#conference-booking-software

[clearevent]

Event Management Solution - Clearevent

What are the 5 elements of event management?

The five essential elements of event management are foundational components that guide the successful planning and execution of any event. These are often referred to as the 5 Cs of Event Management:

1. Concept

This is the initial stage where the idea or purpose of the event is developed. It involves answering questions like:

What is the goal of the event? (e.g., marketing, education, entertainment)

Who is the target audience?

What type of event will it be? (conference, workshop, gala, etc.)

This phase sets the tone and theme of the event, ensuring alignment with objectives.

2. Coordination

This involves detailed planning and organization:

Budget creation and management.

Securing a venue.

Managing resources (staff, equipment, materials).

Creating a timeline and ensuring all tasks are assigned and tracked.

Coordination ensures that every aspect of the event is well-structured and runs smoothly.

3. Control

Monitoring the progress and execution of the event plan:

Ensuring adherence to timelines, budgets, and deliverables.

Risk management and troubleshooting.

Quality control to meet the desired standards.

It’s about staying on top of logistics and resolving issues promptly.

4. Culmination

This is the actual execution of the event:

Ensuring the event unfolds as planned.

Overseeing live operations, guest experiences, and vendor management.

Responding to real-time challenges or unexpected situations.

It’s the moment when all prior efforts come to fruition.

5. Closeout

Post-event wrap-up and evaluation:

Conducting a debrief with the team and stakeholders.

Analyzing event performance against goals (e.g., attendee feedback, ROI).

Settling financials (payments, refunds).

Documenting lessons learned for future events.

This phase ensures a professional finish and continuous improvement for future events.

Would you like tips or tools for managing any of these stages?

[hurricane-eggbeater]

my brother has been talking about working in florida for the winter and my family is collectively reacting as if he announced he’s moving to khartoum

[dawnfelagund]

My Open-Source Tolkien Studies Data Sets

One of the best parts of being an independent scholar is that I get to be generous with my research. I am not counting on it for a job, and frankly, between teaching at a small rural school and running the Silmarillion Writers' Guild, I will likely never be able to do all that I want to do with the data that I collect and so love the idea that someone might do something with it.

Because I do love making sets of data. Everything from the mind-numbing copy/paste data entry to learning new spreadsheet formulas is enjoyable to me. I'm an introvert in a very extraverted profession, and after a day of being all on for my students, turning everything into numbers is like a cup of tea under a warm blanket with a Golden Retriever at my feet.

So please use these data sets if they interest you. Play with them. Write about and share what you notice. Expand and build on them. Publish using them. If you use my data or work, credit Dawn Walls-Thumma and link to my website, dawnfelagund.com, if possible. I'd also love if you'd let me know if you share anything using them.

Consolidated Timelines. I made this back in 2013. I was trying to arrange all of Tolkien's timelines side by side. I did some weird things with numbers that I'm not sure I fully understand now, but maybe you can make sense of this or maybe you just want everything Tolkien said about timelines in one handy document. (Make a copy of the Consolidated Timelines.)

Fanfiction Archive Timeline. Made for the 2023 Fan Studies Network North America conference, this timeline-on-a-spreadsheet shows archives in the Tolkien and Harry Potter fandoms, multifandom archives, and social networks and when they came online, were active, became inactive, and went offline, along with data about affiliated communities, software, and rescue efforts. I update this timeline annually with that year's data and will continue to add new archives when I have enough data to do so. (Make a copy of the Fanfiction Archive Timeline spreadsheet.)

References to Sources in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien. In this document, I record each time a narrator's source is mentioned or alluded to. Ideally, this will one day include The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as well! For now, it is just The Silmarillion for the selfish reason that I'm predominantly a Silmarillion researcher. (Make a copy of the References to Sources.)

Silmarillion Characters. A list of all of the characters in The Silmarillion, demographic data about them, the number of times they are mentioned, various aliases, and which "books" of The Silmarillion they appear in. The latter part is a work-in-progress. (Make a copy of Silmarillion Characters.)

Silmarillion Death Scenes (spreadsheet | document). For last year's Tolkien at UVM and Oxonmoot conferences, I collected every death scene in the Quenta Silmarillion and recorded various details about character demographics, cause of death, and grief and mourning rituals. (Make a copy of the spreadsheet. Make a copy of the document.)

The Silmarillion: Who Speaks? This is my newest project, which I hope to complete by the end of the year, documenting which characters get to speak actual words, the number of words they speak, and demographics about the speaking characters. Eventually, I would like to include as well characters who are mentioned as having spoken without being given actual dialogue, but one step at a time. Again, this is a work-in-progress. I have just started working on it. Come back in 2025 and, hopefully, there will be interesting stuff to see.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

They're handing out patents for "inventions" that don't exist

Today (Oct 16) I'm in Minneapolis, keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing. Thursday (Oct 19), I'm in Charleston, WV to give the 41st annual McCreight Lecture in the Humanities. And on Friday (Oct 20), I'm at Charleston's Taylor Books from 12h-14h.

Patent trolls produce nothing except lawsuits. Unlike real capitalist enterprises, a patent troll does not “practice” the art in its patent portfolio — it seeks out productive enterprises that are making things that real people use, and then uses legal threats to extract rents from them.

One of the most prolific patent trolls of the twenty-first century is Landmark Technology, whose U.S. Patent №7,010,508 nominally covers virtually anything you might do in the course of operating an online business: having a homepage, letting a customer login to your site, or having pages where customers can view and order products.

