[500DISTRO] Going for Global: 5 Guerrilla Tactics When the Slick Stuff Fails

How Volkswagen Mocked Corporate Social Responsibility: “DieselGate” Outs Sustainable Business Sham In September 2015, the automotive industry played witness to the largest scandal among its ranks in recent history, as Volkswagen was caught cheating with its pants down. The German car manufacturer had recently overtaken Toyota in sales, in the first half of 2015, to establish itself as the leader of the global car market. Though, this shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone, since VW was largely leading the automotive industry in terms of revenues, profits, and assets even in 2013. The world was left with jaws agape in early September, as the German giant admitted to placing “cheat” software in roughly 11 million of its diesel-engined cars worldwide. Carried out since 2009 onwards, this subterfuge was perpetrated in an effort to deceive pollutant emissions testing in developed markets like US and EU. As investigations into the fraud continue, the primary reason seems to be that Volkswagen did not wish to install a Urea-based exhaust system marketed as AdBlue – roughly $336 per unit – into the “clean diesel” engines which they'd spent years developing for their 2009 models. In-house testing into the engines revealed that they emitted roughly 35 to 40 times the amount of nitrogen oxide, linked to smog, acid rain, asthma, and other illnesses, above the limits allowed by clean air legislation in developed nations. Suddenly, the car manufacturer was faced with two options – go back to the drawing board and miss out on the 2009 car season, or spend exorbitant amounts of money to fix the problem by retro-fitting their engines with AdBlue. They chose option three – cheat through a “defeat device” software. Ironically, the test which ultimately uncovered the deception was carried out by independent American researchers – working for an NGO, rather than the EPA or other bigwig agencies – to show their European counterparts that diesel engines can be used with cleaner emissions. Despite their published efforts coming to light in 2014, however, the EPA was unable to make Volkswagen admit to the cheat till September 2015 – after threatening to withhold approval for VW's and Audi's 2016 diesel models. Now, after having lost its CEO in the wake of the scandal alongwith almost a fifth of its share value, Volkswagen is looking at criminal investigations from the US and Chinese governments, a legal penalty for $18 billion for the roughly 482,000 cars it sold in US, and class-action lawsuits from owners of post-2009 VW Jetta, Golf, Beetle, and Passat, as well as similar Audi diesel models. Even though the firm has set aside roughly $7.3 billion to deal with this scandal, early projections show that this amount may be grossly insufficient. By now, we're sure that you have a flood of unanswered questions – What are these “defeat devices”? How do they affect the car's performance? For more visit > > > cake.hr

The document discusses workforce diversity statistics at Yelp as of July 31, 2015. Overall, 49% of Yelp's global employees were female and 51% were male. In non-tech roles, females comprised 45% and in tech roles they comprised only 25%. Regarding ethnicity in the US, 67% of employees were White, 14% were Asian, 8% were Hispanic, and 5% were Black. Ethnic diversity was higher in non-tech versus tech roles.

There are many stories on residential rooftop solar but few on what cities are doing to make themselves energy self-reliant by using their own buildings and lands to generate power. In Public Rooftop Revolution, ILSR estimates that mid-sized cities could install as much as 5,000 megawatts of solar—as much as one-quarter of all solar installed in the U.S. to date—on municipal property, with little to no upfront cash. It would allow cities to redirect millions in saved energy costs to other public purposes.

Our year-end wrap-up of the top A-Z HR pros continues to highlight experts in the Human Resources field that we believe are helping influence and shape the trends and growth of the HR function thanks to their innovative solutions, mainly in HR analytics and strategy – a topic that is extremely hot right now due to the shift in how HR operations are now being run. A positive difference you will see between our top A-Z gurus in the previous quarter and our top A-Z gurus in Q4 2017 is a better balance of the genders. Despite the fact most of the HR experts in our A-Z teams already have a large following, we hope that we will continue to see plenty more inspiring content on LinkedIn from the likes of Josh Bersin and the other HR experts that we have listed throughout 2017 to help motivate the rest of us in the way we run our own HR functions. * * * LEARN MORE AT blog.cake.hr

Can the U.S. have a 100% renewable energy economy by 2050? This short presentation by ILSR's Director of Democratic Energy John Farrell summarizes Stanford professor Mark Jacobson's landmark study of the possibility, annotated by David Roberts at Vox. The answer? It is possible, but only with an unprecedented coordination of local, state, and federal government to lay the groundwork.

