It was the first week of my vacation in the Philippines, and every day was just packed with things to do with friends and family.

On August 11 (Monday), we arrived in Manila. The Philippine Airlines flight we arrived on was full of boisterous Filipinos who joked with the flight attendants, sang way off-key, and cheered as the plane touched the tarmac, but I didn't mind losing sleep on that red-eye flight. I was home! And I was awake enough to try the dress I was going to wear for Diane's wedding and make other arrangements…

On August 12, I celebrated my birthday with W- and my parents. My dad took W- and me to Raon (the electronics district) and R. Hidalgo (the street of photography shops), and he gave me a flash for my birthday. I look forward to using it to light stuff! In the afternoon, my mom took W- and me to Ateneo de Manila University and Philippine Science High School, so that W- could get an idea of what my campus years were like. We also passed by the University of Philippines, where my mom told W- stories about her campus years. In the evening, I snuck into the Benilde commencement ceremony and exhibit for the graduates of their photography diploma course, and I listened to my dad and my sister give the short commencement speech. Cool!

On August 13, my dad gave W- and me a few shooting lessons. We discovered that the flash I have can freeze water drops in action, and we also practiced lighting small objects. I took a picture of the Scrabble game that W- and I had played on the flight home. It was definitely worth recording. =) After our shooting lessons, my mom took us to Alabang, where we had a tea party with several of my godparents. We listened to hilarious stories about avoiding traffic tickets, taking pictures in restricted areas, and other hijinks that my parents and godparents had done.

Practically all of August 14 was taken up by Diane's wedding. She was the first of my best friends to get married, so we were all excited about that. I couldn't help going "squee!" every few minutes. I loved the video montage that Mario had put together: childhood pictures, high school pictures, all the way up to their engagement pictures. The wedding photographers delighted us by showing a video montage of Di's wedding pictures during the reception itself - that was fast work!

We spent most of August 15 working at home. I was aghast to find out that a bug in my code had resulted in the deletion of users on our production system ( =( !), and that the project manager and the IT architect had to recreate many accounts by hand. That further emphasized the importance of test-first development and well-written tests. Ouch. I've paid the tuition for that mistake, now I just have to collect the paycheck; I can't undo that mistake, but I can learn from it and become a better developer. To avoid that mistake in the future, I will write more tests using the Simpletest framework, and I'll ask someone else to review the tests with me.

I perked up a bit more in the afternoon, when my mom took W- and me to a yoga class taught by one of her friends. It was more challenging than the yoga classes we normally attend, and it was a good break. The yoga teacher was so impressed that both W- and I do yoga, and waxed lyrical about how beautiful it was to see couples practice yoga together.

On August 16, I hosted a get-together for my friends. We spent the entire afternoon laughing at the best of the Internet memes: a pastiche of websites and Youtube videos that we or the others had missed. In the evening, we watched Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, which both left us practically crying from laughter (and maybe a little grossed out). It was so nice to laugh with my friends again!

We spent most of August 17 at a photography summit, where we learned about taking pictures of people. I'm looking forward to applying those lessons. I'd like to learn how to take good pictures of my friends! My mom also showed W- the rows and rows of stalls selling pearls at Greenhills. It was all quite overwhelming, and I was glad to get back to the photography summit.

So that was what last week was like. I hope next week will be a little calmer. <b>I plan to work during most of the week</b>. I'm going to be on a team call this evening, so I napped this afternoon to make sure I can stay up later. A quieter schedule should mean more early-morning writing time, too, and I'm looking forward to <b>posting more notes on browsing the Web from Emacs</b>.

