Recently I’ve been giving a series of two hour talks on various aspects of social media. In the last two sessions I was lucky enough to have Lin Sagovsky as one of the attendees. Amongst other things, Lin runs Play4Real – a consultancy that takes theatre techniques into the workplace as a way of building skills and confidence in all walks of working life.

Although at pains to let me know that my sessions were full of good content Lin offered to help me improve my presentation technique. I had the cake, what was missing was the icing.

What a revelation. I knew my presentation skills weren’t as good as they could be. I just didn’t know why, or where to start to improve the situation. Very quickly Lin was able to pinpoint the areas that needed working on and offer equally rapid solutions.

In less than two hours we looked at body language, breathing, timing, staging (sight lines, lighting, acoustics), managing the audience and much more besides. All of Lin’s advice and tuition addressed my specific needs.

I can’t recommend her highly enough.

I have a few weeks to practice before my next public speaking opportunity which if all goes well will be the whole cake, complete with icing. And in time I might even manage a cherry on top.

If you think you could do with some help in improving your own public speaking you could do a lot worse than signing up for Lin’s free tips newsletter. It’s a good first step in the right direction.

At this year’s BNI Big Breakfast the first speaker’s slot was given over to Richard Swan who had penned a new piece to follow up on last year’s pastiche of Don Maclean’s American Pie. This time around the musical backdrop was a composition of his own. Watch the home recorded version on YouTube here: BNI Beat Poem

It’ll be interesting to see if it can match the unexpected success of last year’s piece: BNI Song which to date has been viewed almost 33,000 times. What is certain is that Richard’s first piece influenced in part the decision to make greater use of video in marketing individual groups. Last year saw the start of a competition amongst BNI groups for best promotional video. Perversely our own group didn’t enter. Possibly because Richard is one of our members we felt there was little more to add.

I gave a talk recently to introduce a group of business owners to the world of twitter. A few were already regular twitterers but most had simply heard the growing buzz around twitter and social media in general and had yet to stick their toes in the water.

This post rounds up some of the twitter applications that we didn’t have time to cover in any great detail.

One of the first things anyone needs after opening a twitter account is something that will manage activity in a more useful way than the twitter site itself.

Two desktop applications that I have found useful are Tweetdeck and Seesmic. I have a marginal preference for the latter but have been running both on different machines for the last month.

Both will allow you to manage multiple accounts and show your tweets, replies and direct messages alongside the general stream of tweets from those you follow. They will also allow you to create groups containing the tweets of those you particularly want to keep track of. And both will allow you to hook up to your Facebook account and shorten your urls to help you keep within the 140 character limit.

They’ll do a lot more besides but these few things make either an invaluable tool. If neither take your fancy another desktop application worth looking at is Twhirl.

For tweeting away from your desk you’ll want a Mobile twitter client such as tweetie or tweetdeck for i-phone or ubertwitter for Blackberry.

A URL shortening service such as bit.ly, budurl or tinyurl will help you keep track of how popular your tweets are and keep your tweets within the 140 character limit. Most desktop clients will include URL shortener but registering directly with the service will allow you to track your shortened URLs as well as simply shortening them.

Beyond these few must-haves there are hundreds of helper applications. What follows is a listing of a few that have caught my attention:

tweetbeep and twilert – a couple of services that send alerts based on keywords that you choose to track. Great for keeping track of tweets that mention you, your product or service, or any topic you’re particularly interested in.

grouptweet – group message broadcasting for twitter. A way of using the instant messaging power of twitter within a closed group. Group tweets are broadcast privately to group members.

ping.fm – Not a twitter specific service but rather a social network broadcasting service. Ping.fm will update your status on over 40 social network sites with filters and triggers to ensure all your messages go to the right place.

nearbytweets – The Royston Vasey of the Twitterverse, a service that helps you find twitterers nearby: local tweets for local people. Key in your postcode, a keyword and a radius in miles and nearbytweets returns online twitterers tweeting on topic within your cachement area.

Another service along similar lines is
twitterfall – a ‘waterfall’ of tweets on topics you select and within geographic boundaries you set.

whofollowswhom – Pick up to five tweeters and compare what they share in common in terms of who they follow and are followed by.

friendorfollow and twitterkarma – who’s following you that you’re not following back and who are you following that isn’t following you. These two services will let you know. I have a preference for the way twitterkarma works but friendorfollow doesn’t require you to give your password – always a plus.

twittercounter – shows growth and projected growth of followers and followed based on past activity.

tweetstats – a statistical analysis of your tweeting patterns over time: tweets per hour, tweets per month, tweet timeline and reply stats.

twittercal – a service that connects your twitter account to your google calendar.

