sacha chua living an awesome life

I learned a lot from the Art of Marketing conference even before it started. To take advantage of someone else’s affiliate link discount and the group ticket purchase, I coordinated a group purchase with two friends, saving ourselves $100 each. It was easier than I expected, thanks to the joys of broadcasting on Twitter and receiving money through Interac.

CONTENT

Mitch Joel: New media isn’t like old media. Why are we still using old-media paradigms of broadcasting? Reboot your marketing. Interesting stories/points: Burning the ships, SnapTell, more grandparents than high school students (comments point out logical flaws in the headline, though), 40% sleeping while watching TV, negative review converts more readily to a sale, semantics: negative review can be great, 20% completely new searches on Google every day, Journey and Arnel Pineda

Seth Godin: Be an artist instead of a cog. Solve interesting problems. Risk getting booed off the stage. Invent the next step. Work around your lizard brain. Characteristics of indispensable people: connected, creative, able to handle complexity, good at leading tribes, inspiring, have deep domain knowledge, passionate. Ship. Thrash at the beginning, not the end. People say: we need you to lead us. Work can be a platform to create art.

Sally Hogshead: Factors of fascination: Mystique, power, lust, prestige, alarm, vice, trust. People will spend a lot on things that are fascinating or things that help them become fascinating.

James Othmer: Not about campaigns, it’s about commitments. Persuasion – voice – engagement – immersion. Create a story that invites people in. Learn from movies and entertainment. Pay attention to continuity. Create a story that hangs together.

Max Lenderman: Be compelling, contextual, visceral. Story about skits in rural India, virtual ary, branded spaces, Camp Jeep, Flame (Whopper perfume), Kwik-E mart (7-11), Tide free laundry

Dan Heath: Change: Find the bright spots. Not recipe, but process. Skip true but useless knowledge. Focus on the signs of hope. What’s working right now and how can we do more of it? Direct the rider, motivate the elephant, shape the path. We change behavior by working with the elephant. See – feel – change. Find the feeling. Shape the path: Tweak the environment. Amsterdam urinal spillage story (fly). Most people try to change 5-7 times before they succeed. What makes you think you’ll get it on the first try?

PRESENTATION

Video can be a shortcut for sharing emotional stories.

Slick ad-like animations (soundtrack only, no voice) detract, though. The shift in attention is a jarring.

Some professional speakers read slides, apologize for themselves, turn their backs on the audience, have low-contrast slides, use ineffective fonts, use jargon, get lost without notes… Plenty of opportunities here.

Big difference between people who give lots of presentations (ex: Seth Godin, Dan Heath, Mitch Joel) and people who haven’t given as many.

Vivid language, metaphors, stories, funny pictures = awesome.

Key message and simple framework essential for helping people follow what you’re saying.

Good talks are focused on you, not the speaker.

Well-chosen transitions/animations make a presentation look extra-polished. (Dan Heath – good example.)

Meta

1600 people filled the auditorium. Lots of need for insight.

Choice of topics shows that audience is still mostly struggling with shift to digital.

Advantages of attending conference over reading business books: see what speakers focus on, watch videos illustrating stories, pick up presentation tips.

Got so tempted to dig into some presentations and experiment with their structures. May want to turn that into presentation coaching someday.

—

I liked Dan Heath’s content the most. I like Dan’s presentation style and Seth’s presentation style about evenly.

Next actions for me: Track down stories they shared; collect interesting stories, videos, and pictures; continue learning and sharing material.

I like the GTD way of managing mail, and I’ve created folders for this. The three folders I use the most are AA Next Action, AA Waiting, and Done. Dragging messages down to the right folder is more mouse work than I like, though. I created three buttons on a custom toolbar. For example, the action that moves the current message to my Done folder runs this:

@Command([Folder]; “Done”; “1″)

I’d love to associate these with keyboard shortcuts, or spend some time hacking my mail template. That would be even awesomer! =)

Updated May 6 2010 – added Call varXLFile.Quit()

Mwahahahahaha!

I’ve been looking for ways to recognize people’s voluntary contributions to community discussions. E-mailed thanks are great because people can use the Memo-to-File feature to save it in their performance record, and copying their managers means extra kudos.

I wanted to thank 21 people for their contributions. With the Lotus Connections Communities API, a little bit of Ruby scripting and an internal tool for looking up people’s managers, I came up with a spreadsheet that listed people’s names, e-mail addresses, number of posts, first-line manager, and either “post” or “posts” depending on how many posts they had. Pulling random bits together from examples on the Net, I developed this super-nifty Lotus Notes script which does a flexible mail merge from a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to Lotus Notes.

Create the agent and copy the following code into it. Then write an e-mail that you’ll use as the template for your new messages, and call the agent while the e-mail is selected. Give it a spreadsheet where the column headings are the tokens you’d like to replace in the template (body only). “<to>” and “<cc>” are special – they’ll also be replaced in the mail header. The resulting mail messages will be in the “Drafts” folder so that you can customize the messages before sending them out.

