In this action-packed explosion of erudition Lee shares his experiences on a half-day workshop on Social Media, especially his view that business communicators suck at communicating.

Allan agrees, noting that the two best ways to prepare for a presentation are to:

1. Don’t work out and shape your presentation in Powerpoint; only turn on Powerpoint when you already HAVE your story.
2. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.

Lee praises David Grossman for his superb presentation that obviously met both of the above criteria, and agrees that he is the ‘one born every minute’, as PT Barnum would say.

Allan goes into depth about how to use headline titles in PowerPoint correctly.

Allan confesses that he doesn’t read blogs these days, preferring to read Twitter, Jaiku and Facebook. Lee is really concerned at the possible death of blogging at the hands of micro-blogging and wonders whether the ‘attention deficit economy’ means that we are witnesses to the end of long-form creativity.

But then again, ‘they’ all said that children were only interested in multi-colour, fast-paced, interactive blip-style media, and Harry Potter completely blew ‘their’ opinions out of the water. As Nassim Taleb says, a ‘black swan’ moment (a ‘black swan’ because scientific reason held that swans were only available in ‘white’, because hundreds of thousands of observations had shown only white swans. When black swans were discovered in Western Australia they completely and instantaneously made a mockery of ’scientific experts’ and destroyed several ‘truths’ about swans that the scientific community held dear to their hearts.

The differences in blog usage between Lee and Allan reflect their different perspectives. Allan uses his social media tools to engage with a small group of practitioners, to swap ideas and so on. Lee uses his tools as branding and marketing outreach channels. Both of their perspectives are equally valid.

Like the ‘old fart’ that he is, Lee laments over the ‘walled gardens’ of Facebook, CommunicatorsNetwork, MyRagan, Second Life, MySpace and so on, arguing that these walled gardens are the opposite of the ethos of social media and the internet in general. Allan, quite naturally, sees these as complementary not antagonistic to the ethos, allowing small, like-minded groups of individuals to coalesce and share the conversations they would probably share around the water cooler, coffee urn or friendly pint down at the Queen’s Bum & Icepack.

Allan points out that there are stylistic differences that the limitations of micro-blogging can actually work to enhance, recounting that one well-known blogger is incredibly stilted and annoying on their blog posts, but warm, friendly and very funny in their micro-posts. Allan even briefly mentions Danah Boyd’s paper about the socio-economic differences between the residents of MySpace and Facebook.

Agree with them? Disagree? Let them have it - both barrels! Drop your comments on the show blog, or even better send a Waxmail to their Gmail account: commscafe at gmail dot com.

All in all, 30 minutes of caffeine-fuelled hyperbole and satire, which you can either download and listen to right away, or else subscribe to via your rss podcatcher. And if you are an iTunes user, you can find our podcast in the iTunes Music Store (for free, of course!) Beware, though: iTunes has a funny habit of not picking up all of our chats; you are better off copying our rss feed and then, in your copy of iTunes, go to ?Advanced? in the top menu bar, ?Subscribe to Podcast?? and paste in our rss feed there.

Until next time (paying clients must always take priority) take it easy, take some risks, take your children to the park.

They also announce they are ‘advertising free’ (although if you want to throw a few pennies their way to pimp your product they won’t object).

Along the way they erupt about Pensacola, eruditionize (?!) over Twitter and Jaiku, and give you plenty of time to hide by announcing where they will be appearing (not, unfortunately, as a ‘double act’) in the next month or so.

Agree with them? Disagree? Let them have it - both barrels! Drop your comments on the show blog, or even better send a Waxmail to their new Gmail account: commscafe at gmail dot com.

All in all, 23 minutes of caffeine-fuelled hyperbole and satire, which you can either download and listen to right away, or else subscribe to via your rss podcatcher. And if you are an iTunes user, you can find our podcast in the iTunes Music Store (for free, of course!) Beware, though: iTunes has a funny habit of not picking up all of our chats; you are better off copying our rss feed and then, in your copy of iTunes, go to ‘Advanced’ in the top menu bar, ‘Subscribe to Podcast…’ and paste in our rss feed there.

Until next time (paying clients must always take priority) take it easy, take some risks, take your finger out of your nose, junior!

