It’s not really possible to cleanly pin down the setting of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Written by Michael Chabon and published in 2000, the story takes place in Brooklyn, in Prague, on the battlefields of World War II, on the top of the Empire State Building, and in the imaginary universe of a superhero comic book.
The breadth of locationsphysical and metaphysicalmake for a rollicking read. But when New York’s Met Opera decided to stage an opera version of the book, that globe-crossing, reality-bending narrative presented some very tangible challenges.
“It’s a big sweeping novel, so it requires an enormous canvas and a lot of locations,” says Bartlett Sher, director of the opera version of the book, which has just opened the Met’s 20252026 season. “We started workshopping it a couple of years ago, and I realized I can’t do this in the normal way.”
[Photo: Evan Zimmerman/Met Opera]
To make those leaps in the real time span of a live opera performance, Sher and his team had to take a novel and highly complex approach to its production design. The Met tapped 59, a multidisciplinary stage and experience design studio, to design the sets, lighting, and, crucially, video elements that reveal a narrative that takes place on multiple continents and within the pages of comic books.
[Photo: Evan Zimmerman/Met Opera]
The story follows two Jewish cousins at the outset of World War II who create a comic book hero whose stories are intended to urge Americans to join the fight against the Nazis. Their comic becomes a hit, but their lives are thrown into chaos as the war unfolds, taking the audience from New York to Prague to the minds of comic book creators.
Part of the experiential design agency Journey, 59 developed a production design approach that embraced the story’s location hopping. “The worlds start to be really musically distinct and really visually distinct, and then everything starts to collide together throughout the course of the piece,” says Jenny Melville, principal design director at 59. “It was quite clear early on that particularly the comic book world was going to have a major visual component to the whole design.”
[Photo: Evan Zimmerman/Met Opera]
Melville has worked on operas and stage plays around the world, and 59 has developed video elements for productions like the Broadway version of the Netflix series Stranger Things and the Met Opera’s 2024 staging of Aida. Melville says that as more and more performances integrate video elements, production designers have to strike a careful balance. “Video design in opera is very much supportive material, an augmentation to the scenic design,” Melville says. “But it’s really critical to never overshadow the live performance on stage.”
[Photo: Evan Zimmerman/Met Opera]
For The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay opera, video took on an outsized role, especially for scenes involving the creation of the comic book and stories from within its pages. “There are these moments where, really unusually for an opera, the singers stop singing and the video moments take over,” Melville says.
That’s partially a function of the narrative, which revolves around the creation of a superhero comic. The impracticality of having the audience watch actors imagining superheroes and drawing comics on stage led to the integration of vivid animated sequences projected on the set.
[Photo: Evan Zimmerman/Met Opera]
The opera’s modernist score, by composer Mason Bates, also creates moments for the video elements to come into the foreground. The music juggles between the somberness of Europe in World War II, the jazziness of New York City in the 1930s, and a comic book world represented by electronic music. “Because there are these electronic music sections, it’s a really clear divide when we’re a supporting act, which is actually like 90% of the time,” Melville says.
[Photo: Evan Zimmerman/Met Opera]
The abundance of video elements in the opera presents its own set of technical challenges, especially when it comes to making sure the video synchs up with the musicians in the band pit and the singers on stage. “The timing changes every night, because of course the conductor and the orchestra and all the singers have to just do what feels right in the moment,” says Melville. “We’ve had to break all of our cue structures down into very, very specific time sequences.”
[Photo: Evan Zimmerman/Met Opera]
“We worked very cleverly and carefully to make it work,” says Sher. “And that was fun, but it wasn’t easy.”
The hard work on The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay opera may pay dividends later on. Sher and 59 are already working together on another production, a musical version of the film La La Land, that is going to rely on a similar level of video integration. “Everything we’ve absorbed on this experience is only going to help redouble our efforts when it comes to that experience,” he says.
Becoming a chartered financial analyst (CFA)a certification that requires thousands of hours of professional experience, as well as taking a very rigorous exam; Investopedia calls it one of the most respected designations in financeis no easy feat. That is, until now.
Two years ago, AI models could only pass the first two sections of the prestigious, three-part exam. The essay section, however, had it stumped.
And yet, in a new study from New York Universitys Stern School of Business and GoodFin, an AI-powered wealth management platform, advanced AI like Gemini 2.5 Pro and Claude Opus passed the exam with flying colors. What wouldve taken a human 1,000 hours of studying over multiple years took AI a matter of minutes. Just two years ago, analysts were saying that it would never be able to pass the exam. Its a sign of how advanced the technology has become, and once again fuels discussion about how AI could replace even the most challenging jobs.
But Anna Joo Fee, founder and CEO of GoodFin, which contributed to the research but did not fund it, told CNBC, There are things like context and intent that are hard for the machine to assess right now. Thats where a human shines, in understanding your body language and cues.
That didnt stop social media from having all sorts of reactions.
One LinkedIn user called the news both an impressive milestone and a little eye opening. They wrote in a comment: It doesnt replace the human side of financial advising, but it does raise big questions about how the role of advisors and analysts will evolve in the near future.
AI passing the CFA in minutes while humans cry over flashcards for years? At this point, the calculator deserves a corner office, another joked.
On the r/CFA subreddit, however, many were actually unimpressed. Isnt that like taking an open book exam? Unless your AI has memory problems, one wrote. Study: water is wet.
While it may not be surprising to some, the study does make plain the rapid pace of change in AI’s capabilities in just a few short years.
Right now, most of the conversation about work is about chasing the latest signal of what AI can do at work. It’s a messy, noisy, often contradictory conversation because AI is change that keeps changing, chief economic opportunity officer at LinkedIn, Aneesh Raman, wrote in a post.
