#SpeakerU - First Step: Picking a Topic

OK, so you've decided to take the plunge and become a technical speaker/presenter.  Excellent!  Well, the obvious question must be this: on what subject(s) will you speak?

This question is not as simple as it might seem at first glance.  Most of have a mental library that looks something like this:

We all have some old volumes (ask me about provisioning cylinders on a 3380 DASD sometime...), some nifty books that are rarely used, stuff we thumb through regularly, and new stuff that we haven't really read through just yet.  Now, your first urge will be to find something new/hot/shiny to talk about and/or something with which you are familiar in great detail, but there are three things you MUST consider:

1. Know your audience.  Are you speaking to a highly technical audience, a management-heavy audience, a room full of "just want it to work" end users, or a combination of the three?   Some events (notably larger regional/national conferences) may have separate "technical tracks" and "executive sessions," but that won't always be the case.  You may need to pick a topic on which you can (potentially) engage a broad range of listeners.
2. Know your limits.  I'm not referring to your skills in public speaking or slide layouts, or even your knowledge of the subject matter; rather, I'm talking about the simple mechanics of the venue.  Will you have a projector available?  How much time will be alloted to your presentation?  Will there be a mandatory Q&A period that cuts into your speaking time?  Will you have network connectivity for use in live demonstrations?
3. Know what fits.  You may be the world's leading expert on foobiebletches, but you won't be invited back if you run out of time, lose half of your audience halfway through, or rush through a massive deck of slides in an attempt to "cram it all" into the alloted time.  As an experienced speaker, I can tell you that there are few things more painful than watching a speaker who has bitten off more than can be chewed...

So, this boils down to a single statement - "Pick a topic with which you are familiar, but also which can be discussed in some detail in the time alloted, in terms that most of the audience can follow."

A few suggestions:

• New speakers are often comfortable with a "tips and tricks" presentation; most of us have favorite configurations/tweaks for various applications and/or devices.  If you stop to think about it, "12 Neat Things You Can Do with Your iPhone" or "What You Don't Know About Hotmail" would be great presentations for the local Toastmasters, school groups and the like; something like that would be a good "hip pocket" presentation to keep around for short-notice speaking opportunities (especially since they can often be "trimmed to fit" different time limits!).
• Brainstorm with friends and colleagues.  Ask them, "what would YOU give up an hour to hear?"
• Draw upon your own experience, for better or worse.  I've seen some EXCELLENT presentations on topics such as, "10 Things I Learned While [fill in the blank]"...if you happen to write a blog, go back and review your old articles; you may find raw material there that can be refined into a great presentation.
• Take a look at sites like Slideshare, where thousands of presenters have posted copies of their slides.  Take a look at their topics, and think about whether you could take a slice of that pie and run with it.  (NO, DO NOT JUST COPY THEM WHOLESALE - you will be found out...)
• Search for meetings/conferences in your field, and check out the presentations being made at those events.  You don't have to start at that level of difficulty, but it will give you a good idea of topics that made it through the selection gauntlet.

Well, that's simple enough - so go do it!

Next up: the art of writing abstracts...

Time For You to Get on Stage - #SpeakerU

Having just returned from IamLUG, I've realized that it isn't too early to start thinking about next year's IBM Connect.  At both Connect 2013 and IamLUG, there was a great deal of discussion around the question, "How can we get more people up on stage presenting?"

Well, I've been doing this for a while (as a speaker, coach, and content selector), so I've put together a few thoughts, a few experiences, and--yes--a few war stories, in the hopes that some of you will be encouraged to make that jump from "attendee" to "speaker/presenter."  For lack of a better title, I'm calling it Speaker University, or #SpeakerU for short.

Now, let me be clear; there is no One True Path to success as a technical speaker.  Each of us has both strengths to which we can play and weaknesses to be avoided.  My tips may not work for everyone, and I ABSOLUTELY encourage everyone to chime in - not just here, but on their own blogs as well.  (I would like to see the #SpeakerU hashtag, just so that folks can more easily find a range of voices on the topic...)

Having said that, here's what I'm going to write about over the next few months:

• Picking a topic
• Writing an abstract
• Outlining a presentation
• Creating slides
• Timing
• What to do (and not to do) while speaking
• How to catch that person in the last row AND hold their attention
• ...and more.

Down the road, I'm planning to move this into small-group and (perhaps) one-on-one coaching sessions, using Skype, Sametime, Google hangouts, or whatever works best.  Think of it as an online Toastmasters meeting, and you won't be far off the mark.