00:39
A word from our sponsors - GoToMeeting.com

01:58
Your two intrepid intellects come clean that they are only into podcasting for the money. From the advertising revenue they receive they will be renting adjoining penthouse suites at a swanky hotel in New Orleans. Yes, they disclose exactly how much they have received thus far…

02:56
Ted Demopoulos‘ new book “What no one ever tells you about blogging and podcasting: real-life advice from 101 people who successfully leverage the power of the blogosphere” is fabulous, but Allan wants the 2nd Edition out pronto! That’s because he’s not in it. Lee assures Allan that the reason he’s not in it, unlike Lee who IS in it [page 25], is because Allan is not worth talking about, unlike Lee. Allan doesn’t like the title, but Lee is happy with it because it draws you in, just as good Direct Marketing titles should do. Lee loves Ted’s writing style, and also comments favourably on ‘Promoting your podcast: the ultimate guide to building an audience of raving fans” by Jason Van Orden.

07:35
Allan is jealous of Lee’s new Edirol R-09 digital recorder. Lee explains why he received it and again thanks Ross Monaghan at Deakin University for the opportunity.

08:28
Lee has been called many things over the years, but is he a “professional?” The question has been keeping Allan up late at night (much to Mrs Coffee’s disgust). Jay Rosen and Shel Holtz raised the question a little while ago, Lee blogged about it over at the Marcom blog with interesting answers from Robert French’s PR students. Allan thinks that the question for being recognised as a ‘professional’ is a frustratingly silly one; Lee recalls his Sociology studies and attempts to sound authoritative by talking about the ‘Professional Project’. Both toss the ideas around about formal, legal accountability versus informal self-accreditation (including the IABC & PRSA), plus the difference between respect for the positional title and respect for the person. Allan suggests that accredited professionals have to go for re-examination or accreditation every, say, 5 years, in order to show that they are undergoing self-development and keeping their skills up to date.

Agree with us? Disagree? Let us have it - both barrels! Drop your comments on the show blog, or even better send a Waxmail to our new Gmail account: commscafe at gmail dot com.

All in all, 23 minutes of caffeine-fuelled hyperbole and satire, which you can either download and listen to right away, or else subscribe to via your rss podcatcher. And if you are an iTunes user, you can find our podcast in the iTunes Music Store (for free, of course!) Beware, though: iTunes has a funny habit of not picking up all of our chats; you are better off copying our rss feed and then, in your copy of iTunes, go to ‘Advanced’ in the top menu bar, ‘Subscribe to Podcast…’ and paste in our rss feed there.

Until next time (paying clients must always take priority) take it easy, take some risks, take the garbage out when your wife asks you to.

Technorati : allan jenkins, commscafe, deakin, edirol, gotomeeting, iabc, jason van orden, jay rosen, lee hopkins, marcom, professional, prsa, robert french, ross monaghan, shel holtz, ted demopoulos

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Welcome

It’s been a while — and we knew you missed us so we came back!

In this cheeky chat we:

• Craftily reference a YouTube video of Aussie satire show CNNNN
• Let you know that GoToMeeting.com are our sponsors (and we think their product is great, too!)
• Chat about Allan’s recent ‘off the grid’ experience over the Dec-Jan period — he loved it, we missed him, and he only thought of Lee twice but was blown away by how ‘matter of fact’ some folks in his travels consider podcasting and blogging
• Talk about the time it takes to create a podcast versus a vidcast versus a blogpost, and Allan has a superb strategy for dealing with the whole ‘time it takes’ issue for SMEs (Small-Medium Enterprises) — plus he explains why he rarely listens to podcasts and explains why Auburn University takes a day off to celebrate Robert French once making the ‘Coffee Stain at the Bottom of the Cup’ section of Allan’s blogroll.
• Link to such luminaries as Mitch Joel, Bryper, Josh Hallett, Robert French, C.C. Chapman, The Divine Miss M (nice new image for your Diary of a Shameless Self-Promoter podcast, Heidi!), Donna PepsiCola, Steve Crescenzo, Stuart Bruce, Shel, Neville and FIR, and the IABC Conference in New Orleans
• And talk about LibraryThing.com and the wonderful scanning mouse you can buy for $15-20 — well worth it!

Along the way we rip the p*ss out of each other (as usual), disagree with each other (as usual) and shed more light on business communication than you will see at an Aerosmith concert.

Agree with us? Disagree? Let us have it - both barrels! Drop your comments on the show blog, or even better send a Waxmail to our new Gmail account: commscafe at gmail dot com.

