Hasta La Gadget!

PANGKALAN BUN, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesian rescuers lifted the fuselage of the crashed AirAsia jetliner nearly to the water’s surface before it sank to the ocean floor again when the lifting balloons deflated Saturday, a setback in the effort to recover more of the victims’ remains.

Four bodies were discovered though around the area where dozens of divers were struggling with strong current and poor visibility to prepare to retrieve the 30-meter-long wreckage, said Suryadi Bambang Supriyadi, the operations chief at the National Search and Rescue Agency. Divers reached the fuselage section for the first time on Friday and retrieved six bodies. A total of 69 bodies have now been recovered from AirAsia Flight 8501, which crashed Dec. 28 with 162 people on board while flying from Surabaya, Indonesia’s second largest city, to Singapore.

Authorities believe many of the other bodies are still inside the fuselage.

“We now need additional balloons,” Supriyadi said after Saturday’s setback.

He added that the cockpit was reported to be about 500 meters (yards) from the fuselage at a depth of 30 meters (100 feet) and the bodies of the pilot and co-pilot might be inside. “Divers would evacuate (them) if they are there,” he said.

Media reports said Saturday the fuselage was lifted to about 7 meters (23 feet) from the surface before some of the balloons failed.

Some passengers’ belongings such as biscuits, milk boxes, hair rollers and even an iPhone with an attached earphone, as well as aircraft parts such as seat cushions and tables, floated out as the fuselage was being lifted, the Detik.com website reported.

Bad weather is a suspected factor in the crash. Just before the flight disappeared, the pilots asked to climb to a higher altitude to avoid threatening clouds, but were denied permission by air traffic controllers because of heavy air traffic.

Investigators are analyzing data from the aircraft’s cockpit voice and flight data recorders with advisers from Airbus, the plane’s manufacturer.

Tatang Kurniadi, head of the National Transportation Safety Committee, has ruled out sabotage and said a preliminary report on the accident is expected to be submitted to the International Civil Aviation Organization next week.

A full analysis of what went wrong could take up to a year, Kurniadi said.

I’ve wanted to re-establish diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba since I was 10 years old. (But I’m glad that President Obama is beating me to it.)

My interest in Cuba began in elementary school when, between vocabulary lessons, my Spanish teacher would speak about her upbringing in Havana with colorful anecdotes and rhetorical mystique. I craved to learn more about her homeland, a nation only 90 miles off Florida’s coast yet at my age so far away from my realm of political comprehension. Also around this time, the international custody battle over a Cuban boy my age named Elián González stirred a raucous national debate, an incident that made clear to me that Cuba is a country that arouses deep-seated passion in the American political psyche.

However, like many other millennials, I was confused: How could a nation that had been depicted as a vestige of the Cold War still evoke such vehement reactions in contemporary times? After all, I was born into a generation that grew up after the fall of the Berlin Wall and usually heard the term “communism” described in the past tense. For all intents and purposes, Cuba sounded like a chapter in a history book.

As I grew older, I researched U.S.-Cuba relations in greater depth and was enthralled by the drama of the rapport between our countries. I grew impassioned to revamp official dialogue between our nations; it became my ambition and my “mission” to bring Cuba out of the history books and start writing a new chapter. I embarked on an academic path to prepare myself for what I aspire to be a future ambassadorship to Havana. Cuban-studies expert Julia Sweig recently diagnosed me in retrospect: I had caught “the Cuba bug.”

Part of my academic journey involved traveling to the island on multiple occasions and writing an undergraduate senior thesis on U.S.-Cuba relations. As a twenty-something-year-old, I was interested in studying and contrasting my Cuban contemporaries’ experience of growing up in the 21st century. Ultimately, I found that the Cuban version of the “millennial generation” has been at the helm of significant change, both economically and politically.

Economically, the reforms under Raul Castro have opened unprecedented opportunities in the past few years for private entrepreneurship in Cuba, albeit still limited in scope and gradual in pace. Young Cubans are running startups that range from agricultural cooperatives to community-sourced barbershops. Politically, younger Cubans have begun to find their voices online, as a small but burgeoning community of Internet bloggers has gained international recognition for its expansion of civil society and advocacy for human rights. Significantly, the bulk of Cuban bloggers have not pushed for an overhaul of Cuba’s socialist framework, but rather for reform of the current bureaucratic system. In many ways, the Cuban “millennials” parallel their American counterparts by embracing entrepreneurship and by using digital media for political expression.

