Keynotes & Workshops

Keynotes


Not Another Social Media Keynote

PowerPoint, check. Wireless mic, check. Canned inspirational intro story, check. Talking just long enough that there’s not much time for questions? Checkmate! 

Have you ever been to a keynote or breakout to find that the most valuable part was the conversation bubble around the speaker afterwards? Yep. Every. Time.

I do social media strategy. Big picture. *Your* story, not wag-the-dog analytics chasing. 

So let’s do that and cut out the whole PowerPoint talking head thing. 

First-come, first-served, we will load up your Instagram or whatever on the big screen. I’ll then host a large group discussion/critique. It will be like a huge, inefficient consulting session, but what makes it work is that we are crowdsourcing strategies live. I’m a professor. That kind of thing is what I do. Critique is awkward. Always is. But we’re going to have a good time. The best time you ever had being told half your Twitter posts aren’t working.

You’ll also get my strategic takeaways the way you want them anyway, you who tweets pictures of the “good slides” during a talk, as physical and electronic documents.

That’s the overview. Here’s the key: What if, in the end, we can’t beat the bots?

How much social media advice have you received that really is just about that – all the new tricks for how and when and what and how often to post? 

Social media companies make a lot of money. They do that by selling ads, or, more precisely, by continually constraining free workaround hacks to generate reach and making us buy ads. That means that eventually they beat the tricks. Facebook changes its algorithm, Instagram shadowbans you for your hashtag overuse, and on and on.
What if, instead, we stopped making content whose purpose was to drive eyeballs to more content whose purpose was to drive eyeballs to more content whose purpose was . . . .

This tactical grind, which also grinds down the limited resources of the time and patience of social media marketers, is a perpetual motion machine hunting for eyeballs. What if we stepped off the hamster wheel for a second and thought, instead, about strategy?

Assume you’ve reached an eyeball. Someone is reading and looking and clicking. Now, what do you want them to see?

This session will be about making social media destinations for people. It will be about content that converts reach into engagements and about how to build that content in keeping with your mission and brand. Could we get people coming back to our content not because we tricked it into their feed or even bought an ad, but because they wanted it, sought it out, maybe even missed it while they were gone? Of course we can! But it means making some changes.


Fixing Public Speaking Teaching

Looking for faculty development in oral communication? I focus on two major elements. First, a new model of integrating oral communication competencies across the curriculum without sacrificing content. Second, how to bring the TED lesson of revision to the staid way we teach the basic communication course.




Workshops


The One-Day Communication Reset


Messaging. 
Speaking. 
Listening. 
Facilitating. 
Negotiating. 
Leading. 

I take teams through an intensive, active set of experiences, focused on retraining and re "mind" ing professionals. They learn how to tap into their existing skills more effectively, and they leave with a set of new takeaways to improve their outcomes.

The full training is 6 hours. Smaller modules in each area can be delivered, an hour each.

Can You Escape This Workshop??


Everything can be made more fun and more engaging with my Escape Room style Puzzle Boxes. Participants work in groups to unlock the clues. Meanwhile, they are reading and applying the skills we want them to learn! Click here for more information or see the workshop in action below: