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Monthly review: March 2010

For the third year in a row, March was a flurry of presentations. I started with “The Shy Presenter” at Ignite Toronto, did a recorded replay of “Remote Presentations That Rock” for IBM Canada’s International Women’s Day celebrations, gave a 5-minute presentation on collaboration for a client in the UK, gave a short talk on personal brand to the IBM A/NZ social media marketing team, gave a talk on “Presentation Kaizen” at PresentationCamp, and did another replay of Remote Presentations That Rock. I also gave a brief overview of Sametime Unyte and Lotus Connections Communities to my second-line manager. I even gave a short presentation on microblogging, too. Eight talks – new record for frequency! I’m looking forward to a quieter April, although the next few months already have talks scheduled.

March was also a month for career planning. I drafted my personal business commitments and individual development plans after many conversations with my manager, dotted-line manager, and various mentors (including one who is about to retire from IBM). I mapped out what I wanted to learn, and people have been helping me find opportunities to do so. I realized that travel wasn’t as scary as I thought it was, so I applied for IBM’s Corporate Service Corps and indicated my availability for occasional overseas work. I learned a lot about facilitation, too. I helped one of my mentors facilitate a large-group discussion around Smarter Cities. Hooray!

March was a month of transition from winter to spring. I’ve been biking – yay! The tulips and lilies-of-the-valley are starting to poke through the soil, and I’ve planted a few seeds in the garden. Can’t wait to get plants going again! We’ve been very busy baking and filling our freezer with all sorts of goodness, so that’s working out just fine.

April promises to be quieter. I’d like to get back into Emacs tweaking and sewing, and maybe free up every other weekend instead of cooking all the time. =)

For some reason, people really liked On circumstances and somebodies. Here are other blog posts you might’ve missed from this month:

Presentations and public speaking:

Other communication skills:

Work and career:

Automation and lifehacking:

Weekly reviews:

Previous monthly review: Monthly review: February 2010

Short URL: http://sachachua.com/blog/p/7129

On This Day...

  • 2012: Trying out MindManager 2012 – Almost but not quite the right fit for me — (Click on the image for  larger version.) I love the way that mindmaps let me get lots of information down quickly [...]
  • 2009: Passions, Strengths and Goals — I asked Joy Soria (another virtual assistant from the Philippines) to put together some career advice and stories to share [...]
  • 2009: Volunteer opportunity for teachers and retired teachers in Ontario — I know Deniz from LifecampTO, and I’m all for helping newcomers with their job search. Know anyone who might be [...]
  • 2009: Virtual assistance process: Calendar management with Timebridge — Thanks to Ana Conception-Macatiag for documenting this process and including screenshots! =) Setting up appointments: Log in to http://www.timebridge.com, see Accounts [...]
  • 2009: Quick tips for making the most of Sametime Unyte — More and more people are turning to virtual presentations as a way to save on travel and reach a wide [...]
  • 2008: Weekly report — One week on the ground–that’s all I have in between flights. We got back from a two-week vacation in the [...]
  • 2007: Collaboration — Now is about the right time for me to step up my job search. I sent my resume to some of [...]
  • 2007: Sorting out my schedule — The days are just packed. I need to think of how to balance my time. There’ll never be enough time in [...]
  • 2006: Friends — My best friend from Japan is in the Philippines, and I’m glad to hear that my mom and my friends are [...]
  • 2006: Potluck last night — I had a potluck dinner with Lusine, James and Stefan last night. Tons of fun! We enjoyed chatting about things as [...]
  • 2005: Networking — The network tester I bought yesterday was very useful. Celine and Yaya suddenly lost network connection, and the tester quickly showed [...]
  • 2005: Playing with fire — Told you we play with fire. Staff in a front circle Staff going around my back 猫の目は非常に光を感じやすい。 Cats’ eyes are very sensitive to [...]
  • 2004: Sniff, sniff — I was trying to get rid of a stray directory called ~ when I accidentally zapped my home directory instead. Fortunately, [...]
  • 2003: [[bbdb://jm.ibanez][JM Ibanez]] tries out Emacs — Looks like UA&P geek JM Ibanez has taken the plunge! =) Welcome to the Emacs world, JM.
  • 2003: .htaccess and RedirectMatch — RedirectMatch permanent /~sachac/notebook/wiki/(.*).html /~sachac/notebook/wiki/$1.php is a very funky .htaccess line that helps me deal with the Great Renaming.
  • 2003: Gnus and duplicates — emacs — I am very, very glad that Gnus can automatically delete duplicates with (setq nnmail-treat-duplicates 'delete) .
  • 2003: Speech Synthesis — Making Computers Talk is a Scientific American article about developing speech synthesizers. You might also be interested in SALT, an XML standard [...]
  • 2003: Can IT Still Attract the Best and the Brightest? — From ACM Technews: http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/21095.html - “Far from draining the field of the most talented IT workers, there is a distinct possibility that [...]
  • 2003: filesets.el — emacs — help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org, Thomas Link: filesets.el in CVS Emacs, and also at http://members.a1.net/t.link/CompEmacsFilesets.html . “filesets.el makes it easy to open frequently accessed files. In conjunction [...]
  • 2003: comp.sys.wearables call for moderators — What, there’s a comp.sys.wearables? Must head over to http://groups.google.com …
  • 2003: curriculum review template created. — Cross-reference: CurriculumReview#1
  • 2003: completion on name of wiki page — Cross-reference: PlannerMode#9
  • 2003: How Software Companies Die – Orson Scott Card — Looks like one of my favorite novelists has some insights on the software industry. http://www.netjeff.com/humor/item.cgi?file=DeveloperBees, from Google:orson+scott+card+software+companies, from a Slashdot comment on programmer psychology. The [...]
  • 2003: open source courseware links from blogs — Cross-reference: OpenSourceCourseware#1
  • 2003: eclipse ide — One of these days I should really try out Eclipse. Rumor has it that it’s much like Emacs, but runs on Java.
  • 2003: game blog — Again from http://slashdot.org: http://www.corante.com/gotgame/ is a blog about the gaming industry. Eric and some other gamedev geeks might be interested in [...]
  • 2003: psychology of programmers — http://slashdot.org links to http://www.devx.com/devx/editorial/11659, an article that talks about “flow” and how to encourage programmer creativity. Pretty good suggestions, like letting developers [...]
  • 2003: kitten — Heard a kitten inside the walls between my room and the bathroom. What was that short story that had a [...]

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