Constant Random Change

Red asked me to give a talk in Ignite Manila 1 mainly because he remembered that I tend to break character once in a while back in our old workplace. It should be easy for me to give a presentation on something related to anime given my level of experience in the matter.

Problem is, even if I focused on just anime and manga instead of the entire Japanese hobby culture scene (which would include cosplay, collectibles, etc), I still have literally dozens of possible topics to talk about.

After thinking about it for a day, I went with the topic that I could say that I am really passionate about: the story of how we reversed the fortunes of UP AME; from being a hopeless anime organization into a thriving one. Not only is it a significant part of my life, the topic would also be relevant for most of the audience (I doubt that most of them aren’t inside a club or community of their own).

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I put a decent amount of effort into this talk, not only because I don’t want to embarrass myself or the org, I also don’t want do look like a hypocrite after bashing the presentations in last year’s Y4IT.

Most of my effort went to the slides. It took me at least 3 days to finish them mainly because of my lack of experience (dammit, I’m a software engineer, not a graphic designer!) and because I had to look for good pictures from various sources. I also had to re-read Presentation Zen since it’s been a long time since I’ve made presentations.

Preparation for the talk itself was difficult, though it’s not as hard as the slides. I’d have to thank Scott Berkun for this part, his Confessions of a Public Speaker as well as his Ignite talk on giving Ignite talks gave me invaluable tips for making my talk.

One thing I learned on my own about Ignite was that Ignite presentations are more like song performances than presentations when you have more than 4 points to make. My talk had 7 different points so the timing is important. It didn’t worry me, though, since I have experience singing in front of a lot of people. I just had to practice enough that my mouth goes auto-pilot when on the stage, ignoring the inevitable effects of stage fright.

My script went through at least a dozen revisions throughout my practice sessions. With at least 3 runs per revision, I’m guessing that it took me 60 partial runs (just a 1-minute section) and about 30 full runs to get the hang of things. As you would see below, even with all this practice, I still had to ad-lib and adapt to the situation.

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Oh and yeah, Ana Santos of Sex and Sensibilities talked before me. Talking about hardcore geeks after a talk on sex was kinda awkward. D:

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Script, slides, and side comments below the cut.

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I’ve been wanting to write a proper post on “crab mentality” ever since I noticed that my post on Ako Mismo unexpectedly got into the first few pages of Google’s search results, but I didn’t feel like writing about something so trivial.

Unfortunately, some idiot tried to use that term as a rebuttal in a Facebook hate group that I passed by earlier today and it looks like it’s a good time to share my thoughts about that Filipino derogatory term.

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Just doing my part in spreading the word…

Seth Godin and a bunch of other prominent Internet personalities / 21st century thinkers are giving away a free ebook of micro-essays on what you should think about in the coming year.

Here's the deal: it's free. Download it here. Or from any of the many sites around the web that are posting it with insightful commentary. Tweet it, email it, post it on your own site. I think it might be fun to make up your own riff and post it on your blog or online profile as well. It's a good exercise. Can we get this in the hands of 5 million people? You can find an easy to use version on Scribd as well and from wepapers. Please share.

Seeing that I still have a lot of bandwidth available on this site for this month, I might as well host the file to lessen the load on his blog:

While browsing through e-learning items in my Google Reader list, I found this very insightful list from the sidebar of a blog pointed to by a shared link:

What The Blogosphere Wants More Of:

Blog readers want to see more:

• original research,surveys etc.
• original,well-crafted fiction
• great finds: resources, blogs, essays, artistic works
• news not found anywhere else
• category killers: aggregators that capture the best of many blogs/feeds, so they need not be read individually
• clever, concise political opinion consistent with their own views
• benchmarks,quantitative analysis
• personal stories, experiences, lessons learned
• first-hand accounts
• live reports from events
• insight: leading-edge thinking & novel perspectives
• short educational pieces
• relevant “aha” graphics
• great photos
• useful tools and checklists
• précis, summaries, reviews and other time-savers
• fun stuff: quizzes, self-evaluations, other interactive content

Blog writers want to see more:

• constructive criticism, reaction, feedback
• ‘thank you’ comments, and why readers liked their post
• requests for future posts on specific subjects
• foundation articles: posts that writers can build on, on their own blogs
• reading lists/aggregations of material on specific, leading-edge subjects that writers can use as resource material
• wonderful examples of writing of a particular genre, that they can learn from
• comments that engender lively discussion
• guidance on how to write in the strange world of weblogs

Last night when I was sucked into browsing TV Tropes, I came across one of the classic debates in the Internet: Subbing vs. Dubbing.

