By Ian Griffin and Laurie Brown

Laurie Brown has over two decades of experience as a trainer and speaker, helping her audience improve their customer service, sales and presentation skills. She started her career as a professional actor, performing in hundreds of training films, commercials and movies. This experience has provided her with the ability to engage and keep her audience’s attention. Laurie has written extensively on presentations skills. She is the author of The Teleprompter Manual and Brand-aid.

A tech primer in NetworkWorld, authored by Cisco Systems, presents startling evidence of the coming surge in business video:

Video traffic is expected to grow from 50% of all Internet traffic today to 90% by 2013. In volume that will be equal to transmitting the equivalent of 10 billion DVDs across the network every month.

Cisco, being the network engineering company they are, provide end-to-end solutions for important technological solutions that support the growth in video, from high-resolution TelePresence systems to media-ready network architectures that will support multimedia.

However, the missing piece of the puzzle is not the technology, it’s people’s comfort-level and effectiveness being on camera.

As video becomes pervasive, it challenges the abilities of executives, trainers and “virtual experts” to present themselves on camera with poise and authenticity.

Looking into the camera in a brightly lit studio is an environment which most of us must be trained to be effective in. As challenging as it is to emote with a fish-eye lens, it is something to get over. Practice makes perfect, so invest in a personal video device and practice until you are natural.

Here are some areas to focus on.

A bad hair day is not an option

Communication is about more than the words you use. On a phone call, tone of voice, emotional intensity and volume all “color” the way communication is received. In person, add in facial expression, stance, angle relative to the listener. How you look is as important as what you say. You cannot help but leave a visual impression. Studies have shown that people are influenced more by the non-verbal clues we present when we communicate than by content alone.

So pay attention to clothes and grooming. Invest in make-up or at least a powder to remove shine (yes, guys, you too) and avoid fabrics with busy patterns, narrow stripes or herringbone tweeds.

Body Language Best Practices

Body language is a crucial factor to consider when you are on camera. Your posture and body language are crucially important. In fact, good posture is even more important in virtual communications than in person. It is best to try and deliver video messages when standing, feet apart. When seated, you should sit on the first third of the chair with your legs at a 90 degree angle and your feet flat on the floor. Sitting this way, keeps your diaphragm free so that you can breathe properly and speak dynamically. It also gives you a firm base, thereby reducing any unnecessary movement.

Movement

Movement on camera can be very distracting. Watch newscasters or actors and you will see that for the most part their bodies and heads are very still. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use gestures — you should, but do so intentionally. Be careful to avoid movement that doesn’t have purpose.

All movement is exaggerated on camera. If you want to lean forward to show interest, make it a slight move. Avoid frequently moving toward and away from the screen.

Gestures

Gestures are a great way to add interest to your communication. Be aware of the range and framing of your position in the studio. Never move any part of your body that is not in the shot. It will seem like disconnected movement. Also, how much of your body that is visible on-screen will impact how much movement can be used. Remember that unlike with in-person communication, less of your body can be seen by the other person. The less of your body that is visible, the smaller your gestures need to be. It helps if you imagine your viewer seated no more than a foot away from you. In “real” life, you would naturally make your gestures smaller so you don’t overwhelm the person to whom you are speaking.

Eye Contact

When you speak to the camera, maintain eye contact. If you are on a panel and not speaking, make sure that you are looking at whoever is speaking.

So, how are you finding the move to video? Is it something you are involved with? How’s it working out for you? If you have any comments, suggestions or questions please share them below.

In this third and final ‘how to’ segment I’ll cover the final step of importing images into PowerPoint 2007 and some of the options you can use to manipulate them.

Step 1 – Import: It’s really very simple. Choose [Insert] [Picture] from the main menu and choose the image file you want. It will be dropped into the slide in whatever size it was saved in. You can then drag and reposition it as necessary. Here’s the picture I took at the market in Laos imported into a blank slide:

Step 2 – Manipulate: Once the image is in the slide your options are endless. As an example, I can take the fabric photo and fill the screen then add a rectangle with [Insert] [Shape] and then right-click and [Format Shape] and assign a [Transparency] of 51% with a light gray color. Onto this, I [Insert] [Text Box] and put my title for the presentation.

Another use for the photo would be to add another rectangle with no transparency, leaving a small border, and then right click and [Format Picture] [Recolor] to give a muted border for an Agenda slide and a template for other slides in the presentation.

Reducing PowerPoint File Size

I mentioned in the first posting in this series about the risk that very large high-res pictures will make your PowerPoint file too bulky. I’ve seen slide decks that exceed 20MB – impossible to share via email. You can reduce the size of the PowerPoint file, often by over 70%, by using the ‘Compress’ menu option. This is difficult to locate. Follow these steps:

Step 1 – Once you’ve added all your pictures, click on any picture in your presentation.
Step 2 – Look for the menu bar on the top right to change to [Picture Tools]. Click on [Format] [Compress Pictures] and be sure to check out the [Options] in the pop-up window:

If you want the smallest possible file size, choose the [Target Output] [Email]. Otherwise [Screen] will be best, and significantly reduce the size of a PowerPoint file with high-res images.

Expert Advice

I’m embarrassed to show any more of my lame examples of how to manipulate pictures in PowerPoint. Now you understand the basics, I suggest reading books which deal with the purpose and aesthetics of creating visually compelling slides written by professionals in the field. The two best books that I know of are Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds and slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations by Nancy Duarte. Both books are jam-packed with practical ideas and many examples to help you create beautiful, well-designed presentations.

Also, check out Garr’s Presentation Zen blog for exquisite examples of slides which use visuals in a compelling way.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this series of three blog postings on how to use images in PowerPoint and will be able to move away from relying on plain text and boring clip-art in your next presentation.

In my previous posting, I discussed how to save, crop and resize image files.

But where can you find images – photographs, logos, graphics – that illustrate your subject and match the theme of your presentation?

Google Image Search

An obvious place to start is with a simple Google search and select ‘Images’ from the top menu bar. This is a fast way to find images on any topic. But the big danger is the copyright ownership of almost all images. Google warns:

The images displayed in a Google Image Search may be protected by copyright, so we can’t grant you the right to use them for any purpose other than viewing them on the web. If you’d like to use images from our image search, we suggest contacting the site’s webmaster to obtain permission.

So be aware, just saying “Picture copyright XYZ” does not cover you.

Assuming you needs images which are not just for your personal use, but for slides which will be shown to an audience, it’s not worth the risk grabbing one from Google or the trouble of asking the sites webmaster for permission.

Your own photographs

Don’t overlook the obvious. Use pictures you’ve taken with your own digital camera or a still from a Flip video. Manipulate them by cropping, resizing and saving to your computer.

I took this picture in a market in Laos and I’m just waiting for the right moment to use it as a the background for a title slide.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia has an extensive description of the copyright on uploaded images. This means that most of the images in the various articles have clearly labeled copyright terms of use. For example, the article on Ben Franklin has an image which is a photo of the painting by Duplessis hanging in the National Portrait Gallery. The information page on the image makes it clear that it is a Creative Commons image and “photographic reproduction is … considered to be in the public domain.”

Flickr

Flickr is an awesome image hosting and video hosting website, now owned by Yahoo!. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to host images that they embed in blogs and social media. In September 2010, it reported that it was hosting more than 5 billion images. It has very clear guidelines on copyright for the images. Many of images are made available under the Creative Commons license. To find these, choose [Advanced Search] and check box near the bottom of the screen ‘Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content’

The cleanest Creative Commons license is the simple ‘Attribution’ which gives express permission to use an image if you give attribution to the owner – usually by inserting their name from Flickr under the photo. It could also be included in a closing frame in a video. If you are planning to deliver in a business setting, be aware of the ‘Non-Commercial’ limitation.

Here’s a great photo of a statue of Benjamin Franklin which I’ve attributed to the photographer:

cc licensed flickr photo shared by tonythemisfit

Hint: Compfight is a great tool for speeding up your Flickr searches. Be sure to set ‘Creative Commons = only’ to the right of the search bar.

istockphoto

There’s a number of stock photography sites. istockphoto.com is my favorite. The images cost $1-2 each and include rights to reproduce for commercial or non-commercial purposes without attribution. There’s a wide range of photographs and graphic illustrations. This photo of Ben Franklin on the $100 bill came from istockphoto.

I make use of Lightboxes to save multiple pictures for a project, and email Lightbox contents for review by colleagues. While you are spec’ing out a project you can download a ‘Comp’ version – a low-res image with the istockphoto watermark embedded. These work as placeholders in your PowerPoint slides to see if they look right.

Once you decide to purchase simply buy some credits and then download the images you like. You’ll only need to download the smallest size available (the one with the minimum number of credits) which work fine for PowerPoint or blogs.

Other resources

I’ve just given a couple of examples from the sources I use. Garr Reynolds has an extensive list of inexpensive and free sites, with many more suggestions in the comments to his original posting. Presentation magazine also lists sites. Some of the commercial stock photo sites like Getty can be quite expensive. Oliver at Rethink Presentations has a useful comparison table which includes pricing information.

At a recent Toastmasters Club meeting, Tevis encouraged us to appreciate the impact of adding pictures to PowerPoint presentations. Unlike plain text, a memorable photograph adds to a talk without distracting from the speaker.

It was obvious from the discussion that some Club members did not know the basics of how to find, save and manipulate images. Since this is part of my day job, I offered to write up a series of simple ‘how to’ guides for Windows XP users.

In the first of the series, I’ll show how you can start to build up a library of pictures for future presentations by learning how to save, crop and re-size image files. These can be used in PowerPoint presentations, posters, magazine and newsletter layouts, websites and blogs.

Saving an image file

Putting aside questions about where to find image files, copyright issues and how to insert image files into PowerPoint – which I’ll discuss in a later posting – the first practical step to understand is how to save an image file.

I’ll take as an example the photograph of the book cover I used in my last blog posting. It was sourced from a Google Image search for the title of Harold’s book: 4 Steps to Financial Security for Lesbian and Gay Couples. (I had permission from the author to include his book in the profile, so copyright was not an issue).

Step 1 – Save: Right-click on the first file from the Google Image search results and you’ll be given the opportunity to ‘Save As’. Choose .JPG or .PNG and a name for the file that makes sense.

Step 2 – Crop: The image as saved includes white space on either side of the book cover. Right click to ‘Open With’ Microsoft Office Picture Manager. Then choose [Picture] [Crop] and move the left and right handles in until the white space is removed

Click ‘OK’ and [File] [Save] and overwrite the existing file.

