BOJ statements can be rather Delphic, so their latest was mercifully brief at five paragraphs of plain prose, including eight uses of "moderate" or "moderately" to describe the economic background. One notable passage was at the end, where it highlighted financial and foreign exchange markets ...

Hershey Co lays off some workers this week

A flow of recent data from the U.S. government has made one thing strikingly clear: A surge in consumer spending is fueling strong growth, demonstrating a resilience that has confounded economists, Fe

US consumers keep spending despite high prices and their own gloomy outlook. Can it last?

HERSHEY, PA. — Strong seasonal sell-in and successful implementation of the company’s new Salty Snacks ERP in early October have The Hershey Co. on track to deliver projected full-year sales and earnings targets, said Michele G. Buck, chairman, president and chief executive officer of The Hershey Co.

Strong seasonal sell-in lifts Hershey earnings

A flow of recent data from the U.S. government has made one thing strikingly clear: A surge in consumer spending is fueling strong growth,<a class="excerpt-read-more" href=" More

The Hershey Company is gearing up for Halloween, its busiest time of the year, and it enlists home office employees to support retail stores.

Employees At The Hershey Company Help To Support Its Biggest Day, Halloween

Last year, customers did their Halloween shopping early. But this year, they’re taking their time. That means that this weekend, Hershey is counting on shoppers loading up on candy so it can meet its goals.

The stakes are high for Hershey this Halloween weekend

The Hershey Company, together with its subsidiaries, engages in the manufacture and sale of confectionery products and pantry items in the United States and internationally. The company belongs to the Consumer Staples sector, which has an average price to ...

Uncovering Hidden Gems – The Hershey Company (HSY)

Analysts fell to the sidelines weighing in on Murphy USA (MUSA – Research Report) and Hormel Foods (HRL – Research Report) with neutral

Wall Street Analysts Are Neutral on Top Consumer Goods Picks

There’s a lot to be optimistic about in the Consumer Goods sector as 2 analysts just weighed in on Simply Good Foods (SMPL – Research

Analysts Offer Insights on Consumer Goods Companies: Simply Good Foods (SMPL) and Silgan Holdings (SLGN)

Hershey

hershey

🙌 Hi web3 folks! ⌚️Timex launches Bored Ape watches The luxury watchmaker has partnered with Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) to enable BAYC holders to showcase their NFTs on their wrists. . More 🍫 Hershey launches chocolate-themed metaverse experience The chocolate brand’s Philippines and India arms have launched a gamified metaverse experience in Decentraland. . More 🧴 Laura Mercier debuts virtual store in the metaverse The cosmetics brand’s “World of Beauty” has AR/VR functionality and enables customers to trial products in a new way. . More 🚘 Renault launches first NFTs and announces long-term web3 plans The NFTs celebrate the 50th anniversary of the iconic Renault 5. Renault is also kickstarting a web3-enabled community of Renault enthusiasts, R3NLT. . More 🐦 Rumors circulate that Twitter is launching a token Code extracted by reputable tech researcher Jane Manchun Wong reveals plans for a coin and updated tipping function. . More 💄Givenchy Beauty reveals winter wonderland Roblox experience The LVMH brand has launched a winter-themed metaverse experience in Roblox just two weeks after partnering with Bstroy to offer free NFTs to purchasers of the new clothing line. Givenchy first entered Roblox in June. . More ☕️ Starbucks launches beta of long-awaited NFT-based loyalty program Starbucks made headlines earlier this year after announcing its plans to completely revamp its loyalty program, based on NFTs. Last week the brand launched the new program, Starbucks Odyssey, in beta, ahead of launch next year. . More 📥 Comprehensive report on brands entered Web3 in Q3 2022. Here Thanks for reading and see ya next week!

Weekly Web3 Brand Tracker: Hershey's in the Metaverse and More

Solos: A Dataset for Audio-Visual Music Analysis-  Conclusions and References

সোলোস: অডিও-ভিজ্যুয়াল মিউজিক অ্যানালাইসিসের জন্য একটি ডেটাসেট- উপসংহার এবং রেফারেন্স

Solos: Ein Datensatz für audiovisuelle Musikanalyse – Schlussfolgerungen und Referenzen

Solos: un conjunto de datos para el análisis de música audiovisual: conclusiones y referencias

Solos : un ensemble de données pour l'analyse de la musique audiovisuelle - Conclusions et références

सोलोस: ऑडियो-विज़ुअल संगीत विश्लेषण के लिए एक डेटासेट- निष्कर्ष और संदर्भ

Solos: オーディオビジュアル音楽分析のためのデータセット - 結論と参考文献

솔로: 시청각 음악 분석을 위한 데이터 세트 - 결론 및 참고 자료

Solos: um conjunto de dados para análise musical audiovisual - conclusões e referências

Соло: набор данных для аудиовизуального анализа музыки – выводы и ссылки

Sololar: Görsel-İşitsel Müzik Analizi için Bir Veri Kümesi - Sonuçlar ve Referanslar

Solos: Bộ dữ liệu để phân tích âm nhạc nghe nhìn- Kết luận và tài liệu tham khảo

Solos：视听音乐分析数据集 - 结论和参考文献

Older and Younger Adults Are Influenced Differently by Dark Pattern Designs: Conclusion & References

