“Let me tell you about the very rich, they are different from you and me…” F. Scott Fitzgerald
There are two parts in viewing the rich. Yes the rich have more money, by definition, which tends to allow them to live different regarding many of the rules regular and poor people have to follow. This means that simple challenges others face are not for them: How do I research something that I can’t go and visit, How do I meet that person of influence, etc.
Lack of access to the money that can get you out of an emergency is one definition often used for poverty. When in a crisis do you have a friend or family member that could lend you $2,000 to get you out? If so you are likely not poor. When my wife and I were doing non-profit work there would be regular conversations about whether we were poor, yes we were a dual master degree family living below the poverty line, but as we finally demonstrated at any point we knew that we had the means and connections to relieve ourselves from the circumstance. This is not true for people in poverty.
On a layer different the rich are exactly the same as every other human being, same problems, hang ups and often their riches only make the flaws in their personality worse. Take care of those items regardless of your stature or rank. Often my experience has been that the rich are more isolated from others and the community around them.
Trust that good is available to transform you so that rich or poor you are living as the person you have been created. Also know that the rich are same as you.
Mr. Waters there is a god and it sure might be you and I am positive it is not the first time you have been told this (though probably in different circumstances:)
I was born in 1976 at St. Agnus Hospital in Baltimore and by 5 years old I was wandering the city blocks of West Baltimore in Edmondson, a wild thing for a white boy in the 80’s. As life moved on I became a devoted follower of you even attending movies at the Senator. As a young adult, I found the director’s cut of A Dirty Shame and your glossary of sex terms extremely helpful and still recommend it to my children and strangers when they find struggles with such naming conventions. “Full of Grace” is a regular quote in my family attributed to Pecker…and thank you for indulging my fanboy-ness but this note is about divinity, not celebrity.
This morning I realized that tonight at 40 years old I have reached the pinnacle of my life. My oldest daughter is 15 years old and deeply in love with theater and last spring at the drama auction for Ingraham High School in North Seattle I bought a “walk-on role” in the musical this spring. I was delighted to learn in fall that the musical would be Hairspray.
As a sophomore, the production has been a dream come true for my daughter, in addition to landing a role she was also given the responsibly of dance captain. Due to circumstances, she choreographed and co-choreographed several the songs including Good Morning Baltimore. As horrible people say, “the apple does not far fall from the tree” as her mother is a choreographer and movement artist.
Back to me, this week I learned and this morning it dawned on me how significant it is that my walk on role for Hairspray is during Good Morning Baltimore. Not only that but I get to be “The flasher who lives next door”. Following in the footsteps of your cameo role in the recent film.
For a kid that grew up the son of window cleaner in Baltimore my life could not be better, for that I am so grateful. I may live to see the marriage of my children, grandchildren born or even become a billionaire but nothing will compare to the moment when I walk out on stage tonight. No better script exists than my own life and this moment certainly makes me consider that all of it has been choreographed for me already. Happy belated birthday, missed you when you were in Seattle a month ago, and I do hope someday our paths will cross in person as they already have in spirit.
*This message was originally written on the fan page @JohnWatersFanPage where I realized that you are not on Facebook. Tempted to hand write the letter to you, but I wanted you to read every expression of my heart clearly. Many blessing enlighten one!
In the past month(s) some of the news coming out from major technology companies have caught the media’s attention. At the same time my co-host for the Globally Speaking Podcast, Renato Beninatto , was really pushing us to make our most complex podcast to date on the topic as part of a series on the machines taking over:) Since then I have started doing my research in preparation for our conversations with leaders in the field. At this point I’m likely to help others talk intelligently at a cocktail party.
To date much of the conversation around Machine Translation, which has been around since the 1950s, mainly consisted of statistical and rule-based systems. Rule Based systems as the names signifies is based up linguistic rules that set how words will be translated, words from target language will replace the source language. Statistical machine translation focused on pattern recognition within translation and provided target based on huge amounts of parallel texts. Most of the effective machine engines for a time ended up being a Hybrid machine translation engine that incorporated the best of both methodologies..