Databricks Spark Chief Architect Reynold Xin's keynote at Spark Summit East 2016, discussing streaming, continuous applications, and DataFrames in Spark.

My talk from SpringOnePlatform about Spring Cloud Contract Links: * http://martinfowler.com/articles/consumerDrivenContracts.html - article about Consumer Driven Contracts by Ian Robinson * https://github.com/marcingrzejszczak/springone-cdc-client - code for the client side of the presented example * https://github.com/marcingrzejszczak/springone-cdc-server - code for the server side of the presented example * https://cloud.spring.io/spring-cloud-contract/spring-cloud-contract.html - documentation of the Spring Cloud Contract project

This document outlines Wealthfront's equity plan to attract and retain employees. It discusses using equity incentives for new hires, promotions, performance bonuses, and evergreen grants. For new hires, it provides examples of equity budgets based on job role and market rates. It also discusses granting additional equity for promotions, using equity to reward top performers, and implementing evergreen grants to encourage long-term retention. The total estimated dilution for this example company is 3.945% per year, which is within the generally acceptable range of 3-5% dilution.

There’s a lot of information out there for sales and marketing professionals. In fact, as our friend Erik Devaney at Drift.com points out, a quick search of the term “sales and marketing advice” yields more than 90 million results on Google. What’s more, there are tons of industry influencers who, on a regular basis, share their views on everything from content marketing and sales, to pricing and customer success. It’s a noisy conversation, and for many, a confusing one. So, how do you make sense of it all? By focusing on the sales and marketing efforts that actually produce results, not flash-in-the-pan engagement. But finding those results is a little challenging. That’s why we decided to put together our latest report with Drift.com, The State of Sales and Marketing at the 50 Fastest-Growing B2B Companies. Using Mattermark data, we were able to identify the fifty high-growth companies in the U.S. and evaluate their marketing activities to understand which practices really moved the needle. In order to make the qualitative portion of our research more tangible, we evaluated each company on the list in light of how they approached content, customer communication, path to purchase, and pricing. What we and the team at Drift.com discovered was surprising, to say the least.

Discover Weekly is a personalized mixtape of 30 highly personalized songs that's curated and delivered to Spotify's 75M active users every Monday. It's received high acclaim in the press and reached 1B streams within its first 10 weeks. In this slide deck we dive into the narrative of how Discover Weekly came to be, highlighting technical challenges, data driven development, and the Machine Learning models used to power our recommendations engine.

What you'll get from this deck 1. The M&A race for AI: by the numbers 2. Watch out! hype ahead: definitions & disclaimers 3. Machine Learning drivers: why is Machine Learning a ‘thing’ now (vs before) 4. Venture Capital: forming an industry, the AI/ML landscape 5. The One Hundred (+13) AI startups to watch in the Enterprise 6. The great Enterprise pivot: applying Machine Learning at scale 7. - where to go next -

What does the future look like? Is it a dark space where we’re suffering from varying degrees of techamphetamine or are we heading towards a Utopian fantasy of abundance and harmony? Understanding that our basic human needs and wants barely change, we explore the future state of a range of topics; from our need for physical sustenance through to our age-long fascination of transcending the limitations of our biology. Looking at the future from a human perspective, our potential for greatness is teetering on a fine line between darkness and hope. We’re banking on the latter.

This document outlines 7 proven strategies for maximizing success on Twitter for businesses: 1) Listen strategically to customers and industry conversations; 2) Respond to everyone who mentions your company on Twitter; 3) Repeat great content to increase exposure; 4) Use hashtags wisely to join related conversations; 5) Advertise smarter by setting goals and targeting the right audience; 6) Join existing conversations about topics related to your business; 7) Use social media management tools to efficiently implement the strategies and track analytics. The presenter promotes the social media management tool Likeable Hub to help businesses effectively execute these Twitter strategies.

