Catching you all up.

Because of the feeds mixup, those of you on this feed from GPMB.WordPress.com, missed some stuff.

• Tyranny of Chronology
• Beyond Monetization
  
• Let’s Talk Success: BNCA Talk in Pune, India

Please re-subscribe by clicking here. Thanks and sorry for the inconvenience!

 

Changes in the Weather…

Some changes are coming to the Great Presentations Mean Business blog… First, if you are subscribed on the RSS feed and haven’t seen updates in a month or so, please click here to resubscribe via FeedBurner.

Sorry for the trouble, but when we moved off wordpress.com, we realized most of you were subscribed via the wordpress.com feed, instead of the FeedBurner one. (Which is http://feeds.feedburner.com/pistachioconsulting, for your convenience, if the link above does not work.)

The name of the blog is going to change (SEND US YOUR IDEAS!), because the focus of the blog is expanding. My brain these days is wrapped up in a broadened definition of communications. Some call it web 2.0 or social media, to me it’s just the web as it evolves and where we can all go with it. Look for more about social media in the enterprise, communicating across many platforms, collaborating effectively and of course lots about presenting effectively. The unifying theme remains: achieve more by presenting your ideas effectively. The difference is: presenting, collaborating and sharing ideas via many different media. And yeah, I’m gonna blog about Twitter. Probably a lot. For VERY good reasons.

I’m very excited about these changes, which have been a long time coming. The shifting focus is a big part of the reason for my slowdown in blogging. The other big reason is, if you do not already follow me on Twitter, that I have jumped into microblogging (heh, coming pretty close to Lifecasting, as some have said) with both feet. That influence is also going to make this blog a lot more personal.

Hope you will also check out the new “lab” at www.Brainsieve.com. Speaking of things in transition, that is going to be an exciting place as it evolves into my vision of a highly collaborative “best of” filtering tool to excerpt and surface only the most interesting of the streams of the digital media I produce. At the moment, it looks an awful lot like a blog. But if you spend some time playing there, and have suggestions for me on how to get to the vision, please rock my world by telling me!

Post-move, we’re still adding widgets and working out technical details, so please excuse our appearance in the process.

One last thing. With 1064 & growing followers on Twitter, my “following-back” has fallen COMPLETELY off the wagon. Won’t you PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE engage me in conversation using @ replies anytime, even if I don’t currently follow you back? There are 311 UNREAD Twitter follow messages in my gmail plus many more read, but not looked at yet. Every voice matters to me, I just haven’t figured out how to listen effectively yet. Even if I follow you, PLEASE “@” me when you want to engage.

That’s all for now folks. Happy Solstice, and may the increasing light outdoors from here on, increase all manner of light in your life.

With love, Pistachio.

 

Command and Control is Dead. Long Live Converse!

Found in Anne Truit Zelenka’s links: But Miss, they’re not listening to me

Get your audiences thinking. Give them an active role in your presentation. Make them want to do more, learn more, get their questions answered. They don’t owe you attention, you owe them useful, relevant content.

We have to earn the respect of our peers. But remember, in a networked society, everyone is a peer.  Your professors. Your children. Your subordinates. Your bosses.

Everyone’s a peer.

Live with it.

There’s also an intriguing generational contrast between “surreptitious” Backberry users pretending to pay attention, vs multi-taskers on laptops (and BBs) who don’t look like they’re listening but may be really engaged with notes, searches, etc. Not sure how universally it plays out, but interesting to consider.

 

Presenting… Your Audience

Had a fun session this morning at PodCamp Boston 2, great discussion on understanding and conversing with your audience no matter what kind of media you produce. Think *you’re* not a media maker? Guess again. This stuff applies to everything from your emails, outgoing voicemail message, participation on blogs and other social networks, right up to full-blown mediacasts. And of course, to your presentations!

I will add some more commentary, but for now here is the deck:

 

Interview: Delivering Killer PodCamp Presentations

My good friend and social media guru Bryan Person was kind enough to host me on BlogTalkRadio yesterday, fielding questions and talking about how to do a great job presenting this weekend at PodCamp Boston 2.

From his blog:

Here’s the audio from my 58-minute conversation with Laura Fitton earlier today on BlogTalkRadio.