Step 3 – Re-size: You can re-size images inside PowerPoint so they’ll fit your slide. But for newsletters and, especially, web pages and blogs, it’s crucial to have a source file that’s the right size (width and height).There’s also the question of file size (in MB’s).While a small book-cover image is not a problem, other images, especially high definition photo’s, will make your presentation file size very large. So shrinking it down in Picture Manager can be useful. Select [File] [Resize] and choose from a number of pre-defined width and height settings or reduce by a percentage of the original width and click [OK] to save.

Experiment with different sizes and see what resolution you get when importing into PowerPoint.

Putting it into practice

Here’s an image I purchased from istockphoto.com of a railroad yard.

I used the [Crop] function to select a narrow band of tracks to insert in a title slide

Knowing these simple steps for manipulating image files is useful for building an image library for your future presentations.

In my next posting I’ll deal with various sources for photographs on the web and all-important copyright issues.

My recent post on representing large numbers in a speech coincided with preparing to publish the second part of Denna Jones’ guest posting on why she’s switching from PowerPoint to Prezi. Denna, an architect and speaker, references the 1977 film, Powers of Ten, by Charles and Ray Eames. The film

… has the capacity to expand the way we think and view our world. Over ten million people have seen the film, and it continues to be shown in classrooms, business meetings, festivals and retreats around the world. Starting with a sleeping man at a picnic, the film takes the viewer on a journey out to the edge of space and then back into a carbon atom in the hand of the man at the picnic, all in a single shot. It is an unforgettable experience.

This illustrates how, at the scale of the very large and the scale of the very small, all is light. As Adi Da Samraj has said:

All manifest things and beings appear within a universal cosmic theater of the physics of light.

Today’s newspapers carried the most recent image of the Planck telescope’s image of the ‘known universe’:

Better than any words or abstract mathematical formula, these pictures and the 9-minute Eames film brings home to viewers the scale of the universe we inhabit; consider how images such as this could be used in your next talk.

The annual Cisco Live! Conference was held June 27 – July 1, 2010.

The big Cisco event came in two flavors – Cisco Live in person at the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas. Cisco Live virtual offered those of us who could not travel a (greener) alternative to Vegas and an opportunity to attend numerous sessions online.

Attendees generated over 7,000 tweets under the hashtag #cllv10.

Twitter is ephemeral. It only maintains 10-14 days of content, so this information will soon disappear. However, here’s a useful permanent archive all of the tweets. It’s with deep gratitude to all the attendees who posted their messages that this content has been made available worldwide on Twitter. Thanks!

Building on an idea of listing of “top tweets” I first experimented with at the Detroit Ragan Corporate Communicators Conference at the GM Headquarters in May, and extended at the San Jose Ragan Social Media Summit held at Cisco in June, I’ve curated a list of 505 tweets I found most content-rich and interesting; adding links where appropriate for easy reference; consolidating others. Removing the re-tweets (RT’s) alone reduced the number of total tweets from 7,000 to 5,700.

Full disclosure: I am employed by Cisco as an executive communications manager. I’m not a network engineer, nor do I play one on TV.

I aimed for brevity and so none of the Twitter handles or attributions are listed below, so search the archive if you need sources.

Please share your own experiences of the event in the blog comments (or on Twitter!). I apologize in advance if I omitted your favorite tweet – please add it to the comments below.

Enjoy!

Click to enlarge – Image by Wordle.

