diversity in the workplace entails, but also how it pans out. Let’s dive deep into the various aspects of diversity and inclusion in the workplace. 52. Why Employee Engagement is More Than a Buzzword The ideal collaboration for employee engagement with rewards & recognition boosts consolidated communications in a single point. 53. Everything You Need to Know About Employee Engagement Know what exactly is employee engagement and how to effectively and efficiently increase the rate of employee engagement of your organization with SuperBeings. 54. Improve Employee Engagement and Mental Well-being In 2021 In this article, you'll find some amazing techniques to improve employee engagement and mental wellness. Thank you for checking out the 54 most read stories about Employee Engagement on HackerNoon. to find the most read stories about any technology. Visit the /Learn Repo

54 Stories To Learn About Employee Engagement

In today’s episode of the Brains Byte Back podcast, we speak with , Founder and CEO at , a platform that aims to simplify vulnerability management and patch management. Mike Starr trackd From this episode, you will learn about Starr’s journey from being an NSA engineer to entering the . We also learn about the intriguing story behind the name trackd and how it resonates with both tech enthusiasts and non-nerds alike. startup world To kick off the show Starr shares how he transitioned from his role as an NSA engineer to the startup world after meeting a brilliant individual at a tech gathering in DC. This encounter led him to work on software-defined networking and eventually paved the way for founding trackd. Starr then shares his views on some of the worst advice, including the misbelief in the security of air-gapped networks. He emphasizes the need for tailored security approaches that consider the specific context and needs of each organization. cybersecurity Additionally, he shares the best cybersecurity advice for listeners, which according to him is understanding the problems that need solving and aligning security and IT teams’ efforts. He takes it a step further and advocates that collaborative decision-making, treating humans as humans, and bridging the gap between security and IT tools are essential in this process. Also, Starr sheds light on the significance of considering the human factor in cybersecurity breaches. He emphasizes the importance of collaboration and empathy between different teams and how vendors can contribute to fostering a more collaborative culture. And finally shares how trackd aims to expand its network and install base, providing tools and features to eliminate vulnerabilities in enterprises. With a focus on making patching safer and more efficient by aligning it with corporate risk strategies and considering the operators’ perspective. https://youtu.be/x6x5QvtVvcM?embedable=true : My name is Mike Starr. I’m the founder and CEO of Trackd. And what we found is that when most people are trying to fix their , they’re crossing their fingers, hoping patches won’t break their sh*t. So, we built a platform that not only unifies vulnerability management and patch management but also provides insights into how patches have affected other people’s systems before you apply them to yours. This allows operators to automate remediation decisions based on quantifiable metrics instead of qualitatively worrying about disruption and safety within arbitrary periods of time. Mike Starr software vulnerabilities : Samuel Brake Guia Fantastic. Thanks for joining me today because you have such an interesting background, and I’m really looking forward to exploring it. I understand you’re a former NSA engineer. I’d love to hear how you transitioned from government employment to the startup world. : Yeah, there’s a really long version of this, but ultimately, I met a wickedly intelligent dude at a nerd barbecue in DC. It’s a big hub for tech folks and data center space, which aligns with my background. This guy was on the forefront of software-defined networking when it was in its infancy and OpenFlow was still a baby. At the same time, I was closing out three major projects at the agency that largely revolutionized how cyber operations networks were built and conducted. But when I tried to push the envelope further, I ultimately got a pat on the head and was told I had done enough, and they needed me to lay low for a bit. So I asked this dude, “Hey man, how do you sell SDN to companies?” and his response was, “Why don’t you just come work for me? And I’ll double your salary.” So I did. Mike Starr : Samuel Brake Guia That is a fantastic offer. That’s what everyone dreams of. And I want to know what’s the story behind the name Trackd, and I should say for listeners, it’s spelled T R A C K D. : Yeah, it’s a pretty lame one actually. Initially, when I was doing interviews for this concept, I kept talking about it as an “intelligent vulnerability management lifecycle system,” which is a mouthful. When I went to create the first GitHub repo, I thought, “This is too long to be typing and saying all the time.” So I was like, “What the hell am I actually doing with this thing?” And I thought, “I guess I’m tracking s***.” So I said, “Well, maybe ‘Tracked’ or ‘Tracker’ or something like this.” For those that are Unix nerds, a word with a lowercase “d” at the very end indicates that something is running in the background (a daemon). So I thought, let me be cute and just drop the “E” and we’ll call it “Trackd.” So now, Unix nerds will come up to us and say, “Hey, tell