Dear tourists,
London buses exist so people can get around the city. They are not mobile tourism information centres. Buy a ticket or get off the fucking bus.
Dear tourists,
London buses exist so people can get around the city. They are not mobile tourism information centres. Buy a ticket or get off the fucking bus.
I’m not watching Eurovision. I seem to be massively in the minority…
“We’re sorry, Flickr Search is currently disabled.” Sigh.
Just got around to activating Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools on my site. Wow. I thought I had a dirty mind, but whoever turned up at my site looking for Nadine Dorries porn… just wow.
Numerous people have also turned up at my site after searching for “why gays shouldn’t get married”. Which is quite amusing.
And at least one person arrived having searched for “bad things margaret thatcher did”.
Today is the International Day against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia.
It’s today because back in 1990, the World Health Organization decided that being gay wasn’t a disease. Which is nice. It’s sure nice to not be considered disordered by the medical establishment just because you like dudes.
Anyway, you know, be awesome to one another.
If Plaxo didn’t keep spamming me with invitations to send e-cards to people who were acquaintances a few years ago, I’d have forgotten they still exist.
This week, I went to 300seconds, an event that tries to help women get started with public speaking. There were some good talks and some which could do with some work, but it was an enjoyable evening.
I’ve done a fair amount of public speaking, at events like BarCamp, Dev8D, Wikimania, and OpenTech. I’ve given lightning talks, workshop presentations and been on panels. And the 300seconds organisers are encouraging those of us who’ve done it before to give some sisterly advice.
These days, everything has to be a super craptastic list in order to get anyone to read it, so here are my twelve tips for budding public speakers.
Go to BarCamp and speak. Not just BarCamp, but any free events. Speak at every free event you can. People aren’t going to storm out in anger, and you get valuable practice learning to speak in front of audiences.
Train yourself to not give a fuck about what people think about you. They’ll judge you based on your appearance, on the way you talk, on the way you dress, on whether you use Windows, OS X or Linux, or PowerPoint or Keynote… the only way to deal with this is to not give a fuck. You have one life to lead, you will never be perfect, you’ll never satisfy everyone. At one time, I actually gave a fuck what people think about me, but giving that up is the first step towards a sane and happy life. Everyone has to come out from something, even if it is just a self-constructed shell made of fear.
Don’t try and be someone else. It’s very easy to try and be a better public speaker by going and watching TED talks or other conference talks and thinking that all you have to do is impersonate those guys. Authenticity is always more appealing to me than listening to someone who is deliberately trying to ape another person’s style. Learn from other people’s approach, sure, but there’s an important difference between being inspired by someone and mimicing or appropriating their style. (Incidentally, I think TED is very overhyped.)
Build a rich inner life. I’ve written before about the value of writing about yourself. Read lots of books, think hard about your own reactions to things. You’ll be a better speaker for having analysed your own reactions.
Humour should be spontaneous rather than scripted. It’s fine to be a little bit saucy and camp with your jokes, but never cross over into being dirty or explicit. Keep your jokes intelligent: wordplay, humorous but obscure references, that sort of thing. If you aren’t sure about the crowd, play it safe. Self-deprecating humour is good too: if you don’t give a fuck about what people think about you (see point 2), it becomes a lot easier to do self-deprecating humour. They are probably thinking it anyway, may as well get a good laugh out of your own mishaps.
Know your shit, but don’t feel like you have to be an expert. I’ve given talks about Scala, a subject I’m definitely not an expert in, but which I know enough about to mean I know more than the likely attendee. Don’t be afraid to go off script: if you are giving a talk and only a few people turn up (say, at a BarCamp), and the room seems keen on something you’ve spoken about, go into more detail. I’d rather spend 20 minutes with people excitedly learning about one thing than 20 minutes plodding through PowerPoint. Don’t be afraid to honestly describe your limits: if you know that you don’t know something, say so.
Vocal projection. I don’t remember how I learned to project my voice, but it is VERY USEFUL (in fact, almost as useful as touch typing). Vocal projection is not shouting: people sometimes tell me not to shout, but I then realise I’m not shouting, I’m just vocally projecting. A lot of people speak only with their mouth and their throat, but you need to feel like you are pushing the words out from much further down, from your chest and ultimately from your stomach. Watch some singers doing it: opera singers or big soulful divas like Jill Scott and you’ll see an enormous amount of vocal power and control. (Or, you know, hop on to YouTube and watch Brian Blessed.) Don’t rely on there being a microphone. The microphone is there to assist you, but you should be able to make yourself heard in a reasonable sized hall without a mic. (Vocal projection is also useful if you ever find yourself in a noisy bar or nightclub!)
Practice, practice, practice. That doesn’t mean standing in front of a mirror going through your slides, although that’s useful. Get lots of public speaking practice: it helps you build up your confidence, it helps you develop the not-giving-a-shit muscle when you fuck up (and you will fuck up, everyone does, that’s how you learn), and it lets you develop your own style and your own voice.
Drink water not alcohol. Alcohol makes your throat dry. Drink water before you talk. Once you’ve finished talking for the day, you can always get the gin out. Have a bottle of cool water with you.
Pace yourself. A lot of people talk very quickly when they start. This is because people are often nervous. Just let the words flow at a natural pace. Don’t be afraid to pause: so long as the pauses sound natural rather than “pregnant”, pausing is fine. If someone asks a question and you have to think about it, it’s perfectly fine to pause. The reason we find pausing so difficult is because we have watched too much television. On television, if someone pauses to think or take a swig of water before answering a question, we interpret this as “boring”. But that’s just a learned reaction from our MTV-trained attention-deficit culture. In front of an intelligent audience, it’s perfectly fine to pause for a few seconds to think of a well-reasoned answer rather than feeling you have to respond as quickly as you possibly can.
