Today is the 10th anniversary of the death of my best friend, Charlie O’Brien. His daughter Michelle and I have started a Facebook Page to commemorate this sad milestone and to share photos and memories. Charlie was my mentor and editor, but he did not live to see me write my first book, something he had urged me to do for many years. Ten years have passed and sometimes an entire day goes by withut my feeling the hollowness caused by missing my best friend.

Shortly after he died, his family held a memorial service for Charlie, in a tent near the water in Quincy, Massachusetts. Some of us read eulogies. I worked hard on mine. I wanted to capture the spirit of our friendship and the story it told. Perhaps I’ll write that book some day. Carlie would like that I think.

Here’s what I wrote ten years back:

“Finally, I have the last word. After 37 years, I’m free of O’Brien’s editing. He can’t hammer me with a: “Jesus Christ, Israel, just cut to the bloody chase.” No more will Charlie tell me to move a graph up here, make a chop there. When I’m done speaking today, he doesn’t get his chance to turn to you and say: “What really happened
was …”

Charlie would have enjoyed today. To him, family and friends were as good as it got. Can’t you just picture him sitting here, listening– shaking his head side-to-side, tugging a beer, toking a cigar waiting his turn, saying a paucity of words, both wise and irreverent.

I wish this were a roast, but it is not.

For nearly 40 years, Charlie O’Brien and I laughed together, often at the expense of one of us or the other. Jousting was essential to our relationship almost to the end. So was humor. Hiking three years ago at
Tahoe, we sat drying on a rock after he had guided us into a snow drift. Earlier, that day, he had demanded that I accept he was going to die which was tough and for that reason, we had been hiking mostly in
silence until Charlie guided directly into a waist deep snowdrift.

As we sat there, I asked him if he had any wisdom to
impart–something he now saw that he had not understood before… Some
pearl to leave behind.”

He thought for a moment. “I might have been wrong about the
vitamins,” he said with the straightest of faces, then he gazed
pensively out at the Lake. Charlie, over the years, had fanatically
consumed entire alphabets of Vitamin pills, using a vile protein
concoction as his chaser.

Three years later, I would be sitting on a barstool next to Charlie
for the last time. Cancer and its so-called treatments had reduced him
to sipping soft drinks through straws. By contrast, I was downing his favorite droughts at a steady pace. There was a chance, he told me, that he’d be taking medical marijuana pills. The juxtaposition of
preferred recreational substances would become our last good laugh. He would die three weeks later in the company of people who loved him.

I cannot believe he’s really gone. I expect to see him at any minute. I picture him packing for yet another trip. Charlie loved, LOVED to travel.

Our travels and misadventures together were legendary. They began in 1968 with a hike up a New Hampshire mountain. Of course we got lost and I swear it was his fault. Over the years we probably took more than 40
trips together, many on extended Thanksgiving weekends.

There were three rules for the annual trips:

(1) It had to be an adventure.
(2) It had to be cheap.
(3) It had to be new.

Cheap fell away first. Then, we repeated a few destinations, but the adventures were always unique.

We did amazing things.

We hiked the Grand Canyon, when I was 50 and he was 55, in a single day. We dived in the Seychelle Sea Caves in Mazatland’s Mayan Jungle, meeting locals who lived in thatched huts and communicated by cell
phone. We kayaked to a desert island on the Sea of Cortez where a monsoon marooned us for three days. We snuck into Cuba and spent two unsuccessful days searching for an authentic Cohiba Cigar staying in
the National Hotel, once owned by the Chicago mob. We visited Death Valley, where Charlie duped me into watching a ‘pantomime ballet performed by a 75-year-old pot-bellied hag dancing to opera on a
wind-up Victrola. We laughed so hard we had to go out side to pee.

Sailing to Catalina Island on “Manana,” the boat we owned together—actually the stern still said “Kewtie Pie– with a ‘K,’ because we never got around to replacing the sissy name the previous owners had given her– we hit a storm and I snarled the jib. We would have motored in but Charlie had bought another cheap
battery that–just like the last cheap battery– died. Ten-foot waves were breaking across our stern and we were losing our heading. Charlie shrugged and said it was a fine day to die, but it turned out to be a
better one to live.