Lastly, I'm thrilled at how BarCampManila's turning out. I pinged a couple of people about having a geek get-together on Thursday, August 21, and gave them the responsibility for making it happen. And they did! So, if you're near Metro Manila and you want to hang out, check out:

<a href="http://www.barcamp.org/BarCampManila">BarCamp Manila</a> - August 21, 2008, 7:00 PM @ G2VC Innovation Center<br />
<a href="http://www.barcamp.org/BarCampManila">SIGN UP ON BARCAMP.ORG!</a>

This early-morning schedule meant that I found myself getting sleepy at 9, though, and I was often in bed by 10. W- expressed some concern that we might end up leading separate lives, so we'll figure out how to balance that. We could either figure out how to make the most of a late schedule, shift to an early schedule, or make sure we have enough quality time together. If you're in a wonderful relationship with someone with a different circadian rhythm, how do you make the most of it?

(I'd definitely like to keep my early-morning writing, though. I liked the feeling of that more than I like afternoon or evening writing…)

Result: Lots of Emacs blog posts this week, as I set up my Emacs development environment for PHP!

• On-the-fly syntax checking with Flymake
• Emacs and PHP tutorial: php-mode
• Emacs and PHP: There's more than one way to do it, of course
• From Eclipse to Emacs: Drupal development with Subversion, tags, templates, and xdebug
• Navigating your source tree

In other news, the Drupal project I've been working on is now live on the production server. Hooray! The project manager asked us last week to estimate how much time it would take to move the system from the quality assurance server to the production server. I plucked a number out of the air based on how long it took to move to the QA server: one hour? My teammate adjusted my estimate to account for finicky things: three hours? The project manager laughed and told us that we had a week to do it. I took care of it yesterday, and it took me almost exactly an hour (including DNS changes). I'll check later if any bugs have come up.

I was also happy with some of the infrastructure I built and the tests I added at work. Kaizen! Experience++!

Other parts of my life:

• I've achieved the savings target for my gadget fund, which means I _could_ go out and get a Lenovo Thinkpad X61 tablet PC if I _really_ wanted to. I don't have a compelling need for it, though. I'd like to use it to draw and mindmap, but there are plenty of things to keep me busy in the meantime, so I won't touch the gadget fund until I know that it'll give me a lot of extra value.
• I'm saving up some of my play money so that I can experiment with delegating chores and swapping money for time. I don't have a good sense yet of whether that's an efficient long-term tradeoff, but it's worth exploring. Personal assistant agencies in Toronto tend to charge about $25 / hour.
• Yoga classes have been cancelled for August, so it's just going to be krav maga. I'll continue to do yoga at home.

I'm planning to install Ubuntu today. I need to borrow W-'s CD drive, as mine seems to be somewhat broken. I'd like to get everything set up over the long weekend.

My goals for next week are:

• Work out a better schedule with W- so that we have time to keep developing in-jokes and enjoying each other's company
• Keep the production server running; begin development on phase 2?
• Cook beef stroganoff for the first time
• Get ready for our trip to the Philippines - yay!

Telecommuting worked out mostly okay. I finished the items on my list and joined all the relevant calls. Voice over IP occasionally flaked out on me, but we worked around it. I tried rebooting to Microsoft Windows a few times in order to use the VoIP plugin I've got in the mail client, but I sometimes encountered system problems. Still, none of that stopped me from getting my bug list down to zero, and I'm looking forward to the next phase of development in this Drupal project. Hooray! Maybe I'll try to switch my development environment to Emacs during the break - that'll encourage me to keep working on the book.

In other news, I now have tentative trips to Washington (September?), Berlin (October?), and Montreal (October?), all because of Web 2.0 stuff. Hooray!

I'm simplifying my wardrobe while adding some flair, too. I used to be quite fond of dresses with matching bags when I was eight or so, and then (if you believe my sister) I promptly lost all sense of fashion. I'm slowly working out my style, my "uniform" - a white blouse, a black skirt or pair of slacks, and a scarf. I replaced my handbag with a medium-sized one with loops for a scarf, and I find a certain odd pleasure in having matched the scarf around my waist with the scarf tied (neatly) around the rim of my bag. It reminds me of fractals. I've also made progress on my quest for decent flat shoes I can wear to the office, having decided that life would probably be better without high heels. It might be unfashionable, but it'll save me back pain in the long run.

