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10 Things To Do Before Any Video Interview

We’re all working from home, and that include job interviews, news interviews, class lectures, webinars, presentations to customers and even just business meetings. The 10 Things to Do Before Any Video Interview infographic from Kickresume is a great last-minute checklist before you turn on your webcam!

In the end, you can take this infographic as a checklist. You can use it to prepare for your job interview or any other video conference call.

And, oh boy, are we going to make many more of those. Sure, it took a global pandemic for companies to recognize the value of working from home but now there’s no going back. Video conference calls are here to stay. (I personally hate it but even I should probably get used to it. Damn.)

Anyway, good luck at your job interview!

I would have preferred more visual elements, but I like that this is a tightly focused infographic with a clear, useful message to a broad audience. This is one of the best uses for an infographic: an informative topic, related to the industry of the publishing company, with a popular, trending topic. This design checks all the boxes.

Designers have to remember that the infographic image file will often be shared by itself, so it always helps to include a few more thins in the footer:

  • The Infographic Landing Page URL (not just the company home page). This will help readers find the full infographic and the article that went along with it. Don’t make people search for it on your website.

  • A copyright or Creative Commons statement is always a good idea when you publishing an infographic




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California Study: Four Widely Used Neonicotinoid Pesticides Harm Bees

Center for Biological Diversity Press Release WASHINGTON – Four commonly used neonicotinoid pesticides can harm bees and other pollinators, according to a new analysis by California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation. The study found that current approved uses of the “neonics” … Continue reading




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‘Warning Bells Going Off’ as NOAA Forecasts Entire Great Barrier Reef at Risk of Coral Bleaching and Death

By Jessica Corbett Common Dreams “This is a wake-up call,” says one Australian marine biologist. “Given sea temperatures usually increase as we get towards March, this is probably conservative.” Delivering yet another “wake-up call” after recent studies have shown that … Continue reading




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Insects Are ‘Glue in Nature’ and Must Be Rescued to Save Humanity, Says Top Scientist

By Jake Johnson Common Dreams Rapidly falling insect populations, said Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson, “will make it even more difficult than today to get enough food for the human population of the planet, to get good health and freshwater for everybody.” A … Continue reading




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Vulcan Bomber

Andrew Rickmann posted a photo:

The Vulcan at RAF Fairford





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Trip to Mazirbe

At the very last day of last year (2017) I took an offer to go to Mazirbe – an old fishermen village, located on coast of Baltic sea, West part of Latvia. Trip turned around to be very nice. And I got some nice shots, too.

See rest of photos from trip to Mazirbe.




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Leonardo DiCaprio Premiers “Before the Flood” Climate Change Documentary

Environmental activist and Academy Award®-winning actor Leonardo DiCaprio and Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Fisher Stevens premier their documentary film, Before the Flood, a compelling account of the powerful changes occurring on our planet due to climate change. Before the Flood will … Continue reading




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Understanding Climate Change Means Reading Beyond Headlines

By David Suzuki The David Suzuki Foundation Seeing terms like “post-truth” and “alternative facts” gain traction in the news convinces me that politicians, media workers and readers could benefit from a refresher course in how science helps us understand the … Continue reading




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‘Warning Bells Going Off’ as NOAA Forecasts Entire Great Barrier Reef at Risk of Coral Bleaching and Death

By Jessica Corbett Common Dreams “This is a wake-up call,” says one Australian marine biologist. “Given sea temperatures usually increase as we get towards March, this is probably conservative.” Delivering yet another “wake-up call” after recent studies have shown that … Continue reading




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After 30 Years Studying Climate, Scientist Declares: “I’ve Never Been as Worried as I Am Today”

By Jake Johnson Common Dreams And colleague says “global warming” no longer strong enough term. “Global heating is technically more correct because we are talking about changes in the energy balance of the planet.” Declaring that after three decades of … Continue reading




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Why Is Going Green So Hard? Because Our System Isn’t

By Jill Richardson Other Words If environmental solutions aren’t systemic, living green will always mean going against the grain — and usually failing. Every year around Earth Day, I’m reminded of papers I graded in an environmental sociology class. The … Continue reading




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Insects Are ‘Glue in Nature’ and Must Be Rescued to Save Humanity, Says Top Scientist

By Jake Johnson Common Dreams Rapidly falling insect populations, said Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson, “will make it even more difficult than today to get enough food for the human population of the planet, to get good health and freshwater for everybody.” A … Continue reading




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Usability task scenarios: The beating heart of a usability test

Usability tests are unique. We ask people to do real tasks with the system and watch. As the person completes the task, we watch their behaviour and listen to their stream-of-consciousness narrative. But what makes a good usability task scenario?