Now neural networks are on the scene. To understand the effectiveness and basic outline of this technology check out a this great article, From not working to neural networking. As I understand the strength of the neural network is the depth of the data that is process. Rather then being limited to a number of rules or a corpus of strings to improve the quality. Neural machine translation operates beyond a string and by exposing it to a huge number of examples it will learn without telling it what to look for. There is a sight that even allows you to demo the Neural Machine Translation by LISA, which has been trained on a lot of data from the UN and European Parliament.
So since this has been going on for some time, why the news all of a sudden? For one Alan Packer from Facebook came out and said that the other forms (specifically statistical) of machine translation have reached their usefulness and Facebook is now focusing on the use of neural networks. Check out Rachel Metz’s article, Facebook Plans to Boost Its Translations Using Neural Networks This Year. Then this month Google has come out and said that Google Neural Machine Translation reduces errors by 60 percent, cool. NPR picking it up here, they interviewed a translator naysayer who felt the need to reinforce that professional translators will be needed.
Then during Google’s “Made by Google” Event, the implications of this break thru and artificial intelligence (AI) were discussed by Sudar Pichai during the early part of the event. The part about the implications for voice technology were interest, why do we only have one voice?
With all the excitement it is important to have other voices outside of Google and Facebook, so that we don’t all get caught up in the next wave of hype. For that check out the article, Hyperbolic? Experts Weigh In on Google Neural Translate from Florian Faes at Slater. Overall the opinions are rather favorable, so check it out.
Now you are on the road of looking like a star with your friends and new acquaintances. Glad to hear about other resources you are finding key on getting you up to speed with this great technology, if it’s something we use I’ll be sure to mention it on the podcast!
Sometimes I wish that I could go into a time machine right now and just look at my self and say, ‘Calm down. Things are gonna be fine. Things are gonna be all great. Just relax.’
Yesterday while running through the park yesterday I ran past this art and was reminded of a simple mental exercise regarding sales. Follow with me for a moment:
Which of these to chairs represents the salesperson and the client?
There is no correct answer but the way you answer may reveal a great deal about how you think of salespeople. If you are a salesperson it may reveal how you think about yourself. In an ideal world the chairs would be the same size and it would be two experts working together for their common good. There are also times to humble oneself, when providing hospitality or after a mistake that may lead to an discrepancy. There have been moments where I have remembered this image and thought to myself, which one do I feel like right now…and is that okay?
Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman, not the attitude of the prospect.
There are a number of models of success in the localization industry.
Each day billions of people use products they would otherwise not have access to because of the translator or editor and supporting services.
Global companies continue to drive higher revenues worldwide, often outside the country that the company was originally founded in.
An author gets his book out to an audience that doesn’t speak his native language.
Communities are being connected and the localization industry has a continued opportunity to onboard new groups of people to this exciting connected world we live in. Through this work we share in the beauty of the worlds growing diversity, and language is at the core of it.
If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart. -Nelson Mandela
Today we put our the latest episode of our podcast, Episode 010: What about Sales, from Globally Speaking. www.globallyspeakingradio.com or you can listen and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play (USA or Canada), Stitcher, or via RSS. This inspired me to share a story that tells you how hard it is to do sales, which is something I am passionate about.
A few years ago before the localization industries primary trade show, LocWorld, I sent a note to a friend that I saw was going to be in attendance, offering to show him around town since the show was in Seattle. It had been a few years since I had connected with this friend and former client, so I thought it would be great to catch up. Surprisingly, to me, there was no response.
