Do copywriters sometimes wish nobody reads their stuff ?

Changing a passion into a profession can be a tricky business. What inspires when done on impulse can also bog down when done under pressure and oversight.

So I got to wonder: do copywriters sometimes wish nobody would read their output ? Do the news editors who bury a story on page 17 hope it would go unnoticed because even they don't like it ?

Writing for expressing oneself naturally leads to a desire to share, but writing to earn your bread may well lead to stress.

They say if you find something you love and make it your profession you will never have to work a day in your life. True. But will it also mean silently dreading the quality of your output everyday because while it is good enough to meet the deadline it is never enough to satisfy your soul ?

Vote for your kids

10 Headlines I'd like to see (but probably won't in my lifetime...unless I do)

1. "_______ concedes elections - congratulates winner"
2. "Google opens new groundbreaking research facility in Pakistan"
3. "Complete ban imposed on traffic blocks for VIP movement"
4. "90% literacy achieved in Pakistan"
5. "Rupee strengthens against dollar on positive economic outlook"
6. "Manufacturing jobs shifting to Pakistan - new China?"
7. "Pakistan exports excess power to neighbouring countries"
8. "Fortune 500 companies lineup to hire graduates from Pakistani campuses"
9. "Expat Pakistanis return home in search of jobs in booming Pakistan"
10. "Dell & HP shifting all laptop manufacturing to Pakistan"

or will I ?  -  hope springs eternal.

My completely unscientific, highly personal, and probably misguided list of presentation tips

Over the course of a long career, I've sat thru, prepared, and given more presentations than I care to remember.

Here's my completely unscientific, highly personal, and probably misguided list of presentation tips - use at your own risk:

• Know your material: This is so basic that I'm amazed I still come across presenters who put up a slide and then break down as soon as someone asks the first question about what's written on it. Know your material. Know the sources of your data. Know the units of your graphs. Know the rationale of your arguments. Know everything. You get the idea.

• Know your audience: Are you presenting to people who are already familiar with the material you have put up ? are they subject experts looking for details ? or are they novices looking for introductory material ? Will they understand the jargon you are using ? will they be bored if you try to give too much background they are already familiar with ? Know your audience and tailor your style accordingly.

• Know your purpose: Are you trying to inform ? entertain ? convince ? get an approval ? State your purpose and make sure your material is structured to get the proper response.

• Know the time: Is this a 15 minute update ? or a 1 hour discourse ? Please, for the love of all that is holy, have a clock in a visible location and look at it once in a while

• Know the occasion: All presentations are not born equal. Making a presentation at a conference is completely different from making a routine update presentation to your colleagues. You can be more dramatic if the occasion demands it, give more preamble if the situation allows, but be brisk and businesslike if it is a routine internal meeting. Don't waste your audience's time with needless introductions and dramatics unless the occasion demands it

•  Use a clicker: If you make presentations regularly do yourself a favour and buy a wireless clicker which let's you advance slides from a distance. It is extremely irritating for an audience if you are constantly getting up to point something on a slide, and then sitting back down to advance a slide by pushing a button 

• Move: Specially in long presentations, try to move around the room a little. For important slides, move up to the screen and point out critical details with your hand, move back to the audience, gently pace the floor. There is always a very good chance in any presentation that you might be putting the audience to sleep - at least it shouldn't look like you are about to follow them. Look a bit lively and chances are your audience will deel a little livelier too.

• Don't dim the lights unnecessarily: It's considered good form to dim the lights so that the slides are visible. But unless you are intentionally going for a twilight atmosphere, dimming the lights will also make it more likely for the audience to fall asleep. Experiment and see how much light you can get away with while still maintaining visibility of the slides.

• Either read off the slides - or don't. If you intend to read your slides word for word, go ahead. Not a great idea but it is sometimes needed. But if you intend to articulate most of the material yourself, don't have too much text on the slide. Because this will confuse the audience. They will not know whether to listen to your spoken words, or read the thesis on the slide.

• The presentation is there to complement you - not vice versa. It's OK to have clever graphcis and effect in a presentation  - and done right they certainly add impact - but don't get carried away. The audience are there to listen to you, not to be blown away by creative slide animations. If the focal point is the presentation, you're extra. Think about it.

