Thanks to Boston College's BC Bookmarks for the review of Blending Leadership.

This project contains a US map with each state as a separate object for which the color can be changed. People can use it to create an electoral "heat map" in a similar manner to what is seen on the news and in newspapers. To create it, I imported a generic US map image, traced and used draw fill for each state. When finished, I deleted the background image. The states by default were all grouped together. You can ungroup them, lock the scale and/or rotation to make a puzzle or a break out map.

Following the suggestion of a business acquaintance, I picked up an electronic copy of Corey Sommers and David Jenkins' Whiteboard Selling: Empowering Sales Through Visuals. There is quite a bit of attention placed on positioning live white-boarding against traditional PowerPoint "sit and get" slide decks, but there are also some pretty useful visual structures for organizing a conversation or presentation. I am thinking about trying to do live whiteboarding (and sketchnoting) during my next PD presentation to see how it goes. I think it requires a good deal of practice to alternate between looking at audience, writing legibly on a board, and maintaining and generating meaning from a dialogue going throughout. 

Here are many of the slides from my presentation yesterday evening at the Peel SB conference.

There are two, connected composition things I'd never felt proficient at - vocal melodies and guitar solos. Returning to a simple book about rhythm and melody, I reminded myself of something I probably did not pay enough attention to during my college days - very intentional note selection based on the backing chord compassion, neighboring notes, repeating patterns, starting on the 1 (and not), ending with a 1 or 2 syllable melodic cadence, and more. Here is my first attempt at a simple melodic track following some Melody 101 rules.

We've started a couple of albums on Flickr with various media assets connected to Blending Leadership.

I had to get new shades for windows in my son's room and I generated this project to help display dimensions.

It was honor to speak with Kelly Croy once again on his Wired Educator podcast, and I was delighted to learn that not only was it the 50th episode of his series, but I was the first return guest and also the first to take part in a 3-person, 3-location interview on the show. Kelly is a pro when it comes to interviewing, engaging friends and strangers in meaningful dialogue, and simply getting things done. Be sure to check out not only our episode but all of his wonderful interviews and conversations.

3 guitars, bass, and drums all performed live.