A look at Dublin Contemporary 2011
I should start this post by telling you three things.
- I am grumpy and dislike most things
- I am not the typical type of person who goes to art exhibitions
- I received a grand tour of Dublin Contemporary and really enjoyed it.
Those last fact alone should inform you that a visit to Dublin Contemporary is worth a visit.
One thing I did not expect was the sheer scale of the exhibition, it’s pretty gigantic and inhabits multiple rooms, corridors and floors of Earlsfort terrace, which I presume is an interesting enough place to walk around even when there is no art on show. I spent an hour being guided (by the wonderful Zaynab) around from piece to piece, but in reality if you were so inclined you could spend a whole day there pottering around and checking out the many video pieces.
I fear it is probably because I am a bit of a simpleton, but for the most part I appreciated the pieces on a purely visual basis, the intended deep meaning of certain pieces just… didn’t work for me, but the pieces are so interesting to look at that that doesn’t really matter. It didn’t to me in any case.
So without further ado, here are a few snaps I took, Dubcon really is a photographers dream, my skills (or lack thereof) don’t do the exhibition justice.
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You can check out an entire floor of their stuff for free so you don’t have good reason to not go and check it out if you happen to be in the City centre. So I would say go give it a visit while it is still there which is until the end of October, and check out the site http://www.dublincontemporary.com/ for more details than I have been able to give here.
Also if you are fond of a tweet or two, check them out on twitter
Plato Talk and a few notes
Thanks to everyone who turned up to the Plato talk today, as promised I have put together a few notes from the questions asked afterward, and have uploaded my talk to Slideshare as I mentioned (you will also see what I mean by slideshare-proofing a presentation)
Here is the presentation:
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In terms of the presentation clicker, or remote, I suggest you pick one up, This one: http://www.amazon.com/Kensington-Wireless-Presenter-Pointer-Built-/dp/B002E3AI0I/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1315927063&sr=8-1 is great because it is also has a memory stick built in.
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Here is a video on how to use “presenter view” in powerpoint http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dJDL7g5TkY, I highly recommend it. It takes a while to set it up properly when you hook your computer up to a projecter but once you know how to do it it’s easy to get easily set up each time.
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I have probably missed a lot of stuff here, if you have any questions feel free to email me at ed@clearpreso.com or leave a comment here. Or you could tweet me at www.twitter.com/clearpreso
You can see some of my work @ www.clearpreso.com
And I am always open for a coffee and a chat (us small business folk have a lot to share with eachother).
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Hope you enjoyed today’s talk! Thanks!
Ron Paul deserves a proper graph
I like Ron Paul. I also like proper display of data. So I just couldn’t resist this one.
It looks like the mainstream media in America really don’t like Ron Paul, they don’t even like mentioning him when he gets high public ratings in debates. Not too long ago he came second in the poll taken after the Republican debate in Iowa and hardly got mentioned as a possible front runner at all.
A couple of days ago we had another Republican debate with Ron Paul performing strongly again, so strongly in fact that on NBC’s poll a whopping 57% of the public had said that Paul was the winner, not too shabby eh? Below is the poll they display on their site to show this crushing majority.
Oh, but wait a second, something is wrong here… can’t quite put my thumb on it… perhaps the proporations look a little off? Last time I checked 57% was more than twice that of 14%. We better go in for closer inspection.
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Let’s take a closer look at the top three candidates, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and Rick Perry
Below is how NBC would like you to see the results.
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And below in blue we have the real proportionality between these results, no bar-stretching involved.
When you see what the results actually look like it makes you realise the extent to which NBC are deciding to inflate the poor vote counts of both Romney and Perry.
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Finally, below we can see the True and exaggerated results overlaid.
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So the media now have a new way to ignore Ron Paul’s success, graphically.
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If you happen to like this post, why not follow me on twitter… at www.twitter.com/clearpreso
I don’t usually put up posts on non-business stuff… but here we go…
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Last night I ended up watching a documentary over on RTE, “Departure day” which showed in detail the extent and effects of emigration in Ireland. In particular, as we all know, it is the younger generation that are being forced to move abroad in the search for jobs.
Keeping an eye on the twitter stream for the show I noticed that most peoples comments were for the most part empathetic to various families’ situations as they waved goodbye to their loved ones. However other comments annoyed me so much that I have been driven to write this little rant.
The one tweet in particular that got me angry was the following:
This semi-joking anti-Ireland sentiment can be heard day to day in conversations all the time and the internet is rife with people bemoaning the country as a whole
On Boards.ie a while back, a comment posted on the topic of: “Why do people say we are a scenic country” read: “Well we’ve feck all else going for us, so may as well exaggerate what we do have.”
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I don’t think it’s funny.
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These are not entirely original jokes of course, few of these down-talking references are. It seems to have become very common, if not quite trendy, to badmouth “Ireland” as a whole. I know things like these are made in a flippant manner, but all the same it makes me fupping angry.
