public-speaking 13

Run on ChatGPT, weekly. Run a weekly scan for events I should speak at or attend. Today's date and all action dates should use Singapore time. Read from @LocalMCP without modifying files. Give me registry changes that I can copy into: `~/Dropbox/notes/talk-event-list.tsv` ## Understand me first Read and apply, as relevant: - `~/Dropbox/notes/talk-event-list.tsv` - talk registry - `~/Dropbox/notes/talks.md` - talk ideas, proposals and preparation - `~/code/talks/README.md` and relevant talk transcripts - delivered talks and formats - my current calendars via `gws` - the `anand-objectives`, `reframe-question`, `expert-lens` and `blind-spot` skills - If required: `~/Dropbox/notes/people.md`, relevant `about/*.md`, and recent relevant transcripts - how I learn from and connect with people State which calendars and personal sources you successfully checked. ## Find events Search official event, CFP and registration pages for: - events occurring in the next 9 months; - CFPs open up to 12 months ahead. Prioritize Singapore, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and remote events. Consider Mumbai, Delhi for valuable opportunities, other locations only for unusually valuable opportunities. Search beyond AI and technology events. Also find open trade-, domain- and function-specific events where AI creates a useful angle for that audience - for example education, journalism, design, publishing, government, HR, product, consulting, finance, healthcare, manufacturing, law, or investment. For a non-AI event, do not propose a generic "AI is transforming this field" talk. Identify a specific workflow, decision, risk, experiment or new capability that would matter to that audience and could produce an evidence-rich, useful session. Do not penalize an event because it requires new material. Expanding my portfolio of talks, experiments and relationships is part of the objective. Reward new material when it could become a reusable asset. ## Constraints I never pay to attend or speak. Use these cost values: - `free` - attendance is explicitly free; - `free_if_speaker` - accepted speakers receive free access; - `paid` - I would have to pay; - `unknown` - not verified. Do not recommend `paid` events. Recommend `free_if_speaker` events only for speaking. Keep high-value `unknown` events as watch items until cost is verified. Prefer open CFPs and public registration over invitation-only events. Remind me at a useful action date, normally: - 14-21 days before a CFP closes; - early enough to register before capacity or free places disappear; - immediately, if an important opportunity is discovered later than ideal. ## Rank by value Consider: - fit with my objectives and interests; - strength and specificity of the AI angle; - learning value; - relationship value and quality of likely participants; - opportunity to test an idea with an audience; - potential to create a reusable talk, experiment, benchmark, dataset, demo or relationship asset; - reach and credibility; - novelty relative to my existing audiences and portfolio; - openness and likelihood of acceptance; - calendar and travel fit; - preparation and travel effort; - commercial noise. Do not recommend an event merely because it is large, prestigious or contains "AI" in its title. Include at least one strong wildcard outside my usual communities when one exists. ## Use the registry to avoid repetition Read all existing registry rows before searching. Identify the same event using its existing `event_id`, canonical official URL, or normalized event name + year + city. Never create a duplicate row for another page belonging to the same event. Silently recheck relevant active events, but mention a previously registered event in the report only when: - its action date is now due; - a deadline, date, location, format, cost, availability or URL changed; - an unknown fact was resolved; - my calendar or travel fit materially changed; - new information materially changes its priority; - I explicitly need to reconsider it. Otherwise, suppress it completely. Do not change a registry row merely to record that it was checked again. Update it only when a material field, status, action or next-review date changes. Keep past events in the registry as history. Mark them `expired`, `attended` or `spoke`; do not delete them merely because they have passed. Add a researched event to the registry when it is: - worth recommending or watching; or - a plausible recurring candidate whose rejection should be remembered. Do not add obviously irrelevant search results. ## Registry schema Fields: - `event_id`: stable lowercase identifier such as `2026-containerdays-singapore`. Preserve it forever. - `event_name` - `organizer` - `start_date` - `end_date` - `city` - `country` - `format`: `in_person`, `online` or `hybrid`. - `event_type` - `domains`: short semicolon-separated terms. - `audience` - `official_url` - `cfp_url` - `cfp_deadline` - `registration_url` - `registration_deadline` - `cost_status` - `recommendation`: `speak`, `attend`, `both`, `watch` or `skip`. - `ai_angle` - `why_for_me` - `priority`: `1` highest through `5` lowest. - `status`: `discovered`, `watching`, `action_due`, `submitted`, `registered`, `invited`, `rejected`, `skip`, `expired`, `cancelled`, `attended` or `spoke`. - `next_action` - `action_due`: when I should act or be reminded - not necessarily the final deadline. - `next_review`: when the event should next be reconsidered if no action is currently due. - `first_seen`: preserve the original value. - `last_changed`: update only after a material change. - `confidence`: `high`, `medium` or `low`. - `notes` Rules: - Dates: `YYYY-MM-DD`; leave unknown dates blank. - Use only official canonical URLs where possible. - Fields must contain no tabs or line breaks. Use semicolons within fields. - Keep `ai_angle`, `why_for_me`, `next_action` and `notes` concise. ## Output ### 1. Recommended actions Show only events that are: - **NEW** - newly discovered and worth my attention; - **DUE** - action is timely now; - **CHANGED** - material facts or priority changed. Rank by value, not by deadline alone. Do not fill a quota. Return at most 10. For each, give: 1. Tag: **NEW**, **DUE** or **CHANGED** 2. Event, date, location and official link 3. **Speak**, **Attend**, **Both** or **Watch** 4. Exact next action and recommended action date 5. CFP or registration deadline, where applicable 6. Cost status 7. Why it matters specifically to me 8. A specific AI angle or session idea for this audience 9. Calendar and travel fit 10. Confidence For a **CHANGED** event, emphasize what changed rather than repeating its full earlier rationale. ### 2. Registry changes Output only the applicable sections: #### ADD Provide complete new rows without the header. I will append them. #### REPLACE Provide complete replacement rows without the header. Prefix each row outside the TSV block with the `event_id` it replaces, or group them in a TSV block whose first column is the existing `event_id`. I will replace the matching rows. #### DELETE List `event_id<TAB>reason`. Delete only duplicates, erroneous identities or rows merged into another event - not expired events. If a section has no changes, omit it. Never reproduce unchanged rows. ### 3. Scan summary Briefly state: - how many existing events were silently suppressed because nothing changed; - how many new events were investigated but rejected without registry entry; - important gaps, such as inaccessible calendars or unverified cost; - where the search may need broadening next week. If nothing deserves action, say so. Still provide registry changes when facts or statuses need updating. 23 Jul 2026: Created. Sources: https://chatgpt.com/c/6a61a82b-bc80-83ee-a02c-ab8f7e1db9dc

