The title of my speech is “What Took You So Long?” which is what many of you may be asking. You’ve seen me at meetings for several months, I’ve served nearly every role. Yet I haven’t delivered my ice breaker. Let me explain why I’ve needed such a running start to clear this hurdle.

Many years ago, perhaps 10, I was freelancing and sitting in a conference room with maybe 5 other women. I was talking confidently about a subject I knew very well when suddenly, all I saw were their eyes on me. I grew flush, my heart began to pound, my hands began to sweat, my mouth dried up. I was having a panic attack. I excused myself and cut the meeting short   blaming seafood I had the night before. A lie.

In the years since, situations even remotely similar to this one trigger the same physical response. As a consequence I’ve suffered in several ways:

• Primarily, these situations are excruciating. For days before a job interview or giving a training session I’m filled with anxiety and dread. In the moment itself I feel I’m going to pass out.
• Which results in the other way I’ve suffered: I avoid these situations. I don’t speak up in meetings because I can’t articulate my ideas. I don’t apply for positions for fear of the interview. I’m loathe to further my education because it likely involves giving presentations.
• And finally, it’s even so bad I get vicariously nervous for others. My sister recently received an award and I attended the banquet. She was last to be recognized and take the podium. I couldn’t even look at her until the whole thing was over for fear the stricken look on my face would register with her and she’d freeze up.

It’s silly I know, but more than that, it’s incredibly frustrating. For one reason, it hasn’t always been thus. In the past, while I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it, it wasn’t a big deal to stand up and speak.

What bothers me the most is it runs counter to all other trends in my life. Professionally, I’ve been laid off, I’ve been fired, I’ve been un employed, under-employed, I’ve run my own business. I’ve emerged from these experiences never more confident in my work – what I know, the skills I have and the value I bring to an organization. Personally, having celebrated a birthday yesterday, I won’t say which one, but old enough to care less about impressing others, and just content to be who I am.

I don’t recall who first recommended Toastmasters to me but I do recall what won me over:

1. All of you. You’ve been welcoming and supportive and I can’t tell you how much that means to me.
2. All of you. I’m inspired by your efforts and accomplishments. I’m particularly in awe of those for whom English is just one of the languages you speak.
3. There’s a grammarian! I love that! I love words, how they sound, how they feel in your mouth when you say them, their pedigree and intersections with popular culture. Before switching with Jodi, I was slated to be Grammarian today and would have picked “frugal”, froo-gull.
4. I appreciate good oratory. I majored in Latin in college where I read a lot of Cicero. I love a good rhetorical device. Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? “How long, Cataline, will you abuse our patience?”
5. Finally, I like the Toastmasters program itself. I find it refreshingly understated in an over-hyped, hyperbolic world. Turn on the television or walk through the book store and be bombarded with guarantees to improve yourself through no effort at all. “Lose weight without giving up the foods you love!” “Master Javascript in 24 Hours!”

Toastmasters, on the other hand, makes no such guarantees. Rather, you’re invited to apply yourself consistently and diligently over the course of many months. And the reward for all this effort? Mastery? No. Competence.

In today’s world where everyone is a rock star and all our children are above average, “competence” sounds like a euphemism for low achievement. Yet it’s what I’m striving for. I’ll keep showing up. I’ll keep volunteering for roles. I’ll keep putting myself in the path of having to stand and speak. So that maybe, over time, if I work hard, I might just be competent.

• Reserve http://www.z.umn.edu/toastmasters.
• Get Moo cards to pass out during events.
• Work campus events.
• Encourage members to tweet about meetings and use the hashtags #umn and #toastmasters.
• Get our meetings on the University calendar.
• Post our meetings in the Minnesota Daily.
• Improve the look of our Freetoast site, possibly incorporating University identity.
• Encourage members to complete their member profile and post a picture.
• Create a LinkedIn group for Golden Toasters.

I was table topics master at a recent Toastmasters meeting. The meeting’s theme was “Summer Travels.”

The phrase evokes for me an image of sunny days, the open road, and hanging your hand out the window. But not all summer travels are foot loose and fancy-free. Last month I visited the Bonneville Salt Flats west of Salt Lake City and was reminded of the ill-fated Donner Party, who lost half their members trapped in the Sierra Nevadas. The reason they were crossing mountains in the winter of 1846, is their summer travels across the Great Salt Lake Desert took too long.

