…as the author of two profoundly powerful books on crafting and delivering presentations, slide:ology and Resonate…

…as the co-creator of Duarte Design, a firm that has been redefining the art and science of presentations for nearly a quarter-century…

…or as a pioneer in integrating social media and public speaking around the central driving idea of story.

Our conversation lasts less than 10 minutes, but Nancy packs a lot of insight into

• how the backchannel changes the balance of power between speaker and audience
• how speeches can take on a life of their own as social objects
• how even harsh criticism can make you a better speaker
• and how dramatic tension and release can lend your next speech the power and impact your ideas have been waiting for.

Listen in – and then explore more deeply:

• Nancy Duarte on Twitter
• Duarte Design on the web, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn – and the Duarte blog



• SlideShare presentations by Nancy and Duarte Design
• Steve Jobs’ now-legendary commencement address at Stanford (video) (text)
• Duarte’s new online store Diagrammer (imagine an iTunes for PowerPoint-format diagrams, tailored to the relationship you’re illustrating and instantly downloadable for 99¢)
• Microsoft PowerPoint, which Nancy recommends for its outlining mode, as a way of clustering and refining your thoughts and crafting a compelling structure
• Prezi and Apple Keynote

I weighed in on the side of Telestream’s ScreenFlow, and I’m sharing it here in case you’re looking for something for your next computer or Internet tutorial:

I have a two-year torrid love affair with ScreenFlow (although Darren Barefoot has actually proposed to marry it, so consider me trumped). It’s Mac-only, but if you’re in the Apple universe, you get an awful lot for the $99 pricetag.

Here’s some of what I like:

• A simple, intuitive editing interface that – for me, at least – beats the more recent versions of iMovie for making sense right off the bat
• Fast and easy creation of callouts (that is, highlights, with background blurring and darkening, and foreground zooming)
• Fast and easy annotation with text and shapes
• Easy addition of new recordings
• Simple adjustment of playback speed

And here’s some of what I’d like to see:

• Clip masking or cropping
• Integrating edited clips into one, so you can then apply affects to the whole
• Customizable presets for text, annotations and callouts
• More customization in the export settings, especially publishing
• Better HTML5 support in publishing

Check out some of the other feature requests from the user community.

A note: because its export function relies on QuickTime, you’re limited to Apple’s selection of video formats (of which H.264 is probably the most universal). So if you have your heart set on WebM or Ogg, you’re out of luck.

How about you? Got a favourite screen capture tool? Do you use QuickTime’s free screen recording feature on the Mac? CamStudio on Windows? Camtasia? Jing? Make your case in the comments!*

* Vendors, you know we love you, but please leave this conversation for users and customers. Thanks!

The (barely-tested) bookmarklet: Drag this link to your browser’s bookmarks bar: Hide toolbar | Restore toolbar

I love the administration toolbar that comes with Drupal 7, the one that puts the admin menu within easy reach at all times. It’s one of the most convenient developments in my online life.

But there are times when it’s really inconvenient – like when you I want to show an unpublished page the way an ordinary mortal will see it when they visit. There’s a shortcut bar underneath it, which you can hide or show at will… but that toolbar stays there, come hell or high water, as long as you’re logged in.

Short of installing a module (which would be rude of me, if I’m not the guy actually developing the site), I’ve resorted to hiding the toolbar by manually editing the CSS properties in my browser. A little “display:none” here, a sprinkle of “padding-top:0px” there, and we’re in business.

But that gets old pretty quickly. How about handling it in one click? The JavaScript is actually pretty straightforward (this is on a site where the body‘s CSS “padding-top” value is zero throughout):

javascript:document.getElementById(“toolbar”).setAttribute(“style”, “display:none”);void(document.body.style.paddingTop=”0px”);

It works by hiding the contents of the toolbar, and resetting the body‘s padding-top value to zero.

I tested it successfully in Safari, Firefox and Chrome, but I ran it through John Gruber’s JavaScript bookmark builder to work its magic encoding on the spaces and punctuation just to be safe. It now looks like this:

javascript:document.getElementById(%22toolbar%22).setAttribute(%22style%22,%20%22display:none%22);void(document.body.style.paddingTop=%220px%22);

Of course, you might want the toolbar back again. So:

javascript:document.getElementById(“toolbar”).setAttribute(“style”, “display:block”);void(document.body.style.paddingTop=”65px”);

…and, encoded:

javascript:document.getElementById(%22toolbar%22).setAttribute(%22style%22,%20%22display:block%22);void(document.body.style.paddingTop=%2265px%22);

Limitations:

• It only disables the toolbar until you reload the page or navigate to another one.
• I haven’t tested it in anything except the Mac versions of Safari 5.1.5, Firefox 11 and Chrome 19.0.1084.46. Oh, and I’ve tested it on all of one Drupal site.
• It assumes the body‘s padding-top CSS value is zero pixels.

