Here is somebody in their mid twenties who has already spent a decade immersed in a world of collaboration and web based networking. As William Gibson said, “The future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed”.

This is interesting, because I’m both leading and following, learning from what’s new and what’s old.

The new: I represent a whole bunch of new ideas we’re still trying to figure out. Many of the things I do helps people imagine the future. Researchers who explore how power users work using our new collaborative tools often interview me (which is great, because I get to find out what they’re working on!). People figuring out virtual leadership look at how I and other people can influence without authority.  My value is not only in the ideas and effort I contribute, but in the questions I ask and the assumptions I help explore.

The old: All that is so small, though, compared to the awesomeness of being in a company where people have been thinking about and working on collaboration for decades. The infrastructure we can build on, the critical mass of talent we have, the way we challenge ourselves to figure out how we can work better and the world can work better—I love that. 

What I identify with the most is this ad:

… except I smile more.

People are teaching me so much. I work on sharing as much of it as possible, and on figuring out how IBM and the world can make the most of the person they are helping me become. I don’t know enough of the organization to make that overall choice yet, but there must be something amazing we can do with the gifts people have given me.

It’ll be a great adventure!

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

Steeped in collaboration

Last Wednesday, I decided to invest time in figuring out how I can get closer to saving time and money through cooking once a month. We’ve comfortably settled into a routine of cooking once a week, which saves us a lot of time and lets us focus during weekdays. What would it take to cook for two weeks, freeing up a weekend? What would it take to prepare for longer?

I emptied our chest freezer and the freezer drawers of our fridge. Then I inventoried the contents, discovering useful things along the way. (It turns out we have three packages of frozen okra, and three and a half packages of frozen shrimp.) I measured the internal dimensions of the different spaces and drew diagrams.

After I put the frozen items back, I reorganized them on paper, and then moved things around to match our new organizational scheme. Packed lunches and large containers go into the chest freezer to take advantage of its regular shape. Breakfasts, desserts (lots of frozen home-made tarts!), bones for stock, and small packages of ingredients go into the freezer drawers because that freezer is easier to search.

I picked up 16 Rubbermaid Take-away containers (in addition to the eight we already had). Standardizing on one storage system is important because it means not having to look for the correct lid. We still have a lot of different storage systems, but I plan to simplify that soon. I also picked up Ziploc zipper freezer bags, which I can use to freeze large portions of soups, sauces, and other things.

I estimate that I can fill the chest freezer to capacity with up to 52 of the Take-away containers, which can be used for individual lunch portions. If I want to further conserve space, I can also freeze larger portions (without rice, for example), cook fresh rice as needed, and assemble the lunches or dinners during the week.

I’m also planning to make cheesecake tarts, lemon tarts, and other varieties, so that I can throw them into our new frozen-desserts drawer and we can enjoy them any time. I may also pick up a bunch of different kinds of apples and make this Saturday an apple-tart-tasting party, as many people have not likely thought about the differences between the apple varieties. It’s hard to compare when you eat them on separate occasions, but I can give people the opportunity to sample many different kinds of apples. <laugh>

Next steps:

• Clear freezer by using up the bulk ingredients
• Collect bulk cooking recipes
• Make meal plan and shopping list
• Experiment with online grocery delivery
• Try cooking for two weeks

I think about relentless improvement, even for the little things in life. Figuring out the little things in life frees me up to work on the big things.

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

Kitchen kaizen

I’ve written about some of the things I want to learn at work, such as facilitation skills. I’ve also written about some of the things I wanted to learn in life: getting better at storytelling, helping new hires connect, sharing what I’m learning, helping people change, nurturing relationships over a distance, and being more practical. What I hadn’t really done before was to make a map. (Or if I did, I forgot about it, and what use is that? )

So here is what I want to learn, and now I can take that and translate the work parts into an individual development plan, and add next actions for work and life learning to my to-do list. =D I definitely recommend going through the process of thinking about what you want to learn and sharing that with other people. I’m sure that I’ll add or remove things from this, but it’s a good start!

Thanks to TerriAnne Novak for the nudge to think about this.

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

What do I want to learn? Making a map

…It is important to note that by simply participating, managers transfer their status into the new paradigm; while not participating creates a real discrepancy.

Cecille Demailly, Toward Enterprise 2.0: Making the Change in the Corporation, as cited in Bill Ives’ blog post

Sarah Siegel’s reflections on virtual leadership made me think about the changes that IBM is going through. We’re moving further apart from each other (more remote/mobile workers, more geographically-spread management functions), and at the same time, moving closer to each other through social networking tools. Front-line managers might still see many of their team members face to face, but dotted-line relationships across countries are becoming more and more widespread, and middle managers work in an increasingly virtual world.

Many people struggle to translate management and leadership skills to the virtual world. They feel the loss of contact as we move away from offices and co-located teams, but they don’t have a lot of guidance on what excellent leadership looks like in this new globally-integrated world. There are no recipes or clear best practices in standard management and communication books, in the MBA courses they might have taken, and in the business magazines. Their own managers might also be dealing with the growing pains of the organization.

So some managers participate, and many don’t. The ones who participate are figuring out what works, and they may make mistakes along the way. The ones who don’t participate (out of fear? lack of time? lack of confidence?) might end up finding it even harder to get started, and then people feel confused and isolated because they aren’t getting leadership and direction from the people who are supposed to lead them.

I think managers really do want to help people work more effectively. It’s hard with all the external pressures and the pace of change, tools that are constantly evolving and practices that need to be adapted for the times, and greater challenges from both inside and outside IBM. Communities like the one Sarah Siegel organizes for IBM managers are vital, because managers need to be able to connect with other managers and learn from each other.

There are no clear answers yet. Organizations around the world are still figuring things out. Many of the principles remain the same, but translating them online when you can’t see body language and you can’t make eye contact is difficult for many people.

People need to learn how to not only work around the challenges of a virtual world, but also take advantage of its strengths. And there are strengths. Virtual teams are not just shadows of what we can do face-to-face. Going online brings new capabilities that we can explore.

We need to help managers figure this out. Along the way, we’ll end up helping ourselves and other people, so it’s worth the effort.

I remember growing up and realizing that even though I’m the youngest of three children, my parents were learning all sorts of new things about parenting while raising me. That helped make it easier for me to understand them instead of getting frustrated or upset. It’s like that with managers, too. Managers are learning about working with us just as we’re learning to work with them and with IBM.

