tonygoodson

Cluetrain and Dreams Coming True

The one thing I forgot to ask Chris Locke about was Bricolage.  He wrote about it in his follow up book to Cluetrain, Gonzo Marketing.  I was reminded of that, because I bust a gut all day to get the interview I’d done with Chris, out.  Which meant adding some music.  And I’d been sitting on some music for over 2 years, Stereophile’s “That’s The Shit” I thought it was called Bass, oh well!

It’s great to collect something, and then use it 2 years later.  And I’ve had a dream to interview Chris Locke since podcasting started, so great to get it together and do it.  Who’s next?  I have a few on the list, and I added another person over the weekend, Neil Young (Man Citeh footballer).  Are you out there Neil Young?

What I’ve done over the last few months, is bring my big dreams forward.  Oh yeah, we’ve all learnt about goal setting and all that.  Have a dream and then put actions to achieve that dream.  Well it doesn’t quite work out, does it.  I’ll tell you why.  We keep doing all the short term stuff before we allow ourselves to do the big stuff we’d love to do.  Except there’s always small stuff that keeps on coming in.  So I switched things around.  I looked at what my big long term things are and made sure they’re the first on my list every day and every week.

In fact, I’ve not been very productive recently, but the big ones are happening. Someone told me recently that they can see a lot of the colour orange in my life.  So I used Orange as the main them for The 3 Moments website, and blow me down if the main colour for Cluetrain isn’t orange, and the RSS Feed logo is orange.

What are the big things you want to do in life?  That doesn’t necessarily mean a big house, Ferrari, and lots of money!! 

When you’ve cracked a big dream, it’s a bit like that time after the wedding, and all the guests have gone.  What now!  I dunno!!  Next guest to interview for a podcast.  Next project! Actually, come to think of it, there’s a few other shows I’ve been wanting to do, and now I have the platform. 

All Time Teams, I talk with people who name their all time sport teams based on how long they’ve followed their team.  I ran a pilot show in 2005 for an All Time Manchester United Team, so it’s a bit out of date now, but just have a listen, and if you’re a keen Man Yoo football fan it sounds great! Click here to download The All Time Manchester United Team 1968 to 2005.

Madman Across The Street, interview the people who are on our city streets.  Instead of stepping over them, find out what their story is, how they got there…3 Moments! 

Sustainability and Green stuff, still a subject we all know we should contribute to, but we can’t be bothered!  I have two pilot shows from the last 18 months that I must upload.

Thanks Cluetrain.

Guest Interviews - The 3 Moments

Ever since I was a kid watching Parky, then Russell Harty, and now Andrew Denton and Larry King, I’ve loved interviews.  Interesting people with interesting things to say.  Inspirations.  I like the Parky interview style.  The guests don’t have to be grilled or caught off their guard, or sensationalised.  Just conversations.  Interest and curiosity in the guest, and what they have to tell and teach us.

And not just the famous and the stars, but some of my favourites were Barbara Castle, Jonathan Miller, Peter Ustinov, Michael Caine, Bette Midler, and latterly, Paul McCartney talking about his ego.  That was Part 1.

Part 2 for me, came just before the start of podcasting, and in fact partly created podcasting.  The Chris Lydon interviews. Wonderful political and technological conversations published as mp3 files to download and listen to.  This coupled with Doug Kaye’s I.T Conversations, led to a world of mp3 downloads for me.  And still to this day, I manually download mp3s to listen to instead of using podcast software to automatically download to my laptop or mp3 player.

Since 2003 I’ve pondered who I’d like to interview.  I’ve never had the platform to interview anyone.  Sure I’ve podcast on The Productivity Show, dabbled, had some great guests, but I realise I want to go beyond productivity.  And I’ve feared and procrastinated for 5 years.  No longer.

It’s simple really. All I have to do is list the 100 people I’d most like to interview in the world, and invite them!!  Yeah sure, most won’t reply, or will say no, or it will become too difficult.  But you know what?  At least 5 will say yes, and it will be magnificent.

So I’m starting with a simple website, a banner, and name…The 3 Moments.  Why “The 3 Moments”?  Well, when I look at the people I’d like to interview, it’s about their journey, their highs, their lows, the ending of something and that “Oh Shit” moment, the Harrison Owen (Open Space Technology) writes about in his book Wave Rider, and how people deal with set-back and grief.  If you ask someone to draw a timeline of their life from birth to now, the chances are there will be two or three peaks/troughs, so let’s hear about those things, The Hero/Heroine’s Journey.

Build it and let them come.  So let’s see what happens. 

Latest Productivity Show podcasts

Two recent podcasts by me, for The Productivity Show, Peter Mahoney of Nuance Dragon Speaking, on Voice Recognition, and Michael Deutch from Mindjet MindManager on MindMapping and Productivity.

I love doing these podcasts.  I love being a podcaster, and I want to do more, with plans for more, not just The Productivity Show.  I love fiddling with sound, and believe me, nothing ever runs perfectly. 

