From 3 PM to 5 PM on March 14 (Saturday), I'll be giving a talk at the Toronto College of Technology to a group of approximately 80 newcomers to Canada and people re-entering the IT field. With that in mind, I proposed the following talk: Make a Name for Yourself: Creating Opportunities in Diff...

I'm looking forward to receiving the first bonus of my working life. =) Thinking about it, I'm reminded of a story my mom told us a number of times. It goes something like this like this: Two entrepreneurs each start off with a variety store. The first entrepreneur takes the profits from t...

IRC chat, thanks to Stephane Corlosquet This was for my Totally Rocking Your Drupal Development Environment talk at DrupalCon 2009. =) bryankennedy my favorite development environment requirement = electricity bryankennedy glad i got near the power strips jrglasgow Be Lazy! lyricnz Such infectious e...

In a previous reflection on presentation and public speaking, I mentioned how I'm looking for inspiring role models who can deliver effective presentations in person and remotely. Role models are hugely important. Think about all the people you've heard speak, and then think of the ones yo...

When I beta-tested this talk with an IBM audience, I realized that there was no way in heck I could fit all the generally useful tips I wanted to share into the session, much less go into the joys of Eclipse, vi, or Emacs. (Especially Emacs. I could spend hours sharing what I've learned about E...

I do a lot of web research, and I'd like to be able to outsource that to a virtual assistant. Web research is also one of the common services offered by virtual assistants. My coworkers tell me that I find information on the Net very quickly. If I can teach those skills to virtual assistants I ...

From last week's plans: Attend Drupal Camp Toronto organizers' meeting, figure out task delegation Everyone was happy with the sponsorship letter I drafted, and we're working out a system for managing tasks. Give lecture at York University - Schulich Business School on Enterprise 2.0 ...

David Seah asked people how they process books. Here's what I commented: I read a _lot_ of books, and I frequently refer other people to books that match their interests. When I do so, I love being able to point people to the exact page or quote they should check out, or to send them a summary ...

One of the reasons why I love thinking of ways to help people rock even more is that I often end up learning a lot in the process. For example, last week, I needed to coordinate schedules with Katie Bartlett, Jeff Widman's assistant, for a chat with Jeff about networking. I thought about how mu...

I spent the entire afternoon trying to figure out how I can do a live teleconference with screensharing so that I can show people actual Drupal tips and tricks instead of handwaving through a bunch of slides. Rube Goldberg would probably have approved of all the different things I tried. Unfortunate...