On this YouTube Channel, we will share our Big Idea: our personal goal and invite you to participate with us, share your comments and questions and perhaps motivate you to achieve your own Big Idea. We will post an update on our project every Tuesday. We invite your comments and questions about your own Big Idea while you follow ours. We will both reply to all comments and will feature the best questions in our YouTube update videos each week. So click SUBSCRIBE and let’s get started!
The launch of the Mayo615 YouTube Channel Trailer
On this YouTube Channel, we will share our Big Idea: our personal goal and invite you to participate with us, share your comments and questions and perhaps motivate you to achieve your own Big Idea. We will post an update on our project every Tuesday. We invite your comments and questions about your own Big Idea while you follow ours. We will both reply to all comments and will feature the best questions in our YouTube update videos each week.
If You Get Technology “Convergence” Wrong, Nothing Else Matters
I came across this book during my most recent visit to the UBC Vancouver campus. As good as I think this book is at focusing attention, in workbook style, on the importance of market and industry analysis in new venture due diligence, there is an issue that I think is not adequately addressed by any model or theory: not Porter, not STEEP or SWAT. Convergence is the issue.
We can imagine and even potentially envision a very cool business idea, but if the technology to achieve it is not ready, not sufficiently mature, the idea is Dead on Arrival (DOA). I do not mean to pick on young entrepreneurs, but I reviewed a business concept last week that was a superb and compelling idea, but the technology necessary to achieve it simply was not there, either in terms of its capability or its price point. I am confident that it will be there in time, but it is not now. As if to make my point, Apple announced that it was acquiring a company for $20 Million in the exact same technology area: indoor location tracking (no small feat). At this point it is not clear that the acquired company has any extraordinary intellectual property or expertise, and the article primarily focused on the point that this “location identification” technology was “heating up.” It looks like it may be a simple “aquihire.” Global Positioning and geo tagging as in smart mobile phones, radio frequency identification technology (RFID), and inertial guidance are all currently used in various combinations by a host of competitors (too many) to achieve required levels of accuracy, immediacy and cost. A local industrial RFID company has just closed its doors because it simply could not compete and make money. The simple problem was that this company’s idea, as compelling as it was, could not achieve the necessary price point, or possibly would not even work.
So we have the problem of “convergence.” Great idea but the technology simply is not ready….yet.
I have three personal case study examples of the problem of “convergence,” that every potential entrepreneur should study. I have to admit that I was a senior executive at all three of these Silicon Valley companies, one of which actually made it to the NASDAQ exchange. All of them had the “convergence” problem.. Too early for the available technology.
1. Silicon Graphics. Silicon Graphics was founded in the late 1980’s by a pre-eminent Stanford professor, Jim Clark, on the idea that 3D visualization of complex problems would become the next big wave in technology. As a minor side business, it also excelled at computer animation, a growing new market of interest to Steve Jobs and others. It is now obvious that Clark was onto something that has now finally become the Next Big Thing, but at that time, the available technology simply made it too difficult and too expensive. Silicon Graphics no longer exists. Silicon Graphics crown jewel was its enabling software code, the SGI Graphics Library. It does still exist in open form.
2. iBEAM Broadcasting. iBEAM was the precursor of YouTube, but too far ahead of its time. the founder, Mike Bowles, a former MIT professor, envisioned streaming media across the Internet, but this was in 1999. Intel, Fox Entertainment, Reuters, Bloomberg, Microsoft were all involved, some investing significant sums in the company. We tried mightily to make it happen for Mike, but there were technology convergence problems. The Internet at that time simply did not have sufficient reliable broadband capability. In 1999 the vast majority of Internet users still used a dial-up connection. The company, with help from Microsoft and its other big pockets investors turned to satellite transmission, which is immensely expensive. I did learn a lot about the satellite business. Great idea, way too early, and the company failed early.
