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

Drawing is about seeing the magic in everyday things

Leading Out Loud: Inspiring Change Through Authentic Communications Terry Pearce, 2003 Excellent advice on being authentic. Good point starting p133 about when not to take questions, and how to address difficult questions.

When not to take questions:

If the speech is your first advocacy for a change, it is likely to be more abstract and less specific, written to inspire with context and values. Questions could prove frustrating for you and your listeners, and could drain away the excitement that your initial speech has generated. If your audience is large, taking questions is logistically difficult. The process needs to be tailored both to allow representative questions to be asked and to avoid ill feelings in someone not recognized due to time constrains.

… More typically the size of audience and nature of material are not prohibitive, and in such cases you should always offer the audience the chance to clarify, contribute, or challenge your comments. When others can really participate, they are more likely to feel ownership and commitment. In offering to take questions, you are offering a direct relationship to individuals, in addition to the group as a whole. You build expectations of candor in the audience, and can greatly enhance or damage the credibility and trust you have constructed during the speech.

p133, Terry Pearce, Leading Out Loud, 2003

These are the five primary elements of the invested listening model:

• Answering the stated and unstated question
• Acknowledging feelings
• Finding common intent
• Distinguishing between your context, or point of view, and the questioner’s point of view
• Checking in: making sure that you have been responsive

p139, Terry Pearce, Leading Out Loud, 2003

Leading Out Loud is well worth revisiting and keeping around for inspiration.

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

Book: Leading Out Loud

My standard for decadence used to be the microfiber robe I once had the pleasure of trying in a hotel spa. It was unbelievably soft and comfortable. I added a luxury bathrobe to the list of things that might be worth buying someday. In the meantime, I contented myself with the terry bathrobe I picked up at a bargain from Winners.

I finished making a hooded fleece bathrobe. The pockets are a little too low, the edges are not quite finished, and lint and stray threads are everywhere. After some adjustments, the sleeves are now the right length. The hood does not pull up at the back. One of the pockets features a cat. It's mine, it's cozy, and it's the best robe I've ever had. I think it’s even cooler than this Jedi bathrobe.

I love the territorial pleasures of making things for myself.

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 luxury of making

I always get confused by “Previous page” and “Next page” on Wordpress blogs. After only a little struggling, I finally got my navigation sorted out so that you can page through it using “Older posts” and “Newer posts”.

I added the following to my style.css:

.navigation { font-weight: bold; font-size: larger }

.navigation .right { float: right }

.navigation .left { float: left }

Then I added this to my theme’s index.php:

<div class="navigation">

  <div class="left">

    <?php next_posts_link('&laquo; Older posts'); ?>

  </div><div class="right">

    <?php previous_posts_link('Newer posts &raquo;'); ?>

  </div>

</div>

Result: yay!

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

Wordpress: Older posts, newer posts

I'm sitting at gate B6 at the Pearson Airport in Toronto, waiting for my
flight to Boston. In a few hours, I'll be at the IBM Cambridge research
lab to help facilitate a client workshop. No visit to the lab is
complete without connecting with the Collaborative User Experience
group, and I've carefully stashed cookies in my carry-on bag to share
with them.

I get a warm and fuzzy feeling whenever I think of CUE. They've created
some of my favourite systems in IBM–social tools that have transformed
the way I experience work. Their questions and analyses help us explore
the effects of social computing and collaboration in the enterprise. And
they're wonderful people, too.

I first got to meet them after convincing my research supervisor that
the graduate research I was doing at the University of Toronto would
benefit from a face-to-face meeting with the authors of the major papers
in my area of study. They could point me to interesting questions and
resources. Although travel funds were limited (aren't they always?), I
finagled approval after showing that I could stay with a family friend
and taking public transportation. Taking a page out of my sister's
playbook (and borrowing her "secret recipe", too), I baked oatmeal
cookies for gifts.

Meeting the researchers in person was my first experience of how
powerful the social intranet could be. I felt I already knew them
because of their blog posts and papers. After a quick look at my
bookmarks and blog posts, they knew me too. Conversation was
surprisingly easy.

I kept in touch with the Cambridge lab as I continued to explore my
thesis topic. As an avid user of the social networking tools within IBM,
I was frequently involved in their studies. They published papers that I
cited, and commented on my blog posts with additional resources I should
check out. I flew down to speak at one of their get-togethers and learn
from the other sessions there. I was just dipping my toes in with my
research. It was fascinating to learn from people who were immersed in
the field. Through IBM's Web 2.0 tools, I got to know them further, and
I also connected with lots of people all over the world.

That's what made a real difference for me. I got to see a side of IBM
that few other graduate students or interns experienced. I met all these
amazing people throughout the organization. I learned so much from them,
and I was surprised to find that they were learning from me as well.

I couldn't think of anywhere else I'd rather work or anyone else I'd
rather work with. I joined IBM's application development and consulting
group in October 2007.

A year later, I visited the Cambridge lab again–this time as an
IT specialist facilitating a workshop on Generation Y. I made sure my
trip included an extra day for just meeting up with people, and I asked
one of my mentors to help me figure out how to make the most of that
day. He did more than that. He orchestrated this amazing insight-packed
day of meetings with different researchers who were passionate about
social networking and collaboration. An entire day! I felt like a
visiting dignitary instead of a newbie who was just starting out in the
organization. =) I took as many notes as I could, and I wished I could
make even better use of the ideas they shared.

I even got to sit in one of the research group meetings as they bounced
ideas around for the next year. I brought oatmeal cookies. When he saw
the cookies, the research group leader smiled and said it was just like
before. I had brought cookies when I visited them as a student shortly
after starting my thesis. Even though it was a small gesture, he
remembered it. That made me smile.