On the second night of the show we are at a bar and I see this friend I reached out to at the same bar with his colleagues enjoying a drink. The bar was closing, and I went up to see how he was doing. After some small talk he said, “You’re from here, where can we get another drink?” I had my car and offered to take them to another bar I knew would be open and fun. So we went out to my car, the four of us squeezing into a small two door car, once everyone was in I locked the door and asked, “No one is getting out of the car until I found out why you didn’t respond to my email.” There was laughter, but I did not move or start the car as everyone looked around.
Finally my friend went to explain that he had received no less then 400 emails or LinkedIn InMail before the conference. Some were offering him “10% less then his current prices, guaranteed.” He then apologized, under the threat of never getting out of my car, and went on to explain how it was impossible to separate the signal from the noise in such circumstances…so he just shut off.
Not only was it fun to reconnect with an old friend, but he insight was shocking to me. How do you distinguish yourself when people have shut off because there is too much noise? How do you respect a person’s desire to not be bother but also let them know that you are thinking about them? This is the work and the art of sales, each person and company are unique but the principles you have in place to tackle this obstacle are key in your success.
Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman – not the attitude of the prospect.
The existence of this tool is far overrated. Often in strategy meetings adding that one tool is the over simplified solution for an extremely complex problem, and it is no surprise that it often does not work.
Few things work as well as compound interest. This goes for money and showing up every day to the work before you. Constantly doing your job, regularly and steadily improving small bits that can improve the whole.
For those not paying attention success does look like a silver bullet was discovered, an overnight sensation discovered, and all the lonely days practicing in the garage or at empty shows are forgotten because of the success. For those who accomplish it, they remember all the work and failure that provided the foundation for the win. Once it is achieved it means you have to go out there and do it all over again.
“The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.”
49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick addresses the media after a preseason game against the Packers. (Ben Margot / Associated Press)
No one enjoys hearing things they don’t like.
Sit or stand, pray for suffering or not…in a free country many think differently then you. Social commentary keeps it in your face longer then you are comfortable. Then there are those who react because it is not what they like. And under all of this a message is being sent.
Are you listening? am I? Only recently have I been made aware that it is possible to disagree and not demonize the other person. In short disagreement does not demand that the other burn in hell. Music is notorious for offending older generations and then being played on the oldies station a few decades later. Take the time to breath and listen. Perhaps we will have the strength to engage in an actual conversation with that which we don’t like to hear.
One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say.
Over half way through this year I would say that has been the biggest change in my life, finding my own voice. A big part of it has been the Globally Speaking Podcast. Blogging and stand up comedy have also been a part of the process as well. Pretty fun and I’m excited to see where it leads.
The second half of the title (inspiring others voice)I’m not so sure about, but I’ll take some credit for it. Two co-workers have published on LinkedIn, if you have a chance check them out:
There are risks involved in your job. For some, such as police and firefighters, the over all daily risk of death is much higher then others. Being an Olympic Athlete is not a job generally thought of as high risk for death, and yet this week Ryan Lochte was held up at gunpoint while in Rio. The details seem sketchy and this could end up going strange directions, but the fact remains that many of us do not have regular threats on our lives in daily work or even when we travel for work.
I’m grateful for the peace that I experience on a daily basis and I also am grateful for those who put themselves in harms way intentionally for the sake of others. So the next time you take a cab or Uber and end up at the destination without being robbed, say a little thanks.
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
In the past month(s) some of the news coming out from major technology companies have caught the media’s attention. At the same time my co-host for the Globally Speaking Podcast,
Yesterday while running through the park yesterday I ran past this art and was reminded of a simple mental exercise regarding sales. Follow with me for a moment:
Today we put our the latest episode of our podcast, Episode 010: What about Sales, from Globally Speaking. 
The existence of this tool is far overrated. Often in strategy meetings adding that one tool is the over simplified solution for an extremely complex problem, and it is no surprise that it often does not work.
There are risks involved in your job. For some, such as police and firefighters, the over all daily risk of death is much higher then others. Being an Olympic Athlete is not a job generally thought of as high risk for death, and yet this week 
Web Theologian 