Since beginning his career in the video business in 1977, Rhys Ludlow has worked in field production, lighting, engineering, editing and producing. With a talent for clear communication with strong technical skills, his work includes national TV spots, specials, documentaries and corporate video.

Rhys’ work has been seen on all major US TV networks, at the Smithsonian and he edited the Academy Award nominated documentary “Last Images of War.”

His work on corporate promotional and educational videos include clients such as Chevron, Wells Fargo, PG&E, Pacific Bell, Hewlett-Packard, Autodesk, Visa, Dewitt Jones’ best selling motivational video, “Celebrate What’s Right With the World”, Jason Jennings’ 10-part series, “Productivity” and numerous demo reels for professional speakers. Examples of his work for speakers can be seen on his website www.media4speakers.com/

Rhys is taking the National Speakers Association Pro-Track class to better understand the business issues faced by speakers.

To hear his discussion on tips for speakers who want a video of their presentations, as well as his thoughts on the investment needed to become a professional speaker, click on the podcast icon below.

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Coverage of the Summer Olympics has included television reports of wonderful varieties Chinese cuisine. As the 2008 Games approached the Chinese government took it upon themselves to provide approved translations of menu options on offer in local restaurants.

This, according to an article by the wonderfully named Fuchsia Dunlop (a name I’ll never tire of!) in the Weekend FT.

She lists the literal translations of many Chinese dishes found on restaurant menus:

“Chicken without sexual life” (a young chicken)
“Iron flooring cremation” (cookies baked on an iron griddle)
“Pock-marked old women’s bean curd” (stir-fried tofu in hot sauce)
and “the fragrance explodes the cowboy bone” (no other translation given – my imagination runs wild…)

Lost in translation

At the root of these amusing lists is not some Chinese inability to grasp the basics of English translation. Rather, the lack of congruence between Chinese characters and roman script impedes clear communication:

You can only go so far in borrowing from Chinese because beyond a certain level you have to know the actual Chinese characters to understand precisely what you are talking about. In Sichuanese cuisine, for example, there are two cooking methods that would both be transliterated as kao, but you can’t tell them apart unless you see the actual characters. The different characters for “salty” and “umami” are both rendered in the Roman alphabet as “xian “

The inability of one civilization to render the finer points of its culture into words that would be clearly understood by another is not limited to cuisines. Many social and cultural nuances are lost in translation – business arrangements; educational systems; humor, love, marriage and death. It’s made apparent when we see the literal English used in these menus. Official attempts to provide a standardized alternative are equally limited. Fuchsia Dunlop explains how these are:

…a pale reflection of one of the world’s most marvellous cuisines. Lyrical descriptive terms – like feicui (jadeite) for greenish foods, and guaiwei (strange-flavour, used for an intriguing combination of tastes) have been lost in the translation, and mapo doufu has severed its connection with the lovable pockmarked old dame of Chengdu. As Raymond Zhou wrote in the China Daily, this standardised translation is “a double-edged sword. It removes the ambiguity and unintended humour . . . But it takes away the fun and the rich connotation too. It turns a menu into the equivalent of plain rice, which has the necessary nutrients but is devoid of flavour”.

As with food, so with business. Corporate communications either lose their flavor or suffer unintended mis-translations in the journey from West to East and back. This is all part of the rich tapestry of human life. Give me an exploding cowboy bone any day over the stark accuracy of the standard translation.

I attended the 2008 NSA Convention in New York City. Unlike my podcasts from the 2007 San Diego Convention and my blog from the 2006 Orlando event, I was not able to spend the time necessary to review the Convention in depth on Professionally Speaking.

Not to worry. There are two excellent resources I’ve added to the NSA Blogroll in the right column.

NSA Meetings is a blog hosted by Cynthia D’Amour and Don Cooper. There are a number of excellent postings on the conference in New York.

No NSA Conference would be complete without the parties Ed Rigsbee organizes for the Cigar PEG. Their new blog will keep you up-to-date on what happened in New York as well as plans for the future.

Finally, if you missed any of the sessions at the conference, don’t forget you can order audio and video of all sessions from SoftConference.