Landmark shook down more than a thousand productive businesses for $65,000 license-fees it demanded on threat of a patent lawsuit.

But that reign of terror is almost certainly over. When Landmark tried to get $65,000 out of Binders.com, the victim’s owner, NAPCO, went to court to invalidate Landmark’s patent, which never should have issued.

A North Carolina court agreed, and killed Landmark’s patent. Landmark faces further punishments in Washington State, where the attorney general has sued the company for violating state consumer protection laws in a case that has been removed to federal court.

Landmark’s patent contains “means-plus-function” claims. These a rentier’s superweapon, in which a patent can lay a claim over an invention without inventing or describing it. These claims are almost entirely used in software patents, something that has been blessed by the Federal Circuit, America’s most authoritative patent court.

A means-plus-function patent lets an “inventor” patent something they don’t know how to do. If these patents applied to pharma, a company could get a patent on “an arrangement of atoms that cure cancer,” without specifying that arrangement of atoms. Anyone who actually did cure cancer would have to pay rent to the patent-holder.

-A Major Defeat For Technofeudalism: We euthanized some rentiers.

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[cyberstudious]

✨ 📖 ✏️ studyblr masterpost jam ✏️ 📖 ✨

📌 what is this?

this is a masterpost jam, like a game jam or a hackathon or a writing challenge, but for creating masterposts! the goal is to share knowledge and resources, as well as connect with other cool folks on tumblr! this challenge was born out of the studyblr community, but anyone who loves learning is welcome to participate. each day, share a masterpost following the prompts below and tag your posts with the hashtag #studyblrmasterpostjam so we can all reblog them and share the love <3

🗓️ when is this happening?

the main challenge will run August 12th through August 18th, although you're welcome to participate on your own timeline :)

✨ everyone is encouraged to participate in whatever way is comfortable!

you don't have to be an academic or a professional! tell us about your special interest, a favorite hobby or craft, or something else that you like learning about!

even if you're a beginner, you still have a valuable perspective that's worth sharing (and writing posts for this challenge is a great way to do some research and learn!).

you don't have to do all of the days or share posts on the "right" day! pick and choose your faves if you want, combine things, and take as long as you need to put them together.

you don't have to make super long posts! if you have a single resource or tip to share, please do and we will appreciate it all the same <3

if you don't want to write any posts, you can still participate by reading posts that other people make and reblogging them so we can all learn from each other!

please feel free to interpret the prompts below in your own way and expand upon them! there are so many different topics out there and the questions I've written probably don't make sense for some of them, so take what makes sense and use the rest as inspiration!

✏️ prompts

[monday, august 12th] an intro to your topic or field of study

how would you describe this topic to someone who has never heard of it? what careers are available? what professional organizations/conferences are big? what journals do academics publish in? what are the big questions, goals, or challenges? what are the sub-fields/sub-topics/areas of specialization? what are some resources for learning about the field itself?

2. [tuesday, august 13th] books

textbooks, fiction that relates to the field, inspiring memoirs, biographies, art books, graphic novels, audiobooks… anything that you think is relevant to your topic and helpful!

3. [wednesday, august 14th] free resources

online things! resources that you might be able to get from your library! and and all ways to learn/study/practice that don't require money - feel free to get creative here and come up with some cool ideas beyond just links to websites!

4. [thursday, august 15th] notable figures

who has made important contributions to the field? is there anyone who made big contributions in the past that are now outdated or incorrect? who has done great things but been overlooked because of racism/sexism/ableism/etc.? who is making interesting contributions today? is there anyone in the field that you look up to? this is a great time to do some research if you don't already have some notable figures in mind!

5. [friday, august 16th] study tips

what are your favorite tips and ways to study this topic? are there lots of things you need to memorize or tricky concepts that are hard to understand at first? is there a skill that requires lots of practice? tell us about it and how you approach it!

6. [saturday, august 17th] tools of the trade

do you work with software? lab equipment? art supplies? your favorite pen and notebook? certain analysis frameworks or processes? tell us about them!

7. [sunday, august 18th] beginner's guide

what resources were most helpful when you were a beginner? what are the important concepts/techniques to start with? are there any prerequisite skills? also, include links to your previous masterposts!

remember to tag your posts with #studyblrmasterpostjam! if you want to participate, feel free to reblog this to spread the word. I'll see y'all on August 12th for the first masterpost!

[anarcho-physicist]

i helped* write a new physics textbook and it has a cool (and free) website: softmatterbook.online

*a little bit. The vast majority of the book was written by van Saarloos, Vitelli, and Zeravcic, but a whole bunch of people contributed little bits of writing (myself included) and are credited in the preface.

This book is an accumulation of some of the most fundamental results in soft matter physics, many of which were first discovered or derived very recently. The website hosts a bunch of extra resources (videos, notes, demos, etc.) sorted by the chapters of the book:

Fluid Dynamics

Elasticity

Brownian Motion

Colloids

Polymers

Liquid Crystals

Interfaces, Surfaces, & Membranes

Pattern Formation out of Equilibrium

Active Matter

From Designing Matter to Mimicking Life

It also lists a whole bunch of labs all around the world that are studying the sorts of systems described in the book, as well as mailing lists you can sign up for, conferences, workshops, youtube channels, and software packages. I'm absolutely biased (see below) but I think it's a really great resource for anybody interested in soft matter!