This may not work with multi-line replacements or fancy formatting. Review before sending, and have fun. =)

Sub Initialize
  Dim ws As New NotesUIWorkspace
  'Prompt for the filename - should be a Microsoft Excel file
  'with columns, where the first row of each column
  'is a token that will be used when replacing text in the body of the message
  'Special tokens: <to> and <cc> set the appropriate fields
  
  fileName$ = ws.Prompt(12, "Select file", "3")
  If fileName$ = "" Then 
    Exit Sub   'Cancel was presed
  End If
  strXLFilename = fileName$
  Dim s As New NotesSession  
  Dim uidoc As NotesUIDocument
  Dim partno As String
  Dim db As NotesDatabase
  Dim view As NotesView
  Dim doc As NotesDocument
  Dim collection As NotesDocumentCollection
  Dim memo As NotesDocument
  Dim body As NotesRichTextItem
  Dim newBody As NotesRichTextItem
  Dim range As NotesRichTextRange
  Dim count As Integer
  
  Set db = s.CurrentDatabase
  Set collection = db.UnprocessedDocuments
  Set memo = collection.getFirstDocument()
  
  'Get data from the spreadsheet
  Set varXLFile = CreateObject("Excel.Application")
  varXLFile.Visible = False
  Set varXLWorkbook = Nothing
  varXLFile.Workbooks.Open strXLFilename
  Set varXLWorkbook = varXLFile.ActiveWorkbook
  Set varXLSheet = varXLWorkbook.ActiveSheet
  
  lngRow = 2
  While (Not (varXLSheet.Cells(lngRow, 1).Value = ""))
    
    'Fill in the template
    subject = memo.Subject(0)
    Set body = memo.GetFirstItem("Body")
    
    'Compose message
    Set maildoc = New NotesDocument(db)
    Set maildoc= db.CreateDocument()    
    maildoc.Form = "Memo"
    maildoc.Subject = subject
    Set newBody = maildoc.CreateRichTextItem("Body")
    Call newBody.appendRTItem(body)  
    Set range = newBody.CreateRange      
    
    'Look up tokens from the column headings and replace them
    columnNo = 1
    While Not(varXLSheet.Cells(1, columnNo).Value = "")
      token = varXLSheet.Cells(1, columnNo).Value      
      value = varXLSheet.Cells(lngRow, columnNo).Value
      count = range.FindAndReplace(token, value, 16) 
      If (token = "<to>") Then
        maildoc.SendTo = value
      End If  
      If (token = "<cc>") Then
        maildoc.CopyTo = value
      End If
      columnNo = columnNo + 1
    Wend
    Call maildoc.Save(True, False)
    lngRow = lngRow +1
  Wend
  Call varXLFile.Quit()   
End Sub

Yes, I know, liking Lotus Notes is weird. It’s a little like liking Emacs, but even more inexplicable.

But Lotus Notes 8.5 lets me easily add my Google Calendar to my work calendar!

This rocks. =D

Oh, and I can work with Activities offline, too… I’m in love!

Taking a quick break from Javascript hacking to post this Lotus Notes tweak.

Following Susan Schreitmueller’s advice in the 28-hour Workday presentation she gave, I started replying in subject lines and using [EOM, NRN] to indicate the end of the message and that no response is necessary.

Not everyone’s familiar with this convention, so I always included a short explanation in the body of the message. After a number of these EOM/NRN messages, I created an AutoHotkey macro to save me a few keystrokes. I set up !eomnrn to expand to “EOM – end of message, NRN – no response needed”, and I used that in the body of the message.

I thought it still took too many keystrokes and mouse clicks to reply to a message, add my note to the subject line, add “[EOM, NRN]” to the end of the line, and type in the explanation in the body of the message. In fifteen minutes, I whipped up this little LotusScript agent that prompts you for a response, puts it in the subject line with an explanation, and sends the message off.

In Lotus Notes, use Create – Agent to create an agent called something like “1. EOM – NRN”. Edit the agent and put this in the Initialize sub.

	Dim workspace As New NotesUIWorkspace
	Dim session As New NotesSession
	Dim db As NotesDatabase
	Dim collection As NotesDocumentCollection
	Dim memo As NotesDocument
	Dim reply As NotesDocument
	Set db = session.CurrentDatabase
	Set collection = db.UnprocessedDocuments
	Set memo = collection.getFirstDocument()
	While Not(memo Is Nothing)
		Set reply = memo.CreateReplyMessage( False )
		response = Inputbox("Response to " + memo.Subject(0))
		If (response <> "") Then
			reply.Subject = response + " re: " + memo.Subject(0) + " [EOM, NRN]"
			reply.Body = "EOM - end of message, NRN - no response necessary"
			reply.IsSavedMessageOnSend = True
			reply.Send(False)
		End If
		Set memo = collection.GetNextDocument(memo)		
	Wend

Then you can select the message(s) you want to whiz through, type Alt-A 1 to call the action, and reply quickly. You can also call it while viewing a message, which is probably a safer place to start.

Enjoy!

Worth reading! The Renaissance Soul gives down-to-earth advice for
people who thrive on variety and challenges in a number of deep and
rich interests. The book helps people identify their passions
(plural!) and follow them without feeling overwhelmed by choice. It’s
also clear, well-written, and full of concrete stories. I like it!

—-

A number of people have told me that they admire the way I know what
I’m doing. My grade school teachers were completely unsurprised by my
choice of a college major. My love for technology can be traced to
childhood, and on the surface it can seem like I’m one of those people
who know what they want to do and how to do it.

However, my teachers and friends have also always known that I can
have a hard time focusing. In university, I switched from mobile
computing to wearable computing to personal information management to
education. I take up hobbies and let them go at some point.

The best thing I took away from the book is the idea of a focal point
sampler. Identify four things you’re passionate about. Figure out if
you’re the kind of person who pursues things sequentially or who
prefers to enrich life by blending things together. Make it happen.
Key point: you’re not stuck to these four choices forever; you can
change your mind and try different flavors next time. It’s like
sampling flavors in an ice cream shop…

I think my sister Kathy should read this book, too. =) Good book.
Thumbs up!

—-

Notes:

On Technorati: book, notes, career, life

- The Renaissance Soul: Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One