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The number of people who have come to me whispering, I want to be seen as a thought leader. And yet when I say, Amazing, lets put you on camera, Im suddenly met with . . . crickets. I get it. Putting yourself out there can feel awkward. Exposed. Vulnerable. Thats how I feel about dancing in public. Its my own personal nightmare. At Zumba, Im hiding behind the water cooler. At my wedding, my husband had to mouth the 1-2-3-4 count so I wouldnt lose the beat. And recently at a music festival, the band leader pointed at me to come dance on stage. I prayed he was pointing to the person behind me. Nope. As I sheepishly walked up the stairs to the stage, I realized something important: no one cares that much. No one thinks Im auditioning for So You Think You Can Dance. Theyre not judging meI was overthinking. So I danced. Honestly, probably not that well. However, once I stopped overthinking, I actually had fun. Thats the truth about visibility: Once you stop overthinking, you can start owning your voice. The Real Fear Behind Thought Leadership When I spoke at this years Fast Company Innovation Festival on this topic, I started with a few simple questions: Who wants to be more visible? Who wants to be seen as a thought leader? Who wants speaking invitations, press, clients, opportunities? Almost every hand went up. Then I asked, Who posted a video of themselves in the past month? Not even a third of the room. We say we want to be seen, but we hide. We tell ourselves were too busy, that social media is superficial, or that were not good on camera. Ive trained thousands of people to be on camerafrom my years as a national TV producer to now a public speaking and video coachand everyone can learn the skills of being confident on camera. So what holds people back? Fear. Fear of looking silly, fear of seeming salesy, fear that someone from high school will see our video and mock us. But heres the reality: Hiding from the camera is hiding from opportunity. If youre not showing up, people who should be discovering youclients, collaborators, journalists, recruiters, conference organizerssimply wont find you. Visibility isnt vanity. Its credibility. From ‘Accomplished but Anonymous to Seen and Successful After nearly 20 years producing and directing at Netflix, People, and launching Us Weeklys first-ever digital video unit, I left TV to help professionals grow through video and podcasts. But I had a problem: My own social media was a hodgepodge of work moments and my young children climbing on top of me. I was what I now call accomplished but anonymous. I had expertise and credibilitybut only to my circle of media executives and TV producers. I needed visibility outside my circle if I wanted clients to seek me out. So I started posting to social media, showing up on camera and speaking at seminars. It was awkward at first (not as awkward as dancing on stage!) but I got better each week. Over time, I had new clients, invitations to be a guest on podcasts, and corporate training opportunities. The success has metastasized since then. This year I gave two TEDx talks, I’m a national keynote speaker, and have a thriving business coaching professionals to be seen as experts through video and podcasts. None of that would have happened if I continued to be concerned about “being cringey.” And thats why I created my SEEN Framework, to help professionals show up authentically without feeling fake or cringey. The SEEN Framework Here’s a breakdown of what SEEN stands for.S = Self-Awareness I grimace when people say I know I should be on camera, but Im not good at it as if theyve failed in life. Youre an expert in your industry, not a full-time TV host. I have a degree in communication, so dont feel you should know this. And just because you own a phone does not mean you automatically know how to create content. (If owning a microscope made me a scientist, I would have saved a lot of money on tutors.) Being self-aware means recognizing what you havent learned yet. Be kinder to yourself. Being confident on camera is a skill, not a personality trait. E = Expertise In my very first job in TV news, I decided who got on-air as an expert. If I picked someone who wasnt actually an expert? I could get fired. (And I really needed that job.) To be viewed as an expert, establish both your credibility and your point of view. Ask yourself: What do I believe about my industry that isnt being said enough? What are people constantly misunderstanding about my work? What problems am I obsessed with solving? These insights become your content pillars, your speaking topicseven the early chapters of your book. One of my leadership coach clients recently told me, My book is basically already written thanks to our messaging work. Thats the magic of defining what you stand for: It clarifies everything. Forget about building your “personal brand”share your professional perspective. E = Exposure When I asked the crowd at the Fast Company Innovation Festival what word influencer brings to mind they said: shallow, and freeloader. Tough crowd. But when I asked a friend what she thought the word meant, she said: An influencer is a thought leader in their industry. Forget about semantics. And dont shy away from messaging people you dont know wellsome of my most meaningful business relationships, like partnerships, collaborations, and clients have started online! N = Next Level When I began in TV over 20 years ago, to be visible you needed to be selected by an editor or a TV producer. Instead of feeling that social media is a burden, see it as an opportunity. Stop waiting for gatekeepersbosses, publishers, networksto choose you. Create your own opportunities. Start a video series. Host a webinar. Pitch yourself to a podcast. Launch the newsletter youve been thinking about since 2017. One of my clientsa health care consultantfollowed this exact path: We created a video series and podcast, and she doubled down on posting to social media. Within months she had three new clients (including her dream client) and within a year she was invited to moderate conferences nationwide. When you stop waiting for permission and start creating, doors swing open. The Mindset Shift: Stop Hiding, Start Shining Thought leadership doesnt start with followers, it starts with ownership. Own your ideas, your voice, and your visibility. Create your own stage. When you stop hiding, you start shining. Thought leadership isnt about being loud or cringey. Its about sharing your point of view, and having the value you bring be seen and recognized. So stop overthinking and start owning your voice. People want to hear it.