3. P-Cube. In 2001, I was approached by prominent friends at two downtown Palo Alto venture capital firms to consider joining an Israeli startup in which they had invested. The idea was wildly popular at the time….traffic policy management and so-called Internet traffic shaping. I enthusiastically joined the new company and became its first U.S. based employee. The compelling idea was simple, make money by charging for bandwidth. The background idea was to enable deep IP packet payload snooping to prioritize traffic, but also for its political potential. This is the technology that Dick Cheney employed after 9/11 to snoop all Internet traffic. The only problem was that the technology was simply not yet ready. The P-Cube Internet traffic switch was a 24 layer printed circuit board (hideously difficult to fabricate), with 5 IBMPowerPC chips, 1 Gig of onboard memory (at the time bleeding edge, but today laptops have more memory), a host of “application specific integrated circuits” (ASIC), and to top it off a proprietary software language to program the box. In the end, P-Cube burned up $100 Million in venture capital, and I had great fun traveling the World selling it, but the box never worked, largely because the technology simply was not there.. P-Cube’s assets were bought by Cisco Systems and t0day such capability is built into the boxes of Cisco System, Juniper Networks and others.
The key takeaway lesson from this: do not underestimate the importance of technology convergence with a great idea.
In an extraordinary turn of events, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission appears set to implement strong new rules, later this month to enforce Net Neutrality on the Internet. If the new rules are implemented, it will have major favorable implications for future global Internet policy with the International Telecommunications Union in Geneva, Switzerland. This means simply that all traffic on the Internet will be treated equally and fairly, which is one of the founding principles of the Internet, since its invention by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Vin Cerf and others back in the 1980’s.
Rule Would Ban Practice Known as Paid Prioritization, Say Sources
U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman, Tom Wheeler
In an extraordinary turn of events, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission appears set to implement strong new rules, later this month to enforce Net Neutrality on the Internet. If the new rules are implemented, it will have major favorable implications for future global Internet policy with the International Telecommunications Union in Geneva, Switzerland. This means simply that all traffic on the Internet will be treated equally and fairly, which is one of the founding principles of the Internet, since its invention by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Vin Cerf and others back in the 1980’s. It is the same for voice telecommunications the World over. The current problem has been the preference of large corporate Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) to charge preferentially for priority access, or “paid prioritization.” The potential for abuse by corporations is obvious. Comcast, one of the largest “carriers with content,” has been cited for the potential to prioritize its NBC content over other competitor content, if Net Neutrality were not enforced. Netflix had already capitulated to Comcast and entered into what is known as a paid “peering agreement,” to insure priority of Netflix streaming content. If the FCC Title II rules are implemented, the Comcast/Netflix agreement would likely become null and void.
REBLOGGED from The Wall Street Journal
By GAUTHAM NAGESH
Updated Feb. 2, 2015 4:18 p.m. ET
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler intends to seek a significant expansion of his agency’s authority to regulate mobile and fixed broadband providers, a move that would fully embrace the principle known as “net neutrality.”
According to multiple people familiar with the agency’s plan, Mr. Wheeler intends to change the way both mobile and fixed broadband firms are regulated. Rather than being lightly regulated information services, they would become like telecommunications companies, which would subject them to greater regulation on everything from pricing to how they deploy their networks.
A key element of the rule would be a ban on broadband providers blocking, slowing down or speeding up specific websites in exchange for payment, a practice known as paid prioritization, these people say.
Mr. Wheeler’s expected proposal tracks closely with President’s Barack Obama’s Nov. 10 statement, in which he called for the “strongest possible rules” to protect net neutrality, the principle that all Internet traffic should be treated equally. That represents a major shift from the chairman’s initial plan, which would have allowed some paid prioritization.
In his statement, the president called for Mr. Wheeler to classify broadband providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act, a move that came after months of campaigning by activists, Web startups and others.
The proposal would also give the FCC the authority to regulate deals on the back-end portion of the Internet, where broadband providers such as Comcast Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc. pick up traffic from big content companies such as Netflix Inc. and network middlemen like Level 3 Communications Inc. The FCC would decide whether to allow these so-called paid peering deals based on whether it finds them just and reasonable, the standard under Title II.
