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.

Al Gore’s new movie opened in this week in Hollywood. I watched it today in a theatre at Sunset and Vine while LA County freeways throbbed with the ceaseless roar of SUV’s, convertibles, sedans and hybrid vehicles. Steeper gas prices have not put a dent in the Southern California lifestyle, any more than they’ve changed American’s driving habits in any of the other 49 states.

Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth aims to change some of these very truths that American’s hold self-evident: the inalienable rights to execute tight right turns on red in a set of wheels that gets the lowest average mileage of any nation on earth.

No matter if you voted for Gore (which the majority of us did) or for the current President (which slightly fewer did, but enough in the right parts of Florida) you owe it to your children to see this movie. It convinced me. And one of the reasons it is convincing is that Gore gives quite simply the best executive presentation I’ve ever seen.

One reason might be is that he knows his content.

He’s delivered the same presentation over 1,000 times – in most American cities and many places overseas. He has seen what works with audiences, and where he saw the need for more compelling content he created it.

One highlight of his stagecraft is when he shows how increased CO2 emissions are literally “off the chart” by ascending 20 feet above the podium on a hydraulic lift to reach the high-point on his graphic where recent increases in pollution have spiked in comparison to the 650,000 year-old records we have (core samples from the polar ice don’t lie).

Time and again a relaxed, tanned, slightly overweight Gore uses compelling images and animations onscreen to support his argument. I did not see one bullet point in the whole thing. What I did see were:

Pictures worth a thousand words

Beautifully executed animations that support the speaker but don’t distract

A little humor

Simple, elegant charts with graphs that explain, not obfuscate

The graphics are simple, compelling, effective. Time and again we see Gore the road-warrior as he jets around the world delivering his speech (shades of do as I say not as I do in terms of his own beefy carbon footprint on the planet this travel schedule must have imposed – but I guess he can be forgiven given the message he carries. At all times he has his trusty Apple (whose Board is he on) laptop open, tweaking a slide or three.

Garr points out that it’s not a “PowerPoint” presentation – he used Apple’s more elegant product, Keynote.

Perhaps Steve Jobs the master of effective presentations schooled him. Someone did. This is not the Al Gore who used t’joke about he being the wooden one in the roomful of Secret Service agents (a joke that itself was so wooden, so scripted, as to be a parody of an effective speaker).

Agree or disagree with Al, if you’re a professional speaker or speechwriter, ya gotta see this film.

Garr Reynolds recently remarked that stand-up comedy is the most terrifying presentation skill to master. Very few of us want to try doing a set at the local comedy club, no business person really needs that experience on their resume. But knowing the right and wrong way to work humor into a business presentation is a valuable skill for both speechwriter and/or speaker to master.

But surely no mere mortal is funny enough to make audiences laugh in the way Seinfeld, Woody Allen or the talk-show hosts make ’em laugh? Many speaking coaches warn that attempts at humor in a business speech are doomed to embarrassment and failure. Audiences want the facts, just the facts, ma’am. Fun has no place in the business world, damn it! This might be true…in Germany. But in many countries, a little humor goes a long way to connect with an audience. But what to do – if you don’t have the talent or courage? Are there any sure-fire techniques to build a laugh machine to turn ’em on?

The May meeting of the vibrant (and growing!) NSA/NC Chapter was the place to be Saturday to see two masters of the comedic arts share their trade secrets.

We leaned about “The Rule of Three”; “The Call Back”; “The Topper” as well as a bunch of funny lines and plain zany ideas to plant in your next script to wow your audience. These were not the idle suggestions of amateur funny men – they were practical, tried and tested techniques to get any business audience laughing.

David Glickman – ‘Be More Funny, Make More Money’

David is a superb stand-up comic in the tradition of the best of the Borscht Belt. His tips for creating great humor include:

David shared other great insider tips. Such as using a graphics professional to create a glue-on cover that parodies a well known book with a new title the specific audience will find funny – Harry Potter and the Mystery of Hotel Banquet Pricing for a speech to a Meeting Planners Convention.

Business audiences love jokes that are customized for them. Poke fun at the competition, mention product names, use corporate lingo. They’ll love being in on the ‘Inside Joke’.

All this and more in his excellent book.

