sacha chua :: living an awesome life

Here are my notes (click on the image for a larger version):

I’ll tell stories along the way. =) Looking forward to it! (I may even remember to record it if I don’t get too flustered…)

I enjoyed chatting with Holly Tse about blogging and how it can help you learn more about life, connect with people, save time, and do awesome. For the next day or so (Aug 17), you can listen to a free recording of my interview with Holly at http://instantteleseminar.com/?eventid=21913131 . I’m working on putting together a transcript and some follow-up notes, but here are some quick thoughts.

Blogging doesn’t have to be about building a personal brand or improving your search engine ranking. You can write as a way to learn, understand, remember, share, and save time.

Trying to figure out how to write about something possibly sensitive or offensive? Take a step back and try to take a really, really positive approach. Don’t focus on past hurts, focus on how to move forward. Don’t focus on what other people are doing wrong, focus on what you can do and what you can change about yourself. Write through things in your private notes if you need to, then see what insights and ideas you can share with others.

Where can you find the time to write? Holly Tse mentioned spending most of her time focused on her husband and their toddler, organizing this telesummit, and taking care of other essentials. I mentioned that mommy blogging (and parent blogging in general – let’s not forget the blogs!) was popular for lots of reasons: grown-up connections, memories, ideas, sanity checks, and so on. I also shared some time-saving tips, like cooking in larger batches. =)

You might be boring. In fact, you almost certainly will bore yourself from time to time. Writing will feel awkward if you haven’t been doing it a lot, and even if you have, it can still be frustrating. Keep writing. Don’t worry about being interesting. Don’t worry if no one reads your notes. Write in order to think clearly, write in order to remember, and write in order to share. You can grow into a good writer, but only if you write. You don’t need to win the Pulitzer Prize to write notes that can help you and other people.

How frequently should you write? As frequently as you can or would like to. =) Don’t beat yourself up if you can’t post every day or you blog sporadically. That said, try using writing as a tool for thinking. Try asking yourself questions like: What do I want to remember? What did I learn today? What do I want to do better tomorrow? What do I want to work on learning? If you do that, you’ll probably find that there’s a ton of stuff worth writing about.

More thoughts to follow. Feel free to ask more questions! Leave a comment so that other people can also share their thoughts with you, or use the contact form to get in touch with me. Have fun!

Gail LeCocq asked me if I wanted to give a presentation for the Other-Than-Traditional-Office (OTTO) group in Toronto. At the time, I was preparing The Busy Person’s Guide to Learning from the Network, so I suggested that. When she got back in touch a ew weeks later to confirm, though, I realized that I wanted to talk about a different topic instead. I suggested a topic on mentoring, which several people had asked me about. Here’s a rough draft.

Why

Mentoring. We all know mentoring is good for your career, but sometimes it’s hard to make time to find and meet with mentors. Here’s how mentoring can make a big difference in the way you work:

• Information: Mentors can help you learn complex tools or processes, review your work, and avoid or resolve problems.
• Advice: Mentors can share insights you didn’t even know you needed. Mentors can also help you understand your hidden strengths and weaknesses.
• Accountability: Mentors can help you commit to your goals and stay motivated.
• Stretching: Mentors can challenge you to grow and call you out if you’re slacking off.
• Connection: Mentors can help you navigate a large organization and find just the right people who can help you.
• Sponsorship: Mentors can help you find opportunities you may not hear about yourself, or convince people to take a chance on you. Mentors can also speak up for you when people are making decisions.
• Social interaction: Regular mentoring conversations can bring some of that social interaction back into remote work.
  

  Challenges and advantages

So mentoring is good, but how can you convince someone to invest the time and energy into mentoring you, particularly if you can’t make that face-to-face connection with them or develop familiarity by working together in a colocated office?

Mentoring can be difficult if you’re a remote employee. In an office, you might bump into someone you admire and ask them questions, your manager might walk over and introduce you to someone, or you might buy someone coffee or lunch while picking their brain. When you’re remote, you need to be more creative about connecting with people.

