The NSA International PEG (Professional Experts Group) is a group of around 100 NSA members with an interest in speaking in different countries. Many members travel internationally as part of their speaking career.

I was asked by the PEG Chairman, Garth Roberts, to develop a multi-author blog so that his members could both read and post items of interest to the group. This is a wonderful use of blogging as a community resource rather than just for the writing of a single individual.

After some discussion of the merits of Blogger and Typepad we decided to use Typepad Pro, which allows multiple authors to post to one blog. In a surprisingly short time I was able to create the blog and Garth is currently recruiting a stable of authors from among the membership.

Take a look at Internationally Speaking and let me know what you think.

If you are interested in what professional speakers who travel the globe get up to, subscribe to the blog and find out.

The ANZA Technology Network conference is taking place in Silicon Valley Monday to Wednesday this week.

Today’s presentation coaching by Dan Sapp took the visitors through some powerful executive presentation coaching prior to their 5 minute pitches to VC’s and potential partners tomorrow. It was fascinating to see how Australian executives, as much as their counterparts in the US, need to amplify their communications with body language to connect with their audience.

Dan does a great job teaching people how to talk with an audience not present at them. He encourages people to experiment and take risks with their presentation style. When they amplify beyond what is comfortable it’s just about right for the audience. He shows people choices they can make with stance, tone and pitch of voice and pauses that deliver powerful presentations.

Dan stressed that Powerpoint and visuals should only be used to explain something if the audience would understand more if you use it. Especially when pitching to VC’s, people tend to over-inform. Investors don’t need to understand everything, just enough to be intrigued to ask for a follow-up meeting. Knowing this, the impression you make in the first 30 seconds is crucial. This judgement is formed by how the presenter looks and sounds, not by the slides.

There’s more than a dozen cool Australian companies with great technology to share. Check ’em out.

Thanks to Hal for pointing me to an awesome website that is a wonderful repository of visualization tools for data. Gapminder is a non-profit venture for development and provision of free software that visualize human development.

Check out their animated charts on Human Development Trends for 2005 (just press start on the main webpage) and see how the visual display of quantitative information can be done well. I hesitate to show the simple static image below, the beauty is in how they animate these charts to make the data come alive, so please click on the link to Gapminder above and explore for yourself:

They also have some well-done static charts, like this one on CO2 emissions by country:

A picture sometimes really is worth a thousand words.

Just finished a great book: Rome, Inc: The Rise and Fall of the First Multinational Corporation by Stanley Bing.

Fortune columnist Bing condenses the 1,200-year history of Rome into a slim, wildly entertaining satire written for modern executives. The book renders the history of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire in corporate-speak. Starting out in 753 BC as a “Mom and Pop operation” through the era of the Bureaucratic Republic; the company peaks from 18 BC to 180 AD as a Caesar-centric organization.

For anyone who works, like Bing, in a large corporation, there’s an eerie familiarity in deeds of ancient Roman tribunes (middle managers) patrician senators (the executive committee or board members) and megalomaniac consuls (CEO’s).

Rome is the corporate center (always being lavishly remodeled in marble); outposts in Africa or Gaul are field offices; conquests are unfriendly acquisitions.

The core attribute of the truly great Romans — Caius Marius, Julius Caesar, Marc Anthony, Augustus — was an egomaniac sense of destiny, an utter belief in themselves.

Bing makes it absolutely apparent that there are corporate titans around today not all that different from those who ruled two thousand years ago. Denis Kozlowski’s famous birthday party with an ice statue spraying vodka from its penis; the tragedy of Kenneth Lay; Al Dunlap; Dick Grasso’s grasping excess — all the outsized compensation packages and overweening pride before a fall that was there in 20 BC is still around in 2000 AD:

In a sane society, such people are dealt with rationally, as sick individuals whose egos need amelioration, either upward or downward in size. In a crazy culture, these pathological titans are promoted, invested with power and respect. Eventually, they destroy themselves, both individually and as a group, giving way to new forms of executives.

Bing’s analysis of the forces that drove the ancient Romans is distant mirror in which to see our own careers. Working for large companies might demand we tolerate bread and circuses, but it’s better than life as a Visigoth or Hun.

If you’d like a quick read this summer, check out Rome, Inc.

