source: toothpastefordinner.com
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Archive for the 'Communication' Category
Online communities are awesome! I’ve been pretty much glued to my computer monitor for the past 2 days trying to make my new Nvidia video card (GeForce 9600GT) play with Linux. To be fair, the hardware does come with a CD which contains software for the Windows platform; but that doesn’t help me much.
Enter the Ubuntu community, http://ubuntuforums.org. These online forums have a wealth of valuable information on every subject imaginable when it comes to managing your Linux system. I was able to solve my missing driver issue with the help of this thread. I’m continually amazed at the level of help and support that you can get from online communities. who knows… I may even try to help somebody else in return 
Last night I had the opportunity to deliver yet another technical speech to my Toastmasters club; the goal of this speech was to “persuade with power”.
Like all my speeches, I delayed my efforts until the very end because I couldn’t think of anything to persuade the crowd with. Just hours before my deadline, I decided that I would persuade them to consider open source software.
My speech was a hit with a few members of the audience, and lasted almost 10 minutes, a new record for me!
Although I didn’t use any visuals during the speech, one of the suggestions I received was to include a nice visual representation of the topic; so I put together a quick timeline to point out a few milestone in open source. This might come in handy for another speech.
The first time I heard of “Toastmasters“, I wasn’t quite sure who they were or what they did. After some research, I found out they were a group of people that got together to improve their public speaking skills by doing speeches in front of one another. The idea of public speaking usually terrifies me, so I decided not to do anything about it at that time.
I’m not exactly sure how it happened, but I ended up making an appointment to visit a toastmasters meeting near my house a few days later. The members at North Star Toastmasters made me feel welcome and just let me observe their meeting; which was fine by me. At some point during their meeting, they asked me if I wanted to participate in something they called “table topics” and I agreed, mostly because they made it look very easy.
Table Topics
Basically, someone asks you a question about a certain topic and you answer it however you want; the only requirement is that you have to speak for at least one minute, but no more than two and half minutes; and that’s it. I won’t go into the details, but I will just say that I spilled the beans and gave out too much personal information. I won’t be doing that again. Lesson learned!. Overall, I had a really good experience that first day and made the decision to return to the meeting and eventually I became a member.
One year later
It has been about a year since I joined toastmaster and I’m finding myself looking for a goal or target. The Competent Toastmaster (CTM) award is the first level of accomplishment a Toastmaster can achieve. It also serves as a goal for working through the essentials of public speaking. To reach CTM level, you must complete 10 prepared speeches. Last week I completed my 6th prepared speech towards CTM status and I’m getting really excited about completing all 10 of them!
You too
Public speaking still terrifies me, but I’m finding it a lot easier to do thanks to Toastmasters. They provide you with the right tools and knowledge you need to pull off a fantastic speech or presentation. If you feel uncomfortable in your own skin at the thought of speaking in public, then consider visiting a toastmasters meeting in your area. They have thousands of meetings all over world; even in Tukwila, WA. Who knows, you might even enjoy it as much as I have.
I had almost forgotten about myspace, until today. My inbox showed a “New MySpace Message” from and old friend that I knew as a teenager.
It’s always good to hear from friends, but it’s a real treat to hear from friends from those times — when life was simpler and you didn’t worry about projects or deadlines. This was a good reminder for me to 1) update my myspace profile and 2) open up the lines of communication with social networking sites such as myspace.
In an effort to open those lines of communication, I will share with you my myspace profile page. (still needs updating)
http://myspace.com/exposedelements
Mario Seijo
web developer
I can totally relate to this guy; do you know what I mean?
source: www.wellingtongrey.net
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