Jeff Jonas

My Broken Neck: A 20 Year Anniversary

TWENTY YEARS AGO TODAY … I broke my neck in a car accident which rendered me a complete quadriplegic for a short while. The only reason I am alive today, with relatively full functionality, is thanks to some stranger who saved my life and then disappeared without a trace.

On Leap Day 1988 in San Mateo, California I went on a BMW test drive. The salesman was driving. He was showing off the handing capabilities of the car on back roads. He lost control as we approached a turn which resulted in us plowing into a dirt embankment at what was estimated at 63 miles per hour. I was in the rear seat behind the driver – in a seatbelt, without an airbag.

While my seatbelt secured my body, my head continued to travel forward at 63 miles per hour. This resulted in a C2 spinal fracture (the same break that Superman’s Christopher Reeves experienced). I ended up sitting there in the car – each hand resting palm down on each leg, perfectly placed. Unable to hold my head up, I starred towards my lap fully aware we had crashed and to boot realized I was totally paralyzed and unable to breathe (as my hanging head blocked my wind pipe).

I had always wondered as a kid what would be the final minutes of thinking if you knew death was imminent. So there I sat staring at my hands slowly changing color from that of the living to that of the dead. And so it seemed this day would end my 23 years of Earthly habitation.

I do not know how many minutes I was forced to witness my slow death … more than a few minutes for sure and less than six for sure.

My door flies open, and only my door. An Asian man leans into the car and looks up into my face and says "Can you breathe?" I lip synch "No" … three times.  He says "Do you want me to lift your head?" So, I lip synch "Yes" once. He proceeds to hold my head up in a hyper-extended fashion with perfection … as if medically trained. Once my head is extended I find I can breath. Move? No. Breathe, yes!

He holds my head in position with his arms fully extended for nearly thirty minutes until the ambulances arrive (heads are heavy and the fact this person could maintain this position for so long is in itself a miracle). Had he tried to rest or settle my head to assist the others in the car I would, without a doubt, be dead or a quadriplegic today.

The paramedics step in and take possession of my head.

Then … poof this savior disappears! No sign of him.  No witnesses, no reference in the police report.  Nothing.

The doctors told my parents I would most likely be paralyzed for life. No one told me that though … and so, despite this prognosis ... I recovered.

And recover I did - over the next four or five months, although not fully. To this day, I suffer from a very rare condition called Brown-Sequard Syndrome. In short, the center of my spinal cord in the vicinity of the C2 vertebrae is now dead. As a result, the right side of my body has a very lower ability to sense hot, cold, and pain. And the nervous system on the left side of my body is hypersensitive and I have a noticeable degree of muscle atrophy on the left side as my brain does not talk to all of those muscles anymore.

Lucky? Yep.

Does such an accident reorient one to the value of life and priorities? True, although oddly this new think only lasted about six months!

What are my thoughts about death now? Every day since February 29th, 1988 has been an extra day.

Regrets? I only wish I could locate and thank the person who saved me. Maybe he wonders what came of my condition and if he had done the right thing. My parents, my children, my girlfriend, and I would like to convey our thanks.

Dear Mr. Stranger: Thank you.

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Virtual Reality: There Is No Place Like Home

Increasingly over the last year, I have been asked to share my thoughts about virtual worlds (e.g., Second Life and World of Warcraft).  After repeated provocation, I took a peek into these interactive 3D La-La-Lands to see what is up.  Here are a few of my core conclusions:

1.    Virtual realities will end up consuming the attention of a substantial number of humans and this will happen more quickly than most may think.
2.    Data synchronization between the real world and virtual worlds will increase the relevance of virtual worlds.
3.    Along with the eyeballs of transacting consumers will come increased corporate investment thus driving more relevance and more growth.
4.    Investors in virtual world physics re-engineering will possess a distinct advantage in virtual worlds.
5.    As with any tool, a very small percentage of the population will use virtual worlds for criminal activities.