I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

Saturday night and Sunday morning the NSA 2006 Convention kicked off in style. Main tent sessions on Saturday featured professional magicians and illusionists who messed with my eyes. Sunday morning’s five hour marathon Rally showcased six speakers delivering motivational keynotes that messed with my emotions. In different ways, both events cleansed my doors of perception.

Opening General Session

This was the Big Tent kick-off that sets the Rah-Rah tone for the NSA National Convention. All 1,600 thousand-watt light bulbs gathered in one room. Presenting to an audience of pro speakers must be one of the more paradoxical challenges for anyone on a podium. Like a hooker at a swingers party, the presenter is being paid to engage in acts the audience openly embraces. There’s precious few novices to dazzle with amateur moves. They expect the Full Monty. They appreciate a fellow-professional, but are probably dissecting your technique before the applause ends. Where was I? Oh, right, the NSA General Session. Standing ovations at the drop of a hat. What’s not to like?

Amos Levkovitch

Amos worked the conjurer’s art with a half-dozen tame doves that disappeared into thin air to emerge in a puff of smoke. They circled him and landed. Landed and circled. One escaped to the rafters only to return to land on an unsuspecting audience member (or was she?) in the middle of the closing act. Who was performer and who audience?

Dan Menendez

Dan juggles tennis balls and drops them onto a keyboard to create classical music tunes. Simply amazing. He cracked the first testicle joke of the Convention (at last, Beethoven with balls).

Craig Karges

Was the hit of the evening. His act, The Magic of the Mind—Experience the Extraordinary and Ignite Your Intuition, combines the art of magic with the science of psychology and the power of intuition. With his eyes duct-taped shut he correctly identified the serial numbers on currency, guessed phone numbers and the contents of sealed envelopes. Trickery or not, the audience was amazed. Even more amazing was the result of 1,600 people using pendulums he left on the seat to divine the symbol on cards.

By the time he levitated a table four feet into the air we doubted both the evidence before us and our grasp on reality.

Thanks to Craig for re-introducing us to our inherent feeling of Ignorance and the realization that we truly don’t what anything is.

NSA Rally

At what seemed like a ridiculously early hour we re-convened in the main hall.

It fell to a Canadian to wake us all up.

Michael Kerr

Used a hilarious opening video to set the Kerouac-on-speed pace of his fabulously funny forty minutes. He wrapped the serious message that we need to bring humor into our working lives in the cloak of jokes.

He used pro-speaker in-jokes to turn the tables on us, sympathizing that “the pressure of being an audience at this convention must be tremendous – sitting there looking engaged, nodding at appropriate times. I’m not gonna offer you feedback and at no time will I think ‘that could be me out there’.”

He recommended five R’s for a successful career and life:

I think he skipped Reward and Reframe, his final two R’s that were promised in the program.

Howard Putnam

Ex-Southwest Airline CEO and current NSA big wheel Howard Putnam used more traditional presentation techniques – and the first PowerPoint slides of the event – to review his survey findings of the top echelon of NSA members (the CSPs or Certified Speaking Professionals). Most work alone from home offices and outsource anything that’s not a core competency. To this extent, they employ the same business model as the big technology companies like my ex-employer Sun Microsystems. They focus on profitability and tracking their net fees after taxes and expenses. Finally, they strive to achieve balance between work, family, church and community.

Bonnie St. John

Amazingly inspiring. An Olympic Silver medalist in downhill skiing, despite the amputation of one leg at age five, Bonnie encouraged us to reach out to help others who look different from us, even those who we might be scared of. She won Silver not because she had the second-fastest time but, since all the one-legged skiers in the race that day hit the same ice patch and had to climb back up to finish the race, because there was only one other racer who was faster at getting up after the fall. Invest in helping others and they’ll be there to assist when you fall.

Robin Sieger

Robin was introduced with the second testicle joke of the Convention. An accidental record holder who played a round of golf in the coldest conditions ever when he completed a game at minus 26 in Fairbanks, Alaska. It was so cold his balls shattered ba-doom, ba-ding!

He confessed to a number of mistakes in life. Running the New York City Marathon in a kilt with no underwear was one that caused as loud hiss from the audience as all the men collectively inhaled through clenched teeth at the thought. This testicle reference was no laughing matter.

He’d also made the same mistakes we all make when learning to walk. Most infants fall 240 times before they succeed. None accept their failure and continued to lie on the floor and ask Mum to just bring a can of lager and the TV remote to equip them for life. As adults we give up too early.