Brad Montgomery – Got Mirth? Milking Your Material For All The Humor It’s Worth

Wow! A stand-up comic who started in the business when he was 16, is a magician and he has his own blog! What’s not to like!

Brad took an analytic approach to generating mirth in front of the mike. He spent time putting our fears to rest by sharing some groundrules:

Brad gave us great tips for livening up business audiences.

Let the audience see you are having a good time.

Laugh and the world laughs with you, fail and they’ll let you die.

The Fourth meeting of the Pro-Track training sponsored by the National Speakers Association, Northern California, took place on April 22. This month’s focus was on choosing a topic to speak on.

Webster defines a topic as:

Etymology: Latin Topica Topics (work by Aristotle), from Greek Topika, from topika, neuter plural of topikos of a place, of a topos, from topos place, topos
1 a : one of the general forms of argument employed in probable reasoning b : ARGUMENT, REASON
2 a : a heading in an outlined argument or exposition b : the subject of a discourse or of a section of a discourse

The bottom line for professional speakers is that your topic must appeal to audiences willing to pay to hear you speak. We heard from two consummate professionals who had picked topics that packed ’em in.

Adrian Pearson

Ms. Pearson (I state her sex since the British mostly expect Adrian’s to be men – Adrian Mole, Adrian Cockcroft, ‘Adrian’s Wall…) is a market research expert who highlighted the importance of measuring the interest people have in a particular topic before writing the speech. Why choose to develop a topic that will be difficult to sell?

Simply ask a small sample of people to rate your subject on a scale of 1-9. Anything that scores a 6 or higher deserves your attention. Otherwise, fuggedabout it!

My homework – finding what specific topics in the area of international business and doing business overseas people are willing to pay good money to hear about.

Craig Harrison

This craigslist of ways to find your topic included:

– Ask yourself what gives you most pleasure as a communicator (shocking audiences? storytelling? inspiring them?)
– Examine what qualifies you as an expert on your topic – where does your credibility come from?
– Find out what audiences value enough to pay for – what are the hot topics they are interested in?

We then spent time developing an elevator pitch to showcase our uniqueness. He coached us to think in terms of the listener, clearly stating the benefits of what we do and inviting them to connect further with us.

At the end of the day I had the following rough draft for my elevator pitch:

I speak on the secrets of success in international business. I’m Ian Griffin and I’ve experienced first hand how to survive and thrive in foreign lands. If you want to feel at home anywhere in the world I can teach you 35 tips for productive overseas trips. Are you ready to do business, worldwide? Call me.

I’m sure I will modify and refine this over time. And at some point I might actually develop 35 tips that people will pay to hear. Meanwhile, on a scale of 1 to 9 (1 = terrible, 9 = fantastic) tell me how you rate my elevator pitch?

A whirlwind of an IDC Directions Conference in San Jose today. The focus was on globalization and technology. An “Agenda for a Shrinking Globe: Seizing Opportunities in a Connected World”. A heady mix of the level of detail to expected from professional analysts and sweeping generalizations that time alone will prove the value of. Here’s some of what I heard.

IT Market Outlook in Four Emerging Markets: Brazil, Russia, India and China

The famous “BRIC” countries hold the promise of the highest growth rates by many measures (IT spend, population under 30, percent broadband penetration etc etc). Some fun facts:

• India had 2.5M college graduates a year, of which 184,000 are engineering graduates (although there’s considerable debate about how you count engineering graduates — like other minorities their numbers seem often misrepresented). China has 2.4M graduates and 16M enrolled in college.
• In a few short years India is expected to become the world’s 3rd largest economy, behind China and the USA.
• India’s population is 1.08B – growing at 15M annually (adding just under two New York Cities a year).
• 73% of Russia’s population is urban.
• 30% of India’s population has a mobile phone.

John Gantz: IT & Communications: Disruptions Ahead

Gantz was the first presenter of the day to mention Friedman’s book The World is Flat. I heard seven people quote it in total (five presenters and two in the buffet line for lunch). He revealed the ‘parallel universe’ of the MySpace generation where a band like Hawthorne Heights can get 350,000 “friends” and succeed as a rock band with no MSM exposure.