On the plus side, you can connect with possible mentors around the world. This means you can learn from very different perspectives. You can get a sense of what life and work is like in different business units and geographies.

Finding mentors

In IBM, you can use the Bluepages company directory system to find people who have volunteered to mentor other people. IBM Learning organizes speed-mentoring events where you can connect with many possible mentors, ask quick questions, and follow up for additional help or introductions. IBMers are also usually open to e-mail requests or questions.

Mentors can be older than you or younger than you, in the same business unit or in a different one, next door or around the world. Keep your mind open, and reach out. It doesn’t hurt to ask.

You can build a mentoring relationship over time. Start by connecting with your potential mentor and asking for a small piece of advice. Act on that advice if it’s good. Send a thank-you note with the results. Ask for more advice, and share more updates. Share what you’ve been learning from other people, too. If it turns out to be a good fit for both you and the other person, you might ask if you can set up a regular monthly chat to learn more.

If your potential mentor posts blog entries or profile updates, you can use that to build a relationship as well. Read what they post, comment, and share any updates on insights you’ve picked up from them and applied in your work or life. Send thanks – or better yet, post your thanks online too.

Making the most of mentoring

• Have a clear idea of what you want to learn, how your potential mentor can make a difference, and why he or she may want to help you.
• Set up a regular time to connect with your mentor – once a month, for example. Meet in person if possible, or connect using a video-conferencing program like Skype.
• Talk about communication preferences with your mentor. Some people like having very focused meetings. Send them prepared questions before your conversation. Other people prefer e-mail or blog conversations over phone conversations. Try that out.
• Take notes. Mentors invest time into helping you, and you can save them time and increase the ROI by writing down what you’ve learned in a form that they can easily share with other people.
• Thank people!
  

  Helping others

Helping others is fulfilling, and you’ll learn a lot along the way. Even if you don’t consider yourself an expert, you’ve probably learned a lot of things you take for granted. You can help people get started, save time, and learn more. Give mentoring a try!

Some ways to connect with mentees:

• Talk to your manager and other people about the things you can help people with. They can refer people to you.
• Give presentations and share your slides. There are many groups in IBM who organize regular conference calls, and they’re always looking for speakers.
• Attend virtual and real-life networking events. Ask people what they want to learn or what could help them be more successful.
• Post profile updates or write blog posts. This helps people learn what you’re good at and get a sense of who you are.

Don’t forget to mention your mentoring during the Personal Business Commitments (PBCs) review. It’s a way of giving back to the community and investing in others!

Next steps

Now we get to the networking part of this presentation, where you might find a mentor or connect with a mentee. You’ll probably want pen and paper for this one, so you can write down people’s names. Let’s go around and introduce ourselves. Say your first and last name, then answer these questions: What do you need help with? What can you help people with? Then say your first and last name again, in case people missed your name the first time around. (Spell your name if you need to.) If you’re listening to someone’s introduction and something interests you, feel free to connect on this call or through Sametime!

What do you think? What would you like to share with other people looking for mentors or mentees?

2011-05-20 Fri 14:55

I gave a presentation using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro and desktop-sharing in Lotus Live, and it worked out really well. I think I’ll do this for as many presentations as I can get away with. =) I’ll post a link to the recording when it’s up. It was much more fun and much more flexible than annotating in Microsoft Powerpoint. Here’s how I did it.

I pre-drew my one-slide talking points on a single layer so that I wouldn’t have to count on thinking, talking, and drawing all at the same time. I used an idea from children’s activity books: instead of drawing, you can use the eraser to make content appear, like the way you would scratch off black paint to reveal colours. I created a layer on top of my "slide", and I flood-filled this layer with white. I set the opacity of this layer to 90% so that I could see the traces of the images on the layer underneath. That way, I could use an eraser to reveal the sketches below. I selected a large eraser to make it even easier.

I also wanted to be able to draw new sketches or highlight items, so I selected a red ballpoint pen as my primary brush. Red goes well with black and white. Because my Lenovo X61 tablet pen has a pen tip and an eraser tip, I could easily flip between revealing pre-drawn sketches and adding new sketches. I drew on the the white layer that I gradually erased to reveal the underlying sketches. This meant that I could quickly remove accents or new sketches without disturbing my pre-drawn sketches.

