to dig deeper, to find three words that could be used as lighthouses to guide you through stormy seas, that can be used as flags on the battlefield of your challenges, words that will bolster you and give you a direction that goes beyond the goals you might attach as a result of these words.

So I’ve thought about words for this year and realised that what gets in my way quite often is that I take life way too seriously, I need to simplify and get more joy out of the things I do. I’m going to attempt to do that through using 3 P-words as beacons:  prioritise, purge and play.

Prioritise. To prioritise properly I will have to constantly ask myself: “Why?” “What positive contribution does it make in my personal or professional life?” Of course to be effective I’ll also have to figure out exactly what I really want to achieve.

Purge. Priorities will allow me to purge things from my life – unnecessary activities, for one – but also other stuff. I’m a hoarder of stuff; that will change. To simplify life I need to go with the maxim: less is more. No I’m not going to go totally Zen on you, but unclutter, I will.

Play. I need to be less serious and go more for having fun. Ok, so I’m a nerd, so my idea of fun and play may be a little bit different than others. However, I am in the lucky position to be in a job where I can define a lot (unfortunately not all) of what I do. I don’t think I’ve been taking enough advantage of that.

I hope that thinking about the three P’s can help me simplify my life.  Join me on my journey in 2012 – together we can make it an awesome year!

Have any words that you define your 2012 by? Why not share them with me (and the rest of the world)  in the comments…

Interested in knowing how I am doing? Keep reading my blog and make sure you subscribe via e-mail, RSS, or the Facebook page…

Related articles

• My Three Words for 2012 (suzemuse.com)
• Share YOUR Three Words (dave-lucas.blogspot.com)
• 3 Words for 2012 (cc-chapman.com)
• My 3 Words – 2012 (courtneyengle.com)

Active (C+): If it weren’t for this December I would have given me a solid B. I did not lose more weight, but I managed to stay active in the gym – at least three times a week, except when I was travelling. To a large extent my lifestyle changed – now just to transfer that style change to the Christmas holidays as well. Let’s just keep it at saying at the beginning of December I was still keeping my weight…

Balanced (B+): Compared to 2010 this certainly improved. I tried spending much more time at home, and I tried ‘working’ less. Is it working? Well the B+ implies it went well, but there are some definite room for improvement, especially as far as community is concerned. I think I’ve mellowed out a bit, both at work and at home. Not sure I always like it, but mostly it is better for me, my family and maybe even my co-workers.

Creative (B): My creativity somehow was limited to my work environment. While I produced several reusable ‘components’ for my lectures, my most creative time was during November. I set myself a target to in November produce a thousand words a day in new notes and course material per day. I am proud to report that by 30 November I had more than 30000 words, thus meeting my target. Sure, it is a first draft which will be added to and edited significantly during January to be used as course material from mid-February, but it is much more than what I have ever produced.

Deliver (C): Did I ship enough? Traditional academic outputs, yes, that would score a B+. I had 2 journal papers appear and some 5 conference papers. A PhD, two MTechs and an MBA treatise student walked over the stage in April (arguably that is because of 2010 efforts though). What about other outputs? No, that’s probably a D. Nevertheless I’m hoping that the momentum that I built during November won’t be lost completely over the December break and that it is a sign of good things to come. One thing that I’ve realised is that sometimes I am trying to bite off (way) too much; I must learn to eat the elephant bite-by-bite.

So overall my guiding words helped; I’d give myself a B-.

Finally, on a personal note, some of my more vivid 2011 memories:

• All the kids are in school now and are doing great. The last one entered school in Grade 1, and the oldest went to high school. All three made me proud, very proud.
• My first PhD graduate, Jacques Ophoff crossed the stage.
• Laurie Butgereit, one of my 2011 M graduates who is continuing with her PhD, not only got the award for the best masters in technology by dissertation, but also the very prestigious Rupert Family Trust Award.
• I crossed the stage for the Post-graduate Certificate in Higher Education.
• For the first time since 1994 I bought a brand-new car, quite an event considering the time lapse. For the record, I am still very happy with my Hyundai i10.
• We had some good family breakaways. Most notable is what is becoming our annual outing to the Grahamstown SciFest, and a trip to the Tsitsikamma showing the kids where mom and dad always go for their anniversary.
• This December we did not use our own caravan for camping; instead, we hired a caravan. Might sound stupid, but it is so much less stress if somebody else worries about that part plus it added a full two days to our camping due to the lack of setting up and breaking down camp. So the ten days were actually ten. Furthermore, the car trips involved a lot of stopping and enjoying the trip, something that with a caravan on tow is just not possible.

