An article in Business 2.0 tackles this topic by posing this question to '50 of the brightest minds in business'..

 

It's an interesting read - and there are the ones I tend to agree with strongly:

 

1. Succeed with simplicity - Sergey Brin, Google co-founder

2. Turn a setback in to a comeback - Carly Fiorina, former HP CEO

3. Seek big rewards in small ideas - Muhammad Yunus, 2006 Noble Peace Prize winner

4. Obsess about solutions, not problems - Donald Trump, Trump Org chairman

5. Turn your biggest weakness in to your greatest asset - Reed Hastings, Netflix co-founder

6. Share the credit - Nancy Pelosi, Democratic leader

7. Let them see you sweat - Pamela Thomas-Graham, Group President Liz Clairborne

8. Mind the mainstream - Brad Garglinghouse, SVP Yahoo

9. Be willing to cross the aisle - Malcolm Gladwell, tipping point author

10. Practice "constructive dissatisfaction" - Mike Eskew, Chairman and CEO UPS

11. Don't be a bridge burner - Debra Lee, Chairmand and CEO BET Networks

12. Reinvent yourself, not just the company - Andrea Jung, Chairman and CEO Avon

13. Be an industry disruptor - March Benioff, Chairman and CEO salesforce.com

14. Keep unlearning to stay smart - Gary Hamel, management consultant

15. Leverage your personal network - Karen Francis, Chairman and CEO Publicic & Hal Riney

Well I've been tagged by Dare - so here it goes:

 

1. I'm really good at memorizing long numbers... for example, I know my all my credit card and bank card numbers by heart, as well as my parents and anyone else's if I look at it more than once :) whenever I see numbers I find some sort of a relationship - I've done this since I was a little kid.

 

2. I was the only student in first grade not to get straight A's in my class - my mom and aunt were actually worried that I was a bit retarded :) the reality was that the teacher didn't like me and played favoritism, so I would go out of my way to annoy her. from 2nd grade till I graduated I was at the top of my classes. I placed #3 in all of Tehran's coveted provincial exams (think amongst thousands of students) I used to study so much,all of my text books were neatly highlighted with notes. I never owned a text book that I hadn't read every single page of. I also participated in all sorts of math, writing and science contests.

 

3. I moved to Vancouver when I was 14 (during which I skipped grade 9) and I went to a private all girls catholic school in Wimbledon, London during grade 6.

 

4. I started writing when I was 4 or 5 years old, because I was jealous of my brother going to school and writing homework :)  I was actually really good at writing upside down because of the direction I was peaking at my brother's books. I was also really eager to sing (I wasn't very good at it, my voice was quite hoarse for a 3 year old ), again because I was jealous of my brother :) I think I was around 3 when I wrote my own little song and I asked my mom to tape record it, since she was recording my brother's :) What's really funny - I still remember the song!

 

5. My mom shaved my head when I was 2 or 3 years old - because my hair used to grow straight like an afro, no joke! :) she heard that shaving it would help, and sure enough it did. By the time I was 4, I had silky smooth hair :)

 

ok - Heather, Omar, Bubba, Steve and Mike I'm interested in reading your top 5 in case you see this.

 

architecture in the sense of buildings not computers - though I'm passionate about both, is one of my main interests... Dubai is quickly becoming the epicenter of such art with burj al arab, the world and the palm.

 

what's next? burj dubai - likely to be the world's tallest building with 160+ floors!

- the interior will be decorated by Giorgio Armani
- the armani hotel will occupy the first 37 floors
- floors 45-108 will have 700 priavte apartment, which sold out within 8 hours!!!
- Corporate offices and suites will fill most of the remaining floors
- 123rd floor will hold the lobby
- an outdoor zero-entry swimming pool will be located on the 78th floor
- estimated opening - February 2009

 

hmm - while I'd LOVE to own a unit on the 108th floor :) i'll be happy with staying at the armani hotel and swimming on the 78th floor while enjoying the phenomenal view out to the Persian Gulf.

