Ed Batista

The Slate 60

Today Slate unveiled their ninth annual list of the 60 most generous American philanthropists.  (Here's an intro, and here's the list.)  A few noteworthy gifts

• Bill and Melinda Gates topped the list with $3.4 billion to their foundation (although $2.7 billion of that was just a pledge.)  It's good to be a Gates!  It's also good to be a librarian, as Global Libraries are one of the Gates Foundation's major funding priorities.  My wife's a librarian, so I know how vitally important these institutions are, and how rarely they get the attention they deserve.
• Pierre and Pam Omidyar came in at # 7 with $173 million to their foundation, which has been reinvented as the Omidyar Network.  I hate to rain on this parade of generosity, but I'm still a little skeptical of this new enterprise.  I understand the desire to be something more than an old-school foundation that just writes checks, but I'm not sure that the Omidyars have achieved that goal.  The new site--and the organization itself?--seems to revolve around...discussion boards.  I'm hoping there's more to it that I'm just not aware of--perhaps someone will clue me in.  To the Omidyars' credit, apparently they also gave away another $79 million--they didn't tell Slate who they gave it to, for some reason, but at least they're spreading it around.
• At # 9, Sidney Frank, who gave and pledged $142 million, including more than $100 million to my alma mater, Brown University.  Yes, I realize that's noteworthy primarily to me, but hey, it's my site. 
• Right behind Sid at # 10 is Mr. Mayor himself: Michael Bloomberg gave $138 million to various causes.
• Oprah Winfrey clocked in at # 24, giving $50 million to her foundations.

And the folks who just missed the list are worth a special mention, too.  According to Slate's Jodie T. Allen:

Donald E. and Violet Himebaugh finished 61^st, just keeping them off the Slate 60. The Himebaughs bequeathed $16.3 million to the Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region in Appleton, Wis. Donald Himebaugh had worked as an accountant and office manager for a grocery wholesaler in Appleton, and his wife was a Spanish teacher at a local high school. Apparently the Himebaughs amassed their fortune through careful saving and investment. Their final bequest, comprising their entire estate, followed upon earlier gifts to the foundation.

The primary purpose of the list is to inspire some competitive giving among the plutocrats, and if the increased amounts are any indication, it's working.  Samuel and Aline Skaggs topped the first Slate 60 in 1996 with a $100 million gift--they'd be tied for 13th place today.

But I also hope the list serves to highlight the importance of individual giving in general.  Total charitable giving in the U.S. was just under $241 billion in 2002, according to the American Association of Fundraising Counsel, and the vast majority of that--over 76%, or nearly $184 billion--came from individuals.  (Corporate giving and foundation grants together accounted for just over 16%, or $39 billion, and bequests accounted for the rest.) 

"Corporate Blogging" = Oxymoron

Doc Searls takes a promoter of "corporate blogging" to task (gently).  He writes:

"Corporate blogging" is so ironic it's nearly an oxymoron. Having "a system in place to monitor what is being said" seems more consistent with ending a conversation than with starting one.

But, credit where due. Sally Falkow (whose blog is Website Content Strategy) is trying to do a Good Thing here: getting companies to talk, and to engage, in  human voices, with real people.

Her problem — the same one all of us have — isn't with setting up practices, policies, strategies and so on. It's with trying to frame an understanding of blogging in too many ways at once, and losing track of its core virtues in the process...

Haywood

Haywood had an 8-year run, ending in 2000, that culminated with Men Called Him Mister and We Are Amateurs, You and I.  I'm mighty sorry they're gone, but if it had to end, "Amateurs" is a hell of a swansong.  I never knew them when, but they've been in heavy rotation ever since I first heard them--probably courtesy of Gimme Noise (horrid, absolutely horrid site--but the girl's got good musical taste.)  They're hard to pin down stylistically--plenty of emo-ish introspection, but they can kick out the jams, too.  One reason to love them--Ted Pauly, vocalist and guitar player, transparently pimps "Mister" on Amazon: " This record by this band is great! I love this record the most of any record I own, even though I am not in this band!" 

