People In Passing

“I’m insanely grateful to make my living as a traffiker of ideas.” – Scott Berkun

I hope one day to be able to say the same thing.

I’ve just finished reading “Confessions of a Public Speaker” by Berkun and am still absorbing all of his many incredibly useful, and well presented points. I’ve read or listened to a number of books about public speaking (one of my irrational fears) as it is something I hope to do well one day.  I would wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone that does any form of persuasive speaking. Whether you’re in the board room, a PTA meeting, or on a dais in front of an audience of thousands.

Two major themes resonate throughout:

1. Settle down. The audience is (most likely) on your side, they will give you wide latitude and likely aren’t going to remember this tomorrow anyway.

2. Be prepared. The audience has given you the opportunity to enter their lives for a short while. Respect that by taking the time yourself to be worth their time.

With excellent examples and personal illustrations from other well known public speakers he does a good job of convincing you that everyone stumbles, and that’s part of the adventure.

My most memorable public speaking crash-and-burn was while introducing a former United States Ambassador to  Afghanistan at a World Affairs Council of Oregon event. I’d prepared the night before by reading up on his resume and accomplishments. I typed up the highlights and printed them out in an extra large font so that I wouldn’t have trouble seeing them.

We had dinner with Ambassador Eliot before the event and I felt fairly comfortable with what my job was. Upon entering the room I noticed that there was no podium as I’d anticipated, just a table. Someone handed me a revised set of notes as I walked to the front of the room in a much smaller font than I’d prepared. I scanned the notes and, for some reason, was convinced that I would have to recite them from memory as it would be bad form to read them off the paper.

That was not a good idea.

I welcomed everyone and went blank. I couldn’t remember his name, the school he was dean of and no amount of mental gymnastics brought the details back to me. The paper sat on the table only 3 feet from my eyes but I wouldn’t touch it.

A long enough pause occurred that an elderly woman in the front row said, in the way that only an annoyed elderly woman can, “Just pick up the paper!”

I was mortified and then saved moments later by the Ambassador “Thanks Brad, I’ll take it from here.”

I stayed away from speaking in front of crowds for a long time after that even though I’m positive I’m the only one that remembers my performance that night. (Except for the friends I’ve reminded of the event.)

Happy 2010. Here’s to picking up the paper.

A bit of adventure.

Yesterday Summer and I packed our bags and headed for the airport. Our plan was to catch a flight to Seattle and then another to Lihue Hawaii.

Well, we made the connection, but the flight was full. After we were sure we wouldn’t be making the flight we checked the departures board and attemped a flight to Honolulu and then one to Las Vegas. Having no luck on those flights either it was getting pretty late and the list of destinations was dwindling so we decided to return to Portland and try again on Friday.

Friday morning came early and we headed back to the airport, resuming our attempt at Hawaii. With no small amount of luck we got the last two seats on a flight to Maui. Neither of us have been to Maui before (this is my first trip to Hawai’i) and as of the time of this writing, I’m somewhere over the pacific sitting next to a cute couple with a seemingly endless supply of little Captain Morgan bottles that they have been kind enough to share.

Summer and I have nowhere arranged to stay when we arrive. For me, that’s the fun part. We’ll touch down in another couple hours and figure the rest out then.

Anyone that’s been around me for any length of time in the past year or so has probably heard me rattle on about “Make“. Either the Blog, that I spend a great deal of time reading, the Magazine,  the long anticipated Make:TV, or the Maker Faire that I had an incredible time at last year.

“Make” is an idea that’s been around forever but has found some new momentum. It used to be that skills were handed down from generation to generation, then learning was institutionalized in the guilds, schools and colleges, now it has been globalized with the Internet. Anything you want to know, or want to know how to do, is within your grasp. Even better, if something you dream of isn’t available to buy, the means of production are available to you so that you can create it yourself. Given that you have enough drive to see it through…

Make is creativity, resourcefulness and the desire to create. Make is DIY with a hacker ethos.

As I have become a part of all this I am inspired daily by how people are rethinking, reimagining, and redesigning the world around them. In an effort to further this idea a few friends and I have been working together to launch a local Chapter of the Make: groups that have been popping up around the country.