One time, we were drinking in an Ensinada, Mexico dance hall, where locals paid ten pesetas to fox trot with Indian women and Charlie almost had me convinced that I really wanted to eat the worm, when Federales with loaded and pointed machine guns suddenly appeared, lining up everyone up against the wall for a search except for us two gringos at the bar who thought it wisest not to mention that the bad guys had ducked into the woman’s room and crawled out the window.

The last moment of the last night of most jaunts were usually savored on some hotel balcony overlooking outrageous beauty. We’d share cigars, cognac, philosophy and humor. “Great trip,” Charlie would
conclude–then fall asleep in his chair with drink in hand. We had already planned our next Thanksgiving trip.  We were going to follow the route of the Civil War from Gettysburg to Shiloh when cancer ended
our tradition.

Charlie’s versions of these stories and mine were almost always at
odds. It doesn’t matter whose were more accurate. Often, we were both
too loaded to know. We shared huge chunks of life together. They were
among the best of my life.

I met O’Brien in 1967 at the Quincy Patriot Ledger’s West edition
office. He was an editor and I a reporter. I applied to be his #2.
Everyone thought I was the worst possible choice, and they were
probably right. But Charlie swung the bat for me and I got the job. We
sat facing each other from midnight to dawn, five nights a week for
nearly four years. We got to know each other in eight-hour doses. He
was my boss but became my friend and eventually the best friend I would
ever have.

We were adventure companions and sailing buddies. As roommates for two years we were the oddest of couples. He was my mentor and surrogate big brother. Our adventures nearly killed us a couple of times. We
nearly got arrested a couple other times, or into a brawl or two in seedy, foreign places. We laughed lots and argued a fair amount. He understood who I was but liked me anyhow.

He was always calm–even facing death. Most perils, he described as “a bit hairy.” He called cancer, “the luck of the draw.”

He gave me the two things I need most—encouragement and shit. He gave a lot of people encouragement. He saved the shit for a select few of us. His encouragement pointed me toward the top and his shit stopped
me from going over it.

Charlie taught me about life and living; about death and acceptance. He taught me ethics without preaching, about tolerance without suffering assholes and about patience even if I wouldn’t get to the bloody point.

Charlie usually put his focus on other people. He was always non-assuming. I never knew him to betray a secret. He contrived little custom rituals with people he liked. He became my wife Paula’s cooking
assistant, where he gave her sage advice on children and her husband. He very rarely lost his temper except once when Paula hid his liquor on a camping trip.

Charlie was actually a very simple person. He didn’t change that
much in the years I knew him. In the end, he just wanted to have more
good days than bad and the good days were often defined by who he spent
them with. He enjoyed reading or hearing “a good yarn.” He cultivated a
hard-ass image but everyone knew he was a softie.

He had disdain for self-important people, Republicans and hypocrites. He didn’t usually trust people in uniform, expect Park Rangers. (Brother John, a Boston cop didn’t count ‘cause he never wore
the damned thing.) He was a committed atheist. He usually had a buck for the panhandler. He read voluminously and very slowly. He preferred fact to fiction. Three favorite books were: “Memoirs of US Grant,” “Into Thin Air” and “Undaunted Courage.” The only thing I ever heard him call inspiring was “Tuesdays with Maury.” He almost never lied and was consistently objective and logical. He almost always drove too fast.

Above everything, he valued his family and friends, even more so at the end.

Charlie considered himself a better editor than writer. Yet, he authored a truly unforgettable work: “Health Updates,” which his friends received by email. It broke newspaper rules by burying hard news leads inside little good news sandwiches. In the middle graph we’d find telltale words like “inoperable” or “a mild discomfort in the
lower jaw.” As the author warned, Health Updates would end sadly. Before it did, we learned about courage, strength, reality and that justice has nothing to do with it.

