2010 Race for Independence – Blind Driver Challenge
June 1, 2010 by Mike Hingson · Leave a Comment
The tall sandy-haired man walks to the new, shiny red car. He opens the driver side back door as his yellow lab hops in and settles on the floor behind the front seat. As he activates the keyless ignition, the engine begins to purr. “Welcome Mr. Hingson” the car speaks in a melodious yet professional voice. “Ready to engage.” Michael gently accelerates as his Guide Dog Africa begins to snooze. Michael, a man who defies stereotypes and enjoys leading others to do the same, is a WTC survivor. He is also blind since birth. And he is driving a car!!!!!
No, this is not a futuristic dream. This is a soon-possible reality. This July, at the National Federation of the Blind Convention in Dallas, a blind driver will take to the road. Michael Hingson’s goal is to be that driver. Michael’s very life this far has defied all odds. Surviving the 9/11 WTC Terrorist attacks with his guide dog Roselle was perhaps the most dramatic. But blind people are breaking barriers and stereotypes each and every day.
The 2010 Race for Independence – Blind Driver Challenge is an event guaranteed to change the very definition of being blind. Advancements in technology combined with the spirit of innovation and the power of keeping an open mind are being brought together to turn our attitude about “abilities” and “disabilities” on its head!
Join Michael in making history by supporting him in forging a new “first” with your donation. Select the “Support” button and help him reach his goal, while demonstrating that together we can make a difference and change history.
All of the money raised from this event will be returned to National Federation of the Blind state and local affiliates in the form of grants and direct funds to help in educating the public about blindness, provide scholarships for blind students, and to aid in the development of new technologies to help blind persons in all walks of life including an automobile which can be driven by a blind person.
It will also be used to support the NFB Jernigan Institute’s programs for children, youth, college students, adults, and seniors.
Together with the National Federation of the Blind, you and Michael will change what it means to be blind. Let’s rev up those engines!
Michael is a proud member of the National Federation of the Blind which raises funds to educate the general public about blindness. This organization is of vital importance to Michael and countless others, as it has played a vital role in redefining what it means to be blind.
Michael’s fund raising team for this challenge is “NAGDU,” or the National Association of Guide Dog Users, of which Michael is Vice President. Michael is an ardent advocate and teacher on the importance and value of the human-animal bond, and what it can show us about teamwork. After all, it was his Guide Dog Roselle that led Michael and others down from the 78th floor of Tower 1 of the WTC to safety on 9/11.
The NAGDU’s team goal is $30,000, which they must reach before the NFB Convention on July 1st of this year. Click on the support button now to be directed to the donation page. Michael and his current Guide Dog Africa thank you in advance and will keep you informed of their progress.
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National public speaker, teamwork and assistive technology expert, Michael Hingson is Vice President, National Association of Guide Dog Users (NAGDU) and President of the Michael Hingson Group, Inc. www.michaelhingson.com
Help Michael make history and by assisting him in his goal of raising $30,000! Speed on over to the Race for Independence and donate today!
Keep an Open Mind – Part 2
June 1, 2010 by Mike Hingson · Leave a Comment
The Road to National and Personal “Recovery”
The need for keeping an open mind is evident in every area of our lives, whether related to medical breakthroughs, national healthcare, economic recovery and our personal qualify of life. For example, as our nation is reportedly emerging from the economic recession which touched us all, has our response resulted in any substantive change? Even as the government is proposing widespread reforms, we have yet to hear leadership within the banking system taking any responsibility for the problems. Nor are we seeing evidence that the banking industry is willing to open up small business lending. Without a change in mindset within the banking industry, new regulations will likely fail to initiate policies which could foster the creation of new small businesses, creating jobs and generating profits that return to the community.
Self-assessment should be a part of our everyday lives, not just corporately, but individually. “Did I do the best job here?” “How could I have handled that conversation better?” “How can I better teach my kids so they will grow up to be the kind of adults that any parent can admire?” Truly looking at one’s actions is hard to do. There is a reason why we are our own worst critic. Nevertheless, taking a minute or two several times a day to examine what we are doing and how we are doing it with an eye toward finding ways to improve will lead us towards becoming better workers, better family members, better friends, and better people. The process starts with an open mind and a willingness to learn.
