Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 282

PowerPoint Doesn't Suck. You Do.

How many times have you heard the phrase, " PowerPoint sucks!" or "slides kill presentations?"

Here's something to think about as you head into the weekend: PowerPoint doesn't suck. You suck. Sorry. I don't mean "you" (the person reading this blog post... I mean after all, for all I know you could well be one of the smartest people in the world), but the person who is speaking/presenting/attempting to captivate a crowd and is using way too much slide presentation software without understanding their content at all... they suck. True story: I was speaking at a board meeting several months ago. It was a small event in a very exclusive hotel. The audio/video set-up was two brand-new, fifty inch TV monitors for an intimate group of twenty executives. I plugged my MacBook air directly into these two televisions that were attached by a splitter. I ran through some of my slides during the allotted set-up time. Also in the room were the most senior communications and marketing executives from the company, to ensure that everything was being set-up just right. As I clicked through my slides, one of them asked: "what technology are you using to show your slides?"  My response was: "ummm, that's PowerPoint." They looked at each other and burst out laughing. "That's NOT how we use PowerPoint," they said.

It's not PowerPoint. It's you.

The reason people use so many headings and bulletpoints is because:

They don't know their content.

They don't know how to design a presentation.

They don't know how to tell a story.

They're worried that they are going to forget something.

It runs deeper.

If you really want to better understand how to create a more compelling presentation and how to design it, folks like Garr Reynolds, Nancy Duarte, Nick Morgan and Peter Coughter can best help you deep-dive well beyond the skimming of this blog post. The point is this: don't let bad presentations of the past dictate the presentation that you have to give tomorrow. PowerPoint, Keynote and the like are blank canvasses. You can put on them whatever you want. That being said, whatever you do put on a slide is not the content. At all. Whatever you put on the slide is simply a way to reinforce whatever it is that is coming out of your mouth. Your presentation is not your slides. Your presentation is not your technology. Your presentation is not the words or images on a screen. Your presentation is your ability to distill the information between your ears into a format that tells a simple, educational and entertaining story to your audience.

Here's what you must do:

Know your content inside and out. When the slides fail (and something always fails), it should have no bearing on you or the story you tell.

If you don't know how to create a story arc, find/hire someone who can help you formulate a strategy and structure.

Learn how to tell your story. What is the beginning, the middle and the end? What is the one thing (or two) that everyone should know after it's all said and done?

Don't worry about forgetting certain parts. If you know the greater story, the details do work out.

Practice, rehearse and know your content (yes, it bears repeating).

Don't let the slides suck.

Inevitably, someone will tell you that they would like a copy of the presentation or that the presentation should also be some kind of leave-behind. Don't fall for that. It's a myth. If you have to leave something behind, don't let it be your slides. Leave the audience with speaking notes or a more formal deck, but not the slides. Why? The slides should only be a small component of the story. In fact, I would argue that the best presentations in the world are the ones where the slides are completely meaningless unless you have seen the speaker present them. Focus on that. Ensure that your slides act as a visual enhancement to everything that you're saying. Why? Because if they don't, it means that there was never a need to have the presenters there in the first place, because everything was self-evident from the words on the slides.

That would be a shame.

BONUS! Here's a hilarious little story about Steve Jobs from Apple and his desire to become a better storyteller from Business Insider: Here's An Awesome Story About Steve Jobs Telling An Employee He's Going To Become The World's Best Story Teller In 1994.

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A Real State Of Independence

It's easy to get caught up in the news.

Whether you are celebrating the Fourth of July (and, if you are, Happy Fourth!) or following the news as it is unfolding in Egypt today, it can be somewhat easy to detach our personal selves from the idea of independence. When the Fourth of July rolls over on my calendar, I am immediately thinking about the professional and career choices that I have made in my very squiggly career that have brought me to this moment in time. The vast majority of those decisions were based on my own desire for independence. I never liked asking people for money and was brought up by parents who exemplified a strong work ethic (and still do, to this day). Success was never about titles or compensation. Success was always about my own ability to be solely responsible for my financial and professional outcome. It's still not, one hundred percent, based on independence (it never can be), but I am not reliant on the traditional model of a manager or a boss who controls how much income I am capable of making.

