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Apr 02
Love0

The New World of HR

By business stream, mesh13

Highlighting a mesh13 business panel

It used to be an employer would have to sift through a pile of candidate resumes only to read through the demonstrated abilities, consult Myers-Briggs and hope for the best. Maybe a consultant would be called to shorten the process, but the placement was still reliant on what the candidate offered or the research revealed.

Then came the Web and, more recently, social media. We share everything so it only makes sense the practice of hiring would start to leverage digital to tell the story of the future employee to find the match. It also makes sense prospective employees would study an organization’s online assets to see if there is a good fit. Like any partnership, the more you understand each other the better chance everyone has in the long run.

For this session on May 16, we have gathered Ben Baldwin (ClearFit), David Ain (Egon Zehnder) and Gary Swart (oDesk) to help us understand how the dynamics of hiring talent have changed as employers and potential employees leverage social media and their digital networks to find opportunities.

Ben Baldwin is the co-CEO with ClearFit, an online service solution that provides small and medium size businesses with a better way to find the best employees. ClearFit matches candidates with new employers using patented data analysis. The startup, which recently received $7-million in venture capital, analyses the prospect’s experience, organization’s culture and other measurable factors.

Joining Ben is David Ain, a Partner in Egon Zehnder’s Toronto office. David is a member of the firm’s Consumer, Technology and Private Equity Practice Groups. His practice is largely focused on consumer, technology and digital clients across North America. He also works extensively with private equity firms on CEO, CFO and other senior searches for a wide range of portfolio companies. David will share his insights on how the industry has changed.

Rounding out the panel is Gary Swart, CEO of oDesk. With more than 2.7 million registered contractors, the world’s largest online workplace lets businesses and contractors to work together. By using technology to remove the barriers of traditional hiring, oDesk’s platform enables businesses to find and collaborate with talented contractors regardless of where they are located..

According to the oDesk CEO, “Businesses are recognizing the competitive advantage of being able to hire the skilled professionals they need, regardless of where they happen to be, and scaling their teams on-demand. We see this as a massive market opportunity — any work that can be done via the Internet — and predict that by 2020 one in every three people will be hired to work online.”

From securing contractors to finding the right full-time employee, the hiring game has changed and it’s tough to know your next move. Learn from these three thought leaders so that you an get a head of the competition for the best talent for your next project or your business…or to seek out your next great work adventure.

To learn more about our speakers, please click on their links below:
Ben Baldwin (ClearFit)
David Ain (Egon Zehnder)
Gary Swart (Odesk)

Apr 02
Love0

The Web as a Gym for the Brain

By mesh13, society stream

Highlighting a mesh13 society panel

Over the past decade, we have studied and learned more about memory and cognitive function. We have come to understand the brain is a muscle that can be trained. Using this knowledge, we have been creating tools that can help us combat aged-related memory loss as well as those brought on by an array of health factors ranging from depression and thyroid conditions to Alzheimer’s disease. The Web has offered opportunities that let us explore and improve our collective “brain health.”

In a session called “The Web as a Gym for the Brain,” we’ll explore the virtual playground through the ideas and innovations of Cogniciti’s Veronika Litinkski, SharpBrains’ Alvaro Fernandez and Vivity Labs CEO Michael Cole.

Veronika Litinkski created and launched Cogniciti. While brain health can be measured in a variety of different ways, the startup is a unique science-based digital brain health platform to address concerns specific to the aging process. The platform leverages the wealth of research on memory and cognitive function amassed by Baycrest Hospital’s’s interdisciplinary team. When it is ready for general use, the report will tell you if your overall cognitive abilities are within the normal range for your age, or whether further assessment by your doctor is advised. The report will also provide information about factors known to be associated with cognitive health, such as health conditions, medications, or changes in your mood, as well as information about how to maximize your cognitive and brain health.

Alvaro Fernandez is the CEO of SharpBrains.com, an independent market research and think tank tracking health, education, and productivity applications of neuroscience. Alvaro is the editor-in-chief of the industry report “The Digital Brain Health Market 2012-2020: Web-based, mobile and biometrics-based technology to assess, monitor and enhance cognition and brain functioning,” and the co-author of “The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness,” recognized as a “Best Book” by AARP.