This time round, I’ve really been struggling to save my edited shows as MP3s at the right frequency and bitrate.  Audacity seems sometimes to have a mind of its own with what bitrate and frequency it saves at, in spite of the settings I set.  And even when I get it to save at the right frequency, the sound quality has reduced because it’s changed the frequency from the original recording. 

At least I’m starting to learn about the multi-tracks, moving them around, and starting to edit the sound quality.  Almost time for some music intros.

One of my long term dreams is to edit podcasts live just like a real live DJ, you know, with all those cow bells!! Just 9,900 hours to go to be a genius with sound editing.

Productivity Podcast with Sue Knight

My latest Productivity Show podcast is up on The Podcast Network website,  it’s a discussion with Sue Knight, author of NLP at Work, on Alignment and Purpose, plus a lot of other good stuff.

Check it out, and enjoy.

Sansa e260 mp3 player V1!

I bought a Sansa e260 mp3 player a few weeks ago.  My previous player, also a Sansa, has stopped connecting on the right channel, it's the connection inside the player and not the headset.

The Sansa was a bargain at 4GB for $128, colour screen, can also play video and hold photos, if converted via the Sansa media converter.

I'm a big podcast listener, which is my main use for the Sansa, so it's a great player to have for that purpose.  For the first time, I'm synching my mp3 player using Windows Media Player, not sure if I can synch both ways but it's working from PC to player, where before I just copied and deleted straight to disc.

I've always been one to run manual downloads, by spotting the new podcast on RSS, but not automating the file download, so maybe it's time to automate and use iTunes or something.

A few things I can't work out yet.  When I delete a podcast from the PC playlist and then synch, it of course updates the playlist on the Sansa, but as far as I can make out, it doesn't delete the actual file on the Sansa, which means my player is filling up, and using a playlist means each song is in it's own folder, which is a pain to clean up.

And other thing that has really irritated me, is I bought the Sansa e260 thinking it was the most up to date version, only to find out there is a Version 1 and Version 2.  I think I have a v1, because it won't work with Audible which only works with v2.  A firmware update, doesn't load the latest v1 firmware, and certainly doesn't update to v2.  Bloody hell; just a minor irritant to a good value for money player.  No wonder the price was so good for 4GB, they're getting rid of the V1s!

Interview with Tim Ferriss "The 4 Hour Workweek" and being a Sound Engineer/DJ

I've just published my Productivity Show interview with Tim Ferriss, Author of "The 4 Hour Workweek".  Nice of him to say yes and give me some time.  And in fact, it's a good use of his time, by being available for 30-60mins to a potential audience of 500,000 and more, on The Podcast Network.  He asked a few big authors what the biggest use of time, for the smallest return is....Book Tours and Signings.  Not because they don't want to get out to the people and fans, but the time it takes, to get to a venue, do the book signing, and get back home, or on to the next venue.

So blogging and podcasts are two efficient channels for selling more books.  We talk about this on the show, and it was also talked about in Leo Laporte's interview of Tim on TWIT - The TechGuy.

And you know what, a busy person always has time.  Credit to Tim for saying yes, and making himself available and being supportive.

I had more trouble with the technology than the guest!  I record in CallBurner, over Skype.  That's the good bit.  CallBurner records easily, and in high quality, both an mp3, and and 2 high quality WAV files, one for each voice.  I usually copy the mp3 recording into WavePad, save it as a WAV, drag it to The Levelator (and have a listen to Doug Kaye's excellent talk on The Secret Lives of MP3 Files), which magically brings the voices up to the same level, and makes the recording louder. Convert back to mp3, and publish.

However....WavePad, loses the last 10-20secs of the mp3 file when I initially convert it to WAV.  Weird. I usually paste in the missing last 20secs and edit it.  But this time, I thought I'd play with the high quality WAV recordings on both our voices.  Loaded it into Audacity, combined the two channels/voices, into one mono recording, and then convert to mp3.  But, I can't get the mp3 to save in Audacity, at the right frequency.  It keeps saving at 32KHz, which doesn't work on some flash players.  I'm not the only one with this known problem,   And WavePad wouldn't read the Audacity output WAV or from The Levelator's WAV.

So back to the ordinal mp3 recording, which is lower quality.  I'm also experimenting with plugging my headset and mic into the USB port, instead of the sound card, which I think is creating background noise.

Jeez, when I've made my million's with Tim's help, I'd love to spend all day making podcasts and fiddling with sound!  Oh, and recording just like a real DJ in realtime, and mix the sounds in live on CastBlaster or WildVoice.

"Don't Put it Down, Put it Away!'

I recorded a Productivity Show with Lissanne Oliver yesterday.

One of her phrases is "Don't Put it Down, Put it Away!", and I committed on the show to doing that for 24 hours, from yesterday. Failed!  It's amazing how much I run on auto-pilot, and it's a great exercise in being conscious of everything I do, every second of the day.

On the plus side, I seem to have got a few things done today, that I haven't done in months...and years.  Bought a new bin for the home office.  If I'm going to get rid of some clutter ("anything you Don't Love, Don't Use, or Don't Need") then I noticed I don't have a bin near at hand.  The kids broke the last one.  Got the TV working on a coax cable again, instead of the bloody SCART which is useless, with a terrible picture.  Bought a coax cable for the other TV, we were one short (from the move).

