Usually, I love the summer.

As a college professor and department chair, normally Im done teaching by June, and my time is taken up by scholarly and administrative duties: Doing research, advising doctoral students, staffing classes for the fall. As a professional musician, I also typically take advantage of the summer to do things I cant make as much time for when school is in session: Playing at festivals, getting into the recording studio, and writing new material. And, as a father of two school-aged children, the best part of my summer usually involves doing stuff with them: Swimming, traveling, playing video games.

Those of us who study social media professionally noticed a while back that these kinds of uncomfortable spillovers are hard to avoid on apps like Facebook. We even have a name for it: context collapse.

This summer is different. Its not that Im missing out on most of my favorite activities; its just that, thanks to COVID-19, theyre all mashed up together. Its kind of like being on Facebook FB, +1.98%, all day, every day. And I dont mean that in a good way.

Have you ever had the experience of posting something on social media related one aspect of your life, only to have it spill over into another? Has your boss ever liked a risqu photo of you and your friends out at a nightclub? Have your parents ever posted baby pictures of you that you wish had stayed in a dusty photo album on their shelves? Have you ever gotten into a political argument with an old high school acquaintance you have little in common with? Of course you have. Stuff like that happens to everyone.

Those of us who study social media professionally noticed a while back that these kinds of uncomfortable spillovers are hard to avoid on apps like Facebook. We even have a name for it: context collapse.

In real life, we go to different places to do different things, and to be different people. When Im on campus, Im Professor Sinnreich. When Im on a festival stage, Im The Bass Player. And when Im doing a cannonball into a swimming pool, Im just plain Dad. But on Facebook, its hard to be different people, because everyones in the same place. Our different networks get all mixed up together, which means our different identities do, too. So we have to juggle, and come up with ways to be all things to all people, all the time. Its exhausting.

Thats one of many reasons I quit Facebook a few years ago; their willing role in amplifying racial hatred and social discord was another.

Im kind of half-assing everything right now, and thats because of context collapse. I cant focus entirely on my doctoral students challenges with their dissertations when my kids need help logging in to their own classes.

(Facebook says, We do not allow hate speech on Facebook because it creates an environment of intimidation and exclusion, and in some cases, may promote real-world violence. However critics of the social media-site have said its become virtually impossible to police. Last month, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Fox News. I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldnt be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online. Private companies probably shouldnt be, especially these platform companies, shouldnt be in the position of doing that.)

But now Im getting uncomfortable flashbacks to my social-media days, because context collapse has come to my real life.

Like much of the world, Ive spent the past three months largely cooped up in my own home with my family, self-isolating to help stop the spread of COVID-19. This has meant shifting all my professional obligations to remote work. I taught the second half of Spring semester entirely online, and so did my wife, who teaches in an after-school music program. My kids, of course, have been home as well, taking their classes online, often at the same time as my wife and I were teaching. Ive also served on hiring committees and advisory councils, participated in research conferences and mentor sessions, and even helped to launch a new masters program, all via Zoom ZM, -1.30% or Google Hangouts GOOG, +1.85% or Skype MSFT, +2.34%, from the relative safety and security of my own home.

Ive also been busy in my creative life. My wife and I have done a series of concerts, recording 30 quarantunes from our home studio and sharing them via Instagram and YouTube GOOGL, +1.81% (yes, Im aware that Facebook owns Instagram its my wifes account, not mine). Weve played livestreamed sets in several online music festivals. And Ive even collaborated on recordings with friends as far away as Seoul, and as close as down the street. Ive also been working on a novel collaboratively with my sister, a historian and author who lives about three thousand miles away.

I have to accomplish all of these different tasks, be all these different people, at the same time, in the same place. I was no good at it on Facebook, and, as it turns out, Im no good at it in real life, either.

Most importantly, Ive gotten to spend quality time with my kids. Weve gone on hikes in local nature preserves (wearing masks and gloves). Weve done a lot of cooking and baking together. Weve played a lot of Animal Crossing. Technically, Im even on vacation this week. I havent checked email, logged into Twitter TWTR, +3.41%, or read the news, in five whole days probably a record for me.

But to be honest, Im kind of half-assing everything right now, and thats because of context collapse. I cant focus entirely on my doctoral students challenges with their dissertations when my kids need help logging in to their own classes. I cant practice my bass when Im getting pulled into a last-minute emergency Zoom meeting. I cant adequately review a journal article when the garden is desperately in need of weeding. And Ive learned the hard way I cant tell my kids Im taking a week off from work and then sit down at my laptop and hammer out a chapter of my novel. I have to accomplish all of these different tasks, be all these different people, at the same time, in the same place. I was no good at it on Facebook, and, as it turns out, Im no good at it in real life, either.

Obviously, in the grand scheme of things, these are small problems. Lucky problems. My brother survived COVID-19 unscathed, and the rest of my family has remained thankfully uninfected. I have the relative job security of a tenured professorship at a time when tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs. And I live in a happily integrated multi-ethnic neighborhood and household at a time when our nation is being torn apart by racist violence and racial strife. And, as my wife said when I explained the premise of this article to her, Welcome to the challenge of being a mom.

I have to accomplish all of these different tasks, be all these different people, at the same time, in the same place. I was no good at it on Facebook, and, as it turns out, Im no good at it in real life, either.

So I guess my inability to navigate context collapse is, in a way, really a reflection of my own privilege. Ive been lucky to have the space to be different things to different people. Lucky to have a private office on a beautiful college campus. Lucky to have a job that affords me the time and freedom to play at festivals. Lucky to have a home with room for a music studio and a garden. Lucky to have the freedom to quit Facebook without serious repercussions for my social or professional life.

In a way, then, COVID-19 is a blessing as well as a curse. By collapsing my context and taking away the infrastructure that allowed me to pursue the different aspects of my life in parallel, its revealed to me how much of my personal success and happiness has depended on that infrastructure, how rare it is, and how ill equipped I am to live my life without it. Its a rude awakening, but a necessary one for me, and, I think, for all of us.

We still dont know whether or when things will ever return to normal. Whether well develop a vaccine or a cure for COVID-19. Whether all the lost jobs will return, whether music festivals will start up again, whether theaters and restaurants and college campuses will reopen and resume business as usual. But I know one thing for sure: I wont be going back to the way I was before the pandemic. Now that I recognize the privilege inherent in keeping my life tidily compartmentalized, I dont want anything to do with it. Better to live an integrated, haphazard life as a half-ass than to live luxuriously in pieces as a total ass.

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I recognize the privilege inherent in keeping my life tidily compartmentalized: How quarantine made me reevaluate my life - MarketWatch

As lawmakers debate the extent of further government intervention for another federal spending package, the pandemic continues slamming people's livelihoods and throwing millions into a world of uncertainty.

Over 40 million Americans have filed for unemployment in the last three months, which has sent the jobless rate soaring to nearly 15% as of last month. That trend came as businesses closed their doors to keep the coronavirus from spreading, forcing a wave of furloughs and job losses in the work force.

The federal government initiated new programs aimed at mitigating the fallout, mainly through a $600 boost in weekly unemployment benefits and a one-time $1,200 stimulus check for millions of Americans under the CARES Act in March.

Read more:'Embrace the coming crash': A notorious market bear who called the dot-com bust warns big tech stocks are on the verge of succumbing to the economy's downturn

On Friday, the Commerce Department released data showing that personal incomes surged over 10% as consumer spending plunged 13%, the steepest drop ever recorded due to lockdowns keeping Americans at home. Many people also scaled back their spending as they were either furloughed or laid off.

But a stunning chart below illustrates the effectiveness of federal aid in significantly boosting household incomes during a period of severe economic contraction and reduced consumer spending.

The savings rate also skyrocketed 33% as a share of personal disposable income in May, a record high, according to the data. It's up from around 13% in March.

What the data relays is the continued effect of the lockdown in April, given that consumption fell nearly 14% as shown in the chart above. It indicated that Americans held onto their money since many businesses remained closed and stayed home to comply with public health guidelines.

Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist for RSM, said government aid was a critical element in salvaging incomes.

"Lost jobs and income thus far have been partially offset by the $1,200 aid check sent to most citizens and the extra $600 per week distributed to those put out of work due to the pandemic," he wrote in a Friday blog post. "In fact, that is the reason why personal disposable income inside the data has not completely collapsed."

Troy Ludtka, an economist at Natixis CIB Americas, a corporate and investment banking firm, said the development marked a victory for ambitious federal programs designed to aid struggling people.

"This is an unambiguous triumph of countercyclical government spending, which will save the U.S. economy a heap of trouble in the medium to long term," Ludtka told The New York Times.

Still, experts say the trend is likely to be short-lived as there are no additional stimulus checks planned and the ramped-up unemployment payments are set to expire on July 31 without further legislation.

Read more: BANK OF AMERICA: Buy these 13 under-the-radar tech stocks poised to outperform amid flaring China tensions and lasting pandemic damage

Economists are expecting a rebound in spending as states gradually scale back lockdowns and businesses begin to reopen, causing people to amplify their consumption.

But there's little prospect of a quick economic recovery, and economists forecast it will take a year or more for personal spending to reach pre-pandemic levels, Bloomberg reported.

