Soft Skills

I've heard the mind mapping term tossed about here and there for years, but I never really understood how it differed from plain old brainstorming from the days of yore. I felt my storming mind needed a little orderly mapping, and below I outline how that process unfolded.

Tom Limoncelli of The Practice of System and Network Administration (TPOSANA) and Time Management for System Administrators (TMfSA) fame recently wrote a provocative blog entry called

So, apparently trying that blogging thing didn't work so well in the last several months of chaos. So, I think we're back to a variation of the same question:

Why blog?

So, a while ago I managed to lose the list of news feeds I tracked. As my life finally started winding down to a mellow level of chaos, I recently started playing catchup. The result is that I've been reading either overlooked, forgotten, or simply neglected feeds and posts around the blogosphere.

Despite a fair amount of snow dumping on the Madison, WI, USA streets, we had a half dozen folks show up for my presentation (which really turned into a lively discussion) on making and performing presentations.

The PPT presentation file is attached, but ask permission before using or distributing the presentation file for other than personal viewing.

Comments are welcome!

So, I'm taking some time to catch up on much neglected feeds in my aggregator, and I am reminded, once again, that there are very smart and perceptive people out there producing great content that more people should read.

Seth Godin posted the Top ways to defend the status quo.

If you've heard anything like what's on that list, your organization might suffer from metathesiophobia, the fear of changes, and be subject to groupthink.

What can you do to counteract this paralyzing groupthink behavior?