Here's what I ask of you:

1. If you're thinking about jumping into the pool - GREAT!  It's an incredible experience, whether you're presenting at a small local meeting, a user group conference, or a major industry event.   You won't regret it.
2. If you're already an established speaker/presenter, I'd LOVE for you to post your own tips/tricks/techniques - write a blog entry, a series of tweets, I don't care...but it's time to start priming the next generation of speakers.  Use the #SpeakerU hashtag when possible, so that folks can catch all of us in as few searches as possible.

That's it for now...coming up: Picking the Right Topic.  See you then!

IBM Notes 9 Social Edition on Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail) - Some Tweaking Required

OK, so you've downloaded the Notes 9 Social Edition for Linux, and you want to give it a spin on the latest rev of Ubuntu Linux.

OOPS.

As it turns out, Ubuntu has moved to a newer release of CUPS, the Linux printing subsystem; as a result, Ubuntu 13.04 installs libcups2 instead of the libcupsy2 package Notes expects to find.  So, the install falls flat on its face with a failed dependency.

If you don't mind a bit of debfile editing, you can fix this one yourself.  Basically, we're going to go into the control file for the Notes .deb install file and fix that pesky little dependency.  Here's what you need to do:

• Move the ibm-notes-9.0.i586.deb file into a temporary directory; I used ~/tmp/notes9
• Do a "raw" unpack of the debfile into a subdirectory, like so:
• dpkg-deb -R ibm-notes-9.0.i586.deb ./working
• Move into that subdirectory (~/tmp/notes9/working), then into the DEBIAN subdirectory
• Edit the file named 'control', change the one instance of 'libcupsy2' to 'libcups2', and save your changes.
• Move back up to the unpack directory (~/tmp/notes9/working) and issue this command:
• dpkg-deb -b ../ibm-notes-9.0-FIXED.i586.deb
• Now, move back up to the temporary directory (~/tmp/notes9), and you should see both .deb files.

You may now install Notes 9 and its various addins with the dpkg command, like so:

• sudo dpkg -i ibm-notes-9.0-FIXED.i586.deb
• sudo dpkg -i ibm-sametime-9.0.i586.deb
• sudo dpkg -i ibm-feedreader-9.0.i586.deb
• sudo dpkg -i ibm-opensocial-9.0.i586.deb
• sudo dpkg -i ibm-cae-9.0.i586.deb
• sudo dpkg -i ibm-activities-9.0.i586.deb

So, there you have it - a fully functional Notes 9 Social Edition client for Ubuntu 13.04.  If you haven't taken a look at Notes 9 yet, you should grab the free trial!

UPDATE: I neglected to mention that I specifically tested print capabilities; I didn't notice any problems pointing Notes to libcups2 instead of libcupsy2...

Improving the NCAA Basketball Tournament - Earning/Losing At-Large Bids

I've said this before, but Wichita State's run to the Final Four brings the issue into sharp focus - so I'll throw the idea out for consideration.

CONFERENCES SHOULD EARN OR LOSE FUTURE AT-LARGE BIDS FOR PERFORMANCE AGAINST SEEDING EXPECTATIONS.

Every year, several conferences get an outrageous number of at-large bids; every year, we see those teams fail to play to the level at which they were seeded.  It's time for those kind of choke jobs to carry tangible consequences for the conferences.  Let's not forget that MILLIONS of dollars are riding on at-large bids, because tournament revenues are funneled through the conferences, NOT the individual schools.

So, let's take a look at the two conferences represented by Wichita State and Ohio State.  For purposes of this experiment, let's say that a "bad loss" is a loss to a team seeded more than two spots lower; that way, #8/#9 matchups and "First Four" (blech) games are "pick 'em" situations that don't hurt the conferences...so, who took (or delivered) "bad losses" this year?

The Missouri Valley Conference received two bids; Creighton was an #7 seed, and Wichita State was a #9 seed.  As the tournament progressed, Creighton played up to its seed (they beat #10 Cincinnati and lost to #2 Duke), so that's an "expected result."  The Shockers, of course, played far above their seeding, knocking off #8 Pitt, #1 Gonzaga, #13 LaSalle and #2 Ohio State.  It's now impossible for Wichita State to suffer a "bad loss," since they'll face either #1 Louisville or #2 Duke in the national semifinal.  The MVC overperformed by seeding, delivering two "bad losses," and should be rewarded with an additional at-large bid for next year's tournament.