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One stunning chart shows the success of federal aid in helping financially struggling ho... - Business Insider - Business Insider

Twenty years ago, John Junior was looking through the mirror at their reflection as they put on their mum's makeup and clothes.

When she caught John in the act and asked them what was happening, they simply told her that it felt normal to them.

John, who is genderfluid and uses the pronouns they/them, says that memories like these can now be looked back on as crucial stepping stones in their life journey but they didnt see it that way at the time.

Ive been confused about my gender identity since I was eleven, John tells the Manchester Evening News.

I wanted a sex change when I was an early teenager. I felt like I was living in the wrong body, and I still to this day feel more female than male inside.

John, 31, has Klinefelter syndrome, which means they were born with an extra X female chromosome, while they were also diagnosed with borderline personality disorder in August last year.

They say they have been bullied and suffered emotional, physical and sexual abuse since a young age.

On one occasion, they said they had a boiling hot kettle poured on them when they came home late.

I was constantly being put down and told nobody wanted me, John recalls.

I was told everyone hated me, and I was punched and kicked about a lot. I kept that to myself for a very long time.

I found it was just easier to lock up how I really felt and pretend my life was fine, but I eventually realised that locking up how I felt only added more stress and made my mental health worse.

In March 2018, John's dad passed away. John attempted to take their own life three days later after feeling they no longer had anyone to turn to.

At the time, John also weighed 27 stone and had severe depression and anxiety.

Being overweight was so damaging to my mental state, John says.

My dad was the one who helped me start to lose weight. All of a sudden, he wasnt there to help me with that.

Having already joined a Slimming World group in Wilmslow, John decided to keep at it to ensure their dads efforts werent in vain. Theyve since lost five stone.

It was during this time that John decided they needed to seriously consider how to turn their life around.

Despite feeling so low and upset, they came up with the idea of a project called John and Charlie's Journey.

Joined by a fluffy sidekick in the form of a cuddly duck called Charlie, John felt more comfortable with talking about their mental health and realised it could be used in a positive way to help others.

The aim is to raise awareness and to end the stigma surrounding mental health problems, John explains.

I want to get people talking about how they feel without feeling worried, judged or stigmatised.

Since November, John and Charlie have travelled across the country and share their personal experiences with mental health in order to help and inspire others.

They recently joined an abuse survivor to deliver a powerful message on domestic violence during the lockdown.

"Charlie sparks curiosity for people to come and talk to me, they say.

We take photos and do funny videos to lighten the mood, it's a great feeling to be able to lift someone's spirits when they're feeling low or alone.

I dont want others to experience what I did where I had nobody to turn to, felt all alone, scared and worried.

People have hope because me and Charlie are going to move mountains, we are bringing change to end the stigma.

Its going to be a challenge but I have passion and nothing beats that.

They have also been joined on their journey with some very special friends.

They were recently invited to the Boyzlife tour by Keith Duffy from Boyzone and Brian Mcfadden from Westlife.

Halfway through one of the shows, they were invited on stage and asked to share their story with the audience.

John and Charlie have also been working with Real Housewives of Cheshire star Tanya Bardsley at her Wellness Hub & Boutique.

I feel like I have a second chance in life, John says.

I have purpose and passion. We want to end the silence and we will.

But, John admits that recent events have been tough for them to cope with.

They have not left the house in over 55 days due to their OCD and fears over germ contamination.

I see people going out and I wish I could but, for me, its not as simple as just putting gloves on or wearing a mask, they say.

I am physically petrified of going out, my anxiety is very high and I have been having trouble sleeping.

However, John says they have been able to find some focus through using the Samaritans latest self-help app.

It features a mood tracker and recommends coping methods based on how the user is feeling.

It can just help you empty those thoughts that are clogging up your brain, John says of the app.

Its a relief to see them written down and on the page and helps take some of the weight off your shoulders.

John says the ultimate goal is to open centres across the UK, with the first one being in his hometown of Wilmslow.

They say the centres would provide mental health support, alongside therapy services and mental health awareness courses.

I used to believe it was just me with problems, they say.

But I realised people hide how they feel because they dont want to be judged.

I discovered that when one person talks, others will usually follow.

Its okay to not be okay, so lets end the silence together and talk.

You can follow John and Charlie's Journey on their website here.

Continue reading here:
How John and Charlie are turning mental health trauma into personal success - Manchester Evening News

To the Shawnee Mission Community,

We are facing a challenge that tests our character. Across the country and our community, there is deep pain over the killing of George Floyd. We are seeing an outcry of grief and anger as our neighbors and families gather to speak out against injustice. Sadly, this and other recent events serve as stark reminders that we still have much work to do to address systemic racism, inequities, and disparities that exist in our country.

Why do these unjustified acts of atrocity continue to happen? That question and many others weigh heavily on our hearts. Similar incidents have happened repeatedly across the country, and many of our students and families are experiencing these events as repeated and on-going trauma. This is not who we aspire to be, these are not the values we profess, and we must all figure out together how to make these killings stop. It wont be easy; we have a lot of history and pain to overcome.

Our community highlighted the importance of addressing equity in our strategic plan and provided specific direction for actions that need to be taken. Putting the plan into action, we are training every staff member in cultural proficiency. We will continue our work to hire a more diverse workforce, including our grow our own initiative to help train the next generation of educators from within our diverse student body. We will also continue to publicly report our data, so that together we can monitor our progress on ensuring that each student has a personalized learning plan that prepares them to be college and career ready, with the personal skills they need for life success.

Part of systemic racism is the promotion of a narrative that some children are more capable than others, and that a childs abilities correlates with the color of their skin. Often, that belief is not a conscious one, but historically, it has been implicit in structures and actions. However, going forward, it is critical that our attitudes and actions provide hope and opportunity for every child.

At SMSD we are committed to making our world a better place for each and every student. We will be relentless in pursuit of our Districts mission, to ensure students can construct a foundation of success that is distinguished by an inclusive culture, an engaged community, and robust opportunities to challenge learners to achieve their full potential. Striving to fulfill this promise to each and every student must always be our goal.

We appreciate the partnership we have with our families and community in Shawnee Mission. The work in front of us is important, and together, we can make a difference. Thank you for being a great community that cares about each and every child.

Sincerely, Dr. Mike Fulton, Superintendent Heather Ousley, President, SMSD Board of Education Mary Sinclair, Vice-President Jamie Borgman Sara Goodburn Laura Guy Jessica Hembree Brad Stratton

Continue reading here:
SMSD News: Letter to the community - Shawnee Mission Post

The personal savings rate -- the amount people are saving as a percentage of their disposable income -- skyrocketed to 33% in April. It had been around 8% for months, but then ticked up to 13% in March before surging in April, according to new data from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis. This is by far the highest savings rate recorded since BEA started tracking it in 1959.

The accumulation of cash is largely due to the pandemic, which has made people cautious about their health and their finances and has kept many from their routine spending habits, said Ken Tumin, a banking expert at DepositAccounts.com, a bank account comparison site.

Here's what you need to consider when looking for a place to store your emergency savings.

That's not much of a return. But, for many savers in this ultra low-rate envrionment, the benefit traditional savings accounts do offer is convenience.

While both traditional and online savings accounts are FDIC insured, the accessibility to branches at traditional banks makes it easier to do things like deposit cash -- something that's more difficult to do with online savings accounts.

But the big banks do tend to charge higher monthly fees.

And those fees can add up, said Steven Chau, certified financial planner with Know Your Worth Financial of Tempe, Arizona.

"The difference in interest rates in this environment are not going to outweigh the cost of a few fees," said Chau.

"They are FDIC insured and you can keep your existing checking account," he said.

"Rates are above 1% now, but online savings account rates are falling," said Tumin. "I wouldn't be surprised if they fall to 1%."

At 1%, if you deposit $10,000, that's the difference between earning $100 a year if the rate remained unchanged at an online bank versus $1 at the end of the year from a traditional savings account offering 0.01%.

"This isn't a great return, but it's better than nothing for funds that need to stay liquid for any needs that might arise," said Ryan Watermiller, certified financial planner at Ankeny Financial Planning in Iowa.

Just be sure to read the fine print: Some online accounts charge a fee if you have not made a deposit or withdrawal within a certain number of months or if the balance drops below a specified amount. And there are some accounts that function like certificate of deposits by charging a penalty for closing the account before a specified amount of time.

CDs: Another safe place to put your money is a certificate of deposit, or CD. It's similar to a savings account since it's federally insured, but you agree to leave your money there for a period of time, such as six months, a year, five years or even longer. Typically, you earn more interest the longer your money is deposited.

But, as with savings accounts, the interest isn't much.

"Because CD rates have fallen so much, it isn't a good time to lock in right now," said Tumin. "There are now several online banks that cut their 5-year CD rates so low, they're lower than their savings account rates."

But, he said, if you have a CD ladder already going, in which maturing CDs are rolled over to new CDs, stick with it.

However, before automatically rolling over with your current bank, shop around, he said.

"Even online banks have been cutting CD rates to all time lows, but not all of them," he said. "Your bank may be one that is cutting rates and you may get a better rate elsewhere. Look around. You don't want to lock into a very low rate if you can find something better."

