Mark your calendars, and synchronize those watches, because PresentationCamp is ready to go!

PresentationCamp Toronto
Tuesday, March 23rd, 6-8pm
Ryerson University Library, Room Lib 72

Get your free ticket here.

The schedule will be available in the coming weeks.

We’re still looking for dynamic presenters. Leave a comment if you’re interested in speaking!

Thanks to the Ryerson ITMSA and SevenL Networks for sponsoring the event!

Here’s the thing: I like giving and receiving gifts as much as everybody else.

Gifts mean something. Gifts mean that somebody is thinking of you. Gifts mean that a person went out of their way to get that thing that they thought you would appreciate. Gifts make you feel good!

But, here’s the problem:

• Commercial interests dominate the times of the year when everybody’s expected to be buying things. This leads to undue pressure, and impulse buying decisions.
• Despite their best intentions, your gift giver usually ends up buying a thing that you just don’t need, because they truly don’t know what thing it is that you want.
• But, they don’t know what you want because you don’t know what you want. You make up things that you think you want, so you have some ideas of things to give to these people.
• And then you finally give or receive the thing, it doesn’t meet expectations, and is eventually forgotten about.
• Now this physical thing is hard to get rid of, because it has an emotional, or personal attachment. It becomes an object that just takes up room.

Awk-ward.

Personally, I want to give memorable, meaningful, and/or useful things that don’t take up room in people’s lives.

So, I did some thinking, asking, and searching. What might such things look like?

Here’s what I came up with:

Continue reading Minimal, Meaningful Gifts »

At the end of every course I teach, I hand out an evaluation form.

Generally, I’m happy with the marks I get in return. Alas, there’s this one question in which I consistently don’t do so hot. This question asks everybody to rate the instructor (that’s me) on their…

Ability to make the course interesting

The results aren’t… great.

Without going into too much detail, what I train people on is our software package, which is essentially an all-in-one toolkit for business analysts (BAs).

Granted, the subject matter of the course can get dry, which is why I strive to inject humour into the course, to keep things lively.

And I know some people are forced to be there who would rather not be. Still others have a highly-technical background, making the material seem, well, pedestrian. I can usually tell who these folks are, and identify their evaluation forms.

Call me optimistic, however, because I believe that at some level I can still make the course interesting enough for just about everybody.

So I began to wonder, just how are people interpreting the question in question? Just what does “interesting” mean?

At first, I thought that people might be asking themselves whether I made the course seem fun. I’ve had positive feedback on this front, so I didn’t think that “fun” told the whole story.

And then I thought, maybe it’s about whether I’m making the course relevant to their jobs. After considering this over the span of the past few classes, however, I adjusted my thinking.

The real question was actually this:

How should I rate the instructor on their ability to make what I do seem more interesting?

In my case “what I do” is business analysis. And what I’ve learned is that some — perhaps most — BAs have not been through any sort of formal training to do their jobs. This makes our class, perhaps, the first foray into a study about what they do for a living.

Looking back on my classes through that lens has been rather interesting, indeed.

With all of the thinking about minimizing that I’ve been doing lately, I realized I hadn’t put any thought towards minimizing what I take with me when I travel.

That is, I hadn’t until the U.S. Transportation Security Administration’s restrictions for us Canadians came into play.

Continue reading Traveling Light »

I just neutered my BlackBerry.

The light went on (or rather, off) when I finally realized that I didn’t have to use the BlackBerry to do what it was designed to do, namely automatically delivering me my mail.

Now, I use the Gmail app, which allows me to check email on my schedule, without the constant reminder that there’s new messages waiting for me every time I look at my phone. The other awesome side-benefit to this is that I’m looking at the exact same inbox I see on my computer, so they stay in sync. Before, I had an inbox to manage on the Berry that I later had to reconcile manually against Gmail, even though they were technically the same inbox!

Here are some other ways I have minimized the flow of information into my life, either by eliminating inboxes, by preventing what sort of stuff goes into them, or by reducing the number of distractions they cause:

Continue reading Minimizing Inputs »

To keep all those new year’s resolutions, one needs a method of keeping track and monitoring the completion of the action items needed to make them happen.

If you’re like most people, you probably put those items into a list with the full intention of checking them off one-by-one as they are achieved. A noble goal. Unfortunately, this tends to fall apart as the year progresses, as you get overwhelmed by daily life, or for various other reasons that I’m sure you’re making up right now.

One way to stay on top of your resolutions is to make your task list work smarter for you. Here’s how.