So, how can we help? Here are some ways:

• We can explore and model behaviour. For example, I believe that a culture of knowledge-sharing can make a real difference to IBM. If I experiment with that and model the behaviour, I can help managers and non-managers see what it’s like, what the benefits are, and how to get started. Mahatma Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”
• We can give feedback. I think my manager finds it amusing that I think a lot about what brings out the best in me and I suggest that to him. Managers can’t read minds. Make it easy. If your manager is receptive to the idea, give suggestions and share what you think.
• We can coach. When the pain of ineffective methods is strong enough to drive change (think about all the frustration over endless reply-to-all conversations), people will look for better ways to do things. Coach people on how to use tools and how to change practices. It’ll take time and they’ll probably get frustrated along the way, but you can help them keep their eyes on the goal (and remember how painful the old ways were!).
• We can help people see the big picture. Resource actions can sap morale. Impersonal communications can make you feel that the company has drifted from its values. Even if people are afraid, you can work on making sense of the situation, focusing on the positive, and looking for ways to keep moving forward. Vision isn’t just the CEO’s job. What you say and how you act can influence how other people feel about their work and how well they can focus on making things better instead of getting lost in the stress.

There are a lot of individual contributors within IBM. If we see leadership as something everyone in the organization does instead of being limited to those who have the “manager” bit in their Bluepages record, if we remember that leadership competencies are something we can express no matter where we are in the organizational chart and we take responsibility for helping make IBM and the world better, and if we help as many people as we can, we’ll not only get through these growing pains, but we’ll make a company worth working with even more.

Thanks to Rawn Shah for sharing a link to Bill’s blog post through Lotus Connections Profiles, and to Sarah for prompting me to write more about this!

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

Leadership going virtual: how we can help managers

There are the existing goals and commitments that come down through the management chain. I want to work with IBM on making those happen because I believe in what we’re doing, and I believe that the work will help me grow. Saying yes to those is easy.

And then there’s the really important question of what I want to do with IBM, if IBM can be this platform that lets me make a bigger difference. What I want to do with IBM is to build a world where work really does flow like water, where people can do and be their best wherever they are.

If we can figure out how to work with the system—if we can figure out how to align and support even a fraction of the energy and talent in this 400,000-strong organization and our extended ecosystem—imagine how much we can help change the world and how much better we’ll work. Look at how much the world has already changed in the past few decades. Wouldn’t it be amazing to find out what we could do if we could help people fully use their talents?

So what does that look like, long-term?

• People can easily and effectively collaborate with people around the world. This means knowing how to reach out and find resources, work together, and deliver results. Challenge: Lots of growing pains right now, especially as work moves around the world and companies shift towards more diverse workforces. People don’t know which tools to use when, and we’re still figuring out how to work together.
• People can work on what they’re good at and passionate about. We can get better at connecting people with opportunities and adapting to changing needs.
• People learn and share as much as they can. Learning from other people and sharing what we’re learning becomes a natural part of the way we work.
• People work well. We communicate clearly, without too much jargon. We communicate as people, not hiding behind passive words or inhuman abstractions. We connect with each other.

How can I help make this real?

• Consulting: I can help organizations, communities, teams, and individuals change the way they work by helping them learn about tools, practices, and success stories. I can coach people on how to develop new practices. I can look for what people are doing well, document those practices, and explore how they can work even better. If I can get really good at consulting, I can help people identify the strengths that they can build on, recognize and share what works, and plan how to address the challenges that get in the way of collaboration.
• Practising relentless improvement: I’m good at looking for small ways to improve processes and building tools to help people work more effectively. If I can get really good at relentless improvement, I’ll be able to identify key changes that help people work much more effectively, shape a culture where people love practising relentless improvement themselves, and formalize and share improvements through processes and tools.
• Learning and sharing: I’m good at learning tons from people around me and sharing what I’m learning through presentations, blog posts, and other ways to scale up the knowledge. If I can get really good at learning and sharing, I’ll be able to inspire people to learn and share, map out what people need to know, share lots of insights, and organize it so that people can find what they need.
• Connecting: I’m good at connecting people with other people, resources, and tools. This is partly because of a wide network and broad exposure, partly because I deliberately look for ways I can connect people, and partly because I work on taking notes and thinking of associations. If I can get really good at connecting, I’ll be able to not only help people build on others’ work instead of duplicating effort, but also push the network knowledge into the organization so that people can find relevant people and resources without being bottle-necked by connectors. I could also get really good at connecting and then use this to help clients understand complex technical systems.
• Showing the big picture: I’m good at showing people how they fit into the big picture, why their work matters, what else is going on, and what they can do next to grow. If I can get really good at helping people see that, I’ll be able to shape people’s motivation to work, help people stay passionate and engaged, and show what the next steps are.

It’s interesting to look at this list. Although I enjoy building systems and developing my technical skills, I think I’ll get closer to what I want to do by focusing on the business side. My technical aspect helps me because I can automate tasks, crunch numbers, analyze information, and build tools for remembering things. For the kinds of challenges I’m really curious in exploring, though, technology isn’t the limiting factor. Technology-wise, things change really quickly, and I’m confident that people can build what we need. What we’re limited by is our ability to change and learn.

What does that look like in the short- and medium-term? What can I work towards for my career?

One of the quirks about planning my career is that I don’t need to work towards a specific position in order to make the kind of difference I want to make. I can already work on this from where I am. My current role already involves all of those capabilities to some extent, and I also contribute outside my official job role. My work with Innovation Discovery helps me learn about all sorts of interesting people and interesting projects. My mentors teach me about consulting skills and facilitation techniques. My tasks provide me with plenty of opportunities for relentless improvement. Learning and sharing, connecting people across the organization, helping people see the big picture and the next steps—these are things I do for work and fun.

So, how can I make the future even better than today?

• Better alignment: The more closely my goals and my team’s goals are aligned, the more resources I can tap to make things happen, and the better IBM and our clients can take advantage of what I’m good at.
• Immersion: If I focus on developing one capability (or a set of related ones), I can create and share more value faster than if I spread myself out. For example, if I focused on doing lots of technology adoption coaching, I can build lots of resources around that instead of making gradual progress in lots of areas. (Although touching so many different areas of work also helps me with connecting…)
• Better inspiration: If I work with other high-performing teams that do connection and collaboration really well, I can learn tons, share insights with other teams, and bring my own talents to the mix. If I work with different kinds of high-performing teams, I’ll learn different things. For example, I’m currently learning a ton about working with decision-makers and spanning boundaries within IBM, because those are the things my Innovation Discovery team excels at. I wonder what other teams can teach me, and how they might benefit from cross-pollination.
• More leverage: I can learn about contributing through a team in addition to contributing as an individual. People-management sounds like it’ll take a lot more work than individual contribution (and management seems less secure, too!), but it seems to be a good way to break past the limits on how much value I can individually create. I have 24 hours in the day, like anyone else, but if I can figure out how to be a great manager and enable lots of other people to work at their peak, we can create more collective value. I love learning about management and leadership, and I’m curious about what’s possible. I don’t know enough about this because most of my mentors are individual contributors, so I don’t have a good sense yet of whether management would be a good fit or how I can go about exploring it.

