for W3c validation
Friday Faves is our weekly blog series highlighting a few select pieces from the REG team’s reading lists. You can catch up on past Friday Faves on the archive.
International Women’s Day
The global theme for IWD this year from the UN is #GenerationEquality. There is also another organisation, internationalwomensday.com, whose #EachForEqual theme you may also see used.
Each for Equal
Each for equal
An equal world is an enabled world. How will you help forge a gender equal world?
Celebrate women’s achievement. Raise awareness against bias. Take action for equality.
What I love about this year’s theme is the focus on what we each can do, individually. Often in large scale movements, we can talk about issues that require systemic change – for good reason. But that can cause people to feel they can’t make a difference, when the truth is that large scale change always starts small, it starts with each of us. You can make a difference by addressing your own bias and calling it out in others. You can make a difference by celebrating the achievements and contributions of women.
Generation Equality
Generation Equality is a call to action to join forces across generations, to create a world where every girl and woman has equal opportunities to fulfil their full potential. Equal access to education and income are central to levelling the playing field for women around the world.
What I love about this year’s UN Women’s theme is the idea of finally achieving a generation who have only known equality. They’ve even created Equiterra, an illustrative place where gender equality is real.
Read any news comments section and you’ll find plenty of people who believe women are already completely equal to men – you might even come across some who think things have “gone too far” and that women are “more favoured” than men, who now suffer “reverse sexism.” Those feelpinions don’t address realities like the need for #MeToo and how someone like Harvey Weinstein finally faced his reckoning. They don’t address tech’s gender disparity problem. They don’t address the gender pay gap. They don’t address that women’s unpaid labour across the globe is worth nearly $11 TRILLION dollars. They don’t address gender-based violence, or erase its long history in Australia. It is clear and plain that there is yet more work to do, in Australia let alone across the planet.
The goal for equality is simple, while the underlying issues are often complex and systemic. What will continue to drive us toward #GenerationEquality is considered, concerted effort – from each and every one of us.
How will you take action for equality today, this week, the next?
Cartoon of the week
Anne says: With no intention to trivialise the seriousness of the situation, this cartoon provides a very Australian perspective on the public behaviour highlighted daily in the Australian media – the panic buying of toilet paper.
And if you’re wondering why there’s panic buying on toilet paper the following articles propose some explanation.
Read: https://theconversation.com/why-are-people-stockpiling-toilet-paper-we-asked-four-experts-132975
And: https://www.smartcompany.com.au/industries/retail/who-gives-a-crap-sales-toilet-paper-stockpiling/
Coronavirus – now it’s time to leverage your workplace technologies
Anne says: This week has seen a marked increase in the spread of the coronavirus across the globe. While many medical experts were predicting this, until it happened, many organisations did not prepare for the impact of restricted travel, quarantined workers and general disruptions to operations. I introduced the concept of an infodemic 2 weeks ago, this week you’re probably experiencing the overwhelming amount of information from reliable agencies, like the World Health Organisation, to the politic agendas of global leaders, to the impact on our daily lives (like a shortage of toilet paper).
For us, as a team of digital workplace designers, we have recognised that now more than ever it’s time to leverage your workplace technologies to enable the flexibility that may be required if your workers are disrupted in any way. We’re already seeing organisations responding to employees who have tested positive to the virus by sending all workers at that location to work from home for 2 weeks in self-imposed quarantine. (Nike in the Netherlands; Twitter, Amazon and Facebook in the US; HSBC in London; and many more will follow as more people become infected). Are you prepared for a large number of your employees to work from home? Do you have the necessary technology infrastructure, security controls, connectivity abilities and management processes ready?
There’s a lot to consider and there’s a responsibility to your employees and stakeholders to ensure their safety is the primary focus. I selected 2 articles to highlight some of the strategy planning that is required to support remote working. There’s some good general advice contained in both – but there’s a lot more to encompass. Just having plans and technology infrastructures does not ensure an effective remote working approach.
From next week, we’ll be introducing a new blog series that will include guidelines for remote working. Although it will be difficult to avoid articles about the coronavirus, we are not intending to specifically address the medical advice, that’s not our expertise. However, we will provide links to reliable information sources where relevant. If you’re a subscriber to our blog, you’ll receive a notification when our posts are updated. We will have links to how to use technology to extend the engagement, trust and workflows of remote workers. Plus tried and tested tips that we’ve used in our practice with clients. Although this is a time of uncertainty for many, we hope to share our expertise to guide organisations through these times of disruption.
Please email me if you’d like us to address specific challenges in your digital workplace.
Read: https://hbr.org/2020/02/whats-your-companys-emergency-remote-work-plan
And: https://www.zdnet.com/article/effective-strategies-and-tools-for-remote-work-during-coronavirus/
The World Health Organization has joined TikTok to fight coronavirus misinformation
Christoph says: The coronavirus has been on everyone’s lips (you see what I did there?) for a couple of weeks now. I just came back from the Digital Employee Experience conference in Copenhagen. Judging by all the cancellations of other events and conferences, it probably is the last one to have taken place for the foreseeable future. Yes, people were a bit more cautious. Yes, we greeted each other with elbows or doing the Wuhan Shake. Yes, people took more care of their personal hygiene. None of this was or should have been really out of the ordinary. It still felt like a normal world compared to the craziness the Internet is today and the messages that are catching people’s attention. Everyone and anyone has something to say about the virus, except maybe Juergen Klopp, the trainer of Liverpool FC. I love his response to a question regarding coronavirus: ‘Politics, coronavirus, why me? I wear a baseball cap and have a bad shave.’ Here is the entire response on video. I think a lot more people should be like Klopp and simply refer to people that know!
