Mind-Mapping Tools for College Students & Others

As a hardworking student, you have a lot to organize, including essays, exams, deadlines, and class schedules, not to mention your social and personal life – plus any part-time jobs you may have taken on. For help, see this list of mind-mapping tools that are designed to help you see your ideas more clearly, analyze and outline research papers, become more efficient when you study, and get inspired to be more creative in your work.

See also this post from 12manage for an explanation of mind-mapping.

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The New Rules for Rock Stars

"Here are the new rules to make it in the [music] business:

"The future is DIY. Learn how to use affordable tools, but remember... software won't solve all of your problems... create awareness... don't underestimate the power of giving away your music for free...

"Fans are the new record label. The business now all depends on the relationship between an artist and their fans, most importantly the uber fans, the ones who buy all the merchandise, go to all the shows, and spread the word about their favorite bands.

"The key to staying in touch with your fans is through e-mail... Have a sign-up sheet at every show. Have your audience text their e-mails to a road manager's cell at the end of every show and promise to personally stay in touch... Build an online community by blasting out webcasts, photoshoots, interviews, and even live streaming concerts. Engage with fans in a meaningful way, nothing forced or fake...

"Build a management team to take care of the tools, marketing, and technology. If you're just starting out, enlist a college music lover to build your brand. Sign any deal as long as it's short-term if it's going to get you noticed. Otherwise you're not going to be on the radar.

"Start local, start tribal... Connect with similar bands doing similar music and go on tour with them. Build your own scene and work to break through together..."

Read more in this walletpop.com article from which the preceding was quoted.

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Series AA Equity Financing Documents

"Y Combinator and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati are happy to announce the Series AA Equity Financing Documents. Their goal is to make angel funding rounds for startups easier for both sides.

"These documents were originally created for YC-funded startups to use when raising angel rounds. They seem to have worked well in trial runs so far, so we're open-sourcing them.

While they may not be suitable for all situations, the goal was to make the terms fairly neutral. So while we would of course advise both parties using these documents to have their lawyers look at them, they provide a starting point that we hope can be used in many situations without too many modifications.

"Needless to say, neither YC nor WSGR [nor I] assumes any responsibility for any consequence of using these documents.

Series AA Termsheet
Series AA Stock Purchase Agreement
Series AA Board Consent
Series AA Stockholder Consent
Series AA Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation
Series AA Investors' Rights Agreement "

From this Y Combinator post: Series AA Equity Financing Documents

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Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship for College Students

"Becoming an entrepreneur can be one of the most rewarding decisions of your life. Understanding how to separate yourself from the rest of the rat race and put yourself in control of your own life is incredibly empowering. By choosing this path, you are giving yourself the ability to control your own destiny rather than simply choosing to work for someone else...

"You will not and cannot be a “Jack of All Trades” as an entrepreneur – you will need to focus on what you do best and hire, contract and outsource others to do those things that are not your forte. However, that does not dismiss your responsibility to have a well-rounded education and familiarity with various core business topics. You need to be able to effectively and intelligently communicate on those topics if for no other purpose than to properly evaluate those that you hire. If you don’t have the most basic understanding of accounting, how can you possibly search for the proper qualifications for a crucial and strategic business account for your new endeavor?

"The point of this article [How To Become a Great Entrepreneur - Important skills and classes for successful entrepreneurs] is to illustrate that an entrepreneur, while a specialist, must still be very well rounded in his or her education in order be able to see all sides of the issues in front of them. Successful entrepreneurs are able to effectively wear multiple hats and shift from role to role as necessary. They surely won’t be an expert in everything, but they know enough to surround themselves with great talent and know how to evaluate that talent. By leveraging the efforts of others, they can boost their own performance as well as free themselves up to pursue other endeavors as well.

"While not all may be cut out for the entrepreneurial lifestyle, for those that are, it can be extremely rewarding and provide freedom and flexibility far beyond the cubicle walls of any corporate job. It will, however, take discipline and a great deal of self-control in order to keep yourself on the right track and focused on the target. You will have to shuffle between a lot of different skill sets and responsibilities and using your college education to create a strong foundation is clearly your best bet for long term success."