I spent the first year of my PhD helping to put this thing together. I translated research papers into problems, hunted for typos, and wrote most of the solutions in the instructor's manual. I don't make any money off the book sales (my PI told me they made it available for as cheap of a price as the publisher would allow), but my PhD stipend was funded for the year to work on this thing instead of having to TA.

I was ridiculously lucky to get the chance to work on this thing, even if at times it felt like learning how the academic sausage gets made.

[blubberquark]

Are Game Blogs Uniquely Lost?

All this started with my looking for the old devlog of Storyteller. I know at some point it was linked from the blogroll on the Braid devlog. Then I tried to look at on old devlog of another game that is still available. The domain for Storyteller is still active. The devblog is gone.

I tried an old bookmark from an old PC (5 PCs ago, I think). It was a web site linked to pixel art and programming tutorials. Instead of linking to the pages directly, some links link led to a twitter threads by authors that collected their work posted on different sites. Some twitter threads are gone because the users were were suspended, or had deleted their accounts voluntarily. Others had deleted old tweets. There was no archive. I have often seen links accompanied by "Here's a thread where $AUTHOR lists all his writing on $TOPIC". I wonder if the sites are still there, and only the tweets are gone.

A lot of "games studies" around 2010 happened on blogs, not in journals. Games studies was online-first, HTML-first, with trackbacks, tags, RSS and comment sections. The work that was published in PDF form in journals and conference proceedings is still there. The blogs are gone. The comment sections are gone. Kill screen daily is gone.

I followed a link from critical-distance.com to a blog post. That blog is gone. The domain is for sale. In the Wayback Machine, I found the link. It pointed to the comment section of another blog. The other blog has removed its comment sections and excluded itself from the Wayback Machine.

I wonder if games stuff is uniquely lost. Many links to game reviews at big sites lead to "page not found", but when I search the game's name, I can find the review from back in 2004. The content is still there, the content management systems have been changed multiple times.

At least my favourite tumblr about game design has been saved in the Wayback Machine: Game Design Tips.

To make my point I could list more sites, more links, 404 but archived, or completely lost, but when I look at small sites, personal sites, blogs, or even forums, I wonder if this is just confirmation bias. There must be all this other content, all these other blogs and personal sites. I don't know about tutorials for knitting, travel blogs, stamp collecting, or recipe blogs. I usually save a print version of recipes to my Download folder.

Another big community is fan fiction. They are like modding, but for books, I think. I don't know if a lot of fan fiction is lost to bit rot and link rot either. What is on AO3 will probably endure, but a lot might have gone missing when communities fandom moved from livejournal to tumblr to twitter, or when blogs moved from Wordpress to Medium to Substack.

I have identified some risk factors:

Personal home pages made from static HTML can stay up for while if the owner meticulously catalogues and links to all their writing on other sites, and if the site covers a variety of interests and topics.

Personal blogs or content management systems are likely to lose content in a software upgrade or migration to a different host.

Writing is more likely to me lost when it's for-pay writing for a smaller for-profit outlet.

A cause for sudden "mass extinction" of content is the move between social networks, or the death of a whole platform. Links to MySpace, Google+, Diaspora, and LiveJournal give me mostly or entirely 404 pages.

In the gaming space, career changes or business closures often mean old content gets deleted. If an indie game is wildly successful, the intellectual property might ge acquired. If it flops, the domain will lapse. When development is finished, maybe the devlog is deleted. When somebody reviews games at first on Steam, then on a blog, and then for a big gaming mag, the Steam reviews might stay up, but the personal site is much more likely to get cleaned up. The same goes for blogging in general, and academia. The most stable kind of content is after hours hobbyist writing by somebody who has a stable and high-paying job outside of media, academia, or journalism.

The biggest risk factor for targeted deletion is controversy. Controversial, highly-discussed and disseminated posts are more likely to be deleted than purely informative ones, and their deletion is more likely to be noticed. If somebody starts a discussion, and then later there are hundreds of links all pointing back to the start, the deletion will hurt more and be more noticeable. The most at-risk posts are those that are supposed to be controversial within a small group, but go viral outside it, or the posts that are controversial within a small group, but then the author says something about politics that draws the attention of the Internet at large to their other writings.

The second biggest risk factor for deletion is probably usefulness combined with hosting costs. This could also be the streetlight effect at work, like in the paragraph above, but the more traffic something gets, the higher the hosting costs. Certain types of content are either hard to monetise, and cost a lot of money, or they can be monetised, so the free version is deliberately deleted.

The more tech-savvy users are, the more likely they are to link between different sites, abandon a blogging platform or social network for the next thing, try to consolidate their writings by deleting their old stuff and setting up their own site, only to let the domain lapse. The more tech-savvy users are, the more likely they are to mess with the HTML of their templates or try out different blogging software.

If content is spread between multiple sites, or if links link to social network posts that link to blog post with a comment that links to a reddit comment that links to a geocities page, any link could break. If content is consolidated in a forum, maybe Archive team could save all of it with some advance notice.

All this could mean that indie games/game design theory/pixel art resources are uniquely lost, and games studies/theory of games criticism/literary criticism applied to games are especially affected by link rot. The semi-professional, semi-hobbyist indie dev, the writer straddling the line between academic and reviewer, they seem the most affected. Artists who start out just doodling and posting their work, who then get hired to work on a game, their posts are deleted. GameFAQs stay online, Steam reviews stay online, but dev logs, forums and blog comment sections are lost.

