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How Google is using the principles of Success Tracking
October 18, 2017 October 18, 2017 Nick Shah News engagement, gamification, success tracking
An email from the team at Google Maps landed in my inbox recently. I knew that it was a "robo-generated" email, and yet I got engaged. The title of the email grabbed my attention first – "Your review is making a difference". As I looked at it further and digested fully the message, I realised that Google was using the 5 core principles of Success Tracking
So, here's how:
This bit of the email shows that I have opted-in to receive the success tracking report (score)
And the main part of the email shows how Google are adhering to no prizes, a simple score, storified content and positive score keeping
This is a great example of how just relevant feedback, storified and positive, is driving my behaviour change.
Great to see #success tracking at work.
Gamifying the gamification industry
August 29, 2017 Toby Beresford Customer News gamification, gurus, leaderboards, social media
This is a guest post by two of the Gamification Gurus, Pete Jenkins and Vasilis Gkogkidis, describing how Rise is being used to motivate gamification professionals to be more active on social media.
Recently the Success Tracking University was launched by Toby Beresford (https://successtracking.teachable.com/blog/962609/launching).
When we read about it we immediately wanted to help spread the word by sharing some of our experiences with numerical feedback and how it can change behaviour. We have used numerical feedback as a tool to motivate users in a lot of projects we have designed or part of as it can be a quite powerful tool if used right.
In this blog post, we will talk about how Rise, a company that Toby Beresford founded, engages and motivates gamification professionals to be more active on social media. The aim of this case study is to have a look at how numerical feedback made us feel as users and changed our behaviour.
One way to use Rise is as a tool to make a leader board and keep track of how well players are doing on their social media and online presence.
The leader board we participate in is called Gamification Gurus Power 100 (https://www.rise.global/gurus) and monitors how well participants are doing on their social media. The metrics include Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn interaction with the audience as well how many blog posts you uploaded for the month.
We will start by explaining how leader boards work as a game mechanic and what effect they have on the players and on audiences watching the players. Then we will list the goals behind this leader board and how it promotes the gamification industry.
How do leader boards work
The sole purpose of leader boards is to introduce competition among the players. Let's take a sport like Tennis as an example. Let's have a look at the Men's Singles leader board for 2017.
Table 1: Source: http://www.espn.com/tennis/rankings
We need to keep in mind again that a leader board works on three levels:
it helps the designer of the system to reach the goals of the project,
it motivates and rewards players and;
engages and informs the audience that follows the sport and the leader board.
Let's break this leader board down and analyse it to see how it works on each of these levels. Going from left to right, the first thing we see is the rank of the players and their name. It may seem obvious but it's important to have numbers indicating the ranking every player occupies on the leader board. Being number one is a matter of status, I want to see the number 1 next to my name if I am first on the leader board. The same goes for the audience, they want to know who is the best at their favourite sport. By giving this information first the designer of the leader board awards status to the players and informs the audience about who is the best at what they are interested in.
Next element of this leader board is a list of flags indicating where each player comes from and which country they represent. The designer here wants to remind us that Tennis is a sport that people play all over the world. It's not a national but rather an international phenomenon and each player represents his or her country. Players feel proud to represent their country of course and audiences from these countries are proud to see their flag up there on the leader board.
Third element is the movement of players and how many places they went up or down the leader board. This element shows the progress of players in time. Maybe I was third last month but now I managed to climb to number one or two. It's important to show how stable player's performance is. The best players always perform well over a long period of time.
Finally, we have points! Points are rewarded to players for playing the game. The better they play, the more points they get and they perform better than their competitors. This is the element that determines the ranking in every leader board. This is the numerical feedback we have been talking about. Points can be very useful because we can quantify performances based on them. You can see how many wins each player made throughout the year and how many times he lost.
What does the Gamification Gurus Power 100 achieve?
Let's have a look now at how numerical feedback helps the gamification industry grow by changing behaviours.
A leader board that rewards people to share good content online related to gamification works on three levels as well. First, we have the designer (Toby Beresford in our case) that wants to motivate gamification professionals to share content regularly to grow the industry and create a buzz around it and around Rise, which is his product and he wants to demonstrate its usefulness.
Then we have the players, the gamification professionals that their reward is status that helps them boost their profile in the gamification community. I also think that getting credit from your peers when you share something useful is very motivating. The same goes for some of the conversations that start online and the information you may get on a new project you didn't know about.
We can't forget the audience of course. People that want to know more about gamification and they can have a look at the leader board to know who to ask for some information and knowledge on gamification.
Getting numerical feedback from this leader board has really changed the way we think about our social media. We all know that it's very good to promote good content on social media and have active profiles that help you promote your work.
Participating in the Gamification Gurus leader board though, has really changed the way we use social media. We now feel that we get something extra for being active and for creating engaging content.
As we mentioned earlier, points can really help you analyse a performance and see what you need to improve and of course how well other people are doing on the same thing. Curiosity is in all of us and can motivate us to participate in something to see how good we are compared to other people.
We hope you enjoyed our small case study, if you want to know more about us please have a look at https://gamificationplus.uk/ and find us on Twitter: @petejenkins and @v_gkogkidis
PS. Editor's note: you might be interested to see that Pete has increased his score from 24 this time last year to 73 (out of 100) on the Gamification Gurus, and Vasilis has increased his from 31 to 65:
Pete Jenkins Gamification Gurus Score. Source: https://www.rise.global/gurus/p/2249879
Vasilis Gkogkidis Gamification Guru Score. Source: https://www.rise.global/gurus/p/5916048/r/2526853
7 ways to train for your dream job – lessons learned.
July 4, 2017 Toby Beresford Customer News andrzej marczewski, blogging, coursera, deci, drive, gamification, gurus, jesse schell, kevin werbach, meetups, mooc, motivait, nudge, raph koster, ryan, success tracking
Career development isn't something most of us do very well. Our horizons are all too often limited to the career progression offered by our current organisation, our bosses job or perhaps a dreamy, unfocused vision of turning our hobby into a day job.
Even in well run organisations, career progression is only properly discussed in an annual performance review and tends to be narrowly focused on roles within the current business unit. Of course this makes sense, there are few rewards for HR and managers who "outplace" cost effective and high performing staff!
However in the digital age, employees no longer need to accept the status quo. Just a mouse click away are the informal learning resources and opportunities for us to take our career in a new direction – we just need the guts to try.
In this post I want to talk about the journey of Andrzej Marczewski who in 2011 set out on a journey to leave his job as an intranet manager to become a leading gamification consultant. It took him 5 years but he eventually achieved his dream job!
To do so he used a number of informal learning methods, not provided by his then employer, that brought him success. We can learn from the route he took.
In his own words, the tools he used were:
"Social media was the key to getting really going as it gave me access to people who had the same interests as me and could point me in the direction of what to read to learn more – as well as being willing to teach me directly. If social media didn't exist, there would have been no chance at all for my work to get me noticed."
"I read up on game design, with books such as The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell and A Theory of Fun from Raph Koster. I researched the psychology of rewards from papers by the likes of Deci and Ryan, but also from more "pop" books like Nudge and Drive."
MOOC Courses
"Kevin Werbach released his Coursera MOOC course on gamification. I wish this had been around in 2011 as it was a great way to validate a lot of what I had been doing."
"I started to write about my version of gamification and my views… I continued to research and produce content on a weekly basis and just kept gaining traction."
"I went to meetups and events about gamification as often as I could and eventually started to speak at them. I remember my first Gamifiers Meetup talk with abject horror. I spoke at conferences such as the Gamification World Congress which helped with exposure greatly. "
Success Tracking
"By 2012 I was getting fairly established, I had started to be a regular in the Gamification Gurus top 10. I have to give credit to being on the Gurus leaderboard as well, for better or worse it provided good exposure over the years!"
"I did a little bit of gamification consultancy on the side, but it was not until 2016 that I finally broke into gamification as a career – 5 years after I started making a move on the industry!"
So those are the some great lessons learned!
For me, the most interesting aspect was how Andrzej used the Gamification Gurus Rise board to track his social media success. The board tracks his blogging activity, engagement with his twitter content and the reach of his talks using Slideshare. By optimising all three of these metrics, over time Andrzej was able to reach the top 10 and improve his online social presence. Having such a strong online presence in the sector was a big benefit to his prospective employers looking to offer expert advice to their clients. Success Tracking in action!
Andrzej Marczewski is now a Senior Solution Consultant focused on gamification at Motivait and continues to blog at www.gamified.uk.
Reflections on using Rise to support conference-based gamification
October 22, 2015 November 2, 2015 Nick Shah Customer News engagement, events, gamification
This is a guest blog from:
Fiona MacNeill, Learning Technologies Adviser, University of Brighton and UCISA Digital Capabilities committee member. AboutMe: http://about.me/fmacneill Twitter: @fmacneill
In early June I had the pleasure of implementing a conference-wide gamification activity in support of the UCISA Digital Capabilities event. The event took place at MediaCity, Salford; a vibrant and engaging venue for an event stocked-full of innovative ideas. The event focused on showcasing successful practices for supporting academic staff and learners in their use of technology within further and higher education. Another goal of the event was to highlight findings from the recent Digital Capabilities survey. So when a member of the event organising committee, Iain Cameron (University of Aberdeen, and UCISA Digital Capabilities committee), mentioned the idea of a Twitter selfie (or Twelfie) competition as part of the proceedings; Rise immediately came to my mind as the right tool for the job! I had encountered Rise before at a demo at the International Confex event in 2013 and then again during the Mahara 2014 Hui held at the University of Brighton.