There are many paths that I can take. Here are a few paths that people have recommended I think about:

• Working towards becoming a client IT architect: David Ing recommended this because it involves low travel, takes advantage of my strengths in connecting the dots and keeping complex systems in my head, and helps me build a deep understanding of a particular industry (probably public sector?). It’s a revenue position, so it should keep me relatively safe from resource actions, and it will allow me to continue contributing to IBM.
• Focus on collaboration, maybe figure out some kind of rotational program between client-facing and staff positions: I would love to alternate between focusing on helping our clients adapt and helping IBM adapt. If I have the capacity to do this simultaneously, even better. Working with IBM will help me deepen my understanding and empathize with client challenges, while working with clients will help me share what we’re learning and broaden our perspectives. David Singer suggested this because being client-facing means not having to worry too much about other people cutting budgets, while the rotational aspect will help me learn more.
• Working towards becoming a master inventor. Boz suggested this one because I love helping people come up with and improve ideas, I love learning, and I love connecting the dots.

Staff positions are interesting and I know a lot of people who do incredible work. I love the variety of my internal and external network and the things I learn from constant interaction with clients, though. So it looks like I’ll focus on growing as a consultant and figuring out how to be the bridge. Following an individual contribution path will give me more flexibility, I think, than growing into people management.

I’m fascinated by small businesses and entrepreneurship, but an organization of IBM’s scale and influence can do so many amazing things. I want to figure out how to work with an enterprise like this to make things happen. So I’m going to figure out what I can do with IBM, because I want to make a bigger difference than I can make alone. =)

What does that mean for the next year and the next few years?

• I can deepen the work that I do with Innovation Discovery by volunteering to take on more responsibility for engagements, or by applying relentless improvement to the social networking and collaboration topics that clients are interested in. Scaling the program up is interesting and creates value, but if I’m going to focus on that, I need to figure out how to focus more on the consulting or sales aspect instead of taking the training/staff approach so that it’s in line with my long-term goals.
• If I want to focus on the client IT architect path, I can find a mentor and look for engagements that will let me immerse myself in other kinds of systems and how to work with them. Yes, even if that means stepping outside my wonderful open source / web application world. After all, our team is good at application services, so I should take advantage of those competencies.
• If I want to grow towards the strategy and transformation practice, I can find mentors, shadow or support engagements focused on Web 2.0, and build more thought leadership inside and outside IBM around collaboration and technology adoption.
• I can deepen my technical leadership capabilities by sharing what I’m learning, exploring more virtual leadership skills, and helping people become better technical leaders and individual contributors.

What are some next actions that I can take?

• Find role models in strategy and transformation, learning and knowledge, and other areas that I’m considering. Find out what their work is like and look for resonance.
• Negotiate my job role with the Innovation Discovery team so that we can deliberately develop certain capabilities.
• Invest into learning and sharing as much as possible around collaboration and change, learning about different industries along the way.

If I can build lots of understanding and insight around collaboration both within and outside IBM, then I can help people learn and experiment within the company, and I can inspire clients to learn and experiment as well, and I can (I hope!) convince clients to invest in partnering with IBM so that we can help them create value much faster.

So that’s what I’m thinking, and now that it’s outside my head and in a form I can share, I can work with other people on making it clearer.

Now the hard work begins: clarifying, creating, collaboratig, learning, sharing… =)

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

Thinking about what I want to do with IBM

It’s been almost ten years since I gave my first public technical talk on August 25, 2001. I’ve experimented with:

• trying to read my slides without glasses (doesn’t work)
• wearing contacts (okay, but a hassle)
• using bullet points (doesn’t really work)
• having my computer talk me through my presentation (actually works, with Emacs and speech synthesis)
• writing my talks out as blog posts first (works)
• storyboarding my slides (works)
• using full-screen images (stock photography kinda works, Flickr is more fun, but this “look” is getting much too common)
• using only text (works)
• lowering my energy level (doesn’t work)
• sharing my presentations online (works, and reaches way more people)
• using short URLs in my slides (somewhat works; some companies block these URLs)
• encouraging re-runs and revisions (works)
• taking advantage of my blog archive (works)
• shortening my talk and using more time for Q&A (works)
• using the backchannel for more interactivity and learning (works awesomely)
• using the webcam for remote presentations (works awesomely)
• using a hat to balance out  harsh-top lighting when needed (works)
• professional editing help (kinda works)
• shorter scripts and more improvisation (works; tested with Ignite presentation)
• scripting with a target words-per-minute count (probably works, although I haven’t tested the results yet; should follow up with recordings)
• limiting travel and focusing on local or Web-based presentations (works)
• watching excellent talks for inspiration, such as those from TED and Slideshare (works)
• focusing on concrete next actions instead of general theory (works)
• strict presentation constraints (works; tested with Ignite and Twitter-paragraph-length presentations)
• using a hat or distinctive suit to make me easy to find at a face-to-face conference (works)
• easier-to-remember URLs (sachachua.com is hard to spell; LivingAnAwesomeLife.com is long but easy to remember; livingawesomely and liveawesomely don’t quite roll off the tongue)
• posting reflections on what went well and what I can improve (works awesomely)
• speech exercises (kinda works; need more practice)
• reading tons of books about public speaking and presentations (works)
• submitting proposals for conferences, just in case (works awesomely)
• making it easy for people to find previous talks (works)
• drinking lukewarm water (works)
• telling stories (works, want to do more of it)
• using stick figures (fun to make, faster than finding pictures, and makes people happy; works awesomely)

I’m looking forward to experimenting with metaphors (both visual and verbal), humour, stories, more content, and animation. =)

Someday, when I save up for it and decide that it’s a good thing to spend on, I’d like to get a tablet PC and figure out how to use that for presentations. (Wouldn’t that be awesome?) I remember seeing Tom Wujec show us this totally awesome drawing / storyboarding tool, which I unfortunately forgot to get the name of, but if anyone’s familiar with the Autodesk suite of tools and remembers some kind of index card thing…

It’s been eight and a half years of deliberate practice. I’ve come a long way from the nervous speaker who stuttered her way through her first talk and panicked when she saw only one person attending her second. (The rest had been late from lunch, and had politely stayed outside the room when they saw me sitting down and chatting with the lone audience member.) I’m going to keep working on this because it’s fun to learn something well enough to explain it to someone else, and this kind of sharing helps me scale up and help hundreds and thousands of people at a time.

I probably take a lot of things for granted now, so it’s a good thing I’ve been sharing some of my notes along the way. This is why it pays to share what you’re learning, because after a while, it gets hard to explain how you got from point A to point B.