Money market accounts: Money market accounts, which generally earn higher rates than savings accounts, may allow for check-writing or debit cards and can require a higher minimum deposit.

But there may be some fees involved. Some money market accounts may have monthly fees, inactive account fees or other fees for not adhering to specifications by the bank.

High-yield checking accounts: High-yield checking accounts, sometimes called reward checking accounts, are usually offered by community banks or credit unions and offer rewards for meeting specific account requirements.

Most have no fees, but you do need to meet the requirements in order to earn the high interest rate.

"Reward checking accounts can at least provide a way to earn some interest right now in an environment where rates are low and will remain low for some time," said Tumin.

Read this article:
People are saving more than ever. Here's where to stash your cash - CNN

B.C. provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry listens during a press conference in Vancouver on March 14, 2020.

DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press

Carey Doberstein is an assistant professor of political science at UBC and the author of Distributed Democracy: Health Care Governance in Ontario.

There is no doubt that British Columbia has managed to contain the COVID-19 pandemic better than Ontario and Quebec. At the end of February, B.C. had more cases than either of those two provinces. But since then, the province has managed to contain the outbreak such that its per-capita metrics are much closer to that of the smaller seven provinces. Among jurisdictions with more than 5 million people, it now has the lowest death rate in North America and Europe.

For some, this success can been ascribed to luck or circumstance. In particular, experts have associated province-by-province outcomes with the different timings of spring breaks, as well as the proximity and frequency of connections to New York, the epicenter of the outbreak in the United States in the first months.

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What is the reopening plan in my province? A guide

These circumstantial factors surely explain part of the patterns of spread in the early days. But we must not ignore the extent to which the particularities of health care governance in each province have shaped the trajectory of the virus in the subsequent weeks.

While governments in B.C., Ontario and Quebec have all managed this crisis well at the political level, it is not their partisan characteristics that are important here. Rather, it is how individual provinces have set up their health authorities and the manner in which they have structured the integration of core parts of the health system, such as primary care, hospitals and labs, that is going to be key to a comprehensive post-pandemic evaluation of their performance.

When observed from the perspective of a patients ability to receive essential medical care, the provinces often do not appear all that different. Yet when one peels back the outer layer, revealing the nuts and bolts of health care governance across Canada, we see considerable variation in how individual provinces have structured where authority is held, who makes those decisions, and how various parts of the health care sector (e.g. primary care, hospitals, labs, long-term care and mental health) are linked or not.

Some provinces have a single province-wide health authority, such as Alberta Health Services; others have a few regional bodies, such as B.C.'s five, co-ordinated by one overarching province-wide agency. Others have dozens or many more localized authorities (Ontario and Quebec).

This variation is the result of the debate around whether health care governance ought to be centralized or decentralized. That has never been settled among health-policy scholars, with no clear performance superiority established from either model. It is complicated because community and personal health are complicated. There are trade-offs at each point along the spectrum with respect to democratic accountability, responsiveness, service integration and efficiency.

Yet when a pandemic hits, we want a health system that functions as an integrated system though not necessarily a centralized one with information systems linked across various institutions and service providers. On this measure in particular, Ontario and Quebec have long faced challenges. Quebec has numerous nested layers of health authorities at the local level, with some amount of historically preserved autonomy and independence from each other. Ontario is challenged as a result of the dismantling of Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs), which began at roughly the same time the pandemic hit, forcing it into an awkward place at a crucial moment.

In British Columbia, critical integration work among the five regional health authorities is coordinated by the Provincial Health Services Authority (PHSA), as well as associated agencies that deliver some critical programs and services province-wide, including managing supply chains, public-health policy guidance, aggressive contact tracing and laboratory services. These configurations have existed for some time in response to previous disease outbreaks. Additionally, many of B.C.s long-term care homes are operated by the health authorities and are all linked to some degree. All of this is led by Dr. Bonnie Henry, an experienced provincial health officer whose decisive orders could be acted upon immediately thanks to the highly co-ordinated system.

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By contrast, Ontario and Quebec are comparatively less integrated with respect to partnerships, services and administration in such crucial realms as long-term care. As a result, parts of those provinces have responded well, while other hot spots appear to be losing ground. Evidence is piling up that health-officer orders in Ontario and Quebec have not had the authoritative weight and seamless implementation as those issued in B.C.

Such provincial variations are a feature, not a bug, of Canadian federalism. A comprehensive examination of the individual responses will provide us lessons for future health crises that can then be implemented with local precision and sustained public engagement, much as B.C. learned and led after HIV, SARS and H1N1. Once the COVID-19 pandemic recedes, we should not ignore any potential factors that explain why some provinces fared better than others and health-system governance needs to be part of that conversation.

Sign up for the Coronavirus Update newsletter to read the days essential coronavirus news, features and explainers written by Globe reporters and editors.

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Governance, not government, might be a better measure of provinces pandemic success - The Globe and Mail

Choosing a partner for starting a business can sometimes be stressful. It is important to find someone whom you have trust, good communication, shared mindsets, aligned visions and similar worldviews. Previously we spoke about the pros and cons of founding a startup with your best friend, and now we are going to explore the pros and cons of founding a startup with your family.

On a side note, my co-founder is my father and I have experienced the feeling of this is the worst decision Ive ever made and the feeling of this is the best decision Ive ever made. What has helped us move forward is to define and frequently review the roles, responsibilities, and who takes the final decisions on certain domains. Another tip I could share from my experience is that you must identify and address the emotional tensions before moving forward with conversations and decisions, to avoid personal conflict.

So lets see what are the pros of starting up with family:

1.- Common Core Values

Having strong core values becomes a competitive advantage for your business because core values support the vision, shape the culture and define the essence of the companys identity. Most likely youll share strong core values with your family and when you start a business together, the values become stronger giving you an extra edge towards shaping the identity of the company allowing it to run smoothly.

2.- Communication

Communication is key to every good relationship and this is also true for business relationships. Many family members have found a way to communicate effectively, in exactly the way that a businesses could benefit from. However, this is a tricky one because when conversations go the wrong way everything can go to bad places, breaking up relationships and businesses. One of the most important things when founding a business with family, is to address emotional and personal feelings soon to avoid friction and future problems.

3.- Loyalty and Strong Commitment

Building a business requires a lot of commitment in hard times and good times. A great perk of starting a business with your family is that youre more likely to invest extra hours and effort needed to reach your goals. Also the key people are more prone to make sacrifices for the success of the company, which also relates to strong loyalty between the founders, who are more likely to stick together in harsh situations and show the determination to accomplish the shared goals.

4.- Lower Cost Staff

The salaries and wages for staff can be take a big chunk from the companys budget, but luckily for family businesses, the staff is more willing to make financial sacrifices for the sake of the business. It is more likely for family members to accept lower pay than they would get elsewhere, to help the business in the long term or during a cash flow crisis. This can be beneficial for the early stages of a business or even when things are not going as expected.

5.- Appealing for Customers

Customers relationships with businesses are based on trust, and for many customers the fact that the business is family owned is appealing. They understand that strong core values are shared, loyalty and strong commitment drive the decisions, and this translates into building trust for them. Family businesses are more likely to satisfy and understand their customers needs and happy customers drive the business towards success.

6.- Leaving Legacy

Many founders think about the possibility of creating long lasting legacies through the companies we build and when partnering with our family, it becomes a bigger incentive to put our names into that legacy. We create the possibility of making a family legacy that will last for future generations.

Now lets evaluate the other side of the coin and explore the cons of starting up with family:

1.- Conflicts

Businesses can generate situations where conflict arises and when your partners are your family, disputes can mix personal and emotional situations. This creates a lot of friction for the business, slowing down progress and requiring the involved parties to engage in difficult conversations which can last for weeks depending on the situation. It is extremely important to resolve conflicts as soon as possible to avoid future unresolved issues and reduce friction that slows the progress.

2.- Favouritism

Businesses require making decisions with objectiveness and family members can easily forget about this when working together. For example, who gets hired for a role or gets promoted, should be a decision based onwho is more fit to develop the role and take the responsibilities. However, making this decision when family is involved can sometimes be difficult. as favouritism might arise. Another example is when outside employees feel the favouritism and take sides, avoiding offering feedback in fear family members might get offended. A great tool that helps to reduce favouritism, is to use numbers and indicators for making decisions and making sure every employee feels equally comfortable with sharing their thoughts.

3.- Emotional Labour

One of the greatest challenges we face as Founders is the emotional labour we must endure when starting and running a company, dealing with our fears, anxieties, sadness, and stress, which can easily get in our way to reach our goals. When working with family things get a bit more difficult, because there is an additional layer to the emotional labour from the relationship between family members. Achieving peace with this situation requires a lot of effort and patience, but when the work is done results are worth the effort.

4.- Life events

Even though life events occur sometimes without any previous warning, it is important to think about death, divorce and incapacitation, which are situations that could potentially destroy your businesses. Family members and also co-founders often face the risks of enduring those life events. This is why it is important to take some time to discuss the possibilities and define a plan of action for those types of situations.