Flying back from an exhausting few days at the National Speakers Convention in New York on Tuesday I was looking forward to catching up on my sleep with a few hours rest in the window seat of JetBlue Flight 95 from JFK to Oakland.

Imagine my surprise when I opened the New York Times that morning to read that the “Happy Jetting” airline had decided to charge customers $7 for pillows and blankets.

Exhausted and intrigued, I decided to hand over my credit card (no cash accepted by the cabin crew) and see what money can buy at 36,000′ these days.

A lot less than I expected.

The pillow and blanket came in a sealed plastic sack which also contained a $5 voucher for Bed, Bath & Beyond. So the net cost is $2 if you remember to cash in the coupon.

The package was branded as a CleanRest by MicronOne and promised “The World’s Cleanest Pillow”. Gary Goldberg the founder of CleanRest tells us on the insert provided with the pillow that “my wife’s vigilance in building the healthiest possible environment for our kids led me to take action … to create a clean, safe, sleep environment for our kids.” Hopefully the Goldberg’s keep their kids off airplanes where recycled air carries far more germs than are ever found in a pillow.

Anyway, the pillow was not worth the money. It’s tiny (10×12) – and does not bridge the gap between the seat-back and the wall which is the main way someone sitting in a window seat can make themselves comfortable.

Obviously, airlines are suffering from high fuel prices. They don’t seem able to raise fares to cover the added cost of flying, so they are reverting to charges for items which they used to provide gratis. One wonders where it will all end. How about a nickel a sheet for loo paper?

Michael writes on the Ragan Communications website about the age disparity between twenty-something political speechwriters and graybeard corporate communications types like me.

Michael and I spoke last week about my experience of the age range in corporate America exec comms departments. He quotes me in the article. One misquote – “I’ve been a corporate communicator for 25, 30 years”. This is simply not the case. I’ve been in the computer business for 25 years. But my early career was spent in technical jobs (database administration and systems engineering). I moved into product training 15 years ago and speechwriting came out of that, but only in the last eight years.

The salary gap seems way overstated. Political speeechwriters might well only get paid $40-50K. But claiming that “A speechwriter for the CEO of even a medium Fortune 500 company might make $250,000” seems way high. Try changing the leading 2 to a 1 and the number makes more sense. At least in my experience. But wait! Maybe I’ve just been grossly underpaid all these years…

Every summer, the best and brightest science and engineering students from across the country and around the world spend a summer interning at Silicon Valley companies. This select bunch of students are mostly post-graduates with a handful of undergraduates. PARC, SAP Labs, Sun Labs, Microsoft Research, Google and HP Labs host a series of visits and social networking events. These events culminate in a visit to HP Labs and a reception for the students.

I helped organize the visit to HP this year and took the opportunity to ask the students where they were from, which company they were interning at and a little about their research interests. To hear what excites the next generation of Silicon Valley scientists and engineers, click on the podcast icon below.

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This month’s Pro-Track profile podcast features an experienced Myers-Briggs expert.

Dan Moirao is an educator of students — from kindergarten through working professionals. He has served as a classroom teacher, site and district administrator in a variety of school settings ranging from rural, to urban and suburban, representing every level of the socio-economic spectrum. His devotion to the importance of the learning and teaching process has been evident throughout his career.

Today, Dan is very much a traveling consultant. While he lives in Danville, with his wife Anita of 29 years, he finds himself traveling to Kentucky, Georgia, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Philadelphia and Minnesota and beyond.

Dan’s passion and work is a style model — the Myers-Briggs. While he started and continues to work with teachers on instructional strategies to increase student achievement, Dan has found his work shift organizational development. He has learned is that professional development for the “workers” isn’t the end — the organization and the systems that propel it are also important.

To hear what he told me about his work with Myers-Briggs and the value he finds in the National Speakers Association Pro-Track program, click on the podcast icon below.

You can contact Dan at TrDan@aol.com

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Wimbledon tennis has concluded for another year, the Tour de France is rolling through the French countryside, the boys of summer are playing on baseball diamonds and the world awaits the start of the Olympics in a few weeks. Sport is filling the airwaves and, as I’ve noted before, is a common topic in business circles.