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Astra Pro with Gutenberg Review – Practical Application

At 3.7 Designs we have an array of strategies we use to solve business problems. For example, when it comes to redesigning a website we might recommend recommend a completely custom design that starts with a design discovery engagement. Typically this process can take three to six months with ample time upfront to research the […]

The post Astra Pro with Gutenberg Review – Practical Application appeared first on Psychology of Web Design | 3.7 Blog.




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Does your website need to be beautiful?

When I first started designing websites in the 1990s, I focused most of my attention on creating striking visuals. In my defense, I was typically designing gaming website with only the occasional local business… but my goal was always to design a site that looked “cool.” In the early 2000s I stumbled across a website […]

The post Does your website need to be beautiful? appeared first on Psychology of Web Design | 3.7 Blog.




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Cinematic Street Photography by Victor Cambet

Cinematic Street Photography by Victor Cambet

AoiroStudioMay 07, 2020

Victor Cambet is a freelance graphic designer and an amazing photographer currently based in Montreal, QC. What initially caught my eyes on Victor's work is his perspective of how he sees things through his camera lenses. It's pure, raw, and cinematic street photography. That's one of the reasons why we decided to feature his work on ABDZ. Being a personal fan of Victor's, I have always enjoyed his shots from my hometown of Montreal (and still do). I have lived in this city for more than 30 years and it's quite a pleasant sentiment. Definitely check out his Instagram, you will get to follow the 'behind-the-scenes' stories and you will notice how Victor is passionate and patient with his photography. Make sure to give him some love.

La rue est un film où chaque inconnu en devient le personnage principal.

About Victor Cambet

Victor is a freelance graphic designer currently based in my hometown of Montreal, Qc in Canada. You should definitely follow Victor and check out his store.

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La rue est un film...

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L’homme au chapeau.

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De l’ombre à la lumière.

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Un regard.

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Une silhouette dans la nuit.

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À découvert.

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Abelardo Morell, Camera Obscura: Early Morning View of the East Side of Midtown Manhattan

Abelardo Morell
Camera Obscura: Early Morning View of the East Side of Midtown Manhattan, , 2014
Website - AbelardoMorell.net

Abelardo Morell was born in Havana, Cuba in 1948. He immigrated to the United States with his parents in 1962. Morell received his undergraduate degree in 1977 from Bowdoin College and an MFA from The Yale University School of Art in 1981. In 1997 he received an honorary degree from Bowdoin College.

His publications include a photographic illustration of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1998) by Dutton Children’s Books, A Camera in a Room (1995) by Smithsonian Press, A Book of Books (2002) and Camera Obscura (2004) by Bulfinch Press and Abelardo Morell (2005), published by Phaidon Press. Recent publications include a limited edition book by The Museum of Modern Art in New York of his Cliché Verre images with a text by Oliver Sacks.

His work has been collected and shown in many galleries, institutions and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Art Museum in New York, The Chicago Art Institute, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Houston Museum of Art, The Boston Museum of Fine Art, The Victoria & Albert Museum and over seventy other museums in the United States and abroad. A retrospective of his work organized jointly by the Art Institute of Chicago, The Getty in Los Angeles and The High Museum in Atlanta closed in May 2014 after a year of travel. Abelardo will be having his first show at the Edwynn Houk Gallery in New York opening October 23, 2014 and will run until December 20, 2014 featuring a selection of new pictures.




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Monochrome beach

From Ølberg Strand. Taken with iPhone 11 Pro wide-angle and given some Lightroom fixes for sky effect.




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10 Best Restaurant Menu Plugins for WordPress (Compared)

Want to add a food menu to your restaurant website? Publishing your restaurant menu on your website comes in handy especially if you’re providing an online restaurant reservation or online food delivery. That way your users can figure out the available food options without having to walk into your restaurant. In this article, we’ll show […]

The post 10 Best Restaurant Menu Plugins for WordPress (Compared) appeared first on IsItWP - Free WordPress Theme Detector.