Just in case I needed to go into more detail, I added another layer on top, filled it with white, and hid the layer. That way, I could always unhide it (thus blanking out everything else I’d drawn), add a new transparent layer on top, and sketch away.

I hid all the tools I didn’t need, and kept the layers window open on the side so that I could easily switch to another layer. Then it was time to share my screen, turn on the webcam, and give my presentation!

Here’s how you should set up your layers, from top to bottom:

1. White layer, so that you can easily add layers on top of this for new drawings
2. Translucent white layer with parts erased
3. Pre-drawn sketches
4. White background

The technique should work just as well with any drawing program that supports layers, a web conference that supports screen-sharing, and a tablet or tablet PC that lets you draw or erase easily.

Try it out and share your tips!

Some IBMers convinced me to share presentation tips with Lotus instructors. Here’s what I’m thinking about:

You know what’s really difficult in training? Staying interesting – and /interested/ – session after session after session. I used to teach university, and I’ve also given lots of presentations as an IBMer. It can be tough to be energetic and engaged when giving a presentation that you’ve given many times before. Even if you’re giving a new presentation, if it’s your umpteenth lunch-and-learn this year, you might feel tired just thinking about it.

I want to share some tips that help me when I’m giving presentations, and I want to hear from you what works for you and what you want to do even better.

First (and probably the most important for people who give presentations a lot): If you’re bored by your own presentations – and admit it, this can happen – it’s very hard to avoid boring others. How can you stay interested?

Let’s take the worst-case scenario: Your job is to present XYZ every week. Same presentation. Same slides. You could do it in your sleep.

Instead of just going through the presentation, look for small ways you can improve each time. Experiment with your timing. Try different examples. Ask questions. Try different questions. See if standing up makes a difference in your voice. Experiment with the capabilities of your web conference. This is a great time to experiment, actually – when you’ve practically memorized the material and can recover confidently from anything Murphy’s Law throws at you.

Would that help you stay interested? Yes. And other people will be interested because you’re interested. And you’ll be a better presenter at the end, too.

So that’s a good start. Let’s say your work is better than that. Let’s say you can improve your training as you learn – make new slides, add more resources, and so on.

Save time and create more value. Record your presentation. Share your slides and your speaker notes. Now you can give yourself a better challenge: How can you improve your training so that it’s really worth attending? What extra value will people get from you that they can’t get from recordings, slides, or speaker notes?

…

It’s a good idea to build plenty of room for interaction into your presentations. That’s because people can get everything else from the extra resources, but this is where they can really ask and learn. It’s also a great way for you to learn from people: what’s important to them, what else they want to learn, how to make your training better. Teach less, listen more.

Attend other people’s training sessions. See what you like – and what drives you crazy. Take notes.

It’s also a good idea to work on the next actions for your presentation. You should have a clear idea of what you want people to do after your presentation. What changes do you want them to make to the way they work? What resources do you want them to check out or bookmark? As you learn more by teaching people, build up those resources and refine those next steps. This is one of the areas where you can make a real difference as a trainer – you can help people get ready for and commit to change.

You can do lots of things to make your next steps even better. Can you make a checklist that people can save and follow? Can you share recordings and other resources? Can you tell people about other training they’ll find useful? For example, after this presentation, I want you to pick one small, specific way you can improve your next training session, and practise using it until you get the hang of it.

Let’s talk about some of those specifics. Here are three quick presentation tips that might help you make even better use of your web conference (and if you’re not using a web conference for remote training yet, switch to one!).

First: You can use the text chat for Q&A throughout your talk. Why? It’s important to see when people have questions. It’s hard for most people to interrupt speakers on the phone. You can pause for questions, but you’re probably not going to pause for questions often enough, and it breaks the momentum. Some people might use the hand-raising feature in web or phone conferences, which is good, but it’s even better to ask people to type their question into the text chat if possible. Why? You can prioritize questions, you can adjust your presentation on the fly, and you might even find that people are answering each other’s questions. If you find the text chat distracting, have a moderator or buddy keep an eye out for questions, or take a look at it every so often.