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Bocce : Everything You Always Wanted to Know

My friend and classmate, Matt Flournoy and wife Joanne host the Annual Marietta Kiwanis Club Bocce Party at their home in Marietta, Georgia. Here are their rules and related instructional videos for all you bocce enthusiasts or curiousts out there.

Bocce Rules and Definitions/ Non Uniform Local Rules of Flournoy Bocce , and Bocce Instructional Videos by Joanne Flournoy (Joanne R. Flournoy) and Matt Flournoy (Matthew C. Flournoy) in Marietta Cobb County Georgia


Joanne Flournoy ( Joanne R. Flournoy)and Matt Flournoy ( Matthew C. Flournoy) have a lighted out door Bocce Ball Court in their back yard in Marietta Cobb County Georgia. The Bocce Court is 60 feet long and 12 feet wide. The surface is granite dust.

We recommend that you read the Bocce Rules and Definitions, and then watch the 21 short Bocce Instructional Videos linked below before you play. The 21 short Bocce Instructional videos average only 13 seconds in time. The total time of all 21 videos is only 265 seconds or 4.4 minutes.

21 Short Bocce Instructional Videos created by Joanne Flournoy ( Joanne R. Flournoy) and Matt Flournoy (Matthew C. Flournoy) on September 3, 2006 in Marietta Cobb County Georgia.
(Click on each to view):
1. Introduction to Bocce (18 seconds).
2. Bocce Court (11 seconds).
3. Bocce Balls (22 seconds).
4. Palino, the target ball (7 seconds).
5. Object of Bocce Ball (11 seconds).
6. Foot fault line (10 seconds).
7. Bowling the Palino (12 seconds).
8. Bowling the first Bocce Ball (9 seconds).
9. Bowling the second Bocce Ball (13 seconds).
10. In Team versus Out Team (17 seconds).
11. Bowling the third Bocce Ball (16 seconds).
12. Green Team is In and Red Team is Out (10 seconds).
13. Ok to hit the Palino with Bocce Balls (10 seconds).
14. Ok to hit Bocce Balls with other Bocce Balls (15 seconds).
15. Red Team is In and Green Team is Out (8 seconds).
16. One point frame scoring (20 seconds).
17. Two point frame scoring (13 seconds).
18. Three point frame scoring (9 seconds).
19. Four point frame scoring, the maximum points possible per frame (10 seconds).
20. Scoring after each frame (12 seconds).
21. Scoreboard, first team to score 11 points wins the Bocce game (12 seconds).

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What I Wish I Knew When I Was Twenty

Stanford Technology Ventures Program's Executive Director Tina Seelig shares rich insights in creative thinking and the entrepreneurial mindset. Her talk, based on her 2009 book, What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20, cites numerous classroom successes of applied problem-solving and the lessons of failure. The Art of Teaching Entrepreneurship and Innovation

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Sample Board Meeting Minutes

This Brad Feld post provides a good template for a sample set of board meeting minutes following the wise lawyer's advice to keep it light, stating:

"I go to a lot of board meetings. As a result, I’ve reviewed a lot of board meeting minutes. In general, the philosophy among most VC-backed companies – promulgated by the law firms for these companies – is to keep the board minutes “light.” They should cover the substance of the meeting and have any specific votes, option grants, or board level issues documented, but they should not contain extensive details about the presentations giving in the board meeting.

"I regularly get asked for “sample board meeting minutes”, especially among newly funded companies that are just starting to have board meetings and might not have their outside counsel present at the meeting (although most outside counsel’s that are credible and used to working with early stage companies will attend board meetings at no charge – just ask as part of your initial interview process with the firm – it’s very useful to them to be there so they can stay up to speed on what is happening at the company.)"

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Trade-marks guide updated | eLegal Canton

David Canton has updated and split into 2 his trade-marks guide. trade-marks-guide-part-1-registering-a-trade-mark summarizes what one should know before selecting and registering a trade-mark, and the advantages of registering. trade-marks-guide-part-2-after-registration summarizes how to properly use and care for a trade-mark after it is registered.

Source: Trade-marks guide updated.

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Findlaw's Small Business Center

FindLaw's Small Business Center provides information and resources for small business owners, and help for entrepreneurs seeking to get a business idea off the ground. Here you can get information on choosing and forming the right legal structure for your business, legal tips on day-to-day business operations, an overview of employment law issues, and much more.