I want to help lots of people learn how to present well. Eventually I may become a polished, well-practiced presenter like Seth Godin or Dan Heath, and then it will be harder for people who are just starting out to think, ”Hey, maybe I can learn to speak too.” But then I can help figure out what “awesome” looks like, and that will help other people build on it and figure out what “more awesome” looks like. So it’s all good.

How are you growing? Share your notes in the comments! =)

Thanks to Rohan Jayasekera for the conversation!

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

Experiments as a presenter

• Work
• [X] Prepare overview of Sametime Unyte and Lotus Connections Communities for my second-line manager
• [X] Facilitate Idea Lab and summarize results
• [X] Write about Idea Lab refinements
• [X] Revise Innovation Discovery wiki
• [X] Make UK travel arrangements
• [X] Learn tons of cool stuff at The Art of Marketing
• [X] Talk about productivity with mentees and contacts

Relationships

• [X] Try a new recipe
• [/] Finalize care package
• Enjoyed being taken care of by W- after my wisdom teeth extraction: pureed congee, oatmeal, egg custard, cheesecake, Jello… mmm

Life

• [X] Participate in Ignite Toronto
• [X] Have wisdom teeth taken out
• [X] Test evening themes for working on short-term goals
• Biked again – yay! 8km
• Simplified my wardrobe and donated a lot of clothes
• Read the “His Dark Materials” trilogy, thanks to W-

Plans for next week

Work

• [  ] Help with re-run for Remote Presentations that Rock
• [  ] Branding / social marketing chat with IBM AU/NZ social media marketing folks
• [  ] Prepare collaboration presentation for UK workshop
• [  ] Finalize UK workshop travel arrangements
• [  ] Prepare for trip

Relationships

• [  ] Explore more recipes
• [  ] Sort out photography
• [  ] Host tea party
• [  ] Tidy up some more

Life

• [  ] Go for follow-up appointment with dental surgeon
• [  ] Recover from wisdom teeth extraction

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

Weekly review: Week ending March 7, 2010

With the general move away from face-to-face conferences and my decision to cut down on face-to-face speaking, I thought that would lead to a lighter year. My goal was to do one presentation a month, which was really just half of what I did last year. I successfully held it to one major presentation each for January and February, postponing things as needed.

Then March came (Why is it always March?), and I got lots of invitations to speak at things that sounded really interesting.

1. There’s a client workshop in the UK at which I’ll do a short presentation on collaboration and culture change. That’s work, so there’s no rescheduling or referring that.
2. There’s another internal teleconference that wants to re-run my “Remote Presentations That Rock”. There are actually two of these, but the other one’s fine with the recording.
3. I’ve been invited to speak to IBM social media and marketing folks in Australia (teleconference) about people and the IBM brand.
4. I volunteered to give a presentation about presentation tips at IgniteTO, which was on Wednesday. I wanted to try the Ignite format and listen to the other presenters.
5. I’ve been invited to do something at PresentationCamp, and I’ll probably build on the talk I’m giving at IgniteTO.

And that’s after I’ve tried referring as much as possible to other people, such as a social media speaking thing that would be a great fit for one of my friends.

Greedy learner that I am, it’s really hard for me to resist the temptation to learn not only from the process of preparing the presentation, but also from the participation of interesting people during the delivery and post-presentation conversations.

Also, the talks all fit into what I want to talk about in 2010. Amazing how that works out.

What am I learning from this?

• March is typically crazy.
• Even when I don’t submit abstracts to conferences, speaking opportunities come anyway.
• Putting together and sharing as much information as possible makes things easier for me afterwards, because people can now ask me for presentations based on previous presentations or blog posts, and those are less work than completely new things.
• Even when I say no-travel-except-for-work-presentations, local and remote speaking opportunities come up.
• I still haven’t figured out a good way to tell myself no. But it doesn’t cut into work or living yet, so I think it’s still okay.
• Even though I mock-gripe about the time it takes to figure out my key message and how to illustrate it, I still think it’s a good use of my free time.

So now I can deliberately practice clarifying my key messages, illustrating my slides, and reusing things from my blog and my past presentations. I also want to get better at collecting stories and videos.

Maybe I can get better at asking:

• Are there other people who can do this presentation?
• Are there other dates on which I can do this presentation?
• What new insights do I want to capture and share?

Next talks I want to develop about presentations:

• How I learned to stop worrying and love the webinar (Why remote presentations can be great and how to make the most of the backchannel), or
• Presentation kaizen: Relentless improvement and the art of public speaking, or
• More for your money: Increasing your return on effort on presentations

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

An abundance of opportunities

To call it just luck is to ignore the hard work that people put into recognizing and taking those opportunities. To shrug it off as a life lottery shuts one to the possibilities that stretch before them. We have many, many stories of people who have changed the world from unconventional starting points.

Stop worrying about luck. You’re always luckier than someone and not as lucky as someone else.

When I was growing up, I used to feel pretty darn lucky. I stumbled across computer programming at an early age. I had an aptitude for it, which developed into a passion.

Then I heard about people my age—or younger!—in other countries doing even incredible things, and I felt insecure. Maybe I’d missed out. Maybe I’d never be able to catch up.

It wasn’t even the bright stars like Marcelo Tosatti, who became the Linux 2.4 stable kernel maintainer in 2001. We were both 18 then, and he had attained my then-pinnacle of geek coolness. It was the fact that in other places, ordinary students were hacking on incredible things. I remember feeling despondent about the fact that our operating systems course in computer science had a reputation for being more theoretical than deep-in-the-guts-of-an-operating-system practical, and I felt envious of universities like Georgia Tech, where undergraduates experimented with Linux on the Compaq iPAQ PDA. The Internet could get me curricula and whatever resources people shared, and it could let me participate in open source development, but it couldn’t give me those hallway conversations and interesting project experiences people no doubt enjoyed there. There were the coop opportunities that I would never get to explore, because I wasn’t in Silicon Valley or Waterloo. People I wouldn’t bump into. Mentors who might never find me.

Then I decided I wasn’t going to let being in a third-world country stop me. And I learned, and I hacked, and I ended up committing code to the Compaq iPAQ bootloader, which was actually my first public commit with my name on it and which made me feel that hey, I could stand up there with everyone else. (Story: I had sent in patches almost every day for a week. This was either final exam week or the week before that, so coding was a great way to procrastinate studying. It got people’s attention, and Jamey Hicks of the Compaq Research Labs actually called me up, long-distance, to find out who I was and how they could help me keep hacking. That felt awesome.)

And then I decided to stop stressing out about prodigies and possibilities and uneven distributions, and instead work on helping people surpass me by sharing as much of what I learned as I could.

After I finished my degree, I taught computer science in university to students who grew up with even better tools and better resources than I did. The things I helped them learn how to build in first year were better than what I built in first year. Awesome!

