Social Signal Podcast

Social Speech Podcast, Episode 7: Chris Brogan

info@socialsignal.com (Social Signal) — Fri, 04 May 2012 08:46:47 +0000

For several years now, Chris Brogan's blog has been a must-read for anyone who wants to use social media productively. Add his thriving practice as a speaker, the fact that he co-founded PodCamp, and his New York Times bestseller Trust Agents (cowritten with Julien Smith) along with two other books (Google+ for Business: How Google's Social Network Changes Everything and Social Media 101)...

...and his now-legendary 2009 presentation at New Media Atlanta, where he brought an angry backchannel into the open and won it over...

...and you have a shoo-in for the social speech hall of fame — not to mention someone well worth listening to on the subject of social media and public speaking.

Especially because he'll explain what you, as a speaker, can have in common with the Grateful Dead.

The links:

Social Speech Podcast, Episode 5: Ian Griffin

info@socialsignal.com (Social Signal) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 18:40:48 +0000

With this episode, we flip the mic (metaphorically) and talk with someone who's a lot more used to writing speeches than delivering them. That's not to say Ian Griffin isn't at home behind a lectern; he's an accomplished speaker and a skilled communicator.

If you're in the tech industry, you've probably heard his words; Ian has worked in executive communications at Cisco, Hewlett Packard and Sun Microsystems. He's also incredibly generous with his time and expertise, as many Silicon Valley communicators who've attended one of his presentations can tell you.

In this interview, he asks why we put so much effort into creating a speech, and then fail to do that little extra bit that can help it reach far more people... and he offers lots of ideas for what that little extra bit can be.

Ian Griffin's blog, Wikispaces hub, LinkedIn profile and Twitter feed
Wikispaces, Slideshare, Twitter search, HootSuite
Cliff Atkinson's The Backchannel (yep, it came up again!)

Social Speech Podcast, Episode 1: Nancy White

info@socialsignal.com (Social Signal) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 01:08:55 +0000

The social web has gone a long way toward changing what it means to be in the audience at a speech – making an audience member less a passive spectator listening to a monologue, and more an active participant in a conversation among peers.

And nobody does that quite like Nancy White – except she doesn't just rely on digital technology. She's one of the best group facilitators in the business, working all over the world with everyone from small community groups to Fortune 500 companies. You can see her approach at work in the March of Dimes' Share Your Story site, which several years on is still one of the examples we cite the most often of how online community can make a real different in people's lives.

So who better to kick off Episode 1 of the Social Speech podcast?

A few links:

Nancy White on Twitter
Nancy's company, Full Circle Associates
Free tools for integrating PowerPoint and Twitter (for Windows) courtesy of Timo Elliott
Timo's Mac-friendly integration between Prezi and Twitter
Alex's case for recognizing online life as real, too: her Harvard Business Review blog post and her TEDx Victoria talk

Photo by kk+
Graphic: A quick sketch I did of Nancy at Northern Voice a few years ago

Introducing the Social Speech Podcast

info@socialsignal.com (Social Signal) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 06:56:41 +0000

If you're involved in public speaking – as someone who delivers speeches and presentations, or as an executive communications practitioner, or as an event organizer – then this is for you.

Over the next several weeks, I'm going to share conversations I'm having with some of the smartest people I know about public speaking and social media: how connected audiences are transforming the world of presentations, and how some forward-thinking speakers are making the most of it.

I'm calling it the Social Speech Podcast. You can find the feed here or subscribe on iTunes. Here's the introductory episode; the first interview will go live next week.

But please – don't let my schedule hold you up. Give this intro a listen, and if you have thoughts about the Social Speech (I've posted some of mine here) then please share them in the comments. Or email your text or audio comment (up to 25 MB) to rob@socialsignal.com.

Thanks – and I'll look forward to hearing from you!

BBC: podcasting still around, and it's bigger than Twitter

info@socialsignal.com (Social Signal) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 23:17:47 +0000

Podcasting, as any social media guru worth her or his robes knows, is dead. Like so many social technologies, it failed to jump the adoption gap, break the hype cycle or clear the Great Hurdle of At-First-Raving-and-then-Dismissive Punditry.

