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Welcome Payson Area Computer Association! They are sitting out there watching me give a presentation on blogs as part of the AZACC presentation tour. They are located in Payson AZ and meet at the Payson Library. (By the way, the presentation is being done over Skype. Cool, huh?)

One of the things I am demoing to each group is how easy it is to post a new blog post. All I have done is create a post in OneNote and copy the text over to my blog post screen. During the meeting I edit it to make it more personal.

When the presentation is all done, I am hoping that one or more of them will comment and let us know what they thought of the presentation.

There were about 16 people in the audience for this session. If you have a blog you want to share with them, feel free to comment below!

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Welcome Corte Bella! They are sitting out there watching me give a presentation on blogs as part of the AZACC presentation tour. They are located in Sun City West here in the Phoenix area. (By the way, the presentation is being done over Skype. Cool, huh?)

One of the things I am demoing to each group is how easy it is to post a new blog post. All I have done is create a post in OneNote and copy the text over to my blog post screen.

When the presentation is all done, I am hoping that one or more of them will comment and let us know what they thought of the presentation.

There were about 25 people in the audience for this session. If you have a blog you want to share with them, feel free to comment below!

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Welcome EVACC! They are sitting out there watching me give a presentation on blogs as part of the AZACC presentation tour. They are located in Mesa AZ. (By the way, the presentation is being done over Skype. Cool, huh?)

One of the things I am demoing to each group is how easy it is to post a new blog post. All I have done is create a post in OneNote and copy the text over to my blog post screen.

When the presentation is all done, I am hoping that one or more of them will comment and let us know what they thought of the presentation.

There were about 10 people in the audience for this session. If you have a blog you want to share with them, feel free to comment below!

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This afternoon’s AZACC presentation was to Sun City Grand Computers. I did some rework on the slide compared to the morning’s presentation. Maybe one of them will comment and let us know what they thought.

There were about 70 people in the audience. WOW. That’s big for a local user group. Maybe some of them will talk about how they get people to the meetings!

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This morning starts another mini-tour for AZACC. This month, I am presenting an introduction to blogs and blogging to 20-25 groups. Most of the tour will be done over Skype.

This is the second half tour I have done this season. Being able to do them over Skype increases the number of presentations I can do without increasing the stress on my knees. This is a good thing.

As the materials get finalized, I will upload them to the cloud and add them to this post. For now, feel free to comment with blogs and blogging tips that you want to share.

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As one who works from home most of the time, I get sick of seeing the same walls, the same furniture, the same other person. Sure, I connect constantly with others over Skype, Twitter, Facebook, the phone, and other mechanisms. But most work days the only other human I see is Bruce.

Today is one of the nice exceptions. I am working away from Gangplank. I am using one of the spare community desks. I even got here early enough to get one of the desks with a monitor, so I can see what I am doing. I have already had conversations with lots of people I rarely see. Some of the conversations where quick “what do you think of this” while others are deep dives into something specific.

So what is Gangplank? Gangplank is a collaborative workspace facility in Chandler AZ. Located on Arizona Hwy in downtown Chandler, it looks at first glance like a big open office space. It is that, but it is also so much more.

Gangplank is founded on the idea that collaboration and cooperation does good things for all involved. What that means for me is that there are drop in desks and drop in table spaces that I can use when I have the need. There are conference rooms available for scheduling as needed. There are people around that I can talk with as needed or just know they are there. There is background noise as I need it.

But there is more to it than that. When I am home, it is easy to take too many breaks. Easy to bop from project to project and not make progress on any of them. Easy to be interrupted and distracted. Here, I work. I may get interrupted, but I also make sure I get things done. Here, I connect with people. Here, I learn.

Today is a good example of that. In just a few hours, I have written two articles, connected with a new PodCampAZ volunteer (Hi Marvin!), skyped with various APCUG people on a number of different topics, planned the menu for the APCUG face to face this morning, learned about a new opportunity, wrote this blog post and handled a bunch of emails. And it isn’t even 1:30 yet! At 2, I have a meeting here at Gangplank, then it is off to home. (And depending on how the meeting goes, I may even get a second blog post written before I head out!)

What Gangplank offers me is a wonderful place to become the worker I know I am. Even coming here once every couple of weeks allows me to keep connected with the people here. It forces me to get out of my comfort zone. It forces me to keep to a schedule. It reminds me that I make a difference. And, it doesn’t cost me anything but the gas to get here.

If you haven’t checked out Gangplank yet, TRY IT! What do you have to lose?

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I love Skype. It lets me sit in one place and talk with people in another place. Whether the person I need to talk with is in the other room or in another country, it doesn’t matter. It just works.

That said, there is one thing about Skype that bothers me. By default, Skype saves everything forever. For a screen recorder like me, that can leave me open for some embarrassing screen moments.

There is a fix: Clear your history. It is actually a two step process: Set Skype to not save the history and then clear the history itself. The process itself isn’t hard. It’s finding where to do it that gets complicated.

How do you learn what to do to clear the history? Watch the screencast – It tells you just what you need to know!

(See the video full size.)

What other tools would you like to see screencasts on? Let me know and I will pull them together. As QueenGeek can tell you, I take requests!