239 Stories To Learn About Web3 Writing Contest

In October 2022, The Markup published an investigation into . Afterward, many readers, including fellow journalists, reached out to ask how they could replicate the investigation for other cities. internet disparities in 38 major cities across the United States We wanted to help make that possible, but we knew that the early challenge we had with sourcing, cleaning, and wrangling street addresses would pose an issue. So, we got to work on finding a way to help people get easy access to randomized address data—or as we like to say, receipts from streets. Here's the tool United States Place Sampler (USPS) Today we’re introducing a beta version of The United States Place Sampler (USPS), a new tool by Big Local News and The Markup that samples random street addresses in the United States: https://usps.biglocalnews.org/ The “P” in US S refers to the U.S. Census Bureau’s definition of “ ,” which is an encompassing term for geographic entities such as municipalities, cities, towns, neighborhoods, and named areas. P place This includes legally defined geographic areas called “incorporated places,” like New York City and Milwaukee, Wis., as well as “Census designated places,” which are unincorporated and have no legal boundaries, like Stanford, Calif., and Hershey, Pa. USPS can collect either a percentage or a finite number of street addresses for geographic designations, such as Census block groups, cities, towns, and counties. Here's the code GitHub Based on the work The Markup has done so far, we know the tool will be useful for analyzing disparities between address-level outcomes with socioeconomic data from the U.S. Census Bureau and historical redlining maps from the University of Richmond’s project. Mapping Inequality With that in mind, each address record USPS provides contains the surrounding area’s Federal Information Processing Series ( ) codes down to the Census block group level. FIPS Aside from allowing readers to reproduce our investigation in their own cities, we also hope that USPS will be useful to fellow journalists, researchers, and others who seek accountability through street-level data. Journalists and researchers can use USPS to sample addresses and test for disparities in: Outages to utilities through service outage portals for , , and electricity gas cable Access to grocery stores, hospitals, trauma centers, polling places, and other essential locations across neighborhoods and cities Availability, and rates of location-based services likes ride sharing (Uber, Lyft, Revel), food delivery (GrubHub, DoorDash, Uber Eats), and e-commerce Soon, we will be releasing a step-by-step-guide showing how to replicate our investigation into internet disparities in other American towns and cities using USPS. (Sign up for our newsletter to be among the first to know. here Why Did We Build USPS? As part of our investigation into internet service providers, we collected and analyzed more than  one million internet plans offered across 38 major cities and found that lower-income, least-White, and historically redlined areas were disproportionately offered slow internet speeds for the same price as faster speeds elsewhere in the same city. In the process, we discovered the difficulty of a seemingly simple task of building a representative sample of random addresses in a city. The first issue was finding a data source. Publicly available street address databases were scarce, and those that we could access were incomplete. Even though “clicking around Google Maps” was the accessible, readily available option for most people trying to gather addresses in a given area at any sort of scale, statisticians advised us (and we agree) that it’s biased and shouldn’t be used. We decided to use , which is an open-source repository of addresses and associated geographic coordinates collected from public data from state and local governments. Although OpenAddresses does not include full coverage of the United States, it was the best source we could find and had adequate coverage in the major cities in our investigation. OpenAddresses Coverage aside, we found that many addresses were incomplete—lacking cities, zip codes, and other geographic markers we would need for our analysis. To standardize and complete these addresses, we used the U.S. Census Bureau’s , which lets us map the Census block group and designated place (city) to the geographic coordinates that were provided for every address in the dataset. To learn more about our methodology, see our companion article for our investigation . geocoder API here Following publication, journalists in at least seven of the cities we investigated used our data to for their neighbors. But , researchers, city workers, educators, and readers who were not in one of those 38 cities also expressed an interest in reproducing our methodology to map internet speeds near them. localize our findings journalists We began writing a guide on how to manually collect internet offer information from the front end of internet service providers’ websites so that anyone from high school classrooms to community groups to civil servants could follow the process. However, we soon realized it would be unrealistic to expect others to source street addresses the same way we did. We also didn’t feel as if it would be responsible to offer an easy solution that could be biased, such as “clicking around Google maps.” So, we partnered with Big Local News to download, clean, and index every address we could find in the United States to simplify the task of sampling random street addresses. How Do You Use USPS? To build a sample of addresses on . usps.biglocalnews.org Enter the name of the location you would like to sample from Specify a number percentage of addresses you’d would like to sample or Press “Search” Now you should see a map with some dots; click the plus sign and then “download CSV” https://themarkup.org/still-loading/2023/03/02/introducing-the-united-states-place-sampler-usps These searches will require a bit of patience, since USPS queries more than 200 million addresses. Want More Control Over Your Search? If you need greater precision, you can specify a search by a Census block group, county, or city using custom query strings. To search by a city or town name, use the `place` query syntax. place: buffalo city You can do the same for , , county-subdivision ( ), Census , and Census block group ( ). state county cousub tract bg In the future, we will document the underlying API for others to programmatically pull samples of addresses. Please visit Big Local News’s and for updates. GitHub page usps.biglocalnews.org How Did We Build USPS? USPS uses addresses from public data from the open-source project OpenAddresses, and shapes and geographic metadata from the U.S. Census Bureau’s from 2022. Tiger Shapefiles OpenAddresses data was ingested for every address in the United States between Feb. 19 and Feb. 23. In total, the first iteration of USPS contains more than 200 million addresses. The tool is powered by , an extension to the PostgreSQL database that supports geographic objects and spatial queries. PostGIS Rather than make a request to the Census geocoder API for each U.S. address from OpenAddresses, we preprocessed addresses with PostGIS’ . This executes the same functions as our original methodology but with a simpler data pipeline that doesn’t strain the U.S. Census Bureau’s servers, given the scale of addresses we preprocessed. Tiger Geocoder PostGIS also allows USPS to use “ ”—which uses geographic bounding boxes as the main reference point, making geographic-based queries fast and efficient. spatial indexing For USPS, we created spatial indices around the Census Tiger Shapefiles for each geographic designation (Census block group, place, county, etc.) and used those as reference points to quickly filter addresses against their geographic coordinates. But before that was possible, each address’s geographic coordinates were converted to the same coordinate system as the TIGER data (called epsg:4269) and stored in another spatial index. By , , and Leon Yin Aaron Sankin Joe Nudell for Big Local News at Stanford Also published here Photo by on israel palacio Unsplash

The United States Place Sampler (USPS): The Tool to Help You Learn More About Your City