Tell me how you get through experiences that are long and grueling. Maybe it’s a car trip across the Dakotas or a wedged into a plane seat for a long flight. How do you prepare and how do you pass the time?

In literature, travel is often a metaphor for a journey of self-discovery. Think Huckleberry Finn or Jack Kerouac in On the Road. The adventure through the landscape mirrors the protagonist’s own self-awareness. I work for the Office of International Programs and our work is predicated on the idea that travel opens doors in the mind. T.S. Eliot wrote, “And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.”

Describe an experience where you returned from a trip changed in some way. A time when your experience away gave you new eyes and new insights into your everyday world.

The travel movie has been a favorite Hollywood trope since the start. What a great way to place a beloved character in all manner of bizzare situations. Recall the Bob Hope road movies or “The Wizard of Oz.” They’re usually zaney and screwball, like “Some Like It Hot” or “Cannonball Run.” One of my favorites is the low-brow, “National Lampoon’s Vacation.” In our own family, the times we remember most fondly is when things went horribly wrong… the time we all got food poisoning, the time we drove off with the cake on the top of the car, the time my mom and dad navigated our rental car through Paris.

Talk about a travel experience where something went wrong (e.g. you missed a flight, you forgot to pack the tent, the mosquitos were horrible). How did you adapt? And do you think back on this experience fondly or does it still give you nightmares?

Day One

After a day-long conference, I headed to the airport hoping to catch the last few innings of the Twins home opener. I missed it and had plenty of time to walk the concourse, surf my iPod and size up the gathering crowd; hoping not to sit next to her or him. This being a flight to San Francisco, there was a third category, a shim, with breasts and a beard, whom I did sit next to, and who was delightful.

A plane ride, a taxi ride and I was enjoying a cocktail in the hotel bar of Hyatt Fishermans Wharf with Melinda June, Ben-Bob, and a new acquaintance from London, YB.

Day Two

Up at my usual Central Daylight Time and well before the others, I tip-toed down to Starbucks where I sipped and read my book, The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath. Back at the hotel, unrushed, we plan our day, shower, dress and head out. MJ and I walked the wharf, stopping at Boudin for delicious sour-dough bread shaped like turtles. Then on to the Ferry Building and it’s foodie marketplace where we reunited with YB for lunch overlooking San Francisco Bay. Our ambitious plans for the afternoon waned as we failed to spot any double-decker tour buses which had been ubiquitous all morning. Now chilled and underdressed, we went back to the hotel to regroup.

A short nap and warmer clothes prepared me for the evening which started with a Cable Car ride to the shopping district. We split up among DSW, H&M and the Apple Store, then reunited over cocktails at The St. Francis Hotel on Union Square. The monument in the square commemorated Admiral Dewey’s victory at Manila Bay the very same day 112 years ago.

Now dinner, and for that we taxied to Sordini’s in North Beach to meet up with YB’s friend Dylan. It was fun to hear two Brits talk about the States. I go to bed stuffed and hiccupping Chianti.

Day Three

Again I’m awake before I should be, killing time at Starbucks before meeting Ben and Neda for breakfast. After which MJ and I walk to the pier and board a ferry to Alcatraz. It’s fascinating and satisfying. Here it is looking just like in the movies and on the History Channel. Back on land we head to City Lights Bookstore. I recently read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and On the Road. In fact, I characterized this trip as MJ playing Dean Moriarty and me just “shambling after.” I had to see this landmark of the Beat generation. I marveled over the new print of Animal Farm illustrated by Ralph Steadman but left with a simple copy of Howl.

We’re hungry so we walk the streets of Chinatown and select a place that looks the most authentic — which is to say there was nothing Chinesey about it — just formica tables and fluorescent lights. Inside, a table of men chat and nibble. Not only were they straight out of central casting for chinamen in a 50′s western but thanks to one of them, I now understand the expression, “long in the tooth.”

Time to leave our heart in San Francisco but not without visiting its greatest landmark, the Golden Gate Bridge. Our stop was brief but long enough to take in its awesomeness.

I’m a lousy navigator so we’re grateful for GPS which guides us to Oakland. Crossing the Bay Bridge, we can’t help think of the 1989 earthquake that flattened these double decks. Our destination is the home of MJ’s friend Heidi, a woman she knows only through blogging, has never met in person. Heidi’s a great cook who fills us with pasta and warm cookies. We supplied the cannoli from a bakery in North Beach. Many Godfather references were made.