Or maybe it's only confirmation bias. If I was into restoring old cars, or knitting, or collecting stamps, or any other thing I'd think that particular community is uniquely affected by link rot, and I'd have the bookmarks to prove it.

Figuring this out is important if we want to make predictions about the future of the small web, and about the viability of different efforts to get more people to contribute. We can't figure it out now, because we can't measure the ground truth of web sites that are already gone. Right now, the small web is mostly about the small web, not about stamp collecting or knitting. If we really manage to revitalise the small web, will it be like the small web of today except bigger, the web-1.0 of old, or will certain topics and communities be lost again?

[meg2md]

Operation: Trying To Get My Shit Together

It's my last week of nights, but like I said before, even though it's ass and I'm constantly in a state of existential dread, the hours are considerably better than normal day shift hours and I actually have a relative ton of free time as long as the floor isn't on fire and I'm not expecting transports. I read through all 41 volumes of Berserk in the past 3 weeks and have (almost) recovered from the emotional trauma it inflicted on me, and now I have one week left and no hyperfixations that call me too strongly. So I guess I can work on getting my life together lol.

Academic responsibilities:

M&M - draft due Tues, about half done

CREOG - test in January

ACOG - need to make AROM demos and borrow some amnihooks/FSEs, e-mail about borrowing CE demos, end of Oct

M3 surgical skills - submit simulation center form!!!!, next month

Urogyn - prepare for surgical cases next block by reading/watching videos, next week

Conferences: book hotels, flights; schedule reimbursement - this month

Research: meet about SDOH study paper; log into Athena to prep for data collection for Sedation project; touch base with JC about if AI study going anywhere

Fellowship: app in May, the biggest things are figuring out when/how to ask for LOR and drafting a personal statement. And then hoping my extracurriculars and research are enough :( also potentially an away rotation for end of March/early April - need to meet with MIGS ppl next week to discuss next steps

But the most stressful thing that's been weighing on me for MONTHS is my finances and disorganized spending. This week I REALLY REALLY REALLY want to get my budget it order. I can't even imagine how much my stress levels will improve if I don't have this crushing dread about my finances hanging over my head. This includes

Figuring out loans and how/when to pay them back

Budgeting software (I used YNAB previously)

Paying back my friend who lent me money for vet bills

Calling insurance to see why therapy costs so freaking much

My spending has been out of control!!!! It is like, the absolute worst, most damaging symptom of my ADHD that I don't have a good handle on yet, especially when I'm so dysregulated from nights. I thought I could work on it over the weekend but alllllll my limited, limited energy was spent on basic self-care (laundry, dishes, cleaning floor) and I had NOTHING left.

Anyway. Today is for starting on the budget journey and working on M&M. Maybe I'll log into YNAB and reset some things and just start over. ho hum

I'm just..... so beaten down, so tired. I have so much existential angst. Like idk that I'd want to do anything other than medicine in my life, but like..... what's the point of living ? Lol. Is this all there is? I don't have a partner, I don't have many friends near here. I don't want to not be alive but I like, need a reason to live

:')

[eretzyisrael]

Good News From Israel

In the 20th Sep 23 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:

Israeli AI system identifies thousands of new effective combination cancer therapies.

Two examples of Israel’s inclusive army.

Israelis are helping survivors of the earthquake in Morocco.

More Israeli breakthroughs to prevent global hunger.

Israel is “on the global map” for trade links, electricity, and (we hope) peace.

Israeli innovations will protect the vulnerable in Oklahoma and Japan.

The “People of the Book” has a new National library.

Muslims and Jews pray together at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

Read More: Good News From Israel

The Jewish New Year is a very appropriate time to celebrate more new exciting Israeli life-changing innovations and activities. These include new ways to combine cancer treatments to increase effectiveness with less side-effects. And a new Israeli treatment for MS is now available on-line. The US FDA have approved new Israeli software to guide cancer surgery and a new Israeli ultrasound-guided device to take biopsies. Meanwhile, Europe is funding trials of a new Israeli formula for feeding premature newborns. There's a new sign-language tour of Jerusalem's Tower of David; a new home for lone soldiers; the first visit to Israel by the UK's latest Foreign Minister; and the first official Israeli delegation to a conference in Saudi Arabia. Israelis have found new ways to communicate with plants; new ways to extract milk proteins from mushrooms and to generate new proteins using biotechnology; new ways to motivate children at school; and new protective fireproof uniforms. Recent diplomatic announcements opens up the prospect of a new age where Israel provides natural gas and electricity to Europe and becomes the center of a new trade route linking Europe, the Middle East and India. Meanwhile, numerous new business ventures have just been launched by Israeli startups. Jerusalem, the eternal city, continues to be renewed as the rebuilt Tiferet synagogue nears completion. Finally, visitors to the Kotel (Western Wall) had a new experience - the sight of Jews and Muslims praying together. It brings new hope for the New Year. The photo (TY Sharon) is of the inside of Jerusalem's new National Library of Israel, which will be opening in October.  Wishing those that celebrate it a peaceful and meaningful Yom Kippur and a very happy Sukkot / Tabernacles

[ettawritesnstudies]

9 people I'd like to know better tag

Thanks for the tag @moondust-bard!

current book: I'm about to start reading White Oaks by Jordan King for my indie author interviews/book reviews on my blog, and listening to The Weaver and the Witch Queen by Genevieve Gornichec because I have a road trip to a work conference tomorrow and so I'm going to put that on in the car.

