Not very often I get out and do public speaking…but for some reason, I find myself doing two public appearances over the next week. A couple of thoughts on how to go about such things since the reason I did radio journalism instead of teevee reporting was because I really like not having my mug all over the place.
The first thing is a noon meeting in Tyler, Texas where a few folks from the web bot discussion group have asked me to drop by their gathering. It’s set up for noon on Saturday and more details (where it will be, for example) will be posted on the Peoplenomics.com web site this afternoon.
The second group will be a local writer’s group meeting in Palestine, Texas next week. Just to talk about writing. That oughta be interesting because I have never been particularly attentive to the whims of the punctuation police, preferring to write whatever comes out of the fingertips. Still, talking about writing makes as much sense as touching smells, so I offered to share a few thoughts.
In both cases, I will be using PowerPoint and a good high-resolution projector.
I’ve tried a lot of different ways to communicate, but whether you’re a presenter trying to stick to an outline, or someone in the audience trying to stay awake and on-point, the only thing better than a well-done .PPT is a full-up video production and while that might be fund, it’s just not practical for most spur-of-the-moment discussions.
A couple of basics of .PPT writing that I try to stick with:
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Keep the slide content short and large – If the audience can’t read it, it’s pretty boring stuff – a page that ‘grays out’ in PowerPoint is inexcusable.
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Match decor, if you can, in color schemes. If you have that dark burgundy carpet in your conference room, with a rosewood conference table, that oughta be your background, or so it seems to me. Minimally, it should be a color scheme that compliments things.
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Never use a white or light background. Way too much glare in general, but even more important, your words sink into oblivion compared with a dark background, if you see my point.
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No more than two or three ‘text’ slides without some kind of graphic. There are plenty of ‘royalty-free’ pictures available on the web.
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For custom graphics, the fastest way to make flow-charts and such is to use something like FreeMind or Inspiration and if necessary, paste a graphic from either into a graphics editor like CorelDraw and then export at whatever resolution/scaling you need.
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Whatever you do, don’t just ‘read’ the PPT – talk around some of the key points on each page according to what you think the audience wants to hear. They will be able to follow the drift of what you’re saying and believe me – nothing is worse than having someone read a PPT – it’s like being in a medial English class, I swear.
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Learn to use PowerPoint for its other great purpose – a kind of visual scratchpad. Back in corpworld days, when a colleague and I were in meetings with a client, one of us would ‘lead’ and one of us would ‘drive’. The role of the ‘driver’ was to make notes on the conversation on a PowerPoint on a real-time basis, so that as soon as a meeting was done, the ‘minutes’ would be emailed around, and there was never any dispute about who said what, or who had what deliverables due when, because the PPT driver had the notes up during the discussion and anything contentious was dealt with in the meeting – just helped efficiency a lot.
Most of my PPT’s use a dark blue background, seldom touch things like animations (can you say hokey?) and if I have time to do a soundtrack (which is what I have a studio for, eh?) then put music into it (off a licensed library, of course) and make the soundtrack really ‘pop’. Otherwise, you’re better off doing no soundtrack.
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One of these days, I might actually get a weekly planner going for “Copi9ng” section content. Something like management 101 on Mondays, Taxes and personal finance on Tuesdays, tinfoil hat Wednesdays, wildcard Thursdays, and then home & garden Fridays. Sounds useful, doesn’t it?
But in the end, like most everything else I do…it will start off on one heading and drift around to something else. So why bother in the first place?
Anyway, by sometime this afternoon, I should have the meeting location notes (Tyler, Texas is a hint, noon Saturday) up on the subscriber web site. Based on response so far, looks like about 50-100 people will be on hand. The way I figure it is this: Even if my PPT isn’t to your liking, you’d at least be able to meet up with like-minded people and chat about this, or that. Folks with the same mindset who won’t look at you like you have two heads when you say ‘predictive linguistics’ or ‘bank holidays’ may be ion short supply in other areas…
Maxa’d Out!
The newest update to the Maxa Cookie Manager software has been released and you can download it here:
Jens ) Maxa’s chief techno-wizard, outlines the update’s features as follows:
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New option to fine tune automatic deletion of cookies according to evaluation result and age. This improves automatic cookie handling as you can specify to delete cookies that are older than x minutes automatically, or only delete web bugs or those that were rated yellow for example. You’ll find this in the white list window.
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Added history of visits to privacy test -Support of version 2.5 of Flock internet browser
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Support of “The World” browser -Stability and speed improvements
If you try the free version and like it, remember it doesn’t delete the browser-independent cookies unless you upgrade. There’s an upgrade option in the upper right of the demo – the unlock will cost you $35.
Why have I been such a supporter of the Maxa product – I mean for months and months? Well, you saw where even CNN is running headlines like “Think you deleted your cookies? Think again…“
Now that this is rolling over into the MSM, we will likely see a lot more headlines like “Flash Cookie Researchers Spark Quantcast Change” as folks become aware that the browser-independent cookies can not only be a privacy backdoor, but they can also slow your computer performance way down.
Oh, and since I put Maxa on of my busiest machine here, it has eliminated (you’ll love this) 32,841 cookies.
