Dropsafe

by Alec Muffett

Just back from Blogs and Social Media…

I’m just back from the Blogs and Social Media Forum which was stonkingly good fun.

Some quick bulletpoints before I go to bed, so I can remember to write about them properly tomorrow:

  • Chris Barger, IBM’s chief blogger, is a deeply cool dude; I regret missing his session, but apparently recordings/podasts will soon be up.

  • JP Rangaswami, CIO of DrKW is likewise a stunningly smart chap, and a complete chess fiend.

  • Ben Hammersley wears a leather kilt and carrys a 17″ Powerbook festooned with vaguely goth/vamp cartoonery.

  • Adriana Cronin-Lukas, aside from being a total babe and society goddess, knows how to throw fantabulous good party – and it’s a brave but stupid man who challenges her to shots.

  • I spent the evening drinking booze in a Chelsea formerly-MI5-owned-and-wired house with an original 1960s leather-upholstered bar what was installed by Oleg Penkovsky (WP) and Greville Wynne, whom acting in cahoots each stiffed the KGB and MI5 respectively for 500 quid to build the bar in order to get the other drunk for intelligence purposes, took the resultant grand, spent 300 on building the bar and the remaining 700 quid on call-girls to keep them entertained at the bar.

    Chris Barger and I both flipped-out at this story, both having an interest in that sort of thing… Meaning spies, of course…

  • It is possible to deliver a 201-slid presentation in 25 minutes flat and have people not merely enjoy the experience, but even have people keep congratulating and thanking you repeatedly to the point where you start to get slightly scared by it.

  • …

…damn, it’s late; I shall have to post pictures and a write-up tomorrow; I am back earlier than expected since there are rail engineering works disrupting trains, and everything stops at Farnborough – including the express. I took the bus from there to Fleet and from there a taxi home, getting back an hour before my train would have pulled into my local station on a normal day.

It’s a weird world.

⊞

Comments

8 responses to “Just back from Blogs and Social Media…”

  1. alecm
    re: Just back from Blogs and Social Media…

    Oh yeah – and the Blog guy from Johnson&Johnson mixes a really good Martini.

    Reply
  2. Geoff Arnold
    re: Just back from Blogs and Social Media…

    201 slids [sic]? That’s sick.

    Reply
  3. alecm
    re: Just back from Blogs and Social Media…

    Not at all; if you want to see my inspiration for the new style, go watch

    http http://www.identity20.com/media/ETECH_2006/

    – I worked out a process to develop such a talk without going crazy, and refined my naturally higher sliderate and extrant tendency to use single-concept slides.

    You’ve sat through at least one of my Grid presentations, but where most people in presentation-skills training are recommended to pitch 2 minutes per slide and to “talk to the slide”, I’ve always pitched 45 seconds per slide and talked to the audience, using the simpler, non-bulleted slides as guidance/structural backup.

    My target this time was 6 to 7 seconds per slide, now using the slides as single-point jokes, or as a counterpoint, or as a Greek chorus, and it worked well although this being the first outing I heavily relied on an edited and marked-up script telling me the changes.

    It was the first time I’ve *ever* received a response to the depth like I got — but from my perspective more inportantly I got the point across, it made people laugh, it made people remember, and wasn’t so hard to do once I’d cracked the technique.

    There is rumour that I may have broken some sort of record. I’m also told by some that I shall get an invite back.

    Which would be nice 🙂

    Reply
  4. alecm
    re: Just back from Blogs and Social Media…

    ps: as an aside…

    I am not sure how much faster it is possible to go and still be called a presentation. As Simon Bullen put it: much below six seconds per slide, you can start to call it “framerate”.

    Someone did suggest releasing it as a flick-book.

    Reply
  5. Geoff Arnold
    re: Just back from Blogs and Social Media…

    Years ago I attended a presentation by Cliff Stoll (remember “Cuckoo’s Egg”?). He used real plastic transparencies – unframed – at about 45 seconds/slide. As he finished each slide, he just tossed it in the air. At the end of his talk, the floor at the front of the room was littered with slides….

    Reply
  6. alecm
    re: Just back from Blogs and Social Media…

    I just ripped from an old VHS tape a security lecture I did circu 1992, doing much the same thing. I am toying with the idea of posting it…

    Reply
  7. Jackie Danicki
    re: Just back from Blogs and Social Media…

    It was a really, really great presentation. You and JP alone gave people their money’s worth.

    Reply
  8. alecm
    re: Just back from Blogs and Social Media…

    Thanks, Jackie. One other thing that came out of the experience is that I really must update my blogroll…

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

More posts