In commemoration of Mother’s Day, Save the Children is publishing its seventh annual State of the World’s Mothers report.

By focusing on the 60 million mothers in the developing world who give birth every year with no professional help and the 4 million newborns who die in the first month of life, this report helps to bring attention to the urgent need to reduce infant mortality around the world.

The report also identifies countries that are succeeding in improving the health and saving the lives of mothers and babies, and shows that effective solutions to this challenge are affordable – even in the world’s poorest countries.

Read on …

Did I really complain about no flowers and chocolates? What a spoilt woman I am! Am I complaining about being tired because I spent 4 hours last night helping with homework? Instead I am grateful that I have healthy, well-fed boys who do not live in fear, and whose births were surrounded by all the reassuring facilities and staff.

Tags: mothers, education

“A WA millionaire has developed a way to generate electricity using the power of the ocean.

Businessman Alan Burns believes it may be the answer to the state’s water problems. The process also produces clean water.

Mr Burns claimed that within 10 years, the technique could meet up to one-third of Perth’s daily peak energy and water needs, producing about three times more fresh water than the planned Kwinana desalination plant.” Read on …

How long before someone discovers an endangered marine organism to stop him?

environment

from the Who has time for this? blog

On everyone’s mind this year: it was only a matter of time before the internet changed TV in a way more profound than color or cable. That kind of disruption calls for a VC road map…

The entertainment industry managed to ignore the net for a decade. Only 250 miles apart, Hollywood and Silicon Valley might as well have been on different planets. Happy with their structural oligopoly, TV networks resisted change, and (just as buyers and sellers keep each other coming back to eBay) the talent and the audiences stayed loyal to the networks.

I also read a piece recently about how a child did not discriminate between the screens in his life – the television, the computer, the screen in the player in the back seat of his parent’s car, and his game player. I look forward to seeing who manages to integrate the lot into one device and what that device will look like and how it will operate. At the moment I sit at a desk to compute and lounge to watch TV (though rarely – partly because I cannot stand watching someone else flipping throug the channels. If TV becomes more interactive, will it become increaingly a solitary activity? I doubt it somehow. I watch my children sharing games and television, and they seem to be able to work it out. )

I guess it is similar to the juggling between books and the internet. Location , portability and interactivity are all aspects that need to be ironed out.

technology,

library

Public Speaking Tip: Add Weight

From Tom Antion

No I’m not promoting obesity.

I’m referring to outdoor presentations.

If you are ever forced (I say “forced” because you should try to avoid outdoor presentations at all costs) to do an outdoor presentation, then make sure you have several different kinds of weights handy to help control your presentation.

You might need a sand bag or dumbell to hold down the easel of your flipchart.

How about taping some heavy coins to the bottom of the sheets and clamping the edges to keep the breeze from lifting up the pages?Paperweights, or in a pinch, plain old rocks are great for holding down papers you have on a table on stage.

What else do you commonly have with you on stage that could blow around in a breeze? Make sure it’s secured.

Ties and scarves that look gorgeous in a no wind hotel room look terrible and distracting when flapping in the wind.

public speaking

Use Powerpoint to enhance your presentation, not cripple it

I’m not the first person to point out that Microsoft’s mainstay meeting and presentation application Powerpoint is usually anathema to any sort of useful communication, and that most speakers rely on it as a crutch rather than a memory jog, but I just got back from a three day marketing conference and was really struck by how most of the presenters were still falling into BPS (Boring Powerpoint Syndrome).

You know what I’m talking about if you ever go to meetings or attend any sort of workshop or conference. These are the folk that use plain white backgrounds for their slides and cram ten to fifteen bullet points on each slide, each bullet point a full sentence.

Read on …

Tags: powerpoint

presentations

public speaking