Tag: Motivation

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Required Reading: 5 Books On Leadership (2017 Holiday edition)

The 2017 Holiday season is officially underway. While the holidays are the perfect for spending time with family, friends, and other loved ones, it is also time for you to go into low gear and slow things down a bit.

Slowing down should give you some time to yourself, so why not take advantage of that time to kick back and read a book or two (or five). Who knows you might learn a thing or two (or five).

Here is the list of books that I consider to be the PERFECT leadership reading during this holiday season. So pour yourself a glass of eggnog or make a cup of hot cocoa and get to reading because the holidays will be over before you know it.

 

Be, Know, Do: Leadership the Army Way by
U.S. Army, Frances Hesselbein, Eric K. Shinseki, Richard E. Cavanagh
The Little Big Things: 163 Ways to Pursue EXCELLENCE
by Thomas J. Peters
The Leadership Secrets of Santa Claus: How to Get Big Things Done in YOUR “Workshop”…All Year Long
by Eric Harvey
Crush It!
by Gary Vaynerchuk
The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)
by Seth Godin

 

Do you agree or disagree with this list. Let me know either by Twitter @daveguerra or by email [email protected] or both.

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The Walking Leader Podcast Episode #96

Out-Doing the Competition is this episode’s topic. In this episode David Guerra (your host) talks about OUT-DOING THE COMPETITION, why it is important to always to be OUT-DOING THE COMPETITION and as a leader, you should always be asking yourself: Do I Know Who The Competition Really Is?

To access the podcast page click here or click on the image below

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Amazon’s Alexa and The New WALKING LEADER Skill

By now, you have seen the Amazon Alexa commercials.

If you haven’t then let me share the following: Alexa “is an intelligent personal assistant developed by Amazon, made popular by the Amazon Echo and the Amazon Echo Dot devices developed by Amazon Lab126. It is capable of voice interaction, music playback, making to-do lists, setting alarms, streaming podcasts, playing audiobooks, and providing weather, traffic, and other real time information, such as news. Alexa can also control several smart devices using itself as a home automation system.”1

Sounds pretty cool. You talk to a small device and it talks back. Heck, it even tells you a joke, if you ask it to. Folks, it is official, we are living in the future.

I have been intrigued with the Alexa IPA (intelligent personal assistant) since it first came out, then appeared on my Kindle Fire and then it was on my Amazon Fire TV Stick. I was hooked. I was beyond hooked, I was mesmerized. Here is the perfect opportunity to be part of an emerging technology. VOICE.

So what did I do to be part of this emerging technology?

During the recent Amazon Prime Day the Echo Dot was available at a price that was too hard to resist.

While I was waiting for my very own Echo Dot to arrive, I brainstormed and came up with a couple of ideas. However, I wanted to proof of concept as well as making certain that I was not in over my head when it came to creating a new Alexa skill.

Doing my homework, I discovered there are approximately 15,000 Skills (and climbing) so why not add one more to the list of skills? That’s what I did.

What I did is put my daily audio,  the Walking Leader podcast, Going Beyond The Grind-Going Beyond The Hustle (Facebook video)  and the Amazon Skill development tool to get all that put together. A few days later, the approval email came in from Amazon and here is the link for  you to get my new Amazon Alexa Skill: Walking Leader Flash Briefing.

Now I am even more hooked. You can be too. Looking back, I was not in over my head. It was actually quite easy to create the “Flash Briefing“. What I am saying is you can create your own. All you need is an account on the Amazon Developer Platform. If you have an account on Amazon then you already have an account on the Amazon Developer platform. You are going to need a few things the most important is having a audio content that resides (is stored) on SSL enabled web-hosting service.

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is the “standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. This link ensures that all data passed between the web server and browsers remain private and integral.”2

How do you know if you have an SSL enable web-hosting service? Simple, when people go to you website do they see HTTPS:// or HTTP://? If the see HTTPS then you are good to go. If not, then contact your web hosting provider to get the SSL added. Be warned, the SSL might cost you to install. However, once you have the SSL in place you are well on your way to having your Alexa Skill ready for the world.

If you have a message you want to share with the world, then give it a shot. Now is the time to get in on this new emerging technology. I am excited to be part of all this and I know you will be, as well.

Thanks,
David Guerra, MBA

 

  1.  Amazon Alexa. (2017, August 14). Retrieved August 17, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Alexa
  2. (n.d.). Retrieved August 17, 2017, from http://info.ssl.com/article.aspx?id=10241