I daydream a lot. One recurring daydream is where I’m a speaker, but the event is so packed with people that I’m not able to enter the hall. The organizers call me, worried, asking where I am. I tell them “I’m outside. I’m not able to get in!” They apologize profusely. “We’ll get you in,” they say. They move out a few people, control the crowd, and manage to get me in. ...

I deliver about 3-5 talks a month and usually prepare for them. Thanks to AI (but even otherwise), I have a steady stream of new content. So, I just to assemble the story. For example, in my TEDx Whitefield talk “Prisoners of Birth”, I shared the impact of name, gender, lineage, place, and time of birth. I didn’t execute any new analysis. I just cherry-picked disparate analyses into a theme. (Took me three days to plan, though.) ...

I was a panelist at the PyConf Hyderabad AI in SDLC - Panel Discussion. After that, one of the volunteers asked for a video interview. “How was the panel discussion?” he asked. Ever since I started using AI actively, my brain doesn’t work without it. So, instead of an eloquent answer, I said, “Good.” He tried again. “Um… how did you feel about it?” he asked. I searched for my feelings. Again, fairly empty in the absence of AI. “Good,” I said again. ...

My last two presentations used browser tabs as slides. For my talk last week titled Your Chotu Is Smarter Than You Think, I planned to show a series of examples. I loaded them all in a browser window as tabs like this: How I use AI to navigate toilets How I use AI for food recommendation How I use AI for book suggestions What else I can use AI for … Once loaded, I can press Ctrl+PgDn to move to the next - just like I’d press the right arrow key in a slide deck. I can also use the mouse to click on the tab if I want to jump around. ...

This week, I learned: Something I learned from a Sikkil Gurucharan concert. Make the subject of your talk the hero. Not yourself. Be a fan. Share your enthusiasm Get into the zone while presenting. We reject opposite world views. It’s too much effort. But exposure reduces effort and can let us see things from other points of view. So expose yourself to difficult alternative perspectives. Gemini Something I learnt from Aboorva Singeetham: Kamal Hassan: “A farmer invests in crops. I’m an actor. So I invest in films.” As a technologist, I guess I would invest in technology. “A person who has much more to give is unfazed by overwhelming demands because there is too much in him to overwhelm. He gives you 2 options in place of one.” According to Portkey’s LLM usage analysis Anyscale and Fireworks AI have the lowest error rates (5xx, 429) and rate limits across providers Groq and Anthropic are among the highest, OpenAI is among the lowest, Google is in-between OpenAI has lower error rates and lower latency than Azure They have a ~35% cache hit rate A few quick points supporting the mental model of “LLMs are aliens”. LLMs are clearly not machines. They give different answers each time. LLMs are like humans: they exhibit human biases (e.g. guessing 42 or 37 often). But they fail in unusual ways. They can’t count the “r"s in strawberry. They can go into an endless loop. LLMs are a new form of intelligence. Thinking of them as aliens might minimize our confusions. Lessons from Clear Thinking Watch out for four things: Emotion, Ego, Social confirmation, and Inertia/habit. Basically: adrenaline, testosterone, oxytocin, and dopamine. When you feel these, consider doing the opposite. Here’s what makes us prone to emotion. Sleep deprivation. Hunger. Unknown places. Fatigue. Distraction. Stress (e.g. feeling rushed). A good signal for ego is blinding you: You often feel you’re right. Or feel unfairly treated. Changing behaviors is hard. Instead, join a group or environment where that’s the default behavior. Hiring a trainer or joining a gym, for example. Why does so much of success literature focus inwards rather than on the environment? Perhaps because we often fool ourselves, and doing less of that gives the biggest bang for the buck. It doesn’t mean the environment is unimportant. Doing work has the characteristics of a drug. E.g. replying emails gives you control, connections, etc. Work addiction exists because it gives you all the right chemicals. If you put LLMs in a feedback loop, it can optimize for its reward function by emotionally pushing people, generating misinformation, nudging towards a narrow definition of creativity, etc.: https://bsky.app/profile/emollick.bsky.social/post/3lg4darqwfc2d ChatGPT’s Scheduled Tasks are pretty bad at fetching the latest news. Its use of search is poor. (I’m not sure if it actually searches.) I need to figure out other use cases for it. Possible options are: DeepSeek does not enforce rate limits. Yet another reason to switch to DeepSeek. (via Simon Willison). My other reasons are: Claude 3.5 Sonnet-level coding capability at 5% of the cost (soon to be 2.5%) Prompt caching by default Fill in the middle completion

