The New York Times reports that the typical U.S. executive still wastes six weeks a year searching through paper piles and e-mail! Got better things to do with your time?

Since 1988, Eve Abbott has pioneered brain-based productivity systems for executives, managers and business owners. A Brain New Way to Work gets teams working at least 25% more productively through lively programs and practical consultations.

Eve is the author of How to Do Space Age Work with a Stone Age Brain ™. She earned her degree in Sociology and Psychology from the University of California and holds a Lifetime Adult Teaching Credential.

Eve is a popular guest on TV and Radio. Her expertise appears in The New York Times articles and she writes the ‘Business Wise’ column for the nationwide Business Journals.

When speaking, Eve combines her sense of humor with the latest in brain research to guarantee a fun and practical program for conferences ranging from Builder/Architect to Women Leaders 2008.

Eve says “My personal mission is saving every working person in America an hour a day so they have more time for life. My professional objective is converting the 12% of productivity wasted from information overload to your enterprise’s profits, where it belongs.”

S. C. Johnson & Son, Inc., Lotus Construction, Nixon Peabody, LLP and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency choose A Brain New Way to Work’s seminars for solutions to their employee’s challenges.

Watch Eve

As she introduces her topic in this video:

Listen to Eve

As she tells me about her work and how the NSA/NC Pro-Track class is helping her.

To hear my interview with Eve, click on the icon below.

 

 Interview: Eve Abbott [4:28m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I took time out this afternoon from my overflowing email inbox, endless string of to-do’s and overwhelming number of projects, to sneak into a Senior Leadership seminar at Hewlett-Packard. Since I’m neither senior (well, not in the terms the organization uses that term) nor a leader, I was flying under the radar. But it was a risk well-worth taking.

The speaker was best selling author and personal productivity guru, David Allen, the author of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity.

Allen spoke for 90 minutes about the powerful methods he has created to vastly increase personal organization, efficiency and ways to achieve creative results. It was apparent that he is a masterful professional speaker in his own right, as well as an author and executive coach. Some of my favorite quotes from his talk:

• Good executives are like Teflon - nothing should stick to them. But it’s apparent in most organizations that the boss is the bottleneck.
• Stuff should not lie fallow in the upper levels of an organization until the heat is on. Then it spews through three levels of the organization creating stress and unreasonable deadlines for everyone. Managers should not let things blow up, they should take action when things first show up.
• To sit there and have the same thought twice is not productive.

I was curious if the systems Allen teaches are as applicable to entrepreneurs and individual contributors as they are to managers in large organizations. To hear what he told me about this, click on the podcast icon below.

 

 Interview: David Allen [8:04m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Sci-Fi legend Bruce Sterling (Heavy Weather, The Difference Engine, Distraction and other great novels) is one of the cyberpunk gang of authors who have seen through the more pollyanna views of ‘cool new technology’ to warn that innovation can potentially create disruptions in everything from the climate system to the social system.

I’ve been a fan of his since coming across Heavy Weather in the mid-1990’s. Climate change was not cool back then. We’re so much older than that now and the planet is so much warmer.

I was delighted, and honored, when I ran into him earlier today at the FiRE Conference in San Diego and he agreed to be interviewed for Professionally Speaking.

I really had no idea what he’d talk about. The last thing I expected was a discussion on the Mafiosi-like features of the European Union bureaucracy in Brussels. In fact he’s planning to set his next book in Europe. To hear him explain why he finds modern “post-national” Europe so fascinating, and why he predicts the view from across the Atlantic will soon “return to the slightly paternalistic attitude of American’s as poorly educated hay-seeds,” click on the podcast icon below.

 

 Interview: Bruce Sterling [9:47m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I first met Hank at a Northern California National Speakers Association meeting in September 2007. I posted a podcast interview with him at that time, partly to demonstrate how easily podcasts can be created and posted. Since then Hank has signed up for the NSA/NC Pro-Track class and this podcast is part of the ongoing series of Pro-Track Profiles. So, for the first time ever, here’s a second Professionally Speaking podcast with the same person!

Hank’s passion for outstanding customer interactions - or Touchpoints - was born in the food and beverage industry. As a waiter and restaurant manager during collage, Hank experienced first-hand the financial benefit of consistently delivering outstanding customer experiences.

In 2002 Hank co-founded the pioneering research consultancy, Touchpoint Metrics. Hank served as its President/CEO, co-invented their Touchpoint Mapping methodology, and led Customer Experience Management (CEM) engagements with organizations large and small, including with GE, Microsoft, and AT&T.

Now known as the “Touchpoint Guru,” Hank is currently working on his first book, The Touchpoint Principle, How to Dominate Your Market Touchpoint by Customer Touchpoint.

Visit www.TouchpointGuru.com to sign up for Hank’s “Touchpointer” newsletter and for more information regarding CEM, Touchpoints, and how he can help as a speaker or consultant.

I caught up with Hank at a break in a recent Pro-Track class. To hear my interview, click on the podcast icon below.