Search Me Redux

Why can't I find a (free) site search tool that works?  The Technorati searchlet that I installed recently on my day blog isn't working any more--it only searches the entire web and ignores instructions to search just my site.  Not helpful.  So I've put the Google search box back (TypePad makes it easy.)  But it's an imperfect solution at best.  It's not updated all that often (at least for a little ol' site like mine), so it excludes terms from recent posts.  And it includes terms from my sidebars, so you get a lot of false positives when searching for someone in my blogroll, for example.  PicoSearch had its own problems, so at this point I'm out of ideas.

Open Source Marketing

More good stuff on marketing from the folks at Change This that raises some challenging questions--and presents some tremendous opportunities--for nonprofits and advocacy groups.  James Cherkoff of Collaborative Marketing believes that marketers should be taking lessons from the Open Source movement.  He writes:

BACK TO THE SOURCE
Consumers are no longer happy to sit back and be fed a brand and its values. They want to interact with the ʻbrand sourceʼ in the same way that Linux programmers want to get their hands on the programming source code. That means giving consumers access to the brand and inviting them to co-create. Open Source marketers understand this and make it easy for customers to get involved with a brand and affect its direction, maybe even its values.

Let's Get Small

Chris Houchens of Shotgun Concepts challenges you to rethink your marketing strategy in a pithy Change This manifesto:

Your marketing works not by telling everyone that your product is great. Your marketing works when you have one person believe that your product is great. This is hard to do and it certainly wonʼt get done with a national TV buy.

Luckily, some people have caught onto this truth. Instead of BROADcasting to consumers, they are NARROWcasting. Firms now exist to create word-of-mouth for your company just by using your product on the streets. Online marketing can now zero in on specific online users. Direct mail companies can tell you more than you want to know about the people not just living in a certain zip code, but individual streets in that zip code. And on it goes.

Abandoning "Complaint-Based Activism"

Michael Shellenberger is an unconventional political strategist and advocate whose work poses a fundamental challenge to progressives' traditional "complaint-based activism."  (A delightfully apt phrase.)  Co-founder of the New Apollo Alliance, a "coalition within the labor, environmental, business, urban, and faith communities in support of good jobs and energy independence," and founder of the Breakthrough Institute, a progressive advocacy shop/think tank, Shellenberger was recently interviewed by Marc Polonsky of The Sun on Why Liberals Need to Abandon Complaint-Based Activism (sorry, PDF only):

Public Speaking

R. Todd Stephens has a good list of public speaking tips.  (I'm linking to the Internet Archive's version of this page, as it's no longer available on Todd's site, and reproducing the entire list below.)  I particularly like his last tip:

R. Todd Stephens' Top Twelve Speaking Tips

Practice, Practice, PracticeThere is no substitute for this. Every professional speaker spends an enormous amount of time working out the session. “It takes me three weeks to put together a good impromptu speech." - Mark Twain. Practice at home, in the car, in the office, 5-10, 20, minutes; what ever you can schedule.

Establish that Foundation
The first 10 minutes may be the most crucial time in an entire speech. This is where people form perceptions on your skills, knowledge, and experience. Delivering a solid performance here and you will set the stage for the remainder of the session.

Flexible Ending
No matter how much you practice, you will approach the ending of your session at different times. Try to take the last 10 minutes and make a mental note of which slide you should be on. Assuming you have 20 slides and you think you should be on slide 16 with 10 minutes to go. You should be able to expand the discussion points to 15-20 minutes or shrink this time period to 5 minutes or less. This is crucial to deliver a professional speech; attendees don’t want to feel cheated by ending early or not covering some of the material because of time constraints. Your ability to pull this off without giving a hint of what’s going on will set you apart.

Limit the Use of Bullets
Most speakers like to use bullets in their slides and the more the merrier. The problem is that you can’t really tell where you are in the slide deck without reading the slide itself. Try to place diagrams or even clipart into the deck that can remind you of where your are. Most nervous conditions come during the transition period between slides and by using diagrams you only need a glance to determine where you are.