Second: Make your summary your Q&A slide. I can’t tell you how many presentations I’ve seen that end on “Thank you!”, “Q&A”, or some other mostly-blank slide. This is probably the slide that will be shown the longest – make it count! Show a one-slide summary that helps people remember what they want to ask questions about and reiterates the next steps you want them to take. Don’t let your session trail off into Q&A, either. 5-10 minutes before the end of your session, summarize the key points and review the next actions so that people can remember them.

Third: Consider adding video. Webcams are inexpensive and you can make your presentation more engaging. If you do use video, make sure your background isn’t distracting, and warn other people who might walk in!

So that’s what I’ve got to share, and I hope you’ve found one or two ideas you can use to improve your presentations. Let’s talk about it! What’s working well for you right now? What do you want to improve?

2011-04-27 Wed 17:56

I promised to put together a talk on learning for an IBM virtual conference for new hires. Here’s a rough draft, just to get it out of my head and into a form I can work with. I’ll add URLs internally. The next steps I want people to take are:

• Find a mentor, or even several mentors.
• Bookmark Lotus Connections so that they can easily search it in the future.
• Learn to find people based on documents and other shared information.

One of my mentors told me that at IBM, it’s okay if you don’t know something. If you don’t ask for help and things get messed up, though, that’s when you get into trouble. So I want to share with you some tips I’ve picked up on how to learn as quickly as you can, from as many people as you can.

I’ve been with IBM for almost four years. I know what it’s like to feel overwhelmed by all the different things there are to learn: working with Lotus Notes and other applications, dealing with technologies, working with team members and clients… It can be really intimidating. Fortunately, at IBM, there are plenty of people who can help – but sometimes you need to step up and ask.

• Mentors
  

  If you don’t have a mentor yet, find one. Even better, find several mentors. Mentors can help you figure things out: the specific technology you’re learning, the tools you need to work with, the processes in your team or business unit, even your career plans.

  How can you find a mentor? Share your questions with your manager and ask your manager to refer you to some people who might be good mentors for you. Look for people on Bluepages or Lotus Connections. Take advantage of the speed mentoring events that IBM Learning sometimes organizes and see if you can connect with anyone. Attend presentations and connect with speakers or other participants. Once you have a mentor, ask him or her for introductions to other people who might be able to help.

  Maybe you’re feeling shy. Maybe you think, “Well, I’m new to IBM. Why would anyone mentor me?” I found it hard to ask people to mentor me, too, but I was amazed by how generous people were when it came to helping new people. Many mentors help others because other people mentored them. Others mentor people because they learn a lot in the process. Mentors have lots of reasons for helping, so don’t be afraid to ask.

  Social networking tip: Look for mentors and role models who blog or post updates in Lotus Connections or on the Internet. That way, you can easily learn from people in between your meetings. You can even learn from people around the world, and people whom you might be too shy to reach to right now. For example, if you’re curious about what IBM Fellows do (they have the highest technical rank in IBM), or what vice presidents are like, or so on, you can learn from their blogs, tweets, and other posts. Maybe you’ll find something you can comment on or ask about!

  How to work with mentors: Talk to your mentors about your goals and figure out how they can help you. Take the lead in setting up meetings and asking questions. Show your appreciation through thank-you notes – and even better, show your appreciation through the results that come from taking your mentors’ advice.

  Okay. You’ve got mentors. But you can’t go to your mentors for every little thing you need to learn, so you still need to figure out things on your own.

• Documentation, assets, and other sources of information
  

  You’re probably already used to searching the Internet for information when you’re trying to learn something new. It can be harder to find just the right document within IBM. If you’re new to a topic, it can be difficult to find beginner-level resources, or even to know what and where to search.

  If you’re stuck, ask your coworkers or your manager for help in getting started. Take notes! Make a list of the resources you find useful as a beginner, and you’ll be able to share that list with other people who join the project. It’s a quick way to create value – and people are more likely to invest time into helping you if they know that your notes will help them and other people save time in the future.

