Monday, January 28, 2013

There's Not an App for That


I am a big fan of Slate.com, the online current affairs and culture magazine. I listen to Slate's podcasts, I read all of the regular columns, and I especially enjoy Farhad Manjoo's short videos and articles. Manjoo writes about technology in a way that I can get my head around it. Together, he and his handy sidekick, The Hand Model, review some of the best applications for the web, mobile phones, and social media. 

So, you can imagine my delight when I came across one of his videos entitled Get Better at Public Speaking where Farhad Manjoo reviews apps that help you speak in front of a crowd. I watched his video and then downloaded all of the apps he mentioned. SlideshowRemote allows you to control a PowerPoint presentation from your smart phone. While presenting to an audience, you can view the current slide and your notes in portrait, or you can view the current slide and the next slide in landscape. Simply swipe forward to advance, or swipe back to return to the previous slide. This is a perfect app to help you rehearse your presentation.

Presentation Clock is an app that does one thing extremely well: it displays large, easy to read numbers that change colors at intervals that you determine to help keep you from speaking too long. When the timers hits 0, the colors invert (from red on black to black on red) and continue counting up indicating how long you've gone over your time limit. It's fully customizable with simple touch controls.

But here's where Manjoo's video is misleading: none of these apps actually make you a better speaker. There are tools that will help make a difference in your ability to communicate more effectively, but you already have those tools - they can't be download in the form of an app.

So, what are the tools that you already have?

You've got the basics - a voice, a smile, eyes, gestures, body language. You've got a message. You've got two ears. You've got your personal style. And you've got fear. And believe it or not, even fear is a tool that you can use. Learning how to put each of these tools to work will lift you from where you are now to the level of master communicator in a way that no app will ever be able to do for you. If you put these tools to work, you can change from the inside out. Your outlook on yourself and others will shift so that personally and professionally - you will soar. That's not a claim that we at Ty Boyd, Inc. don't take lightly.




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