Here are a few details related to these points.

Virtual reality: soon serving the masses.  As these alternate worlds become more immersive (i.e., ability to hold ones attention when in the virtual space) and accessible (think One Laptop Per Child), I think it is possible that a half billion people show up.  How soon?  In six to ten years – maybe faster.  Why?  Because there are a lot of people on Earth that would rather exist in a synthetic world as opposed to their real world.  Hmmm … shanty town, nagging spouse, or insurmountable odds versus a stimulating environment with near limitless potential to reinvent oneself.

Cross-reality synchronization.  Imagine taking heat sensors in a real-world data center and publishing these into a virtual space which is physically configured like the real data center.  The difference being that the immersed person can now physically visualize the temperature distribution in the data center.  This is already being done.  Then move something in the physical world and it moves in the virtual world at the same time, automatically.  I wouldn’t be surprised if this is already happening in some context, somewhere.  As well, the inverse: There is supposedly a fellow who has an island in Second Life with a surveillance mechanism implemented that sends him a real-world email or text message whenever someone steps foot onto his island.  Long story short, if one wants to look at something specific, if the real and virtual worlds are synchronized, it’s going to be cheaper, faster and will burn less carbon if one takes the virtual option.

Real economic growth in unreal worlds.  Have you heard about the real estate developer in Second Life that has made $1,000,000 (real) US dollars?  True.  Linden dollars, the monetary unit in Second Life, have their own currency exchange to US dollars called the LindeX – a currency market apparently moving millions of dollars a month between the virtual and real worlds.  Point being, if a billion people show up in virtual spaces, each on average spending only eleven cents ($0.11) a month – this amounts to a real growth market which will trigger further industry investment.  Consequently: more people arrive. 

Virtual world physics re-engineering.  Through serendipity, careful study, and/or experimentation it is possible to develop capabilities within virtual reality that other participants, or in some cases even the creator, cannot fathom.  The first such instance I heard of five or six years ago involved a player who figured out he could climb walls by mounting deactivated explosive devices on a wall.  Placing one above the other, the avatar cleverly scaled the wall.  He climbed so high that he moved beyond the rendered space … into a region of the game where all that was visible was texture-less grid lines.  In a more recent example, in Second Life an individual created a covert listening device the size of a single pixel -- then placed this pixel inside some object.  Later when the object was near a conversation, all communications were echoed to a third party unbeknownst to the victims.  Prior to this event many players in Second Life would not have considered this possible.  Game physics re-engineering is also happening in World of Warcraft (where it is called "Theorycraft").  In this virtual world, one expert explained it to me this way “[we are] unwrapping the mathematics and developing a perception of space and time in relation to the virtual world, that determines which combination of attacks or defenses have the greatest efficacy.”  This info is then shared with colleagues in password protected chat rooms.  Using this knowledge delivers extraordinary advantage, namely lethality per second optimizations, hence the importance of keeping this specialized knowledge to a privileged few as long as possible.  By the way, let’s not forget that we are re-engineering the physics here on Earth in a similar manner.  Heck, ten thousand years ago, who would have conceived of the possibility that spaceships could be devised to take man to the moon and back! 

Tools are tools.  Are virtual spaces dangerous?  Well, is a phone, the Internet and email dangerous?  Nope, not for the most part, in fact the opposite, as the social and economic values of these technologies far outweigh the consequences of misuse.  Sure bad actors will continue to use the best tools they can get their hands on too.  And with this behavior, as more bad actors show up … the folks paid to “protect” us will venture into these virtual spaces in an effort to detect and preempt.  Hence some of my quotes in this recent Washington Post story “Spies Battleground Turns Virtual.”

And finally, how will you know virtual worlds are starting to collide with your own real world?  Watch for this sign: someone wants to chat with you while showing you something and they explain the best way to do this efficiently is for you to “step in” [to the virtual world that is].