1. 10,000+ network engineers having lunch http://twitpic.com/20s53y
2. 23,000 people onsite for CiscoLive @carlosdominguez states.
3. 35% of US population posted or updated some sort of social media in the last 24 hours, wow.
4. 62 mil searches will have been done on Google in the next 30 minutes. By 2013, more video will be searched & consumed than ever.
5. A little more NetSim demo footage
6. A more realistic live network is coming to R&S lab, including live background traffic and flapping routes etc. Sounds a year out.
7. After this EEM session I think I’m going to have to go buy that new Cisco Press TCL book. This stuff is awesome!
8. Ah…just learned why we can’t use 10Gb twisted pair cabling for FCoE. High bit error rate over the twinax cables. Explains that.
9. All about leveraging your investments and relationships … Collab Cloud + On-Premises Integration + Service Provider Integration.
10. Amazing application of Cisco technology: Network Emergency Response Vehical (NERV).
11. Astounded how much social media is integrated into this conference, and how useful/important twitter is proving. Great job Cisco.
12. At Cisco CTO talk. I’m glad tech finally allows for “collaboration” – how did civilization last 10K years without it?
13. At Cisco Expo in China, mayors wanted to know how Cisco tech will help healthcare sys & grow jobs not switches & routers.
14. At CiscoLive keynote 2 in Las Vegas. Padmasree is great speaker (and coolest name around Ms. Warrior.)
15. At Cisco Live, we’re using our own Customer Collab technology to listen to tweets from attendees and respond to their requests.
16. Attending IPv4 Exhaustion: NAT and Transition to IPv6. Reminds me of http://xkcd.com/742/
17. Attending IPv6 Deployment Experiences, speakers impressive, from Comcast, Google, Microsoft, Cisco, etc.
18. Auto login to extension mobility will be a great productivity enhancer, for both hoteling and traveling users. Cool!
19. AutoStitch panoramic photo app is blazzin fast on iPhone 4. Processed 10 shots in < 30 sec! Mandalay Bay at #cllv10 – http://ow.ly/i/2jaY
20. Barry O’Sullivan: Collaboration is going inter-company, we need to think beyond the firewall.
21. Barry O’Sullivan: Talking abt Cisco’s collab innovation rodamap, including extended mobility capes & social media cust care + more.
22. Barry O’Sullivan: We’re going to take video everywhere and it’s going to be part of everything we do. Put people @ center of collab.
23. Been following Cisco for 17 years. They’ve come so far and really are just getting started. Great vision+execution.
24. Ben Mezrich (author of Accidental Billionaires which led 2script 4 Facebook movie) giving final keynote – http://om.ly/nIOu
25. Best thing Cisco’s done is buy WebEx.
26. Big bets for Cisco – Video, Cloud, DC / Virtualization, Smart communities .
27. Blog by Jerome Henry: Cisco believes in cloud networking future.
28. Blog Post: Cisco announces WAAS enhancements for application delivery at CiscoLive.
29. Blog Post: CiscoLive 2010: The last two days.
30. Blog: CiscoLive 2010.
31. Blog: CiscoLive 2010 – It’s all about the Milk & Cookies – comments welcome
32. Blog: CiscoLive 2010 – The First 36 Hours.
33. Blog: CiscoLive 2010 Tuesday & Wednesday recap.
34. Blog: My crystal ball (and gut) say we should be “Expecting a Different Kind of Cisco Live”.
35. Blog: Professional Life Update.
36. Bonus: Got to shake hands with @carlosdominguez (Altho, I am still pulling for @padmasree in winning the tweep count.
37. Borderless network trust and sec needs all Cisco network OR standards that are not being developed.
38. Bos: 3 areas differentiate Cisco Quad. Open architecture, fine grained policy, video.
39. Bos: Cisco Quad enterprise social sw just announced at #e20 see it at the Cisco booth.
40. Bos: WebEx first collab app on iPad.
41. Bos: says 25% of R&D on interoperability. In our DNA.
42. Both Google and Microsoft use OSPFv3 for their IPv6 IGP. Interesting. Both said they might use IS-IS in the future.
43. Brian Lett is talking about Eliminating the War Room with #emcionix at emc booth. Read his blog yet?
44. Bridgewater boosts interoperability in NGNs.
45. Bridgewater Joins the Cisco Developer Network and Completes Interoperability Verification Testing.
46. BRKSEC-3061Adv Sec Mgmt & IC good enough to keep me alert the morning after CCIE party. Need more on ops structure & process tho.
47. BT and Cisco extend hosted unified communications service to U.S. market.
48. Burg/Borderless: “1.3 billion mobile devices expected w/i 3 years” – do I hear an IPv6 tie in there?
49. Burg/Borderless: 80% of the Internet is ‘dark’, i.e. not recog. by URLs / crawled / known.
50. Burg/Borderless: Anytime, anywhere, any-how, from any platform … but aiming to cover the 80% commonground.
51. Burg/Borderless: SensorBase: largest vuln resource; moving beyond content, reputation, signatures & into context/awareness.
52. Burg/Borderless: Talking enterprise security now, but all of the L3 parts are IPv4-only – need to be updated w/ Eric’s input.
53. Burg/Borderless: The transparent implementation uses WCCP, therefore no IPv6-Right? Again, whole preso so far = very IPv4-centric.
54. By distributing a doctor’s services via Cisco Telepresence they are up to 200% more efficient.
55. C&W selected Cisco #UCS for their hybrid #cloud IaaS w/ newScale for easy-to-use on-demand provisioning.
56. Cable&Wireless launches #cloudcomputing w/ Cisco UCS + newScale for self-service provisioning.
57. Carl Wiese: Collaboration is a journey, not a project. It’s time to move forward in that journey.
58. Carlos Dominguez “54% of companies block social media” Legal teams spook them.
59. Carlos Dominguez given your presentation today, thought you’d like this blog.
60. Carlos Dominguez: We (all of us) are the forefront of changing the world. Take the knowledge you got @CiscoLive. It’s power.
61. Carquest uses Cisco WAAS to optimize bandwith and Infovista VPM to monitor utilization.
62. CEMA10 field trip to was very impressive! NOC (network ops center) in the middle of the foyer in “fishbowl” style is brilliant!
63. Chambers even after all this years looks really passionate and very much hands on.
64. Chambers fielding questions from a room full of CIOs. http://twitpic.com/20uxmt
65. Chambers in action http://twitpic.com/21as7s
66. Chambers Keynote: Cool to see him walking the crowd.
67. Chambers Keynote: Elaborate intro by http://tweetphoto.com/29842647
68. Chambers makes thousands of engineers feel that they are being heard and that Cisco is listening. Makes them feel great. Smart.
69. Chambers on Cisco Cius and Apple iPad coexistence within Cisco customers: “We love anything that loves networks.”
70. Chambers recorded presentation to to #giic … want all presenters to remember this – http://su.pr/1YrlDC
71. Chambers: Cius used by teachers in classroom: world must change approach to education.
72. Chambers: “Cisco had no choice to take on the giants in the data center”. I think HP threw the first punch.
73. Chambers: “Culture change and Process change are the difficult part. Not the technology” ref biz model/cloud.
74. Chambers: “If a picture is worth a 1000 words, a multimedia video is worth a million words.” Big networking implication.
75. Chambers: Aligning Business organization, dynamic models, with the Cloud(tech arch)…
76. Chambers: Bank of America has over 200 high end TelePresence systems.
77. Chambers: Business Architecture is enabled by Technology Architecture.
78. Chambers: CiscoLive 2010 Will someone please tell him that chasm is pronounced kazm?
79. Chambers: Cisco needs to put in the highway so customers can drive on it.
80. Chambers: Cisco UCS grew 168% sequentially Q/Q – but building off small numbers.
81. Chambers: Companies or countries that don’t change will be left behind.
82. Chambers: Every biz mgmt mistake I have made was because we either moved too slowly or couldn’t create a repeatable process.
83. Chambers: Expense cutting is done, executive leaders need to increase productivity via network economy.
84. Chambers: Focus 1st on vision & differentiation from competition, then execution for next 12-18 months.
85. Chambers: Innovation and operational excellence are now in parallel.
86. Chambers: It’s about virtualization first in the datacenter then on to your home.
87. Chambers: It’s not about information, it’s about the network … the network economy. The devices, all connected.
88. Chambers: like the way he is walking around the audience.
89. Chambers: Market transitions wait for no one.
90. Chambers: Networking moving from being plumbers to enablers of IT.
91. Chambers: Our next transformation requires not technology, it requires process change and culture change.
92. Chambers: Talking innovation: Cisco went from ~380 patent applications in Q1 to ~770 in Q3.
93. Chambers: The drive to change starts from the consumer and moves to the datacenter.
94. Chambers: Use the power of collaboration, process replication, organizational change…
95. Chambers: Virtualization and cloud computing. Huge interest. Companies are looking to jump the chasm.
96. Chambers: We can take a brand new idea … assign it to any two Cisco execs … and have it in front of BoD in 45 days.
97. Chambers: We have the ability to see beyond the challenges of the immediate future.
98. Chambers: We will continue to innovate at a pace that will challenge competitions to keep up.
99. Chambers: We’re positioned to be your best business partner.
100. Chambers: Whatever you use in your personal life, you will use in your business life.
101. Check my blog on CiscoLive.
102. Check out the latest offering from Cisco to address our Energy challenges. Launch later today!http://bit.ly/9e6pkb
103. Check out this case study about a server guy named Steve: http://om.ly/mizO Look for Steve in newScale’s booth.
104. Check this out this customer testimonial from CiscoLive by @metroPCS – http://dld.bz/jGQS
105. Chris Botting: Your customers are talking via social media channels. Sometimes comments are good, sometimes not-so-good.
106. CIO panel from Cisco, Teletch, Modec & KROLL focusing on value of virutalization, w/ a lot on storage virtualization in particular.
107. Cisco achieved $1.052B in net benefits from its collaboration strategies, roughly 30% from innovation and growth benefits.
108. Cisco and open platforms: Android… a phone is not a phone anymore, its a device to “connect”.
109. Cisco announces FabricPath – need to tease out marketing as this isn’t just TRILL on Nexus
110. Cisco announces the availability of the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution.
111. Cisco Author- Lance Hayden. IT Security Metrics- Practical framework for measuring security. http://amzn.to/afsiOV
112. Cisco collaboration accelerated teamwork: 40 mins saved each day, 31% fewer trips, 87% report + experience, 4.3% revenue growth.
113. Cisco created virtual sales specialists & gained 6-15 hrs of productivity, 50% incr cust interactions, 70% incr work/life balance.
114. Cisco Delivers Data Center Architectural Flexibility to Support Virtualization and Cloud-Based Environments.
115. Cisco EOS looks like a biz version of Ning or Google Sites.
116. Cisco FabricPath gives you up to 16 active L2 links w/o spanning tree.
117. Cisco FabricPath: ambitious but pricey – http://is.gd/daag1
118. Cisco has a private cloud which allows provisioning of compute power in 15 min.
119. Cisco industry first … first intercompany call with regular phone numbers earlier this year.
120. Cisco is committed to multi-platform, multi-device collaboration with our collaboration portfolio.
121. CIsco launched over 400 new products last year. CRS-3, Nexsus, Catalyst, ASR, Vblock, etc…
122. Cisco Movi for Mac and Windows – dial in to all kinds of video, inc. Telepresence.
123. Cisco Pulse internal deployment results: 5,600 users, 2+ hours saved/query, increased quality of responses, reduced sales cycle time.
124. Cisco Pulse will fundamentally change skills-based routing … And other ‘disruptive components’ like video-enabled Customer-Care.
125. Cisco resp: Both. Vision from the top. Execution is collaborative. Drive is productivity, growth, and innovation.
126. Cisco retail architect Bart McGlothin demo Virtual Expert to John Chambers at CiscoLive http://yfrog.com/5op5xej
127. Cisco rolled out Webex IM and Presence to 30K people in 2 weeks. That’s the beauty of the Collaboration cloud.
128. Cisco Show & Share: Collaboration through Video http://bit.ly/cDTHtm
129. Cisco Smart Care Service combines networkwide tech support with ongoing network monitoring and proactive network.
130. cisco soar – a new expertise locator. — seems like an important step in the evolution of enterprise collaboration.
131. Cisco Social Media Customer Care demo is pretty cool! Saw our tweets real-time!
132. Cisco Tablet Cius anncd at #cllv10 – everything the iPAD should have been.
133. Cisco Teleprescence Collaboration using Tandberg technology.
134. Cisco to make an Android tablet.. Cool idea but it is very very tiny. WIll there be a larger option available in the future?
135. Cisco to offer Wi-Fi-enabled Flip, enterprise video transcoding, and iOS video app.
136. Cisco UC roadmap looks great with exciting new features and enhancements to existing ones!
137. Cisco Unified Contact Center ties into social media tools, including Cisco Quad through open APIs.