SocialOomph – formerly tweetlater – a bundle of useful tools at the core of which is the possibility of forward booking your tweets – write now and send later. It will integrate with your bit.ly URL shortening account, allow you to manage multiple accounts, vet followers and automate much of the process. Personally I keep most of the settings on manual and still find plenty that’s useful.

Another useful twitter client, particularly if you have a number of contributors to a single profile, is HootSuite.

twitterfeed – tweets generated from an RSS feed that you nominate

twittersheep – enter your username to generate a tag cloud based on the words in the bio notes of those that follow you.

tweetake – a back up service for all your twitterings.

twibs – a business directory for twitter

twellow – a yellow pages for twitter

coupontweet – a discount coupon service via twitter

retweetist – a site that shows the most popular re-tweeted tweets. One way of discovering trends, popular topics and tweeters.

Last but not least two useful guides to twittering and twitter etiquette. The first from mashable and the second (via @subutcher) from computer-colleges.com

If anyone reading this has a favourite twitter related application or site that I have omitted, please do leave a comment.

This last week has seen the views of Matthew Robson, the 15 year old intern at Morgan Stanley, causing a little concern in boardrooms across the world. The reason: a three page report he had been invited to put together detailing the media and communication habits of his peer group. In some quarters, this straw poll of one has since been elevated to the Gospel of a Generation.

The headline take-aways in the Morgan Stanley report are that teenagers:

• ignore and despise advertising
• don’t read the news
• don’t listen or watch much radio or TV
• don’t pay for anything if it can be avoided
• don’t use twitter because of the cost of texting (an investment best reserved for texting their mates)
• we should all be worried because this casts a shadow over current notions of how the world works.

So what’s new? Not much. But for twitter, a relatively new addition, it was ever thus. Teenagers have never had that much disposable income. They’ve always looked for ways of having fun without having funds. They’ve never really wanted to do much other than be with their friends, listen to music and watch movies. And it doesn’t have to be a particular movie, As Robson says in his paper,

“Teenagers visit the cinema quite often, regardless of what is on. Usually they will target a film first, and set out to see that, but sometimes they will just go and choose when they get there. This is because going to the cinema is not usually about the film, but the experience – and getting together with friends.”

In effect, the rest of the world is inconsequential to the extent that it doesn’t impinge on their world.

As a group, their attitudes and media consumption habits will change. And some of that change will be driven by the rise in the levels of their discretionary spending.

The comment about twitter is a case in point. Robson cites that the major lack of appeal of the medium is the cost of texting and having better things to do with their ‘free’ texting allowance. This is a slightly parochial signal that only really applies in Europe – the US service having struck better deals with home turf carriers which effectively removes the cost argument – at least as far as service delivery. And anyway, modern phones have wi-fi internet access which makes tweeting free within a free access zone. It’s the availability of free access to the internet and not the service, be it twitter or anything else, that would seem to determine, for a 15 year old, whether or not it’s worth bothering with.

Hence it comes as no surprise that they’ve taken to VOIP in a big way. They’re not footing the bill that provides the core internet access on which their game console will be running. So of course they use the voice chat facility on that – it’s free.

And as for advertising, who do you know in any age group that admits to being in the slightest influenced by advertising. You can probably count them on the fingers of one hand. Everyone likes to think that they’ve arrived at their decisions via more ‘respectable’ routes. There’s an awful lot of advertising out there and most of it, one could be forgiven for thinking, isn’t aimed at anyone in particular. And most of the advertising that is targeted, isn’t targeted at you. For the average (there’s a weasel word) teenager, is it any wonder that most advertising is annoying or irrelevant. It’s either untargeted, poorly targeted or not targeted at them.

So should board members be concerned by this report from Morgan Stanley ? Probably not, unless the organisation is paying for a lot of poorly targeted advertising. Will 15 year-olds take their free-loading habits into their twentys and thirtys? Possibly some of them will take some of those habits. And there will certainly be a lot more free stuff available by the time they reach twenty. But most will earn enough to buy themselves better options than those that are freely available. And most of them will grow up to have a wider range of interests than music, games and movies. And advertising, in the broadest sense of the word, will be helping them make their decisions. But it probably won’t be advertising purely in the mass media forms most of us are familiar with.

