Guest Post from Jake Jacobson

Jake Jacobson with Jim Felt of Felt
Bicycles in Monaco prior to the start of
Stage 1 of the 2009 Tour de France.

Flashback two years to July 2008, and I was faced with an exceptional opportunity and exciting challenge as an outdoor/fitness PR specialist and blogger for Garmin International . I was sent to the first week of the Tour de France to promote and chronicle Team Garmin, the world-class professional cycling squad founded by Slipstream Sports that had just taken us on as title sponsor the month before. Armed with a laptop and the assumption that every worldly hotel has wifi, I set out to share news and insight about Team Garmin’s Tour debut.

The first of several shortcomings in my quickly hatched plan was clear from the start. Though it ends in bustling  Paris , the Tour often starts in much smaller towns. And we were in an even smaller town outside of that small town. The hotel lobby had wifi. But not the hotel I was staying in. So the morning of the first stage, while I was feverishly mooching wifi, Slipstream chairman Doug Ellis made a short, prophetic suggestion. “You should try Twitter.” He explained that with Twitter, you don’t need a laptop, a global aircard or a neighboring hotel lobby. All you need is a phone and something to say in 140 characters or less. For a username, we landed on @JakesJournal as a reference to a familiar section of Garmin.Blogs.com and a reminder that readers were following the actual person doing the talking. My crash course continued as we loaded into the van until I finally felt comfortable typing my first safe but somewhat intriguing Tweet: “driving stage 1 of tour de France with Team Garmin”.

That first day, six people started following me. I was elated. Someone was listening. I tweeted from the finish line, the pressroom and helicopters high above the peloton. By the time the Tour wrapped up, I had around 60 followers. I cheered when another would sign up. I cringed when the number would drop. With each emotion I wondered what I had said to cause the action. Fortunately I had Ryan Ressler – good friend, brilliant writer, dedicated colleague and early adopter – to help. He reminded me that personality and transparency are crucial in social media, while salesmanship and  advertising are better left to their respective departments.

GUEST POST FROM LISA BRAITHWAITE:

Lisa Braithwaite

As a blogger, I am constantly needing new ideas for my public speaking blog. Some time ago, I committed to writing six days a week, and I’ve mostly held up that commitment, except when life has intervened, as it so inconveniently does from time to time.

As a speaker and trainer, I’m constantly trying to come up with ways to make my presentations more engaging and to get my message across to my audience. I may use the same basic structure for each presentation, but I’m always tweaking, customizing and making improvements on each one, and looking for good stories, quotes and analogies to bring my message to life.

You might find yourself with mental blocks from time to time when writing and creating, and the frustration can be all-consuming. In fact, that frustration probably sucks out your last little bit of inspiration by focusing all your energy on the black hole in your brain.

I thought I’d share some of the places I get inspiration for my blog posts and presentations, and maybe these ideas will inspire your inspiration!

1. Working out

I work out at a local community college track with killer stadium steps. I’ve also been training to throw discus for masters track meets, reviving the love of a sport I competed in during high school. My discus training has inspired several blog posts about holding yourself back, using practice to train your “muscle memory” for public speaking, and putting all the pieces together when you feel overwhelmed by details.

I’ve been inspired by people at the track who are completely out of shape, working their behinds off in search of fitness. You don’t get better at anything without working at it, public speaking included. I was even inspired once by a saying on a runner’s t-shirt to write a post on giving it all you’ve got as a speaker.

2. Athletes

To take the workout analogies a step further, I love finding similarities between athletes and speakers. During the Olympic trials, I wrote about dealing with failure, trusting your gut, fighting misconceptions, and resting on your laurels.

Other athletic inspiration has come from track meets (psyching yourself up and self-pressure to perform), football (“leaving it on the field”), cycling (the fabulous metaphors of Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen during the Tour de France), and basketball (Pat Summitt’s 1,000 victories in relation to goals, vision and persistence).

I use athlete analogies in my presentations as well, for example, talking about adrenaline and the fact that elite athletes don’t feel pumped up and ready to compete if they don’t have that adrenaline rush and accompanying pre-performance anxiety.