Following Friedman’s discussion of Brickwork he highlighted A. J. Jacobs’ Outsourced Life – a real-world experiment at outsourcing executive assistant tasks to a Dooneysburesque lady in Bangalore name Honey K. Balani (really!) at the bargain price of $1,000 month for a standard 40 hour week. Of course, she and Mr. Jacobs never meet face-to-face — but how many executives really need to see their assistant’s smiling face each day? And Honey is so, obliging.

Gantz puts all this in the context of the exploitation of new technologies unleashed in the last 1990’s now coming to fruition. The convergence of 1.3B Internet and 3.2B phone users will give rise to a new range of unforeseen opportunities for customer interaction. From 24B web-based transactions in 2005 he predicts a 50-fold increase to 800B by 2015 – excluding podcasts, streaming video and all the really good stuff!

Does, he asks, your company know how to use this new ‘internetwork’ to the fullest extent possible? I would suggest that if you are still having church-lady style debates about the etiquette of your company “blogging policy”, perhaps not.

We were treated to an explanation of the famous observation that the Chinese characters for “crisis” and “opportunity” are the same. Well, not quite. But wÄ“ijÄ« does have a similar look n’ feel to untutored eyes.

Frank Gens: Flattening the world of Enterprise IT

Fascinating observations on the different agendas of CEO’s and CIO’s. The former want to go fast with IT implementations. The latter advise caution. As enterprise IT vendors (hardware and software) champion the move from arthritic to dynamic IT (Sun’s N1; IBM’s On Demand Computing; HP’s Adaptive Enterprise) the reality is less than 10% of all customers have a project in place. There’s a serious chance for disruption.

The Small and Medium Sized (SMB) market is the likely origin of this disruption. Just as Chris Anderson of WIRED observed The Long Tail of new media replacing blockbuster hits of yesteryear with new niche’s for all, so this opportunity might occur with IT solutions distributed via the web to millions of SMB’s vs. the top, say, 2,000 accounts globally. And guess what? SMB’s account for 60% of GDP in the USA, 72% of GDP in China and fully 80% of GDP in Latin America. These under-served markets are ripe for driving demand down this “long tail” and making multiple small engagements pay totals previously enjoyed by fewer large value sales. Different supply chains and routes to market are, of course, required to find profits.

Bob Welch: Challenges and Opportunities of Globalization for Services Companies

The afternoon sessions brought as many globalization/flattening discussions as the morning.

Welch raised the point that it’s hard to do global scale and be consistent. Channel partners are key to success. Again, multiple routes to market must be coordinated.

Innovation must be measured by client outcomes, not by posting stats on how many patents a year your company logs.

Carl Olofson: Building the Star Trek Computer – Ask a Question, Get One Correct Answer

Marrying the traditionally separate fields of transaction processing and content requires unstructured data be schematized and semanticized. The pay-off is a Captain Kirk level of ease of use, when you ask “Computer…” and you get one answer.

David Tapper: Building an Optimal Service Delivery Model to Ensure Customer Satisfaction in a “Flat” World

The Web 2.0/3.0 applications such as salesforce.com, Google, eBay and others allow virtual teams to become productive in hours instead of days or months. The route from Onshore to Offshore leads just as surely to Virtual. The building blocks you use to plug solutions into and out of the enterprise are key. People want to consume functions, not hardware. As with the long tail, companies who win will mine gold dust, not gold bricks.

Robert Reich: China, India and the Future of Everything

The grand finale!

Reich, former Clinton Secretary of Labor, held the audience in the palm of his hand as he delivered a stunning keynote. Well rehearsed, poised, with commanding presence, sans PowerPoint, sans notes:

He reviewed three storm clouds on the horizon for the American economy:

1. Oil prices climbing due to demand from India and China exceeding supply.
2. America living beyond its means with a $400B deficit and the dollar sinking into the setting sun as foreign investors look for better returns elsewhere.
3. Consumers finally running out of steam as their negative savings rate and precarious home equity loans get called in.

Against this, he proposed some long-term opportunities:

1. Globalization:
” Rarely in public discourse has a word gone so directly from obscurity to meaningless without any intervening period of coherence as the term ‘globalization’ – most people don’t know what they mean when they talk about it!”

Criticizing the ‘cartoon version’ which sees country A selling to country B and visa versa he highlighted how “Everything is coming from everywhere”, and standards of living are not a result of national companies owning the whole process, but of adding value to the global distribution of goods.

