Uglue: conference

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Make Your Meeting or Product Come Alive in Images

Like to literally see a story unfold? Want to make your complex product or idea simple to understand? Yearn to make your next meeting more memorable – and enable more people to experience it? Here are three vivid approaches offered by the masters of their visual genres.
1. Animating Your Story to Make it Come Alive
To see an animated version of a TV show, launched out of a radio program, This American Life, (still with me?) see Chris Ware’s coverage of the segment “Every Marriage is a Courtroom” and another segment here. What if you videoed a happy client using your product or service, then hired a cartoonist to created a Ware-styleversion to reinforce your message?Also consider a manga-style comic book version such as Dan Pink did with Johnny Bunko, along with a video trailer, of course. Lesson? Multiply the fun and/or helpful ways they see your message.
2. Drawing the Speaker’s Message to Compound Its Impact
Watch a graphically illustrated version (BigViz Book) of the last TED conference’s 50 or so speakers, brought to you by group cartographer, David Sibbet and Kevin Richards.
3. Illustrate the Steps So We Recognize How and Why to Take Them
How about getting some pictorial help on “how to” do something new? View the “plain English”, explanatory videos at Sasha and Lee LeFever’s Commoncraft.
Follow-up Ideas: Consider hiring one of these talents or others to:
• Illustrate the messages presented by your speakers at your conference or meeting. Give the results to attendees as an ebooklet or vlog – a free meeting momento. Then offer it online to anyone else for a modest fee (new profit center?) – or for free to attract members and media coverage. Find a sponsor to underwrite the costs.
• Create the visual story of a new product, service, program or innovation. Feature employees or customers in the creation and distributionof this story. Feature it on your blog and web site. Tell your key media about it.
• At a brainstorming or other meeting, keep everyone focused on the goal, not whip- sawed by the verbally dominant. Share a Sibbet-style visual group record of the meeting with team members and other stakeholders.
Like participating in a lively Pecha Kucha, these other visual methods can make collaborating and learning together more productive and fun.

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/bndxi

via Amplify.com

Posted via email from Kare Anderson on Coummunicating to Connect

Easy Way to Organize Gatherings for Those Who Share Your Interest

Your hobby or work expertise or belief may be unusual, yet it’s likely that people near youshare your interest. Or they may just want to have fun. How can you find those kindred spirits? By hosting an ever-better MeetUp.
Also consider start a MeetUp to create a profit center for yourself. Or to hone a skill or support a cause.
What’s a MeetUp? Let masterful Lee LeFever quickly show you.Imagine making money by making others happier. See a large one to get ideas.
• Perhaps, like Liz Ryan, you’ve built a successful online business out of serving clusters of local constituencies. UsingMeetUp you can offer your people a new service. Face-to-face gatherings. Through your MeetUp, individuals can chat with people they’ve met online.
• They can meet regularly in some format that they collectively choose, with your leadership. Suggest formats such amastermind or other kind of mutual support group, cross-consulting or speaker series.
• Forge an alliance of your local MeetUp chapters. Get ideas from how other alliances work. Recruit and reward local organizers who host “our” gatherings.
• Let each “chapter” decide whether they want their MeetUps to be free or for-fee or a mix of both. Should your local leaders be paid or share in the revenue raised through a speaker series or set of seminars?
• Get input from your host leaders by arranging regular conference calls with them via a free service such as Skype or FreeConferenceCall. In true Me2We fashion you can facilitate their sharing of ideas for MeetUp formats and topics. Explore how these phone seminars and in-person meetings can complement the online offering that you, like Liz Ryan, offer your clients.
• Take a look at an online, for-profit model (in which I participate) that also supports face-to-face gatherings that are organized and hosted by members – biznik.
• Or start or join a MeetUp of your peers. I belong to the Bay Area Reporters and Journalists organized by Susan Kuchinskas.
Why explore these ideas?
Because, if your expertise or experience matches the interest of a distinct niche market, then the approach outlined in this post enables you to enlarge your circle of friends and/or make money in supporting others’ strong needs or interests.