3. Entertainers

I’ve written and spoken about actors who are afraid of public speaking, comedians who cleverly acknowledge when they bomb, and American Idol contestants learning to believe in themselves. I write about performers like Eddie Izzard, David Lee Roth and Rufus Wainwright being memorable, being original and staying focused. Entertainers have many lessons for speakers, and whether I’m watching TV or a live show, I’m always taking notes on how they connect with their audiences, how they prepare, and how they themselves are inspired.

4. Language

I’ve always been fascinated by language, grammar and spelling, so when I come across examples that relate to public speaking and communication, I’m thrilled!

I talk about jargon, clichés, misused words, mispronounced words, and overused words. I’ve discussed metaphors, idioms, analogies, gibberish, and language that confuses rather than clarifies. Speakers need to communicate clearly, concisely and precisely, and paying attention to nerdy topics like these can help accomplish this goal. I read grammar and communication blogs for this inspiration, as well as watching and listening to speakers and performers and watching TV commercials!

These are just my most common areas of inspiration. I’m always noticing what’s going on around me and picking up ideas from what’s happening in my life, so mental blocks are actually quite rare.

I hope you’ll find some inspiration in *my* inspiration, and open your mind to the world around you when searching for topics for your presentations and your writing.

ABOUT LISA BRAITHWAITE

Lisa Braithwaite is a public speaking coach working with individuals and groups to build their skills and confidence as speakers. Her philosophy of public speaking is that it’s fun, it’s an awesome way to express yourself creatively, and that authenticity and passion are worth more than a thousand techniques. She is also the author of Speak Schmeak, a blog about speakers and public speaking.

Before launching her public speaking coaching business in 2005, she worked in the nonprofit sector in Santa Barbara for 16 years as an advocate, educator and trainer, creating and implementing programs, curricula, and training materials for nonprofit organizations. Her areas of expertise in the field of training and education have involved gender equity, domestic violence prevention, media literacy, adult learning principles, and communication skills development

In 1997, she co-founded Body Electric, an organization promoting sports, physical activity and gender equity for women and girls. In 2003, Lisa was honored for her work with Body Electric with the Louise Lowry Davis award, named for a pioneer in women’s sports.

Lisa received her B.A. in Theater from Pomona College and her M.A. in Education from UC Santa Barbara.

Guest Post by Jurgen Appelo:

I once read that “managing is harder than programming, because making people do what is needed is far more difficult than making computers do what is needed”. (Don’t flame me if you don’t agree. I’m quoting from an unknown source here.)

This quote kept running through my mind when I recently encountered a number of, well… let’s call them disciplinary challenges, like…

• Not being at a meeting, without notice, despite having accepted the request,
• Not keeping systems or task boards up-to-date with latest task/story statuses,
• Not linking code or time registration to issues or user story numbers,
• Not actively checking if there’s overrun on a budget,
• Not responding to a show stopper problem within promised response time,
• Not storing project documents in the shared repository,
• Etc…

Is this a case of hanging out the dirty laundry? Not really. We’re all people, employees and managers alike. We’re not computers, we all make mistakes. If you don’t have similar problems in your organization then I will assume you’re working with robots, not with human beings.

Still, they are problems nonetheless. If my computers were this unreliable I would throw them out the window. No, actually I would carry them all the way up to the tea room in our office building, and then throw them out the window. But we don’t do that with employees anymore these days. That’s because managers have discovered how to be humans themselves, and they can understand the reasons for people’s non-disciplined behavior, with excuses like: I-Didn’t-Know-This-Was-A-Rule, Sorry-I-Forgot, There-Was-Too-Much-On-My-Mind, I-Was-Kept-Busy-With-Some-Major-Problem, I-Was-Sick, My-Dog-Was-Sick, My-Dog-Ate-My-Agenda, My-Dog-Ran-Away, and of course My-Dog-Died.

So, we all understand being human. But what to do about the problems?

One solution that people often come up with is that some supervisor should be made responsible to inspect everything. This is of course step 1 on The Road To Bureaucracy, and it is a direction that agile and lean people fervently argue against. However, other people argue that some of those steps are nevertheless very useful.