All in all, 36 minutes of caffeine-fuelled hyperbole and satire, which you can either download and listen to right away, or else subscribe to via your rss podcatcher. And if you are an iTunes user, you can find our podcast in the iTunes Music Store (for free, of course!) Beware, though: iTunes has a funny habit of not picking up all of our chats; you are better off copying our rss feed and then, in your copy of iTunes, go to ‘Advanced’ in the top menu bar, ‘Subscribe to Podcast…’ and paste in our rss feed there.

Until next time (paying clients must always take priority): take it easy, take some risks, take your chances where you can when you are playing Roger Federer.

Technorati : Stuart Bruce, bryan person, bryper, cc chapman, cnnnn, diary of a shameless self promoter, divine miss m, donna papacosta, donna pepsicola, fir, for immediate release, gotomeeting, heidi miller, josh hallett, mitch joel, neville hobson, robert french, shel holtz, steve crescenzo, youtube

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As part of a series of interviews with great internal communicators that I conducted for Deakin University, Brad Bellaver, currently the Internal Comms Supremo for Wells Fargo’s Technology Information Group, was kind enough to run the gauntlet of my ferocious interrogative style (hah!).

I’m not sure why this particular interview fell through a gap, but Deakin forgot to publish it — so I have instead!

Brad’s views on the importance of employee communications is STUNNING!

He has so many diamonds within his head that the man is a walking jewellery store!

What does he do?

“I’m the little sheep dog you see running around cattle, trying to keep them all heading in the same direction.”

So he explains how he helps 40,000 employees put all their left feet down in front of their right at the same time, including saying ‘No’ to those who would try to hijack the strategic communication goals.

“We need to move from ‘message deliverer’ to ‘meaning maker’”

If you’re thinking that the easiest way to communicate with ‘the troops’ is via the intranet, you are in for a rude and powerful wake-up!

I cannot recommend this 55 minute interview enough — even listening to it again now I find myself getting buzzed all over again from the amount of passion and energy that Brad has; he’s contagious!

You can download the interview directly to your computer and listen, or if you want to catch all of the interviews, then why not subscribe to our rss podcast feed and retrieve them in your podcatcher of choice (such as iTunes or Juice).

This completes the series of interviews I recorded with employee communications specialists.

The interviewees were:

• Allan Jenkins(mp3) [more details]
• Amy Gooen(mp3) [more details]
• Brad Bellaver(mp3)
• Catriona Byrne(mp3) [more details]
• David Jones(mp3) [more details]
• Donna Papacosta(mp3) [more details]
• Meryl David(mp3) [more details]
• Peter Vogt(mp3) [more details]

Technorati : brad bellaver, deakin university, themediapod

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In this pre-Christmas, bumper edition of The Commscafe Chat you will find your two intrepid investigators of all things ‘Business Communication’ considering the following:

On organisation versus creativity :::
Lee admits he is slightly more disorganized than most — he couldn’t even organise a drink in a brewery; Allan finds no difference in his output whether his desk is neat and tidy or, as Lee’s is usually, a complete schemozzle; Lee finds that all of his creative juices can get poured into looking at ‘organization’ as a mini-project in and of itself, but that the project is only short-lived. Both Allan and Lee love nothing more than big sheets of A3 paper and plenty of pencils and pens to get the creative juices flowing for our clients. Lee then progresses his doodlings via MindManager mind-mapping software. Allan tells his clients “don’t go in and start creating your presentation with PowerPoint!” Lee raves about Beyond Bullets, Cliff Atkinson’s book and blog. Both Allan and Lee rave about Garr Reynold’s superb blog Presentation Zen.

On organizing rss feeds in GreatNews (and other feed readers) :::
Lee references Mitch Joel and his discussion about organising feeds. Lee questions how he can follow 250 feeds, Allan says he follows 400+ and Shel Holtz reckons he follows around 700. Whilst two years ago we might have been able to scoop a story, these days with 55million blogs around, that’s highly unlikely to happen (except for Rubel, for example). Where value is added these days, Allan argues, is in providing commentary — the ‘what this means’ factor. But should one add personal, non-business, feeds to one’s blogroll? Or indeed post personal, non-business information? Both of them explain how they organise their feeds, noting that some days the newest bloggers around (such as some of Robert French’s Marcom/PR students at Auburn Uni and Robert’s alumni) are the best reads of any of them. Allan pines for the day when an intelligent blogreader can determine how important a post is, based on your previous tag history, to which Lee wouldn’t be surprised if Google were already working on it.