138. Cisco Video Surveillance Monitor (VSM) requires Internet Explorer / ActiveX … So no Cius support? whoops?
139. Cisco WAAS announces enhancements for application delivery today at CiscoLive.
140. Cisco Web 2.0 collaboration initiative benefits and costs: net 2-yr benefits greater than 8x the cost, payback = less than 1 yr.
141. Cisco: Absolutely, focus on the larger org change and biz process is a harder convo to have, but biz results inspire other groups.
142. Cisco: Bring *people* back into collaboration with any-to-any video, instead of just email, documents and presentation sharing.
143. Cisco: The Power to Control Your Converging IT Infrastructure From a Single Console. http://bit.ly/9BQVUr
144. CiscoDC #NetApp #VMware validated design 4 Secure Multi Tenancy in a virtualized DC – its the real thing #IVA http://bit.ly/c7L2Vd
145. CiscoLive – I agree social media is an integral part of this experience.
146. CiscoLive and the global unveiling of Cisco Cius, a new world for collaboration. – I’ll admit, I’m getting goosebumps watching this.
147. CiscoLive attendees loving the Cisco UC 8.0 integration.
148. CiscoLive has been awesome! Check out my new tattoo!
149. CiscoLive I would love to see an architecture/troubleshooting session on ME3400/ME3750/ME3600X/ME2800X platforms next year.
150. CiscoLive I’m baffled why session #BRKCCT3005 wasn’t selected for recording, already heard lots of requests due to overlap.
151. CiscoLive is one of the best conferences I have been to. Every session had in-depth tech info that I can use with no sales/marketing BS.
152. CiscoLive NOC Tour: 400 APs, 150 access switches, 6500 VSS core, over 3k wireless clients, 200Mbps Internet uplink.
153. CiscoLive: one of the few places where men have to wait in line for the restrooms, but women do not.
154. CiscoLive’s theme is “Knowledge is Power!”
155. Cisco’s Home Energy Management Launch – my take from C-Scape.
156. Cisco’s IME inter-company solution is the real deal. It’s greatly enhanced collaboration between CDW UC team and our Cisco peers.
157. Cisco’s IPICS bridges communication media, 4.0 starts @ 1/4 the price …and the mobile client supports Android & iPhone, incl video.
158. Cisco’s Making a #Tablet? That’s Like #Apple Making a Connected #Grid Router in Wall Street Journal.
159. Cisco’s Network Emergency Response Vehicle http://bit.ly/8ZVESQ http://bit.ly/btPOCR http://bit.ly/cmGviI — totally awesome.
160. Cisco’s new FabricPath supports Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL) http://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/trill/charter/
161. Cisco’s Todd Famous (awesome name) demoing social interaction solution for use in financial services. Very relevant.
162. Cisco’s TRILL drill: FabricPath beats IETF standard to market – http://bit.ly/crgRtq
163. Cisco’s UC cloud. Partners must innovate with new services–reselling cloud slices is a volume biz. http://bit.ly/aFwbBr
164. Cisco’s Unified Communications platform now available as a service.
165. Cisco’s video big bets: transform TV, media/entertainment, advancing advertising, reinvent collaboration and communications.
166. CiscoVNI: active multitasking and passive networking = 13 hrs of extra IP per day. Probably not so much outside mature markets.
167. Cius – general availability in the first quarter of calendar year 2011. http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2010/corp_062910.html
168. Cius – I agree $1k is not mass consumer, maybe make a mini? (‘You’ is half of ‘us’==”Ciyou?”) http://su.pr/2FNshh
169. Cius cool, especially real-time HD video and telepresence, but dock looks like tiny 1970s TTY. http://tinyurl.com/39vmetx
170. Cius could change education entirely!
171. Cius has front- & back-facing camera, plus HD based on an open system. A personal TelePresence system! iPad killer!
172. Cius Intel Atom 1.6-Ghz may be key to beating Apple iPad, which has 1 GHz A4. http://tinyurl.com/27mpe8u
173. Cius is an interesting name. Is it a coincidence that it is pronounced “See Us”?
174. Cius is now your personal HD Telepresence device. Book reader too!
175. Cius is really a tablet for business. Using Android platform because its open. Thr will be many tablets states Padmasree.
176. Cius looks cool! Dammit I just bought an iPad.
177. CIUS ‘See Us’…..Web 2.0 in action. Mobile platform that dovetails with the Enterprise…
178. Cius tablet brings the world to the classroom on a whole new level w/live video in Aegean Sea! WOW!
179. Cius: Android-based – does grades, attendance, create ebooks, conferencing: Collaboration; Supports HDMI & Bluetooth headsets.
180. Cius: Children of the future are going to have it soo good with Cius in the classroom.
181. Cius: UCS and AnyConnect client capability, nice! … But they should use Swype for the keyboard?
182. Clean air APs will only make rrm changes to its own radio, it cannot influence the rrm settings of surrounding Aps.
183. Cliff Meltzer: It’s less about installing and running infrastructure — it’s about adjusting to business models and market changes.
184. Cloud panel at ITES: Security is not the only concern. Its about having the right services and service management.
185. Cloud panel at ITES: Talent and resources to deliver cloud and virtualization solutions is scarce. Need to grow expertise.
186. Cloupia helps customers to overcome “Barriers to Broader Cloud Adoption” mentioned by Padmasree.
187. Collab strategic dir: Interop open arch, flexible consumption models, ent social sftw, secure inter-co, video coms = integrated exp.
188. Collab wasn’t for a specific project. Needed to take all comms to the next level. Dialtone isn’t enough to bring people together.
189. Collaboration – foundation for Cisco sales with customers, within the sales force, within the company, outside the company.
190. Collaboration, “a river that runs through everything we do” – http://twitpic.com/20kj1m
191. Comcast goes live with IPV6 trials – check it out by registering.
192. Comcast speaker says they want to divorce themselves from IPv4.
193. Comcast speaker shows graph of access times to sites via IPv6 vs IPv4. IPv6 is slower. Not good. Tunnels part of the problem.
194. Contact Center with 550 agents from 25 rack servers down to 13-14 blades on 2 chassis with virtualization.
195. Cool that they are showing so many iPhones at Cisco Live, even if Apple people are confused about what IOS means.
196. Cool, live translation for hearing impaired too. Very inclusive.
197. Correlation: the ratio of women to men is about the same as Apples to PCs at CiscoLive – I think I even saw an iPad
198. CTI will also die. All Cisco UC engineers are rejoicing!
199. Current number of Voice CCIEs as of June 27th, 2010 is 1,219.
200. Cust collab framework: start w/ customer contact center, extend to partners and experts, social media, brand mgmt, biz video apps.
201. CVO also provides consultative guidance for automating the deployment and management of remote sites. #servicesbooth.
202. Dan WIng: DNS64 works great, for things that use DNS – not so much for things that uses IPv4 literals (req ALG, & kudos to T-Mobile.)
203. Dan: Instead of adding new features / functions, applications are having to diddle with these 120 pages of (NAT traversal) spec’s.
204. Dan: Long tail to IPv4 (as-in prolonged / permanent) … “NAT IPv4 where we must, but get IPv6 deployed.”
205. Darrin Simmons: presenting Quad at CiscoLive – New ways to collaborate in an enterprise.
206. Darrin Simmons: Cisco Quad has 3rd party UC Integrations so you don’t have to “throw away” previous UC/client investments.
207. Darrin Simmons: see’s Quad as replacing email aliases . Shows video – http://bit.ly/9pQRXs
208. Darrin Simmons: shows profile with tags, posts, pictures, activities, docs, and his status updates – all on Cisco Quad. Communities up next!
209. Darrin Simmons: talks Cisco Collaboration Architecture: http://bit.ly/duwvHv
210. Darrius Jones: Cisco deployed: Mtg Center, Call Manager, WebEx, and more.
211. Darrius Jones: lessons learned – Learn the “what’s in it for me”, what problems do your customers have, work to fix the problem.
212. Darrius Jones: Perception of Cisco in Collaboration … confused at 1st but with WebEx and Tandberg acquisition Cisco is leader.
213. Darrius Jones: We don’t start with ROI, we start off with an exp – what is the desired outcome and then how do we deliver that exp?
214. Datacenter 3.0 lab! I just configured Nexus 7000s, a MDS9506 and a UCS blade system. Awesome to combine technologies.
215. Debra Chrapty tells about her first days at Cisco after coming from Microsoft – now onto SaaS architecture.
216. Debra says increasing focus on developer tools and APIs. Building on Jabber XMPP.
217. Demo of MXE streaming to different end points. also showing real-time recording and pulse video search and alerts.
218. Demo: Bluetooth proximity, Cisco Quad … and a cust issue includes LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Email, Phone-call, SMS #cllv10 – ScaryCool!
219. Demonstrating the social media customer care sltn & the campaign dashboard. http://twitpic.com/2134u3
220. Deploying Nexus 7000 in Data Center Networks class is awesome. For all you at Ciscolive its class BRKDCT-2951
221. Despite being visually wiped from messaging, Scientific Atlanta’s brand won’t die. Chambers has uttered it now 3X.
222. Did presenter mention to just run jumbo MTU on IP transport to avoid mucking with server MTU? Seems like best option.
223. Did you know newScale provides self-service for Cisco UCS? http://om.ly/mwOQ Stop by the newScale booth for a demo.
224. Do you know the five factors for successful collaboration? http://ow.ly/24WIC
225. Do you really know what happens in the server room? Check out #SolarWinds totally new video for CiscoLive.
226. Ed Flavin, CIO of Modec : The biz trusts IT, so we have the credibility to virtualize anything. Our mission is to just make IT work.
227. EEM is awesome. So much I want to do with it!
228. Efficient cloud delivery of education takes priority over privacy. (paraphrase)
229. EMC Symmetrix VMAX disk cabinet. 240 hard drives. Even us network geeks have to gawk at that! http://moby.to/kt0o4e
230. Enjoyed both of the keynotes at Cisco Live, some good food for thought, good to see Padmasree shout out to CCIEs re Cloud
231. Enterprise knowledge = real time, deep packet analysis. Search based on keywords/tags.
232. Enterprise Social Software – enables employees to work together in new ways, integrating real time communication capabilities.
233. EoMPLSoL2TPv3, holy acronym batman.
234. Even John Chambers talks to the #EMC Vspec Team. Check it out! http://twurl.nl/23k8ht
235. Evolution of Computing Architecture — Data Center 1.0 Scale Up, Data Center 2.0 Scale Out, Data Center 3.0 Unified.
236. Example of using quad to accelerate employee on-boarding; use profile, communities, videos & searches to find related content etc.
237. Excellent information shared at Cisco UC roadmap session. Excited to see new mobile UC enhancements coming in 8.5 release!
238. Excellent presentation Padmasree. I’m always impressed with the business model and success of Cisco.
239. Expect CCIE Voice written complete refresh announcement in the next 45-60 days.
240. Expect to see 10GBase-T solutions for FCoE later this year. (Cisco is already supporting on Catalyst product lines.)
241. Extend your current Unified Communications investments … integrations throughout the Collaboration portfolio.
242. Externalization of the Enterprise: Not just context anymore but in some cases core processes, expertise, and infrastructure.
243. Fascinating presentation @benmezrich! Truly enjoy your work! Looking forward to seeing Accidental Billionaires movie!
244. Fascinating to see a transition unfolding. Even better, being part of it.
245. Financial advisor/agent and customer uses WebEx Meeting App on the iPad to discuss 401K in live meeting.
246. Financial Services Agent proactively reaches out through Twitter to help change his direct deposit form.
247. Fine line between cool and creepy when orchestrating social CRM interaction. Kind of like hot peppers use sparingly.
248. For emphasis: WRT IPv6 = Current FWSMs and ACEs must be forklifted & no IPv6-only VPN client from Cisco until ~2012 #SadNews.
249. For those of you who attended BRKRST-2301 yesterday or will today you can get the full slide deck at http://bit.ly/cs42gb
250. Fortune resp: Enable users to see the biz value. Start w/small use case which will catch fire and eventually ignite an inferno.
251. Fortune resp: If it’s scalable & replicable, then IT will pay attention. If it’s an occasional event, it’s harder to get their attn.
252. From IPv4 Nat Session: IPv6 == 56 billion billion billion addresses per person. I need more toys.
253. Funny. Presenter says Cisco has lots of “TLA” Three Letter Acronyms.
254. Gave into geek vs practical urges – switching from WLANs (practical) to LISP (geeky) at last minute.
255. Geeks have such a charming sense of humor! RT@stilgar There’s no place like 127.0.0.1
256. Gen-Y: We expect a level of proactive engagement in the way we engage. Too true!!
257. Gillett sees cloud computing as revolutionary in the long term but over-hyped & misunderstood.
258. Good convo with a reporter. Says #socialmedia has forced him to insert more of his opinions in articles to stay relevant.
