Archive for January, 2008

Tackling a new skill (or project, objective, etc.) break it up into small steps and achievable bits.

When I was on Jonny’s Partay (see below) Jonny asked use to compare trapeze lessons with getting better at public speaking.

From the moment I walked into my trapeze lesson to the very end of class each one of the three instructors was reviewing a simple chain of steps you need to take to complete a knee-hang, backflip dismount, and eventually a catch.

like a mantra, they recited: “left hand hold, hips forward, right hand reach, left hand reach, ready, hep, legs up, hands off, arch & reach, hands back, legs down, legs forward-back-forward, let go & grab knees, extend.” and by then you would be on the crash pad.

I never had to remember and reproduce the complex sequence on my own, even as it became familiar.

When you tackle a new skill, like public speaking, give yourself bite size pieces to master, support yourself with a step-by-step framework, and work with a net all you like. (Notecards or a written script can be a perfectly acceptable “net.”)

Oh and click more for the trapeze videos…

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Whether you’re DEMOing or watching, some links and key ideas for pitching.
***UPDATE: WebInno presenters and attendees, this means you too!***

Stay within the six minutes by focusing on what’s most exciting to THEM and by ending with what you want them to DO. Don’t try to show or tell all you possibly can. It’s never about tonnage. It’s about leverage. It’s the compelling core idea.

What is the point of being at DEMO? What is the ACTION you could stimulate? What do you want the audience (both there and remote) to actually DO when you finish? (stuff like: try out the product, tell someone else about it, blog that it’s a great thing, whatever…) Have a clear objective.

For those about to pitch, we salute you:

10 pitching rules to break
10 tips for pitching
Body language cheat sheet
Nail the “ah-ha moment”
Name who you help & how
Who & how part 2
Apply the “which means that” razor

• Think about the audience’s motivations, needs and interests. Connect and resonate with these needs when you demo.
• The pitch itself is never the ends (I did “great,” but so what?). It’s a business tool. To accomplish something.
• Focus on what you want to accomplish, and have a clean ending that leaves that thought in their heads, preferably 20-30 seconds BEFORE time is up, so your last words can settle in.
• Maybe the goal is to get them to come to you for a full product demo. Tell them that. Say “come to me for a full product demo.” If your 6 minute pitch touches a nerve with their interests and motivations, they will. But don’t leave it to chance.
• Don’t think that just by showing them “interesting” and “exciting” and “good enough,” they will figure out what they should do next to engage with the idea.

If you only have time to read one post, this one’s lightning fast and universally useful.

SCORECARD: Using the ideas above, tell us how DEMO pitches you saw stacked up. Who left money on the table? Who swatted it out of the park? What one thing would have made the most difference across many pitches? You can use the top 10 lists as “scorecards.”

(Inspired by Twittering with @loiclemeur this morning.)

You might think presentations answer “What is it?” Nope. The good ones answer “What does it do?” and “What does that matter?” (credit to @JNSwanson: and great ones answer “What does that matter to me?”)

What is emotionally moving and significant about your work? product? ideas? company? message?

Not only is this Wired infographic on the blog post ecosystem interesting to follow, I love how the information’s rendered and presented. On the downside the UI navigation was a little buggy, but on the upside it’s a cool approach to analyzing and displaying a slightly complex story.

The Life Cycle of a Blog Post, From Servers to Spiders to Suits — to You

The graphic follows a theoretical blog reaction to a Budweiser Super Bowl commercial through a posse of bots, pings, scrapers, et al on its way to readers of various shapes. (And the readers really are a pretty funny shape!)

(Via Boing Boing)

I had very nice bursts of productivity on the train to and from NYC this week. I was also privileged to see the work environments of several folks I know. Walking down Park Avenue I thought “Ah, so THIS is where Jane Quigley works.”

The last year taught me lots about my own continuum of “modes” between work and play. Some of the most arbitrary and meandering of which have yielded the most valuable business results (ahem, Twitter… social networking…)

All of this got me wondering how you would answer the question “Where do you work?” Most who replied via Twitter did NOT answer with just a company name. *That was a pleasant surprise. Maybe because I hinted that any kind of answer was cool. In the comments, add yours.

(*Tho I admit, I *am* still curious what company you work for…)

Photo credit: Susan Piver

Sean Buvala (@Storyteller) I work all over the US in business, schools, libraries, fields, churches, stadium, gyms, coffee shops, offices. I’m a storyteller

royblumenthal (@royblumenthal) I work where I can play, be me, exercise my creativity, curiosity. Where I can doodle in my Moleskine, paint on my tablet pc.

LaGringa (@LaGringa) on the web

BIMwebTV (@BIMwebTV) where?-worldwide

Goza Family (@Activated) We work on the road, performing at schools and libraries all across the U.S.A.
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I am very excited to have a number of meetings in NYC over the next two days. I’ll get to meet face to face for the first time with a number of really interesting people I’ve been privileged to connect with over the past 9 months. If that wasn’t enough, there are also excellent social media networking “events” in the hopper for both nights.