 

 Interview: Hank Brigman [3:54m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Carlos Cruz is a life and business coach, corporate, community and personal motivational speaker, and trainer. Carlos, a former member of the US Navy, founded A Path to Success, and he is an experienced small business owner and consultant.

Carlos believes there are three essential leadership qualities to look for when choosing a speaker, coach, and trainer: life experience, professional training, and an ongoing commitment to rigorous self-examination and self-development. With his continued, sincere committment to developing and integrating these leadership qualities for himself, Carlos has built a firm foundation, and he is seriously dedicated to earning and maintaining your trust.

He is a member of the National Speakers Association 2008 Pro-Track class for emerging speakers. I caught up with Carlos at a recent meeting and asked him about his business and what he is getting out of Pro-Track. To hear what he told me, click on the podcast icon below.

 

 Interview: Carlos Cruz [5:50m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Carlos Gutierrez is an inspirational bilingual speaker.

Carlos is a survivor. He’s survived several car accidents and paralysis. Carlos’s story is captivating; not only for his achievements, but for his circumstances and his challenging positive attitude. His inspiration comes from the heart.

Carlos is an entrepreneur. In the last five years, he has built three different businesses, and has inspired thousands of people with his presentations and his sales career in Finance and Real Estate. Carlos is writing a book in Spanish to help and inspire people in his native language. Eventually, he plans to write the book in English.

Carlos speaks on his passions: Education, Real Estate Investment, Love, Compassion, Suicide Prevention, Parenting, Marriage, Wealth, Happiness and Life Purpose, Human and Civil Rights.

I asked Carlos to explain more about his speaking topics and what value he’s finding in the National Speakers Association Pro-Track program. To hear what he told me, click on the podcast icon below.

 

 Interview: Carlos Guiterrez [4:07m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Just after I finished talking with Art Fong, my colleague Barbara Waugh introduced me to another distinguished HP retiree - Zvonko Fazarinc.

Dr. Fazarinc emigrated from Yugoslavia and started working at HP Labs in 1965. He remembers clearly the impact that Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett’s management style had on Labs - which they used to visit every morning when arriving at work.

Listen to the podcast to hear some amazing stories - such as the time he tried to convince Dave Packard that he found more socialism in action with the HP Way than back home in Yugoslavia!

 

 Zvonko Fazarinc - HP Retiree [5:03m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

One of the unexpected delights in the HP Labs event in Palo Alto today was the opportunity to meet many of the retired employees who were invited to attend.

It was a great honor to talk with Art Fong. He was recruited to the company back in 1946 by Bill Hewlett over a home-cooked spaghetti dinner. He was one of the first 100 employees at what is now a 172,000 person company.

He shared some stories of his years at HP and how inventions he created helped change history. His opinion of the research being done today? “Real cool!”

To hear Art discuss unique moments in HP history, click on the podcast icon below.

 

 HP retireee Art Fong [5:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

E Pluribus Unum - Out of One, Many
HP Labs Pluribus - Out of Many projectors, One super-screen

Super-bright, large-scale, and very high-resolution digital projectors are indispensable tools of modern communication. They help CEOs wow audiences of analysts. They make rock concerts intimate. They turn computer gaming into a spectator sport. And they can make digital cinema an instant reality.

They are also very expensive. Prices for high-end projectors run into tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, which keeps these devices from being widely used.

HP Labs’ Nelson Chang and Niranjan Damera-Venkata had a hunch they could make a much cheaper projection system by combining the outputs of several smaller projectors to create a single, high-quality image. They work in the Multimedia Interaction and Understanding Lab in Palo Alto on a project code-named Pluribus.

Seeing Pluribus in action, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the huge, crystal-clear picture it creates. Hook a 16-foot screen up to a game of Madden NFL Football, for example, and the players are life-size - putting you front row and center at the same scale as the real thing.
Although Pluribus looks great, its true appeal lies in the cost savings it offers anyone in the business of projecting large images. How so? For example, Pluribus can combine ten off-the-shelf projectors costing $1,000 each to project an image as bright and sharp as that created by a single high-grade projector costing $100,000.

Once this technology reaches your local Best Buy it will cause the prices of what is possible with high-end home theatre to be reset to a new price-point. You’ll just have to be patient. Hear Nelson and Niranjan discuss their work in the podcast.

 

 Pluribus - Video Projection on Steroids [4:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Bernardo Huberman is one of only four Senior Fellows at HP Labs - the most distinguished technologists in the company. He runs the Social Computing Lab. His research focus is on the behavior of millions of people using the internet and how this can be analyzed and predicted. He is recognized around the world as an authority on how people communicate and collaborate on the Internet. His lab has recently developed Cloudprint, which lets you store documents in the cloud so you can retrieve and print them on any printer using a mobile phone.

One amusing way of illustrating his research in everyday terms is the choices people make when they place bets. Using the patters of behavior that the bookmakers need to understand to make a living, he looks at predictions we can make in corporate purchasing departments and other business settings.

To hear Bernardo’s remarks click on the podcast icon below.

 

 Bernardo Huberman - Social Computing [3:54m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download