Next week, my plans are to:

• Install Ubuntu on another partition and get the IBM Linux layer onto it. I think this will help me be more productive. I'm not quite used to the way Redhat Enterprise Linux does things.
• Patch any critical bugs the testers find, and get ready to move the Drupal project from QA to production.
• Write at least three Emacs-related blog posts.
• Finish my pasalubong shopping.
• Produce a one-page guide to IBM's Web 2.0 tools for new hires< ./i>

Goals for this week:

• Get that much closer to a release-worthy version of the Drupal site.
• Blog more about Emacs in an attempt to get back on the book-writing track. Thanks to folks in #emacs and people who have been e-mailing/commenting on Emacs-related stuff!
• Meet up with people in Ottawa. W- is going to the Ottawa Linux Symposium.

Ideas for improving networking at conferences:

• People should get the attendee list beforehand. This would be even cooler if we could help people set up networking sessions. The Technical Leadership Exchange conference had some meeting places set up beforehand, but the 4,000+ attendee list was a bit overwhelming. If the attendee list could be mashed up against your contact list and some kind of social recommendation system, then it might be more manageable. Calendar, too?

Main tent, second time: (~200 people)

• The value of keeping it fresh
• Adding humor: illustrating generational change through VCR joke. "It used to be that you could tell if you were on the wrong side of the generation gap if your VCR said 12:00. Now, it's if you know what a VCR is."
• Relaxing and connecting with the audience
• Video
• Slides: images are very flexible. I didn't change my slides, I just changed my content and delivery.
• People liked my presenter remote because it provided good feedback when advancing slides, it had intuitive controls, it had fantastic range, and it had a slim, dark profile.

Web 2.0 tools, third and fourth times: (~15 + 10)

• I took responsibility for follow-up
• I used the talk as an opportunity to collect data
• I changed it from a list of ten things to a multiple-choice quiz to help people think about how they were currently doing things
• I could really use two easels next time
• Maybe I might have a webcam watching the audience, to aid with counting and improvement?

Main tent, first time: (~ 200)

• Not having text means being able to drop in even better statistics and references on the fly
• Speaker notes are terrific
• River metaphor frequently cited afterwards
• Good joke about half-empty, half-full room

Web 2.0 tools, first and second times: (~ 30 + 15)

• Back to back sessions are hard
• People liked my energy
• Second session was a bit tougher than the first - people may be tired, too
• Need time in between sessions to mingle and recharge
• Still good, though!

Sowing Seeds: A Technology Evangelist's Guide to Grassroots Adoption (~20)

• Remote presentation early in the morning - doubly-tough!
• Liked the webcam part - Sametime Unyte has added this, but it's not available for IBM early adopter accounts yet
• I need to work on this. Who am I being that people's eyes are not lighting up?

Ideation:

• My notebook of business ideas turned out to be useful
• Random sources of ideas: phone book, StumbleUpon, HalfBakery, good questions
• One of my strengths that I should build on

Miscellaneous:

• Bernie Michalik told me about two funny IBM ads: "Websphere isn't for dummies" and "Should've called IBM Global Services here." I can't find the originals, though. =(
• Between my own presentations and some client-related work, I didn't get to attend many presentations. I'm glad I got to see Jean-Francois Barsoum's presentation, though. He was funny! Particularly clever things I want to steal: roadrunner running across the screen, and a good illustration of the impact of government policies: the Haiti/Dominican Republic border showing the effects of deforestation. I may also find an excuse to use a fake Powerpoint end screen. Also, during the Open Space thing, he used his cellphone to record people summarizing the points, and he played it back during the wrap-up. Terrific idea - showed diversity of input while getting the points across. He recorded a video and put it up on YouTube, actually.
• Ruth McLenaghan recommended the book "I Can See You Naked".
• Met a number of recent hires (same cohort), like Nancy Gabor and Sameer Gupta).
• Promised to follow up with people through e-mail, will need to get some kind of mailing thing going
• Difference between culture (how things get done around here) and climate (how we feel)
• 5y half ValuesJam gone, good way to illustrate
• Interest in rotational assignments
• Utilization versus skill development
• Blue Consulting?
• Interest in employee engagement, future leadership development