me about Track d,” and then non-nerds will come up to us and say, “Hey, tell me about Trackd.” Funny enough, we consistently get that. So our marketing guy, anytime someone comes up to the booth and says “Trackd,” he’ll be like, “So you’re a big Unix nerd,” and they’re like, “How the hell did you know that?” And so it’s a great icebreaker for people coming up to the booth. Mike Starr : Samuel Brake Guia That’s a fantastic way of, I suppose, understanding where people are coming from immediately, and I think automatically you know that I’m not a Unix nerd considering that I’ve already jumped into the category of “Trackd.” So I’ve learned something new there as well. That’s awesome. I also want to say one of the things that we want to discuss primarily on today’s show is the prevalence of bad and wrong information about cybersecurity, and I’d love to know what are some of the worst pieces of cybersecurity advice that you’ve ever heard? : Yeah, this is an interesting one. Air-gapped networks are a big pet peeve of mine. An air-gapped network is essentially something that’s not connected to the internet in any fashion, and superficially, you’d say, “That sounds right, just disconnect everything.” Disconnect all the stuff from the internet, outbound connectivity, and I’m safe. Not really. There are plenty of examples of malware popping into air-gapped networks. If your listeners care to understand, one example of this is Stuxnet, and there are a couple of books on that, which are interesting reads. But yeah, air-gapped networks don’t work, so anytime I hear someone talk about them, I get angry. Mike Starr But I think my biggest bone to pick, in general, is just the lack of consideration given to the operational effort and risk in enacting security policies and procedures. Security only cares about cyber risk and either doesn’t give any mind to it or is completely ignorant of the operational risk in mitigating cyber risk. There are a bunch of major initiatives right now like “get rid of all your passwords,” “just patch all your vulnerabilities,” “deny everything by default and only allow what’s absolutely necessary.” All of those things require an inordinate amount of effort, time, and risk to the business that security folks don’t have to think about. So that’s really the wrong information or the bad advice in cybersecurity – taking a generic paintbrush and saying, “Just do this thing in general,” without any understanding of the nuance and context of companies, the people in them, what the business actually does, and the decisions that go into it. And, I see a lot of, generic advice on, if you just deploy a bunch of firewalls or you just get rid of VPN or you just do blah, it’s like there’s no context for what the hell is the business actually cares about? And so I would say just generic s***** cyber advice, just ignore it. : Samuel Brake Guia Okay, that makes sense. And I have to say, while we’re speaking about this, it’s come to mind. I’m sure also curious to know what is some of the best cybersecurity advice you’ve heard, or maybe an easy way of saying what’s some of the best cybersecurity advice you could give? : Really, it comes down to understanding what matters to the team, understanding the group, and it kind of sounds like this Kumbaya BS, but really it comes down to who’s on the team? Who are the stakeholders? And truly understanding what are the problems that you have? What are you solving for? What are the things you’re afraid of? And then building, let’s call it, a quote-unquote plan. It sounds boring, it sounds difficult. But really, the plan is like, do we have a bunch of branch offices that only have digital nomads or whatever? And just have laptops? Do we actually need a VPN? Do we actually need a firewall? Do we actually need printers? Mike Starr Understanding what you need is the best advice that I can give – understanding, and this is not just cyber, it’s engineering in general – is understanding the problem you’re trying to solve for, truly understand it before telling people to just go do the thing. : Samuel Brake Guia Okay, thank you for sharing that. I also have to say, I’ve checked out your website and I saw recently, the folks published an article on your blog titled, “Consider the Human Factor in Cyber Breaches.” Now based on this article and your own knowledge, what advice do you have for the listeners looking to stop cyber breaches and how can they address the human factor? Yeah, I won’t get on my, quote-unquote, “preventing cyber attacks” soapbox because it’s just unrealistic, especially given the current state of affairs in the cyber landscape. But the human factor part of your question, that’s damn interesting. The human factor is just realizing that security operations or infrastructure, whatever you want to call them, and everyone else that’s involved in all the other stakeholders, we’re on the same damn team. And don’t get me wrong, I’ve been guilty of this most of my career, where I’ve been a security weenie or an infrastructure weenie multiple times across multiple companies. But in each time, my perspective was, “Why don’t those assholes just do their job?” or “If only those jerks in security actually knew how to do anything but run an SS or a burp scan.” In those programs, we never got anything really done. And now there are a bunch of things that go into this, but when you realize just one of the major contributors to this mindset that’s a combat of mindset as opposed to a collaborative one, it’s just a lack of context. You can start to