Be The Pigeon

UPDATED: September 2020 with added tips from experience I routinely lead customer workshops as part of my profession. 100% remote work is changing things in a major way!  Workshops are not designed as remote experiences; yet here we are.  I led my first remote customer workshop this week!  As expected, it was definitely a different experience but it worked pretty well.  I learned some significant lessons  along the way and thought they'd be a valuable share (beyond this forced-quarantine time).  Delivering workshops remotely certainly isn’t the preferred method.  But there's surely things we can do to make them as effective as possible. Tips: Energy.   Start with uptempo. music, jokes, and a high-level overview of what you're going to accomplish and how.  Have handouts that give people a strong mental model of where they are in the process.  They'll tune out and get bored otherwise. PRO TIP: I love to use a concept called ELMO ...

NOTE: This post is an update to an original post on LinkedIn in April 2018 . I've attended a lot of presentations over the years. And I mean A LOT! And I've given more than a few as well. Over those years, it's become obvious that the corporate world is very much stuck in a rut. Too often, the presentations are entirely forgettable and might as well be repeats of similar talk tracks from years or decades past! As speakers, it seems as though our message has to be plastered all over a slide in order for us to talk about it. We literally read the words on the slide to one another.  We're fearful these days of just talking eye to eye about a topic we're passionate about. There's tons of books, articles, and teaching about how to make better looking or more meaningful presentations. I love much of that content. But I want to share a different angle on improving presentations. Much of the content you'll find when searching on presentation tips...

In the midst of the worldwide pandemic we're each now navigating, we are obviously in uncharted waters in all aspects of our lives. Professionally, nearly every one of us is now working from home (WFH) full time. Though many folks have long WFH'd one day per week or on occasion, it’s a very different thing to become a full-time remote worker. Some of you are adapting to very new ways of working that might at times feel awkward. Here's some tips from those who have been doing the WFH thing for years. Routine. As much as you can, try to maintain a normal routine. That means starting the day on time, getting ready for work as you normally would. You might not be dressing up like you would for the office, but there’s mental value to the whole “getting ready” routine. If you wake up and immediately hit the laptop to start into emails, you don’t get that important ramp-up/ramp-down time in your day. Take breaks as you normally would. It’s not uncommon to find yourself si...

In my profession, I’m often presenting and speaking publicly, often about technical topics. But last week, amidst the life-changing times to which we’re all now adapting, I was listening to a COVID-19 presentation from a virologist and biologist when I had an epiphany. No, nothing related to the virus; that’s for another time. I had an epiphany around the way we communicate. I sat for 90 min listening to incredibly intelligent people explain highly technical topics in a way that I found both interesting and relevant, but on topics which I was having trouble completely comprehending. The scientists were just speaking at their normal rate—zippy—because it’s their daily expertise, and with enough “A=B=C” style tonality to keep my head a half-step behind where they were at. As they concluded, I realized this is exactly how our audiences in technology/business often feel when we’re done speaking to them.  We—as vendors especially—quickly become accustomed to having topically similar...

I've been trying in recent months to provide some professionally relevant content to share.  I started by using LinkedIn article posts, but I've grown tired with its very limited set of editing tools.  I looked at medium.com, but I'm not trying to monetize my thoughts.  So I'm back to a blog I've ignored for years.  Stay tuned.

Many friends from outside the area have inquired how we've fared through the recent disaster in Colorado.  Here's an update: Our current place (rental) is fine, though the property we're building on was decimated pretty badly (it's about 2 miles from where we presently live, next to a lake on the St Vrain river).  The river is normally 20-30 feet wide and 1-2 feet deep.  I could have waded across it no problem a week ago.  It was 200-500yds wide when we saw it a few days ago (no typo there).  The shot below is our lake, but it's connected now to the river and the next lake over.  The water continues for hundreds of yards to the right side of the frame.  Utterly amazing. Here's the sign to our neighborhood.  Irony is we just changed the street name from Dougla Drive to Waterside Ln.  How appropriate. This guy tried to go around the road barriers.  Bad idea.  Fire department got their engine stuck trying...

I took my 8-year old on a date tonight and she chose for her activity--wait for it--Walmart Bingo. She found bingo cards online and after our dinner, we commenced the hunt. The items on the card were mostly outrageous and not likely to find (including "bearded woman"), though not outside the realm of possibility; the "someone buying beer and diapers" came pretty close. Here, however, were some delightful finds I did manage to pick up, even if not on the bingo card: Teenage girl in PJ's Dude with "Shh, this is my hangover shirt" t-shirt Dude with one eye Dude with a mohawk and a mouth full of chew Guy buying worms Guy with a full 1-1/2" gauge in his ear, plus more jewelry on his lips.  He looked like livestock Broken bottles on the floor in the drink aisle Mormon missionaries.  Maybe they broke the drinks!  Luckily they were missing the facial jewelry.  Phew. A girl playing (successfully) with 3 hoola hoops at the same time    ^^^M...

This is entry #15. Link to entry #14. Jolayne is also chronicling our trip  here. Final Thoughts . What an amazing journey we had!  This was a life-defining event for both me personally and also for my family.  As I've now had several months to consider the experience as a whole, I do regret that we were immediately thrown into the chaos and stress of moving once we returned home; I didn't really get to bask in the experience the way I'd hoped.  However, I am grateful for the time I spent noting and writing down the things that happened on this trip.  My journal entries are long and perhaps too detailed.  But I've learned from previous trips that the details and vividness of the experience tends to wear with time, so I'm hoping to keep as much of this as I can. My favorite joke was "How many people can you fit on a jeepney?"  Answer: "Isa pa, isa pa!"  (One more, one more!)  Here's a fun clip I put together on our orphan...

This is entry #14. Link to entry #13. Jolayne is also chronicling our trip  here. Day 12-13.  Wednesday, April 10th . Day 12 picked up exactly where day 11 left off; it's all part of the same thing.  Our flight from Manila wound up leaving almost an hour late, but it was no big deal.  We boarded a new A330 about 1230am and pretty much all immediately fell asleep.  The plane was very quiet, and none of us touched the food we were served; Kristen probably slept the best and Amy the worst since she was sitting next to another guy that kept bumping her.  It's funny about personal space on airplanes.  Things you'd never do in public normally are all-of-a-sudden common and acceptable when confined on a plane: touching, rubbing, all sorts of awkward.  The flight was about 3 hours was all, and before we knew it we were landing back in Incheon/Seoul.  We took off at 82 degrees (+humidity) and landed to 32 degrees.  We'd taken ...