Dahle Communication

Foursquare Badges Tell Stories - Which One Is Another Story

If you don't know what Foursquare is you are not alone. There are a little more than 3 million users currently on Foursquare. Now that is quite a jump from the 725,000 users in March, but it is still quite short of the 500 million users on Facebook.

What is Foursquare? Well, I am not talking about the game played on playgrounds with four squares and a ball, but a mobile application that "aims to encourage people to explore their neighborhoods and then reward people for doing so." If you visit a location often enough you can become the 'mayor' of the location. Some businesses are taking advantage of Foursquare and giving away things or offering a discount to those people who check-in to their location. For example, Granite City in Sioux Falls offers a free 20 oz beer to the mayor of Granite City.

Along with being a 'mayor' you can get 'badges' for going to certain locations, checking in a certain number of times or at certain times. While the badges can be fun, you have to be careful what you are saying to the rest of the world, because they can become a story unto themselves.

For example, there is the Bender badge - where if you check-in at locations four nights in a row. Or the Crunked badge - where you check in at 4 stops in one night. Now are all of those bars? Not sure, but what story is starting to develop if someone sees those badges? And really, do you want to broadcast that information to everyone out there?

While there are some articles that talk about privacy, you also want to be careful about sending mixed messages. While it might be fun to check-in everywhere and go over everything, make sure that you are not sending a mixed message to everyone (like getting a 'player please' badge when you are out on the town WITHOUT your significant other - didn't happen to me, I'm just saying). If you want to see a compiled list of badges, this website is doing a pretty good job of keeping it all up.

What you can take away from this as far as communication goes is a simple one: Communication is all about getting the right message out. If you don't have a clear message when you are speaking, people can get the wrong idea. When that happens, they will either be uninformed, misinformed or utterly confused. When that happens, your speech will suffer.

So make sure when you are writing and giving your speeches that you use language and images that are not going to have double meanings in them. Being clear, concise and unambiguous is very important in making sure that your speeches are successful.

So if you are on foursquare, make sure to think about what you want posted for everyone to see. And if you are interested, you can find me there trying to keep my Mayorship of Queen City Bakery!

Will Obama use storytelling again with Elena Kagan?

Picture from Kathleen Dooher-AP, Washinton Post

 This morning I awoke to the news that President Obama is going to nominate Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. The biggest news from this announcement is that it will mark the first time in United States history that there will be three female justices serving on the bench at the same time.

However, what I am interested in is how he is going to use communication to get the confimation though. Using an effective communication strategy (better known as Public Relations) is key to winning the public vote, even if he doesn't get the Republican's vote.

Last year I noted that he was using a great story to paint Justice Sonia Sotomayor as the all-American tale of rising up from hard times to become a justice. It was a great story. Here is just a small part of the New York Times article that I quoted then:

Her up-by-the-bootstraps tale, an only-in-America story that in many ways mirrors Mr. Obama’s own, is one reason for her selection, and it is the animating characteristic of her approach to both life and the law.

It was well done and obviously successful since she was nominated. The question I have now is, will Obama learn from those hearings and once again focus on Kagen's story to gain public support? If he is smart he will. The story-telling that the Obama administration used last year was very effective.

As always, I have no idea if this person is qualified or not - I need to do some research before making that decision. However, I will be interested to see how the Obama administration appraches this issue, especially with the toxic environment that politics seems to be in since the health care debate and an upcoming election in November.

I'll try to keep a watch of the proceedings as they unfold and will continue to see how effective (or ineffective) their communication methods will be. However, in the opening article I am already starting to see a trend: serve das Dean of Harvard Law School and would make history by joining two other females on the court. However, the article was mostly focused on other issues that are not that condusive to telling a good story. Only time will tell if that is going to change.

Ingite comes to South Dakota

Last month Brett Duncan over at Marketing In Progress reminded me of an event that I had found earlier, Ignite. Ignite is "a geek event in over 100 cities worldwide. At the events, Ignite presenters share their personal and professional passions, using 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds for a total of just five minutes." 

I love the concept of Ignite. You get 5 minutes and 20 slides that will automatically move every 15 seconds, which means you have to be prepared and you can't ramble on. Their tag-line is "Enlighten Us, But Make It Quick." 

