The importance of career breaks and new ways of working

"Reworking", a conference on the changing nature of work, was held in New York City last week and illustrates the level of dialogue that this subject is raising amongst corporations, universities, government and individuals. I find this such an interesting and relevant topic, particularly given the year that I have just had, where I was an intern, freelancer, student and corporate employee all in the space of one year.


My friend Danz writes a blog, Life After Five, on Gen Y and all the cool fun things there are to do OUTSIDE of working life. She has recently been featuring guest posts by friends who are doing something interesting and different with their lives and I was lucky enough to be able to contribute. Read the post here! 

"Life Hack" - my new favorite phrase

SO: I have a new favorite phrase - "life hack" - and it has actually unseated my former favorite term, FOMO (fear of missing out). "Life hack" seems to have recently migrated from tech jargon into the mainstream. As explained by Wikipedia:


The term life hack refers to productivity tricks that computer programmers devise and employ to cut through information overload and organize their data. In more recent times, the same phrase has expanded to any sort of trick, shortcut, skill, or novelty method to increase productivity and efficiency, in all walks of life; in other words, anything that solves an everyday problem in a clever or non-obvious way might be called a life hack.


There are two Skillshare classes out now which teach life hacks, one on how to life rent free in NYC, and the other which its teacher describes as "Tricks I have learned and created over the years to optimize my life." Sound too good to be true? We'll see - I am signing up to check it out.   


In the meantime, as my impending return to student life looms ahead, I am finding myself forced to invent my own life hacks, if for nothing other than to attempt to cut down cash outflows, whilst still taking advantage of what New York has to offer. For the first time in 5 years, I face the prospect of living without an income, and this is casting a serious pall over my grand plans to continue enjoying the good life.  Here are a few austerity measures I have put in place - and hopefully I will learn more at my first Life Hack Class in a few weeks:

1. Don't eat meat at home. Many of you will gasp in disbelief at this, but it happened quite naturally. I started craving spinach and brussel sprouts (!!!!) and simply stopped cooking meat at home because it was too much of a nuisance (although I broke this rule for Thanksgiving). I tend to eat a lot of veggies and splurge on meat when I eat out. 
2. Live in Greenpoint. Recently rated by L Magazine as number 1 in the Brooklyn Neighborhood Power Rankings, I have to say it's not as trendy as Willy B, Fort Greene or Park Slope, but it's certainly cheaper, and it's right next to Williamsburg, which makes you feel like you practically live there (minus the crowds). My rent is cheaper than it was in Sydney (!!) and I still have amazing food, coffee and parks all around me - not to mention perogies. The area I live in is so Polish that we have our own local Polish psychic and the local Subway chain has created it's own Polish sandwich, the Zapienkanki, as shown here: 
3. Get your yoga classes free (or at least very discounted). Some yoga places now have a more populist approach to pricing - Hosh Yoga in Greenpoint, around the corner from me, is a perfect example. You can attend classes on an ad hoc basis and they simply ask that you pay a small donation fee of your choice. Amazing. 
4. Eat $1 dumplings. For $1, you can get a tasty snack to keep you going. For $2, you get double the serving - more meal than snack size. Try Prosperity Dumpling in Chinatown or the hole in the wall on Mosco St (between Mulberry and Mott streets). You'll know it's the right place because the sloping alley it's on is popular with skateboarders doing tricks...
5. Want to stay social and learn new stuff? Skillshare can't be beat. General Assembly and Third Ward have great classes, but are much more expensive. Skillshare's classes are typically around $20, but I got my last photography class for $10! Plus, in my experience, Skillshare students the type of people you'd want to hang out with outside of class as well.
6. Forgo the gym and just walk or bike everywhere. At first I was loathe to do this because I was worried I'd get run over, but now I'm totally converted to New York (or at least Brooklyn) by bike! If you must join a gym, try Boom Fitness for $20 a month - it's the cheapest one I could find, with classes all included. While my colleagues tease me about belonging to the 'ghetto-est gym' on the block, I can live without the eucalyptus scented towels from Equinox, which is over 8x more expensive.  
7. Get your hair cut for free. There are tons of students all over the city who need to finesse their skills. If this freaks you out a bit, don't worry - my student had her teacher standing right by her the entire time, watching, demonstrating and making sure she didn't leave a big hole in the back of my head. Check out the salon apprentice site for hair models wanted here.
8. Re-sell unwanted furniture.... Ok, so I'm not super proud about this because I know it will seem a bit ghetto. But I certainly made a profit... While out in Williamsburg with my cousin a few weeks ago, we came across this perfectly beautiful IKEA couch on the side of the road, with a "free" sign taped to the top. Impetuously I googled "pickup van" on craigslist, found someone to come pick us up right then for $40 and and then sold the couch a few days later on Craigslist for $100.  Not much effort for $60 bucks profit. 
9. Shop in flea markets - much more fun than IKEA! I bought this old hat rack at a flea market in Park    Slope and turned it into a quirky bookcase. 