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Information Incontinence

I was on a call the other day working on a family project when the other party asked for my cell phone number. I handed it over on two conditions: (1) she throw it away after the project was completed, and (2) I made her swear to not enter my cell phone number into any computer. Immediately following this conversation my girlfriend overheard me muttering, "Computers are dangerous." Let me explain.

When it comes to preventing information leakage … the best rule is:  "Don’t ever let the data be placed into digital form."

Then for extra protection it is best not to ever speak it.  And, in coming years, it will be best not to ever think it either. (See P300 post below)

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Ludicrous Speed Billionaires

Just wanted to point out that the speed with which organizations can go from zero to multi-billion dollar valuations is unprecedented.

Would love to see the graph of old school business velocity compared to today’s modern marvels like Google, Facebook, and YouTube.

If this trend continues, there is going to be the day where a company will open its doors for business and then do hundreds of millions in revenues in the first year.

And with this … we will see new billionaires being made in days not years.

Think China.

Van Halen, Risk Management and Breaking the Law (Allegedly)

One of the freedoms we have is the freedom (ability) to knowingly bend or break a law.

While in New York this week, I discovered that Van Halen was playing Madison Square Garden Tuesday, November 13th! Back in the day when I used to play guitar, Eddie Van Halen was like a super hero to me. Unfortunately, the concert was sold out.

Sold out or not – I decided I was going, one way or another. After checking Craigslist without luck and checking with the hotel concierge who found a pair for $1400.00, I decided to take matters into my own hands.

9:02pm - Madison Square Gardens

I arrived at the curbside with a load of cash on hand looking for a scalper. The police were everywhere. I stumble immediately into an interesting character who claims to have one ticket. When I ask him how much, he says $350. I say "deal!" And with great disregard for scalper laws and the countless police all about, I pulled out my wad of $20 bills and counted them off … all in plain sight.

Allegedly, of course.

I inspect the ticket for signs of being a forgery and accept it. He pockets the cash, and then pulls out his wallet while saying "I have something else for you." I briefly wondered if I had lucked into an undercover policeman! Nope, handing me his card he says "Call me anytime you want a ticket here." Then he says, "Heck for the price you just paid, I'll walk you to the front door."

9:15pm – I'm in the concert!

Allegedly.

More Death Cheaper in Future

The difficulty and cost of delivering death and mayhem are dropping so fast, there will come a time in which the ill-will of a few evil men could ruin the day for millions.

Technological advances in physics, engineering and biology coupled with the Internet and the dynamics of Web 2.0 have contributed to unprecedented social progress and overall improvement of the human condition. In many ways … and in most places … it is better now than ever before; hence my recent post "The World is Not a More Dangerous Place." At the same time, these same phenomena are accelerating the lethality potential per unit of human effort.

Example 1: The difficulty required to build and deliver the first few 10-kiloton nuclear devices in the 1940’s involved 130,000 people and cost two billion dollars ($23B in 2007 dollars). Today, graduate students are building viable detonation systems … albeit lacking the enriched uranium or plutonium. But unlike the 1940’s when enriched uranium did not exist – every ounce having to be produced – today this nuclear material exists in stockpiles all over the world.

Example 2: Recent biological advances have made it possible to reanimate the 1918 Spanish Influenza. Did I say "possible?" Sorry, I meant to say "this has already been done!" Between a couple of tissue samples left over in a military hospital and a deceased Alaskan Eskimo preserved in the permafrost, the virus has been successfully reconstructed and its DNA sequenced. Researchers then proceeded to inject this virus into mice with the human immune system. The result – unprecedented death – the most deadly flu virus ever tested. [story here] While nuclear material is hard to acquire, I was told the DNA sequence of the 1918 Spanish Influenza was already in the public domain. Hard to believe, so I asked a friend in the biological community for a copy of this DNA sequence. So it appears that I now have a copy on my laptop, but what would I know!