Do I feel a twinge of envy when I see a 12-year-old girl publishing books and speaking at TED? Yes, a little bit. But it’s drowned out by a feeling of inspiration for doing it, pride that the world makes it possible, and excitement about what can come next.

You know what’s even more inspiring? The people who discover their passions late in life, and make a difference anyway. The people who develop and deepen their understanding into something that changes the world. Life is not a sprint. It’s a marathon, and we’re all in it together.

There will always be someone luckier than you are, and someone less lucky. There will always be someone who knows more and someone who knows less. It’s what you do with what you have that makes you who you are. It’s okay if you didn’t start ten years ago. Start now. Find and develop your passion.

Thanks to Mylene Sereno for the nudge to write about this. Hang in there! Everyone starts somewhere.

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

On circumstances and somebodies

I’m sure I’ll find out what the oral surgeon was like over the next few days. I hope he was great. Although it’s hard to imagine anyone being as great as W-. If you need to be stuck on a liquid/creamy diet, I recommend finding someone like him, because he’s going to make it awesome.

Lunch was congee made with the chicken/turkey stock, soft glutinous rice disintegrating on a still-numb tongue. I ate it very carefully because I didn’t want any rice getting stuck in places  that would be hard to clean, cooling my congee to avoid burning myself. For dessert, there was leftover filling from a lemon meringue pie.

Two acetaminophen-codeine phosphate painkiller pills and a nap later, it was dinner time. (Just like Timecat!)

When I woke up and headed downstairs, I found egg custard and egg tarts cooling under cookie sheets (to protect them from curious cats), lemon filling in the making (to use up extra tart shells), Jello in the fridge, and rice pudding in the planning. W- had been busy.

There are all sorts of soups in the pantry, too. I’m looking forward to raiding our stash of cream of mushroom soup.

Dinner will be congee (pureed this time), and there are all sorts of things for dessert.

It would be such a hassle to go and find restaurants that could accommodate my eating restrictions, taking the painkillers, and making it back to the car and to the house despite the drowsiness.

This would have been even less fun on my own. Or worse: battling for fridge space with housemates.

It still hurts to swallow. I’m still looking forward to my next dose of painkillers. I still hope don’t end up with dry socket, which appears to be the major complication. It’s reassuring to know that dry socket only happens in about 5% of cases and I don’t have any of the aggravating factors that typically bring it on.

All of my work is taken care of, I’m being taken care of, and life is good.

Now to explore the food options…

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

A little less wise, a little more awesome

CONTENT

Mitch Joel: New media isn’t like old media. Why are we still using old-media paradigms of broadcasting? Reboot your marketing. Interesting stories/points: Burning the ships, SnapTell, more grandparents than high school students (comments point out logical flaws in the headline, though), 40% sleeping while watching TV, negative review converts more readily to a sale, semantics: negative review can be great, 20% completely new searches on Google every day, Journey and Arnel Pineda

Seth Godin: Be an artist instead of a cog. Solve interesting problems. Risk getting booed off the stage. Invent the next step. Work around your lizard brain. Characteristics of indispensable people: connected, creative, able to handle complexity, good at leading tribes, inspiring, have deep domain knowledge, passionate. Ship. Thrash at the beginning, not the end. People say: we need you to lead us. Work can be a platform to create art.

Sally Hogshead: Factors of fascination: Mystique, power, lust, prestige, alarm, vice, trust. People will spend a lot on things that are fascinating or things that help them become fascinating.

James Othmer: Not about campaigns, it’s about commitments. Persuasion – voice – engagement – immersion. Create a story that invites people in. Learn from movies and entertainment. Pay attention to continuity. Create a story that hangs together.

Max Lenderman: Be compelling, contextual, visceral. Story about skits in rural India, virtual ary, branded spaces, Camp Jeep, Flame (Whopper perfume), Kwik-E mart (7-11), Tide free laundry

Dan Heath: Change: Find the bright spots. Not recipe, but process. Skip true but useless knowledge. Focus on the signs of hope. What’s working right now and how can we do more of it? Direct the rider, motivate the elephant, shape the path. We change behavior by working with the elephant. See – feel – change. Find the feeling. Shape the path: Tweak the environment. Amsterdam urinal spillage story (fly). Most people try to change 5-7 times before they succeed. What makes you think you’ll get it on the first try?

PRESENTATION

Video can be a shortcut for sharing emotional stories.

Slick ad-like animations (soundtrack only, no voice) detract, though. The shift in attention is a jarring.

Some professional speakers read slides, apologize for themselves, turn their backs on the audience, have low-contrast slides, use ineffective fonts, use jargon, get lost without notes… Plenty of opportunities here.

Big difference between people who give lots of presentations (ex: Seth Godin, Dan Heath, Mitch Joel) and people who haven’t given as many.

Vivid language, metaphors, stories, funny pictures = awesome.

Key message and simple framework essential for helping people follow what you’re saying.

Good talks are focused on you, not the speaker.

Well-chosen transitions/animations make a presentation look extra-polished. (Dan Heath – good example.)

Meta

1600 people filled the auditorium. Lots of need for insight.

Choice of topics shows that audience is still mostly struggling with shift to digital.

Advantages of attending conference over reading business books: see what speakers focus on, watch videos illustrating stories, pick up presentation tips.

Got so tempted to dig into some presentations and experiment with their structures. May want to turn that into presentation coaching someday.

—

I liked Dan Heath’s content the most. I like Dan’s presentation style and Seth’s presentation style about evenly.

Next actions for me: Track down stories they shared; collect interesting stories, videos, and pictures; continue learning and sharing material.

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

What I learned from The Art of Marketing

Five minutes will fly by. Don’t worry. All you need to do is do a commercial and point people to where they can find out more. You have plenty of time to make an impression. TV spots are typically 30 seconds long. You have the equivalent of 10 TV commercials to make an impression in. You can do it.

Instead of starting with a bigger presentation and trying to squeeze it into five minutes, start with your key message and expand that to fit five minutes. It’s easier that way.

Write your script, plan your slides, plan a key point for each slide, and then let go of your script. Focus on getting your key point for each slide across, and improvise whatever you need to make it shorter or longer. This means you don’t have to stand around waiting for a slide to change (you can always just add more detail!) or stress out if your slides seem to be going at lightning speed (just say your key point).

Don’t put a lot of text on your slides. If you can, don’t put any text on slides shown when you’re speaking. Text makes people read. Reading makes people stop listening. You’re going to be too nervous to give them time to read. Make it easy for people to focus on you.

You can either apologize for mistakes or focus on getting your message across. Focusing on communicating your message is more useful and fun. People don’t expect you to be perfect.

Put your notes or script online so that people can read the things you forgot to say. You can post it after the session if you don’t want to spoil your punchlines.

An easy way to remember your slides: Figure out your key point for each slide and the transitions between them. It’s easier to remember when it all flows. Tweak it until it feels natural. Then review your slides. For each slide, practice remembering your key message and the transition to the next slide. That way, you always know what the next slide is.