Is your business website or website application accessible to all? When I say “All”, it also includes people with diverse disabilities. What if your website is not ADA-compliant and what are the risks associated in that case? This article will help in clearing a lot of your questions related to ADA compliance website design. According to the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act Standards for Accessible Designs) lawsuit, web accessibility encompasses all the disabilities outlined below that affect access to the web. This list is included under the web accessibility category by World Wide Web Consortium, popularly known as W3C. Auditive Cognitive Neurological Physical Speech Visual ➡️ ADA gives crucial importance to equality to able and differently-able people when it comes to accessibility of a web design. And as per its lawsuit, it is now mandatory to develop ADA-compliant websites and web solutions. ➡️ Talking about the USA alone, 1 in 4 adults is living with a specific disability, . That’s about 61 million people not having “EQUAL ACCESS” to your website if it is not ADA compliant.😲 CDC reports If that is not clearer to you yet, let us first discuss the web accessibility basics. What is Website Accessibility? It means that your web design process delivers a design that is used by normal and differently-abled people. The main purpose of delivering accessible web designs is to remove any technological barriers whatsoever so that anyone can access and interact with your website content. Do not worry 💆‍♂️ if you are unaware of where to get started. Explore the W3C documentation for web accessibility . This documentation includes three categorized guidelines shown below: here Focuses on tools that users use to create internet content. Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG): Includes the guidelines that help to make the website accessible to EVERYONE. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG): It looks at the accessibility of tools that render web content. User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG): In this article, our sole focus will be on WCAG which has three different levels of compliance: A, AA, and AAA. If you go from A → AA → AAA, it means that you are following more ADA standards and guidelines to launch a website that is accessible to a larger number of people. So, How Do You Know Your Website is Accessible? The only answer is: “Do an audit” of your website accessibility. Remember that you do not have to perform the audit on your own. If you are feeling uncomfortable doing it or lack the technical knowledge to do so, the best way is to outsource the audit for yourself. Get in touch with a top web design & development agency and talk to the team of experts. The web designers and QA engineers will analyze all the aspects of your website or web app to make any necessary adjustments needed through automated and manual checks. How Much It Will Cost? The cost will depend largely on the complexity of your website, adjustments, and the level (A/AA/AAA) you wish to achieve. A standard process is followed to refurbish and revamp the existing website by implementing WCAG standards and guidelines to deliver your AA/AAA level ADA-compliant website. A full spectrum of ADA compliance services guarantees to make your website compliant with ADA, Section 508, WCAG, and more. What are the Risks if Your Website is NOT ADA-Compliant? ⚠️ Brace yourself to face the charges if you get caught launching a website that is not ADA-compliant. The first-time violation 🚫 fine could fall within the window of $55,000 - $75,000. Even after that, if you do not make your website ADA-compliant, there come the second-time violation charges. And that could cost you a hefty fine of approximately $150,000. First and foremost, ADA compliance is a legitimate requirement to make your website live. Businesses of any size could come up against legal action from an individual or advocacy groups if they fail to comply with ADA regulations and WCAG guidelines. Organizations that need to follow ADA requirements include: ▶️ State and Local Government Agencies ▶️ All Businesses Open to the Public For instance, retail stores, banks, hotels, hospitals and clinics, restaurants, movie theatres, etc. are affected businesses. A lawsuit can bring severe damages to your company’s finances and goodwill in the market. It only takes a moment to see your reputed empire fall down, which took years and decades to build. No one is above anyone in complying with ADA regulations. All are equal as many giants have been already named in the lawsuits. Huge brands like Amazon, Nike, Hershey’s, The Wall Street Journal, Domino’s Pizza, Fox News Network, Burger King, etc. are not spared from filing a lawsuit for not being ADA-compliant. List of Actions to Make Your Web Design ADA-Compliant Follow the quick reference guide on . These 12 guidelines are organized under four principles: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust. The three levels A, AA, and AAA are given to every guideline as success criteria indicators. WCAG 2.1 guidelines for website accessibility is the most popular extension available for quick initial accessibility audit and it runs on Firefox and Google Chrome browsers. You can also download its paid product version in the form of WAVE API to schedule and/or automate routine checks on website accessibility. WAVE Automated tests can only identify and catch 20-30% of total issues on your website. Note: To give you a better understanding, we are listing some of the action items considering various aspects of our website audit process to make an ADA-compliant website. 🎬 Captions for Live Videos For every video on your website, you can automatically add captions to all videos using a tool like and manually edit them later if you feel like it. Or outsourcing it to professionals is always possible. Because it not going to be perfect captions coming from an AI-powered tool like Wave. wave.video 📻 Audio Descriptions For all pre-recorded content, you have to add audio descriptions for each one of them. You can also add a link near the content that directs users to your audio description. 🔡 Text Readability Any regular-size text that conveys useful, important, and critical information on the website shall be easy to read. Contrast plays a vital role here. Large text (Headings for instance) needs a 3:1 text-to-background contrast ratio. Whereas, regular text that makes up the body of your content shall have a 4.5:1 text-to-background ratio. 🔍 Text Zoom-in Any user shall be able to zoom to the areas he or she wishes to see larger. But this action shall not restrict or limit the web page functionality. 🔠 Text-resizing Without any assistive feature, users shall be allowed to resize text up to 200% without affecting website functionality and content. This action item is not applicable to Captions and images of text. 🖼️ Image Optimization Adding Alt Text to the images has become more than an SEO practice. Alt Text is giving captions to the images to explain what’s up with these images. Alt Text resides in the coding part of your web page. You can see an Alt Text for an image by checking its source URL Page. 🖱️ Keyboard & Mouse Friendliness Not every one of us uses a mouse to access and navigate the website on the internet. However, your website shall be accessible to such users. It is not only important to make it accessible to a keyboard or a mouse, but it is equally important to showcase what part of your website shall be in focus. 📍 Easy Navigation The main navigation header should be constant from page to page. Improve website navigation through HTML sitemap, site search, and consistent navigation menu for better accessibility. 🏷️ Headings & Labels To explain topics or purposes, use headings and labels that are descriptive and self-explanatory. Labeling site elements such as a pricing list, size chart, or contact form would be a plus. 🌐 Adding a language attribute (French for example) to the web pages helps foreign people who are not familiar with the language used (English) on the website. Adding language attributes massively helps to increase website accessibility. Language Option: 📢 This includes providing textual recommendations and guiding users to fill in valid information asked of them. A simple example would be suggesting the format of a phone number in the USA in the contact form. User Suggestions for Validation: 👨‍⚖️ Verdict: ADA Compliance is Mandatory NO MATTER WHAT! Even if you think that ADA compliance does not include your area of business, accessible web design and development should be still a top priority for you. The lawsuit protocols are subjected to change in the future. So this is definitely not the comprehensive list of  guidelines for website accessibility. If you are a government (Federally) funded organization, you risk yourself to lose its funding, at the time of first-time violation itself or the repeated violation. If you want to do it yourself, we recommend doing comprehensive research to evaluate your web design accessibility as per the ADA regulations.