Day Four

Our pledge to make Reno that night failed. We ran out of steam in Auburn and good thing too, we would have missed gorgeous scenery to darkness and risked driving off the road to tiredness. We reached Reno and it’s Whole Foods the following afternoon. We ate lunch, caught up on social sites and gathered grubstake for the empty miles ahead. Empty indeed. Nothing here but supermax prisons which you can’t see but know you’re near by the signs warning not to pick up hitchhikers. I took the control of the wheel while MJ took control of the iPod. Jonathan Richman and a 75 mile per hour speed limit (we did 80+), shot us across the state and into the arms of West Wendover, NV. Our hotel/casino was a lonely, inexpensive place that straddled the state line and time zone. We picked at the buffet, joined a sorry collection of guests at the slots, then shuffled off to our room for a road-weary sleep.

Day Five

Daylight revealed the valley we descended into the night before — unbelievably broad, flat and salty-white. East of town are the Bonneville Salt Flats. I expected an interpretive center with interactive displays and uniformed staff. Instead, at the end of a very long road stood a solitary sign: weathered, pock-marked and full of bullet holes. This was better; austerity fit the place, so simple and elemental. I scooped salt into a left-over TSA baggie.

Further down I-80 was Salt Lake City. I’ve read Under the Banner of Heaven and I’ve seen the send-up of Mormons on South Park but neither prepared me for Temple Square. We were approached by no fewer than a dozen young women, working in pairs, clutching the Book of Mormon to their breast and beseeching us (I never use that word but it’s called for here) to explore the grounds, linger in the Visitor Centers both North and South, and hear the story of Joseph Smith. What creeped me out has less to do with Mormonism than my unease among shiny, happy people. And they were happy, and polite and earnest. My dark side supposes they go home to a father who beats them but I don’t think so.

We smiled and backed away from Utah and into Wyoming. MJ drove while I picked M&Ms out of the trail mix. The Cowboy State has few people, fewer towns but amazing views. There was snow in the higher elevations and these curious buildings – square, brick, a single smoke stack and door but no windows and no tire tracks near. We’re still puzzling over them.

The most beautiful stretch was between Laramie and Cheyenne. It was dusk and felt like a late winter storm was organizing. Curt Gowdy’s from these parts. It was a long day and we were happy to check in at the Holiday Inn Express. I dragged MJ to a Mexican restaurant for dinner. Cheyenne has an abundance of drive-in motels. In other towns they collect weeds, adulterers and riffraff on the lam. In Cheyenne they’re as tidy and inviting as their 50s-era postcard, including elaborate neon sign and western theme — The Lariat, The Hitching Post. Why do these motor inns thrive while others slip into disrepair and ill repute?

Day Six

Weeks before our trip MJ picked two things to do in Cheyenne: visit the Cow Girl Museum and buy boots. The museum was closed for renovations and we nearly talked ourselves out of spending money on boots. But how could we skip The Wrangler? They had walls and walls of boots and that was just for cowgirls! We each bought a pair (or two) before hitting the trail.

Welcome to Nebraska but don’t get too comfy because, “THE END OF TIMES ARE UPON US!” An enormous Jesus menaces us at the border. Nebraska is there so cross-country travelers can make up time, like lag in a project timeline. We left the interstate just once for a yummy lunch at a diner shaped like an igloo. We had pie.

Omaha is cool, which was news to me. We had a fine Indian meal in the warehouse district near the river. The streets and outdoor cafes were packed with college kids, middle-aged conventioneers and high school prom couples. There was a great energy in the 70 degree air. Also, many mixed race couples.

Day Seven

The point of today is to get home. After our routine visit to Starbuck’s, we head out of town. For the first time in five days, the compass registers North. We ascend 29 then cut over to 169 which takes us to the Twin Cities and my home in north Minneapolis. MJ deposits me on my lawn and heads to a friends house where she can be alone til they come home from work. She’s got a full day tomorrow followed by final drive to Chicago. God bless her.

Dear [Project Name], We can’t go on seeing each other… I’m… I’m breaking up with you.

But seriously, it needs to work the way I scripted it below. I know you’re getting feedback but you need to distill that into actionable items and submit them to me in writing. We delivered the project according to spec, any new requirements go on a new project. Again, if there’s is a bug, let me know by email and I will fix it immediately.

I realize this seems dispassionate after the thrill of going live, but I’m following project management protocols and yielding to the reality of being one developer for many units. In the space occupied by [Your Project], other equally-urgent projects have taken residence. Returning to the break-up metaphor, I’ve moved on.

