Sat, Feb 24, 2007
Nonprofit Geek Trivia Winner #
I spent two days this past week at Aspiration's Nonprofit Software Development Summit. I've organized several events with AllenGunn (Gunner), so it was fun to take off the organizer hat and just be a participant. I had no agenda going into the conference, which was also quite pleasant. I attended because I love the people in this community and because Gunner asked me to facilitate a session on usability. The summit did not disappoint. I caught up with old friends, made several new ones, gave the ol' noggin a vigorous workout, and had a ton of fun overall. (LUH)
I ended up participating more actively than I had originally planned. It started with my usability session, which caused many to mistakenly assume that usability was my specialty. I decided to rectify this the following day by offering an ad-hoc skill-sharing session on throwing kick-ass collaborative events. We had a great group of high-energy people in that crowd, and the wisdom sharing was decidedly bi-directional. (LUI)
At the last minute, Gunner asked me if I would do a SpeedGeeking session on HyperScope. I was hesitant at first, because it had been months since I last spoke about HyperScope and because I had never quite gotten my presentation down to five minutes. The best I had done previously was half an hour. Plus, people were already confused enough as to what I did for a living. Nevertheless, the hesitation quickly dissipated. I live for challenges like this. (LUJ)
It turned out to be even more difficult, because there were 14 presentations. For those of you counting at home, that meant giving the same five minute presentation 14 times in a row, with no breaks in-between. My first and last two presentations were mediocre -- it took me a few rounds to get my pitch down, and I was exhausted by the end -- but I had a nice little streak in the middle. (LUK)
Here's some cute historical trivia: I presented at the very first SpeedGeeking session (at the first AdvocacyDev three years ago). In my commentary then, I expressed doubts as to whether SpeedGeeking was a great format. Since then, I've seen it performed several other times, and I've watched it become popular in other venues, although I hadn't participated in another one until this past week. I'm now a full-fledged convert. My original criticisms still stand. What's swayed my opinion is that, when done right, SpeedGeeking is all about movement and positive group energy. (Gunner, of course, always facilitates them beautifully.) When executed poorly, it's an energy suck that degrades into hallway conversations. (LUL)
Speaking of trivia, I couldn't bow out of the conference without participating in the Nonprofit Geek Trivia Contest. EvanHenshawPlath, MichalMach, LenaZuniga, and I formed The Flying Luas and dueled several other teams over questions such as: (LUM)
- To the nearest power of two, how many kilobytes was the ROM BIOS on the original Macintosh? (LUN)
- Name the now-defunct U.S. branch of the Association for Progressive Communications. (LUO)
- And my personal favorite: What is a "link condom"? (LUP)
Clearly, only the deeply disturbed had any chance of winning this competition. Guess who won? (LUQ)
I'm on a bit of a roll with these things. My secret? I'm the JohnSalley of the conference contest circuit. (LUS)
The last question of the night was a five-point bonus question: Write a haiku about data loss. I took a short video of the results. In our collective defense, we consumed much alcohol that evening. (LUT)
/events | Posted at 12:47am
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