I had the pleasure of attending, an Academi of Life event titled “Conversation with Elizabeth Gilbert”.  I had discovered Elizabeth Gilbert, by watching her TED conference talk, where she addresses a number of topics related to being creative – including fears and anxieties about “the work you were put on this Earth to do.”  It is a “must watch”, and has become one of my favorite TED talks.

Hearing Elizabeth live was amazing and inspiring.  As a presenter, she is outstanding! She is personable, connects with the audience, tells an amazing story, and is just fun to listen to.  To lean more about the presentation aspects of the talk, read John Zimmer’s speech critique.

The Effects of Multitasking

Elizabeth’s message on “reclaiming & reconnecting with ourselves” inspired me the most.

Practically everything we do is sending energy outward. We are connected to the world 24×7 and are expected to read, think, and respond immediately. When we are not in front of our computers, we are on our mobile devices…we are either working or texting, twittering, facebooking, checking in with our friends and followers and we are constantly interrupted and we are multitasking and multitaskers are “lousy at everything that’s necessary for multitasking”. The studies show this and multitasking causes major stress, inhibits our creative ability, reduces our ability to problem solve, and it makes us slower thinker. It drains us and depersonalizes us.

We need to reclaim our personal and professional boundaries, reduce our stress levels, stay more focused on the task at hand and the goals ahead and we need to reconnect with ourselves to ensure that we are more balanced and more effective and efficient. Below are 5 tips that will allow you to reconnect with yourself and reclaim your life.

Elizabeth’s 5 Tips for Reconnecting with Yourself

1. Say No
   “I’ll say no to things that I used to instinctively say yes to, invitations that are wonderful, but I know will actually make me more tired the next day, more stressed”, says Elizabeth Gilbert.

   According to William Ury, director of the Global Negotiation Project at Harvard University, “No may be the most powerful word in the language, but it’s also potentially the most destructive, which is why it’s hard to say” and almost everyone has trouble saying No.  If you’re not sure how to get started, read the 7 simple ways to say “No”.

2. Schedule “Quiet” time
   Whether it is ten minutes or an hour, make time where you spend with yourself, without TV, phone, computer, or any other distraction.  Making this “Quiet” time a part of your schedule will ensure that you will make time for it.Elizabeth takes long walks.  You can meditate, go for a walk, play with your dog, or anything else that brings you to a peaceful moment that is purely yours.

   In that silence and stillness, I met this other voice that I never had before, which is this older part of me—this calm, sedate, affectionate, forgiving, wise soul that watches my comings and goings and my spastic fears and desires and anger, and all the stuff that pulls on me and intercepts me before I get dragged too far away from myself
   ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

3. Find a “State of Wonder”
   This is a simple act of finding and believing that something around you is beautiful.  Whether it is a painting, a building, or a just a tree, this exercise forces us to see and appreciate beauty that is all around us, no matter what is happening in our own lives, and will help us lift us spiritually.

   On the “State of Wonder”, Elizabeth says “it’s our responsibility to find it from time to time”.

4. Don’t rush to make decisions
   When making decisions about your life, Gilbert advises everyone to just slow down.  She says:

   I think we always rush into decisions because we don’t want to hold up the train of progress but it’s okay to say actually I don’t know and I need some time to figure it out and just ask the world for a little bit more space and a little bit more time and that’s not always easy to do. But you risk injuring yourself as you hurtle along when things are not going right instead of stopping the momentum.

5. Be Present
   Elizabeth embodies “being present” and it is one of the hardest tasks for me and most people and requires a lot of practice.  For some great being present tips, read this simple guide to being present for the Overworked and Overwhelmed.

My takeaway from the evening: only if we can be connected enough with ourselves, can we be more productive, creative, and happy.

Thank you to the Academi of Life & Elizabeth Gilbert for reminding me to reconnect with myself.  Join the the Academi of Life on May 11th, for an evening in conversation & music with Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor.

What do you do to reconnect with yourself?

As a devoted fan of computers, computer science, robots, and basically everything about technology, I pretty much believe science can do anything. We may not have flying cars or television beamed right into your head—yet—but technology and innovation can eventually, somehow, solve everything.

Technology failed Japan this week, however. Its state-of-the art technology and infrastructure, though undoubtedly life-saving, wasn’t enough to prevent the death toll from climbing to an expected 10,000 people.

Japan has some of the most sophisticated earthquake and tsunami warning systems—and some of the strictest building codes—in the world. Spurred to action after the 1995 Kobe earthquake that killed over 6,000 people, the Japanese government invested billions of dollars in technology and infrastructure to protect against future—and assured, in Japan—quakes.

