As a public speaker, you’ll want your audience to understand you. You’ll want to be clear. To gain insight about your speech clarity, try this insightful and easy exercise. Take the one-minute “speech pace” exercise I posted last week. Then, upload your one-minute video sample to YouTube. Within a few moments of uploading your video, YouTube …

I designed an exercise to give public speaking students insight into the concept of pace. If you’re curious about your own speaking pace, you can complete this exercise in minutes. Try it alone, or as part of a class (or party?) activity. Step One: The script below contains 170 words. Read it to yourself, so …

Mastodon? Mastodon? Do we really need another social network? And do we really need to name it Mastodon? That’s hard for people to spell off the top of their heads. If you’re wondering why people are talking about Mastodon and what it looks like, I give you a glib and superficial glance at this open …

Stock photos pretty much suck. Perhaps they had their time and place, but their moment has passed. After a few years of looking at your friend’s photos on Instagram and Facebook, your eyes have been accustomed to seeing real people doing real activities. In contrast, stock photos of people faking their emotions doesn’t quite resonate …

Throwback Thursday… In 2005, Merv Griffin said he wrote the Jeopardy! theme song in under a minute. “That little 30 seconds has made me a fortune, millions,” he said. How much exactly? Somewhere between 70 and 80 million. And that was ten years ago. Let’s pretend it took you 30 seconds to click through and read this …

Back in 2007, I quickly tossed up a YouTube instructional video. It took me about a half hour to make the 4:46 minute video. Today, the video will reach its 2 millionth view. But it’s not a viral video. It’s not hip or trendy. It didn’t get a big spike in viewership and then go …

I came across the words smetiquette and framily for the first time in January. I didn’t need to look these words up: I knew what they meant instantly and intuitively. Smetiquette is a portmanteau: a mashup of the phrase social media (SM) and etiquette. Framily is Sprint’s marketing mashup: it means “Friends and Family”. We …

This morning, a company rep told me, “”Customer satisfaction is our number one priority.” I laughed, because no human being actually talks like that, right? Clearly, he was badly coached. Stilted words guaranteed a clumsy delivery. This turned into an awkward, laugh-out-loud moment. Later this afternoon, I worked with another service. “Customer service is our …

You can ask Google almost anything. But at the moment, you have to use your words. Today, I can’t show Google a photo of an unknown thing and ask, “What is this thing?” For such queries, social search might be a better option. You can post a photo on your blog, on Twitter, on Facebook, …

True story: I haven’t formally interviewed for a job since 1999. So when a local university called to ask if I could conduct a training session about interviewing skills, I politely declined. I haven’t interviewed for a real job since 1999. I don’t feel qualified to speak to a modern audience about interviewing for a …