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12 Best GoDaddy Alternatives for Domain & Web Hosting (2020)

Are you looking for the best GoDaddy alternative for domain registration and web hosting? Without a doubt, Godaddy is one of the most popular names when it comes to registering domain names and hosting your business online. Over the last 22 years, GoDaddy has managed to establish a stronghold in the market. In this article, […]

The post 12 Best GoDaddy Alternatives for Domain & Web Hosting (2020) appeared first on IsItWP - Free WordPress Theme Detector.




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9 Best Staging Plugins for Your WordPress Website (Compared)

Are you looking for a good staging plugin to test your experiments before it goes live? A staging site is a replica of your website where you can experiment with new features, plugins, and updates before you push them to your live website. That way you can find and fix bugs without having to worry […]

The post 9 Best Staging Plugins for Your WordPress Website (Compared) appeared first on IsItWP - Free WordPress Theme Detector.




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6 Best Divi Plugins That Work on Top of Divi Builder

Are you looking for some good Divi plugins to extend your site features? While you can certainly use any plugins with the Divi theme and Divi Builder plugin, the Divi community has created some plugins specifically for the Divi users. In this article, we’ll show you some of the best Divi plugins that let you […]

The post 6 Best Divi Plugins That Work on Top of Divi Builder appeared first on IsItWP - Free WordPress Theme Detector.




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WPForms vs. Google Forms – Which One is Best? (Compared)

Looking to build an online form on your WordPress site? Not sure whether you should use WPForms or Google Forms? Both WPForms and Google Forms are two great options for small and medium scale businesses. But when you dig deeper, you’ll find a few key differences between these 2 form builders. To help you find […]

The post WPForms vs. Google Forms – Which One is Best? (Compared) appeared first on IsItWP - Free WordPress Theme Detector.




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For Veterans with TBI and PTSD, Finding Your Best Path in College

Whether taking classes online or finding a seat in a lecture hall that makes you feel safe, Adam shares ideas for vets with TBI and PTSD returning to school.




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Three Principles to Remember for Successful Recovery

When it comes to TBI and PTSD, everyone's recovery is different. But Adam shares three key principles that can be crucial for everyone.




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At College, Move Beyond the Stigma of Asking for Help After a Brain Injury

If extra time on a test or memory aids can make life easier during college, why not use them? Adam talks about moving past the "stigma" of using disability services and getting the help you need to succeed in college.




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Best Alexa Skills That Will Actually Surprise You

Technology has changed the way we live. A few decades back, we couldn’t even imagine making a video call to a person sitting in another corner of the world. With every technological advancement, mankind is treading towards greater development. From smart gadgets to machines, every invention has leveraged the human lifestyle.  There’s no doubt in […]

Original post: Best Alexa Skills That Will Actually Surprise You

The post Best Alexa Skills That Will Actually Surprise You appeared first on Daily Blog Tips.




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Website Inspiration: Ruben Kuipers

Comprehensive One Page portfolio for freelancer Ruben Kuipers. There are a few noteworthy elements here; the tech/design skills switch, the integration of the two (quality) testimonials within project thumbs and how the dark mode color scheme switcher changes the image of him – nice touch! Full Review




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Article: 25 Beautifully Dark-Schemed Landing Pages for Inspiration

There is something instantly remarkable about a website with a strong, dark color scheme.




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My PTSD can be a weight. But in this pandemic, it feels like a superpower.

For the first time, it seems, the entire world knows what it’s like to live inside my head.




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Children’s Exposure to Secondhand Smoke May Be Vastly Underestimated by Parents

Tel Aviv University Press Release Smoking parents misperceive where and when their kids are exposed to cigarette smoke, Tel Aviv University researchers say Four out of 10 children in the US are exposed to secondhand smoke, according to the American … Continue reading




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Mysterious Sharks Dance Away Bethel's COVID-19 Blues

A couple of mysterious sharks have caught the fancy of the town. Maybe it's the cabin fever finally setting in, or perhaps this is what happens when you go too long without washing your mask, but Bethelites are going wild for two people in inflatable shark suits who pop up randomly around town.




