Q&A with Donna Sturgess, author of Eyeballs Out

 

 What's the book about for those who don't know?

Eyeballs Out is about the power of immersive experiences to generate novel ideas for business growth.  In an immersion both the body and mind work together to stimulate conductive thinking--something business has not been tapping before.  From a personal perspective, immersions are  also a powerful way to drive individual growth. In the back section of the book I give examples of immersions teams or individuals can go on. 

What's the most interesting chapter for yourself?

The most interesting chapter for me is the first one, Thrill.  This chapter has struck a chord with many readers and I am receiving a good bit of email asking me to do more writing on the subject. So I am encouraged by the thoughtful commentaries I am getting to the subject of thrill, something people are looking for more of in their professional and personal lives.

How has it been received?

In addition to the feedback from business leaders  I was delighted that militarywomen.org has posted a story on the book and is adding it to their leadership book list.  Military.com has also taken an interest in the book.  

5 questions with Mr. Federico Ferrari, author of Living in Berlin

 

How did the idea for this book?

The book was brought by 24 hours culture, in view of the fact that I have been a part of my research for doctoral thesis in Berlin and I lived there several times for several months.

What it means to live in Berlin?

I think it means, at least at this time, before the situation is "normalized" as is inevitable, the opportunity to be in a unique condition: that of a city full of symbols and history at the same time projected into the future like no other. For this rich stimuli and also uncertainties and contingencies. But without the uprooting some 'alienating many contemporary megalopolis, which I believe to reach its peak in the cities of Asia which, overwhelmed by a strong expansion. Certainly also interesting and challenging, but if the dynamism of Berlin is not so violent and confusing. This is a very strong force and perceptible, but at the same time reassuring, allowing everyone to find their size. I think the real strength of Berlin and the inconsistency and heterogeneity. As I wrote, its "porosity."

What image in the book has hit the most?

I think the most important projects are those in more central areas, where the comparison with the surroundings is as inevitable as more challenging. One of the most interesting in this regard is that of Joerg Ebers in Augustrasse 26. The point here is how to get the Committee up to a lot of very small and confined between two existing buildings, the most difficult challenge for an architect, interior flooded with light through large openings, which at the same time make the front a game of squares and rectangles offset. A similar principle is also found in another building in the book: the house of Busman Haberer in Pappelalee 21. In this case, the expedient of rectangular forms arranged freely on the front is more pronounced, particularly through the use of color and larger apartments.

What is the misconception about Berlin?

Berlin is a typical German city. As also in the case of other urban German stereotype of Germany as a country and icy "cold" is often wrong, for Berlin is totally out of place. Or rather, maybe Berlin is the extreme contradictions inherent in the soul of the German, who often live a constant tension between a markedly northern inevitable and irresistible attraction for the Mediterranean. Berlin embodies the best of this bipolarity: it is both Prussian - orderly, efficient, compact - and southern - broken, lively, full of "gaps", ie opportunities. But perhaps this affects the extreme proximity to the Slavic world. In short, Berlin is a melting pot identity, so it is difficult to describe in a synthetic image. Its strength is its ineffability.

What will your next book?

I deal with urban history and urban planning. For this reason Berlin is a case study very interesting and I intend to further deepen the knowledge that I derived from his attendance at a fairly constant in recent years. I plan also considered that next year will be a collaboration with the Institut d'Urbanisme de Paris, a publication about Paris and projects launched by Nicolas Sarkozi in "Le Grand Paris", a competition of ideas to imagine the future of the French capital.

5 Questions with Randy Shaw, author of Beyond the Fields

How'd the book come to be?

I knew many people who had gone from working for the United Farmworkers (UFW) in their twenties to devoting the rest of their lives to enhancing social justice. I felt that the UFW’s role as the great activist and organizing incubator of its time had not been written about, and that people would be interested in learning how this one social movement has had such lasting and ongoing influence.

What was the most interesting chapter to write?

My favorite chapter describes how the UFW grape boycott created leadership opportunities for women, Latinos, and young people that were not otherwise available in labor struggles, and how a sense of community was created among the thousands of volunteers working long days for $5 a week plus room and board. The notion of getting supermarkets across North America to stop selling grapes seemed like an impossible quest, and it was fun writing about how this strategy succeeded.

What's the main message you'd like to get out there through it?

People should evaluate the legacy of Cesar Chavez and the UFW not by current union membership roles, but by the people the farmworkers’ movement inspired to lifelong commitments to activism, and by the ideas and strategies it generated that still set the course for many of today’s social movements. Barack Obama’s 2008 grassroots presidential campaign has its roots in the UFW electoral outreach of the 1960’s and 70’s (“Yes We Can” is the UFW’s rallying cry, “Si Se Puede”), the immigrant rights movement was greatly influenced by UFW alumni and ideas, and no organization has provided as many opportunities for idealistic young people to engage in fulltime organizing work as did the UFW in its heyday.

What kind of man was Cesar Chavez?

