Category: productivity

Conference envy

Later this month I’ll be heading to Chicago for Ragan Communications’ conference on Corporate Communications and the Social Media Revolution. (It’s billed as “the can’t-miss social media summit,” so how could I skip out?) I’ll also attend the free un-conference that’s happening the day before. So I shouldn’t be experiencing conference envy. But then I read about a couple of others that turn me green.

First, there’s TechCrunch40 and its powerhouse keynoters: Marc Andreessen, David Filo, Mark Zuckerberg — names synonymous with innovation. And it’s in San Francisco in a couple of weeks.

Then, also in San Francisco, starting today is the Office 2.0 Conference, which, according to the CNET preview, “will push the Web 2.0 concept for business as far as it can go.” I love to learn about the latest software to make managing products and processes easier. The problem is, I’ve yet to find one that has really made life any easier for me or my team. But, who knows? Maybe this is the year Office 2.0 offers up a gem, and I’d love to be in San Francisco to hear about it firsthand. Guess not.

Also this month is CASE’s Annual Conference for Senior Communications and Marketing Professionals. I co-chaired last year’s event in Philly. And where might this year’s conference be? San Fran, once again.

OK, maybe I don’t have conference envy so much as a desire to visit San Francisco. If any readers are going to any of these, send me a postcard. I’ll do the same from Chicago.

Labor Day productivity tips

labor_day.gifIt’s official. Summer’s over, kids. Yeah, school’s been back in session for a week or two, but it’s a long haul from here to Thanksgiving. Lots of work ahead of us all. Maybe we could use some tips for being more productive. Here are a few I’ve culled from the RSS feeds.

  • Let’s start with three brilliant reads (all PDFs) brought to us by ChangeThis:
  • Before your start working on that next PowerPoint presentation, check out these clear and to-the-point PowerPoint tips. This is a summary by Garr Reynolds (of Presentation Zen fame) of a new book, Clear and to the Point: 8 Psychological Principles for Compelling PowerPoint Presentations, by Stephen Kosslyn, a Harvard cognitive neuroscientist. Kosslyn “aligns his list of presentation and PowerPoint ‘do’s & don’ts’ with sound psychological principles,” Reynolds writes. But the Harvard scientist’s pedigree offers a voice of authority that may help communicators change an organization’s prevailing PowerPoint culture. “It’s one thing when a designer [or you, to your boss] says the current methods are flawed, but it is quite another when a cognitive neuroscientist says so.” Reynolds’ post offers a thorough summary of Kosslyn’s ideas, with pictures.
  • Plans? Who needs a plan? What you need are skills and a problem. “Take a look at the biographies of great people. None of them actually planned to accomplish what they did accomplish. Their ‘life plans’ are something authors and historians (and sometimes they themselves) construe from the crooked path their life actually was.” Via Signal vs. Noise (link).
  • Five resources for creating and managing your brand, via Chris Brown’s Branding and Marketing blog, which is a pretty neat resource of its own.
  • How to get out of bed earlier. I swear, I’m going to try this one first thing tomorrow. Via LifeHacker.
  • And to wrap it all up in a nice, neat package, some nuggets from Seth Godin‘s Labor Day post.

    Today, working hard is about taking apparent risk. Not a crazy risk like betting the entire company on an untested product. No, an apparent risk: something that the competition (and your coworkers) believe is unsafe but that you realize is far more conservative than sticking with the status quo. …

    Hard work is about risk. It begins when you deal with the things that you’d rather not deal with: fear of failure, fear of standing out, fear of rejection. Hard work is about training yourself to leap over this barrier, tunnel under that barrier, drive through the other barrier. And, after you’ve done that, to do it again the next day.

    The big insight: The riskier your (smart) coworker’s hard work appears to be, the safer it really is. It’s the people having difficult conversations, inventing remarkable products, and pushing the envelope (and, perhaps, still going home at 5 PM) who are building a recession-proof future for themselves.

    So tomorrow, when you go to work, really sweat. Your time is worth the effort.