Let me know if it works for you – or if you’ve found a more useful/robust solution.

Bookmarklets: Hide toolbar | Restore toolbar (or, if you get easily frustrated, Die, toolbar, die! | Restore toolbar)

Taken at Bus Stop 50063

Posted via email from Rob Cottingham’s posterous

Check out the full project at BeforeIDie.cc. Amazing.

(I’m a little chagrined that my first instinct was suspicion that this was a marketing campaign. Maybe that’s a healthy instinct in 2012 — or maybe I need to lose some of my cynicism.)

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…and his now-legendary 2009 presentation at New Media Atlanta, where he brought an angry backchannel into the open and won it over…

…and you have a shoo-in for the social speech hall of fame — not to mention someone well worth listening to on the subject of social media and public speaking.

Especially because he’ll explain what you, as a speaker, can have in common with the Grateful Dead.

The links:

• Chris Brogan: blog, Twitter, Google+
• Chris on his New Media Atlanta session
• his company, Human Business Works
• Cliff Atkinson’s The Backchannel
• Gentlemint

A high-school-era friend of mine, Waldo Rochow, recently did something astonishing to one of my cartoon-blog posts from the Nonprofit Technology Conference earlier this month.

Here’s the original. …And now, check this out:

Posted via email from Rob Cottingham’s posterous

Posted via email from Rob Cottingham’s posterous

In our conversation, Mitch talks about what matters the most to him about social media and speaking, and the sheer miracle of being able to press “publish” on a blog post and share your knowledge with the world. “These are such early days, and we haven’t spent the time to appreciate the tremendous canvas we have in the palm of our hands,” he says.

Some links from our conversation:

• Mitch Joel’s blog and podcast
• @MitchJoel on Twitter
• Mitch Joel’s U.S. and Canadian speakers bureaus
• the TED 2012 Conference
• Six Pixels of Separation: “the first book to integrate digital marketing, social media, personal branding, and entrepreneurship in a clear, entertaining, and instructive manner that everyone can understand and apply”

The image on the right is a doodle I did a year or two ago.

With this episode, we flip the mic (metaphorically) and talk with someone who’s a lot more used to writing speeches than delivering them. That’s not to say Ian Griffin isn’t at home behind a podium; he’s an accomplished speaker and a skilled communicator.

If you’re in the tech industry, you’ve probably heard his words; Ian has worked in executive communications at Cisco, Hewlett Packard and Sun Microsystems. He’s also incredibly generous with his time and expertise, as many Silicon Valley communicators who’ve attended one of his presentations can tell you.

In this interview, he asks why we put so much effort into creating a speech, and then fail to do that little extra bit that can help it reach far more people… and he offers lots of ideas for what that little extra bit can be.

• Ian Griffin’s blog, Wikispaces hub, LinkedIn profile and Twitter feed
• Wikispaces, Slideshare, Twitter search, HootSuite
• Cliff Atkinson’s The Backchannel
  (yep, it came up again!)

And he’s a terrific speaker, travelling around the world to address audiences on five continents (Australia and Antarctica, that’s your cue) about topics as diverse as negotiating, collaboration, conflict management, social media, open government and open data. As you’ll hear in this episode, Dave has thought a great deal about what makes for a great, productive speech – one that doesn’t just get a solid audience response, but also achieves a larger goal. And you’ll hear about how his blog is a crucial resource for his speeches, and how yours can help you deliver a more powerful presentation the next time you’re on stage.

Some links:

• Dave’s blog (check it out to see what a mental gymnasium looks like!), Twitter and LinkedIn profiles, TripIt feed and speakers agency
• TripIt, Dave’s travel lifeline (I’ve just started using it – phenomenally useful)

So I thought I’d try something. I usually sketch in those minutes between the flight crew saying “Turn off your mobile devices! They are tools of the devil! Yes, you in 24A, I do mean you!” and that sweet moment when they permit us to go back to our productively wired lives (“Buh-CAAWWWWW!” “Oink, oink, oink.”).

Looking at my sketchbook just now, I wondered: could I post all of those sketches using only my iPhone?

It looks very much like the answer is yes… up to the posting part, which will have to wait ’til I’m on the ground. I’m drawing with my trust Pigma Micron (05, if you’re wondering, and if you are, then I love you for it) using JotNot Pro to capture the cartoon and convert it to nice, sharp black and white; SketchBook Mobile to add my URL, and the iOS WordPress app to compose the text and queue up the images.)