Everything you ever wanted to know about sprints, sprinters, and the culture around face to face contact in Plone

The document discusses trends in social media, video conferencing tools, and best practices for virtual meetings. It provides an overview of: 1. Current social media trends and how behaviors have changed with the rise of digital technologies and social networking. 2. Popular video chat platforms like Facebook Video Chat, Google Hangouts, Skype, and their features. 3. Common virtual meeting/webinar tools such as Adobe Connect, WebEx, GoToMeeting and their pricing structures. 4. Best practices for engaging participants and increasing participation in virtual meetings through techniques like using polls, prompting interaction every 10 minutes, and setting clear ground rules.

The document discusses Beto Fernandez's learnings from the Cannes Festival over several years. It lists 7 topics of learning: 1) Multi-platform Ideas, 2) Innovations, 3) Becoming a global hit before the festival, 4) Balancing investment and reputation, 5) Crafting strong arguments, 6) Conducting social experiments, and 7) Creating impact for social good. Under each topic are examples from various years of campaigns that exemplify each learning point.

The document discusses getting more developers involved in contributing to open source projects like Drupal. It notes that currently only 0.1% of Drupal users contribute code back to the core, and the goal is to increase that to 1% by 2014. Some of the barriers that prevent more contributions are discussed, such as code being public, language challenges, and lack of an open source mindset. The document proposes creating a "Drupal contribution ladder" to motivate developers and make contributing easier. It describes an initiative where contributions increased significantly and lessons learned around motivating developers to start contributing.

The document discusses using technology to engage audiences. It suggests non-profits should consider (1) who their audience is and where they are located, (2) what message they want to convey and why the audience will find it interesting, and (3) how to keep the audience engaged over time. Popular technologies mentioned include websites, email, social media like Facebook and Twitter, and online surveys. Both benefits like saving time/money and drawbacks like learning curves are noted. The document provides examples of how different technologies could be used for functions like communication, meetings, fundraising, and promotion.

Darragh Doyle's presentation 10 THING I HATE ABOUT YOUr online activity at The Business of Fun conference 2011

This document provides guidance for organizing a Slideluck event in a new city. It discusses establishing a team with roles for a director, producer, submissions coordinator, artist coordinator, press manager, and sponsorship manager. The first team meeting should establish goals, responsibilities, and communication plans. Global will provide cities with a Slideluck handbook, email address, and templates to help with submissions, press releases, and other materials. The document outlines next steps and deadlines for setting up the event.

This document summarizes a meetup for an organization called Data For Good that uses data to address social issues in Israel. It introduces five current projects, including detecting hate speech on Twitter and creating a map of volunteering opportunities in Tel Aviv. For the hate speech project, labeled Twitter data has been collected and cleaned, and the next steps are modeling and website creation. For the volunteering map, most relevant websites have been identified and the next steps are scraping and merging the data and developing a website. Information is also provided on how to join projects and begin contributing.

This document discusses Frankly, Green + Webb, a company that provides research, planning, design, and implementation services for cultural heritage institutions developing digital experiences and technologies. It covers their business models, including options where the museum works alone, partners with a vendor, or outsources completely. It also discusses their approach, which focuses on understanding audiences and designing experiences centered around meaning making rather than just delivering information. Finally, it provides guidance on the RFP process for museums seeking vendors, including tips for internal planning, writing the RFP, and evaluating bids.

- The document discusses how real estate agents need to develop an effective "digital twin" or online presence to stay competitive as the industry becomes more digital. It emphasizes building a strong online foundation through owning your domain name, developing a complete LinkedIn profile, and creating a profile video. - On top of this foundation, agents need to develop active presences on various social media platforms and populate their website with useful content like neighborhood videos and business directories. They also need to strategically use platforms like Facebook for targeted advertising. - The document warns that agents who do not effectively use technology risk being replaced by those who do, as the industry and consumer expectations continue rapidly evolving in a digital direction.

Penny Reeh presents strategies for promoting events with limited budgets and resources. She outlines five basic rules of resource allocation: focus on your strengths, understand customers, prioritize free promotions, and commit only to effective tactics. The document then discusses promotional vehicles like advertising, publicity, and word of mouth. Reeh emphasizes the importance of understanding media preferences, building relationships, and having a well-organized website and social media presence. She also explores mobile marketing strategies like SMS, MMS, and augmented reality.