Later that day, I was walking through the corridors with the mentor
who'd arranged all of those meetings. He pointed out someone we'd just
passed, and whispered that that was Benoit Mandelbrot. It took me a lot
of resolve not to fangirl then and there. I nearly turned around and
asked for an autograph. I had been fascinated by fractals in high
school, and there was the person who'd kicked it all off. Isn't it
amazing, the kind of talent the world has?

Not all of us will invent new fields or open vast new vistas of
knowledge, but we're all working on making the world a little better.
I'm deeply appreciative of the researchers at Cambridge and my other
colleagues around the world. They ask interesting questions. They build
our knowledge of how the world not only works, but how it _can_ work.
And they're willing to reach out and take the time to help this novice
learn as much as she can from as many people as she can… Isn't that
amazing?

Sometimes it's hard to believe that I've only been at IBM for two years,
officially. I've been on the network for four years. I feel at home in
our communities and on our networks. It's also hard to believe that this
is really only my third year of "real" work experience: one year as a
teacher, and now two years at IBM. There are many, many things I'm
figuring out for the first time. But the social networks I can reach are
disproportionately bigger than my tenure, and the insights and
opportunities that people have shared with me mean that I sometimes now
find myself with the answers to questions people ask.

What amazes me most about all of this is:

If I can connect like this, work like this, and love like this even as a
recent hire who's figuring lots of things out, imagine what else is
possible. Imagine what I could do ten years from now. Imagine what more
experienced people could do right now. Imagine what new hires could do
if they got off to an even faster start. Imagine what the enterprise
could do if this was part of the culture.

I sometimes wonder why people are so generous with their insights and
energy, why they share so much with me. Perhaps part of it is paying
their own mentors back. Perhaps part of it is that my questions help
them further understand their answers. And perhaps part of it is that I
help them see the difference they've made and imagine the future they're
helping create.

This is a future worth building, and I can't wait to see what we can do
next.

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

Cambridge stories from the past and future

I needed to update many of the links in our wiki because a team member left, so I had to reupload all of her files to a shared service and change all the URLs to point to the new files. Unfortunately, the file service didn’t send me the former URLs of the files, so that was going to be a manual process. Our wiki had 149 pages in it. Not fun.

After a few pages of editing (and correcting the occasional typo that crept in as I changed URLs), I decided to partially automate the process. Using a smidgen of Emacs Lisp, I created a function that pasted text into a temporary buffer, performed whatever automatic fixes it could make, prompted me for any URLs it didn’t recognize, remembered the old URL – new URL mapping I defined, and copied the text back.

The function looked somewhat like this:

(defvar sacha/wiki-links nil "Associative list of (old-url . new-url).")
(defun sacha/wiki-fix ()
  (interactive)
  (with-temp-buffer
    ;; Insert text from clipboard
    (yank)
    (goto-char (point-min))
    ;; Look for all the links
    (while (re-search-forward
            "\\[\\([^|]+\\)|\\([^\]]+\\)\\]" nil t)
      ;; Check if it's one of the links I want to replace
      (if (or (string-match-p "viewpage" (match-string 2))
              (string-match-p "lsoohoo" (match-string 2)))
          (replace-match
           (save-match-data
             ;; Prompt and the entry to the map if it does not yet exist
             (unless (assoc (match-string 2) sacha/wiki-links)
               (add-to-list 'sacha/wiki-links
                            (cons (match-string 2)
                                  (read-string (concat (match-string 1)
                                                       "? ")))))
             ;; pick up the corresponding URL
             (cdr (assoc (match-string 2) sacha/wiki-links)))
           t t nil 2)))
    ;; Copy the text into the clipboard
    (kill-new (buffer-string))))

I used M-x global-set-key to bind a convenient function key to it (F12, I think), and then it was just a matter of clicking on each page, clicking on Edit, typing Ctrl-C to copy the text, switching to Emacs, pressing F12, switching back to my browser, typing Ctrl-V, and saving the wiki page. I also added some lines (not shown here) to convert the previous wiki gardener's full links to intrawiki links, change server URLs, and do other fun things.

I thought about fully automating it (somehow hooking into w3, perhaps?), but that seemed to be more trouble than needed. Besides, it was good to review all the pages.

As a result of this Emacs wizardry, processing all 149 wiki pages took me a few hours instead of a few days. Yay!

Of course, I finished the last wiki page, I found out that I needed to change the servers in the URL. I decided to go ahead and fully automate the darn thing.

I extracted a list of URLs for the wiki by viewing the tree version of the wiki index. It used Javascript, so I couldn't just pull the URLs out of the source code. Fortunately, the Firebug plugin for Firefox lets me copy the rendered HTML, so I used that instead. Some judicious text-editing later (replace-regexp rocks), I had a list of URLs to the different pages. I knew I needed to put in some kind of delay when loading web pages. sleep-for let me spread out my requests so I didn't hammer the server too badly. Reading the w3m.el source code turned up w3m-async-exec. Once I set that to nil, requesting web pages and running code on the results turned out to be straightforward. Selecting the right widgets was a bit of a hack (re-search-forward here, w3m-previous-anchor there), but hey, it worked. After confirming it by manually running it on a few pages, I left it merrily running in the background.

Here it is (some tweaking required):

(defun sacha/edit-wiki-page ()
  (interactive)
  (let ((buffer (current-buffer))
        (w3m-async-exec nil)
        (delay 5)) ;; number of seconds
    ;; While not at the end of the buffer
    (while (not (eobp))
      ;; Load the URL on the current line
      (w3m-browse-url
       (buffer-substring
        (line-beginning-position)
        (line-end-position)))
      ;; Look for the edit button
      (goto-char (point-min))
      (when (search-forward "Edit" nil t)
        ;; Click it
        (w3m-view-this-url)
        ;; Look for the Minor change checkbox
        (goto-char (point-min))
        (when (search-forward "Minor change" nil t)
          ;; The text area is the second widget back
          (w3m-previous-anchor 2)
          ;; Open the text area in a temporary buffer for editing
          (w3m-view-this-url)
          ;; Do the changes
          (while (re-search-forward "https?://example.com/path" nil t)
            (replace-match "http://path.example.com" t t nil 0))
          ;; Save the value
          (w3m-form-input-textarea-set)
          (when (search-backward "Save" nil t)
            (w3m-view-this-url))))
      (switch-to-buffer buffer)
      (forward-line)
      (sleep-for delay))))

I’m sure this kind of automation might be possible with lots of hacking in Mozilla Firefox, and I’ve seen great scripts for the Mac, too. But I know Emacs, I’m comfortable digging into source code, and I can make things work.