Current fic: I'm not actively reading or writing anything right now, but I have an old friend in the Newsies fandom who's continuing to put out chapters of a 300K+ fic that I love called Something Worth Winning and so I've been meaning to catch up on that. PJean over on ff.net and I think she's got an AO3 now? It's been a while...

Currently watching: Twelve's run in Doctor Who and the Clone wars in rotation.

Next on my watchlist: I'm about the start the new Fallout show tonight! Eric's been playing through the games recently but we've put off watching the show until my edit was done.

Current hyperfixation: I had Rolling With Difficulty as a hyperfixation until I got buried in Runaways writing, so I lost interest for a little bit while I shifted focus onto my work, but I'm hoping to get back into it!

Favorite color: Greens of all sorts!

Sweet, spicy, or savory: sweet, I joke I'm basically a hummingbird in human form.

Relationship status: I just got engaged over Easter! I don't talk a lot about him here because he values his privacy, but my fiance, Eric, has been such a wonderful support through all of my writing and publishing endeavors. We're in the middle of wedding planning right now, and if all goes according to plan, we'll get married next summer, which is right in the middle of all the promotion and distribution work for putting out Runaways in October. It's going to be such a busy (and expensive) year, and I was like "I can push the book release out, I guess :I" but he refused to let me do that because he knows how important it is to me and encouraged me to plan a Kickstarter for the spring like an absolute madman. Yesterday I complained that the formatting programming software I like is only available for Macs but fuck apple and he started looking up how to install a virtual machine without a second's hesitation. He's so wonderful and I don't know what I'd do without him.

Last song: The Old Witch Sleep and Good Man Grace by the Amazing Devil

Last thing I googled: Stegosaurus dinosaur

Skill I’d like to learn: oh god so many. Top of the list right now is songwriting. I've got dozens of lyrics cluttering up my notes app and I'm dreadful at turning them into complete songs. Also Animation!

Best advice: Recently, I've seen a lot of people in my life struggling with the 20-something capitalist-hellscape 1st-world-problem flavor of existentialist-depression and look, it gets to me too, but you guy have got to relearn the virtue of gratitude. On one hand, toxic positivity sucks and you're allowed to bitch and moan about your situation, but doomerism feels infectious and there is so much to be thankful for when you stop and take the time to appreciate what you've been given.

I'm turning into my mom.

[danniswrites]

My writing turned totally around in Jan 2022. I was editing my latest NaNoWriMo project, and decided to check out a resource I found on nanowrimo.org to help me. Basically, I wanted help to write a dynamite blurb, or tagline. When I create a new story, I use a LibreOffice template I created to put my title page, copyright page with a sentence describing what the story's about, TOC, and a dummy first paragraph with my first dummy paragraph heading.

I wanted to know how to write better taglines.

So I read the article above and the light bulb went on! Simple. Elegant. Plotting.

I had always been a pantser. Never planned any part of my stories, and I have about 650 of 'em, half not even to the first draft. Dedicated pantser. In my teen years, I hated English literature in 8th grade even though I knew I needed to know how to plot, but all the analysis of the books we read [and I enjoyed reading them] just made me feel like, 'I'm too stupid to learn all this.'

Now, I'm reading these 10 steps and had an epiphany!

So, I broke down Step 1 and made it into my worksheet for coming up with taglines.

Here's how I think about those 15 max words to get it done:

One Sentence Summary: Adj.+Noun+Verb+Obj [Worker] [Action] [Effect] in 15 words or less Character With Most To Lose: What They Want:

So, for Adia, Scientist, here's what I came up with:

Discouraged scientist must discover a new fuel so her colony can escape from war.

I write science fiction and I loved chemistry in college, so, hey, I like formulas. I don't want my writing to sound like it came from a formula, but if you look at a lot of genres, there is one.

If you read enough romances, like my sister did, you figure out there's a pattern you can follow as a writer. I was there when she did. She went on to become famous and actually got an award presented to her in New York from her idol, Barbara Cartland at a writer's conference.

I--uh, I'm the non-famous sister who self-publishes on Amazon. But I enjoy my writing life, and though I do love to put romance in my books, romance writing is not my thing.

However, if you're like me and you want to improve your writing, Snowflake Method does work for a lot of us. And, if you buy one of Randy Ingermanson's very entertaining books, you get a free copy of his Snowflake Pro software, which walks you through each step and lets you see what you wrote in the previous step.

I don't do all 10 steps. Let's face it, I'm a plantser now. I'm not that meticuolous and organized. But, I do most of them, because Steps 1-5 give me a nice head start. And, Steps 3, 5 and 7 concentrate on your characters. Characters make your story. If you don't have a character that grabs your reader from the first chapter, why will they want to read your story? You have to have someone to care about and they have to have something happening that attracts the reader.

Now that I had a loose framework for my stories, I needed to [finally] learn something about plot structure more than the beginning, 3 disasters, and an ending. Randy does an excellent job of simplifying 3 act structure [though there are other methods such as PlotDot or Save The Cat that also work with Snowflake Method].

Another resource I found while exploring resources in the Now What? Revision pages on nanowrimo.org was K. M. Weiland's wonderful site:

This lady puts 3 act structure into terms that I can understand, and she has a vast database of books and movies that she's analyzed for us. If you think 3 act structure is complicated and boring, try reading a little of your favorite on this list:

I love the Marvel movies, so here's how she summarized The Avengers.

