technozid

A fun ride through the cyperspace

Category : General

Where have you been on September 11?

On September 9, 2001, I boarded my plane back to Germany. I spent the previous days in Chicago, attending the “Print 01″ trade show together with the US partner company of my employer. I quite enjoyed Chicago – it’s a nice and interesting city and the Great Lake had its own enchanting athmosphere. I also liked my US colleagues – they were professional but also friendly, and working with them for years made me bond with a few of them.

“Print 01″ was not that much of an interesting expo though. I was scheduled to fly back on September 13, however my presence there was not really needed anymore. Some of the staff of the US guys left the expo early – only a rump crew of 4 remained. It was decided that I went back to Germany as well. My plane landed early morning on the 10th in Brussels. I took the day off and resumed my regular work on the morning of September 11.

I still recall when the news broke. We stared at each other, it took quite a while before we really grasped what happened. Soon, any work we did stopped and we were glued to news websites and the radio. I immediately thought of my colleagues in Chicago.

Later, they reported that the whole tradeshow was in a state of shock. They inofficially/officially shut it down the very same day. They were stranded in Chicage, the US skies blanketed with a no-fly ban. They eventually managed to hire a rental car at outrageous prices and took turns on the wheel riding the 700 miles back to Virginia.

Since then, I got a new passport. But I kept the old one with the immigration stamp showing I left the country on 9/9/2001.

New year resolution

Welcome 2012. I’ve had two all in all quite good years in 2010 and 2011 and most recently I switched jobs and work in the industry I love for years now and with a great and committed team. Those are all prerequisites for a great 2012 as well. So here’s my list of personal resolutions for the new year.

  1. Blog more
    This blog is horribly neglected. I am a constant writer on the corporate blog, yet my personal blog could do with some new content as well, even though some authors claim that “blogging is dead” in the social age. Also I suspect there is one Spanish reader who might like to see more posts here.
  2. Work out more
    Not driving to work by bicycle anymore (too far/clothing demands) took my daily workout away. There is an opportunity for weekly badminton with the colleagues as well as a slot for swimming. Would be great and healthy if I manage both.
  3. Lose weight
    Goes in line with #2 :-)
  4. Digitize my physical media
    I barely listen to my CD’s anymore – only to the songs I have on the various electronic devices. There’s several hundred of CD’s waiting to be digitized and tagged. Not sure what to do about the boxes full of audio cassettes.
  5. Make photobooks
    Then again, sitting back and browsing through an actual physical album with photos is quite relaxing. A best-of for each year of digital photography would be cool.
  6. Improve my guitar skills
    My guitar skills have not really improved in years. Taking lessons a few years ago did not really work out, mostly due to my busy schedule. So I need to think of a strategy how I can play more often and improve. Maybe the new gadget I gave myself for Christmas helps?
  7. Spend more time with friends
    I’ve been something of a hermit the past years (people who know me know why). Gladly I made some new friends in 2010/2010 and I would enjoy spending more time with them. The old friends are scattered all over, but there is car and train. An exception might be my friends in Kiwiland.
  8. Geocaching
    Finally the equipment is all here, so caches in the vicinity – beware!

Well, quite a list already. Welcome, 2012!

My 3 Public Speaking Tricks

I love public speaking. Passionate presenting in front of 5, 50 or 500 people is what I truly enjoy. So I was very happy when I got asked for a speaking engagement last Saturday. The presentation had to be held in front of a group of just 10 people, but they were probably the toughest critics one can think of. I am pleased to report that it went very good, and that I managed to include them in Q&A and even practical breakouts during my gig.

In a funny coincidence, I stumbled across an article with public speaking tricks today. I support most of the tricks mentioned. They work well. Here are my three secret soup ingredients when it comes to public speaking:

  1. Speak LOUD
    In smaller rooms and with smaller audiences, I usually do not need amplification, because I talk significantly louder than many other speakers I have met. The trick is to find a volume where you are not shouting yet and still have full control over the nuances of your voice. Not only will speaking loud help the audience to understand you. The main effect is that a loud and clear and steady voice will give you an aura of authority and expertship. As a side effect, it will force you to breathe regularly, which helps you to relax and makes your thoughts more clear.
  2. Speak SLOW
    Some people suggest you should treat your audience as if they were a bunch of 5 year olds. I do not like the implications of that – it’s a disregard of your audience. However, what works for me, is to speak slow. Real slow. And then a bit. Of course you need to adjust to your audience, but still – speak slower than you would normally do in a conversation. Again, this helps your audience to follow you, but it also helps YOU to plan your sentence ahead, in order to avoid gaps. Especially useful in a Q&A track.
  3. Make eye contact
    Secret sauce ingredient #3 is equally important. I usually pick 2-5 people from the audience, and keep eye contact with them. It’s really not important who you chose, but if there are important people in the audience (prospective clients for example), pick them. Otherwise pick the ones you think look most sympathic or attractive. Members of the audience you will NOT pick, won’t realize they were not picked, but WILL realize you keep eye contact with the audience. Shift your eye-contact among the people you picked in a random pattern. Actually, don’t think too much of it, it will happen automatically. The effect is that the audience gets the impression that you CARE about them, and that you want them to take something home with them from your presentation.