understand why you’re being asked, quote-unquote, “stupid questions” from security like, “Hey, the CD just came out. Are we affected?” or “Why can’t we just patch everything in the maintenance window tonight?” or what seems like indifference or unmotivated IT folks just pushing back on security with, “I’ll get to it when I get to it” or “You even have a ticket number?” The human factor is just exactly what it sounds like – just treat humans like humans, not roadblocks or obstacles that you need to bulldoze and get out of your way to get your stuff done. Mike Starr: : And really, I believe that there are two main influences on an organization that prevent collaboration and reward conflict. The first is pretty obvious, right? It’s just assholes in leadership and day-to-day operators being assholes. And we have a strong “no assholes” policy here. As a result, the team is hands down the best I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. And there are no egos. We get things done, people help each other, and no one’s afraid to say, “I don’t know,” and we work to resolve things together. But people that are not aligned with looking at the community as a whole or the business as a whole, we’re in this together, that is one major source for this thing and it’s really hard to change human behaviors. I’ve staked my career on doing that and have been somewhat successful in doing so, and we’ll continue to push that envelope forward. Mike Starr But the second one is a little less obvious and more difficult to address, and it’s that vendors perpetuate this false dichotomy, especially between IT and the security teams. The culture, in general, in an enterprise is like you’re either on the security team or you’re not, and it’s just b*******. They perpetuate this false dichotomy either purposefully or just in ignorance between teams because it’s just easier to sell into a single business unit. So if you look at all the major IT software on the market today, it only solves for IT stuff. And if you look at the security tools, they only solve for security stuff. But when you realize that security cares about cyber risk and IT cares about operational risk, and just only having one is worse than useless, it’s a main source of frustration between these two teams, and the adversaries clearly have a leg up. So if you can start to bridge this gap between these two teams and the tools they use, to start having questions instead of just go patch that stuff, like, “Hey, y’all, this new vulnerability is available or actively being exploited. They’re targeting financial institutions, and it seems on Twitterverse or Reddit or whatever else this patch hasn’t really broken anything. Can we patch more aggressively?” You start to have these kinds of conversations that start from a place of collaboration as opposed to competitiveness. And that’s really what the human factor is, and it sounds like Kumbaya and blah blah, but you hear a lot of lip service around cybersecurity is a people problem first, and it’s only lip service. What group of tools actually focuses on truly fundamentally human bottlenecks or human conditions first? They don’t really exist in the market. Mike Starr: : Samuel Brake Guia I’m not going to lie, I did very much love, and I’m still smiling as I laughed when you were saying about the “No A**holes” policy. I can just imagine going to your careers page and just seeing that in big capital letters “A**holes Need Not Apply.” That’s brilliant. Mike Starr: That will definitely be a headline when we have a careers page on Trackd. It will be there, I guarantee you that. : Samuel Brake Guia Fantastic. I love that. And obviously, like you mentioned there, when your careers page comes up, that sounds like it’s going to be something that’s going to be in the future. I mean, what else is on the horizon for you folks at Trackd? : Yeah, our goal, at least for the first half of this year, is to expand our network and install base. We’ve had our private beta open since March, and we’ve got a bunch of folks on the platform, from multi-hundred billion dollar market cap companies to really tiny law firms. We’re really just trying to focus on eliminating vulnerabilities. So in the enterprise, we’re building out these tools and features that help people reason about patches and vulnerability management in a way that aligns with their corporate risk strategy. We want to give them metrics that actually matter and help them quantify their fear of uncertainty. And so that’s our big focus – getting people to realize that patching is generally safe. And then building these kind of guardrails to allow them to roll out patches in a way that aligns with their corporate risk strategy. The patch’s known impact, but most importantly, the operator’s life – if they patch tonight, are they going to miss a Tinder date? Are they going to miss their daughter’s recital, or will they patch too fast at the urging of an existing executive only to come back the next day and be yelled at for causing downtime by that same a******?” Mike Starr : Samuel Brake Guia That’s very considerate. And I am really excited to see how you folks develop. And if people are listening to this and they want to keep up with the work that you are doing, what’s the best way for them to do that, Mike? : Yeah, head over to Trackd.com. There’s a form where you can ask me anything, or you can just reach out to me on LinkedIn or at my email: mike@trackd.com. Happy to chat! Mike Starr This article was originally published by on Samuel Brake Guia The Sociable.