It's about more than financial independence.

Today is the day that allows me to appreciate things like this blog, the Six Pixels of Separation podcast and my books (Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete) in a whole other light. Recently, I wrote a contributed article for a major publication. After I submitted it, they informed me that it wasn't to their liking and that they would not be running it. At first, I had the same feeling of rejection and disappointment that plagued me throughout the late eighties and early nineties when I was doing a lot freelance music journalism. The constant rejection and silence from magazine and newspaper editors is something that I would never wish on any other professional... in any industry. Thankfully, things have changed since my music journalism days. The popularity of this blog affords me instant access to a community of passionate professionals. I no longer need the validation from this editor as a gateway channel to an audience. After that initial lump in my throat, I simply hit the publish button on this blog and watched the shares, amplification and comments flow. Ahhh.... independence.

You should do this. You should do that.

I'm probably doing everything wrong when it comes to the recoding of my podcast. It's not short. It's not recorded with professional audio equipment. I spend zero time editing the audio. I could go on and on. The thing is this: it is my own, independent audio channel to play with, tinker and push what I think an audio show should be. It's a place where I can have a conversation with someone that I admire or that I am curious about and share it with the world. The same could be said for this blog. My posts are long. I don't use link-bait-like headlines. I don't add pictures to the posts. I'm not great at being overly active in the comments. Again, independence. My own choice in controlling my own destiny (in as much any one individual can).

Make the choice.

As your roast your weenies today and drink yourself blind on beer before setting off the fireworks, start thinking about what your real state of independence can (and should) look like. If you're not sure where to begin, I'm currently loving the book, Choose Yourself - Be Happy, Make Millions, Live The Dream by James Altucher (don't let the hype-y subtitle throw you off).

Happy Independence Day (no matter where you are geographically based). I hope you're spending some time planning your own independence.

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The Problem With Big Data (It's Not Me, It's You)

Big data. There, I said it.

For the past little while, I have watched - in astonishment - the amount of times a senior marketing professional (both from the agency and brand side) have spouted off about the opportunity of big data in this brave new world. As they continue to speak, it becomes abundantly clearer that they probably don't even know what big data is. By my estimation, the vast majority of people extolling the virtues of big data seem to think that it's just like the data we have known to date... but more of it. That's not big data... that's more data. That's just a lot more of the same data. As these marketing professionals continue on their verbal admiration of everything that big data will bring to the industry, you quickly begin to realize that it's nothing more than jargon to these people.

The problem with big data.

The problem with big data is that most marketers suck (big time) at the small data... or the data they're currently using. How many different flows of data do they have (email lists, web analytics, search engine marketing campaigns, traditional ad campaign results, research and more)? Do those individual streams of data flow into a larger ocean? If you dig beneath the surface, my guess is that most organizations have what my friend, Bryan Pearson (CEO of LoyaltyOne and author of The Loyalty Leap) calls "data ghettos." These clumps of data that sit in silos and rarely (if ever) speaks to one another. Is big data something important (and big)? Yes. Are businesses truly ready, willing and able to act on it? Unlikely (at this moment in time). Currently, data is hardly being amplified using real time technology, and even fewer brands are actually taking the time to create tests and iterations from these traditional data sets. Let alone doing that form of marketing optimization on a daily basis. Sadly.

What big data can look like.

Take this definition from Smart Data Collective: "A phenomenon defined by the rapid acceleration in the expanding volume of high velocity, complex and diverse types of data. Big Data is often defined along three dimensions- volume, velocity and variety." What is this telling us?

Big data is data that can be manipulated (slices and diced) with massive speed.

Big data is the not the standard fare that we use, but the more complex and intricate data sets.

Big data is the unification and integration of diverse data sets (kill the data ghettos).