Deliver with Feeling
The basic difference between the good, the bad, and the ugly is passion. Deliver the session like you have spent your entire life waiting for this moment. Deliver the session with feeling and emotion, let your passion flow like a Baptist Preacher, can you say amen?

Watch that Slide Count
You should be able to spend 3-5 minutes on each slide besides the title and support slides (QA, References, Contact). Why not less than that? Because some members will be reading the slides while you talk and you want to make sure they can read the entire content. Hence, why you shouldn’t put 20 bullet points and then cover in 2 minutes. Why not more than 5? Perhaps you have too much content that could be much easier explained in separate slides.

Alter your speed of delivery
If you ever watch the World Poker Tour, you will hear them talk about changing the speeds of play. Playing fast, slow, conservative, aggressive, etc is the recipe for success. Same holds true in speaking, delivering a slow monotone for the full period can lull the audience to sleep. However, an overly aggressive style, like Richard Simmons, can wear the audience down and perhaps lose the message in the process. Vary everything!

Use Humor or Interesting Things in the Show (It is a Show by the way)If you have ever watched Emeril Live more than once you will pick up on some comments that are meant to interject humor and delineate him from other cooking show hosts: Bam, Use your Knobs, Kick it up a Notch, Smell-a-Vision, etc. They are funny fillers that have become a brand unto them selves. Work on a few things that you like to say besides Hmmmmm. Props are good for this….

80-90 Percent Rule
No matter how hard you practice, when the day comes you will only be able to deliver 80-90 percent of your ability. The same is true for professional sports like golf. The pressure, time constraints, public view, and a variety of other reasons cause you to be less than perfect. It’s ok, most people won’t notice.

A Built-in Support Group
Remember, the attendees have selected your session to attend. They may have paid to see your presentation and you can bet they want to see you succeed. Nobody goes out and buys a car in hopes that it will break down or get into a wreck. Go on, everyone wants you to succeed.

The Room is your Friend
Most speakers find a parking spot at about 35 degrees to the left and right of the screen. It gives them comfort of being able to look at the screen at any point in time. Don’t park the car, ride that baby. Walk in front of the screen (just don’t park there), walk in the isles, walk down the sides, vary everything. This allows you to look directly at the majority of the audience, since most people sit in the back of the room. Also, big secret time. The most important time you need to see the screen is when you change slides, this is where you gather your thoughts. If you time it right, by walking back toward the front of the room you can see the entire slide without appearing as you needed it.

Be a Host not a Speaker
Before the session, try to meet as many people as you can. Even if you only talk to the people you know, others will get the feeling that you are an approachable person. Try not to spend more than 2-3 minutes with any one person; bounce around. If your session is large, you may only get to say hello with 5-10 people, but these folks could be your supporters that you focus on during the session.

Robert Scoble. Silly?

Rick Bruner of Business Blog Consulting calls out Microsoft's Official Blogger Robert Scoble for insisting that lack of RSS on a marketing site is a firing offense.  (Bruner's already on record as an RSS skeptic--and he cites some Jupiter analysts who take his side as well.)  Bruner & Co. are right to give Scoble some grief about his obsession with RSS, but they're missing some of the other good points he's making.  A marketing site that uses only actors and no real people, that streams videos but doesn't make them downloadable, and that lacks permalinks is a crappy site.  And although the developers shouldn't be fired merely for leaving out RSS, perhaps the $100,000 they wasted should come up in their next performance review?

Adaptive Path

My post below on Jesse Garret's Ajax primer led me to take a closer look at Garret's company, Adaptive Path.  They're a user experience design shop, and they have some great resources on their site, ranging from paid reports on topics like "How Labels Affect Usability and Branding" ($20) and "How ROI Changes User Experience" to free articles on topics like "Making a Better CMS" and "Metadata for the Masses".  Very cool.