Actually, the coax cable was used reviving my Sony TV, from the UK, which seems to be regionalised.  It won't pick up the TV signal here, and won't even connect to a DVD player, so it's converted into a Nintendo GameCube Mario Kart screen, with built in VHS player.

And finally, I edited the show in WavePad, merging two channels of WAV into the one mp3, a bit of editing, but not the time to learn to add music yet.  I'd love to make some time and make audio my hobby.

Thunderbirds are Go - My own Productivity

I did it!  I ditched Outlook 2007 on Tuesday night and moved to Mozilla Thunderbird.  Why?  My Outlook 2007 is running like a dog; a three legged dog!  (And talking about productivity the latest Productivity Show podcast is now up, which I did with Michael Specht)

Now it might not be Outlook's fault.  My .pst is over 1GB, I have the Skylook add-in, and AVG and Avast anti-virus chipping away at the loading and performance.

However, would I recommend Outlook 2007 to an Outlook 2003 user?  Nope!  I can't work out the difference other than the ribbon in composing emails, and coloured squares for categories (you can't even colour in the whole line!).  The "Ribbon" - isn't it about time someone said the Emperor Has No Clothes.  It's just an expanded tool bar that is so thick it enables more functionality to be visible.  Big Deal!!  And you can't find some of the things that you used to use!  So it's swings and roundabouts.

I can't fully explain it, but Outlook 2007 seems bloody slow to load and use, just like the other Office 2007 products.  Ok, I don't have the latest  processor, and I have 500MB of RAM, but that's a reasonable configuration isn't it?

Maybe I should archive much of my email in Outlook, but why should I?  I want it immediately accessible and searchable.

And Thunderbird ain't no carnival.  It's a bit clunky with weird defaults, and I can't work out if what I see is is what I'm sending, from a font size perspective.

However, do you know how wonderful it feels to have Thunderbird load in 5secs, instead of the 2mins+ that Outlook is taking, plus another minute to populate the preview pane of an email I click on!!

Another part of this story, is I've had to move to sending emails in plain text and take out the SkypeMe logo and my website link as a hyperlink.  Why?  It seems that some spam filters including my own bloody email provider are using these criteria to call my emails spam.  Yeah, great idea sending in plain text, but most people on the other side have their plain text default set to some crappy font which makes only my emails look dull!!

And finally, I don't use Outlook Calendar, being a SOHO, but I do use Outlook Tasks, so I've transferred my tasks over to my MindManager mindmap.  Now what's amazing is the lumpiness of having my tasks on my mindmap, have made it easier to actually do actions, rather then see line after line of uniform things to do.  But here's the thing. MindJet need their ass kicking for following the same "Ribbon" development as Microsoft and thinking that I'm stupid enough to just pay for that as the only improvement, in MindManager 7.

So here's the thing....if I'm no longer using Outlook, MindManager isn't lumpy enough in organic feel and interface options, and I'm starting to think about OpenOffice, whilst I'm in the mood......what's stopping me from moving to a......Mac!!!  Holy Shit, I never thought I'd ever ever say that!

The Productivity Show

It's up and running again.  After 9 months away, a new Productivity Show has been posted on The Podcast Network, hosted by, err, me!  My contribution to productivity in the world.  I was a guest on the first show, 2 years ago, so it's come a full circle. The first guest is the previous host, Cameron Reilly.

It makes sense to have Cameron on first, because between us, we can cover most things on Productivity.  And also, we both have our triumphs and setbacks with productivity.  In fact, I think productivity is one of the biggest issues for most people.

So I'm looking for guests to interview and co-hosts to co-host with, listeners to attract, and sponsors to contribute.  All suggestions welcome.

There are of course hot-tips and gadgets as part of productivity, and I'd also like to go into the psychology and motivation (or lack of it) why we do or don't get things done.

And I'm wondering if some of the most successful people in life, are actually the most disorganised, which they realise early on in life, so they're good at engaging others to help them!!  The danger is for the majority of us in the middle, who are all fairly well organised, instead of being at the extremes, where the success happens!!

SnogFrog Blog

As I promised myself, my new blog is up and running.
SnogFrog Blog.  My wife hates the name.  My friend hates the name.  My mother hates the name.
I love it. Gut feel.
It's about Kissing Frogs.  Selling with Passion.  Networking.  Getting Organised.

Snog is a an English term for kissing.  Kissing with passion.  Pashing.

I've set up the blog and soon the podcast (SnogFrog Pod!) to talk about selling.  Interview people.  See what happens.  See what works.
I'm going to try my hardest to not make it like most other things about selling, which fall into this dull  world of sales talk.  Actually the language isn't dull, just that it sounds like a war.  Territory, Plan, Close, Win, etc etc.  That's fine for 80% of you.  This if for the other 20% who don't feel satisfied with what's out there, and feel there's a different way to sell.
Maybe it's not even selling.

Anyway, let's not define it too much, let's just see what happens.