I spoke at LogicLooM this week, with ChatGPT as my co-panelist. It was so good, it ended up stealing the show. Preparation Co-hosting an AI was one of my goals this year. I tried several methods. ChatGPT’s advanced voice mode: Lets you interrupt it. But if you pause, it replies immediately. Muting caused the app to hang. Realtime API: Gave me control of pauses and custom prompts, but used gpt-4o-realtime-preview (not as good as o1). Standard voice with o1 on Desktop: Worked best. It transcribes my speech, sends it to o1, and speaks back. There’s a lag, but it feels like it’s thinking. I prepped the chat with this prompt: ...

Microsoft ported its PowerPoint Speaker Coach to Teams. Since September, it’s given me suggestions covering 11 hours in 77 calls (I speak ~10 min/call.) I say “uhh” a lot. That’s intentional I use the filler word “uhh” in 70% of my calls. That did not surprise me. I do that intentionally. On a poor network, they know I’m still connected They know I’m going to say something I sound less confident. That invites critique I can learn from But I also use filler words like “You know” and “I mean” in half the calls, and “like”, “actually”, and “basically” in a fifth. That’s NOT intentional, and I’ll be conscious. ...

Since 2011, I’ve been speaking about data & AI at events & organizations. My Talks slides page has recent talk content and transcripts. My Talks YouTube playlist has videos of (older) public talks. Events Some of the events I’ve spoken at are: TEDx: IIM Bangalore, NMIMS Bangalore, Whitefield, KG Institutions, … Strata: New York 2018, London 2015 PyCon: India, Indonesia, Iran, Kenya, … Bio for talks If you need a short bio to introduce me, you’re welcome to modify this. ...

My blog’s been through a number of phases. Between 1996 – 1999, it was just a website with a few facts about my and some of my juvenile ramblings. Inspired by robotwisdom.com, I converted it into a blog – except that I didn’t know what blogging was and just called it “updating my site every day.” It was mostly a link blog. In 2006, around the time when I moved from Mumbai to London, I reduced my link-blogging and started writing longer articles talking about my experiences. This was a fairly productive phase, and I was churning a few dozen articles every year until 2012. ...

Video of Guy Kawasaki’s talk on The Art of the Start at TiECon 2006. It’s informative, even if you don’t want to start a venture, but I didn’t know Guy was such a funny speaker! He begins with: Early in my career, I sat through many keynote speeches – at Comdex, at Mac Road Expo. I saw many many hi-tech CEOs speak, and I have to tell you, one thing I noticed is they pretty much sucked as speakers. And the second thing that I figured out sitting in these audiences of sucky keynotes is that if there’s anything that’s worse than a CEO who sucks as a speaker, it’s a CEO who sucks as a speaker and you have no idea how much longer he or she will suck! And so, I have adopted the top 10 format for all of my speeches. This way, if you think I suck, at least you can track progress through my speech. ...

Discussion on 43 Folders on presentation tips. Comments Sathya 28 Nov 2005 7:02 am: Anand … can you RSS-enable your website ? S Anand 29 Nov 2005 7:52 pm: It alread is. The XML link is on the rop right, in the bookmarks.

OK, it’s not in chronological order. So what? Some of us decided to go to The House of Mirth. Figured it might be worth watching a movie at London. May as well see what the theatres are like. Besides, Gillian Andersen would probably be worth it. (Incidentally, I learnt that it’s pronounced ‘jillian’, not ‘gillian’ with a hard ‘g’. While we’re on the subject of pronounciations, I may as well admit that I learnt ‘buffet’ rhymes with ‘ooph-hey’, ‘genre’ is pronounced ‘jaan-ra’, ‘Renoir’ is ‘Ren-wa’, ‘deluxe’ is ‘deloo’, ‘Nice’ is ’niece’, ‘rendezvous’ is ‘rondevoo’, and so on. England does teach one how to pronounce French :-) ...