This variant of my “2.0″ overview slide deck supported an interesting chat with some of Boston’s leading nonprofit executives at the Phillips Forum Non-Profit Cafe luncheon hosted by Colette Phillips Communications in Boston today.

I emphasized how important it is to listen and shared some anecdotes about how nonprofits can use social media. We did not go terribly in-depth on specific tools because even more important to organizations entering the space is understanding the principles and strategies that inform how to employ tactics effectively.

The last few resources and tools slides point to the real experts and resources (provided by NP2.0 guru Beth Kanter) in the “nonprofit 2.0″ space.

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Your comments and questions are most welcome, whether you were at the talk or not!

These have been rumbling around my head all morning:

1. Present your ideas, NOT your slides.
‘Nuff said.

2. Speak. To people.
Of presenting or speaking, always choose (in your own mind) to speak. Engage humans in your “audience” almost precisely the way you would engage them at a wonderful dinner party. Tell them your best stories. With love, and with interest in their interests.

3. “Which Means That.”
Live by this. Explain your concept/idea/plan/business/offering, and then append the words “which means that ___________,” and fill in the blank. Apply this repeatedly until you get to the core significance of the message and the reason that your ____ needs to exist. There is something meaningful and universally relevant at the core of anything worth doing. Tease it out and then lead with it.

(Though I forward this as a technique to make presentations better, it’s really a way to make whole organizations better. Find the significance. Share it. Always.)

View from the conference venue
in Ouchy: Image via WikipediaI gave a talk this morning in Lausanne at Stephanie Booth’s Going Solo conference for freelancers.

Stowe Boyd live-twittered the talk. Suw Charman-Anderson blogged amazingly complete notes, and Urs Gattiker wrote this post about the principles covered. Jaap Stronks is liveblogging the entire day using CoverItLive.

The slide deck is below:

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Big thank you to Stephanie and all of the attendees. We had a really enjoyable discussion (see Suw’s post for detailed notes on the Q & A also.)

(If you would like to follow these folks on Twitter: Stephanie is @stephtara, Stowe is @stoweboyd, Suw is @suw, Urs is @commetrics, Jaap is @Jaapstronks.)

UPDATE: Video of the presentation itself is already live. Wow, conference video guy! Thanks.

This blog is link in the previous post, but their page on the cyclone is worth its own post, particularly for the map detail (which originated from Mizzima)

Cyclone Nargis « Rule of Lords

So the provocative question that Christopher Penn asked is this, can a boat from India get into any of the ports near the hardest hit areas? Were shipping facilities there also destroyed? How creative can we get?

Chris Brogan did yet another cool thing with his blog this morning. He asked:

What were your first steps into social media?
Who were your early people you admired and followed?
How did you get started?
If you were going to give advice to someone starting out, what would you tell them?
What will you do in the next few months with social media?

Little known fact: I experimented with blogging from Dec 2005-July 2006 as the Science Vigilante. What I lacked then: community and connection. I wasn’t using a blog reader or reading a lot of other blogs. I just came across stories in the news.

Early 2007 I started to read blogs more, and even pitched some of my “top 10 tips” sheets to a few bloggers. (Much love to Seth Levine for picking them up, my first-ever blog “ink!”)

My real start was March 2007 when I started “Great Presentations Mean Business” on wordpress.com as a way to build up a “database of my ideas” on the web. Getting my ideas out there, demonstrating how I approach presentations and letting the world see how I think has been a crucial part of marketing my consulting business. That blog continues today as my website.

Bloggers I loved reading from early on: Doc Searls, Jeff Nolan, Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, Tara Hunt, Kathy Sierra, Brad Feld. Funny, I’ve gotten to meet all but Kathy and Brad so far. Wow. Thanks universe. UPDATE: I have NOT met Seth Godin. Frankly, I forgot for a second that he was in the list.

This story is thoroughly told elsewhere, but Twitter is what REALLY put the juice in my ability to network, connect and grow. I’m @pistachio. The smartest thing I did was to play around with many different ways of using Twitter, and the best advice I got was from Chris Brogan: “be human.”

Advice I give most often to those entering the space? Listen. Listen. Listen. Listen way more than you “speak.” Five-to-ten times more. When you do speak up? Be useful. Be nice. Ask questions. Listen. Be considerate. And yes, be human.