Move about on stage, if you can. If the presence of the mic is tying you to the lectern, or it is more of a traditional, academic conference, you’ve got good reason not to. Otherwise, move about a bit. I had a lecturer who, during first year undergraduate lectures, would climb up on tables and chairs and jump around like an acrobat. Students couldn’t quite believe he was for real (see point two: not giving a shit), but nobody would ever fall asleep in his lectures.
Enjoy yourself. If you can get over nervousness and anxiety and learn to not give a shit about people judging you (to quote Lady Gaga: “People will always talk, let’s give them something to talk about”).
Geeks of London and blogging means going to lots of events: hackdays, barcamps, unconferences, PR junkets. people are surprised when she says she’s an introvert.
Introversion and extraversion. People tend to think introverts are shy and quiet, extraverts social and outgoing.
Where do you get your energy from? Introverts: from self-reflection, extraverts from interaction. Introverts want to be alone to recharge their batteries, extraverts need to be around others. Most of the time introverts are shy and quiet, but not always.
Social caterpillars. how do you recognise them?
Emily Webber talking about londonshopfronts.com at #300seconds. Very visual, so can’t really liveblog it.
by Darci Dutcher
Agile: company plonked down two books on the table and said “we’re doing agile!” Didn’t work out.
UX people who don’t like agile say: no time to think through big picture, piece by piece design is disconnected, UX improvements prioritized below new functionality
Agile gives you an opportunity to learn. You get software every two weeks rather than every 18 months. Opportunity to improve and iterate. Test with real software. Learning is more important than being right the first time. Collaboration with people from other skillsets.
Focus on high priority features. From a design standpoint: you get to design the most important things. You don’t get distracted by the small things.
Not for everyone: focus on people, focus on collaboration, learn from what you are doing. Be better tomorrow than you are today.
We naturally think of digital democracy as being a dick to our MPs.
We have an e-petition: it goes to the Backbench Business Committee, championed by an MP, non-legislative debate.
change.org: MPs are overwhelmed by email, so MPs filter it and don’t see your email. Astroturfing/copy-paste campaigning. There ends up being an arms race. Problem with legitimacy.
Twitter is good for being funny. Twitter is bad for meaningful engagement with your representatives.
How do we adapt democratic systems?
Micro approach: line-by-line, clause-by-clause comments.
Adjust your expectations: you aren’t going to get involved directly.
Ask questions: systems are always adaptive, not monolithic. The processes are made up. Talk to your MP rather than tweet.
Charlotte Curle, Standard Chartered - @charliecurle on twitter
Standard Chartered is a sponsor of Liverpool FC. Took photos of the players, halftime competition.
“What’s your Perfect Match?” (e.g. Fish and Chips) - on Facebook and Twitter. Four signed Liverpool FC shirts up for auction on eBay. Hashtag #PerfectMatch
No paid advertising.
48.5% email open rate. 12 million + Facebook fans. 10.5m reached on Twitter.
Tweeted by footballers and sports pundits.
60% increase to the Seeing is Believing site. 15% increase in FB likes, 10% on Twitter. 150% increase in traffic to fundraising pages. 1,818% in people talking about the campaign. 248k engaged users. $23,000 raised through eBay.
What worked? Simple concept and entry, mobile friendly, a unique prize.
What didn’t work? Facebook Rules - different countries have different rules on what you can do on social media. Football isn’t necessarily popular in different countries. Other things were going on.
Tried to liveblog @mrsmoti’s talk at #300seconds but she talks very very quickly. ;)
gov.uk is a single domain to house government information in the UK. recently won design of the year award.
trying to build in an agile and iterative way.
Make the font size readable. Disabled users. But it makes pages easier to read for everyone.
Use white space to allow users to focus and read text without distraction.
Typeface: careful selection of typeface. Based on Transport, originally designed for UK road signs. Has historical relevance, cultural reference for UK users.
Aesthetically pleasing doesn’t mean usable. Simpler wins.
Icons are intended to create icons: alpha release had ten different icons in the footer, no key to describe what they do. Had no real meaning. Current version dropped that.
(Out of time!)
I’m at 300seconds (Lanyrd). It’s an event to try and establish the profile of new women speakers in London. Because too many conferences are all men. I’ll be writing about the talks as separate posts.
Organisers: friendly environment, place to talk about all sorts of things, get used to presenting.
“We move closer to the larger goal of true equality with each woman who leans in.” (Sheryl Sandberg)
Laura D (website, twitter) is first up to talk about ‘Folding Drupal’.
Module: in Drupal, it refers to a chunk of code that has a singular function. In origami, a module is the basic unit too.
When you first install Drupal, “it’s a bit crap”. Content types: lets you define different types of content, like events, articles, pages etc. You can add fields on to them; extra modules allow you to add date fields.
Contrib modules: additional modules you can download from the Drupal site.
Bad contrib modules exist. But it is open source, so you can fix them!
Themes, so you can style it. People put too much logic in the theme and they need to be modularised.
UKIP councillor investigated for anti-Muslim Facebook posts. This is why UKIP’s success in the local elections will hurt them: for the next few years, we’ll get one or two of these stories every month. It may not be politic for the Prime Minister to say it any more but “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists” still applies.
Subreddit connections visualises the links between sections of Reddit. It is pretty. Go gawk at it.
Turn this one right up: Joey Negro and the Sunshine Band – Sitting On Top Of The World (Dub Mix).
Philosophy Bites has a discussion with Leslie Green on the morality of same-sex marriage. (Green is for it.)
David Burrowes is being as classy as usual. I’m so glad that equal rights now resembles a killer shark.