The Dangers of an ADA Non-Compliant Website

This article was originally published in by . ProPublica Bernice Yeung In the middle of March, L., a 23-year-old culinary school graduate from the Philippines, was scrambling eggs in her kitchen when her supervisor called. L. sensed trouble was coming. As part of the J-1 Exchange Visitor Program overseen by the U.S. Department of State, she had a job setting up the breakfast buffet at a luxury resort in Virginia. For weeks, as COVID-19 spread across the United States, she had noticed the guest count dropping on the white board in the kitchen. It was still a shock to be told she was being laid off. L., who spoke on the condition that she be identified by only an initial, felt the disbelief crest into panic. L. was trapped. She was ineligible for government assistance and her visa status limits her to U.S. jobs approved by her visa sponsor, which she said went silent. L., who had a few hundred dollars to her name, could no longer afford to stay in the United States. She also didn’t have the money to fly home. More than 5,000 foreigners with J-1 visas have been stranded in the U.S. since the pandemic struck, according to an estimate from the Alliance for International Exchange, which promotes cultural-exchange programs. ProPublica interviewed 13 of them, from India, Vietnam, China, the Philippines and Peru, and they described the same phenomenon as L.: They’re suddenly jobless as a result of the economy’s collapse, effectively unable to find new jobs. Many can’t afford to stay in the country — or to leave it. Critics say the plight of the stranded J-1 visa holders represents an acute version of the long-standing problems associated with a State Department program that receives little oversight and amounts to a privatized guest-worker program — one in which the worker pays to obtain a job — disguised as cultural exchange. The federal government “does not fund or administer” the J-1 program, a State Department spokesperson said. But he said the agency will “continue to offer support and assistance” by authorizing visa extensions and making sure foreigners have updated and accurate information if they choose to return home. The State Department’s hands-off approach means there is minimal instractructure to make sure J-1 workers receive meaningful assistance, even in a global crisis, said David Seligman, director of the nonprofit law firm Towards Justice who is representing Filipino J-1 workers who say they faced labor trafficking and wage and hour law violations. “The current situation exposes their vulnerabilities as they are stranded halfway across the world,” Seligman said. More than two months after losing her job, L. remains unemployed, passing her days in the apartment she has shared with four other J-1 visa holders. She can no longer afford to send support checks to her parents back home. She can no longer make payments on the $8,900 in debt that remains on what she borrowed to enter the J-1 program and come to the U.S. L., who used to work in a Japanese restaurant in the Philippines, preparing bowls of ramen noodles, now survives on vegetables, canned goods and packaged ramen from a food bank. “If only I could turn back time,” she said, “I would not come here knowing that this would happen.” Fixated with American movies, L. always dreamed of coming to the United States. But that seemed like an impossible fantasy. L. made the equivalent of $150 a month in her restaurant job in the Philippine province of Cebu. She was her family’s primary breadwinner, and most of her earnings went to rent and groceries. The constant pressure to provide for her parents made her anxious. She saw a future of hard work for not enough money. A friend told her about the J-1 program. It would give her a year of international work experience, the friend said, and an opportunity to improve her financial prospects. Living in the Philippines, which lacks work and encourages outbound migration, getting a J-1 and working in the U.S. seemed like a way to save money and gain competitive advantage. “If you have experience in other countries,” L. said, “you have advanced knowledge.” The same day, L. went to a recruitment agency to see if she qualified. The program required an investment. She would have to pay a placement fee of $5,500. From there, the recruiter would connect her with a U.S.-based visa sponsor, who would help her find a job in the culinary department at an American hotel. She would also have to pay for all of the travel to and from the United States, plus the visa and incidental costs. L. couldn’t afford anything close to what it would cost. So the recruiter connected her with a local lending company, which arranged a $10,000 loan. That was the equivalent of three years’ salary. She said she was assured that she would easily make back the placement fee — and more — once she got to the United States and started earning in dollars. But once she arrived in the U.S. in June 2019, the money L. earned didn’t add up to enough. She was paid $10 an hour and usually worked around 32 hours a week. In an average month, with occasional overtime, she took home $1,200 after taxes. She paid about $320 a month for her share of the apartment rent, spent a few hundred dollars for groceries and incidentals, and the rest went toward paying off her debt and to her family back in Cebu. “Rent, debt, and I still send money home,” L. said. “It’s the reason why I wasn’t able to save money.” The educational component of her program was also disappointing. She had visions of gaining an insider’s view of a resort’s culinary operations. Her training plan said she would learn banquet menu planning, work on four different food preparation stations in the main kitchen and learn fine-dining cooking techniques. Instead, for the first five months, L. reported for work at 3 a.m. to take croissants and pies out of cardboard boxes for reheating for the breakfast buffet. “Mostly all of the products came from a box, so I wasn’t able to see how you do it from scratch,” she said. “I wanted the privilege of learning more.” She found the early-morning shift wearing. L. has anemia, and she said the lack of sleep made her sick several times. She was eventually assigned to work the dinner shift, where she plated pre-made desserts for three months. Just before she was laid off, more than nine months into her internship, she spent several weeks on the midday shift to bake cupcakes and layer cakes. The cultural events described in the training plan included invitations to staff events such as the year-end holiday party, a winter ski trip, a spring golf outing and Fourth of July festivities complete with fireworks. None of those panned out either, L. said. Instead she joined a group of J-1 workers when they piled into a rental car to see New York City and later, a whiskey distillery. “There were so many things that I expected, like cultural exchange,” she said. “We were not able to experience that. We found ways to visit different states, but we had to spend our own money.” The J-1 visa includes some illustrious programs. It was created in 1961 by the terms of the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act. Even today, it is best known as the visa used by an elite exchange program — the Fulbright scholars — that has brought top-flight education to thousands of foreigners and Americans. But there are many other programs under the same umbrella. The J-1 visa offers foreigners to visit the U.S. for cross-cultural purposes. 14 ways The phrase “cross-cultural purposes” turns out to have a very broad definition. In the 2018 fiscal year, nearly 193,000 of the more than 340,000 people holding a J-1 visa participated in cultural exchange programs that involved some kind of low-wage job, such as working as an au pair, lifeguarding or hotel or kitchen jobs. The increase in low-level J-1 jobs dates to the mid-1990s, according to Catherine Bowman, a visiting assistant research professor at Penn State who has studied the J-1 program. That’s when the State Department loosened regulations and allowed private-sector visa sponsors to take a more active role. That change coincided with increased interest in travel to the U.S. from people in Eastern Europe and Asia. As demand for the visa increased from both U.S. employers and foreign visitors, new J-1 categories were added and the number of visas issued each year increased. Unlike the Department of Labor, which oversees various guest-worker programs, the Department of State does not require employers of J-1 visitors to pay for worker housing or travel. The placement fee, which is central to maintaining the J-1 as a self-funding program, is also forbidden in guest-worker programs overseen by the Labor Department. The Department of State also does not require employers who take on J-1 workers to conduct a market analysis to show that U.S. workers are unavailable for the positions they are seeking to fill. Nor does the agency require employers to pay J-1 workers the prevailing wage. These provisions have put it in the crosshairs of some policymakers who worry that the J-1 program takes jobs away from American workers. Donald Trump, for example, vowed to during the 2016 presidential campaign and then it early in his presidency with the Buy American and Hire American executive order, but he has not done either. eliminate the program considered limiting In the wake of the economic fallout from the pandemic, J-1 visas has come up again. (Trump Tower in Chicago also at eateries and at the reception desk prior to Trump’s election.) the notion of restricting reportedly used J-1 workers Even without a global pandemic, J-1 visitors can have a hard time finding help, said Daniel Costa of the Economic Policy Institute and co-author of a on a J-1 summer work-and-travel program for college students. 