The Big Ten, on the other hand, has not fared quite so well.  The conference received 7 bids, but #1 Indiana took a "bad loss" to Syracuse, #2 Ohio State took a "bad loss" to Wichita State, #3 Michigan State played to its seeding, #4 Michigan overperformed by one game, #5 Wisconsin took a "bad loss" to Ole Miss, #7 Illinois played to its seed, and #11 Minnesota overperformed by one game.  The conference delivered 2 "bad losses", but underperformed by seeding and suffered 3 "bad losses" itself; the Big Ten should lose at least one at-large bid for next year's tournament.

A quick look at a few other conferences...the Sun Belt performed to its seeding with 2 teams, so they get status quo next year....the SEC overperformed by seeding and administered one "bad loss" (#13 Ole Miss over #5 Wisconsin), so the SEC gets an additional at-large in 2014...the Big East had 8 bids but underperformed, delivering 1 "bad loss" while taking 2 "bad losses" (Georgetown and Notre Dame), so they lose at least one at-large bid next year...the Moutain West's 5 bids resulted in underperformance by seeding and 3 "bad losses," so they lose at least one at-large...Harvard's overperformance and delivery of a "bad loss" brings the Ivy League a second at-large bid next year...you can see how this plays out.

This would redirect a substantial amount of money to conferences who perform well across ALL their representatives in the tournament, give a boost to smaller conferences through the reallocation of at-large bids from underperforming "big" conferences, AND pressure the NCAA to make its seeding process more realistic.  How is this NOT a win-win-win for college basketball?

2013 NCAA Tournament Bracket - March Madness Tournament Brackets - ESPN

Twitter on Linux - Goodbye Tweetdeck, Hello Polly!

Twitter's impending retirement of its original (v1) API will be the death knell for more than a few third-party clients, one of which is Tweetdeck's original Adobe AIR client.  Sure, Tweetdeck stopped supporting its Adobe AIR clients some time ago, but I and many other Linux users had been quite happy with the Linux variant.  Needless to say, I was not looking forward to searching for a replacement Twitter client.   Ubuntu Linux ships with the Gwibber client, but--to be honest--it wasn't impressive at ALL; the Ubuntu release is actually a downgrade from the development release, because it removes several features that "don't fit" with Ubuntu's Unity GUI.  I spent a bit of time with several decent alternatives, and two of them deserve mention; either Turpial or Hotot would serve as a good 'entry-level' client for a basic Twitter user.  However, I wanted multiple columns, multiple accounts and support for Twitter lists; neither of those clients really fit the bill.  Then, thankfully...I discovered Polly.

Polly is the brainchild of a Brazilian developer by the name of Marcelo Hashimoto (@conscioususer).  It's a straightforward client, written in Python, and I'm EXTREMELY impressed with its features and functionality.  In 15 minutes of playing around with Polly, I had configured its display into a near-clone of the original Tweetdeck UI - separate columns for timeline, mentions, DMs, and the lists I follow (including my own @wesmorgan/bluegrass-area compilation of Central Kentucky sources).  Polly is responsive, low-impact in terms of system resources, and "just works."  Now, the Launchpad page for Polly says that it's still "pre-alpha" code, but it most certainly rises above that label.  Development is ongoing--font/pointsize controls are slated for the next release--and I'm looking forward to watching Polly improve further.

If you're looking for a solid Linux Twitter client, take a LONG look at Polly.  I think you'll be glad that you did.

The Tech Side of #socbiz - IBM Support Assistant

One of the most frustrating aspects of systems administration/management is the all-too-frequent discovery that a problem you're experiencing is actually a "known issue", and that you've gone through the hassle of opening a trouble ticket and collecting/transferring a few hundred megabytes of logfiles and debug traces for something that already has a known fix or workaround.  Well, I'm going to help you avoid that - or, at least, make the data collection as easy as possible - where many of IBM's products are concerned...and the tools are FREE!

IBM Support Assistant (ISA) was developed to speed both the collection and analysis of diagnostic data.  There are two main "pieces" in the ISA architecture: the ISA Lite Data Collectors, which automate the collection of data for specific products, and the ISA Workbench, which lets you drill down into collected data for problem discovery, trend analysis, and the like.   ISA Lite Data Collectors are available for products in every area of IBM's software portfolio, including IBM Connections 3.x/4.0, IBM Sametime, IBM Websphere Application Server, IBM Tivoli Directory Server, IBM DB2, and more; check the ISA webpage for a complete listing.