The rules of the game were simple and already outlined for me by the organisers. One point was awarded for original selfies; @mentions; and retweets featuring the #udigcap hashtag. Two points were awarded to reward the befriending behaviours needed to: take selfies with another delegate; take selfies with a speaker; and take selfies with organisers. Three points were awarded for imaginative selfies; selfies with passing celebrities who work or visit the television studios of MediaCity; and a selfie with a famous landmark. Although the game was simple, we entered into it with a sense of playfulness, completed by my donning the literal udig-Cap on my head, to signify my position as the twelfie official! Here's the photo evidence
Observed positive effects of using Rise Leaderboard:
Rise really stoked attendee engagement via Twitter. There were around 90 tweets that included twelfies. Overall, there were almost 1200 tweets related to the event, many of which were a direct result of attendees taking part in the Leaderboard.
The competition called for attendees to take photos of themselves with other attendees, speakers and celebrities. This encouraged both in-person and online engagement.
The twelfie competition promoted a sense of fun and resulted in crowdsourced documentation of the event proceedings. The documentation is now archived as a Storify
The competition boosted discursive engagement and publicised the twitter feed prior to the event. This was largely achieved by some pre-conference challenges where attendees were asked to take engaging photographs of their journey to the conference.
Top tips for using Rise in a conference situation
Our photo-based metrics meant that we had to do a lot of manual scoring. I suggest using a wider variety of metrics, including a mixture of automatic metrics derived from twitter polling and manual metrics.
I recommend linking a Google doc to the active leaderboard to enable simpler player addition and
Limit the number of times a certain metric can be scored. We found that some of the twelfies became repetitive, as there was not a limit on the number of times that a twelfie could be scored.
Include some wildcard activities to promote positive conference behaviour:
g. tweet and tag someone whom you met at lunchtime (with their permission);
engage in the conference treasure hunt and tweet what you found etc.
Take greater advantage of the need for the human superviser, or games-master, and consider using them to lead tweet-ups of certain topics raised during the event. These could also have point-awarding options.
Consider day-by-day scoring and options for remote attendees and second day attendees.
Points for @mentions of anything other than the conference hashtag, can affect the quality of tweets' written content due to the character limit. Best to keep it to one @mention metric.
Add players in advance of the conference, if possible.
Having clearly defined board release times was a good strategy and led to a sense of anticipation, e.g. breaks worked well as times to release and show the updated leaderboard. Leave at least 10 minutes for the polls to complete and to release the board. I owe this idea to Katie Piatt (University of Brighton), who used this strategy to great effect at the 2014 Mahara Hui.
Future ideas
As I contemplate gamification at the next iteration of the Digital Capabilities event I have been considering how the competitive element could be developed further. Here are a few ideas, although I won't go into specifics, as I don't want to give the game away in advance!
Make awards unexpected – as Daniel Pink, explains in his 2010 book, Drive expected extrinsic rewards can negatively affect performance (pp. 63-70). Therefore adding some unexpected rewards for completed tasks could add value. However these rewards will not be itemised on the rules list, so a disclaimer about judge discretion may be helpful!
Reward introverts as well as extroverts – one of the best conferences that I have ever attended was Eyeo Festival based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA (http://eyeofestival.com). Eyeo is an awe-inspiring event focusing on data visualisation, interactivity and maker ethics. However in the midst of all the flashy stuff, in the two years that I attended they had quiet spaces where one could engage in puzzles and inventions related to the event, sans supervision or sales influence. This was an invaluable opportunity to play and learn. Having an area in a conference like this provides time for time-out and inspiration as well as hidden scoring opportunities!
An idea inspired by Jane McGonigal's book, Reality is Broken (2012): we allow attendees to +1 each other. This is like an in-person analogy of a "favorite" star or a "like" thumbs-up, but because it is real, perhaps it means even more within the context of the event. I like the idea of using physical +1s (think cardboard cutouts the size of a plate) which could become the subject of a selfie; a nice option for camera shy attendees.
Finally this is an idea that I owe to Pete Jenkins (http://gamificationplus.uk), who suggested making the next iteration of our competition, a team-based activity. Rise Leaderboard can support this mode of use. The concept is that player interest will be more sustained if they are contributing to a group effort, as opposed to seeing individuals rapidly ascend up the leaderboard and losing the will to compete due to very high leading scores. In the team model points can still be awarded individually for small activities and these can contribute to the collective team score.
Well, I for one am excited about the next Digital Capabilities event!
McGonigal, J. (2012). Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. London: Vintage.
Pink, D. H. (2010). Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Edinburgh: Canongate Books.
Telfest 2015 conference uses Rise to enhance conference participation and crowd-source content on social media for non-attendees
October 15, 2015 November 2, 2015 Nick Shah Customer News content marketing, event tech, events, gamification, social media
This is a guest post by Farzana Latif, posted first on 29th Sept 2015 here
During September 2015's TELFest (a week long festival consisting of workshops, discussions and drop-in sessions related to Technology Enhanced Learning) we introduced a leaderboard to enhance participation throughout the event, and to encourage the use social media to share experiences amongst colleagues that were unable to attend. Having experienced the leaderboard at the UCISA Spotlight on Capabilities Conference in June, I was interested in using it to introduce ideas related to Gamification, and bring an extra element of fun, to TELFest. The leaderboard is generated by a website called rise.global, which automatically calculates the scores for tweets that contain a specific hashtag, and, following some pointers from Fiona MacNeil who had set it up for the UCISA event, I set up a leaderboard for TELFest. Given the aims behind using the leaderboard, I decided that points should be primarily awarded for tweeting with the #TELFest hashtag and there were additional points for attending drop in sessions and tweeting TELfie's (TELfest selfies). Below is a breakdown of the points that could be earned:
Tweets with the #TELFest hashtag 1 point
Being Mentioned by someone else 2 points
Having your #TELFest Posts Retweeted 3 points
Tweeting a TELFie with the hashtag #TELFest (TELFest, Selfie) 3 points
Attending a drop in session 5 points
Each day we saw the top tweeters changing positions and there was healthy competition amongst TELFest participants.
To keep tweeters motivated, automated tweets were sent out every evening, informing them of their position on the leaderboard.
Twitter activity increased significantly compared to September 2014, there was a tenfold increase in the overall number tweets, a tripling of the number of tweeters and, on the Friday, TELFest trended in the Sheffield area, meaning that it was promoted to local users on the main twitter interface.
An additional benefit of promoting the use of Twitter through the leaderboard was that it helped to capture the variety of views and opinions shared by participants during the event. We were then able to use the tweets to create daily blog posts summarising these discussions using Storify, allowing us to produce a record of the day's events for participants to look back on and to give some insight into the discussions for those unable to attend.
While the leaderboard was highlighted during the Gamification session as an example of a method to encourage participation and motivate learners, it is hard to say whether, in this case, the leaderboard led to an objective increase in Twitter usage. Early feedback indicates that its' introduction did motivate some people to tweet more than they might ordinarily, yet others stated that they were unaware of the board. Another reason why the increase in the use of Twitter at TELFest this year cannot be solely attributed to the leaderboard is that we integrated Twitter directly into some of the workshops. It is however clear that the leaderboard did not appear to influence the number of colleagues attending drop-in sessions.
We closed the board on Friday at 12pm and as a token gesture awarded chocolate medal to colleagues that were top of the board – congratulations to Gary, Nik and Maria.
Below is a screenshot of the final top 20 for the leaderboard:
This blog has been verified by Rise: Rd886fcb9534f0f3e25d5be49b850a9bc
Why leaders must take control of the score
August 17, 2015 February 4, 2019 Toby Beresford Design Tips best practice, gamification, GOP, KPI, leadership, metrics, Online influence, scorekeeping, scores, social media, twitter
As a leader, one of your jobs is to keep those you lead focused on the goals you are trying to reach.
An underused tool in every leader's toolbox is to create and share "the score".
"The score" is how you have decided everyone should measure success, whether as individuals or as a group.
Whether we realise it or not, we all take account of the score in our daily lives. Indeed, if you don't share the score, people will invent their own. This can have hideous consequences as people chase after the wrong activities. No, it's far better for you to take control of the score by choosing which KPIs matter and communicating them clearly.
As a leader it is your job to identify the scores that matter for the objectives you are seeking.
To do this, first write out the objectives and the success criteria for those objectives. These may be fairly numerical already. Then break down those objectives into the constituent parts and identify the important signals that you can measure reliably and easily. These are the metrics that go into making your score.
Next you need to attribute the score correctly. You have several options:
personal scores – this is a score for each individual. This approach works best in a group setting where there isn't really a team objective – e.g. a conference, a group of separate businesses or a very large business
team scores – a score for your team. This works best when you are seeking to focus the efforts of your internal team – e.g. a KPI such as number of visitors to our website each month
market comparison – in more mature markets it may be more useful to focus on the comparison with peers – e.g. we are the number 1 supplier of milk in our region.
Finally, as a leader it's not only your job to identify the scores that matter but also to communicate them regularly.
This could take many forms from a weekly email to a big screen TV leaderboard in the office. Whatever you choose, you need to remember that facts don't speak for themselves. The medium you choose is important – people will take more notice of a leaderboard engraved in stone than one hastily scrawled on a piece of paper!