• More progress on the Drupal project. It's starting to really come together! You'd never guess it from the length of my bug list, but we're getting close to the finish line. Also–there might be another Drupal project in the line-up, hooray!
• On Wednesday, I had lunch with the other recent hires in the AS Foundations group. I brought up the idea of having a movie night for the new Batman movie.
• New hire evangelism: I mentioned the internal biz.newhire forum to a couple of people from various new hire networks. Looking forward to making it a place for conversations.
• A couple of terrific conversations with people about various
  collaborative initiatives around IBM made me feel warm and fuzzy about
  having the opportunity to contribute something.
• I braved my first kerfluffle about interpersonal communications at work. A colleague's (good-natured) teasing had made me feel a little uncomfortable, so we sorted that out. All's well that ends well.
• I spent three hours at the gym last Tuesday, doing yoga, bag/fitness, and krav maga level 1. Fitter than I used to be! =)

Next week is another presentation gauntlet: four unique presentations given a total of eight times! Yikes! I hope to not only survive this gauntlet, but to do it in style. After all, it's fantastic that I have all these opportunities to share what I'm learning. It'll be a challenge to maintain my enthusiasm and passion throughout the four repeats of a single presentation, but if I can do that, then I'll be ready for a whole lot more.

Stay tuned!

This week:

• Drupal: Our CSS person started work. Hooray!
• Drupal: We switched over to the next phase of configuration management. Instead of dropping and recreating the database from scratch, we now have to work with a live database, making sure that we don't lose the editorial changes that users have been making. It's pretty straightforward with Drupal, actually. Database changes are added to module .install files as modulename_update_() functions. Edits and other system changes are handled in the .profile and through the Web interface. I should blog about this soon.
• Drupal: I handled lots of little defects and a few larger changes.
• Speaking: Prepared another presentation for the upcoming IBM Academy of Technology conference on collaboration. "Sowing Seeds: A Technology Evangelist's Guide to Grassroots Adoption." Uploaded it to internal file-sharing site.
• Speaking: Got the survey results back from the IBM Technical Leadership Exchange! Blog post about that later.
• New hires and networking: Had lunch and tea with some of the other new hires and older employees. =) Good stories. Also, started working on a guide for new hires.
• Work: I wrote two short Ruby scripts that analyzed internal blogging, bookmarking, and file-sharing activity for one of the communities I'm active in. Posted the results in internal blog posts.
• Work: I started putting together some resources for fellow IBM newbies. It's in our internal version of Pass It Along.
• Fight/fitness: Not much this week. Just one class of yoga because the gym was closed on Tuesday and I was feeling tired last Thursday.

Next week:

• Drupal: Survive the demo. Plan tasks for the next phase and clarify my responsibilities.
• Speaking and presentations: Write blog posts / speaker notes / articles for my upcoming presentations. Make plans for conference travel.
• New hires and networking: Make a one-page list of tips about IBM and Web 2.0

This week:

• Work: Welcomed new team member on board. Also, a CSS person joined our project team, hooray!
• Work: More Drupal work, yay! Going through bugs reported in QA process.
• Fight/fitness: headlocks, knees, 360' defenses
• Fun: Three movies (so spoiled!): Wall-E, You Don't Mess with the Zohan (surprisingly funny), and Kung Fu Panda. Shopped for a few things to make life even better.

Next week:

• Drupal, Drupal, more Drupal. =)
• Promised to map Web 2.0 for business resources within the company. Time to break out the visualization tools.
• Promised to put together a guide for speakers.
• Promised to put together some resources for new hires.