Jobs are outsourced to India at the same time that foreign companies invest in operations in the USA. What parts of your “American auto” are made in the US of A?

2. Technological change:
Long gone are the days where economies of scale allowed oligopolistic companies to dominate in terms of size alone. Today companies reap profits and maintain barriers to entry by out-innovating and capturing this in their brand and their people. “Brand is discounted present value of future innovation.”

China is actually losing manufacturing jobs as it grows. Old, inefficient, state-run companies are being replaced with innovative manufacturing organizations in Eastern China. To maintain the flow of people from rural areas to the cities, and minimize social unrest, the Chinese have no choice but to keep their currency low and encourage manufacturing to grow.

3. Demographics:
As the Baby Boomer’s lurch penniless toward retirement they face a minimal crisis in Social Security but a huge crisis in Medicare. The smaller talent pool that the West faces will force companies to do a better job of recruiting and retaining staff. Employees will gravitate to companies that offer work which is exciting, based on new technology and linked to something bigger than themselves. Companies must treat people as a whole person and deliver a reasonable work-life balance.

Reich’s own decision to step down from politics was driven by the desire to spend time with his teenage children – he later turned down lucrative consulting jobs to see his son win races.

Hallmark know all about effective messaging.

The process of creating a card for Valentine’s Day — the industry’s second most popular holiday, behind Christmas — can begin up to two years before it finds its way to a loved one’s hands. An 80-person research staff’s analysis of Hallmark’s 2004 card sales was the initial impetus for this year’s line. That combines with more than 100,000 annual customer interviews, focus groups and in-store observations to lay the framework for roughly 2,000 cards in Hallmark’s core Valentine’s Day line as well as another 2,500 offerings through sister brands offered at supermarkets, Wal-Mart and elsewhere.

Writers and artists and others at the company say everything they do is aimed at helping a consumer express a sentiment. That, of course, translates to sales.

I wonder what would happen if corporate communications staff and speechwriters put as much effort into the content of their next presentation? Executives might be able to make the audience fall in love with what they have say. Or, at the very least, make their hearts beat a little faster…

Disclaimer: I work as a corporate speechwriter in a Silicon Valley high technology company. Most of the ‘speeches’ I write are a series of Power Point slides with speaking notes.

Given that perspective, here’s what I took away from the conference, and some suggestions on ways it might be improved in future.

Demographics: Baby boomer’s don’t retire, they just do freelance speechwriting

There were 250 registered attendees, and it looked like about 60% were male with a predominance of Boomer graybeards. More than one person commented that speechwriting was a ‘senior job’ and CEO’s want someone with experience they can trust. However, my colleague Russell had a conversation with the speechwriter for GM’s CEO who was a woman in her 20’s.

Question: what happens when this current generation of speechwriters retires?

Another question: what age are the speechwriters who support CEO’s like Sergey and Larry at Google? Do guys in their 20’s and 30’s running companies want someone writing their speeches who is old enough to be their father?

The attendees were overwhelmingly from North America. I met two women from The Netherlands and heard a couple of British accents but perhaps, like me, they live here.

Speechwriters: In love with the past, or looking to the future?

The graybeards love classical rhetoric. Many quoted Lincoln, FDR, JFK, MLK, Shakespeare, Robert Green Ingersoll and so on. It’s ironic that few of these masterful orators actually used the services of a speechwriter.

When the next generation of speechwriters comes along will they still look to the past for inspiration? Or will they look forward to messages that are crafted for an age of fragmented media?

Many of the “Greatsâ€? delivered speeches that were absorbed by an audience at one time (in Ingersoll’s case often two or more hours at one sitting). But who would listen to a two hour speech these days? How will messages be received in the future? Will we see more asynchronous communication via blogs, podcasts, streaming media archives? What will be the best way to achieve mind- and market-share with an audience that turns on, tunes in, tunes out, turns off? What do you write for an audience with one hand on the remote? When the keywords you meta-tag your transcripts with bring more web-surfers to the soundbites – what matters the rhetoric? (he asked rhetorically)

Ragan: The shoe-makers children?