2019 report Like L., other J-1 student workers have reported that their actual work assignments don’t match what is promised in their official training plans. Sometimes they are assigned to unskilled jobs — like the kitchen work L. was doing — that is expressly by the State Department. prohibited The State Department to ensure that the J-1 program regulations are followed by employers and recruiting agencies. relies on visa sponsors Bowman, the visiting professor at Penn State, said that many sponsors rely on automated surveys to monitor participants’ experiences with the J-1 program. “It’s a recipe for neglect in the cases where the cultural sponsor doesn’t have a really high ethic when it comes to what they see as their obligations to the participants,” she said. “And it’s a bad formula for a crisis like this one.” Costa said J-1 recipients often feel ignored by the sponsors, which are neither incentivized to disrupt their business relationships with U.S. host employers nor empowered by the federal government to resolve workplace concerns. “This whole structure that is set up leaves workers completely unprotected,” said Costa, who authored one of the first on the use of the J-1 as a work program. reports in 2011 The State Department spokesperson said the agency “monitors sponsors’ programs for adherence to federal regulations, and we take very seriously any report made to us concerning the health, safety or welfare of exchange participants. We expect sponsors to manage their designated programs in a manner detailed in the federal regulations and by sound business and ethical practices.” Ilir Zherka of the Alliance for International Exchange, which promotes and lobbies for cultural exchange programs like the J-1, said that visa sponsors are concerned about the well-being of J-1 participants and that shows that the vast majority have a positive experience. research commissioned by the organization “That’s why the programs are popular and the State Department enables them, and why there is bipartisan support,” he said. But as early as 2000, the found that the agency’s “lax monitoring has created an atmosphere in which program regulations can easily be ignored and/or abused.” A 2005 report by the raised similar concerns. State Department’s inspector general Government Accountability Office Accounts of labor violations in the J-1 program began surfacing widely a decade ago. First came a 2010 exposé about participants in the J-1 summer-work-travel program who were forced to work as strippers; others earned less than $1 an hour. Associated Press Some were made to live in overcrowded apartments and eat on the floor. Then there were a series of highly publicized walkouts by hundreds of J-1 summer workers at a , and more than a dozen J-1 students at a , organized by the National Guestworker Alliance. Hershey’s factory in Palmyra, Pennsylvania McDonald’s franchise in nearby Harrisburg The State Department has since begun requiring sponsors in some programs to vet employers — though it continues to primarily rely on sponsors for quality control — and the agency prohibits work in “positions that could bring notoriety or disrepute to the Exchange Visitor Program.” The department also does a small number of . (It declined to provide statistics related to enforcement-related reviews.) on-site and compliance reviews The extent of the exploitation of J-1 students is unknown because some may feel unable to come forward, said Robyn Magalit Rodriguez, a professor of Asian American studies at the University of California, Davis. “You stay compliant between the threat of losing one’s status and also the fact that for many J-1s, they have paid exorbitant fees to recruitment agents,” Rodriguez said. “When J-1s try to articulate concerns, they have many demands because there are so many actors involved — visa sponsors, then recruitment agencies, then the two governments that helped create the conditions for migration. Who is going to take responsibility? At the end of the day, no one is taking responsibility. They are bearing it on their own.” Rodriguez has studied Filipino J-1 workers, which make up the who come to the U.S. on J-1 visas. largest number of college interns She said that the country’s colonial relationship with the United States, coupled with its labor export policies, has made the J-1 program a popular vehicle for Filipino migrants like L. “For many, they have no idea that this is very much a false hope,” she said. “The investment they think they are putting toward their futures is actually feeding into a highly exploitative system.” The 13 J-1 students ProPublica spoke with say they’re caught in a vise: Out of work, dependent on their sponsor for any work opportunities, running short of cash or facing logistical barriers to returning home during the pandemic. Humanitarian flights sponsored by their governments are expensive and have long waitlists. Commercial flights, when available, are too costly. Some countries’ borders have closed in the wake of the pandemic. (Many students insisted on anonymity, which made it impossible to discuss their accounts with their employers and sponsors.) But remaining in the U.S. has created financial strains. Some J-1 recipients told ProPublica they are having difficulty covering the cost of rent, utilities and groceries; others are able to draw on savings or family resources. The response from their visa sponsors has run the gamut. A group of Filipino interns in Florida said that a representative of their visa sponsor drives an hour to check in on them each week. The Alliance for International Exchange said it had been for J-1 students, and sponsors have chartered planes, provided travel reimbursements and helped J-1 participants find temporary housing. coordinating donations and repatriation efforts Most of the J-1 recipients contacted by ProPublica, however, said their visa sponsors had urged them via email to return home but had offered little practical or financial assistance. “Some of the sponsors are essentially trying to wash their hands of these students, saying your program is over and you should go home,” said Meredith Stewart, a senior supervising attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center. “For students who paid thousands of dollars to a sponsor for the purpose of supporting them in challenging situations like this one, I think it’s immoral.” A hospitality student from Hanoi, Vietnam said he was able to work in an Arizona resort only a month before he was laid off because of the pandemic. His visa sponsor sent him an email instructing him to leave the country within 30 days. He asked for a partial refund of the $4,500 placement fee so he could afford a plane ticket home. The sponsor didn’t respond, he said. “It is really unfair that when we do the interview with the sponsor, they said that if anything happens in the U.S., don’t hesitate to contact us,” he said. In this instance, it all worked out: The hotel re-opened in late May and gave him his job back. L. said she has also received frequent emails from her visa sponsor (which she shared with ProPublica) with recommendations for flights home. She has written to them to ask what she should do if she doesn’t have funds to buy the ticket. She said she has not received a response. J-1 workers have turned to GoFundMe and to make pleas for assistance. Community organizations like the and have gathered food donations and helped interns negotiate with landlords on reduced or delayed rent payments. Facebook National Alliance for Filipino Concerns North American Association of Indian Students The J-1 participants contacted by ProPublica said they paid between $3,000 and $6,600 each in placement fees. For some, it’s a major reason they’re unable to quickly return home — and it creates a seemingly impossible calculus as they sort out when and whether to cut their losses. Another intern from Vietnam arrived in January with $10,000 in debt to start an internship at a hotel in Missouri. He has a wife and two young children in Ho Chi Minh City, and he planned to send them as much of his earnings as he could. But after a month on the job, he was laid off. The hotel provided him and other workers with food for a couple of weeks, he said, but now he’s on his own. He has quietly sought help from a few friends in the U.S. and Vietnam, but he hasn’t told his family about his predicament. “They cannot help me, but they feel worried about me, so I don’t want to tell them,” the intern said. “It doesn’t help. I have to resolve it for myself.” He doesn’t have money for a plane ticket, the intern said, but he also can’t think about going home because of his debts. So he scraped bus fare together and went to live with friends in Philadelphia for a while. He checks in regularly with the hotel to see if they will give him his job back. “I decided to stay here and wait for the sun to shine tomorrow,” he said. Other J-1s have also fended for themselves, in some instances managing to make it back home. L. finds herself in a similar situation. She had planned to start putting money aside for her return trip in the final months of her program but then she was laid off. Instead, she’s stuck in Virginia with no income, fretting about her compounding debt. L’s landlord has taken pity on her and her roommates and has cut the rent in half. She finds herself vacillating between finding a way home — maybe by borrowing from her brother, who has his own family to support and is cash-strapped — to sticking things out in Virginia until her visa expires at the end of July. There’s always a chance, however slight, that she can get a new job to earn a few more dollars. “I’m torn between the two,” she said. “I want to go home. But if I go back, how am I going to pay?” Photo by on Kilyan Sockalingum Unsplash

