scrambledminds » life

London Visit

Jason — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 23:52:40 +0000

We were on a flying visit to London last week after our time in Croatia. It was time to catch up with some old friends. We had a blast! Hopefully it wont be so long before we catch up again. Good times, good times.

Training Secrets

Jason — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 23:30:23 +0000

As part of my new venture to educate businesses about the web and digital technology, I wanted to learn how to provide great, engaging training so I went looking for the training the “Leopard Skin Lady” who ran that training to see if she could help.

The Leopard Skin Lady is one Donna McGeorge and she runs Passion, Energy and Performance.

If you’re interested in doing any training, I’d recommend you check out Passion, Energy and Performance run by Donna McGeorge.

The course was run over three days and was a great event. I went in with a very basic understanding of what

As a matter of fact, if you’re interested in doing any sort of training, presenting, facilitation or public speaking.

Having come from the corporate world, which has more than it’s fair share of boring seminars and dry training, there was only one course over the years that I can remember ever being engaging, entertaining AND educational. Can you remember one of those?

The Leopard Skin Lady is one Donna McGeorge. Speaker, facilitator and trainer and she runs Passion, Energy and Performance.

As a result of getting in contact with Donna I attended her Beyond Cert IV training course (a train the trainer event). What can I say? It was a great three days. I went in with a very good measure of bad training and a very poor understanding of the techniques and tools to run great training and came out enlightened. I was presented with a whole suite of tips, tricks, tools, techniques and “secrets” that I can now practically apply to develop great training. From structuring a plan for effective learning, engaging your audience to dealing with troublesome participants. As a matter of fact, the things I learnt can be applied to any sort of training, presenting, facilitation or public speaking. Even creative writing. Even Sales!

So, if you’re interested in running any training, I can’t recommend highly enough the Beyond Cert IV course run by Donna McGeorge from Passion, Energy and Performance.

It’s Business Time!

Jason — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 04:20:35 +0000

Have any of your heard of The Flight of the Conchords? They’re a comedy musical duo from New Zealand with a fantastic album and TV series. If you haven’t, you should check them out. Here’s some stuff on youtube. They’re hilarious!

I’ve found some peculiar inspiration from their song Business Time (linked above). I’ll let you listen to it, but towards the end of the song is a lyric along the lines of “… and you know what time it is when I’m down to just my socks? It’s business time! That’s why they call them business socks…”. Genius.

Apart from being genius, and referring to something else entirely, this line holds some truth for me in my career. After quite a few years in the Enterprise IT space, I’ve been thinking for some time that I needed to do something else. I wanted a change. I needed to strip back to my socks and start again. I came to the conclusion that it was time to merge my love of technology, particularly the web, and my love of helping people.

Great linkage, huh? But wait! There’s more!

As a result I’ve decided to start my own thing providing training and advice to businesses about how to bring the power of the web to benefit their business. I get to talk about the web. I get to meet cool people. I get to help said cool people. Enough? I think so.

It’s time to give it a go. I’ll be at least able to say I’ve tried! So, as the song says – It’s Business Time.

ps. When I launch, which will be very soon, it’ll be called 101 (i.e. one zero one). The first offering will be training for virtualising your business to work from anywhere, opening the doors of the web through search and getting your goods in an online store. What do you think?

If you’re still reading, why not subscribe to my feed. Get it home delivered!

Melbourne Bound

Jason — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 02:58:57 +0000

So, Jodes has a new job. I don’t. We’ve moved to Melbourne to work on our sun tans! Cool huh? Jodes had already flown down last week and I drove down… if you could call it that. Recently returned Miller the Cat was supposed to be sedated but just looked wasted and whinged incessantly like he usually does whenever we take a ride in the car. I broke down 9km the Sydney side of Gundagai (about 3 hours in), got towed to Albury (~200kms?) had some guy repair the vehicle (wasn’t sure that it could be done and he did a great job), and was back on the road under my own power by about 4:30pm. The rest of the drive was uneventful, if you don’t count the dodgy sausage roll I bought at a BP servo in Euroa. About 2 hours after that I was heaving up on the side of the road. Lucky me!

Anyway, after about 16 hours I made it to Melbourne in one piece, just a little lighter (less money due to towing and repairs and less in my stomach), Fun!

Lost Miller!

Jason — Wed, 13 May 2009 09:31:44 +0000

Have you ever lost a cat? We’re on the move to Melbourne and we’ve relocated temporarily to Jody’s folks place and the relocation hasn’t been kind to our little (big) cat who has decided that he’s found somewhere more interesting to spend his days. I’m sure it’s got nothing to do with the personality clash he had with the in-laws dog, Rosie.

Anyway, if you see Miller, let me know!

*** Update ***
Miller came back! Yes, he was away for 5 days and he just decided that one evening he would reward Jode’s continuous efforts to lure him from whereever-he-was. Anyway, it’s good to have him back!

Michelle’s birthday in the park

Jason — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 07:11:20 +0000

Michelle’s 31st birthday was last week. To celebrate in style, a picnic in the park was in order. We had to move as we were taking up the space where a wedding had been booked. After the mad rush it turned out we’d planted ourselves right where the bridge made her entrance. We gave our congratulations and sang the wedding march (quietly).

Check out the pics.

Christmas and New Years 2008

Jason — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 09:01:21 +0000

The silly season has come and gone once again…

NYE 2008

Xmas 2008

Suprise!

Jason — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 11:18:28 +0000

So you’d be hard pressed to pull a swift one on our Niel. Seems that Michelle had the knack though so we headed for some tasty Thai this week gone to celebrate Neil’s 21st (again). Check out the slideshow.

So… What’s been happening?

Jason — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 23:03:24 +0000

Hi there intrepid reader of scrambledminds.com. Yes, you know who you are. I know you’re thinking “why has there been no well crafty, witty posts of late?”. Well, it’s because I’m slack and I really haven’t been up to much in the last couple of months:

The Wedding (coming soon)

The Honeymoon (coming soon)

Alphabet Club – O

Trish’s 60th Birthday Bash

Ruby’s Christening

Tom’s Bucks Party

Tom and Flick’s Wedding

Fuel prices – conspiracy

Jason — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 12:09:33 +0000

So, I received this by email the other day. I don’t know how accurate it is. Most of it seems possible, if not likely. Anyone know if this stuff is for real?

word.