He encouraged: This new era is about the mind not the machine. Focus on the mindyours, your teams, your organizations, your societiesand so many opportunities will unfold in the coming years. It’s not the robots that are coming. The humans are coming!
A finance professional at PwC agreed. AI wont replace finance professionalsbut finance professionals using AI will replace those who dont, she wrote. Her advice is to be selective about the tools you adopt, prioritize use cases, and prepare to work alongside AI.
For now, though, this most recent headline is yet more fearmongering about the arrival of an omniscient entity plucking jobs from under our feet and kicking entire industries to the curb.
Its just another test a machine can pass faster, cheaper, and without breaking a sweat. Lets be real. This is bigger than finance, another LinkedIn user wrote. This is a warning shot for every thinking job we thought was future-proof.
Artificial intelligence is infiltrating every corner of professional sports, from scouting and injury prevention to scheduling. Now, it looks like golf has its most sophisticated AI adoption yet, and it’s happening in the bag of Bryson DeChambeau, the sport’s most notorious tinkerer.
“We’re building an AI golf coach,” DeChambeau says. “Essentially, it will be a golf coach that, based on data, will be able to tell you exactly what you’re doing, how to practice, and how to improve your game. We can take a golf swing, compile the information, upload it, and within a minute, it will give me what’s different from my gold standard set of swings.”
The setup is deceptively simple: a smartphone on a tripod gathering data via video, paired with Google’s Gemini AI to interpret said data. Combined, they create a swing coach so intuitive that DeChambeau uses it even moments before teeing off in a tournament.
The mental game is something I’ve always struggled with, he says. But whenever I become a little more confident and comfortable with my feel, my mental game goes extremely positive. And this assistant has helped me become a lot more confident with my golf swing.
AI + AI = Coach
DeChambeau’s coaching system starts with SportsBox, an AI-powered 3D biomechanical analysis app that analyzes over 30 key points on the body, club, and ball per golf swing. It measures everything from rotational range of motion to kinematic sequencingthe precise order in which different body parts accelerate and decelerate through the swing. This data is then processed by Gemini AI to turn those measurements into actionable coaching insights.
Think of SportsBox as the measuring tool, Gemini as the AI coach agent, and Google Cloud as the platform hosting it all.
The system starts by building and maintaining a database of DeChambeaus optimal swings from recent years to create his gold standard set. So, when he hits a poor shot, the AI immediately measures that shot against his gold standard set and ranks the factors most likely contributing to the miss.
“We can take a golf swing, then upload it, and within a minute, it will give me what’s different from my gold standard set of swings,” he says. It will give me a rundown list of the top [deviations] that are correlating to whatevers causing me to miss.
According to Granville Valentine, managing director of AI go-to-market at Google Cloud, its Gemini’s multimodal capabilities that bring the SportsBox data to life, creating the interactive coaching agent.
“Gemini is very differentiated on multimodalitythe ability to ingest the combination of video, audio, text, and voice, and even livestreaming some of those capabilities into the model, he says. The combination of really deep video understanding plus core reasoning comes out in differentiated coaching guidance.”
The devil’s in the details
The granular nature of DeChambeau’s AI coaching reveals just how sophisticated modern sports analytics has become. The system uses Z-scoresstatistical measurements showing how many standard deviations a movement is from the mean of a data setto identify exactly where problems occur. Previously, DeChambeau would capture swing data but wait hours or days for analysis. With this technology, he gets feedback within a minute, allowing for real-time adjustments before a round.
We were going through [the data] by hand in an Excel spreadsheet, he says. It was a manual process, very difficult. So youre talking about months and months of trying to study the golf swing, now done in minutes.
The data is also surprisingly precise. Let’s say it’s a radial deviation at P6, DeChambeau says. That’s too much, meaning I’ve got too much wrist hinge, which makes the club come more outside in. So it’s very specific.
For us non-DeChambeaus who got lost at radial deviation and checked out at P6, thats where Gemini comes to the rescue. The AI’s ability to adapt its communication style allows users to train it to explain complex biomechanical concepts in terms appropriate for any skill level. Like other large language models, you can ask it questions, such as what specific terms mean, and as your understanding grows, it will adapt to give you more granular, technical data, meeting each golfer where he or she is at.
Old dog, new tricks
When he began using this technology earlier this year, DeChambeau found one of his fundamental beliefs about his swing challenged. For years, he says, he thought he needed to stay more centered over the ballmore on top of itwhen hitting his driver. The AI consistently told him otherwise, saying he was too on top of the ball.
It told me to keep swaying my chest just a bit back on the backstroke to get my center mass more behind the golf ball so I can allow the club to release through the impact more, he says. So that just blew my mind at how precise this assistant is. It was kind of a kick-in-the-butt moment of, wait, you gotta start trusting this thing.
Eventually, he realized the AI’s objectivity as its strength.
Its unbiased, he says. It doesnt tell you what it thinks you should do. Its literally based on what you do when youre doing your best, and keeps you in check with that.
Democratizing elite-level instruction
The rapid evolution of AI coaching technology suggests we’re witnessing the early stages of a broader transformation in sports training. Valentine points to each new release of Gemini, which shows consistent step-function improvements in spatial awareness and reasoning capabilities.
“With each subsequent release, breakthroughs are happening,” he says, comparing Geminis current moment to the early days of Waymo self-driving cars, which needed time to become trustworthy enough for widespread adoption. That level of trustthat level of breakthrough in the model itselfis now kicking over to a place where humans have the confidence to rely on this as a coach relative to a human coach.
Still, Valentine says, the ultimate goal is not to replace human coaches, but to democratize access to elite-level instruction.
