October 30, 2009

What do you do during boring teleconference calls?

Redesign other people’s presentations, if you’re Lesley. That’s how she keeps herself interested in a call. She corrects typos, makes fonts and colours more readable, adds diagrams and animation, and generally experiments with how to make presentations better. She often sends the presentation to the original speakers so that they can take advantage of her work.

Want to try that during your next call?

Inspired by Dan Roam’s annotated-in-real-time presentation, I picked up a Wacom Bamboo Pen and Touch drawing tablet for portable use. I’ve got an upcoming talk (“Remote Presentations That Rock”) and I’ll need to deliver it from 3600 because of other appointments, so I can’t use my ever-so-wonderful Cintiq 12WX. I decided to spring for the multitouch tablet because I thought the extra buttons and multi-touch gestures would help me work as smoothly as I work on the Cintiq.

After some driver hassles, I got the new tablet working with drivers downloaded from Wacom’s website. The multitouch works better than expected, and I’ve been using it to scroll through webpages in Firefox. Zooming in and out worked with Inkscape, as does scrolling vertically, but scrolling horizontally or rotating don’t work.

I’m still getting used to looking at one surface while drawing on another, but that’s something I can pick up with practice.

Although a tablet PC would probably be an even more efficient way to handle all of this, I think my decision to explore the in-between steps was good. This way, I can add drawing capabilities to any of the computers.

Looking forward to sharing my experiences with you!

Here are some of my favourite presentation books:

Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery Garr Reynolds

slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations Nancy Duarte

Give Your Speech, Change the World: How to Move Your Audience to Action Nick Morgan

The How of WOW: A Guide to Giving a Speech That Will Positively Blow ‘Em Away Tony Carlson

Rainmaking Presentations: How to Grow Your Business by Leveraging Your Expertise Joseph Sommerville

As a foreigner working in Canada, I have to deal with lots of paperwork. The three documents I stress out about the most (and therefore remember to renew) are my work permit, my passport, and my temporary resident visa. Without a valid work permit, I’d be an illegal alien. Without my passport, I can’t travel. Without my visa, I can’t come back into the country.

Ah, paperwork.

Because there are big consequences if I don’t get things like that sorted out (possibly getting kicked out of the country? having to answer yes to awkward questions on future visa applications? getting stuck on the wrong side of the immigration counter?), I haven’t needed long-term reminders.

Renewing my social insurance number, which I really only dig up during tax time and when opening new accounts? That apparently gets me every time. This is the second time I’ve pulled out my SIN card and realized it had expired.

So here’s a checklist for other folks on work permits, if you ever need to renew your passport:

1. Renew your work permit, which was probably issued with the same validity as your old passport.
2. Renew your social insurance number record, which was probably issued with the same validity as your work permit. The process is very fast, but you’ll need your passport and your work permit.
3. Renew your temporary resident visa. This involves sending your passport in the mail, and you should do it after #2 to avoid the wait.

Something like this happens when my task management system fails. I’m getting better at not letting things fall through the cracks, so little failures like this are instructive. I much prefer testing my task management now rather than later, when it might Really Matter.

So, where had it failed?

1. When I received my previous SIN card, I didn’t make a long-term reminder. I briefly mentioned it on my blog before I renewed my work permit, but (a) I didn’t create a WAITING-FOR task, and (b) I didn’t stop and think about it when I received the card. Either action would’ve caught this, although a good WAITING-FOR system is better. I didn’t have an electronic task in Toodledo, which I’ve gone back to using for my day-to-day tasks. (Emacs stores my long-term goals, and I fill Toodledo tasks in based on that.) I didn’t store anything in my then-not-yet-set-up tickler file. This lack of task recognition was the key point of failure. Action: Record WAITING tasks and add them to my weekly review.
2. I didn’t have one place to put my SIN card. I checked three places and two folders (Employment, Identification) for my card. I found a SIN card in the first place I checked (one of my drawers), but because it had expired and I remembered being in this situation before, I thought I must have another SIN card. Also, the drawer was the wrong place to put it – I should’ve moved it to the Identification folder when I set up my filing system. ACTION: Tidy up this weekend and file things that are out of place. 
3. I didn’t have a good action log. Back when I published my full task list, I could easily find out when I last renewed my SIN. I thought I’d renewed it later than that, but apparently I didn’t. So my confusion resulted in maybe five minutes of looking around for a possibly newer SIN card, just in case I happened to have two. Although I suspected that I turned in my expired SIN card during the renewal, it was good to check anyway. ACTION: Get back to posting my task list. I do something like that in my weekly review, but it might not be granular enough.

Slowly figuring things out!