2011 was a good year, with tons of things to be thankful for. I will using some words for next year again (more tomorrow). How about you?

What’s the gist of what I said?

• Good presentation skills and aids cannot “fix” an inherently flawed message. Make sure you have your message clear way before you worry about the presentation aids. I did not mention it in the talk, but I find that working analogue, i.e. working with pen and paper, to get the message and the flow clear quite beneficial. [See Duarte's blog post on advanced stickynoting for more on this idea)
• Think about why you show the audience what you are showing them. Does the aids: speak to the emotions? provide credible evidence? assist with clarifying the logic? [Read Andrew Dlugan's excellent series of posts on ethos, pathos and logos if that idea resonate with you.] I showed a snippet from Jamie Oliver’s TED talk on “Teach every child about food” to show the point (and yet another presentation aid)
• I prefer a minimalist approach to slides. Few words, images that speak for themselves. Obviously sometimes detail is necessary but when faced with, for example, including diagrams ask yourself whether it is helping and whether projecting it is the first choice.
• Stay away as far as possible from bullets on slides – your audience will read them and not listen to you. Oh yes, and they don’t want to listen to you reading it either! Death by Powerpoint is nobody’s preferred way to go.
• Keep your eyes open… widely… there are plenty of good (and bad!) design round you. Most of use can intuitively tell the extremes at least. Ask yourself questions about why you liked (or disliked)something, what caught your eye… Learn from it!  [Learn here, for example, from IKEA billboards]

by minwoo via flickr

When I am assessing student’s writing I am (unfortunately) often reminded of Schopenhauer’s Law Of Entropy…

It goes something like this:

If you take a barrel full of sewage and add a spoonful of wine, you are left with a barrel full of sewage. So, if you take a barrel full of wine and add a spoonful of sewage, what are you left with? A barrel full of sewage!!

Most of us will not waste a barrel full of wine in such way, would we?
So why do we waste our fine writing in that way? We should guard against adding extra, especially if the extra is not quite the same quality of as the rest.

While I am pretty sure I am sometimes guilty of adding unnecessary low-quality writing unnecessarily, I do not feel alone. I see it way too regularly with students. Post-graduate students that add stuff to writing that do not add value, just volume. Students writing exam answer a question fairly well, but then adds some additional irrelevant, if not plain wrong material which cast a serious doubt over whether they actually understand the work…

Next time when you write and you have the urge to add something, join me and first ask yourself whether this is wine or sewage?

cc image via flick by stephee

Read any book on presentations and the concept of storytelling will be in there somewhere actually more than in there, usually it will be quite prominent. I realize I need to work on this skill and therefore I am constantly looking out for great stories, or more specifically great storytellers. Today after church it dawned on me that any presenter can learn about storytelling from The Greatest Storyteller himself, Jesus.

Jesus often used parables.  For example, in Luke 13 we find the parable of the yeast.  Parables are a kind of analogy, and analogies are a device presenters often use. When thinking about some parables though, what occurred to me though is that analogies are audience-specific, i.e. it must make sense to your audience.

Think about it this way: in Jesus’ time baking bread with flour and yeast was commonplace; everybody baked their own, so the image that must have formed in their head would have been completely different to the average person today. If you are my age or less (even a bit older) chances are that you have never baked bread, or even seen one made from scratch. For those of us that know how it is done, it was probably done more as an occasional novelty and not a regular necessity. The imagery that you see in your mind when reading “A woman takes some yeast and mixes it with a bushel of flour until the whole batch of dough rises.” is thus completely different to when Jesus spoke those words.