Awesome. =D

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

Automating tedious wiki editing tasks with Emacs and w3m

The only reason to give a presentation is to help people act or think differently. I’ve tried almost everything that could prod people to take the next step. I’ve distributed hand-outs summarizing the key points and next actions. I’ve given out worksheets. I’ve collected e-mail addresses and sent everyone a follow-up note with links to slides and what to do next. I’ve linked to short URLs on my slides to make it easy for people to take notes. I’ve even experimented with pairing people up so that they could follow up with each other. But it’s still a huge challenge to get people to think about a presentation after they’ve walked out the doors. After your talk, they all go their separate ways.

Virtual presentations are different. While I’m taking questions or after I wrap up, people can click on links in the text chat or type in the URL from my slides. They can download, review, and forward my slides right away. They can review the next steps. They can bookmark the page and return to it when they have questions. There are even systems that automatically track people’s interactions with the content, so I can e-mail them about updates.

The easier I make it for people to take the next small step, such as reviewing slides or planning their next actions, the more I support them in making the next big step, such as trying out social media tools. People’s access to mail and Internet can distract them during the presentation if you’re not engaging enough, but the same access can be powerful when you purposefully use it to guide people’s next actions.

This is the fourth part of How I learned to stop worrying and love the webinar.
Part 1: The best seats in the house
Part 2: From audience to participants
Part 3: Reading the room
Part 4: Taking the next steps
Next: Convenience and control

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

How I learned to stop worrying and love the webinar: Part 4: Taking the next steps

W- and I bought another set of microfleece sheets. They’re much cheaper than an electric blanket or heated mattress pad, and they’re significantly toastier than cotton sheets. We’re planning to keep the house at around 16C – or even cooler, if we can manage it, so the extra warmth will help. It’ll be hard to get out of bed in the morning, but the bathrobe I leave on my night-table may help. Wool socks, scarves, and thermal underwear will take the edge off the cold. I’m even looking forward to trying out the handwarmer that W- got for me.

Living in Toronto gives me three big challenges: being halfway around the world from family and old friends, making sure my paperwork is in order, and dealing with winter. Video calls, new friendships, and trips home take care of the first challenge. I’m about to finish my permanent residency process, so that’ll take care of the second challenge. As for the third challenge, it’s been said that there’s no such thing as terrible weather, only wrong clothes.

Why not just move back to the Philippines? W- shares custody of J- with his ex-wife, so he needs to be in Toronto. Having gone through the hassle of uprooting myself, I’d rather not make others go through the ordeal, either.

Now that I’ve accepted winter as inevitable, I can face it on my own terms and look for ways to stay happy (or be even happier!).

It’s hard to believe that I’m getting ready for my fifth winter in Canada. My fifth! And yet each year makes winter better and better. In 2005, I filled my wardrobe with winter coats from Goodwill. In 2006, a family friend gave me some great coats, and I spent winter time with Toronto friends. 2007 was my first winter with W- and J-, filled with tobogganing and hot chocolate. Last year, I discovered the joys of winter hiking, warm cats, and home-made clothes. This year, I’m looking forward to toasty blankets, lots of baking, and splashes of color in the clothes I’ll make.

The seasons change with or without me, so it’s up to me to adapt.

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

Fleece blankets and seasons

Work

• Planned
  • Finalize the recording for the presentation
  • Prepare for workshop
  • Customize my benefits
  • Write user’s guide for community
• Also
  • Started “How I learned to stop worrying and love the webinar” series, reflecting on virtual presentations
  • Suggested webinars for WITI
  • Submitted my personal business commitment results
  • Had lunch with my manager
  • Summarized rest of Idea Lab results
  • Helped fill a critical need for talent
  • Sent SIN card scan to IBM reference check
  • Set up the training community and the first call assignment
  • Shared our communication plan with others, connecting with the Collaborative Learning Community

Relationships

• Planned
  • Make bathrobes Mostly there
• Also
  • Picked up toasty fleece blankets
  • Helped with yard work
  • Baked a blueberry pie
  • Talked to my sister about Lucas

Life

• Planned
  • Enjoy some more quiet
  • Keep biking to work
  • Get the paperwork ready for the permanent residency passport request Will have passport pictures taken next week
• Also
  • Started tracking personal time in detail
  • Kicked off editing experiment
  • Reviewed all of my blog posts
  • Started drawing more
  • Tweaked my blog navigation

Plans for next week:

Work

• Facilitate Innovation Discovery workshop in Boston
• Facilitate tech prep call for training community
• Support call #1 for training community
• Update wiki links
• Interview Jason Wild about working with the C-suite
• Finish virtual presentation series

Relationships

• Finish bathrobe
• Tidy up around house
• Bake another pie
• Chat with Clair

Life

• Send paperwork for permanent residency request
• Summarize time tracking insights
• Experiment with ways to make travel less stressful

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 November 15, 2009

It starts innocently enough. You’re asked to attend a meeting next Tuesday. You accept. Your coworkers invite you to lunch on Wednesday. You agree. A friend invites you to her birthday party next week. You put it on your calendar. Then another meeting invitation comes, and another, and another. Networking events, coffee breaks, and presentations crowd into your schedule.

