March 5, 2009

Just like a CEO of a company getting a lot of press, politicians also have to be prepared to rattle off their Creation Myths.

Sometimes they are totally made up, like eBay’s launch myth. Sometimes, they are true stories, slightly exaggerated to add flare.

If you caught Morley Safer’s 60 Minute’s interview of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal last Sunday, the Republican party’s rising star echoed his own Creation Myth when asked about his Americanized name. He is of Indian descent and was born with the name Piyush.

So where did “Bobby” come from? He told Safer, “Everyday after school… I’d watch ‘The Brady Bunch, you know? He was about my age, and Bobby stuck.”

To be clear, this is not a political blog, but I’m simply pointing out the importance of trying to make your Creation Myth believable, at least a little.

Perhaps Jindal’s PR machine is not that savvy, I mean The Brady Bunch? That has got to be among the weakest fictionalized Creation Myths of all time. Let’s try to get beyond that it’s the Brady Bunch. In the first season, Bobby Brady was about nine, which would make him in the third grade, and we are led to believe this is when Piyush is telling his classmates to call him Bobby for now on, you know like Bobby Brady?

If this politically minded conservative kid is going to be influenced by a TV character, how come he’s not Gov. Alex P. Keaton of Louisiana?

March 1, 2009

When you hear the Hewlett-Packard Story, the image that often comes to mind is that of a Palo Alto garage. When people think of the eBay Story, they think of the founder’s fiancée trading pez over the Internet (even though eBay acknowledged years later that that story was fictionalized).

Most well-branded companies have a creation myth, says Terry Gault, VP and managing partner of communications consulting firm The Henderson Group, based in San Francisco.

The Creation Myth was the title of a highly interactive workshop Gault led yesterday at Presentation Camp at Stanford University. He defined the Creation Myth as a unique quality of a company or person.

To illustrate this, Gault told two stories, or “myths” of the creation of two separate companies. One was how David Henderson decided to leave a lucrative law practice and take a chance on launching a communications consulting business, which eventually landed Oracle as a client.

The other story was about the launch of Cirque du Soleil, the wildly successful circus show. After a successful launch in Canada, bankrolled by the Quebec government, the founders took the show to L.A., with only enough money to fly the crew there. If it had failed, they were stuck. However, it not only succeeded, Cirque du Soleil has launched an unprecedented 15 spin-off shows without a single failure.

While the story behind corporate Creation Myths may be at least partially true to some extent, if not completely fabricated, they all have several elements in common.
1. Memorable characters: Characters need names, because audiences have a hard time rooting for a nameless protagonist.
2. Vulnerability: the protagonist must show a vulnerable side, because it makes your character human, and your audience can relate to that.
3. High stakes: for a story to be truly compelling, stakes have to be very high. For example, if Cirque du Soleil failed in L.A., then what?
4. Details: Providing details that make it easier for your audience to visualize the story is key. In fact, details are far more powerful than adjectives.
5. Be Selective in Details: How do you know what details to put in and what details to leave out? The answer: If the details don’t enhance the scene or contribute to the myth, they should be left out.
6. Dialogue: In describing a scene, give the characters first-person dialogue. Instead of saying, he was panicking, demonstrate it with visual details. His hand shook as he held the phone. Sweat poured down his face.

February 23, 2009

Editing images, photos or jpegs in Apple’s Keynote ’09 presentation software is an easy process, which no longer requires you to crop the photo or image in iPhoto. This is thanks to a new feature called “Mask.”

Simply place your photo on a Keynote slide, then click the Mask button, located slightly to the right of center in your browser. A square portion of your image will be zeroed in on, while the rest shades out. If you want to make the square portion smaller or bigger, you simply click on the edge of the image and drag it inward or outward until the mask is the size you want.

A mask slider will appear below the image, which allows you to zoom in or out on the image. If zooming in on the image moves the critical piece out of center, you can easily move the portion you want showing until it’s in the window.

Once you are done editing your photo, click “edit mask” again. The Mask portion of the image disappears, leaving you with a perfectly cropped image.

If you want to retouch your photo, there are several ways to do so. One is by doing it in iPhoto. For those who are willing to pay for a photo retouching software, Adobe Photoshop is considered the industry standard.

Another free alternative retouching tool is GIMP, which stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program, which is similar to the MS Paint program PC users may be familiar with.

February 22, 2009

The first of a series of Presentation Camps kicks off this Saturday in Palo Alto, Calif. It’s an ad-hoc gathering of people passionate about presentations, created and hosted by Slideshare.net. Presentation Camp is a participatory conference, where those who plan to attend are free to submit their own ideas for a workshop to the organizers, then show up and share their best practices with their fellow attendees. In the BarCamp fashion, all who attend, are invited to host a session.