Before:

After:

10.  Shop at Housing Works - for furniture and clothes, but more importantly, BOOKS! For someone like me who could spend hours in a bookstore agonizing over which new book I want to spend money on, Housing Works' bookstore cafe in SoHo was a godsend. Most of the books out in full price bookstores (even relatively new ones) I found on the shelves of this amazing store on Crosby Street. I bought one book I'd been eyeing weeks for $2.72 (it was on sale from $4!)

NYC's Tech Startup Footprint & Co-Creation

The NY Times recently ran a very cool article, infographic style, on how tech startups are scattered across the New York Landscape.  See below for the image and check out the article here.

In a city where everyone is talented and ambitious, I am proud to be part of a community of people who are not only smart and passionate, but are also looking beyond the banks and law firms and attempting to build and create great things. One of the best aspects of Startup is that it is a fertile breeding ground for a cross section of industries, bringing together technology, business, art and design, marketing and entertainment.  The old divisions between these areas are starting to break down, with cross pollination and co-creation across different industries, skill sets and mediums coming more and more to define Startup. In a nod to this phenomenon, Fast Company is launching a website centered solely on co-creation, which will showcase "...pioneers who are meshing tech, culture, and commerce in new ways."  Personally, I think the startup and creative industries should continue to be celebrated. We need more creation in our lives, and less consumption.

New York Times,  AMY SCHOENFELD, TIMOTHY WALLACE and ALICIA DESANTIS November 19 2011 
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/11/20/nyregion/technology-footprint-starting-up-in-new-york.html?src=tp

Startup theme: Curation

One of the most prevalent themes that has been popping up in startup business models these days is curation. When I was a kid, the words 'curation' and 'curator' were associated most closely with museums, in that curators selected the content for exhibitions, baesd on their expertise in a particular area. Today, curation and curating have integrated into our daily lives without us even realizing. With so much information at our fingertips and the lack of time or desire to read it all, the need for curation has skyrocketed. We are constantly trying to answer the questions: how do I know which of this information is worth reading, and what is crap? What do I want to re-tweet, share and forward on to my friends because it's interesting or because it makes my brand stronger?

The most organic and unnoticed form of curation has been around since the birth of Facebook in 2004: social media and sharing of information through friends. Watching movies on Youtube and reposting the funniest one on Facebook  is a form of curation, for instance. Nowadays you would never walk into a random restaurant without a recommendation. The selection process would involve Yelping, checking on Facebook to see if anyone had recommended it or going to a recommendations page you trusted. Our friends share stuff with us, thereby guiding what we read and process. As we process information, we too are unconciously curating - we may trawl through many sites, blogs, articles and tweets a day but only 'on-share' the very funniest emails or most incisive articles with our own communities (or we might selectively pass on different information to different groups in our networks). The rise of the blog over the past few years has also supported the ease of curating, providing a perfect forum to curate products, ideas, and experiences.

Nowadays though, curation is truly becoming a revenue generating business model. Businesses have sprouted up to help us filter the vast waves of information and the sheer amount of stuff that comes our way daily. (It is not just information on the Internet which we need to filter and curate, but also the  products available for us to purchase - Americans today have more choice than any other country or generation in history. Even picking out a deodorant is sometimes overwhelming for me.) Apparently this was a challenge to others as well, because one day someone started a company which curated actual products and sent out monthly boxes to subscribers. Birchbox was one of the first to do this with makeup and skincare products, in their words, "a curated box of luxe beauty samples."

