Latest news with #Willows
Int'l Business Times
11-07-2025
- Automotive
- Int'l Business Times
How YELLOW CAR Is Redesigning The Experience Of School Through Listening
Dr. David Willows In an era where trust must be earned and not assumed, and where young people are seeking something beyond knowledge, like connection, meaning, and agency, one company is helping schools pause and ask: "What is the experience we're creating here?" YELLOW CAR , led by duo Dr. David Willows and Suzette Parlevliet, is one of the few experienced strategy firms dedicated exclusively to schools. In industries like retail and hospitality, experience strategy is already a well-established discipline. But as Willows points out, "It's never really ventured very far into education, certainly school-based education. That, for us, was a starting point." What [YELLOW CAR] has developed is a new way of thinking, measuring, and analysing how students, parents, and staff feel about their time in school. "We work with schools to design an experience for them that is suitable, that tends to their needs emotionally and strategically," Willows says. "And that leads to the question: How do we actually measure that?" The answer is the Felt Experience Indicator® (FEI), a proprietary diagnostic tool that [YELLOW CAR] developed to dive deep into the emotional and psychological terrain of school life, something that's most often overlooked in traditional school settings. Conventional methods such as satisfaction surveys or Net Promoter Scores (NPS) may give a number, but as Willows explains, "They don't have impact. Even the NPS has very limited capacity in helping us understand what that experience really is." By contrast, the Felt Experience Indicator® goes further. It captures experience across six emotional dimensions: happiness, connection, belonging, confidence, gratitude, and understanding. These aren't abstract ideas; they're the invisible foundation of a school's culture. Rather than relying solely on broad ratings, which are prevalent in most schools, the tool uses a layered approach. It combines demographic data, numerical ratings, and open-ended questions that produce what [YELLOW CAR] calls "wavelengths" of felt experience across the school's population. YELLOW CAR These wavelengths can reveal real, tangible insights. "We can track whether the wavelength of school increases over time, or does it fluctuate? And if so, in what grades?" Willows says. Parlevliet adds that the data often uncovers surprising disparities, bringing a deeper question to the table. She states, "Almost always, the students are scoring their experience less positively than the employees or the parents, and that begs the question: why is that a trend, and what can be done to change that?" Perhaps the most transformative element isn't just what the tool measures, but what its results set in motion. YELLOW CAR Once feedback is collected, [YELLOW CAR] facilitates co-creation sessions, where students, teachers, and staff come together to analyze findings and brainstorm solutions. "They sit around the same table and try to identify aspects, asking: What are we seeing? What is it telling us?" Parlevliet explains. From there, each group can make a "wish list" of things they'd like to change, often simple, low-cost, high-impact ideas. For them, the firm then helps execute effective solutions that mutually benefit all parties involved. In one case, teachers expressed a desire for less phone use. Students responded with creative solutions: pouches, lockers, or designated "phone-free" spaces. "What we're hearing from students is, 'We know school can't be exactly how we want it. We just want to be part of the conversation.' And that's the space we provide," Parlevliet says. [YELLOW CAR]'s methodology thrives on cross-pollination, where they identify patterns across schools and shape them into clear, shareable models. Drawing on insights from hundreds of educators worldwide, they refine tools like the Felt Experience Indicator® to work in diverse contexts. "When we see patterns emerging, we ask how we can simplify this, how can it apply beyond just one school?" Parlevliet says. This iterative process enables [YELLOW CAR] to take hyper-local insights and scale them into universal strategies. Suzette Parlevliet This spirit of intentionality and shared responsibility is at the forefront of [YELLOW CAR]'s ethos. Every school is viewed as a life cycle, a six-stage journey that includes attraction, admission, induction, engagement, retention, and transition. While each stage involves different actors, from marketing teams to admissions officers to classroom teachers, too often, these actors are designed in silos, not as a team. "What we're noticing is that the perceptions of what's in place are significantly different in almost every school," Parlevliet adds. "That lack of alignment means the experiences are likely misaligned too." To address this, [YELLOW CAR] offers workshops, integrated reports, and impact plans that bring teams together across departments. From security guards to finance directors, everyone is shown that they are part of the experience, and given a shared language to design and improve it. Unlike traditional systems, the company's foundation isn't parsing through survey data, but something much beyond. It deciphers the deeper meaning behind patterns. Sometimes, a small story captures the whole. In one school, a broken water tap forced girls to walk across the campus just to access drinking water. The data flagged the issue as a friction point. It was "just a tap" until it wasn't. It became a symbol of systemic oversight. Fixing it didn't just solve a plumbing issue; it affirmed that someone was paying attention. And that's what the Felt Experience Indicator® sheds light on. Helping to connect the symptoms to the underlying causes, and in doing so, guiding schools to focus not only on what's broken, but what it means. In a world where students are increasingly disillusioned, parents are anxious, and staff are stretched thin, the act of deep listening becomes radical, and what [YELLOW CAR] offers is a new paradigm, focusing on the quality of the journey over outcomes. In helping schools make the invisible visible, [YELLOW CAR] is reimagining education from the inside out, one felt experience at a time. [YELLOW CAR] is also exploring how this approach to listening can be relevant beyond school.