And she even mentions how what works in this movie would not, in a book. This is something I read time and time again about science fiction writing. Science fiction movies are not 'true' science fiction, for the most part. Star Wars is fantasy set on other planets. Star Trek has science in it, but again, is science fantasy.

In science fiction, science drives the story more than characters or plot. Though, to make my science fiction more accessible to a wider audience, I choose to concentrate on psychology, particularly interpersonal relationships. I do make sure that my science is feasible and believable, and explain it simply. And, I do my research.

So, when writing a book, it's good to see analyses like this of movies, but remember, it's different for books.

A friend who was also a producer told me, for a two-hour movie, you have to choose about two chapters for your script. The director has to insert some points to connect the dots. That's why many movies 'aren't like the book' they're based upon. It's an art to take a book and condense it like that so it still makes sense and absorbs the viewer.

But, we writers can learn much from movies about character development and how to get our readers involved with them, and with our stories.

[jcmarchi]

Broadcom's AI surge challenges Nvidia's dominance

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/broadcoms-ai-surge-challenges-nvidias-dominance/

Broadcom's AI surge challenges Nvidia's dominance

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Riding the AI wave, semiconductor giant Broadcom has joined the stampede of companies chasing Nvidia for a piece of the lucrative AI chip market. The computing and software conglomerate is up more than 66% in the past year, as it makes power moves to establish itself as one of the most dominant players in AI today. Broadcom has been making aggressive moves that have piqued the interest of analysts and investors, from buying VMware in a $61 billion deal to strengthen its data centre and cloud chops, to investments in AI chip R&D.

Central to Broadcom’s AI aspirations now is its fast-growing AI-connected chip business, which the company said it now forecasts will bring in an astounding $11 billion in revenue for fiscal 2024, up from a previous forecast of $10 billion. Combined with a 15% jump in Broadcom Inc shares recently, the upward revision reinforces the strong appetite for chips driving the rise of generative AI.

Morningstar analysts agreed in a note to Reuters that Broadcom remains “we continue to see Broadcom as incredibly well-positioned to benefit from rising generative AI investment in the long term,” — a view widely held on Wall Street. A second explanation for the upswing in AI for Broadcom is essentially through buying or investing very well over the years.

They come as one of three planned spinoffs in Dell’s drive to become a full-fledged cloud computing firm with the $61 billion acquisition of VMware next year, which also added $50 billion to its market capitalisation, per FactSet data. In addition, Broadcom has been ramping up its own custom AI chip business, inking deals with tech giants including Alphabet’s Google and Meta Platforms.

In March, the company revealed that a third unidentified customer was using its custom AI chips, which gave its business credibility in this high-stakes industry. According to Reuters, “At an investor conference on Wednesday, Broadcom said it will produce the new custom AI chips for ‘hyperscaler’ buyers that are mostly Alphabet’s Google and Meta Platforms.”

Diversified revenue streams and investor optimism

Broadcom’s software division, bolstered by the VMware acquisition, added $2.7 billion to its second-quarter revenue, further diversifying the company’s revenue streams and positioning it as a formidable force in the AI ecosystem. The company’s stock performance reflects this optimism, with shares surging 76% over the past 12 months and closing at a staggering $1,495.5 on Wednesday. 

Broadcom’s recent announcement of a 10-for-1 stock split, a move reminiscent of Nvidia’s strategy, is expected to further fuel investor enthusiasm. “It’s a sure-fire way to send your stock soaring,” Triple D Trading analyst Dennis Dick told Reuters, commenting on the stock split, adding that the move was “right out of Nvidia’s book.”

Nvidia’s dominance and competitive pressure

Broadcom is progressing, but Nvidia is still the leader in this space. For years, Nvidia has benefited from the first-mover advantage of producing AI chips that cater to a long tail of applications while favoring innovation over turning in big volume. While that balance appears to be in flux, Broadcom’s recent wins shed light on how the writing may be on the wall for a boom in AI now benefiting more than just one company.

This new contender has even forced Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang to admit that ‘a resurgent Broadcom (and other start-ups) have planners at Nvidia nervous. Huang, for his part, stressed how the company must continue to innovate to ensure that it remains ahead of its peers. Nevertheless, competition has yet to make a dent on Nvidia’s enviable lead in the AI chip market as the company busily cranks out its top-performing AI tech.

Broadcom vs Nvidia: The battle for AI chip supremacy

Unlike Nvidia’s graphics processing units which have long dominated the industry, Broadcom’s custom AI chips – or application-specific integrated circuits – might offer a great business opportunity for tech giants with massive and steady-state AI workloads. These bespoke chips require considerable initial capital investment but they can offer large cost savings in both CapEx and power consumption, which sets them up as a more cost-effective (if less general purpose) option to Nvidia’s.

Also bullish on Broadcom is Piper Sandler analyst Harsh Kumar, who writes, “We continue to see [Broadcom] as the best AI play [excluding Nvidia] due to its strong positioning in the custom ASIC business along with its strong software portfolio.”

Broadcom’s multi-pronged strategy of pumping cash into buyouts, offering bespoke chips and expanding into a software business has established it as a strong rival, as the AI revolution shows few signs of abating. Nvidia is still the undisputed leader in the industry, but Broadcom’s bold AI play here was enough to light a fire under investors and analysts both, sowing the seeds of what could become an epic showdown in the market for AI chips.

