Practical Meditation for the Technologist's Mind

I am down in Long Beach this week on behalf of Google Sidewiki - to distribute HD Flip cams to attendees who use Sidewiki to generate conversation on the conference website. So far I've given out 15 or so of the 25 that I have. It's going well - the crowd is diverse. Technologists, scientists, authors, TED escapees, venture capitalists, altruists, etc.

I thought I'd add to the blend and speak on two passions of mine - Tea and Meditation. I should also say that I've never spoken on these subjects before - at least not to a crowd of unknown people.

I proposed this:

This talk will address our need to find balance amongst the ever increasing desire to be constantly connected to our highly addictive shiny technology thingies. I will discuss how to find time in the day to meditate, bring up some breathing techniques, and propose how the simplicity of tea drinking can help us achieve mindfulness. I’ll also be touching upon some of the mental and physical disorders technologists suffer from, and what common sense wisdom we can all conjure to overcome them.

I'll have to post the talk here when the BIL and TechZulu staff are done editing things down. I desire feedback from my community - whether you're a teaist, fellow meditator, techie, whatever. It's for the betterment of diseminating information that can help us all. I wanted to stray from talking about how meditation affects the brain and the health properties of tea. I wanted to share how simple techniques that I've learned over the years are being utilized in the greater tech industry to find balance and well-being in our increasingly busy lives. And I think I did it. First verision. Draft 1. Now I want to revise it, learn from it, and take it farther.

I added elements of Native American principals, cultural elements from Japan, China, and Iran, and spoke with a lot of Non-Violent Communication flavor. We all already have the ability to access the calm and the present - and by all means, I'm new at this. But I think we're all affected by a rushed and overly connected life, even if we can't accurately look and admit to ourselves how wound up we are. Especially us tech kids.

So, I present you with my slides. Huge thanks to @drkkolmes and @SorenG for insights and learnings and to the Meditation list at Google for your support.

Practical Meditation For The Technologist's Mind

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