Say it Better

New way to make a quick pitch for money

Get a friend to grab a camera to video you making your pitch for funding for your business via vatortv. Or to find the right management team or other work need. You’ve got just three minutes. No more. But some smart and successful venture capitalists and angel investors are backing this site. They may click to see you. And, of course, Bambi may interview you. These videos are helpful and sometimes even fun to watch if you want to hone your elevator pitch for anything. (Thanks again Liesbeth).

Save Yourself From Death by Meeting

Avoid making sarcastic comments out of the side of your mouth or worse. You know you want to bop that long-winded dolt over the head or flee screaming from the conference room. We’ve all been there. Instead read this pithy list of rules for making meetings more productive:
1. Sterile Cockpit (maintain focus)
2. Jackanory (no story-telling, i.e. reasons, explanations, justifications, causes)
3. Sherlock Holmes (reveal rather than conceal)

See the other four rules from Irish IT engineer-turned virtual collaboration expert and “Bumble Bee” blogger, Ken Thompson.

Ken’s notes:
1. Sterile Cockpit is an aviation term which means that during critical phases of flight, such as takeoff and landings, nothing else should be discussed by the flight crew. Even if it is important keep it for later.

2. Jackanory is Cockney rhyming slang for 'Telling A Story'. When we tell a story about why something has happened we usually, without realising it, begin to defend and justify. This wastes time and energy. We only need to give the absolute minimum facts to allow the meeting to determine the correct action. The time for stories is really after the meeting.

3. Sherlock Holmes was a famous but fictitious detective who had a fantastic ability to uncover the truth in difficult circumstances. A team should not expect their team leader to have the same level of investigative and deductive skills as Sherlock.

Follow-up by reading Patrick Lencioni's “easy-to-read novella,“ the “business fiction” book, Death By Meeting.

And, if you want your group to become better co-creators, try the Four-Player System designed by David Kantor and described in William Issac’s book Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together. (Thanks again Ken).

Here’s the roles that participants must adopt for a collaborative conversation:
1. Mover
Without Movers there is no direction.

2. Opposer
Without Opposers there is no correction.

3. Follower
Without Followers there is no completion.

4. Bystander
Without Bystanders there is no perspective.

Ready to Re-Shape Your Self-Image? Get Simpsonized.

If you want to become part of The Simpson family how would Matt Groening draw your portrait? Dare to find out how dorky you can look right now. Yes, because of a SmartPartnership tie-in to attract big crowds to the movie’s debut on July 27th, you, too, can get Simpsonized. See jaundiced Linda Tischler.

Odd Simpsons tie-in motto though, “Turn the world yellow with Burger King.” Now does that make you want to leap into your car and drive over for a “yellow” fast food snack?

For more fun with modified reality see what restless and creative graphics designers do on their break.

Then view a spectacularly quick, animated and morphing view of modern art, from van Gogh to Picasso to Warhol. See Joan C. Gratz’s Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase.

Perhaps you'll be tempted to see her downward-facing frog before you return to your regular life - away from your computer screen.

Want to be Happier?

Simplify. It’s clarifying. Then one can focus. Focus on what is really going on. What you feel right now. What most matters to you. What best serves the situation. Gratefulness. "First things first" will be apparent. After all, "Life is short, and many of us tend to clutter our lives with things that we do not really want to do.”

Smile.

Focus next on self-esteem.

We earn self-esteem when we learn self-confidence and self-respect. That may be the first step towards living a happier life.

Self-confidence comes from our feeling of competence in responding to the difficulties and the opportunities we encounter in our work and personal life. Self-respect means we feel worthy of being happy. That’s what psychologist Nathaniel Branden’s believes. He wrote, “Self-esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves.”

Self-esteem helps us become independent thinkers, according to Tal Ben Shahar, author of the practical new book, Happier.

Paradoxically it also enables us stay open to hearing others’ differing views, I believe. This path towards a positive and resilient outlook begins with giving oneself the permission to feel.

“Happiness lies at the intersection between pleasure and meaning.”

Want to grow up into happiness? Here are two tips I’ve found especially helpful from, “the teacher of Harvard University’s most popular and life-changing course. One out of every five Harvard students has lined up to hear him.”

1. Sweat it out. Enjoy an immediate, free mood elevator by getting in vigorous motion more often. A Duke University study showed that working out for 30 minutes three times a week” is equivalent to popping Zoloft.”

2. “Accept life as a roller coaster. Optimistic people have ups and downs like everyone else, Ben-Shahar says. "The difference is that happy people realize that if they're sad, they'll get over it," he says. "There's a misconception that being happy means being on a high and having positive moods all the time. That's not what happiness is. If you're happy, you have a life — overall — that you find both meaningful and pleasurable." Methinks Gretchen would agree.

There’s more to the growing popularity of the practical application of positive psychology to everyday life and its “cash value.”

Remembering a life-changing movie scene

Billy Crystal, in one of his most famous movie moments (written by Nora Ephron) as Harry, tracks down Sally (Meg Ryan) on New Year's Eve and tells her: "I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible."

See it pump and get scared

Comic books for learning. That’s one wildly popular way to make a complex idea understandable and interesting enough so that people will pay attention.

Another is animation. In the hands of the savvy folks at Kreative Vistas you actually see why you better be worried about high blood pressure, for example.