Laura was my guest on a show about “delivering killer presentations at PodCamp” and offered excellent advice for both first-time presenters and accomplished speakers alike. She also took several call-in questions from a listening audience that ranged between 15 and 18 for a solid hour.

Enjoy — and see you at PodCamp Boston 2 this weekend.

The show is archived at BlogTalkRadio, so please, take a listen and let me know what questions you have about your presentations!

UPDATE: I am deeply indebted to mdy for her careful notes on the show, and the excellent “key points” summary that she posted at her blog. Wow, if you want a gig writing up show notes for my speeches, you’re SO hired! She writes up detailed notes on:

• (1-to-1) Interactions can be presentations
• Be effective and useful for your audience
• Don’t lose sight of the purpose
• Stop worrying about what you’re going to say. Factor that in last. First think: who am I talking to?; What result do you want to achieve?
• Get to your room early and chat with people as they come in
• Prepare for a wide range of audience expectations
• Communications is 2-way
• Make things interactive
• De-personalize the experience of presenting
• Get the Q&A flow going
• Don’t end with Q&A
• Do not confuse the call to action with a call to buy
• Think of setting up a website around your whole presentation, so people have a place to go to continue the conversation
• One-on-one: Don’t ambush people with your 30-second pitch
• Start with the A-ha! The so what? The why do I care?
• Think about what you can control in the room
• Watching videos of your presentations
• Body Language: Walk. Smile. Care.
• Dealing with The glassy-eyed room

I’ve added in links to some articles on this blog that flesh out the principles in more detail.

 

Meet the Nut: Upcoming Engagements

Three new speaking engagements and lots of events coming up on the Pistachio Calendar. Hope I get to meet YOU at one of these events:

• Boston Blogger’s Dinner, October 18, Rattlesnake Bar, Boston, MA

• Startup Weekend, October 19-21, Axon Labs, Newton, MA

• PodCamp Boston, October 26-28, BCEC, Boston, MA
  • Presenting… Your Audience: 9 am Room 205

• Speaking engagments in Pune and Mumbai, India, Nov. 3-19, TBD
  • Contact me about speaking to your business or group

• Dr. B. N. College of Architecture, November 17, Pune, Maharastra, India
  • Great Presentations Mean Business, address to Masters of Architecture candidates

• PubCon December 4-7, LVCC, Las Vegas, NV
  • Monetizing Social Media Traffic, panel discussion, 11:35 am Salon A

• In addition, you can often find me at Boston-area Social Media Breakfasts, Tweetups, WebInno events and more. Please, introduce yourself and say hello!

I’d also like to thank the organizers of these recent events for inviting me to speak and for their gracious hospitality:

• Emerson College, social media panel, September 26, Boston, MA
• Blogtoberfest, 5-5-5 rockstar speaker, October 5, San Marcos, TX

 

What Good is a Presentation?

It’s Blog Action Day, Gore & the IPCC just won the Nobel Peace Prize, and I sure as heck have something to say about how that happened. So I give you: What Good is a Presentation?

So you present. So what? Why? Because someone makes you? Because you have to? Seriously, why bother? PowerPoints are mind-numbing. Nobody wants to hear you stand around and talk talk talk. Can’t we all just get out of this meeting soon, anyways?

It doesn’t have to suck. Not if you’re really trying to do something, and not if you connect to that.

So, what good is a presentation? It’s a sh*t way to deliver a whole massive lotta content, concepts and ideas. It’s not even a good way to persuade if you make it all about you and what you think and you know. It has to be about the audience. It has to connect with them where they are today.

Watching Inconvenient Truth you can see how Gore used metaphors, comparisons, stark visual displays of information and appeals to emotion to show that — and why — the audience should be concerned about climate change. There was nothing in that movie that I hadn’t heard about while studying environmental science and public policy 15 years ago. The difference was in the connections he made with the things people care about. You can’t change people, but you can move their hearts and minds.

By now you’re laughing. Move their hearts and minds at the weekly (weakly) Monday morning status meeting? Ha. I’m lucky if they even look up from their coffee!

You’re not going to care about your next status report or even client pitch as much as Gore was concerned about the environment when he set out to start speaking on Global Warming, sure. But so what? Presenting is going to take up your time and “their” time, so it’s worth doing well. Figure out what you need to accomplish when you present?