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E-Commerce
Earlier this month, the House Oversight Committee made public more than 20,000 pages of documents from the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epsteins estate. The documents were released as thousands of individual text files, images, and scanned PDFs, a monumental trove most wouldnt have the time or patience to sift through. But what if you could navigate the source documents as easily as you do your inbox? That was the thinking behind Jmail, a Gmail-style interface for accessible browsing of Epstein’s released emails launched Friday by Kino CEO Luke Igel and software engineer Riley Walz. Walz, a serial website builder previously dubbed San Franciscos Tech Jester, is also one of the masterminds behind the Panama Playlists, which earlier this year exposed the Spotify listening habits of some famous people, as well as a tool to track San Francisco’s parking cops (the project lasted just four hours). In an X post announcing the Epstein project, Walz confirmed the pair used Googles Gemini AI to do optical character recognition on the individual emails, making them more readable and searchable than the source documents. The site also includes verification links to government originals. “You are logged in as Jeffrey Epstein, jeevacation@gmail.com,” the Jmail website reads. These are real emails released by Congress. Just like a real inbox, the messages are sorted from most recent, dating up to the eve before Epstein’s arrest in 2019. Theres also a working search feature (search Trump, and youll get 1,000 results). In the sidebar, you can sort by Inbox, Starred, and Sent. Copying Gmails ability to star important messagesexcept this time crowdsourced by the internetthe most-starred email, with 228 stars, is correspondence with Epsteins brother, Mark L. Epstein. It contains the now infamous line: Ask him if Putin has the photos of Trump blowing Bubba? The lower sidebar section is sorted into Labels, which, in Gmail, separates emails by category. In Jmail, it is a list of people who regularly corresponded with Epstein, including journalist Michael Wolff, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon, to name a few. The House Oversight Committee released the original emails on November 12. Since that release, the president has signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which requires the attorney general to make publicly available in a searchable and downloadable format all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in the possession of the Department of Justice within 30 days.
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E-Commerce
Africas official maps are stuck in the past, often either outdated, incompleteor both. But governments dont have the budgets to fix them, making it difficult to complete projects as complex as deciding where to put new solar plants to as simple as delivering a package. Now a new plan is underway to map the entire continent using satellite data and AI. Maybe 90% of African countries dont have access to an accurate current base map for their country, says Sohail Elabd, global director of emerging markets at Esri, the mapping company behind the Map Africa Initiative. At a United Nations event last year, Elabd met the heads of national mapping departments from around 30 African countries. Nearly all said they didnt have accurate base mapsthe foundational maps that are critical for everything from urban planning to disaster response. Everyone was complaining that theyre struggling, he says. They had no funding. On the plane ride home, he started thinking about what satellite data could make possible. Traditionally, mapping a country required flying specialized planes with sensors and cameras over the land for a month or more, along with extensive data collection on the ground. “Usually it’s a very costly process and time consuming,” says Elabd. Now AI can analyze satellite data and create detailed maps at a fraction of the cost. The new project will train AI to recognize features across different terrains, from roads in the desert to homes in the rainforest. Then it will produce base maps that include physical features of the landscape, buildings and roads, and geographic boundaries. The project will also map additional layers, from agricultural fields to urban infrastructure and vegetation. It’s possible to map not only where farms or trees are located but also to analyze the type of crop and the species of each individual tree. While satellite data and AI are already used in mapping, the continent-wide scale of the project is unprecedented. The maps can help governments update land registries and plan everything from where to best deploy wind and solar farms to port infrastructure improvements. They can help make navigation systems more accurate. And in parts of Africa where standard addresses don’t existmaking it hard to make deliveries or deploy emergency servicesthe new maps can give governments the details they need to create address systems. The project will launch early next year, with Space42, a UAE-based space tech company, providing satellite data, and Microsoft supplying cloud infrastructure and the AI framework. Each African country must submit an official request to participate. After the AI is trained, updating the maps will become significantly cheaper, and each country will receive a data management system for annual or biannual updates. The same approach can help other areas that have gaps in map data, including South America and parts of Asia. Elabd notes, The platform we are building for Africa is designed to be reusable and cost-effective for other regions, and it can produce base maps anywhere in the world.
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E-Commerce
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