Car and Driver
28-06-2025
- Automotive
- Car and Driver
We Entered the Electric Lemons Endurance Test and, Well . . .
One million nickels. Real nickels, like, physical money. I say that because there are plenty of mirages on a 101-degree day at Thunderhill Raceway Park in Willows, California. Even though these nickels are not symptomatic of heat stroke, they are just as out of reach. It's not that I doubt that the 24 Hours of Lemons would cough up its promised prize of $50,000 in five-cent pieces for winning a race overall in an EV. It's more that I doubt it's worthwhile, or even possible. It'd be like buying a PlayStation with arcade tickets; you've surely spent more to get there than the prize is worth. There has to be another reason to enter a 2018 Chevrolet Bolt EV in the longest road race in North American history—and there is. You can learn a lot about racing when you're forced to do it with no chance of winning. Lemons racing is famous for crapcan cars and wacky builds, but it's also a place to experiment with new technologies like electric drivetrains for considerably less money than an entry in Formula E. Choosing an unusual vehicle or drivetrain may not be a quick ticket to the overall winner's circle, but as the shimmering nickels highlight, the Lemons team encourages the outrageous and unlikely. View Photos James Gilboy Forrest Iandola has put together a team of outrageous and unlikely drivers to match his unlikely electric entry. It's a revolving cast of tech-industry colleagues who want a taste of racing and, in this case, one Lemons-loving automotive writer. We'd built camaraderie over racing crappy cars, and when he dropped an invitation to race his Bolt in Thunderhill's 25-hour I was happy to join the chase for the nickels. What About the Lemons $500 Rule? Those familiar with Lemons' $500-car rule may object to the $16,800 spent on an off-lease Bolt, and the thousands more to make it race-ready, but the boundaries of crapcan racing have expanded as used cars have become more expensive and Lemons racing more competitive. The $500 guidance predates Cash for Clunkers, when that money went further. $500 will hardly get you a parts car these days, never mind the gear to pass Lemons' safety inspection. I like to say that $500 is a vibe, a means of steering you toward Lemons' ethos: endurance racing in cars that are bad at it. In that sense, there are few cars more Lemons-worthy than a high-mile commuter EV. View Photos James Gilboy It's not that the Bolt is from a forgotten or disreputable brand. It's not poorly made or unreliable (at least, since the battery recalls), and on decent tires, it doesn't corner like a cruise ship. It's just bad at racing on account of having a battery that needs charging. At full tilt, Iandola tells me the Bolt will burn through a full charge in 20 laps of Thunderhill, or about 45 minutes. It'd then be sidelined for an hour to DC fast-charge back to 70 percent, while all the other cars are racking up laps. Unlike cross-country EV records, the strategy in endurance racing isn't to go flat out, but to conserve energy and prolong the time spent on track. It's full-on hypermiling, but it's in the middle of a hot track, and you have California's most impatient beater-E30 driver in your mirrors. Lemons officials say they codified EV rules because Lemons people wanna build weird stuff and race it. Lemons is the only prominent amateur endurance racing series where you can race an EV. WRL, AER, Lucky Dog, and ChampCar don't even have EV rules on the books. Lemons has allowed electric cars since 2019, when it announced the aforementioned $50,000 prize to the first team to win overall in an EV. At the time I considered it an impossibility, and more a publicity stunt than an invitation to EVs, but Lemons officials told me otherwise. They say they codified EV rules because Lemons people wanna build weird stuff and race it. Only recently has it become possible to power said weird stuff with lithium-ion batteries. View Photos James Gilboy Lemons' EV rules, which are based on Pikes Peak regulations, look onerous to follow. They require consulting series safety officials before fabrication begins, as the risk of an EV's battery spilling its Greek fire