Practice the timing so that you can get a sense of how much can fit into 15 seconds. More important: practice the timing so that you can get used to recovering from timing errors. This is really helpful. People don’t mind if your speech isn’t perfectly synchronized with your slides. If you can keep it reasonably on track, that’s great.

Use a short description and bio, to keep the flow smooth.

Make a placeholder entry on your blog and use that link in the bio so that organizers can link to your speaker notes / presentation without having to make last-minute web updates.

Watch other presentations for inspiration. Plenty of great examples out there.

How to deliberately practice timing (very handy!): Print out your script, notes, or slides. Set up a 15-second looping countdown presentation. While this is counting down from 15 to 1, practice “scenes” from your presentation. You don’t have to do them in order, and you don’t have to do them all the way through, although that helps. I find it useful to repeat one scene until it feels okay, and then move on to the next one. It’s also helpful to run through the entire thing at least once.

You can reuse the timing presentation to help you keep track of time during your talk. But five minutes goes by really quickly, and if you’re making eye contact, you’re not going to look at your timing laptop. Don’t worry about getting everything perfectly timed. Focus on getting your message across and to adjusting as needed.

You can practice outside an Ignite event by recording presentations. You can also practice by doing your talk for a friend. Tag a fellow presenter and work out those butterflies by practicing with each other.

Another long reflection on my process: Thoughts on preparing an Ignite-style presentation

More specific notes for myself:

Things to remember for future versions of my talk: introverts aren’t likely to be out at a bar with 199 other people. They’re going to be at home, waiting for the Youtube replay. Like, duh. Maybe a different way to frame these presentation tips?

Also, raise-hands polling is hard with a harsh spotlight. I couldn’t see anyone until I shaded my eyes and adjusted to the darkness.

Next for me: Remote Presentations That Rock (March 8, rerun), branding (March 8 PM), client workshop (March 18-19), then PresentationCamp on March 23.

Video to be posted in the next three weeks, I think.

Fun!

Great stuff from other people: How to give a great Ignite talk

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

Presentation lessons from Ignite; deliberate practice

One of his mentors had taken him to a very exclusive restaurant, the kind that looks like a home. It was a scene right out of the movies. The waiter greeted his mentor by name and offered his mentor’s usual table. His mentor ordered a drink. When the waiter asked Alan what he would like, Alan said: “I’ll just have a Diet Coke, please.”

After the waiter left, Alan’s mentor told him to never use the word “just” to make himself or his decisions smaller. Instead of saying “I’ll just have a Diet Coke”, Alan could say, “I’ll have a Diet Coke.” There’s a subtle difference, but an important one.

Reflecting on this in the afternoon, I couldn’t help but be struck by how many of the presenters apologized for themselves. It was casual — self-deprecating humour, apologies for slides or technique, apologies for nervousness — and almost unconscious, like something that people say to cover up gaps. Perhaps they thought of themselves as “just” themselves, too.

How many times have I asked for just water at a restaurant? Perhaps it’s to forestall the questions: Perrier? Carbonated water? Bottled water? But it seems even more awkward to clarify with “regular water” or “house water” or “tap water”. (What do people ask for?)

How many times have I described myself as just a lucky newbie? I often feel that I am. I feel like that child in the IBM Linux commercial, receiving insights from all sorts of amazing people. But to call it luck would be to frame this experience as difficult to reproduce, and
to call myself just a newbie dismisses the beginner’s mind that I deliberately develop and maintain – the one that lets me focus on learning and sharing as much as possible instead of staying within my comfort zone.

So who am I, if not just a newbie?

I am excited and amazed by the opportunities that I have. I am doing something incredibly right. I want to figure out not only how to do even better, but how I can share that with as many people as possible and help them do their best.

And yes, I am going to change the world. =) Why not? It’s possible. How wonderful can it be?

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

Not just a word

My first Ignite-style presentation will be The Shy Presenter, which I’ll share at IgniteTO this Wednesday. It’ll be a fun experiment that builds on a lot of things I already do for my regular talks.

Full notes

So let me take apart my process to see how I can improve it, or if I’ve picked up any tips that other people might find useful.

I write about a topic before preparing a talk for it so that I can find out what I know, whether it’s useful, and whether I care enough to invest a few hours into preparing a presentation. (Yes, it’s that old skills-needs-passion sweet spot. Handy!)

Ideally, I’ll have blogged about a topic often enough to figure out the key points I want to communicate, and then it’s just a matter of reviewing the previous posts, summarizing them, and editing the points. Not having lots of blog posts about a topic is often a danger sign, as I learned two years ago:

But sometimes an interesting presentation opportunity comes up, and I’ll flesh out new material after people have okayed my title/abstract.

I’ll mindmap what people come in with, what I want them to leave with, and what I can put together to help them along the way.  I also find it useful to braindump a quick list of points I might want to make.

I like making my talks short. I usually try to fit my talks into 7-15 minutes, which is good practice in finding the core of a message and putting together a few supporting points. A good way to estimate this is to take your target words per minute and multiply it by your time, adjusting for pauses. I usually aim for 150wpm (in the middle of the 140-160wpm often suggested by books on public speaking), although I often end up speaking at 180-200wpm. Then I read things through and tweak the text until it fits.

Keeping it short and simple also makes it easy for me to remember. The shorter it is, the more I can improvise to fit the needs of time.

I post my speaker notes online. It lessens the surprise, but it makes the notes easy to share, search, and get feedback on.

Then I split my notes/script into segments. For Ignite, that’s about 37 words per segment. Editing smoothens things out.

At this point, I can usually think of a few simple ways to illustrate each segment. Sometimes I write out the visual sequence and then storyboard it. Other times, I go straight to the storyboard. Sometimes images or segments pop into my imagination, and I rework my writing to include it.

Then I draw the pictures and make slides. I usually use Inkscape because that makes it easy to edit my drawings to reasonably resemble my imagination. I’ve been experimenting with MyPaint lately, though. It takes more work, but it’s interesting.

I post the slides on Slideshare and add it to my blog post, again trading surprise for sharing, search, and feedback.

Once I’ve boiled the idea down to slides, I can work on remembering the key points for each slide. If the key points flow together and people get interested in a topic, they can always look up the full notes on my blog. That means I don’t have to worry about following the script word for word. So if it turns out I have less time than expected, or more time than expected, or I forget something or people want to learn more about something, I can adapt.