  Don’t stop with the documents you find, too. One of the best things you can learn from a document or an asset is where you can go to find more information. Are there related communities? Can you look up other things the author has written? When you come across a useful document, look for any author information or lists of related experts. If you need help finding the right resources or you have a question that’s not answered by the document, you might be able to ask those people for help. (Look for communities or forums first, though – this helps avoid e-mail overload, and you can ask more people for help. We’ll talk more about communities later.)

  Okay. Formal documentation is great, but there’s often very little of it, especially for new tools and technologies. What do you do when you need to learn about something that doesn’t have a lot of articles or manuals yet?

• Files, bookmarks, wikis, and blog posts
  

  When I need to find out about something new, informal, or obscure, I often check people’s files, bookmarks, wikis, or blog posts. This is where Lotus Connections really shines. You can search people’s public files and presentations for new information, search bookmarks for information other people have found useful, check out wikis to see what people have collaborated on, and read blog posts for people’s notes and articles.

  What if you still can’t find what you need, and the people you ask don’t know of any resources, either? This is where you might need to ask more people.

• More questions and answers
  

  Have a short question? Try posting it on IBM Answers. You’ll get an e-mail notification if anyone replies. While you’re there, see if you can answer any of the pending questions.

  Tip: Don’t just post your question on IBM Answers and walk away. Reach out to specific people to see if they can share anything. If you use Profile status updates, post your question with a link to the answer page.

  Regarding experts: If you have a question that needs deep expertise, you might want to give Expertise Locator a try. You don’t want to waste experts’ time, though, so if your request is non-urgent, it’s probably better to start at a lower level. People can escalate your request if needed.

  Sometimes it helps to ask many people instead of focusing on just a few. This is where Lotus Connections Communities and IBM forums come in.

• Lotus Connections Communities
  

  Whatever you’re looking for, there’s probably a community or forum related to it. Search Lotus Connections Communities to find groups related to the topic. IBM Forums has older groups, too.

  Many communities have discussion forums. You’ll need to join the community in order to ask a question. Look at other posts to see how people ask for help. Provide as much information as you can in your message, but don’t post any confidential information. Show that you’ve “done your homework” – describe how you’ve tried to solve the problem or where you’ve looked for information. That way, people might be more encouraged to help you.

  Important: Ask the community owners (see the Members tab) Some communities use the “Mail community” feature to handle questions, before mailing the community. Many communities have thousands of members, and too much community e-mail can make the community useless.

• Building your network
  

  What about all those questions that people haven’t answered before, and for which there are no active communities? This is where your personal network becomes important. When you’re faced with questions that need much broader or deeper experience than you have, or you have no idea where to even start learning, your network is essential.

  If you can’t think of anyone who would know the answers you need, try thinking of people who might know people who would know the answer. Ask them for referrals. You can also look for people in Lotus Connections Profiles or Bluepages and try reaching out to them.

  Social networking tip: Lotus Connections Profiles is a great way to ask questions and get quick responses from whoever’s available in your network at the time. You need to build your network before you can use this effectively, though. Look at the main Profiles page to see who’s been participating, and invite them to your network. If they agree, you’ll be able to see their updates in your timeline, and they can see yours. That means that if you post questions in Lotus Connections, people might see it and answer it.

  Why would people spend time checking out Lotus Connections and possibly answering questions? For many people, it’s like a quick break by the virtual office watercooler, a way to catch up with lots of people and to help out people if they can. Try it – spend a little time each day or each week building your relationships by reading people’s profile updates, answering other people’s questions, sharing useful resources, and posting notes of thanks or encouragement.

• Wrapping up
  

  You’ll need to learn a lot at IBM, and you’ll need to learn it quickly. Not everything will be written down, and you might not find everything you need using w3 or an Internet search engine. You’ll need to learn from the network.