Continue reading Making the Most of Your Task List »

Twenty ten is going to be a big year for me, if I have anything to say about it …and I do.

As of this particular moment in time, I resolve to:

Run

The problems I have with working out in gyms are the reliance on a place and equipment, and sheer boredom. Running, on the other hand, requires only a good pair of shoes, and opens up my neighborhood (and anywhere I travel to on business) to exploration.

To make this goal concrete,

• I’m aiming to complete a half-marathon later in the year. I’ve narrowed it down to one of two particular events in September and October. Training begins now, and equates to 40 minute workouts, three times a week.

Introspect

What inspires, drives, and motivates me? I’m already putting some real thought into answering this question.

But I believe that a real journey to find myself is truly in order:

• I’m going to travel, by myself, to Africa, in the Fall. If I could go earlier, I would, but I need up at least three weeks of vacation days based on the options I’m interested in.

Challenge

It’s always good to step outside that zone of comfort we live within, in life.

To begin to challenge myself,

• I’m going to talk to at least one stranger every day. The rule is that I have to be the one to initiate the conversation.
• I’m finally going to go skydiving, around July.

Minimize

One must continually challenge the need and place of everything in your life, and I intend to do just that.

My storage locker is packed to the brim, and various “stuff” dominates the nooks of my home. This will be an ongoing exercise, but,

• I plan to immediately start purging, as my schedule allows me to give away, donate, or dispose.

I’ve already started getting rid of a lot of the material crap in my life. But this is the year I fully intend on pushing myself to the point where I’ve minimized as much as possible.

Build

Creating things is just part of my nature. While I shall endeavor to regularly update this here blog, and contribute to ProductCamp, I need some new projects.

To start, I intend to:

• Launch PresentationCamp, hopefully early this year. An event like this requires the assistance of many others, but the onus, this time, will be on me to pull it all together. I look forward to the challenge.

…Set More Goals

While that about sums up my concrete goals at the moment, I fully intend on evolving and adding to this list over the coming months.

So, what are your resolutions for 2010?

Want to learn how to make your presentations better? I know I do!

PresentationCamp is yet another BarCamp-style event that is focussed on helping each other learn more about the design and delivery of presentations. PresentationCamps have taken place in SF, Seattle, LA, and elsewhere, and have followed the traditional BarCamp format.

I want to launch PresentationCamp in Toronto, but we’re going to do things a little differently to begin. Rather than start off with a full-day event, let’s have a two-hour-long, weekday evening event, with eight (8) ten-minute presentations. If there’s enough interest — and I don’t doubt that there will be — we can expand this to a full-day affair.

You in? Great! Your first step is to follow @prescampTO.

Now, leave a comment below or contact me directly if you think you can help me with the following:

• Presenters. Do you give presentations for a living, and have tips to suggest around a given topic, such as a presentation style?
• A Venue. My guess is we’ll need a large auditorium, and we’ll aim for around 200 people to attend. I’m reaching out to Ryerson (host to ProductCamp and the next two DemoCamps), but if you have contacts at, say, Rogers or MaRS, please let me know.
• Sponsors? I’m hoping we can do this first event without the need for paying sponsors, but if the venue needs cash to open up for us, then we’ll need to offset the cost. Are you interested in sponsoring PresentationCamp?

Drop me a line, or simply follow @prescampTO for updates. Let’s do this thing!

So, it’s almost been a full year since I became a vegetarian.

(Technically, January 2nd, 2009 was my first full day, because I slipped up on New Year’s Day by partaking in a single, tasty shrimp!)

Here’s a look back at my first year as a vegetarian.

Continue reading Vegetarianism »

Lately I’ve started to think about what I do on a daily basis in terms of two things: consumption, and production.

Consumption is what you do when you absorb material produced by other people. Whether this is listening to music, watching TV, reading, or surfing the Internets.

Production is creating stuff for myself: Writing, web design, working towards a project, cooking… whatever.

I know I’m doing too much of the former, and not enough of the latter.

Some consumption is OK, of course: consumption of certain content leads to better produced content. But, in general, if I can’t connect something I’m consuming to something I want to be producing, I’m effectively wasting my time with it.

This is not to say that I’m against having fun, which generally involves consumption: watching movies, reading my friends’ activity streams, and so on. At some level I need to satisfy my basic social needs. The trick, however, is to not let these activities consume me.

In aiming to achieve a more sustainable lifestyle, I find that this metaphor factors nicely in that context, as well: We really should be considering what we consume, and by how much. Consuming less also contributes to a simpler lifestyle.