How Coca-Cola Used Vending Machines To Try To Unite The People Of India And Pakistan
Relations between India and Pakistan are marked by many things—and happiness is generally not one of them. But Coca-Cola recently brought people from both nations together—or at least brought citizens of both countries face to face—over vending machines.
No ordinary vending machines, the Small World Machines, created by Coke and Leo Burnett, were equipped with full-length webcams that allowed participants to see each other and interact in real time. They were placed in malls—one in Lahore, Pakistan, the other in New Dehli, India—in March.
As part of its larger mission to associate its product with happiness
“Coke has always been a brand that’s about positivity and optimism, and we’re always talking about how we can provoke just a little bit more happiness in the world, and increasingly we’ve tried to create experiences to actually bring people together in intimate moments of connectivity,” Jantos Tulloch says.
“Telling this story through the lens of India and Pakistan really came from our team on the ground there who knows better than anyone that the people really want more positive connection and more positive communication between them.”
“Every morning I wake up and I tell myself I’m gonna do the very best job that I can today.” —CTO of Shopbevel Nikki Stevens shared her personal morning pep-talk with us at a recent Girls In Tech meetup.
A new app uses the power of your own positive thinking to create a placebo effect—which works even if you know it’s happening.
You start by setting a goal: say, more joy or love in your life. Then, you choose someone to give you the placebo (maybe a friend or family member), what you want it to be (a pill, say), and where you want to take it (maybe a forest where you go running with a friend). You then “take” the placebo whenever you want to, following a pre-set ritual built into the app.
The point is to replicate what’s important about the placebo effect, which isn’t the pill itself, but the experience.
“We would like to look at them and understand how we could introduce ads, in a very light ad load, where the impact is really created, because the ads really fit the users’ expectations and follow the form and function of the dashboard.”
Bloomberg’s head of tech Catherine Hui handed out tons of great career tips at a recentGirls in Tech/Facebook meetup. Here, some of the best:
On mistakes:
“Acknowledge your mistakes and you’ll be fine.”
“It’s not about making a mistake - it’s about how you handle it.”
“The sky is going to fall at some point. The key is how you handle the post-mortem.”
On mentorship:
“Find someone who has your best interest in mind - that’s a true mentor.”
Don’t be shy. People want to help you.
Meet with your mentors/members of your network regularly.
Choose your mentor wisely.
Have at least one or two awesome geeks in your network of mentors.
On who she hires:
What blogs do they follow? What is their favorite news source? Does this person have a natural curiosity for what’s happening?
Can this person learn fast?
People don’t necessarily need to have a tech background- but they should have communication skills, be a team player, and most importantly they should have common sense/strong problem solving skills.
And finally, these gems:
“We [women] need to learn how to ask for things … Men never wait to ask.”
“I didn’t become who I am by accident. I struggled through the whole journey.”
Read more about the event here!Also, here are some tips for finding (and keeping) great mentors.
The highlight of Google’s year is the I/O developers conference it hosts each May. On Wednesday, 6,000 people converged on San Francisco’s Moscone Center and more than one million tuned in to the YouTube livestream of the conference keynote to hear about the newest Google products and services. And during the three-and-a-half-hour opening keynote, Google delivered. And delivered.
The sheer number of new product features was staggering—engineering director Vic Gundotra unveiled 41 new features for Google Plus alone—but only a few made the cut for being truly innovative.
“We always seem to view our role models as if they’ve made perfect choices every step of the way. If only that were really true!”
Facebook’s NYC headquarters was packed to the brim Tuesday night with career-minded techies looking to gain insight from a panel of some of the tech industry’s leading ladies. The chat was organized by Girls in Tech, a global organization “focused on the engagement, education and empowerment of powerful, influential women in technology and entrepreneurship,” and was moderated by Kickstarter’s Bethany Sumner.
The conversation originally focused on career mistakes, but veered to cover everything from mentorship to sexism in the workplace, and left guests with a heap of actionable tips.
“I didn’t become who I am by accident. I struggled through the whole journey.” -Catherine Hui (Bloomberg)
“Don’t say ‘no’ out of fear. Say ‘yes’ to yourself. Know that you are worth it and that you can do it.” -Amanda J. Stent (AT&T)
“If you’re playing World of Warcraft 25 hours a week, you’re probably hiding from something in your life.” -Goranka Bjedov (Facebook)
“Make mistakes. Just don’t make the same mistake five times.” -Bjedov
“Until I fail empirically, I am good enough to do the job.” -Nikki Stevens (formerly Refinery29)
What’s the biggest career mistake you’ve ever made, and how did you overcome it? Looking back, what piece of advice would you give your younger self? Tell us on Twitter with #FCadvice.
The JF-Kit House by the Spanish design firm Elii is an experiment in “domestic fitness,” rendering “the image of a possible future where citizens produce part of their domestic energy requirements with their own physical activities.” Each room features a fancifully named exercise station that would, theoretically, help create energy to power the home, including an “arm workout bureau,” a “spinning kitchen,” and a “triceps greenhouse.” A video shows the home’s imagined inhabitant lifting weights, cycling, and doing calisthenics as part of his house’s everyday upkeep and daily chores like cooking.
What do a startup king, a social network innovator, a hip hop prince, perhaps the best actor on television, and two absolutely hilarious dudes have in common? They’re all among the Most Creative People—and we can learn quite a bit from the way they work.
After Apple booted Google Maps from iOS last year, Daniel Graf led the development of a beautiful, refreshed mapping experience that shot to number one in the iTunes store and kicked Apple’s ass on its own turf. Here’s how Graf made it happen—in his own words:
“We have a very successful Android version of Google Maps, so the easiest thing to do was to say, this is super-successful, users love it, so why don’t we just port it over to iOS? But I wanted to challenge the team. While the Android version is a great product, you can also tell it’s been around for a while. You have to access everything via menus—it’s not really best-use-case driven anymore. I said, let’s take a step back—what if we could start from scratch and forget anything we’ve ever done? We have the foundation—the Google data, the mapping data, the local business data, the imagery, the navigation algorithms—it’s a dream to start with.”
“I focus best on Friday when it is sunny out.” “Looks like classical music enhances my focus.”
Ever wondered just how focused (or not) you really are during the day? Melon could be your answer. This new headband measures your focus and then sends the results to your smartphone. The goal is to help you learn which environments and activities improve your focus. More info, and a demo video.
“I’ve data mined myself. I’ve violated my own privacy. Now I am selling it all.”
Data mining is big business—but what if Internet users could monetize their personal data on their own? New York University grad student Frederico Zannier stalked his own online activity for two months, and is now selling the data.