Professional (bland text) approach:
Each time your heart beats, it pumps out blood into the arteries. High blood pressure is excessive force of your blood pushing against the walls of your arteries. When left untreated hypertension hardens arteries as cholesterol and calcium builds up. High blood pressure usually has no symptoms, but it can cause problems with such as hemorrhage, heart attack, and kidney damage

Animated approach:
It reinforces primal branding of you, your product or your idea.

Want to learn how so you can literally show others?

Are You Talking to Me?

What happens when passersby hear random, kind words and praise, emanating from a box as they walk by it in Washington, D.C.?

Tom Greaves calls his invention the Compliment Machine (not the first), believing our culture is carelessly free with praise. And he is onto something because praise is a two-edged sword.

Yet this bit of unexpected street theater sounds fun. Washington Post’s Joshua Zumbrum describes the startled reactions.

I once designed a variation of this “hearing praise” mood elevator for a nurses’ conference where I was speaking.

As attendees walked down the hotel hallway to meeting rooms, they’d pass audio speakers, wall-mounted at ear level. Thus they would “overhear” a sequence of snippets of conversations between their colleagues, praising different nurses by name.

Sort of a verbal version of the Burma Shave sequence of billboard messages that motorists once viewed when driving on desolate highways. Nurses would look startled. Some laughed and many paused to hear more, then talk with each other about what they were hearing. Two nurses actually started talking to the speaker boxes. By the time they entered the meeting rooms more attendees were actively engaged in conversations about their colleagues and their own nurse heroes and experiences in nursing.

Positive conversations make us happier and reduce stress.

How would you involve the senses to re-invent your next meeting? How do you involve the unexpected and more of the senses to get people talking with each other?

Take a laugh break?

So prime minister Gordon Brown got in trouble for his leaden repetition of an anecdote he actually borrowed from an American leader. Feel free to share this humor to lighten the rest your week ...

“God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny.”
~ Garrison Keillor

"Marge, it takes two to lie. One to lie and one to listen."
- Homer Simpson

"My reading list was sort of The Celestine Prophecy of Motorcycle Maintenance."
- Tim Allen

“People say satire is dead. It's not dead; it's alive and living in the White House.”
~ Robin Williams

"I had arrived at the airport one hour early so that, in accordance with airline procedures, I could stand around."
~ Dave Barry

"Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I shall not put!"
~ Winston Churchill

Read these signs carefully ....

Seen during a conference: For anyone who has children and doesn’t know it, there is a day care center on the 1st floor.

In a laundromat: Automatic washing machines: please remove all your clothes when the light goes out.

Notice in a farmer's field: The farmer allows walkers to cross the field for free, but the bull charges.

“Regarding SPAM, I'm comfortable with the size of my penis, I don't care that young girls want me, I've got more than enough insurance, and I can't help you escape from jail in Ghana, so please, go jam somebody else's in-box.”
~ Mark T. Gould, New Haven, Connecticut

If love is the answer could you please re-phrase the question?”
~ Lily Tomlin

"You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it."
- Robin Williams

See elegant, animated humor at The New Yorker.

What humorous observations have you heard, said or read? Help spread the laughter. Add some of your favorites as a comment to this post.

Watch Out! That Video Camera “Knows” How You Feel….Maybe

Say you’re walking down the street, or through a store or airport – and your mind is racing with thoughts about your life. Or your last conversation. Or the jiggling bottom of the woman ahead of you in that impossibly short summer skirt and skimpy top. Or a billboard advertisement.

Now your private emotions may not be private anymore when you are out and about in public. Your feelings can be “read” in real time if a special video camera catches your facial expression. That’s the assertion anyway of some German researchers. Advertisers are already dancing with glee.

Here how it (ostensibly) works in a first application under development at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits. A video camera records the crowd that passes an ad in a public place. Using algorithm-based software, the video can zero in on the faces, count the number of people observing the ad, distinguish between men and women and then analyze their expressions. Apparently the technology can register whether a man or woman looks happy or sad. The researchers are working on detection of other emotions including surprise and anger.

Worried about your privacy? The technology, researchers say, could also be used to detect driver alertness. That still seems like invading my space.

Make Attention-Grabbing Comparisons

Always be on the lookout for credible images and words to associate with your idea, product, cause – or yourself. Here’s three ways to anchor your words in their minds.

1. Hijack a familiar slogan to use in a new way.

After a company has spent millions to make a slick slogan well-known twist it in a new direction for your intended meaning.
Example:
Redwood Hospital in Northern California used this billboard variation of the popular milk slogan to ask for blood donations: “Got blood?”

2. Be provocative, by comparision.

Know your audience then take your chances.

Example:
In a review of the uplifting memoir by Terry Ryan, centered on her mother, The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less, Jennifer Foote Sweeney wrote, "I (have) accepted Evelyn Ryan as my personal savior."

3. Use “The/Of” Rule

Fill in the blanks in this sentence: The ___ of ___ .

Examples:
Musician Jon Hendricks is the father of vocalese. That’s the art of setting lyrics to jazz instrumental standards and then having voices sing the instruments' parts. That's why Time Magazine dubbed him the "James Joyce of Jive."

The Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship is called the Davos of social entrepreneurship.

“The Mini Cooper of office furniture,” is the apt tag line of the tiny firm, Turnstone. Their elaboration: “Leveraging parent Steelcase's technology and distribution channels, we offer small businesses great style for less, with big-business speed.”