Tag Archives: presentations

Social Speech Podcast, Episode 11: Maddie Grant

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Maddie Grant of DC-based SocialFish has done a lot of thinking about connecting online audiences with speeches, panels and presentations. More to the point, she’s done a lot of doing, including convening one of the most ambitious online conference approaches I’ve seen: NTC Online, the digital version of the Nonprofit Technology Conference held every year by NTEN.

In our conversation, she offers some great advice for event organizers, speakers and anyone who wants to use digital tools to help online and offline audiences learn. And after you’ve heard our conversation, check out these links:

Social Speech Podcast, Episode 10: Holly Ross

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This episode features Holly Ross from NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network. She’s a great speaker in her own right – and every year, NTEN hosts the Nonprofit Technology Conference. It’s a huge gathering (but remarkably relaxed and collegial), and we talk about what it takes to connect that many people online at a conference – and how speakers can make the most of a connected audience.

Some links and resources:

 

Social Speech Podcast, Episode 9: JD Lasica

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When you want solid advice on social media, backed up by years of experience with both non-profits and businesses, you go to JD Lasica.

And so did I, for a half-hour conversation that touched on everything from why letting your audience see your slides in advance may not be a bad idea, to how speaking and community-building go hand-in-hand.

Listen to JD, then explore these links for some terrific resources:

Social Speech Podcast, Episode 7: Chris Brogan

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For several years now, Chris Brogan’s blog has been a must-read for anyone who wants to use social media productively. Add his thriving practice as a speaker, the fact that he co-founded PodCamp, and his New York Times bestseller Trust Agents (cowritten with Julien Smith) along with two other books (Google+ for Business: How Google’s Social Network Changes Everything and Social Media 101)…

…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:


Social Speech Podcast, Episode 2: Tod Maffin

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If you were to assemble a herd of top-notch researchers, and tell them “Find me someone who embodies public speaking, social media and podcasting,” chances are fights would break out as several of them vied to be the first to get to Tod Maffin‘s door.

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.

Tod Maffin photo

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:

Social Speech Podcast, Episode 1: Nancy White

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The social web has gone a long way toward changing what it means to be in the audience at a speech – making an audience member less a passive spectator listening to a monologue, and more an active participant in a conversation among peers.

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:

 

In which I am covered in chalk

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I came home today wearing a jacket covered in a substance I haven’t had to deal with (professionally, at least) in years: chalkdust.

I’d facilitated a day-long session at Simon Fraser University’s Harbour Centre campus, a 21-year-old facility (which makes it a puppy in university years) in downtown Vancouver. It’s a modern, bright, open building -but at least in the room we met in, uses blackboards.

Not whiteboards. Not digital whiteboards… a technology I have yet to actually use. (I nearly did on Tuesday at another day-long session, when I came this close to writing on one with a whiteboard marker before the dismayed howls of the participants stopped me.)

But chalkboards. Or, to be more accurate, chalkboard: a big board divided in two by the projection screen (for which there was a corresponding overhead projector, tucked away into an alcove).

I’m comfortable with flipcharts and whiteboards. Lately I’ve even started casting them aside in favour of shared mindmaps on a digital projector, which often get an “oooooh” from audiences. Blackboards seem painfully retro by comparison, and I wasn’t looking forward to writing on these ones.

Until I did. And I felt a primal emotional resonance in the way the letters took shape in powdery, gritty strokes amid the soft clicking and squeaking of the chalk.

Maybe it’s just memories from grade school (and one teacher in particular whose blackboard handwriting style appealed to me so much that I deliberately set out to copy it, and largely succeeded). Maybe it’s that artisanal satisfaction that comes from using a technology that goes back a few hundreds of years, to long before the days when writing implements would fail because their batteries were drained.

Whatever the reason, I took an unexpected pleasure in filling the board quickly as participants offered ideas, insights and observations. The brand new stick of chalk wore down to half its length by the time I was finished, and I had handprints in half a dozen places on my jacket… the same way, I imagine, a schoolteacher at the dawn of the 19th century might have had.

And then I shot it with my iPhone and uploaded it to Evernote so I can use the OCR feature to make it digitally searchable. You know, because.

Were you at my Northern Voice keynote? Review Teh Funny at SpeakerRate

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Rob Cottingham (image by Randy Stewart)

Teh Funny at Northern Voice 2009 (photo by Randy Stewart)

If you happened to catch my keynote last Saturday at Northern Voice, I’d love to know what you thought. Comments are always welcome below… but now there’s a new way to let me (and any other speaker) know how you think they did.

SpeakerRate is a new online community for speakers, audience members and event planners, where you can rate presentations you’ve attended. (I’ve described it in some detail on the Social Signal blog.)

Some speakers may find this a little intimidating, the way many doctors and professors have reacted to similar sites. But I suspect it could do a huge service for us. Not a lot of events do speaker evaluations, and not all of those that do share the results; SpeakerRate is a vehicle for potentially valuable feedback and comments.

Here’s the listing for Teh Funny on SpeakerRate. If you were there, I’d appreciate your honest opinion. And then I’d love to know what you think about SpeakerRate.