I don’t think the objective is to get rid of coaches, he says. I think its to deliver access to those folks who don’t have access to coaches. There are lots of folks in the world who would probably be very well served to have access to coaching, it just hasnt been available to them.”
At the PGA Tour level, DeChambeau believes there are further use cases for the tool, and that widespread adoption is inevitable once other players experience the results hes seen.
When these [other golfers] see what the capabilities are, they’ll immediately latch onto it, hesays. Because it’s not about some theoretical idea. It’s about what works best for them as an individual. I cant wait for a day when its a full-on coach, club fitter, you name it. Were just at the beginning.
Following the Trump administrations cuts to foreign aid, two-thirds of Mercy Corps U.S.-funded programs have been rescinded. CEO Tjada DOyen McKenna shares how shes leading her team amid immense pressurescrambling to find new ways to help those in need, even as she resorts to layoffs to keep the business afloat. McKenna reveals what shes hearing from her team of aid workers on the ground in Gaza, and why she isnt running away from burnout but embracing it. Like many business leaders experiencing political or economic volatility right now, McKenna is faced with a complex conundrum: fight, flight, or freeze.
This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.
U.S. government funding accounted for half of your funding, right?
Exactly.
About two thirds of your programs were rescinded. I mean, it’s like an existential crisis, a true existential crisis for the organization. So what did you do? I mean, you faced a slew of urgent decisions.
They were urgent decisions, and I have to say it was very clumsy, right? Usually when you work with the government, there are definitions for every single thing, so very specific definition for stop or very specific definition for freeze. And in this case, the guidance wasn’t there. When they said we had to stop doing everything, our first concern was safety for people. If I have people in a remote area of a country or in charge of delivering food to a school feeding program next day, that community didn’t understand that we weren’t showing up the next day, and they certainly didn’t understand it was because the U.S. government told us not to, but we had to go to work.
Once it was clear what was going to be cut or what wasn’t going to be cut, we had to go about shutting down those programs across 40 different countries, lots of different labor laws to that. We consolidated some of our regions, we closed some country offices. We just got to work to say, “If the funding wasn’t there for that program, we’ll shut it down in the most responsible way possible and we’ll keep moving and then address what we have to do with the U.S. government to see what we can preserve, make sure our other funders are okay, and still be prepared in case if another hurricane or earthquake had hit during that period, we still had to be prepared to respond.”
I mean, the irony is your organization is all about responding to crisis when it emerges and now the crisis becomes you. And in some ways in some of these communities you’re sort of creating the crisis because they’ve become used to having you there.
Yes, yes, yes. And I worried a lot about staff safety, particularly in remote places where we were a source of survival for people where we provided access to food, and that continued to plague me. We’d hear reports from colleagues of government officials trying to stop their country director to make sure everyone got paid before they left. And my staff in Sudan, almost all of them are displaced from their homes themselves. So they’re working for us in temporary shelters, still going through the same problems that everyone else is going through.
And so this was a weird situation where our organization was the one that had to be the emergency patient, but we also knew . . . You almost felt guilty for feeling bad because people have it so much worse than you do. There were a lot of weird mental gymnastics that were happening for all of us.
We’re now months in, past that initial shock. How much do you look at 2025 today as an inflection point, sort of a new normal for USAID orgs like Mercy Corps? Are you kind of holding your breath in a way in hopes that, “A next administration maybe will reinstate things?”
No, we know nothing’s going back to the way it was, but we don’t know exactly what that looks like going forward. The other thing that was surreal is there was this demonization of aid or demonization of aid agencies. A lot of misinformation about the work we were doing and how we were doing it. And then theres the third and fourth effect. So in a lot of places, we rely on UN airplanes to get in and out of certain areas, and so a lot of UN organizations we’re also facing the same U.S. cuts that we were. So we are still digging out of the aftermath. We know the world is fundamentally changed, and right now we are trying to embrace that and move into the future while also knowing the future’s still quite uncertain.
I have to ask you about Gaza. There are all the reports about famine in Gaza where you’ve had teams on the ground. Your Mideast director was on this show in October of 2023 soon after Hamas’s October 7th attack as the initial Israeli military action was underway. Are your teams still active on the ground there now? What are they seeing and what might our listeners be missing in the news reports that they’re getting?
We have about 35 staff that are still on the ground living and working in Gaza. We’ve had about 1,300 trucks stuck at a border that have not been able to get in. We’ve had some food in those trucks expire in that time period. And even without those trucks, our teams on the ground we’re working with water desalination plants and supplying clean water to people. It’s so dire right now. Our own team members are hungry. They are worried about where their next meal is coming from. We have a staff member that is able to go in and out, and she talks about the weight loss that she’s seen in her colleagues. About a million people are under evacuation orders in Gaza City. A lot of them, this is the fourth, fifth time they’ve moved.
And what’s different lately, which really concerns us, is that sense of hope is really eroded. I think people feel like they’ve been just left. This is as tough as it’s ever been, and our own staff are fighting for their own survival. We talk about the lack of food, but 95% of households there just don’t have enough water. And so someone said, “A choice you’re making every day is, do I wash my hands? Do I drink a glass of water? Do I bathe the kids? The little water I have, what do I do with it?” And we just can’t imagine. It’s just been horrific and to feel so powerless, especially when we know there are trucks waiting across the border that could get in.
There are people like us that are really eager to do the work, like my staff who are looking for food themselves, who want to get out and do things, and we just know it’s political will that’s stopping that.