While advances in technology are a big part of this trend, other factors contribute as well including population density, dependence on mobility, the tightly coupled interdependencies in which the world operates (e.g., from just-in-time supply chains to your just-in-time access to cash and food) and media-driven sensationalism. Factors such as these have a force multiplying and amplification effect even upon traditional means for mayhem. For example, consider the death and mayhem created by Malvo and Muhammad, the two Washington DC-area gunmen. They were able to turn an investment of a few thousand dollars (car, gas, gun, bullets) into an instrument of terror which not only killed a number of people but also created so much panic the regional economy lost an estimated half a billion dollars ($500,000,000).

And so it seems, as time marches forward fewer people are able to create more damage cheaper and faster.

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Social Engineering of Hotel Maids – Win Some, Lose Some

I travel a lot.

Picture this. The hotel front desk recreates my room key so I can get back into my room. Because I forgot what room number I was in, I have them remind me. When I get to the room I find my key does not work. I hate it when this happens. It happens often enough that I know the fastest solution is to have a conversation with a maid to bypass the system. So that is what I did.

After some convincing dialog with a maid – "poof" – I am in the room (no name, no ID, no nothing). Not the first time I have done this, and for the record a rather easy affair.

I step over some luggage, see some pink running shoes, notice a container of watermelon chunks and other clutter. I remove a purse and towel from the chair at the desk so I can sit there and connect my laptop to the Internet and get some work done. Let’s just say I was hyper-focused.

I work about 45 minutes and from time-to-time consider getting naked and climbing into bed for a short nap until my girlfriend returns.

My cell phone rings and it is my girlfriend. I tell her I am in the room. She proclaims that is not possible because she is in the room.

Like a nightmare – as I scan the room, nothing is familiar. That is not our luggage. We don’t own shoes like that. The purse and towel I moved from the chair, I’ve never seen them before either!

Well, let’s just say I tensed up!

Gone in sixty seconds.

How Many Copies of Your Data? Is Somewhat Like Asking: How Many Licks to the Center of the Tootsie Pop?

I get asked form time-to-time how data flows. But, what they really mean is: How many places does the data land? After explaining this a few times I decided to blog it for easy future reference.

If you give a company your name and address, how many copies of this data might there be twelve months later? Many might be surprised to discover that there could easily be in excess of 1,000 copies!

So roughly speaking it looks something like this …

When data first arrives it is likely to be stored in an operational system – sometimes called the "system of record." This is the first instance.

Systems of record are frequently mission critical systems and are therefore candidates for robust backed-up policies. While different organizations have different back-up policies, one common strategy involves creating one backup every day; keeping each daily backup for seven days. This is a rolling strategy where every Monday overwrites last Monday’s backup. An end-of-week backup (e.g., every Sunday night) might be kept for five rolling weeks. Month-end backups might be kept for twelve rolling months. And year-end backups are likely to be kept for something like seven years.

So at the end of twelve months it is possible that there are now an additional 24 copies of the data (7+5+12). The good news is that backups are well protected; the bad news is that the greater the number of backups the greater the chances one turns up missing -- which happens. [Example here]

Structure governs function. [More on this here.] This is important because how the data is structured in the original system of record is specific to its mission. This means if an organization wants to use the data internally for other reasons (e.g., secondary operational systems like a fraud detection system, statistical analysis, marketing, etc.) this data is copied into each additional system.

Along this line, many organizations create a reporting copy that can be used for ad hoc analysis without effecting operational systems. Some copy the data into an operational data store (ODS). Another copy of the data is often moved into to the enterprise data warehouse. Copies from data warehouses are often used to populate data marts. How many data marts might there be? Who knows; one, two, three, or maybe more?

So if an organization has only one reporting copy, one ODS, one enterprise data warehouse and three data marts, then this would add up to six more copies. And these copies are likely to have backups made of them as well, especially when significant computational effort was involved in moving the data (e.g., pre-processed, translation, standardization and integration/co-mingling with secondary data sets). If the same backup strategy is used this could result in 6*24 or 144 more copies.

So now we are at 1 + 24 + 144 = 169 copies.

But wait, there is more. Many of these systems likely have some form of audit logging – maybe both at the application and database level. Often additional "one-time data snapshots" are made over the course of a year for such things as, pre- and post- maintenance and conversion (e.g., application or database upgrades), specialty analysis projects, audit snapshots, and so on. Then there are complete copies made for testing purpose (e.g., to ensure the scheduled upgrade is going to work as planned) and training systems (yes, sometimes training systems are created with real data). These may be backed up as well!

Furthermore, high availability mission critical systems can be expected to have one or more fully synchronized copies of the database strategically dispersed across the landscape for both work load distribution and/or disaster recovery purposes.

And then there are many odd little places data can get parked including sensor-side caching (e.g., at the slot machine or cash register itself), in-transit caches (e.g., cell phone towers), message queues, local and central search engines, performance enhancing indices, and so on.

Sorry, but I’ve lost count. So let’s just say over a hundred copies are made … internally. Now, what about the copies of the data which travel beyond the organization that originally collected the data?

Let’s say you are applying for credit. In this case, you have likely authorized a credit report. Getting your credit report involves sending your information to a (or all three) credit bureau(s). This information request now sits in their system of record; their audit logs; their data warehouses and data marts; their backups and so on. But wait there is more!

These secondary recipients of your data may in turn further disseminate this information. This is especially true if the organization is a data aggregator/data broker. This data is combined with other information, assembled, scored and sold. These tertiary recipients then make their own mission-centric copies, data warehouses, backups, etc. And, in some cases, it is repackaged and sold again.

Care to guess how many copies of the data are out there now?

• No copies                     You better hope not
• >10 copies                    Almost certainly
• >100 copies                  Very likely
• >1,000 copies               Quite possible is certain settings
• >100,000 copies            Sometimes
• >1,000,000 copies         Not out of the question

What can cause information to be replicated over 100,000 times can come into play with such information as phone service (phone books), credit applications, and believe it or even those warranty cards you have been filling out!

What does all this mean?

1. Keeping data current in the eco-system is not trivial. [See: Data Tethering]

2. Protecting this many copies of the data is not trivial.

3. The more data you see, the more you realize most data is duplicative.

And this leads to an area I have been thinking about for about five years which I sometimes refer to collectively as "Data Reduction Strategies." More about some progress I have made in this area on some future date.

Oh … and my Perpetual Analytics stuff is going to need one more copy (with its own particular database schema) since Enterprise Intelligence requires Persistent Context. And, of course, it would be wise to back this up too.

The World is Not a More Dangerous Place

Back in the days when I had my company, Systems Research & Development (SRD), I prevented anyone from pitching my software using "the world is a more dangerous place" as the set up pitch.

Two reasons: (A) I think it is safer to be alive now than ever before and (B) I hate the idea of using the "fear card" to sell.

Before you call me crazy, consider the following: In the 1300’s the Black Death killed an estimated 75 million people – including a third to two thirds of Europe’s population. The 1918 Spanish Flu killed 50 – 100 million in just 18 months making by far the most destructive pandemic on record.

The average life span at the end of the nineteenth century in Western Europe was thirty seven. Today the average lifespan in the world is sixty seven! [Ref: Life Expectancy]

In short, you are more likely to grow older today than any time in the history of man.

Here is another point of reference: Even if America sunk into the ocean the 300 million deaths would be ~4.5% of the world’s current population (~6.7B). The 75 million lives lost to black death amounted to ~17.4% of the world’s population at that time (~432MM). Thus, if you were standing in America and discovered it was going to suddenly fall off into the ocean in the next few minutes, although this makes for a very bad day for you personally, overall the world still would be a less dangerous place as compared to the mid-1300’s.

Nukes complicate this equation. The two primary nuke scenarios being: a) one-se-two-se nuclear detonations carried out by stateless criminals; and b) a full scale global nuclear war causing the annihilation of mankind.