Going forward, it will be important for millennials on both sides of the 90 mile-divide to become educated and involved in the discussion of U.S.-Cuba relations. After all, it is this generation that will inherit the legacy of our countries’ imminent rapprochement. If my own findings are any indication, Cuban and American millennials may have more in common than our predecessors have led us to believe.

Despite my optimism, I recognize the challenges ahead. In his December 17 speech, President Obama borrowed a common Cuban saying for daily life: “No es fácil” — It’s not easy. The phrase certainly applies to working out the kinks of the relationship between the U.S. and Cuba. This is especially the case for an American generation that has grown up learning about Cuba in lofty — and often ideological — terms.

My Cuban tour guide, Nelson, presented me with a challenge during my last trip. He said the longer you are in Cuba, the harder it is to articulate the situation in the country: “If you spend one day in Cuba, you can write a book. Spend one week in Cuba, and you can write only a chapter. Spend one month — all you can manage are a few sentences. More than a year? You won’t even get a word written on the page.” I’ve accepted Nelson’s challenge. So far, I’ve managed to pen a thesis on Cuba; I’ve worked on a HuffPost op-ed series on Cuba; and hopefully, one day, I’ll be writing an essay for a job application to the U.S. Embassy in Havana.

This post is part of a Huffington Post blog series called “90 Miles: Rethinking the Future of U.S.-Cuba Relations.” The series puts the spotlight on the emerging relations between two long-standing Western Hemisphere foes and will feature pre-eminent thought leaders from the public and private sectors, academia, the NGO community, and prominent observers from both countries. Read all the other posts in the series here.

If you’d like to contribute your own blog on this topic, send a 500-850-word post to impactblogs@huffingtonpost.com (subject line: “90 Miles”).

Last week I wrote about education in community colleges in general, as an introduction to President Obama’s proposal for providing free tuition for community college students. At the time, only the idea had been introduced, with the promise that the President would announce the specifics in his State of the Union address last Tuesday. I concluded last week’s blog by saying that this week I would dig deeper into the details, look at minuses and pluses of the program, and update you on any recent developments.

Instead of the President going into the details of his proposal during the State of the Union address, the White House announced some likelihoods of the program prior to Tuesday night. Currently, we have only a few of the specifics, and this week I will write about: what I do know about the proposal; the need for more particulars; arguments in favor of, and in opposition to, the proposal; and an alternative proposal.

First of all, let’s concentrate on the details.
• The program would provide tuition-free education for community college students who maintain a 2.5 grade point average (c+) and who make consistent progress toward graduation–whether working for a certificate or degree in occupational training programs leading to employment or an associate degree that is transferable to a four-year college.
• The cost is estimated at about $60 billion over ten years, with the federal government bearing three-fourths of the cost and the states and local entities paying the remainder.
• The federal money would come by increasing the capital-gains and dividends tax rates for high-income households, closing a trust-fund loophole, and charging a fee to financial firms that borrow heavily.
• The proposal also calls for streamlining Coverdell education-saving programs and the 529 savings plans, which are difficult for students and their families to understand.
• And the proposal would extend the Hope tax credit to students enrolled less than half time.

The details of this proposal are very complicated. In my opinion, it would be imprudent for the U.S. Congress to pass this bill before all the specifics of the program are clearly spelled out, which would include a precise line-by-line budget and reasonable safeguards for the budget to be adhered to. We know that government spending always seems to run amok, and we remember Nancy Pelosi’s famous words about first passing the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and learning about the details later.

Let’s look at some of the arguments for and against the proposal, first turning to what people in favor of the program are saying.
• This program would send a clear message to everyone that community college is an affordable option for higher education and could induce more high-school students to prepare for, and enroll in, college.
• This program would possibly encourage more students to attend community colleges instead of the more expensive for-profit colleges, thus reducing their debt burden.
• Four-year degrees would be more affordable by attending community colleges for the first two years and transferring to a four year college for the last two years. This is significant because having more people highly educated would: make for a much larger and better qualified workforce, bring new industry to the United States, create many new jobs, and generate more revenues than the costs of funding such a program.
• The proposal would help middle-income families who make too much money to qualify for Pell Grants but do not make enough money to pay for the total cost of a college education.
• Because so many students who attend community colleges work full-time jobs, covering the tuition for part-time students in addition to full-timers would make it possible for more students to attend college.
• If students are allowed to use Pell Grants to defray college expenses other than tuition, as many White House officials suggest it will, it would be a huge bonanza for college students. Tuition is only a small portion of the total cost of attending college, and most colleges have “tuition” grants available for students with limited financial means, making it possible for the Pell Grant to be used for other college expenses.