If this has ever made you feel suffocated, exhausted, and in dire need of some alone time, you might be an introvert.

I know it’s difficult to say no to opportunities. I’ve accepted too many invitations and tried to attend too many events. Last year’s conference season was particularly stressful. The first week, I was in New York for the Best Practices Conference, giving a presentation on blogging. The second week, I was at the even bigger Technical Leadership Exchange in Florida, giving a presentation on Generation Y. By the time I got to the Web 2.0 Summit (which I was helping organize), I was ready to hide. (And I did, behind the podium.)

As much as I enjoy learning from people in conversations and conferences, needing to be “on” all the time is incredibly draining. I’m learning how to manage my schedule and how to say no.

It’s important to figure out what works for you. For example, I don’t want to be out late two nights in a row. In fact, I’d rather not be out late at all. This means that before I accept an invitation, I look at my schedule for that time and my schedule for the week, making sure that I’m not trying to pack too much in.

In addition to getting better at saying no, I’m also getting better at scheduling time for myself. I’ve blocked off time on my calendar for planning, working on important tasks, and responding to mail. Sometimes people still schedule meetings during those times, but in general, I can be sure that my day won’t be full of conference calls. I sometimes block off time during evenings and weekends for particular projects, too. If I’m going to travel for a workshop or a presentation, I want to have a quiet week before and after the trip, and I plan accordingly.

Does this limit opportunities compared to extroverts who are out there schmoozing? Maybe. But I’ve tried running in extrovert mode for extended periods of time, and I can’t do my best if I feel like I’m coming apart. Besides, the things I do in my quiet time—read, write, reflect—also help me connect with people, although in a more introvert-friendly way. It’s better to work with the grain instead of against it.

It’s important to make time to breathe. If you find yourself running ragged because you feel that you have to say yes to everything, stop and slow down. Schedule introvert dates with yourself. Make time for breaks. Say no. You’ll find that the quiet time you give yourself will make it even easier to connect with people when you do, because you’ll be happier and better rested.

What can you do to free up some time for yourself?

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 connector’s schedule: making time to breathe

I reviewed my past eight years of blog posts and dusted off some articles that I think still have some uncaptured value in them.

Public speaking and presentation skills

1. http://sachachua.com/wp/2009/11/11/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-webinar-part-1-front-row-seats/
2. http://sachachua.com/wp/2009/11/12/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-webinar-part-2-from-audience-to-participants/
3. http://sachachua.com/wp/2009/11/13/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-webinar-part-3-reading-the-room/
4. http://sachachua.com/wp/2009/10/14/7-tips-for-remote-presentations-that-rock/
5. http://sachachua.com/wp/2009/06/24/notes-from-totally-rocking-presentations-at-ibm/
6. http://sachachua.com/wp/2009/10/09/public-speaker-worried-about-losing-control-dont-have-lectures-have-conversations/ or http://sachachua.com/wp/2009/08/14/from-presentations-to-conversations/
7. http://sachachua.com/wp/2009/03/29/virtual-conferences-change-the-game/
8. http://sachachua.com/wp/2009/03/02/want-to-grow-as-a-speaker-look-for-inspiration/
9. http://sachachua.com/wp/2008/08/04/finding-something-worth-talking-about/
10. http://sachachua.com/wp/2008/06/12/how-to-scale-presentations-up-or-down-the-art-of-timing/
11. http://sachachua.com/wp/2008/05/28/dealing-with-stage-fright/

The particular quirks I bring to this are:

• I link presenting with blogging and connecting, which is a particularly good combination for introverts
• I’m comfortable giving virtual presentations
• I love thinking about presentation organization
• I love flipping the dynamic for presentations (not just “speaker as expert”)
• I like sketching, and that’s become part of my style

I can create value by:

• helping other introverts and novice speakers identify their core passions through blogging/writing, and develop presentations around those topics
• helping speakers make the most of virtual presentations
• sketching explanations for other topics, and helping build a visual library of metaphors and examples

Connecting / networking

1. http://sachachua.com/wp/2009/08/11/the-shy-connector-thinking-out-loud/
2. http://sachachua.com/wp/2009/03/19/networking-outside-the-firewall/
3. http://sachachua.com/wp/2009/03/10/making-a-name-for-yourself-thinking-out-loud-about-my-talk/
4. http://sachachua.com/wp/2009/01/27/braindump-of-conference-networking-tips/
5. http://sachachua.com/wp/2009/10/05/how-do-you-keep-in-touch-with-500-contacts/
6. http://sachachua.com/wp/2009/08/26/exercising-my-network/
7. http://sachachua.com/wp/2009/08/19/social-media-has-made-small-talk-easier/
8. http://sachachua.com/wp/2009/02/04/conversations-about-networking-scale-structure-and-skills/
9. http://sachachua.com/wp/2008/12/07/lets-talk-about-passion/
10. http://sachachua.com/wp/2008/05/25/thinking-out-loud-taking-it-offonline/
11. http://sachachua.com/wp/2008/02/29/why-democamp-is-one-of-my-favorite-networking-events/
12. http://sachachua.com/wp/2006/09/29/networking-create-value-with-your-business-cards/
13. http://sachachua.com/wp/2006/09/28/conference-commando-networking-with-nametags/

The particular quirks I bring to this are:

• I’ve figured out a lot about how I can connect as an introvert (speaking, social media)
• I’m a geek, and I tweak my system

I can create value by:

• sharing tips for other introverts
• sharing tips on connecting through writing, speaking, and using social media
• connecting the dots

Productivity

1. http://sachachua.com/wp/2009/03/24/how-to-do-a-lot/
2. http://sachachua.com/wp/2009/03/21/five-reasons-why-im-experimenting-with-outsourcing-to-virtual-assistants/
3. http://sachachua.com/wp/2009/06/22/log-your-accomplishments/
4. http://sachachua.com/wp/2009/01/15/travel-tips/

The particular quirks I bring to this are:

• I’m comfortable delegating tasks and projects, and I’m learning more about that
• I enjoy practicing relentless improvement

I can create value by:

• Sharing tips for personal delegation
• Sharing my process improvements and ideas

Looking at these lists, I think I’ll be able to create the most value by making presentations (and writing accompanying articles) about presenting and connecting. Presentations spread much faster than blog posts and they also help me practice visual communication, so my output will probably focus on that. Blogging is a great way for me to think through the topic out loud, organize my thoughts, and figure out what should go into the presentation. Editing can help me pick out the key messages for the different topics, express them more vividly, figure out what’s missing or redundant, and improve the presentation flow.