Proposed sessions so far include:

Time: Camp will run from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 pm, Saturday, Feb. 28. The agenda will be decided between 9:30 – 10 a.m. that day.
Location: Stanford University, Cordura Hall 100
Fee: Tickets are $10. You can register through TicketLeap.

Future Camps: Presentation Camp San Francisco is slated for March 21. Others are being planned for Seattle, New York, Washington DC, London and Kansas City.

February 15, 2009

Converting a PowerPoint presentation for a Mac so that you can take advantage of Apple’s sleek design and features of Keynote ’09 is easier than ever. All it takes is dragging and dropping the PowerPoint file onto the Keynote icon on your Mac desktop. The presentation file then opens in Keynote. (Keynote ’09, is an application that is part of iWork ’09, released last month.)

Conversely, if you’ve designed your slide deck in Keynote and will be one of a series of presenters (at a seminar, for example) who will all be using the same PC, no problem. It’s simple to convert your Keynote presentation into PowerPoint. The easiest of two ways to do this is by email. In the “Share” menu at the top of your Mac browser, select “Send via Mail,” then choose the format (Keynote, PowerPoint, or pdf). Keynote then launches the Mail program with the document already attached.

The second way is to go to the File menu in Keynote and select “Save As.” In the popup window that appears, check the box that says “Save Copy As,” then make sure “PowerPoint presentation” is selected. Then Click Save.

February 2, 2009

About a month ago, I wrote a post about 4 conferences where you can see great presentations (either live or archived on their sites). I just came across a slide deck on slideshare.net that lists three of the four conferences I noted, plus six others. One, of course, is TED, which kicks off tomorrow, in Southern California.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Barack Obama’s inaugural address tomorrow is arguably the most anticipated inaugural address to date.

More than 2 million people are expected to brave the near-freezing DC weather to hear Obama address the nation in front of the U.S. Capitol as the 44th president.

It’s hard to imagine a more anticipated inaugural speech for several reasons. Not only will it be by the first African-American president, but also Obama rose to prominence as a prolific speechmaker. His 2004 Democratic National Convention speech catapulted him into the national political spotlight. And hardly anybody can argue that the current economic crisis builds more anticipation for Obama‘s first speech after taking the oath of office.

Obama’s 10-year-old daughter, Malia, is also adding additional pressure, according to a CNN article. After a family visit to the Lincoln Memorial, which has Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address inscribed on its walls, Malia turned to her father and said, “First African-American president — better be good.”

In a John F. Kennedy-like move, Obama, in tomorrow’s address, will ask Americans to restore a national value system that honors responsibility and accountability, according to Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, in a Sunday interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

JFK’s speechwriter and advisor Ted Sorensen told the New York Times, Obama should keep his focus on the country’s international standing.

“That Inaugural Address is going to define his presidency in the eyes of the rest of the world,” Sorensen said. “It should be “bipartisan in tone and global in reach.”

Speechwriting Style

In his critique of Obama’s speech style, Sorensen told the Times, “I would say that occasionally his sentences and words are not always short.”

That was a key element of Kennedy speeches written by Sorensen. In fact, a recent New Yorker article references Sorensen’s comment about Lincoln’s inaugural addresses: “Lincoln never used a two- or three- syllable word where a one-syllable word would do.”

While it’s common today for presidents to have their speeches crafted predominantly by others, Obama’s press secretary Robert Gibbs insisted in a Sunday TV interview that the president-elect had written the bulk of his inaugural address.

The Jan. 12th New Yorker article, written by Harvard history professor Jill Lepore, has a rather amusing title: “The Speech: Have Inaugural Addresses Been Getting Worse?”

Throughout the campaign, Obama’s speeches have focused on hope and unity, such as the opening line of his Presidental-Elect acceptance speech last November in Chicago:

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

I haven’t heard anyone say they anticipate Obama to give a bad speech, but Lepore noted that most inaugural speeches are not memorable, aside from a few snippets (or soundbites).

Quite comically, she also noted: “A bad inaugural address doesn’t always augur a bad Presidency. It sinks your spirit though.”

******

Inaugural Address Trivia

(courtesy of Lepore’s article)

First inaugural address broadcast on the radio: Calvin Coolidge, 1925 (prior to that, inaugural addresses were only read by the general public in the newspaper)

First televised inaugural address: Harry S. Truman, 1949

First inaugural streamed online: Bill Clinton’s second term address, 1997

First expected to be Youtubed: Take a guess

January 4, 2008

If you want your presentation skills to shine and your message to stick with your audience, you have to tell a compelling and memorable story. It also helps greatly to present it with minimal delivery or technical glitches. Here are some devices that professional speakers should carry with them to minimize these potential problems.

1. Remote Control: Using a handheld remote control to advance your slides during a presentation is important, because it allows you to move away from the podium and focus on your audience. It’s very difficult to connect with your audience if your attention is on your slides.

