Filed under: For Fun
One of the many other reasons I love Chicago is its winter holiday season and city decorations. While the bitter winter wind and knee-high slush might not seem so great in February, the holiday decorations that come prior to this make living in Chicago worth it. No small town does lights and bows like Chicago, whose theme tends to be expensive, expansive and extravagant.
One of the places all Chicagoans must visit during the holiday season is Daley Plaza, where the Chicago City Tree stands each season. Just more than a week ago the annual tree-lighting took place, and now the entire city twinkles with holiday lights. In conjunction with the Chicago Christmas Tree (rumored to be more than 90 feet tall), Daley Plaza is home to Christkindlmarket until Christmas day.
Christkindlmarket is one of the largest German markets in the U.S. Each year it offers visitors a festive and unique shopping experience where venders actually sell traditional German food and trinkets. Having recently visited Germany, its holiday traditions and decorations are some of my favorite — I highly encourage anyone in the area to check the festival market out.
Today is the first day in the three-part webinar series on Carmine Gallo’s The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs. Gallo, principal of Gallo Communications, is an executive speech coach and has worked with many high profile speakers like Steve Jobs (CEO and founder of Apple). His most recent book, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, went on sale earlier this fall.
Gallo’s goal is not to turn people into Steve Jobs, but to teach speakers about the key attributes of really capturing an audience – something Steve Jobs had done very well. He explains, “Someone can have the best idea in the world, but it means nothing if they cannot present it.”
The book’s webinar series is led by Gallo and helps participants explore the book principles further. While the first webinar was today, people can still register for the next two here. In the meantime, consider this underlying point from today’s webinar:
Great presenters do three things:
1. Inform
2. Educate
3. Entertain
Which point(s) do you overlook?
If only just for fun, visit one of the next two webinars to see if and how Gallo practices this point – even through a livestream or video presentation.
Devin Hester with his Berry Chill
Every time the Chicago Bears‘ Devin Hester scores a touchdown, Chicagoans receive a free Hester-combination Berry Chill yogurt the next day. Despite the fact that the Bears were a bit of letdown tonight, we can still celebrate because Hester did, in fact, score a touchdown. According to the Berry Chill blog, his favorite combination is original yogurt with mango, pineapple and gummy bears. While I can personally do without the gummy bears, it still sounds like a pretty sweet deal. Follow @YogiJones on Twitter to stay in the loop on other Berry Chill “Sweet Tweets.” This kind of thing never happens in Roscoe. I love Chicago and Berry Chill.
Also, in case you are an avid Berry Chill visitor and aren’t yet aware, Berry Chill containers are actually recyclable. If you bring in 10 Berry Chill bowls, you receive a free medium mix for free.
According to the Wall Street Journal yesterday, more people worldwide use social media than email to communicate. As of August 2009, there were 301.5 million people using social-networking and community sites, while only 276.9 million people were using email. That is a whole lot of people and a massive amount of conversations made possible.
At first that sounds hard to believe, but if you think about the evolution of message sending, it actually does seem logical. From horse to telegraph to post to email, we have always searched for faster ways to communicate. Social media is the natural progression from email because it is as close to “real time” as it gets. It is faster than email, often easier than email and provides access to mass amounts of searchable information.
This does not mean everyone is going to drop email though. Social media can’t do everything. There are size limits to many social media tools, like the 140 character maximum on Twitter. There is also a lot of clutter and a lot of people out there in those public social media domains. Personally, I like the space for detail and the somewhat private atmosphere that email can still provide.
…But why wait for an email reply when you can receive an answer instantly via AIM or Google Chat? So maybe Facebook is not your preferred mode of communication, and perhaps it isn’t appropriate for all types of communication, but you have to admit: Social media has its benefits too.
Filed under: For Fun
What if instead of sending astronauts up to the moon or mars for years, we just sent them on up for forever? This year’s NASA panel has definitely been considering the benefits of a “One-Way Ticket to Mars”
as opposed to exploration programs that return every few years.
The author makes an interesting point of comparing space explorations to colonizing the New World. Settlers left their homeland with no intention to return, but instead forge life somewhere new. While I wouldn’t personally want to end my life here to go live on Mars, it is definitely an interesting thought. What do you think?