Trapped Under a Rubble of Debt and Stuck in a Foreign Country

ঋণের ধ্বংসস্তূপের নিচে আটকা পড়ে বিদেশের মাটিতে আটকা পড়ে

Gefangen unter einem Schutt aus Schulden und festsitzend in einem fremden Land

Atrapado bajo los escombros de la deuda y atrapado en un país extranjero

Pris au piège sous les décombres de la dette et coincé dans un pays étranger

क़र्ज़ के मलबे में फँसा और एक विदेशी देश में फँसा

瓦礫の借金に閉じ込められ、異国で立ち往生

빚더미에 갇혀 외국에 갇히다

Preso sob os escombros da dívida e preso em um país estrangeiro

Borç Enkazı Altında ve Yabancı Bir Ülkede Mahsur Kaldık

Bị mắc kẹt dưới đống nợ nần và mắc kẹt ở nước ngoài

被困在债务的废墟下，困在异国他乡

AI is approaching the next level of maturity, coming out of the hype cycle, says Gartner. Its adoption is expanding across industries beyond automation to building new-generation intelligent products and services for business growth. Around 90% of companies in the US and UK view artificial intelligence as a priority, with AI projects either in planning or production. However, half of them acknowledge that they lack the skill to make the most of AI advances. This is where experienced AI consulting firms come in to help. The market of AI consulting is vast, ranging from tech giants like IBM and Accenture to Big 4 firms and smaller-scale innovators. Here, we’ve compiled a list of the top 10 AI consulting firms that have earned a reputation for disruptive innovations. These experts run product discovery and deliver proofs of concept (PoC) and MVPs. This way, they help organizations bring pioneering products and services to the market and build proprietary AI systems for transforming operations. Let’s explore these top AI consulting companies — they are worth their salt. In this blog, you will find an overview of each of them and useful tips on picking the right partner for your AI project. Our list of the top 10 AI consulting firms for 2023 1. ITRex is a full-cycle AI and big data solutions provider with teams in Poland, the US, and Mexico and a dedicated R&D lab where they design new AI concepts and build prototypes. They are tech savvy in all AI-related fields (ML, deep learning, NLP, and computer vision), delivering AI projects end to end, from preparing data for algorithms to rolling out systems to thousands of users. ITRex Having adopted a start-small-and-scale-up approach, ITRex helps Fortune 500 companies and startups launch breakthrough AI products, apart from automating operations, boosting customer experiences, and supporting smart decision-making. They’ve delivered quite a number of impressive AI projects, from an AI-powered big data platform for the world’s biggest retailer to a fitness mirror with a personal coach experience, an ML-based clinical decision support system for cancer patients, a SaaS cybersecurity solution using face recognition, and many others. Walmart, 21st Century Fox, and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. are just some of their big-name clients. Rates: $50 – $99/hr Size: 300+ Founded: 2009 Headquarters: Aliso Viejo, California 2. Deeper Insights The UK-headquartered is fully focused on providing AI consulting and development services, with its expertise spanning from AI exploration to ML engineering, NLP, and computer vision. As they say on their website, they solve their clients’ “impossible problems,” helping them achieve the desired business results. Deeper Insights The company develops custom AI algorithms and ML models using either their clients’ data sets or data collected via their proprietary ML web scraper – the Skim Engine™. They have delivered many innovative AI projects for big-ticket and smaller clients, including an automated insights app for sales teams at Deloitte, a custom media monitoring platform for the global real estate services company Jll, and bespoke computer vision algorithms integrated with deep learning to recognize body parts in images in robotic surgeries. Rates: $50-$99/hr Size: 10-49 Year: 2014 Headquarters: London, UK 3. InData Labs also specializes in AI consulting and implementation services. As most top AI consulting firms on our list, they offer not only advice but also AI R&D, PoCs, MVPs, and development of AI web/mobile apps, empowering clients with data science and AI technology. InData Labs The company helps clients leverage predictive analytics, NLP, computer vision, and intelligent automation to get meaningful insights from data, understand audiences, forecast demand, reduce risks, and eliminate cost overruns. Examples of their AI-powered solutions include a computer vision system for pose estimation in fitness, face recognition for a surveillance system, image analysis for ticket processing software, and many more. They’ve also delivered different kinds of predictive analytics systems for logistics, eCommerce, sports, entertainment, and healthcare, along with NLP tools for simultaneous interpreting, remote education, and sentiment analysis. Rates: $50-$99/hr Size: 80+ Year: 2014 Headquarters: Nicosia, Cyprus 4. Cambridge Consultants With over 20,000 sqm of R&F facilities and a 900-strong team, helps organizations develop AI-based products that “will transform how we live and the world around us.” Cambridge Consultants Being part of the French-based tech consultancy Capgemini, Cambridge Consultants is a big and established player on our top AI consulting firms list, operating since 1960. Cambridge Consultants is honored for AI breakthroughs in many fields across industries. Projects in their portfolio range from a drone delivery service to military robots using AI-based navigation and reinforcement learning, a proprietary crop spraying technology, an AI system for an automated response to cyberattacks built for the UK Ministry of Defence, and a piano music classification tool. Rates: Undisclosed Size: 900+ Year: 1960 Headquarters: Cambridge, UK 5. ThirdEye Data Based in Silicon Valley with delivery centers in the US and India, describes itself as a one-stop shop for data science, analytics, and engineering services. Apart from providing end-to-end big data and AI solutions, the company has developed its own open-source tools for anomaly detection and predictive analytics. ThirdEye Their expertise is recognized by multiple industry awards. Microsoft, Walmart, British Petroleum, and AWS are among their Fortune 500 clients. The company has implemented over 30 end-to-end data and AI projects, such as an image quality detection system for Southern California Edison, MLOps engineering for XPERI, and predictive metrology for Glas Trosch. Rates: $25 – $49 hr Size: 51 – 200 Founded: 2010 Headquarters: San Jose, California 6. LeewayHertz Operating since 2007, specializes in many AI fields, from ML and NLP to computer vision. Among its big-name clients are Procter & Gamble, McKinsey & Company, Siemens, and Hershey’s. LeewayHertz With the mission to help organizations adopt AI at scale, LeewayHertz has entered our top AI consulting firms list for delivering innovative AI solutions across sectors. Among its landmark projects in collaboration with an Indian food tech startup, which has resulted in the creation of the world’s first tea-making robot Arya using ML, speech recognition, and NLP. They’ve also built a computer vision-enabled marketplace for AI applications and an AI-based employee time-tracking app. Rates: $50-$99 hr Size: 51-249 Founded: 2007 Headquarters: San Francisco, California 7. DataRoot Labs is a fast-growing company with teams in Ukraine and Israel. As a top AI consulting firm, it helps ambitious startups and startup accelerators turn their boldest AI ideas into reality. DataRoot Labs DataRoot Labs prides itself on driving tech innovation by running the DataRoot University, which offers data engineering and data sciences courses. They have accomplished a great number of projects around computer vision and other AI technologies for clients, delivering, for instance, a solution for defect detection in solar panels, a personal coach app, an in-store customer activity tracking app, an empathetic virtual assistant, and many others. Rates: $51-$99/hr Size: 10-49 Founded: 2016 Headquarters: Kyiv, Ukraine 8. Azati Software Creating fully functional AI solutions since 2016, shares its expertise on a consultancy basis across AI fields, from supervised/unsupervised learning to NLP, computer vision, predictive analytics, and conversational AI. Azati Software Their featured AI-based projects include a data processing tool to analyze inputs from oil and gas meters using ML and computer vision, an ML model for pharmaceutical marketing, a semantic search engine to tap into scientific datasets, and an AI-powered app that changes the interior of smartphone pictures. With an R&D center in Poland, this top AI consulting firm successfully helps clients translate their AI vision into prototypes and MVPs. Rates: $25-$49/hr Size: 150 Founded: 2001 Headquarters: Warsaw, Poland 9. Tooploox The EU-based AI consultancy has built its AI expertise by working extensively with US startups, innovators, and VCs. Tooploox With the mission to improve people’s lives through cutting-edge technology, Tooploox has extensive R&D capabilities that have widened after the company joined forces with Microscope IT, a development shop offering AI-related services for healthcare, medtech, and life sciences. Their skillsets around AI now extend to computer and 3D vision, deep learning, sensor fusion, NLP, data capture & OCR, and beyond. Tooploox has been recognized for its research at international conferences, such as NIPS and ICML. They are also known for building Virtum, an AI-powered image analysis system that helps spot cancer cells. Rates: $100-$149/hr Size: 150 Founded: 2012 Headquarters: Warsaw, Poland 10. Addepto is another fast-growing company that deserves a spot on our list of top AI consulting firms. It was established in 2017 and now helps companies grow with the power of data and AI. Addepto With expertise in all data-related fields, the Addepto team has won the trust of a few Fortune 500 companies, which they support in creating complex AI solutions. Among them are Citibank and P&G. Addepto has helped build a digital twin monitoring airport operations, an intelligent passenger and baggage tracking system, a shipping schedule and inventory management system using predictive modeling for the world’s second-largest aluminum company, and an ML-powered demand forecasting tool for postal services. Rates: $50-$99/hr Size: 10-49 Year: 2017 Location: Warsaw, Poland How to choose your AI partner - Tips from the ITRex CTO Reducing a lot of options available in the AI consulting market to just a few should make life simpler. However, you still need to choose only one of them at the end of the day. What should you consider? We’ve asked ITRex CTO Kirill Stashevsky, who has over 15 years of experience helping companies deliver innovative solutions, to share his tips. Here they are: 1. Explore the vendor’s website to make sure they indeed offer AI consulting services, not just development. [ ] This can be especially helpful for those with little or no technical background. The thing is, an experienced consulting partner might figure out a more elegant tech solution for translating your vision into a reality. This solution can be cheaper, quicker, and more efficient than the one you had in mind. The latest AI breakthroughs can be fascinating, but it is useful to make sure first before any coding begins that they are exactly what you need to build a fascinating product. A good AI consulting firm would be happy to look at your vision from different perspectives and give you free advice over the phone. Don’t hesitate and ask for it first. 2. Look through the vendor’s portfolio to check if they delivered a similar solution in the past. [ ] Companies’ portfolios with featured projects or case studies are a great source of valuable information. They let you understand which clients they served and what projects they accomplished previously. It is best to reduce your list of top AI consulting firms to companies that have a demonstrable experience with what you are trying to achieve. These guys should know your domain well so you will speak the same language with them without having to waste time explaining the basics. They are also likely to know all the potential pitfalls that might be typically encountered on a journey like yours. However, don’t be too quick to strike off a vendor of your choice that doesn’t have the exact expertise you are looking for. The firm can still be a perfect fit for your project if they specialize in AI consulting services (see the first tip). 3. Do a bit of homework to define your business objectives clearly. [ ] Instead of contacting all the 10 or 20 companies on your top AI consulting firms list to discuss your future product, prepare a one-pager describing what you are trying to build from the business point of view, and send it out. Some vendors would reply they don’t know how to help; some might figure out how they can implement your idea best, while others might offer you cost-efficient customization of a tool already in the market. This way, you will narrow down your list quicker, saving time and energy. 4. Don’t forget about social proof [ ] Check out previous reviews from clients who partnered with the company and the company’s rating. This information can be found on sites like clutch.co or goodfirms.co. Ask your acquaintances, colleagues, and people you meet at hackathons and industry conferences — they might have heard something about a firm of your choice. You can also ask the vendor for feedback from their previous clients. Wrapping it up Artificial intelligence is already profoundly impacting our daily lives while transforming the business landscape. that AI could add more than $15 trillion to global GDP by 2030, meaning that it has the potential to change the way we live completely. Capitalize on the emerging trend and put your company at the front of the line by partnering with the right AI consulting firm. PwC estimates Originally published . here

