The other day I was thinking I’d like to do more public speaking next year, and then I read Chris Brogan’s How to start speaking at events which pushed me into thinking I’m going to do more public speaking next year. I’ve done a fair bit in 2008 but it’s mainly been variations on a theme of “what is blogging and how do I do it?” and while that’s all good I’d like to increase my repertoire a bit. So I’ve been jotting down some ideas for talks I might develop. Some are pretty basic, some are pretty specific, all need some work. See what you think.
- How to be a better blogger.
- How do online spaces work? Key similarities and differences with the “real” world
- What could civic websites learn from Wikipedia?
- Lessons from the emergence of the Brum Bloggers community. What can we learn from early adopters? How can these lessons be applied to other groups?
- The asynchronous town hall. Reaching people who can’t reach you.
- Creative failure. When the cost of collective creation is zero how does that affect the art that Artists produce?
- The interesting similarities between the technical structure of the Internet (autonomous machines communicating through agreed protocols) with the social structure of society.
- What does the radical devaluation of recorded music mean? What lessons can be drawn out for everyone else? (Specifically NOT for music industry people.)
Do any of those make you think “Hmm, I’d spend an hour listening to the speccy bald guy talk about that”?
Also, does anyone have any video of me talking? I know a couple of times there’s been big hefty professional looking cameras pointed at me but in my experience those never make it online for some reason. All I have is my appearance at the Fray Cafe (more a story than a talk) and a group discussion on co-working led by Stef and myself, neither of which are exactly the sort of thing I’m planning on giving. Plus I like to think I’ve gotten better since then.
This is a good list. I have a few thoughts from my experiences too -
Fundamentally most organisations fall at the first hurdle and have no-one who’s responsible for a web strategy. Small orgs have few staff with hundreds of competing priorities so will claim little time to dedicate towards the net (maybe something on overcoming that), and in large ones it vanishes down the back of the sofa with the cushions being marketing, IT, webmaster and the technical experts who would produce the content.
Larger organisations probably need some sort of guidance so that everyone knows where they stand – eg commenting on other peoples blogs or editing your own orgs wikipedia page (can you detect any frustration here…)
Maybe a presentation on who is responsible for co-ordinating an organisations approach to the web? That might also be a good ‘opener’ to some organisations.
Another thought – I’m increasingly finding that grant funding generally comes with the caveat of evaluating what you’ve done. Maybe something about using social media to strengthen your evaluation plan.
Looking back at what I’ve written the topics probably suit interactive workshops better than presentations and may be aimed at slightly different audiences to the ones you’ve listed. Hope this is useful somehow though.
Very useful – thanks!