The coolest companies out there in the business of curation make it fun. Now there is Quarterly, where you can subscribe for curated care packages which are "engaging and have good taste". Subscribers don't technically need any of these things, but they are surprising and delightful "...and meet some standard of interestingness and originality." Others have made a business of curating happenings, culture, art and technology within a particular area. Cool Hunting seeks to provide inspiration by sifting through innovations in design, technology, art and culture for their readers. GOOD combines user input with curation through "Good Finder" where they invite users to "post anything inspirational, thought-provoking, mind-blowing, or otherwise good to share..." These submissions are then curated by GOOD's editorial team.

While the saying "there is no accounting for taste" is old and perhaps true, curation as a viable business relies on having the clout, expertise or track record to get people to shell out money because they trust or share your taste. In other words, what you recommend better be good. My sense is that many of these businesses started organically, with the Founders sharing something they were passionate about, and then realizing that being an expert in something that you are passionate about, and sharing that with the world through curation was actually a viable revenue stream. What could be better than having a day job that is all about sharing the things you love and think are interesting, with other people?

Startups - the latest hot ticket item for journos...

Despite the name of this blog, it's no longer summer, and we're almost beyond fall, on the cusp of winter. But I'm back and still blogging! It's been a while since the last post, for a few reasons. Workload is a pretty boring excuse and I do have a better one - Blogger changed their interface and during the interchange I somehow lost a post, which was really annoying. I was so pissed off that I am only now returning, after a brief flirtation with Tumblr.

There is a lot going on in the tech startup world here. Many of these themes seem to resonate with the media and it's amazing to me how often startups and Silicon Valley feature in serious sections, such as the Sunday Business section of the New York Times. Michael Ellsberg's article on whether "Dropouts will save America" was interesting. The Times also recently ran a feature on Andrew Yang, who is starting Venture for America, a "Teach for America for startups". I saw Andrew speak at the TiE FORSE conference in Boston and his idea is compelling. There are at least seven journalists with different slants writing on startups in the Small Business Blog and this is just the Times. We knew that startups had truly gone "Hollywood" after The Social Network hit theatres, but this cultural phenomenon was formalized when newspapers started covering which stars were investing in which new companies (in case you're curious, Leonardo Di Caprio invests in Mobli; for more gossip on which stars invest, read this Mashable article.) News vehicles from USA Today to the Wall Street Journal have been hitting the startup beat. Check out this article from Bostinnovation which associates entrepreneurship with being sexy.
The flavor of the moment is that startups are saving America from the recession and that we need to invest in entrepreneurship to drive our economy. Entrepreneurs are the new heroes because they are creating jobs. It's a hot ticket to be writing about startups, at the moment - which I love! However I can't help but feel unease at the bubble that seems to be growing around the startup sector, and the expectations that come with large IPO's like those of LinkedIn, Groupon (and maybe Facebook, sometime next year.)

I'm hoping to find the time and discipline to write more posts on the themes I've seen emerge in startup through my role at Catchafire. Tomorrow's post will be about curation: how it's emerged organically over the past few years and how entrepreneurs are taking it to a new level by building businesses purely on the basis of curation, or taste.

Picture courtesy of dierken on flickr

If you are interested in the tech startup world...

...these are some interesting sites to bookmark and read regularly.
Check them out here.

1. Smashing Magazine - Delivers useful and innovative information to Web designers and developers. What I like is their focus on user experience and design.
2. The 99% - Behance's think tank,which researches the forces that truly push ideas to fruition. One of my new favorite sites.
3. TechCrunch - Dedicated to obsessively profiling startups, reviewing new Internet products, and breaking tech news.
4. Mashable - I may have mentioned these guys before, but they are the largest independent news source dedicated to covering digital culture, social media and technology so they are core source of news to the startup community, the same way the NYTimes is core to liberal, well educated urbanites.
5. We are NYTech - The strength of New York's start-up community can be attributed to its diversity of talent and the strong collaboration between those involved. This site puts a face to the amazing people who are involved in this industry, some of whom I've had the pleasure of meeting and or working with. In fact, my friend Sarah Judd Welch was featured the other day!