A federal court struck down the FCC’s most-recent set of net neutrality rules in January 2014, sending the issue back to the agency for the third time. Wireless and broadband industry officials have indicated they plan to sue again if the FCC moves ahead with Title II, which they believe would saddle them with outdated regulations and depress investment in upgrading networks.
It remains unclear how the proposed rules will treat other practices besides paid prioritization, such as zero-rated mobile plans that let users access only a small number of apps without hurting their monthly data allowance. The FCC is also expected to exempt broadband providers from the bulk of Title II regulations, in areas including what they charge their customers, through a process known as forbearance.
Mr. Wheeler is expected to circulate his proposal on Thursday, with a vote scheduled for the FCC’s open meeting on Feb. 26. A majority of the FCC’s five commissioners must approve the rules for them to take effect.
It appears to me that the original vision and promise of the Internet, referred to by many as Digital Utopianism, is at severe risk of deteriorating into a “balkanized” World Wide Web.
National and political Internet barriers, censorship and ubiquitous surveillance seem to be the emerging new reality. Notable digital luminaries the likes of Vin Cerf and Bill Gates have been questioned on this point, and both have expressed no major concern about deterioration of the freedom of the Internet or with the original Utopian vision. The argument is that the World Wide Web cannot be effectively blocked or censored. As a long time Silicon Valley high tech executive, I understand this optimistic view, but the facts on the ground are now providing serious evidence that the Internet is under attack, and may not survive unless there is a significant shift in these new trends.
It appears to me that the original vision and promise of the Internet, referred to by many as Digital Utopianism, is at severe risk of deteriorating into a “balkanized” and severely impaired World Wide Web.
Internet barriers, censorship, protectionist Internet policy, and ubiquitous surveillance seem to be the emerging new reality. Notable digital luminaries the likes of Vin Cerf and Bill Gates have been questioned on this point, and both have expressed no major concern about deterioration of the freedom of the Internet or with the original Utopian vision. The argument is that the World Wide Web cannot be effectively blocked or censored. Google would probably respond that their “loon balloons” could simply be launched to counter censorship. As a long time Silicon Valley high tech executive, I understand this optimistic view, but the facts on the ground are now providing serious evidence that the Internet is under attack, and may not survive unless there is a significant shift in these new trends.
This week alone, Turkey’s Erdogan has tried to block both Twitter and YouTube to prevent Turks from viewing evidence of his corrupt government. This morning’s New York Times reports Edward Snowden’s latest revelation. While the U.S. government and media were investigating and publicly reporting on Chinese government Internet espionage and Chinese network equipment manufacturer Huawei, the NSA, the British GCHQ and Canada’s Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) , were all collaborating, doing exactly the same thing. The hypocrisy and irony of this is not lost on either the Chinese or the Internet community. CBS 60 Minutes reported on the Chinese espionage, but has been essentially silent on NSA’s own transgressions. 60 Minutes even broadcast a report that NSA metadata was essentially harmless, which has now been shown to be false. The 60 Minutes objective reporting problem is the canary in the coal mine of the corporate takeover of media and the Web. Protectionist policies in various countries targeted against Google, Microsoft and others are emerging. One of the many negative effects of the NSA revelations was the announcement this week that the United States was giving up control of the International Committee for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which essentially sets Internet traffic policy. Finally, this week, Netflix spoke out forcefully against the “peering agreement” it was blackmailed into signing with Comcast to insure “quality of service” (QOS) for Netflix programming to the edges of the Web.