Since much of the actual content of the presentations can be found in the many excellent books on the craft of speechwriting at your local Barnes & Nobel for $20, why pay $895 for a conference? And if you do pay that, do you have a right to expect a flawlessly run event? My minor quibbles include:

On the positive side:

But I did find it embarrassing that some of the presenters were unable to practice what they preached in terms of rhetoric and speech delivery.

Whither speechifying?

Unlike dramatic shifts in the worlds of the music, art and literature there seems to have been no sea-change in effective rhetoric since the nineteenth century. When a speaker from the 1880’s is held up as an example to study, and speeches form Shakespeare are quoted with relish, whither speechifying?

Modern writers must deal with the novel after Joyce and the poem after Ginsberg. Contemporary Artists must paint in a world turned upside down by Impressionism, Cubism and later movements. In the time Ingersoll was speaking, The Academy was refusing to exhibit Manet and since then the establishment has banned works ranging from Lady Chatterly to Howl.

What paradigm shifts have we seen in the world of the public speaker? Why are we still recommending that speakers “Tell ’em what you’ll tell ’em; tell ’em and then tell ’em what you told ’em”. Is anyone listening any more?

I’d like a future Ragan conference to bring in the rap singers, greeting card sloganeer’s, comedy writers, Hollywood script-meister’s, advertising executives, graffiti taggers, punks and poets who know how to create messages with impact.

I’d like future conferences to feature presentations by people whose first language isn’t American English. Let’s hear from Japanese, Thai, Indian, European, Australian and Fijian speechwriters. Let’s especially hear from those British political speechwriters who cut their teeth on Prime Minister’s Question Time!

I’d like to hear presentations on what it’s like to write a speech for the generals in Iraq; a political speech in both the Red and Blue States; for NGO’s like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. I’d like to hear from a Toastmaster Champion and the best the National Speakers Association has to offer.

One great visionary who knows that communication ‘business as usual’ does not work anymore is the Wizard of Ads, Roy H. Williams. His Monday Morning Memo recently asked us to create speeches:

[Find and replace used to customize ‘advertising’ for ‘speechwriting’]

Monsoon Wedding Eulogy

Since much of what I prepare in my day job is delivered by senior executives who I enjoy close contact with, I feel safe from offshoring. At least, I did until I reached page 31 of The World is Flat on the plane ride home:

Friedman says that where most of the research can be gleaned off the web and summarized in a standard format then the speechwriter who only offers this amount of value to an organization is ripe for offshoring… (gulp!).

Let’s invite someone from Brickworks to the next conference – before they replace us all…

As with any conference, you don’t just go for the formal presentations — it’s the conversations with fellow delegates that make the trip worthwhile. Where else on the planet would I be in a room with 250 people who all, more or less, do the same job? I met some great folks.

Vinca runs an independent consulting operation in the DC area. She really did work in the West Wing – writing President Clinton’s foreign policy speeches. Traveling on Air Force One, heads down over her laptop, she wrote his November 1995 speeches given in Derry and Belfast, Northern Ireland. There’s still work for Democrats who write speeches in DC, just not in the West Wing at the moment.

Kathryn works for a Silicon Valley High Tech company where she’s the only writer supporting 13 executives. She also finds time to use her own speaking skills, developed as a member of the National Speakers Association, by offering presentation skills classes to the staff. She asks her students to consider the two key questions all audience members ask when a speaker starts a presentation:

1. Should I stick around? Not just literally, but if you don’t grab their attention in the first six minutes of a speech they will check out. Thoughts about the laundry, shopping or the cutie in accounting with the winsome smile will occupy their attention, not whatever it is you are saying.

2. So What? Meaning, what’s in it for me? If you don’t answer this question every time before moving onto a new topic (or a new PowerPoint slide) you will have lost some or all of the audience. A good few of the presenters at this conference omitted the ‘So What?’ in their presentations.

Colin has a web site that helps freelance speechwriters find work. He offers a free eZine and bonus marketing workbook. Maybe he’ll start a blog one day soon?

Damien is a lobbyist for the American Insurance Association. He writes for the ex-Governor of Wyoming who now runs the place. His main challenge is frosting the road apple of his subject matter. No matter which way you spin it, commercial insurance is plain old BORING.