For example: Mary and Tom Poppendieck, famous for their books on Lean Software Development, argue that inspection to find defects is waste, and they call for zero-inspection. They claim that resources should be spent on preventing problems instead of fixing them, because it’s cheaper.

On the other hand: Tom and Kai Gilb, famous for their work on Software Inspection (among other things), teach people how to inspect documents to find and measure defects. They even have certificates for inspection, like Inspection Leaders and Inspection Process Owners!

What’s going on here?

Can these different viewpoints be aligned? Can I earn myself a certificate for doing zero inspections? Or do we have a chance of witnessing a clash between the two most celebrated family duos in software development? An epic battle between father and son Gilb against husband and wife Poppendieck?

Well, I admit that would be a sight to see, but my guess is that their viewpoints are simply two sides of one and the same coin. Yes, preventing problems is cheaper than fixing problems, but only for 95% of the problems. In fact, it has been noted before that zero defects is the wrong approach, because preventing those last few problems is far too expensive. Which means that we have to allow some problems to flow to the next phase in the process, where detecting and fixing them can be cheaper. I discussed the staged approach to discipline in one of my earlier articles:

1. People have to show a high level of self-discipline;
2. They have a coach to help them in becoming more disciplined;
3. Their discipline must be subjected to peer pressure;
4. There should be tools to assist in mistake-proofing the process;
5. Last of all, there might be some supervisor doing regular inspections;
6. And if everything fails, the dirt will land on the manager’s desk.

It is almost always cheaper to solve problems higher up in this stack. Supervising and inspecting is the final gate where problems can be detected and prevented from ending up at the manager’s desk, or worse… the customer’s desk. Fewer inspections are better. But zero-inspection is like full code coverage. It is a lofty goal that, in practice, is unattainable because of its exponential costs. There will always be some work left for some supervisor to inspect, certified or not.

So, in solving the problems I mentioned earlier, before giving work to a supervisor, I will try and make sure that I have done all I can to prevent needing him in the first place!

And of course, the principles of discipline apply to my own work as a blog writer as well… juicy title: check… teasing opening paragraph: check… re-reading ten times: check… silly jokes: check… spell-checking: check… hyperlinks and mark-up: check… great pictures: check… making fun of celebrities: check… conclusion: check… OK, ready for the next phase… Chris, will you inspect this post please?

About Jurgen Appelo

Jurgen is the Chief Information Officer at ISM eCompany, rated (a while ago) as the #1 fastest growing technology company in The Netherlands. As a manager, he leads a horde of 100 software developers, development managers, project managers, business consultants, quality managers, service managers and kangaroos, some of which he hired accidentally.  He also write a blog called NOOP.NL: A Guide to Development, Management, Things & Stuff.

GUEST POST FROM OLIVIA MITCHELL:

Olivia Mitchell

Audience engagement and participation is a common goal for presenters. But participation in particular can be hard to get by traditional means. People enjoy the comfort zone of being passive in the audience and often need significant prodding to do anything.

But now we have a new tool to get engagement – that’s Twitter. Many presenters are scared of presenting while people are twittering. But as Dean Shareski says:

The more I’m allowed to interact and play with the content the more engaged and ultimately the more learning happens.

Twitter makes it easy to engage. There’s not the risk of humiliation which is always present when you say something out loud. And if there’s a power heirarchy in the room, it gets flattened somewhat – everybody has 140 characters to have their say.

So rather than seeing the Twitter back channel as an intimidating third force in your presentation, embrace it.

Later this month, I’m going to be presenting remotely from New Zealand at PresentationCamp in San Francisco. I’m going to experiment with using Twitter as a channel to get active participation from my audience.

Here’s a variety of ways that you could use Twitter to engage your audience.

1. Introductions

If you would normally get people in your audience to introduce themselves, why not do it via twitter. Many people dread the round-robin introduction – doing it on twitter is quicker and less onerous.