About the cartoons, a disclaimer or two:

• I love Bellingham. It’s just that our pilot sounded awfully depressed on the intercom on that flight.
• I have never brought a rack-mounted server array onto a plane. They make me check it Every. Time.
• I think flight attendants work harder than nearly anyone I know. Yeah, airlines are treating passengers like cattle that happen to have credit cards… but that isn’t the fault of the flight crew. Don’t take it out on them, okay, Mr. Guy Several Rows Up From Me A Few Flights Ago ?

This time around, the good folks at Rally – a social fundraising platform, and the folks behind a very cool workspace – sponsored the graphic recording effort.

Which meant there were not one but two pens flying during various keynotes and breakout sessions. My colleague was the amazing Kate Rutter, who manages to combine detail, structure and composition in ways that amaze me. You can see the results of our work here.

I’m pulling together the last of my cartoon-blog images, and I’ll post them here soon. But in the meantime, here are the cartoons I drew from the floor of the conference. They include my notes from the session on social media policy, led by Idealware’s Andrea Berry and Darim’s Lisa Colton and centered around their free social media policy workbook.

Only a few years ago, business – especially non-tech Fortune 500 business – was pretty skeptical about social media. One of the first people to break through that barrier was Maggie Fox, CEO of Social Media group. And she did it by creating solid strategies rooted in tangible business goals, breaking ground with companies like Ford.

Our conversation looks at everything from handling the backchannel to how you can stand out as a smallfrog presented in a big pond conference. And here are some links relating to our discussion:

• Maggie Fox on Twitter and LinkedIn
• Social Media Group on Twitter and LinkedIn
• Doodle, the how-to-schedule-busy-people app

Also from the podcast: I’m heading to San Francisco for NTEN‘s Nonprofit Technology Conference next week. And I’ll be speaking at Ignite NTC on the social speech. I’d love to see you there!

• NTC 2012
• NTC Ignite
• Rob’s myNTC profile 

One day he’ll be speaking to large corporations about digital marketing; the next, to a hometown social media conference about podcasting. His “Taking Crazy Back” keynote takes an unflinching look at his own struggle with depression and addiction as a powerful way of bringing conversations about mental health into the full light of day.

In this conversation, you’ll hear Tod’s insights on using social networks to get a sense of a room weeks before he sets foot in it; how meeting planners want more value from an engagement, and how you can offer it; why a projected backchannel is as bad a distraction as a troupe of dancing chimpanzees; and why digital dazzle can’t top a good, compelling story.

A few links that came up:

• Tod Maffin on Twitter
• Tod’s company, engageQ
• Professional Speaking Tips, Tod’s email newsletter
• Apple’s Keynote presentation app, CloudApp and Dropbox
• Photo by Jeremy Lim, used under a Creative Commons license

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via brainpickings.org

And here’s a little background by one of the Code’s creators, Maria Popova. (Let’s see if I’ve got this right… ᔥ LinkWithLove.org)

Posted via email from Rob Cottingham’s posterous

Posted via email from Rob Cottingham’s posterous

But how about when the customer screws up? How easy do you make it for them to recover lost information, correct a mistake or get out of a dead end?

Put it this way: if the web is like an episode of The Simpsons, is your site more like helpful, compassionate Lisa, or Nelson “Haw, haw” Muntz?

After a pretty Nelsonish user experience, here’s what I included this in a customer feedback survey from Rogers Communications.

Their kind Twitter customer service rep, @rogers_kate, helped me resolve an issue where I was trying to update my expired credit card info for my iPad data plan. The interface wouldn’t accept my email and password, and offered to send my my forgotten password. It turned out the problem was I was using the wrong email address – but I didn’t find that out before wasting a lot of time troubleshooting.

Every person I dealt with was great. But the interface for handling billing info on an iPad is awful.

Telling someone who’s just entered the wrong email address for their account that you’ve sent them a password reset email, when you actually haven’t, leads to lots of digging through inboxes, checking spam filters and troubleshooting. If instead the form had said “Incorrect email address – please try again”, I’d have saved myself hours – literally – of frustration.

So kudos to your customer service team. And a tsk-tsk-tsk to whoever set up that billing workflow.

I should have added a little wrist-slap for yours truly; the original error was mine. I just had no way of knowing I’d made it. And customers logging in with the wrong email address, when many of us are running around with three or more, is commonplace these days.