How can you move hearts and minds, even just a little? That status update? Don’t just dump everything you’re doing and where you’re at. That level of detail works better in a list anyways, not in a presento. Take it a step further and consider why the team needs the update. What are the most valuable, pertinent bits you can shave off the top of your mass of information and deliver in a way that your audience needs? Share some excitement for what you do & why it matters. Make your report connect to their emotional & professional lives. Talk about what’s relevant, then shut up & sit down.

You don’t believe me? Your subject matter too dull to matter?

“This week I ordered paper, pens, sticky notes and toner. I checked that we have sufficient supplies of pencils, pens, binder clips, staples and white out…”

OR

“Since it sucks to waste time looking for office supplies, I made sure we have enough of everything. Here’s the list. Let me know if you need anything else.”

I haven’t engaged in discussions on it publicly and intellectually in a long, long time. But, I am extremely concerned about the disconnects between science, policy and the environment. There’s a great deal that we have known, for a very long time, that is very bad news. Lots of folks with an axe to grind will try to pretend it ain’t so, and do all in their power to undermine the messengers. Go ahead and hate Gore, hate the movie, hate the super-mega-international-jetfuel-burning lecture tour if that makes you feel better. But what that won’t do is change the message — the Inconvenient Truth of it all.

And the brutal truth is that it’s ultimately not about “Saving the World,” it’s about saving ourselves and each other. Looking long, long back through the scientific record it is plain that “The World” will survive no matter what we do to muck with it. Life’s like that. But if we muck with it enough, it will have “no qualms” killing us off and getting on with its day. So, um, yeah.

More links on the Peace Prize award: AP News, MSNBC , Newsday, Boston Globe

 

Persuade

Do your presentations merely inform, or do they persuade? Brian Clark of Copyblogger writes up 10 Timeless Techniques Persuasive Writing Techniques. Apply them to your next presentation, with a clear eye on what you are trying to achieve (not just say).

Repetition

Reasons Why

Consistency

Social Proof

Comparisons

Agitate and Solve

Prognosticate

Go Tribal

Address Objections

Tell Stories

 

Camera, Camera

If you’ve used Flickr much, you know it’s both great for sharing photos and for finding ones to use in presentations, blog posts, etc. (but please get your licenses right!) You don’t have to be a rockstar photographer to play along there and share your own stuff. Get pictures & videos of yourself in action when you are presenting. Share pictures of your work activities and special events. Be more approachable, share your smiles and your enthusiasm for life. There’s value in combining a convenient camera + your work + Flickr.

To do all this, you probably want a small point & shoot digital camera. I sure did this week when my old Elph “went away” in an unfortunate series of events.

I’m not promoting any of these, but here’s what my Twitter friends suggested for me:

Scobleizer @Pistachio: the small point and shoot I like is the Nikon S51C because it has Wifi capabilities. It’s pretty small too, and has a big LCD.

WickedGood @Pistachio: I really like my Canon Powershot SD1000. But if I had to do it again, I’d spring for the Powershot SD850 IS w/ stabilization.

thepartycow @pistachio I have the canon sd850 IS and love it…no wifi, but rocks on all other accounts

davidjacobs @pistachio: this is the one i’m getting. canon powershot sd750. http://tinyurl.com/22uac9

MartysMind @pistachio I am still rather fond of the Casio Exilim, I have the EX-S600

yogapod @Pistachio the Canon Elph

ldpodcast @pistachio- I have a nikon coolpix s9, but had some video compatibility probs. Try a Canon- better software apparently

jeffnolan @pistachio it’s not teeny tiny, just tiny, but it’s an awesome camera, Canon SD850is. I just bought one and really like it.

neilford @Pistachio: The SD750 looks like a good choice. No viewfinder though which might be a problem in bright sunlight

cspenn likes the Canons and found that they have a wifi model in the SD430

So, the Canon SD series (Elphs) were runaway favorites, but Scoble agreed that the new slender, wifi enabled Nikon S51C was pretty craveworthy. We opted against it for the slow shutter speed, but you might love it. Whatever you use, enjoy!

 

Can They Eat You?

