The Goal of True Education
How to Survive a Conference Call
In many businesses today, it’s common to have conference calls to share information when coming together to meet physically is not a viable option. Here’s some advice for a successful conference call.
- Know ahead of time if you’ll be participating with audio only, or both audio and video.
- Test out your equipment ahead of time so you’re sure you know how to use it.
- If you’re the only one at your location on the conference call, use a headset with a good microphone, rather than relying on a speakerphone or holding the phone to your ear.
- If there are multiple people at your location on the conference call, reserve a conference room (if possible) and make sure everyone is seated where their voices can be picked up by the speakerphone’s microphone.
- To avoid distracting background sounds for the other participants, mute your microphone when you are not speaking. (Typing or shuffling papers during a conference call may seem quiet to you, but not to anyone else on the call.)
- Do your best to exhibit the kind of behavior you would in a face-to-face meeting. For example, stay focused on the speaker(s), rather than multi-tasking.
- When it’s your turn to talk, introduce yourself briefly, even when you’re talking with people you know. For example, “This is Debbie at Oswego, and ….”
- When the call is over, ensure you have hung up / ended the call before discussing anything about the call with others. You never know who might still be on the call, even when you think it’s over.
Specifically for video calls using a service like Zoom, WebEx or GoToMeeting:
- For a video call, dress appropriately head to toe.
- Minimize visual distractions in the background. If possible, set up your video camera so that a blank wall is behind you.
- Close all tabs in your web browser except any that are specifically needed for this call. And do not display your bookmarks.
- Turn off any pop-up notifications that may appear on your computer screen.
- When you are talking, look directly into the camera, not at the face on the screen.
If you’re coordinating or leading the call, also take these suggestions under advisement:
- If you know that the attendees live across the country or even the world, make sure you are extra clear about what the time zone for the start of the call. (The website TimeAndDate.com has helpful resources for determining the time across zones.)
- When it makes sense to do so, record the call for others who could not attend.
- Keep the call as short as is reasonable. A one-hour conference call seems much longer than a one-hour in-person meeting.
For a humorous take on video conference calls, watch this video by Tripp and Tyler. Though it’s (intentionally) over the top, I think I’ve experienced every one of these mistakes, just not all in one call.
Image Credit: http://www.virtualstudio.tv/blog/post/96-3-tips—-hosting–running-effective–successful-conference-calls
14 Ways to NOT Suck As a Guest Speaker
[Originally published Fall 2010. This post was featured by Lisa B. Marshall in her The Public Speaker podcast. Thanks, Lisa!]
When you’ve been invited to be a guest speaker for an organization’s luncheon or other meeting, you don’t want to be that speaker. And it can be terribly easy to be that speaker: You know, that high-maintenance one, or that boring/irrelevant one. You want to be the one who is memorable for positive reasons. Here’s a list of 14 ways to NOT suck.
- Learn as much as you can about your audience before you speak. (This is a good tip for any public speaking situation.) Even if you don’t know much about the organization beforehand, you can learn a lot during the mealtime, if that’s part of your engagement with them. During the meal, listen more than you talk. When your presentation begins, weave in examples that you know are relevant to this group.
- Find out from your contact at the organization what the norms are for speaking engagements like this one. Will the audience members expect handouts? Is there usually a Q&A session? What’s the best way for you to share your contact information with every audience member?
- Let your contact know what your A/V needs are as far in advance as possible, and only request what is necessary. Avoid last minute surprises, as they often cannot be accommodated — and they turn you into that speaker.
- Plan your presentation so that you can expand it or contract it as needed. Even though you may have been told you have 45 minutes, you may discover that the business portion of the meeting has run long, and you end up with just 30 minutes. Make no mention of shortening your presentation to your audience; just do it. Gracefully.
- Allow extra time in travel to arrive at the meeting location, especially if you have never been there before. Some things to keep in mind: Is there construction along your route? Do you cross train tracks on the way? When do the trains typically stop traffic? Do you know how to get into the parking lot? How far is it from the exterior doors to your meeting room? And never trust your GPS 100% to get you to a new location.
- Know how to use the technology you will be using, inside and out. Practice hooking up all the cords and cables and know how long it will take you. Know how to easily blacken the screen during your presentation when the slides are not needed (in PowerPoint, simply press B to blacken the screen, and then any other key to bring the slide back up). Do you have something new with you? In front of your audience is not the place to learn how to use your new presentation remote.