 

Just watched Rounders - yeah somehow I had missed this classic. Great movie, and Matt Damon, my favorite actor, is fantabulous as usual.

 

A few memorable quotes (requires some knowledge of cards and poker):

 

It was 7 pm on Thursday when I turned the last corner towards my house and was greeted by darkness in my neighbourhood. It was raining so hard. I had fallen down on the way to my car when leaving work, I accidentally stepped on a deep puddle that wasn't visible given how hard it was raining. It was a feeling of deja-vu for a minute, I remembered how I used to fall when I was younger and was constantly active and had a bruised knee often especially during summer. Sure enough my knee got quite bruised and started bleeding this time too.

 

I have been so consumed with work lately, the storm was actually a blessing. A sign for me to just focus on something else. I got home, took a nap. When I woke up it was around 11 pm and it was starting to get windy, really windy. I had heard earlier the winds would be as high 65 MPH. It was too loud for me to go to sleep, so I lit up a few candles by my bed and started reading. I love reading and I had just recieved my latest order of 6 books from Overstock. I decided on reading 'Memoirs of Geisha' although I had already seen the movie, my friend heather highly recommended it saying the movie while great doesn't do the book justice. I was completely immersed in the book from the first page, getting distracted by the storm every once in a while. The storm was getting stronger and now I could feel my place move, and there was another long moment of deja-vu. I remembered the earthquakes I had witnessed when I was younger in Iran and even worst the period of the Iran-Iraq war and the bombings. It took me a good 30 minutes to distract myself and instead think of the movement as it if I was a baby being rocked and become immersed in my book again. By 4:30 am, my lack of sleep overcame my urge to babysit the storm and I fell asleep.

 

Friday morning, 9 am and still no power. Again, the first thing on my mind was work and my top 20 things to address and the solutions I had in mind from some and my meetings... Being completely disconnected from the world except for my cellphone, I called Mike to ask if he could send a mail on behalf to the team saying I couldn't come in when he mentioned the campus was closed. I was relieved to hear that.

 

I spent the rest of the day reading my book by my gas fireplace and taking a nap every now and then. It's now 5 am Saturday, the power came back on around 2:30 am... the storm was a blessing in disguise that forced me to take a break and reminded me of the big picture instead of the little cracked piece of the mosaic I've been fixated on recently.

For those of you that read my blog - you know that I love cute overload. This is just sooo adorable :)

 

Before:

A potent learning tool created expressly for the world's poorest children living in its most remote environments.  Nicholas Negroponte's $100 laptop project is an ambitious one and one that I have great interest and admiration for. As we obsess over the next flashy gadget millions struggle with basics such as electicity that we take for granted.

 

The device, now referred to as XO is quickly evolving to something practical and sleek. It comes with a fist-sized generator when you pull a cord to make juice - like starting an old lawn mower.

"The XO comes with tiny stereo speakers and three USB slots. It can be used as a conventional laptop or - with the screen twisted around - as a booklike tablet. The screen itself is a feat of energy-conserving innovation. As necessary, it can be read like paper with entirely reflected light or be illuminated completely from within. The user experience is also coolly state-of-the-art."  (link)

So who's on board? Libya, the Palenstinian kids in the West Bank, Argentina, Brazil and Nigeria.

 

This program has stirred quite a debate:

Steve Jobs:  "Nicholas, it looks like a science project"

Intel CEO Craig Barrett wrote to Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo criticizing the project.

Bill Gates has questioned whether the concept is "just taking what we do in the rich world" and assuming that that is something good for the developing world, too.
Larry Cuban, a Stanford university professor : "if part of their rationale is that it will revolutionize education in various countries, I don't think it will happen, and they are naive and innocent about the reality of formal schooling."

 

And some folks are becoming believers:

"Several years ago, I thought it was an illusion or a utopian idea," said Juan Jose Daboub, managing director of the World Bank and an independent economic-development expert. "But this is now real and encouraging."

 

 

This is hilarious... LOVE IT

 

http://www.on10.net/Blogs/laura/im-bringing-xbox-back/ enjoy :)