Where I am going with social media:
1) help convey the benefits of it to others, both for business and personal growth, and especially for nonprofits and social causes and
2) experiment further with making live events “more 2.0″ www.mediacasters.tv, mashing up widgets, lifecasting techniques and popularity/quality/attention data sorting of content.

Thanks for “tricking” me into writing this post Chris. You’re an important influence on many of us, and we’re grateful for that.

One big, brief thought while reading: Psychology | Inside a deal | Economist.com

Can you see the world, or at least *your* message, from the “audience” point of view?

The same perspective-taking and empathy skills that make people more effective in negotiations also make presentations much stronger and more persuasive. After all, a presentation is often the stepping off point towards engaging in negotiation.

Perspective-taking, “the cognitive power to consider the world from someone else’s viewpoint,” is probably the most important part of presenting more effectively.

(Via SigmaXi’s Science in the News.)

Why aren’t presentations becoming generally better despite so much great thinking on how to fix them? Is it because many come together at the last minute?

Presentation Zen (which is awesome) got me thinking. What can you fix if you only have a few moments? Say you don’t have time to master the concepts in Garr’s book, you haven’t been reading presentations blogs, your company didn’t invest in training or coaching, and you’re on the spot. What then?

10-minute overhaul to improve any presentation:

Audience & Objective
Put your slides (or script/visuals/etc) away and get out a piece of paper. Imagine that you just gave the presentation. Now write down answers to:

1. Who was in the audience? What motivates them? (2 mins)
2. How did my presentation connect directly to their interests and motivations? (1 min)
3. What did I achieve? What is the audience going to repeat from my presentation? How will they answer “What did you just learn?” (1 min)

These answers determine your purpose. They show your “audience-specific objective.” Know who you’re talking to and how to connect their needs to your goals.

Get Darwinian
Back to your slides. Delete or hide any that do not support your audience-specific objective. (2 mins) (If you MUST, promise you will click swiftly through with little comment. If knowing it’s there makes you calmer, well, calmer is better.)

Reorder
Start and end the presentation with your big idea expressed as “what’s in it for them.” Tie it to your audience’s interests and motivations. At the end of the presentation, connect your big idea to what you want to achieve. Your presentation should start something. It should stimulate an active response from the audience. (2 mins)

Extra time? Arrange your entire deck to build up the case for your big idea. Illustrate with simple stories. Sort concepts and stories into coherent sections and use clear transitions between them. Find a sequence brings the audience to your conclusions.

Lightning Round
Race through your presentation using no more than one sentence to explain each slide. Take no more than five seconds per slide. State the point in just one short remark. If you can’t, kill the slide. If you can’t kill it, “maim” it until it has a point. (2 mins)

Extra time? Go through the presentation several times in “lightning round” mode, and do significant edits between rounds. Work in teams to collaborate on the best “main points” of the presentation.

Come see this in action. Join me on ooVoo (sign up at www.MyOovooDay.com/signup.php) at 4 PM on 2/12, 2/14, 2/19 or 2/21. We’ll experiment with the ooVoo videoconferencing software (download required) by discussing how to use this fire drill. The seminar is FREE and benefits the Frozen Pea Fund.

I use the word “slide” in this drill. Most formal presentations still use slideware. They DO NOT have to. If yours does not (YAY!), substitute “paragraph” “supporting point” “story” “example” to best suit your presentation.

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.

TED | Talks | Isabel Allende: Tales of passion (video)

PLEASE watch this for two reasons:

1) Most of all, just, wow. Listen and reflect on the power of stories, the strength of passion and the need to change the world. Listening to this called me to action on the Nine Million children living as refugees worldwide. It made me dream about what I want my life to become and what most matters to me to DO. Meanwhile, here’s more on the NineMillion:

• Nine-Million on MS Spaces.Live
• Media Resources

2) Because we learn to communicate well by listening and watching. “This is how you do it” folks, this talk (and any number of TED talks) is a gold standard to learn from.

(Via Chris Brogan.)

This was presented to an SEO/SEM audience at www.PubCon.com 2007, but holds the kernels of a bunch of stuff I’m working on right now.

In fact, expect the name of this blog to change soon, and the focus to include a lot more writing about social media. That’s where my brain is living these days. It’s also what I am being asked to speak about, 2-3 times more often than I speak about, err, speaking.

Watch this space

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Notes are coming. I swear.