If it's for a product, I say start with the name that most clearly communicates what it is that the product helps with / problem it solves. Think "Can Opener". That's the kind of name you want for your brand or product to start. Even the big brands started out more specific... McDondald's was "McDonald's Hamburgers" for a very long time before removing the Hamburgers. Apple was "Apple Computers Inc" a long time as well.
When you are small you have to be more specific because you have a lower number of impressions ( chances to talk to your potential customers ) and you need to make sure you are sending the right message. The big brands can afford to put their message in more places, so they can be more abstract. Small brands don't have that luxury.
JTG also emphasizes active literacy (writing, speaking) versus passive literacy (reading, listening). One without the other is as a table with half it's legs.
I think the true test is to go to an educational institution and observe first hand what is happening. Is it a or b and to what extent either of the two:
a) Education that helps people leverage their innate curiosity to become free and intelligent individuals capable of independent investigation and thought.
b) Schooling that trains people to be obedient to authority, conform to standards of thought and behavior, distrustful of their own abilities and reliant upon experts.
The evidence I have seen shows the state ( any state, anywhere ) to be delivering to children today much more of b than a. JTG lived this for 30 years as a distinguished and awarded public school teacher in NYC. If you look at the incentives of those in power and actively controlling the government and it's apparatus, it is easy to understand why it would be this way and not get too judgmental about it. Lets imagine that you are a general in battle, which would you prefer: Obedient soldiers who follow orders or free-thinkers with their own agenda?
The ad hominem attacks and annoyed tone of your argument betray a disintrest in any argument that does not match your established view. I invite you to consider new ideas.
"crank": An eccentric person, esp. one obsessed by a particular subject or theory.
John Taylor Gatto is an education crank who has dedicated his life to improving education and fighting schooling. I think we would do well to have more such cranks among us.
Fatbird, you suggest that we "reliably detect the optimum education environment for each student, and 2) give it to them".
Replace the word education in your statement with the word training and you have a good definition of what exists in schools around the world today.
"The secret of American schooling is that it doesn’t teach the way children learn, and it isn’t supposed to; school was engineered to serve a concealed command economy and a deliberately re-stratified social order." - John Taylor Gatto
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30fxRwkBbHc
Great article. Unfortunately the vast majority of the so-called education to which people around the world are exposed is not education, it's merely schooling. For those interested in the difference I suggest reading John Taylor Gatto's books. Also most important is to reflect on your own experiences of education vs. schooling. I myself have found that the two are absolutely antithetical.
Great feedback Andrew. I think we need to change the design and make it more clear, however we do request that every completed "order" receive a review and comment from the customer. We also allow chefs to receive written endorsements as well which are publicly displayed on the site.
The chefs are sorted by reviews, endorsements and other quality-ensuring factors so that the first chefs you see are those we know most about and know deliver great service.
Great suggestion, thank you Marquis!
To everyone in California, we do have a few chefs signed up in San Francisco [1] and Oakland [2] although we've only just started to promote the site in the USA.
This is no typo. To date we have only booked 169 chef services. We are focused on delivering bookings for the chefs however due to the open nature of our platform we have no way of knowing how many bookings a chef actually receives as a benefit of being on ChefSurfing.com ( we link directly to their own external site if they have one ) and it is very likely that once a chef and customer have contact with each other they maintain this relationship without Chef Surfing being involved.
Some of the chefs we are close with have called us after working a job they received via Chef Surfing and told us about how the customer would like to do more business together and asked us "if that's ok". That's not just ok with us, it's our goal ( getting the chefs more work and higher pay ).
This is true. The grey zone in which "Closed door restaurants" operate in Buenos Aires, for example, requires only that the chefs have catering licenses issued by local government fairly liberally.
Chef Surfing is a startup born in Buenos Aires and inspired by the independent chef movement of Argentina and South America. Our favorite purta cerrada Cocina Sunae [1] by chef Christina Sunae serves the best south-east asian food available in Buenos Aires. I highly recommend this place to tourists, expats and local Argentines!
It really depends on the chef and city you are living in. In Santiago, Chile service prices start at 10,000 pesos ( ~20 USD ) per guest. If the size of your party is larger the price can be lower however that is generally the starting price. One chef in Santiago ( Chef Nancy Bavestrello [1] ) delivers meal packages at a lower price if the order volume is higher.
My suggestion is to focus yourself on doing the activities in your life that you find virtuous. Make a list of three things you decide are valuable and pursue them. Focus on them and do them one at a time. Trust me, this will work. You complain that people are not free, well Bob Marley said: "none but ourselves can free our own minds" and while I don't agree with all of his statements, this one I find to be true. So my suggestion is to focus on freeing yourself first. Lead by example and the negativity will fall away into the background.
When you are small you have to be more specific because you have a lower number of impressions ( chances to talk to your potential customers ) and you need to make sure you are sending the right message. The big brands can afford to put their message in more places, so they can be more abstract. Small brands don't have that luxury.