The ironies of life are endless - (but fascinating)

My birthday falls on the 30th of April, which means I always have a holiday the next day from it. Which would be perfect if I was given to wild parties and late nights. As it is, I wouldn't know a wild party if I landed slam dunk in the middle of one. How's that for irony.

And here's another one. Decisions which seemed like impossibly difficult 15 or 20 years ago seem to be trivial now. But of course I can't go back and make those choices again - instead there are new ones.

Though I have to admit that almost any decision gets easier with time. When you are twenty you feel like one wrong decision will alter the course of your life and you will have to live with it for maybe 40 years. Once you're above forty (or forty four as the case might be, ahem) you know two things. First, you know that life gives you many chances and most decisions tend to work out with a little luck, a little perseverance, and a little acceptance. More importantly, even if I do make a mistake, I'll only have to live with it for maybe another 15 or 16 years of active life. After that, who cares !  The joys of ageing.

Anyhow.

I have a long commute from work these days. And as I drive to and from work, it often seems to me to be an apt analogy for life. A long drive full of traffic jams, red lights, sights, sounds and colours. But always moving forward. You might slow down or stop briefly, but in the end it always takes you to your destination.

Ah yes, the final destination. It's funny how one suddenly starts thinking about mortality beyond a certain age. But not in a morbid way. It is fascinating actually to think that I have maybe 30 years or so to go - barring accident, illness, or other catastrophe of course.

I was born in 1969, the same year internet was first created. And it took the internet about 25 years or so to get widely noticed in the 90s, and about 35 - 40 years to really come of age.

Using this as a rough scale, some ideas which are on some innovator's drawing board today will mature too late for me to see them. As a techie I find that both kind of disappointing, and immensely fascinating. What will the Xbox look like in 2050 ? What will the internet be like in 2060 ? Will there be colonies on Mars after all ? How will we fight global warming ? I'll never know. And yet all this will happen.

It has been a fascinating journey so far. I remain, immensely blessed and slightly bewildered as I go through the years. Blessed for the love of my family, and bewildered at the sights life has shown me. Life is hard to predict before the fact, and harder to explain after the fact. So the best one can do is to sit back, open the window, and enjoy the ride.

The Mac OSX File Manager (Finder) is a joke

While I have found much to like on my Mac, I have to say this: The Finder app on the Mac is an absolute joke.

Coming from the PC world, I've really gotten spoiled by the excellent file explorer options in Windows that let you manage, preview, copy or whatever your files easily and intuitively. Finder, by comparison, feels like you've landed back in kindergarten. It seems to want to protect you from the file system so much that it is completely archaic. Even your drives aren't listed on the folder tree, so that going to the root folder involves going to the "Go" menu and selecting "Computer". Going up the folder hierarchy involves going back to the menu and selecting "Enclosing Folder" rather than a simple "Up" button or a clickable path control as is usual. The whole thing is non-intuitive, difficult to navigate and just plain awkward.

So if you are a power user on a Mac, you will probably need to dish out more dough and buy something like Path Finder. Why Apple hasn't bought this app and integrated it into OSX is beyond me - but thank goodness it's there. I would have gone completely crazy managing my files without it.

With OSX 10.9 around the corner, this is definitely one area I'm hoping will get fixed.

The the rule of law

There is a lot of talk of justice and rule of law around the airwaves these days and that is excellent to hear.

But have you noticed that rule of law is something that everyone wants to apply to the other person? We all like to talk about justice and equality and fairplay, but just wait till we get a traffic challan and most of us will immediately go into overdrive to find a way to settle, it or evade it.

It seems to me that the majority of us here in Pakistan seem to treat rules and laws not so much as a norm to be followed, but as a sort of challenge.

We relish in finding ways around it, we delight in finding loopholes and shortcuts. Stories of jumping queues, cutting off at the traffic light, finding someone on the inside, and greasing the wheels are told and retold as proud conquests rather than apologetic necessities.

We should not be too surprised by what goes on in the corridors of power because people get governed by what they deserve. Except in an absolute monarchy, the government is a reflection of society. 

It seem to me that we spend far too much time pulling down others, and far too little time doing some serious soul searching.