Here are some of the comments from those who oppose the proposed program.
• There is too much emphasis on the need for everyone to attend college, thus degrading people who just do not have the disposition or temperament to attend college. There are many respected vocational positions that do not require education beyond high school.
• Tuition is already free for most poor and working-class students, who qualify for federal Pell Grants and tuition grants from the college they are attending.
• If we are going to fund the first two years of college tuition, such funding should not be restricted to community colleges; it should also be used for the first two years of tuition for four-year colleges. The drop-out rate at community colleges is a tragic 82% (on average, only 18% graduate). If students plan to transfer to four-year colleges, it is a mistake to encourage them to initially go to community colleges, where they are much less likely to graduate; it makes more sense to attend four-year colleges in the first place.
• Transferring credits from a community college to a four-year college sounds easy, but in real life it can be a nightmare.
• This program broadens the country’s welfare program, which encourages people to depend on the government, rather than promoting hard work, long-range planning, sacrifice, and self-reliance–attributes that have long been hallmarks leading to success. At the least, if the program is adopted, students participating in such a program should be required to commit to a one- or two-year service project in the community, military service, or an equivalent.
• No one has provided solid information to suggest that the program would be helpful for education over the long haul.
• Once federal programs get started, they historically grow in size and cost far, far beyond what was originally forecast.

From what I have been able to learn about the President’s proposal, although it has some attractive components, the arguments against the program outweigh those for it.

Writing in The New York Times (January 19, 2015), David Brooks offers an alternative program that deserves looking at. He suggests that the problem is not getting students to enroll in community colleges, but helping them to graduate. He proposes that, if the money is going to be spent, it should be used to: subsidize counselors, tutors, and mentors; provide better remedial programs (all college teachers agree that a substantial number of their students are not prepared for college work, and that this is especially true of students attending community college); and to provide more and consistent support services such as child care.

“In short,” writes Brooks, “you wouldn’t write government checks for tuition. You’d strengthen structure around the schools.”

(Sources for this column are: various articles in recent issues of The Chronicle of Higher Education and The New York Times, numerous reports of the U.S. Department of Education, and personal knowledge gained from being involved in higher education as a teacher and administrator for many years.)

As an engineer, Leah Busque, founder and CEO of TaskRabbit, said she’s always worked primarily around men.

“For me, it’s never something I’ve focused on but it definitely is there and is an issue,” Busque told HuffPost Live at Davos on Saturday.

Busque said she regularly thinks about how she can encourage women at her own company to take on leadership roles and grow as employees.

“I’ve had some very strong female role models, so I think that’s an important thing,” she added.

Busque also said that a business leader, it’s important to consider the quality of the lives you’re curating for workers.

“I believe there’s been a slippery slope of new companies that have formed in the name of on demand services … that maybe aren’t having as much of a focus as they should on the worker,” Busque said.

Below, live updates from the 2015 Davos Annual Meeting:

Kimberly Gordon is CEO & co-founder of Depict. An artist at heart with the grey matter of an economist, she started Depict to crack open the visual art world to people and provide increased economic value to artists. On a day-to-day basis, Kimberly is responsible for the development, execution and overall strategy and vision of the company. Prior to founding Depict, she helped build the first domestic carbon trading platform in China while working for Emissions Zero in Shanghai. It is there where she learned how to talk about gas trapping technologies in Mandarin, how to make environmental safety sexy and to always travel with extra shoes. Kimberly has a B.A. from Barnard College at Columbia University and a MBA from MIT Sloan.

How has your life experience made you the leader you are today?
I suppose there are a few key characteristics and commensurate experiences. First off, I am very motivated by two things: things I find meaningful and things I find challenging. I am most excited and driven when both of these elements are present. Looking back I can see that I have a history of choosing to do tough and slightly out there things – moving to Beijing after high school (in 2000, this had not yet become a common study abroad destination) by myself to learn Mandarin, again moving to China but to Shanghai after college without a job in search of something in the clean energy space, then taking a position as an early employee at a clean -tech company there as the only native English speaker other than the CEO. When I made these decisions they felt like things I just wanted to do and was interested in doing and now I realize they had two characteristics – they were challenging and I found them meaningful. Starting Depict offered the same things and I like to work with people who have similar motivations. When you work with people on a shared vision to create something that has meaning and a mission that has potentially huge impact, its easier to make decisions – you are clear on what you are doing and why and the mission and what is needs can lead you forward. I see my job as the holder of the vision and the cheerleader of its impact. Other important learnings have come from mentors and role models, learnings about empathy, growth, communication and accountability. Honesty and transparency are tantamount in building a business and you need to learn to communicate transparently and effectively and how to own your mistakes as well as your accomplishments and let others do the same. A startup company is a group of leaders coming together to build something.