Recovering from mistakes is one key to success. Recognizing opportunities is another. Immigrants are four-times more likely to become millionaires that the native born in a country (maybe that’s why the Alamo Alliance wants to keep ’em out – envy?).

The real secret of success? Good old John D. Rockefeller said it best:

Get up early
Work hard
Strike oil.

Bob Bly

Bob is a writer. He presented content as many writers do – in written form on PowerPoint slides and lots of ’em. More information that he had time to cover. Much more. In a font size that many of us at the back of the room had a hard time reading. Bob is a writer.

His tips included:

Martha Williamson

To conclude the morning the executive producer of the TV hit show Touched by an Angel departed from her prepared notes to deliver an emotional plea for all speakers to find their true selves and speak with real passion. A slender and attractive 51-year old, she made frequent references to her Muumuu wearing 250lb former self and her struggles to make the show a success on TV. I was left wondering about three things. How can anyone lose that much weight and look that good? How did that make the 250lb people in the audience feel? And did she really depart from her prepared script?

In conclusion

There were illusions aplenty at the NSA last night and this morning.

We related spontaneously to speakers who inspired us; to speakers who overcame our feelings of separateness, emptiness and the sad litanies of limitation we all feel – of being small, threatened and inadequate beings. But weren’t these feelings of relatedness and attention from the speakers themselves an illusion? How could 1,600 really know the Sun was in his pocket and that all the uplifting stories were authentic? We left the room alone, each to ponder by the pool.

One, Two, Three, Four.

Uno, Dos, Tres, Cuatro.

Numbers are such absolutes, the bedrock of what we know, of how we think. We count the ways of loving and measure out our lives in numbers. So it’s only common sense that these must appeal on a similar level (of pure reason) in each and every listener worldwide – no matter if the audience is in St. Louis or Shanghai. Right?

Not so, reports the Chinese People’s Daily Online. Significant cultural differences exist in the way we process numbers.

Despite using the same numerals in computing, English and Chinese speakers displayed different brain activities in processing them, according to a new study conducted by a China-US research team. For example, the participants might have been shown symbols of an erect scythe and a cleaver and asked to figure out the visual orientation of a tilted knife in relation to the first two.

Right there, the dispassionate focus of the researcher betrays a deep cultural bias. While mental images of erect scythes, cleavers and a tilted knives would draw a blank in most westerners (with the possible exception of those of us who live in San Francisco and are habitues of the Power Exchange ) for the Chinese this is a valid area of research where numbers are represented by pictograms.

Since Chinese characters are more visual that Arabic numbers the brain activity required to process these vastly different written codes are significant.

This is yet another reason to eschew text and numbers in your Powerpoint when presenting at home or abroad. Stick to photographs and images that have more universal appeal. The audience will understand you better. You can count on it.

It was Showtime at Saturday’s NSA/NC Pro-Track Meeting. Team 5 took a turn to Showcase our presentations. In addition, we learned the importance of Marketing for Speakers as a way to showcase our expert talents to the world.

Jill Lublin

The best-selling author of Guerilla Publicity and Networking Magic shared her powerful, street-smart, results-oriented tips and tricks to capitalize on media opportunities and get the word out. Jill has seen that the problem with most CEO’s, independent professionals, consultants, speakers and authors is they have a great message but no clue how to craft it so the media will say “Yes! YES! YES!!� They have a lot of good ideas, but lack the focus and clarity to quickly and easily figure out what their main message is.

A sampling of her admonitions:

I experimented with my own media pitch:

The world is changing. Over 50% of businesspeople must deal with overseas customers, partners or staff. Hi, I’m Ian Griffin with Executive Communications and I help businesses bridge cultures by: building your credibility as an outsider who enjoys hidden advantages over native businesspeople; helping you communicate clearly and understandably with foreigners and, finally, by giving you twelve travel tips to ensure your next overseas business trip is stress-free and effective.

Nan Andrews Amish and Michael Lee

Two of the most experienced members of the National Speakers Association shared their insights on developing an effective marketing plan. Some of the highlights:

In a fascinating survey out this week, the Pew Research Center reports that anti-Americanism is on the rise across the planet.
The big issue is the war in Iraq:

The survey shows that the Iraq war continues to exact a toll on America’s overall image and on support for the struggle against terrorism. Majorities in 10 of 14 foreign countries surveyed say that the war in Iraq has made the world a more dangerous place. In Great Britain, America’s most important ally in Iraq, 60% say the war has made the world more dangerous, while just half that number (30%) feel it has made the world safer.