259. Google IPv6 speaker says they don’t depend on DHCPv6. They use SLAAC (Stateless address autoconfiguration). No DHCPv6 on Mac OS X.
260. Google speaker just said they they are actually running out of RFC 1918 addresses! They need IPv6.
261. Google speaker regarding IPv6: “Dual stack when you can; tunnel when you must.”
262. Got multiple DCs in a metro area? Check out tested #CiscoDC #NetApp #VMware Long Distance App Mobility http://bit.ly/aahsye
263. Great conference, fav sessions were UCS XML API and UCS QoS and Security. Missed out on Sean Mcgees session. Overall great week.
264. Great day at CiscoLive. Chatted w/ Scott Morris a bit, got a few CCIE Sec tips from Yusuf Bhaiji himself, plus got a tweet from @padmasree.
265. Great discussion and information shared at UC on UCS panel discussion! Looking forward to multiple app support on C series.
266. Great presentation from McNab on mapping IT strategies to business.
267. Great preso by @benmezrich at #CiscoLive. Tlkd abt Bringing Dwn the House. Now talking abt #Facebook.
268. Great Q&A w/ John Chambers at the CCIE NetVet dinner! My first time attending, and it’s impressive openness.
269. Great recap of CiscoLive from an analyst POV.
270. Great to see Cisco’s Collaboration Innovation Roadmap focus on video and expanding mobile platform support.
271. Great to see the focus on video!! Would love to see addl interop between cisco vid and apple FaceTime!
272. Great verbiage on ‘availability engineering’ coming in BRKRST-3365, (RE: DAAP tool). I consider myself part of the choir” (whoops )
273. HA WAN session recommends IP-SLA w/ EOT.
274. Has anyone thought of the impact the Cius has to Microsoft both Operating system and MS Office. Do we really need them?
275. Here goes Cisco CEO John Chambers in his keynote walkabout… i wonder if he gives a route to the camera people first..
276. Hey check out real life Cisco UCS production experiences at http://bit.ly/aWWfX2
277. Hilarious seeing all of the “will trade iPad for Cius” tweets.
278. Hot Geek pr0n action: Cisco Flip plugs directly into Cius tablet.
279. How do CiscoLive attendees define #cloud computing? Check the Top 3 responses http://bit.ly/cQSHOr
280. How do you overcome islands of productivity interconnected by PSTN? IME enables high-quality voice & video across internet.
281. How IT service assurance optimizes performance on Cisco nets, according to CA Technologies http://bit.ly/c8eBnr
282. HPTF latest DC switch claims 2x performance, 50% less power at 35-40% cheaper price; we’ll see what comes out of next week.
283. I am the World’s Most Interesting Intern: Vegas edition – http://bit.ly/a7Pmgd
284. I can’t believe the UCS 6100 can’t deal with L3 qos tags. Is it smart enough?
285. I don’t get it – how does blocking a SaaS app at network level prevent access out of band e.g. 3G device? false security?
286. I feel like my brain is going to explode from all the information I’ve gotten this week.
287. I just bet a coworker that John would come down off the stage 5 minutes into his speech. He bet 2 minutes. I lost.
288. I just love hearing Cisco push AS. Because partners just aren’t good enough for “the tough stuff.”
289. I like how when Padmasree 1st used the word ‘network’ in this segment, the representative img that came up was fabric looking
290. I like the PPTs … much better than the “insane rubbish” of last year… http://yfrog.com/jwbrjp
291. I like what I see of ACS 5 so far.
292. I lurv it when companies spend money on flashy events. I am so shallow. http://myloc.me/8B3uH
293. I really appreciate how the presenters repeat the attendees questions. Big rooms can make it hard to hear.
294. I think Chambers should have used a jet pack to land on stage like Tony Stark did in Iron Man 2.
295. I think Padmasree forgot app/service developers in cloud value chain. Huge shift and lucrative opp for app/services delivery.
296. I use Movi every day & love it! RT @tfraz06: Cool movi demo for pc and mac. Amazing quality.
297. I want to be Padmasree or Allison Watson (#WPC10) when I grow up! Brilliant WOMEN in Technology & life.
298. I was a little skeptical of deploying dial plans like a routing protocol with SAF, but this looks pretty interesting! #BRKUCC2003.
299. I wasn’t aware – there are known problems with WCS pushing templates with preshared keys or radius keys, it sometimes fails silently.
300. I would like to see someone like Padmasree in charge of Facebook.
301. I’d like to see SAF CCD learned routes in the GUI rather than having to go to RTMT. Just sayin’.
302. if the slides are dynamic with moving content, why do we get PDF’s?
303. If you *want* out of order packets, override the defaults — truth! Gets ugly when people do it.
304. If you don’t have vision, strategy, execution in first 3 slides, you owe chambers $100. LOL.
305. If you just deploy it & think they will come, you’ll see failure. Important to focus on change management & internal processes also.
306. I’m studying @padmasree tweet style and page to get some pointers on how she does it. Zen like – flower background, glam shot.. Humm.
307. IMHO, Video as the next voice means major scaling demands for networks, storage, and compute in the datacenters. Aligns with VCE.
308. In BRKCRT-2001 and the speaker is great…keeping it fun and exciting.
309. In BRST-2041 WAN Architecture and Design Principles. Dropbox is awesome. Got all my session PDFs ready.
310. In flight quick blog post on impact of virtualization at these conferences. http://bit.ly/bEplKN
311. In ‘Interconnecting voice and video with CUBE’ class with Christina Hattingh. Stoked, been in her sessions before, great presenter.
312. In session BRKUCC-2010 at CiscoLive – excellent content, great presenter!
313. Information technology creates a new division of labor. http://twitpic.com/212qsg
314. Inside view of Cisco powered next-gen (actually, in use today) network emergency response vehicle (NERV).http://twitpic.com/211vbr
315. Interested n how the exam process works – catch this video from @ciscopress Tim Warner @ CiscoLive http://youtu.be/gQsWSAh-sl4
316. Interesting comment: N5k new version will have some L3 support, but “not all L3 support is equal.”
317. Interesting that Avaya is retiring contact ctr technology.
318. Interesting that http is actually quite low in usage compared to other protocols here at CiscoLive (based on keynote audio display.)
319. Interesting to learn about TATA Communications dual-stack network. They seem to be huge but I’d never heard of them.
320. Interesting. If your servers aren’t at least 60% loaded you can’t really consider your datacenter green. Too much overhead.
321. IPv6 repost IPV6 Deployment discussion at CiscoLive – http://bit.ly/dkO3xc – http://bit.ly/9fskAZ
322. IPv6 Sec/Vyncke – Busy room (100+ ppl, aboutv2x last year) and ~half of those are running IPv6 in their networks already, excellent!
323. IPv6: if using link-local addresses for eBGP Cisco will automatically re-write the next-hop for iBGP – nice, where useful.
324. IPv6: useful, hidden IOS command to help tshoot 6PE (and 6VPE, presumably) – “show ipv6 cef internal.”
325. Is desktop virtualization a brave new world or just a way for centralized IT to assert more control?
326. Is technology dictated by mgmt or is it a collaborative process working w/employees?
327. Is the IT industry getting much, much younger people in from college or HS? A lot of very young people at CiscoLive.
328. IS-IS: “priority driven” prefix updates, nifty … and supports IPv6. (Purge interface sounds useful too.)
329. IS-IS: “SPF is never the problem, it’s the flooding” (talking about IS-IS vs OSPFv3 Addr Family support.)
330. IS-IS: “Use NSF at the edge, SSO in the core .. and fast convergence” (If NSR support is available, use that.)
331. IS-IS: ~”A single protocol for L2, IPv4 and IPv6 … Coming to your datacenter soon (TRILL).”
332. IS-IS: can exclude connected prefixes &/or adv. passive-only … reduce the operational overhead when talking about 1000s of routers.
333. IS-IS: Fast-Flood optimization, router can flood 5 LSPs prior to running SPF, so other routers can start processing … interesting!
334. IS-IS: good way to think about it, “link failure is N^2 problem, node failure is N^3 problem” (for all link state RPs)
335. IS-IS: TRILL, RBridges – Faster, minimal/no cfg, load-sharing … ~”anything to avoid tshooting STP” – TRILL finally becoming real!?
336. Isn’t EEM a low priority process? So EEM stuff may not run under heavy load I believe.
337. It just occurred to me that Cisco CEO John Chambers sounds a lot like Ned Flanders.
338. It will be tough to get Apple to like DHCPv6 over SLAAC considering Apple’s history. AppleTalk did SLAAC in 1985.
339. ITES: Jeff Kubacki of Kroll did Cisco UCS POC which yielded unbelievable increase in throughput.
340. Jacoby : It’s not about structuring your data, but finding a way to make decisions from unstructured data. It’s about ‘we’, no ‘me’.
341. Jacoby Cisco CIO: virtualization, collaboration, data mgmt, security, TCO are 5 key strategic areas for Cisco organization.
342. Jacoby: Cisco IT’s goal is to be a services organizations, some sourced internally & some sourced externally.
343. Jacoby: Cisco IT’s journey to services has four phases: location freedrom, HW freedom, provisioning freedom, and business process freedom.
344. Jacoby: Every business leader should rotate thru IT.There isn’t a single business component that isn’t underpinned by IT.
345. Jacoby: IT is an assembler of services. Services sourced either inside or outside the company.
346. Jacoby: 5 key value conversations IT must have w/ the biz: scope/source/architecture, cost, time to capability, quality, & risk.
347. JJB: Comcast treats IPv6 as a differentiator, is already 5 years into their plan, actively testing (incl. users) – 6RD “very soon.”
348. John Hernandez: Announces the impending death of CTI and peripheral gateways 2 be replaced by collab apps and session Mgmt.
349. John Hernandez: Cisco Quad and Pulse coming to customer collaboration. Drive better connections, skills based routing.
350. John Hernandez: Really big distruptive thing = social media – 48% of US population now participates in Social Media.
351. John Hernandez: Talking about Customer Collaboration. Huge transitions!
352. John Hernandez: Talks about proactive engagement in social media. http://yfrog.com/0h9x7j
353. John Hernandez: 10 year old boy on YouTube shows him how to configure game controller.
354. John Hernandez: Cisco quad will replace CTIOS and CAD.
355. John Hernandez: Customer care — huge market transition with infusion of social media.
356. John Hernandez: Integrated reporting is absolutely key in the customer collaboration business.
357. John McCool: By 2015, more people will access Internet by phone rather than desktop.
358. Just demo’d Cisco Home TelePresence. Cloud-based provisioning, call routing. No pricing or tech specs. Quality appears 720p-ish.
359. Just had the BEST UCS session…troubleshooting! Had some great insights in the mystical UCS CLI.
360. Kenneth Mills http://bit.ly/bupB2B on how CA Technologies can assure app delivery in Cisco environments http://yfrog.com/74g3rej
361. Kerry Bailey “Dialtone was the first cloud – we need that for data”. Some have called it “webtone”.
362. Kerry Bailey, Verizon CMO: “The dial tone was the first cloud. Apps today have to be as reliable as dial tone.”
363. Key component of Playbook for Transforming IT: Change management: define measure success for each of us – changes in new environmnt.
364. KK (Google) – Special attention paid to IPv6 Addressing Plan, do out right the first time, learn from past mistakes; /48 per office.
365. KK (Google): Google chose OSPFv3 and SLAAC, operational familiarity FTW.
366. KROLL doing desktop virtualization w/ a combination of Cisco UCS & HP servers for lawyers that need access to sensitive data.
367. Kudos to Rebecca for adding “self service” to virtualizaiton vision. It’s a critical diff b/w virtualization & true internal cloud.
368. Last but not least: My picture of the Cisco ice @ the ccie party. http://twitpic.com/21659p
369. Learning some very useful troubleshooting “show” commands in the cat 6500 session.
370. Leesman Index = employee survey for engagement, satisfaction with workplace settings.
371. LinkedIn profile change of employer pops up as Quad alert on agent desktop.
372. LISP: It’s like IPAnywhere without all the /32s all over your routing table.
373. LISP: All open, multi-vendor, to be exp RFC … Shipping code (ltd platforms, new code later this week). In use by Facebook now.
374. LISP: An attempt to return the DFZ to ISP routes only, via a layer of indirection; authoritative/centralized Routing Locator mapping.
375. LISP: Bonus, can use LISP encapsulation to get IPv6 across non-v6-capable ISPs, “proxy LISP”. And TTL / HopLimit transparent.
376. LISP: Can use LISP in place of 6RD / Dual-Stack Lite / etc. … I think they would still need CPE control, yes?
377. LISP: Equal support for IPv4 and IPv6 (including automatic-tunnel-like encapsulation); the best news I’ve heard all afternoon!
378. LISP: For multicast we will have EID trees on the ends, RLOC tree(s?) in the middle … good to hear mcast mentioned (positively).
379. LISP: Pre-arranged SAs, return routability, Nonce’s, and (fairly) backwards compatible. May have hybrid LISP+NON-LISP sites.