Big data is based on much larger amount of data sets than what we're used to and how they can be resolved with both speed and variety.

Big data extrapolates the information in a different (three dimensional) way.

What does this mean?

The net result is that big data delivers new and previously unavailable opportunities to drive business efficacy. That's it. Plan and simple... and hard. A tonnage more of your traditional data mixed in with what big data really is and what you have is a world where marketers are drowning in their data. Bring in the analysts, because the only people who are going to turn big data from a shiny, bright object of jargon into a functional place that drives business solution will be these data analysts coupled with marketing strategists. Together, these people may be able to unlock the Da Vinci Code of big data to churn out actionable insights (as my good friend, Avinash Kaushik, calls them). Everything else is simple hype and hyperbole.

Watch this.

I recently appeared on The Agenda With Steve Paikin. The full thirty-minute conversation will air Friday, July 26th, 2013 on TVO. As a bonus, Steve asked me about the business of big data, and this is what I said:

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An Advertising Tide Probably Won't Raise All Of The Boats

There has been a lot of talk online about the end of advertising lately.

Whether it's a new book on social media, some pundit pushing for social business or someone who is very excited that Instagram now affords their consumers the right to shoot 15 seconds of video along with their filter-tinged pictures, everyone is screaming that advertising - as we have known it to date - is dead (and/or dying). You can't throw a marketer down a flight of stairs without hearing the words "big data" tumble out of their mouths and smart, smart people like Jeremiah Owyang (Altimeter Group) is banking on newer business spaces like the collaborative economy, while Jay Baer is pushing for something he calls, Youtility (which he defines as smart marketing that is created by helping consumers and not just hyping at them). It's not a stretch to know that I fully (and categorically) back a lot of this thinking (see my latest book, CTRL ALT Delete for more on that).

But, there's this thing...

As much as I can't stand brands that are chasing likes on Facebook for the sake of chasing likes, or the ones who are doing nothing but shilling on Twitter, it's hard to argue with the effect that it is having. Yes, these channels are gateways that allow brands to have these amazing direct relationships with consumers where they can be helpful, provide levels of utility and create levels of engagement like never before, but still there have been many instances when the numbers don't lie. It turns out that chasing likes, shilling on Twitter and more have helped these brands increase their followers by impressive leaps and bounds, and that all of that pushing of products and services has created a level of activity that the brands are happy with. Crazy, right?

Maybe we don't blame the brands?

It's easy to sit here - as a marketing pundit - and take jabs at brands that are using social media as a megaphone to generate nothing more than free, cheap and easy impressions. It's kind of like owning a guitar and insisting that there is nothing more to be played on it but crude power chords. There are dynamics and intricacies at play here that could engender the brand in a completely new and fascinating way, and yet they're still doing whatever they used to do in traditional media by simply copying and pasting that model into these very different platforms and channels. Think about it this way: what if that's what consumers know, want and expect? Sure there may be a segment that knows and understands how much more marketing and advertising could do because of these new tools, but what if they either don't care or are simply used to (and accept) the advertising as they have seen it to date? Ask people if they like marketing and advertising. What do you think that they will say? Over the history of marketing, I'm going to guess (because I have no actual research to back this up) that when asked, the vast majority don't like marketing and advertising and simply "deal with it" as a part of life (like death and taxes). If that's the expectation - and it's an understandable one because of the deluge of marketing messages that marketers place everywhere and anywhere - perhaps our own desire to evolve the medium is simply that - our own desire.

Advertising doesn't work.

We like to say that advertising doesn't work, but what do we really know? What if advertising works just fine, but the challenge is that there is simply too many choices (and a lot of bad advertising)? Not exactly rocket science, but we many of the new(er) media folks like getting their knickers in a knot when they see brands doing the selling game on social media instead of the long term value and relationship play. An advertising tide probably won't raise all the boats, but it will for some (if not many).

We advertise to sell stuff.