Greek Flu
Reports in media that flu shots will be mandatory in Greece aren’t exactly accurate, says our reader in the land of gyros and Retsina…
“Dear George
The article about “Greece, are planning to make swine/engineered flu vaccinations mandatory for everyone” it’s kind of old news here since the media is borbarding us bit by bit every single day, since April-May i think. The odd thing about it is the speach of doctors in the media about “the new vaccines will be tested on all of us, since there is no time to see the reactions of it in a bigger scale” and that each and everyone that wants (or must or forced) to have the vaccine will sign a paper that states, more or less, that “I, the receiver of the vaccine, am aware of all the possible reactions or problems that it might cause and take it by my own will”, so the health department will be fine after “who knows what” this vaccine might cause. I thing that i will stick to vits C and D3 and take the vaccine only if i get the flu or drugged unconscious.
If you need help with that, Retsina may help…
Flying Lessons
Elaine’s going to be taking a flying lesson later on today. Asked her to take a camera up and snap a picture of Uretopia from the air…will let you see it if it comes out/she remembers/etc.
My son says flying Microsoft Flight simulator is harder than flying a real plane. I think that sometimes, too. Maybe I need three monitors instead of two and the yoke and foot pedals…
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Still, not even considering an airplane until she gets her ticket to solo. Then…well….airplanes hold their value pretty good compared with, oh, paper money, for example.
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One more reason I got my pilot’s license updated: “Airlines to require more passenger daya” starting this week. Don’t mind submitting my gender (if the beard and mustache aren’t enough of a clue on the photo ID, or reporting my age. But ask Elaine her age? Ha! Hat’s classified so far over MAJIC-12 it’s not funny.,…
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Send comments to george@ure.net
The UrbanSurvival Mall:
Peoplenomics This Week:
Which Critical Path?
We are now less than two weeks from the August 22 ‘hot date’ in the predictive linguistics work from Cliff at www.halfpasthuman.com and it’s as good a time as any to have a little chalk-talk about how this fall could work out. The earthquakes in Baja, occurring with almost uncanny precision as expected, and the following 6.1 in Japan fulfilled all of our ‘duality’ expectations, so we’re left with a very hard set of linguistics to deal with for the fall. So dire are the possibilities that I told my son, who starts his EMT re-certification program in September in the Pacific Northwest, that he may not be able to complete it. Moreover, there’s one critical path into our future that could result in him hiking to Texas (from Washington state) as a wandering medical practitioner in 2010. Action point:, He should pay particular attention to the EMT-W content on the side. If you’re not familiar with EMT-W (sometimes WEMT) curriculum, it’s designed for first responders in a wilderness setting where you’re basically on your own. It’s one thing to save a life with 4-minutes response times, one minutes from an AED, and withy 150-drugs and a 12-lead ECG 7-minutes out. It’s entirely another when there are no communications and you’ve got only a trail first-aid pack, OTC medications, and a good pocket knife. From an emergency medicine standpoint, we may all be at either extreme of that spectrum within a year; such is the breadth of critical path possibilities.
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MyGroPonics
My commodity broker JB Slear and I have written a simple book to get you started on high density hydroponics. It’s an example of how someone with a little creativity, access to a few ‘dollar stores’ and willing to try out some new farming techniques can grow an amazing amount of produce sin a very small space – like even an apartment balcony (if it gets some sunlight). Sound interesting? It’s just $10 bucks here…
Maxa-Cookie Manager
No, when youi tell your browser to ‘empty your cookies’ of web sites you’ve visited, it probably won’t get them all. Why? Because there is a whole class of ‘browser-independent’ cookies that will gobble up space on your hard drive, but more important is they will sneak out information about you without you being aware of it. Ever week I get emails like this one:
“Thanks again for the Maxa Tools recommendation, I never knew how much additional garbage gets attached every time I browse. “
Test drive it free by downloading it. To upgrade to full functionality will be $35 bucks. Is your privacy worth it?
Once you try it out, click the upgrade button (!) on the upper right hand side for the $35 unlock to get it to remove even those nasty and highly intrusive ‘non-browser specific’ cookies. Bonus: You computer may run faster. I’ve taken 1,000 2,000 cookies off my machine with version 4 now. It’s just amazing.
Attn: Mac Drivers: MCM does support the Safari Browser, but that does not mean it is compatible with Mac OS. Maxa-Tools only support the Windows world….so far. Given Jens and the other engineers time…
Feeling Thorny?
Want to be a thorn in the side of the Old World Order? Simply click here and send a link to this site to everyone on your distro list…Nothing more dangerous than sharp, clear-thinking upstarts who ask a lot of questions, eh? Unless you believe WTC-7 fell over on its own, of course….
“Live on $10,000″ Updated
I’ve told you in the past to order my ebook “How to Live on $10,000 a year or less…” with the rationale that “We’re all going to live it shortly, anyway.“ Don’t know as you have looked lately, but the unemployment rate is up more than 3% since I wrote the first edition of that book and underpasses have never been more homely. Worth ordering? Just visit www.liveontenthousand.com or, click this little whizzie…
It’s an automatic download. It’s written in an information dense style: The whole thing runs about 65 pages, but it gives you a vision of how to not only live on the cheap, but also how to migrate up the economic foodchain if you have a little hustle left… Click here for the index and details.
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Last week’s report is here. For back issues of this site, click here. (Goes back to 1997!)