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The Illustrated Gladwell

Another great offering from the lens of Hillman Curtis.

Originally posted on January 3rd but I was a little too keen, Hillman pulled it into private mode as not quite ready to share. Now it’s available for your eyes, brain, soul…

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Apples Keynote | Seven Great Uses Other Than Presenting With It

keynote logo

Keynote is Powerpoints funkier and far more slicker younger brother.

Been an avid fanboy of this fantastic application since switching to a Mac (nearly ten years) and thought I’d share the other ways I’ve used this uber-versatile presentation software:

  1. Video Vignetting—take one .png file and apply it over a video on a slide, export presentation as movie and hey presto, instant vignetting;
  2. Movie credit former—craft all your opening and closing movie credits with the great animation text effects plus some images / video underneath if that’s how you roll (again, once finished just export as movie and import into your editing software)
  3. Animation creator—create awesome little animations like this and this and this;
  4. Pie charts / bar graphs maker—create amazing 3D stats with the inbuilt chart maker;
  5. Advert / flyer / poster / desktop image tool—a simpler version that Photoshop (I created this infographic in Keynote);
  6. Resizer / repositioner / recutter of images—make things bigger, smaller, overlapping, cut things out etc with the in-built image editor;
  7. Design sites / applications—due to it’s simple interface designers are starting to use it to wireframe their websites plus others are exploring it application / programme design as well;

So what about you? How do you use yours?

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It’s Just A Ride

Fear / love: which are you going to choose…

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The Illiteracy Of Play | Pecha Kucha Night Christchurch

Another 20 slides x 20 seconds per slide.

Here’s my PechaKucha Night Christchurch presentation on the illiteracy of play—how we as adults have forgotten to cultivate and use the best learning instrument on the planet…

It draws on experiences from my youth work days right through to developing and delivering social media training for folks like BBC, UNICEF and The Gates Foundation.

Exploring ideas and case studies of how playing is the root of all education and also innovation.

This was a remix of my never-delivered TEDxOverlake talk.

Big thanks to the exact and fabulous PechaKucha Night Christchurch organisers for the opportunity to participate, the other fab speakers and the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetu for hosting/sponsoring (plus camerapeeps Tim and Elaena).

So do you think adults have lost the ability to play? Become illiterate to it’s power in our own learning and day-to-day work?

Let loose in the comments… you’re not that reserved on Twitter!

THANKS / REFERENCES:
Steve Keil TED Talk
Divide
Button Theory
Playing Is Learning By Stealth
Stealth Image
LEGO Serious Play
Iceland / Facebook
Gamification
Spare Change
Challenge
Reinventing Money
Make Something Awesome
Dead Fish
Twitter Sketch
Grading Laughter
Cultivate
As always, I try to reference everything used but if anything is yours and it’s not suitably credited let us know and will certainly rectify.
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The Best Damn Public Speaking Course On The Internet (Even The Planet)

Microphones

Want to be a kick ass public speaker? Does the idea of giving presentations to your boss / colleagues / board scare you? Are you wanting to develop another skillset and income stream?

Over the past couple of years I’ve been lucky enough to speak on four continents, for small charities to big brands, at public conferences through to internal events, to audiences ranging from a handful to over a thousand etc—I’ve gotten pretty good at it but always remained open to learning new approaches and developing my craft.

Throughout my journey of becoming a person who gets paid a healthy wedge to stand on a stage and tell stories, there were no credible and insightful coaching available or aggregation of best practice, delivered in an accessible and funky way (apart from corporate-stuffy-suit-types with bad powerpoint slides who gave me advice which runs contrary to how I roll)…

…come mid-March 2012 there will be!

Twelve amazing speakers will each be featured in a 40minute skype/video interview offering insights and advice plus a deeper focus on their areas of expertise (from confidence building, presentation design, landing gigs, technology use, personal branding etc.). Each video will also be accompanied by a downloadable transcript, a one-page worksheet based on the conversation plus other related material and links.

The cost of the course will be around £100GBP / $150USD / $200NZD.

At the time of writing a third of the speakers are in place and waiting on responses from the others (only sent the emails out yesterday).

So what do you think? Would you be up for taking the course when it comes out? What will your expectations be? Maybe you think I’m going about this in the wrong way?

Hit me up in the comments, don’t be shy, you’re not on Facebook!

Image credit
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Infographics | The New Social Media Snack / Crack

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=infographics

Lick the screens and spread the linklove for infographics—they are like blue smarties for your eyes and brain.

The search rate for Infographic-related content has been steadily rising over the years (see above) as this wonderful way of visually presenting information and data has really taken hold (see my humble attempt with Ulearn11 | How Twitter Makes An Event Global and Learning@School 2012 | Tracking Twitter Infographic).

I’ve been talking to clients about them probably for about 4/5 years now as an opportunity to present statistical related material in a much more engaging and ultimately shareable way. Think annual/quarterly reports, market/customer research, sector analysis etc

Whether you’re in the education, marketing, shoes etc game, there’s a growing Infographic and Data Visualization library for you.

Their variety is a testament to their versatility, ones like:

—you get the idea… even the Whitehouse is doing it and here’s a blog aggregating the cool ones.

UPS is even using it in their Fast Company ads:

fast company ups infographic

Still not convinced?

Go away…

Still here?

Watch this:

Now get the research/numbers peeps in your organisation to talk to your design team so together they can create some gorgeous infographic offerings. Failing that, take the initiative and impress your boss by doing one yourself—there’s quite a few how-to’s on the web like this, that, and thus (don’t forget to come back and leave a comment sharing what you’ve done).

Have I made you a fan of infographics? What ones have you seen which you want to share? Leave a comment you lovely readers you.

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Artistic Freedom Versus Power

ricky blog

“It’s not about power. It’s about artistic freedom. And if it is about power, it’s a power you can give to yourself anytime you want. If you can’t be bought, you’re the richest man in the world. I just always feel if you can make something from scratch you’ll always be OK. Growing up, one of my favourite quotes was “Ability is a poor man’s wealth.” John Wooden said that. And I tried to prove him right.”

From the insightful pen / blog of Ricky Gervais.

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Next Year Baby | 2012

Every year the ‘noise’ which accompanies the closing of another 365 days and the embracing of a new set populates the blogosphere.

Folks review, take stock, gaze back, reach forward, look inwards, hope outwards… we surround ourselves in pledges as aggrandizement.

2012 will be a year I continue to:

The new focus will be to:

…but most importantly: DO MORE!

“You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.”
Henry Ford

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