Lest we forget. This is the reason that we are in business. Yes, we are here to add value. Yes, we are here to build brands. Yes, we are here to get excited. Yes, we are here to get people passionate about the things that we do. But... if they don't buy, none of that matters. Many brands have (and only require) one imperative: create some kind of distraction/disruption in a consumer's patterns to let them know that the brand, product and/or service exists. It's a game of inches in a very crowded marketplace and, sometimes, the best way to do it isn't by trying to be everyone's best friend over the long haul, but to simply get in front of those eyeballs, let them know that you exist, make an offer and them get out of their way so that they can get back to the more important things in their lives.

Sometimes to sell, brands have to push. We may not like it, but there are sometimes no other way to get a very distracted person's attention. Don't believe me? Go play with some young kids for a bit.

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Peeking Into The Future Of Retail

Episode #364 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

He has been called "one of the world's foremost retail industry futurists" (put that in your pipe and smoke it!). For over twenty years, Doug Stephens has worked with some of the world's biggest brands, agencies and retailers helping them to achieve the success that they demand today with a keen eye on how quickly the world of retail continues to evolve. Currently, he is the founder of Retail Prophet and the author of the book, The Retail Revival. Do shopping malls have a future? How much of an impact does e-commerce have on retail and where is this all headed? How will retail figure out attribution in a world where people can shop the store while physically being there, or on their smartphone (at the same time)? How is this all going to shake out and what will the future of retail look like? This is a meaty one... enjoy the conversation...

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast #364.

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Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #158

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, Solve For Interesting, the author of Complete Web Monitoring, Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks and Lean Analytics), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik and co-author of Book: A Futurist's Manifesto) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:

A Class Divided - Frontline . "In 1968, a teacher thought of a novel way to teach racism. This resurfaced online recently, and it's a fascinating lesson in just how easily our inherent tribalism can be tweaked. To me, Jane Elliott 's unorthodox teaching is up there with Milgram and the Stanford Prison Experiment in terms of uncomfortable, but brilliant, social manipulation. This link to the PBS Frontline episode has the full video, and some history and context." (Alistair for Hugh).

A Great Response to a Cease and Desist Letter - Above The Law . "It's great to see a lawyer with a sense of humor." (Alistair for Mitch).

Organized Chaos Makes the Beauty of a Butterfly - Nautilus . "Chaos and harnessed randomness in biology. From a feature in Nautilus magazine called: 'Facts so romantic on biology' (!)." (Hugh for Alistair).

C.S. Lewis On Writing - Letters of Note . "C. S. Lewis, author of the Chronicles of Narnia, got reams of fan letters, many from young aspiring writers. Apparently he tried to answer all of them. Here's one response he sent, filled with good advice for a young correspondent from Florida." (Hugh for Mitch).

Why does everyone except Google want to build a reader? - GigaOm . "Word is that Google Reader is going away. It has many of us digital media nerds up in arms, but I'm not sure why? On one hand, I love Google Reader. On the other hand, I can't remember the last time I looked at it. Strange how that works, isn't it? Well, since Google announced that they would no longer be developing the platform, it seems like everybody else is suddenly jumping on the RSS reader bandwagon. As is always the case, Om Malik , writes a poignant piece about the reader that everyone claims to want. So, what's going on here? Google - obviously - knows that either fewer people are using a reader, or they can't figure out how to make any relevant money from it. Whatever the case, we'll soon see if there's any relevant traffic, revenue and usage for all of these newer readers." (Mitch for Alistair).

78 Tools for Writing and Previewing Markdown - Mashable . "Originally, I had just bookmarked this page and figured that I would get to it eventually. I left this article open in my Google Chrome browser and was reading it on a flight this week. My only thought was, 'I bet Hugh would get a kick out of this,' before quickly realizing that anyone who writes a blog... or e-book... or book would probably really dig this. I'm a massive fan of Scrivener , but still there are some gems on this list that I'll be sure to grab and check out." (Mitch for Hugh).

Now it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.