Top 10 AI Consulting Firms Today

“When you’re a kid, you don't have the boundaries we do as adults. We haven't been tainted. We haven't had enough people in our lives tell us we can't do things when we're a child.” ~ Chris Naugle How often do you allow yourself to feel completely free of responsibilities and expectations? Do you ever pretend, even for a moment, that you don't have a care in the world? I rarely do, if ever. I feel as though our propensity for freedom falls away as we age. We become more and more bogged down by the weight of the world as time goes on, and it seems that few of us ever find our way back to that carefree state. As it turns out, we'd be far better off if we could. Children are free of self-imposed limitations. They live in the moment; risk-taking is their way of life. They're not afraid to look foolish, and they don't hold back from trying new things. I recently spoke with someone who I felt retained a lot of these child-like qualities through Chris Naugle is a pro snowboarder, a serial founder, and America's number one Money Mentor – but he grew up with no money at all, and had to make ends meet. Let's hear how his story began. entrepreneurship. Hustling From Day One A far cry from the glamorous entrepreneurial dream, Chris grew up in a lower middle-class family. His dad was an alcoholic and was mostly nonexistent in his life. Thankfully, though, Chris had an incredible mother who instilled some amazing values in him from the get-go. “We didn't have money. We didn't have resources. So if I wanted things, my mom taught me to draw them. I was always an artistic kid. Whether it was a skateboard I wanted or a BMX, my mom would just say, ‘go draw it out. Show me what it looks like.’” I loved hearing these little anecdotes from Chris’s childhood; it gives us a glimpse into not only the life he’s lived but also the events that shaped his unique and admirable mindset. His entrepreneurial spirit was certainly there from day one. “My grandparents lived in a mobile home park. So I would go out there, and I would go around to the neighbors and ask if they needed weeding, or their windows cleaned. I'm like five, six years old at this point; I'd give the money to my mom, and she'd put it in this box.” What a go-getter! Can you imagine voluntarily cleaning windows at five years old? That’s some true gumption. And it didn’t stop there – Chris also told me about one of the defining moments of his childhood, which was digging his own fishpond in the backyard. “Every single day after school, I went out there with a wheelbarrow and a shovel. And I just dug, and I dug, and I dug, and I dug, and I ended up digging a pond. It started with the idea, then thinking it over, and then taking action. Digging a pond is no small task.” (Yes, Chris did end up putting actual live fish in the pond. No, they didn’t take the bait a second time around.) Chris Becomes a Snowboarding Sensation A significant part of Chris’s career and life has been spent on the slopes. He’s a professional snowboarder and has been from the age of about 18 or 19. But getting there was no walk in the park – especially with limited funds and access. “Living in Buffalo, New York is not the mecca for snowboarding. I didn't have money to buy lift tickets, but I would take that board up the street and build a jump on the hill.” Once again, Chris strikes with his entrepreneurial spirit and innovative mind. Hitting a homemade jump wasn’t quite as glamorous as going up to the ski resort – but it did the job. A few months later, he was finally able to try boarding on a real slope. “I remember my first run – I hated it. This probably would have been one of the first times I was willing to give up on something.” Luckily he didn’t, because snowboarding turned out to be Chris’s ultimate passion. “I came up with the crazy idea that I'm going to be a pro snowboarder. I'm watching the VHS tapes. I'm looking at all these photos of my heroes, and I remember thinking, ‘I want what they have. I want to do what they're doing.’” Supporting the Dream Of course, to become a professional at anything, you need money – whether it’s for traveling to competitions, buying gear, or getting by on the road. Chris needed to figure out exactly where he was going to get the funds from. His answer? Launching the Phat Clothing Company. “I started making shirts and sold them out of my backpack, and then I got my friends to start selling them out of their backpacks. One year later, we had three seamstresses, and I sold my clothing on the road.” It wasn’t long before Chris wished for his own store; one he could attend to every morning, and then lock up to hit the slopes in the afternoon. “I just had to have that. I needed that lifestyle business. And that goal I found out would take about 70,000 bucks.” With help from his mother, and using anything he owned as collateral for a loan, Chris eventually secured his first store – and suddenly, he was well on his way to supporting the professional career of his dreams. “Snowboarding was my life; it was all I thought about and all I cared about. So everything was just a means to that end. A skateboard-snowboard shop embodied my ‘why’.” What Made Chris So Successful? I didn’t have time to cover his whole origin story, and there are a few key details you should be aware of before we move forward: Chris went on to work as a financial advisor for Wall Street; he dabbled in real estate investing and took risks during the recession that led to an accumulation of some pretty serious debt. He rose from the ashes, though, and is now the proud founder of 16 companies, with his businesses being featured in Forbes, ABC, and House Hunters. Chris is currently the co-founder and CEO of FlipOut Academy™, founder of The Money School™, and Money Mentor for The Money Multiplier. You’ll notice that I chose to give his childhood stories significantly more spotlight than his later business achievements. Don’t get me wrong, the latter are incredible – you can hear all about them in the full podcast episode – but I focused on his childhood for a reason. Children, in all their wide-eyed naivety and flourishing imagination, are some of the most innovative people we’ll ever be able to observe. I have no doubt that Chris’s story brought up memories for many of you listening; moments when you invented something as a child, or solved a problem in an unconventional way. This is what I wanted to talk about in today’s newsletter – what it means to act on your ideas with all the enthusiasm of a child, and how taking that approach can help you overcome barriers like imposter syndrome. Let’s take a closer look. The Superior Psychology of Kids “As a child, we don't have limitations. We don't have barriers. Many of us let other people's failed dreams dictate where we’re going to go in life.” I know, I know. Kids are pretty silly at times. If we all decided to revert to our younger selves, the world would probably fall apart. But Chris is right about one thing – adults are far too reliant on other people’s experiences and expectations in order to feel valid. Take one look at the modern workplace and it’s easy to see how this happens. We’re so bogged down by rules, processes, and the need to meet targets that we forget why we’re doing any of it in the first place. We become scared to take risks, or even try something new lest we fail and are ridiculed by our peers. There's also a deeper psychological reason, though, and it stems from our self-concept. Life coach and counselor Michael Formica explain it like this: Each of us has a 'self-concept' based on the experiences we've had and the way we've been treated by others. This self-concept is like a set of glasses that we see the world through. If our self-concept is tainted by failed risks or negative experiences, we'll be more likely to see risks as dangerous and shy away from them. In other words, we become prisoners of our own past failures. I suppose this does make evolutionary sense – if we get burned by a hot stove, we’re unlikely to put our hand back on it. But when it comes to business, this kind of thinking can really hold us back. It also explains why kids are the total opposite when it comes to taking risks. Their self-concept has hardly even had time to appear, let alone develop negative biases. And since they don’t have the same kind of experience or expectations that adults do, they’re far more likely to take risks and try new things. The Role of our Frontal Cortex It turns out there’s also a neurological reason for this difference in thinking. Professor and researcher, Leonardo C. de