This post is a good musing on confidence, but what really caught my eye was comment #6 by Marina of Sufficient Thrust. She relates:

The CEO of GoDaddy, Bob Parsons, explained it best when he shared a story of how he was hesitant to take a leap and his father simply asked him: “Can they eat you?”

If they can’t eat you, do it.

 

Confidence, on Purpose

True confidence isn’t empty. It’s not “brass ones” or ego or faking it. Confidence lies in getting down to business. It’s in focusing on your purpose for being there. Confidence comes in forgetting yourself, in forgetting all the fears and judgments you worry* others are making about you, and in connecting strongly with your purpose.

Connect your purpose to the audience through the message, and allow your anxiety to fall by the wayside. This involves listening, parsing, knowing your audience and desired results, until your message has real purpose. When your presentation is truly all about what you need to achieve for that audience, the spotlight’s not on you anymore and the confidence flows.

Take the focus off the project of presenting and the stress of being the presenter, and put it into what needs to be said. Connect soundly with what needs to happen. What needs to be heard? What needs to be done? Believe that you are the one to say it. Own that, and let go of your fears about your personal success and failure.

What you’re trying to achieve is way more important than “how you do” at presenting. Be confident about your purpose for being there, and let the rest follow.

*They probably aren’t making the judgments you *think* they are, and frankly, your fears themselves create most of the insecurity and perception that you’re being judged.

 

Google Docs: Presentations are up

Is this news? I’m terribly sorry not to know one way or the other, but I’ve been under a technology news rock.

At any rate, word’s been out for months that a presentations application for Google’s web-based version of the software FKA Office has been well, in the offing. Earlier in the summer, Gmail users noticed a Googlenative format option when opening .ppt attachments.

@Zemote just echoed @jabancroft on Twitter, pointing out that Google Presentations is now live.

Check out Google Presentations, here.  UPDATE: Here’s the story on Google’s blog.

(And PLEASE remember, it’s not what the software does, it’s what the user does!)

 

Information impact rock star: CNN

This animation of data by state over time speaks volumes of the impact of high fructose corn syrup, portion sizes, school lunches, refined sugars, bleached flour, trans fats, sedentary lifestyles, advertising-generated insecurities, err, whatever it is that is causing weight gain, diabetes, etc. to increase across the board.

Points off for the color palette. Blue-red too contrasty to show incremental difference. It’s also misleadingly evocative of the political map. Here, blue is not opposite red. The sad truth of the 2006 “end state” is that every state but Colorado reports more than 20% of residents with BMIs over 30. Body image, lookism, sizeism be damned, what scares me most is the effect on health.

 

Body Language Cheat Sheet: Walk. Smile. Care.

Need better body language fast? Walk, smile and care.

Mastering presentation body language gets confusing fast. It takes time learn effective body language and eliminate “wrong” messages. Overused body language “tricks” ring false and irritate your audience. So here are three simple ways to dramatically improve your body language – fast.

Walk…
Take a hike! Practice relaxing your walk. Head up, shoulders back and relaxed, breathing deeply and walking with confidence and purpose. Try to lead with your sternum or collarbones. Practice by simply going for walks. Occasionally “scan” your body for relaxation, paying attention to how you feel and where you hold tension.

Smile…
Even if you’re not feeling it, put a genuine smile on your face. You will relax and engage your audience better. With a real smile – not a forced one – a lot of other better body language will follow.

Care…
You’re talking to someone, a lot like you would if you were simply sitting together. They matter to you. A lot. Show them you care about the experience they are having. Look at them, talk to them. Using the right gestures and posture can be effective, but avoid “tricks.” If you wouldn’t do it in conversation, you probably shouldn’t while presenting.

Walk. Smile. Care. Got it? Great. Have a nice day.

UPDATE: What are your favorite tips for better body language? Tell us in the comments!

 

Overload & webinars: don’t be crappy.

Two very different sounding posts. One universal presentations problem. Both of these recent posts by John Windsor at The You Blog are about crappy audience experience.

Watch out for the bag lady The Trouble with Webinars

Always avoid presenting a data dump that’s built around your needs. Be precisely focused on audience needs and engagement. If it’s not urgently important to the audience, don’t do it.

