Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Daily Highlights:

• The conference started today.
• I started off with a little bit o' USA vs Australia basketball at the Olympics, followed by a nice cup of oatmeal at the Corner Bakery. Mmmm Mmm.
• My whole day today was the Management and Leadership Seminar.  It was 4 speakers each on a different topic related to (duh) leadership and management.  Here's my assessment:
  • Henry Givray (President, CEO of SmithBucklin Corp.) - spoke on the topic of passion and the leader. He's an orator, not a speaker.  Interesting, accomplished, experienced, probably a good leader.  Didn't really do much for me.
  • Barbara Tannenbaum (President, Dynamic Communication, Sr. Lecturer, Brown Univ. Dept. of Theater, Speech & Dance) - spoke on being an effective public speaker.  One of the best I've seen.  Practical, funny, insightful, intelligent.  She is good.  Here's a couple of nuggets I gleaned amongst many:
    • Avoid vocal fillers
      • It's distracting
      • It makes us seem less intelligent
      • It can make it sound like we're making stuff up - we're untrustworthy
      • "Um" and "uh" can mean different things in different languages
      • Pausing instead, can make us seem thoughtful
    • Avoid tag questions
      • "it's really nice today. Don't you think?"
      • "I got a lot out of this. Didn't you?"
    • Avoid uptalking
• Lunch was at an awesome restaurant called Mad Greens - kinda like Subway for salads.  Outstanding.

• The afternoon was spent in sessions - mine covering HR and team management.  I don't know what everyone else's sessions covered. I was pulled out of the second half to solve problems with the GalaDB.
• After the conference day ended, it was time for fun.  I had dinner at Dave and Cheryl Lamb's house, while Caitlin, Christine, Jen and K-Nor went to the Red Rocks Amphitheater to see Garrison Keillor.  Here's Jen's report:

Girl's night out at Red Rocks to the soulful voice of Garrison Keillor and his sidekick Newman. The setting was breathtaking as well as the 6000' plus altitude and we enjoyed listening to Mr.Keillor wax on about many silly things and sing spirituals while we ate some baguette and cheese and watched the moon rise. But, at 10 PM we had enough and Garrison starting exhausting Caitlin's electrolytes. Still, a great place to see anything!

• Lora - you'll note we haven't killed Caitlin yet!