Japan’s warning systems and technologies worked as intended and were effective during this disaster, but technology just wasn’t enough. The investments they made have been fairly comprehensive, though, including the following disaster responses:

• Earthquake warnings. Earthquakes don’t give a lot of warning, of course. But the earthquake warning system in Japan—which notifies officials and the public via phone messaging as well as traditional media—can give a few seconds’ notice before a quake hits. Not much, but enough to enable transit workers to shut down trains and some people to take cover.
• Tsunami warnings. The billion-dollar tsunami warning system uses a network of over a thousand GPS-based sensors and can give people several minutes to evacuate before waves start hitting.
• Infrastructure. Japan’s strict building codes, long among the most stringent in the world, meant that the buildings sway instead of crumble during the quake.  Seawalls, derided as eyesores by some, protect the coast from Tsunami waves.
• The Internet. It’s still up and running in Japan. Access to information (and to loved ones) is paramount during a disaster, and Japan’s undersea cables have remained mostly intact so far, allowing much-needed communication and response.

Technology can do a lot for us. It saved lives in Japan, and in the future it will surely save more. But it’s just not enough. Someday, advanced technologies will be more effective in disasters like this one, but in the meantime all we can do is try to help.

Big Data is changing our world. I learned a lot about the subject after attending the O’Reilly Strata  Making Data Work Conference, held February 1-3 in Santa Clara, California. I was able to attend with an all-access pass, courtesy of a Webgrrls giveaway.

The event, held over the course of three days, ran from early morning until late into the evening. So there were many opportunities to learn, listen, talk to others, ask questions, and just take it all in.

The first day featured extended workshops, including a data boot-camp, an executive summit, explanations on how to use programs like Hadoop and Apache Cassandra, as well as how to display data, and communicate your point clearly with charts and graphs.

I attended the data bootcamp, which had a variety of speakers, such as LinkedIn’s Joseph Adler, bit.ly data scientist Hilary Mason, Drew Conway of New York University, and Yahoo!’s Jake Hofman.

The day provided a great look at what Big Data is all about, and how it can change the world. There was a lot of hands-on work, where audience members worked along on programs as the speakers talked. While some of the data boot-camp topics were over my head at the time, I’ve learned a lot more since attending the rest of the conference. I’m glad I attended the data boot-camp sessions, because it gave me a guideline for the topics to be discussed at the conference. I discovered that Python is more than a snake, and R isn’t just a letter in the alphabet.

Mythology of Big Data

My favorite keynote was Third Nature founder Mark Madsen’s Mythology of Big Data talk. He made many good points, such as comparing what’s going on now with data to the Gold Rush. He also noted that “if there’s no process for applying information in a specific context, then you are producing expensive trivia.”

Can Big Data Fix Healthcare?

Another highlight was Carol McCall of Tenzing Health’s talk on Can Big Data Fix Healthcare? She made a complicated topic understandable.

Data Without Limits

I also enjoyed Werner Vogels of Amazon’s talk on Data Without Limits — he talked in a practical way about how data was being used in e-commerce.

Privacy and Big Behavioral Data in the B2B

James Powell of Thomson Reuters spoke about Privacy and Big Behavioral Data in the B2B Space, but don’t let that daunting title scare you — it was a very interesting, relatable talk.

The $3 Million Heritage Health Prize

And Anthony Goldbloom of Kaggle announced the The $3 Million Heritage Health Prize, something that is sure to draw interest.

Strata Conference YouTube channel

I encourage you to check out all the Strata Conference keynote speakers on their YouTube channel. You can learn something from each of them.

Mentors & Motivators is a series of blog posts interviewing some women who are accomplishing some amazing things with the hope that their stories will encourage, inspire, and motivate you in your career, business, or personal life.

Meet Nina Walia. Nina is a Creative Strategist and Producer of Engaging Cross-Platform Experiences.  She has overseen interaction design and content development of websites and games for the Webby-award winning pbskids.org since 2004.

Never let someone else tell you that you don’t belong at the table – most of all yourself. Remember how crucial your unique perspective is to how we use and design technology and in shaping the freedoms of systems of the future.
~Nina Walia

1. What is your background and how did you get into the interaction design field?

As a daughter of an Electrical Engineer father, I was always the tinkering with technology. I studied Computer Science at Georgia Tech but the lack of diversity in the CS student population lead to a lack of diversity in teaching approaches so I left to pursue more creative uses of technology. I transferred to University of Georgia and received a degree in Journalism, focusing on film, audio and new media production – but I couldn’t shake the knowledge I had gained from Computer Science. I had learned how to make systems and interactive components work so I applied interaction to all my media projects. For example, I helped build a webcasting studio and produce events for it, I built and operated an interactive component to a theater production and built websites for orgs on a freelance basis.

Without skipping a beat, I knew I wanted to pursue interactive design further and went straight to grad school. I returned to Georgia Tech, where they had begun a Masters program called Information Design and Technology. IDT was a new multidisciplinary program crossing computer science with art, design, & communication. It was a fantastic program where, amongst many things, I sound designed tangible environments, learned usability and human computer interaction concepts, created educational technology applications, and experimented with designing new kinds of interfaces for experiences of the future.