I had conversations with a whole number of other people whose names I don’t remember. But the variety was impressive:

And last but not least:

All in all, the conference attracted writers with a love of the spoken word rather than speakers with an interest in the written word. Bookish intellectuals rather than the extrovert glad-hander’s at speaking conferences. People were willing to share the tools of their trade and had a contagious enthusiasm for their craft.

I’ll share more of my overall impressions of the conference in my next posting.

The third and final day of the Conference. As always at these events, my brain has reached overload by this point. Here’s my ‘class notes’ from the sessions I attended Friday. I’ll write up my subjective impressions and report on hallway conversations and networking on the flight home.

Breakfast Panel What’s going on in the speechwriting world?

Panelists:

David Murray, editor, Speechwriters Newsletter
Rich Greb, facilitator, Chicago Speechwriters Forum
Jan Cook, founder, Washington Speechwriters Roundtable
Dana Rubin, founder, New York Speechwriters Group

Warning! We’ve been outed! Thanks to Rob Lowe and the West Wing, people know about speechwriters – we’re more visible now than ever. But speeches are not going away and blogs will never replace speeches (according to David Murray). That said, here’s my blog on the main points I captured from the free flowing early morning panel discussion and audience Q&A:

Steve described the process whereby he leveraged transformations at UPS (such as district managers renewing their focus on customer service, or the move to the company being an enabler of the global supply chain) into effective messaging. His guiding objective is to

Position UPS executives as thought leaders and powerful brand ambassadors through public speeches, events, by-lined articles, Op-Eds, White Papers and other repackaging channels.

In other words: find the downstream potential in each and every speech – maximize every second of the executives time at a venue beyond what they say on the podium – turn ‘delivering a speech’ into an event rich with possibilities that gives the speech content extra bounce. Schedule meetings with press, key customers, analysts. Place senior managers closer to key stakeholders.

The strategy of Steve’s Exec Comm Department includes:

They sweat the details by:

A huge win for Steve was when Thomas Friedman was researching The World is Flat and happened to Google the phrase synchronized commerce. Friedman found dozens of references to past UPS speeches that had been repackaged by Steve’s team, as this example illustrates. Friedman dedicates a section of his book to UPS, identifying them as his #8 world-flattener in a section titled What Those Guys in the Funny Brown Shorts Are Really Doing. As Steve dryly observed, you can’t buy that kind of PR. And it all began with the simple process of making the transcripts of executive speeches available online and searchable outside the firewall. Does your company do this?

Steve produces an annual $1million event which brings world-class political leaders such as Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, President H.W. Bush, President Carter and Polish leader Vaclav Havlal together with academics and CEO’s from major customers. This is co-branded with the prestigious Harvard Business School Publishing. Very little on the Agenda overtly  ‘sells’ UPS. The goal is to stimulate dialog and debate around issues such as globalization. Funding future events is secured by the measurable $25 million incremental revenue which resulted from past events.

By positioning his team at the intersection of creativity and strategy Steve has earned a seat at the table when senior management  frames the future of the company.

Steve is to the average speechwriter what an army general is to an infantry grunt. He plans the campaign and grabs victories from the jaws of defeat. The rest of us dig foxholes and practice duck and cover when the corporate big guns fire. (Hey! I needed a coupla good military analogies being so close to the home of the Commander in Chief, n’ all)

Hal Gordon What speechwriters can learn from a great American orator – Robert Green Ingersoll

Hal is a freelance speechwriter who currently writes for Shell Oil in Houston and blogs for Ragan Communications. He’s written for both the Walt Disney World and top advisors to President Ronald Reagan (from Mickey Mouse to Ed Meese). His blog explains all about Ingersoll. Ingersoll’s best speeches show him a masterful orator and a fiercely intelligent and independent thinker. He openly wore the badge of his atheism – which in 19th Century America got him into about as much trouble as it would in some corners of the Heartland today. This speech on Chinese exclusion masterfully skewers the limited horizons and profound lack of cultural understanding in the USA. As then, perhaps now:

There’s a lot more where this came from here. Read it and weep.

Dawne Simmons From speechwriter to speaker: What you can learn by taking the podium

Dawne walks the walk and talks the talk. One of the rare breed of speechwriters who also know how to speak in public. She’s a dynamic independent consultant who participates in National Speakers Association trainings.

