gbrugman's posterous http://gbrugman.posterous.com Most recent posts at gbrugman's posterous posterous.com Tue, 29 Jun 2010 11:47:43 -0700 How to get a standing ovation http://gbrugman.posterous.com/how-to-get-a-standing-ovation-1 http://gbrugman.posterous.com/how-to-get-a-standing-ovation-1

When I started public speaking in about 1986, I was deathly afraid of public speaking—for one thing, working for the division run by Steve Jobs was hugely intimidating: How could you possibly compete with Steve? It’s taken me twenty years to get comfortable at it. I hope that many of you are are called upon to give speeches—it’s the closest thing to being a professional athlete that many of us will achieve. The purpose of this blog entry is to help you give great speeches.

  1. Have something interesting to say. This is 80% of the battle. If you have something interesting to say, then it’s much easier to give a great speech. If you have nothing to say, you should not speak. End of discussion. It’s better to decline the opportunity so that no one knows you don’t have anything to say than it is to make the speech and prove it.
  2. Cut the sales pitch. The purpose of most keynotes is to entertain and inform the audience. It is seldom to provide you with an opportunity to pitch your product, service, or company. For example, if you’re invited to speak about the future of digital music, you shouldn’t talk about the latest MP3 player that your company is selling.
  3. Focus on entertaining. Many speech coaches will disagree with this, but the goal of a speech is to entertain the audience. If people are entertained, you can slip in a few nuggets of information. But if your speech is deathly dull, no amount of information will make it a great speech. If I had to pick between entertaining and informing an audience, I would pick entertaining—knowing that informing will probably happen too.
  4. Understand the audience. If you can prove to your audience in the first five minutes that you understand who they are, you’ve got them for the rest of the speech. All you need to understand is the trends, competition, and key issues that the audience faces. This simply requires consultation with the host organization and a willingness to customize your introductory remarks. This ain’t that hard.
  5. Overdress. My father was a politician in Hawaii. He was a very good speaker. When I started speaking he gave me a piece of advice: Never dress beneath the level of the audience. That is, if they’re wearing suits, then you should wear a suit. To underdress is to communicate the following message: “I’m smarter/richer/more powerful than you. I can insult you and not take you serious, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” This is hardly the way to get an audience to like you.
  6. Don’t denigrate the competition. If you truly do cut the sales pitch, then this won’t even come up. But just in case, never denigrate the competition because by doing so, you are taking undue advantage of the privilege of giving a speech. You’re not doing the audience a favor. The audience is doing you a favor, so do not stoop so low as to use this opportunity to slander your competition.
  7. Tell stories. The best way to relax when giving a speech is to tell stories. Any stories. Stories about your youth. Stories about your kids. Stories about your customers. Stories about things that you read about. When you tell a story, you lose yourself in the storytelling. You’re not “making a speech” anymore. You’re simply having a conversation. Good speakers are good storytellers; great speakers tell stories that support their message.
  8. Pre-circulate with the audience. True or false: the audience wants your speech to go well. The answer is True. Audiences don’t want to see you fail—for one thing, why would people want to waste their time listening to you fail? And here’s the way to heighten your audience’s concern for you: circulate with the audience before the speech. Meet people. Talk to them. Let them make contact with you. Especially the ones in the first few rows; then, when you’re on the podium, you’ll see these friendly faces. Your confidence will soar. You will relax. And you will be great.
  9. Speak at the start of an event. If you have the choice, get in the beginning part of the agenda. The audience is fresher then. They’re more apt to listen to you, laugh at your jokes, and follow along with your stories. On the third day of a three-day conference, the audience is tired, and all they’re thinking about is going home. It’s hard enough to give a great speech—why increase the challenge by having to lift the audience out of the doldrums?
  10. Ask for a small room. If you have a choice, get the smallest room possible for your speech. If it’s a large room, ask that it be set “classroom style”—ie, with tables and chairs—instead of theatre style. A packed room is a more emotional room. It is better to have 200 people in a 200 person room than 500 people in a 1,000 person room. You want people to remember, “It was standing room only.”
  11. Practice and speak all the time. This is a “duhism,” but nonetheless relevant. My theory is that it takes giving a speech at least twenty times to get decent at it. You can give it nineteen times to your dog if you like, but it takes practice and repetition. There is no shortcut to Carnegie Hall. As Jascha Heifitz said, “If I don’t practice one day, I know it. If I don’t practice two days, my critics know it. If I don’t practice three days, everyone knows it.” Read this article to learn what Steve Jobs does.