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100 Awesome Blogs for Your Business Education

I am happy to report that my blog was included in this list of 100 Awesome Blogs for Your Business Education. Thanks to Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends for the link.

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Pursue M&A Stages in Parallel

"Many companies diminish their effectiveness by managing M&A as a linear process. They treat each stage of a deal as if they were handing off the baton in a relay race, switching from the boardroom team, to the negotiating team, to the integration planning program leaders, to line management. This approach lengthens the time line of the acquisition, exposes the newly merged company to the impatience of the markets, and makes it harder to resolve issues early — so they surface later, causing additional delays and difficulties. The alternative is to pursue the stages of M&A in parallel (with substantial overlap and continuous referencing back and forth), managed by a single large team whose members communicate easily and regularly with one another and with the rest of the organization. This type of process places great demands on resources, time, and staff. But the results are worth the added effort." To better understand this approach, read more in this strategy + business article.

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Twitter Guide Book

"Twitter is a social network used by millions of people, and thousands more are signing up every day to send short messages to groups of friends. But where's the user manual for Twitter? Where do new Twitter users go to learn about Tweeting, retweets, hashtags and customizing your Twitter profile? Where do you go if you want to know all about building a community on Twitter, or using Twitter for business? How can you find advanced tools for using Twitter on your phone or your desktop? To answer all these questions and more.." check out the Twitter Guide Book – How To, Tips and Instructions by Mashable

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More on Risk Management

"First, remember that risk — the probability of an outcome significantly different from the expected — can produce both surprisingly good as well as surprisingly bad results. Be as ready to seize the wondrously good as you are to shield yourself and others from the horrendously bad.

"Second, in dealing with exposures to loss, put risk control before risk financing. It is always better to prevent losses, to minimize losses, or to make losses more predictable than it is to pay for potentially large and unforeseen losses. Good risk control makes more efficient use of a company's or a country's resources than does any kind of risk financing.

"Third, in managing risk in either gains or losses, be as self-sufficient as you can. Here, the "you" can be an individual, a household, an organization, public entity, a country, or even a continent. The more you are self-sufficient, the less you have to pay someone else to safeguard you from, or to indemnify you for, unexpected losses. Likewise, when unforeseen opportunities for gain arise, being self-sufficient enables you to keep more of the gains for yourself or for those you serve."

from I Will Write No More Forever. Thanks to Jim for the link.

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Risk Management in a Nutshell

"'Risk Management' is the art and science of thinking about what could go wrong, and what should be done to mitigate those risks in a cost-effective manner.

"In order to identify risks and figure out how best to mitigate them, we first need a framework for classifying risks.

"All risks have two dimensions to them: likelihood of occurrence, and severity of the potential consequences. These two dimensions form four quadrants, which in turn suggest how we might attempt to mitigate those risks:



Read more in this VC Experts article.

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Widow of Murdered Fly Sues

WASHINGTON -- The widow of the housefly murdered by Barack Obama during a recent CNBC television interview announced this morning that she would be filing a wrongful death suit against the President in federal district court. The plaintiff brief -- citing pain, suffering and loss of income -- seeks a formal apology and compensatory damages, including an unspecified quantity of shit.

"Bob was a wonderful husband and provider," said the widow, Mrs. Vivian Vvzzvzwwzzz, wiping tears from her compound eyes. "Even though he was always busy at the Rose Garden turd pile, he always flew home in time to tuck in our maggots."

Read more in this iowahawk post, found via this post from overlawyered.

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Zombies are People Too

I borrowed from the local library and have been watching this Course on Understanding the Brain taught by Jeanette Norden. Doctor Norden is a wonderful lecturer and makes a fascinating and complex subject easier to understand.

Stephanie West Allen suggests perhaps a more fun and very novel way to learn about your brain:

What a sense of humor! Dr. Steven Schlozman, an expert on zombies, recently wrote a paper on the topic. The fake medical journal article, described in A Harvard Psychiatrist Explains Zombie Neurobiology (io9), is about:

the zombie plague, which he calls Ataxic Neurodegenerative Satiety Deficiency Syndrome, or ANSD (the article has five authors: one living, three "deceased" and one "humanoid infected").

