Free Registration: Contact Brien Palmer at bpalmer@interlinkbusiness.com or 724-733-5007.In Pennsylvania, we can't vote on super Tuesday, but we can come to a big CoREM Event for 4:00 PM Tuesday, February 5, 2008,
CoREM Book Review:
“The Black Swan”
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
--The Impact of the Highly Improbable--
Discussion leader: Art Davidson
This hard-cover non-fiction New York Times best seller makes the concept of a black swan a metaphor for rare events with high impact. For example, put yourself in the place of a young turkey, who finds every day of life just getting better and better. As each day passes pretty much like the one before, the turkey gets more and more comfortable with his environment and more and more confident in the future. For a thousand days, his confidence builds. Then, on the 1001st day, the day before Thanksgiving, he experiences an event that he could not ever have predicted, and which has extreme consequences for him. The ax falling on that Wednesday in November is a narrative used by Taleb to define his concept of a black swan event.
Art Davidson will give a summary of Taleb’s ideas, assuming no prior knowledge of the book. He will lead a discussion of how Black Swan events, both good and bad, have shaped our lives, organizations, and community. There will also be an original CoREM hands-on exercise calculating what might be called a logistical black swan.
Bio for speaker: Dr. Arthur Davidson has been active in CoREM and predecessor organizations since 1993. He served as Director of the Deming Forum of Western Pennsylvania from 1994-1997, and was a co-founder of CoREM. He is presently employed as the Executive Director of the Center for Circuit and System Solutions (C2S2) at Carnegie Mellon University. Previously he had 25 years of experience in the computer and defense industries at IBM, Westinghouse, and Northrop Grumman. He teaches “Business for Engineers” to undergraduates and “Nonlinear Dynamics” to grad students in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept. at Carnegie Mellon
Directions to Forbes Road Career & Technology Center
The Center borders Boyce Campus of CCAC
Address: 607 Beatty Road, Monroeville, PA. 412-373-8100
From Downtown Pittsburgh: Go east on Interstate 376 (Parkway East) approximately 15 miles and get off the Parkway in Monroeville at exit 14B (Plum), just past exit 14A (Rt. 48). Proceed north through the intersection with the traffic light to the stop sign at Beatty Road. Van Horn’s Funeral Home will be on the far left corner. Turn right on to Beatty Road and drive to the second stop sign (Community College of Allegheny County--Boyce Campus entrance). Turn right and go approximately 100 feet. Turn left into the Forbes Road Career & Technology Center entrance (Gateway Press building is on the right).
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CoREM provides a forum for the critical study of original and effective leadership methods and principles through collaboration and lifelong learning, to benefit individuals, organizations, and our communities. See CoREM’s programs since the middle of 2007 at the CoREM blog: Leading Leaders and Leadership.
