The Storytelling theme attracted our attention.

What is it?

The formula was a new one on me.  This is taken from the PechaKucha website:

PechaKucha 20×20 is a simple presentation format where you show 20 images, each for 20 seconds. The images forward automatically and you talk along to the images.

It was indeed a fast-moving series of fascinating, sometimes confusing, rambling, varied presentations loosely based around the theme.  Some shared information; most told stories or shared ideas, opinions, passions on book format, design, font, imagery, sculpture, art, thoughts, childhood, business and more…

I liked it.

Twitter

It makes sense that if you’re using Twitter already, you tweet information and links to events you’re running or helping to promote.

• Tweet often.  People who are online at 07:30am may not be online at 3pm, or 10pm. Experiment, to see which times get the best results.  You can measure this in simple ways, by engagament (i.e. Replies, Mentions and Retweets) or by using a URL shortener for example, such as Ow.ly (an URL shortener and link visit tracker).
• Experiment with different phrases.  As people expand the number of Twitter users they follow, things become unmanagable.  This is where tools such as Tweetkdeck and Hootsuite play a role in helping users filter tweets for keywords. As you might expect, not everyone follows the same keywords as may be obvious to you.
• If you’re not already on Twitter and open an account solely to promote a single event, don’t expect too many bookings.  People like to get to know you first.

Also, take a tour of Twitter for Business, to learn about other promotional tools.

Your Own Website

There is no better place to promote an event than your own website.

• Twitter aside (in our case), it is probably the source of the majority of visitors to your event booking page.
• Remember to use Google Analytics, or some other website statistics package, to record the source of all visits.

Facebook

We’ve already blogged How to Use Facebook to Promote an Event, but there’s no harm mentioning this again.  (Remember to come back once you’ve read this post.)

Eventbrite

The three best things about Eventbrite are:

Event invitation, booking, payment, reminder and notifcation management

OK, that’s five. But, this (almost free) application is worth its weight in handbags.  See Eventbrite pricing for further details.

• Automate sending of invitations, notifcations and reminders (including complimentary tickets) to a pre-existing list of contacts
• Take bookings – with multiple payment options – online

Tracking links

• Would you like to be able to see which online marketing effforts are sending most links to your booking page?
• Would you like to identify which affiliates are sharing your links more effectively than others?
• Would it help focus future marketing events if you could see which tracked links were ineffective?

Customisation

There are buckets of customisation options in Eventbrite.  One of my favourites is the facility to create ticket forms, widgets like this one, calendars and links to promote your event with a clean, professional look.

WhatsOnNI

Register and add your event (free) to WhatsOnNI.com.  Events are uploaded along with an image and approved on the same day.

Email Newsletter

Using a legitimate email contact list, sign up to Mailchimp today.  I’ve surveyed the best of the rest, and this is the one that was consistently easy to use and written with non-tecchies in mind.

Advantage NI

Advantage shares Northern Ireland news and events and has a Business Directory that you can add your details to.  Register with Advantage NI to being making use of the website’s promotional facilities.

InvestNI

NI Business Info is an InvestNI webiste where you can read crucial business information and view business events in Northern Ireland.  Register with NI Business Info, to begin accessing information and sharing events.

SyncNI

SyncNI publishes a Northern Ireland business calendar listing varying types of events, though its focus is business, technology, science and innovation.  Register with SyncNI (for free) to list business events, post news, share press releases and blog posts.

Addictive Creatives

Addictive Creatives lists news and Northern Ireland creative events.  Contact Addictive Creatives with details of your event.

LinkedIn Events

You can add LinkedIn Events as long as you already have a LinkedIn profile.  Like Facebook, you, attendees and other interested parties can add their name to the list.  You can also send invitations to anyone in your contact list.

Business Events Hub

The Business Events Hub Facebook page is added to regularly by business people sharing and promoting events.  As long as you already have a Facebook profile, you can Like the Page, then share links to events.

On the 8th of this month we had our first BookCamp event.  BookCamp is a business book-club designed to aid skills development, idea generation and networking among local entrepreneurs, professionals and businesspeople.  We studied Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell, and enjoyed some different perspectives on its usefulness and impact.  Take a look at my Amazon review (duplicated below) entitled, “Very pretty. But, can it fight?”

Next book: Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath. Get reading now!

Register for April’s BookCamp here.

Perhaps the main problem with the book is its use of the word ‘outliers’ to refer to exceptional people, individuals who achieve so much more than others. It should instead refer to the exceptional circumstances that allowed them their meteoric rise to success. These factors – such as year and era of birth, family background, race and place of education – contain the quirks of fate that allow the merely talented to achieve the successes that lie so far outside the norm. This is Gladwell’s major thesis.

Gladwell’s target is the traditional American story of success: rugged individuals, by dint of hard work and raw talent – perspiration and inspiration – achieve those magnificent success levels that elude others. Instead, Gladwell wants to show the place of circumstances and situation in this story. He wants to give success a context beyond that of one man and his willpower. Fair enough.

In order to do this, Gladwell tells some stories of his own. Lots of them, in fact.