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Elizabeth Gilbert: The Art of Being Yourself

Brace yourself for a TRULY powerful episode with the bestselling author and creative genius, Elizabeth Gilbert. Although best known for her memoir Eat, Pray, Love–which went on to sell over 12 million copies and became a film staring Julia Roberts—she’s also one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world… The whole world. Spend some time with her in your ears on today’s podcast and you’ll know why in under a minute…   In this episode, we cover How Liz considers mental health her full time job, and writing / being a professional creator is a hobby.  How the only way out of pain is through honesty. Liz shares her experiences working through the loss of her partner to cancer. The things we won’t even admit to ourselves will cause us pain, even to the point of mental and physical breakdown Her latest INCREDIBLE novel called City of Girls (…a “delicious novel of glamour, sex, and adventure, about a young woman discovering that you don’t have to be a good girl to be a good person”) Why mercy is the foundation to any creative endeavor. How creativity and writing can be a tool to slow the mind during hard times. And […]

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The Introvert Advantage with Beth Comstock

Even though I’m an extrovert, I have a feeling the future favors the introvert. Beth Comstock was at the CreativeLive studios in Seattle and I could not help but snag her for a quick moment to pick her brain on one of the most popular topics on my channel — navigating an extroverted world as an introvert. As a self-described introvert, Beth knows what it’s like to find elevate your strengths and have the courage to defend your creative ideas. Beth was named one of the most powerful women in business. After leaving a 27 year career at GE as their Chief Marketing Officer and Vice Chair, she decided to got a completely different direction to focus on new areas such as writing, art, exploration, and discovery. In this episode, Beth shares her advice to embrace your nature, and bring those strengths to any client, team, or situation. Enjoy! If you dig the show, please give a shout out to Beth on social and let her know. ???? FOLLOW BETH: twitter | instagram | website Listen to the Podcast  Subscribe   This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in […]

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A [big] new challenge—the story behind the Creative Calling book cover

When it was time to think about the cover – the whole design package – for my NEW BOOK, Creative Calling, I knew I wanted it to be something different. After all…see if you follow me here… it’s just wrong to make a book about creativity with just any old trend, cliche book cover.  Instead, the package needed to embody the ideas within. So when we approached this design challenge of a hard bound book – it had to be meaningful, beautiful, AND stand out in a sea of other books on the shelf.  No small task… And consider this:  you know that this isn’t just a nice story about the book cover.  This is a metaphor for any creative challenge.  Like every episode of podcast is full of practical advice….this is the real life story of ups and downs on this process…on how we struggled to overcame the challenge front of us… with costs, design options, time, publisher feedback, and other real-life constraints.  In short of EVERY CREATIVE PROCESS.  I’ve included 2 live-recorded phone calls with the designers on the project, Lou and Vasco, so you get their take on the creation process, challenges, the concepts behind what we set out to […]

The post A [big] new challenge—the story behind the Creative Calling book cover appeared first on Chase Jarvis Photography.




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Adaptation, Self-Awareness and Art of the Side Hustle with Chris Guillebeau

Chris Guillebeau has traveled to 193 countries. And just to be clear, that is all of the countries recognized on the planet. He is the first person to do it before the age of 35. More importantly, he has built online businesses, side hustles, and mastered the art of a non-conforming lifestyle since he was 19 years old. There’s almost nobody better person equipped to talk about starting lots of businesses. He has a daily podcast called Side Hustle School where he’s featured more than 850 different side hustle businesses + featured many in his new book called 100 Side Hustles. Chris also started half a dozen or more himself, started one of my favorite conferences, The World Domination Summit, and is a New York Times bestselling author of books like the $100 Start Up and The Art of Non-Conformity and many others. This guy is a beast and he’s so savvy, so humble. In this episode: We go into details about some of Chris’ favorite side hustle businesses he’s come across in his podcast & writing this book – what are some of the most common traits and failures. Chris shares his experience with depression, how he’s faced it, […]

The post Adaptation, Self-Awareness and Art of the Side Hustle with Chris Guillebeau appeared first on Chase Jarvis Photography.