It’s taken me twenty years to get to this point. I hope it takes you less. Part of the reason why it took me so long is that no one explained the art of giving a speech to me, and I was too dumb to do the research. And now, twenty years later, I love speaking. My goal, every time I get up to the podium, is to get a standing ovation. I don’t succeed very often, but sometimes I do. More importantly, I hope that I’m standing and clapping in the audience of your speech soon.

Een goed advies voor presentaties

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Sat, 13 Feb 2010 07:03:19 -0800 Integrating Posterous with Google Buzz http://gbrugman.posterous.com/integrating-posterous-with-google-buzz http://gbrugman.posterous.com/integrating-posterous-with-google-buzz

After four well described steps you add your Posterous into Google Buzz. 

 

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Sun, 07 Feb 2010 05:28:26 -0800 Voordeel van XLTweet http://gbrugman.posterous.com/voordeel-van-xltweet http://gbrugman.posterous.com/voordeel-van-xltweet

Met XLTweet.com kan je dus langere teksten kwijt, dus geen microblog van <140 tekens. Enkel de eerste 120 tekens worden getweet en de rest staat waarschijnlijk op twitwall.com. Zal het eens uitproberen, maar dit is dan eigenlijk niet anders dan Posterous.com waar je ook al langere teksten kunt maken die dan afgekort op je twitter account gepost worden. Voordeel is dus?

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Thu, 28 May 2009 14:07:40 -0700 Wave opvolger voor email? http://gbrugman.posterous.com/wave-opvolger-voor-email http://gbrugman.posterous.com/wave-opvolger-voor-email Google introduceerde vandaag Wave, een communicatie-programma dat opnieuw ontworpen is ter vervanging van mail. Ik zal er eens dieper induiken, zie de links hieronder.

Een van mijn grootste bezwaren tegen huidige e-mail is dat het zakelijk gezien te persoonsgebonden is terwijl de meeste berichten dat niet zijn. Ook privé zou een deel van mijn mail ook voor mijn partner direct te lezen moeten zijn en in een gezamelijke inbox moeten komen waar ik ook mijn persoonlijke private mail in terug kan vinden zonder dat die zichtbaar is voor de ander. Zo ook zakelijk, al mijn mail, nou bijna alle e-mail, zou zichtbaar moeten zijn voor mijn directe collega's, behalve de als privaat aangemerkte berichten natuurlijk. Oplossing is dus dat de afzender aangeeft of het bericht privaat is of voor een groep/rol/functie bestemd is zonder iedereen afzonderlijk te moeten adresseren. Misschien zou het zelfs mogelijk moeten zijn om delen van de e-mail die privaat zijn onzichtbaar te maken voor overige lezers. Verder zou ik als afzender willen bepalen of de ontvanger(s) mijn bericht geheel of gedeeltelijk zouden mogen doorsturen, ter voorkoming van verspreiding van genante uitspraken die niet voor andermans oren bestemd zijn.

Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave
Google Wave: What Might Email Look Like If It Were Invented Today?

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http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1777977/Guus_augustus_2011_hv.JPG http://posterous.com/users/168ADFONwZj Guus Brugman gbrugman Guus Brugman
Wed, 27 May 2009 14:06:01 -0700 Ok, aan de slag met Posterous http://gbrugman.posterous.com/ok-aan-de-slag-met-posterous http://gbrugman.posterous.com/ok-aan-de-slag-met-posterous Vandaag iets nieuws gelezen en dat is een variant op Ping.fm en heet Posterous. Betekenis van woord Posterous opgezocht maar niets gevonden. We connectie gelegd naar twitter, facebook, blogger en wordpress.

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http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1777977/Guus_augustus_2011_hv.JPG http://posterous.com/users/168ADFONwZj Guus Brugman gbrugman Guus Brugman