I spoke to another humanitarian aid leader recently off the record, who shared that starting years ago, they chose not to provide services in Gaza because they were worried and believed that Hama would inevitably infiltrate their efforts. And obviously this is what the Israeli government or military at least is kind of saying, did you have worries about that? Does that matter when you’re trying to just feed people?
Gaza has always been one of the most difficult places in the world to work. I mean, we all are under U.S. anti-terrorism laws. Our staff are vetted. We check the names, we check the lists because the risk of having a staff member be a part of Hamas is too great to bear. We have not seen mass aid diversion from Hamas. That just has not been our experience, and most of our colleagues have not experienced that either. So that has been talked about as a threat. You do see looting, you do see hungry people, crowds of hungry people swarming to every truck and you see children and people throwing themselves in front of trucks. The way to address people stealing aid or making food valuable is to flood the zone with food, and then it’s not as valuable.
I think more importantly, there have been anonymous Israeli defense forces in COGAT, which is the border authority officials saying that they’ve seen no mass aid diversion. U.S. government reports, internal former USAID audit reports said they have no evidence of mass diversion of aid. So we work in difficult environments and we all take vetting very seriously, but we know how to do this. We know how to work in these environments.
Its Sunday night. Before kids, this was the time to nurse a mimosa hangover and zone out to The Sopranos. Now? Its a very different playbook. Sunday evenings feel less like a gentle exhale from the weekend and more like staging a Broadway play with a cast that hasnt rehearsed and refuses to put on pants. You are simultaneously the chef, chauffeur, hairdresser, homework coach, and emotional support animal.
For parents, the Sunday Scaries dont whisper your inbox is waiting. They shout:
Did you wash the soccer uniform?
Are there enough snacks for afterschool?
Is the social studies project due tomorrow or Wednesday?
Ugh! Did I RSVP for that birthday party?
The stress creeps up way before the Monday morning alarm. Workweek Ericka already has 15 Google Meets scheduled, but Mom Ericka must also make sure small humans leave the house with a full water bottle, completed homework, and hair appears combed. And unlike our carefree twenties, we cant just order Pad Thai at 10 p.m. and call it dinner for two days.
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The case for Sunday systems
Heres the encouraging news: you dont have to live in perpetual scramble mode. Research consistently shows that people who plan and structure their weeks report lower stress and greater well-being.
Weekly planning reduces rumination. In a field experiment, people who sketched out their week in advance reported fewer 2 a.m. spirals about forgotten tasks and felt more engaged during the day.
Routines stabilize mental health. Psychologists link chaotic home routines to worse parental well-being, especially during school transitions.
Planning boosts control. Other studies show that planning is correlated with a greater sense of progress and competencethe feeling that youre steering the ship instead of clinging to the side in rough seas.
Of course, lets be clear: folding laundry does not spark joy. Its possible that people who are naturally calmer are also more inclined to plan. But the evidence leans in a direction every parent instinctively knows: structure is sanity.
How to survive (without spiraling)
The trick isnt to banish the Sunday Scariesyou wont, unless you invent a time machine or outsource your children. The goal is to outmaneuver them with rituals that make Monday feel less like an ambush.
Hold a Family Staff MeetingYes, it sounds corporate but it works. Ten minutes where everyone lays out the week: who needs poster board, who has soccer practice, whos on snack duty. Cookies as bribes are encouraged.
Do Laundry Like Its GospelUniforms, tights, hoodies, and beloved blankies must be washed and folded by 7 p.m. Otherwise, youll discover the only clean option is a Halloween cape on Wednesday morning.
Play Fridge TetrisStock the fridge like a level of Tetris: cheese sticks where you can grab them, sandwich fixings prepped, carrots visible so you can feel virtuous (even if no one eats them).
With a system in place, you can turn Sunday night from a slow-motion panic spiral into something approaching serenity. Because Monday morning will still bring tears over the wrong-colored water bottle, but if the bags are packed, the laundry is folded, and the fridge is stocked, you will survive with a little more calm, and maybe even brushed hair.
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I was one of the millions of people who lost someone to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the nonstop news about the new normal, my grief felt invisible. I took shallow solace in my phone and turned to social media to numb me from the reality that I now lived in: a world without my dad.
One day, while mindlessly scrolling, I came across the r/Squishmallow subreddit, where a girl had posted her collection of more than 100 round plush toys. They were called Squishmallowsround stuffed animals invented in 2017 that have become one of the most popular toy lines in the world, with more than 100 million sold each year.
I was hypnotized. I expected that my dive into the Squishmallow phenomenon would be the usual two-hour rabbit hole, but spending time in that community was the first joy Id felt in months.
After scrolling through endless photos of Squishmallow hauls, I worked up the courage to post. I asked if there was a cardinal Squishmallow, since that bird was my dads symbol for his own father. I was bombarded with compassion; even though cardinal Squishmallows were rare at the time, someone sent me theirs for free. That single act of generosity started my collection.
Stumbling into the Squishmallow world
But alongside kindness and joy, I encountered a darker side of the community: resellers. Finding the most coveted Squishmallows could turn into a fierce competition.
This wasnt just my personal frustration. As a doctoral candidate in marketing, I wanted to understand how communities like this function when outsiders exploit their passion for profit. That became the focus of my dissertationthe first study to examine resellers psychological and emotional impact on brand communities.
That researchwhich my colleagues and I published in one of the fields top journalsechoed what I had lived through as a collector: Resellers are one of the most consistent sources of pain for members of brand communities.
A Squishmallow reseller discusses his technique.
For example, when I heard that my local Hot Topic would be selling two Reshmas, the coveted strawberry cow Squishmallow, I, like any rational adult, found myself outside of a mall at 6:30 in the morning. When the doors finally opened at 11 a.m., I sprinted to the storefrontonly to find that I had been beaten by some people who had dressed as mall employees to sneak in early. I left devastated and cowless.