I recently came across Professor Fred Turner, Professor of Communication at Stanford. It has been a revelation for me. His book, “From Counterculture to Cyberculture’is an acclaimed milestone work. Turner has articulated the World I lived in the counterculture of the 1960’s and in the early Silicon Valley. His work explaining the evolution from the “counterculture” of the 1960’s to the emerging new “cyberculture” of the late 1980’s and 1990’s is an excellent record of that time in northern California. This was the World of Steve Jobs at that time and his personal evolvement to a digital Utopian. It is detailed in Jobs biography, and in Jobs wonderful Stanford University 2005 commencement speech, in which he also acknowledged the importance of Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth Catalog. This was also my countercultural World as a Communications student at San Jose State at that time, in the heart of the Silicon Valley, and subsequent high tech career, beginning at Intel Corporation. But even Professor Turner has expressed his own ambivalence about the future direction of the Web, though only from the standpoint of less worrying lack of diversity of Web communities. My concern is much more deeply based on current evidence and much more ominous.
Fred Turner, Stanford Professor of Communication – Counterculture to Cyberculture
Stewart Brand, the father of the Whole Earth Catalog and the original digital utopia visionary, has been rethinking its basic concepts. Brand has come around 180 degrees from environmental Utopianism based on “back to the land,” and is now embracing the future importance of urban enclaves. While this new urban view is now a widely held idea by many futurists, it can also be viewed as another facet of the end of digital utopia. This TEDTalk by Brand lays out his new vision. Where we go from here is anyone’s guess.
Joel Peterson, Stanford Business School Professor, and Chairman of JetBlue Airways, is the author of the LinkedIn post below. My MGMT 481 Strategy students will recall his YouTube lecture on corporate culture shown to our class. In this piece, Professor Peterson emphasizes the importance of preparing in advance for your interviews, and responding intelligently to the inevitable question from your interviewer, “So, do you have any quesitons for me?”
When it comes to job interviews, preparation is key. But it’s not always easy for prospective employees to show interviewers who they are, and how well they’ve done their homework. The best chance comes when you’re asked the inevitable – but tricky – open-ended question: “What questions do you have?”
This is an interviewer’s chance to find out how much research you’ve done, how self-absorbed you are, and where your priorities lie.
There are good and bad ways to respond. If you want to mess up what might have been an otherwise successful interview, be sure to ask one of the following:
1. “What will my salary be?” — followed by the even worse, “And how often do you give raises?
2. “What are your policies regarding vacation, time off, and breaks?”
3. “Can you tell me about your healthcare plan? Will my spouse be covered?”
The first questions reflect a “what’s in it for me?” attitude. The second two are the types of questions more appropriate for human resources than for your valuable time with a decision-maker. There’s plenty of time to learn about these issues if an offer is made.
So instead of asking questions about you, try asking a few about the place to which you may be devoting a great deal of your future time and energy:
1. “How can new employees become familiar with, and begin to contribute to, the culture you’ve developed here?
2. “What’s the most important way that your company differentiates itself from competitors?” (Focus the question on the particular industry you’re in, showing that you’re knowledgeable about the company and its sector.)
3. “What are a few of the most important challenges that the industry is facing, and how is your company going to approach them?
4. “What might I do to add the greatest value to the business?” — followed by, “What kinds of things can I do to prepare myself for the job?”
These questions reveal three important things: that you know the company has a unique culture; that you understand that a successful business is ultimately about offering something unique to the market, and that you’re already imagining yourself as part of a winning team.
If such an open-ended question scares you, don’t let it. If you’re ready, you can transform a challenge into an opportunity, and either get the job offer or get called back for a second interview — where your interviewers will remember how prepared you were for the toughest question of all.
The Wall Street Journal has highlighted this commencement speech, and I thought it so good, I had to share it here with my UBC Management students. It is at least as good as Steve Jobs 2005 Stanford commencement address, and it was also given in the same year, 2005.
The Wall Street Journal has highlighted this commencement speech, and I thought it so good, I had to share it here with my UBC Management students. It is at least as good as Steve Jobs 2005 Stanford commencement address, and it was also given in the same year, 2005.
Ironically, this commencement speech is by a young novelist you probably never heard of (David Foster Wallace), to the graduating class of the small private, liberal arts(Uh oh, there’s that liberal word again!) college, Kenyon College, in Gambier, Ohio.