How has your previous employment experience aided your position at Depict?
When I was working in Shanghai, I was often pushed to my limits and had to learn new things as I executed on them. One of my favorite example is learning the Mandarin vocabulary for the clean tech industry. Every Monday we had a full company meeting where each person would update one another on what they were doing – all in Mandarin – the first couple of months I didn’t understand much of those meetings. I would prepare my statement ahead of time and attempt to use as many of the new terms as possible. After about 3 months, I caught up on the vocabulary and how information was presented and I stopped having to do research after the meetings and could participate ad-hoc. It was a good feeling, but scary at first. Building a young company involves learning new things on a regular basis then quickly developing the confidence to execute in those arenas. Luckily, we now get to hire experts and have a great advisory board that supports new areas but the learning is still continual. It makes it fun and always interesting.

What have the highlights and challenges been during your tenure?
Highlights come in various forms, some are small and more personal, others large and more public. One of the things I am very proud of at Depict is our culture and our team. I work with some really incredible people and when I take a moment from the crazy pace of our day to day to look back at where we were 6 months ago and how much we have grown, I feel very honored that they all wanted to take this journey with me and Shambhavi, my co-founder. Building a team with that kind of talent, emotional intelligence, creativity and drive is incredible. I’ve also been able to watch some of the younger team members grow and evolve, which is really amazing. Recently, we did an event in NYC with some very esteemed members of the Art World and a woman from Sotheby’s came up to me and said, “oh my god, that Frame [the Depict Frame] is gorgeous. I didn’t even realize it was digital untilI one of the images started moving. The resolution is incredible and it looks just so natural.” That is what I had hoped people would say about it because I wanted our Frame to look and feel analogue but be powered with all the amazing technology we develop at Depict and that is available in the world, like Ultra HD displays. And clearly we did it, right out of someone else’s mouth! Challenges also come in different shapes and sizes. Sometimes we have the exciting challenge of hitting a launch deadline and making sure everything is picture perfect and all the necessary elements are in line. These challenges are fun and exciting and involve the whole team and lots of take out to the office. Its about staying motivated and making sure that someone is up when someone else is frustrated and we carry a mood of excitement despite the pressure. Other challenges are quiet and personal – how to communicate something unpleasant to a team member or give critical feedback in a way that is motivating and not demoralizing. Both the highlights and challenges come in different ways and they come daily.

What advice can you offer women who are looking to start their own business/have a career in your industry?
No one can tell you how to build your own vision. There are some great tools for understanding the basics of how things work in a startup business and how to do day to day things more easily, like run your back office or an early fundraising deal and you should listen to the conventional wisdom on these elements of your business as they are tested, but on occasion the tride and true won’t work for you and you will need to pave your own way. This is both scary and exciting. Creating a vision and a team and holding that mission together – that is yours and you need to own that. Find people who support the vision and mission and you as a person and who are talented as hell. Get them to work with you and invest in you and give those people room to contribute as much as they can. Be uncompromising about who you involve. People build the business. Lastly, never compromise on your values. When you start something, your integrity and your ability to demonstrate credibility and the ability to make tough decisions are all you have and the things that hold you up and give you strength. Have a strong back bone and let that guide you. Sometimes those choices are hard, especially for women as you will undoubtedly find yourself in some weird situations – I don’t know a single female entrepreneur that doesn’t have a few “you won’t believe what this guy said/did” stories up her sleeve. I have turned down large checks at critical moments due to behavior I felt was truly appalling. I don’t regret it. If you have taken the leap to build your own company don’t compromise on your vision of that that looks like, or else, what’s the point?

How do you maintain a work/life balance?
This is one of the elements I have found to be the most difficult. I can get very focused on something (and by something I mean whatever major challenge is ahead with Depict) and when I do, I just go full force into it and forget to maintain normal activities like exercising or eating on a normal schedule. This is not good for me or for anyone. I have learned over time that a powerful and healthy team member is the best kind – you make better decisions, can be more objective and protect yourself against burn out. So now, when I exercise and take time to cook a meal or spend the weekend taking a hike with my boyfriend, I really allow myself to enjoy those moments and detach so that when I get back to work, I am renewed and invigorated. It works much better. I like to read and cook, be outside, do random creative projects, look at art, decorate our house, etc. These things bring me joy and thus bring joy into my work.

