Simone Brunozzi

Tomorrow: South Africa.
Can’t wait.

Job opportunities at Amazon APAC.

While on holiday, I finished reading “Do the work” on my Kindle.
I think that it’s an excellent book, with tons of good advice. If you have a Kindle, it’s free. Get it :)

Resonate: one of the best books on presentations that I’ve ever read.
Unfortunately, I don’t know Nancy Duarte personally, and I cannot recommend her services (trainings, etc). But the book is pure gold. Buy it.

In the past few weeks, I’ve happily watched The Long Way Round DVD for several hours. (it also includes The Long Way Down, which is another trip).
I loved it, despite this is not a highly professional documentary like the ones produced by Discovery or National Geographic, and despite sometimes the episodes could have been compressed more (in other words, sometimes they spent too much time on something).
If you don’t know, the Long Way Round is an adventure organized by Ewan Mcregor, a very successful british actor, and Charley Boorman, an actor as well. They ride motorbikes from London to New York, crossing most of Asia and most of North America.

They also use the adventure to do some charity work on behalf of Unicef.

Motorbike adventures are incredible. If you never did one, you should.

I have an “evil plan” (this explains the term “Evil Plans”),  but it seems that the third adventure, The Long Way Up, is not going to happen.
Instead, Charley is organizing a shorter, but equally interesting, trip in Africa which is open to 25 motorbikers.

A conference like this one would be much needed in Italy. In english, of course.

I’d like to be selected as a volunteer for this 1-week project: going to Ghana to teach kids, and teachers, how to use e-book readers.
This is an initiative by Worldreader.org and Edreams.
This is the video in which I explain my ideas. Enjoy :)

Yesterday, today, and for the next weekend, I’m attending an art workshop at Lasalle College of the Arts in Singapore, a beautiful building and, from what I know, a great Art school.

Doing “art”, or at least trying to, inspired me again.
I was able to feel parts of my brain, of my soul, again.
It’s like being a passionate motorbiker, and the moment when you ride a motorbike again after years of silence. Same thing.
(Oh, by the way: did you know about my Evil Plan for 2011? It involves motorbikes. “Evil Plan” is inspired by a book by Hugh McLeod, here’s my review).
I don’t define myself as an “artist”, but for sure I have a great passion for art and creativity, and I cannot express it that much lately.

I decided to immediately apply these new stimulus to my job, being a Technology Evangelist for Amazon.com, which implies giving a lot of PowerPoint presentations. I think that most of us focus TOO MUCH on PowerPoint, and too little on the effectiveness of our presentation.
Also, most of our presentations are bullet points. They are supposed to be hand-outs, but they’re instead using during live presentations. That doesn’t bring what the audience wants.
Yes, in the year 2011, still most presentations can be improved, by focusing more on the message, rather than on PowerPoint.

I consider myself better than the average, simply because I prepare and deliver presentations almost on a daily basis (I’m not at almost 300 presentations in the last three years), not because I have a better brain or I’m a genius. This means that with a little effort, anyone can improve any presentation.

I still think that there’s too much focus on PowerPoint. What to do?
I decided to draw some new slides, by hand (with pencil and pen).
Strange, right?

These are the results (click the image to see it bigger):

The above, Cloud Slide #1, simply says “Cloud Computing”, and it’s supposed to be used when you introduce the concept of Cloud Computing to the audience. No extra text here, just the “title”. If you want to know more about it, see what Wikipedia says about Cloud Computing.

The one above is the Cloud Slide #2.
Amazon Web Services (which is the Cloud Computing platform I talk about, most of the times) is a set of building blocks: Storage, or Amazon S3; Computing, or Amazon EC2; etcetera. Amazon Web Services, or AWS, allows to use a combination of these building blocks, based on your specific needs.
There are also tools that give you control on how the overall system behaves, such as Cloud Formation.
This slide shows these “components”, or services, in the form of cubes with a little “dent” on the side, which represents their ability to be mixed together. It’s an idea, of course, and I’m sure that it can be improved.

Third, and last, some very “ugly” sketches for simple slides (on the upper part, you can see some nice drawings that I was doing during the class).

The one with the clock tries to explain how Amazon EC2 is billed: by the hour.
Every hour, you pay an amount based on the cost of the Virtual Server you are running, times the number of Virtual Servers: Pay as you go, pay only for what you use. The others are less clear, just simple sketches that I was playing with.

What do you think? Comments?
Would you like to see a presentation done this way, instead of the usual PowerPoint and bullet points?

This photo gallery by my friend Luca Sartoni, Portraits at SXSW, is simply spectacular.

p.s. This is my favourite one.

Do you want to relax? Watch this nice slideshow :)

Click below for the Flickr set.

It’s Sunday, I’m in Singapore, my girlfriend is still in the US, therefore I have plenty of time to study Portuguese, read books about food, and write on the blog.
The last few days have been interesting for me.
Last Tuesday, at the Founder Institute in San Francisco, my session was very well received… And I liked the interaction with the students and the Mentors. Well done, Adeo! These are the (almost self-explanatory) slides that I used for my presentation: Startup Research. If you like them, well, like them on Facebook too, or on Twitter :)

My Evil Plan for 2011, being part of The Long Way Up, is still just a dream, as I cannot get in touch with any of the organizers.

By the way, a lot of people liked my “review” of Evil Plans, the book by Hugh McLeod. Take a look at it, and drop a comment and tell me what you think.

And, yeah, I miss the US today. Not just Seattle and the Washington State (and Port Townsend’s pizza), but also San Francisco and the “vibe” that you breath there.
Let me share with you a couple of pictures from San Fran. Hope you like them :)

(The FULL SET of Pictures is on Flickr. Hope you like it.)

Last, but not least, I really wish that Japan will soon recover from this recent disaster (Earthquake + Tsunami). I don’t exactly believe in God, but my prayers are for these people there.

Have a great weekend.