5.- Generation gaps

In my personal experience this has been one of the hardest things to manage while working with my father. There is a generation gap which sometimes makes our worldviews too different. When starting a business with family, take into consideration that different generations with different experiences choose to take risks and analyze decisions in different ways, which most of the time can raise opposed perspectives and possibly conflicts between family members. A great strategy that has helped us manage the situation is to agree on the methods of evaluating risks and decisions, which should aim to remove any emotional and personal influences.

6.- Power Struggles

It is difficult to separate life and work when someone from your family is your business partner, sometimes family roles can mix with the business roles, leading to a pre-established chain of command which if changed or challenged might raise power struggles. Weve managed those situations by separating and clearly establishing the family relationship with the business relationship. This has not been easy but it pays off in the long run.

If you missed our article onthe pros and cons of founding a startup with your best friend, check it out as well for some more perspective.

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The pros and cons of starting up with family - EU-Startups

On June 17, WashingtonExec will be virtually celebrating the most impactful and innovative C-suite executives in government and industry. These chief officers work in technology, security, data, operations, finance, business and more, excelling on both sides of the government contracting sector. Our team of judges have chosen the finalists for the inaugural Chief Officer Awards, so before we announce the winners during the event, we wanted to get to know the finalists a bit better. This Q&A series highlights their careers, successes, proud professional moments and notable risks.

Lindsay Weissbratten, Siemens Government Technologies

Lindsay Weissbratten is chief human resource officer atSiemens Government Technologies and a finalist in the Public CompanyCHRO Award Category.

What key achievements did you have in 2019?

I joined in August 2019 and have been leading an expansion and enhancement of critical human resources functions for the company through a Focus on You initiative, where we are systematically developing human capital solutions and programming to better serve our workforce based on their feedback through surveys and multiple engagement forums with our CEO. Programming has included items such as revamping onboarding processes and improving new hire orientation, to recognition forums, mentoring, employee development and much more.

Our efforts all tie back to the simple but powerful premise that an employees connection to our company begins on their very first day of work and is continuously reaffirmed through opportunities to grow, learn and be recognized for their contributions to the success of the business.

What has made you successful in your current role?

While hard work and continuous learning have supported my professional growth and development, there is one informal mentor that I can point to throughout my career that has been pivotal in providing me with guidance. As one of my former managers, she was also an individual who led by example. I remain in touch with her today and know she is always in my corner.

In addition to her, my parents have always believed in me. Their confidence in me translated later in life to confidence I grew within myself to achieve goals I set out for.

What was a turning point or inflection point in your career?

From a personal perspective, roughly four years ago, we almost lost our youngest child due to a life-threatening food allergy. Twice in one week. It was the kind of experience that shakes you to your core and leaves you numb.

When I have been faced with hardship, I try to pause and find the positive in it. While this was a personal experience, having witnessed the fragility of life has impacted me professionally as a leader. In todays world, the demands are never ending. They will always be there and it is important to work to your fullest potential.

However, part of working to your fullest potential is ensuring that life does not pass you by without your participation. One of my more senior employees reached out to me in a prior role and explained how important it is to the future generation to see strong leaders value family and do their best to balance success.

I try to remind myself of the importance of leading by example and how I can help my staff and others be the best they can be professionally and personally through my own actions.

What are you most proud of having been a part of in your current organization?

This spring, our team has been involved in helping the Army retrofit locations into hospitals to serve communities in need due to the coronavirus pandemic. I am proud to be a part of Siemens and the amazing things the company is doing at one of the most unique times in history. From health care infrastructure, to the development of antibody testing, we are truly making a difference when it matters the most.

One of our key strategic goals at SGT is ensuring we have a dedicated focus on being a good neighbor in the communities where our employees work and live and encourage them to leverage our Volunteer Time Off Program.

This spring, being a good neighbor took on a whole new meaning. Our employees have been giving back to their communities through activities such as making masks, printing face shields on 3D printers, donating plasma, caring for the elderly to volunteering at food banks.

Whatareyour primary focus areas going forward, and why are those so important to the future of the nation?

When I think about serving an organization as an HR leader, Im reminded about our unique ability to navigate the business perspective and the priorities and challenges of an organization while also having the ability to influence the future of the company through successful talent management programming.

With successful human capital leadership, HR has the ability to impact the daily lives of the workforce, enhance job satisfaction and propel the organizations productivity and success. It is a wonderful thing to know that our employees make our nation stronger, more effective and more efficient. From an HR perspective, helping to recruit top talent and ensure we maintain healthy turnover is critical to our success in serving government customers.

Whats the biggest professional risk youve ever taken?

After more than a decade with a well-known government contracting firm in the area, I decided to take a leap of faith and exit the organization as part of a spinoff. I went from an HR staff of one in 17 days to a team of 20, led the rebuilding and design of all of our policies, procedures, systems and programming while doubling our headcount internationally in the first four months.

In addition, on our very first day as a standalone organization, we acquired another company that I was charged with helping to fold in. I remember telling my team this will be the experience of a lifetime and like no other job theyve ever had.

This was a time when I left the comfort and low-risk environment I had been a part of for over a decade for what many saw was a huge risk. There were so many unknowns and uncertainty. I have zero regrets and have grown so much since then as an individual, as a leader and as a HR professional.

The new experiences Ive gained have changed me as a person and as a leader and helped broaden my potential impact for the organizations I have worked for since then.

Looking back at your career, what are you most proud of?

During one of my positions at General Dynamics, I was charged with leading employee engagement and development. My team and I launched a resource for our employees called Dynamic Development. It was an amazing resource ahead of its time and best practices that provided employees with a holistic view of their development from traditional job changes to on the job development to emotional intelligence development.

It tied our recruitment, compensation ladder system and learning programs together in one place with exercises and resources embedded throughout that were tailored and customized specifically for our workforce. I worked closely with a vendor who helped us embed a behavioral competency tool within our intranet and later modeled our work creation into future offerings for their customers, even a decade-plus later.

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Chief Officer Awards Finalist Lindsay Weissbratten: 'Faced with Hardship, I Try to Pause and Find the Positive' - WashingtonExec

Harbor High holds drive-through graduation for its alternative school students on June 3, 2020 at its White Lake campus Wochit

High school diplomas were collected by 101 unconventional graduates and one proud, grieving mother on Wednesday night in the Huron Valley School district.

Everything about the 2020 Harbor High School and adult education commencement was unusual in this year of coronavirus.

In a drive-through ceremony, students popped out of their vehicles to pick up their diplomas from a table and stepped on to an outdoor stage while only the family they could fit in the car clapped and cheered.

Also applauding were school faculty spaced six feet apart and who mourned the hugs they couldnt give to their students whose paths to graduation were the most noteworthy of all, overcoming obstacles that even a pandemic could not overshadow.

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Every single one of the kids in the alternative high school and adult ed are overcoming something difficult, usually loss or adversity in their personal life that is really hard for them, Ben Dowker, director of the alternative high school and adult education for Huron Valley, said. They didnt think they were going to make it (to graduation).

One of the graduates honored Wednesday didnt make it to the stage, but his mother did in an exceptionally emotional moment.

Joe Wagner, 18, completed the necessary coursework for his diploma from Harbor High School last September. One day later, he was crossing Highland Road in White Lake when he was struck by a vehicle and died.

Christy Wagnerclutched her sons diploma as well as the Courage Award which staff bestowed upon Joe when she stepped on to the commencement stage.

Christy Wagner of Milford accepted her son Joe Wagner's diploma during Harbor High's commencement on June 3, 2020. Joe Wagner was killed in an accident last September, a day after he completed his coursework.(Photo: Courtesy of Huron Valley Schools)

It was bittersweet, the Milford mom said. Of course I felt sad that he wasnt here to accept all this, but me and my husband are honored to accept it for him. We promised we would always celebrate him like he is here.

Joe, who worked full-time for a construction firm and had overcome many personal struggles to achieve his diploma, was all about family, Christy said.He was also survived by his father, Larry, and his younger brother, Connor.

The motto that it takes a village to raise a child rings true to Christy, who said Joes village included Dowker and Karen Gerard, Harbor High teacher and adult ed student advisor, who she said feels like family to her.

Christysaid she plans to take her sons graduation cap to Dowker and Gerard to sign. At the graduation, she released a balloon signed by the family.

Larry and Christy Wagner hold a picture of their late son, Joe and his high school diploma on June 3, 2020.(Photo: Courtesy of the Wagner family)

Joe, who loved to be the center of attention, would have loved the fanfare.

I left there feeling like he accomplished something and we helped him accomplish it, she said. Joe had no shame in his game, he would have hammed it up and let them know he was there, and his personality would have come out for sure.

Jessica Worden, 35, finally crossed the finish line at the Huron Valley adult ed commencement, surmounting obstacles that make the pandemic seem like hardly a blip on her lifes radar.

The Waterford resident dropped out of school when she was 17 to raise her sisters baby in order to keep him from going into foster care. She had custody of her nephew for the next decade.

In 2016, Jessica and her mother, Jena Marek, enrolled in the Huron Valley adult ed program to finish their high school education together, but Jessica was foiled by a dog bite, which was a blessing in disguise.

The bite sustained from her Great Dane when she got between it and another dog resulted in 28 stitches and damaged nerves. While she was being treated at the hospital with her husband Tyg by her side, he suffered cardiac arrest, leading to the discovery of a heart condition for which he is now treated.