And then there’s the blog post on the day of the presentation, and the blog post following up on what I learned from the presentation, and the blog post following up on people’s questions, and the blog post about any revisions, and the blog post about process or content tips (like this one!), and the tweets and Slideshare embeds and all of those other things that mean that the four hours or so invested into preparing a presentation pay off several times over…

Here’s a totally numbers-from-a-hat estimate:

So that’s how I generally prepare my talks. =)

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

Thoughts on preparing an Ignite-style presentation

What’s up for next month? Lots of work involving documenting and organizing assets, connecting the dots, and sparking people’s imaginations. I’ve also got three presentations scheduled: The Shy Presenter (IgniteTO), a presentation on collaboration for a client workshop in the UK, and an internal IBM re-run of Remote Presentations That Rock. I tried to keep it to one presentation a month, but sometimes opportunities are hard to pass up.

Blog posts:

Sharing what you know

• Personal blog? Don’t worry about your strategy
• It’s not what you can’t write, it’s what you need to share
• Writing for love and fun
• The Shy Presenter: braindumping an introvert’s guide to public speaking

Work

• Thinking about indexing and connecting the dots
• Wiki organization challenge – thinking out loud
• Wiki information architecture thoughts
• The sweet spot at work
• Moving from testing to development
• I’d like to build the post-connector workplace
• Learning more about interviewing

Reflections on presentations

• Harvesting the backchannel bazaar of insights
• Lessons learned from microblogging talk
• Survey responses for TLE: Remote Presentations That Rock
• Kaizen: WITI: The Shy Connector

Wedding planning

• On vintage portaits and wedding photography
• Getting ready for a new adventure
• Patternicity, how things come together, and happiness
• How not to propose marriage

Life

• Seeds
• Circuses, pots, and cathedrals: three key stories
• Experiments in awesome
• Visualization of my blog categories

Weekly reviews

• Week ending February 7, 2010
• Week ending February 14, 2010
  Week ending February 21, 2010
• Week ending February 28, 2010

Misc: Winter, Fixing SIOCSIFFLAGS: Unknown error 132 for Karmic wireless on Asus Eee 1008HA, ACM Hypertext conference in Toronto this June; paper deadline Feb 14, Bug-hunting spreadsheets, Teapot, Always look on the bright side of life

Last month’s highlights: January 2010

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

Monthly review: February 2010

Work

• [X] Conduct IBVA interviews (eep!)
• [X] Finalize preparations for Idea Lab
• [/] Create leader guide for Discovery Workshop
• [X] Finish UK visa application
• Also: Put together ID overview

Relationships

• [X] Bake more pies
• [X] Send invitations to my family
• [X] Assemble more things for care package
• Also: Stocked the fridge and freezer with lots and lots of make-ahead food (apple tarts, empanadas, pot pie, pasta, rice and beans, pandesal), yay!
• Treated W- to Toronto Opera Repertoire’s performance of “Marriage of Figaro”

Life

• [  ] Survive having my wisdom teeth extracted – Postponed to March 5 because of dentist’s schedule
• [  ] Re-explore a liquid diet =( – Likewise!
• Also: Learned how to make pandesal. Mmm
• Signed up for Ignite Toronto and prepared The Shy Presenter talk
• Refreshed part of my wardrobe
• Maxed out my RRSP for this year and next year
• Wrote a Perl script to automatically renew our library books using WWW::Mechanize

Plans for next week:

Work

• [  ] Prepare overview of Sametime Unyte and Lotus Connections Communities for my second-line manager
• [  ] Facilitate Idea Lab and summarize results
• [  ] Write about Idea Lab refinements
• [  ] Revise Innovation Discovery wiki
• [  ] Make UK travel arrangements
• [  ] Learn tons of cool stuff at The Art of Marketing
• [  ] Talk about productivity with mentees and contacts

Relationships

• [  ] Try a new recipe
• [  ] Finalize care package

Life

• [  ] Participate in Ignite Toronto
• [  ] Have wisdom teeth taken out
• [  ] Test evening themes for working on short-term goals

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

Weekly review: Week ending February 28, 2010

There are thousands of books and blogs and classes with advice. To save you time, I’ve summarized them all for you:

Figure out your key message. Come up with a catchy acronym. Be clear.

Find a surprising fact. Tell a story. Ditch the bullet points. Use a clever title. Make your slides prettier. Use full-screen images. Use no images. Draw your diagrams.

Go to Toastmasters. Practice in front of a mirror. Practice with a friend. Practice with a small group. Videotape yourself.

Make eye contact. Don’t stare. Imagine your audience naked. Don’t read the slides. Watch others for inspiration. Practise. Practise. Practise.

Did you get all that? Are you ready?

Right. So let’s talk about what you need to know in order to get started. You can figure out the who and when and where. You can learn the how. But there’s a huge gap here because of two questions no one can answer for you:

Why would you get up there in the first place?

And what do you have to say?

Why speak? Why spend hours putting together a talk? Why risk stage fright, stutters, stammers, technical difficulties, hecklers, off-topic questions, incorrect information,  embarrassment, rejection?

There are lots of surprisingly good reasons. It doesn’t have to be about promoting yourself or working on your career.

Me, there are two reasons why I give presentations. First: I love learning. And short of making something a life-and-death matter, there’s nothing that makes you learn something more than teaching it to someone.

Second: I’m an introvert. It’s so hard for me to walk up to one person and say hello. You know what’s easier than that? Talking to 200 people. Particularly if I can rehearse first. Then people have an excuse to talk to me if they want to. So if you’re an introvert, give it a try. And if you’re an extrovert, give it a try too.

That’s why I speak. Learning is fun. I want to teach what I know. I want to learn from others, but I hate starting conversations.

What’s your reason? Why are you going to get up and speak?

For you, that question could be the worst question to ask. Here’s a surprise. That’s because you might not be able to find out your why until you figure out your what.

Don’t wait for some grand passion to sweep you away. Don’t wait for  the aha! moment. You’re not going to suddenly “get it”. Don’t let that stop you.

You won’t know why until you begin. It’s not going to become fun until you’re doing it. (And sometimes not even then). Just treat it as an experiment. A way to improve your communication skills.

How do you start?

You need to figure out what you have to say. This is very useful.

Now someone said, “I need you to do a presentation on X,” problem solved. But you’re probably starting from scratch. Try this simple question instead:

What do you know that someone else doesn’t? Write it down or go tell that someone about it.

What do you know that you didn’t know yesterday? What else do you know? What do you keep saying? What are you curious about? Share.

You don’t have to be an expert. You just have to help.

True story. The only reason I got started in public speaking was because some friends of mine were organizing a conference. By the third call for speakers, they sounded pretty desperate. I said, hey, I’m just a student, but I can talk about this if you really can’t find anyone, and I’m playing with that as a hobby. They booked me for two talks. I learned that even as a beginner, you can help other people learn.

Now you’ve got the raw material for a presentation. You’ve got the what. Share it and see how it makes people’s lives better. You’ve got the why. The when and where and who and how – that’s easy, once you get over that gap.

