tip Archives : Conferences That Work

How to minimize Midjourney distortion of body parts

Sunday, September 3rd, 2023 by Adrian Segar

Many who use the popular image software Midjourney have had problems with Midjourney distortion. Human hands, arms, feet, and other body parts are often totally unrealistic. Extra fingers, matchstick arms, and feet disappearing into a blur are common.

Yes, there are explanations for why this happens. Regardless, this flaw makes folks waste significant time getting Midjourney to generate images of people that don’t include these artifacts.

After spending many frustrating hours, either trying to dream up prompts that avoid these problems or cropping out distorted portions of images, I’ve finally developed an approach that minimizes Midjourney distortion of body parts.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: artifacts, body part distortion, fix, graphics, illustrations, Midjourney, tip| Posted in Technology, Tip | No Comments »

Tip to improve breakout gallery walks

Monday, January 16th, 2023 by Adrian Segar

In a typical in-person conference breakout session, participants divide into small groups to discuss one or more topics. Each group records members’ thoughts and ideas on one or more sheets of flipchart paper. At the end of the discussions, groups post their papers on a wall and everyone walks around reading the different ideas. Facilitators call this a gallery walk. Here’s a tip to improve breakout gallery walks.

Why use gallery walks?

In the past, it was common for small group work to be “reported out”: a representative from each group verbally shared their group’s work with everyone. If there are many groups, this takes a while, and there’s typically a fair amount of repetition, which makes it hard to maintain focus. In addition, if the groups are covering multiple topics, likely, some or most of the reporting will not interest attendees. In short, reporting out is tiring to take in and inefficient.

A significant advantage of gallery walks is that participants can easily concentrate on the topics, thoughts, and ideas that interest them. If a flipchart page is of no interest, it can be ignored. Also, it’s simple to customize a gallery walk to meet specific wants and needs. For example, if there are experts on a particular topic, they can stand near their flipchart notes and answer questions or support discussion. Gallery walks allow ongoing interaction around the captured ideas, which isn’t possible during “reporting out,” a broadcast-style activity.

And this leads to my tip…

My tip to improve breakout gallery walks

You can improve the effectiveness of a gallery walk by adding one small step before it starts. Ask everyone to pair up with someone they don’t know and walk the gallery together while discussing what they see. When you do this, each participant:

Gets introduced to and learns about someone new.
Gains new perspectives on the topics under discussion.
Continues to actively learn about the topics after the end of their small group.

In essence, pairing participants increases the reach and impact of the breakout session by extending connection and interaction into the concluding gallery walk.

As usual, lightly ask participants to share in pairs. I like to think of such requests as giving people permission to do something they might want to do but feel a little awkward asking for it. If folks want to go around with someone they know or have just met, or decide to walk as a trio or alone, respect their choices.

Thank you!

A hat-tip to my friend, photographer Brent Seabrook, for inadvertently sparking this tip when we took a gallery walk at the Clark Institute a few months ago. Looking at art with Brent added so much to my appreciation of what we saw—and I got to know him better too!

Image attribution: Georgia State University, College of Education & Human Development

Tags: breakout sessions, breakouts, facilitation, gallery walk, reporting out, small group work, tip| Posted in facilitation, Tip | 1 Comment »

How to delete ALL mail messages from iPhone/iPad in one step

Thursday, January 9th, 2014 by Adrian Segar

Here’s how to delete ALL mail messages from iPhone/iPad in one step. Yes, there is a way to delete all your unwanted iPhone/iPad emails from the Mail app in one step! No more left-swipe: tap Trash for every individual message. No more Edit: tap the single open circle next to every individual message and finally tap Trash. And you don’t need to jailbreak your device.

If you leave your iDevice on for a few days and come back to find a few hundred messages on it that you’ve already downloaded elsewhere this trick will save you time and irritation. I didn’t discover the method—it’s far from obvious—but found it on one of many Apple discussion threads bemoaning this irritating hole in Mail functionality.