2. What is it about interaction design that you most enjoy, or find most rewarding?

Finding new ways for people to connect with content and each other.

Companies must set aside time and budget to conduct user testing, even if it’s just informal user testing. It shouldn’t be one of the first items on the budget chopping block when it’s so fundamental to a company’s success.

3. What’s your favorite milestone in your career or business?

There’s still so much to accomplish! But one of the achievements I’m most proud of is becoming the “go to” for creating concepts for cross-platform experiences at PBS KIDS. I’ve produced successful games kids participate with on TV, online, and soon on mobile devices.

4. What major obstacle/barrier/conflict have you faced and how did you overcome it?

Working at a nonprofit you are often asked to produce big things with small resources, so I’ve found many ways to overcome budget and resource barriers in order to produce successful gigs. Some tricks include reusing art or audio assets from TV programs for the web and having an arsenal of external developers you are familiar with who are extremely flexible. By delivering products that shine and get the attention of company decision makers, our interactive team has been allocated more resources in subsequent projects. We’ve proven ourselves time and time again, taking us from being a second thought to innovation leaders all departments of the company turn to.

Always think about how you can extend an experience across devices and platforms from the beginning to gain efficiencies and a unified user experience. At the concept or kick-off phase, have representatives from every platform team at the table to brainstorm the big picture and how it all ties together.

5. What are the common mistakes made by companies when it comes to interaction design?

A common mistake is using company employees as the only source of user testing. All too often I’ve seen the approval of senior executives be the only point in the development process where someone outside the project interacts with the interface. Companies must set aside time and budget to conduct user testing, even if it’s just informal user testing. It shouldn’t be one of the first items on the budget chopping block when it’s so fundamental to a company’s success.

Another mistake is not having a diverse pool of interaction designers. Different backgrounds bring different perspectives and approaches to a project. Without diversity you are operating with a blind side.

6. Which websites do you admire from an interaction design perspective?

I’ve been working on quite a bit of augmented reality lately so I’ve come across some interesting new kinds of interaction models. It’s exciting because these models allow children to bypass the challenge of using a mouse. Enhanced interaction can be placed on tangible objects children are used to, like blocks. For example, using wIzQubes™, kids can manipulate familiar fairy tales by arranging blocks next to each other in different combinations.

7. You specialize in building Engaging Cross-Platform Experiences.  Can you give advice to other companies who are trying to design their applications for different platforms?

Two key points of advice:

• Plan the experience as a cross platform experience from day one! Always think about how you can extend an experience across devices and platforms from the beginning to gain efficiencies and a unified user experience. At the concept or kick-off phase, have representatives from every platform team at the table to brainstorm the big picture and how it all ties together.
• Take advantage of each medium’s affordances. The experience should not be exactly the same across platforms. For example, there are ways you can engage with characters or content on mobile devices that TV or desktop computer don’t allow you to.

The greatest “technology” I’ve adopted is this new personal time prioritization system.

8. You have designed very successful curriculum-based games for kids. What are some challenges that you’ve faced in designing things for kids?  Any advice to someone who is trying to build an application for this demographic?

What you think you know about this age is probably wrong J. User testing is key. Testing with your own children or neighbor’s children is probably not enough of a sample to reflect the general population (interaction designers’ children are generally more savvy than most).

Another thing that has helped is taking days where we’ll volunteer at a school for that age group. Immersing ourselves in what its like to be a kid that age is a great reality check on the abilities of that age group.

I highly recommend consulting the PBS Parents Child Development Tracker: http://www.pbs.org/parents/childdevelopmenttracker/. We worked with child development experts to gain insight into learning and development milestones for children ages 1-9 years. The guide covers: approaches to learning, creative arts, language, literacy, math, science, physical health, and social & emotional growth.

9. What is the latest, greatest technology that helped you make a quantum leap in your work?

Outside of my day job I am involved in many organizations and side projects that are demanding of my time. I’ve finally learned that although I want to be involved in everything, I only end up feeling guilty about how I don’t have enough time or energy to give my best to each and every project. I now focus only on a couple of projects that elicit the most personal happiness when I’m engaging with them, and I allow myself the flexibility of being involved only for certain time frames. I’m spread much less thin and am much more productive. So the greatest “technology” I’ve adopted is this new personal time prioritization system.

10. What are the qualities & characteristics that a professional woman needs to succeed in today’s fast paced world of technology? What sage words of advice (words of wisdom) can you offer to other professional women to help them achieve their own success?

I agree wholeheartedly with Cheryl Platz’s answer to this question: “Never let someone else tell you that you don’t belong at the table – most of all yourself.” Remember how crucial your unique perspective is to how we use and design technology and in shaping the freedoms of systems of the future.