The score is an essential part of leadership. We all take account of the score whether we realise it or not. As a leader you can leverage the score and its communication to achieve the goals you've set for your team.
A great example of the importance of leaders and 'communicating the score' has recently taken the world's media by storm. The Republican Party or Grand Old Party (GOP) Presidential candidates for the 2016 US elections recently debated each other on Fox News and presented to the audience what "scores" were important to them to keep and raise for the country. From here on in, how these individuals communicate their leadership goals to the people will be paramount. The use of Social Media will be more important than ever in reaching out and speaking to the electorate.
Interested in how much influence you have online? Why not join our Online Influencer ScoreBook and see how you compare?
July 2, 2015 September 15, 2016 Toby Beresford Design Tips gamification, team benefits, winning
Team based gamification, recently branded "teamification", has much going for it.
For one, it avoids the problems of individual gamification at work, particularly around badly drawn comparisons on leaderboards that cause unwanted disengagement ("I'll never get to the top, I'm happy being a middle ranker I'll just stay here, I can't get a top score because I don't use that tool").
The benefits of teams are in the shared celebrations, the shared sense of endeavour and collective achievements create bonding and high relatedness amongst team members. We all like being in winning teams.
Recently I put this to the test with a collective endeavour twitter competition to see if we could spread the word among "foreverists" – fans of the recently cancelled ABC show "Forever". I published an hourly-refreshing leaderboard during the tweet storm and it was well received among the fans who saw their personal dashboard, their rank within the community, and most importantly the progress of the whole community towards the goal.
It worked really well and we hit our goal and more. 349% of our target to be precise. For 284 participants to drive 4500 tweets, 2300 retweets and over 3000 mentions is no mean feat. Clearly the power of teams and collective endeavour is worth tapping into.
But is there a downside?
Certainly being stuck in a perpetually losing team is no fun either. Teams that lose frequently tend to disband or morale simply drops through the floor – worse, being a loser becomes the cultural norm with anyone trying to challenge the status quo being laughed off as naive.
Within teams there are issues too.
At a recent Gamifiers meetup, Sebastian Deterding highlighted the issue of Social Loafing – that's what happens when someone coasts on the back of the rest of their team's hard work – not really contributing yet sharing in the team rewards.
In a short term finite campaign like the Forever example above, it's not an issue, but in a long term infinite scorekeeping project, the problems of social loafers can become acute.
The problems that occur (probably after the two week honeymoon period any group seems to enjoy) are infighting, factions, politics and disengagement. They can be just as damaging to individual motivation as badly designed leaderboards that pit individuals against each other.
Avoiding the issues of teams is worthy of another discussion but for now it is worth bearing in mind that although teamification has its strengths it also has weaknesses too.
Grandfather of Gamification, Chuck Coonradt, explains infinite scorekeeping
March 5, 2015 September 15, 2016 Chuck Coonradt Design Tips employee engagement, gamification, scorekeeping
When I wrote the "Game of Work", in 1984, there were five core principles that would be considered, by many, to be the DNA of Gamification. They are as follows:
Goals Must Be Clearly Defined
Scorekeeping Must Be Clear and Predictable
Feedback Must Be Frequent and Appropriate
Rules Don't Change in the Middle of the Game
There Must Be Freedom to Perform and Choice of Methods
Coach John Wooden said "It is what we learn after we think we know it all, that really matters."
I agree, and after almost 40 years of hands-on experience with over 5,000 organizations, and hundreds of thousands of practitioners, I believe the most important learning has been that the creation of a culture of appropriate feedback is the most significant of the five principles we previously identified.
This principle is much more significant than I first realized and is the cornerstone of improved employee engagement through the gamification process.
The next great learning was that scorekeeping's primary purpose was to create agreement between player and coach (not measurement or metrics). Feedback is based on:
When (what is appropriate frequency);
What Kind (celebratory, or corrective); and
How Much (primarily determined by the recipient)
Feedback is appropriate. This is the basis for judgment of the effectiveness of the scorekeeping system and scorecards within that system.
I am not a management scientist, like Jim Collins, but rather an observer of the different motivational levels demonstrated by the same people in different circumstances. Our observations produced a bit of a tongue twister, when we asked "Why will people pay for the privilege of working harder, than they will work when they are paid?
Let us learn about the power of infinite scoring from our experience with the games people all over the world love to play. The scorekeeping systems have several elements which make them the sustainable worldwide standard .
They are credible to the participants – all players accept the scorekeeping methods before being asked to play
They seldom change, if at all. Basketball took years to determine define and adopt the three point line, and then had to have several different distances.
They are objective – even the scoring of ice skating, diving, and gymnastics, (seemingly subjective) are governed by principles that insure the consistency which is necessary to gain credibility from the participants and viewers (fans)
They maximize the number of winners.
Compare 144 employees playing in a company golf tournament. – 6 different flights separated by player handicaps, 24 players per flight. Then you add longest drive, closest to the hole, and maybe even an award for most lost balls, and you have the possibility of multiple winners and several games within the game for overall best player.
Contrast that with the same 144 players in a tennis tournament where there will be only one ultimate winner. The first round 72 folks lose, and 72 move on to the next round., where another half of them will lose, until the final two are standing and then one of them will lose, resulting in a single winner. Unfortunately, the end result is 143 players whose final memory of the experience is a loss.
They allow the comparison between my CURRENT PERFORMANCE, MY PERSONAL PAST PERFORMANCE, AS WELL AS AN ACCEPTED STANDARD. For example,
Whether you are in a marathon or other measured distance running the primary goal is to beat your personal best, or
Golf , where a handicap (based on past personal performance) allows all of us to challenge ourselves against our previous performance
In both cases, there is a world record, and of course PAR, but the vast majority of participants are motivated by the comparison to past personal performance.
They are dynamic. Meaning players know the score during the game (which allows them to change their behavior to win, before time runs out)
Hockey fans are much more enthusiastic than figure skating fans because they know the score during the game.
A figure skater only knows how she/he did after the performance is over with no chance to improve.
The very powerful question, which drives human behavior, on and off the job is "Am I winning, losing or don't know the score?"
Leaders, Coaches and those of us who assist them, must stay true to the principles of established scorekeeping to bring true employee engagement and satisfaction to the workplace.
The Game of Work is just like the Game of Life. Everyone wants to be a winner. With clear and predictable scorekeeping, you can win.
For additional information you may contact us for a free executive summary of 'Scorekeeping for Success' via email or visit our website
By using the core Game of Work principles, we have much more than just a shiny new object. We will have a very valuable tool for management and an opportunity for individuals to reach their full potential.
Just remember – "Given a Good Game, People Will Play Their Heart Out".
This guest blog was written by Charles "Chuck" Coonradt, labelled as "the Grandfather of Gamification" in a Forbes Magazine article in 2012 by Ken Krogue
Chuck is Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of The Game of Work, founded in 1973 and dedicated to the success of its corporate clients. Graduate of Michigan State University. Internationally recognized in the fields of goal setting and profit improvement, as an author, consultant, and speaker. Chuck's best selling books The Game of Work, The Better People Leader, Scorekeeping For Success, Managing The Obvious, and The Four Laws of Debt Free Prosperity have been labeled management "must reads." He is a contributing author to the best selling Chicken Soup for the Soul series and quoted in an additional two dozen books. He is a founding member of the School of Entrepreneurship, Brigham Young University, Marriott School of Management.
The Game of Work's client list includes many Fortune 500, as well as other nationally and internationally recognized firms. Companies that have successfully utilized and implemented Chuck's unique concepts include Pepsi Cola, The Chicago Tribune, Nordstroms, The US Air Force and Postal Service, Boeing, Marker Bindings, Molina Healthcare, Coca-Cola Consolidated and International Paper. Over one million executives, managers, and supervisors on five continents have been exposed to Chuck's ideas on feedback, scorekeeping, goal setting, coaching, choice and accountability.
Gamification for Performance Management
February 16, 2015 September 15, 2016 Mario Herger Design Tips crowd sourcing, gamification, hr management, performance tracking
While businesses spend billion of dollars every year to evaluate their employees, the outcome is disappointing. The data that performance evaluations are done and promotions based on are lacking in detail, extent and objectivity. No wonder that instead of a meritocracy we see people being promoted based on their networking and socializing skills.
World of Warcraft players on the other hand know very well how they and their fellow players are doing. The player stat sheets clearly indicate their current status and achievements, and tell them how to advance. A game played by 10 million players has more data on its players than billion dollar companies about their employees. But this is about to change with introducing gamification to Human Resources and into all aspects of a company.
Let's take a look at how companies are doing performance management today, what the actual goal is, and what some companies have done by introducing gamification to this process.
Traditionally performance reviews are scheduled to take place every quarter or once a year. The review is done by the employee's line-manager and, sometimes, additional appraisers are added. The problems of course are:
Defining the goals at the beginning of the period and adapting them during the period, when goals and strategy change
Keeping track of achievements and evaluating them
How to bring achievements in the equation that were not part of the original goals but were done anyways
The first issue requires flexibility that allows adapting goals and then proper communication and agreement with the employee. The second issue is just keeping track of them. There is not one way to record achievements; some may be documents (study written), some money in the bank (deals closed), others simple emails from clients or colleagues who wanted to thank you for your help. A manager's challenge is to access the channels and compile the information. Some channels may never be accessible, like the emails that thanked your employee.