Those are my 3 golden rules for presentations. More general rules include to be well prepared, to know what you talk about, the make a full body presentation, with walking, gesticulation, leaning against things. I even sat down on stage edges occasionally, to address the audience.

Public speaking can be great fun and is definitely a rewarding experience. Next time you have to do it, remember my 3 suggestions.

 

Have fun!

What is missing here?


It is day 3 after the Eyjafjallajoekull volcano in Iceland brought the European air traffic down. My friend Lorna from Scotland was the first to report about it, and she told me about the chaos on British airports. Now the choas spreads slowly across the rest of Europe, with our own chancellor stranded in Lisboa. It is – in a scary way – amazing how radically an event of nature can disrupt our civilized life.

I always loved flying. I won a balloon ride as a teenager and my father sponsored me a short helicopter ride as well. My first commercial airline flight was to go visit Microsoft in Redmond, and over the past two decades I amassed quite a lot of flight miles. While flying became routine for me, it still never ceased to hold some fascination.

Now the sky is clear. The image above is a montage of some shots out of my window. Being located close to 3 commercial and one military airport, the sky usually holds 2-3 condesation trails at any time. Those white, kilometer long stripes are such a common sight, that their absence rings a chord. A clear sky is a strange sight.

I spoke to a friend briefly this morning, and we spun the idea that if the ash cloud from iceland blocks air traffic for another 3-4 weeks, how would it change our behaviour and our perception of air travel?

75.917 spam comments in the queue

So this blog was not touched since July 2007, and in those 17 months there were 75k successfully intercepted spam comments. Bandwidth is far too cheap it seems.

Reliability of digital cameras

BoingBoing has a post on the person who photographed the new Harry Potter book. The person obviously forgot to manipulate/erase the EXIF metadata, so the camera type and serial number is known. The real dynamite (at least for me) lies in the quote of a Canon official:

“From what we know, the device is one of the original Rebel cameras, probably a 350D, and given that they’ve been out for three years, it’s likely the owner would have had it cleaned or repaired in that time.”

Pardon? You must be kidding, don’t you? In a 3 year timeframe, that camera had to be sent in for maintenance at least one time?

I just replaced my old analog Canon camera – which I had for 10 years – with a Fuji digital camera. My old Canon NEVER got maintenanced in all these years!

Vienna, Rome – but not Berlin

These have been eventful weeks. I have been traveling a lot, been visiting a dealer and one of his customers in Austria, and I spent several days at a tradeshow in Rome. There, however, my already tattered knee got worse, and I had to take rather strong medication and keep it absolutely calm in order to avoid surgery. Upon my return in the office preparations for the next tradeshow in Berlin were in full swing, so I dived right back into work. One of the downsides of this completely unnecessary knee issue is that I didn’t get a ticket for Berlin myself. Since I do not only love to plan and manage tradeshows, but also love to go there, this was quite a disappointment. But knee surgery is not what I want to experience either.

Bicycle accident – knee damaged

Today is the fourth day after a bicycle accident I had. Fortunately it happened without another party involved – otherwise it might have been even worse. I cycled downhill and had to take a right turn at a crossing – a spot I pass twice each day. Since it hasn’t rained since April 1st the crossing was dusty with dirt an pollen. However a municipal cleaning machine has just passed and sprayed some water on it. The water formed a greasy coating with the dirt/pollen, so my bicycle lost traction and I slammed to the ground and slid accross the crossing. I am covered with bruises, and my left knee was bleeding heavily and was quite swollen. I had to go to the hospital and they took 3 x-rays of the knee. Fortunately nothing is broken, but the swelling only subsides very slowly. On Thursday and Friday I could barely walk at all. Today on Sunday there is still some substantial swelling, not to speak of the battered look which looks as the leg comes right out of a Zombie movie…

St. Patricks Day – alas without me

For the first time in many years I realized a few days ago that St. Patricks Day is coming up – usually this only occurs to me a couple of weeks later. I was looking forward to spend the evening today in one of our three Irish pubs in town and have lots of music, lots of Guiness and lots of chat. And then I found out that I had a dentists appointment for yesterday – to get a “wisdom tooth”(?) removed. The procedure was planned for 5-10 minutes, but then it turned out that the tooth was not really cooperative, so that in the end three(!) people worked on me for 45 minutes. I got anesthesia of course so I felt no pain. Nevertheless it was quite exhausting and stressful for me. And a couple of hours later the anesthesia wore off and that is when the “fun” really started for me…
Today it feels much better, but I’m still taking painkillers and I am very cautious what I drink and eat since the wound is still pretty raw. If it continues like that I would be ill advised if I’d join St. Patricks Day tonight, at least in the pubs in my town. However I have seen a few places in Second Life where they celebrate it too. Maybe a virtual St. Patricks Day is better than none at all.

Paris II: Sentences that would be completely rubbish 5 years ago

Myself to Sean when he took photos of the Eiffel tower at night:

Michael: What resolution does your phone have?
Sean: 3 Megapixels