Zen Presentations

"Presentation is the "killer" skill, said Garr Reynolds at a meeting of the Foreign Women Lawyers Association held in Roppongi Hills last night. "The competition sucks, but; you don't have to." Garr, formerly of Apple and now at teaching marketing and branding in Osaka, has quite a following for his "naked presentations." He encouraged the crowd to take risks. Forget about PowerPoint. Connect with your audience.

In the world according to Garr, the Naked presenter (as in the "naked truth") approaches the presentation task embracing the ideas of simplicity, clarity, honesty, integrity and passion. Simple is not always easy. But it is worth the effort--for you and the audience.

Sorry for such a poor picture. In person, Garr looks more like Eric Bana

Uncle Swint and Sega lawyer team up to teach Negotiations

Ari Staiman, Esq, general counsel for Sega, the US$93billion video game and software company, and Uncle Swint are co-teaching a course at Temple University, Japan Campus on Business Negotiations. Classes are held on Saturdays and started last week. It's a great group of students most of who work for international companies; but, a few are goverment officials and others work for NGOs. We'll keep you posted on the progress.

Makoto-san

My newest friend. Makoto-san, originally from Obihiro, Hokaido.

Lunch w/Steve @ the Ritz

Tokyo finally has a Ritz-Carlton. On Friday, Steve Greenberg, the head of Gallup Japan took, Uncle Swint to lunch at 45. You guessed it, on the 45th floor of the Ritz-Carlton building. Hotel GM Ricco DeBlank was there to greet us. Who could ask for a better reception. OK better stop here before Uncle Swint drops any more names.

Photo artist Mark Vassallo

On last Friday, May 18, at a benefit for Hope International, I was unable to resist bidding on this a photo by Italian-born, British-raised Tokyo resident Mark Vassallo.

Gallup CEO and Economist say the smart money is on Hillary

After asserting his conservative credentials to rule out any bias, Jim Clifton placed Hillary Clinton at the top of the heap of US presidential wanna-bes. Polling shows that while some people will not vote for her because she is a woman, even more will vote for her because she is a woman.

Clifton was in Tokyo visiting clients this week, and so Uncle Swint invited him to speak at an 'intimate' breakfast for 130 members of the American Chamber of Commerce (in Japan).

The Economist (May 17, 2007) said: “The smart money is on Hillary Clinton to win the White House in 2008.”