Michael Cole is the CEO of Vivity Labs, creators of Fit Brains. The Fit Brains Trainer app was downloaded more than 1.5 million times in the first 60 days of launch. The online brain fitness platform combines casual brain games, personalized tracking and customized recommendations with a motivational rewards system and a variety of social features. The team has seamlessly blended entertainment, science and technology to create something fun for anyone looking to keep their brain sharp!

Veronika, Alvaro and Michael have been creating tools, sharing information and building organizations so our brains work better and memory lasts longer. All, in their own way, ensuring we have places online to better understand our minds. On May 15, we will look at how the Web is playing a key role in the brain training and fitness marketplace by giving consumers more ways to get active.

To learn more about our speakers, please click on their links below:
Veronika Litinski (Cogniciti)
Alvaro Fernandez (SharpBrains)
Michael Cole (Vivity Labs)

Apr 01
Love0

Whither the Book?

By media stream, mesh13

A mesh13 media panel
At last year’s mesh conference, David Weinberger joined us on the mesh main stage to talk about how we need networked forms of knowledge and collaboration even more now to understand the world around us.. Though we spoke for close to an hour, it felt like we just scratched the surface of our conversation. David generously shared his insight with us and, honestly, left us wanting to just continue talking.

So earlier this year when we started talking about putting together a session about what’s happening in books beyond publishing, we knew that we wanted to have David join the conversation. As the co-director of the Harvard Library Lab, David has been actively working on projects that transforms the way that we use libraries. These projects include ShelfLife—a community-based wayfinding tool for navigating the vast Harvard Library System, LibraryCloud —a cloud based infrastructure to share what libraries know, and the Library Test Kitchen—an academic collaboration exploring the future of libraries. With more e-books now being sold than paper-based books, the multi-billion dollar business has entered a new stage. But there are many areas where the impact and business models for digital books are still unfolding. Libraries are one of these areas. But it is not the only space where business models are changing. We are also seeing changes in how talent and his or her works are being discovered.

Joining David on this panel are two talented innovators, Beth Jefferson (BiblioCommons) and Allen Lau (WattPad).

Beth Jefferson is the co-founder of BiblioCommons, a shared catalog and social discovery experience to millions of patrons worldwide. BiblioCommons emerged from Beth’s work as the founder of The perF!NK Project, a non-profit youth literacy initiative that sought to enable the same social context for reading that is at the heart of forms of popular culture. BiblioCommons has a lofty goal,
“To help public libraries deliver the same kind of rich discovery and community connection experiences online that the library has always delivered in its branches — all built around the heart of the library: its collections.”

With BiblioCore and a full suite of SaaS solutions, BiblioCommons has created a platform that allows the users to search, explore, borrow, track, share and connect, replacing a library’s existing public access catalogue to create a better patron experience.

Allen is the CEO and co-founder of Toronto-based WattPad, the world’s largest community for readers and writers to discover and share stories. WattPad builds on a somewhat lost tradition of sharing—when the writer was the author, publisher and the distributor of the work. As Margaret Atwood—who has embraced WattPad, said in an interview:

“It’s not a new thing, it’s an old thing that has come back via the Internet….The Brontes wrote for one another in their famous little booklets….Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Treasure Island and read it to the family circle and they found it interesting enough that he kept on with it.”

It may not be new, but that does take anything away from the fact that WattPad fundamentally changes the way that we now interact with books and with authors. This vehicle for discussion and sharing that allows for readers to become fans while they talk with the author about the poems or prose. Allen and the WattPad team have created a space for author and reader that collapses the line drawn between the creator and the consumer

For all of these reasons, we ask is the book as we know it about to fade? How will we share and discover our next great works? We look forward to learning what’s next for the book.

To learn more about our speakers, please click on their links below:
Allen Lau (WattPad)
Beth Jefferson (BiblioCommons)
David Weinberger (The Open Library Project)

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