and red-flagging a race—perhaps for a whole weekend—is too great to neglect. That's why it comes as a surprise how little the Bolt had to be modified. In the end, Lemons and Iandola agreed that the safest thing was not to meddle with high-voltage safety systems that GM spent billions engineering (and later fixing), only to add new points of failure. The Bolt's performance mods aren't much more auspicious either. Slim options for 5 x 105 wheels leave it on cheapo 17-inchers with 215-section tires, with the rears hidden behind corrugated plastic moondisc covers. A plastic undertray flattens out the underbody. Performance brake pads, a stiffer rear anti-roll bar from a Cruze, and front camber plates round out the chassis changes. Quicker cornering speeds are a big piece of the efficiency puzzle, and race strategy plays an even bigger role. But it can't control the wildest variable in any race team: the drivers. View Photos James Gilboy As mentioned, Iandola's volunteers run the gamut from experienced sim racers to total novices, so we never had much chance of sticking to his well-planned race strategy. In theory, two drivers would split a charge evenly, maximizing regenerative braking by racing in Low gear. The second driver would leave the track with around 5 percent charge to visit DC fast-chargers in town, about 10 minutes from Thunderhill. While the fastest cars could run under 2:20, our target was a leisurely 2:50 with 2.1 percent energy use per lap, for an average stint of about an hour. That's about all the human could take with track temps soaring past 100 degrees anyway, cool suit or not. Those times proved deceptively hard to hit. Saving juice required going not much quicker than 70 mph down the straights. Making the most of regen required slowing twice as far out as you could with friction brakes, too. As a consequence, traffic tended to come in red-hot, and we often couldn't see them dive-bomb us on account of the Bolt's poor rearward visibility (a trait of almost all modern cars). When cars didn't make aggressive moves, they often assumed they could barge past in the corners. They quickly learned otherwise. View Photos James Gilboy From the factory, the Bolt might be the worst-handling new car I ever reviewed. The steering is quick, but its weight signifies nothing, and the pedals add nothing to the conversation. Rock-hard tires didn't help either. But with the modifications? It's a tiny hatch with a short wheelbase, a low center of gravity, and its understeer tuned out. I could latch on like a lamprey to the back of an E30 through any corner, and waggle the rear to bring the nose in line. Even while conserving energy, the Bolt had pace to make the occasional pass. We mainly preyed on our chief EV competitor, Arcblast's converted Datsun 620 pickup with a battery hot-swap setup that kept it out on track (and importantly, ahead of us in lap count). I added a C5 Corvette to the tally too. It may have been an automatic convertible hauled out of a field, but a Vette is a Vette. I might've been frustrated driving what felt like a permanent full-course yellow had I not known what I was getting myself into. This isn't a wheel-to-wheel showdown, it's an efficiency challenge. What is "slow is smooth, smooth is fast" but a maxim about conservation of energy? Learning not to waste momentum is just as important to mastering the Mazda MX-5 as it is endurance-racing an EV. Distill the experience down to the very fundamentals of driving fast, and you learn more. I certainly gleaned more about technique in an hour in that EV than I did any of my previous three 24-hour races. View Photos James Gilboy The overall winner of the 25 Hours of Lemons was, in fairly predictable fashion, a beater BMW. And we were nowhere close to catching them, but I'd still give an electric another try. Twenty-fours are hellish affairs that are just as likely to break you as your car. I've subjected myself to heat stroke and exhaustion-induced auditory hallucinations in the name of anonymous finishes before, and I will again. If I'm going to finish 81st of 118 cars, I might as well relax while I do it. Eat some ice cream. Do some yoga. Think about how to inch closer to those five and a half tons of nickels.