Therefore, I you were to use those words today to a young audience you probably needs to spend much more time on explaining the analogy, on colouring in the picture than what Jesus had to do.

So next time you use an analogy be sure to think about the audience. Who are they? Does their context help/hinder the use of this analogy? How much more explanation is necessary?

Many, many things could play a role. The generation gap is real, so is the difference between genders. Audiences have varied literacy levels; there may be language and other cultural barriers, to name but a few.

For your next presentation, pick your analogies well.

1. GIVE THE BIG PICTURE FIRST! Ever tried building a puzzle without a box with a picture on it? It certainly is more difficult than when you have the picture at hand. (Do you know the wasgij puzzles? The picture on the box is what a person in the actual puzzle see and not the picture that you are building – great fun, but definitely more difficult than normal) Your presentation needs to make the “big picture”, the value proposition of your talk clear, upfront, otherwise you may just lose your audience.

2. BUILD THE OUTLINE. What do most people do when building a jigsaw puzzle? Start with the frame, each piece has a straight edge (or two for the corners) and is much easier then to figure out where the rest fits.  A presentation must also be framed; at the macro-level consisting of a beginning, a middle and an end.

3. COLLECT RELATED PIECES. We typically sort jigsaw pieces according to some common trait like the dominant color. When designing presentations one needs to collect all the material that could be necessary, sorted and the pieces that don’t have a place be discarded for this presentation. In a way this corresponds to having multiple puzzles available, some pieces will just not be useful in the current puzzle.

4. FIND KEY PIECES Once one starts looking at a puzzle it usually become clear that some pieces are more easily identified than others. These pieces can be compared to what Nancy Duarte terms STAR moments. Finding them gives solid anchor points for other pieces.

5. NOT EVERY PIECE WILL FIT FROM THE START. Sometimes the first puzzle piece that you try in a space will not fit; in fact, most of the time it will not. when you design a presentation you must be willing to try different things, the first try is unlikely to be the best fit. Finding the pieces that join seemingly unrelated  pieces together often gives this kind of problem.  Presentations are no different, working extra hard to join things together, to find the flow is definitely worth the effort as it takes the emphasis away from the individual clumps and ensuring that the whole becomes better.

6. WORK ON THE HIGHLIGHTS – THE ODD PIECES BECOME EASIER.

Building all over does not work; typically one would build around a key feature, finding as many pieces of a similar colour, pattern or other characteristic. We must do the same in our presentation preparation: fine tune it piece by piece. Of course doing so one must constantly keep an eye on the big picture, otherwise you may find yourself looking for a piece which already are used elsewhere.

7. HOW MUCH TIME TO YOU HAVE? just like you would not choose a 1000 piece puzzle if you only have a couple of hours, so you must ask yourself how much time you have available for your presentation. Do not give the audience a puzzle that’s too complex for the allotted time. Amazingly a small 99 piece puzzle can be just as much fun to build like a 2000 piece; in fact completing the 99 piece is much more fulfilling than getting the 2000 piece 5% complete.

8. BEST EFFORTS ARE TEAM EFFORTS. An extra pair of eyes help. Often when I feel stuck, a family member will come past, look at the pieces and quickly find a missing piece or two. Similarly, get others to help you with your presentation; do dry runs, get feedback.

9. FUZZY PIECES BUILD DIFFICULT. Which parts of the puzzle builds the most difficult? For me it definitely are the parts like skies, grass and bushes, especially where these do not have well-defined features such as clouds and visible twigs. For your presentation make sure that you have a clear vision, that you show the clear parts of the picture. The parts that are fuzzy for you will be fuzzy to the audience as well.

So next time you need to prepare a presentation, imagine you are building a puzzle, because for the audience you are.

Yesterday I discovered builtwith.com which allows you to see which technologies rae used to build any specific site. Just enter the web-site you are wondering about… Great tool for curios geeks like me! They also have a trend site trends.builtwith.com which provides interesting statistics.

However, this post is not about builtwith, but about using some of these graphs in presentations.