Unlike a break-up however, we all gather for a post-mortem — a Close-Out Meeting in PM parlance — where we discuss what went well, what didn’t. All with a goal of teasing out lessons to apply to future projects. Perhaps this thread reveals one lesson: we should have included [Group of Users] in a testing phase.

I will schedule a Close-Out Meeting for some time in June. I’ll see you at our training this afternoon. I hope it’s not weird.

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I heard an interview with Tom Ford — he dresses entirely in black and white — who says you could blindfold him and he could still “feel” the color red on his skin. To a math genius numbers have mood and personality. Maybe my thing is words, the way they sound, their rhyme and meter, the shape of my mouth when I say them, their pedigree and intersection with popular culture. The word frugal fascinates me now.

Run-ins with my word are awkward, like being introduced to to your ex. I can’t help but shimmy my shoulders and curl my lip. Why am I so repulsed? It could be the unattractive contortion of mouth, jaw and neck required to shape it. The choking, regurgitating noise it makes. Its meaning full of Orwellian overtones. Its presumption in a sentence when another word will do.

I don’t know why it gives me the creeps, but there it was in the very next essay. Yuck.

Join Facebook as you.
Build a profile. Ratchet down the privacy settings. Upload a decent, up-close picture of yourself – just you, not with your spouse or kids. Men, if you’re single and looking, don’t put a picture of you holding a fish.

Update your status regularly.
Don’t join Facebook never to be heard from again but don’t post too often either. Update your status once-a-week at a minimum to let people know you’re there. In your posts, don’t be boring – “so sleepy”; mundane – “eating a cookie!”; snarky – “I hate old people”; share too much – “I love my new boy shorts”; obtuse – “think I put the tubes back together the right way”; forced – “I don’t know what to write on my Facebook status”; or cliched – “it is what it is.”

Be you, be original, be kind. If being you means being political or strident, that’s cool. Just be aware that no positions go unchallenged and dialog easily morphs into personal attacks. Assume a current or future employer will read your posts.

Make friends.
Friend a few people but not coworkers. Be patient – people will find and friend you. Don’t accept friend invitations from people you don’t know.

Go easy on the apps and quizzes.
If you take quizzes, edit your settings so they don’t show in your friend’s feed. Don’t start off by sending everyone a beer or flowers or an untraceable cellphone from mafia wars. Ignore all invitations sent to you. This is how Facebook viruses spread and until you know how to recognize them, ignore them all.

Photos.
Don’t upload embarrassing photos and tag your friends. I don’t post pictures of kids. That’s me, I just don’t. Too much true crime TV I guess.

Wait, watch and learn.
Observe your friend’s behavior and take note of what you like and don’t like. Once you “get it” you’re ready to start a Facebook group.

It’s not super helpful, but read OIT’s page on social media.

Consider whether Facebook is the best home for your group. Other campus groups use Ning. I’m partial to LinkedIn for connecting with alumni. Even Twitter can be leveraged to promote your group. If you host events, Facebook and Ning are handy for tracking RSVPs. If it’s branding, awareness and pride you’re building, set up shop on LinkedIn. For buzz go with Twitter.

You can double-up and have a presence in more than one sphere. Twitter is a good complement to Facebook or Ning – pinging your constituents and driving them back to your main site. Don’t try to be everywhere in a major way. Go ahead and join slideshare and Flickr just direct all comers back to your primary page.

Whichever social media platform you settle on, it’s good to have a web site backstop. A web page provides a place to link to for more information. For this, try a UThink blog.

How they did it: They built on a technology backbone laid down by the Dean campaign. They spread out to all networks and channels, not just the most popular. Analytics was the “linebacker.” It directed all their efforts from the massive to the teeny. Praise for Silverback, check it out.

About the Obama brand: They sold their “product” not simply by what it does, but how it improves lives. By employing consistent colors and images they gave the impression of stability, even-temper, durability and a sense of control. Fully justified text suggested solidity, firmness and a complete grasp. They consistently used “we” rather than “he.” These measures balanced the “Hope” and “Change” aspects of the brand – the flip side of which can evoke aloofness or lack of experience.

What worked: Working fast, super fast! Providing basic resources to folks in the field. Letting go of the brand and allowing the masses to mash it up. The man on the street created his own buttons and posters and riffed on the brand in a way that strengthened, rather than weakened it. By letting go, they captured the moment.