Listless

“Content is king!” has been a blogger battle cry for some time now.  With so much information flying from every corner at audiences, attention has become a precious commodity and a powerful currency.*  All bloggers and online info provider (myself included) like to think that our content is high value, high impact, unique, or otherwise…

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Hard work

I’m currently watching yesterday’s episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.  His guest was Bill Clinton, who recently delivered an extraordinary speech at the Democratic National Convention.  Clinton is one of the most highly regarded contemporary public speakers and delivers hundreds of speeches every year. When Jon Steward asked Clinton if he could tell that…

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Winging it

“Hey, we need you to fill a space in our program.  This speaker just backed out, see, and it’s too late to find someone outside the organization to fill their space.  The presentation needs to be related to Topic XYZ.  Don’t worry, you’ll do fine – you’re so good at winging it.” I shuddered every…

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Argument, flawlessly presented

There are few feats of intelligence as beautiful as a well-composed bit of rhetoric.  Today’s bit of Friday silliness gives such a demonstration, definitively settling an age-old debate.  Enjoy! [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyXJ1sAQtaY&w=560&h=315]

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(Hand)Written words

There is something magical about receiving a hand-written note.  Assuming that the content of the note is desirable, they give a sort of warm fuzzy feeling that can only be approximated by flowers or a box of chocolates. As communication now is all about instantaneous delivery, hand-written greetings – especially when delivered by mail – are…

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Information Overload

Let’s start off this post with a quick apology to you, reader, for the gap in entries this last week.  I was somewhat indisposed, being at the hospital with my husband in order to bring this lovely little bundle into the world: All three of us are doing extremely well. I am healing nicely, my…

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Everything that’s old…

Up-cycling, reusing, re-purposing, refinishing, and other activities that take old things and polishes them up into something newly relevant are very, very hot at the moment.   This surge of interest in making use of well-worn objects can be chalked up to a number of factors: frugality movements, tough economies and lower disposable incomes, environmentalism, and…

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Muscle madness

Old Spice: the bodywash that makes my husband stink like a dog in a swamp but that has one of the best advertising departments ever. Here’s one of their latest interactive internet ads.  I’m not even going to try to cleverly tie this to a communication quip.  All I can say is that it made me…

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The chatty chameleon

It helps to be a bit of a social and verbal chameleon.  Matching your language, demeanor, and expression to the expectations of your audience is generally a good thing. Adapting yourself to your audience is not about abandoning your personal style or changing your message to suit someone else’s expectations.  It’s about increasing your personal…

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But how does it sound?

Voice quality is a very, very important thing.  A beautifully timbered voice can make the foolish sound clever.  A juvenile, chirpy tone can make the experienced professional seem like an vacuous twit. And a well-placed voice over can turn a touching scene into this: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfAww-6X2Ig&w=420&h=315] This is an old video, but I laugh myself…

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