Later that day, I saw the same people gloating in local Squishmallow Facebook groups, trying to resell the cow for more than 10 times the retail price. I was heartbroken and angry; I swore Id never collect again. And I wasnt the only one to feel that way: Across social media, youll find countless collectors venting about resellers.
What is a brand community?
I didnt know it then, but I had joined my first brand community: a group of consumers who form strong, meaningful connections through their shared admiration of a product. Brand communities range from giant online hubs with more than 100,000 members to tiny local groups that host trading parties in empty lots.
You might be in a brand community without realizing it. These communities can be created by a companylike Harley-Davidson, Lego, and Hot Wheelsor emerge organically from fans, like the Facebook group Walt Disney World Tips and Tricks.
And they arent just about buying and selling. Theyre creative ecosystems, full of posts showing collections, inventive displays, and even goodbye messages when someone rehomes an item to another loving collector. Community members help each other solve problems, share leads on hard-to-find items, and sometimes even mail strangers a plush toy because they know it will make them smile.
But while collectors use these communities to exchange information, so do resellers.
The reseller paradox: A shared enemy can unite a community
Resellers are outsiders who buy the most sought-after items and flip them online for a profit. They scout inventory tips, track hot products, and plan their shelf-clearing strategies accordingly. And they infuriate collectors like me. Nothing sours the thrill of the hunt faster than seeing a shelf cleared by someone who only wants to use your sacred collectibles for profit.
After feeling emotional pain myself, I wanted to understand why resellers bothered me so much, and what they meant for the communities that had become my lifeline. That frustration became the spark for my research. What I found surprised me.
As a collector, nothing frustrates me more than to say: According to my research, resellers paradoxically strengthen brand communities. Yes, you read that right. Resellers help communities, but not because they try to help members acquire their desired items. In fact, my findings indicate that resellers inflict heartbreak on community memberswhich was in line with what I saw and experienced.
Resellers help brand communities because they create a common enemy that the community can rally against. When resellers grab all the stock from a store shelf, collectors turn to each other. They vent. They strategize. They share tips on where to find certain items, offer to pick up extras for strangers, and organize trades to help each other avoid inflated resale prices. Ironically, the people causing the most frustration also increase community engagement.
Brand communities are real communities
These communities reminded me that you are never truly alone in our darkest moments. Joining a niche community, whether for sneakers, trading cards, cars or even Squishmallows, can enrich your life far beyond the products themselves. It wasnt the Squishmallows that helped me heal from loss; it was the connection that lived in threads, comments, and group chats.
I even came to appreciate the villains of the communityresellersfor their role in bringing people together. Although I still think I deserve that strawberry cow more than they did.
Danielle Hass is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Marketing at West Virginia University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Almost as soon as the first iPad was announced, a range of competitors sprung up in an attempt to become the iPad killer. Devices like the Motorola Xoom, BlackBerry PlayBook, and HP TouchPad all put another spin on the formula but couldnt come close to the iPads blend of performance and App Store dominance.
Android tablets are still around today, of course, but most manufacturers dont push them too hard. Theyre all fine at doing tablet things like watching videos, and theyre all worse than the iPad when it comes to the app ecosystem. In recent years Ive used some great hardware from Xiaomi in particular that I still wouldnt outright recommend over an iPad.
Xiaomis latest, though, is straight-up better than its Apple equivalent.
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The Xiaomi Pad Mini feels like an exercise in picking low-hanging fruit: in this case, the iPad mini. Apples smallest tablet is often neglected and rarely updated, leaving several open goals for competitors. In this case, Xiaomi has turned in a better design with better performance, and critically in a form factor where Apples software advantages are less relevant.
Added ports
This tablet isnt going to stun anyone with its originalityit pretty much looks like an iPad mini. It does have one neat trick, though, by placing USB-C ports along both the bottom edge and one of the sides you can easily charge it in a dock or while using it for video. (Apple apparently considered the same idea for the original iPad before deciding against it.)
[Photo: Xiaomi]
The Xiaomi Pad Mini runs on a MediaTek Dimensity 9400 processor, the chipmakers current top-end mobile system on a chip (SoC) and one thats at least in the same ballpark as the two-year-old A17 Pro in the iPad mini, if not faster. Performance is excellent, and Xiaomi also offers up to 12GB of RAM while the iPad mini is stuck on 8GB.
Superior screen
The screen is where Xiaomi really pulls away from Apple. This is an 8.8-inch 3008-by-1880-pixel LCD with a 16:10 aspect ratio; the difference in size to the 8.3-inch iPad mini is mostly that the Xiaomi has thinner bezels and is slightly wider in landscape. Critically, it refreshes at up to 165Hz while the iPad mini is still stuck on 60Hz, which is very jarring for anyone whos gotten used to the much smoother frame rates on the iPhone and almost every Android phone in recent years. That was the main reason I sold my own iPad mini a while back.
[Photo: Xiaomi]
HyperOS, which is Xiaomis custom version of Android, looks and works similarly to iOS, but Apple actually moved in the direction of its system of multitasking and resizing windows with this years iPadOS 26. While Android apps still cant compete with the iPad in terms of quantity or quality, how much productivity are you planning to get out of an 8-inch tablet in the first place?
Like a really big phone
The Xiaomi Pad Mini handles simple multitasking with ease, and its aspect ratio is well-suited for most Android apps. Since you can hold it in one hand and the screen is relatively tall, apps like Instagram work fine in portrait orientationits basically like using a really big phone. The aspect ratio is also better suited to most video content than the 3:2 iPad mini, meaning youll get a bigger picture with smaller black borders.