I gave a presentation on social networking for new hires on Thursday, and I learned a lot while preparing and presenting that presentation. I don't have any presentations scheduled until mid-July, when I have three presentations scheduled in one week (two replays and one new presentation on technology evangelism). Time to start preparing for them…

In self-defense and krav maga class, we practiced groundwork, side kicks, back kicks, and getting out of side head-locks. I've got a long way to go before I can kick as well as the others do, but the guys make it fun. We often warm up with a shoulder-tapping game, which I like. I sometimes forget to breathe, though, and that makes me tire faster! <laugh> Gotta work on that.

It's been quite an indulgent week on the personal front. On Friday, W- and I made up for long workweek days by taking off early and wandering around downtown. He introduced me to Burrito Boyz, this hole-in-the-wall burrito place that seemed to be quite a favorite among students and clubbers. Yummy! And then on Saturday, W- and I went on a classic dinner-and-a-movie date: an absolutely scrumptious elk steak dinner at the Corner House restaurant (the soft-shell crab starter is also not to be missed) and a movie (Iron Man, which got great reviews on RottenTomatoes). We even squeezed in a concert. Video Games Live happened to be playing near the movie theatre, so we listened to a number of segments before watching the movie.

I plan to spend the next week helping the quality assurance team test the system we've been working on, transferring some of my work to the new hires coming on board (I already know one of them! =) ), and preparing for the next few weeks. From mid-July to late August, my schedule's going to be quite a whirl. Presentations, working remotely in Ottawa, then off to the Philippines for Diane's wedding… Lots of stuff going on!

I also attended a local Drupal meetup. I ended up giving a 7-minute impromptu braindump on how to set up a great coding environment for Drupal. This won Best Talk and an extra-large T-shirt with the label "node monkey" (a clever reference to "code monkey" and Drupal's node-based architecture). I haven't figured out exactly what to do with that extra-large shirt yet, but it will involve T-shirt surgery so that I can wear it to the Drupal meetups without drowning in it. I may even have a series of hacks, if I plan it carefully. =)

I enjoyed giving presentations about social networking and Millennials during a virtual IBM conference and during a meeting of the IBM University Relations group. Next week, I'm going to give a talk on networking for new hires for the GBS Foundations new hire group.

Krav maga and yoga continue to be fun. I didn't go last Tuesday because of the Drupal event, but I made up for that by skinning a knuckle during our Thursday session on combinations. Yesterday, we practiced quick offenses–slaps and headbutts from a neutral position. I have no illusions about my abilities–I'm definitely not going to pick a fight!–but it was fun exploring these things with such helpful and encouraging people in the class.

I had a lot of fun at the Ontario Science Centre this weekend, too.=)

Tonight, I hope to write most of an article that I've promised a colleague. Next week, I plan to wrap up most of the work for my Drupal-related project and resume working on an internationalization-related project. I'd also like to do more writing, which means resisting the siren call of Lego Indiana Jones… (But it's so pretty on the PSP!)

The rest of life has been quite interesting. Between my recently-rejoined krav maga classes and the Manila-hot humidity that's been hitting Toronto recently, I've been… hmm… glowing, right, that's the term. Whatever happened to "temperate" weather? Oh, well, at least it's sunny. And when it isn't sunny, nature takes care of watering the garden for me.

My cantaloupe seeds have finally germinated. I had started another batch indoors after birds and resident wildlife snacked on the seeds I optimistically sowed outside. ("But it said late May to early June!" "Also requires at least five nights of more than 23'C." "Oh.") Two of those seeds grew roots, so I carefully planted them outside. I'm not sure if they'll manage to grow before winter sets in, but it's fun even as a science experiment. The rosemary sprigs are growing quite well, too, and I hope a few of them will take the hint and start branching out. I've sown some lettuce and basil seeds as well, although I suspect that rabbits will get to the lettuce long before we will.

Slight progress on my book - half an article written. I hadn't really explored Emacs' spam-filtering features before, so this is new ground for me.