Think that doesn’t apply to your mandatory routine presentations? BS. If you have to include it, there’s a reason somewhere. Your mission is: yank that reason out, make it obvious and package it into your delivery so it grabs whoever’s watching. Challenge yourself!

 

Presentationships

The deck is the deck is the deck (not the “presentation”), but some decks stand out. Here’s a new, striking, smart example:

From Chris Brogan’s talk on presenting at PodCamp Pittsburgh2.

The basic premise was that presentations are relationships, not to waste people’s time, and to treat people like they’re smart.

“Presentations are relationships.” Attention, listening, “communicating, conversing, connecting, creating” all factor into this, and so does putting the audience first. But ‘audience first’ goes even further to include treating people well, respecting their brains, their time and trying to make a substantial emotional connection. It’s about engaging, empowering and stimulating people to carry ideas forward.

If you’re puzzling over the slide with the microfont, it reads:

Powerpoint is a tool, not a requirement.
YOU are the presentation.
Lead with something that engages and builds allies.
Assume everyone is smart.
Practice. Check your language skills. Practice more. (Kill your ums).
Deliver value.
If you use a slide deck: big pictures, few words. PowerPoint is NOT MS Word.
Empower instead of preach.
Give your ideas handles.
Leave them feeling good. Or moved. Or both.

(PodCampers! know where to dig up video of this in action? We’d love to see it.)

Just before his talk, Chris also posted a great roundup of presentation tips, examples and resources.

 

Information impact rock star: Smashing Magazine

Honorary information impact rockstar award to Smashing Magazine for this phenomenal roundup of modern approaches to data visualization.

IMAGE: Amaztype returns icons for each search result in the shape of the keyword searched. Wow. 

Organized into seven broad categories (mindmaps, displaying news, displaying data, displaying connections, displaying websites, articles & resources, and tools & services) the article profiles dozens of innovative approaches and provides more than 40 examples. From their introduction:

In fact, there are much better, profound, creative and absolutely fascinating ways to visualize data. Many of them might become ubiquitous in the next few years.

So what can we expect? Which innovative ideas are already being used? And what are the most creative approaches to present data in ways we’ve never thought before?

Nice to see past rockstars Information Architects Japan featured leading off the roundup.

More than enough compelling content here to revisit, think about, and chew on for weeks, especially if you are an information impact junkie like me. So let’s let this catch us up from a particularly dry spell on this blog and a long time since we awarded the last information impact rockstar. I’ll feature some of the particular approaches in future entries/awardees.

Tip of the hat to David Armano from his Twitterstream  (@Armano).

 

Ode to Twitter

Let me come clean about my Twitter adoption “arc:”

The wise student hears of the Twitter & practices it diligently. The average student hears of the Twitter & gives it thought now & again. The foolish student hears of the Twitter and laughs aloud. If there were no laughter, the Twitter would not be what it is. -Lao Tzu (well, sorta)

I was foolish. If you think Twitter’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever seen, I hear you.

But I evolved.

I recently tweeted what Twitter is to me:

water cooler, colleagues, sanity check, ideas, advice, good tips, friends, company, connections, inspiration. oh ya & network.

I poo-poohed Twitter in March, grudgingly tried it on May 17, and 4 days later met my first real world Twitter friends (aka, drank the Kool Aid.)

I began to see how creative/productive Twitterers can inspire. I used it to surround myself with role models. I started getting to know people, and to enjoy the company, humor, conversation and great links. Just by way of writing, reading and responding to each other’s tweets, unbelieveably valuable networking contacts have become familiar workday presences. I’ve met and hired 3 subcontractors for my business, met numerous potential collaborators and even found extraordinary new business leads. I’ve been to numerous networking and social events (lifesavers for a WAHM in a new city!). Interesting, creative, challenging, thoughtful and very deeply caring people have come into my life. New ones seem to appear every week. Twitter has served up answers, opinions and inspiration. It’s saved my sanity and yesterday, my dishwasher.

Hugh McLeod’s mentioned both flippantly (April) and seriously (June) that Twitter has slowed his blogging. I’d blame summer for my recent slowdown, but maybe it’s Twitter. But as a wise ninja pointed out, Twitter also improves blogging by absorbing your off-theme tidbits, good links, quotes, questions and other scraps of ideas. It ain’t called microblogging for nothing. But it’s true my blog posts are more detailed and thought out now, the quick cool stuff goes on Twitter.