380. LISP: RIPE-NCC is going to default to PI IPv6 address allocations? I missed that, will need to look into it!
381. Look who paid a visit! John in Managed/Cloud Services Partner Pavilion at CiscoLive the other day http://twitpic.com/21kd9b
382. Lot simplier to setup, 1 cat5 cable instead of e big ones, fiber, power and control.
383. Lots of DoD top secret folks in this course. Did they get dropped off by unmarked helicopters!?
384. Lots of voice sessions talking about E.164, but most carriers don’t support it yet. We found only Level 3 fully supported E.164.
385. Making a movie at CiscoLive about Valence Energy’s smart #energy buildings in India and USA. http://twitpic.com/21bti1
386. Marthin de Beer, Cisco SVP, Emerging Tech Group, highlghtd Valence Energy’s software & energy savngs on Cisco’s bldgs!
387. Marthin de Beer: By 2013 90% of IP traffic will be video.
388. Marthin de Beer: Collaboration is THE way we work. Find the right people & info, collab virtually & measure the impact.
389. Marthin de Beer: It’s all about the experience, innovation is key. Exp = hardware + software + network.
390. Mcast: “ip pim passive”, like “ip pim sparse” on interface – but with a load of auto-filtering. IPv6/MLD support?
391. Mcast: Addressing plan, where the IPv4 mcast addresses explicitly carry admission control / BW limits … Interesting.
392. Me and John Chambers – http://twitpic.com/212chp
393. Migrating to internal cloud means new servers are rolled out in 15 minutes vs. 6 weeks the old way @ Cisco.
394. Most of the us who have shared info openly on Twitter with me I am putting the info here: http://bit.ly/chkiGp might help?
395. Multilayer: “300msec de-bounce on copper is (one reason) why you NEED to use fiber interconnects”
396. My biggest concern about the Cius? Battery life. In that form factor, even 8 hours isn’t enough.
397. My colleagues get a travel day tomorrow. Since I attended Cisco Live! remotely can I just take the day off?
398. Need open lines of coms between security and collab teams. Must agree on risk versus reward scenario.
399. New Cisco Social Media alliance looks like it has some awesome potential!
400. New Service Assurance Daily blog post: How to make the most of your Cisco environment http://bit.ly/bupB2B
401. News: ESPN uses Cisco and telepresence to bring World Cup soccer to your television http://bit.ly/9P49o8
402. Nexus 7000 F-series cards have ~5ms latency, support trill & DCB, 10 w/port, $1k/port.
403. Nitpick: the slide lists copyright date of 2009 .. but if that’s my biggest complaint for the week I think it’s a win.
404. No matter how many times I come to Cisco Live, Chambers always leaves me jazzed about my job and technology!
405. Note to self: Do not enable ‘logging standby’ on my system. Just duplicates syslog traffic.
406. Oh joy! I learned how to write a game that runs on/in IOS. Gotta love EEM Applets!
407. One iPhone can use as much bandwidth as 200 legacy phones.
408. Only at #ciscolive can you walk around a smashmouth concert and hear an argument break out about packet loss and jitter.
409. Original iPod sales had Mac pull-through sales. Think Cius will have TelePresence pull-through? This could be brilliant!
410. ospf prefix suppression! What will they think of next! Now that’s cool.
411. Overheard on shuttle – “Great to see a bold, big, rich company like Cisco. Most get big and cautious not dynamic!”
412. Padmasree: and Verizon Business CMO discussing cloud computing with a huge emphasis on #VCE. http://twitpic.com/21alfq
413. Padmasree: Cloud provides large businesses agility and efficiency.
414. Padmasree: Cloud provides on demand, multi tenant & scalability. Public cloud massively scalable private cloud owned by enterprise.
415. Padmasree: Disaster Recovery the biggest initial cloud app deployed.
416. Padmasree: Excited about bringing cloud + smart, connected communities together “it will change the world.”
417. Padmasree: I’m beyond ‘evaluating’ cloud computing… lets chat about what’s next someday.
418. Padmasree: Massively scalable alone doesn’t make a ‘cloud’. it’s gotto be cross platform.
419. Padmasree: The future of work, connected life, & computing all rely on video as a key component.
420. Padmasree: Trends – Video, collaboration, virtualization /cloud comp,smart communities.
421. Padmasree: “The cloud is a $33B oppty for service providers by 2013.” Big number!
422. Padmasree: 3 key trends: future of work, future of computing, future of connected life – driven by voice & collaboration.
423. Padmasree: Barriers to the cloud: Security, Compliance, QoS, Control, Fear of Vendor Lock-In.
424. Padmasree: Cisco Goal – Build an ecosystem without a closed stack; prevent vendor & information lock.
425. Padmasree: Cisco taking 2-prong #collaboration approach giving customers choices & flexibility states.
426. Padmasree: Cisco will deliver collaboration in a hosted manor via subscription for all businesses.
427. Padmasree: Cloud computing: IT delivered as a service over the network. Applications abstracted from the infrastructure.
428. Padmasree: Cloud-based, Borderless network architecture require security, trust.
429. Padmasree: Consumption models will be much more hybrid. On premise and from the cloud.
430. Padmasree: Europe is moving the #cloud. Japan is moving to a government cloud. Happening In most developing companies.
431. Padmasree: goal=”Make the cloud more network-aware, and make the network more cloud-aware.”
432. Padmasree: I like Twitter. Its like a digital water cooler.
433. Padmasree: In the next 5 years virtualization with emerging cloud computing will transform IT http://bit.ly/aMVXCy
434. Padmasree: Let the transformation to ‘mainframe on the network’ begin with cloud computing.
435. Padmasree: Service Providers: new revenue streams. For large enterprise: efficiency/agility. For public sector: efficient sharing.
436. Padmasree: The next Internet: move from just a data transport to a media experience.
437. Padmasree: Virtualization is an enabler to build energy efficient(sustainable) infrastructure.
438. Padmasree: ‘We came to the cloud for the cost and stayed for the agility’ customer comment.
439. Padmasree: We have roadmap to help customers in the “journey to the hybrid cloud”.
440. Padmasree: Webex is probably the top SaaS solution in the world.
441. Padmasree: What’s common btwn cloud computing and smart connected communities? Both multi-architectural and global.
442. Padmasree’s keynote was big on Cloud. I think her big strength is in conveying complex technology ideas in simple messaging.
443. Paul McNab’s ITMATO-5177 was one of the best session. Very relevant, insightful and energetic.
444. Personal dashboard for Quad is one-stop place to work.
445. Presenters should really close their IM clients before a session.
446. Chambers: Pro tip: when John is using you as his focal point in the crowd, look up from the twitter stream. IRL multitasking is hard.
447. Q: If I upload a video to Quad w/ Show and Share integration, where does that video live? A: w/ SnS int, we store the video in SnS.
448. QOTD from #cllv10 “I want to have 1000 VDI agents on the same VLAN – it melts with IPv4” – Ya think?
449. Quad: Is different 1) built on open APIs (not a silo app) … connected to IM, video, Jabber capabilities.
450. Quad: New collaboration platform with strong video support – Sharepoint-like but built with collab. v. content focus.
451. Quad: Arch highlights: Incorportes social graph, embedded policy mgmt, mgmt, semantic rdf store, OpenSocial, content mgmt int.
452. Quad: Available July 2010 on a limited basis Beta versions for iPad and iPhone apps available in August. .
453. Quad: Being deployed initially by the Australian region of DiData – it will spread from there virally to other regions.
454. Quad community demo – documents, videos, posts, tagging, sharing with people and/or communities, and permissions.
455. Quad: Enables open social gadgets via OpenSocial APIs.
456. Quad: deliver social netwk w/o the risk, save time & resources thru pre-int w/ common IT infra platforms (pt1).
457. Quad: Directory profile, blogs, wikis, forums, posts, communities, people/info search, micro-blogging, feeds through your Quad dashboard.
458. Recap: Day 2 of CiscoLive! was all about #cloud, #collaboration & Padmasree keynote http://bit.ly/9GKA1f
459. Resource awareness’ called out as key to role of net in cloud.. pushing capabilities to where they’re needed. Smart.
460. SAF-FP supports IPv4 & IPv6, no v6 clients yet, but it’s ready today.
461. So much hype about Cisco Cius that Cisco Home Energy Management Solution got overshadowed. It’s cool too! http://tinyurl.com/2blde96
462. Social media cust care maturity model: 1) listening 2) media broadcasting 3) marketing 4) customer care 5) proactive engagement.
463. Social media stats: +400m active FB users 50% log on every day, 50m tweets/day and 75m users on Twitter.
464. Social screen pop. Combination of public social media profile data and CRM data. Interesting.
465. Some presenters are using tinyurl links in their presentations to mask bulky cisco.com URLs. brilliant!
466. Specialist on-call will treat 30% more patients w/neurological symptoms via use of Cisco Telepresence.
467. Strategic Imperative – Interoperable Open Architecture: It starts with the network and can be on-prem, hosted, or hybrid.
468. Successful business strategy of future = speed + scale + flexibility + replication, powered by Dynamic Networked Org model.
469. TechNews TechJournalist: all that’s missing from this show is Willy Wonka @ CiscoLive http://bit.ly/9SJlFq #DhilipSiva
470. Telco giant C&W announces #cloud IaaS solution powered by Cisco UCS w/ newScale for self-service http://bit.ly/cnsBOF
471. The companies that treat IT as a cost center instead of as a differentiator risk being disrupted.
472. The mobile site for CiscoLive is awesome. Having my schedule and doing surveys on my iPad is super easy.
473. The Padmasree Warrior keynote bottom line: Sysadmins gonna lose their jobs.
474. The places people “live” at work: Social systems, content/document systems, communication systems, business process systems.
475. The Winner of the Cisco i-Prize is Team Renovation in Mexico!!!
476. They key mantra at CiscoLive seemed to be Combining Innovation with Operational Excellence.
477. They should have demoed live video from the Gulf – Imagine the impact!
478. This Catalyst VSS session is excellent, I have never configured it but after this session I will be able to.
479. Tip Sheet: The secret meaning behind Cisco’s surprise Cius tablet launch http://bit.ly/cAVUDq
480. Top NERV questions: who do you support? Primarily 1st responders, govnt’s, NGOs etc. NERV fleet is always on 4 hr alert status.
481. Transcribe video to make it searchable and accessible, says Cisco’s Marthin de Beer – what about visual element, beyond words?
482. UCS fundamentals is a fire hose of good information. Great speaker.
483. UCS is great but we are a total NFS shop with Netapp. Makes FC San booting a challenge. Don’t want to deploy FC just for booting.
484. Using a GRE tunnel between two VRFs on the same router to apply inbound shaping on an unsupported platform/interface.
485. Using short videos to explain problems, teach users is far better than static docs. Get this in the call ctr, frustration way down!
486. Very cool of Cisco: they have someone signing John’s keynote for the hearing impaired.
487. Very good article about the new Cisco #Cius about not being an iPad competitor and I fully agree.
488. Video calling feature on iphone uses 30x more bandwidth than voice.
489. Video enabled customer care: provides a richer customer experience with insurance company example.
490. Vision for interco collab: Enable borderless org, borderless exp-anyone, anything, anytime, anywhere-securely, reliably, seamlessly.
491. Voice Analytics to mind-map the conversation, measure level of engagement w/i Quad #cllv10 – lie detector in next version?
492. Vyncke talking IPv6 – http://twitpic.com/20rdk2 – Also, not Scapy6 anymore, just Scapy – and yes it rocks!
493. Vyncke/IPv6: Note, Simply blocking/alerting on UDP/3544 will yield false positives … Overall, great presentation!
494. Vyncke/IPv6: “Flexible Packet Matching (FPM)” can do regex to fully match Teredo.
495. Vyncke/IPv6: ASA had made lots of advancement over the last year our three WRT IPv6. (there IPS is getting better too!)
496. Vyncke/IPv6: ESA ( email security appliance, IronPort) in beta for IPv6, any volunteers? Oh, & FWSM “bad bad bad” (done in SW).
497. Vyncke/IPv6: Huh, I didn’t know “fragment” also caught the “undetermined-transport” packets.
498. Vyncke/IPv6: RA-Guard and DHCP Guard, ACL based for now … RA Guard soon to have “Config Based” option. Good News, indeed!
499. Vyncke/IPv6: The equiv of DAI = avail ~EOY (GOOD). No SEND in Win7 (BAD). Leaving PVLANs, Port Sec, etc. … RA Guard?
500. We need ability to index and search video content for video to take off in the enterprise to replace static docs, emails, etc.
501. Webex mail will kill Exchange.
502. When Cisco deployed TelePresence, we saw a 20% cut in travel expenses & shortened the sales cycle.
503. Wired magazine announces Cius as ‘the BlackBerry of Tablets’ http://bit.ly/amXWml
504. With Cius being Android, most of that capability should come to other Android devices as well, yes?
505. Wow! This Elvis impersonator is freaking awesome!

