The organizers met at Vinifera last night for our annual conference retrospective and dinner. Great food, excellent wine, awesome friends. What more could you want for a good time?
Toastmasters 2012 District Conference
I will be attending our local Toastmasters conference on May 4 – 5, 2012. Should be a great time!
Achieved Competent Communicator in Toastmasters
I’ve been participating in Toastmasters, an organization devoted to improving public speaking and leadership skills, for two years now. I just achieved the Competent Communicator level. Many thanks to all of the people who have helped me improve my skills dramatically over this time period.
RubyNation 2012 Is Over
RubyNation is like a microcosm of excellent talks, mind-blowing ideas, awesome food and great people. When it’s over, I’m simultaneously elated that we pulled off another great event and sad that it’s over.
RubyNation 2012, Day 1 – Dinner
Day 1 of RubyNation 2012 was awesome! Corey Haines snapped this photo of a bunch of us techies having a late dinner at Chili’s…
RubyNation 2012 Logo Graphic
Our graphic artist, Don Anderson, came up with an awesome Mayan-themed graphic logo for RubyNation 2012. Here’s a sample below:
RubyNation T-Shirt Orders
Whew. Shirt orders for RubyNation 2012 have been submitted to CustomInk, and we spent a pile of money. Red T-shirts for attendees; black polos for speakers and organizers; and charcoal hoodies for organizers (by special request this year).
RubyNation 2012 Shirt Design Review
Since this is 2012, the end of the Mayan calendar (and possibly the world), we decided to go with a Mayan theme for our RubyNation Conference shirts this year. Here’s the logo for this year shirts, compliments of Don Anderson, our illustrious graphic artist.
According to Don: “The glyphs are the Mayan date for March 23rd — 2 Chik’chan, 13 Kumk’u 2012.”
And for the really curious: “Dots represent 1 and bars 5, the shell is zero. Mayan is base 20 and from right to left, 12 (1’s) + 0x20 + 5×400 = 2012. Yes I know this isn’t the real Mayan Year, but if I did the long count I wouldn’t have enough room. 2012 makes more sense.”
Toastmasters Area 45 Contest 2012
I just finished participating in the Toastmasters International Speech Contest for Area 45. It was held at AOL’s headquarters building in Dulles, VA, which I hadn’t been in since early 2008 when I used to work for AOL.
Toastmasters 2012 International Speech Contest
I’ve found Toastmasters to be an excellent organization for helping me to improve my speaking skills, as well as my leadership skills. I was proud to participate today in the Toastmasters 2012 International Speech Contest for my area (District 29, Division D, Area 45).
Edmond Joe, who is a Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM) and an awesome speaker, was kind enough to take some photos of my talk:
It was the first time I’ve ever participated in a speech contest. It’s just you, an audience, no notes or visuals, and five to seven minutes to fill (and you get disqualified if you’re more than 30 seconds over or under). I was pleased to find that I was actually good enough to be competitive. While I didn’t win, I did take second place. I highly recommend Toastmasters if you’d like to improve your speaking and leadership skills.