Although virtual presentation skills meet a timely need at work, the Shy Connector series and other networking tips would benefit a wider audience. I want to make a set of presentations and blog posts that can help introverts and extroverted newbies make the most of conferences, blogging, and other ways to connect.

Okay! Next step: get in touch with potential editors, explain my goals, and do a trial run of reviewing/revising one major post each.

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

Reflecting on how I can create value

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

Reflecting on 8 years of blog posts

I remember when Lucas entered our lives. My sister had been staying late at the zoo, taking care of a sick foal. My father insisted that she have someone or something for company and protection. A big black dog, perhaps.

What did my sister go and do? She got a black Labrador puppy. Labradors can’t help but project instant friendliness. We joked that he would guilt-trip prospective muggers into leaving my sister alone.

With his easy charm, he became the mascot and client service ambassador for Adphoto, my sister’s favourite model, and a friend to everyone.

Old age has taken its toll on Lucas. He’s hanging on bravely, but it’s almost time to let him go. My sister hopes Lucas can stay until we can all say goodbye to him, but our flights are more than a month away. We’ll see how things work.

I’m happy that of all the families who could have shared Lucas’ life, we were the ones who got to know such a fine dog.

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

Lucas

I’ve been thinking of ways to get even better at communicating. Blogging and volunteering to do lots of presentations has helped me figure out what I want to talk about and how I want to talk about it, and I’m looking forward to exploring this further over the years. What could really help me take this to the next level, though, is working with a professional who can bring experience and a critical eye. An editor can help me distill my blog posts and presentations to the essential message, hold me accountable when I dither or when I skip over things that should be explained, and challenge me to express myself more clearly and vividly.

Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten that kind of detailed writing or presentation feedback. Teachers are typically too busy to help each student figure out their core messages and refine them through successive drafts. At work, I’ve bounced ideas back and forth, wordsmithing with others, but nothing like what I hope to learn by working with editors.

I want to know:

• What’s the key message people will find valuable, and how can I communicate that message more clearly?
• Where am I skipping too quickly over things I should explain further? Where am I spending too many words on a concept?
• Do the words and paragraphs or slides flow well? What could improve the structure?
• Where can I be more vivid or more precise? Where do my words distract from my message?
• How can I express these thoughts more clearly and more memorably?

I don’t just want feedback on typos or suggestions for individual word changes (unless those make spectacular differences), just as I don’t want my speaking evaluations to focus just on “ums”, “ahs” and vocal variety. I want to get to that deeper level of value.

Considering the benefits of great communication skills, I think this is well worth using my opportunity fund—particularly if I can figure out how to create even more value with the results. (E-books? Articles? Awesome presentations?)

So, three weeks ago, I posted a quick job ad on oDesk:

I'm looking for an editor with an excellent command of English, a familiarity with blogging style (short, conversational, personal), a knack for presentation flow, and the ruthlessness to cut and rearrange words until a piece flows well and is no longer than it needs to be. I want someone to help me trim the occasional blog article and presentation until it's clear.

You will not need to write content (or fake reviews, or astroturf comments, or do other icky things). Just edit to make sure that every word counts.

Turnaround doesn't need to be immediate – you can fit this work around your other work.

When applying for this job, please submit before and after samples of your editing. The best applicants will have examples of both edited blog posts and edited presentations, and an innate hatred of business jargon such as "utilize",  "incentivize," and "leverage" (when used as a verb).

If you would like to see my writing style to see if we're compatible, check out http://sachachua.com for my blog posts and http://slideshare.net/sachac for my presentations. I write a lot of raw material which I occasionally refine into more useful articles, and I would like to take that writing to the next level. I also tend to obsess a bit about the logical flow and organization of presentations, and I would love to be able to bounce ideas off an editor who knows his or her work and who can provide fresh perspectives.

Looking at the list of candidates, I can’t help but want to hire them all. =)

It always amazes me that there are so many people in the world who can do things so much better than I can, and that with a little investment of time and money, I can tap their skills. Someday, I want to learn how to create even more opportunities to create value. I want to be able to bring people together to build even more complex things. Wouldn’t it be amazing to find and solve problems or make new things possible, working together with people who are doing what they love? The world is a candy-store of opportunities and talent, and I can’t wait to explore it further.

But first things first, of course. How can I work with editors so that I can learn what I want to learn, and how can I use this opportunity to practice creating value?

I’ve written a lot on my blog, and it would be interesting to review that archive, figure out what might have some kernel of value for others, and learn more about my thoughts and my voice. As I do that, I can pick the most promising posts, send them to this team of editors, and ask their feedback using the questions above. If their suggestions are enough to prod and inspire me, I might go and try to implement them. If I think there’s some more potential that I haven’t been able to reach, I can ask them to apply their editing magic to it, and I can learn from their example.

So that’s my plan. I’m sure I’ll learn a lot from it! Have you thought of or done any similar experiments before? I’d love to read your thoughts!

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 how I can make the most of editing; The world is an amazing candy-store of talent

Every so often, I have these moments when I realize: This must be the future. It’s here!