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How to Build Your Brand /w Ben Von Wong

Back in 2012, budding photographer Ben Von Wong stopped by my photo studio in Seattle to say hello. Fast forward to present day and he’s making headlines working with some of the world’s largest brands like Nike and IBM, create work that combines art & activism. His work has been featured numerous times on Buzzfeed, Gizmodo, Mashable and the Huffington Post to name a few. So when he stopped by the CreativeLive studios not too long ago, I wanted to pick his brain one of the most common questions I get on how to stand out and build a personal brand. In this episode: Put work in your portfolio you want to be hired to do. If you shoot weddings and also muscle cars, consider separate sites. One of Ben’s main considerations for helping his project spread? Create with the headline in mind. Ben shares a little about his process to discover his unique style and thumbprint to his work. Enjoy! FOLLOW BEN: instagram | twitter | website Listen to the Podcast Subscribe   Watch the Episode  This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, […]

The post How to Build Your Brand /w Ben Von Wong appeared first on Chase Jarvis Photography.




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Dan Pink: If You Believe In It. Share It.

Dan Pink is a bestselling author and was the host & co-executive producer of “Crowd Control”, a television series about human behavior on National Geographic. He’s appeared frequently on NPR, PBS, ABC, CNN, and other TV/radio networks worldwide. His provocative books include Drive, A Whole New Mind, To Sell is Human, and his latest book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. I love Dan’s books. He’s a ruthlessly practical thinker and in this episode he doesn’t hold back. We get into: How to see trends or unlikely connections across by absorbing and learning from a wide variety of sources, whether that’s audio programs, books, documentaries, or episodes of Silicon Valley. Using lists to track influences, sources, and even random ideas or curiosities to spark new ideas Selling isn’t a dirty word, it’s required to get our ideas out there. If we believe in our work, we have a moral obligation to share it. and so much more… Enjoy! FOLLOW DAN: instagram | twitter | website Listen to the Podcast Subscribe   This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker, money/life and the ability to make […]

The post Dan Pink: If You Believe In It. Share It. appeared first on Chase Jarvis Photography.




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You Are Not Your Ego with Cheri Huber and Ashwini Narayanan

Cheri has been a student and teacher of Zen for over 35 years. She is the author of over 20 books on Zen, and founded the Mountain View Zen Center and the Zen Monastery Peace Center. Cheri also founded a non-profit dedicated to transforming lives and ending suffering, Living Compassion, whose primary work is the Africa Vulnerable Children Project in Zambia. Ashwini co-facilitates and creates workshops with Cheri. She runs the operations of the two nonprofits that Cheri founded. Her eclectic background includes degrees in physics, business, and computer science to working in advertising, an investment bank, a social enterprise, and several technology startups in the Silicon Valley. Cheri and Ashwini have co-written multiple books, including their latest Don’t Suffer, Communicate. Today’s episode isn’t just about awareness practice, it’s about a framework for navigating life. A few highlights: Zen isn’t just the practice of keeping things nicely organized, it’s also a spiritual practice largely focused on awareness and where you direct attention. Self-improvement is an endless diss. The very nature of saying we need improvement implies we’re not enough. Cheri and Ashwini share some useful tools to redirect the attention, such as using a recorder to access the wisdom, love, and compassion that is […]

The post You Are Not Your Ego with Cheri Huber and Ashwini Narayanan appeared first on Chase Jarvis Photography.




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Choose Wonder Over Worry with Amber Rae

In a time when fear, doubt, and uncertainty creep in, it’s more important than ever to tune into our emotional wellness and health. That’s why I’m excited to share my conversation with Amber Rae on the show today. Amber Rae has been called “The Brené Brown of Wonder.” She’s a multi-talented artist, entrepreneur, and author. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, NY Mag, TODAY, Self, Fortune, Forbes and Entrepreneur and collaborated with numerous big brands. She reaches over 2 million people per week with her words and art. Her book Choose Wonder Over Worry: Move Beyond Fear and Doubt to Unlock Your Full Potential is so timely right now and her art helps us explore, visualize, and bring our well-being to the forefront. In our conversation: We are not our feelings and some of our internal voices are not all ours. How family trauma and/or generational trauma can effect us Amber shares her personal experiments to explore inner healing, including naming her inner critics and how it allows her to be able to be more observant of what comes Addiction and how can we create “wake up” calls as a catalyst for change and much more. […]

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Getting Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable

Being uncomfortable isn’t usually fun. In fact, we’re probably more likely to try to avoid uncomfortable situations than actually run toward them. Yet, it is a valuable skill. Not only in dealing with adversity but giving us confidence and trust in ourselves to recover quickly from failure, manage our fears, and explore the unknown. In today’s episode, we dive a big deeper into this topic and I share a few ways we can all practice getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. Enjoy! FOLLOW CHASE: instagram | twitter | website Listen to the Podcast Subscribe   This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker, money/life and the ability to make a living in any of those disciplines. They are high quality, highly curated classes taught by the world’s top experts — Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy Award winners, New York Times best selling authors and the best entrepreneurs of our times.

The post Getting Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable appeared first on Chase Jarvis Photography.




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Create the Change You Seek with Jonah Berger

Jonah Berger is a marketing professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and internationally bestselling author of Contagious, Invisible Influence, and The Catalyst. Dr. Berger is a world-renowned expert on change, word of mouth, influence, consumer behavior, and how products, ideas, and behaviors catch on. He has published over 50 articles in top‐tier academic journals, teaches Wharton’s highest rated online course, and popular outlets like The New York Times and Harvard Business Review often cover his work. He’s keynoted hundred of events, and often consults for organizations like Google, Apple, Nike, and the Gates Foundation. Enjoy! FOLLOW JONAH: instagram | twitter | website Listen to the Podcast Subscribe   Watch the Episode This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker, money/life and the ability to make a living in any of those disciplines. They are high quality, highly curated classes taught by the world’s top experts — Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy Award winners, New York Times best selling authors and the best entrepreneurs of our times.

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Ben Moon: Surf, Survival, and Life on the Road

Since we’re home, I’m working to bring more LIVE conversations to you from our living rooms. ???? Join me + adventure photographer / filmmaker Ben Moon at 12:30PM PST tomorrow. There will be a live chat, so please ask us some questions as well. See you there. You might know Ben from his adventure and lifestyle photography or his beautiful films. Surviving cancer in his 20s gradually shifted his artistic focus from capturing the pursuit of adventure to telling nuanced human stories that have inspired and impacted millions. Most notably, his personal story battling colorectal cancer and his special relationship with his dog Denali, which he shares in his beautiful viral short film, now turned book, Denali. ABOUT BEN Ben Moon is an adventure, lifestyle, and portrait photographer whose vibrant images have graced the pages of Patagonia catalogues for the past 18 years.  In recent years, he has shifted his focus to filmmaking. In 2015, he founded his production company, Moonhouse as a platform for collaboration with friends and creatives to bring a wide range of thought-provoking, impactful and cinematically beautiful stories to life on-screen. As a director, Ben’s unique ability to connect with his subjects paired with the talent […]

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Our WFH Best Practices

Our first remote office opened in 2007 when a designer and a developer left our HQ office and moved to Durham. Ever since we've been fine-tuning our ability to collaborate across locations. Today, we have team members across the country in our four offices, and we have fully remote employees in Charleston, Kansas City, New York City, Dallas, and Charlottesville.

Because of the coronavirus outbreak, a lot of people recently started working from their homes across the world, the country, and Viget. We wanted to share some of our best practices for being great teammates and doing great work, regardless of locale, and we’d love to hear yours in the comments.

Communicate Often and Write It Down

We want every person at Viget to be informed and connected. We do this in a few ways. We have a company Knowledge Base, which contains critical information including HR policies, office processes, brand guidelines, project resources, etc. We also have a well-organized Google Drive that everyone can access.

My favorite communication tool we use, however, is our Internal Lab Report. Every week, we create a Google Doc with HR updates, birthdays, upcoming events we’re attending, relevant publicity we or a client received, and timely updates on projects, sales, and recruiting. This report allows the entire team to have the same information, regardless of PTO schedules, and it provides a record that can be referenced weeks, months, or years later.

I have also found our Slack habits really helpful. We try to make our availability easily known, mostly via a passive Slack status. We each update our status daily, sometimes multiple times, so people can see if we’re working from home, out of the office for an appointment, in a meeting, or offline for a personal phone call. We also have a few Slack Channels we use very specifically to announce PTO, important announcements, and recently, one that is specific to the updating coronavirus situation.

