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 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
August 6, 2010
TED is all about ideas worth spreading, right? So I figure that one the best indicators of an effective TED talk is that I end up telling everyone and anyone who’ll listen about it. I’ve enjoyed tonnes of TED talks on a range of different topics, but I’m very conscious of a few that I talk about constantly. Here they are…
Published:
August 6, 2010 | Tagged: TED |
I must admit that when I hear the term ‘social network’ I immediately think of web-based tools and services – Facebook, MySpace, Twitter etc. But this TED talk explores the (surprising and somewhat hidden) power of more traditional social networks – the networks of family, friends and neighbours that we create and form part of. I found this talk interesting, surprising and inspiring…
I also enjoyed James Fowler’s PopTech 2009 talk on the same subject.
One of the recent TED talks I’ve enjoyed… In it Daniel Kahneman discusses the ‘remembering self’ an the ‘experiencing self’ and poses an interesting thought experiment:
Imagine that your next vacation you know that at the end of the vacation all your pictures will be destroyed, and you’ll get an amnesic drug so that you won’t remember anything. Now, would you choose the same vacation? And if you would choose a different vacation, there is a conflict between your two selves, and you need to think about how to adjudicate that conflict, and it’s actually not at all obvious because, if you think in terms of time, then you get one answer. And if you think in terms of memories, you might get another answer. Why do we pick the vacations we do, is a problem that confronts us with a choice between the two selves.
It reminded me of this photo (which I know I’ve told lots of people about, but I don’t think I’ve posted yet)…