2. Poll your audience

If you haven’t been able to find out about your audience before the presentation (which I do recommend), then ask a question and get them to respond on Twitter. In the past, I’ve seen presenters ask their audience what they want to get out of the presentation by going round the room and writing it up on a flipchart or whiteboard. This can get tedious. Ask out-loud, but get the responses on twitter. Ta-da. Instant recorded feedback.

3. Encourage questions through twitter

Instead of waiting till the end for questions, encourage people to tweet their questions as soon as they occur to them.

4. Active engagement with the substance of your presentation

My session at PresentationCamp is on developing the core message of a presentation. My plan is to have people tweet their core messages (which conveniently should be under 140 characters long) as they develop them through the session. How could you get your audience engaging, rather than just listening, with the substance of your presentation?

5. Encourage audience members to add their own ideas to yours

The best presentations are the ones that spark insights and ideas for your audience. Encourage them to tweet these ideas.

6. Get input and feedback from your audience

Consultation-type meetings have always been tricky. I’ve used flipcharts, post-it notes, forms for people to fill in. With a twitter-enabled audience, all that paraphernalia will be a thing of the past.

7. Gather evaluations

Presenters have already realised that twitter is a great way to get real-time evaluations by reviewing the stream of tweets that happened while you were presenting.

Paul Gillin Having recently waited six months to get audience evaluations from one presentation, I can tell you that the immediacy of the tweeted feedback was wonderful.

So make it official – at the end of your presentation – ask your audience to tweet their evaluation of the presentation.

Practical stuff

To create a stream of tweets just for your presentation, you’ll need to create a special hashtag for your presentation and then use an application that tracks just those tags (hashtags.org, spy, eventtrack, twitter search).

You may also want to display the tweet stream on a screen so that everyone – including you – can easily see it. If you want the stream to be on display all the time, you’ll need a second laptop, datashow and screen. But you could also display the stream at certain breaks in your presentation, in which case a second laptop plugged into the datashow will do fine.

Your thoughts

Have you used Twitter to engage your audience? What ideas do you have for how it could be used?

About Olivia Mitchell

Olivia Mitchell is a presentation trainer and blogger from New Zealand.  Olivia blogs at Speaking about Presenting. Visit her blog for more tips on how to prepare and deliver an engaging presentation.

GUEST POST FROM NATE CHENENKO:

Part-time pedicab driver Nate Chenenko gives tourists a lift on weekends to supplement his full-time job as a contract specialist and says “Pay what you like!”.

(Photo credit: Richard A. Lipski – The Washington Post)

O.K., I confess: I’m a moonlighter. On weekdays I write and administer government contracts, but on the weekends I pedal a bicycle taxi, also called a pedicab, around the streets of Washington, DC. I really enjoy the physical and social aspects of the job, but it’s the economic and business aspects that truly intrigue me. I’m particularly attentive to the intricacies of pedicab ride pricing, and I’d like to use this opportunity (thanks Chris!) to discuss the theory behind pedicab pay-what-you-like pricing.

It’s tough to sell pedicab rides, and I estimate that I typically experience a failure rate of over 99%. When people visit a shopping mall, they visit because they are either interested in buying clothes, or interested in the idea of browsing, of seeing clothes to buy. When people visit the National Mall, they don’t come to buy pedicab rides, they come to visit the museums and photograph the monuments. Since I only expect one person out of one hundred to indicate any interest, it’s critical that I convert that an interested person into a customer.

The first question potential customers typically ask is “how much do you charge?” When I answer, they don’t realize how carefully I’ve crafted my response: “Whatever you think is fair. Pay when we get there!”

This statement comes as a shock to some people and a surprise to most. Our economy, once so centered on bartering and trade, has in recent years become much more fixed in its pricing schemes. I’m only 22, but I remember when my father taught me how to haggle with the hot-dog vendors in Manhattan. That was ten years ago. Try to do that now and they’ll laugh you straight to the next block. But take a pedicab ride in many cities across the country. You’ll enter a scenario where you’re receiving a service with no concept of what you should pay the service provider.

The second question I typically receive from potential riders is “Why? Don’t you get cheated a lot?” My answer: “Very rarely.” Again, riders don’t realize the consideration behind that sentence fragment, but the response is completely true. I rarely get cheated. I rarely get cheated, but I do many rides where I receive less money than I’d like. Often I’ll take customers on a long ride and receive a four-dollar tip when I would have asked for ten or 15 dollars.