While periodic unscheduled 10-kiloton nuclear detonations would be very very bad, until such events exceed a few a year (or they go thermonuclear) – in the grand scheme of things us Earthlings are still safer than the 1,300’s. (True. If all of these events happen in a single geography, then while the world at large would still not be a more dangerous place, that specific geography would certainly be a more dangerous place!)

The scenario involving a full-scale nuclear exchange of large numbers of thermonuclear weapons deserves special attention. True, the risk of global nuclear annihilation was absolute zero before the 1900’s and today this risk is no longer zero. But, this risk ebbs and flows. One way to consider how this risk changes over time is the Doomsday Clock. Remember that? The idea being, the closer this clock is to midnight, the greater the risk of global annihilation. Its keepers calculated the time period 1953-60 as the closest the world has yet come to a doomsday event (2 minutes till midnight). [Note: the Doomsday clock was not adjusted in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis as this incident came and went faster than the group reconvened and reset the clock.] Then from 1991 to 1995 the Doomsday Clock was rolled back to 17 minutes until midnight suggesting times were the safest since the inception of this clock in 1947. Notably, the clock shows that since 1995 the safety of the world has been declining. Nonetheless, at this point in time even when considering nuclear Armageddon, the world is less dangerous today than 1953-1960.

So in all fairness, when considering whether the world is a more dangerous place one would also have to ask "as compared to when?" and "as compared to where?" For example, if you called Chernobyl home on April 27th, 1986" you were definitely in a more dangerous place.

And one more thing … when the world seems like an incredibly dangerous place ... you can probably thank some of the media for that. The media’s ability to take every bad thing that happens on the planet and package it up for maximum sensation plays a huge role in spreading fear. It’s not their fault of course it is yours (and mine) as sensational news is what draws us into the media. And as our attention gives them higher ratings they justifiably work even harder at finding, packaging and delivering up even more of this bad news for us. [So, I propose we fix this by only directing our attention to "good news" stories from now on ok? Wait, is that a smoke plume on CNN … get out of my way … I gotta see this!]

Honestly, if you could pick another time to live, would you really trade living in this age for an earlier century? I wouldn’t. Oh, and I wouldn’t want to trade it for 100 years in the future either – I think the future has a chance of being really messy.

These could be the golden years!

PS: Before you get too excited one way or the other about this post, take this into account: This is my Yin post. Stay tuned for my forthcoming Yang post which will be entitled something like "More Death in Future Cheaper."

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On Public Speaking

I do a fair bit of public speaking. In 2006 I spoke to approximately 7,000 people over the course of the year and this year I am on track for something like 15,000.

And while I get pretty good feedback, make no mistake about it … I hate public speaking.

This generally comes as a surprise to those who have seen me make a presentation.

I have come a long way. Believe it or not I used to be unable to speak to more than three people at a time. Back in my SRD days, when my staff grew to three employees, I stopped having staff meetings. Then one day in the early 90’s I attempted to present a time and attendance system to the CIO of the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino and his staff (6-8 people in total) … I was dysfunctional to say the least. I stared at a grease board, my back to the room, shaking, sweating and senseless mumbling.

Be afraid ... be very afraid!

After this horrifying incident, I realized that an inability to effectively communicate my ideas was going to severely blunt my lifetime potential. So, I asked my friend Doug Pool how he became such an accomplished presenter. His answer: Toastmasters. This amazing organization took me step-by-step from no ability to more ability … one super-scary step at a time. And guess what? It worked. Mind you, public speaking is still nerve-wracking … the difference now being … I know how to do it.

