Manila Observatory’s Brown Bag Lectures: Some suggestions for topics

Since most of the speakers would be talking about scientific stuff in Manila Observatory’s Brown Bag Lectures, for a change, I would like to give a talk on some things I learned from books that may be useful to Manila Observatory.  Here are some topics to choose from:

1.  “Duct Tape Marketing: the World’s Most Practical Small Business Guide” by John Jantsch.  MO needs to market itself as Philippines premiere scientific institution.  The core marketing message must be applied from the level of the porter and up.

2.  “Getting Things Done: The Art of stress-free productivity” by David Allen. How to collect all tiny bits of things to do in order to free your mind from the stress of trying to remember everything.  Includes effective use of calendars, task lists, and file folders.  Also includes how to sort your emails and loose papers.

3. “Built to Last: Successful habits of visionary companies” by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras.  Some insights may be useful for understanding how MO lasted for 150 years and how it could last for another 150 years.

4.  “The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World’s Greatest Manufacturer” by Jeffrey Liker.  Discusses how to speed up business processes, improve quality,and cut costs in any industry. Also discusses how to create a learning institution and just-in-time production.

This is all for now.  Maybe talks like these would encourage Admin and network guys to give similar talks:

1.  “Finance for dummies: how to prepare program budgets with inflation and depreciation”
2.  “W3C web standards: What it means for the MO website”
3.  “Latest library technology that would be useful to MO”
4.  “Philippine Internet backbones: How is MO in connected?”

The important thing is this: everybody shares whatever they know to help Manila Observatory become better.  This is not just the job of scientists.