Her claim, which I fully agree with, is that by mastering the art of public speaking you learn to do what you are asking those you write for to do. You step away from the computer monitor and leap the divide that’s represented by the truism: Those who can, do, those who can’t, write about it… 

Indeed, I have often wondered how many authors of sex manuals are actually great lovers? How many cookbook editors can create a meal that would actually delight the palette? Do the editors of travel guides really enjoy exploring foreign parts? Speechwriters might be able to describe the motions, but not until they’ve assumed the position and engaged in the act with an appreciative audience can they really understand what it takes to get it up. Speaking to an audience is an act of seduction. If you’ve not experienced the sweat on your palms and the palpitations of the heart as you present your naked voice to an audience for the first time then in some real sense you are still a callow virgin.  Writing text, even if you annotate with pointers for techniques and timing, is not the same as participating in an uncensored relationship with consenting adults.

So, where was I. Oh yes, Dawne’s class. She challenged the audience face up their fear. Toastmasters is a great place to start. There’s a club meeting near you this week, guaranteed. Being both a writer and a speaker advanced Dawne’s career. Public speaking changed from a stumbling block to a stepping stone for success. Bottom line:

Practice both speaking and speech writing, they go together like a left and right shoe!

Bill Crain Speechwriting (fun)damentals: How to wow audiences and win business

Bill is an independent consultant who writes for ExxonMobile and was recently hired as a speechwriter for the government of Thailand. By the  afternoon the crowd had thinned out and I was just about to do the same . But I’m glad I stayed for this post-conference seminar. It was filled with more practical tips and tricks than  rest of the conference put together. Bill provided a great handout with step by step checklists:

He included a bonus selection of samples from commercial speeches he had written and extracts from well-known speeches by Martin Luther King, Churchill and Shakespeare.

Bill’s work pushes the envelope when he looks at major factors reshaping speechwriting today, including those of globalization and the shift in the geo-political axis toward Asia which he and I agree is changing the form of acceptable business communication. He also acknowledges discoveries in quantum physics and human potential psychology as relevant factors. His most unique views are around suggesting meditation as a practice to unlock creativity and the power of the still quiet voice within. He has studied the Sanskrit chakra system used in Indian ayurvedic medicine and suggests the relevance of different chakras to speechwriting. Considering the ascent of the chakras from  bodily base to crown he interprets the color and quality of each for a speechwriter, suggesting we review each speech to ensure it includes at least a reference to each element.

Specifically:

The root of the body at the base of the spine is associated with the color red and signifies the family, health and issues of physical survival. For speechwriters: how does your topic pertain to the family and to human health and safety?.

The sacral area of the body and sexual organs associated with the color orange signifies sex, power and money. For speechwriters: how does your topic affect men and women differently? What are the political and economic aspects? (I would add – does the speech turn your audience on?)

The solar plexus and diaphragm associated with the color yellow signifies ethics, integrity and personal will. For speechwriters: what are the ethical dimensions of this topic?

The heart, chest, lungs associated with the color green signfies love, compassion and kindness. For speechwriters: to what extent is there an emotional dimension to your topic? To what extent is compassion called for? (I would add, unless your audience are automatons you must appeal to their hearts – since they can only comprehend with their head what their hearts have responded to on some level).

The throat, ears, nose, teeth associated with the color blue signifies personal expression and communication. For speechwriters: what are the communication challenges in your topic? What is essential for the speaker to communicate? (I would add a big DUH! You better communicate throughout the speech.)

I was intrigued by Bill’s groundbreaking work here. I’ve not heard of the chakra system being applied to business communications. And I assume that if Bill had more time he would have included the all important final two chakras:

The brow chakra or third eye center, associated with the color indigo signifies the act of seeing, both physically and intuitively. As such it opens our psychic faculties and our understanding of archetypal levels. When healthy it allows us to see clearly, in effect, letting us “see the big picture.” For speechwriters: to what extent does your speech deal with the big picture?

The crown chakra sitting on or above the physical top of the head. Associated the color violet. It relates to consciousness as pure awareness. It is our connection to the greater world beyond, to a timeless, spaceless place of all-knowing. When developed, this chakra brings us knowledge, wisdom, understanding, spiritual connection, and bliss. For speechwriters: to what extent does anything in your speech really mean a damn in the big scheme of things?