Tonight: Seesmic Meetup at the Half King, 7 pm. Tomorrow: Informal Tweet-up, venue & time TBD. If you’re around I would love to connect, and even more I would love to connect you with other awesome NYC-area folks I’m lucky to know. You can always find me on Twitter and through email: laura (at) this web domain address. I hope to see you soon!

Financial Aid Podcast Daily Free MP3 Internet Radio » Martin Luther King Jr. I Have A Dream Speech Complete audio and text of King’s famous speech, courtesy of Christopher Penn and the Financial Aid Podcast

Or, watch this full-length video from YouTube:

I hope you had a chance today to reflect on the power of what this man did, what he symbolized and what remains to be done.

Nice tidbit from The Tipping Point, Sesame Street researchers noticed how closely attention was tied to comprehension. Whenever the program got confusing, contentious or *flashy just for flashy’s sake, attention wandered. When the children understood what was going on, they paid rapt attention.

Now, anyone who had to read long, difficult academic papers in college (or any point in their lives) won’t find this the least bit surprising.

I say over and over to clients. You’re not “spoon feeding” information because they’re dumb, you’re packaging and framing it so that it’s easy to parse. Especially important when you consider keeping in mind the zillions of things battling for your listener’s attention.

*Anyone mesmerized by slide transitions, animations, fonts, effects & colors in PowerPoint should softly whisper this point over and over to themselves while editing a slide deck.

These are wonderful pointers and I really (sincerely) liked them. Overwhelmingly good and useful article by Skellie at DailyBlogTips, and I’m glad I saw it in Chris Brogan’s tweets this evening.

But. I took issue with part of #9: “You don’t want to spend more time reading other people’s content than you do creating your own.” Huh? Seriously?

If your only object is to blog more, sure, write more than you read. But that’s such a narrow and self-limiting view. I’d roundly discourage that in a client. Studying, reading, listening… that’s how we learn and how good ideas get better. I get my best ideas when I’m reading - books, feeds, great links from my friends, etc. I’d much rather post less and go deeper. Cultivate and think and converse until I have something I must write, that I’m really inspired about, that builds on ideas I’ve heard and stuff I’ve learned.

Beware frittering time away in a feed reader, yes. Use tools like friends’ shared items, www.aiderss.com, ranking and social bookmarking sites to find the best content and curtail “wasted time” reading, sure.

But I’m dead against more writing than reading time. If anything, I’d advise spending 5-10 times more time taking information in than spitting it out. More time listening, less time talking. Across any & all social media: blog, socnet, etc. To me this turns the quality conversation way up.

(… If I’m going to be so unkind as to poo on one of the ideas, I’d like to offer something productive. Switching to an offline/online tool (with bookmarklet!) for creating blog posts has made a huge difference in my blogging productivity. I currently use MarsEdit but have heard raves about others too.)

Ballast. The weight that rights your boat when it gets knocked over.

Ballast is great. It prevents capsizing. Snaps the boat back upright after something knocks it down. Did you ever have a Weeble toy? Ballast.

Want the physics? Ballast is weight as deep and low in the hull of the ship as possible and exerts a “righting arm” of leverage to keep the ship upright. In a knock-down, ballast pulls the top of the boat right back up above water. Excellent.

But too much ballast can be a disaster. When the boat gets knocked over, water floods in and adds to the ballast weight. The now over-ballasted boat rides lower in the water and slower. It also becomes much easier to tip. So ballast needs to be rearranged and reduced after a knock-down, usually by pumping out any water that flooded aboard.

So, my personal ballast gets me thru stuff. But then it has to be discharged so it won’t slow me down. And that’s what my new years re-gearing has been, pumping off the excess to build up speed and get underway. So I can start sailing — really sailing — again.

Ironically, I formulated this entire post *before* we learned that my husband was laid off today. I even have some drawing board sketches, trying to make it a cartoon post early this morning. (These will never see the light of day as, alas, I am not Hugh.) But as to this new development, well… Fortunately the pumps have been hard at work and we’re in fine trim. The ballast is doing its job. On we sail.

I’m a big fan of layoffs, as they always seem to lead to something better.

“Failure” is important in all human endeavors. How do you right yourself, pump and sail on? What do you rely upon? What can you call on for ballast when you’re presenting? Making any kind of communications?

UPDATE (1/23): Anand accepted a new job at www.wegohealth.com yesterday. We were very, very lucky this time. More than that, we were overwhelmed by the outpouring of support from my professional network here, on Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. My first social media birthday was astonishing on Monday, the number of folks who reached out, but our first social media layoff was even more moving. Thank you all. For all of it.