I last visited Charlie two weeks before he died. I stayed for only a few minutes because he was clearly suffering. There just weren’t enough good days left.

I miss him terribly. I’d give anything if he could tell me now to tighten and rearrange these few paragraphs. I still see him shaking his head from side-to-side, saying: “Jesus Christ, Israel—would you just
cut to the bloody chase?

I’d even give him the last word.”

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, like a face-to-face engagement despite what we zealots of social media like to think. Group Twitter and Facebook chats have value, but they often are confusing and misunderstanding sometimes is an unintended consequence. Webinars have a definite value, but when I present in that way, I often feel during my slides that I am presenting to an empty room..

But we keep trying new ways to present online and slowly steadily they get better.On June 5, I will be trying out a new hosting platform called Shindig. I have not used it or watched more than their demo, but it seems to me a most promising technology for bring speakers and their audiences closer together online.

Shindig, a New York City-based startup, is focused for now on authors, and I will be using my time to promote my new book Stellar Presentations at 2 pm PDT next Tuesday, but I hope some of you will attend just to check out the new platform.

Shindig has created a virtual library room, one that looks a bit like the great room at the NYC Public Library. On one screen, attendees will see me. On another my short deck. Then we will have a Q&A, or perhaps just a general discussion about presenting. When people virtually raise their hands and get recognized, they go live to ask their questions.

Go watch the demo you can find on the Shindig page I linked above. It’s easier than my telling you.

Shindig has started and it will be interesting to see how it develops. Fr me it looks like a fund way to see and share with people everywhere, from the comfort of my own home office. If you have time, I hope you will catch at least some part of this very promising social communications experiment.

My best friend Charlie O’Brien died ten years ago today. The sense of loss is still there. The pain is less frequent and a lot duller than it once was, I imagine like someone who has healed from the loss of a limb. Sometimes I go two-or-three days without thinking of him–but not often.

I have managed to purge him from all my mail lists and speed dials–but there are still scores of paper photos in garage-hosted boxes  that I cannot yet remove. And there is a certain pain when the Celtics are battling in the playoffs, because that was what I was paying attention to when I heard Charlie had finally died after a long and ugly bout with cancer.

I have lived a good chunk of life since Charlie died. As a writer, I have enjoyed my greatest success. I have written four books and have contributed to some respected online magazines. I have travelled to 15 new countries, often as a speaker about a subject that had not yet been named before Charlie died. I dedicated my second book, “To Charlie O’Brien. You should have been here.”

And he should have.

I would never have succeed as a writer the way I have without Charlie. He wasn’t just my friend, he was the editor who taught me to tell the story as clearly as I could and to get to the point as fast as I could. He was also my mentor, and I have become more patient and less aggressive than I once was because of the wisdom he demonstrated.

Charlie’s oldest daughter, Michele O’Brien has started a memorial page for her Dad on Facebook. She has asked friends and family to post memories of Charlie in the form of words and pictures. People can do and say whatever they wish to say. It is sort of a reunion in a space that did not exist while Charlie lived. Had he known Facebook, I think he would have been ambivalent about it. He preferred face and phone time, and it took him a while to warm up to email.

But for friends of Charlie, scattered all over this country and the UK, this is the best we can do in the form of a reunion. Remembering Charlie O’Brien is a public page. If you knew him, please share a thought. If what you see there inspires you to say something, please feel free to contribute. If it helps you deal with a loss of your own, then we who started the page will be happy.

Charlie would be as well.

Sometimes an entire day or perhaps two goes by when I don’t miss him. There has been some form of healing. Instead of a pain that sometimes agonized, there is now just an aching, I imagine like someone who has healed after an amputation. I no longer move to call him on Sundays to catch up on how his week went-three days

Ever since I started writing The Social Beat for Forbes, I’ve been wondering what to do with this, my beloved home blog. I have an idea. I currently crowd source my column ideas on Twitter and Facebook to get content, quotes and ideas that often find their way into the my columns.