  • Learn from managers, coworkers, mentors, and role models about things you might not even know to ask about
  • Follow the clues from people’s files and assets to find related communities and experts.
  • Search people’s files, bookmarks, blog posts, and profile updates to see the latest.
  • Check out Q&A sites for additional resources.
  • Reach out to communities and forums if you need help from more people.
  • Gradually build your network so that you can easily ask for people’s help when you have new questions.

  Good luck!

  2011-04-02 Sat 21:42

My Emacs Org-mode talk at GTALUG was a lot of fun. I had made a quick outline of things I wanted to cover, and the discussion took us to all sorts of places – really more like a romp through the world of Emacs. I kept my talk plan small and tightly-focused – not even Org-mode, just note-taking in Org-mode – but I ended up talking about all sorts of things because they were cool and that’s where the discussion took us. This means that my outline isn’t much use for reconstructing the talk, but maybe whoever recorded it can share the audio and the video. =)

Unexpected wow moments of the day, completely not in my outline:

• Someone’s question about my tablet PC led to showing off M-x artist-mode, drawing using my tablet, and the line and spraycan tools. (I’d never tried it before. It works!)
• A conversation on the way to the talk led to my showing M-x snake.
• Someone’s joking query about whether you can run vi in Emacs (following up on someone who mentioned the vi emulation mode, perhaps) led to my demonstrating vim in M-x term, which naturally led to running console Emacs within my Emacs.
• Someone mentioned mail, so I showed Gnus, and another person mentioned adaptive scoring, and we talked about news-inspired techniques for dealing with e-mail.
• People asked me how big my config file had gotten. The word count tool says 226k characters – ah, the process of accretion. You can learn Emacs and customize it a little bit at a time, though!

I’ve given two Emacs talks so far, and both of them had delightful audience interaction – among the best of any of the talks I’ve given. I think it’s because with Emacs, even people’s jokes give me a starting point to mention something I’ve learned about or come across or built. The energy of the session is really something different. It’s almost like an infomercial-ish “But wait, there’s more!”, but everyone’s in on the joke, they’re part of what’s happening. It’s an adventure.

I don’t want to give the impression that Emacs is just about fun. ;) Of all the software I’ve ever used, I think Emacs has contributed the most to my productivity and my learning. Not only do I find the direct benefits useful, I also really appreciate the inspiration I get from all these other people who use and improve Emacs.

So the key question I want to address with more thought is: where does one find the time to learn these things? I think you answer this the same way you make the time for things that matter – strategic optimization. Like in code, premature optimization doesn’t work. You need to figure out what actions are important and where improvements would have the most effect – where your moments of truth are. For example, it really pays to improve my abilities in programming, writing, and note-taking, because I do that a lot and it creates a lot of value at work and in life. On the other hand, I don’t stress out about typing even faster, because that’s not my bottleneck. And I also make sure to invest time into all sorts of other aspects of life, because those are important to me too.

Back to Emacs and the presentation. My goal for the talk wasn’t to convert anyone or show people specifically how to set up their environment. I wanted to give people an idea of what my workflow looks like, expose them to some of the things Emacs can do, and perhaps inspire people to learn more about their tools. (I made sure to mention lots of cool things about vi, too!) We started at 7:30 and had a great discussion for two hours (two hours!) that flew by until the organizers suggested it was time to wrap up. Quite a few people came up to me afterwards and told me that they were inspired to learn more about Emacs. Whee!

That was tons of fun. I’d do it again. It has to be an interactive group, somewhat casual (so that people feel free to interject questions) and technical (helps to have a few other Emacs users in the audience, and a general interest in tools). Voice is probably a huge component of it – both being able to communicate enthusiasm and for the conversational aspect of the discussion. Screen-sharing or projection is vital; this kind of talk wouldn’t have worked with slides. So it’s probably a talk I’d need to give in person, considering webconference interaction patterns and screen-sharing delays. Hmm…

(Maureen: there is a screenplay mode for Emacs. Isn’t that amazing? Might be worth learning Emacs. More writing resources on the EmacsWiki. If you’re intrigued by it, check out the Emacs Newbie resources.)

2011-03-08 Tue 23:40