Sick in the City

When you're living abroad in an exciting new city for a limited period of time, it's really a bit like the honeymoon period in a relationship: rose tinted, romantic and not exactly a study in realism. Therefore, I believe it's always important to try to experience a new city not as a tourist but as a true resident would. I like to think that this is what I did this week. I experienced what happens when you get really sick and need to see a doctor, fast.

While it was certainly not a pleasant experience (and initially made me feel like I had wasted 5 days of my life) I realised that I learned what the city had to offer me in a time of crisis.

Initially I thought it was just regular old food poisoning and that I would have done my time in 36 hours, 48 at the most. When day 3 rolled around and I felt I was getting worse, I freaked out and looked for a doctor online. Zocdoc, the amazing online booking system I found, was great - it listed available doctors in my area and highlighted which ones took my type of insurance, their specialty and all their available times for the next few days. I could even review their resumes, or look at their picture to see which face I found most appealing, or knowledgeable! (Only in the US would you have this much information with which to make your choice!) Once you've made your choice, you can then click in to make your appointment. When I had issues with the website and called the 1800 number for help, a lovely young man named Matt tried to assist me, and when he couldn't, he SENT ME AN AMAZON COUPON for my troubles! God, I love customer service in America!

Eventually I got an appointment at Beth Israel two blocks from work. Just hearing the name Beth Israel  made me feel better. (For Aussies, Beth Isreal is a major hospital network with a very strong brand in NY).  I had chosen a professional looking general practitioner who was female and young. The appointment was pretty generic - lots of paperwork, doctor decor, super sterile clinical rooms and the doctor was 15 mins late as per normal. However, she had an air of efficient knowledge, and diagnosed me with absolute confidence. She even provided me with other useful life tips, before sending me out the door in just over 5 mins. I was impressed with her speed, but she was so quick it actually made me suspicious that she'd diagnosed me correctly.

When I wasn't getting better 24 hours later, I came across a little office in the East Village advertising "Dr. Dave", a man brave enough to actually post his cell phone number on his office door. In a panic, I texted him. We had a few back and forths, me frantically describing my symptoms and asking if I had Helicobacter Pylori (a bacteria from hell), and him calmly reminding me I needed to make a real appointment. What impressed me was that he actually responded to my text. What impressed me even more the next day when I showed up for my appointment was that he is obviously a doctor with a difference.

Turns out "Dr. Dave" is something of an institution in New York. Numerous articles have been written about him and he has been featured on CNN:

Sporting colourful tattoos up both arms and the mannerisms of a 21 year old, Dr. Dave runs a tiny office right around the corner from my apartment on Ave B. The population of people patiently hanging out in his waiting room indicates that he treats mostly immigrants, bootstrappers, and everyone else with little cash. Dr. Dave is most well known for his gig running a health co-op for food workers in the restaurant industry. He has been known to provide health advice from the bar and do house (restaurant) calls in the middle of the night when people cut themselves. As I sat waiting to see him, he treated a young guy seemingly for free. I seemed to have stumbled upon an honest to god community doctor, in the 21st century, in my neighbourhood.

In the end, Dr Dave confirmed that the doctor at Beth Israel had gotten the diagnosis right and it was just taking me longer to get better than I thought. However, he added another medicine to my list, as well as prescribing me Gatorade(!), which I actually think made all the difference in how quickly I got better.

Having had experiences on both ends of the spectrum, it is a nice feeling to know that I have choices, depending on what I need.  I could go with surgical efficiency, a brand name guarantee and mid town locale, or go the community style, slightly zany but discount route. At this point, I think I prefer the latter. It's hard to explain why I felt more comforted by Dr. Dave than my uber efficient Beth Israel practitioner. Perhaps it's because he takes care of the whole process, start to finish - from appointment booking (and texting, if you need that) through diagnosis to payment and followup. He seems to charge you what he thinks you can pay for, and humour never hurts when you're not feeling well. He made me laugh. Whilst Beth Israel is great, there is no substitute for a local experience that makes you feel like there is someone watching out for your community. Oh, and by the way, my follow up appointment with him is free. =)