On Wednesday, I received an urgent request for a Web 2.0 strategy and intranet design expert for a 5-week engagement in Europe. A $10M deal hinged on our ability to find such a person before the end of the week. The project team had already asked the usual groups, and everyone was fully booked.

I knew that we needed to cast a much wider net than just the people I knew. I summarized the request and posted it to our Web 2.0 for Business community inside IBM. I asked people to respond on the discussion thread, e-mail me, or contact the person who had sent us the request. The program manager for the deal found the discussion thread and posted some more details, and we asked people to send him their résumés.

The response was amazing. People stepped forward. They passed the opportunities along to their social networks, diversity groups, and communities. After a flurry of e-mails, Sametime instant messages, and discussion thread posts, we found a lot of strong candidates. The program manager contacted the top candidates and put together a package for the client. Along the way, I got to know lots of people with just the right skillset we were looking for. Suzanne Minassian-Livingston was right: IBM is like an amazing candy-store full of talent.

Problem solved, thanks to Lotus Connections Communities and strong social networks within IBM. I would never have found or thought of all of those people on my own, and it would have taken us too much time to work through the normal e-mail chains in networks. Not only did we solve the problem, we also created a powerful success story that showed the client the value of Web 2.0 on the intranet.

Hooray for IBM, Lotus Connections, and social networks!

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

Wild success and social networks

Many speakers tell me that they don’t like webinars because they can’t read people’s body language. We rely so much on watching people’s body language when giving a presentation. Is the talk too slow? Too fast? Do people agree? Disagree? Doubt? Are people too warm or too cold? Where in the talk do people nod? Where do they tune out?

Body language gives important feedback, and you get that feedback even when people don’t consciously think of giving it. People who might not raise a hand and say that your talk is boring, but if they’re falling asleep, you can tell that you’ve got to work harder at engaging people. Likewise, you don’t have to stop and take a poll if you want to know if people are interested. Are they leaning forward? Are they taking notes? You’ve got your answer right there.

When you can’t read the room, you run the risk of going off track, of going too fast or too slow, of losing your audience without even knowing that you did. Feedback becomes a little more structured, a little less natural. If you need to take the temperature of the room, you have to stop and ask. You’ll only get responses from people who were already engaged, so even your feedback is skewed. It’s tough.

But remote presentations have a strong advantage that many speakers overlook. Why settle for reading people’s body language, when you can read their thoughts?

Enabling the text chat and encouraging people to use it allows you to keep an eye on what people are thinking about, what they have more questions about, and what engages them. Frequent polls give you feedback, too. Many sophisticated web conference systems even allow participants to indicate their status throughout the presentation: if they think it’s going too fast or too slow, if they’re happy, if they have a question… Although most attendees will still not be used to these practices, you can help them become familiar with the tools, and they may become part of the standard ways people interact with teleconferences.

The feedback you get in the official conference environment will probably be biased towards the positive, so you’ll need to make an effort if you want to know more. Make it safe for people to ask questions or indicate confusion, and never embarrass your attendees for asking. In fact, you might want to ask someone to keep an eye out for possible questions and ask them during your session. If he or she thinks of something to ask, other people in the audience probably have the same question, and they’d be relieved if someone stepped forward and asked it for them. That can also show people that you really do welcome questions and conversation.

If you have feedback channels that aren’t displayed—such as Twitter, perhaps with a hashtag you’ve suggested—you may be able to monitor that for more honest feedback (or at least it will be frank until people realize that you’re watching ).

Being able to read what people are thinking instead of just guessing their thoughts is a great help when you’re giving a presentation. If it’s difficult for you to watch the chat or the interactions while giving a presentation, ask a buddy to do so, or take occasional breaks to review what’s being said.

Again, this might not work for all presentations and all audiences. If you anticipate a hostile audience, you probably want to be there so that you can make a personal connection and read the room. Some cultures seem to be more comfortable with the idea of chat and feedback than other cultures are. But if you’re probably going to have friendly, engaged participants who are willing to interact with you, make the most of the feedback that they’re happy to give.

I find that it’s much easier to adapt my talk to the responses from participants when I’m giving a virtual presentation compared to when I’m giving a face-to-face one. Even with all the current limitations of online feedback channels, reading people’s thoughts can beat reading people’s body language. Give it a try!

This is the third part of How I learned to stop worrying and love the webinar.
Part 1: The best seats in the house
Part 2: From audience to participants
Next: Taking the next step

Subscribe to my feed in your favourite feed reader or get new posts by e-mail!

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

How I learned to stop worrying and love the webinar: Part 3: Reading the room

1. Totally Rocking Your Drupal Development Environment, IBM
2. Totally Rocking Your Development Environment, DrupalCon 2009
3. Totally Rocking Your Development Environment, Drupal Peru
4. Totally Rocking IBM: FutureBlue and Web 2.0
5. New Employees and a Smarter Planet (slides only)
6. Networking outside the Traditional Office
7. Networking outside the Firewall
8. Making the Most of Sametime Unyte
9. How the Web is Changing the Way We Learn – Mesh panel
10. Get Smart with IBM Web 2.0 – GBS Tech Talk
11. Four Generations in the Workplace: Top 10
12. Signs of Multi-generational Issues
13. Enterprise 2.0 and Knowledge Management
14. Staging and Deployment Panel, DrupalCon
15. The Read/Write Internet
16. Awesomest Job Search Ever
17. ABCs of Gen X, Ys, Zs – MyCharityConnects conference
18. ABCs of Gen X, Ys, Zs (revised) – Terry Fox Foundation
19. Totally Rocking Presentations at IBM – Extreme Blue
20. Getting Started with LinkedIn and Twitter
21. Leveraging social media for Innovation Discovery
22. Key Trends in Web Channel Delivery (EDC)
23. Travel scenarios
24. IBM TLE: IBMillennials (NA, AP)
25. The Teacher's Guide to Web 2.0 at School
26. The Shy Connector (slides only)
27. Smarter Work (slides only)
28. IBM TLE: Remote Presentations That Rock

I delivered my presentations to about 1,300 people and reached about 35,000 additional viewers online. I didn’t do a lot of big conferences this year (minimizing travel!), but I accepted the occasional invitation. Still… that’s a lot of work, and a lot of reach.