David Foster Wallace, Novelist, Deceased
It was given in the same year, 2005, as the now legendary Steve Jobs commencement speech at Stanford. Wallace’s commencement speech is easily as profound as Job’s. Jobs died of cancer. Wallace committed suicide in 2008, three years after this speech. But what is important is that despite Wallace’s persistent depression, his speech is a rousing affirmation of life, and being responsible for all of your decisions, and not shirking from your existential angst, at being completely and independently responsible for everything you do in your life. Following is an edited 9 minute YouTube video of Wallace’s address. The full 22 minute video of his commencement address is available on YouTube for those who wish to have the full experience.
…and just for the record, this is another powerful example of a great public speaking event.
I came across this book during my most recent visit to the UBC Vancouver campus. As good as I think this book is at focusing attention, in workbook style, on the importance of market and industry analysis, there is an issue that I think is not adequately addressed by any model or theory: not Porter, not STEEP or SWAT. Convergence is the issue.
If You Get Technology “Convergence” Wrong, Nothing Else Matters
I came across this book during my most recent visit to the UBC Vancouver campus. As good as I think this book is at focusing attention, in workbook style, on the importance of market and industry analysis in new venture due diligence, there is an issue that I think is not adequately addressed by any model or theory: not Porter, not STEEP or SWAT. Convergence is the issue.
We can imagine and even potentially envision a very cool business idea, but if the technology to achieve it is not ready, not sufficiently mature, the idea is Dead on Arrival (DOA). I do not mean to pick on young entrepreneurs, but I reviewed a business concept last week that was a superb and compelling idea, but the technology necessary to achieve it simply was not there, either in terms of its capability or its price point. I am confident that it will be there in time, but it is not now. As if to make my point, Apple announced that it was acquiring a company for $20 Million in the exact same technology area: indoor location tracking (no small feat). At this point it is not clear that the acquired company has any extraordinary intellectual property or expertise, and the article primarily focused on the point that this “location identification” technology was “heating up.” It looks like it may be a simple “aquihire.” Global Positioning and geo tagging as in smart mobile phones, radio frequency identification technology (RFID), and inertial guidance are all currently used in various combinations by a host of competitors (too many) to achieve required levels of accuracy, immediacy and cost. A local industrial RFID company has just closed its doors because it simply could not compete and make money. The simple problem was that this company’s idea, as compelling as it was, could not achieve the necessary price point, or possibly would not even work.
So we have the problem of “convergence.” Great idea but the technology simply is not ready….yet.
I have three personal case study examples of the problem of “convergence,” that every potential entrepreneur should study. I have to admit that I was a senior executive at all three of these Silicon Valley companies, one of which actually made it to the NASDAQ exchange. All of them had the “convergence” problem.. Too early for the available technology.
1. Silicon Graphics. Silicon Graphics was founded in the late 1980’s by a pre-eminent Stanford professor, Jim Clark, on the idea that 3D visualization of complex problems would become the next big wave in technology. As a minor side business, it also excelled at computer animation, a growing new market of interest to Steve Jobs and others. It is now obvious that Clark was onto something that has now finally become the Next Big Thing, but at that time, the available technology simply made it too difficult and too expensive. Silicon Graphics no longer exists. Silicon Graphics crown jewel was its enabling software code, the SGI Graphics Library. It does still exist in open form.
2. iBEAM Broadcasting. iBEAM was the precursor of YouTube, but too far ahead of its time. the founder, Mike Bowles, a former MIT professor, envisioned streaming media across the Internet, but this was in 1999. Intel, Fox Entertainment, Reuters, Bloomberg, Microsoft were all involved, some investing significant sums in the company. We tried mightily to make it happen for Mike, but there were technology convergence problems. The Internet at that time simply did not have sufficient reliable broadband capability. In 1999 the vast majority of Internet users still used a dial-up connection. The company, with help from Microsoft and its other big pockets investors turned to satellite transmission, which is immensely expensive. I did learn a lot about the satellite business. Great idea, way too early, and the company failed early.