2. Thumb Drive, also known as a flash drive, is a thumb-size portable memory storage device. Even if you are bringing your own laptop to a presentation, it’s good to have a backup copy of your PowerPoint in your pocket and able to be plugged into someone else’s computer if and when yours crashes.

3. Wraparound (or a lapel) Mike: When speakers use a handheld mike, their gestures are often awkward, because they are using only one hand. Clipping a mike to your lapel or using a headset wraparound mike will prevent your gestures from being half-hazard.

4. Passion: This is most important, but listed last because it’s a bit abstract for a briefcase: You always need to bring your passion for the topic to the presentation. If you show that you don’t care much for the topic, why should your audience care?

December 29, 2008

1. In February, the annual TED Conference turns a quarter of a century old, and will be celebrating its 25th in its new digs in Long Beach, Calif. TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) has apparently outgrown the Monterey Convention Center – even though the conference remains by invitation-only, and the world’s mover’s and shakers hope each year they get an invite. This year’s conference will be held Feb. 3-7. Many of its best speeches can be found at Ted.com.

TED’s mission is “to spread ideas that change attitudes, lives, and ultimately the world.” Those who are asked to speak are challenged to give “the talk of his/her life” in 18 minutes.

In past posts, I’ve written about some that I have found most fascinating, such as those by storyteller Carmen Agra Deedy, former eBay president Jeff Skoll and Comedian Julia Sweeney. But it’s hard to keep up, because the conference organizers pull from their archives and post (not so) new ones online nearly every week. Well, they speeches are new to the public anyway.

2. Ignite Portland: If you had five minutes on stage, what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically rotated after 15 seconds? Around the world geeks have been putting together Ignite nights to show their answers. Ignite Portland 5 will be held on Feb. 19, 2009.

3. In August, ten Toastmaster International contestants from different parts of the world will compete for the title of World Champion of Public Speaking after surviving a six-month long process of six elimination rounds. Since 1924, Toastmasters International has grown to become a world leader in helping people become more competent and comfortable in front of an audience. The nonprofit organization has nearly 235,000 members in 11,700 local clubs in 92 countries, offering a proven way to practice and hone communication and leadership skills on a monthly, bi-monthly or evenly weekly basis.

This year’s four-day convention will be held from Aug. 12-15, in Mashantucket, Connecticut.

4. In October, Pop!Tech brings together 500 visionary thinkers in the sciences, technology, business, design, the arts, education, government and culture. It’s a three-day summit held in Camden, Maine. Famous musical conductor and renowned keynote speaker Benjamin Zander’s speech on the Art of Possibility from last year is very interesting. You can watch it here on Pop!Tech’s site or below.

How Dyslexic CEOs Compensate

November 18, 2008

Virgin empire founder Richard Branson suffers from it. So does Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers. As does Paul Orfalea, founder of the Kinko’s chain. Charles Schwab, too. And what that is, is dyslexia.

If you wonder how some entrepreneurs who struggle at reading and writing not only succeed, but thrive, it’s often the result of developing superior public speaking skills (as well as social and problem solving skills). This is one aspect outlined in a fascinating New Yorker article by Tipping Point author Malcom Gladwell published last week titled: The Uses of Adversity: Can underprivileged outsiders have an advantage?

Gladwell suggests it’s fair to compare people who rise to the top in their field while battling disabilities, like dyslexia, to those who seem often to amaze us for success after being reared in poverty, or lacking the social connections affluent families can provide.

Gladwell points to a study that found 35 percent of small business owners suffered from dyslexia, surveyed by business school professor Julie Logan.

“That’s a remarkable statistic,” Gladwell writes. “Dyslexia affects the very skills that lie at the center of an individual’s ability to manage the modern world. Yet Schwab and Orfalea… and Branson seem to have made up for their disabilities in the same way that the poor, in [Dale] Carnegie’s view, can make up for their poverty.”

Another fascinating stat Gladwell points to came out of a study conducted in Britain. It found that 80 percent of dyslexic entrepreneurs had held the position of captain of a high school sport, versus 27 percent of non-dyslexic entrepreneurs.

“They compensated for their academic shortcomings, by developing superior social skills, and when they reached the workplace, those compensatory skills gave them an enormous head start,” Gladwell writes.

Gladwell’s New Yorker article comes on the heels of his new book, Outliers: The Story of Success, which hits bookstores today.

More about Malcom Gladwell and his books:

The Malcom Gladwell Effect, from the New York Times, Feb. 5. 2006

Secrets of Their Success: Fortune Magazine’s Q & A with Malcom Gladwell, Nov. 18, 2008

Gladwell TV Interview on The Colbert Report, Nov., 17, 2008