Except that the common wisdom - that podcasts are the 3-1/2" floppy disk of the 2000s - has been lost on one group of people: listeners.

According to a BBC story from the summer,

[P]odcasting has continued to grow and grow.

More than eight million adults in the UK - around 16% of the adult population - have downloaded a podcast, with almost half listening to one at least once a week. This figure is echoed in the US.

As a comparison, this is still a greater percentage of people than use Twitter.

And while many of those podcasts are just repurposed content from broadcasters and other big media voices, they're creating a channel that the rest of us can use as well, whether it's as individuals or organizations.

The lesson? (One that I have to constantly remind myself of?) Don't dismiss a platform just because it isn't on the front pages, or being talked up by the hottest social media voices. It may well be the humble, unsung hero of your next foray into social media.

Introducing Bedtime with Rob and Alex

info@socialsignal.com (Social Signal) — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 19:01:34 +0000

It's the start of our favourite season here at Social Signal: the run-up to Valentine's Day. For us, it's a celebration of love, togetherness and community.

And what better way to express that togetherness than through a podcast? That's why we're launching a new experiment, Bedtime with Rob and Alex. It's a podcast that captures the knowledge, insights and passions of our online community and Web 2.0 explorations -- whether that involves a new way of looking at online collaboration, or a new piece of software for looking at online pictures.

As partners in both bedroom and boardroom, we get to explore these questions 24/7. (Don't you talk about RSS aggregation after your baby wakes you up at 3 a.m.?) But we've long noticed that our most creative, wide-ranging conversations often happen at the very end of the day, as we're comparing notes or sharing what got us most excited. (Not that kind of excited. Usually.)

And now we're ready to see whether our king-size bed has enough room for two adults, two kids, a dog and an iPod. For the next ten days (just until Valentine's Day!) Bedtime with Rob and Alex will share our conversations as we wind down. Check it out and let us know whether what happens in the bedroom should stay in the bedroom, or whether you're enjoying the chance to eavesdrop.

Our first episode, What's missing from the Web 2.0 menu? (recorded February 4th) asks why there are still unmet needs amidst the overabundance of social web applications. Would Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Yahoo! help fill in these gaps....or erode the quality of existing solutions?

You can subscribe here. Tune in and let us know what you think!

P.S. For those of you who are curious about Alex's solution for menu-planning on the Mac (as discussed in the podcast), it's a program called YummySoup. It lets you import recipes from sites like Epicurious and Martha Stewart, and turn ingredient lists into grocery lists.

Podcast episode #2: Should you test your site for usability?

info@socialsignal.com (Social Signal) — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 23:03:21 +0000

Episode #2 of the Social Signal podcast features an interview with design ethnographer Kelly Goto, who explains why testing for usability is a must in the era of the social web. We also list some of the events coming up on the Social Signal calendar.

Some of the links mentioned in the podcast:

Our calendar of upcoming events
Registration for the NTEN webinar series
The Northern Voice blogging conference
Registration for Web 2.0 and Your Organization with Alexandra Samuel and Jason Mogus
Kelly Goto's company, gotomedia
The books Kelly recommends:

Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think
Karen Donoghue and Michael D Schrage, Built for Use

Kelly's book:

Web ReDesign 2.0: Workflow that Works

Podcast Episode #1: From Org Charts to Sitemaps - How organizational structure affects web strategy and implementation

info@socialsignal.com (Social Signal) — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 23:00:29 +0000

Does your organizational structure support web innovation or inhibit it? Learn how to make the most of your own team's structure from the web strategists at two very different nonprofits: Corrie Frasier, Online Communications Manager for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Jed Miller, Director of Internet programs for the American Civil Liberties Union. In this, the first edition of the Social Signal podcast, Corrie and Jed talk about everything from how to get senior buy-in to your web strategy, to how interdepartmental cooperation helped the ACLU respond effectively to NSA spying.