On offline blog editors :::
Lee shocks Allan by confirming that he has indeed once more attempted to use RocketPost, but goes on to confirm why he again dumped it and sticks with his beloved Zoundry — whereas RocketPost has had a chequered (to say the least) history, Zoundry has never stopped working for him, their support and development team are ‘on the ball’ and incredibly helpful, and Zoundry integrates beautifully with GreatNews, Lee and Allan’s news/feed reader of choice.

On Allan’s two year blogging anniversary :::
Lee congratulations Allan on his two-year milestone, and lets him know that we miss him when he’s busy. Allan worries about Lee’s recent hospitalisation and is glad to hear that things are okay now.

‘Draft’ versus ‘No Draft’ :::
Allan and Lee agree to disagree that the draft is a good idea. Allan thinks that the maturation process is not for the military or government to sort out on behalf of parents; Allan thinks that the Draft couldn’t be any less than three years because it takes so long to train someone up to be useful, whereas Lee thinks that you don’t need to train draftees up to be specialists. Allan thinks that letting these draftees working around the community means that you have plenty of sullen people who would resent having missed two years of job or study possibilities. Both Lee and Allan volunteered to serve their country and agree to disagree over the Draft issue.

Agree with them? Disagree? Let them have it — both barrels! Drop your comments on the show blog, or even better send a Waxmail to our new Gmail account: commscafe at gmail dot com.

All in all, 44 minutes of caffeine-fuelled hyperbole and satire, which you can either download and listen to right away, or else subscribe to via your rss podcatcher. And if you are an iTunes user, you can find our podcast in the iTunes Music Store (for free, of course!) Beware, though: iTunes has a funny habit of not picking up all of our chats; you are better off copying our rss feed and then, in your copy of iTunes, go to ‘Advanced’ in the top menu bar, ‘Subscribe to Podcast…’ and paste in our rss feed there.

Until next week: take it easy, take some risks, take your hands out of your pockets when you talk to me.

—–

“Online Meetings Made Easy with GoToMeeting - Try it Free for 45 days and use Promo Code: ‘Podcast’”

—–

Technorati : A3, Auburn, Ecto, Epic 2015, Garr Reynolds, Google, GreatNews, Marcom, Mind Manager, Mitch Joel, PowerPoint, Presentation Zen, Robert French, RocketPost, Shel Holtz, Steve Rubel, Zoundry, draft

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Peter is the Director of Internal Communications for eBay and is responsible for communicating with eBay’s 11,000+ employees, personally running a team of 16 communicators worldwide. eBay stole him from Microsoft, where he was the Head of Internal Communications worldwide.

eBay has three companies: eBay itself, PayPal, and its most recent acquisition, Skype.

A PR graduate, Peter has enjoyed 20 years as a ‘Communicator’ and along the way gained a phenomenal amount of insight and knowledge into employee communications — I cannot recommend this interview highly enough if you want to get an insight into the challenges and successes of a highly successful communicator.

Some of Peter’s great comments include:

“You should only work for companies you are passionate about”

“Mark my words: within 5 years Skype will be the leading company within the eBay group”

“Engagement has evolved, but we haven’t evolved with it”

“When your cheese moves, move with your cheese” (in reference to the phenomenal best-seller Who Moved My Cheese)

“Are you wedded to your career as a communicator, or are you wedded to the company? In my experience rarely do the two actually ’sync’ up”

“This [communications] can be an extremely exciting industry to pursue — I have found that internal communications has the ability to really make a difference in many ways, and when done well it can be the true ‘leader’ and ‘lead’ the change. I encourage anyone in this industry to think of new ways of engagement and think of themselves not as simply writers, or not as simply conduits, but actually people who can be catalysts in and of themselves”

Download the interview (21mb; 47 minutes), or subscribe to the CommsCafe rss feed to have all of the interviews delivered to your computer or mp3 player.

{A word from our sponsor: Online meetings made easy with GoToMeeting: try it free for 45 days - use promo code “Podcast”.}

Technorati : ebay, employee communication, internal communication, lee hopkins, microsoft, paypal, peter vogt, skype

Allan extends warm congrats from the both of us to Shel & Neville (and CC Chapman and Joe Jaffe) on their crayon/SL venture.

Allan agrees with Lee [itself a scary thing - Ed.] that ‘one size fits all’ communications is — or at least should be — a thing of the past. “Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) must go!” they both proclaim loudly from their nearest rooftop. All communicators, they reason, must recognise the mega trend to individualization and the death of market segmentation. Lee cross references his FIR report on the matter, which you can also listen to.