A solution could be to go with crowdsourcing feedback and recognition. Eric Mosley, CEO and co-founder of the employee recognition solutions company Globoforce, mentions five steps to improve that process[1]:
Capture achievements throughout the year.
With social recognition, individual and team achievements and successes are captured at the moment they happen throughout the year. Employees better understand what performance is desired on an on-going basis while managers can see first-hand an employee's true performance, behaviors and influence.
Widen the input circle beyond a single point of failure.
By leveraging feedback from across the organization, managers can expand the singular viewpoint of traditional performance reviews to include positive feedback from co-workers and peers alike. These ongoing reviews provide a more accurate collection for how individuals are performing within teams and across departments.
Use inspiration, not obligation.
Social recognition is the epitome of effective reviews: they're truly inspired, not forced by antiquated performance review processes. When peers give reviews of each other via recognition, it's due to the strong performance they witness. It's a purer performance evaluation and not diluted by a check-box mindset.
Expand accountability for reputations and careers.
By incorporating feedback from peers across the company, you lessen errors for how an employee's performance and career is judged and nurtured. For most companies, the performance review is an anchor for documentation. By rounding it out with recognition, you are creating a more complete assessment around employees' reputation and work performance.
Empower employees to create a performance mosaic.
With relationships and workflows extending beyond immediate teams and divisions, management and HR can create a performance mosaic to appraise true company performance. This social graph of the true performance of individuals and teams develops as employees and peers recognize one another.
Gamification of Performance Evaluations
While crowd-sourcing is not necessarily a gamification technique, Australian startup Wooboard[2] allows employees to thank each other for work they have done. By sending a (whimsically named) "Woo" and tagging it with a category (categories are maintained by management and reflect the core-values and activities the management wants to encourage), the standalone system enables peer-recognition, records that information, and shows how often employees have been wooed for following the company's core values.
What if you even go beyond crowd-sourced achievement gathering and extend that to the determination of each employee's bonus? That's what the US-based gaming and entertainment company IGN [3] is doing[4]. Employees themselves decide who should earn more bonuses. The system is called "viral pay" and twice a year every employee receives "Tokens of Appreciation" which they can distribute to other employees. The rules are simple:
All tokens must be distributed
You cannot distribute them to yourself
And the CEO is exempt from receiving tokens
While nobody knows who gave the tokens to whom, IGN posts a list of who got how many tokens. Employees reward each other for helping out and going the last mile. That system motivates others who have not received as many tokens this time to be more helpful the next time.
This concept of course is not unfamiliar to IGN. That's how loot in many videogames is distributed. Teams, guilds, battle groups who beat the boss (such as a dragon), distribute the awards amongst each other depending on their contributions. Lee Sheldon, video game designer and associate professor at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, started his own video game design classes as a video game, where students formed teams of five and had to distribute the loot amongst them according to their contributions in the team projects[5]. Fears that students would distribute them equally turned out to be unsubstantiated. The students knew exactly how much each team member contributed and awarded accordingly.
A technology that can be used for such a crowd-determined bonus round is Bonus.ly[6]. Each team member receives a monthly allowance for granting bonuses, and can then praise and grant small peer bonuses to their colleagues. A crucial factor to make a peer-to-peer bonus working is keeping them transparent. In a failed example from the General Services Administration[7] the bonus-rewards were not transparent (only the recipient and the giver knew about the amount), led to rigging the system, and violated federal governance standards.
Thus a gamified performance review would rely on better data. And as we've mentioned the gamification score extensively, a performance review wouldn't even be required anymore, but would surface in a different form: as a career planning and advocacy session.
Spanish company Gamifik[8] offers a mobile solution for continuous 360-degree feedback. This helps HR to identify problems early rather than at the end of the period.
ROIKOI[9] offers a gamified mobile app that lets co-workers rate other co-workers using peer voting to rate people in the company. The voting happens anonymously and the results are displayed through a ROIKOI-score on a leaderboard.
With these examples the first companies are on the way to create a fairer and more objective way to evaluate employees and thus motivate and engage them better.
MARIO HERGER is CEO, founder and partner of Enterprise Gamification Consultancy LLC[10], a strategic consulting group focused on gamification, innovation, social business, and intrapreneurship in the enterprise. He had been Senior Innovation Strategist at SAP Labs in Palo Alto, California and Global Head of the Gamification Initiative at SAP where he had worked for 15 years. He is the author of a number of gamification books, including Gamification in Human Resources[11].
[1] Crowdsource Your Performance Reviews http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/06/crowdsource_your_performance_r.html
[2] http://www.wooboard.com
[3] http://www.ign.com/
[4] At IGN, Employees Use A "Viral Pay" System To Determine Each Others' Bonuses http://www.fastcompany.com/1801532/ign-employees-use-viral-pay-system-determine-each-others-bonuses
[5] Lee Sheldon, The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game, Course Technology, 2012
[6] https://bonus.ly/
[7] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2013/05/17/watchdog-says-awards-for-gsa-executives-were-excessive-system-lacked-transparency/
[8] http://gamifik.com/en
[9] https://www.roikoi.com/
[10] http://enterprise-gamification.com/
[11] http://www.amazon.com/dp/1500567140


Toronto (ON), Canada – Zevrix Solutions today is proud to announce the release of Output Factory 1.3.19, a feature update to its professional solution to automate printing, exporting and post-processing from Adobe InDesign. Output Factory automates and simplifies workflows of printers, prepress bureaus, ad agencies and publishing houses worldwide by offering batch processing and powerful and versatile output options.
The new version adds a new option to the HTML output workflow: users now can output batches of InDesign files with a single set of HTML export settings, in addition to exporting each file in a batch using its current HTML settings. The new feature is especially helpful for the users who need to select a specific CSS file to be batched with every HTML document.
Output Factory can be purchased from Zevrix website for $169.95 USD (Light version $119.95), as well as from authorized resellers and Adobe Exchange. Trial is also available for download. BatchOutput users can upgrade to Output Factory for $84.97. Output Factory is available for Mac OS X 10.5-10.8 on Intel-based Macs and works with Adobe InDesign CS3-CS6. An InDesign CC compatible version will be available shortly.


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Chelsea ends Man City's quadruple quest to reach FA Cup final
Posted by theinfogist | Apr 18, 2021 | News, Sports, UK | 0 |
Chelsea ended Manchester City's quest for a historic quadruple of trophies as Hakim Ziyech's goal earned a 1-0 win to take the Blues into the FA Cup final on Saturday.
A damaging day for City also saw them lose Kevin De Bruyne to an ankle injury just over a week away from the League Cup final, where they face Tottenham, and the first leg of their Champions League semi-final against Paris Saint-Germain.
Chelsea were good value for another impressive win under Thomas Tuchel and will be favourites for the German's first silverware in English football when they face Leicester or Southampton May 15.
Tuchel could land an even bigger prize in the Champions League just months after replacing the sacked Frank Lampard in January.
His side showed they can get the better of City in what could be a dress rehearsal for the Champions League final should the English clubs see off PSG and Real Madrid in the last four.
The physical demands of City's bid for a clean sweep of trophies was shown as Pep Guardiola made eight changes from the side that beat Borussia Dortmund in midweek with goalscorers Phil Foden and Riyad Mahrez among those rotated.
Tuchel made just three changes and Chelsea looked the far less disjointed side in a bright start.
Timo Werner's cross was swept home by Ziyech after just six minutes, but the goal was ruled out for offside against the German international.
That proved to be the only shot on target of a cagey first 45 minutes that did little to whet the appetite of a potential reunion in Istanbul for European club football's greatest prize on May 29.
Despite the number of changes, the ease with which Chelsea were able to spring quick counter-attacks will be of concern to Guardiola with the fearsome duo of PSG's Kylian Mbappe and Neymar to come.
From one slick break, Chelsea's wing-backs combined but Ben Chilwell could only slice Reece James's cross wide.
City got to half-time without any damage on the scoreline, but suffered a potentially huge blow to their hopes of still clinching a treble of trophies early in the second-half.
Just 11 days before the first leg of the PSG tie, De Bruyne appeared to roll his ankle in a challenge with N'Golo Kante and was replaced by Foden.
City were still reeling from the loss of the Belgium attacker when they were finally caught out by the Chelsea counter-attack.
Guardiola's decision to retain Zack Steffen in goal for domestic cup competitions backfired as the American was caught in no man's land when Werner raced in behind and once again squared for Ziyech to roll into an empty net.
Steffen made some measure of amends moments later to deny Ziyech a second when the Moroccan was clean through.
City took until the final 20 minutes to get going, but their best chance of sending the game to extra-time came from a corner as Ruben Dias headed over from close range.
Instead, it was Chelsea who found the net again through Christian Pulisic in stoppage time only for the offside flag to again come to City's rescue.
But there was no saving a bid for history for Guardiola's men as they cannot now better Manchester United's treble of Champions League, Premier League and FA Cup from 1998/99.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The fine nine-floor building of hotel fascinates with its simplicity and elegance. To services of visitors of Perm in hotel a Restaurant – "European", the Fitness Center, the Centers of Aesthetic medicine and the Massage, the equipped Conference hall. The convenient, round the clock-protected parking, is located to the right of a spacious input in hotel. The quality combination of given services and the comprehensible price policy will pleasantly please you. Stars of the All-Russia size were numerous visitors of a complex: N.Babkina, M.Bojarsky, L.Leshchenko of G.Martirosjan, group "A-studio", K.Sobchak and others.