I posted a link to Dr. Schlozman's lecture on zombie brains because he teaches about our brains, too, and it's a fun way to learn. (The good doctor is funny.) Click for a summary of the zombie lecture. A shorter summary comes from sodahead in Zombies Real, Says Harvard Psychiatrist Dr. Steven Schlozman: How would you survive a zombie invasion?

Excerpt:

Dr. Schlozman says zombies can only be fueled by rage. The amygdala then, is what powers zombies, just as in crocodiles. To this, Schlozman says "You can't really be mad at zombies, because that's like being mad at a crocodile."

...Watch the lecture. You will laugh and learn...

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New Yorkers now at liberty to shoot wild fowl in their own state

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New Yorkers now at liberty
The Library of Congress

This delightful headline is courtesy of the October 10, 1909 edition of the New York Tribune recently posted to Flickr by the Library of Congress. The image is part of the Chronicling America project. This site allows you to search and view newspaper pages from 1880-1922 and find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program and is well worth a visit.

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Don't Call Me Crazy on the 4th of July

"In the early 1970s Bob Lansberry began protesting on the streets of Pittsburgh, wearing signs accusing specific government officials of withholding or censoring his mail and subliminally controlling his mind. His signs and fliers proclaiming messages such as WHY CAN'T LANSBERRY GET MAIL? and ARE YOU MIND CONTROLLED? became icons of downtown Pittsburgh life.

"Several times during the 1980s, Lansberry ran for public office. In 1984 his campaign carried Kennedy Township in the race for U.S. House, And garnered over 30,000 votes in his bid for clerk of courts, though ultimately losing both races.

"During the approximately 30 years that he spent protesting on the street, seeking proof that the government was controlling his mind through a radio receiver in his dental filling, Lansberry wrote frequent letters to the Federal Bureau of Investigation requesting the contents of any files that were kept on him. Several years prior to his death he received over 400 pages of documents from the FBI detailing their interest in his life beginning in 1975, shortly after he took to the streets."

This interesting short film, "Don't Call Me Crazy on the 4th of July," points out that when Lansberry put on those signs and went before the public, he was asking us a question, "Who is crazier, the guy who believes people are controlling him and fights back, or the people who believe they are free, and still do what they're told to do."

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Iconic Depression Era Photographs Released

"Migrant Mother"
The Library of Congress

The Library of Congress has created a remarkable set, FSA/OWI Favorites, which includes the “Migrant Mother,” by Dorothea Lange, the original film negative of which is housed at the Library of Congress. The Library preserves Lange’s original, and makes the digitized photo freely available. “Migrant Mother” is part of a landmark photo documentary project based in the U.S. Resettlement Administration, the Farm Security Administration (FSA), and later the Office of War Information (OWI). The most active years were 1935-1943, and the collection was transferred to the Library of Congress in 1944.

The Library of Congress’ newest set features 10 of the most frequently requested photos plus staff picks to introduce you to the vast archive of about 170,000 negatives and 107,000 prints of life in America during the Great Depression and World War II. Do not miss a visit to the FSA/OWI Collection in the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) at LOC to explore more of these amazing photos by gifted photographers who worked with 35mm and large format sheet film. Please go to the Library of Congress’ blog post for much more information and insight.

If you have never seen these, don’t pass up a moment to experience them.

Reprinting this Flickr Blog post

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Soften Your Heart at the Tenement Museum

No need to close your eyes and imagine what it might have been like for immigrants in turn-of-the-20th-century America to struggle mightily for a piece of the promise of the American dream. Visit the Tenement Museum and see it and feel it for yourself, as I did on Tuesday.

It's not that you leave your imagination at the door. Rather, your wonderings take wing in context as you meet the ghosts of past inhabitants of 97 Orchard Street on New York City's lower east side.

On our tour, you stand crowded in dark, tiny tenement rooms once called home by a German-Jewish family who survived the Panic of 1873 and an Italian Catholic brood who outlasted the Great Depression. You are crowded shoulder to shoulder with other curious historians, many of them, descendants of the very immigrants whose lives we touch, standing there. With words and answers and pictures and questions and breathing in the dense history, you are transported to a teeming time, a dreaming time, the same American dream that drew my ancestors and that continues to draw 'em in even as we speak. Great stuff. Check it out if you have a chance.

For more see Tenement Museum Flickr Photostream and Tenement Museum Blog.

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