Graham Chastney

I’m not very often in the position where I am making formal presentations. It’s more likely that I am leading a discussion or a workshop. But, when I am presenting I hate sitting down.

I’ve been in many situations where people are sat down at the end of a table talking through a set of bullet-points. This has to be the dullest way of presenting, what’s to engage with. One of the reasons that people sit down to present is because they feel tethered to the control of their presentation, their laptop.

A while ago I was provided with a Logitech Cordless Presenter, this completely removes the tether. It’s great to work without a tether, walking around, pointing, being visible. Hopefully presenting in this way is a lot more interesting than presenting from a seat with a laptop in front of me. I want my presentations to be engaging and Cordless Presenter really helps me to do it.

The Presenter has a really simple set of buttons which are just what you need:

• Forward and backward buttons which take me forward and backward through a presentation.
• F5/esc button which allows me to start and end a presentation.
• Black screen button that allows me to get people’s attention back.
• Volume up and volume down. I’m not often presenting video or audio, but when I do it’s great to be able to adjust the volume.

The Presenter also has a couple of features that I rarely use.

• Laser pointer – I tend to use my finger to point rather than to use a laser pointer. If people are near enough to see the laser dot, they ought to be near enough to work out where my finger is pointing. The other challenge with the laser pointer is that it causes me problems with airport check-in, a laser pointer cannot be carried within hand luggage. It seems a bit strange to check-in a single object that fits in your hand.
• Timer – There is a timer on the device that you can set in increments of 5 mins. When the time is reached the device vibrates. I’ve tried using it, but the device only vibrates once, and I’ve actually missed it a couple of times. It doesn’t really vibrate enough for me to notice it.

There is also an on-switch and an off-switch.

The Presenter is a great piece of kit, it always surprises me that so few people make use of them.

I’m told that I live in an always-on world, and there are many times when it feels that way. Like many of you I have a tool available to me that keeps me in control of the times that I am available. It’s an invaluable tool and it’s called the off-switch.

Most of the devices I have include an off-switch, even if they don’t I am still in control of the power supply. I have the power to unplug, or to remove the battery.

The off-switch is very good for your brain. As we are approaching the season of holidays and vacations now is the time that you should employ this tool as often as possible and preferably for an extended period.

Here’s my guide to the off switch:

• On my laptop it’s the small silver button just above the F9 key.
• On my desktop it’s the larger silver button on the front towards the rear.
• On my blackberry it’s a silver button on the top left of the device.

Go on, you can do it.

I find mind maps to be a fabulous way of thinking about things.

I regularly find myself in the situation where I am doing what I call a personal brainstorm. There are a huge set of ideas that are floating around about a subject, placing them all down onto a mind map and then structuring them is a very powerful way of visualising them. It often sparks new ideas, highlights things that are not really related to the subject and highlights activities or ideas that are dependent upon each other.

The tool that I use for mind mapping is Mindjet MindManger Pro.

I’ve struggled for a while to know quite how to write about this subject. It’s one of those where you either stay shallow or you dive in deep, and I’m not sure I see the real value in one and I don’t have time for the other. I’ve decided just to start and see where I get to.

I nearly always use mind maps for structuring thought. I have tried to present mind maps for people to talk around, it normally results in lots of vacant looks. I’ve, therefore, moved away from presenting mind maps other than the simplest of diagrams (You can now do really simple diagrams in PowerPoint 2007).

As a thought structuring technique I nearly always start with a blank sheet and type.

Mind Manager allows you to do a lot of the working from the keyboard so it’s relatively easy to stream-type. In this mode the two most powerful keys that you have available are the “Enter” key and the “Insert” key.

• Pressing “Enter” adds a topic at the same level as the one you are currently in. This is great for creating a list of things all at the same level.
• Pressing the “Insert” key adds a topic as a child of your current topic. Great for adding a sub-thought.