Souza, has the role of our frontal cortex in creativity; it's fascinating that this area of the brain doesn't even fully develop until we reach our twenties. studied extensively This part of the brain is responsible for things like planning and decision-making, and as de Souza explains, it's also responsible for inhibiting certain behaviors. In other words, it helps us to think rationally and make sound decisions. However, this comes at a cost; when our frontal cortex is more active, we’re less likely to take risks or be creative. And guess when that part of our brain is most active? That’s right – during adulthood. Everything becomes a little more rational and a little less fun. So, Why Is This Relevant? The reason I started thinking about all of this in the first place is because I was absolutely blown away by Chris's mindset. I'm floored at how, even from such a young age, he was nurtured to find his own solutions and do things unconventionally. It was incredibly sweet to hear his affection toward his mother, who undoubtedly shaped his perspective on business (and life) by asking him to visualize his dreams and always think big. I feel like there's something inherently creative about people who grow up without money, too. “When you think about a pro snowboarder, you think they're traveling around doing all these events. I didn't have that luxury. I didn't have the money. My early years were spent learning tricks in the summer on a trampoline." Hearing about how Chris carried this resourcefulness and creativity into his business endeavors made me want to understand how he thinks, and how I can do the same. What does it take to embody the intelligence and social skills of an adult, but the fearlessness and creativity of a child? How To Channel Your Inner Child I came across something interesting whilst researching for today's newsletter: Dr. Donna Maria Romeo, an anthropological consultant with McKinney, actually runs workshops with the aim of helping business people . channel their inner child Romeo believes that by doing so, we can liberate the parts of our brain that are blocked by stress and anxiety, making us more productive, efficient, and happier employees. Here are some of the challenges her participants faced during the workshops: Owning their assumptions. Participants are challenged to identify and call out any split-second assumptions they make about themselves and others. Asking more questions. "Like anthropologists, young children don’t presume to hold prior knowledge about the world." Participants are encouraged to ask questions about everything – even the obvious. Immersion and observation. To channel their inner child, participants are asked to immerse themselves in an environment, taking in as much information as possible without judging it. Noticing anything and everything. According to Romeo, the most creative, childamonlike thinkers are the ones who can see possibility and opportunity in everything. While some of these tasks may seem daunting, or even impossible, at first glance – they actually make a lot of sense. I even remember exhibiting some of these behaviors as a child; it's funny how we're natural-born innovators without even realizing it. Mistakes Make You A Better Entrepreneur One of the best things about children is that they're not afraid to make mistakes. And making mistakes is actually one of the most important aspects of being an entrepreneur. Chris's biggest mistake in his early career was taking out too many loans on real estate, and he paid an enormous price for it – debilitating debt, the temporary loss of his relationship, and having to start over almost from scratch. But making mistakes is a common theme among some of the most successful entrepreneurs. Milton Hershey launched two failed candy shops before his third one took off. Elon Musk lost all of his money from the SpaceX rocket explosions. James Dyson created 5,127 different (failed) vacuum prototypes before he finally got it right. The key is not in the mistakes themselves, but in the effect, those mistakes have on our psyche. It's like building your immunity to poison; the more you're exposed to failure, the less it feels like an unwanted substance, and the more it becomes a part of your journey. In fact, some people believe that making mistakes is actually essential to becoming a successful entrepreneur. If you never fail, it means you're not taking enough risks – and without risk, there's no room for growth. Next Steps With all of this in mind, I've got some ideas on how I'd go about thinking more like a child. Hey, we've all been there before – it's just a matter of calling back on those memories and re-learning how to see the world through childlike eyes. 1. Embrace absurdity. As Chris explained to me, the very best and most successful people are those who go out of their way to create something new. They're not conforming to norms or expectations; they're doing their own thing and making a name for themselves. “If you look at 20-year-olds, and you ask them all, ‘Are you going to be successful at the age of 60?’ Every one of them 100 percent will say yes. Take those same 20-year-olds, but now they're 60 years old; statistics will prove that only one of them is wealthy, and only five of them would be considered financially successful.” Insane, right? “The difference between success and failure comes down to one thing. Five of them created something; they went out there, and they created, and they shut everything else out. The others gave into other people's failed realities. They conformed.” 2. Focus on your 'why'. As a kid, your day-to-day decisions are solely based on your wants and needs – not on the expectations of others. And while you might not be able to get away with that as an adult, you can still use your 'why' as a compass to guide your actions. Your 'why' is the motivating factor behind everything you do; it's what drives you to get out of bed in the morning and face the day. And when you're able to connect with that 'why', it becomes a lot easier to make decisions (even if they're not the ones everyone else wants you to make.) Chris's 'why', for instance, was his snowboarding career. He let that be his north star. “I didn't care about being an entrepreneur. I didn't even know what that was. All I wanted was enough money to be able to travel..." Thirty-something years later, he's been all over the world as a professional snowboarder. So something tells me he made the right decision. 3. Start with a clean slate. A frustrating part of being in business is that we fall into a set of workplace customs. Having problems with your client relationships? There's a bigger and better CRM software out there that can help you. Hiring process taking too long? Let's just outsource it to a staffing agency. We get used to certain jargon, too. When employee performance is going south, it's because they're not being 'coachable.' They're going through 'growth pains.' They need more 'bandwidth', we say, and then proceed to offer half-hearted feedback that does nothing to help the situation. In order to start thinking like a child, we need to forget all of that nonsense and start from scratch. If something's not working, don't just accept it – try to find a different way of doing things. And I mean completely different. Something I like to do when I'm feeling analysis paralysis is to shut out all external ideas for a whole week. That means no podcasts, no books, no articles, no conversations with people in my industry. I just sit down and try to come up with my own solutions to the problem at hand. And more often than not, I find that a lot of the answers I'm looking for are right in front of me. Wrap-Up Writing this newsletter was more challenging than I expected it to be, and maybe that's reflective of how strange it feels to think like a child. It takes real effort to shed your biases and preconceived notions, especially when you've spent your whole life building them up. But it's worth it. Because when you're able to think like a child, the world becomes a lot more interesting – and a lot less scary. And, if you're anything like Chris, it becomes a world of opportunity rather than scarcity. If you're as intrigued by Chris's story as I was, I highly recommend going back to listen to his full interview on the Success Story Podcast. There are so many nuggets of wisdom in there; I guarantee you'll come away with a new perspective on life, money, and business. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next week! Also published here.

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