Overall, this is a great tablet for watching videos, reading ebooks, scrolling social media, and browsing the web. You know, tablet things. It handles all of these tasks at least as well as the iPad mini unless you have a need for a very specific iPad app.
A caveat
There is one slightly bizarre caveat, which is the lack of any true biometric authentication. You can use your face to unlock the tablet through the selfie camera, which works better than it used to and didnt get fooled when I tried to use a picture of my face, but thats still not as secure as a fingerprint reader and doesnt work in the dark.
That could be a deal-breaker for many. Touch ID isnt exactly a great experience on the iPad mini, but surely a fingerprint scanner would have been a low-cost, worthwhile inclusion here for convenience and peace of mind.
[Photo: Xiaomi]
Still, I can put up with sometimes needing to enter a PIN in exchange for all the ways that this is simply a better product. I would rather use this than the iPad its competing with, which is the first time Ive ever been able to say that about an Android tablet.
And thats before I even mention the pricing, which starts at $429 for a mdel with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. The iPad mini, on the other hand, costs $499 for 8GB of RAM and half the amount of storage; the 256GB model is $599.
Its not like Apple isnt capable of making the iPad mini better value for the moneyit just doesnt particularly care to. This is what can happen when companies keep outdated devices on shelves at high prices. Mini tablets clearly arent the most critical product category in the world, but for the first time in a long while, Apple doesnt make the best one.
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According to a recent study conducted by the global consulting firm, EY, 97% of respondents reported that it is important for companies to act with integrity. Many companies tout integrity as a core principle of their organizations in an attempt to reassure customers, employees, and the wider public that their organization plays by the rules. By some estimates, integrity is ranked as one of the most cited corporate core values, with over 80% of companies listing integrity as a core value.
But simply including integrity on your list of core values and mounting that list on a plaque on a wall (as many companies do) wont positively influence your culture unless your core values are fully embraced and lived by employees each and every day. After all, Enron was once the darling of corporate America and a supposedly stellar business success storyuntil news broke that Enron had engaged in what would turn out to be one of the biggest accounting scandals in U.S. history.
Here’s why listing integrity as a core value and getting employees to live with integrity in the workplace can pose a challengeeven for companies with the best of intentions.
A few years ago, the CEO and chairperson of a large financial institution were caught with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar, engaged in what could be described, at best, as questionable behavior. When the media asked the chairperson if what she and the CEO had done was aligned with the companys core value of integrity, the chairperson replied, Integrity means different things to different people.
The media and the public were outraged by the response. But, yknow what? The chairperson was right! Integrity does mean different things to different people when it comes to business practices.
Here are three steps to take if you want to build a company where everyone understands exactly what integrity means to the organization and exactly how to demonstrate integrity in the workplace.
1. Define what integrity means for your company
An organizations perspective on the topic of integrity most often comes from the leadership of that organization, and their various versions of integrity are often reflected in corporate policies.
For instance, ice cream chain Ben and Jerrys version of integrity is reflected in their policy to only use fair tradecertified ingredients, ensuring that farmers along their supply chain are paid a fair price for their products. Chipmakers like Intel demonstrate their version of integrity by avoiding using conflict minerals that are mined under conditions that could be considered to be abuses of human rights. The Body Shop demonstrates its version of integrity by committing to never testing its products on animals.
Some companies whose very business models, products, services, or waste may be viewed by others as causing harm to the communities in which they operate try to demonstrate integrity by engaging in acts of restitution. For instance, timber company Hampton Lumber plants three trees for every tree it harvests.
Outdoor clothing company Patagonia, known not only for the quality of its products, but also for its efforts to minimize damage to the environment, donates 1% of revenue to environmental groups. (Despite these actions, some critics insist that the acts of restitution pale in comparison to the destruction caused by the companies and even accuse these companies of greenwashinga deceptive practice designed to paint organizations as being more environmentally conscious than they are.)
But, demonstrating boardroom integrity through corporate policies isnt enough to qualify a company as being one that acts with integrity. Companies also need to demonstrate integrity at the grassroots level. It makes little sense to list integrity as a company core value unless that commitment to integrity permeates every corner of the organization on an individual, team or departmental level.
2. Clarify what integrity means for your employees
So, since integrity may mean different things to different people, how can a companys employees truly commit to integrity as a core value? Theres no easy answer to that question, but one way to stay within the boundaries of ethical behavior is to use the social media test where you instruct your employees to ask themselves, would I be comfortable if this behavior, action, or decision were to be reported on social media (or in the newspaper) for everyone to see? If the answer is no to this litmus test, then deep down in their hearts, they probably recognize that whatever they are considering probably isnt aligned with the principle of integrity.
Another way to clarify to your employees how to act with integrity in the workplace is to articulate clear behavioral expectations expressed not in abstract concepts but in clear, crisp, and concise language, using what I refer to as the even if principle to make it crystal clear that your organization values integrity over the potential short-term benefits of acting unethically. For instance, members of your organizations sales department might be told: Integrity means never misrepresenting a product to close a deal, even if it means losing a sale.
Consultants that provide services on an hourly rate to clients might be instructed to never overestimate or bill clients for time not spent on the accounteven if that means not hitting monthly billing targets. Quality control managers at a company that manufacture parts may be told in no uncertain terms to never ship faulty productseven if a customer might never notice the defects.
3. Take Accountability Seriously
Next, its important to hold employees (especially leadership) accountable for these standards.