And with that effort I give you Make:PDX

Portland, Oregon is a magnet for creative people and has a social scene second to none. There is a group of people getting together somewhere for nearly every interest you might have. Make:PDX has the lofty goal of bringing together groups of focused interest to trade ideas. To act as a community builder, not to replace any of the individual passionate groups of people chasing ideas but hopefully bring more people into their ranks by raising awareness. This extends from rockets to robots, cooking to crochet, electronics, woodworking, writing, roasting coffee, brewing beer, etc…

If there is one thing I have learned in this life, it is that the more skills you have and the more you understand, the more beautiful and full of possibility the world around you is.

If you’re in Portland this weekend, we’ll be having our first get-together. If for no other reason than to watch me squirm as I attempt public speaking after a long hiatus it should be interesting. Oh, and also for the cupcakes and cookies Summer and I have been busily making.

So, we had a bit of a media black out this summer. It started around the end of May when I descended into my basement and stuck my face in a bunch of books. I was studying for the CISSP certification for about two months. My nights and weekends were dedicated to the obscurity that is the depth and breadth of that study material.

Well, after burning June and July on test prep I flew down to Los Angeles and sat for the exam. It is considered the standard for computer security professionals and is taken on scantron paper with a #2 pencil. (This may give you some idea how much they trust computers.) 3 hours and 46 minutes into the the allotted 6 hours I walked out. I wasn’t entirely sure what the result would be. Two weeks after that I found out I passed. Whew… finally. I’ve been looking at that test for a long time.

Summer and I then attempted to reclaim the rest of the season in a short period of time by squeezing Camping, Hiking, Jack Johnson at the Gorge, and a week vacation into the last couple weeks of August. It wasn’t so much a vacation as a let’s-get-a-bunch-of-stuff-done-on-the-house week but it was incredibly productive! Oh, and we built something really fun…

A FULL SIZED HOME ARCADE!!!! It isn’t finished. We still need to add the trackball, cup holders, and the *very important* kegerator with taps for Player 1 and Player 2. It isn’t as pretty as some models you can buy for lots of $$$ but whatever, I learned a lot in the process.

I’ve got some other projects in development so stay tuned for updates.

Let’s move on…

I met a old woman on a plane once that told me a story about her childhood.

She told me of hiding under her house with her father when the Germans came through their town during World War II. She told me of the bombs that fell and knocked down the house around her and her father. She told me about how they waited for what seemed like days for help to come.

She could smell the gas leaking from the pipes into the small crawlspace that they had hid in.

Show told me of the look in her father’s eyes as he handed her a cigarette and took one for himself, pulled out his lighter and prepared to end their wait, when they heard the voices of the neighbors outside as they started pulling the rubble away.

I don’t know why I remembered that story this morning. I don’t know why I’m not aware of it at all times. It reminds me to have perspective on things. I pray I never have to make a decision that hard.

World AIDS Orphans Day was Wednesday.

From Scouts.org:

World AIDS Orphans Day will occur on 7 May. More than 25 million children worldwide have lost one or both parents to AIDS – equivalent to the number of people living in New York, Paris, Rome and Bangkok combined. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, 12 million children have been orphaned by the pandemic. In addition to being especially vulnerable to all forms of exploitation, these children face financial difficulties, disease, and stigmatisation.

Short Notice: The World Affairs Council of Oregon, the Portland Area Global AIDS Coalition (PAGAC), and Unitarian Universalist Global AIDS Coalition (UUGAC) are hosting Stephen Lewis at the First Unitarian Church of Portland tonight.

Stephen Lewis is the co-director of AIDS-Free World (www.aids-freeworld.org), and was the United Nations Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa from 2001 - 2006, his extensive career in the fields of diplomacy, politics, activism and humanitarian work includes roles as Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF and Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations.

He is a powerful, motivating speaker that you shouldn’t miss.

Full info HERE

Details:

Friday, May 9, 2008
First Unitarian Church of Portland
SW 12th and Main

Stephen Lewis 7:00 p.m.
Action Fair 6:00 p.m. & 8:30 p.m.
$5-15 Admission (sliding scale)