admincathy

I was interviewed for Marketplace Money, in a segment that will air this weekend. We talked about all the new ways that new kinds of skills can and should be defined, assessed, and part of digital portfolios since so much of what the 21st century workplace demands is learned outside of school not inside. We also talked about how specious and useless letters of recommendation are becoming (because of fear of libel) and that resumes have become (padding!) and how peer systems, such as those used by Top Coder or Stack Exchange, offer lots more depth, specificity, complexity, detail, nuance . . . I hope you’ll listen to the interview and let me know what you think!

Why do pundits miss so much of what online connection also reveals and makes possible about all the ways we live in this “bazaar” we call life together? I thought about this during an afternoon of handsewing (something I’ve never done before) with Natalie Chanin of @AlabamaChanin. The calm we shared as, so humbly and beautifully, was unforgettable. We took two pieces of cloth, stitched around the stencils, then cut through to reveal the lovely hidden color below: reverse applique. What a metaphor!

Harvard Business Review asked me to videotape a post on how to make teams work more effectively, how to privilege the outlier voice, and how to work past extreme cultural, national, gender, racial, sexual, generational, religious, and other differences more and more common in our worlds today of work and education.