Following my recent trip to the Ragan Corporate Communicators Conference in Detroit I created a listing of 108 “top tweets” from the event – tips, suggestions, ideas and topics which people found noteworthy.

Now, I’m as guilty as the next person of attending conferences and workshops, getting all fired up with ideas and suggestions, and failing to follow through and implement any of them. So, in the spirit of implementing at least some of these ideas from Detroit, I plan to examine some of the tweets in more detail.

Top Tweet: learn Screencasting

The first tip, which came out of Shel Holtz’s seminar at the event, was “Use Camtasia Studio to create audio “screen-casts” of apps – embed in departmental websites as training aids. Create animated preso library.”

I’ve asked my National Speakers Association colleague and uber-geek, Jim Carrillo, to explain in detail how screen-casting can be accomplished. His explanation includes a screen-cast – of course!

Screencasting – the Fourth Dimension in Communication

by Jim Carrillo

You may have seen Screencasting, or screen recording in its generic name, when you’ve watched online training snippets for some popular websites. Screencasting is a name coined by Jon Udell, and is a digital recording of a computer screen’s output that usually contains voice narration.

Before diving in to how you can use it, let’s start by explaining the fourth dimension concept. Communication is the backbone for all we do. The best form of communication is when we’re face to face with our counterpart, which I consider our first dimension. Unfortunately, one of the worse forms of communication is written, or email, which we use far too much. With email, we lose the tonalities of our voice, the excitement in our gestures, and the other forms of visual and audio interaction; this would be the second dimension. The third dimension of communication would be recording ourselves for distribution to a single person or an audience. Recording has been around for quite some time, and with voicemail, or HandyCam video cameras, we’ve all become accustomed to the word “recorded message”. It’s clearly either a video or audio recording of a communication (or both).

What do you call a video communication that doesn’t involve a camera though?, a communication that brings in a new element of reference that both the presenter and receiver can focus on? With the explosion of the integration of the computer screen in our daily lives, bringing this medium into the focus of the communication has become natural. Screencasting is exactly that. It’s a recording of a communication with the focus on the computer screen, not the presenter.

Oddly enough, Screencasting is one of the easiest methods of recording. Bypassing the Video or Audio recording industries, screencasting was born out of the computer generation. Ease of use was top of mind in creating this technology.

Don’t be misled though, just because something is easy, don’t expect professional production ready results. To give an analogy, many people know how to type in a word processing application, but it doesn’t make them an author. Everyone can learn how to create a Screencast in minutes, but don’t start calling yourself a producer just yet.

You can try it right now! The best out of the box (and there is no box), get your feet wet Screencasting system I’ve found is Screen Toaster (www.screentoaster.com) . Screentoaster is completely web based (meaning no software to install), and it’s FREEEEE! What a beautiful word isn’t it? FREEEEE.

Considering becoming a director or producer in Screencasts for a more professional production? I’ve tried many, and with much reluctance, I finally gave Camtasia Studio (www.techsmith.com) a try. The price is inexpensive for professional use (only $300), and is not only packed with features, they’ve made it very simple to use. The simpleness is what brought a tear to my eye.

Interested in seeing a demonstration? In this Screencast, I’ve created both a simple Screencast showing you how to create your own Screencast in about two minutes (ouch, that circular explanation hurts my brain every time I write it). I’ve also added three examples of Screencasts that I often produce. Screencasting is part of my daily communications, and professional marketing services. Not a day passes that I’m not recording my cursor fly by.

The Ragan Corporate Communicators Conference in Detroit (May 4-7) was festival of presentations on Social Media, Speechwriting, Corporate and Internal Communications. Over 250 attended the event held at the General Motors Headquarters in the downtown Renaissance Center and hosted by GM.

Attendees generated over 900 tweets under the hashtag #ragangm. Since Twitter only maintains 10-14 days of content live they will soon disappear. Here’s the archive all of them.

I curated a list of the most interesting 108 tweets,adding links where appropriate for easy reference.

