Digital Biographer's shared items

I have not been shy about sharing my passion and love for Twitter. It is the most influential tool in my personal learning network.

Here's why I love Twitter:

• Twitter allows me to share and glean resources I can use in the classroom
• I meet and connect with other educators from around the world whom I would otherwise never be able to meet
• I've become aware of and involved in conversations "beyond my field"
• It gives me 24/7 access to the most creative, influential, and innovative minds the world has to offer, allowing me a virtual whiteboard and brainstorm group
• And yes, it makes my personal brand "findable"

As a critical reader and writer, Twitter or otherwise, you must be purposeful in how you engage. You get what you put in, and I am not talking about the number of "Tweets"-I am talking about engagement in the conversations.

My Twitter Engagement Formula is my guideline for entering the Twittersphere with purpose and intention. It's what I call my 70-20-10.

Share Resources (70) - Successful learning in the 21st Century is not what you know, but what you can share, so 70 % of my Twittertime is spent sharing others voices, opinions, and tools.

Collaborations (20) - 20% of my Tweets are directly responding, connecting, collaboration, and co-creating with like-minded Twitter colleagues. From these important tweets, lifelong professional and personal relationships have been forged.

Chit-Chat (10) 10% of my Twittertalk is "chit-chat-how's-your-hat" stuff. It is in these "trivial" details shared about working out, favorite movies, politics, and life in general that I connect with others as a human being. These simple chit chats are what have allowed me to know that I am never alone, and there is support whenever, wherever, and however I need it!

Your Twitter Engagement Formula will, of course, be different, but I encourage you to create one. Engage with purpose and intention, and Twitter success will follow!

By following this formula, I'm honored to land on the Top 100 list of eLearning Professionals on Twitter. If you're just starting to follow people on Twitter -- start with this list.

• Twitter Handbook on Education
• Edmodo is a Twitter for Education
• Twitter + Skype = Happy 4th Graders

Back in June, 1987 when I spoke at the Lotus Developers Conference it was the first time I ever spoke in front of an audience. And looking back at how I approached that moment, I would have been a great example of all the things someone should not do when speaking to a crowd. From writing my words in advance and reading my script to the audience and becoming a “Talking Head”, I can only appreciate how much the audience tolerated me as a first time speaker.

Ever since that moment, every time I give a talk I look for feedback from both friends and strangers to get a feeling of how I did. I am someone who is always looking for ways to improve the experience for the audience for the next time I go on stage.

Below are some of my tips for Public Speaking which may be useful to you the next time you find yourself in front of a crowd.

Be Prepared - If you are giving your speech and using Powerpoint, make sure your presentation is set to go before you get to the stage. And if you are doing a live demo, make sure your internet access is working in advance of your talk. Be prepared with a backup strategy if either your powerpoint doesn’t appear and/or your Internet access isn’t available.

Be Confident - When you take the stage, the attention is on YOU. So embrace the moment and be confident and you will have the confidence of the crowd.

When I started giving speeches on a regular basis, I never thought about the speaking opportunity beyond having a platform to share information. It took me a while to realize there were ways to both share information and leave a positive impression with the audience and get myself invited back.

I used to get nervous before I gave a speech. Sometimes I still do. Regardless of how I feel inside before walking on stage, I have the confidence I will give a great talk, or at least I would have an opportunity to. If I mess up, that is my issue and maybe no one will be as hard a critic about myself than me. But if I didn’t feel confident, there is just about no way I could ever go on stage.

Speaking of which, one of the hardest talks I ever had to give in my life happened in April, 1998 at the Spring 1998 VON Conference in San Jose. This event took place about two weeks before my father died from complications of Brain and Lung Cancer. But my father wanted me to continue with my life and insisted that I go to VON and give my talk and I did. I decided my talk to him. After say this, It took all of my energy to regain my composure and give a talk about the state of the nascent VoIP industry. But I got through it. And when I need to find inner strength before I give a talk, I sometimes look back at that moment and then give my talk.

