Archive for the ‘Tips & tricks’ Category

Here’s a simple way to share secret information with others.

I enjoy espionage fiction, in film, books and on TV. It’s a pure escape from reality, which is not to say that I don’t learn from it. Take, for example, “tradecraft,” the label for all those spy tricks. I know how to follow someone, how to lose a follower, how to use a dead drop and how to change my identity and disappear.

Here’s how to communicate secretly and securely with one or more other people: Create an email account with an online service, like Gmail or Yahoo. You and your associates know the log in ID and the password. You write messages but you don’t send them; instead, you save them as drafts. Your associate reads the drafts when they log into the account and permanently deletes the messages. Nothing is ever transmitted and, even if the account is hacked, there’s nothing there to read.

Happy to share something so useful.

Attending a couple recent conferences I concluded that, rather than enhancing communication, Powerpoint impedes it in sometimes-fatal ways. When I started writing this post, it was going to have a series of tips on how to make better Powerpoints. Then I thought I was going to ask you to abandon it completely. Now, though, I just want you to stop using Powerpoint as a verb and instead use it as a noun.

The presentations have overwhelmed the content; no, they have usurped it. They have become the very purpose of the session: I Powerpoint therefore I am.

Powerpoint makes people with little artistic ability think they are artists. Hey, they chose a colorful background and a creative font! They used dissolves. They found a cute caricature; never mind the fact that they had to revise their script to rationalize the picture. They Powerpointed!

Public speaking is story telling. Your objective is to make the audience believe or feel or do something. Even if you are presenting mind-numbingly dry technical information, you still want them to at least exclaim “Aha!” at the end of your talk, if not write you a check.

Because it’s a story, a presentation needs an arc: A beginning, a crisis, a dénouement and a conclusion. Powerpoint slides trudge along at the same tedious pace, sabotaging the rhythmic changes and drama that make your story compelling. Nobody ever complained that a speaker was too entertaining.

And while we’re talking about drama, why are you standing off to the side of the room hiding behind a podium while that projection screen hogs the spotlight? You are the star. Don’t share the honor. Any actor will tell you that downstage center is the place to be.

I think the problem is that, as speakers plan their presentations, they start not from the story but from the Powerpoint. They do Powerpoint, not persuasion. If you’ll promise me that you’ll knock it off and write your story first, I might allow you to use Powerpoint as a noun: As a tool to deliver images that explain, expand and enhance your story.

You don’t need a fancy template. You don’t need a continuous stream of slides. Maybe you only need three or four images that you call up when a picture really will replace a thousand words.

That’s easier said than done, because relevant, evocative images are hard or expensive to create. If you want to take viewers’ breath away when they see the scope of your factory, you’re going to need a photo. Shot from a helicopter. If you’re going to show illustrations – maps, artists’ renderings, site plans – they have to be well-executed to begin with because, if they’re bad, they’ll be worse when they’re 10 feet tall instead of 10 inches. One dramatic pie chart is better than a dozen wishy washy ones and those created in Excel look like it. What story does the picture tell that words cannot? Is it therefore obvious that slides with words on them are equally limiting and pretty much useless?

Here’s a parenthetical reason to use Powerpoint as a noun: Murphy, who correctly said that, if anything can go wrong, it will. The projector bulb burns out, the technician shows up with an immobilizing hangover, your computer rewards your optimism with a blue screen of death, the lights in the room either can’t be dimmed enough for slides to show up or is so dim that you can’t see your notes. If you were planning to Powerpoint (verb), you’re dead. If you were planning to Powerpoint (noun) the show will go on.

For grins, here’s a site with some examples of spectacularly bad Powerpoint slides.

Don’t be overwhelmed by this list of 30 tasks to “improve” your social media profile (and smartphone use).  I did three of them and am positively giddy with self-congratulation. Here are my accomplishments:

Day 8: Start segmenting your Facebook friends. This series was published in 2010, so some of it is a bit outdated; however this piece of advice presages Facebook’s recent grouping improvements and the advent of Google Groups. I do want to connect with clients and journalists who are my friends on Facebook but I don’t want them to know everything. There are updates I only share with the theatrical community. Only my women friends would be interested in that new mascara (OK, some of the men, too. You know who you are.)

Day 10: Lock your phone already. I didn’t even need a separate app on my Android phone. Go to home screen/menu/settings/security/change screen lock. A refinement: Clean your screen regularly, because the swipe path is a visible smudged line.

Day 23: Switch to Firefox or Chrome. Firefox offers supreme customizability. Chrome is clean and fast: Type a URL into the address bar and it’ll take you there or enter words or a phrase and it will initiate a Google search.

