Mike Bowler

I listened to a truely amazing podcast this morning. Secrets of Mental Math has Arthur Benjamin demonstrating complicated "in his head" calculations in front of a live audience. He then talks about the techniques that he uses in order to do these calculations. Absolutely fascinating!

Arthur Benjamin is both a professor of mathematics and a magician. After wowing the audience with some amazing feats of calculation, he is happy to reveal his secrets. Seemingly impossible problems can often be broken down into more tractable steps and phonetic codes that can be held in memory and processed quickly. Benjamin explores these steps, giving examples of how he is able to multiply large numbers together, or pinpoint the day of the week of any birthday in any year.

Since I seem to get more comments here about the Millionaire Mind Intensive (MMI) than I do about anything else, I thought I'd mention that there's a Millionaire Mind Evening on April 18 in Toronto.

The most frequent question I get is whether the MMI is worthwhile. Specifically, I'm being asked if this person should attend. I can't tell you what the right answer is for you. All I can do is give you some information about it and let you decide for yourself.

If you're on the fence and aren't sure if you want to commit a three day weekend to the MMI then I'd highly recommend that you check out the evening. This is a three hour sampling of the material that you'll get in the MMI. It's nowhere near as comprehensive but will give you a taste of a Peak Potentials event and will give you an idea of whether the MMI is right for you.

For myself, the MMI was extremely valuable. I learned some things about myself that I hadn't been consciously aware of and was able to change some limiting beliefs that I'd had. I'm very happy that I attended and I highly recommend it.

If you're not familiar with the MMI then very briefly, it's a three day, extremely intensive, workshop on the psychology of money. If you've seen The Secret or read any material like Think and Grow Rich or others, you'll already realize that the biggest factor that determines your success is what's going on in your head. It has very little to do with the actual knowlege you've accumulated and is almost entirely based on your beliefs and your focus.

The first day of the MMI is mostly theory, explaining how your mind works and how you can work with it to become more successful. During the second day, you go through a whole slew of exercises to break down old limiting beliefs and then on the last day, you build up new empowering beliefs.

This is a really amazing program and I'm glad I went through it. This isn't the ultimate one-stop to fix your mind forever but is a really good course to give you a significant boost in your success. I've been recommending it ever since I took it.

If this sounds intriguing but you're still not sure that you want to commit to the full three days then check out three hours of sampler at the Millionaire Mind Evening.

We've been fans of the Cashflow games from Rich Dad for quite some time. These are board games designed to teach financial concepts. There are two games for adults (beginner and advanced) and one for kids. We've owned the two adult versions for a while and have found them very useful and fun to play.

We recently picked up Cashflow for Kids; the only one in the series that we hadn't tried. We've been waiting until our son was old enough to understand how to play the game. Although he's still probably a bit too young, he's really interested in the adult versions of the game and keeps asking to play. He was thrilled that we'd picked up the kids version and he's really been having fun with it.

I'm really impressed how they've managed to simplify the financial concepts for kids while still retaining the core ideas from the adult games. I expect that this game will be a favorite for a long time.

Over the last couple of months, I've been listening to an awful lot of podcasts. Now that we've moved out to the country, my commute is longer and podcasts make the drive to work pass very quickly.

I've found that podcast quality really varies significantly. Some are absolutely fabulous while others are a waste of time.

My absolute favorite at the moment are the TED Talks. These are recorded sessions from the TED Conference and features some of the most interesting speakers from around the world. Each speaker is given eighteen minutes to tell their story and the stories are amazing. All the speakers are passionate about their topic and most of them have a fabulous presentation style.

This morning, for example, I listened to Ben Saunders recounting his solo trip to the north pole. An amazing story of endurance and determination.

Colorado Software Summit 2006 starts in another week. If you haven't already booked for this then I highly recommend that you do.

Disclaimer: I'm speaking there this year, however, I'd be praising the conference even if I wasn't.

If I can only make it to one conference/event in a given year, this is the one I go to. The information I get here easily pays for the costs of attending. I learn as much from casual conversations in the hallway as I do from the formal sessions and those sessions are extremely worthwhile.

Every year, I come back from this conference having gotten a greater knowledge of things that I've already worked with and more importantly, having been exposed to things that I hadn't even been aware of previously. These new things frequently end up helping me immensely after the conference.

I see that No Fluff Just Stuff is coming to Toronto in October. I've heard good things about this event although I've never been to one myself.

Their timing is not very good from my perspective as that weekend overlaps the beginning of Colorado Software Summit where I'll be speaking on Ruby and Rails. Even if I wasn't speaking, Colorado Software Summit would be my first choice as this is the best conference I've ever been to. It has been consistently excellent year after year.

Kathy Sierra recommends this fabulous video of Sir Ken Robinson discussing creativity and our education system.

I went to a fascinating talk on NLP New Code last night, given by Hugh Comerford of NLP Centres Canada.

NLP today is split into two communities which have each gone down their own paths and developed specific techniques not used by the other. Each community is led by one of the two original founders of NLP; Richard Bandler and John Grinder.

"New code" is something developed by Grinders community and is a newer way to approach NLP than had been used traditionally. This was my first exposure to New Code and I found it quite interesting.

As I sit here drinking my first coffee of the day, I'm reading about the effects of coffee on the brain


Link from Simon Phipps.

Amy Hoy writes an amusing article about why online communities degenerate and how you can avoid that.

Here's a great story using Harry Potter characters to illustrate the differences between different training styles. Not only is it educational, it's fun at the same time.

Link from Kathy Sierra

Kathy Sierra has a fascinating blog entry where she talks about the negative effects of boring work environments on your actual brain chemistry.

Colorado Software Summit has put out the call for papers.

If I can only go to one conference in a given year, this is the one I go to. I can't recommend it highly enough.

I just finished reading Naked Conversations: how blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel. This book has given me quite a bit to think about with respect to my usage of this blog.

I had two main goals for the blog when I first started it (in November 2004). The first was to force myself to write more. Traditionally, I've been prone to writers block - writing articles has been very difficult as I'd get stuck and wouldn't know what to write next. I figured that like any other skill, my writing would improve if I just started doing a lot of it. This has mostly worked as I'd hoped. I do find it easier to dump my thoughts without getting stuck.

My other goal was to get exposure for my consulting company. I was already fairly well known in the local user group circles but I was hoping to get some wider exposure. This has also worked out reasonably well - I was quoted in the Globe and Mail last year by a reporter who had found me through this blog.

In addition to reflecting on my own blog, Naked Conversations has made me think about how my perception of certain companies has changed due to bloggers from those companies. In many cases, I've never met the bloggers that I'm suscribed to and yet I feel that I know them personally. This certainly influences my perceptions of the companies that these people work for.

If you're unsure whether you should start (or continue) a blog then I highly recommend this book. It offers up many ideas to consider on both sides of the argument. A most enjoyable book.

For myself, this book has convinced me to step up my activity on this blog. I'll be trying to focus more on original writing rather than just linking to things happening elsewhere.

I can rarely talk about the work I do for my clients and that has put a damper on many things I would have liked to write about in the past. Perhaps I'll talk about more lessons in the context of Literary List as I have no restrictions on my discussions of that (It's my site).

The book talks a lot about conversations and there hasn't been much of that here. I've been starting to see more comments over the last couple of months and I'll certainly be encouraging that as we go on.

Alec Saunders is arranging a blogger dinner on Monday March 6, 2006.


If you're interested then leave a comment on Alec's blog. Link from Rick Segal, who will apparently also be there.