Addendum to How to Get a Standing Ovation

My, my...this topic sure generated a lot of comments. I'll respond to them here:

1. Dress code in Hawaii. A great aloha shirt is the way to go. Have I got the solution for you. The world's best aloha shirts come from Anne Namba. I often wear them in my speeches because it's powerful to know that you are wearing the most expensive shirt in the room. Here is a horribly out of focus (don't blame me, I didn't take the picture) picture of me in an Anne Namba alongside Rick Smolan and Russell Brown.
2. Dress code of Steve Jobs; Steve denigrating the competition. Steve is Steve. There is only one Steve Jobs. Very few rules apply to him. Certainly not the rules of a mere mortal like me.
3. Toastmasters. Can't say I know much about them, but I hear nothing but good things. My father was a member in Hawaii, and he was a great speaker.
4. Conversational tone of voice. Absolutely. This tone is a natural outcome of telling stories. I'm an evangelist, and I hate the preachy tone. I despise the, “I've come down from the mountain to inform you ignoramuses” tone too.
5. Keep it simple. No simple answer here. I believe I can cover ten topics in a speech. :-) Certainly you shouldn't ramble, but remember: be entertaining!
6. Better to be too short than too long. Generally, true, but if you're too short, you can insult the audience. If you're too long, you insult yourself. Just practice until you end exactly on time.
7. Delivery of proceedings before or after the speech. I hate giving out my slides before a speech. I think it leads to attention deficit because people can skip ahead. However, many people like slides to take notes on--and my slides are particularly sparse, so I'm not exactly blowing the suspense. I always offer my PDF after my speeches but not just because I'm a good guy. I also like to capture people's email addresses for future evangelism. :-)
8. How will I keep up with “this amazing flow of brilliant content”? (You the Man, Martin Oetting, for putting it this way!) Good question. I just know there are bloggers out there who don't think I can keep up this pace...which drives me further to keep up this pace. I ask myself that question every night at 10 pm or so. It takes me two hours to write a blog entry. Then it takes me one hour to recover before I can fall asleep. On Tuesday nights the posting is late because I have to watch my favorite TV program: Boston Legal (my goal is to be the Denny Crane of technology). Postings are also late anytime the San Jose Sharks play. I'm trying to post five times a week: skipping Friday and Saturday nights. This Thursday is going to be tough because I have a hockey game at 10:45 pm. When I reach 100,000 page views a day, I'm going to start taking it easier.

What do you think: Does this qualify as Wednesday's posting so I don't have to write one tonight?

I hope you like KubaKounter, my daily page views counter. When I asked if anyone knew of such a thing, two people went and wrote one for me! Is the Web great or what?

Written at: Palo Alto, California.

Comments

[jakethespud]

You could reduce posting to once a week to give the slow readers like me a chance to digest the feast!

[Kendall]

Guy. I agree. The content here is priceless. I know that I learn a lot and take a lot of information from each post. Thanks.

[ripple]

Guy - it qualifies :) The content has been amazing and would be at half the pace! I'm having a hard time keeping up... Honestly? One of the great blogs out of the gate. Glad you waited ;-)