One way to hold people accountable is through the use of independent oversightsuch as an empowered board of directors, ethics committees, or external auditors. To be effective, these bodies must have the authority to investigate ethical concerns, insist on transparency, reward employees for acting with integrity, and apply consequences to those who violate their companys standards for acting with integrity. Most importantly, these bodies must not be influenced by internal politics and should not be able to be fired on the whims of the leadership team who they are holding accountable. Ideally, these oversight bodies should be proactive, with audits that identify potential conflicts early enough to prevent ethical mischief.
Another way to hold leaders accountable is to create a culture where employees at all levels feel safe reporting ethical concerns without fear of reprisal. Anonymous reporting and whistleblowing channels can help identify problems that leadership might otherwise missor wose, knowingly condone.
The desire to operate a company that acts with integrity is a noble onebut, as we have seen, one that is fraught with challengesparticularly because acting with integrity means different things to different people. No wonder research shows that just 23% of U.S. employees strongly agree that they can apply their organizations values to their work every day!
If you want your organization to be one in which employees can apply integrity to their work every day, follow the three steps above. Define what living with integrity means for your organization, drill down to the employee level and remove any ambiguity about how employees can live with integrity, and hold everyone in your organization (especially the leadership team) accountable for living with integrity. Once youve done this, you will be in a much better position to lead with integrity, maintain your reputation in the marketplace, and navigate complex ethical challenges.
The latest wave of tech layoffs doesnt have to be a step backwardit can be a launchpad. If youve spent years shipping products, debugging systems, and partnering with go-to-market teams, you already have what many founders dont: domain insight and a network. Pair that with AI employees, (role-specific software agents trained on your companys data that can perform defined tasks like drafting on-brand content, qualifying leads, and updating CRMs) and your severance becomes seed capital for a lean, scalable company.
Whats different now is that the traditional barriers to starting a business have collapsed. The math is transformative: What once required $500,000 in annual salaries can now be achieved for less than $500 a month. Beyond cost, theres leveragethose complex migrations you managed, the customer insights you unearthed, the systems you architectedthats IP AI can now operationalize at scale.
The most successful builders arent just venture-backed startupstheyre experienced operators who realized AI employees can handle everything from customer research to financial analysis, all trained on their specific expertise and methods. Former Google engineers, Meta product managers, and Amazon developers are spinning up businesses with the capacity of a 10-person startup, run solo. Take Todd Krise, who launched Mercenary Marketing after two decades in agencies and now teaches others to run lean, AI-powered businesses without traditional overhead. Or Jenna Ahern of Guardian Owl Digital, who is transforming a decade-old agency into an AI-first marketing firm.
Tech professionals have a unique edge here: You understand system architecture, data flows, and automation logic, and you know what good looks like from UX to code qualityknowledge that becomes exponentially more valuable when deployed through AI agents working 24/7.
While I didnt lose my job, I did choose to leave my job at TikTok when changing inoffice requirements and a fading worklife balance told me it was time to rethink my path. I realized companies were being asked to deliver more with leaner teams, and AI was finally capable of helping. I started Parallel AI soon after with a simple goal to turn anxiety about headcount into AI tools that could help teams automate content, sales workflows, and operations without burning out.
Building is messy and setbacks happen, even now. The steps below aim to reduce risk and improve your odds.
Start with a real problem
Write one sentence that states the outcome a buyer wants.
Test it with 10 buyer conversations before you build. Ask: What have you tried? What did it cost? What would make this a yes in 30 days?
A former marketing agency leader, Todd Krise, mapped out how artificial intelligence could replace the bloated, outdated agency model he worked in before launching Mercenary Marketing. He pressure-tested the plan with real clients and deadlines at the start of 2025 to prove that the systems, prices, and deliverables worked before he scaled.
If you cannot find 10 people who would pay, change the outcome and try again.
What to prioritize in the first 30 to 90 days
Aim to land two or three paid pilots and validate one repeatable way to get customers.
Divide your runway into two or three time blocks (for example, 30, 60, and 90 days) with clear milestones.
Sell clear outcomes you can deliver in two to six weeks. Use them to confirm the right customers, the right price, and the value you create.
Create a simple brand: Think a clear oneline promise, a basic landing page, and two or three proof pieces (short case example, short demonstration, testimonial). Building trust matters more than polish.
Measurement: Pick one main goal (revenue or active pilots) to focus on, and three early signs (qualified talks each week, proposals sent, share of proposals that become sales).
Careful spending: Cap monthly spending, and pay yourself a modest paycheck.
Platform choice: Prefer a measurable, custom AI agent platform over many singlepurpose tools. Fewer vendors means lower cost, less setup, and a clearer view of what works.
How to land and execute your first paid pilot
Define a tight offer
Who: one target customer with a clear problem (for example, software companies that sell to businesses but have a weak sales outreach, or agencies that need brandsafe content in larger amounts).
What: a named pilot (for example, 30Day Artificial Intelligence Sales Outreach Boost or Content in Context Sprint) with three to five deliverables and success measures.
Why now: a clear trigger (new product launch, missed sales target, hiring freeze, a backlog of content).
Use your own relationships to find your first pilot clients
Use a short, specific outreach
Subject or opener: Quick pilot to achieve [outcome] in 30 daysBody (three lines): We help [customer type] achieve [outcome] without [main headache].Proposed fourweek pilot: [deliverables] success = [measure]. Price: [$X], 50% upfront, applied to ongoing work if it delivers.Worth a 20minute fit call next week? If not you, who is best?
Include one proof point, a short case example, a short demonstration clip, or a measured personal example.
Reduce friction
Apply the pilot fee to a monthly agreement or offer a partial refund if success measures are not met.
Keep paperwork simple with a onepage work plan with clear data rules and weekly cadence.
Make onboarding quick with a startup checklist, access you will need, and a dayone plan.