In the fall of 2017she enrolled to try again.But two months laterwas called upon to help her brother-in-law, a widower with two young sons, one of whom was discovered to have a brain tumor. Surgery was successful, but tragedy lay ahead.

In May 2018, another nephew was murdered in Pontiac, leading her to spend a great deal of time in court for the trial and leaving her feeling defeated about life and her education.

And then I just gave up for a little bit, because I had already tried three times to go, and my Mom was like, You have to give it one more try, Worden recalled. I felt it wasnt meant for me to go to school anymore. Every time I start, something horrific in my life happens. What more can I take that is going to happen?

Last fall, she dug in again, and then coronavirus arrived in March threatening yet another derailment of her dream.

Jessica Worden celebrates her high school graduation during a commencement ceremony held by Huron Valley Schools on June 3, 2020.(Photo: Courtesy of Huron Valley Schools)

Worden, who is a home healthcare worker and raising nephew Dayvin, could only look in stunned disbelief at the email that said school was closed.

I thought, Oh my God. Seriously? Here we go, its really not meant for me to finish school, she recalled.

But a worldwide pandemic was the one enemy she would finally defeat, and even though the graduation ceremony was way out of the ordinary, she said she wouldnt change it.

With everything I have been through, it was everything and more than I could have asked for, she said. Because I didnt go through school the traditional way, why have a traditional ceremony?

True to form in a life that hasnt been easy, her car was in the shop and she and husband Tyg pulled up to the drive-thru ceremony in a rented 2020 GMC Terrain, with nephew Dayvin, as well as two nieces.

She got out of the car, wearing her cap and tassel adorned with a passage from Proverbs, She is clothed in strength and dignity and she laughs without fear of the future.

Tyg Worden holds wife Jessica Worden, who displays the top of her graduation cap on June 3, 2020.(Photo: Courtesy of Jessica Worden)

In her excitement to get to the stage as Gerard announced her as the adult ed valedictorian, nearly forgot to grab her diploma and carnation from the table until reminded by Dowker.

She recalls proudly the clapping and cheering she received from the staff, the people who had pushed for her, and believed in her even when she didnt believe in herself.

I felt like a star, they absolutely made me feel like a starI felt amazing, she said. I felt like a 30-year goal was accomplished, I felt wonderful. It almost made me feel like everything I had to endure and go through was worth every bit of it.

She reflectedback on 2016, when she had first stepped into the Huron Valley adult ed building in White Lake and told her mother and Gerard that she didnt belong there, that she was too old.

Gerard responded with words that have stayed with her.

She said, Youre never too old, its never too late to go back and finish something, Worden recalled.

Those words, along with gestures like the staff sending her flowers following her husbands heart troubles, when she was again out of school and at the lowest point of her life, or just lending an ear when she needed it, are not forgotten and never will be.

Worden, who recently accepted a job at Fords Livionia transmission plant and plans to attend college to become a social worker, cant wait to return to see the Harbor High staff when it is safe and hug those who helped her succeed.

Gerard looks forward to that day.

I know that good things are in store for them in the future, she said. They showed determination and courage to even walk through the doors of this building to complete their education and by willing to adapt to the current situation, they showed the inner strength they had and I know they will have success in their future because of their ability to do that.

Contact reporter Susan Bromley at sbromley@hometownlife.com or 517-281-2412. Follow her on Twitter @SusanBromley10.

Read or Share this story: https://www.hometownlife.com/story/news/local/milford/2020/06/05/huron-valley-alternative-and-adult-ed-graduates-granted-2020-diplomas/3137246001/

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101 graduates and one proud, grieving mom granted diplomas in Huron Valley ceremony - Hometown Life

Abstract

Human technology is characterized by cumulative cultural knowledge gain, yet researchers have limited knowledge of the mix of copying and innovation that maximizes progress. Here, we analyze a unique large-scale dataset originating from collaborative online programming competitions to investigate, in a setting of real-world complexity, how individual differences in innovation, social-information use, and performance generate technological progress. We find that cumulative knowledge gain is primarily driven by pragmatists, willing to copy, innovate, explore, and take risks flexibly, rather than by pure innovators or habitual copiers. Our study also reveals a key role for prestige in information transfer.

Culture is responsible for the behavioral diversity that has led to our species remarkable adaptability and ecological success (1, 2). At the heart of culture lies social learninglearning influenced by contact with other individuals (3)which is used by an extensive variety of species. Only in humans, however, do we see compelling evidence for the buildup of socially transmitted information over multiple rounds of innovation and social learning, often into complex multicomponent functional solutions, leading to tools, products, and knowledge that no one individual could have invented alone (2, 4, 5).

Strong evidence suggests that individuals should use social learning selectively according to strategies that guide how, what, and under what circumstances they copy others, and when they rely on their own experience (611). Recent studies show that humans exhibit consistent individual differences in the rates of using either social or asocial information in decision-making (1216), with these preferences consistent across time and contexts (13), and linked to personality traits in both adults (17) and children (18). Such individual differences in social-information use have profound implications for the way researchers conceptualize and model social learning. In particular, there has been little research thus far on how variation in learning strategies between and within individuals could affect the processes underlying cumulative cultural evolution.

Here, we analyze a unique large-scale dataset to investigate, in a cumulative cultural evolution setting, whether and how individual differences in learning generate collective progress. The dataset arises from a series of collaborative online programming competitions organized by the MathWorks software company over the course of 14 years (19). Each contest involved participants attempting to craft and improve solutions to a set of NP-complete computer coding challenges (20). Such challenges do not have an exact solution, which allows open-ended improvement, as typically characteristic of cumulative cultural evolution. This exclusive dataset provides a rare opportunity to isolate the causes of technological progress in a setting that approaches real-world complexity.

Complex cultural systems, often characterized by opaque links between cultural traits and payoffs, require individuals to use effective heuristics to guide their learning. One cue thought to be particularly important in human societies is prestige, defined as high status or influence typically related to higher competence in valued domains of activity (21). In complex contexts when direct observation of payoffs is difficult, watching how much other individuals defer to, attend to, or copy a model can provide an efficient proxy for that models information quality (22, 23). Prestige can extend across domains, for example, being perceived as a successful yam grower might still increase the probability that an individuals fishing techniques would be copied (4).

The complex interactions characterizing cumulative cultural evolution provide an ideal context for such prestige bias to emerge. Repeated interactions between individuals in a challenging environment characterized by hard problems allow individuals to create reputations that are used to guide the copying of beneficial traits. In the aforementioned programming contests, once an individual submitted a valid entry, it became public, making its code accessible to other participants, along with its score and the authors chosen username. Over time, some individuals took part in more than one contest, which allowed the potential to build reputation and influence across contests.

Here, we show that the successful individuals that drive cumulative improvements in the programming contests are neither habitual innovators nor inveterate copiers, but rather mixed-strategy pragmatists, willing to copy, innovate, explore, and take risks flexibly. We further demonstrate that superior performance in contests allows players to generate reputations that are used by other players as a cue to guide social learning above and beyond the effect of payoff bias, both within and across contests.

We analyzed data from 19 online programming competitions organized by MathWorks from 1998 until 2012 (19). Overall, we had data from 1964 unique participants from 19 contests, with an average of 136 participants per contest, some of whom took part in more than one contest, and collectively submitted a total of 45,793 valid entries. We grouped submitted entries according to the participant that submitted them (henceforth called contestant) both within each contest and, where possible, across different contests. Each contestant was thus responsible for a collection of entries, which can be characterized in terms of activity (the total number of entries submitted to the contest), novelty (similarity to the entry with the current best scoreas there is substantial copying taking place in the contest, this similarity is an unbiased, relative measure of how much an entry is deviating from the current population consensus), and performance (whether the entry became, on submission, a leader in its contest, i.e., whether it achieved the best score at the time of its submission). Each individual contestant could thus be characterized by a number of entries, a distribution of leader similarities, and a distribution of performance measures for every entry they had submitted. To begin with, for simplicity, we analyzed each contest as independent and assumed that all contestants were distinct (i.e., contestants were not linked across contests; see below for an analysis considering the same individuals participating in multiple contests). This means that each contestant had an associated activity, novelty, and performance measure for each contest in which they participated.

We found that individuals differed widely in their activity, use of novelty, and performance. Activity ranged from those who only submitted one entry to very active, very exploratory individuals who returned a wide range of raw scores. The number of entries per contestant was approximately exponentially distributed in all contests, with 30% of contestants submitting only 1 entry in the entire contest, 60% submitting 5 or fewer, and less than 1% submitting >50 entries (fig. S1). Of all participants to all contests, 22% submitted at least one entry that took the lead, and 14% did this more than once. The average number of entries per leading contestant was 10 times larger than the average number of entries per nonleading contestant. Activity was therefore strongly linked to performance at the individual level (fig. S2). However, the variation in activity levels among leading contestants indicates that high activity was not necessary for a participant to be able to take the lead8% of leading contestants submitted only a single entry, while 16% submitted less than five (fig. S2).