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The Opportunity Of A Lifetime From Ev Williams

Do you know where Clarks, Nebraska is?

It's a village in Merrick County, Nebraska. In the 2010 census, the population was 369. That's where Ev Williams is from. Actually, that's not true. He didn't really live in the village. He lived on a farm near that village. From there, he moved to a city that had about 20,000 people and then went on to study at the University of Nebraska. Ev Williams has an impressive resume. He started Blogger (which Google acquired for an undisclosed sum - people say that it's somewhere between $20-$50 million), he then went on to Odeo which became Twitter and is currently working on Medium. Like I said, it's a strong resume. People always complain about their lot in life. What do you think the odds were of Williams becoming the individual that he is today? People often complain about their lack of opportunities in life. The most successful people will tell you that they created their own opportunities. In another stunning episode of Foundation with Kevin Rose, he spends a little over an hour having an amazing conversation with Ev Williams.

Watch this... then go out there and create your own opportunities:

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The Depressing State Of Social Media Marketing

How do you think brands are doing when it comes to social media marketing?

My friend, Chris Brogan (co-author with Julien Smith of Trust Agents and The Impact Equation), laments the state of social media marketing in one of his latest blog posts, The Bare Truth About Social Media Marketing. While Brogan paints the landscape with a wide brush and lacks any quantitative of qualitative data to back it up (beyond his own review of what some brands are doing in spaces like blogs, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube), it's easy to understand and relate to his frustrations.

Social media is not living up to its promise.

You don't have to go that far back in time. A little over ten years since the publishing of the momentous business book, The Cluetrain Manifesto, painted a picture of how brands could now conduct themselves. Everything was so bright and hopeful back then. Suddenly, all of this inter-connectivity and untethered consumers would lead us to a path where markets truly would become conversations and the promise of Don Peppers and Martha Rogers' one to one marketing world would and could come true. In a way, social media has over-delivered on certain aspects of the equation. No one could have imagined just how transformative these technologies and innovations have become. Nobody could have imagined how willfully consumers would want to connect and publicly share so much personal and contextual information. Nobody could have imagined a world where each and every one of us would become our own media channels, publishing our thoughts in text, images, audio and video to the Web... and to the world in real time. Nobody could have imagined the volume of data sets and information that now paint a very different consumer profile, which transcends the world of demographics and psychographics. Just look at what is happening today on Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, Vine and more. The opportunity for businesses to connect in a much deeper, richer and more profound way could not be easier. Brands truly can have real interactions between real human beings.

So, what is so wrong?

For my dollar, people like Brogan (and I count myself in the same camp as him) simply wants brands to become more personal and more personable. In short, brands have passed the social media marketing test because they are using it as an added way to communicate. I would argue that communications is not the point... creating true connections is the point. This is not a debate of semantics, but a much larger corporate conversation that brands are simply not eager to have. If you surveyed the vast majority of these brands, they will not understand the gripes of Brogan, Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, Nilofer Merchant, Avinash Kaushik, Joseph Jaffe or me. They will point to the amount of people who are following them on Twitter or how many likes they have on Facebook and push it further by showing the level of engagement they have with consumers in terms of speed-to-response or resolution in regards to a customer service issue as the barometer for success. They will demonstrate how often their messages are shared, liked, promoted and retweeted. They will highlight individual consumer feedback as a metaphor for the direct relationship that they now have with consumers, but they are still missing the point.

So, what could be so right?

Using social media to communicate a message is the obvious stuff. To this day, we have all-too-many brands who don't even know how to nail down that very elementary component. What brands are missing, when it comes to social media is the true connection. The trust that is built out of real interactions between real human beings. And, quite frankly, they're missing this point because social media marketing is simply seen as any other form of corporate marketing and communications. It may even be agency-led or outsourced to a company that specializes in community management. Brands aren't internalizing the power of how to be social, so the act of social media is simply an extension of the communications and not a true connection between brand and consumer.

Getting social media right. 