(Photo by Kenny Eliason)

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including Intelligent Automation Conference, BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.

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Tags: ai, artificial intelligence, broadcom, Nvidia

[thesaleswhisperer]

Michael Falato on The Sales Podcast

https://blog.thesaleswhisperer.com/p/michael-falato

  00:00 Introduction and Air Force Stories

11:33 Sales as a Service: Full Throttle Falato Leads

24:27 Lead Generation Strategies

29:22 Pricing and Comparisons

36:17 Aim High and Provide Value

Takeaways

Michael Falato transitioned from a career in sales and real estate to starting his own company, Full Throttle Falato Leads, which offers sales as a service using software automation.

Personalization and value are key in outreach. Michael invites prospects to be featured guests on his podcast or roundtable as a way to start a conversation.

Tools like Apollo can be effective for lead generation, but it's important to understand how to use them properly and avoid spamming or breaking email deliverability rules.

The future of cold email outreach is uncertain, as platforms like Google may implement stricter measures to prevent spam.

Building relationships and providing value are essential in sales, regardless of the industry or approach. Attending conferences and events can be a valuable way to meet potential clients and generate leads.

Social media platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn can be used to connect with prospects and set up meetings.

Personalization and finding common ground with prospects can help make outreach more effective.

Having a strong mindset and being persistent are important qualities in sales.

Building relationships and providing value to clients are key to long-term success in lead generation.

Market like you mean it.

Now go sell something.

SUBSCRIBE to sell more, faster, at higher margins, with less stress, and more fun!

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Check out The Sales Podcast's latest episode

[nanowrimo]

Back to School: Interview with Virginia Pratt, Young Writers Program Educator

NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program helps over 85,000 kids, teens, teachers, and families set creative goals and tell stories they care about. We asked some of our amazing YWP educators to share how they take on the NaNoWriMo challenge in their classroom. Today’s advice comes from Virginia Pratt, who has been an educator for over 35 years.

Q: What grade/ age level do you work with? What type of NaNoWriMo group is it (whole class, club, homeschool, elective, etc.)?

A: I teach 4th/5th Grade gifted/talented ELA.

Q: How long have you been doing NaNoWriMo with your students?

A: 4 years (this will be year 5)

Q: How do you structure the entire project (for example, do you start prepping in October and write in November, do you have kids work on it all year, etc.)?

A: I use the month of October to prep. We do a reading/writing workshop, and I find that the materials are great for helping me work with the students on understanding literary elements as we read in October and prepare for the writing in November. As students are working on crafting their own characters, we are studying the arc of character in reading—seeing how different events impact them, how they change over time, what conflicts they face, etc. We do this with setting, with plot arc, etc.

Q: What does a normal NaNoWriMo day look like for your students?

A: In November, once we are writing the stories, kids have their independent writing time to work on their stories. I read their work and confer with them, and they also have writing partners with whom they meet during the week. As they encounter struggle—dialogue, for example—we have mini-lessons on those things and then students continue to move forward. While they only have 20 - 30 minutes of writing time during the day, many kids opt to write at night and in other "choice times".

Q: How do you set and manage word-count goals?

A: I give the kids an example of what different word counts look like, once typed. I tell them the length of some texts they are all familiar with. I tell them my work count, and explain that I write/type much more quickly than they do. When they make their goal, I let that stand unless they come to me later and say they want to change their goal. Changing a goal (either increasing or decreasing) is not ever an issue.

Q: How do you manage grading? Do you grade?

A: Grades come from what I see them doing as a result of our entire process. I take grades on their reading comprehension and understanding of literary elements, figurative language, etc. All of those things are positively impacted by their work actually manipulating them in their own writing. I do give a grade based on effort and growth, and the students have a rubric/checklist of things I am looking for in their writing. They all get good grades because they are working with me in conferences and they are motivated to participate.

Q: How do you approach revision/ publishing (if at all)?

A: We do some revision work—as kids bring up areas that are causing them difficulty - during November, but we save most of that work for the month of January and the "Now What?" phase.

Q: Any NaNoWriMo tips or tricks to share with other educators? Hard-won lessons? Ah-ha moments?

A: I think it is really important to be accepting of what the kids want to try to do. The way the program materials are set up, if a child tries to write a piece with little to no substance, it's easy for me to go back to the workbook and say, "Okay, but why is your character doing this?" "What made him/her act this way?" "What conflict is impacting your character? " They realize pretty quickly that they are missing a lot of key information that they NEED to make a good story.

If a kid wants to do a comic book or graphic novel, I find a way to let them do that. We use storyboards or software that helps them put that together, and then handle the word count manually.

My focus is on getting them excited to write, and having them actually do writing. We can polish and improve the work later, but just getting them to tell a story and take the risk to put it out there is the most important part.

Q: Have you ever run into resistance from your administration about doing NaNoWriMo, and if so, how did you manage it? What do you say to people who don’t see the point of having students write novels? 

A: I haven't had any issues. Generally if anyone does question what we are doing, they stop questioning when they see how engaged the kids are.

Q: What are the most meaningful things you or your students take away from the project? What's your best NaNoWriMo memory?

A: The best part for us is that there is a true sense of being part of a greater community of writers who are all struggling/working together to get closer to a dream of being a published writer. We watch some of the videos NaNoWriMo posts that are appropriate for 10-11 year-olds, and we've also used some video tape of some of the write-ins where a topic is given for everyone to write on for 10 minutes. If I select those carefully, they really open the kids up to a different way of thinking about their writing. The best memories are around those kids who are so proud of how much they've written, or if they've met their goal.

