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Billboard fail

By on December 27, 2012 in Story and design

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This Is Your Brain on Visuals credits and notes

By on May 2, 2012 in Story and design

Here are the slides from Wednesday’s presentations at The Chamber. Plus, you’ll find some notes from the presentations and credits for photos. Leave questions in the comment box below!

BEYONCE, GORILLA GLASSES & UNZIPPED FLYS: HOW TO BECOME A STANDOUT SPEAKER: HOW TO BECOME A STANDOUT SPEAKER

This Is Your Brain on Visuals 2may2012

View more presentations from Jon Swerens

Notes, downloads and credits:

Handout download:

Lisa Braithwaite’s Presentation Readiness Checklist

Related blog posts:

Open Sans font download:

Open_Sans

Recommended reading:

Photo credits:

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The Painter of Light™, RIP

By on April 7, 2012 in Church and theology, Story and design

A quick note about the death of Thomas Kinkade:

His art did a poor job of reflecting the Gospel that he professed. Sin and redemption are a part of that story, but instead of his art reflecting death and decay and our eventual victory over it, his art simply acted as though it doesn’t exist.

This is the reason so many could find true beauty in his art, which was present in some degree, while others found it superficial.

Nevertheless, RIP Mr. Kinkade.

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5 Essential Steps to Self-Publishing Success

By on April 23, 2011 in Story and design

Hello! Here are the notes from today’s presentation at the Allen County Public Library.

5 Essential Steps to Self-Publication Success
View more presentations from Jon Swerens

Daniel Decker is a great resource when you’re ready to self-publish a book. I gained a lot of information from his post, “10 Awful Truths About Book Publishing … And 7 Ways to Overcome Them.”

Here are the link for the “Sweat the Details” portion of the presentation:

AuthorHouse: A traditional self-publishing house

Lulu: On-demand book printing

Register a DBA form for your publishing house at the Allen County Recorder’s office.

Buy your ISBNs at ISBN.org.

Create your bar codes at this Bookland page.

Establish a web presence using wordpress.org.

Be your own agent:

Make a Facebook page, instead of using a personal page.

Interested in doing presentations? I am always inspired by Presentation Zen.

Follow me on Twitter by clicking here.

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Five Missteps That Can Kill Your Self-Published Book

By on April 13, 2011 in Story and design

I was honored to be the first person the Allen County Public Library contacted when they were first considering hosting an author fair. I said I’d be glad to be a part of it, if I can give some helpful hints to budding authors.

About 30 local authors will be participating in the fair, which will be Saturday, April 23, at the Allen County Public Library downtown.

My portion of this free fair will be a presentation called “Five Missteps That Can Kill Your Self-Published Book.” It will cover some common roadbumps that beginning authors must negotiate if they decide to self-publish their books. My experience editing and publishing the Allen County Photo Album books will definitely come into play.

The 20-minute presentation will begin at 1 p.m. in Meeting Room A of the Allen County Public Library in downtown Fort Wayne.

This presentation is part of the free Author Fair sponsored by the ACPL.

If you’re on Facebook, you can tell me you’re attending on the FB event page.

Hope to see you there!

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You Can Cook Another Omelet

By on April 8, 2011 in Friends and family, Story and design

The lesson here: Just write it down.

My daughters Hannah and Sarita are budding authors, and this short essay by 13-year-old Sarita reflects what they wish to accomplish and how they intend to get there.

You Can Cook Another Omelet

a short essay sort of thingy about ideas

By Sarita Swerens

Just write down the idea.

When you detect that feeling, that inexplicable sense that you’re on the verge of becoming the author of a whole series of novels that no one has ever thought of, no one has ever read, no one has ever imagined in their deepest dreams, write it down.