So if it’s common to receive low tips, isn’t that great justification to start charging a set fare? Absolutely not, and there are four reasons to avoid set pricing. The first reason is a loose application of opportunity costs. For example, if a family of three with a toddler asks for a ten-minute ride, they might be willing to pay five dollars. What if I ask for seven dollars? A six-hour shift yields an average of only ten to 20 rides, and an average of $150 in gross earnings. After a half-year spent on the pedicab, my gross fares average out to about 25 dollars per hour. With that data, I know my opportunity cost is $25 per hour, and I should engage in any activity from which I expect to earn more than $25 per hour. Theoretically, I can do six ten-minute rides in an hour. At $25/hour, this means that my opportunity cost for ten minutes is just over four dollars. This means the family of three who is willing to pay five dollars for a ten-minute ride exceeds my opportunity cost. I should certainly take their business and provide a ride. If I were to set a fare of seven dollars, I lose a hard-to-find customer. I’ve failed to consider my opportunity cost when making business decisions, and I’ve lowered my potential profit for the day.

A second rationale for charging a pay-what-you-like rate is purely related to marketing: I want people in my cab. I want the hundreds on the sides of the street to see that laughing toddler as his pedicab speeds down the road. I want people to see a cab not as a gimmick that no one actually uses, but as a legitimate, enjoyable mode of transportation. More rides at noon leads to more people in my cab for the rest of the day. This is why I don’t mind competition from other pedicabs – competitors help put the idea of a pedicab ride into the minds of pedestrians.

The third reason for avoiding set fares focuses on the entertainment aspect of pedicabs. At the beginning of the ride, that cute toddler’s parents were willing to pay five dollars. At the end of the ride, when the child says how much he’s enjoyed himself, that ride might be worth ten dollars. Setting a fare at the beginning of the ride keeps that additional five dollars out of my pocket. Ever buy a book and absolutely love it? If I get halfway through a John Grisham novel, you might be able to sell me the second half of the book for twice the price. Prior to purchase, my expected level of enjoyment was just that: an expectation. On page 200, however, I have a higher level of information about the product, and my demand adjusts accordingly. A pay-what-you-like pricing system accounts for that change in demand as one consumes a service.

But it’s truly the fourth reason that ensures I will never charge a set fare. This is a risk-management concern, and it’s heavily influenced by economics as well as observed evidence. Readers who invest in the stock market have no doubt heard of upside potential and downside risk. I think about these devices constantly while working on my pedicab. Let’s use the example of a fare for which I would typically expect (and typically receive, based on evidence): 15 dollars. A 15-dollar fare might take a customer from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial. My downside risk on this ride is 15 dollars – it’s possible the customer could jump out and run away. This is highly unlikely, but it still represents the lower bound of the risk spectrum. My upside potential is infinite, as it’s possible I could get a multimillion-dollar tip. Unfortunately, this is also unlikely.

Let’s narrow the parameters based on the evidence. I’ve received four dollars for a 15 dollar ride, and, as a result, I’ve “lost” or “been cheated out of” nine dollars. I’ve also received 50-dollars for a 15-dollar ride. How many “losses” can that 35-dollar gain cover? About four, and that’s the reason I don’t charge a fare. Pay-what-you-like pricing allows for the possibility of that 50-dollar fare while reducing the opportunity for losses to five or ten dollars. In other words, I’ve tightly limited my downside risk while preserving my entire achievable upside.

Pay-what-you-like pricing maximizes the customer base because price details will never turn a customer away. This in turn contributes to my bottom line as well as my marketing image. It allows for the retrieval of otherwise-lost “demand” that occurs during service provision. Additionally, pay-what-you-like pricing allows me to capitalize on the big tipper, the guy at the top of my upside potential spectrum. But maybe it’s possible to make my system better. If you have suggestions or comments, or you simply enjoyed this piece, please post below in the comments. I’d also love to hear feedback directly. Please, email me at Chenenko@gmail.com.