The novelty results show that this between-individual variation extends to how individuals used social learning in their solutions. Some contestants were very conservative and preferred to keep their entries safe through solely copying the current leader, while other contestants were relatively adventurous, submitting entries that varied in their novelty (Fig. 1A). However, contestants did not display a bimodal distribution in use of copying or introduction of novelty, but rather could be broadly split into three groups, albeit on a continuous distribution: (i) a surprisingly large number of contestants who only submitted entries with low similarity to the current leader, a group that we term incurable mavericks, who barely ever took the lead (Fig. 1A, left section); (ii) an intermediate group whose entries ranged from zero similarity to very close copies of the current leader, termed occasional mavericks, who were the most likely group to take the lead (Fig. 1A, middle section); and (iii) a smaller group whose entries were always very similar to the current leader, termed extreme conservatives, who, again, rarely took the lead (Fig. 1A, right section). Most leading contestants and the most active contestants lie toward the copying end of this spectrum.

Similarity to current leader (A) and score increment (B)average values with bars spanning the range of the distribution. The colored circles indicate leading contestants (i.e., contestants who submitted at least one entry that improved the overall score at the time of its submission), and the size of the circles is proportional to the total number of entries submitted by each contestant. The shaded panels in (A) indicate a visual split of participants into mavericks (left), copiers (right), and flexible users (middle) based on how they make use of social learning. The shaded panels (B) indicate a visual split between poorly performing contestants (left), contestants who are variable in performance (middle), and consistently good performers (right).

There was also considerable between-individual variation in terms of performance (Fig. 1B), with participants again split into three groups: a number of contestants who displayed very little variation in scores relative to the current leader and who often took the lead but more often than not only submitted one or two entries (Fig. 1B, right section), a group of contestants who showed variation in performance but tended to take the lead (Fig. 1B, middle section), and a final group of contestants who varied in their scores but showed poor performance on average (Fig. 1B, right section). Leading contestants use social information in a notably different manner to other contestants (Fig. 2). We split participants into leading contestants (i.e., contestants who submitted at least one leading entry that beat the current best in the contest, in at least one contest) and nonleading contestants (who never submitted any entry in any contest that beat the current best leader). To test whether the way individuals used social information affected their performance, we fitted a generalized linear mixed model with a binomial error distribution that predicted whether an individual was a leading contestant or not as a function of the mean and the range of the distribution of similarities between that individuals submissions and the current leader at the time of submission, to ask whether more or less innovation in terms of solutions was beneficial.

(A) Distributions of average leader similarities and distribution of leader similarity ranges for all nonleading and leading contestants. (B) Probability of a contestant becoming a leading contestant as a function of mean leader similarity and the range of the leader similarity distribution, as predicted by the generalized linear mixed model.

According to the generalized mixed linear model (GLMM), the probability of a contestant introducing leading entries increased with a higher mean similarity to the current leader, but was also correlated with a higher range of the distribution of similarities between each entry submitted by the author and the current leader (i.e., the variation of solutions submitted by the author; Fig. 2B and Table 1). For every one unit increase in mean similarity, the log odds of taking the lead increasd by 3.488 (i.e., the odds increased by a factor of 31). Therefore, both between-individual variation (i.e., how much copying a contestant engages in on average, as measured by the average similarity to the current leader) and within-individual variation (i.e., how variable the solutions submitted by each contestant are, as measured by the range of the distribution of similarities to the leader for each individual) are predictors of individual performance. Leading contestants, who were almost always occasional mavericks, were more similar to the current leader, on average, than nonleading contestants. However, leading contestants also showed considerable flexibility in their behavior, being substantially more variable in their use of social and asocial information than nonleading contestants. Leading contestants deviated more often from the status quo than extreme conservatives, while (unlike incurable mavericks) still sometimes working on variations of the current leading solution and scoring consistently better than nonleaders even with their nonleading entries (fig. S3). Results from the continuous version of this model confirm our findings (table S1 and fig. S4).

Results from GLMM: LeadingContestant ~ MeanScoreDifference + MeanLeaderSimilarity + RangeLeaderSimilarity + (1|Contest). Predictors are standardizedsimilarity ranges theoretically between 0 and 1 and score difference between 1 and 1.

We devised a measure, which we call influence, that captures how much of an entry a population picked up following the entrys submission. Influence is broadly calculated as a normalized version of the average similarity between an entry and subsequent entries submitted by other contestants in that contest, thus capturing how much of an entry is reflected following entries, while controlling for self-similarity (fig. S5). Leading contestants were also copied more (i.e., they had, on average, higher influence) than nonleading contestants, through both their leading and their nonleading entries (Fig. 3). Leading entries had higher influence than nonleading entries overall, but even nonleading entries submitted by leading contestants had higher influence than entries submitted by nonleading contestants (Table 2), even when we control for score difference. For instance, a nonleading entry submitted by a leading contestant had a 0.135-point increase in influence compared to a nonleading entry submitted by a nonleading contestant. If the entry was also leading, this added another 0.175-point increment. This was in addition to the increase in influence due to higher increment. Notably, leading contestants submitted entries that had a higher influence on other participants, even when those entries were not the best available to copy, and even when variation in actual score was accounted for. This demonstrates that a prestige effect was taking place in the contests, with contestants who manage to take the lead at least once forming reputations that influenced how others copied.

Entry-level influence distribution for entries submitted by nonleading contestants, nonleading entries submitted by leading contestants, and leading entries submitted by leading contestants.

Results for fixed effects from linear mixed model: Influence ~ LeaderGroup + Increment + (1|Contest/Contestant). The top row represents the baseline, entries that neither led nor were submitted by contestants who were ever leaders. The following two rows indicate additive effects relative to the baseline for nonleading entries submitted by leading contestants and leading entries submitted by leading contestants. The last row indicates the relationship between influence and performance as measured by score increment (standardized between 1 and 1).

Crucially, this effect extended across contests (fig. S6). Overall, again, leading entries had significantly higher influence than nonleading entries, and so did nonleading entries that had been submitted by a contestant who managed to take the lead in the same contest. Leading entries submitted by a contestant who was a leader in the current contest had, on average, 0.243 higher influence than nonleading entries submitted by a contestant who was never a leader, but even nonleading entries submitted by a contestant who had taken the lead in the contest had, on average, 0.217 higher influence (Table 3). More surprisingly, this prestige effect held even for entries that did not take the lead, submitted by contestants who did not become leaders in the focal contest, but had taken the lead in a different contest (Table 3), which achieved 0.120 higher influence than the baseline, nonleading entries submitted by contestants who never led. This was true while controlling for payoff bias, i.e., mean performance overallfor every unit increase in mean score increment, influence increased by 0.284 units. This shows that cross-contest individual behavior was significantly related to entry-level measures of influence, indicating that consistent individual characteristics affected how entries were copied, in line with the expectations if prestige effects were forming across contests through repeated participation.

Results for fixed effects from linear mixed model: Influence ~ LeaderGroup + Increment + (1|Contestant/Contest). The first row indicates the intercept: nonleading entries submitted by nonleading contestants who never took the lead in any other contests. The following rows indicate the additional effect corresponding to each factor level indicatedbold indicates leading (either entry, contestant, or contestant in a different contest). The last row indicates the relationship of influence with performance, measured here as score increment.

In a cumulative cultural evolution setting with real-world task complexity, we have shown that individual differences in reliance on social and asocial learning give rise to considerable variation in performance. Analysis of individual-level patterns of entry novelty did not indicate a dichotomous split between individuals who preferred copying and those who preferred innovation, but rather a continuous spectrum, in which individuals varied not only in their proclivity to copy and/or innovate but also in how much within-individual variation (i.e., exploration across entries) they displayed. Notably, the spectrum of the individual reliance on social learning had long tails formed by individuals with relatively pure always innovate and always copy approaches, who had relatively low success overall. The best-performing individuals occupied the center ground, mixing a balance of copying the leader with their own innovation and exhibiting flexibility and exploration in achieving this balance. Our results suggest that, to succeed, it is not enough to innovate alone, or solely to copy uncritically, but rather, individuals must strike a balance between the two. Successful individuals are pragmatists, willing to copy, innovate, explore, and take risks.

Previous work acknowledges and occasionally focuses on between-individual variation in social-information use (9, 15, 24), sometimes identifying factors that could explain this variation, such as confidence (9), intelligence quotient (25), or age (26). For instance, in a dataset of 60 years of opening moves in the game of Go, Beheim et al. (27) found both individual variation in social-information use (some players copy more than others), as well as cultural variation (players from certain countries copy more than others). Modeling work has shown that a mix of innovation and social learning can be beneficial, at both the population and individual level (6, 11, 28), and improvement is maximized by a careful blend of exploration and copying (29, 30). The literature less often discusses within-individual variation in social learning and how it is linked to population-level improvement. Morgan et al. (9) show that individuals flexibly adjust their reliance on social information over time, as they gain confidence in the task, and Toelch et al. (31) show that individuals change their reliance on innovation when presented with social performance cues. Such findings are indicative of growing evidence that humans implement learning strategies flexibly (32). We extend these findings to show that not only do individuals use social information flexibly but also this flexibility is adaptive in the sense of being associated with successful performance: The best-performing individuals are those that most effectively navigate the trade-off between innovation and social learning.