1. Use Camtasia Studio to create audio “screen-casts” of apps – embed in departmental websites as training aids. Create animated preso library.
2. Internal comms compete w/lots of entertaining options for employee mindshare. Videos & Photos need to be quality & entertain to compete w/Rolling Stone & People Magazine.
3. Every internal web page should have star rating system and allow comments.
4. When developing messages for employees, ask the question “What does this have to do with the key audience how does it speak to their concerns?” WIIFM at two levels for employees: 1) What does it have to do w/ me? 2) How does changing my behavior make my life better?
5. Three steps to changing employee behavior: 1) Handle comms logistics – content, design, 2) capture employee attention and 3) do be relevant. Result = change behavior.
6. Comms is responsible for simplifying complexity of business – diagram things.
7. We can no longer have internal comms messages targeted to everyone – the branch office does not see things same way HQ staff do. Gen Y workers diff. from Baby Boomers.
8. Every communicator (esp. long-timers) eventually stops communicating 4 their audience and starts communicating 4 their boss. Do whatever it takes to avoid this. Bonus be damned!
9. 3rd party media training is often more effective. Execs seem more receptive and less defensive/dismissive about their advice. Hire an outside coach for faster results.
10. People now have now gone from having ADD to ADOS – Attention Deficit … Ooh Shiney!
11. Executives need to understand Gen Y. “Connect with the coming tidal wave.” Try reverse mentoring, people!
12. Irrelevant information is not benign. Limited reader attn means messages must be focused on benefits or risk losing readers.
13. Write for the range of target audience that has least understanding of your topic. Duh!
14. 89% of journalists say they turn to blogs for story research. Lazy or smart?
15. 78% of people trust recs of other consumers; 14% trust ads. This is why social media is so important. Who do you trust?
16. 62% of employees who tweet, tweet from work.
17. 66% of employers have monitored employees’ internet use; 1/3 of companies have fired someone (mostly for visiting wrong websites).
18. Make sure to integrate comms channels with each other. Example given: The Petco Scoop blog.
19. Wildfire has a fun ways – sweepstakes, contests and give-aways – to engage SM audiences.
20. Ideal number of words in a graf before losing reader attention: 42.
21. Listening is the most important thing you can do on Twitter – check out http://search.twitter.com/ and http://www.socialoomph.com/
22. Speechwriter Rob Friedman: Eli Lilly’s main purpose is to show “the value of pharmaceuticals” – ask: what is it for your company?
23. “A speechwriter is a playwright for the client – script them well”
24. Era of destination website is over – archival ‘.com’ sites being replaced by social media.
25. 68% of online content read by Millennial’s is created by someone they know personally.
26. Check out cool tool PubSubHubBub.
27. Real-time search engines can tell u the sentiment & reactions to ur org’s news. Look at https://brandmentions.com.
28. Twitter is not a personal communication tool. It’s a news distribution service.
29. AT&T uses Twitter Ambassadors found those already on Twitter and take that passion to help your brand in a real way.
30. Write tweets in ways that add value to the reader to aid optimization.
31. Augmented reality is the next big thing. @shelholtz: “It’s going to be huge.”
32. Are u using http://www.evernote.com/ – It will change ur life.
33. Polleverywhere – Cool live polling technology. Used my phone to txt a vote and watched live results on the screen!
34. General Motors: Changing the public’s perception 1 customer at a time. Personal correspondence with GM execs. Actively seek unhappy customers.
35. Re finding/responding to online complaints, “It costs less…than finding a new customer,” Says GM’s Susan Docherty.
36. SM lessons learned by GM: Don’t be boring, don’t over-promote, cut the hyperbole, respond to people w/real people.
37. Social media “policy” for employees: if you can’t say it at your daughter’s bday party, shouldn’t say it online.
38. “Stop treating customers like a one-night stand,” GM CMO Susan Docherty. Great advice for all companies!
39. “Emerging” media is now traditional media. GM had 8-fold increase in digital media spending since 2001.
40. In communications, if you start with the consumer, you will do the right thing.
41. Qumu – great option for internal communications webcasting: Ragan Conference using them.
42. GM has “social club,” informal, regular meetings of those from all depts w social media responsibilities.
43. Remember you (your comp. or org) are a publisher and you compete with media outlets.
44. PR & Marketing need to have a ‘”happy marriage.” Audiences can’t tell the diff between the two. They just see you.
45. GM lets employees spend worktime in Twitter & Facebook so they can interact w/customers, which is now part of everybody’s job.
46. Viral is a phenomenon, not a strategy…absolutely true.
47. Any GM employee can tweet about the company, says @maryhenige. Co keeps them advised of rules, links them to info & asks them to be smart.
48. In the end – just provide value. Don’t lead w/your messages; community’s needs come first.
49. On Social Media…don’t be a brand, be human.
50. 70% of successful outcome depends on how well you communicate. The last thing u want is 4 execs to be hiding behind their desks.
51. “SM is like having a kid – you can’t just leave them when they’re done being cute.”
52. Writers are ditch diggers. Can’t wait for a muse. Get your ass back in there and DIG!
53. Any speech longer than 20 minutes is too long. If they want longer. Tell them you’ll speak for 20, QA for the rest.
54. How to determine speech length? 100 words = 1 minute is good benchmark. Anyone speaking faster than that needs to SLOW DOWN, pause for audience to absorb message.
55. Speechwriters: Make 3-4 big points. No more. Get them from the principal in ur 1st mtg, or they’ll throw ur 1st draft out.
56. Get a 2nd monitor for your computer (to monitor Twitter).
57. Use flickr to spark yr creativity.
58. Use flip cams for fast ‘scrappy’ videos (caveat: content must be good).
59. Greatest gift of YouTube culture: low expectation for video quality. BUT compelling content + authenticity is extremely high.
60. Using humor in Corp comm is not always a fireable offense.
61. Keeping it real: Bullfighter: – eliminate jargon & b.s. in your documents.
62. Hire a presentation/speech coach to help ur executives improve. Not overnight, but 3-4 months.
63. Use http://bit.ly to shorten URLs and track clicks.
64. Stay current: Read http://mashable.com/
65. Do a short 2 sentence interview with multiple ppl and mash together for a good video on a single topic. Example: http://bit.ly/aqzoCd
66. Create a presentation homepage for upcoming events, preview videos, outline, slideshare, ask for comments. Example: http://bit.ly/aWBAow
67. Flip camera tips: Clean the office behind you; use a desk light to highlight face; watch for b/g noise; bump sound with Windows Movie maker post-production.
68. Keep your language conversational. Test your writing by reading out loud as if you were talking to someone in an elevator.
69. Writers: Get rid of passive sentences; capture the essence of your press release in a Tweet.
70. Stop blocking social media from ur employees. Train them and empower them.
71. Spice up internal comms: Roving reporters and employee film fests: uncovering talent in ur organization.
72. “Who died & put IT in charge of employee productivity?” @shelholtz
73. Amplify employee voices thru low-cost podcasting. Can listen at user convenience, develops trust and community. And cheap to produce.
74. Journalism graduates today are trained to shoot, edit, and publicize. Get a dedicated staff member to focus on video.
75. @MarkRaganCEO on why authenticity matters: “We live in the age of bullshit.”
76. Useful podcasting tools: Wavepad, Camtasia Studio, Audacity, Levelator.
77. On podcasting…the tool is not the message.
78. Podcast Production Lessons: Cozy up to your radio. Get comfortable with being seen & heard. Prepare, prepare, prepare.
79. Podcasters: Think like a marketer. Create full campaign. Don’t 4get your global audience. Measure every podcast.
80. Podcasters: Your leaders make for great content. Look for your influencers. Let employees be the interviewers sometimes.
81. Internal Podcasts: You’ve got experts in your community. Help them tell their stories. Find the moment when the mike goes away.
82. Podcasts complement crisis communications. Can quickly be on the scene or respond to rumors. Easily done over the phone.
83. Time length for videos is controversial. Brevity important in most cases. 90 secs or less. BUT if it’s good, ppl will watch longer.
84. Executive communications is like a high wire act…eventually something will go wrong.
85. Public Speakers: Common mistake – spending more time on slides than on delivery. Dry runs are important.
86. Public Speakers: Conversational tone in a large audience doesn’t always work. Stage presence is important.
87. Speechwriters: Beware of tongue twisters. “Red Buick, Blue Buick”.
88. Speechwriters: Prep your exec in case their time gets cut. Provide a 60-30-15 minute version of the speech as a contingency.
89. Understand Cultural Sensitivity/Diversity issues: Resource: Culture Crossing – Beware of culturally-specific analogies (e.g. Sports US= “4th down”; UK= “batting on a sticky wicket”).
90. Think about mic’ing your exec when they present so u can re-purpose their speech/audio for other things (website, podcast, transcript, etc.)
91. “Opportunities multiply as they are seized”- Sun Tzu. Especially true for the internet.
92. @aribadler suggested we’ve moved from work-life balance to work-life blend.
93. Avoid extended online debates with ppl who disagree with a message.
94. 28 Best Praactices for virtual presentations, WebEx sessions: www.whatworks.biz
95. Best way to brief ur exec? Know them, their style. Personalize ur approach and style.
96. If your employees love what they do, make them ambassadors.
97. Pre-flight checklist for exec-comms events available as .doc source: http://bit.ly/bzzoTh
98. Blogs must be authentic. Don’t ghost write your CEO’s. Ppl expect authenticity. If they can’t write it, look for something else.
99. If ur CEO is a bad writer but a good speaker: have him dictate it + ur comm staff can transcribe to the blog.
100. Comm cascade often fails. Focus on interpretation + location! Help staff take the message, interpret, + pass it on accurately.
101. Branding: Detroit is considered “gritty”. Baby Boomers equate that to dirty. Gen X define it as “authentic”. Detroit’s brand position: Detroit is where cool comes from.
102. Ask your agency to pitch ideas they don’t think you’ll approve. Creativity will flow.
103. Whether it’s online or in print. If you don’t know if people are reading it, why are you doing it?
104. Interviewing tip: Don’t be afraid to go where your answer leads you and not where your question sent you.
105. Complaints are inevitable in any biz. Look at them as opportunities to showcase problem solving and communication skills.
106. Comms must compete for your employees’ attention – Paying employees gets them in the door, but that doesn’t engage and motivate them.
107. Measure communications by business goals/objectives.
108. Consider Prezzi.com instead of PPT: Animated visuals are dynamic and impressive. As shown in @shelhotz closing keynote.

Thanks to Ray Strackbein for posting to SpeakerNet News details of a fascinating free visual online dictionary.

SnappyWords.com might well replace your dictionary and Thesaurus in ways you could never imagine. It packs a lot of information on one easy-to-navigate page.

Look up any word and SnappyWords presents a visual dynamic network of all related words and their definitions.

Here’s what you see when you enter “Speech” as a search word:

Explore the meaning of words and gather suggestions for alternate words with a few simple mouse clicks.

1. Place the mouse cursor over a word to view the meaning.
2. Double click a node from the branch to view other related words.
3. Scroll the mouse wheel over words to zoom in or out. This helps you see more associations or view words and meanings more clearly.
4. Click and drag a word or branch to move it around and explore other branches.

It’s fun to experiment with place names. Here’s the results for London:

Candid Camera

Springwise reports that a wearable camera has been developed in the UK which can document a person’s life. Promising “Memories for Life” the Vicon Revue has been created as an aid for people with memory loss.

The device can operate either on a timer—taking photos every 30 seconds—or it can be set to take photos automatically when triggered by internal sensors, which can detect body heat as well as changes in temperature, light and motion. Along with images, the camera also stores a time-stamped log file that can be enriched with GPS traces. Its 1GB of flash memory can typically hold around 30,000 images, or approximately 6 days’ worth of capture.

The appeal of the Vicon Revue is expected to broaden from Alzheimer’s patients who need a photographic record of events they might otherwise forget to anyone narcissistic enough to want to record as much about every moment of their life as possible.

So, if you were to stick one of these devices on a newborn and they lived to be, say, 70, then 4.3TB of disk storage would hold their entire lifetime in pictures. You can actually buy that much storage for around $700. What are you waiting for!

Life Caching

Springwise terms this emerging trend Life Caching and notes:

Thanks to the onslaught of new technologies and tools, from blogging software to memory sticks to high definition camera phones with lots of storage space and other ‘life capturing and storing devices’, an almost biblical flood of ‘personal content’ is being collected, and waiting to be stored to allow for ongoing trips down memory lane.

One possible future is that all of us will soon have enough of our lives recorded that no-one, least of all ourselves, will have the time or inclination to review the data we’ve collected. If you cache 100% of the life you lead for 24 hours, and proceed to review it, then the next 24 hours would be a cache of you reviewing your cache. Our lives would recede like reflections in a hall of mirrors, as we viewed ourselves viewing ourselves. Our self-obsession would become magnified.

Technology is already causing this to happen to some of us. I’ve collected 27 days worth of music on my iPod, most of which I’ll probably never listen to. I have countless folders filled with digital photographs I never look at and a blog with over 500 articles that I hardly ever read.

So what’s your point (of view)?

The end-game of this technology might well be a time when each of us holds a cache of our separate lives and yet is unable to make any more sense of it than we do of our unrecorded life. In fact, if everyone did this, life would become infinitely more confusing.

What would it be like to play back all the images from even a half-dozen lives, lived wearing a Vicon Revue? Imagine a group of people in the same family or people who worked together all recording their separate points of view. What would this tell us? How would we even begin to make sense of it? Imagine they spent time together in the same room—what would it look like?

Not knowing what anything IS

This question has been addressed by Avatar Adi Da Samraj, who writes:

If each person’s “point of view” were replaced by a camera, and you collected photographs of all those “points of view” in the room—up, down, sides, all different orientations—and if you put them all together, you would wonder what you were looking at. Ten such photographs would be enough to make the room unrecognizable. In any case, no single photograph represents the room in its totality. Any single photograph is a portrayal (or an abstract representation) only—and the same is true of your perception. Your perception is only a portrayal (or an abstract representation) of the room. Your perception is not the room As it Is.

— The Way of Zero Bargaining, The Aletheon, p. 1590, Avatar Adi Da Samraj.

Adi Da discusses the profound implications of this fundamental truth. He explains that neither a single room, nor the whole universe, can be accurately described, since “knowledge” about anything is limited by a “point of view”:

“Point of view” defines everything about conditional “knowledge”, whether it is “knowledge” of “self” or “knowledge” of the universe. That is the purpose served by “point of view”. That “knowledge” is the power of “point of view” – its presumed ability to escape bad luck, misfortune, confinement, death, bad results, negative destiny, and so on. That presumed power (or ability) is the purpose of the effort of introversion. It is also the purpose of the effort of extroversion. It is the purpose of all seeking.

— The Aletheon, p. 1591-2.

Understanding Life

So, perhaps a better option than obsessive life caching and a concern with squirreling away the minutia of every moment, is working to develop an understanding of life as it really is; not as an archive of separate images, but as a totality that transcends all possible “points of view”.