My work from home station.

Figure Out Your Boundaries

This looks different for everyone and can be an ever-changing target. Understanding your boundaries requires you to be honest with yourself – Are you easily distracted? Can you successfully work in pajama pants? Will your dog actually allow you to get work done? Does working from the couch result in good work, or do you need a designated work spot? For some, working from home requires setting boundaries to ensure the work gets done. For others, working from home requires setting a start and stop times to ensure you don’t overwork yourself.

Viget has a flexible work policy, so many of us work from home fairly often and have gotten our routines set up. As such, we have written about this before! Check out Trevor’s article about working remotely.

Show Your Face

When I first started at Viget, I’d never worked anywhere that used a Google Hangout for nearly every meeting. At first, I was tempted to call into meetings and leave the camera off because I found it exposing. Now, I can’t imagine not using it, and I’ve even embraced it in my personal life with friends and family. I realized the value in face-to-face conversations even in virtual form, the ability to see body language, and the connection you establish when you see each other's faces — even if your hair isn't perfect or you haven't arranged your plants just-so in the view behind you. Whenever possible, use your camera during a meeting. It increases trust, communication, and in my personal-not-backed-by-science-opinion, lightness, which frankly, I think we can all use a bit more of right now.

Here's a screen shot from our Saint Patrick's Day Happy Hour.

Create Shared Experiences

As a company with project teams often distributed across our four locations, cross-office experiences are vital to our culture, and we’ve spent years working to keep our remote offices in sync. A few of our ongoing group activities include a monthly virtual Book Club, our weekly full-team Free Lunch Friday tradition, Donut for Slack, and, of course, our Pointless Weekends.

The current global health crisis now requires almost all of the company to work remote, so we’ve gotten creative with our attempts to increase non-project time together, in order to keep up the vibes we’ve worked hard to create.

What we’ve recently started:

    • Last Weekend this Morning - Monday mornings, we have an optional virtual coffee, where anyone who’d like to chat can join and share the latest gardening lesson or bingeable tv show. It lets us start our week off as we would when we’re all in the office — saying hello to each other.
    • Virtual Happy Hours - We are a company that likes to socialize, and a bit of distance doesn’t stop us. This week, we set up an after-hours Happy Hour for St. Patrick’s Day.
    • Daily Lunch Table- If you’ve ever visited our HQ office in Falls Church, you’ll notice our large kitchen table. We have an informal tradition of gathering around noon to eat together, whether it’s just a couple folks or the whole team. We now do this lunch virtually. So far, we’re mostly taking turns discussing who is eating what, and of course, sharing said recipes.

I crowdsourced some ideas from the Viget team, and here are some noteworthy takeaways:

"In remote meetings, minimize all your other windows and be fully present. It’s easy to allow your attention to accidentally drift if you see a new Slack channel light up, especially if you’re in a larger meeting. Suddenly, you find yourself multitasking. Treat the meeting as if you were there in person: unless you’re taking notes, minimize your other tabs, and give the conversation your full attention."
- Paul Koch

“I try to reach out to more folks I don’t consistently work with. Since there’s less interaction in general, I want to be more intentional about staying connected.”
- Laura Sweltz

“Good habits are hard to form and bad habits are hard to break, and it’s often hard to find the right time to make a change. Most of us are experiencing a disruption to our usual behaviors right now, but that doesn’t have to be entirely bad. Be deliberate now and when this is over, we might all end up with some new work habits worth keeping.”
- Emily Bloom

“I’ve found it helpful to create a physical space similar to the one I had at work. While this isn’t exactly possible, small things like setting up a laptop stand and second screen make it so I’m less likely to get distracted and wander to the couch or kitchen (aka the snack danger zone.).”
- Aubrey Lear

“It’s easy to get stuck in one spot all day, so be proactive about moving around, or creating excuses to do so. Whether that’s making yourself a cup of coffee, eating lunch away from your computer, or going for a quick walk outside for some fresh air. This will help reduce the risk of going stir crazy.”
-Zach Robbins

True to Viget form, our remote work is all about “Progress, Not Perfection.” While remote collaboration is ingrained in our company, we’re looking for opportunities to fine-tune our approach and improve our habits.

We’d love to hear from you: What are your best practices? Lessons learned?




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