Within our current framework, it is not immediately obvious how this trade-off is negotiated, or even how to predict accurately how good ideas are generated. Individual preferences for copying versus exploration can be explained in terms of both perceived expected payoffs and built-in proclivities for either type of learning. The structure of the scoring system allows for better scores either through algorithmic improvement or through speeding up the code, which means that copying is a safe strategy and individuals who are not especially proficient coders will typically receive higher payoffs from copying than innovating. Nonetheless, we see evidence of poor performers who stick exclusively to innovating and refuse to copy, suggesting a personal preference, manifest independent of payoff. Given the substantial search space of existing solutions, the fact that entries tend to have high similarity to the current leader is not surprising, as copying the leader is a quick heuristic for reducing the space and focusing on proven solutions. The fact that new leaders are both similar to current leaders and more exploratory could be interpreted as leaders being good at innovating from a starting point of the current best solution, although studies show that a degree of randomness can aid exploratory search (33, 34). However, our data imply that both conservatism and exploration play a role in effective innovation. We have shown in previous work that many leading entries were very similar to the current leader, but a handful were very different, yet associated with higher improvement (19). The latter generated large innovative leaps that triggered the population to adopt this new solution, which was then optimized through small modifications. Here, we show that the individuals responsible for these crucial entries rarely worked alone and also participated in the tweaking process. Overall, leaders showed a higher level of engagement than nonleaders, perhaps symptomatic of relevant personal motivators (interest, expertise, and perseverance).

Prestige effects are expected to emerge where there is a correlation between status and performance (21). According to participant accounts, introducing an entry that takes the lead is a highly sought-after prize, which suggests that reputation is a valued commodity in these contests. Moreover, participants remember good players from previous contests and pay attention to their submissions. Our study provides clear evidence that leaders had more influence on the patterns of solutions in the population than nonleaders, even when their entries did not take the lead. This effect extended across contests such that individuals who had proved successful had influence even in contests in which they never took the lead. Modeling the influence of leaders while controlling for the individual performance of each entry allowed us to establish whether leaders had higher influence merely as a result of submitting generally better entries or whether leadership genuinely creates a reputational effect. The analysis confirms genuine prestige effects in the copying of leaders. This prestige effect held up across contests, suggesting that an individuals reputation builds in the MATLAB contest world independently of the specific challenge, perhaps serving as a heuristic used to reduce the overwhelming search space. This is in line with Henrich and Gil-Whites theory (21), suggesting that prestige can be a useful tool in the face of uncertainty, even when that uncertainty is not a result of lack of success information, but rather an excess of it. However, such effects are still reliant on general programming expertise, as opposed to, say, a gifted footballer promoting a brand of clothing, and it remains to be established how widely this cross-domain influence extends.

We have investigated how individual-level use of social information contributes to technological progress in a cumulative cultural evolution microcosm, where cultural artifacts are incrementally improved over time through modifications by multiple individuals. We studied what humans do when unguided or unprompted, confirming and extending results from theoretical models and small experiments in a large-scale realistic setting. Although there were no experimental interventions in this study, we can nonetheless draw clear inferences about the factors that shape cumulative cultural change. Our results suggest that overt attempts to maximize cumulative cultural adaptation require populations consisting of many individuals exhibiting leader qualities (i.e., exploring and flexibly switching between social and asocial information). We have also shown that prestigious individuals have a disproportionate influence on cultural transmission, a finding that implies that performance increments may be achieved through coupling prestige with superior solutions. We note, however, that prestige bias need not speed up cumulative cultural evolution, if this means that good solutions introduced by nonprestigious individuals are hindered from spreading through the population. While our study system might mimic patterns of improvement in some contemporary scenariostodays business world, for exampleit is limited in its generality. For instance, many cultural adaptation scenarios do not involve the level of competition or transparency manifest here. Further realistic studies of such phenomena are needed to establish the generality of our findings.

Consistent interindividual variation in behavior has been a focus in behavior studies for over a decade, sometimes controversially (35). Our study contributes to the growing expectation that differences between individuals, and groups, in their approach to learning will have important effects on the patterns of cultural evolution (36).

However, our findings also draw attention to within-individual flexibility in the use of social and asocial information, suggesting that not only the predilection to use social information but also the contexts in which humans copy could be learned. Here, any assumption that social learning strategies are not learned could underestimate the speed of response to environmental variation (36), as well as the patterns of change of these social learning strategies (32), and the vulnerability to the propagation of maladaptive traits (37). Our study implies that flexibility in learning is a key ingredient for successful innovation.

Last, our study provides compelling evidence for prestige bias. To date, little empirical work has focused on the importance of prestige bias [see (38) for a review of the existing literature], but the complex cumulative cultural evolution microcosm provided by our dataset provides a useful framework for studying this learning mechanism in a naturalistic setting. Why prestige effects should be so potent is unclear, but plausibly, this bias has been co-opted as part of norm psychology, a psychological suite of traits evolved to support cultural evolution (39), and is used even in the presence of more effective learning mechanisms. If the effect of prestige is manifest even in the presence of a clear cue of success, then our findings suggests that prestige could play an even more prominent role in human social learning contexts in which payoffs are opaque.

We analyzed data from 19 online programming competitions organized by MathWorks, the company that produces MATLAB, from 1998 to 2012 (19, 40). Each contest involved the organizers proposing an NP-complete problem (traveling salesmantype constraint problems; see the Supplementary Materials for an example) and participants submitting solutions to it, in the form of MATLAB code. Each entry was submitted to an online platform and evaluated automatically. Once submitted, each entry, along with its score, submitting author, and time of submission, was freely available on the website for all the other participants to access and copy. Participants could only learn their score by submitting an entry. Prizes were nominal (e.g., a MATLAB T-shirt), and participants competed mainly for reputation. Participants were incentivized with small intermediate awards like daily leader and highest improvement in a day. Both these intermediary prizes and the final winner were highly sought-after accolades. The contest attracted programmers that varied in their skill level and engagement with MATLAB, from beginners to engineers and academics who use MATLAB proficiently in their professional life.

Our dataset consisted of 1964 participants from 19 contests, with an average of 136 participants per contest, some of whom took part in more than one contest, and collectively submitted a total of 45, 793 valid entries. Participants submitted an average of 21 entries each, but with very large variation between participants, ranging between 1 and 1502 entries submitted. Of the total of 1964 individual participants, 83% participated in only one contest, and the average number of contests participated in was 1.34, with 2 participants competing in 14 of the 19 contests we studied.

Throughout the week of each contest, participants were allowed to submit as many solutions as they wanted through an online interface, which resulted in numerous participants submitting multiple entries. The participants were identified using an identification number that was linked to a MathWorks account that they themselves created and that was needed to submit entries to the contest. Individuals were not forbidden from creating multiple accounts if they wished to do so, but we have reason to believe, based on online communication between participants, that most did not and, because this would have required substantial effort (e.g., creating a new account, linked to a new email address), we expect that this was not a major confounding factor in this analysis.

The score of each entry was a function of its effectiveness on the task, the speed of execution, and code complexity, measured using McCabes cyclomatic complexity (41), such that improving an entry could be achieved by improving the success of the algorithm and/or the speed of execution, and/or reducing its complexity (the latter could be achieved without considerable programming proficiency). Entries were disqualified if they exceeded execution time or length limits, and the winner was the entry with the lowest score at the end of the week.

We characterized individual variation through three principal metrics that we term activity, novelty, and performance. The analysis included only valid entries, which followed the contest guidelines and received a score (if an entry contained a bug that stopped execution, it was not valid and did not receive a score). Some of the contests included a period of darkness in the first 2 days, in which contestants only had access to their own entries, in an attempt to encourage individual exploration. To compare accurately across contests, in our analysis, we included only data from the third day onward for all contests.

Activity was measured as the total number of entries submitted in a contest. At the individual level, activity is an indirect measure of motivationwe expected that more motivated, more interested players would submit more entries throughout the contest.

Novelty is inversely related to social learning, and hence, this measure allowed us to quantify and investigate individual differences in both reliance on social learning and innovation, as well as link these factors to performance and thereby establish their adaptive value. To measure novelty, we first used similarity to the current leader as an index of copying. We have shown elsewhere (19) that solutions quickly become very complex, which incentivizes participants to copy the current leader (i.e., the entry with the best score at a set time) substantially and tweak that leading solution instead of submitting completely original entries. As a result, populations converged on similar solutions over each contest. Entries are much more similar to the current leader than to any other entries, and although this similarity might not indicate direct copying but rather could be mediated through third entries that copied the current leader, it is nonetheless a robust measure of how much an individual is deviating from the population consensus and, reciprocally, a measure of how much novelty they are introducing. Although we could have used raw proportion of new lines introduced into the contest as a straightforward measure of novelty, this would be a biased measurethere is much more scope for novelty at the beginning of the contest, while novelty naturally decreases over time as possible space of solutions is explored and exhausted. Therefore, we settled on similarity to the current leader as a relative measure that is conditional on the current level of novelty entertained by the best entries. Code similarity was measured using the Czekanowski similarity, designed as a statistic for comparing two ecological samples in terms of proportion of overlapping species, given byCZik=2j=1Smin(xij,xkj)j=1S(xij+xkj)(1)where CZik is the similarity between samples i and k, xij is the number of instances of species j in sample i, and xkj is the number of instances of species j in sample k. For our analysis, each sample corresponds to an entry, and each species is a line of code. Every entry is a set of lines of code, so the similarity between two entries is a function of the total number of lines they have in common, including reoccurring lines, relative to the sum of their lengths. Each individual contestant could thus be characterized by a distribution of leader similaritiesthe novelty introduced by an individual is therefore given by the distribution of dissimilarities (i.e., 1 CZik for each entry).

