Clippings

Picture Yourself Doing A Presentation...In Ten Years!

Here are some questions for you:

  • What does it mean for presentation training , NOW?
  • What are the skills we need to develop to be ready?
  • How to protect professional data?
  • How to deal with challenging  time zones? (you're in US, east coast , your team is spread between San Francisco, India and Europe )
  • Will pandemic diseases reduce dramatically the corporate travels?
  • How will the companies be able to pay the ecological and financial costs for travel expenses?
  • When will face to face meetings and presentations will really be essential?
  • Will physical PRESENCE become the ultimate luxury?
via geronimocoaching.com

In a thought-provoking post Marion Chapsal suggests that we be thinking about what presentations need to become to reach the Milennial generation. Her quote from MilennialGeneration.org is that the approach for audiences of the future will be "optimistic, proactive, innovative, and it utilizes social media" I wish there were more speakers in Toastmasters thinking ahead like this.

Seth's Blog: Is it too late to catch up?

What if your organization or your client has done nothing?

What if they've just watched the last fourteen years go by? No real website, no social media, no permission assets. What if now they're ready and they ask your advice? And, by the way, they have no real cash to spend...

Here's a list of my top ten things to consider doing:

  • Use gmail to give every person in the organization that can read English an email address.
  • Use a free website creating tool or even Squidoo to build a page about your company. Nothing fancy, but list your locations, your people (with addresses) and make it clear you want to hear from people.
  • Start an email newsletter using Mad Mimi or Mail Chimp. Give the responsibility for the newsletter's creation and performance to one person and offer them a bonus if they exceed metrics in sign ups and in reducing churn.
  • Start a book group for your top executives and every person who answers the phone, designs a product or interacts with customers. Read a great online media book a week and discuss. It'll take you about a year to catch up.
  • Offer a small bonus to anyone in the company who starts and runs a blog on any topic. Have them link to your company site, with an explanation that while they work there, they don't speak for you.
  • Have the president post her (real) email address in every invoice and other communication the company sends out, asking people to write to her with comments or questions.
  • Start a newsletter for your vendors. Email them regular updates about what you're doing, what's selling and what problems are going on internally that they might be able to help you with.
  • Do not approve any project that isn't run on Basecamp.
  • Get a white board and put it in the break room. On it, have someone update: how many people subscribe to the newsletter, how many people visit the website, how many inbound requests come in by phone, how long it takes customer service to answer an email and how often your brand names are showing up on Twitter every day.
  • Don't have any meetings about your web strategy. Just do stuff. First you have to fail, then you can improve.
  • Refuse to cede the work to consultants. You don't outsource your drill press or your bookkeeping or your product design. If you're going to catch up, you must (all of you) get good at this, and you only accomplish that by doing it.

The problem is no longer budget. The problem is no longer access to tools.

The problem is the will to get good at it.

via sethgodin.typepad.com

I'd like to see this advice used in more places than I can think.

Afghanistan, revisited

My hunch is that if Mr. Obama wants success in Afghanistan, he would be far better off with 30,000 more schools than 30,000 more troops. Instead, he’s embarking on a buildup that may become an albatross on his presidency.
via nytimes.com

Nicholas Kristof weighs in on the Afghanistan decision in this morning's New York Times. Will listen to Greg Mortenson, cited in this column, on the Diane Rehm show this morning.

Stroke Survey

National Stroke Association Help us kick-off our Stroke Survivor Advocacy Initiative and let your voice be heard! We need survey feedback from survivors, caregivers and support group leaders about unique post-stroke needs. Take the short survey now by visiting www.stroke.org/survey. Thank you for your help! Forward this onto others you know who might be interested.

www.stroke.org
www.stroke.org
Thank you for taking the time to complete this short survey. Your participation will help National Stroke Association more clearly understand the unique needs of stroke survivors and their caregivers. ...
via facebook.com

 

The Morning Papers: Afghanistan

Dana Milbank in The Washington Post

In an open letter to Obama on his Web site Monday, liberal activist Michael Moore wrote that by increasing troops in Afghanistan, "you will do the worst possible thing you could do -- destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you."

Bob Herbert in The New York Times

I suppose we’ll never learn. President Obama will go on TV Tuesday night to announce that he plans to send tens of thousands of additional American troops to Afghanistan to fight in a war that has lasted most of the decade and has long since failed.

After going through an extended period of highly ritualized consultations and deliberations, the president has arrived at a decision that never was much in doubt, and that will prove to be a tragic mistake. It was also, for the president, the easier option.

It would have been much more difficult for Mr. Obama to look this troubled nation in the eye and explain why it is in our best interest to begin winding down the permanent state of warfare left to us by the Bush and Cheney regime. It would have taken real courage for the commander in chief to stop feeding our young troops into the relentless meat grinder of Afghanistan, to face up to the terrible toll the war is taking — on the troops themselves and in very insidious ways on the nation as a whole.

So much for change. Really disappointing to see the President choosing the same old goals the same old way while there are so many more important and sensible things to do. I'm going to hope we at least try some innovative strategies, but we're probably still tied to massive troop buildups, bombers, and supposedly surgical drone strikes while we get worn down with effective and deadly IEDs.

What kind of coincidence made this the day that Stones into Schools is released? When I was reading about this book, I found a reference to a column by Nicholas Kristoff

Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times reporter and columnist who won two Pulitzer Prizes for shining a light on human rights abuses, said Monday in Bozeman that sending 40,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan would be “a mistake.”