Wedding Present Ideas: What To Give Them On Their Special Day

A wedding is one of the most special days of a person’s life, especially when it comes to brides. Although there are many things out there that might be good for the couple, not all of them fall into your budget and others simply aren’t special enough for a wedding day. Some wedding gift ideas you can simply derive for their wedding registries. Even then, you would have to sift through countless stuff that they have sneaked in along with useful stuff.

Artwork

Beautiful artwork is always a welcome gift. The couple is just about to begin their new life, probably in a new home. This means that they will always be in need of stuff that will help spruce up their home. Artwork doesn’t always have to be something generic. You could even get a personalised piece made for them. Something like a portrait or create a mosaic out of favourite pictures.

Paid Vacation or Stay at a Hotel

This is one of the more expensive options on the list. Not too many people have the finance required to back something like this up but it doesn’t necessarily have to be from one person. A number of people could chip in and pay for their dream vacation. A stay for the first 2 or 3 days at an expensive hotel for their first few nights is also a great way to celebrate their new lives.

Bottle of Wine

There are some generic gifts which may become special only by the intentions attached to them. Give the wine a personalised label celebrating their wedding and wishing them a healthy and happy life. Another great way is to tell them to only open it on their 5th or 10th anniversary. This shows the faith you have in them as a couple.

Dinnerware

Dinnerware may sound very boring but ask the bride and groom after a few months of marriage. Once all the exciting gifts have run out and they’re left to tend to their house, dinnerware will feel like a blessing.

Expensive Items off the Registry

These are usually items that the bride and groom have sneaked in. These may be expensive and depend entirely upon your budget and relationship with the couple. Couples are not usually expecting people to purchase these high priced gifts so it will be a nice surprise for them if you do.

Wedding gift ideas can be confusing but if you have a registry at your disposal, you can’t really go wrong. If you want to go off the wedding registry for whatever reason make sure that the present is personal and memorable. Wedding present ideas with a personal touch are very appealing and can set your gift apart from the others.

DemoCamp8 Presentation Review

DemoCamp8 took place last night at No Regrets. The usual crowd was all there with the addition of Amber Mac and Leo Laporte from the Inside the Net podcast and their TV show Call for Help. The venue was improved by the rental of an audio system to help everyone hear the presentations. One big advantage of the No Regrets venue is that beer is served during the demos. The demos this time were:

1/ WildApricot.com

WildApricot recently launched their product to public and I have been setting it up for a small golf tournament I’m organizing. Its a great tool for organizing informal groups and has a capability to track memberships and special event costs. Its a very slick product and Dmitry did a good job showing off the product. I was surprised that the product is written in .NET as there are a lot of features that it could quickly inherit from open-source projects, like forums and web chat. It would be interesting to see if it can evolve at the same pace using the .NET platform.

2/ Jobloft.com

Jobloft is an employment site focused primarily on the retail employment sector with its high transient employment base and location specific needs. Jobloft has integrated an a job list with the Google maps API to provide location specific listings from a variety of retail employers. By targeting retail they hope to avoid Workopolis and some of the bigger employment sites. They have also built the ability for partners and schools to include jobs within a proximity to their location. This makes it easy to partner with schools looking to help their students.

3/FileMobile.com

Filemobile.com provides the ability to upload and host media files from a variety of sources, including your picture/video phone. The service seems to be heavily dependent on flash and has a very good visual interface. The system provides the ability to schedule large files transfers in the background. I thought one of the most impressive parts was the ability to automagically publish to a variety of blog services. Its not really clear what this business model is and how they will be able to scale to the massive amounts of bandwidth required.

4/ Languify

Languify provided a demo on a tool to manage multiple language files. With many languages and sometimes different maintainers it can be difficult to administer all the different language files. Languify provides a defined tool set to provide a web interface for managing these files. The tool has some potential and could be extended to use automated machine translation services or pool from existing translations for the same english phrase. I’m not sure the commercial potential for this sort of application but its very interesting.

5/ How to Measure the Success of Your Web Service

Mike McDerment cheated and did a presentation, using a webpage instead of power point, on web metrics. He focused on explain a conversion funnel which was kinda painful for anyone in marketing but I think was well suited for the developer heavy crowd. It would have been good to see the Google Analytics funnel, even with fake date, though instead of the static webpage.

Overall it was great to see Toronto based start-ups succeeding and the quality of the demos shown was extremely high.

Why Writing Out the Objectives For Your Presentation Is Important

So you have a big presentation to give to impress your boss or to new prospects and you want to make a huge impact. Well, there a lot of strategies out there for delivering a great presentation but you might as well forget them all if you fail to set out your objectives clearly first.

The reason for this is simple; if you don’t have a clear idea of exactly what you want your presentation to achieve then, despite your best efforts, at the end of your presentation your audience won’t have a clear idea of your objectives either.  Without a set of clear objectives you might make a few points effectively but you are leaving a lot to chance. A presentation not created with a strong focus will often leave only a vague impression of the real message you wish to convey.

Begin with the end in mind. If you take time to set your objectives out then you have begun to build a blueprint for the content and structure of your presentation. If you have a clear set of objectives they will inform all your decisions about what to say, when to say it and what to emphasise the most.

So what should your objectives include? Start with the ultimate end in mind, whether it’s a sale, increased web traffic, a chance of promotion, getting a job or even an abstract concept like building credibility. Having this objective in mind then leads to the next level of objectives such as, the key messages that you want to convey, what direct action you want the audience to take at the end or how many new clients you want to sign up.

Once you have these goals in mind then every word, every slide and every image should be evaluated against its ability to help you achieve the goal. Does that long introduction about the company history really help? Does that animation make the message clearer or is it a distraction to your purpose?

Use these goals to inform the narrative structure for your whole presentation as well as the order and emphasis for each point that you wish to make.

Having the end in mind gives you a clear and strong focus on exactly what it is that you need to do to achieve your goals.