The enemy of growth and progress is a rigid belief structure that allows no room to learn from others or even ourselves. As a suggestion, start each morning by asking “what can I do differently to improve myself today?” Before going to bed at night ask what did I do differently to improve myself today?” The very act of asking these questions will set you on a course towards progress. As you genuinely look for answers, you may be pleasantly surprised.
Keep an Open Mind – Part 1
June 1, 2010 by Mike Hingson · 1 Comment
The Key to Breakthrough
This past March, I learned of the death of Dr. Arnall Patz at the age of 89. Most people have never heard of Doctor Patz or his work. I never knew him by name until three years ago.
In the late 1940s, Doctor Patz began to observe that babies born prematurely who were subjected to pure oxygen for two or more weeks exhibited a much higher incidence of blindness than babies who were not subjected to continuous pure oxygen for the same duration. Upon definitive analysis and observation of 75 prematurely born children, Dr. Patz was able to establish a direct correlation between pure oxygen environments for some of these babies and blindness.
He applied to the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation for grants to study this phenomenon. As he told me when I met him in 2007, his grant application was rejected by both organizations, saying that there could not possibly be any correlation between pure oxygen and blindness since, after all, we all breathe oxygen and that it was breathing oxygen that keeps us alive. He was told that his observations could not possibly be scientific in nature.
By the mid-1950s, retrolental fibroplasia, (known today as retinopathy of prematurity) was recognized by many ophthalmologists as the leading cause of blindness in the United States. In fact, it was so widespread among premature births that it lowered the average age of blindness in the United States in 1955 from 67 to 65 years of age. Notwithstanding the original lack of support from the NIH and the NSF, Doctor Patz’ findings were validated and his position was vindicated.
I was one of those premature babies who became blind because of retrolental fibroplasia. I was fortunate that my parents decided that they would not be using the “pity approach” to blindness to raise their child.
Today, retinopathy of prematurity still causes blindness, but only when a prematurely born child must receive continuous pure oxygen to survive. It is now a “given” that if a newborn in an incubator can live without being subjected to ongoing pure oxygen for weeks, then irregular air supply should be utilized as much as possible in order to prevent the blindness we now know can be caused by pure oxygen.
You may be asking what relevance does this story have us personally and the for the world in which we live today. The answer is quite simple if you take a look at the dynamics: On the one hand we had a lone doctor who observed something radically different than what traditional science believed to be fact. On the other hand we had the predominant leaders of the scientific world who rejected scientific facts because they were unwilling or unable to keep enough of an open mind to objectively study Doctor Patz’s data. As history revealed, Dr. Patz was correct and the so-called scientific community was wrong. The delay on the part of science certainly caused more children to go blind than were necessary.
How often do we decide that something told to thus or even some observation we make ourselves cannot possibly be true because it goes against our established pattern of experience and belief? How often do we fail to keep an open mind and thus miss a chance to learn something new? A closed mind is a form of blindness. If we close our minds to new ideas and concepts other than those we have come to accept we may never experience the growth and benefits that those new ideas and concepts potentially bring.
By “keeping an open mind” we can avoid unnecessary blindness figuratively, and as Dr. Patz’s life demonstrated, literally.
You are invited..KNFB Reader Webinar
March 4, 2010 by Mike Hingson · 1 Comment
Everyone is invited Thursday, March 4, to participate in a combined on-line and telephone conference to discuss how we all use the KnfbReader Mobile. A number of persons have wanted a forum to learn from other users “How do you do that?”.
This innovative program will take place Thursday, March 4, beginning at 9PM Eastern time, 8PM Central, 7PM Mountain, 6PM Pacific and 4PM Hawaiian time. In order to attempt to make this program as available to all as possible we are offering two ways to participate.
If you wish to participate via phone Here are the dial-in instructions for the call. The call — in number is (218) 339-3600. The access code is 329906#. Simply call in no later than times given above to be a part of this call. The program is free. Only any relevant long distance charges will apply.