From forms like that iPad billing registration that mislead the customer, to email authentication error screens that tell you you’ve entered the wrong username or password but won’t tell you which one , helping your customers emerge gracefully from their own mishaps will make you some friends.

And save @rogers_kate from yet another tweet of distress.

via plus.google.com

The Google Docs integration in Google+ Hangouts really is something else. (Try it while sharing a presentation. Kind of kicks the traditional webinar’s butt.)

It’s hard not to compare it to Facebook’s Video Calling feature. And to wonder if – as much as Google+ is being billed as less of a social network, and more the connective social tissue for your Google activity – Google+ isn’t going to emerge as the Facebook for people who are actually serious about Facebook.

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And nobody does that quite like Nancy White – except she doesn’t just rely on digital technology. She’s one of the best group facilitators in the business, working all over the world with everyone from small community groups to Fortune 500 companies. You can see her approach at work in the March of Dimes’ Share Your Story site, which several years on is still one of the examples we cite the most often of how online community can make a real different in people’s lives.

So who better to kick off Episode 1 of the Social Speech podcast?

A few links:

• Nancy White on Twitter
• Nancy’s company, Full Circle Associates
• Free tools for integrating PowerPoint and Twitter (for Windows) courtesy of Timo Elliott
• Timo’s Mac-friendly integration between Prezi and Twitter
• Alex’s case for recognizing online life as real, too: her Harvard Business Review blog post and her TEDx Victoria talk

Posted via email from Rob Cottingham’s posterous

Over the next several weeks, I’m going to share conversations I’m having with some of the smartest people I know about public speaking and social media: how connected audiences are transforming the world of presentations, and how some forward-thinking speakers are making the most of it.

I’m calling it the Social Speech Podcast. You can find the feed here and soon on iTunes. Here’s the introductory episode; the first interview will go live next week.

But please – don’t let my schedule hold you up. Give this intro a listen, and if you have thoughts about the Social Speech (I’ve posted some of mine here) then please share them in the comments. Or email your text or audio comment (up to 25 MB) to rob@socialsignal.com.

Thanks – and I’ll look forward to hearing from you!

Posted via email from Rob Cottingham’s posterous

Posted via email from Rob Cottingham’s posterous

Posted via email from Rob Cottingham’s posterous

Tris told me about Simply’s contest where you stuff your Grid-It with your various do-dads, take a photo and upload it to their Facebook contest app. He invited me to come into the store and try it out.

The Grid-It is deceptively simple: a frame covered with criss-crossing rubberized elastic bands. You tuck in your gadgets, dongles and cables, and suddenly your tangled jumble of wires-’n'-crap is one handy package.

Here’s Tris showing it all to me:

I’ve been using it for a few days now, and I love the little beastie.

And while I was there, Tris showed me the new Pogo Sketch Pro stylus. It’s a dramatic improvement over the Pogo Sketch, a worthy competitor to the Bamboo (that’s my highest praise for a stylus), and I used it to draw a concept sketch for a mega-sized Grid-It for storing social media strategists. (Upload to come in a few minutes! It’s here!)

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This notification is just a friendly reminder (not a bill or a second charge) that on 23-Jan-2012, you placed an order from MacRabbit Store. The charge will appear on your bill as “FS *macrabbit”. This is just a reminder to help you recognize the charge. You will not be charged again.

[....] Our customers have found this notice useful in confirming otherwise unknown credit card charges, as “FS *macrabbit” may not be easily recognizable on your bill.

As somebody who has, in fact, had to track down baffling references on Social Signal’s credit card bills (full disclosure: Morgan does far more of our Visa sleuthing than I do), I was touched that they’d thought of this. I was even more pleased that the email seemed to be only about being helpful; there was no call to action, no “Tell a friend about our new CSSEdit integration, improved language support and JavaScript-based API!”

The thing is, I really love using Espresso. And although it’s capable of some pretty heavy-duty web work, I find it’s my go-to tool these days for even a little light CSS wizardry or email template creation. There aren’t too many software tools that make me think “Damn, I wish I had more tasks that let me use this,” but Espresso’s high on the list of the tools that do.

So since their thoughtful email didn’t push me to buy anything or do any evangelism on their behalf, I’m going to do it unbidden. If you’re on a Mac and want to check it out, there’s a 15-day free trial. It isn’t free, but even an occasional user like me can make a solid case that it’s saved me its $79 pricetag many times over in increased productivity.

And even if you aren’t a Mac user or web developer, but you are in the business of sending email, consider looking for opportunities to send the occasional helpful message that doesn’t have an obvious self-serving angle. It can do wonders for your client relationships. It might even score you the odd flattering blog post.