A far more religious and deeply spiritual man than people realize, and whose own sense of sacrifice for the good of farmworkers inspired others. Chavez’s family owned a house before losing it and becoming farmworkers. I think knowing a better life, combined with his own negative experiences in the fields, compelled Chavez to take on the seemingly impossible task of organizing California farmworkers.

What's next for you?

I am very involved in improving and promoting San Francisco’s Uptown Tenderloin Historic District, and expect my next book to focus on this unique community where I have worked since 1980.

5 Questions with Andrew Podnieks, author of Retired Numbers

 

Which number hasn't been retired but should?

Rob Blake's number 4 in Los Angeles should be retired, I think. Although he only hung up his skates this past year, the team has yet to announce any such honour.



Which number retirement ceremony was the most emotional for the player having his number retired?

So many answers to this, but if I had to choose one, I'd say Bobby Orr's number 4 in Boston. The ovation was incredible and brought tears to the usually stoic Orr.



You've written about several hockey players in the game, is there a player that you've encountered that stands out as the most interesting and one that was the nicest of the bunch?

It would be easier to consider who hasn't been nice! Almost every player I've met or dealt with has been courteous and friendly.



You've penned over 55 books, which one meant the most to you?

Two books stand out. The first is called Players, which came out several years ago and features biographies of every NHLer. It's about 1,000 pages and nearly a million words and consumed my every moment for a long time. The other is the Official IIHF Media Guide & Record Book which just published and is available at www.IIHF.com. It has the complete history of international hockey, every player, every country, every game, since 1920. Nothing like it exists elsewhere. These are the two books of which I am particularly proud.



What project are you working on next?

"Next books" are always a bit of a secret until they're published!

5 Questions with Anthony J. Blazevich, author of Sports Biomechanics

 

For those who don't know, what's the book about?

This book could be classed as a hybrid between a standard, University-level sports biomechanics (physics for sport) text book and a mass market ‘how to do it’ book for people interested in improving their sports/exercise performance. The book details all the important physics-related information that is important for improving performance in pursuits ranging from running, throwing, hitting and swimming to basketball shooting and rugby tackling.


How'd the idea for it come about?

Probably like many people who decide to write something like this, the idea was borne out of my frustrations with current texts. Essentially, most students don’t enjoy maths and physics, so they don’t tend to want to read a maths/physics text book in their spare time, even when the examples given in the book sports related. The difficulty for me as a teacher then was to try to help students to understand quite complex phenomena without them also spending time learning for themselves. I’d worked a lot with coaches and athletes over many years and knew that they loved to hear about the basic science that underpinned sports performance, and many of them were amazed when they realised that the techniques they were coaching had no scientific basis (they were also excited when they adopted a different, scientifically viable technique that immediately and markedly improved performance!). So it didn’t take much of a leap to realise that it could be a great thing to write a book where the ‘ideal’ sporting techniques are explained from a physics perspective. So I started working with the idea that a textbook could be written such that each chapter answered an interesting question about sporting technique, and in order to read learn the answer the reader would learn about the physics along the way. So I developed a list of all the important concepts that were important to know and then married them with a question that I’d known coaches and athletes had wanted to know the answer to. For example, many coaches are surprised at how the elbow angle changes dramatically as the arm swings during fast running (many coaches still teach that the elbow should maintain a 90 degree) so I could teach the correct technique whilst explaining the concept of conservation of angular momentum (OK, you’ll have to read the book to find out what that is). Another example is that many students didn’t realise why swimmers spend so much time underwater in a competitive race when there should be more drag when swimming underwater than on top of it, so I was able to teach the difference between form drag and wave drag and thus explain why staying underwater might be useful. Students and coaches can then use this knowledge to optimise techniques in other sports.


What's the main concept or idea you want to get out to your readers?

The main concept I’m trying to get across is that all forms of movement, including the movements we make when playing sports or doing exercise, are subject to physical laws. These laws are common sense and are not difficult to understand if one takes a few minutes to really think about them. Once you understand these laws you can apply them to a movement in order to perform that movement better. So understanding physics, or in the case of this book understanding biomechanics (the physics related to biological systems), allows us to perform all of our movements optimally. Of course, in a university-level course we also have to learn the maths behind the theories, but by explaining a concept before introducing the maths, most students can see that the maths is simply a short-hand way of explaining the concept. It’s really not scary.


Which section of the book was most interesting for you to write?

I’d love to say that I loved writing the ‘Interview with an Expert’ sections because I think it’s so interesting to hear how some of the world’s top coaches and biomechanists use their knowledge or work with athletes, and to read about what characteristics they think are important in the best biomechanists. I think it’s quite unique for a book to have these extras. But of course I didn’t actually write them, so I can’t claim they were the best bits to write. So instead of telling you which part of the book I enjoyed writing the most, I would probably say that my favourite part of the process was to decide which 17 questions (for the 17 topic areas covered) I thought most sports people (and students) really wanted to learn about and then find a way to teach all the biomechanics concepts that need to be covered in an undergraduate university course…it wasn’t an easy task but it was an enjoyable and creative one!

What's next for yourself?