Allan rails against the stupidity of intranets that only allow one look-n-feel across all departments and sections, leading to navigation confusion. Both Allan and Lee agree [see? it happened again! This is a worrying trend - Ed.] that companies need to open themselves to the risk of letting individual departments shape their own internal messages.

On a completely different topic (money), Kami Huyse posted recently that she doesn’t agree with the concept of value-based pricing, citing Fleishman-Hillard and David Maister. Allan and Lee are fully into Value-Based fees, as long as the value is agreed up front, before the project begins. Allan & Lee welcome your views and comments — agree with Kami? Agree with them? Let them know…

Dave Briggs let the Cafe team know what he thought about Chat #20, which compels Allan to launch into some Trabant and Lada jokes (e.g. How do you double the value of a Lada?”). Dave, Allan and Lee rail against offline blog editors, making Lee wonder if Macromedia will launch a pro-level blog editor that will work seamlessly with their industry-standard html editor Dreamweaver.

All in all, 28 minutes of caffeine-fuelled hyperbole and satire, which you can either download and listen to right away, or else subscribe to via your rss podcatcher. And if you are an iTunes user, you can find our podcast on the iTunes Music Store (for free, of course!).

Disagree with Jenkins? Feel like hurling abuse at Hopkins? We welcome your comments! Drop your comments on the show blog, or even better send a Waxmail to ‘comments at commscafe dot com’.

Until next week: take it easy, take some risks, take your dogs for a walk.

—

“Online Meetings Made Easy with GoToMeeting - Try it Free for 45 days and use Promo Code: ‘Podcast’”

Technorati : dave briggs, david maister, dreamweaver, imc, integrated marketing communication, kami huyse, macromedia, sallie goetsch

MBF is Australia’s largest privately-owned health insurer, second in market share to the Government-owned Medibank Private.

Ross Monaghan over at the Deakin University PR pod/blog, themediapod.net, has just published the interview - and what a cracker of an interview it is, too!

“Gone are the days when the media paid little attention to what happened inside the corporate world,” David said.

“Generally (in the past) the media thrived on a diet of crime and politics, but business was always left to the back of the paper. But more and more, the business world is now under scrutiny from the media.

“You can have a major development happening within a company, but unless you get your internal communication right, you could wake up with the problem of your staff are reading about major developments in their company in the morning newspaper rather than hearing it first from managers within their own company.”

A great interview with someone who has been at the ’sharp’ end of communication for decades; it is at your peril if you choose not to listen to this great communicator and his wise insights.

Download the podcast now, or visit themediapod.net to see Ross’ great review of the interview - and whilst there catch up with some of the other fantastic interviews on Ross’ site.

Technorati : australia, david jones, deakin, employee communication, mbf, ross monaghan, themediapod.net

In a move designed to infuriate the Cashflow Accountant in the BetterComms Empire, Lee contemplates life as a Doctor. Would YOU ask for ‘Doctor Hopkins’ to be paged in the First Class Lounge at JFK?

Allan, in a deft move to ‘out cool’ him, trumps Lee’s musing with knowledge and insight into the dinner he and several other Copenhagian communicators shared with Eric Schwartzman, of The Spinfluencer and On The Record fame. Much gossip and alcohol were mixed to create a volatile concoction, totally unlike any gathering of PR types that Lee has ever encountered. Except, perhaps, that occasion when the lovely Kami Huyse developed a drinking problem at a meetup at the CommsCafe lighthouse in Second Life…

Bitacle continues to raise Allan’s ire, making one wonder if it would be better to change the environment rather than repeatedly and vainly squash the cockroaches. But will Google and Yahoo! relinquish the $$?

Allan has been reading about value-based fees and Lee shares his experiences on the matter. Lee reckons that he is a Mercedes Benz, whereas Allan is more at home as a Lada or Trabant.

All in all, 26 minutes of caffeine-fuelled hyperbole and satire, which you can either download and listen to right away, or else subscribe to via your rss podcatcher. Our iTunes profile is playing ‘funny buggers’ at the moment, so we are stopping our existing link and setting up a new one. Stay tuned for further developments.

Disagree with Jenkins? Feel like hurling abuse at Hopkins? We welcome your comments! Drop your comments on the show blog, or even better send a Waxmail to ‘comments at commscafe dot com’.

Until next week: take care, take risks, take your kids to the movies.