Next week: two presentations and more development work. Oh, and more yoga and krav! We'll see if I survive.

• One virtual presentation: Taking It Offline/Online - how to combine your online and offline social networking
• Do more work on the Drupal project - theming, multisite
• Wicked Cool Emacs: filtering spam, scoring mail, setting up profiles
• Send application for extension of work permit
• Check with University of Toronto regarding reference letter

Next week, I have more Drupal and translation server work, and I have three presentations I need to put together for work:

• Taking it Offline, a presentation about how to combine online and offline social networking (0:20)
• I.B.Millennials, a replay for the IBM Regional Technical Exchange (1:15)
• Top 10 Web 2.0 Tools You Should Try, a replay for IBM TechConnect (0:30)

I also plan to:

• Apply for my Japan police clearance (permanent residency application)
• Put together all the paperwork I need for the work permit extension
• Handle more of the cooking
• Drive some more

=)

The quickly-sketched Gen Y Guide to Web 2.0@Work that I put together for a friend caught people's attention, with over 8,000 views on Slideshare and a mention in ReadWriteWeb's article on Why Gen Y is Going to Change the Web. Wow. =) That little thing combined many of my passions and resulted in big results. I love helping people connect. I love bridging the gaps between generations and helping people figure out how to make the most of these new tools. I love exercising my creativity. I love communicating and learning more about communication. I love inspiring and being inspired by others. And I love love love love learning from other people. When I can bring all of those things together… Wow!

I want to build on that strength. I've checked out books on sketching and visual storytelling because I really like how comics and editorial cartoons express things so concisely and effectively. As in writing, I often find it difficult to figure out what I want to say and how I want to say it. I know I'm going to get it wrong, but that's okay. I may need to get it wrong a couple of times before I figure out the message. Talking to other people helps me figure out what I have to say, too, and that's why this blog's so useful. If you comment on something, I learn from what you're saying, and I learn about what I'm saying. (Does that make sense? Maybe it will make sense when I figure out how to explain it.) If I practice, I'll eventually develop the verbal and visual vocabulary to help people understand what I mean, and then I can use that share all these things I'm learning from you and from others. I can't get there unless I go through the awkward phase of trying to figure out what I mean, so… umm… thanks for your patience. =)

I did a number of other interesting things at work, too. We held a virtual exhibition called Innovation in Action, and I volunteered to help staff the Social Networking booth. It was my first time to try a virtual conference/tradeshow like that! =) I had the first shift, and I had a lot of fun figuring out ways to make the most of the platform. In addition to the simultaneous conversations I had with the people who dropped into our booth and typing up my tips to share with colleagues on my internal blog, I had my hands full. Figuring out good ways to connect with people and sharing those tips with my colleagues was a lot of fun!

I've also been doing more development work with Drupal and Javascript, and I'm slowly but steadily making progress. I like the puzzle-solving aspect of it, and I hope I can add more of a people aspect to that kind of work too.

I started on the fifth chapter of my technical book about Emacs, too. I was really anxious about the book before because it was so difficult to write about something that's always changing, but I'm going to keep writing about it anyway and we'll just figure out how everything works out. =)

In other news:

W-, J- and I have been bitten by the gardening bug. We're trying to grow some hot peppers from seed, have a few small hills ready for canteloupes (me) and watermelons (W-), and I've planted the forget-me-not seeds we received for free. We also bought sage and rosemary plants, although we've been keeping them indoors due to chilly weather.

I have also discovered a rather territorial and ruthless side of me: I won't tolerate dandelions in the backyard. I know they can be used in salad and tea, and they really are quite pretty, but I won't have them crowding out my plants (well, my future plants). =)

We watched Prince Caspian today, too. I couldn't help sobbing during the disastrous castle scene, but the rest of the movie felt great, and Reepicheep stole the show. =) After we watched the movie, we chatted about how the movie differed from the book. (Hehehe… Never miss a learning opportunity!)

Great week!

