A tidbit from before last night’s festivities:

Last night we did the rockinest thing: We put Marty up on Ustream with a bunch of rabid art fans and he did commissioned work, live, in front of the Big Bad Internet. It was way more exciting than we even expected. If you’re reading this and you’re one of the people who showed up to support him, dude, thank you. It was thrilling to be broadcasting live with a mob of people in the room, instead of sitting there with no audience feeling like dumbasses. Whew!

We now have a basic plan for what we’re going to do next (i.e., more of THAT!) and when, so if you want to see what we did and plan to join us for the next one, check out Marty’s recap here.

My favorite part was the jury-rigged iSight, taped to a ruler taped to the arm of a tripod. You should see this crazy shit. Who needs technical know-how when you have bright red duct tape?

I asked this question on Triiibes and at Social Work prn. Bob and I talked about it, too. I even asked on Vloggerheads. Now I’m going to ask it here.

What do you need?

Apparently there was no time for my microphone to work, either. Sorry about that, folks! You should still be able to hear okay—and I’ll make sure to check that everything’s working the next time I make an emergency last-minute video. ;}

Oh! Yes! I was Toastmaster this morning at the Balcones meeting, and it went awesomely! Thanks for asking!

• Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers
• My profile on Vloggerheads

This is it, folks—last section in the book! I did this one on the fly late Friday night after returning from a wedding. I proved to myself exactly how quickly I could put a video together, at top speed and slightly deprived of sleep (that is, a 6.5 minute video in a little over an hour—not bad!). But the proof is in the pudding, so you can judge for yourselves:

Just noticed: Oops, I seem to be the Alt-MBA student of the week! FUN! Thanks, guys!

You know, I had a ball doing this. It was quite challenging to get a video out every day (especially when iMovie crashed and I had to redo all my edits, har har), but it stretched my mad skillz and it was incredibly enjoyable to provide something useful to a bunch of neato motivated people. (And incidentally, doing something like this isn’t that hard—it just takes some time and willingness to traverse the learning curve. If I can do it, you can too!)

Inimitable cameo by Martin Whitmore. ;}

I’ve been playing with the wonderful beta presentation tool at Prezi.com, introduced to me by the ever fantastic Matt Cheney. It allows users to embed video in the presentation, among other amazing things. I’m pretty impressed so far—in fact, I’ll probably let you see what I’m working on a little later on. (Patience, grasshopper.)

But for now—on with my day! (Fourth video tomorrow morning!)

My Toastmasters speech this morning on Fundamental Techniques in Handling People went swimmingly! In continued celebration of the awesomeness of Dale Carnegie, the following video is all about section two of How to Make Friends and Influence People: Six Ways to Make People Like You!

Enjoy. ;}

I’m sure you were wondering where all this was going! The truth is, February 9th began my Alt-MBA book discussion week, and my chosen book was one that means quite a lot to me: Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends & Influence People. (Incidentally, I’m giving my third Toastmasters speech tomorrow morning on the same topic. I hope it goes well!)

As you can see, I have a particular passion for this book because of its history in my family. So when it was time for me to give a presentation, the most logical thing in the world was to do some video! (Hey, I needed some more videoblogging practice anyway!)

In any case, here’s my overview and the first section of the book: Fundamental Techniques in Handling People!

* How to Win Friends & Influence People is here on Amazon (of course), and I highly recommend it.

• More information about the Alt-MBA (a.k.a., Alternative-Alternative MBA or !!MBA): main site, original Squidoo book list page.

Rudi: My cat is kind of in love with your voice.
Rudi: She keeps standing all over my laptop while I try to listen to your post from yesterday.
Rudi: And rubbing her little nose against your video-face.

Here are the links I promised to include:
Evil Web Valentine for you! (Pass it on!)

Add your evil Valentine’s quote on this page:
Valentines for Villains Squidoo page (with Twttrstrm, if you use Twitter)

I hope you have enough of a Monday left to have a GREAT one – this was meant to be posted earlier, but video editing takes me a damn long time. In any case, uh… Happy Early Valentine’s Day, too. ;}

I’ve been feeling really… vehement lately. Please raise your standards. You might be the pivotal factor that makes everyone else raise their standards, too. And if you’d like to hear more about that, you’ll have to watch the video! (Hint: I wear a very awesome tie, and talk about subject that really means something to me: POTENTIAL.)

Below is an image of how I started my application mind map! Markers make me happy. I made boxes for each of Seth’s questions, and put some mind maps in the boxes. (The boxes are particularly nice because they change the shape of the information I’m working with—that is incredibly brain-helpful. Text as text can get old fast!

Some happy fun marker-using tips:

• HAVE FUN! I’m serious about this part. It’s fun, it’s fun! (Anyway, that stokes your creative energies—and you’ll need ‘em!
• Use as many colors as possible! Don’t use black, don’t use a pencil, and don’t try to do it all in one color of ball-point pen. (Anyway, ball-point pens are seriously low-creativity. BEST IDEA: FINGERPAINTS!!)
• Shameless familial plug: Listen to Daydream on Autopilot while you work. Okay, this might not work for you. But it rocked for me. Their music is pretty freaking motivating. (Careful about that autoplay, though.)
• Highlight things! Highlighting is fun, especially if you have lots of colors. I didn’t highlight a lot of my mind map, but I went through a print-out of the Alternative MBA Squidoo lens and highlighted all the things I wanted to remember, plus added checkboxes so I could run through them before I finish up and make sure nothing got left out.
• Yours can be WAY better than mine. I don’t think mine is all that fantastic, but I’ve had a lot on my plate this week so I’m feeling forgiving. ;} The best mind maps are great organic beasts of information! Think about fractals and vines and tiny flowers, and you’ll have the right idea.
• Don’t use boxes. Yeah, go ahead, laugh. I think boxes are overrated. The shape-changing bit was awesome, but with a little more thought I might have made the whole map organic. Man, that would be cool! Don’t do it the way I did it. :D

That’s all for now!