Updates

GOOD NEWS UPDATE [added October 3, 2015] IOS 9.0.2 finally displays a “Trash All” button after Edit is pressed! If your phone won’t handle 9.0.2, the following procedure is often successful; read the comments for a detailed description of hundreds of people’s successes and failures.

BAD NEWS UPDATE [added September 25, 2016] IOS 10 has removed the “Trash All” button. Who knows why? The procedure listed below (the original 2014 post) still works for many people.

GOOD NEWS UPDATE [added January 5, 2020] IOS 13.3 allows you to “Select All” your emails and then touch “Trash” to delete all selected emails! If your phone can’t be updated to this IOS version, the following procedure is often successful; read the comments for a detailed description of hundreds of people’s successes and failures.

It works! I present to you this great tip from shashbasharat found on MacRumors (slightly edited for clarity).

How to delete ALL mail messages from iPhone/iPad in one step

How to delete or move ALL emails at once on a non-jailbroken iPad or iPhone

It took me weeks of research to figure out finally how to decode this yet another secretive secret of Apple. There is a perfect way of deleting ALL emails at once without jailbreaking your iPhone or iPad…and here it is:

If any of your messages are marked as unread: Open Inbox >> Edit >> Mark All >> Mark As Read [added May 21, 2014 by Adrian; this extra step makes the difference between success & failure for some.]
Open Inbox >> Edit >> Check/select the top message; it will highlight the Move button.
Press and hold the move button and, keeping your finger on the Move button, use another finger to uncheck the message that you had checked earlier.
Lift all your fingers off the iDevice screen and leave it alone. Wait until all your messages pile up on the right-hand portion of the screen (in iPad); iPhone will give you the actual number of emails it has selected for the action.
Choose trash to delete all of them or any other folder where you want to move them. Remember this will replicate your action on the server so you will ACTUALLY move them or delete them on the server and not just the iDevice.
After moving all messages to the trash you can leave them there for the scheduled cleaning or empty them right away. To empty immediately go to the trash folder and touch Edit. The Delete All button shows up at the bottom of the screen. Hit it! You’re done!
If you do not see the effects of your actions on the server make sure you have enabled your email accounts for such actions.

Tips

Allow enough time (could take several minutes depending on the number of emails to be moved) for selecting the emails to move. Your screen may be unresponsive for a while. On an iPad, you will see them zoomed out on the right-hand side of the screen. On an iPhone you will see a message showing you the actual number of messages selected.
Avoid purging a very large number of emails, the mail app might freeze or crash. If your inbox has thousands of emails change your sync settings to store less emails in your inbox.
[Added Jul 20, 2014, by Adrian] Many people have reported needing to repeat the above procedure several times before it succeeds. (I too have found this to be necessary a few times on my iPhone but not on my iPad—go figure.) So my final tip is to repeat the procedure 3-4 times if the mail doesn’t disappear the first time. In my experience, if your messages disappear momentarily and then reappear, repeating the procedure will eventually make them stay deleted for good.

That’s how to delete ALL mail messages from iPhone/iPad in one step!

Tags: bulk, bulk delete, delete, delete all, emails, IOS, ios7, iPad, iPhone, mail, messages, one step, tip, trick| Posted in NoRepost, Technology, Tip | 404 Comments »

Tip for sharing new ideas at conferences

Sunday, April 24th, 2011 by Adrian Segar

Here’s a tip for sharing new ideas from individual conference attendees into a shared resource that everyone can use.

Create a form like the one illustrated above. Make multiple copies easily available at all sessions. You can place them on tables, have a stack by the room entrances, etc. At the start of the event, encourage attendees to use the forms to write down best practices, tips, and ideas sparked during sessions, explaining that all contributions will be compiled and shared with everyone after the conference. Provide boxes for attendees to post completed forms. Once the conference is over, promptly summarize the ideas shared and post the resulting document on the conference website or other conference community.

Like this tip for sharing new ideas? Thank the organizers of the MGMA PEER conference, where I first saw this idea in action.

Tags: Learning, peer culture, sharing new ideas, social learning, tip| Posted in Event design, Learning | 1 Comment »