We live in a great country and we are a great nation of people. We have been subjected to shoddy, incompetent and disastrous management from political parties that have sought popularity and reelection rather than a better Ireland. But the past is the past and we need to get on with it. Playing the shouty blame game, while fun, achieves nothing for our future.
It seems quite trendy nowadays to label Ireland as a “shithole”, as being “doomed”, “wrecked”, and of there being “no opportunities”. I don’t think that Ireland deserves to be referred to in these terms. Feel free to call the politicians what you want. But lay off dismissing the entire nation as some sort of laughing stock. Life in Ireland will go on. It may be less prosperous than before, but unless we get raptured from above by the flying spaghetti monster we will still be living in this country.
And a fine thing that is because Ireland is a great beautiful country filled with equally great and beautiful people. It is of course unfortunate that some of us will be forced to leave over the coming years, but that is the way it has to be for now. We all know who’s fault it is. But this is where we are. The blame game and the slagging off of our fine country doesn’t help, it just stops debate on the important stuff. The future.
So my one plea is this. Stop putting so much effort into bitching about those parties and their past actions and put more effort into becoming involved in what they do in the future.
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We are all still addicted to recession porn.
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I really thought we would be over it by this stage but we aren’t. As a nation we take far too much pleasure in hearing about, and dispensing, bad news, I think we always have done. But now we get an orgy of bad news on a daily basis on pretty much any news stream you’d care to listen or watch. The country is doomed, finished, about to get swallowed up into the centre of the earth etc etc etc.
Of course, good news isn’t as attractive, good news doesn’t sell papers and it rarely makes for good headlines, but we need to find a way of spreading good news as much as is possible. So make sure when you do hear some good news that you tweet it, tell it to a friend or call it in to Joe “the grim reaper” Duffy, he probably won’t feature it, but that’s no excuse for not trying. Do whatever you have to but we need to give good news a fighting chance.
Ireland is not a joke and it’s not doomed.
It is flawed in ways, but no things in this world are ever perfect.
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If I were to try and encapsulate what the above rant has been trying to get across it is this: Ireland is a great country, we are great people. But right now we really need to stop putting so much of our efforts, thoughts and column inches into various blame games and winge sessions – these actions do NOTHING to improve our situation – it’s a national mindset we really have to try and stamp out.
Let’s instead put the same quantity of time and effort into thinking about ways to improve our situation, and doing things that help our communities survive and grow. I’m not saying we need to put more effort into how we talk about the country, we just need to redirect it.
Do that and we can make Ireland a stronger country that the poor folk featured on RTE’s departure day, and the thousands like them can return to some day in the near future.
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What do you think?
Let me know in the comments here, or on twitter
A recent video presentation
Every so often I like to feature some of my work on the blog, this time it’s a great little video presentation I put together for David @ www.TheHRDepartment.ie .
As always I have tried to keep it clear and to the point and David (and I) were very happy with how things turned out!
Back in the saddle again
Well after wonderful month-long trip around parts of North America I am back in the Presentation saddle again.
I will try and make a better effort at keeping this blog up to date from now on and there will be a few travel related posts to come!
For now why not take a look at a snap from each major location of my trip
Denver – Rocky Mountain National Park
Train Ride from Denver to Salt Lake City – Colorado Valley
Salt Lake City – Capitol Building and awesome mountains (I got heavily sun burnt later that day…)
Portland – Japanese Gardens – Don’t worry I won’t go all Garr Reynolds on you 
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Toronto
Montreal – At the top of Mount Royal
I got some great news recently, one of my clients, Scrazzl – who I helped create a presentation from scratch – won €20k in funding by finishing second in the wonderful NDRC Launchpad programme. Needless to say I was ecstatic for David and his team.
I really enjoyed working on the presentation below (some of the slides are confidential for a bit longer yet) as the CEO David fully bought in to the importance of keeping things simple, visual and memorable, and showing off features of the software rather than trying to describe them through bullet points! And of course on top of all that Scrazzl is a fantastic software product that connects scientific products, publications and people and does a very good job of selling itself!
I have said it before and I will say it again, but I really enjoy running my own business. It beats the crap out of working for someone else, and especially working for someone else in a big faceless organisation. What’s more, I also really enjoy working with other people that run their own businesses too, which is great because I get to do that a lot.
On a side note – through working with a lot of startups it has occurred to me that Ireland is doing a lot right in terms of fostering entrepreneurship and I have worked with some really smart people, but we need more Scrazzls coming out of this country, and that just isn’t going to happen without giving adequate government time, effort and money to get the ball rolling – but that is another days rant.
The question “what would you do if you didn’t need to earn money” is always thrown around by career councillors, and I suppose it is a valid question. When thinking about that recently I came to the conclusion that my answer would be “to encourage more people to start their own business” and of course “to help people make a success of their business”.
The recent success of Scrazzl (and the past success of other great clients) reminded me that by helping people present their businesses in a simple, clear and engaging manner I am at least helping to fulfil the latter half of my aims.
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If you have a presentation that could do with a makeover why not try out our free trial, or if you need to create one from scratch, like David and Scrazzl, why not email me at Ed@clearpreso.com