Getting that confidence is up to you. It doesn't come only from preparation. That only gets you so far. You need to project yourself in a way that you will know it when it is working and also when it isn't. You can feel the audience.

Connect with the audience. Find a way to hook yourself with the people sitting in the audience. When ever you talk about yourself and your vulnerabilities or something else, you need to be real. I've seen this done well and not so well. Part of this comes from the sincerity of your voice and the passion in your eyes. If you just talk but not emanate something your audience can connect with, you will fail, and fail fast.

Learning how to connect with the audience is the single most important lesson I have learned as a public speaker. And I had no idea I was connecting with the audience by sharing a personal moment with the audience. I only discovered I was doing this when I was in Singapore in November 1997 speaking at a Lucent customer event and a professional speaker came up to me after my talk, pointed this out to me and I have kept this in the back of my mind ever since.

Connecting with the audience will almost guarantee that people will remember you as a speaker. Which in a world which what happened seconds ago is part of the blur, is a good thing. And with practice, you can leverage your audience connection into building your own network, your own community.

Be Passionate. Be real. Share you passion for your topic. Feel it emanating from your pours into the air. Sweat the passion until everyone in the room feels it and use it to make your points.

Be Remarkable. Stand out. Once you are on stage find a way to break through the noise of everyday life and share your pearls of wisdom with the group. Try to give the people something to think about long after the event.

Brand Yourself Sometimes dressing differently gives you a visual tool you can leverage to separate yourself from most of the other speakers at the event. Sometimes this leads to the way you can brand yourself. Almost anyone can walk on stage wearing a suit. Walking on stage wearing a Hawaiian shirt and jeans isn’t as easy. But when you do it with confidence it becomes part of your personal brand. Discover YOUR brand. Discover YOUR style. Find a style and make it your own.

Have fun. Share a laugh. You don't need to be a stand up comic to make an audience laugh with you. And when you are able to do it, it means you are connecting with them.

Meet your audience. Usually you will have a chance to mingle with your audience before your talk. Don't be shy. Look at the schedule. Put yourself into the mix during the break and use the time to get a better understanding of the people who are there and try to learn what they hope to learn from you.

Make yourself accessible. Sometime I share my cell phone with the audience. And when I remember, I ask the audience to consider following me on twitter or finding me on Facebook.

Don't hit and run. After you speak, make it a point to be available and talk to the people who want to meet you. Exchange business cards. Be friendly. You owe it to yourself to speak with the people who may have just connected with when you were on stage.

Listen. Address the questions people want answered. Don’t avoid direct questions.

Be Real. You are a person. Share yourself.

Don't be a talking head. Don't stand up and blindly give your company's marketing pitch without realizing this is what you are doing. Just like how Simon Cowell reminds would be American Idols - “take a song and make it your own”. In this case, take the powerpoint pitch and morph it into something that is a reflection of YOU. (And if you need to be a Talking Head, well be the best dam Talking Head you can be.)

Be Dynamic. Be prepared to change what you are saying and how you say it based on what was said before you. (Don't be the third person in a row of speakers who say the same thing.)

Watch the time. Make sure you give your talk during the allocated time. Don't run over and try not to run too early. Both can affect the flow of the event.

Don't read your talk. Talk your talk. There is nothing more painful than being in a room and listening to someone who is looking down at their speech and reading it to the audience. And if you have to read your talk, talk slow and not fast. And don't be nervous. Only thing worse than someone who reads their talk is someone who does so in a nervous voice.

Look into the audience and connect with some of the people sitting there. If there are lights blinding you, do it anyway. People won't know you can't see them.

Don't be nervous. When you are in front of the room, you are the subject matter expert for whatever it is you are talking about. Your confidence will build as you recognize this.

For me, connecting with the audience and sharing my passion are the two goals I have whenever I give a talk. When it feels like I am not connecting I have will try different things before giving up. And should I connect, I use that energy to bring my talk to a new level.