Maybe in this case we want to use the data to support our motivation for considering a specific technology. So I will use some data from builtwith. For the sake of explanation I am interested in payment providers, and specifically two questions:

1. How is payment providers distributed between the top 10000 web-sites?
2. Does the distribution change as one considers more web-sites, say 100000 or 1000000?

I both cases the builtwith website can help. (By the way the sell much more detail information at their Trends Pro site, which hopefully has more options to look at the statistics.)

Looking for an answer for the first question, I see the following graph.

Now this is fine for this question. Why do say so?

• I can see Paypal is the majority, followed by CCBill.
• Google Checkout is clearly in third place, followed by Flattr.
• Mollie and Amazon Payments have no representation on the pie chart
• They have a mouse-over facility which shows the actual percentages when you hover over it, but even without it (with this data at least) we can estimate the percentages quite accurately – in our presentation we may wat to show that inside the chart.

Pie charts are good at showing relative proportions, but horrendous at showing order when the data is close to one another. Consider, for example, the following pie chart showing the distribution of “Feed technology”.

Much more difficult to “see” the relative sizes, so unless you wanted to send the very basic message: RSS is leading, followed by 5 medium players; however, some smaller players still feature relatively strongly. So if that is all you want the audience to see, maybe good enough.

Back to the second question: “Does the distribution change as one considers more web-sites, say 100000 or 1000000?” If we then used the screen captures on our slides with a bit of cropping, cutting and pasting we could build something looking like:

Easily enough done, but can one really see the trends?  I can see that Paypal is getting much more popular as the web-sites popularity decreases… but for the rest I cannot really state anything.

Pie charts is no good at showing trends – and ever where it is visible it takes some extra mental effort to really see it. Now let is take that same data and represent it as bar chart.

I think it is much easier to see trends.

• Paypal’s dominance is still easy to see, so we haven’t lost anything to the pie chart as far as I am concerned.
• I suddenly saw that CCBill is get more popular as we move to the top sites. (Now that I’ve seen it, I can see it on the pie charts as well, but it certainly did not jump out at me in the pie chart)
• I suddenly see some strange trend for Google Checkout in the middle… Not sure what it means, but it’s there…
• Flattr also shows an interesting trend by appearing more in Top 10000 sites… than in other sites.

Did you see any of these trends easier with the pie charts? I know I could not.

So next time you think about presenting your message with data, please pay attention to what you want the audience to see, and make sure that that is what you show.

As I grew up this changed…  Interestingly enough, in the later school years, I enjoyed my prescribed books in English much more than Afrikaans; the stories were just so much better! I developed an interest in computers; I went to a “dual-medium” university, and found I preferred the lectures in the same language as the book… When I hit the workplace, life has changed and I found my co-workers who went to Afrikaans universities confusing to talk shop with… Today I sometimes feel more competent in English than my mother-tongue (at least in professional work environments); scary stuff.

I many times wish that I paid more attention to English as a subject; that my attitude were different. Not initially being “serious” about the English language has left it legacy.  Language errors for me are abound, it’s getting better, but it is a constant struggle. How I wished I paid more attention to the grammar rules, and how I wished I read more English and used the dictionary more often!

Of course I had many years to work on my English skills and it’s probably (hopefully) much better now than say 25 years ago. However, I often see my students struggling with the same issues I had. Many of my students are from non-English backgrounds, and struggle with similar issues as what I struggled (struggle?) with.

I remembered all this when I saw a link to this list of typical “word mistakes” – useful if you tend to get words wrong!.

Maybe English (or any language) is not so different from say learning a martial art for self-defense… One needs to get the basics right before going to the next level. To do so we need to be open to criticism and practice a lot.

Do you practice your English enough?

The video speaks to my interpretation of Carr’s highly controversial 2003 “IT Doesn’t Matter” paper in the Harvard Business Review. I claim that he titled the paper to be controversial (and wow, did he succeed) and that the message is not nearly as strong as the title suggest. However a paper called “IT does not matter for strategic differentiation”, just does not evoke as much emotion and therefore comment.

I hope that you will from time to time enjoy my ramblings in the form of a video. (Hopefully I will manage to get the sound somewhat better in future deliveries – I’m experimenting, and I do not have a radio voice!)