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Info Keep Home
By TransDigital | March 22, 2004
Password and Secure Information Management used by thousands of individuals. Everyone from the average home user to the corporate network administrators can benefit from Info Keep. Info Keep can be configured to allow large enterprise businesses to centralize all of their important, sensitive information. Info Keep can be configured to allow the people who need certain pieces of information to access it effortlessly yet keep that information out of reach of those who don't.
Windows 2000 Windows Me Windows Windows XP Windows NT
Windows Me/NT/2000/XP/2003 Server, Micorosft SQL Server 2000


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UK PM Johnson welcomes economic reforms in talks with Jordan's King Abdullah
August 7, 2019 at 9:12 pm | Published in: Europe & Russia, Jordan, Middle East, News, UK
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson (L) meets King Abdullah II of Jordan (R) at 10 Downing Street in London, United Kingdom on 7 August, 2019 [Ray Tang/Anadolu Agency]
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson hosted Jordan's King Abdullah for a working lunch on Wednesday to discuss ties between the two countries, Johnson's office said, reports Reuters.
Johnson welcomed Abdullah's progress in delivering economic reforms and urged him to continue with them, a spokeswoman for Johnson said.
"The leaders also acknowledged Jordan's important role in maintaining regional stability and the Prime Minister thanked the King for the part Jordan continues to play in hosting Syrian refugees," she added.
OPINION: Jordan is changing, which is what it needs now
Europe & RussiaJordanMiddle EastNewsUK


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An Alliance of Employers' Counsel Worldwide
The 2008 global financial crisis changed the financial services sector significantly. New regulations and laws have shaken up the sector over the last decade, particularly in the US and Europe. In addition to the challenges that all employers are facing, like e.g. digitalization, new technologies, new ways of collaboration, financial institutions are facing an ever changing legal and regulatory landscape.
Our L&E Global Financial Services sector group has a wealth of experience in working with financial institution clients across the globe and is familiar with the time constraints and regulatory pressures they are under. Clients appreciate our unique insight into employment law issues of the sector and choose us to help them navigate the complex and rapidly changing legal framework.
We provide financial institutions with sector-specific, pragmatic advice on global and local employment law issues, compensation schemes and pensions, policies, regulatory employment compliance, highly sensitive employment issues as well as complex employment litigation. Our offices in all major financial centers and extensive coverage in Asia, Africa, Latin America, CIS and CEE enable us to provide a global, integrated and cost-effective service. Our Financial Services sector group advises banks, insurers, asset managers, hedge funds, global investment bodies and brokerage houses.
Advised a Chinese bank / private equity fund on establishing an HR structure in Germany and Luxemburg, including the advice on stock option plans and carry schemes.
Advised a financial institution, on post-merger integration, including harmonizing terms & conditions, benefit schemes and pension plans; coordination / communication with French parent bank, including strategic advice.
Advised a French bank on negotiation of termination agreements and representation in court.
Advised a US based private equity fund on establishing a branch in Germany, including negotiation of employment contracts and advice regarding the lease of temporary workers.
Advised a UK based private equity fund on establishing an affiliate in Germany, including setting up of HR structures and drafting remuneration schemes.
Advising a London listed financial services business on the design, development and implementation of its employee data strategy to comply with the introduction of GDPR across 18 countries in which it is situated.
Acting for a global commodities house on an extensive restructuring exercise involving coordinating advice on redundancy processes in 20 countries spanning Europe, APAC, and South America including local collective consultation obligations.
Advising a listed US asset management company on a review of its handbook and contracts, to serve as a template for all non-US locations.
Acting for an international bank in Canada on a complex whistleblowing claim around allegations of regulatory failings.
Assisted one of Australia's largest integrated financial advisory services and accounting organisations, in a number of complex litigation matters, related to alleged misleading and deceptive conduct and defamation by a former executive operating under an alias and requiring complex preliminary discovery and Anton Piller orders; and seeking an interlocutory injunction for breach of non-solicitation and non-competition restraints of trade.
Spain: News on Equality Plans Regulation
Until now, only companies with more than 250 employees were required to elaborate Equality Plans. After the entry into force of Royal Decree-Law 6/2019, the regulation has been modified in order to extend the obligation to elaborate equality plans to companies with more than 50 employees
Germany: An employee's entitlement to paid annual leave only expires at the end of the calendar year, if the employer has previously informed the employee of his specific holiday entitlement and the expiry periods, and the employee has still voluntarily not taken the holiday
The entitlement to paid annual leave generally lapses at the end of the respective calendar year. However, according to the latest ruling of the Federal Labor Court, the employer has to inform the employee about his paid annual leave entitlement and the expiry period in detail. Only when the employer has fulfilled his obligations and the employee has still voluntarily not taken the leave he is entitled to, will the outstanding leave entitlements lapse
USA: 2019: The Year Ahead for Employers
Over the past year, state and local governments responded in a variety of ways to national policy, and the midterm elections painted a picture of what's in store for employers in 2019 and beyond. Jackson Lewis' annual report outlines upcoming issues, trends, legislation and regulations employers need to be aware of in the coming year
France: Payment of an exceptional bonus exempt of social contributions and taxes
As a response to the « yellow vests » social movement, the government passed a law on the « social and economic emergency measures » on December 24 allows companies to pay an exceptional spending power bonus that is exempt from social contributions and taxes (including income tax), up to 1000 EUR per beneficiary
L&E Global has bundled our member firms' expertise into several key industry sectors
Technology, Media & Communications
Verena Braeckeler-Kogel, partner+49 (0) 211 52 87 45-0braeckeler@pwwl.deGermany
Dirk Freihube, partner+49 (0) 69 34 87 63 9-0freihube@pwwl.deGermany
Christian Jungers, Partner+352 227 330 -1christian.jungers@kleyrgrasso.comLuxembourg
Christiaan Oberman, Partner+31 20 34 46 100Oberman@paltheoberman.nlNetherlands
Robert Stromberg, Partner+46 8 522 065 00robert.stromberg@cederquist.seSweden
Iván Suárez, LL.M, Partner+34 93 295 60 00isuarez@bufetesuarez.comSpain
Chris Van Olmen, Partner+32 2 644 05 11Chris.van.olmen@vow.beBelgium
Magda Volonciu, Managing Partner+4.0372.755.699magdavolonciu@volonciu.roRomania
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France: The Retirement Reforms at the heart of the political debate 28/01/2020
L&E Global's Asia Pacific Members Commended for Excellence in Labour and Employment Law by The Legal 500 Asia Pacific 2020 28/01/2020
A ticking clock – Brexit and UK court judgments 20/12/2019
USA: A Renewed Attempt in Congress to Eliminate Non-Compete Agreements 19/12/2019
UK: Indirect discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief 19/12/2019
European Union: Whistle Blowing Directive - 2 years to get ready for the new reporting rules 19/12/2019
UK Election and Brexit - what happens next? 13/12/2019
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Blackhawks History
Duncan Keith: An Unfinished Legacy
By Greg Boysen October 18th, 2018
Last Saturday, Duncan Keith put on his Chicago Blackhawks sweater for the 1,000th time in his stellar career. He is just the sixth player in franchise history to play 1,000 regular-season games for the team, joining Bob Murray, Brent Seabrook, Eric Nesterenko, Bobby Hull, and Stan Mikita. When Keith calls it a career, we won't be calling him one of the greatest defensemen in team history—we will be calling him the greatest.
From Small Things, Big Things One Day Come
Keith was originally drafted by Mike Smith in the second round (54th overall) in the 2002 NHL Entry Draft. There were 15 defensemen taken ahead of them, five of whom never played a single NHL game. Of those defensemen who were drafted ahead of him, Jay Bouwmeester is the only one have more games played (GP) than Keith (1,111). Former teammate Trevor Daley, who was drafted 11 picks ahead of Keith, needs 27 more games to join the 1,000 GP club.
Heading into the draft, Keith's was ranked as the 94th overall North American skater by the Central Scouting Bureau. He was coming off a rather down season in his first year at Michigan State and scouts were worried about his size.
Chicago Blackhawks defenseman Duncan Keith – Photo Credit: Andy Martin Jr
"You always hear the reports and check them out because it's fun to see where you're ranked," Keith said back in 2007. "But I really didn't really care in the end where I was drafted and what other people said about me. I always believed in myself and my abilities to make the NHL and I think that's what any player should do. There are a lot of things that are going to be said about you, but you can't worry too much about that."
Keith spent the next season splitting time between Michigan State and the Kelowna Rockets of the Western Hockey League. After two successful seasons with the Norfolk Admirals of the American Hockey League, he made his NHL debut on Oct. 5, 2005, and has been a fixture on the Blackhawks' blue line ever since.
Over the next 13 seasons, Keith would miss just 37 total games. He would become one of the game's best two-way defensemen, playing against the top competition in his own end while driving the offense on the other end of the ice. He would become a perennial leader in time on ice (TOI) and Corsi-for percentage (CF%), and possibly the biggest reason for the golden age of Blackhawks hockey that produced three Stanley Cups.