When you feel the inspiration strike, wait for nothing and no one. Don’t post about your enthusiasm on Facebook or Tweet about your idea on Twitter. Don’t send a letter to your friend that you feel like writing; write. Don’t call all your friends on the telephone and shout that you’re about to get the most brilliant idea ever heard of on the face of the earth; write it down. If you have to dash out of the kitchen and let the toast burn or the roast combust or the egg-and-broccoli omelet smolder, then do it. If you have to tear through the house tipping over chairs and knocking your favorite purple coffee mug to the floor to hastily type down a fast-fading story idea from a dream about a song in a book you just heard about from a friend, then do it. You don’t have to use an online thesaurus, or dictionary, or rhyming dictionary, or rhyming thesaurus. You don’t have to spell pontification or serendipity or onomatopoeia or perspicacity correctly. Just write.

Don’t let the small things go. If a single sentence pops into your head that has a neat feel to it and makes you think, don’t leave it there. Don’t think, “Oh, I’ll write it down later, when I’m done with this English assignment,” because if you do, before you read two more paragraphs, the sentence will be a thing of the past; it will have faded away into the winding, cobwebby maze of ideas, stories, dreams, and fantasies that is your brain.

Even if it’s a single sentence, an entire story can be molded from it. A romance from an adjective. A villain from a noun. An ending from an adverb.

Even if it’s a single sentence, a tale of betrayal and faith and battle and love and hope against all odds can be woven into a rich, twisting story that is light and relief in this darkening world.

If it’s a dim, fading image from a dream that you just remembered you had a week ago, and it fills you with a desire to share your perception of the world with others, then write it down, even if it’s on a wrinkled piece of paper from an old history report that you just pulled out of the trash and scribbled on with a dull pencil from the junk drawer. Just write it down. Describe the feeling, the experience. Set your mind down on paper and trace it with ink. Scrawl down your scheme before it wanes and perishes and becomes an illusion of the idea you once had, the skeleton of a greater notion that can never be retrieved from the farthest reaches of you mind. Scribble down the inkling of better tales to come, before the passion dwindles and passes on into the inaccessible realm of lost stories. Just write it down.

Because if you write it down, it’ll be worth it later. If you write it down, then later you can correct your misspelled version of onomatopoeia. You can buy a new purple coffee mug. You can finish your English assignment. You can cook another omelet.

Because if you write down that idea and let it bloom, then later you can embellish it. A romance from an adjective. A villain from a noun. An ending from an adverb.

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Sadly, you are not a monster

By on October 10, 2010 in Motion and sound, Story and design

Possibly the best spoof of the year. First, the original now-classic Old Spice ad:

And then who but Grover of Sesame Street delivers this pitch-perfect spoof:

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How much is 19 million gallons?

By on May 27, 2010 in Story and design

The BP Gulf oil spill is now anywhere from 19 million to 39 million gallons.

But that large of a number is hard for the human mind to grasp. To help, The Associated Press gives us this metaphor:

“In the worst case scenario, if 39 million gallons has spilled, the oil would fill enough jugs to stretch from the Louisiana marshes to Prince William Sound in Alaska. That’s where the Exxon Valdez ran aground in 1989, spilling nearly 11 million gallons.”

OK, so that’s not really helpful at all. Now the distance is too large to imagine.

Also unhelpful was an earlier AP story, which said:

“Under the highest Gulf spill estimate, nearly 39 million gallons may have leaked, enough to fill 30 school gymnasiums.”

Honestly, are all school gymnasiums the same size?

So I searched for the capacities of several northeast Indiana bodies of water and discovered that my own sense of volume estimation is way, way off.

First was Lake James in Pokagon State Park. If you count all three basins that comprise the lake, Lake James contains 10.8 billion gallons of water. That’s billion, with a “b.”

Next, I thought maybe the Hurshtown Reservoir would be more help. But I was wrong again. That reservoir contains 1.8 billion gallons of water.

I need a lot less water. So I called Natalie Eggemann, the public information officer of the Fort Wayne Parks and Recreation Department. She called around the department and discovered that Reservoir Pond on South Clinton Street at Creighton Avenue contains 5.5 million gallons of water.

So the Gulf oil spill is at least four or maybe up to seven Reservoir Ponds.

Is that surprisingly small to you? Or maybe surprisingly large?

Above photo from August 1950 at Reservoir Park in Fort Wayne from News-Sentinel archives

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