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Good luck with your future talks. I hope these tips help you.

Tags: conference, Public Speaking, speaking, Social Media, Jeff Pulver

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I would appreciate learning from you some of the techniques that you follow when preparing for and giving a talk. Please take a moment and share some of your stories.

During a very hectic Web 2.0 Expo week in New York City, I did luckily find some time to work on my Dutch ebook about blogging. Chapter two concerns blogs and communities and I figured social media guru Erwin Blom was the man to interview about this material. So while enjoying a couple of beers in an Irish pub, we discussed whether blogs are communities or not.

We had a hard time coming to a solid conclusion. Sure, if you follow Shel Israel’s definition - “communities are bodies of people loosely joined together by a common interest” - , most blogs are in fact communities. Like Erwin Blom’s blog, where new media adapts come together with every new post.

Photo credit: sillydog

Conversation leader

If you read my last sentence again, notice the part that says when the media adapts come together. That’s the problem. Whereas most online communities aren’t top down, on blogs there is a leader. Blom decides what the discussion topic is. Therefore blogs may not fit the definition of a community.

Fact is though, that on a good blog, like-minded people try to come up with new ideas together. So how can you stimulate that beautiful process?

While I’m writing this, there’s a group of Wordpress developers working their ass of to launch a new version of Buddypress, a set of plugins that creates a social layer over Wordpress multi-user installations. That will turn Wordpress into the next social network. Yet while they’re working, why can’t we get a head start on our blogs?

Right back at you

I launched this blog a few months ago and it’s interesting to see how it slowly grows. After a few weeks, I already noticed several people coming back every time to leave a comment. Out of gratitude and curiosity, I started following them as well - meaning I left comments on their blogs and Twitter pages. This made them come back even more often to my blog.

Although it costs me time, I think it’s definitely worth it. So does Gary Vaynerchuk. The energetic Internet celebrity from WineLibrary TV gave a keynote at the Web 2.0 Expo this week. He told the crowd he still answers every mail he receives (on airplanes mostly). It’s the foundation of his success: “I hustle about meeting every single person on earth.”

Photo credit:
IT.com.mk

Smart feeds

Yes, it’s gonna cost you time. And yes, you don’t have any. BUT, if you decide to invest in every single follower you have, it will definitely pay off. Not just in money or traffic, but also in friendships. So the questions isn’t if we gonna build a community, but how we’re gonna do it.

Of course, this is a complex process, but I would like to get you started with a simple effort that will make the whole following back thing somewhat easier and structured. It’s about smart feeds people.

• I’ve created a Yahoo Pipe in which I aggregate all the blog posts of people I admire and often welcome on Dutchproblogger.com and The Next Web.
• After lunch, I check this feed, read the posts, and leave comments when I think I’ve something interesting to say.

I’ve found out that I actually have some time left to invest in my blog community, I just needed to structure the process first.

Further reading watching

One thing we misunderstand frequently when talking about how great and amazing social media is comes from the fact that we’re thinking from the perspective of what we want the tool to do while the people who are receiving the message might be thinking about the tools in the abstract. When we talk about how Twitter forges real time conversations and delivers business value, others show up and see us bitching about a late flight and live tweeting the baseball game. When we talk about how blogging changes the world, other people are slogging through all the crap blogs indexed by Google when they’re looking for actual useful information.

Marcel LeBrun, CEO of Radian6, was probably the first person I heard use the “social media is a phone” analogy. In his case, he was talking about the need for companies to realize that some of their customers are “dialing the social phone,” and that they’d better have some “operators standing by.” (I swear, if I had extra time, I’d write an ebook out of my talks with Marcel.) He’s not wrong, and that’s why I tend to stretch the analogy even further when discussing social media tools to audiences.

Social Media Tools Aren’t The Revolution

A phone can be used to talk to Mom, talk to the grocery store, talk to customer service at your bank, and a phone can be used to give a teleseminar, to dial for dollars, to market a new product or service. This is the same with all these tools like blogging, podcasting, social networks and the like. The tools themselves are just different (better?) ways to communicate. They involve more nuance.

