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The slides I'm posting are for an event that took place last Wednesday. Tom's been all over the world and had Internet access, but the mountains of Ecuador proved too big an obstacle. We hope he enjoyed several days of being out of touch. In a scenic location. Sounds good to me.

The event was the Seminarium Ecuador in Quito, short for San Francisco de Quito, the capital city. Be sure to look at google maps, wikipedia, and other websites to learn more about this fascinating place. It's in the same time zone as Boston, but worlds away.

If you attended the Seminarium, please give us your comments, and if you'd like the slides they are here.

On Friday, Tom was the closing speaker at the 2009 Urban Land Institute Fall Meeting and Urban Land Expo at Moscone Center in [glorious, matchless, delightful—TP] San Francisco. We'd love to hear from you if you happened to attend the event, and the PPT file is here.

I've been fooling around with a lot of formats for recent events in the likes of Luanda, Riyadh, Dhahran, Mumbai, New Delhi, and Toronto. I've also been folding some of the stuff in the new book into my presentations. For my own use, I created a 525-slide monster I titled "Mini-MASTER." Here it is, FYI.

Tom's public seminar yesterday was hosted by King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals in Dhahran. "KFU is as good as it gets in its field," Tom reports. "I had a lovely time. I think we got some good work done—and had a lovely time along the way. As an engineer, I have great fun poking fun at my brethren." He adds, "If it gets any better than Saudi hospitality, I don't know where." (At Tom's request, spaces at the seminar were made available for "a couple of dozen students.")

As always, please let us hear from you, and you can get the PPT slides here.

Tom's on the road again, this time speaking to the International Conference on Administrative Development: Towards Excellence in Public Sector Performance, in Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. If you attended the event which took place earlier today, please let us hear from you in the comments. If you would like to get the PPT slides, you can do so here:
Excellence Always, Riyadh
Riyadh, Long Version

Tom is speaking today in Toronto at an all-day event called "The Art of
Management." Among others with whom he'll be sharing the podium is Marcus
Buckingham. "There's nobody," Tom says, "in 'this business,' whatever 'this
business' is, whom I respect more than Marcus. It's that simple." (Tom also
reports gleefully that the promised overnight snow did not materialize.)

To get the slides, use these linkks:
The Art of Management, Toronto, Final
The Art of Management, Toronto, Long Version

Tom's in Mumbai, speaking at the Leaders in India Business Forum. He's done by now, since it's nine hours later compared to Boston where I'm located as I post this announcement. So, if you were there, let us hear from you in the comments. And if you'd like the slides, here are the links:
Leaders in India, Mumbai Final
Leaders in India, Mumbai Long

Tom spoke for The London Business Forum again on Wednesday in Manchester. On Thursday he spoke for LBF in the morning to HR professionals and to a General Session in the afternoon. (Tomorrow he heads home.)

Three PPTs for downloading are here:
London, AM Session
London, PM Session
Manchester

Tom swings into his Fall speaking engagement season with the first of four events in the UK, all under the aegis of London Business Forum. At today's event in Glasgow, Tom's bit is titled "Still in Search of Excellence." If you'd like, you can get the PPT slides, or a longer web-only version, and please let us hear from you in the comments if you were there.

On Thursday I had the great privilege of being a keynote at the Health Forum/AHA conference in my beloved San Francisco—putting "feet on the ground" there always sends my spirits soaring. While the health bill, or the likelihood of something, was on every mind, my job was to talk about leadership, regardless of the shape of any legislation. In fact I obsessed on the idea of "your choice"—the idea that incredible amounts of progress were possible in any case. Proof more or less positive is the variance that exists in the system we have today, in spite of existing ass-backwards incentives that reward "piece work" (pay-per-procedure) rather than outcomes and quality-safety. Organizations like Geisinger in Danville PA, Mayo in Rochester MN, Dartmouth-Hitchcock in Hanover NH, and Griffin in Derby CT do wonders already in terms of quality, safety, minimization of unnecessary tests and procedures, and putting the patient and patient's family first.

My main thrust was "controlling what you can control" and creating an "experimentation machine"-"innovation machine" (and a "culture" that supports it) devoted to "letting 1,000 flowers bloom" as the way forward in creating and designing systems that promote 100% employee involvement, patient-patient family engagement, safety, quality, elimination of variation in outcome, and the like. I avoided my usual hectoring (the nature of the likes of quality-safety is now more or less accepted), and urged "getting on with it" ASAP.

I have rarely felt so engaged and have rarely so enjoyed myself--as to impact, the proof will be in the doing. (Glenn Steele, CEO of Geisinger, was immeasurably helpful—he joins my "hero entrepreneurs" shortlist, next to the likes of Teach For America's Wendy Kopp!)

Attached you'll find my PowerPoint presentation; it's less helpful than usual, since so much of the tone was beyond the slides.

PP is attached.

Tom is speaking at ExpoGestão, the annual congress of the Federation of Entrepreneurial Associations of Santa Catarina. He's in Joinville, in the state of Santa Catarina in Brazil. Tom is joined at the podium by the likes of Gary Becker, who won the 1992 Nobel Prize in Economics, and Sharada Ramanathan, who's a director and entrepreneur—and often the face of Bollywood to the rest of the world.