It's not easy. It's not perfect. It's not fast. It takes time. There is not one set way for all companies to engage and connect. Because of this, brands look at social media marketing much in the same way that they look at their campaigns or their quarterly goals. And, if we're going to honest about this, that just won't cut it. Social media is organizational and it's not a vertical within the marketing or corporate communications department. Social media is the horizontal that runs across the organization, much in the same way that the culture, brand and human resources should. If we benchmark social media by campaigns and quarters, we are relegating it to a world where its efficacy won't be about how to build a better brand through better connections, but rather a world where its only role is to augment and supplement the communications of a brand. That sounds like more noise to me.

That would be a shameful waste... wouldn't it?

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Don't #Unplug From Technology

Don't blame technology for our unhealthy relationship with it.

Grazing the magazine newsstand on my flight to NYC last week, I was thrilled to see that the latest edition of Fast Company was on sale. I was even more excited to see Baratunde Thurston on the cover. Most people knew Thurston as the director of digital for The Onion. He then moved on to become a bestselling author (How To Be Black), a well recognized speaker, a a regular contributor at Fast Company and much more. In short, he was riding the wave of his digital connectedness upriver into global success, while developing a personal brand to be reckon with (over 140,000 followers on Twitter, multiple appearances in mainstream media and more). My heart sunk when I saw the name of the cover story: #Unplug - My Life Was So Crazy, I Disconnected For 25 Days. You Should Too. Next up: the siren-ringing sounds of your life as it comes crashing to a halt. There is a simple truth here that people don't want to admit: it's not the technology and all of this inter-connectedness that is the problem... it's us.

Unplugging may make your misery worse.

How many notifications do you have set up in your life? Think about your smartphone. When does it notify you of anything? A voice call? A text message? A voicemail message? An update from Facebook? A direct message from Twitter? When you have a scheduled appointment? When someone would like to set-up an appointment? A notification that a meeting is about to happen? A warning that your flight may be delayed? What about your computer? A new email? An incoming Skype chat? A request to connect via Google Hangouts? A reminder that your favorite blogger on Huffington Post has just published a new piece? A special price for that hotel you were hoping to stay at? The lists, pings rings, beeps, buzzers and more could go on and on. Lately, Thurston isn't the only one talking about a more regimented social media and technology diet. The enthusiasm that many people are expressing to create these digital bankruptcies shore up to a bigger problem: finding a healthy balance in our lives.

Don't blame the potato chips. 

Thurston and others who have recently talked about their inability to keep up with the influx of digital inputs (Chris Brogan and Seth Godin have frequently discussed these issues) could be missing the bigger point: this is the inevitable outcome of success. If you do everything right in terms of building a platform or something that people want to pay attention to, you will never be prepared or able to deal with that success. The same is often the case for brands who are looking to hit viral gold. More often than not, they are not prepared and flounder when it actually works. It is very hard to scale a personality. In short, we become victims of our success. No one is going to cry for Thurston, Godin, Brogan, me or you. Let our biggest problems in life be that we can't keep up with all of the people who want to consume our media and connect with us. Let our email become one big, unwinnable, game of Tetris where all we're doing is moving those messages from the inbox to a folder while attempting to respond, only to have that inbox continually increase at a faster and faster click, until: game over.

How to take your life back (without unplugging).

People are often shocked when they spend any amount of time with me in my protein form. My smartphone, laptop and tablet have zero notifications. Zero. There is only one notification set and that is a customized vibration tone on my iPhone for when my spouse calls and/or texts me. That's it. Otherwise, I look at my devices when I have a moment. Seems simple enough? It is. Over time (and I have been using these technology from very nascent stages), those who connect with me no longer have expectations of an immediate response. The goal is simple: never put yourself in Thurston's position so that your life requires a moment to unplug. Instead of letting the technology and their notifications manage you, start managing your technology and notifications.

The results will stun you.