The proclivity for senior executives to attribute their success in business to lessons learned as a team sports player is discussed by Lucy Kellaway in Monday’s Financial Times.

Kellaway reports that a recent survey of British business leaders found that

Nearly half of the chief executives of the biggest British companies have won awards for their sporting prowess – twice as many as have any academic trophies. Most of them were captain of football or rugby at school or at college and quite a few went on to play for their county.

Executives credit the teamwork learned on the playing field for later business success.

Kellaway is not convinced. In her view, sports encourage delusions of grandeur, a stifling conformity and an inability to communicate clearly:

Sportsmen and CEOs also both make a hash of the Queen’s English. Each generates its own jargon and then feels compelled to borrow the jargon of the other. Sport is responsible for some of the most grating phrases in business, including ballparks, level playing fields, stepping up to the plate, bench strength, getting to first base, raising the bar and playing hardball. Footballers, meanwhile, are starting to talk like management consultants: David Beckham now says “going forward” every time he opens his mouth.

Finally, she points to the problems women have getting ahead in the business-world being exacerbated by the jock culture of boardrooms dominated by the ethos of the locker room.

I’m not a sports fan myself. And look, I’m not a CEO. Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

The saving grace for businessmen using sporting cliches is that they are marginally less offensive than military ones. Despite the fact that the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.

I’ve had a lot of fun working with The Singer’s Gym, a San Francisco based group of musicians and voice coaches who are dedicated to inspired, connected singing. They work with professional and non-professional singers in an environment that allows each singer experience full involvement, spontaneity and vitality in the practice and performance of vocal music. They call this their Gym. They work out in their gym, challenge people, who get stronger — at singing.

Now, as someone who is tone deaf and never been able to carry a tune for more than a couple of bars in my life (maybe why I like singing along with Bob Dylan?) I was not working on my vocal chords with them.

Rather, I helped Ben and the team craft a Vision Statement Movie to express the essence of what they are, and what they offer. I used the technology developed by Malcolm Cohan and the Rocketship. We call it Consensus – offering any group a way to communicate their vision and inspire others to share it. The result is a Vision Statement Movie created by a group. The participants hold a positive vision for a specific outcome, or when a challenge is resolved, or an endeavor realized. Participants volunteer a Brave Statement of their own vision, and the movie is written, compiled and produced as the result of a simple hour-long meeting.

The result can be seen below. Take a look. Compare it to the usual ‘mission statement’ organizations and teams offer to the world. If you like what you see and you’d like to discuss how your team can develop a movie like this, drop me a line.

The New York Times reports that the typical U.S. executive still wastes six weeks a year searching through paper piles and e-mail! Got better things to do with your time?

Since 1988, Eve Abbott has pioneered brain-based productivity systems for executives, managers and business owners. A Brain New Way to Work gets teams working at least 25% more productively through lively programs and practical consultations.

Eve is the author of How to Do Space Age Work with a Stone Age Brain ™. She earned her degree in Sociology and Psychology from the University of California and holds a Lifetime Adult Teaching Credential.

Eve is a popular guest on TV and Radio. Her expertise appears in The New York Times articles and she writes the ‘Business Wise’ column for the nationwide Business Journals.

When speaking, Eve combines her sense of humor with the latest in brain research to guarantee a fun and practical program for conferences ranging from Builder/Architect to Women Leaders 2008.

Eve says “My personal mission is saving every working person in America an hour a day so they have more time for life. My professional objective is converting the 12% of productivity wasted from information overload to your enterprise’s profits, where it belongs.”

S. C. Johnson & Son, Inc., Lotus Construction, Nixon Peabody, LLP and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency choose A Brain New Way to Work’s seminars for solutions to their employee’s challenges.

Watch Eve

As she introduces her topic in this video:

Listen to Eve

As she tells me about her work and how the NSA/NC Pro-Track class is helping her.

To hear my interview with Eve, click on the icon below.

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