Keith Builds a Hall-of-Fame Resume
Very few players have accomplished what Keith has since he made his debut in 2005. He was a major part of three Stanley Cup wins, won a Conn Smythe Trophy (and could easily have another one) and a pair of Norris Trophies, has been a four-time All-Star, was named as one of the top 100 players in NHL history and won two Olympic gold medals with Team Canada. You could very well argue that Keith was the most important player in the Blackhawks' success from 2010 to 2015. Yes, you had players like Patrick Kane, Brent Seabrook, Patrick Sharp, and Jonathan Toews, but a very strong case can be made that those teams would not have won three Cups without Keith.
Since the start of the 2005-06 season, only six players have played in more games than Keith, and nobody has played more minutes than he has. Only Zdeno Chara and Nicklas Lidstrom have a higher plus/minus rating than Keith's plus-145. Since the start of the 2007-08 season, he boasts a 54.0 CF%, one of the highest among all NHL defensemen. He has been a positive possession player each year of his career.
As great as Keith has been over his 1,000 regular-season games, it is during the postseason when he turns up his game to an even higher level. His average ice time jumps up nearly three minutes per game from the regular season while his CF% only takes a slight dip in more minutes against consistently tougher competition.
(Dennis Wierzbicki-USA TODAY Sports)
Keith proved that he was the most important player of the Blackhawks' "core" during the championship run of 2015. When you look back at the defense which was forced to take the ice that spring, it is amazing that the team made it out of the second round, let alone win the Stanley Cup. Keith, Seabrook and Niklas Hjalmarsson were all in their prime while Johnny Oduya was a serviceable fourth defenseman.
Things got very interesting when Michal Rozsival was lost to a gruesome ankle injury during the final game of the second round. While Rozsival was far from great, we realized how reliable he was when he wasn't out there. The Blackhawks somehow got past the Anaheim Ducks and Tampa Bay Lightning rotating David Rundblad, Kyle Cumiskey, an injured Trevor van Riemsdyk and what was essentially the corpse of Kimmo Timonen on their third pairing.
Keith played the best hockey of his life that postseason. He averaged over 31 minutes a game and posted a 54.4 CF% all while nearly putting up a point per game. He finished the playoffs tied with the Ryan Getzlaf for the most assists (18) and it was only fitting that he scored the eventual game-winning goal in the Cup-clinching game at the United Center. Nobody could debate that he didn't deserve to be the 2015 Conn Smythe Trophy winner for being the most valuable player of the postseason. There is no way the Blackhawks even sniff the title without their superstar defenseman on the ice.
What Lies Ahead for An Aging Superstar?
Last Saturday night was a celebration of the past 13 years. Sharp returned to the United Center to present Keith with a silver stick, along with Seabrook, honoring his accomplishment. Kane and Toews presented their career-long teammate with a retrospective painting while his friends and family watched from center ice. The team put together this great video package, which they played for the sold-out crowd.
"It was emotional," said Keith after Saturday's overtime win over the St. Louis Blues. "A lot of people who have supported me were here, which I appreciate. You only have one career, so I might as well leave it all on the line. I guess this means I've played a lot of games."
At age 35, one wonders how much is left in the tank for Keith. He is still under contract for another four seasons after this one. Even though he has lost a step after 1,000 games, there are not many reasons to doubt that he will play out his full deal. There are few players in the league who train harder and are obsessed with nutrition and health as Keith.
The Blackhawks have some talented young defensemen in the pipelines, which will help take some of the pressure off of the veteran star. We have already seen some of that this season with the arrival of Henri Jokiharju. The talented rookie has played well on the top pairing and has even taken over for Keith on the top power-play unit. Early on in the season, Keith's ice time is down from his career average by nearly a minute per game, and he is spending less time on special teams will help save his legs for later in the year. Two more reliable defensemen will be added to the lineup when both Gustav Forsling and Connor Murphy return from injury next month.
Going forward, if Keith is to play out the final four years of his contract his responsibilities will have to be lessened. With players like Nicolas Beaudin, Adam Boqvist, Carl Dahlstrom, Dennis Gilbert, Blake Hillman Chad Krys, and Ian Mitchell all possibly playing in Chicago over the next couple of years, it is easy to see Keith's workload becoming lighter in the future.
Regardless if Keith finishes out his contract or not, when he does call it a career he will have a spot in the Hall of Fame waiting for him and his number 2 will be hanging in the rafters of the United Center for decades to come. The Blackhawks have had their fair share of elite defensemen like Chris Chelios, Pierre Pilotte and Doug Wilson, but as great as they were, none of them ever came close to accomplishing what Keith has while wearing a Blackhawks sweater.
Brent Seabrook
Henri Jokiharju


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Accountants To Examine Records Of 'Vikings' & 'The Tudors' Producers Who Deny Claim They Diverted Up To €40M
Accountants will investigate the financial records of leading Irish firm Octagon Films, a producer on hit series such as Vikings and The Tudors and movies such as Calvary, in the latest twist to a lengthy legal battle between the company's founders and its German shareholder W2 Filmproduktion.
W2, a 49% shareholder in Octagon since 2002, alleges that producers Morgan O'Sullivan and James Flynn diverted tens of millions of euros out of the company to either themselves or entities controlled by them. O'Sullivan and Flynn strongly deny the allegations, which are being contested in Dublin's High Court.
W2, overseen by CEO Winfried Hammacher (The Liberator), is seeking transparency over Octagon's records, income and fees as part of the case and accountants have now been appointed by both sides in the dispute.
German Firm May Seek Injunction Over Planned 'Vikings' Sequel In Latest Twist To Long-Running Legal Dispute
In a statement of claim first submitted at the end of 2017, W2 estimated that its losses run to €40M ($45M) based on the budgets of 113 productions. In addition to denying this claim, O'Sullivan and Flynn, who are 51% shareholders in Octagon, have said in court documents that money claimed to be due was separate to the intended scope of its business.
Last month an Irish judge approved a freeze of assets of the two producers after Hammacher claimed that they were likely to dissipate or dispose of assets.
Octagon is among the most successful production companies in Ireland with credits including Vikings, The Tudors, Love/Hate, Penny Dreadful and The Borgias. Flynn is a producer on movies including Neil Jordan's Greta and John Michael McDonagh's Calvary, while O'Sullivan was a co-producer on films such as Leap Year, P.S I Love You and Becoming Jane.
The internationally under-the-radar case is due to return to court in February of next year but if the accountants don't agree on findings there is an option to return sooner. Neither party was available for comment when contacted by Deadline.


Psycho-oncology is the specialty of psychology that offers support to cancer patients, their families and other professionals in the oncology team, helping to manage the changes that are generated throughout the illness. The fundamental difference between the clinical psychologist and the Psycho-oncologist is that the latter has specific knowledge about cancer, knows the specific characteristics of the disease and treatments and is trained in the most effective psychological interventions to facilitate the management of changes produced by the oncological disease.
Diagnosis: It is a moment of uncertainty where the patient and the family can feel a great psychological and emotional impact, can appear intense emotions such as fear, anger, guilt, etc. The intervention of the psycho-oncologist is focused on detecting the emotional, psychological and social needs and guiding them in their management, as well as promoting adaptive coping strategies and improving the sense of personal control.
Treatment: The quality of life of the patient can be affected by the side effects of the treatments, fatigue, alterations in body image, vomiting, sexual dysfunctions, etc. The intervention of psycho-oncologist in this phase lies mainly in enhancing coping strategies to facilitate the adaptation of both the patient and the family. Some of the most effective interventions in this phase are: Counseling, cognitive restructuring, relaxation and mutual support groups among others.
In the Oncology Platform there is a group of people affected by cancer who meet weekly with the aim of sharing experiences about cancer and to help, through the testimony of people who have already gone through the oncological process, to start theirs own do it in the best possible way, reducing uncertainty and the feeling of loneliness.
Disease-free phase: Frequent controls and the threat of re-presenting the disease can cause problems in the management of fear. The intervention of the psycho-oncologist focuses on providing the patient and the family with tools to adequately manage this fear by maintaining it at tolerable and adaptive levels.
Survival. In the return to "normal" life, to everyday life, problems of adaptation may arise due to the sequelae left by the oncological process or by the internal and external changes that have occurred in the patient and also in the family. There is a before and after cancer and the psycho-oncologist can help the patient improve their resilience, that is, after the cancer the person comes out even strengthened. You can live even better after a cancer.
Recurrence: In the event that the disease returns, a state of intense emotional shock may appear, symptoms of anxiety and depression may be present at this time. The intervention of the psycho-oncologist in this phase focuses on addressing and treating the symptoms that seem to achieve psychological adaptation to the new situation.
End of life: In this phase, the aim is to take care of both the patient and the family. They usually appear intense emotions such as sadness, aggression, fear, etc. that generate a general worsening of the situation. The role of the psycho-oncologist in this phase focuses on contributing to maintaining and / or improving the quality of life, helping to control physical symptoms such as anxiety or pain and giving emotional support to both the patient and the family.


Fans of refinement in performance and ride quality will appreciate the best-handling, best-performing WRX to date, with the 2019 Subaru WRX arriving to our showroom floor here in Boone. From a class-exclusive Brembo brake configuration to a symmetrical all-wheel drive system for sturdiness from one season to the next, appreciate your time spent behind the wheel and the elite capability you can incorporate into the moments you spend on the move around nearby Lenoir.