As always, we welcome your comments if you were there. And you can get three PPTs for the event here: Excellence. Always. ExpoGestão, ExpoGestão, Long Version, and a special deck titled The Innovation 24.

The "Quality 10" became the "Quality 121," which I sent your way from India. Since getting home, I've added to it, and the Quality 121 has become the Quality 136. You'll find it here, with substantial edits since the original, in both PDF and PowerPoint formats.

I'm in New Delhi, where the thermometer is apparently stuck above 100°F. I am presenting at the "ASQ/FICCI Symposium on Innovation and Quality." The joint sponsors-organizers are the American Society for Quality and The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce, a venerable institution whose origins date back to 1927.

As always, I am wonderfully overwhelmed by the amazing energy that one sees and feels in India.

(As part of my preparation, I created "The Quality 121: 121 Random Thoughts on Quality, Emphasizing the Variables That Are Often Missing in Conventional Quality Programs." You'll find it here as a Special Presentation, along with the PPT for the event.)

Tom is in Korea when a great deal is happening in that country. He's speaking to the New Growth Engines'
Convention & Expo in Seoul. We wish him a safe trip, and please let us hear from you in the comments if you attended the event. If you would like to get the PPT, you can download it here.

If you've been reading our blog lately, you know that Tom's been en route to Shanghai. For the three-day event, he gives us four presentations tailored to his audience and in keeping with topics that have occupied him recently:

• Excellence
• Innovation
• People
• Leadership

Please join us in the comments if you had the opportunity to attend the event where Tom was speaking to the Olympic Marketing Training Consultancy, whose founder once offered $620,000 for a chance to meet Warren Buffett.

[And yes! Tom sent the photo above of Shanghai, where the population will surpass 19,000,000 this year, as seen from his 38th floor hotel room window—a little different from the window view in Amsterdam!]

On several occasions I have raved about Amar Bhidé's The Venturesome Economy: How Innovation Sustains Prosperity in a More Connected World. In preparation for a presentation today, I put together a brief (four slides) Special PPT Presentation—which is attached and all yours. (Sorry it's not annotated—it may be more or less self-explanatory. Anyway, I don't care; you should have long ago purchased and ingested the utterly original tome.)

Tom is speaking today for Focus Conferences. His all-day event is at the Nyenrode Business University in Breukelen, Netherlands. (Then he's off to Shanghai to present a 3-day "mini-course.") We welcome you to our comments if you saw Tom speak, and if you'd like to get the slides, you can download them here: Final version and Leadership version.

And, above, one more photo from Tom. Beautiful city!

Tom's ferry voyage took him to Helsinki, where he had a presentation today. Please leave us a comment if you were there, and you can get the PPT slides here. Pictures from the trip are above and below. As you can see, it's a long way from Spring in Helsinski, also. Additional photos are at Flickr. Brrr!

Tom's tour of the Baltic states continues in Tallinn, Estonia, where he's again appearing for Baltic Management Conferences. This is a part of the world that Tom has not spent much time in before now, and I know he must be enjoying meeting new people there. If you were at the event, please let us hear from you in the comments. Or, get the PowerPoint presentation here.

[Tom re the photo, above: "Tallinn, Estonia, still not Spring—my plane approaches the city." If it helps ... it's not quite Spring in Vermont, either.]

The day finds Tom in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, speaking to the Baltic Management Conference. You can get the slides here, and we look forward to your comments if you were there.

Photo from Tom above, "not quite Spring in Vilnius."

Tom's the last speaker of the year at Trinity University's Policy Maker Breakfast series, in San Antonio. He is not using PowerPoint, but he put most of the material together in PowerPoint format as a way of organizing his thoughts, and he offers the PPT to you here. Please let us know about the event if you were there.

In the midst of his current Boston-Abu Dhabi-Boston-Bogotá dash (Lithuania, Estonia, Finland are next), Tom acquired what he calls "the mother of all sinus infections." So, speaking today in Bogotá, he plans to "squeak and sputter" his way through it, with the help of hot water and ginger and honey, I guess.

The event is the Management Forum, and the PPT slides are here; there's also a long version. Please let us hear from you in the comments to let us know how it went!

Tom's at the beginning of an extended speaking tour that will take him to eight countries in two months (not counting the U.S.). Today, he's pleased to be in Abu Dhabi presenting the "Second Annual Leadership Lecture," which he bills as "Developing a Culture of Excellence." You can download the slides here, and we'd love to hear from you in the comments if you were there. Tom's pictures, above and below, give a good feel for the place (it certainly looks as if he's away from the snow again).

Tom spoke today in Auckland to the rapidly growing business-coaching company Results Group and its clients. He reports that while the economy is sagging significantly in New Zealand, the atmosphere is "a million miles from the despair and fear that seem to grip the USA."

Please let us hear from you if you were there, and if you'd like to get the PPT, here's the link.