Because it’s a business and personal tool for me, I Twitter about a LOT of different things. Great finds from my feed reader, impulsive ideas, replies both sassy and heartfelt. I tweet pointers to new blog posts when they go up. Twitter’s kept me company and has let me blow off steam, comfort a friend, and get exposed to completely opposite thinking from my own. On Twitter, we share and promote each others’ ideas and media. We celebrate birthdays, promotions, graduations and anniversaries. We look out for someone traveling or near the site of a disaster. We introduce and we randomly discover each other. Some I follow are just plain entertaining. Others I look up to and hope to meet.

We also combine the power of our collective news/intellectual interests. I get the “best of” ideas that various Twitter friends read or create, any given day. This magnifies the depth and breadth of information I consume. Imagine if your “water cooler” at work were also a wire service/editorial desk? Yeah. Something like that.

Sure, Twitter contains a huge % of “what I had for breakfast.” But the elegance is this: Everyone starts out with nobody listening to them and nobody to listen to. How and who you add determines what Twitter will become for you. Nobody can tweet at you without permission. You add people. People add you. You see interesting exchanges and add new people. Read the Twitterstream of anyone who adds you to decide whether you want to hear what they have to say. Meet someone at an event and you can connect on Twitter to get to know each other’s thoughts a little, over time.

If you used your TV or radio to listen to EVERYONE on your block broadcast their every random sound or video, you’d dismiss radio and TV as useless. If you look at everyone on Twitter at once and complain about futility, you’re missing the chance to find interesting connections and dig in slowly. Before you dismiss Twitter, find some bright, engaging, thoughtful tweeters* and follow them for a little while.

So there it is. I’m an addict. I’m a poster child for Twitter, and I couldn’t be happier about it. If you don’t”get” twitter yet, that’s ok. I’ve been there too.

* I’d have to write a whole separate post to shout out my Twitter favorites and what each one brings to the table. So please, post your suggested “Twitterers to follow” in the comments.

UPDATE: Annotated pic from today’s Tweeter-Q

UPDATES 08/28/2007: Chris Brogan on Twitter: Twitter as a Lab, Deeper Twitter; Dave Davison on Twitter ROA;  Guy Kawasaki joins Twitter.

 

The W-List

Normally don’t “play memes” here at Great Presentations Mean Business, but this one’s important to me. I’m grateful Liz Strauss threw my name in with others in this very big hat to fill, and I’d like to salute a number of my own blogging women heroes. Liz’ followup post captures something I agree with about the “M-List” objection to the “W-List” idea:

I celebrate the women bloggers on the list. By giving to them, I take nothing from the men I esteem. I only wish I had taken the time to celebrate the men too.

As a child I knew, sometimes my parents celebrated one of their children without mentioned the other two. Yet each of one of us was always their favorite.

One lesson that I have always had trouble with is that when I’m not included it’s rarely about me. (And when I am, that’s usually not about me either.)

So with that caveat to the many adored male bloggers I read, here’re my W-List additions:

• ::Horse Pig Cow by Tara Hunt
• A Little Pregnant by Julie
• Bag and Baggage by Denise Howell
• Creating Passionate Users by Kathy Sierra
• Jezebel by team Jezebel
• Internet Geek Girl by Stephanie Agresta
• Lifehacker by Gina Trapani & team
• Media Influencer by Adriana Lukas
• Sweet|Salty by Kate Inglis
• Toddler Planet by WhyMommy
• Work It, Mom! by Nataly Kogan & team
• Anne Zelenka at Web Worker Daily
• Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing

Here is the list from Karin H.’s post:

• 45 Things by Anita Bruzzese
• Ask Dr. Kirk
• The Artsy Asylum by Susan Reynolds
• Back in Skinny Jeans by Stephanie Quilao
• BlogWrite for CEOs Debbie Weil
• Biz Growth News by Krishna De
• Brain Based Biz by Dr. Robyn McMaster
• Brain Based Business by Dr. Ellen Weber
• Brand Sizzle Anne Simons
• Branding & Marketing Chris Brown
• Brazen Careerist by Penelope Trunk
• Build a Solo Practice, LLC by Susan Cartier Liebel
• Christine Kane by Christine Kane
• CK’s Blog CK (Christina Kerley)
• Communication Overtones Kami Huyse
• Conscious Business by Anne Libby
• Conversation Agent Valeria Maltoni
• Corporate PR Elizabeth Albrycht
• Customers Rock! Becky Carroll
• CustServ by Meikah David
• Creative Curio by Lauren Marie
• Debbie Millman by Debbie Millman
• Deborah Schultz by Deborah Schultz
• Designers Who Blog by Cat Morley
• Design Your Writing Life by Lisa Gates
• Diva Marketing Blog Toby Bloomberg
• Do It Myself Blog by Glenda Watson Hyatt
• Dooce by Heather B. Armstrong
• Email Marketing Best Practices Tamara Gielen
• Enter the Laughter by Marti Lawrence
• Escape Blog by Melissa Petri
• Escape from Cubicle Nation by Pamela Slim
• eSoup by Sharon Sarmiento
• Essential Keystrokes by Char
• Every Dot Connects by Connie Reece
• Fish Creek House by GP
• Flooring The Consumer CB Whittemore
• Forrester’s Marketing Blog Shar, Charlene, Chloe, Christine Elana, Laura and Lisa
• Franke James by Franke James
• Get Fresh Minds by Katie Konrath
• Great Presentations Mean Business by Laura Athavale Fitton
• Graphic Design Blog by Tara
• Hey Marci by Marci Alboher
• Get Shouty by Katie Chatfield
• ifelse by Phu Ly
• Inspiration Bit by Vivien
• Inspired Business Growth by Wendy Piersall
• J.T. O’Donnell Career Insights by J.T. O’Donnell
• Joyful, Jubilant Learning by Rosa Say
• Kinetic Ideas Wendy Maynard
• Learned on Women by Andrea Learned
• Lindsay Pollak by Lindsay Polla
• Liz Strauss at Successful Blog by Liz Strauss
• Lorelle on WordPress by Lorelle VanFossen
• Making Life Work for You by April Groves
• Manage to Change by Ann Michael
• Management Craft by Lisa Haneberg
• Marketing Roadmaps Susan Getgood
• Moda di Magno by Lori Magno
• Modite by Rebecca Thorman
• Narrative Assets by Karen Hegman
• Presto Vivace Blog Alice Marshall
• Productivity Goal by Carolyn Manning
• Small Biz Survival by Becky McCray
• Small Failures by Jessie Jane
  
• Spare Change Nedra Kline Weinreich
• SwissMiss by Tina Roth Eisenberg
• Talk It Up Heidi Miller
• Tech Kitten by Trisha Miller
• The Copywriting Maven Roberta Rosenberg
• The Blog Angel by Claire Raikes
• The Brand Dame by Lyn Chamberlin
• The Engaging Brand by Anna Farmery
• The Floozy Blog by Kate Coote
• The Heavy Chef Project with Nicola Perk
• The Kiss Business Too by Karin H.
• The Origin of Brands Laura Ries
• The Parody by Sasha Manuel
• The Podcast Sisters by Krishna De, Anna Farmery and Heather Gorringe
• Think Positive by Kirsten Harrell
• Water Cooler Wisdom by Alexandra Levit
• Wealth Strategy Secrets by Nicola Cairncross
• What’s Next Blog B L Ochman
• That’s What She Said by Julie Elgar
• Ypulse by Anastasia Goodstein

 

College Application PowerPoints?

I want to snark at this, I really do. The possibilities are endless.

University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business will soon require presentation “slides” with their applications. Hmpf. Much sighing and keening will ensue. It begins with the snark about “corporate America’s surrender to…” But read this:

“We wanted to have a freeform space for students to be able to say what they think is important, not always having the school run that dialogue,” said Rose Martinelli, associate dean. “To me this is just four pieces of blank paper. You do what you want. It can be a presentation. It can be poetry. It can be anything.”

Thank you Rose. Are the rest of you are listening? Your slides are only so many pieces of blank paper. What are YOU going to fill them with?