You can also log into our conference room as well.
Please bring your questions as well as your own reading techniques. Please be ready to share and learn from the many other KnfbReader Mobile users and experts who will be participating in the call. No question is too silly and no idea is unwelcome. If you do not own a KnfbReader Mobile here is a chance for you to hear first hand from users how they read, learn, and succeed using this marvelous invention.
I look forward to meeting you all Thursday evening. Thank you in advance for participating in this first KnfbReader Mobile users forum.
Best,
Mike Hingson
Giving Thanks For Team Spirit
November 24, 2009 by Mike Hingson · 1 Comment
At this special time of year when we take inventory of the freedoms afforded to us in the great nation, I am particularly thankful for Team Spirit in America. I survived 9/11 because of teamwork, so for me, as a national public speaker and “expert” on teamwork, I live it, breathe it, share it and teach it. However, two recent events caused me to pause and reflect on the health of our nation’s attitude towards teamwork.
The first event was the announcement that President Obama was awarded the Nobel peace prize. The second more subtle part to the national dialogue on teamwork came with the announcement that Minnesota Vikings’ quarterback Brett Farve “has now beaten every NFL team.” What do these two events have in common? In both cases, golden opportunities were missed to highlight “team spirit” and to enhance a greater feeling of unity in this country during such a critical time in our nation’s history.
In the case of “Brett Farve defeating every NFL team,” the last time I checked, football was not an individual sport but rather a game based on team play. In fact, Mr. Farve has not, and I quote, “defeated every team.” A more appropriate headline would have been, “Brett Farve has led his teams to victory against every NFL team.” Brett Farve is a true leader and as such he himself has always pointed out that he is part of a team and that his victories are the team’s victories. He like other true team sports heroes recognizes the value of teamwork.
His greatest accomplishment, I submit, is not his play on the field but rather the work behind the scenes which he accomplishes to create a winning team spirit and to unify a diverse group of people into a cohesive winning and successful team.
Now let’s take a look at President Obama’s achievement. After the announcement was made that President Barack Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize, the backlash throughout the media was not a sense of pride over the positive recognition the President had brought to America by winning such a universally accepted honor but rather negative commentary such as: “what has he really accomplished to deserve this prize?, and “perhaps the Nobel Prize committee was making a political statement” instead of awarding the prize to someone who truly deserved it.
Of course, many of the less-than-positive comments directed toward this incredible award were politically motivated. Steeped in politics or not, all of the negative commentary throughout the United States political spectrum only served to show how little concern our so-called “thought leaders” have for team spirit or desire to create a sense of unity in this country.
Over the past several years I have written many articles and given many speeches concerning the subject of teamwork and the concepts of teambuilding. I constantly marvel at the fact that so many people say they want to build better teams but when shown how to do so refuse to take responsibility for making teaming relationships a reality. I constantly wonder why if teamwork is such an important goal and if people wanted so much why is it so hard to achieve?
I suspect that the answer is that people don’t really understand teamwork or they are hesitant to subject themselves to the interdependence that teamwork requires.
So how can we contribute to bringing back a sense of unity and teamwork in the United States? First, we must want to be part of the team. The fact is that we have team relationships throughout every aspect of our lives. We have relationships with coworkers, spouses, other students and teachers if we are in school, and some of us even have strong team relationships with other creatures such as the one I have with my guide dog, Africa. Think of what our world would be like if we didn’t have such team relationships. We should be grateful for these relationships and the opportunities they afford us to add value and help shape our destiny, personally and nationally.
A sense of unity and teamwork in our country is no different. It doesn’t matter that the whole United States team contains over 350 million members. The fact is we should still view our entire population as other members on the same team. If we don’t value and accept our interdependence and make that work for the greater good, how can we expect to reach our potential greatness as a country?
Second, we must lead by example. What is each of us doing to help create a sense of teamwork in the United States? Are we demanding that our political leaders find ways to work together? Are we insisting that the various factions of Congress stopped throwing stones and start getting creative in finding solutions to our country’s problems?
I leave you with this question. What have you done today to help build a better team?