The first draft of my next book, about an insider’s view of public speaking, is done!

Yay for me.

If you haven’t checked out speakerconfessions.com, you should. There’s some good material there and it gives a flavor for the questions I’m asking and answering in the book. Spread the word if you can.

I’ll be taking a break for a couple of weeks so don’t expect much to happen here until I’m back.

I’m speaking at BusinessToButtons in Malmo, Sweden next week and wrapping some R&R on both ends.  And I’ll be posting again come mid June.

Posted in On Tour, On writing, public speaking | 1 Comment »

I’m teaching a full day seminar on making things happen (project management fun) this Friday at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.  It’s $129 for the day, and i believe it includes lunch - a super bargain.

Details here:  Full day seminar at CTI for $129.

The room is almost full so they may close registration today.

Posted in On Tour | 4 Comments »

One perk of an independent life - I’m more free than most to travel the world and see amazing things.

Last week I was in Brussels to give a lecture at Namahn, a wonderful design consulting firm, and Joannes, the company founder, was kind enough to take me to Rene Magritte’s house, which is now a small museum. He’s one of my favorite artists of all time - to see where he worked was a very special thing for me.

One of his most famous paintings is The Treachery of Images (La trahison des images). You may have seen it before:

The text in the painting reads “This is not a pipe”.

It seems like a joke.  First time I saw this painting in college I just snickered and moved on. But later I’d realize he’s reminding you that pictures of things are not the same as things. That movies about things are not the same as the things they are about (e.g. Twittering about something is not the same as doing that thing). It’s deep, funny, interesting, philosophical and simple all at the same time, which is what I hope my work to be like.

Walking around the house he lived in, many of the objects that appear in his paintings can be found, including the pipe:

I also saw his bowler hat, the fireplaces and stairs that appeared in many of his paintings.

Here’s what I learned:

• You can be creative with anything. He worked with simple objects and made profound statements . You don’t need complex things to think complex thoughts or make important points.
• You can be serious and funny at the same time. There’s a sense of play in many of his paintings, and also various inside jokes to his wife and friends in his work.
• No one gets a free ride. I didn’t know he spent many years making advertisements and posters to make a living - many of them were on exhibition in the house. It wasn’t until later in his life that his paintings were worth enough to focus on them.
• You can work anywhere. His studio was between the only kitchen and only bathroom on the first floor of his house.  It’d be the last place I’d want to work for hours, but it clearly worked well for him.  Apparently it had the best light in the house, and he prefered working there to the much larger studio out in the back. Here’s a pic of his studio. It’s a tiny little cramped space.

Sadly I just missed the opening in Belgium of the Rene Magritte museum, which will be the largest exhibition of his works anywhere in the world. It opens June 2, 2009.

You can see many of his works here - I suspect you’ve seen some of these before even if you didn’t know the name of the man who made them.

Posted in On Tour, creative thinking, history | 5 Comments »

I have a few days of fun travel to new places coming up.

If anyone has been to Brussels, Belgium or Oslo, Norway, or is a local, and has some advice for good eats or places you think I’d dig, please leave a comment or drop me a line. Thanks!

Posted in On Tour, philosophy | 14 Comments »

Ignite is always an awesome time. There is something so fun about the crowd that comes, and then of course there’s all the crazy stuff that happens on stage.

If you’ve never been, the format is 5 minutes per speaker. The catch is the slides are automated: 20 slides, 15 seconds per slide. The results are, shall we say, unpredictable.

It’s this Wed, 7pm at the King Kat Theater in Seattle.

Here’s Wednesday’s awesome lineup:

7PM - Doors Open

7:30 PM - Paper Tower Contest Begins - Build the tallest tower you can out of just 5 sheets of paper and tape (See Details)

8:30 - First Set of Talks
Hillel Cooperman (@hillel) - The Secret Underground World of Lego
Dawn Rutherford (@dawnoftheread) - Public Library Hacking
Roy Leban (@royleban) - Worst Case User Experience: Alzheimer’s
Shelly Farnham (@ShellyShelly) Community Genius: Leveraging Community to Increase your Creative Powers
Dominic Muren (@dmuren) - Humblefacturing a Sustainable Electronic Future
Jen Zug (@jenzug) - The Sanity Hacks of a Stay At Home Mom
Ken Beegle (@kbeegle) - Decoding Sticks and Waves
Maya Bisineer (@thinkmaya) - Geek Girl - A life Story
Scott Berkun (Scottberkun.com)- How and Why to Give an Ignite Talk

9:45 PM - Second Set of Talks
Scotto Moore (Scotto.org)- Intangible Method
Secret Guest Speaker from Ignite Portland
Mike Tykka - The Invention of the Wheel
Jason Preston (@Jasonp107) - Goodbye Tolstoy: How to say anything in 140 characters or less
Chris DiBona (@cdibona) - The Coolness of Telemedicine
Ron Burk - The Psychology of Incompetence
Katherine Hernandez (@ipodtouchgirl) - The Mac Spy
Jamie Gower JamieGower.com) - I Am %0.0002 Cyborg
Beth Goza (@bethgo) - Knitting in Code

Hope to see you there.