This Part is the Revolution

The revolution comes in how we use them. At once, these new tools allow us a one-to-many opportunity similar to what publishers and TV producers and other large scale media used to own. And at the same time, these tools have created allow us to be much more personable, more nuanced, more one-to-one in how we reach people who share the same interests as us (or our customers).

If You’re In Marketing / PR / Advertising

Getting on the new tools and blasting out the old methods will fail (is failing). This isn’t rocket science, but it is art, and it requires a different set of approaches. It’s as different as comparing the phone book to a personalized invitation. To many of you, you’re rolling your eyes and saying that I’m preaching to the choir, but if that’s so, then we’re not all singing loud enough, because there are still many people in need of better approaches, in need of teaching, and in need of concrete things to do next. If you’re on my side of the fence on this one, and if you’re out there sharing the good gospel of the new social phone, then stop saying “join the conversation.” That’s like saying, “Now dial the phone!”

Instead, share with people the creative ways to dial. Remember when call waiting came out? Remember when we first learned how to forward our phones? Share these things with people. Show them the tools, and further, show them applications for them.

In preparing for the upcoming New Marketing Summit in a few weeks in Boston, I’m most certainly going to bring this message out loud and clear. In several speeches between now and the end of the year, it’s my goal to show that it’s HOW we use the social phone that will change how business is done. It’s part of what Julien and I are doing with TRUST AGENTS.

Will you help people understand this, too? Will you share your new dialing methods? Will you teach them the difference between a teleseminar and a call to Mom? Most importantly, will you show them how to listen?

Ring ring.

Photo credit, jumpinjimmyjava

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Now that Congress has failed to bail out Wall Street, the country (and world, to a lesser extent) has begun bracing itself for nuclear winter. The technology sector is no exception, even if the Silicon Valley tends to fancy itself as immune to broader economic turmoil.

As Fred Wilson points out, startups fortunate enough to enjoy venture capital will fare the best during these hard times. So we compiled a list of all the technology startups that have raised at least $25 million over the past two years, according to CrunchBase. The ~160 startups to stockpile that much capital recently are listed below.

Facebook tops the list with $455 million raised over the last two years (the bulk of its total $496M). Clean tech comes in highly as well with Nanosolar having raised $300 million, eSolar $140 million, and SulfurCell $134 million.

Of course, to know truly how well-prepared these startups are for the next few years, we’d have to see other figures like burn rates, revenue and head counts, not all of which are publicly known. Nevertheless, their recent funding rounds provide a good guideline.

Have we missed any relevant companies or funding rounds? Submit them to CrunchBase and we’ll update this list.