NBC News
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- NBC News
Fantasy ball or Fyre Fest? Attendees describe chaos at Baltimore book event
Dozens of authors and book lovers poured into Baltimore this weekend dressed in glittering gowns, ready for a romance-fantasy book convention that promised a formal 'fantasy ball.' Instead, attendees of the A Million Lives Book Festival said they found themselves standing awkwardly under bright overhead lights in a sparsely decorated space that looked more like a concrete warehouse than a ballroom. Videos of the first-time event quickly gained traction on social media as attendees expressed disappointment at being met with barren rooms, shoddy programming and drastically fewer attendees than promised. 'If the bar for events was on the floor, A Million Lives Festival sent the bar straight to hell,' said Perci Jay, a romantic fantasy author who attended. 'We had no signage directing us around the convention center, no decorations, no badges — nothing to signal that our event was even happening. I was shocked and bewildered constantly because every 30 minutes, something else went horribly wrong.' The gathering last Friday and Saturday at the Baltimore Convention Center became the latest event to go viral online for its disastrous planning, joining the ranks of the widely mocked Fyre Fest, the Willy Wonka-themed 'Chocolate Experience' in Glasgow and the "Bridgerton"-inspired ball in Detroit. Grace Willows, the organizer of the event, issued an apology on her event planning company's social media pages this week. 'I do understand that the ball tonight was not set up to standards,' Willows said on TikTok. 'There were a lot of issues with getting set up and it was not set up well. I want to apologize.' Archer Management, the event planning company behind the festival, said in an Instagram post on Monday that all refunds should be processed by May 31. Willows did not respond to a request for comment. But some attendees, including Jay, say that a refund wouldn't be enough to cover for the financial hit they took just getting to the event. After spending more than $2,000 on flights, event fees and food for the weekend, Jay said she flew from Texas to Baltimore (which required 'tremendous effort,' as she's pregnant with twins) only to realize she and her friends had been 'completely misled' about the event they had been anticipating for a year and a half. The festival had been advertised online as 'the perfect event to make more bookish friends,' teasing a vendor hall, speaker panels, a content creation room and a cosplay competition. Tickets ranged from $50 to $250. Upon arrival, however, several attendees who spoke to NBC News said the only decorations in the room were pink flower petals lined along the tables. In lieu of the planned DJ, one small portable speaker played music from someone's phone. The promised 'content creation room' was just an empty room. Badges and swag bags were mysteriously lost. And due to an absence of chairs and tables, some panel speakers and audience members found themselves sitting on the floor. Several attendees said they were told by Willows that 500-600 tickets had been sold. The exact total number of attendees is unclear. But those who spoke to NBC News estimated less than 100 people showed up, leaving many authors — who had to order books in bulk and pay fees for tables to sell them at — eating their losses and scrambling to ship their unsold books back home. When reached for comment, a spokesperson for the Baltimore Convention Center directed NBC News to a social media exchange between an attendee and the venue's director of sales, Krystine Bussiere, in response to accusations that the convention center was responsible for losing event supplies such as swag bags and snacks. 'I can tell you that we didn't receive information from the event organizer about missing boxes from the event,' Bussiere wrote in an email. 'I checked in multiple times with show management and heard nothing but positive comments about how things were going on-site.' In the aftermath, attendees banded together online to share their experience and petition for answers. Some people created a page online to solicit public support for the financial recovery of authors who 'were left with financial debt due to flights, hotels, shipping their merchandise, and table fees only to be mislead by the turnout of the event.' Author Stephanie Combs, who decided to attend the festival after seeing social media posts advertising it more than a year ago, said she bought eight boxes of books to sell and left with six still full. Instead of the packed convention that she expected, Combs estimated that only about 50 attendees dotted the 'ginormous dungeon' of a room. 'I feel like I vacillated between tears and laughter the rest of the night, because it just felt so unbelievable to me that someone would set this up and think that it was an acceptable ball,' Combs said. 'There's no music, there's no decorations other than a few scattered rose petals. And you just have a bunch of people in a room, you know, eating a couple pieces of chocolate.' Carmen Seantel, a narrator who moderated a panel, said she had to hold the talk in a room with 'no chairs, no tables, nothing.' She said the eight panelists and 15 to 25 audience members ended up sitting on the floor for the hourlong panel without any microphones or air conditioning. 'I took time off work, took time away from scheduled family events to attend this fest- it's not a festival, to attend this FIASCO. As bad as that might seem, it is NOTHING compared to the thousands of dollars authors lost,' Seantel wrote in an email. 'I want to highlight that this event financially crippled 100+ independent authors. I know some authors planned family events, book releases, and other things around THIS. But for what?'