So think about this: What did you learn? How can you share it? Why does that matter?

Figure out your what and your why, and everything else will follow.

What can I help you learn?

Draft of upcoming talk for Ignite Toronto based on previous braindump. Short enough to fit into five minutes, I hope. If you like this, you might also like The Shy Connector. Have fun!

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

The Shy Presenter: Why conventional advice on learning public speaking sucks, and how to really get started

I didn’t think about weddings when I was growing up. I didn’t clip pictures of pretty dresses or fantasize about flowers. I thought I had to choose between making a big difference and living a “normal” life—with a great relationship, perhaps, but still constrained by the obligations of joint decision-making. I didn’t dream of white gowns and lace. I dreamt of living in an apartment, perhaps near a university or a library, and perhaps with two or three cats.

I was surprised to learn that a great relationship can help you grow in unexpected ways.

For example: I was beginning to feel the tic of stress building up around the typical tensions of planning a wedding. We had wanted to keep the guest list small in order to avoid overwhelming ourselves and our guests. Limiting the guests to just our families seemed to be the easiest and least stressful way to do it. A clear boundary. No difficult decisions about who to include and who not to. And perhaps W-, I, and our two families would get to know each other better without the distraction of other friends. I still wanted to host a get-together thanking my friends for helping make Toronto a second home, but a second party could do for that. Limiting the wedding and the reception to family seemed like the least stressful way to plan that day.

Then my mom asked if we could invite four close family friends, people she hadn’t seen in a while but whom she has kept in touch with and who have been wonderfully supportive throughout the years.

I wavered. Should we offer to host another party? Should we include them, even if they might feel a little left out? Should I then go ahead and invite some of my closest friends as well?

I explained the situation to W-.

He said: “It’s their wedding, too.”

In that moment, all that stress went away. All it took was the right perspective.

As much as all those wedding planning websites and blogs would have us believe that it’s our day—or worse, that it’s the bride’s day—our families are the reason why we’re celebrating a wedding instead of heading down to City Hall with two witnesses.

It’s our wedding. By that, I mean it’s not just W- and my wedding, but it’s our families’ too. And friends. And worlds.

(Friends are wonderful and I’d love to include as many as possible, too, but once I start including friends, I get tempted to throw a party for 150+ people, and then my introverted side hides under the imaginary table and eats chocolate. So we’ll plan one party at a time, and maybe have lots of small parties instead of one big one. =) And there are even more friends I’d like to include as a way of thanks for helping me get here as well as for future insights and advice. Challenge: I don’t know everyone. It’s said that it takes a village to raise a child, and y’all are an amazing village.)

English is quite limited when it comes to this idea of “ours”. A tangential story: My mom once told my sister, “We’re going to Hong Kong.” My sister was excited about the idea of going there. My mom clarified: “No, we—your dad and I—are going to Hong Kong.” In Filipino, it’s the difference between kami and tayo. We-exclusive versus we-inclusive. Namin versus natin. Our-exclusive versus our-inclusive.

And I love that W-, for  whom English, Cantonese, and French do not capture that distinction between our-exclusive and our-inclusive,  reminded me of that and helped me get an even better perspective on things.

See, this is one of the wonderful things that gives me a lot of hope about the scary thing called commitment. Making decisions with another person, having another person’s perspective, sharing experiences with another person, and being inspired by another person—by golly, that really can make life even more amazing.

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

Getting ready for a new adventure

W- and I are getting married on August 21. We’ve been thinking about whether we want to do the full-blown wedding photography package or go with something simpler.

I don’t particularly feel the urge to have every little detail of our small ceremony memorialized. Pictures would be a nice way to share the spirit of the celebrations with friends who couldn’t make it, but then again, we’ll probably have plenty of snapshots from both our camera-happy families. Given a choice between budgeting for fancy photographs (which can go well into thousands of dollars) or, say, helping my family come and experience Toronto, I’d pick snapshots + experiences.

I do want to have some formal pictures, though. I’ve always liked the look—no, more than that, the story—of vintage photographs in family albums. Pictures of parents and grandparents when they were young and just starting out.

Here’s what I’m talking about:

Photo uploaded in 2007 by dlisbona – Creative Commons Attribution Licence 2.0

Photo uploaded in 2008 by Spiterman – Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic Licence

And just imagine, now, people can actually smile instead of holding a stiff expression for minutes!

I’m happy to skip all the other typical wedding pictures – the rings casting heart-shaped shadows on a book, the bridal party getting their hair done, the bouquet, and so on. I just want a few good portraits of us and of our combined families. Given that people managed to take these great photos back when they didn’t have speedlights or Photoshop, it should be so much easier now.

But I’m having a hard time looking for a photographer who’s okay with large groups and simple set-ups, who knows a lot about working with light, and who’ll do just a few set-ups instead of a full wedding package.

It would be nice to have a picture with everyone. If we have to, we’ll fiddle with the self-timer or remote. There’s gotta be some way to do this. We’d be happy to pay someone a reasonable amount to get great pictures with less stress. So, know anyone who can make ~25 people in Toronto look timelessly good?

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

On vintage portaits and wedding photography

• You’ll learn even more about your topic
• You’ll meet lots of people without having to start the conversation
• You can make a bigger difference

Challenges

• Don’t know what to share
• Don’t know how to share it
• Don’t know whom to share it with
• Anxious about reception

Typical approach (scary!)

• Practice with friend or mirror
• Join Toastmasters and other speaking groups to work on confidence and delivery
• Typical advice doesn’t help you figure out what you want to say, how you want to say it, and how to get up there

Here’s another way

• Write (journal or blog) until you figure out what other people ask you for help about or something that can save other people time
• Test your material by writing a blog post.
• Share a lot of blog posts so that there are plenty of opportunities.
• When you see that there’s interest, test your topic again by making a short slide deck. Share this on Slideshare or some other presentation site. Keep your presentation short and simple. Less to remember, less to forget.
• Share lots of those and see which take off.
• Based on interest, decide which ones you want to turn into a webinar. Webinars are a good way to start because you can refer to your notes and not worry too much about body language.
• Propose your webinar to a virtual conference or webinar series organizer.
• If accepted, revise your slides, rehearse your ideas, and go for it!

Why this works

You’ve already done the hard work of thinking through your topic, checking for interest / sense, and preparing your slides.

You don’t have to worry about people not being interested or people not finding value in your work because you’ve tested the topics beforehand.

You can connect with a friendly audience before and after your talk.

Next steps

Make a list of things you know that other people might benefit from.

Write a journal entry or blog post that explains one of those things. Repeat.

Post from: sacha chua :: enterprise 2.0 consultant, storyteller, geek. Check out my blog for tips on managing virtual assistants, Drupal, and other topics!

The Shy Presenter: braindumping an introvert’s guide to public speaking