But people send me lots of content that just doesn’t fit. It is not their fault. My descriptions are space limited at Forbes and my requests are often too open ended.  So I thought I would try expanding descriptions here. We’ll see how this works out.

Right now, I’m writing a story about Google+. My perspective is that Google+ could shape the future of Google, and that the company is in danger of being unimportant. I had hoped to have a Google spokesperson tell me why this is wrong, but after more than a month of requesting an interview, I’ve given up on having a conversation with anyone authorize to discuss it.

Here are my questions:

Have you used Google Plus? What was your experience?

Have you increased or decreased you use of it?

What do you think of their integration of Google+ with all other Google products? Is it anticompetitive? Does it make Google’s culture more social? Does it matter to you?

Do you have an anecdote about something that happened on Google+ that could not have happened on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Skype?

Additional Comments?

Please email me your answers. It is far easier for me that way than in a tweeted response.

I launched my new book, Stellar Presentations: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Giving Great Talks six weeks ago. It is the most critically acclaimed of my three books. On Amazon, 10 people have given it five stars, two people gave it four stars and no one has rated it lower. Other blog reviews have also been highly favorable.

People who read it say the book is not just for entrepreneurs but for anyone who has to present in any kind or size of organization. I’ll let the market decide.

Some people think that because the book is so brief–just 76 pages, a two-hour read–that the price is high. I disagree, the value is in how the book can help you present, not the time it takes you to read it. But once again, I’ll let the market decide.

So for the month of April, I am offering  Stellar Presentations at significantly reduced price. You can now buy the paper version for $5.99 at Amazon and the Kindle version for just $4.99. This offer will expire at midnight April 30.

As my mother would say, “this is such a deal, as you wouldn’t believe.”

I am writing a column for Forbes.com called The Social Beat. Everything I write related to Social media, the web, startups and the tech sector will appear there. It will be the primary venue for my online writing. Please come and visit me there.

Occasionally, I will have something to say on other topics, particularly related to my book and speaking projects. I will use Global Neighbourhoods when that occurs.

Until then, I hope you will come and visit me in my new home.

The following is excerpted from Chapter One of my new book: Stellar Presentations: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Giving Great Talks.

The Three Questions

I was raised as the youngest son in a Jewish family.  That meant that each Passover I recited the ritual Four Questions that launched the story-telling part of our Passover dinner. These days, I am rarely the youngest one at the table. But as a speaker and a coach, I begin the story that my clients or I will tell by reciting three questions:

1. Who are the people in the audience?
2. What do I have that they want?
3. What do I want to accomplish by addressing them?

I ask the first two of these questions to conference producers. When they invite me. The third is mine to answer before I accept an invite. Then, as happened in India, I replay the questions and the answers I received just before I start my talk.

Whatever your goal, you will come closer to achieving it if you understand who is listening to you and what you have that will interest them in some way related to their business.

I just told you how great Steve Jobs, was as a presenter, but, like most speakers, he had his off days. In one such case, it was clearly because he didn’t understand what his audience wanted from him.

In 1997, shortly after taking the reigns of Apple for the second time, Jobs was presiding over a press conference, whose objective I do not recall. What was memorable, however, is that he was acting defensively and was evasive in answering direct questions. This made the reporters in the room increasingly aggressive.

Finally, he snapped. “I know you guys are out to get me, just like you were the last time.” The room went quiet for a long moment.

Finally, Greg Zachary of the Wall Street Journal broke the awkward silence.  “Steve, you have us all wrong,” he said. “We don’t care whether you win or lose. We just want a good story—and we get it either way.”

People who attend a presentation are not there to serve the speaker’s goals.  They are there for their own business goals. Conversely, speakers are there to fulfill audience expectations.

Reporters want a good story.  The recent college grads in your audience are looking for a good place to work. Consultants are looking for some new business to pitch, and so on down the line.

A presentation usually starts with the audience generally on the speaker’s side. Other than hard-boiled reporters, most people will benefit far more if you succeed in telling them something that is useful or valuable to them.