1. Facebook - $455M
2. ZeniMax - $310M
3. Nanosolar - $300M
4. OverSee - $210M
5. OANDA - $200M
6. Kayak - $196M
7. GridPoint - $167M
8. Plastic Logic - $150M
9. eSolar - $140M
10. Demand Media - $135M
11. SulfurCell - $134M
12. Modu - $120M
13. United Mobile - $115M
14. Zhaopin - $110M
15. Ning - $104M
16. Glam Media - $104M
17. hulu - $100M
18. 9You - $100M
19. Specificmedia - $100M
20. SpinVox - $100M
21. Rearden Commerce - $100M
22. Ausra - $97.8M
23. CDNetworks - $96.5M
24. Move Networks - $91.3M
25. Spot Runner - $91M
26. Tesla Motors - $85M
27. Big Fish Games - $83.3M
28. Realtime Worlds - $81M
29. Adconion Media Group - $80M
30. The Active Network - $80M
31. HelioVolt - $77M
32. Youku - $77M
33. Datapipe - $75M
34. Trion World Network - $70M
35. Arcadian Networks - $70M
36. Vantage Media - $70M
37. A123Systems - $70M
38. Boston Power - $68.6M
39. Infinia - $66.5M
40. LinkedIn - $65.8M
41. Fisker - $65M
42. Brightcove - $64.4M
43. SilkRoad technology - $64M
44. Coremetrics - $60M
45. ReachLocal - $55.2M
46. Veoh - $55M
47. Federated Media - $54.5M
48. Slacker - $53.5M
49. RockYou - $52.5M
50. 51.com - $51M
51. HealthCentral - $50M
52. ChannelAdvisor - $50M
53. Blowtorch - $50M
54. Dayjet - $50M
55. GarageGames - $50M
56. Revolution Money - $50M
57. Slide - $50M
58. Strands - $49M
59. obopay - $49M
60. JumpTap - $48M
61. ice - $47M
62. Greenplum - $46M
63. Internet Mall - $45M
64. Clear - $44.4M
65. Jingle Networks - $43M
66. Avail Media - $42M
67. Metaweb Technologies - $42M
68. BitTorrent - $42M
69. Amobee - $42M
70. Enforta - $40M
71. Undertone Networks - $40M
72. Turbine - $40M
73. Pure Digital Technologies - $40M
74. Trilliant - $40M
75. SiBEAM - $40M
76. Teneros - $40M
77. SearchMe - $39.6M
78. fabrik - $39.2M
79. Zynga - $39M
80. Turn - $38.5M
81. LifeLock - $37.9M
82. Digg - $37.2M
83. GreatCall - $36.6M
84. Segway - $35M
85. hi5 - $35M
86. Bestofmedia Group - $35M
87. Yodlee - $35M
88. Angie’s List - $35M
89. Lehigh Technologies - $34.5M
90. Sermo - $34.5M
91. ooma - $34M
92. meebo - $34M
93. Dailymotion - $34M
94. Clearspring - $33.5M
95. XunLight - $33M
96. Cuil - $33M
97. Seatwave - $33M
98. Dilithium Networks - $33M
99. Waterfront Media - $33M
100. Mzinga - $32.5M
101. Vanu - $32M
102. Vuze - $32M
103. PicScout - $32M
104. Pando - $31.9M
105. Etsy - $31.3M
106. BuzzNet - $31M
107. Global Roaming - $30.5M
108. NebuAd - $30.2M
109. MFG - $30M
110. Zillow - $30M
111. GodTube - $30M
112. 56.com - $30M
113. Zazzle - $30M
114. Metacafe - $30M
115. Batanga - $30M
116. VideoJug - $30M
117. Eyeblaster - $30M
118. badoo - $30M
119. Viagogo - $30M
120. IGA Worldwide - $30M
121. Leapfrog on-line - $30M
122. MobiTV - $30M
123. MOLI - $29.6M
124. Automattic - $29.5M
125. Intacct - $29M
126. Genius - $29M
127. Kosmix - $28M
128. LiveOps - $28M
129. RadioFrame - $28M
130. PGP Corporation - $27.3M
131. Milestone Systems - $27M
132. Palo Alto Networks - $27M
133. Tideway - $27M
134. BlackArrow - $26.8M
135. ChoiceStream - $26.5M
136. Ruckus - $26M
137. ContextWeb - $26M
138. Solarflare - $26M
139. Quantcast - $25.7M
140. Become - $25.5M
141. Mimeo - $25M
142. Reunion - $25M
143. Gemini - $25M
144. PharmaNation - $25M
145. InMage Systems - $25M
146. Aurora Biofuels - $25M
147. Nimbuzz - $25M
148. Firefly Energy - $25M
149. Yelp - $25M
150. Meraki - $25M
151. Dash - $25M
152. Retail Convergence - $25M
153. Trulia - $25M
154. SpringSource - $25M
155. Zecco - $25M
156. Koolanoo Group - $25M
157. Verimatrix - $25M
158. Optaros - $25M
159. Visible World - $25M
160. Splunk - $25M
161. DeviceVM - $25M

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