I gave a 20-minute presentation on podcasting at the BiztechDay event held Saturday October 25th in San Francisco. I recorded the class on podcasting as a podcast (duh!) using my trusty Olympus DS330 digital recorder and a lapel mic.

The presentation covers the basics of recording, editing and publishing podcasts.

Here’s the step-by-step guide to podcasting handout.

Here’s the slides on podcasting 101.

To hear what I said, click on the podcast icon below. (Since this is a 20 minute podcast, you might prefer to choose the Download option and save it for later.)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:38 — 4.5MB)

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BiztechDay attracted over 500 small business owners and entrepreneurs to the San Francisco Hilton on a sunny October Saturday.

Attendees heard from a wide range of keynote speakers, content experts and panelists about ways to grow their business using the power of the Internet & Web 2.0 tools.

The event opened with Tim Ferriss, lifestyle design author of The 4-Hour Workweek who was interviewed by event organizer Edith Yeung. The afternoon keynote was Blendtec marketing genius George Wright – the guy who invested $50 in a viral marketing campaign that created the Will It Blend? YouTube videos seem by millions. The closing keynote was Scott Helferman, founder of Meetup.com.

Break-out sessions covered everything from social networks to on-demand magazine publishing; viral marketing to email; video to podcasting.

I asked people what business they were in and what brought them to the event. To hear what some of the 500 had to say, click on the podcast icon below to hear the voices of BiztechDay.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 4:40 — 1.1MB)

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Paul is a member of the NSA/NC Pro-Track class who is fascinated by the idea that listening can became a societal phenomenon.

He has partnered with Stanford PhD Dr. Eran Magen to create a powerful system for connecting with others called Supportive Listening.

With Supportive Listening, a listener can help a friend, family member, client, or colleague relax, gain clarity, and find their own answers to challenges. Paul reports that workshop participants are often surprised at the effectiveness of the technique.

In the past year Paul and Eran have facilitated over a dozen Supportive Listening workshops in the Bay Area. Paul is currently working with a group at Stanford to develop a comprehensive listening skills program.

Going forward, Paul and Eran are looking to introduce Supportive Listening into Healthcare environments. They believe that it can help doctors and nurses work more effectively with patients, as well as helping them build trust with colleagues.

Would you like to be a better listener? Subscribe to the Supportive Listening Newsletter to get innovative listening tips and news of the latest workshops and products.

If you have ideas for Supportive Listening, Paul would love to hear from you. Contact him at paul@supportivelistening.org.

Listen supportively as Paul discusses his ideas by clicking on the podcast icon below.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 8:21 — 1.9MB)

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Paul has an excellent post about the lack of coverage of the current economic crisis in many corporate blogs.

Corporate blogs blather while markets tumble shows just how unresponsive many in corporate communications are to the real news in the world. After reviewing a wide range of Fortune 100 company blogs for comments on the current crisis, he concludes:

My point isn’t to ridicule these companies as much as it is to demonstrate how far we still have to go in achieving the culture of openness that new media enables. Here was an opportunity for some of America’s most respected corporations to offer guidance and thought leadership to frightened consumers. Instead, most have chosen to serve up the same old happy-talk mush they’ve delivered for years. That’s their right, but that isn’t leadership.

These are historic times that offer businesses the chance to break through the noise and do something daring and different. So far, corporate America has fumbled the opportunity. Perhaps, as the economic picture becomes clearer, some will start talking with their customers instead of marketing at them.

Has anyone seena Fortune 100 company blog which does cover the crisis?

Interesting article on how to drop the Powerpoint crutch and win people over from the heart of industrial America – Reliable Plant magazine.

Quotes Paul LeRoux, the co-author (along with Peg Corwin) of Visual Selling: Capture the Eye and the Customer Will Follow

LeRoux counsels using images not text to connect with the audience.

A nice quick overview of podcasting from Justin Allen at Ragan Communications. Check it out.

Members of the National Speakers Association (NSA) have long admired professional speaking coach Patricia Fripp, CSP, CPAE – one of the premier executive speech coaches in the world. She has teamed with her equally famous brother, Robert Fripp – the founding and on-going member of rock legends King Crimson. He has collaborated with, and contributed to, David Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Blonde, and Brian Eno. In fact, Rolling Stone magazine named Robert Fripp 42 among the top 100 guitarists of all time. As much as Robert is internationally-known for his brilliance with the guitar…he is a superb and entertaining speaker. Robert is as eloquent a speaker as he is a master performer.

Patricia and Robert have developed a wonderful program ‘How to Be a Hero on and off the Platform, from Beginner to Mastery in Business, Performance, and Life’ which teaches:

• Differences between the reliable professional and an exceptional professional
• How to learn your instrument and performing simultaneously
• Why Universal Principles beat rules and laws
• Specific steps to accomplish your goals
• Habits to develop for personal and career success
• Communication styles to model for your own conversations and presentations.

The Fripp’s are taking their show on the road, to Seattle on November 8, Los Angeles on November 9 and Phoenix on November 11.

Well worth registering if you are in the area.

The Northern California Chapter of the National Speakers Association (NSA/NC) hosted our annual Open House this evening. Over 35 people turned up on the night when much of the rest of the nation was tuning in to the Palin/Biden debate.

The audience heard from a bevvy of professional speakers about what it takes to make a living in this profession.

Among the visitors, I met Nicole Bachelor, who was born in the UK, but now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She works for one of the big technology companies in Silicon Valley and has many years experience as a telecommuter.

Nicole has parlayed her expertise into a website and e-book which reveals essential advice and tools for negotiating a telecommuting arrangement in your existing or new job. Then helps make sure you telecommute successfully and keep your career at peak performance. She provides tips, tricks, and techniques for making telecommuting as simple, and easy as going into the office, without all the extra hassle.

Having enjoyed the benefits of telecommuting as an environmentally responsible, low-stress, productivity-enhancing option I was curious to ask Nicole some of the secrets she shares in her book.

To hear what she had to say, click on the podcast icon below.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 3:17 — 3.0MB)

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A vast majority of employees in high-tech companies are Subject Matter Experts. In the training world they are known as ‘SMEs” (rhymes with please). They are engineering and technical staff with a deep, hard-won, specialist knowledge of one aspect of technology. Without SMEs there would be no high-tech. They are, for many companies, “the noble sinews of our power” (as Shakespeare’s Henry V termed the soldiers he marshaled at Agincourt). They are Archilochus’s quintessential Hedgehog’s who know one big thing better than anyone else.

The challenge for the communications professional is to:

a) Get them to summarize their vast body of knowledge into a sound-bite or elevator pitch which can be included with the data from a dozen other Hedgehog’s into a few remarks by the CEO.

b) Encourage them to talk to each other and share their specialist views of the world with colleagues in different disciplines. Only connect. Develop synergies between them.

One approach to these tasks is discussed in a useful article by Liz Ryan in the September 16 Business Week. She counsels that the communications professional with the ear of the CEO can synthesize the input of multiple SMEs and, by encouraging communication between them, “create an informal in-house council of thought leaders”.

In career terms the person who functions as the nexus must be sure to give full credit to everyone who contributes.

Light relief from the inane world of corporate PowerPoint in this delightful European satire on graphics gone wild:

The video is inspired by Jessica Hagy’s wonderful Indexed blog.