The 2019 Subaru WRX, available not far from Wilkesboro, NC and Elizabethton, TN today, comes equipped with two explosive motors depending upon the level of burst you require from underneath the hood. A standard 2.5-liter DOHC turbocharged engine and an available 2.5-liter DOHC turbocharged engine with up to 310 horsepower and 290 pound-feet respectively elevate expectations and provide ample exhilaration for your time seated inside. With class-exclusive standard six-piston and two-piston rear Brembo brakes and lightweight 19-inch wheels, this new Subaru performance model shows off strong responsiveness when prompted.
Available SUBAU STARLINK covers advanced infotainment and the anticipated peace of mind you expect for trips around surrounding North Wilkesboro and Banner Elk areas. SUBARU STARLINK multimedia connects you to a touchscreen interface for mobile app integration and digital entertainment through music streaming, messaging and more. For better reactivity and interpretation of the open road in real time, a driver-assist technology suite in Subaru EyeSight includes features such as automatic pre-collision braking.
To experience the sharp design and dynamic capability of the 2019 Subaru WRX, visit our showroom near West Jefferson today for a test drive preview. We can discuss available trim levels, review the options you may also consider and answer pressing questions at this time.


Anyway, can someone give me pointers on how I can get Croatian TV and eany equipment needed for this.
Go to http://www.lyngsat.com/freetv/Croatia.shtml that is what is available free to air, not very much though.
you will need a dish and a separate receiver, probable cost, around £150.


Bacon County Schools is a public school district located in Alma, GA. It has 2,114 students in grades PK, K-12 with a student-teacher ratio of 15 to 1. According to state test scores, 37% of students are at least proficient in math and 35% in reading.
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Its a pretty good school, all things considered. They have a new building that it's in great shape and one of the best around but everything else is kind of middle of the road for the region. You're not going to find anything special or extraordinary about it. Some teachers are good, some are not, like most places I guess. The environment is alright too. since its a small school, bullying isn't as big of a factor like in other places and everyone seems to get along well. All in all, you could definitely do worst but you could also do better.
Bacon County is a good school. Staff care about you and want you to do your best. Classes are small and teachers will know your name. Inforces attendance and rewards for good grades. Overall a good school!
Bacon County has a very small school system. The small class sizes allows students to get more one-on-one interaction with the teachers. The counselors and teachers help to prepare you for graduation and college.


Having lived and worked in the Alps, we've had our share of falls on icy streets...We started thinking about ways to prevent slipping on winter streets and came across a car tyre chain manufacturer, who suggested we could use the chains to create anti slip devices which could be applied to footwear - painful slips on winter ice could be avoided!
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EuroAsia EU status
Project of Common Interest (PCI)
Connecting Europe Facility
Inclusion of the EuroAsia Interconnector in the TYNDP
EuroAsia Interconnector Double Labelling – Electricity Highways 2050
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Home 2018 Former Cyprus Transport Minister joins EuroAsia Interconnector
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Former Cyprus Transport Minister joins EuroAsia Interconnector
* Brings vast experience of private-public partnerships to the Board
NICOSIA, December 5, 2018 – Former Transport and Communications Minister Marios Demetriades has joined the EuroAsia Interconnector Strategic Council as a board member.
EuroAsia Interconnector is the project promoter of the European Commission Project of Common Interest (PCI), connecting the electricity grids of Israel, Cyprus, Crete and Attica in Greece with the European system through a 1,518km subsea high-voltage direct current (HVDC) cable with a design capacity of 2,000 MW.
"Mr Demetriades joins the Strategic Council at the most critical juncture of the EuroAsia Interconnector. His sound advice and experience in dealing with public-private partnerships will contribute significantly to the smooth development of the project," Chairman of the Strategic Council and former Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides said.
"As the project developer of the 'electricity highway' that is proceeding according to schedule, we welcome Marios Demetriades who will bring his experience and know-how in matters of communications, energy and business strategy," said Project Director George Killas.
From 2014 to 2018, Demetriades oversaw the transition of the Transport Ministry to one of the biggest contributors to the economy, undertaking reforms in air transport and overseeing major projects such as the commercialisation of Limassol Port, transformation of the Department of Merchant Shipping to the Deputy Ministry of Shipping and large-scale public infrastructure development projects.
During his term in office in President Nicos Anastasiades' first administration, Demetriades supervised tax reforms and other initiatives that bolstered the international image of the maritime sector that now boasts one of the leading merchant shipping fleets in the world and a leading ship-management cluster.
Marios Demetriades was born in Paphos in 1971 and was educated at the University of East Anglia in Business, Finance and Economics in 1993. He worked at international advisory fims BDO and Ernst & Young, and held various managerial positions at Laiki Bank Group and subsequently at Piraeus Bank (Cyprus). He is a member of the CFA Institute (Chartered Financial Analyst), the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (Chartered Accountant) and the Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Cyprus (ICPAC). He is married to Maria and they have two children.
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Was the coronavirus created by a Chinese scientist who tried to cover her tracks – and failed?
Editor's note: The following report provides an account of how the coronavirus was likely created in a biolab by a Chinese scientist who then tried to cover her tracks after it escaped.
(Article republished from LifeSiteNews.com)
May 15, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Dr. Shi Zhengli, known as China's batwoman, was worried. Her creation, a highly infectious coronavirus, had leaked from her lab in October. Early efforts to stop the widening circle of infections had failed. It had spread like wildfire through the densely populated city of Wuhan.
The Communist authorities were also worried that the source of the epidemic would be traced back to the Wuhan lab. To muddy the waters, on January 3rd, China's National Health Commission ordered all biolabs in China to destroy not only the samples of the SARS-CoV-2 that they had isolated from those infected, but also the genetic sequencing of the virus' RNA strand. Dr. Shi must have been only too happy to cover her own tracks—evidence suggests she had already started doing so–by destroying the evidence of the deadly virus' actual origins in her lab.
It was the equivalent of trying to wipe the fingerprints from a gun that had just been used to commit murder.
The "gun" itself couldn't be destroyed, however. In fact, the murder weapon used was busy replicating itself by the billions within each and every person who came down with the China Virus.
Dr. Shi and her superiors, undoubtedly including Major General Chen Wei, the head of the PLA's bioweapons program, knew that the coronavirus she had assembled using recombinant technology was so different from other known coronaviruses that it would raise suspicions. None of the other known beta-coronaviruses, the family from which her "backbone" coronavirus came from, had anything resembling the genetic sequence she had inserted to make it more infectious to humans.
To reinforce the "Wet Market" cover story, namely, that this new pathogen had come from nature and not from her lab, something had to be done. And it had to be done quickly, since by then the China Coronavirus had spread to the rest of the world. Anger against China for its lack of transparency about the origins and characteristics of the virus was growing.
Dr. Shi decided to "discover" a new bat coronavirus that was very similar to the one she had created. That "discovery" would prove that coronaviruses similar to SARS-CoV-2 were found in nature, and so deflect the growing suspicion that she had engineered it in her lab.
The similarity between the two coronaviruses—including their common ability to infect humans–would greatly reinforce her story that the SARS-CoV-2 had jumped from a bat to a human, perhaps through some intermediate species at the Wuhan wet market.
So, all Dr. Shi had to do was sit down before her computer keyboard, open a word file, and begin to fabricate the SARS-CoV-2 analogue that she would claim to have found in nature seven years before. All she had to do was type in the genetic sequence of her own creation, SARS-CoV-2, changing a few nucleotides now and again to mimic the "random mutations" that regularly occur in nature.
She could easily have completed the "data entry" part of her task in a day, since all she was doing was entering in a string of letters alternating between the four nucleotides, A, U, G, and C. And coronaviruses contain less than 30,000 different nucleotides.
Dr. Shi registered her new virus on January 27th, 2020, with the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the customary repository for such information. She called it RaTG-13, Ra for Rhinolophus affinis, the Latin name of the Intermediate Horseshoe Bat, and 13 for 2013, the year she supposedly "discovered" it.
A lot of people have been taken in by Dr. Shi's clever "discovery," which is looking more and more like a forgery. No one else has independently verified its existence. No other lab has a sample of it, and no one else has ever sequenced it. And of course, they likely never will, because more and more evidence suggests that it exists only in a string of letters on her computer.
It was a brilliant scheme, and it almost succeeded. The Chinese virology community—following new, strict Party guidelines—has published a flurry of studies suggesting that the existence of RaTG-13 proves that SARS-CoV-2 came from nature. They claim that other "first cousins" of the China Coronavirus will soon be found to exist in nature if we just keep looking. They do genomic analyses showing that RaTG-13 and SARS-CoV-2 are 96% identical throughout the whole sequence of the viral genome. They calculate that the two share a common ancestor a few decades back.
Actually, the only thing the two virus genomes have in common is Dr. Shi herself, who engineered the one and appears to have fabricated the other.
As clever as Batwoman is, however, she did not commit the perfect deception. She left behind a few key clues that reveal, as clearly as fingerprints on a murder weapon, what she was up to.
One blogger, writing at Nerd Has Power, has brilliantly teased these findings out of the data. The blogger's efforts can be read here if you have a free afternoon and a strong math background. I offer here a summary of one of the blogger's critiques, in the hope of making the blogger's general line of argument accessible to the layman. Because he published his raw data, I and others have been able to check and verify his work. I offer here a summary of one of the blogger's critiques, in the hope of making the blogger's general line of argument accessible to the layman.