3. P-Cube. In 2001, I was approached by prominent friends at two downtown Palo Alto venture capital firms to consider joining an Israeli startup in which they had invested. The idea was wildly popular at the time….traffic policy management and so-called Internet traffic shaping. I enthusiastically joined the new company and became its first U.S. based employee. The compelling idea was simple, make money by charging for bandwidth. The background idea was to enable deep IP packet payload snooping to prioritize traffic, but also for its political potential. This is the technology that Dick Cheney employed after 9/11 to snoop all Internet traffic. The only problem was that the technology was simply not yet ready. The P-Cube Internet traffic switch was a 24 layer printed circuit board (hideously difficult to fabricate), with 5 IBMPowerPC chips, 1 Gig of onboard memory (at the time bleeding edge, but today laptops have more memory), a host of “application specific integrated circuits” (ASIC), and to top it off a proprietary software language to program the box. In the end, P-Cube burned up $100 Million in venture capital, and I had great fun traveling the World selling it, but the box never worked, largely because the technology simply was not there.. P-Cube’s assets were bought by Cisco Systems and t0day such capability is built into the boxes of Cisco System, Juniper Networks and others.
The key takeaway lesson from this: do not underestimate the importance of technology convergence with a great idea.
I started this post to make a relative mundane point for UBC Management students about the importance of making their presentations easily understandable, particularly when they involve lots of numbers or spreadsheet data. But after mulling over the post for a few days, I realized that this is a much bigger story.
I started this post to make a relative mundane point for UBC Management students about the importance of making their presentations easily understandable, particularly when they involve lots of numbers or spreadsheet data. But after mulling over the post for a few days, I realized that this is a much bigger story.
Further back in my career than I prefer to admit, I had the exceptional opportunity to work with the founders of Silicon Graphics, Jim Clark, (who later went on to start Netscape with Mark Andreeson),Mike Ramsay and Jim Barton (who later startedTiVo, the original PVR company). The premise of SGI was making 3D visualization ubiquitous in engineering, complex simulation, and computer animation. As often happens with the convergence of technology and great ideas, SGI was well ahead of its time. Disney loved it but the big engineering customers were not over the moon. The concept of 3D visualization of complex data was compelling. Extraordinary examples of SGI visualization of tornados, molecular modelling and animation can still be found on YouTube. But the chip technology required to achieve it, MIPSRISC (reduced instruction set computing) microprocessors) at that time, was not ready for prime time. Both MIPS and SGI are now long gone, and only SGI’s graphics computing instruction set, known as OpenGL survives. But the era of Big Data and Visual Analytics is just beginning to emerge into the mainstream, as the technology has fully caught up. If you have not seen this TED Talk video by Hans Rosling, it is only 4 minutes long, but it explains where we are going with Big Data, and how interpreting Big Data visually is already making a major impact on our thinking. I have also included a reblogged post from the HBR Network which I think you will find is related to this much bigger concept.
Projecting your data on slides puts you at an immediate disadvantage: When you’re giving a presentation, people can’t pull the numbers in for a closer look or take as much time to examine them as they can with a report or a white paper. That’s why you need to direct their attention. What do you want people to get from your data? What’s the message you want them to take away.
Data slides aren’t really about the data. They’re about the meaning of the data. And it’s up to you to make that meaning clear before you click away. Otherwise, the audience won’t process — let alone buy — your argument.
Take this table, for instance:
It’s confusing — especially if you project it for five seconds and then move on. And even if you leave it up for five minutes while you talk, anyone who’s struggling to derive meaning from it won’t be paying much attention to what you have to say. They’ll be too busy squinting from their seats, trying to navigate all those heavy grid lines that give every single cell equal weight. It’s not at all clear where the eye should go. Your audience won’t know what direction to read — horizontally or vertically — or what conclusions to draw. Though the Grand Total line is emphasized, is that really the main point you want to convey?