Former NSA Engineer on Addressing the Human Element in Cyber Breaches

Roles within Sales and Marketing have become much more complex amid the cacophony from social networks, the proliferation of mobile devices, and changing TV viewer habits. In fact, the positions merge further when you consider just how much content marketing now plays a part in the sales process, especially in light of the 'social selling' trends. To manage this, evangelism has to evolve beyond its current definition. An evangelist is a person who builds up support for a given technology and then establishes it as a standard in the given industry. The title of ‘Chief Evangelist’ has been around for a few years now in Silicon Valley, and the term itself conjures images of some feverish person on their TV soapbox. The most notable example is Guy Kawasaki, who was perhaps the first to coin the term itself when he spent his career at . evangelist Apple Evangelism isn't a job title, it's a way of life. - Guy Kawasaki Consider the differences between Sales and Evangelism: Concept Traditional Sales Evangelism Motivation Make Money Make History Philosophy Sell To Convert Method Impose Expose Goal Quota Change The World When 8am-5pm Anytime Where Clubhouse Anywhere 10 Percent Commission Tithing Credit: Guy Kawasaki, Selling The Dream Whether a company appoints a single “Chief Evangelist” or fulfills the role with functional equivalents from across a sales and marketing team, there are five core themes the role must fulfill: Create a transparent story The evangelist needs to be able to create stories that inspire passion. And to do this, transparency is important. Kawasaki described his role at Apple as “to protect and preserve the Macintosh cult by doing whatever I had to do.” He galvanized the company image and its fans at a time when it was seriously flagging. One of his best achievements was the success of EvangeList, a mailing list that was a rallying cry to all Apple fans around the World to come together to support and strongly defend its products and brand image. At that time, it was unheard of in marketing and was a complete switch in how organizations handled PR and communication. Guy took the concepts of transparency and open information and gave it back to the fans who in turn became consumer evangelists themselves. And we all know how hard they defend the company when it’s criticized. Corporate and product marketing has traditionally been about one-way messaging. But to perform well in new channels, it must become two-way. An honest, transparent conversation about one’s business allows authentic connections with customers. It draws out their own issues and successes, and in turn, can turn them into evangelists with the message that comes from the story itself. It’s not a one-off conversation. It’s a lifelong relationship because the stories change as they unfold over time. Create a real, inspiring story An evangelist must have the charisma to inspire. Robert Scoble is another example of an early evangelist. Scoble became well-known at for his frank conversations about the tech industry. He became respected because he was always honest, even when it came to his own company’s shortcomings. Microsoft Scoble moved to a role at Rackspace (originally calling himself their ‘Startup Liason Officer’ before becoming their Futurist), where he holds conversations with innovative companies and shares his learnings both publicly and internally with his company. It’s his thought leadership, and the association of that with Rackspace, that accelerates the company to the front of clients’ minds. But this is also seen as an inspiration internally. Again, it’s the open sharing of that information that is the key. There is too much noise in the marketplace for a story to succeed without inspiring people both internally and externally. A message has to inspire in order to galvanize both employees and clients into action. Kawasaki championed the masses and listened to what the fans were saying, Scoble inspired and informed from the inside out, so that Rackspace employees are a part of the overall picture. Adapt constantly A survey found that 97% of CMOs think marketing must do things it hasn’t done ever before to be successful and that two-thirds find it very difficult to keep up with the changes. report published by Forrester No longer do marketers have a limited number of channels or devices to target. They constantly need new skills, to manage the proliferation of smart devices and channels through which people communicate (mobile apps and web, social networking, etc). Delivering the brand message requires all kinds of customization, depending on the medium. And that will keep changing. Even the marketing must-haves keep changing: Awareness of how the brand is perceived in the market, knowledge of the technology behind the product and how it is differentiated, and relationships with customers. Be opinionated Opinions matter, even if they’re controversial because they help a marketer to evangelize. Without an opinion, there’s very little passion. Both clients and employees will see right through this. And having a thesis forces an early confrontation with the reality of a changing marketplace. The evangelist is someone who can stay ahead of trends and feed that back to the organization. It’s not about shouting with a megaphone when a new trend breaks. It’s about analyzing trends and picking the right message to draw from its impact, and retaining authenticity. Connect the dots And lastly, it’s about taking those stories and using them to connect the various departments within the organization itself. This allows marketing to connect better with pre-sales efforts to deliver a more consistent and concise message. That message feeds back into the product roadmap, allowing for consistent improvement and adaptation to market needs. And those dots connect all the way back to the point of why you exist: your customers. To paraphrase , , and an evangelist brings that to life. Steve Jobs "you have to start with the customer and work back to the technology" Evangelism creates a human connection with buyers and consumers to technology way beyond typical content marketing means because there's a face and a name relaying the story, expressing the opinion, and ultimately influencing a decision. And in a world of data-driven, and automated marketing technologies and generative AI, evangelism is something you just can't hand over to a robot. If you're in need of an evangelist for your company, look me up on LinkedIn.

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