- Plan for the technology to fail. Always have hard-copy notes for your presentation, just in case you cannot rely on a PowerPoint slide to jog your memory for what to say. Save your presentation as a PowerPoint and as a PDF, and store it on your computer and a USB drive. (Yes, it’s like wearing a belt with suspenders. Twice. And I’m okay with that.)
- Never let your audience see anything on your computer other than the slide deck or other information you intend for them to see. They don’t (or at least shouldn’t) have any interest in watching you boot up your computer, open your file and put it in presentation mode. Keep the projector screen blank until you have your opening slide up. (And never be that speaker who preps her presentation in full view of the whole room while someone else is still speaking; I find this terribly rude to the other speaker.)
- Don’t count on the Internet working 100% perfectly. If I plan to show a YouTube video clip, I always download the video to my computer and show it from there. (I’ve recently been using YouTube Downloader, a free app, and it works quickly and easily for me on my PC.) If I plan to demo a certain website, I’ll use Snag-It to take and save a few screen captures to show in case I cannot access the site during my presentation.
- Provide contact information on each slide or at the end. I like to have a detailed contact info slide as the last one in my slide deck, and I leave that slide up during the Q&A session.
- If you refer to websites or blogs in your presentation, create a set of social bookmarks for your audience so they can go to one URL to find all the links and not spend time during your presentation attempting to furiously scribble down all the addresses. I now use Pinterest for my social bookmarks. Let your audience know early in the presentation where they can find all the links.
- Upload your slides to SlideShare at least a day before your presentation if you want your audience (and others) to have access to them. You can choose to keep the slides private until just before or after the presentation, if you wish.
- The show must go on; be prepared to speak even if you don’t look quite perfect. For example, yesterday, I got caught in a deluge just as I opened my car door arriving at a speaking event. Even with an umbrella, I was drenched (kind of like the cute, wet puppy at the top of this post — at least in my mind). My shoes and blazer sleeves were literally dripping when I entered the venue. What did I do? Dashed into the restroom, grabbed some paper towels, mopped up what I could, and put a smile on my face.
- Arrive with your speaker’s toolkit in tip-top order. I think I almost got a hug from the conference room tech guy at my last speaking event because I had everything I needed, and more. What’s in mine? Here’s what I typically carry with me:
- Computer & power cord
- Power strip
- External speakers with their power cord (just in case there’s no sound system attached to the projector)
- 3.5mm cord to connect speakers to computer (even if I have my Bluetooth-enabled computer and speakers with me, I have the cord as a backup)
- Projector (only if I know that there is not one available for me onsite)
- Presentation remote
- Extra set of batteries for anything that uses batteries
- Hard candy or throat lozenges
- More business cards than I think I could possibly need
So in a large nutshell, these are my 14 best tips on how not to suck as a guest speaker for an organization. What additional tips would you offer?
Word Nerds Unite: 19 of William Safire’s Best Fumblerules of Grammar
When I was a college student back at Auburn University in the 1980s, my father mailed me a typewritten list he had prepared on his Underwood typewriter. This was a list of some “rules” of grammar that he thought were humorous. I agreed. (We were both word nerds.)
Though I don’t have the specific original sources for each of these, I believe that they all came from William Safire. Some of them are from his “On Language” column in the New York Times, while others are from his book Fumblerules: A Lighthearted Guide to Grammar and Good Usage. Enjoy!
- Help stamp out and eliminate redundancies.
- Don’t use no double negatives.
- Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read.
- Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
- Surly grammarians insist that all words ending in “ly” are adverbs.
- Avoid colloquial stuff.
- Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
- Also, avoid awkward or affected alliteration.
- Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.
- Use the semicolon properly, always use it where it is appropriate; and never where it isn’t.
- Avoid commas, that are not necessary.
- If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
- Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixed metaphors.
- Reserve the apostrophe for it’s proper use and omit it when its not needed.
- Don’t string too many prepositional phrases together unless you are walking through the valley of the shadow of death.
- Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns on their writing.
- A preposition is something you should never end a sentence with.
- Who needs rhetorical questions?
- Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; use viable alternatives.
