I repeat, "practice, dude!"

Nancy White talks about a Time to Experiment. She makes sense. As does this.

Years ago, I became bunk champ at jacks (house rules: passies five, poison eights, Boston backs, two hard and one easy fancy). How’d I do that? Practice. I can type about 90-100wpm. How? Practice. I blog… I know how to download to my iPod… I drive a standard car… all practice.

Yes, it’s a commitment, trying to learn these new “2.0″ tools. Yes, it takes time from The Boys and reading. Why, then? It’s my job. Not every tool. Not every tweak. But some tools, some tweaks. When I stop practicing and get comfortable with what I’m doing, it’s time to quit.

More Things I Hate A Conferences

(part three of what I’m sure will be a series)

• Do not talk down to your audience. Particularly if they’re a bunch of technogeeks – acting surprised that at least one of them is liveblogging, and there’s chat activity, and possibly some VOIP action just means that you lose credibility.
• On the other hand, assume that someone in the audience is Mr./Ms. Clueless and prepare a handy cheat sheet for them (you’d be surprised how many Big Thinkers still don’t know what RSS is, despite attending several sessions on it). A glossary to be previewed before attending is really great.
• If you’re doing the One Book/One Conference thing, make sure that everyone knows which edition you want them to read. If a book’s been updated, tell them you want the 2006 edition, not the 2004.
• Allow more time for cracker-barrel discussions. If it’s a small conference, held in one hotel/conference center, where you start at a group breakfast and end at a group dinner/cocktail party, give them time to relax and talk without it being five minutes in the ladies/mens room!. Otherwise people end up staying up really late and are shot for the next day’s sessions. If it’s a large conference, people have to pick-and-choose what they’ll go to, and not have enough time to compare notes with others.
• Double check wifi availability. Particularly at a tech-heavy conference, it’s really upsetting when half the people can’t get on/do the work because there’s not enough bandwidth.
• Presenters, Do not pepper your talk with references to your clients. Do not pimp your latest book. Do not pimp your next conference.

You’ll note that my last rant provoked a response from one of C2′s leaders. I’m not ignoring that, just saving my comments for another post.