SAFIRA 2.0

Quick announcement,

For tomorrow’s selfXpress, along with the 2nd round of DAR’s rehearsal, we’ll have a special guest. LFT is doing an one-time-only encore of his brilliant presentation on Internet Banking, present and future. Be sure not to miss out on this opportunity to see another disciple of the reynolds-duarte-godin-lesig-takahashi school of presentations that I’ve been touting in these sessions.

In the light of such a rare opportunity, everyone is invited to attend this special selfXpress this Thursday April 16th.

See you there.

To the selfXpress crowd,

I uploaded the footage of DAR’s rehersal on YOUTube. Follow the links below to watch the videos. I had to split the presentation in two parts because of the 10 minutes limitation, but I think it’ll not be a problem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN1EL343uzI (part 1)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O58Wg-O90uU (part 2)

You can post your improvement suggestions here, if you like, while DAR works his talk for another go at the next selfXpress to take place on April 16th.

No, it’s not a post with the lyrics to the ABBA song. Truly sorry about that.

It’s 2 AM last night and I’m there thinking about presentations (go figure). I’m thinking, how can I make a powerful message about the tremendous responsibility we, as a company and as a team, face every single day working for the high profile customers we chose to work for? Then I want to make another point about how prepared we are to handle that responsibility.

Just minutes before starting this post I recalled NRP’s presentation at the kickoff. Then I recalled a couple of things more, and they all started to point into a common direction. I’m thinking, “our software handles serious loads of money, every single day, innit?”. Taking NRP’s slide about money moved by some software we recently for one customer as a sample, that application handled roughly 77,5 million Euros in a single day, on the 12th of February. Business as usual, no biggie there, right? Riiiiight!

How about some e-banking stuff, retail and corporate, we’ve been working on since circa 2001 for some other customer? How much money do those apps move in a day? And I really mean plural because I’m counting six of them off of the top of my head.
And how about some financial products platform gizmo we did for this other customer? How much does that baby move around each day? Our own site mentions a case study at BES-Vida about our software handing 1.500 million Euros a year in risk products contracts. That’s 1,5 billion Euros a year in some cultures, but its 6,25 million Euros a day in every culture I know.

My point is, the apps we’ve been developing over the years, and that are currently into production, handle some serious money value every day. Thats a great responsibility! Exactly how much money our apps move every day is what I’d like to know.

So, guys, can you help me figure out how much money does Safira’s software handle on an average day? Money transfers of all types, contracts subscribed, contracts canceled, and every type of order that has an Euro value attached to it counts.
I want to come up with a number in Euros that is the sum of what all Safira developed apps handle on an average day. Depending on what we can come up with, this might just be usable for the kind of message I’m trying to pass.

Can you go into your apps and ask them logs how much money are they handling these days, then report back to me, please? While you’re at it, try to figure out how many customers and customer sessions your app serves a day as well. That might be another interesting number.

Don’t post answers here. E-mail them to me directly.

Thanks.

Toscano really hit the spot I’m aiming at with his post on Garr Reynolds. This is what I intentent to be talking about in the selfXpress sessions. I knew his Presentation Zen blog. In fact, he (and his blog) is one of my main references.

I encourage you to post what you believe to be good references for helping us deliver good presentations, so we can discuss them in the training.

 My contibution is pointing you to TED. I believe that one of the best ways to learn is by example. Observe the masters at work and learn from their performances. TED is one of the best resources I’ve found for watching great talks by great speakers. We’ll be taking a closer look at some of the best examples that can be found here, but for now, feel free to soak up as many as you can. It’ll only do you good.

Thank you all that provided me with feedback, by filling the forms. Your feedback is the only way to improve the way we communicate internally, and a valuable tool for all the speakers.

Thank you, and thank you to all the speakers for their dedication and efforts.

Dear colleagues,

Thank you very much for your submissions of success stories for presenting at the SAFIRA 2008 event. The selected presentations and Team Leaders are:

1. Digital TV (and then some), by Nuno Póvoa, Systems Engineer (nsp@safira.pt)
2. Workflows de Crédito na Industria financeira, by José Neves, Manager (jan@safira.pt)
3. Solemio, the match maker, by Hugo Velosa, Manager (hav@safira.pt)

I believe this selection clearly reflects the diversity of projects and customer industries at SAFIRA these days. Hope you enjoy this content.

To all of the speakers of the last event, but mostly, to all of you in the audience, your feedback is very welcome, and a precious tool for improving the event’s content quality. Post your suggestions here, or if you’re still a web 1.0 fanatic, e-mail the authors directly.

Thank you

Dear Team Leaders,

SAFIRA 2008 (SAF2K8), our annual kickoff event, will take place on 15th February. Following the format started last year’s second quarter summit, I hereby present you with the opportunity of talking about your projects to the whole SAFIRA community, and share your successes and experiences with all of us. Speakers not participating in the previous event, SAFIRA 2007 Q2, will be given priority.

This year’s agenda has three 10 minute slots for project presentations, like the previous event.

GUIDELINES
Your 10 mins presentations should focus on the following:
- Mission and goals
- Plan (project chronogram, where applicable) and project team (names and roles)
- Benefits to the customer
- The value of SAFIRA to the project
- The project’s value to SAFIRA

This means 5 slides maximum, with 2 mins per slide. Also works well 3 slides at 3 mins per slide. I strongly suggest illustrative slides (diagrams, charts, gannts, clip-art), not endless bulleted lists. Less text, more talk.

Watch this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLpjrHzgSRM !!!

DATES & DEADLINES

23/01/2008, 12:00h, Proposals submission

25/01/2008, 14:00h, Orientation
01/02/2008, 12:00h, 1st draft PPT delivery
08/02/2008, 12:00h, Final PPT delivery
15/02/2008, 10:00h, Presentation

Thank you for participating.