Posted in On Tour, Seattle | 1 Comment »

Here’s the calendar for the next few weeks:

• Wed April 29th, Ignite Seattle (public) - I’ll be one of a dozen or so crazy people who will present with slides that have a life of their own.
• May 5th, Brussels, Belgium, at Namahn
• May 6th, Oslo, Norway (Opera software)
• Fri May 29th, Milwaukee, WI (public) - Full day seminar at CTI for $129. It’s a great deal.
• June 12, Business to Buttons Conference, Malmö, Sweden (15% off registration with code ‘FBTB is great UX’)

Posted in On Tour | 3 Comments »

Tomorrow, April 14th, I’m doing a live webcast for UIE on Why designers fail and what to do about it. This will be 90 minutes of lessons on how to learn from other people’s failures, how to become wiser and better than your annoying co-workers, and learn to take more pleasure in experimentation and creative thinking as a creative person. There will be some new twists and updates specially designed for this webcast, includes tactics and approaches to thinking about failure.

If you sign up you get some free consulting time from me after the webcast via email. That’s a sweet deal all on its own.

For this 90 min live talk, including live Q&A,  a talk you can participate in from anywhere in the world, wearing only your underwear if you choose as I won’t be able to see you, for $129 - If you use the promo code (BERKUN) it’s only $99! Wow!I just saved you $30!

Here’s my fun promo video for the session, with audio voiceover, including a last slide that details the value you’ll get from tuning in.

Details and registration info here - Use my promo code BERKUN to get the discounted price of $99.

Any questions? Fire away.

Posted in On Tour | No Comments »

Last call for presentation camp - a brand new unconference event for people interested in pitching, presenting and public speaking.

Presentation Camp
At UW communications building (map)
Saturday April 4th 2009, 9am-4:30pm (Full schedule here)

It’s $15 if you register by noon today, $20 later today or at the door.

I’ll be doing a keynote on Why your talk sucks and what to do about it. And if there’s enough interest I’ll be doing a slide critique fun house, where we look at each others slides and help make them better.

Plus I’ll be around all day interviewing people for my next book.

Hope to see you there.

Posted in On Tour, Seattle, public speaking | No Comments »

Saturday April 4th Kathy Gill and I are running the first ever Seattle presentation camp, an unconference for people interested in all forms of public speaking, presenting, and pitching ideas.

We’ve posted the core  schedule with some of the sessions that we know will take place, as well as plenty of slots for unconference style sessions (you, as an a attendee, can suggest or run a session yourself).

Presentation Camp Schedule - Sat April 4th

Session include Ignite’s Brady Forest talking about how to speak at major conferences, I’ll be speaking on skills I learned from being on national TV as well as how to get over fears of public speaking, Kathy Gill from UW will be talking about Presentation Zen and Slideshare, and plenty more good stuff.

Registration is just $10, enough to cover the basic costs for the cool rooms we’ve got at the UW for the event.

It’s a new event so we’re open to ideas, volunteers and other contributions.  Get in touch with Kathy or I.

Hope to see you there - and help spread the word if you can.  Facebook event and Upcomming event pages are up.

Posted in On Tour, Seattle, public speaking | No Comments »

First, thanks to everyone for entering the contest.

The overlord / demigods at O’Reilly saw the long list of people who wanted a free ticket to Monday’s class in SF and blessed me with two tickets.

The winners are Brandie and Chris. Woohoo! Congrats guys!

I sent an email out to both of you. Please RSVP to me with 24 hours, otherwise I’ll give the tickets away to someone else.

For the rest of you: as of this writing there are still one or two seats left. You can still sign up for Monday’s class, and at a nice juicy %25 discount, by going here and using the code berkunproj.

How to lead and manage breakthrough projects

Posted in On Tour | No Comments »

Next Monday, March 30th, I’m teaching my full day course on how to lead and manage breakthrough projects in San Francisco.

(UPDATE) Winner was announced yesterday.

There are only a few seats left, but as a perk I get one golden ticket to give away - So here’s your chance.

For reference, highlights of the course include:

• A top rated, world class, fun, interactive heavy kick-ass full day course
• Skill development for creative leaders on important projects
• Tools for developing, managing and executing on big ideas
• High energy, fast paced, minimal bs agenda (full agenda listed here).
• Interactive lessons on creative thinking & management from the great innovators of all time
• Covers material and exercises that go well beyond what’s in my books
• Free consulting or Q&A with me over email after the course
• A signed copy of the bestseller, The Myths of Innovation

If you’re in the SF area, or will be on Monday, and want a shot at a $600 ticket, leave a comment. I’ll pick one lucky winner for FREE entry to the course.

How to enter:

1. Leave a comment
2. Wait (and cross your fingers)
3. Winner chosen end of day Wednesday

If you don’t want to gamble, registration details for the course are here. Use the promo code berkunproj25 to get 25% off.

Posted in Innovation, Management, On Tour, Teaching/Training | 20 Comments »

On Tue April 14th I’ll be doing a live webcast for UIE on Why designers fail and what to do about it. This will be the full 90 minute version of my talk, with some new twists and updates specially designed for this webcast, and it includes tactics and approaches to thinking about failure and how both to change your philosophy about experimentation, but also tactics for learning as much as you can from your failures, and failures of designers and creators throughout history.

For this 90 min live talk, a talk you can participate in from anywhere in the world, wearing only your underwear if you choose as I won’t be able to see you, for $129 - Here’s my promo video for the session, with audio voiceover, including a last slide that details the value you’ll get from tuning in.

Details and registration info here - Use my promo code BERKUN to get the discounted price of $99.

Posted in Design, On Tour, creative thinking | No Comments »