What do you think is the biggest issue for women in the workplace?
The perception of who women leaders are and who they have the potential to become. Shambhavi and I wrote an article about the value (mainly monetary) that is being left on the table in Silicon Valley by investors who are overlooking women. The hypothesis is that there is really only one “template” of what female success looks like – Sheryl, Marrisa, etc. – Oscar de la Renta gowns and cropped and straightened hair cuts on highly educated women who have climbed to the highest ranks at companies founded by men. I have nothing against this path to success – I respect those women immensely, but it doesn’t leave room for much creativity or for women to be lauded as visionary leaders bringing new things to the world, not only companies and products and services but ways of doing and seeing things in different forms and via different paths. When male leaders are creative and off beat, when they are college dropouts who wear really bad hoodies and what not to start mega-companies they are considered visionary. I can’t see any examples of this in our culture today for women and its holding us back. Its not only holding us back and present, its holding back young girls from being the type of leaders and visionaries they might be if they didn’t feel like their only options were up through Harvard with a neatly coiffed hair do and an A-line dress. I’d like to see some of the women I know who have built great companies and have creative vision and interesting aesthetics and their own ways of doing things as well as incredibly sharp business acumen get praise for that not just being a successful woman as if “successful woman” as a label applied to every woman who has done something at a high level. That’s silly and constricting, it also makes dreaming boring. Luckily when I was very young, I wanted to be an artist or a writer and in those professional you get to be creative and dream creatively. Think of how interesting our world would be if all girls dreamed creatively.

How has mentorship made a difference in your professional and personal life?
Mentorship has been a key factor to my and Depict’s success as well as my ability to grow. One of my first mentors saw an energy and potential in me that I did not see in myself until later in life and he pushed me and challenged me at every opportunity. It made me better and stronger and realize the strength of my own convictions and abilities. I am forever grateful for him taking that leap and I hope that one day I can do it for someone else. Other mentors have offered support on the entrepreneurial journey in navigating everything from how to negotiate a Term sheet to how to balance your venture and your life without burning out to finding us really cheap and wonderful office space. These mentors have become friends and are critical parts of my personal and professional life. Usually they are people with whom I share some sort of interest, experience or vision, whether it be related to the mission of Depict or just more generally sharing a style of how we like to run a business and a team. I am deeply appreciative of these people and hope they are having as much fun as I am with it.

Which other female leaders do you admire and why?
I draw inspiration from a great number of female leaders ranging from artists to civil rights leaders to business women. I really appreciate and admire women who are able to be themselves in their ascent and show the world who that person is. When I read Patti Smith’s memoire of becoming an artist in the 70s and 80s with Robert Mappelthorpe, I thought she was incredible. I only really ever listened to one of her albums, Horses, before reading her book but the book itself was gorgeous, human, simple, a reminder of the power of art and expression. I do really admire Marrissa Mayer as well – she has a really tough task in front of her in regard to transforming Yahoo!. I have not had the experience of turning something bulky and existent into something new and fresh and growing and imagine that in many ways, it is more difficult than building something from scratch. She has taken on a huge challenge and the press seems to want to needle her at every turn but she keeps showing up and making moves. You have to respect the ability to have a mission and go for it. And of course, a long line of women whose art or actions stand for causes and speak to cultural movements – Maya Angelou, Nina Simone, Malala Yousafzay…. these women are incredibly brave. I also am always impressed by Charlotte Gainsbourg and Gwen Stefani – they are timeless in their beauty and their uniqueness and give women something to look at other than the standard fare. I really love seeing them in magazines. Lastly but certainly not least, the women closest to my life – my mother and my female mentors. My mother is a very accomplished attorney and a very glamorous and creative woman who above all else, does her own thing. I was lucky to have her as a role model and still rely on her for advice and the reminder that you can be a great many things at once.

What do you want Depict to achieve in the next year?
2015 is a big year for Depict. We will start shipping the Depict Frame, continue building our team and adding partners, artists and collaborators to the Depict ecosystem. I want to make sure that when the first Frame’s ship and they arrive at our early customers homes or work places, etc. they have a moment of joy and revel in the gateway to inspiration and creativity that they have in front of them and that when they log into the app or onto Depict.com they find artwork that effects them. This will mean, we need to make sure everything in the product is perfect and is executed perfectly at every step along the way and that we continue to work with the most exciting artists and add new work to our platform every week. It will be a challenging year but an exciting one!