Many of my presentations are externally available at http://www.slideshare.net/sachac . Please feel free to contact me if you want to find out about other sessions!

Wow. Without really planning to, I achieved my target of having, on average, a talk every other week. Although really, this was more like several weeks of back-to-back talks and some weeks of rest…

Compare with my talks from 2008:

1. Wikis
2. Web 2.0 Strategy Recommendations for Practice Blogs
3. Web 2.0 at Work: In Pursuit of Passion (slides only)
4. Web 2.0 and the University
5. Web 2.0 and Retail
6. Top 10 Web 2.0 Tools You Should Try (IBM, given twice)
7. Top 10 Web 2.0 Tools Every IBM Consultant Should Try (IBM, given twice)
8. The Demographic Revolution (IBM keynote segment, given twice)
9. The Art of Blogging
10. Taking it Offline/Online: Combining Online and Offline Social Networking
11. Sowing Seeds: A Tech Evangelist's Guide to Grassroots Adoption
12. Social Media Business Models
13. Setting Up Your Drupal Development Environment
14. No Time to Blog?
15. New Media, New Generation
16. New Bee's Guide to Web 2.0 at IBM
17. Networking for New Hires
18. Millennials and University Relations
19. IBM: The Next Generation
20. IBM TLE: I.B.Millennials
21. How to sketch with the Nintendo DS (slides only)
22. How to Connect with LinkedIn
23. Gen Y Guide to Web 2.0 at Work (slides only)
24. From Webkinz and Club Penguin to Facebook and Myspace
25. Creating w3 sites with Drupal
26. Blog Your Way Out of a Job… and Into a Career (IBM and external)

That’s interesting. Also 26 separate topics… I hadn’t realized I did that many presentations. It’s all fun, though!

Next year, I want to talk more about communication, connection, and collaboration. I want to get better at recording and posting videos. I want to play with more sketches and maybe even animation, too.

My first public talk was at a Linux conference in 2001. In the past 8 years, I’ve learned tons, and I look forward to learning and sharing even more!

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

My talks in 2009

Speakers and audiences see very different things.

Looking out from the stage, you see a large group of people. As much as you try to make sure that you make eye contact with individuals, you’re always aware that you’re talking with a group. Your language might even reflect that. For example, in a typical raise-hands interaction, you might ask, “How many people here have ever experienced this?”

That kind of question makes little sense when you’re part of the audience. You think of yourself as an individual, not just part of some group. You don’t know how many people have or haven’t experienced that. You can’t answer for other people. But you know that what the speaker really means to ask is if you have ever experienced whatever it is, and you’re supposed to raise your hand if you did. There’s a gap when the speaker’s mental model of “the audience” doesn’t mesh with your mental model of you as you.

As a member of the audience, you’re peripherally aware of other people, particularly if you’re at the back and you can see people’s reactions and body language. It’s an odd combination of individuality and anonymity, of being yourself and being part of a group. In a darkened auditorium, you blend into the crowd, but you’re always evaluating the talk’s points with your personal perspectives. You understand that the speaker needs to connect with everyone, but you feel disconnected if the speaker focuses on other parts of the audience more.

Personally, I find this pretty challenging as a speaker and as a participant. I know some speakers go through an almost mechanical process to make sure that they make eye contact with everyone in the room (while not looking as if they’re just sweeping the room left to right). I’ve even seen suggested grids and sequences in public speaking books. But sometimes I catch myself looking at one side more than another. As part of the audience, I find it difficult to sit still and passively listen. I want to interact with the material. I want that back-and-forth. And I want to get to know my fellow audience-members, too. I’m curious about what brings them to the talk, and what they’re thinking.

One of the reasons why I like giving remote presentations more than giving real-life presentations is that it’s easy for me to “make eye contact”. I just have to remember to look at the webcam every so often, instead of focusing on the scrolling text chat or my webcam image. It’s not real eye contact–people know I can’t see them back–but in a large room, it’s difficult to make meaningful in-person eye contact, and webcam connections seem to be okay. I feel more approachable online, and I get more comments and questions too.

It’s also easier for me to get to know people as individuals, and to talk to them as individuals. This takes a little conscious effort on my part, but as I get used to the idea, I’ll get better at asking questions and presenting even more conversationally. I love how the text chat includes people’s names. I love how people agree or disagree with each other in the conversation. I love actually seeing the list of participants—I tend to recognize names better than I recognize faces. I love the fact that when people ask questions on the phone, everyone can hear them clearly. In real-life presentations, they’d either have to find a microphone, or shout their question to me and I’d repeat it from the stage so everyone could hear.

It would be interesting to explore how a remote presentation could feel less like a presentation (speaker, audience) and more like a conversation (participants).

Does this style work for everything? Probably not. But it works for more situations than people would think, and it’s one of the reasons why I find remote presentations surprisingly fun.

How I learned to stop worrying and love the webinar:
Previous: Part 1: The best seats in the house
Next: Part 3: Reading the room

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

How I learned to stop worrying and love the webinar: Part 2: From audience to participants

I was talking to one of my mentors about the recent presentation I’d given on Remote Presentations That Rock. I told him that I actually prefer giving webinars over giving face-to-face presentations because I can connect with people better that way. This surprised him, because most speakers still treat webinars as a poor alternative to face-to-face presentations. So that prodded me to figure out why webinars work really well for me. I suspect there’s a good series of blog posts and maybe a presentation in here about virtual presentations and real intimacy, so let’s explore!

