From the category archives:

Good Communication

Remote Presentations: Before, During, and After

February 23, 2010 Good Communication

Every presentation has three major portions: before, during, and after. Most of focus on during, but taking a little time to plan before and after makes a big difference.
Before
Let’s start with the most crucial question: why should anyone come to your presentation? Will they learn a new skill? Are you [...]

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Every Demo Is An Emotional Journey

February 9, 2010 Good Communication

Every presentation is an emotional journey.
Nancy Duarte said that during an interview and it stuck with me. Every successful presentation takes the audience from one emotion to another. Ignorance about you to excitement or apathy to interest, it’s all about emotional changes. Nancy’s simple statement changed the way I communicate.
I’m a software [...]

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Are You A Bad Apple?

January 12, 2010 Good Communication

You’ve heard that one bad apple can spoil the bunch, but Will Felps at the Rotterdam School of Management proved it. Dr. Felps conducted experiments looking at what he called three “bad apple” behaviors:

Being pessimistic
Slacking off
Being a jerk

He created groups and assigned them simple tasks. The groups were paid more based on their [...]

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Confessions of A Telecommuting Multitasker

December 1, 2009 Good Communication

We need to get the um… [type type type] thing from the guys in the um… [type type type] I mean the product requirements.

I actually do this. It’s one of my worst teleworker habits. I know the data. I know people can’t really multitask, but I always feel [...]

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Make It Easy To Give You An “A”

November 24, 2009 Good Communication

As CEO of Code Sourcery, a small high-tech company, Mark Mitchell wants to make it easy for all of his customers to give his team an A. He manages over 30 employees working from home offices around the world and all of his engineers work closely with customers. They also take on project [...]

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The Wisdom of Mailing Lists

November 12, 2009 Good Communication

For decades mailing lists and IRC were the only tools available to open source projects. And they built cities on top of them. Apache HTTPd, Linux, and MySQL were all built on mailing lists. Emails flying back and forth between groups of people who had never met and were only connected by [...]

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5 Ways To Support Your Team

October 29, 2009 Good Communication

Over the last 12 years I’ve owned six Thinkpads. With one small exception I’ve owned nothing but Thinkpads since 1997. That’s the type of customer loyalty companies dream of, and it all came from customer support. I had one good customer support call from IBM in 1998 and I was hooked. [...]

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How To Say Thank You

October 21, 2009 Good Communication

I am a big giant fan of Aza Raskin. I met him when I interviewed him for The One Minute Commute and he’s always been helpful and kind. He’s also really smart most of the time.
All of this is why I clicked when he posted to Facebook asking for help with [...]

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3 More Tips for Web Presentations

October 13, 2009 Good Communication

Presentating makes you the king of your team for an hour. That’s just long enough so you can drive the discussion and not going mad with power. This is why I like presenting to my team and why I love it when my coworkers present to me. Group discussions are good, but [...]

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Common Web Presentation Mistakes Published at iMedia Connection

October 1, 2009 Good Communication

I’ve just published a new article at iMedia Connection: The 3 Most Common Mistakes of Web Presentations. Check it out to see if you’re making any of these mistakes in your web presentations.
And thanks to the great guys from iMedia Connection. If you want to up your marketing IQ go check them [...]

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