The other side of the ISA architecture--the ISA Workbench (ISAW)--is where the rubber hits the road.  There are dozens of analysis tools available within the ISAW framework, allowing you to get down to the nitty-gritty of your data quickly and easily.  I've had particularly good results with several tools:

• Log Analyzer: This Tivoli plugin not only performs basic log analyses, but also allows you to import "symptom catalogs" for various IBM products.  For instance, you can import a symptom catalog for Websphere Application Server 7.x that is based on the current Technote library; this will allow you to catch "known issues" through a log review - possibly doing so BEFORE they become a major problem.
• Memory Analyzer for Java: This tool is a Java heap analyzer that will help you find memory leaks and manage memory consumption of Java apps.

There are also some promising new tools in the "Tech Preview" category; I'm particularly interested in the "IBM Trace and Request Analyzer for Websphere Application Server," which works to detect delays/hangs in Websphere and HTTP plugin trace files.

I think it's well worth your time to download ISA, collect some sample data and put it through its paces.  ISA is available for both Windows and Linux.  While RHEL and SUSE are the only officially supported Linux variants, I have installed ISAW under Ubuntu 12.10 with no problems noted in my preliminary test cases.  (You'll need to use alien to convert the downloaded .rpm to a .deb file for use with Ubuntu...)

Give it a shot; there's no telling what you might find.

Feeding A Young Science Geek - Free Stuff

I've always thought that a big part of the "educational process" is the active encouragement of young minds.  That's more than just tutoring or answering questions; you can accomplish far more than one might suspect simply by making stuff available.  Toward that end (and yes, one of my daughters is taking AP Biology *grin*), I've been scouring the Internet for science materials that hit the sweet spot of "interest them, challenge them, but don't drown them", and I thought I'd share some of my finds with you.  Almost all of these resources are available in both electronic and print form at no cost to you; my only request is that, if you order printed copies, consider passing them on to your local high school science teacher(s) when you've finished them.

In no particular order, then:

Publications/DVDs:


The National Institute of General Medical Sciences offers a series of science education booklets with titles such as The Chemistry of Health, Inside the Cell, and The Structures of Life.  They range from 20 to 80 pages in length, and I find them extremely well-written.  They also offer several posters; I didn't order those, but the PDF versions look really nice.  One may also view, or subscribe to, Findings Magazine, which showcases cutting-edge research and includes puzzles and other activities.

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute publishes a variety of science materials, on topics ranging from the age of the dinosaurs (their The Day the Mesozoic Died DVD) to evolutionary biology (The Making of the Fittest DVD) and modern genetics (The Genes We Share with Yeast, Flies, Worms and Mice).  One of the most interesting HHMI offerings is their Virtual Lab CDROM, in which one can "go in the lab" for five different projects.  Want to explore the nervous system of a leech, or perhaps use DNA sequencing to identify bacteria?  You'll do it through the Virtual Lab.  All items in the HHMI catalog are free.

iOS Apps


There are several iOS apps which provide a Periodic Table of the Elements, but I find Merck's to be the most comprehensive by far.  Simply put, this app seems to provide everything a typical scientist (or science student) might need "on the fly."  It covers not only the basics of the table, but everything from states of matter (as shown in the screenshot) to molar mass (as in "enter a chemical formula and see its molar mass breakdown") to boot.  Even if your interest is a first course in HS chemistry, this app will prove its worth in short order.

The Merck PTE is available for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, and requires iOS 3.1 or later.  If you're using the US iTunes Store, it's EMD PTE; in the GB iTunes Store, it's Merck PTE.

Grab this one now; it's that good.



Invitrogen Corporation has created a number of free iOS apps, including 3D Cell.  One can take a 3D tour of a typical cell, with extra information avialable for each major cell structure (e.g. Golgi apparatus, endoplasmic reticulum, et al.).  This app does exceed the "sweet spot" I mentioned earlier, in that it goes into details more suitable for college students and professional scientists, but the basic information is accessible to HS students.  (You can see Invitrogen's other apps in the App Store; scroll down and look for the "More Apps by Invitrogen" section on the left margin.)

Along the same lines, the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has produced 3D Brain.  This app should be of interest to students of both biology and psychology (the AP Psychology exam requires knowledge of the relationship between brain anatomy/injury and various mental health conditions), so consider this a two-fer.

Both 3D Cell and 3D Brain offer extensive background information, including videos.

That's all for now; I'm sure that I'll revisit this topic in the future, simply because there's SO much material "out there".   I will say that I'm enjoying these things every bit as much as are my kids (perhaps a bit more!)...have fun.