The book is one, big collection of counter-cultural stories about the nature of specifically American success. (By ‘counter-cultural’ I mean contrary to the ‘rugged individual’ myth described above.) This story-method is Gladwell’s greatest strength or weakness, depending of what you’re looking for. Me, I wanted to read something fascinating, provocative, and launch-pad like. That’s exactly what I got.

Most of Gladwell’s detractors find his method of extreme induction – “Here’s one case so that means there’s a pattern” – infuriating. I find in fun. When I read a Gladwell book, I’m not on the lookout for rigorous sampling methods or objective self-criticism. Let’s leave that to university textbooks, can’t we? Gladwell does pop journalism with ideas and trends. He’s a beginning, a warm-up guy, a threshold-guardian of atypical info. You don’t need to take him more seriously than that.

That said, my lingering sense after finishing the book was one of anticlimax. OK, so now we know that as well as talent and effort, success also requires of us a massive amount of good fortune and opportunity. So what exactly can I do about it? Beyond vague pleas for someone – Big government? The education system? – to take this wider context into account, there’s not much we as individuals can do about it.

Or maybe there there is. Throughout the book Gladwell does flag up a couple of possibilities. He just doesn’t do too much with them, that’s all. That’s what frustrated me the most with the book.

For instance, Gladwell spends some time taking the IQ industry to task. He points out some examples of people with incredibly high IQ levels who haven’t made been successful. So far, so trite. Gladwell sexes up this observation by juicy piece of compare and contrast (chapter 4). In one corner, entre Chris Langan, in IQ terms a genius, but in success terms a flop. In the other corner, there’s J Robert Oppenheimer, theoretical physicist and director of the Manhattan Project. The difference? Oppenheimer had charm, excellent communication skills, and `social knowledge’. And where did this come from? His comfortable, suburban, upper-middle class background.

It’s here that I want to scream. My mind is shouting, “Write about emotional intelligence!

Tell them that social skills and communication can be learned! Mention Howard Gardner, or at least Daniel Goleman at least!” But no. Instead, we get one footnote, two sentences, about the work of Robert Sternberg (p. 290). Way to go, Malcolm. Not. Here’s a prime chance to sow the seeds of personal development, but instead you pour on the cement of social conditioning and class consciousness. Again, nothing for us to do.

Another example is Gladwell’s handling of the 10,000 hour rule (chapter 2), formulated by Dr. K. Anders Ericsson. According to this rule, 10,000 hours is the amount of practise required before a human being can lay claim to mastery or expertise in an activity. Even if you’re a genius like Mozart, you still have to pump in those hours. Gladwell illustrates this rule with the Beatles (performing together) and Bill Gates (programming).

Only problem is, he then goes on to describe how a very specific and unique set of circumstances allowed them to notch up those hours, factors that Joe Bloggs public – that’s you and me, folks – just couldn’t contrive. Still, it made me wonder whether I’ve chalked up anything near 10,000 hours honing a particular skill. The best I could come up with was reading. Does that count?

Anyway, I give the book three out of five stars for entertainment value, quality of journalism, mental stimulation, and idea-gathering. For my taste, there’s a little too much, ‘me, me, me’ in Outliers; Gladwell needs to untangle his brain from his own hype. But his main problem is that the book is discouraging, leavening us little to do beyond wonder if we were born on the wrong time and place to achieve a level of success that lies outside the mean.

Outliers is a book of pretty analysis, that’s for sure. I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it. And for a book about success, that’s a pretty tragic flaw.

Format

The format is open for discussion, as we want to establish an event that will meet the need.  However, the launch (08 March) and first few meetings of the network will take the following format:

1. Food/Networking
2. Introduction
3. Seminar by an experienced peer
4. Discussion/Questions
5. Networking

Note that on the same night, in the same venue, a parallel event will take place, BookCamp, which will start and conclude at the same time. Before and after both events, there is a joint opportunity for networking with other NI professionals.

Who is it for?

We envisage that the following types of professionals will find the network valuable:

• Copywriters, Proofreaders and Editors
• Web Content Writers
• Article Writers
• Researchers and Academic Writers
• Technical Writers
• Indexers
• Tender Writers
• Funding and Grant Application Writers
• Writers of Press Releases
• PR Professionals

Aims and Benefits for Members

Networking (meeting with other professionals)

Professional Development (through peer learning from experienced member speakers delivering talks on a range of requested topics)

Sourcing (liaising with potential clients, and those who can supply referrals)

Speakers

We are currently looking out for voluntary speakers for our monthly events.  This experience will help raise your profile in the professional community in which you work and share your expertise with other professionals.  You are not charged for any night on which you speak.

Would this be something you’d be interested in doing?   If so, get in touch.

Here are some suggested topics:

1. What struggles do you have as a sole writer in an office of non-writers?
2. Or, as a freelancer, do you find it difficult to get in touch with potential clients?
3. Is there a style of writing you’d like more experience in?
4. Are there writing projects in which you need guidance?
5. What common questions and issues arise when approaching certain types of documentation?
6. Are there any online tools or websites to help with creating templates?

We are totally open to requested topics, and to suggestions from suitably experienced writers.  Email us at info@sensei-winbeforehand.co.uk with your name, suggested topic, brief outline and contact details.  It would also be helpful to know which month you’d be free to speak.  Please enter “ScribeTribe Speaker” in the Subject line.

Keep in touch

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