Execute to convert
Measure everything! Record starting levels, send weekly updates with a simple measures checklist, and deliver early quick wins.
At your midpoint review show progress, confirm success measures, and discuss the followon now.
During the final week, present a short results deck and a onepage decision plan with a yes or no choice and a start date for the monthly agreement.
This is the moment to turn your experience into a scalable business with artificial intelligence on your terms.
Early in my career, a boss encouraged me to leave a stable operations role for a position in sales. They noticed my natural persuasiveness in communication and approach to problems, skills they believed could translate into success in a completely different discipline.
It felt like a gamble. I was trading a steady income for compensation directly tied to performance and sales volume. And, I would be venturing into a role where I had no prior experience. But I ultimately took the leap, and that shift changed the entire trajectory of my career.
That experience taught me to embrace discomfort and trust in my capacity to grow. It also revealed something fundamental about sales: success doesnt come from a single mold. Coming from an operations background, I spoke the language of operators, and that authenticity gave me instant credibility with the very people I was selling to.
That experience didnt just redefine my career path; it reshaped how I lead. Today, I actively look for opportunities to help others pivot into roles they never would have considered on their own. With the right encouragement and adequate support, people can thrive in roles in which they have no prior experience.
People want growth, but rarely make the first move
Its tempting to keep strong performers exactly where they are. When someone excels in a specific function, moving them can feel like a loss, especially when resources are tight and hiring is competitive. But this mindset is shortsighted. Holding people in a specific track because they are performing well may feel efficient in the short term, but it can stagnate both the individual and the organization.
One of the most effective ways to help people reach their full potential is to create pathways to grow outside their current functions. This isnt simply a leadership philosophy; its reflective of employee feedback. Overall, 42% of workers are interested in upskilling or looking for upskilling opportunities, according to a McKinsey report.
For most, myself included, pursuing a career pivot is rarely self-induced. People tend to stay where they are comfortable, and taking on a role that requires a new skill set can be daunting and fear-inducing.
Thats where leaders come in. Leaders have the power to soften that fear of the unknown. By showing belief in someones potential and backing it with support, theyre given the confidence to try something new. And more often than not, people rise to the occasion.
When I first joined Fintech, we needed a new marketing lead. The natural instinct might have been to hire someone from the outside with a textbook marketing background. But instead, I looked inward.
One of our operations team members had been with the company for several years. She had no formal marketing experience, but she understood our customers. She had a creative spark, strong communication skills, and a deep sense of ownership. I encouraged her to consider the role. Today, shes not only a capable marketing lead, shes also one of our strongest cross-functional thinkers, bridging the gap between product, ops, and customer success.
Making career pivots work
These kinds of internal transitions are entirely possible, but they require structure and attentiveness. Individuals with untapped potential who prioritize strong communication, think beyond their interests, go the extra mile, and take pride in their work are prime candidates. They often just need a nudge and someone to believe in their ability to succeed to take the leap.
But encouragement alone isnt enough. Gaining buy-in from the team leader in the department where someone is transitioning is critical. Equally important is crafting a clear, detailed plan and communicating it transparently. Success must be defined in small, achievable milestones.
For someone new to sales, that might mean setting a daily target of reaching out to 10 prospects, recording those conversations, and reviewing them with a supervisor to refine their pitch and delivery. In product development, early wins might come from reconnecting with a previous team to discuss a few targeted changes that could have immediate impact.
Sometimes, the milestone is simply exposure. Giving someone the opportunity to present to an internal group can be transformativeespecially for younger professionals who may have had little experience speaking in front of others. Its surprising how often that skill is underdeveloped, yet its so critical to career progression.
Early wins, no matter how minor, build confidence, and confidence is a powerful catalyst for long-term success.
Creating a safety net is also essential. Provide reassurance that if the move doesnt work out, they still have a place within the company. People are far more willing to take risks when they know failure wont lead to free fall.
Our operations lead was hesitant to pivot to marketing at first. Mentorship was central to making this transition successful. It began with short, focused 15-minute daily check-insjust her and mewhere wed walk through her goals for the day and how she planned to approach them.
These conversations created structure, built momentum, and gave her a safe space to ask questions and reflect in real time. The key was setting goals that were both practical and confidence-building.
We set early milestones, which included attending management meetings and offering insights from an operations lens that marketing could amplify, collaborating with leadership to understand stakeholder expectations, and delivering a competitive analysis to leadership using her operational expertise to surface gaps and opportunities.
As her tactical foundation solidified, our daily meetings transitioned into weekly hourlong strategy sessions. She began to link execution with strategy, and that is where her operational background allowed her to gain trust in other departments. With a clear development plan, dedicated mentorship, and achievable early goals, she settled into the role and began to thrive.
The cost of growth vs. the cost of staying still
According to the World Economic Forum, employees will require new skills in the next five years, and six in 10 will require additional training before 2027. Companies that dont build internal opportunities now risk falling behind, both in talent retention and capability-building.
Investing in people this way has always, in my experience, reaped a substantial return on investment. It rarely leads to loss. Both individuals and the company benefit: organizations that prioritize career development outpace others on key indicators of business success.
A former boss once shared an anecdote thats stuck with me: A CFO asks the CEO, What if we invest in training our people and they leave? The CEO replies, What if we dontand they stay?
Too ofte, leaders get caught up in costs. Whats far riskier is underinvesting in your team and watching great talent walk out the door, or worse, watching them stay and disengage. The leaders of tomorrow wont just be measured by their ability to drive results. Theyll be remembered for their ability to spot potential in unlikely places and to nurture it. Growth isnt just about upward movement. Sometimes, its about having the courage to take on something new and the encouragement to try.