And now that I am doing a half-decent job at this whole speaking thing, here are a few tips (should anyone care):

PowerPoint is a Sedative

The more you presentation deck resembles everyone else’s deck, you lose. Most likely your audience has already been punished with grueling PowerPoint charts. You know what I am talking about … those information-overloaded charts with a mish-mash of tiny fonts, over animated, busy architecture and plumbing diagrams and loads of words which often state the obvious. The only thing worse is when the presenter then reads the words off the chart. No one is interested in this. So … if you are going to use PowerPoint, I recommend you spend some time developing a style and deck that is all you. By way of example, when I spoke at O’Reilly’s Third Annual Web 2.0 Summit, I buzzed through 41 charts in less than 10 minutes. It was almost all pictures (hand drawn by me in the PowerPoint scribble mode). I dreamt up this style about a year ago and think it is akin to a slow-motion movie synched up with a speed reader! [The story line here.] [The actual PowerPoint deck here.]

Crank Up the Signal!

When presenting … you had better say something every few minutes that strikes most of the audience as either "huh?" or "wow!" Otherwise, your audience may only be hearing "blah blah blah." In my attempt to do this, I might say something like, "The faster you collect data, the dumber you are likely to be." Without constant and meaningful signals, they will wish they were somewhere else, and then in self-defense direct all their attention to their BlackBerries. Creating signal can also involve doing something that will make it hard for them to ever forget you – for example, smash your guitar. Oh wait, that is a heavy metal band tip.

Don’t Punish Them On Your Watch

Never take advantage of the fact your audience is captive. Don’t waste their time by telling them anything obvious or widely known. And, if you discover you are boring them – the remedy is to jump to material that has a better chance of resonating with them. When in smaller settings, I preempt any fear by starting some presentations by saying, "If I start talking about something that you already know – stop me immediately" and "if this material is not interesting to you in the first five minutes, I’ll leave and give you some time back on your calendar." You would not believe the relief this creates. Furthermore, never ever overspeak your time. It is not fair to your audience or for that matter the next speaker. One exception, throwing the ball to the next speaker 20 minutes ahead of schedule (catching them off-guard), is not nice either … I did this once and felt real bad.

Make it Easily Digestible

If you find you are frequently losing people when you present, spend more time making your material more consumable. For starters, don’t use any words or acronyms your audience may not know. Don’t use any words or acronyms that may mean very different things to different people (e.g., data mining is such an overloaded term I often avoid using it). When I break this rule, e.g., when I use the word Context, I make a huge effort to explain what I mean. Another approach is to create your own terms and then explain them well (e.g., my use of terms like perpetual analytics, sequence neutrality, etc.). As a general principle, the deeper the think, the more simplistic and crisp the concepts must be presented. Don’t be afraid of bloating your presentation with pictures: pictures trump text 1000:1. Duh. (Word of caution: not all graphs qualify as helpful pictures!)

Miscellaneous Tips:

1. The bigger the venue, the more important it is to rehearse both lighting and sound. Have them demonstrate show time lighting because: (a) it is nice to know before hand if you are going to be blind up there and (b) it is wise to know how clearly your materials will project (if you have any). Do a full sound check during rehearsal to see if you are going to be in an echo chamber (something I discovered by accident twice this year in both cases at show time with great horror – the echoes were so distracting I could hardly think).

2. When you hear little voices in your head like "Run" or "Am I stuck in a thoughtless loop yet? How about now? Now?" … don’t debate these evil demons. Just move on.

3. Never call out (by name or otherwise) a competitive product or company. Never stoop that low.

4. The number one way to calibrate how effective you present is inversely proportional to the number people with glazed eyes, nodding off, and/or escapees.

I have a long way to go. For example, I still <quasi-expletive> at delivering a succinct and meaningful closing, I talk too fast, and I often wander off on a lot of unnecessary tangents. Gotta have goals! On this front I have this friend named Dick Hardt of Sxip Identity. He presents hundreds of charts in 10 minutes. His style is so unique and world-class that his video has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times.

Check out this inspiring video: Identity 2.0 Keynote by Dick Hardt

Anyway, while I may never come to actually enjoy public speaking, without a doubt Toastmasters has made an enormous difference in my ability to express myself.