Performance of an entry was simply characterized as whether that entry became, on submission, the leader in its contest (i.e., achieved the best score at the time of its submission and thus improved the overall score). Extending this to the contestant level allowed us to quantify how many of each contestants entries improved upon the current leader. To test the link between social-information use at the individual level and contestant performance, we fitted a model that predicts whether a contestant ever became a leader or not (within a contest) as a function of that contestants social-information use. We used both the mean and the range of the distribution of similarities between a contestants entries and the current leader as measures of copying and exploration around the population consensus. Thus, we fitted a generalized linear mixed model with a binomial error distribution. The predicted outcome of the model was whether an individual was a leading contestant, and the dependent variables were the mean and range of the distribution of similarities between that individuals submissions and the current leader at the time of submission.

An additional independent variable accounts for the fact that some contestants were better players overall. Thus, the model also included an average performance measure for each contestant as a fixed effect. We used the difference in score between the current leading entry and each specific entry as a continuous, relative measure of performance at the entry level, which takes into account the steady improvement in score. This score difference is positive for entries that improved the overall score, and negative for most entriesa large negative difference indicating a particularly unsuccessful entry. We rescaled this increment within each contest so it fell between 1 and 1 according to Eq. 2I=sign(I)IIminImaxImin(2)where I is the original increment value, Imin and Imax are the minimum and maximum values taken by all increments, and I is the rescaled increment. We included the mean score increment for each contestant as a fixed effect in the model. The model also includes contest as a random effect to account for inherent differences in performance and similarity introduced by different tasks in different contests. Therefore, the model specification wasLeaderijBinomial(1,pij)logit(pij)=+1MeanIncrementij+2MeanSimilarityij+3RangeSimilarityij+aiaiN(0,a2)where leaderij is the probability of contestant j in contest i to become a leader, and ai estimates the random effect corresponding to contest i. All models were implemented in R, using the lme4 package (42).

In the context of the MATLAB contests, being a leader was a highly prized achievement and a principal motivator for contestants. Here, leading entries and leaders have the broader significance of improving the overall score at the population level. As a result of the considerable copying taking place, most entries scored just below the current leader, making those entries that did surpass the leader even more salient. This pattern extended to the contestant level: Most contestants, including leaders, had a mean increment value just below zero. Leaders whose mean increment value exceeded zero generally submitted a small number of entries (one or two), while many leaders had a negative increment value because they submitted both leading and nonleading entries. For these reasons, whether a contestant was a leader or not is a more meaningful measure of performance than mean increment (or other continuous measures of performance), although we also fitted an additional linear model similar to the above, in which we use mean increment as the outcome variableMeanIncrementij=+1MeanSimilarityij+2>RangeSimilarityij+aiaiN(0,a2)

To investigate whether individuals formed reputations that affected how they were copied, we needed to establish the extent to which an individual was copied throughout the contest. While we used similarity as a proxy for copying, this does not exclude the possibility that the two entries are related through copying via a third entry they both copied. As quantifying indirect copying is impossible in this context, we devised a measure that we call influence that attempts to capture how much of an entry a population picked up following the entrys submission.

Influence was calculated as the average similarity between an entry and subsequent entries in that contest. To control for the situation in which a contestant is working on a solution and submits a series of very similar solutions to each other, we only took into account subsequent entries submitted by other contestants. This excludes self-similarity as an explanation for high influence. The influence of the entries submitted at the beginning of the contest will naturally be lower than the influence of the entries submitted toward the end, purely because the number of subsequent entries is higher for the entries submitted at the beginning of the contest, which translates into a higher number of entries that could potentially be dissimilar to these initial entries. Therefore, we divided this average similarity by a number indicating the order of the entry into the competition, ranging from 1 for the first entry to the total number of entries in the contest for the last. We used the order of submission rather than the raw time point of submission to control for variation in the rate of submission across the duration of the competition (although the results hold when using raw time point as a normalizing factor). As mentioned above, in this analysis, we only included data starting with day 3, when participants had full access to everybody elses entries; therefore, this timestamp never actually took the value 0. To correct for the skew introduced by the difference in magnitude between similarity and this measure of time, we used a log transformation of the influence measurethis skew correction was used for both measures of time, raw time point, and entry order. Thus, influence was given byInfluence=log(mean similarityentry order+105)(3)

Last, this influence measure was rescaled between 0 and 1 using the same form as Eq. 2 to make comparison across contests possible. Influence is therefore a continuous measure of subsequent-entry similarity for each entry that indicates how much a given solution, once introduced, is used by others in the population. This measure does distinguish between the initial innovator and the following copiers purely because innovators have precedency and therefore a higher number of entries that can potentially copy them, but it does not completely discount copiers as completely lacking influence on the population outcomescopiers deserve credit, too, for recognizing a successful solution and popularizing it, thus influencing the population repertoire.

To test whether leading contestants had a higher influence than nonleading contestants in either or both their leading and nonleading entries, we fitted a linear mixed model with the influence of each entry as the dependent variable. The influence was predicted as a function of a factor with three levels that specified whether (i) the entry took the lead and was submitted by a leading contestant, (ii) the entry did not take the lead but was submitted by a leading contestant, and (iii) the entry did not take the lead and was submitted by a nonleading contestant. The intercept baseline was set to group 3, the entries that did not take the lead and were submitted by nonleading contestants. The model also included the entrys score increment as a fixed effect, because better-performing entries can be expected to have higher influence irrespective of the contestant who submitted them. This allows us to compare between prestige-bias, here measured as how much more influence entries submitted by leading contestants have, and payoff-bias, measured by the score increment of the entry. The contestant and the contest were included as random effects, with contestant nested within contest, to account for the fact that each contest might be characterized by a different average level of copying and that within each contest some contestants might have generally higher influence independent of their leader status. Therefore, the model specification wasijk=+i+ij+1Incrementk+2ContestantFactorkiN(0,12);ijN(0,22)InfluenceijkN(ijk,32)for each entry k submitted by contestant j in contest i, where i indicates the random effect corresponding to contest i, and ij captures random effects corresponding to contestant j in contest i.

The predictor of interest here was the contestant factor. We expected leading entries submitted by leading contestants to have a significantly higher influence than entries submitted by nonleading contestants. However, if prestige bias was operating, we also expected greater influence of nonleading entries submitted by leading contestants compared to entries submitted by nonleading contestants.

Some individuals participated in multiple contests, which gave us the opportunity to investigate whether individuals performed consistently across different problems or whether the variation between contest problems somehow breaks down these individual characteristics. This was tested using a similar mixed linear model as for within-contest influence. In this context, however, the predictor of interest was a factor that specified whether the entry took the lead, whether the contestant submitting the entry was ever a leader in the same contest, or whether the contestant was ever a leader in a different contest. This factor had six levels: (i) nonleading entry submitted by a nonleading contestant who was never a leading contestant in any other contest, (ii) nonleading entry submitted by a nonleading contestant who was a leading contestant in a different contest, (iii) nonleading entry submitted by a leading contestant who was not a leading contestant in a separate contest, (iv) nonleading entry submitted by a leading contestant who was also a leader in a different contest, (v) leading entry submitted by a leading contestant who was not a leader in a different contest, and (vi) leading entry submitted by a leading contestant who was also a leading contestant in a different contest. As before, we included score increment as a fixed factor, and contest and contestant identity as random factorsin this case, the model included a random effect for contest nested inside the random effect for contestant, as contestant identity explained more variation than contest identity. To capture within-participant variation adequately and to ensure methodological validity, we chose to examine individuals who participated in at least three contests, giving a sample size of 96 repeat contestants, of the total of 1416 unique contestants overall.

This allowed us to establish whether entries had more influence when submitted by a leading contestant, independent of how well they scored. Crucially, this analysis also allowed us to establish if entries had more influence when submitted by a contestant that was a leader in a different contest (i.e., if reputations carry across contests, as predicted if prestige bias is important). If entries that do not take the lead, submitted by contestants who do not become leaders in the same contest, but who had been leading contestants in a different contest still have higher influence than entries submitted by nonleading contestants both within and across contests, it would mean that the leadership reputation at the individual level was maintained across contests, evidence of prestige bias.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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R. Boyd, P. J. Richerson, Culture and the Evolutionary Process (University of Chicago Press, 1985).

M. Tomasello, The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition (Harvard Univ. Press, 1999).

R. M. Karp, Reducibility among combinatorial problems, in 50 Years of Integer Programming 19582008: From the Early Years to the State-of-the-Art (Springer-Verlag, 2010), pp. 219241.

E. Miu, Understanding human culture: Theoretical and experimental studies of cumulative culture, thesis, University of St Andrews (2017).

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Flexible learning, rather than inveterate innovation or copying, drives cumulative knowledge gain - Science Advances