I don’t classify, mark, annotate, or even worry too much about the structure it’s just how the thoughts come out. It’s amazing, though, how often that these thoughts are reasonably well structured. If you stop to think too much about the structure you loose the flow a bit.

Ideas tend to come faster than I can type so type as much as possible to make sure that I don’t miss something.

After I’ve brainstormed I’ll then structure and annotate. Mind Manager has a great set of Map Markers. I normally expand these out so they are all visible on the right of the screen. From here I’ll pick topics and mark them. My favourites are priorities, because that’s often what I am trying to get to understand.

The one thing I’ve always thought would be useful, but never been able to work out, is the ability to filter a set of topics based on the markers. Perhaps I just haven’t looked hard enough.

Once I’ve been through this activity I normally go and create something that communicates the thoughts that I have just worked out. I’d like people to be able to just look at my maps and understand them, but that doesn’t seem to communicate very well. Perhaps it’s a culture thing.

I’m actually quite a simple Mind Manager user, and lots of people do far more explicit things, this way of working helps me though.

I really like iTunes, I do really, but I find myself on a reasonably pleasant Friday afternoon writing negatively about it.

My problem this time is yet another expansion of its scope. This expansion, in my opinion, goes beyond what iTunes does and moves it steadily into the arena of bloatware.

This time I’m talking about the bundling of MobileMe stuff into iTunes 7.7.

It’s not an optional install, it just gets deployed, without warning and without question.

Is this just Apple arrogance – “Why wouldn’t you want my software?”

Speaking as an enterprise IT person this would make iTunes a real problem within a secure corporate environment. I might not mind my employees using iTunes for their media, but why would I want them synchronising information outside the firewall. If I want to lock down this capability I need to take some special measures.

MobileMe might even be great software, I just don’t want it thrust down my throat.

Like I say, I like iTunes, but…

Anyone who has read this blog for any length of time will know that I’m a bit of a numbers freak. I used to think that everyone was like me, but I’m steadily realising that not everyone approaches graphs and charts with quite the same level of enthusiasm.

If you are a numbers person – read on. If you think numbers are as interesting as a postman’s socks you have my permission to go and read something more appropriate to your needs.

For a numbers man link me Google Analytics is heaven. I can tell you more information than you could possibly want to know, or could be bothered to ask about.

I can tell you where people came from, where they went to, what browser they were using, where there device is situated, what search keywords they used, and so much more.

Probably the best bit about Analytics is that you get all of this information for the princely sum of £0. Now there’s a bargain.

For those of you not aware of analytics it works like this:

• You register for an account at analytics.google.com.
• You then add a website profile.
• It then generates some code which you put in a sensible place on your site. In the case of this site typepad even have a widget to make it that much easier, and I know that wordpress allows the same.
• Then you wait a while, preferably 24 hours.

Bit by bit, the numbers start rolling in and you can enter numbers heaven.

I have a number of favourite views.

The first thing I normally notice is the Traffic Source view. In recent times there has been a shift here. Google used to absolutely dominate these numbers, they are still big, but they are down to 30%. The difference has been twitter and a myriad of other referers who have said something about one of my posts on their blog (thanks).

Having said that, I still have a good look through the search keywords. Should I be worried that the top two keywords are “graham chastney blog” and “graham chastney”, are people really trying to find me.

As a technologist I’m also interested in things like the browsers that people use – Internet Explorer is still out in front, but Firefox is catching fast.

I’m also really interested in the location of my visitors. Being based in the UK and would expect many visitors from there, the number of visitors from the USA is nearly as big. Being able to drill down beyond country is fun, but it’s not really that useful for my blog.

A blog is really about the content though, and that’s where I get the best information, what are people reading? The simple answer to that is – all sorts of stuff. There have been a few really popular ones, but the reading is very varied, which I suppose reflects the variance in my writing.

You can also decide to share your analytics with other Google users if you so desire. I don’t, primarily because it’s a person blog and I’m not sure else would care about my statistics.

Analytics is so good that I regularly ask myself the question – “why can’t I have this at work?”