The Citizen
01-05-2025
- The Citizen
Calls to declare GBV a national disaster after woman's eyes gouged out in attack
Calls to declare GBV a national disaster after woman's eyes gouged out in attack The recent case of a woman in Richmond, Bongeka Nxele (26), who had her eyes gouged out, allegedly by her ex-boyfriend, has sparked widespread outrage on social media, with many calling on the government to declare gender-based violence (GBV) a national disaster. A Richmond woman is facing a future without her sight after a savage gender-based violence attack that left her permanently blinded in one eye and with only a slim hope of partial vision in the other. Her alleged attacker — Zenzele Xaba (36) — appeared in the Richmond Magistrate's Court on Tuesday, where his application for bail was denied. The Witness interviewed Bongeka Nxele's mother, Zodwa Nxele, on camera and posted the video on various social media platforms. Many social media users expressed their deep empathy for Nxele and called for justice to be served. Clive Willows, a clinical psychologist, said until a proper evaluation is conducted, there is no way to understand what would go through an attacker's mind during such an incident. 'It may have been that [the attacker] wanted to get her to stop looking at other men. It may also have been that this was attempted murder. We do not want to speculate what was happening in [the attacker's] head at the time,' said Willows. He added that there needs to be a different approach to address GBV in South Africa. 'Focus has been given to the victims of GBV. We have had awareness campaigns, strikes, marches, etc, but it is not stopping or decreasing GBV. 'We need to get to the root of the problem and address what causes people to do such heinous things, that would give us a deeper psychological understanding,' added Willows. Women For Change started the #JusticForBongeka campaign on Instagram and said the attacker who stole her eyesight and shattered her life must be held fully accountable. '[The attacker] must face the full consequences of his brutal actions. Bongeka deserves justice, not more betrayal from a system that should protect her,' read the Instagram post. Breaking news at your fingertips… Follow Caxton Network News on Facebook and join our WhatsApp channel. Nuus wat saakmaak. Volg Caxton Netwerk-nuus op Facebook en sluit aan by ons WhatsApp-kanaal. Read original story on At Caxton, we employ humans to generate daily fresh news, not AI intervention. Happy reading!
Chicago Tribune
04-03-2025
- Sport
- Chicago Tribune
Savannah Lynch shakes off hand injury to spark St. Edward in Class 1A supersectional. ‘The momentum we needed.'
St. Edward's Savannah Lynch was excited for the biggest night of her high school career. But then minutes into Monday's game, the sophomore guard suffered an injury to her left hand and had to sit out the majority of the first quarter. The plan got changed, if only for a moment. 'I had to get it taped,' Lynch said afterward. 'It was (bothering me) a little bit, but once I got it wrapped, I knew it was nothing major. I was able to play through it and get the win.' Another big win, at that. Lynch responded by scoring nine straight points upon her return in the second quarter to lead the Green Wave to a 56-43 win over Willows in a Class 1A Harvest Christian Supersectional in Elgin. The 5-foot-10 Lynch led all scorers with 22 points for St. Edward (26-10), which advanced to an 11:15 a.m. Thursday state semifinal at CEFCU Arena in Normal against Pecatonica (30-6). Jordin Sauls added 12 points and Maggie Jarzemsky grabbed nine rebounds off the bench. Caroline Schuler scored 17 points to pace Willows (26-9), which forced a 19-19 tie during the second quarter before the Green Wave got back going once Lynch came back into the game. St. Edward coach Michelle Dawson was just happy her team maintained a lead in the first quarter without Lynch, who had led the Green Wave to their first sectional title since the 2016-17 season. 'Savannah struggled early with that injury,' Dawson said of her star player. 'She came through and everybody else stepped up. She was not herself, but everybody else was there to cover.' Lynch relied on adrenaline to play through it, doing what she had to do to get St. Edward to state. 'I really have to thank my teammates,' she said. 'I didn't think about it and kept playing my game.' Different teammates aided Lynch at different times Monday. After Lynch exited the game, Ginger Younger came off the bench and hit two big shots to help the Green Wave grab a15-6 lead. Younger, a transfer from Hampshire, is in her first season at St. Edward. And she was ready. 'We practiced this 100 times,' she said. 'Savannah is a really big role model. She does a lot of things and she teaches us. We have to stick together as a team sometimes. 'With our coaching, we were all ready. She fought through it.' Willows tied the game 19-19 with 2:15 left in the second quarter, but Lynch found another level. 'I think we all knew we needed to push the pace and get something going,' Lynch said. 'Me getting something going really helped open things up for all my teammates. 'That gave us the momentum we needed.' Lynch followed by hitting a 3-pointer and converting a layup off a steal, sandwiched around four free throws, to give the Green Wave a 28-19 lead they did not relinquish. 'She's been just a joy to coach,' Dawson said of Lynch. 'She's not selfish. She'll do what our team needs her to do to get the win. The entire team is so unselfish. I'm just very proud of them.' After Willows cut the deficit to 32-29 in the third quarter, Lynch drilled a 3-pointer to end the run. Then in the fourth, Sauls scored seven points to fuel an 11-0 run that put the game out of reach. Lynch started to believe that a run to state was possible as the season unfolded. As the Green Wave got healthier and learned how to play together, things began to fall into place. 'We made a goal chart, and one of our goals was getting to state,' Lynch said. 'We knew we could achieve it.' Indeed, the Green Wave have achieved that goal and now have a chance to add a state championship trophy to go with the one the program won in the 1984-85 season. 'It's amazing,' Lynch said. 'We're all emotional. We're just really happy to get down there.'