No surprise in this finding — neither supporters or opponents of the war should be shocked.

What did surprise me was the low level of concern, even ignorance, about the issue of Global Warming in the two countries that are responsible for the greatest output of CO2:

There also is a substantial gap in concern over global warming – roughly two-thirds of Japanese (66%) and Indians (65%) say they personally worry a great deal about global warming. Roughly half of the populations of Spain (51%) and France (46%) also express great concern over global warming, based on those who have heard about the issue. But there is no evidence of alarm over global warming in either the United States or China – the two largest producers of greenhouse gases. Just 19% of Americans and 20% of the Chinese who have heard of the issue say they worry a lot about global warming – the lowest percentages in the 15 countries surveyed.

The Chinese have an excuse, they live in a society where the free flow of information choked off. America claims to be the land of the free. Perhaps it’s just another word for nothin’ that don’t mean nothin’.

This “What, me worry?” attitude is indicated by many Americans reacting with disdain or hostility to Al Gore’s movie. President Bush famously says he ‘doubts’ he’ll see it — exhibiting a classic case of argument from a position of ignorance (“I can’t believe this is possible, so it can’t be true”). The American public continues in it’s tradition of being less aware of major issues the rest of the world:

For the most part, Americans are significantly less aware of events and issues than are the publics in Germany and other major industrialized countries.

There’s a lesson in this for communications professionals and speakers who find themselves addressing American audiences. Dumb it down. Then make it even dumber. Don’t assume your audience knows Jack about the major topics of the day. That includes the ‘educated’ professionals in business attire.

The good news is that a presentation which makes the audience aware of previously unknown facts and does so in an entertaining and engaging manner, will reduce by a small fraction the sum total of this great wall of ignorance. And that’s a good feelin’ — good enough for me and my Bobby McGee.

I was given an action item at Saturday’s Pro-Track meeting. I have to find out what information is of most value to people planning to do business overseas.

Can you help me?

Do you or someone you know plan to live and work overseas? Or do you deal with people in other countries on a regular basis as part of your job? If so, I’d really like to hear from you.

Please leave me comments below or send me an email to ian.griffin@exec-comms.com.

On a scale of 1-5 with 1 = not at all important and 5= most important

You need resources and guidance on:

[1] Practical information — visas, work permits, drivers license, accommodation and health insurance. So you hit the ground running.

[2] Understanding cultural differences — dress, language, food, religion. So you don’t offend anyone.

[3] Communications tips — on the telephone, in meetings, giving formal presentations. So you are at least as effective overseas as at home.

[4] Working with overseas colleagues — project planning, setting goals, expectations, managing foreign staff. So you can operate effectively as part of a global team.

However, maybe these four questions are not important. Is there something else altogether you need to know? What is the biggest question you have about doing business overseas or ‘going global’?

If you have a moment to let me know what’s important to you I’d really appreciate it. I’ll publish the results in this blog in four weeks time.

Thanks.

Last week at the Ragan Speechwriters Conference David Kusnet asked how politicians can best communicate in the post-rhetorical era. One example of a public figure making waves recently is Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berluscino.

Alexander Stille’s profile in Friday’s Financial Times (subscription required) highlights the many bizarre aspects of the Italian Premier’s bid for re-election. He has “alternately compared himself, in the space of abut a week, to Napoleon, Churchill and Jesus Christ while also vowing to give up sex until after the April poll.” The Italian premier courts publicity, any publicity. His outrageous behavior endears him to voters, especially those who get most of their information from television.

Mr. Berlusconi is perhaps the first truly post-modern politician to turn many of the old rules of his trade upside down. Traditional politicians – closely connected to a party, an ideology and a set of programs – did not need to be personally charismatic. In a post-ideological age, what Mr. Berlusconi is selling is Mr. Berusconi, not a party or program. By dominating the media…he controls the political discourse and silences his critics..

We’ll know in April if the Italian voters are swayed by style over substance. If so, there’s a lesson here for corporate speakers and those who manage their external communications. Don’t just focus on the message. Fancy rhetoric, facts and supporting evidence have their place. But don’t lose sight of the impact that the unexpected, outrageous and plain bizarre has with today’s audiences.