Job Interviews Over Lunch: 15 Tips for Success
If you’re participating in an all-day (or several hour) job interview, it’s likely that you will be eating lunch or dinner with your interviewer(s). Here are just a few tips to help you succeed in this circumstance:
- Brush up on the news. There will likely be some “casual” conversation during this lunch interview.
- Use your best manners. (This should go without saying.)
- Bring along a small notepad and pen. You may need to jot something down during the meal.
- If you know ahead of time where you will be eating, review the restaurant’s menu online and choose two or three possibilities.
- Order something from the middle price point on the menu.
- Choose food that can be eaten with fork and knife, if possible. Avoid potentially messy food (like some sandwiches, soups and salads) and smelly food like onions and garlic.
- Order something light or small. You will be doing a lot of talking during this meal.
- Food allergies or sensitivities? Try to order something on the menu that you can eat without special preparation by the chef, if at all possible.
- If rolls or bread are provided, tear off a small piece (what you will eat in a bite or two) and butter just that. (Do not butter the entire piece at one time.)
- Choose something uncarbonated to drink, like water or iced tea.
- Be exceptionally polite to the servers; how you treat them is a good sign of how you may treat employees or co-workers.
- Avoid overly personal conversation. Don’t say anything you would not say in the interviewer’s office.
- Leave your cell phone in your pocket or purse. Don’t take it out even if the interviewer takes his or hers out. (The only exception to this is if you and the interviewer need to look at your calendars for planning a follow-up interview.)
- And bring a dental floss pick with you; you can use this if needed when you are in the restroom. It’s better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it.
Always remember this one key tip: don’t let your guard down. Even though the setting may seem more informal during a meal, you are still being interviewed and evaluated.
Do you have other tips you’d recommend? Or a story about a lunch interview that went exceptionally well . . . or terribly?
[Slide Deck] The Only Secret You Need to Know About Making Viral Content
Fidgets & Wiggles & Crochet
When I am in meetings, or other places where it’s expected that people should sit relatively still and “just” listen, I fidget. A lot. (My ADHD meds do help. I know I was much wigglier before I started taking them about 10 years ago.)
If I have a pen/pencil and paper, I tend to doodle.
But yesterday I tried something different to help abate my wiggles and fidgets: I crocheted. It was a simple, repetitive pattern that I have used on many projects, so it was mostly muscle memory I used to complete the stitches. I am confident that I was able to pay closer attention to the speaker because I had something to do with my hands.
I am curious. If someone near you was crocheting or knitting during a meeting (where the participants are 99% listen-only mode), what would your reaction be? And would it be distracting to you?
And a follow-on . . . If you consider it to be distracting to you, how would it compare to sitting near people who are interacting with their electronic devices during a meeting?
T Shirt Village’s Reprehensible “Suicide Watch” Shirt on Amazon Deserves Negative Stars
This morning on Facebook, I learned from Sam Fiorella about a new shirt from T Shirt Village that’s available on Amazon. And a parent who has lost an adult child, I find this shirt’s mere existence reprehensible. Heck, as a human being, I find it the same.
My heart aches for those who have lost a loved one to depression leading to suicide.
What was Amazon thinking when it allowed this shirt to be sold on its site? I’ll be adding a one-star review for this shirt, but only because I cannot offer negative stars.
For more information on this shirt, please visit “Amazon Contributes to Stigma Surrounding Mental Health” on Sam’s website The Friendship Bench.
How to Get Your Blog Post Shared 1000 Times — by RazorSocial
The fine folks from RazorSocial have published an article with nifty infographic (below) with some excellent tips for creating shareable content. The article is definitely worth a read.
Courtesy of: RazorSocial
14 Ways to NOT Suck As a Guest Speaker
[Originally published Fall 2010. This post was featured by Lisa B. Marshall in her The Public Speaker podcast. Thanks, Lisa!]
When you’ve been invited to be a guest speaker for an organization’s luncheon or other meeting, you don’t want to be that speaker. And it can be terribly easy to be that speaker: You know, that high-maintenance one, or that boring/irrelevant one. You want to be the one who is memorable for positive reasons. Here’s a list of 14 ways to NOT suck.