If you haven’t seen it, the full text of Matthew Robson’s paper for Morgan Stanley is available online at The Guardian.co.uk It’s free. No need to buy a paper. Get stuck in.

There’s something wrong with my knee that necessitates having a few blood tests. So off I went this morning to visit the local blood-letting clinic. Hospitals are not places I spend too much time in (although recently the maternity ward has been a regular stop-off). Like many other infrequent visitors I find hospitals’ sprawling and unfamiliar layouts difficult to navigate.

Signs are everywhere and all pointing to departments with long medical names none of which appeared to be on the sheet of paper my doctor had given me. But what makes the process doubly difficult is the proliferation of hand-made signage – word-processed A4 sheets or hand written notices to cater for every eventuality that hadn’t been thought of when the initial signage went up.

In the waiting room alone there were more than twenty different erratum slips posted to the walls. I had plenty of time to wait and managed to take in quite a few. A number were repeat postings in, presumably, strategic locations.

In the corner where I was sitting, a small notice informed me that if I wished to talk privately with a member of staff, I should ask.

Stuck to the window behind me was a note and under the bold heading, “Important Notice”, it said “The garden is not in use due to health and safety issues. As soon as they have been resolved we will let you know”. Presumably notification will be a little word-processed A4 poster. Still, if the problem is health and safety, it couldn’t happen in a better place.

Another notice informs everyone that, “Children 16 years and younger cannot have their blood taken at this hospital, they have to go to St. Helier Hospital for blood tests”. For some ridiculous reason it makes me think the needles they use here must be very big.

While the blood is being drained from my arm I notice three more temporary posts. One is a poem, presumably to take your mind off the needle, ” A smile doesn’t cost a penny. A smile is all your own, it’s never spent…”. Near the poem is a more permanent, printed, notice to the staff, “Does that patient need assistance? Be ready to give a helping hand, it creates a good impression and is a good thing to do. Now think of it in terms of Corporate Governance”. I never would have thought of it in those terms.

Another hand-typed note from admin reminds everyone, “Before you leave, make sure the windows are firmly shut and the lights are out. Thank You”.

On my way out I see a typed instruction, “Remove bulky outer garments before seeing nurse”.

Too late now.

Helpfully, a little sign on the door handle in red felt marker pen, protected by layers of yellowing Sellotape, says “Pull”. I made my excuses and left.

An idea that has been buzzing around Mike’s head for some time has finally been put to good use. His comic verse ‘Hippoparadox’ has been included in TwitterTitters a marvellous collection of comic writing that has been bundled together to raise money for Comic Relief. The book creators, Linda Jones and Louise Bolotin, used the crowd-sourcing power of twitter to invite submissions. It was only a matter of time before news reached Mike, a self-confessed twitter – holic.

The book is available now both as a download and as a printed copy. All proceeds (less the small cost of production and postage) go to raise more funds for Comic Relief. Please do buy a copy. It will make Mike’s day and probably make yours as well.

Blurb the people behind ‘bookshop-quality personal publishing’ have a competition running (closing date 16th July 2009) for the finest, most creative and innovative self published photography books and the people behind them. Get along to http://pbn.blurb.com if you fancy your chances.

But is an equally bad beginning. Both these statements express widely held views. But, are they true?

Rather than give a simple ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ answer to this most frequent of FAQs, writer Mike Reed has pulled together a panel of expert witnesses to answer the question. Testimonials from Kingsley Amis (The Kings English – 1997), Wilson Follett (Modern American Usage – 1966), and a host of others, all confirm And can be an appropriate and useful start to a sentence. And but is just as valid as an opening word.

The whole thing is packaged in a very clever folding mechanism that reveals page after hidden page of new quotations, adding considerably to the impact of the wisdom within.

Saw this on the bus. Can’t help feeling Nivea have been short-changed despite spending longer trying to decipher their message than I spent on any other ad on the bus. I wonder if they get a special rate for restricted visibility? Alternatively, do they have to pay extra to have a special fitting of their ad so that it sits snug behind the loudspeaker? Can you buy that space specifically in order to make creative use of the speaker within the ad? What I didn’t spend too much time wondering about was the news that Nivea has introduced a Kid Spray.

Seen on welcome screen of the tills at the Sterling Cafe in the ‘Gherkin’ early one Friday morining.