I work as a biomechanics lecturer and researcher so I can probably say I’m already in my dream job…it’s not a tough life to teach or research important questions in my favourite scientific area all day. I do have other ideas for books that I think would be of great interest to a lot of people, but unfortunately time is not a commodity I have in abundance. I think I need to find better techniques to improve work, rather than movement, efficiency.

5 Questions for the authors of "People Of Walmart"

 

Are you surprised the site took off so well?


We started this site as a small joke that we thought some of our friends would get a kick out of. Obviously when you start a website you have the hopes and thoughts that it might be the next facebook, but we were very surprised at how popular it really became and how quickly it became so popular. We believed we had a funny site that almost everyone could relate to but for it to go viral and crash our servers with the amount of traffic we were generating was definitely something we didn’t anticipate, but we’re glad it did.


What's your favorite picture?

There are so many great pictures we receive, and over a year later the fact that I’m still shocked when we get a great submission is crazy! One of our personal favorites was our first “picture of the month” winner, which was a guy with crazy hair, a tie-die shirt covered in gold paint, and his mouth was covered in gold paint like he was huffing it. If that wasn’t enough his entire shopping cart was filled with cans of gold spraypaint. Our most famous picture however is “front to back” which has appeared in many articles and on Tosh.O on comedy central. It depicts a woman whose shirt makes it look like she has big boobs on her back.


How is Walmart different in the US compared to other countries?

Believe it or not, when it comes to crazy things, I don’t think there is much of a difference. We have received several pictures from other countries and you still see some crazy off the wall things. I think most of that can be contributed to the fact that Walmart is so large and attracts so many people and so many different people that you are bound to see something crazy. Now in America you might see these things more often, and maybe because there are so many people that have the “I could care less” mindset or chalk it up to American laziness, but I think you can find that all over the world. For us it’s difficult to really judge because of the cultural differences. For instance we posted picture from Walmarts in China that show meat laying out not in protected wrap laying in bins. Now to us that is crazy, but in China Walmart has to adapt to that style so they can compete with the road side vendors. There are cultural differences and there is crazy, personally I believe both exist.


What's the best and worst thing about Walmart?

For us, the best part about Walmart is the fact that it attracts everyone from all walks of life. It’s one of the few places where it doesn’t matter what race, gender, or age you are they have something that brings you there. It’s one of the few places you can park next to a brand new Lexus and a van covered in dinosaur toys. I really believe it’s a microcosm of America.

As to the worst part about Walmart, we really don’t have anything against them. They have enough people who hate them for driving out small businesses or disagree with their labor policies or you name it, someone hates them. We shop there, we still shop there, and we will continue to do so. It’s convenient, bottom line. I suppose we could say that people are TOO comfortable shopping there, but for us that’s not a bad thing, that’s what we rely upon to run the website!

Any more projects on the horizon?

We are still working to get some sort of iphone app for the site in place. We had one up for a day that reached #234 in a matter of 12 hours but it was pulled back down by Apple and they refused to reconsider it. So we continue to look for a way to give our fans what they are asking for. We continue to add fantastic blogs to our www.Threeringblogs.com network that otherwise might not get any attention. We were fortunate enough to go viral, but there are a lot of great blogs out there that people simply don’t know about. Hopefully our book continues to do well and the demand is out there for a second, but It’s a little too soon to be thinking about that. And of course, who knows, with all of these blogs and internet sensations becoming TV shows recently maybe someone will want to make a PeopleofWalmart show!....I’m guessing it might have to be someone like HBO since some of our content might not be suitable for basic cable! (laughs)

5 Questions with Tom Vandenberghe, author of Bangkok Street Food

 

What inspired this book?

I lived in Thailand for a while (2 years) when organizing culinary trips for a travel agency in Belgium. It struck me how Thai people are obsessed with food and how much this is a part of their social life and behaviour. Food and especially hawker food is plenty full in Thailand, you could say it's the heart and soul of Thai cooking. As a first time visitor it is hard to find your way trough the maze of street food stalls. In writing the "Bangkok street food" book, I tried to help the reader how to recognize certain food stalls and their typical dishes. The book is as much a guide book as a cooking book. Out of a passion of street food and the culture of eating out in the streets which I wanted to share with other people with the same interest.


What's special about Bangkok street food?

We managed to do all photography on the field, no studio work in this book, this helps to identify the dishes at the food stalls and is quite exceptional for a cooking book. The book is as much a guide book as a cooking book.


What are the people like in Bangkok?

People in Thailand are generally open and friendly toward tourist. Thai people like to help and please people. In Bangkok, like in many cities around the world the hasty and busy life of a city reflects itself in the social behaviour, but even then Bangkokians and Thai are still people that like to enjoy eating and life in itself?

There are many beautiful images in the book, anyone stand out to you as the best?

The picture on the front page where the girl is cooking and launching at the same time. Not only because I ate probable hundreds of times at her food stall but it reflect the posting attitude towards life and the passion for cooking.


What's your favorite dish?

Tom yam kung, probably Thailand's most famous dish. The sourness of the lemongrass, galanga ginger, Kaffir lime leaves and spiceness of the chillies make this dish a taste and experience that you will never forget.