PowerPoint Slides from Tom Peters

PowerPoint Slides from Tom and the Tom Peters Company Around 6-7 years ago my thinking was heavily influenced by Tom Peters. At a time of many thick and heavy business books, his offerings were relatively short, easy to digest (lots of big words and pictures - see The Circle of Innovation for example) and generally more fun. Despite this, his books required a lot more interaction and thought from the reader. Tom Peters offers ALL his slide presentations for free download on his website. You can pay a small amount for short documents and slides that include his original speaking notes. I'm not even a quarter of the way through the first Master Slides 2004 file (containing all his slides from this year - a whopping 867 slides, and it's the first of two files!). Already, I have found a lot to think about. It's a bit jumbled up, but the content will get you thinking about the value of work and how to compete in the global economy. Possibly the most useful advice? Forget about competing with China on cost. On another note, I love the fact that more and more authors are giving away their ideas in order for you to come back for more. More and more high-value, practical content is becoming available. Probably the best example of this is the MIT OpenCourseWare project, which plans to give away all teaching materials for their graduate and undergraduate courses. Already there is a wealth of reading lists, slides, and even videos available.

End of Ramadan

It's only about a week or so before the end of Ramadan. So far it's been a good experience. The iftar/breaking of fast times have also been earlier compared to previous years. The weather has been cooperative - it's been cloudy and/or raining almost every day. I love this weather. It keeps me in a mellow and melancholy mood.

The Traveling Salesman

For the past couple of weeks, I have been traveling up and down Peninsula Malaysia meeting representatives of State Governments, in a role I'm not entirely comfortable with - salesman. It's a necessary role, and I have no problems with going through the motions - the travel, the prep, the pitch - but I have never enjoyed the process. It's also been surreal - traveling long distance, mainly late at night or early in the morning, driving in shifts, breakfasts and breaking fast (it's Ramadan) at highway rest stops. Things I have learnt : - probably the most valuable lesson this time around is that civil servants are not quite what they are usually portrayed as - so far they have been accommodative, friendly and even downright efficient. - I am not a night owl. I need my sleep, and I need lots of it. - my palmOne Zire 72 PDA and Sony Ericsson T630 mobile phone work really well together. DiGi had excellent GPRS coverage throughout my journeys. So I was able to check email and browse websites quite easily. I found out that Bush won the reelection at 4.30 in the morning, at the Tapah rest stop. What a way to start the day.