Q: Anything else you'd like to add?

A: For me, the whole thing is about feeling and acting like a writer. The kids don't know it's possible until we let them try. Some surprise themselves AND me with what they can do. Even those who don't start off thinking of themselves as writers come out understanding more about the process and seeing where some of their strengths lie. It gives them something to build on as they move on through school and are asked to write. It's important that NaNoWriMo represents a measure of success for every kid. That works wonders in helping them to take further steps as writers.

Virginia Pratt has been an educator for 35 years, and currently works with 4th and 5th grade students. An avid reader and notebooker, Dr. Pratt loves bringing an appreciation of story to her students and strives to help them to feel like successful readers and writers every day. Dr. Pratt loves music, roller coasters, and naps and enjoys spending time with her family and friends and traveling.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Unity's feudal gambit as class struggle between rentiers and capitalists

Today (Oct 16) I'm in Minneapolis, keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing. Thursday (Oct 19), I'm in Charleston, WV to give the 41st annual McCreight Lecture in the Humanities. And on Friday (Oct 20), I'm at Charleston's Taylor Books from 12h-14h.

The outcome of this struggle is what determines whether the digital society is capitalist or feudalistic. Think of the recent grab by games toolsmith Unity, who have long extracted rents from the capitalists who used their tools to make games. Unity is “software as a service,” which means that you have to buy again it every month, for so long as your capitalist enterprise is in business.

The capitalists who rent Unity’s tools had resigned themselves to this, but then Unity went one step further, and demanded a royalty (a word with decidedly feudal origins!) every time a game made with Unity’s tools was distributed. The outcry was ferocious, and Unity eventually backed down, but even as they did, company executives insisted that they would continue to pursue a “sustainable system” for “shared success.”

“Shared success” is a pure expression of feudalism. Unity was not proposing a joint venture, where they would supply the capital to produce games and share the risk of that capital being competed away by a better games-maker.

Instead, Unity wants a rentier’s bargain: if the capitalist it rents do does well, so does Unity. But if the capitalist does badly — if a games-maker loses out to a competitor who is also a tenant of Unity’s IP — then unity also does well. Heads capitalists lose, tails the rentier wins.

When Unity speaks of this system being “sustainable,” they mean that they will seek to maximize the total amount of profits made by capitalists who rent its tools. Because the higher the total profits are, the more rent it can extract.

Profits are highest where competition is lowest. It’s in Unity’s interest for a single company — or a cartel of companies — to control entire genres or modes of games, and to be protected from innovators who might enter the market with better offers. Unity wants to pick some winners and bind them to its fields.

-A Major Defeat For Technofeudalism: We euthanized some rentiers.

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[cyberstudious]

A Beginner's Guide to Learning Cybersecurity

I created this post for the Studyblr Masterpost Jam, check out the tag for more cool masterposts from folks in the studyblr community!

(Side note: this post is aimed towards the technical side of security, rather than the governance/management side, because the tech stuff is what I'm familiar with.)

Where do I start?

Cybersecurity is a specialization of general tech & therefore builds on some concepts that you'll need to know before you can dive deep into security. It's good to have a background in and understand:

how computers & operating systems work

how to use Linux

computer networking & basic protocols

If you're serious about learning cybersecurity, it can be helpful to look at certifications. Even if you don't want to get certified or take the exam (they can get expensive), they provide you with a list of topics that you can use to guide your self-study. And if you want to find a job, a certification is practically required for getting your foot in the door.

I personally recommend the CompTIA series of certifications, because they're well-recognized and I think they expose you to a good breadth and depth of material to get you started. Start with the A+ certification if you have zero tech background. Start with the Network+ certification if you've never taken a networking course. Once you get your basic computer and networking knowledge down, then you can jump into security. The Security+ is a good starting point.

Do I need to know how to code?

No, but it would be really really helpful. You don't have to be a skilled software engineer, but understanding the basics and being able to write small scripts will give you a solid foundation.

From Daniel Miessler's post How to Build a Cybersecurity Career:

You can get a job without being a programmer. You can even get a good job. And you can even get promoted to management. But you won’t ever hit the elite levels of infosec if you cannot build things. Websites. Tools. Proofs of concept. Etc. If you can’t code, you’ll always be dependent on those who can.

How do I gain skills?

Play Capture the Flag (CTF) games.

Stay up to date with security news via an RSS reader, podcasts, or whatever works for you. Research terms that you're unfamiliar with.

Watch conference talks that get uploaded to YouTube.

Spin up a VM to practice working with tools and experiment on your own computer.

There are lots of brilliant, generous people in cybersecurity who share their knowledge and advice for free. Find their blogs, podcasts, and YouTube channels. Look for local meetups in your area.

I'm still relatively new to the field, but I have a general knowledge of lots of different things, so feel free to send me an ask and I can probably help point you to some resources. We're all in this together!

Previous Cybersecurity Masterposts

An Introduction to Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity Book Masterpost

Free Cybersecurity Learning Resources Masterpost

Masterpost of Study Tips for Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity Tools Masterpost

Thank you so much to everyone who participated in the #StudyblrMasterpostJam this week! It was wonderful to see what other studyblr folks are passionate about. The jam technically ends today but there are no official rules, so if you've been thinking about writing a masterpost, this is your sign!