When I’m speaking, I treat the audience as my customer. I try to give them what I have that they want. This is not altruism so much as a business strategy. Only by pleasing my audience can I subsequently achieve any of my own business goals.

If you represent a startup, the audience will be willing to cut you a little slack. They don’t expect you to be as smooth as George Clooney accepting an award. They will forgive you a stutter or a stammer or even some minor typo in your slide deck. They will even forgive an occasional bug that pops up during your demo of a new product.

But this doesn’t mean you are home free.  The audience is yours to lose and there are many ways that can happen. You can be insufferably boring or ill-prepared; you can overstate your case, pretend to be someone you are not, or otherwise damage yourself by stretching credibility.

You can lose an audience by bad luck. Believe it or not, it is far better to follow a great speaker than one who puts attendees into nap mode. You might find yourself competing with a noisy lunch setup crew just outside your room or at the very worst; you can get caught in a lie.

I’ll address these issues in upcoming chapters.

My new book, Stellar Presentations is 76-pages on length and costs about 10 bucks. I estimate it will take two hours of your time to read it. Four times in the three weeks since I launched the book, people have complained that the book is too short and that I should add more chapters to make it worth the money I’m asking.

As I so often do, let me tell you a story to illustrate a few points:

A woman drives her Mercedes into a garage. The mechanic asks her what the problem is.

“I’m not sure. It just doesn’t sound right when it’s idling,” she says. The mechanic lifts the hood and asks her to start the car. He steps back and listens for a few moments. Then he turns and carefully selects a wrench from the arsenal of wrenches on his workbench. He asks her to race the engine for a second. Listening closely, he selects a different wrench. Then ge tells her to let the engine idle again.

He takes the wrench and taps the carburetor once. The engine immediately starts humming perfectly.

“You’re a genius,” she gushes. “It’s perfect. How much do I owe you?”

“265,” he answers and her jaw drops down.

“You only looked at my car for 5 minutes. How the Hell do you charge me $265 for just tapping my carburetor one time” she demand to know.

The mechanic doesn’t hesitate in his answer. “Lady, I only charged you $15 for the tap. I charged you $250 for knowing where to tap.”

I find it mildly amusing that people who complain about the brevity of my book keeps saying I should add more words  and chapters to it. So far no one has argued that it is over priced.

It took me approximately 350 hours to write the 14,000 words in Stellar Presentations. It took me 30 years as a consultant, a writer and a speaker to acquire the knowledge I put into the book. I wrote a short book because people planning to make business presentations are very busy people.

I think that’s worth ten bucks.

I can make the book longer. I can add a few more of the stories I like to tell. But I will not be able to impart greater wisdom for people who want to understand the strategy of public speaking as well as the specific tips I have on making a talk stellar.

I could make it longer, but that would not make you a more successful speaker. I could charge less money, just like the mechanic could charge less for tapping the carburetor. But I don’t think that would be fair to either my theoretical mechanic or me.

And as far as price goes for either that mechanic or me, you get what you pay for.

I am thrilled to announce I have started writing a column at Forbes.com It’s called ItSeemstoMe, which was the name of my first blog. While my original blog was about anything I wanted it to be, this new column is about issues, trends and news in the tech sector.

I’ve already posted my first and second columns.

As always, I’ll be writing for business audiences about social media and web companies as well as the events surrounding them. I am also still very much interested in startups that have a shot at changing the world. I would also like to profile some of the original thinkers in the technology industry. ItSeemstoMe will be more issue oriented than I have been, looking deeper into issues that are likely to shape how today will become tomorrow.

Above all, I am a sucker for a good story, so please tell me one, so long as it touches on technology and it’s nonfiction.

If you think you have something that fits in, please let me know. The best way is via good old retro email. Put the word Forbes in the subject line and send me 2-3 paragraphs on why you think it would work in my column and some links you think I should see.

I ask you to do only two things first: 1. Read some of my stuff, and 2. Tell me me, don’t sell me.