I particularly like this debate not only because it’s pretty easy to win at, it’s also a great opportunity to educate people about the so-called “anime subculture”.

My modus operandi was simple: I choose to defend dubbing in the face of hordes of rabid anime fans.

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Here’s yet another nice bit of information I found while browsing Wikipedia last year. I’m sure many of you would be able to relate to the scenario described below.

From Parkinson’s Law of Triviality:

Parkinson’s Law of Triviality (also known as the bicycle shed example, and by the expression colour of the bikeshed) is C. Northcote Parkinson’s 1957 argument that organisations give disproportionate weight to trivial issues.

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The concept is presented in C. Northcote Parkinson’s spoof of management, Parkinson’s Law (1957). Parkinson dramatises his Law of Triviality with a committee’s deliberations on a nuclear power plant, compared to deliberation on a bicycle shed. While discussing the bikeshed, debate emerges over whether the best choice of roofing is aluminium, asbestos, or galvanised iron, rather than whether the shed is a good idea or not. The committee then moves on to coffee purchasing, a discussion that results in the biggest waste of time and the most acrimony.

A nuclear reactor is so vastly expensive and complicated that people cannot understand it, so they assume that those working on it understand it. Even those with strong opinions might withhold them for fear of being shown to be insufficiently informed. On the other hand, everyone understands a bicycle shed (or thinks he or she does), so building one can result in endless discussions: everyone involved wants to add his or her touch and show that he or she is there.

So the next time your boardroom meeting degenerates to a “pissing match” over trivial things, you now have a less vulgar term to describe it.

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Further reading: Why Should I Care What Color the Bikeshed Is?

I saw the term “learned helplessness” last night when I was ready my feeds from my friends’ blogs. However, it was only later this afternoon that I asked myself if I had posted about it in this blog before. I mean, it’s such a simple (yet important concept) that I thought that I already posted it here.

Turns out it was not the case (I posted it in an intranet wiki in my old company) so here I am posting about it.

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[EDIT: This isn't an in-depth look at "crab mentality" so I changed the title. The real in-depth look at the term is here.]

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Yay, they finally said who they were. (Spoiler: it’s DDB)

Issue resolved too quickly for your taste? Here’s another lulz-y issue.

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One of the common annoying things about the past few blogosphere-buzzes-of-the-week is when people use the term “crab mentality” to defend the target of the issue.

It’s just… well.. feels wrong to use them in those instances.

Take for example the (I’m not naming names here ) one about the teenage girls who arrogantly maul the English language without even knowing it or the one about the high class people who arrogantly maul the intelligence of those who witness their… whatever. We aren’t laughing at them because we are insecure that we are not as popular or [insert positive trait here] as them so we want to drag them down. It’s simply because there’s something really funny about what they’re doing and they should be able to take the hint. I’d admit, some of the insults are going too far, but if you really know what you’re doing, you should at least know that striking back with something as pathetic as “crab mentality” won’t go anywhere.

Or that judging fiasco/drama. I won’t say much about the issue because, like /b/-tards, white knights are everywhere and nakakatamad mag-delete ng mga walang kwentang comment. I’ll just say that the “crab mentality” attack is directed to the wrong people.

And now the Ako Mismo. No, we’re not scrutinizing the privacy policy and questioning the amount of sensitive information needed by the site because we are selfish bastards who don’t want the country to get out of its current state. We’re just concerned about identity theft. You know, the one where people can pose as you and steal all your money because they know your private information? Oh wait, you’re not working for the food on your family’s plate so I guess you can’t understand what’s in stake here.

The only issue wherein “crab mentality” makes sense is the The Great Book Blockade of 2009, and even the scope of that issue isn’t that clear yet.

The lesson here?

Kids these days are more pathetic at flame wars than back when we were pathetic kids.