Plans for next week:

• Make progress on my work projects. (Someday I'll get the hang of this…)
• Prepare three presentations for two weeks from now. Good opportunity to go over the things I wanted to improve. =)
• Practice sketching stick figures.

Life is great!

Let's see how well this works.

• Posted the last of my notes from my conference, adding the other tips people shared from my packed session on "The Top 10 Web 2.0 Tools Every IBM Consultant Should Try"
• Did community consulting for several internal groups
• Prepared for two teleconference presentations on Web 2.0 next week
• Got my internal login problems resolved, hooray!
• Realized that intranets don't need A-lists, and that concentrating on celebrities can actually be harmful - must blog about this later
• Submitted the revised 7th chapter of my Wicked Cool Emacs book after some frustration about how to write about moving targets
• Watched Joe versus the Volcano and a lot of episodes of Human Weapon with W- and J-.
• Read through a fair bit of Prince Caspian and devoured a number of other books as well.
• Tried to figure out how to do surveys in Lotus Notes. No luck.
• Met a new mentor.
• Prepared spreadsheets of my finances - doing well =)
• Realized teleconferences will probably be a big part of my life, so I might as well get good at them

Next week:

• Two teleconference presentations
• Client work
• More progress on my permanent residency application
• My first meeting with a financial advisor - hence the spreadsheets
• More yoga
• Another article for chapter 6 of Wicked Cool Emacs book
• Driving lessons

• My weekends were mostly spent catching up on laundry, spending time with my partner, and working on personal projects.
• From April 14 to April 17, I helped organize the IBM Web 2.0 Summit at the T.J. Watson Center in Yorktown Heights, NY. The Twitter-based backchannel I started on hashtags#web20summit helped people connect and chat about sessions. I was responsible for facilitating and recording sessions, so I didn't really get to pay attention to them, but the sessions were well-received.
• On April 18, Friday, I spent most of the day preparing for an upcoming keynote presentation. I took a short break to prepare and give a remote presentation on the Top 10 Web 2.0 Tools Every IBMer Should Try at the Web 2.0 Summit Toronto event, based on a list I'd previously blogged.
• I spent April 20 (Sunday) to 22 ( preparing for or attending the IBM blue horizon 2008 conference for consultants. I gave a short presentation on the demographic revolution as part of the conference keynote, and I also presented a highly interactive session on the top 10 Web 2.0 tools every IBM consultant should try. I learned a lot!
• On April 23, Wednesday, I caught up with mail and other things I'd set aside while I was away at conferences. I successfully emptied my inbox. Hooray!
• On April 24, Thursday, I gave another short presentation on Web 2.0 and Retail, filling in for Bernie Michalik and Frank Noto, who couldn't make it.
• On April 25, Friday, I wrote up my conference notes and posted them to my blog. I also helped Ethan McCarty in IBM Communications with some research into how people can tell stories about the company.
• On April 26, Saturday, I wrote another six pages for my Wicked Cool Emacs book, reaching my chapter target. Hooray! I also did some gardening, and I helped W- change his winter times to summer tires.

Packed packed packed! Here are some of the things I've learned:

• I enjoy public speaking, and I'm getting better and better at it. The way I present now is different from the way I used to present several years ago. I'm looking forward to learning even more.
• I need a physical checklist to make sure I don't forget anything while setting up for presentations. I forgot to record my presentations because I was thinking about other things.
• No one likes giving presentations on short notice, but sometimes they need to be done. I need a wide range of experiences so that I can relate to different audiences quickly.
• Professional writing is all about rewriting. It's embarrassing to see how many mistakes you made the first time around, but at least I have the opportunity to revise!
• I want to come up with a better way to follow up after conversations. Even keywords written down in a notebook may not be able to trigger rich memory associations. Slowing down during conferences is one way to make more out of those conversation opportunities.

