Since I didn’t do such a good job of keeping my status up to date on this site, I though it might be a good idea to highlight some of the important activities I was involved in during 2008:

• In January I competed a couple project management classes.
• In April I started a new blog — Breaking Murphy Law.
• In July I was elected to the Health and Science Communications Association‘s Board of Directors and have been asked to oversee their ventures in the emergent social media landscape.
• In August I participated in InfoComm International’s annual Fall Leadership Forum where the councils planned their 2009 activities.
• In October I supported my employer’s recruiting efforts at the NSHMBA Conference & Career Expo. This involved learning to supervise the set up our custom 20′ x 20′ expo booth and making sure everything went smoothly for our HR staff and functional area interviewers. This training will allow me additional opportunities to participate in this sort of activity in 2009.
• In November I became a permanently professed member of the Secular Franciscan Order.
• For the first time since I started at Merck, we weren’t required to present at an FDA Advisory Committees Meeting (ACM) during the entire calendar year. This means I actually had a chance to refine, formalize and document the ACM best practices and procedures that my team has developed over the last few years.
• I completed the required continuing education requirements and renewed my InfoComm International CTS certification for another three years.

Overall it was a very busy and interesting year, I hope it has been for you as well.

The editors of PresentationXpert were kind enough to publish an article of mine called “It was a Disaster” in their June issue. Here’s a brief excerpt:

Many people consider the 1970s the golden age of the big Hollywood disaster movie and it’s fair to say that Airport, The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno are usually the first films that come to mind whenever this genre is mentioned. But disaster movies never go completely out of style and every year we’re offered new opportunities to consider the ways in which things can go completely and terribly wrong.

I’ve decide to get back into blogging again with a new project called Breaking Murphy’s Law . Instead of dealing with an extremely broad area of subject matter like Visual Being, this blog will focus on one specific topic:

There are a lot of things that can go wrong when you’re a presenter (or when you are supporting someone else’s presentation). This site is going to try to help you break Murphy’s Law so Murphy’s Law can’t break you.

More details about how and why the blog came about can be found in this post.

Also unlike my previous blogs, I hope to post less often and concentrate more on original content. The plan is to post a longish piece on Wednesdays with a brief weekly link roundup on Friday.

Please check it out when you get a chance and let me know what you think.