An Impossible Ratio: As viruses evolve, they mutate. That is to say, one of the four nucleotides is randomly replaced by another. Most of these random mutations do not produce changes in the amino acids that make up the protein. Such mutations are called "synonymous", since the three-nucleotide "codon" still codes for the same amino acid despite the change. Like a synonym in a thesaurus, it "looks" different but "means"—in terms of the amino acid and resulting protein—the same thing.
But then there are "non-synonymous" mutations. These are mutations that do change the resulting amino acid and hence the configuration of the resulting protein. In nature, the ratio of synonymous to non-synonymous is approximately 5:1.
Here's where Dr. Shi got into trouble. When typing in the genomic sequence of her "discovery" she made way too many non-synonymous changes at the beginning. Then, one-third of the way through the sequence, she apparently realized her error. After that, she made way too few non-synonymous changes. So while the entire genome has the expected 5:1 ratio, there are stretches where the ratio is closer to 2:1, and other long stretches where it is as high as 44:1.
Nature's mutations are random. Dr. Shi's "mutations" are not. Dr. Lawrence Sellin has calculated that the odds that her "mutations" occurred naturally in just one area—the critical spike protein–at almost ten million to one.
If RaTG-13 is merely a strategic deception, as I believe it is, then what real coronavirus did Dr. Shi enhance in "Gain-of-Function" research to create the highly infectious SARS-CoV-2? Evidence suggests that a coronavirus from a People's Liberation Army biolab may have played this role.
If Dr. Shi's research was in any way connected with the PLA's bioweapons research program, this would go a long way towards explaining China's bizarre behavior – the secrecy, the serial lying, the brutal quarantine, the persecution of whistleblowers, the seeding of the virus around the world, and the furious rejection by Beijing of the idea of an international commission to investigate the origin and spread of the disease. It all seems wildly overwrought, even by the standards of a conspiratorial Communist Party whose leaders suffer from a pathological paranoia.
Be that as it may, there is one thing about Dr. Shi's research that we do know with absolute, ironclad certainty: The U.S. was helping to fund it. From 2013 onwards, the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, run by the now-famous Dr. Anthony Fauci, gave $7.4 million for research involving gain-of-function work and collecting and studying bat coronaviruses, $600,000 of which went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Much of the rest went to other labs in China.
If Dr. Fauci was as familiar with the Chinese Communist Party as he is with viruses, he would not have sent the Wuhan Institute of Virology one thin dime. He would have known that the PRC has a long-running program to develop bioweapons. He would have concluded that China's only BSL-4 high containment lab was the obvious place to carry out at least some of this research. And he definitely did know that the "Gain-of-Function" research he was funding had the potential to create "Pathogens of Pandemic Potential" that might not be used for peaceful ends.
Apparently none of these considerations ever crossed his mind.
Now that Western intelligence services have concluded that SARS-CoV-2 probably is a manmade chimera that leaked from a lab — a lab that he was funding — you might think that Dr. Fauci would be inclined to reevaluate the role he played in this global debacle.
Instead, he continues to tell us that there is "no scientific evidence the coronavirus was made in a Chinese lab" and that there is "no evidence" that it leaked from the lab.
It is a sad end to a career that was at least long, if not particularly illustrious.
Read more at: LifeSiteNews.com
Tagged Under: biolab, China, coronavirus, epicdemic, evil, genetic lunacy, scientist, twisted, Wuhan
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Home / World News / Donald Trump plans to end preferential trade treatment with India
Donald Trump plans to end preferential trade treatment with India
The US goods and services trade deficit with India was $27.3 billion in 2017, according to the US Trade Representative's Office.
world Updated: Mar 05, 2019 11:36 IST
The US Trade Representative's Office said removing India from the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program would not take effect for at least 60 days after notifications to Congress and the Indian government, and it will be enacted by a presidential proclamation.(PTI File Photo)
US President Donald Trump said on Monday he intends to end India's preferential trade treatment under a program that allows $5.6 billion worth of Indian exports to enter the United States duty free.
Trump, who has vowed to reduce US trade deficits, has repeatedly called out India for its high tariffs.
"I am taking this step because, after intensive engagement between the United States and the Government of India, I have determined that India has not assured the United States that it will provide equitable and reasonable access to the markets of India," Trump said in a letter to congressional leaders.
The US Trade Representative's Office said removing India from the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program would not take effect for at least 60 days after notifications to Congress and the Indian government, and it will be enacted by a presidential proclamation.
In New Delhi, India's Commerce Secretary Anup Wadhawan said the US decision to withdraw India's name from the GSP list won't have any "significant impact" on the 5.6 billion dollar exports to the US. "India exports goods worth USD 5.6 billion under the GSP, and the duty benefit is only USD 190 million annually," news agency PTI quoted Wadhawan as saying.
India is the world's largest beneficiary of the GSP program and ending its participation would be the strongest punitive action against India since Trump took office in 2017.
US-India trade ties were hurt after India unveiled new rules on e-commerce that restrict the way Amazon.com Inc and Walmart Inc-backed Flipkart do business.
The e-commerce rules followed a drive by New Delhi to force global card payments companies such as Mastercard Inc and Visa Inc to move their data to India and the imposition of higher tariffs on electronic products and smartphones.
(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text.)
Generalized System of Preferences
trade treatment
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US Supreme Court rejects 'dramatic & disruptive' Pennsylvania election lawsuit by GOP congressman
On Tuesday afternoon, the Supreme Court denied the application of Congressman Mike Kelly (R-Pennsylvania) seeking to stop the state's certification of the election for the Democrat over President Donald Trump. There was no explanation for the decision, or any dissenting notes.
NEW: The US Supreme Court rejected a GOP election challenge in Pennsylvania in a one-sentence order, with no noted dissents — this was Rep. Kelly's case trying to stop certification based on objections to a law passed in Oct. '19 expanding mail-in voting https://t.co/o1dkDSEIRp pic.twitter.com/Vrj0CeCxVD
— Zoe Tillman (@ZoeTillman) December 8, 2020
Kelly argued that Pennsylvania's Supreme Court violated the US Constitution when it failed to overturn the state's expansion of mail-in voting prior to this year's election, and sought to invalidate Biden's victory in the Keystone State – as well as his own election.
In court papers filed on Tuesday morning, lawyers representing Governor Tom Wolf and Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar had asked Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito to throw out Kelly's suit.
JUST IN – #Pennsylvania has filed its brief (requested by Alito) to the Supreme Court. They basically urge the court not to open pandora's box even if federal laws of the US constitution have been violated. pic.twitter.com/OId7w3GnNH
— Disclose.tv 🚨 (@disclosetv) December 8, 2020
Before arguing against Kelly on legal grounds, the lawyers claimed that should the Supreme Court eventually rule in his favor, it would pave the way for future elections to be invalidated.
"Once the door is opened to judicial invalidation of presidential election results, it will be awfully hard to close that door again," they argued, calling Kelly's request "one of the most dramatic, disruptive invocations of judicial power in the history of the Republic."
Democrats and their lawyers aren't the only ones seeking to shoot down Kelly's suit. In a separate filing on Monday, a group of anti-Trump Republicans argued that Kelly should have filed before the election, and claimed that if the Supreme Court were to rule in his favor, the ruling would open the door for Democrats to challenge any future Republican victories in the state on the same grounds.
The Supreme Court was Kelly's last hope to be heard, after a succession of state-level courts dismissed his challenge. What seemed like Alito's initial decision to hear the case had encouraged the president's supporters. The conservative Justice, whose district of responsibility includes Pennsylvania, moved up his original Wednesday deadline for briefs to Tuesday, allowing the court to act before the state certifies its slate of electors for Biden.
If #SCOTUS grants cert in the PA election case, I have told the petitioners I will stand ready to present the oral argument.
Full statement below… pic.twitter.com/EnHxjqGR5K
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) December 7, 2020
Additionally, Texas Senator Ted Cruz has volunteered to present Kelly's oral argument before the Supreme Court.
"I believe #SCOTUS has a responsibility to the American People to ensure, within its powers, that we are following the law and following the Constitution," Cruz tweeted on Monday.
Kelly's case is separate from the suit that Texas has filed against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, alleging that they changed electoral rules through "executive fiat or friendly lawsuits" and weakened ballot integrity, thereby harming other states that conducted fair elections under the US Constitution.
The resulting flaws make it impossible to know who "legitimately won the 2020 election and threaten to cloud all future elections," Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton argued.
Less than one week remains until the Electoral College meets to decide a winner in this year's bitterly-contested election. President Donald Trump has said that he will leave office if the electors back Biden, but in an unrelated press conference on Tuesday, said that "if somebody has the courage" to back his long-shot bid to hold onto power, he expects to remain in the White House.
Read More: US Supreme Court rejects 'dramatic & disruptive' Pennsylvania election lawsuit by GOP congressman
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Alcohol may be man's worst enemy, but the bible says love your enemy.
— Frank Sinatra
New Zealand quake hits beer supplies at major brewery
Cartoon / Rod Emmerson
Sounds like they need rescue supplies.
CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand — New Zealand's major 7.0 earthquake disrupted supplies from one of the country's biggest breweries, an official said Tuesday, warning operations may not return to normal for weeks.
The Lion Nathan brewery, which has stood in central Christchurch since the 1850s, was little damaged in Saturday's jolt but a nearby warehouse was badly shaken, with much of its beer, wine and spirit stock smashed.