Rob Paterson has written about a talk I have heard before. This time, however, the message was clearer due to the fantastic visual animations done by the RSA Animate crew. Watch and learn for yourself … In response to the content in in talk, I like Rob’s points here … “School is all analog and sequential. It is all about the future – when you know this it will be great when you are 30! School is all about it being in control not you. School is all passive. The rewards are all off in the distant and abstract future. …

I have taken a few minutes away from a piece of work I am doing for the Show Me The Change (SMTC) conference which happened in Melbourne recently.That piece of work in progress is called “The Story of Show Me The Change” can be seen here. One my roles in the SMTC design and facilitation team has been to communicate stories. We have created slideshows, written blog posts and utilised the Twitter-sphere. All the while, keeping focused on a few operating principles like these: If you are not having a conversation or telling a story … then you are not …

I am a big fan of Hugh McLeod’s work over at Gaping Void. Today’s ‘daily cartoon’ sums up much of what I and others have been blogging about recently. And Hugh’s words that accompany this cartoon … “Success for me was a log time coming. It probably took three times as long than it should have, maybe. “Better late than never” and all that… That “the world would ALWAYS conspire to make me something less than I am”, was something I learned very early, the hard way. Fort the longest time, I was quite angry and bitter about that. I …

Viv McWaters and I run a training program we call ‘Insanely Great Slideshow Presentations‘. It was fun to design and we have had great feedback from participants – the best feedback is when you see people using the new ‘zen’ approach to slide design and story in their next presentation! I have been playing with an online platform known as Prezi. In the early days it was clunky and I stopped using it for some reason. Recently they have ramped up it’s design and ease-of-use and I’m back using it. Time to combine this tool into our training package Viv …

A report that I proudly co-authored is now available! It tells a story about a project called Castlemaine 500 (which I also helped to orchestrate) … it’s successes, failures and the lessons learned. It is also an example of how an evaluation report can come alive with design, cartoons and stories! The Castlemaine 500 Performance Story Report was recently launched. You can watch interviews with participating households here. The best summary of the project is contained in the report though! If you want a hard copy of the report booklet email me. If you want to download it click here. …