Thanks Bill, you’ve given me a whole raft of ideas: Feng Shui for Speechwriters; Speechwriting Zen (the companion to Presentation Zen); The Inner Game of Speechwriting, and more.

A busy day at the ranch for over 300 speechwriters who attended the first full day of the conference. Here’s a list of the main points I noted from the six sessions I attended. Since the day ran on parallel tracks, there were a whole other set of presentations I did not capture.

Also, I’ll be writing up my various hallway and meal conversations in a later blog after the conference ends. There are speechwriters here from the PTA, TVA and NSA not to mention the FBI, Health Ministry of Holland and a whole lotta consultants.

Meanwhile, this is some of what I heard today:

David Kusnet Speechwriting in a post-rhetorical era: Is the era of Big Speechwriting over?

The opening keynote delivered in the very the hotel where FDR composed the speech that contained the impassioned plea We have nothing to fear but fear itself. Kusnet was one President Clinton’s main speechwriters, now at the Economic Policy Institute.

Notable points:

Ron Kirkpatrick Dump the outline! Structure speeches for maximum impact

Ron is the Manager of Executive Communications at Toyota, USA. He took us through the template from his friend Mark Walton’s book Generating Buy-in: Mastering the Language of Leadership which shows how the intent of every speech should be to build a connection between what is important to the audience and the objective of the speaker via a strategic storyline that tells of a positive future for the audience. The best example of compelling strategic storylines are 30 second television ads and company taglines like GE’s We bring good things to life.

An interesting tie-in with Kusnet’s plea that we open the speech with something that makes the audience sit up and take notice is the suggestion we start with a solid ‘Scene Setter’ – such as a topical newspaper article, reference to current event or something to grab their attention. Developing the body of the speech follows the ‘law of three’ (Faith, Hope, and … / Lights, Camera, …) and gives a framework to deliver three targeted messages with supporting evidence from stories, data and business experiences.

The all-important, and oft-missed, conclusion must contain a call-to-action – something that, in my experience, many executives seem to need the most help articulating.

Walton’s book offers a good practical template that mirrors that used by Speakeasy Inc’s class on content development. Well worth checking out for the $13.75 amazon.com price.

Tack Cornelius Regrets of a Corporate Speechwriter

Tack continued with more of the practical tips he shared in yesterday’s pre-conference session.

Lunch The Best Advice I ever got!

Assorted senior speechwriters shared their favorite tips ‘n tricks, the best advice they were ever given in their careers (apologies for losing track of who said what):

Blanchard Hiatt Reconcilable Differences: How to be a speechwriter in a PowerPoint world

Blanchard is director of executive communications at Avaya, Inc. He shared a medley of PowerPoint tips n’ tricks – everything from suggestions on minimum font size to acknowledging of the wisdom of Edward Tufte.

The Ten Commandments of Wisdom for Presentation Graphics:

1. Speak to you audience before launching your visuals
2. Keep eye contact with your audience, not with your visual aids
3. Avoid reading your slides to your audience
4. Keep text to a minimum; let images and graphics illustrate and dramatize your points
5. Use a font style that is simple and large enough to read at a distance (san serif 20-24)
6. Keep the number of points to 3-5 per slide
7. Ensure consistency of syntax on each slide (if the first bullet point starts with a verb, so should all)
8. Take the time to introduce, and allow the audience time to absorb, complex information
9. Put your slide titles to work – they should help deliver the message (think headlines!)
10. Turn the projector off to focus attention and reclaim the spotlight

Ron Shewchuk What you need from your speaker and how to go about getting it

Ron is a Canadian speechwriter working with a number of different companies. He shared his own ten commandments for the speakers he writes for:

1. Don’t take the name of your company in vain
2. Always check the facts
3. Don’t whitewash the part or paint too rosy a picture of the present, or falsely brighten the future
4. Keep the speech short
5. Use plain language
6. Present a thesis, back it up, and end with a call to action
7. Don’t say anything you would not want to see in the newspaper the next day
8. Understand your speech has a life after you deliver it (leverage it!)
9. Make the speech consistent with company values
10. Never publicly refer to your speechwriter

He then shared his own list of a speechwriter’s responsibilities:

That’s all for tonight, folks!