By
Clare on
January 29, 2011
Presentations / public speaking
Have been thinking a lot about this following my presentation last week. Bought, and quickly made my way through Scott Berkun‘s Confessions of a Public Speaker. The book was a really easy, enjoyable, funny read. Two particularly memorable bits… the discussion about the similarities between fear and excitement; and the part about creating interesting titles for talks.
I’ve also been thinking about how conditioned we are to expect ‘boring’. We expect long, text-heavy, poorly prepared PowerPoint based lectures. Why do we tolerate this? Why do we continue to allow it? I believe that everything can be made more interesting. Induction, occupational health & safety, employee briefings are so dull and have infinite scope for improvement.
Wedding dreams
For as long as I can remember I’ve had ‘anxiety’ dreams just before I travel, or have a big assignment due. Usually they involve me forgetting to do something. I had my first wedding anxiety dream this week where I forgot to send the celebrant our vows and readings etc before the ceremony. And then it got to a few minutes before the ceremony and I went into a mad panic of trying to find someone at the hotel (we’re not actually getting married at a hotel, but in my dream we were) to email or fax the celebrant.
So, what did I do? Got up at 4am and wrote my vows. And they have now been safely emailed to the celebrant!
Ubuntu
I listened to Elizabeth Lesser’s TEDWomen talk on Friday morning and in it she mentions the word ‘ubuntu’ (which I only knew as the name for an open-source operating system). Basically, ubuntu is all about our relationships with others and our human need for interconnectedness. But I really liked how Elizabeth explained ubuntu in her talk… ‘I need you in order to be me, and you need me in order to be you’.
By
Clare on
January 28, 2011
I’m getting married in a little over 2 months, so have been thinking lots lately about marriage, and love, and tradition, and ceremony, and family, and happiness etc etc. So, I particularly enjoyed this PopTech talk from Stephanie Coontz on what makes an ideal marriage.
HINT: It’s the little interactions that matter!
By
Clare on
January 20, 2011
Public Speaking
Today I gave a presentation to 200ish staff at work. Am not generally a particularly outgoing person and you won’t often find me speaking in front of large groups. But I loved it. I loved being pushed. Being out of my comfort zone. Rising to the challenge. Doing something that I knew at least 80% of the audience would probably never do. The two main things that I think made a huge impact on how I performed and how I felt about it (both before, during and after) were 1) I was interested in, understood, and cared deeply about the content, and 2) practice, practice, practice. I had a similar feeling after delivering training as part of my train-the-trainer course (and the same reasons applied then too).
Wedding Song List
So far, the definites on my list are…
All Over Again – Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings
Oops! – Louis Armstrong & Ella Fitzgerald
This Will Be (An Everlasting Love) – Natalie Cole
It’s Growing – Margie Joseph
By
Clare on
January 19, 2011
The slightly random things that I’ve noticed/have been pondering today…
The science of love, and the future of women – Helen Fisher
“Love” is fascinating… And this is such an interesting talk which makes me think lots about the relationships between neuroscience, emotions and behaviour.
Sorry
What does ‘sorry’ mean? How do different people use the expression ‘sorry’ differently? Can this lead to frustration/confusion? Can you use ‘sorry’ too much? Does it lose its meaning to the person saying it, and the person hearing it when it’s used frequently? Can it be used as an expression of sympathy, without apology for wrong doing or a mistake?
Definitions and uses for the word ‘sorry’ from the Macmillan Dictionary
The Holstee Manifesto
Love it!
Company manifesto from Holstee (kickass products, sustainably made, with a social impact).
via David Hood
Dahl
Jason and I made dahl for the the first time (recipe from Maeve O’Meara’s Food Safari). But we used canned lentils (from the back of the pantry and therefore of indeterminate age) and olive oil instead of ghee… And the result was okay, but not great… Next time I’m going to try Emily’s recipe – which I only remembered was included as an appendix to the 2010 Backhouse Lecture [pdf] after we’d starting making our batch.
By
Clare on
January 4, 2011
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and reading about story-telling lately (see my recent book reviews) and want to find more ways to use and promote ‘story-telling’ in my work and my side-projects. I am a big believer in the utility and power of pictures to elicit stories (and memories, opinions etc) so I’ve made myself a set of picture cards and am quite pleased with the result.
Mostly the images are (creative commons licensed content) from Flickr (with a couple of my own photos included) which I had printed as 6×4 photos at Officeworks (for 10c per print). I recorded the Flickr attribution on the reverse of each photo and laminated them, and now have this great set of 33 cards (which I’ll keep adding to).