How I learned to stop worrying and love the webinar
Part 1. The best seats in the house

Here’s where people typically sit in an in-person presentation:

This is a tough room to speak to.

• The people at the back are going to be very difficult to engage. They’re far. They might find it hard to hear you. They know they’re anonymous in the darkness. They’re surrounded by people who have probably already tuned out, so even if you do say something interesting once in a while, social proof influences them to disengage and to stay disengaged.
• The people in the middle may drift in and out. They think that the talk probably won’t be that interesting, because few people are enthusiastic enough to sit in front and a number of people have already mentally checked out in the back.
• The people in front will tempt you to focus on them. They’re the ones taking notes and silently cheering you on. It’s easy to focus on them without realizing it, but if you stop trying to draw the middle crowd and the back crowd in through eye contact and energy, you’re going to lose those audiences for sure.
• Empty seats reduce the energy in the room and make your talk seem less popular. After all, if it were really valuable, the room would be packed, wouldn’t it? (Never mind that this was the only size of room you could book.) The empty space makes it difficult for people to be enthusiastic. There’s no buzz.

Gross overgeneralizations, of course. Steve Jobs probably never has to deal with this, but if you’re not a celebrity presenter, you might’ve seen something like in real life.

How do you deal with it?

Approach #1. Ask people to stand up and move to the front. You’ll get a few people to move, but most will shrug it off with “No, thanks” or “I’m fine where I am.” You can’t spend too much time on this either, because it gets really awkward, and you run the risk of making your audience hostile.

Approach #2. Remove seats or book a smaller room than you need. If you pack the front rows with people, the character of the room can change significantly. If you removed seats, you can always add seats as more people come in. This requires more effort and coordination, and the organizer really needs to take charge of this because you’re going to be doing a lot of prep work as a speaker already. Alternatively, book a smaller room if possible. Downside: you limit the number of people who can attend your talk. 

Even in packed presentations (such as technical talks for hundreds of people in the audience), these challenges are still there to some degree. A stage separates you from people. Without a stage, however, it’s hard for a large audience to see you. The larger the audience is, the more challenging it becomes to connect. You need to use a microphone (wireless lapel mic, if at all possible), and you need to worry about microphone feedback and sound quality. And people will still experience your presentation differently depending on where they sit and whom they sit with.

Now think about webinars. If you use a decent webcam and a good teleconference system, you can put everyone in the best seats in the house. They can hear you well (none of this “Can you hear me in the back?”). They’re close enough to see your facial expressions. There are no gaps in seating and no divisions between front, middle, and back.

And best of all, social proof now works on your side, because the only visible interaction is the interaction from engaged, interested listeners. Other people might cross their arms, scowl, fall asleep, or close the session, but they no longer have as strong an influence as they would in a real-life presentation. Instead, your keeners can easily influence the rest of the participants. If you build interaction into your talk, such as full text chat (instead of moderator-only text chat), everyone sees the conversations that your keeners start, and that’s often enough to bring everyone else in. Even people who would normally sit in the back can see not only that people are engaged, but also what they find interesting. You can see and respond to questions that would’ve normally caused people to fall behind and disengage from the presentation. The conversation might turn hostile (and you’d better be watching it if it does!), but even that comes from interested and engaged people. If someone says “This is boring!”, at least that person cared enough to type it in instead of just leaving—and you can respond by changing your talk.

For really high-energy presentations that involve lots of collective audience interaction (such as asking people to chat with their seatmates or to sing along with you), being face-to-face still rocks. But for many, many presentations, sitting in the best seats in the house can transform people’s experiences. Try it out for your next presentation!

Next post in “How I learned to stop worrying and love the webinar” – Part 2: From Audience to Individuals

Subscribe to my feed in your favourite feed reader or get new posts by e-mail!

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

How I learned to stop worrying and love the webinar – Part 1: The best seats in the house

Image via Wikipedia

As I write this, my shelves hold 50 books from the Toronto Public Library (the maximum you can have out at a time), and I’ve placed holds on 46 more (four away from the maximum for that, too).

I really, really, really like libraries.

It’s a great improvement over standing in bookstores, trying to figure out which one of ten books I would get, furtively skimming through books to absorb the content and writing style so that I could pick the keepers (or simply slurp the ideas from the book, and move on).

I still buy books. I buy them to give to friends, or to turn to for handy inspiration.

But oh, the library…

My first memory of a library outside the bookshelves that lined our house was the Learning Resource Center (or LRC) at my grade school. In addition to rows and rows of shelves, it had colorful books in a small carpeted play area. I’d often curl up there with random things I’d pull off the shelves: classic fiction alternated with Disney stories, reference books matched with fairytales.

My high school library had the largest dictionary I’d ever seen, reference books galore, and a decent collection of science fiction and other novels. I remember coming across a list of phobias and manias in a psychology reference once, and being absolutely fascinated by the names that people had given all these concepts. My favorite was trichorrhexophobia, the fear of splitting hairs. But Google can only find one page that has that term (aside from this one, once it’s indexed). Was it a figment of my teenage imagination, or have the years warped the spelling in my memories?

My university library had a computerized system. While I loved the ease of searching the catalog from my own computer (and even wrote a Perl script that scraped the search results into my database), I missed the familiarity of running into the same scrawled names on library check-out cards. But it was a huge library that spanned several stories, and it had so, so many books. I read and read and read.

And now this. Toronto. One of the largest library systems in the world. As a graduate student, I had access to the towering Robarts Library as well. I thought I’d miss the stacks a lot after I graduated, but the Toronto Public Library is immense and I can find almost everything I need (aside from scholarly publications, which I sometimes wish I still had easy access to, but ah well).

Someday, I want to build a library. There’s something about coming across books I would never have searched for, and I want to share that with the future.

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

Libraries