You won't find me thumbing the iPhone while pushing my kids on the swing at the park, because there is nothing notifying me of any sort of message. So, unless I take a break on the park bench and decide to pick up the device on my own accord, I don't have to play life judge and figure out if an email is more important than the swing-set. This is key: notifications are ambiguous. They no longer tell you what's important, they simply inform you that there is something new to look at. Like the Pavlovian creatures that we are, we just can't help but take a peek at what the message could mean. Over time, this conditioning has jaded our judgment and confused the importance of our work. Many people attack the last message that came in rather than the important ones. Many people attack the messages that are quick to respond to and wait for more time in their day to attack to the ones that require more work. All of this isn't technology's fault. All of this is our fault, because we're allowing the technology to manage us, instead of the other way around.

Take a break.

Instead of taking a break for any period of time, start deactivating your notifications. Block off specific moments in the day when you will check your social feeds (Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, etc...). Decide how much time you're going to allocate to responding to email messages. A lot of the email back and forth can be solved with a thirty-second phone call, but we've conditioned ourselves to engage in a week-long email chain that looks more like a game of badminton than resolving a work-related issue. Agree that before you make a grab for any device, you will proactively define if what you're doing in the here-and-now is more substantive than what may be on the digital screen in your pocket. See, if you unplug, you will eventually plug back in. What you're plugging back into isn't technology. You're plugging back into bad habits. These habits were facilitated by how technology works, but they don't have to be that way. The next time that you're thinking about unplugging from it all, take a step back and ask yourself what, exactly, you're unplugging from and how you can best manage the process? The vast majority of us will never have as much attention as Baratunde Thurston. The vast majority of us aren't as gainfully engaged with all of these digital channels and social networks as Baratunde Thurston. Still, all of us can do a much better job at turning off the beeps, blips, lights, vibrations and ringers in our lives.

That act alone has nothing to to with unplugging, but everything to do with plugging into what is most important in our lives.

The above posting is my twice-monthly column for The Huffington Post . I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original version online here:

Huffington Post - Don't Turn Off Technology -- Turn Off Your Bad Habits.

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Do You Want To Be Employable In The Next 5 Years?

The world has changed.

When I first met with my publisher (Business Plus - Grand Central Publishing) to talk about what would become my second business book, CTRL ALT Delete (out now!), my editor asked me who the target market for this book would be? I half-jokingly said that CTRL ALT Delete is for anyone who wants to be employable in the next five years. The publisher felt like this was the appropriate provocation for this book, because too many brands (and the individuals that serve them) worry too much about how much the world is changing and haven't spent enough time understanding that the world has fundamentally changed.

A video to accompany the chaos?

Along the continuing journey to promote CTRL ALT Delete and get it into as many business leaders' hands as possible, the team at Twist Image - along with the book publisher - have pulled many media and promotional levers (you can get a feel for them over here: CTRL ALT Delete Book Reviews And Media). Along with the CTRL ALT Delete digital experience we've also seen our SlideShare presentation titled, 25+ Mind Blowing Stats About Business Today - CTRL ALT Delete, get close to 114,000 views (and growing with each and every passing day). We've done book launches in places like Toronto and New York City (and, if you're interested in meeting up this coming week, there will be more book launch events happening in Detroit on Wednesday and Washington on Thursday) with a few more surprises to come. But, last week I got a tweet from Bryan Harris. I had never heard of him before and, to this day, I don't know much about him, other than he lives in Nashville (if he's being honest on his Twitter bio). Apparently, he liked the CTRL ALT Delete content so much that he invested his own time, energy and effort into producing a CTRL ALT Delete video book trailer titled, The World Has Changed.

Wow! Wow! Wow!

It is hard to put into words the happiness and appreciation I have for Bryan (if you're so inclined, you can follow Bryan on Twitter). Pure kindness and giving on his part. So, thank you very much, Bryan. I hope everyone else loves this video on CTRL ALT Delete as much as I do. I am grateful for your kindness and I'm hopeful we can shake hands (or have a bro hug) in our protein forms some time soon.

On with the show...

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