Now let’s look at the data presented more simply. Say you’ve identified three business units with potential for sustained growth in Europe. By eliminating the dense matrix and connecting only key numbers to a pie with leader lines, you remove clutter that distracts from your message. And notice the clear hierarchy of information: You can highlight important pieces of the pie by rendering them in color and their corresponding annotations in large, blue type. Other sections recede to the background, where they belong, with their neutral shades and small, gray labels.
But pie charts can be tricky for an audience to process when segments are similar in size — it’s hard to distinguish between them at a glance. If you’re running into that problem, consider displaying the same data in a linear way. In this bar chart, for example, you draw attention to the poorest-performing unit, a point that got lost in the pie:
These few tricks will help audiences see what you want them to see in your data. By focusing their attention on the message behind the numbers, not on the numbers themselves, you can create presentations that resonate with them and compel them to act.
My UBC Faculty of Management students will recall that I said that Bill Clinton’s speech to the Democratic National Convention was memorable. I also predicted that Clinton’s speech would be remembered and analyzed as one of the great communication events in recent years. Now that the dust has settled and the smoke cleared from the U.S. Presidential election, it is also much clearer what was important and what was not. It is even more clear now, with the passage of time, and the elimination of all the emotion. Below is the Wall Street Journal’s glowing assessment of Clinton’s speech. Coming from the WSJ, one must admit that their opinion carries even greater weight because a Rupert Murdoch owned publication is not expected to show much admiration for anything to the left of Karl Rove.
My UBC Faculty of Management students will recall that I said that Bill Clinton’s speech to the Democratic National Convention was memorable. I also predicted that Clinton’s speech would be remembered and analyzed as one of the great communication events in recent years. Now that the dust has settled and the smoke cleared from the U.S. Presidential election, it is also much clearer what was important and what was not. It is even more clear now, with the passage of time, and the elimination of all the emotion. Below is the Wall Street Journal’s glowing assessment of Clinton’s speech. Coming from the WSJ, one must admit that their opinion carries even greater weight because a Rupert Murdoch owned publication is not expected to show much admiration for anything to the left of Karl Rove.
Students of rhetoric and public speaking everywhere should review Clinton’s Tour de Force for gems they can use in their own presentations.
Wall Street Journal Assessment of Bill Clinton Democratic National Convention Speech
John Stewart of the Daily Show had the great good fortune to interview Clinton following the speech, and did us all a favor by asking him, how he did it. The result was a superb explanation of planning and practicing a communications event. If you can find that John Stewart Daily Show video interview with Clinton (September 21, 2012), it is priceless (it is not easy to view in Canada because of copyright and licensing restrictions).
Failing that, watch Clinton’s speech in its entirety on YouTube, and learn.
Bill Clinton Speech Nominating Barak Obama at the 2012 Democratic National Convention
9 Ways To Deliver An Award Winning Speech
Word of mouth marketing can be one of the most powerful marketing tactics. Think about it – it costs nothing and every person who hears about your product is a potential genuine referral. Sometimes you are asked to give business presentations to a group of people interested in your ideas. It can be very difficult to put your ideas into words that your listeners will relate to and appreciate.
I have discovered that there is a checklist of guidelines. I need to make sure my listeners are able to follow along with me and capture my enthusiasm as I deliver a speech selling my ideas. Read on for this “Award Winning, Speech Giving Checklist“.
1.Relate: Make your speech relate to its audience. Often you will be giving a presentation to a class of people who come from all kinds of different backgrounds. Find a common point they all have in common. Alternatively, you can find a common aspect of life they will all have to face some day. Use that as the grounds for your presentation and refer back to it more than once.
2.Preview/Review: When you’re giving a presentation, having pictures is great but what if you have no access to pictures or any visual board? A wrap-up at the end – (i.e. a recapitulation of “what we just saw”) acts in a similar way. It helps everyone keep on track and get a better overall understanding of what you are talking about.