Here’s my additional tip, for Android users: Move as many of your applications as possible onto the SD card. Go to home screen/settings/applications/manage applications (be sure you click “all” at the top of the screen). When you click on each app, you may see a button that says “Move to SD card.” If you don’t see that option, it’s because that app must run in the phone’s memory.

 Got tips? Share them as a comment on this post!

“What would you do with an employee in your sales, public relations, marketing or advertising department who, on a daily basis, damages your company’s image by misrepresenting its goals and mission through misguided communication?” asks Mike Brian, partner at Salt Lake City-based Penna Power Brian Haynes.  Brian’s white paper suggests that you create a job description for your website and conduct a regular performance evaluation.

I’ve tried over the years to use Outlook to manage my tasks, but never successfully.  I want to be able to organize my tasks by due date, priority and/or client.  I don’t really need to be able to share them with others.  Recently I decided to switch to an independent, web-based task manager.  I started with Wunderlist but it didn’t let me alphabetize by category and the screen display was fussy.  In his entertaining and useful presentation at the 2011 Orgpro conference, Sterling Raphael of Avectra mentioned Remember the Milk and I’m sold.  The display is clean, it lets me categorize and tag tasks and share them if I want.  While, for now, I continue to use Outlook’s calendar and email client, I could integrate Remember the Milk with Google, if I so choose.

I switched from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser years ago. When my Mozilla Firefox web browser started doing squirrely things (like crashing Microsoft Outlook), I moved to Google’s Chrome and I am loving it.  It’s clean and fast.

I recently started using Better Facebook, a browser extension which adds some desirable features to the way Facebook appears.  For example, have you ever signed up for an event and then been unable to find the information because you couldn’t remember the exact name of the event?  Better Facebook remembers and shows all my events in one place.  Anyway, Better Facebook doesn’t even offer a version for Internet Explorer.

“IE is a bad browser,” their website says. “Do not use it. It is most vulnerable to viruses and spyware, and it lags behind most other browsers in capabilities. Seriously. Switch to Google Chrome at least!”

Sharing Android apps makes me feel a little bit like being invited to enter that clubhouse with the sign on the door that says “No gurlz alowed.”  It seems like that platform appeals more to guys – or maybe it’s just the gee-whiz sharing of apps (Angry Birds, anyone?) that is so connected to the “Y” chromosome.

This summer I’ll coordinate the first-ever app swap meet at the Michigan Society of Association Executive’s Orgpro conference at Shanty Creek Resort.  It’s a crowdsourcing session.  In the first part, attendees will share their favorite PC and Internet software.  In the second part, Android, Apple and Blackberry smart phone users will cluster to share their favorite phone applications.

So now I’ll do a little crowdsourcing right here.  Comment on this article to share the technology tools that make your life easier, more productive or more fun.

In exchange, here’s a link to Kim Komando’s favorite phone apps.

The October 24, 2010 New York Times did a Q&A with Kenneth Feld, chairman and CEO of Feld Entertainment, producers of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus and Disney on Ice.  When interviewing prospective executives he asks this:  “You’re really smart, but do you know how to make money?  Tell me some things about how you made money.”

“Let me tell you, nothing kills an interview like that,” Feld said.

Even if you work in the public sector — no, especially if you work in the public sector –  you should have an answer that question.  It will keep you focused on your mission and on your bottom line.

(In the mid-1980s, while working at PR Associates, I did local media relations for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus.  Buy me a drink sometime and I’ll tell you about booking the bear act on “Kelly & Company.”)

With the election less than a week away and three registered, active voters in our household, we’re besieged by robo calls.  Why?  Because they’re so gosh-darned cheap, it turns out.

“Hmmmm,” mused Eric Dueweke a lecturer in the University of Michigan’s Urban and Regional Planning program.  Why not bring robo calls back from the dark side, for use by the forces of good?  At those prices, community groups could send meeting reminders, schools could notify parents when classes are cancelled, families could even use them for reunions or birthday parties.

A quick Google search revealed many commercial services, some of which even will send text messages (be careful with that one).  Here’s one I found that offers a low-use free account, or pay-as-you-go calls as low as seven cents each.

Trying to schedule a meeting with several busy people?  Andrea Brown at the Michigan Association of Planning turned me on to Doodle.com.  You don’t even have to register.  Just go there and use it, free.

I’m part of a group of five busy people who network together a couple times a year.  It usually takes us a week of “reply all” emails to find a date and time.  With Doodle, I pulled it off in 30 minutes.