- Learn as much as you can about your audience before you speak. (This is a good tip for any public speaking situation.) Even if you don’t know much about the organization beforehand, you can learn a lot during the mealtime, if that’s part of your engagement with them. During the meal, listen more than you talk. When your presentation begins, weave in examples that you know are relevant to this group.
- Find out from your contact at the organization what the norms are for speaking engagements like this one. Will the audience members expect handouts? Is there usually a Q&A session? What’s the best way for you to share your contact information with every audience member?
- Let your contact know what your A/V needs are as far in advance as possible, and only request what is necessary. Avoid last minute surprises, as they often cannot be accommodated — and they turn you into that speaker.
- Plan your presentation so that you can expand it or contract it as needed. Even though you may have been told you have 45 minutes, you may discover that the business portion of the meeting has run long, and you end up with just 30 minutes. Make no mention of shortening your presentation to your audience; just do it. Gracefully.
- Allow extra time in travel to arrive at the meeting location, especially if you have never been there before. Some things to keep in mind: Is there construction along your route? Do you cross train tracks on the way? When do the trains typically stop traffic? Do you know how to get into the parking lot? How far is it from the exterior doors to your meeting room? And never trust your GPS 100% to get you to a new location.
- Know how to use the technology you will be using, inside and out. Practice hooking up all the cords and cables and know how long it will take you. Know how to easily blacken the screen during your presentation when the slides are not needed (in PowerPoint, simply press B to blacken the screen, and then any other key to bring the slide back up). Do you have something new with you? In front of your audience is not the place to learn how to use your new presentation remote.
- Plan for the technology to fail. Always have hard-copy notes for your presentation, just in case you cannot rely on a PowerPoint slide to jog your memory for what to say. Save your presentation as a PowerPoint and as a PDF, and store it on your computer and a USB drive. (Yes, it’s like wearing a belt with suspenders. Twice. And I’m okay with that.)
- Never let your audience see anything on your computer other than the slide deck or other information you intend for them to see. They don’t (or at least shouldn’t) have any interest in watching you boot up your computer, open your file and put it in presentation mode. Keep the projector screen blank until you have your opening slide up. (And never be that speaker who preps her presentation in full view of the whole room while someone else is still speaking; I find this terribly rude to the other speaker.)
- Don’t count on the Internet working 100% perfectly. If I plan to show a YouTube video clip, I always download the video to my computer and show it from there. (I’ve recently been using YouTube Downloader, a free app, and it works quickly and easily for me on my PC.) If I plan to demo a certain website, I’ll use Snag-It to take and save a few screen captures to show in case I cannot access the site during my presentation.
- Provide contact information on each slide or at the end. I like to have a detailed contact info slide as the last one in my slide deck, and I leave that slide up during the Q&A session.
- If you refer to websites or blogs in your presentation, create a set of social bookmarks for your audience so they can go to one URL to find all the links and not spend time during your presentation attempting to furiously scribble down all the addresses. I now use Pinterest for my social bookmarks. Let your audience know early in the presentation where they can find all the links.
- Upload your slides to SlideShare at least a day before your presentation if you want your audience (and others) to have access to them. You can choose to keep the slides private until just before or after the presentation, if you wish.
- The show must go on; be prepared to speak even if you don’t look quite perfect. For example, yesterday, I got caught in a deluge just as I opened my car door arriving at a speaking event. Even with an umbrella, I was drenched (kind of like the cute, wet puppy at the top of this post — at least in my mind). My shoes and blazer sleeves were literally dripping when I entered the venue. What did I do? Dashed into the restroom, grabbed some paper towels, mopped up what I could, and put a smile on my face.
- Arrive with your speaker’s toolkit in tip-top order. I think I almost got a hug from the conference room tech guy at my last speaking event because I had everything I needed, and more. What’s in mine? Here’s what I typically carry with me:
- Computer & power cord
- Power strip
- External speakers with their power cord (just in case there’s no sound system attached to the projector)
- 3.5mm cord to connect speakers to computer (even if I have my Bluetooth-enabled computer and speakers with me, I have the cord as a backup)
- Projector (only if I know that there is not one available for me onsite)
- Presentation remote
- Extra set of batteries for anything that uses batteries
- Hard candy or throat lozenges
- More business cards than I think I could possibly need
So in a large nutshell, these are my 14 best tips on how not to suck as a guest speaker for an organization. What additional tips would you offer?
