Category Archives: Toastmasters

Day 13 of BlueSky; thoughts so far

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I signed up for Bluesky on November 2nd. Why then you ask? I had “try Bluesky or Threads” on my to do list for a long time. I was waiting until I had time to do it. Which meant finishing Java OCP 21 Certified Professional Study Guide and submitting all Word document drafts of Real-World Java: Helping You Navigate the Java Ecosystem. After that I started catching up on the many things I want to do. It was easy to decide between the two platforms. I remembered a number of Brazilian users had started using Bluesky when X temporarily banned their country. And by November 2nd, tech twitter had started moving over as well.

I do use Mastodon but it doesn’t fulfill the same need for me. For example, plain text search is something I use on Twitter/X and Bluesky that Mastodon does not have. So now I check three social media sites periodically. Some duplication; some differences in perspective.

Here is where I am right now. I’m sure this will change over time, but at just under two weeks, it is enough to feel comfortable.

Security

The only option for two factor is to receive an email with the two factor code, such as 5HAGF-MBYB1, and type it in. (I could copy paste in the browser, but not always in apps). Kinda annoying, but I’m set up now.

Youc an also set up application passwords instead of giving a third party application your real password which is nice.

Starter pack

Starter packs are groups of people you can follow with “follow all” to quickly get started. I followed the Java Champions starter pack. I also had some accounts I had stored in my to do list of people who gave their handles when they left Twitter/X that I was following. After I joined, Sharat created Java Community Starter Packs One and Two.

You can see all starter packs here and search/filter for what you are interested in.

Lists

In addition to my following feed, I subscribed to two lists. One on Cyber Security and one on US Politics. Both are things I want to check periodically but don’t need in my main feed. I expect to add more lists over time.

iPhone client

The official Bluesky Social app works great on the phone.

Mac client

While you can use the official Bluesky app, it is vey clearly an iPhone app. It’s the size of an iPhone which is very much not what I want on my computer. However, I was happy with the browser tab on a computer. I just didn’t want it in my main browser window with all the other stuff I aspire to look at :).

I asked on BlueSky and Josh Long had a great idea. On Safari on Mac, you can choose File > Add to Dock to get a shortcut for just that browser tab. Opening it is like a full screen app. Perfect. Oddly I can’t upload images to my posts so I use the main browser when I want to do that but the docked tab for read/write in general.

iPad client

While you can use the official Bluesky app, it is vey clearly an iPhone app. It’s the size of an iPhone and making it bigger just makes the font huge rather than being reactive. Also, I couldn’t type on the dummy iPhone keyboard. I abandoned that approach almost immediately.

I also tried Graysky. I couldn’t get it to let me log in with two factor and gave up on that too.

iPad has a similar approach to Mac for storing a browser link. However, it opened as a tab my main browser which is what I wanted to avoid! Additionally, I want to see notifications on my Ipad which a browser doesn’t do.

Then I tried the Skeets app which is working great for me. There’s a free and paid version. So far, the free version does everything I want.

converting a PDF to a PowerPoint file on Mac

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I was given a PDF of a presentation and asked to give a presentation on it. I’d like to use what is there and edit it a bit. I’d also like to not be presenting out of a PDF and use proper presentation software. I prefer PowerPoint to Keynote because someone else will give this presentation after me and I’d like them not to have the same problem of “here’s a file you can’t use”.

Didn’t work: Google Docs

Gmail offered to open the PDF in Google docs. The images got completely messed up. The ones that converted were in the wrong place compared to the words in the presentation and each other. Then after a number of pages, Google gave up on converting images.

Didn’t work: Drag from Mac preview to Keynote

Yes, I know I said I preferred PowerPoint for this task. However, it’s easy to export from Keynote to PowerPoint so it would have been fine as an intermediary. However, there were three problems

  1. You have to drag one slide at a time and there are 55 slides
  2. After dragging, it is just an image that isn’t even the same slze as the slide
  3. The slide is an image so I have to recreate any I want to edit.

What worked: Convert to KeyNote

CleverPDF has a PDF converter that lets you convert to a variety of formats. One is PowerPoint. (They also have Keynote). They make their money through a mix of ads and paid products. I didn’t look how secure your data is as this is essentially a public presentation (and not for my job)

I’m impressed with Clever PDF. The transformed file looks the same and is editable. And free.

our first toastmasters post-pandemic hybrid meeting

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Before the pandemic, our club mainly met over a video conference between our NY and NJ office. Everyone was in one of those rooms. (We had a couple other formats, but they were rare.)

Shortly before the pandemic, we talked about adding a phone option for people who would be telecommuting that day. But we shut down too fast for that to grow legs.

Last week, we had our first post-pandemic hybrid meeting. We used the same WebEx link that we’ve been using for the last 16 months. We also had a meeting room in the invite for anyone who happened to be onsite. (We are doing a pilot where a small number of people are onsite.

How it went

  • We had three people in the meeting room. (spread out). We were all visible in the pane of the WebEx representing the room.
  • We had about a dozen people in their homes.
  • Our club mascot (stuffed animal) also attended the meeting in person. He was super excited to be there after spending all that time alone in a file cabinet :).
  • When we were doing pure virtual meetings, we did introductions by having the Toastmaster say each person’s name (based n the participant list) and that person saying their group (we are a corporate club) and a quick fact. With hybrid, the Toastmaster had the people in the room go in a circle to introduce themselves and then did it based on the participant list. This approach is not ideal for a team meeting because it makes the in person participants seem more “central”, but I think it is ok for a Toastmasters meeting.
  • When we did introductions, I brought the mascot right up to the camera and had him wave so everyone could get a good view. (Anyone who joined during the pandemic was seeing the mascot for the first time.)
  • It so happened that one of the speakers (me) was in the physical room along with the Toastmaster. We also had a table topics speaker in the room.
  • We did not shake hands or touch in any way. (We had stopped doing that a little before we went virtual only)

What did I learn about speaking at a hybrid meeting

First, I learned that public speaking is like riding a bike. It came right back to me. Phew.

Additionally, I treated the conference room webcam as if it was a participant in the room. I stood in a place where I was clearly visible to the webcam. (Which was not the head of the table because it is a very long room and we don’t have zoom working yet.) I also made eye contact with the two people and the webcam. So I treated the webcam as if it were an actual person in the room.

What do I think will happen in the future

I think we will have more than three people in the room. But I think we will stay hybrid forever. The odds of everyone who wants to be in Toastmasters being in the office the day we meet seem low. And public speaking at work will involve a mix of in person and remote. So good to practice it.

We used to have Speakouts on Mondays so that people who weren’t in the office on Thursdays had an opportunity to speak. I think we will go back to something similar. Except rather than it always being Monday, have the day rotate. That way members who are only in the office once a week will still get to practice speaking in person.

I also think we will encourage members to meet in small groups at each give a speech. This will introduce more flexibility in speaking in person days they are in the office. It will also accommodate those who don’t feel comfortable being in a room with a lot of people for health reasons. Three people in a room is less risk than “whomever shows up for Toastmasters that day.” Notice I said health reasons. If someone merely doesn’t feel comfortable speaking in front of a group, that’s something to get over in Toastmasters!