My plans for next week are:

• Work: Return to billable work and make sure my internal and external clients are happy.
• Network: Follow up with people I met at conferences, sending links to my conference notes.
• Book: Revise chapter 7 based on my technical reviewer's feedback
• Life: Make progress on my application for permanent residency by applying for Toronto police clearance and Japanese police clearance
• Others: Have a yard sale on Sunday with W- and J-

Technorati Tags: weekly

• I spent Sunday to Wednesday at the IBM Technical Leadership Exchange in Orlando, Florida. Here are some of the highlights:

• Networking workshop: Looks like I've got the basic networking stuff down pat. Well, maybe I could find a better way to do follow-up - a quicker way to do data entry and mass e-mail? Hmm. Also, it might be a good idea to try teaching social networking sometime…
• Presentation secrets from comedians: Some great tips in there, such as establishing the space at the beginning of the presentation and getting the hang of walking backwards.
• Animal Kingdom - It's really quite a different experience, chatting about tech while going up a rollercoaster… =)
• Keynote speeches - Loved the energy! Someday I'm going to be able to do something like that…

Thought for the week: I like this, but I'm also looking forward to slowing down and catching my breath. =)

Technorati Tags: weekly

The last week had been a blast. I attended the IBM Best Practices conference in Palisades, NY, and I presented on "How to Blog Your Way Out of a Job… and Into a Career." I really enjoyed sharing my experiences with blogging with the thirty or so people who showed up. Everyone was so open and friendly! And I'm glad that people enjoyed my presentation, too. I ended up winning Best Paper at the conference, and the organizers said I'd received over twice as many first-place votes as the next in line did! So I'm really happy that I managed to pass on so much value at my first proper conference as an IBMer.

Even more awesome than winning Best Paper, though, was having the opportunity to learn from more than a hundred people who were passionate about their work and about improving the way they work. One of the terrific things about conferences like this is that you can get so much energy and enthusiasm and encouragement from all these extraordinary people.

I'm also really glad that I had to attend sessions I ordinarily wouldn't have chosen and joined conversations I never would have started over e-mail. For example, the keynote speeches from the Rational folks got me thinking about measuring value and measuring adoption. I think that's one of the key benefits of face-to-face conferences. With a virtual conference, it's just too easy to let "real work" take you away from sessions you're not sure about. With a virtual conference, you don't have an excuse to chat over food with people you might not otherwise have met, and you don't have as many opportunities to form new friendships and renew the ones you had.

Good stuff. That was my last week - jam-packed with conversations and lessons learned from both the formal sessions and the informal chats. Very good stuff.

This week promises to be even better. The Technical Leadership Exchange is an even bigger conference, and I have a full schedule of sessions I would love to learn from. Although I need to revise my presentation extensively because I learned so much last week, I'm looking forward to starting conversations, too. Whee!

• I made my first photobook. Well, I didn't bother with captions or anything… Just dumped all the pictures into Picasa, did a little photo correction, uploaded them to Shutterfly, and organized them into roughly logical groups. We'll see how well that worked when the photobooks arrive.
• The jetlag-assisted early start was terrific for my productivity. Unfortunately, it didn't last all week. A few late evenings set me back to my pre-trip schedule. At least I've tasted the productivity of an early-morning schedule. If I can get away with following that schedule during the next few weeks' conferences, I think that would be awesome. If late-night networking means I can't get up at 3:30 or 4:00 without zombie-ing out during the conferences sessions, I'll stick with the usual day schedule, and I'll try going back to an early schedule after this month of conferences.
• Most of my week was spent doing internal work for my team, preparing for the various conferences that are coming up. I managed to do a little client work, too. I feel reasonably happy with my preparation for the next few conferences.
• I finished my article on personal finance with Ledger and Gnuplot for the Linux Journal. Hooray!

Next week, I'm flying to IBM Palisades in New York for the Best Practices Conference, and then to Florida for the Technical Leadership Exchange. If I can survive both conferences with plenty of networking opportunities and without falling flat on my face during my presentations, I think I'll count that as a win.

Technorati Tags: weekly