So, among all the misinformation that exists in this world, it is only logical that people that know need to find their audience. I guess that’s why the WHO decided to join TikTok, as it’s reaching about half a billion people around the world. I don’t know why though no one told them that the audience is rather young. In the first video published on TikTok, Benedetta Allegranzi, technical lead of infection prevention and control, describes measures people can take to protect themselves from the novel coronavirus and directs them to the organisation’s website for additional information. Yes, her voice and tone show authority and seriousness but come on…how boring and technical can an explanation be? How difficult is it to tailor the content to the target audience and the channel they are using? Young people are actually a very interesting audience. Youngsters these days do assert certain influence over their parents, which can be useful and helpful in spreading the right information and non-alarming awareness when it comes to diseases like this.
There is one other thing I have been mulling about in the past years. I consider myself a well-read and well-informed individual but sometimes I really have the feeling that I cannot make sense of all the different arguments that are flying around, not just in the case of the coronavirus. What I would love to see is an authoritative page that lists arguments and counter-arguments and debunks some common myths and questions. One example: “Are sanitisers helpful in preventing the spread of the coronavirus?” I read for example that they are not because they kill bacteria but not viruses! Sounds logical to me but is it true? Or is this applicable to only certain sanitisers? Googling the answer is not easy, as I end up with mixed information.
Just to recap: I applaud the WHO for joining TikTok to fight misinformation. I encourage them though to rethink their tone of voice and messaging. I wish there was a site that would list arguments and counter-arguments when it comes to topics like the coronavirus. Stay alert, stay healthy and apply commonsense!
No, you can’t make hand sanitiser from vodka
Tito’s Vodka has spent the last 24 hours explaining to people that it *cannot* be used as a replacement for hand sanitizer.
God bless Texas. pic.twitter.com/1J08KlgDPI
— Dom (@DomDiFurio) March 5, 2020
Jakkii says: As Christoph has pointed out above, there is a lot of misinformation out there about hand sanitiser. Just this morning I saw this post on Twitter which compiled some of the instances in which US vodka brand, Tito’s, has had to respond to advise people they can’t make hand sanitiser at home from their vodka.
And they’re not alone. CNN published a piece warning people not to make their own sanitiser. Rolling Stone assures people not to panic as you don’t need hand sanitiser to fight coronaviruses. Vox explores the fact that hand sanitiser was growing in popularity before novel coronavirus hit. Even news dot com has found itself publishing a myth-busting article about the use of hand sanitiser and novel coronavirus.
We live in a fascinating era. The easy spread of misinformation would be funny if it weren’t so serious, so dangerous, and so damaging. It is not always easy to sort the wheat from the chaff when it comes to what is factual and what is not, but it’s important we keep trying. It’s also important we call out misinformation we see being shared whenever it is safe to do so. As Anne mentioned above, a few weeks ago she shared an article on infodemic around novel coronavirus. In that same Friday Fave, she also shared tips on how to speak to people who spread myths. The following week, our Friday Faves included some articles on protecting against phishing, as well as the spread of misinformation. If you haven’t already read through these pieces, you might find them useful to shore up your armour against falling for and spreading misinformation.
Read: https://www.eater.com/2020/3/5/21166468/titos-vodka-hand-sanitizer-dont-do-this
A woman philosopher calls out misogyny in the 17th century
Jakkii says: One last contribution from me this week, one I think Nat would’ve particularly appreciated for both its feminism and philosophy.
This piece is a good read on some of the views of the 17th Century philosopher Mary Astell, and her interest in the effects of “bad custom”.
One prejudice that Astell was concerned with is what the philosopher Alice Sowaal in 2007 called the ‘Women’s Defective Nature Prejudice’, which holds that women are intellectually and morally inferior to men by nature.
It’s the 21st Century and there are still people out there who hold similar views today. Our work ridding society of this nonsense is never done, so take your cue from #EachForEqual and call out sexism wherever you see it – just like Mary Astell did.
Read: https://aeon.co/ideas/a-woman-philosopher-calls-out-misogyny-in-the-17th-century
Tech Friday Five
- From robots to AI drugs, here are six tech startups fighting coronavirus
- Swinging the vote?
- Planet plastic
- Apple’s $500 million iPhone settlement, briefly explained
- Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T could be facing big fines for selling your location data
Social Media Friday Five
- It’s hard to care about other people’s feelings online
- Imagine a world without YouTube
- Is this the end of oversharing
- Children’s use of social media is creating a new type of digital native
- Battling coronavirus misinformation in the age of social media
Sydney Business Insights – The Future This Week Podcast
This week: Moore’s law no more, and Silicon Valley’s startup deflation. Sandra Peter (Sydney Business Insights) and Kai Riemer (Digital Disruption Research Group) meet once a week to put their own spin on news that is impacting the future of business in The Future, This Week.
The stories this week
00:45 – The great debate: GIF vs JIF
05:19 – What happens when Moore’s law no longer holds
18:55 – What’s up with Silicon Valley’s startup deflation?
Other stories we bring up
Scientists release genetically engineered moths for first time
Our previous discussion on satellites
All those low-cost satellites in orbit could be weaponized by hackers, warns expert
Gordon Moore talking to Intel 50 years after the creation of Moore’s Law
Alvy Ray Smith on the importance of Moore’s Law
Our previous discussion on corporate inequality
Tech experts are pessimistic about their industry
Listen: https://sbi.sydney.edu.au/moores-law-and-startup-deflation-on-the-future-this-week/