3.Covering your Tracks: This point is more about unity than covering your tracks. When you speak to your class, turn the feared Q & A session at the end into an open floor discussion with everyone. If you don’t know the answer to a question, invite other people to answer. It’s not about what you know; it’s about what people you know know!
4.The Poor Presentation. Everyone in life has a purpose. If you sit through a boring presentation, take note of what aspects of it are boring. Are you making these same mistakes? If you are, reexamine your speech and put yourself in your audience’s place. What would you rather hear sitting with the audience?
5.Looking Professional: Probably the reason why dressing up in a shirt and tie is so effective when you give a conference or speech is because no one else does it. Being one of the few who goes out of their way to look good shows that you care about your appearance and reputation. Moreover, it demonstrates enthusiasm and confidence – two qualities that you cannot do without, especially when teaching people something they assume you are the expert in.
6.Confidence: There are hundreds if not thousands of different ways to acquire a feeling of 100 percent confidence as you walk on the stage or in front of your class. Some tell themselves they are the best repeatedly in their minds. Others study for hours and hours until they have convinced themselves or until they have mastered the material they wish to present. If you give a speech and you fumble because you’re nervous, you can get rid of this by doing the following:
Identify the root cause for the fumbling. This is usually fear, however you need to be certain that you recognise where it is coming from. For example, it could be fear that you are not good enough, or fear that you will make a mistake, or fear of what others will think.
Next replace the root fear with its polar opposite. If you are afraid of what people think, remind yourself that what they think is none of your business. If you feel that you are not good enough, remember that we are all unique and have different special abilities in different areas. If you are afraid of making a mistake, focus very hard on what you are saying and practice! Practice! Practice!
Think positively! Visualise and believe in yourself as a vehicle that will allow you to attain your inner most desires.
7.Enthusiasm: Half of the audience thinks you are waving your hands too much, the other half feel you are not into your speech enough. What do you do? Get excited. Engage your audience by asking them questions and crack a joke while you’re at it if the context allows (this tends to reduce tension). This builds momentum, which puts you in a complete feeling of joy. No one will notice the annoying details if you are giving them an experience to remember.
8.Test-Run: Doing a test run with the equipment you will be using can be very rewarding. Avoid possible difficulties/embarrassments that increase the level of stress on your presentation day. You will also want to use the opportunity to proof-read your presentation to to make sure the text is legible on the background of your slides.
9. My last point is called “Journey” because it is the journey that is the reward, not the end, and not the beginning. As you take your audience through your presentation, you are guiding them through a journey. Hand-feed them all the way, and make sure everything is very well explained. Remember that your presentation is a tool to convey your message, not the object of your presentation. Do not look back at the screen or down at your monitor. Do not read of your slides either – your audience can read off the slides. If you are presenting to 30 people or less, make eye contact with everyone. If you’re presenting to a larger group it is ok to look above the crowd’s head, since eye contact isn’t really possible. One or two large images, key points and “sound bites” will help the audience to remember things you said and to follow you through the journey of your presentation.
And that’s all there is to it! Imagine yourself being electrocuted – you are excited – this will create a contagious smile and energy to flow around the room.
As many of my colleagues and students know, student cyber skills are one of my big passions. Having been incredibly fortunate to be thrown into the whirlwind of Intel and Silicon Valley, I watched as the local secondary schools and universities responded to this. By the 1980’s the University of California system was requiring UNIX skills (the Berkeley version, of course) of all undergraduates, which later morphed into HTML Web design skill requirements. I am very gratified to learn that our Computer Science faculty is already focused on providing similar courses with a view to making them part of the curriculum for all undergraduates.
Code.org the new non-profit aimed at encouraging computer science education launched last month by entrepreneur and investor brothers Ali and Hadi Partovi, has assembled an all-star group of the world’s most well-known and successful folks with programming skills to talk about how learning to code has changed their lives — and isn’t quite as hard as people might think.
mayo615 