 While most cities have been doing Ignite events, Scott and John Meyer at 9 Clouds, Inc in Sioux Falls decided to do something a little different - Ignite South Dakota - a State-wide project. This makes sense on several levels. First, with a total population of around 800,000 people, the State of South Dakota is about 1/3 the size of Dallas, TX who just had their Ignite last month. Second, this will allow smaller towns like Brookings, SD to showcase some of their talent when they might not have otherwise had that opportunity. Finally, South Dakotans are a big family. You've heard of six degrees of separation, but in South Dakota, it really is 1 degree of separation. Because of this, when I travel, I usually just say I am from South Dakota, since few people know where Sioux Falls is anyway.

I'm excited for Ignite getting started here in South Dakota. I think it is a great way for the talented people here in the Dakotas to showcase that talent here and on the web (which I am sure their videos will appear). 

So, if you are in the Brookings area on Wednesday April 21st, come on down and hear some great speakers. They include Megan Dahle of Mt. Jono & First Person History (and my wife!), Corey Heidelberger from Madville Times and an overall talented writer, speaker and artist, Johnathan Burns who has created Cubicons and is one of the funiest people I have ever met and many others. The full list can be seen at the Ignite South Dakota website. Below is a video from John Meyer with a Welcome to Ignite SD.

Welcome to Ignite SD from 9 Clouds on Vimeo.

One Year Down - A review of my favorites

 One year ago today I published my first post on communication here at Dahle Communication. I wasn't quite sure how much I was going to be able to spend posting articles or what I would talk about all of those times. After one year though, I have realized that there is a great deal to talk about and I don't plan on stopping anytime soon!

With that said, here are my top 10 posts from the past year. They are not the top ten in views or comments, but what I feel are the 10 bests posts. Best can mean a variety of things, but to me it represents a post that was thought provoking, got some good feedback and has continued to attract interest not only from everyone out there, but me as well.

10. Presentations to watch: xBlog: Did You Know 4.0 - I put this post in the top ten because of how good the video from xBlog is. Its a great presentation that has given me some inspiration and has also gotten me to think about the world.

9. Prezi - A Revolution in Presentations or Just Another Program? - Prezi is a presentation application that has made me re-think the way presentation CAN be done. However, much like anything new, its novelty has worn off some for me. However, I think it is still a great presentation tool that can be added to any successful presenters repertoire.

 8. A Good Story Helps Propel Supreme Court Nominee Sotomayor - Justice Sotomayor's profile has decreased quite a bit since she was nominated and confirmed as the most recent Supreme Court justice. Her rise to fame however allowed the Obama administration to show all of us how to use a story to get your audience on your side.

7. Watch the context of your language - why MSNBC should learn slang - The reason I put this up on the top 10 list is that I am a political junkie. I follow politics a lot and like to follow how candidates and activists use communication - either to their advantage or disadvantage. Sadly, a lot of people apparently need to learn slang, because this issue is still around. Besides, this has quite possibly the funniest clip from The Daily Show ever!

6. Macworld 2009 Keynote - Minus Steve Jobs - All of us know how good of a public speaker Steve Jobs is. So when he didn't present at the Keynote address of Macworld people were concerned - about Steve and the status of Apple. Apple is so tied to Jobs and his ability to present eloquently that unless his successor can follow in his footsteps as a confident speaker, Apple might be in trouble.

 5. Pearl Jam Ten Redux CD - Addition by Subtraction - I put this post up simply for the fact that music is a big part of my life and I have used music on several occasions to prove a point. Other posts include one talking about Allison Krauss & Robert Plant, The Watchmen Trailer, Alice In Chains, Chris Isaak and Muse. Music can teach us a lot about communication.

4. Destroying a Brand the Tiger way - This has turned out to be a huge story. What's more amazing is that is it still unfolding in front of our eyes. By the end of 2010, we might know everything - but I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't.

 3. Are things like Twitter, Texting, Facebook and Blogging hurting communication? - This was one of many posts regarding communication and how it is being affected by on-line media. A lot of people have simply forgotten how important effective communication is.

2. Twitter vs Facebook - Why Simplicity Matters - I have posted several times about Twitter because of its impact on our world as communicators and on society as a whole. 

 1. Mantras versus Mission Statements? How about a Passion Statement - This post got a lot of responses from people about the idea of a passion statement. While reading Guy Kawasaki's book Reality Check, I liked his idea of a mantra instead of a mission statement. However, I like the idea of a passion statement even more - which is why you will find one of our pages on our website titled "About Our Passion"

These were just 10 of the 88 posts I had over the past year. I can't wait for the next year and what communication will have in store for us.

A Good Story Helps Propel Supreme Court Nominee Sotomayor

There are many people in the communication field that have talked about the importance of telling a compelling story when giving a speech. Duarte Design, Bert Decker, Garr Reynolds, Guy Kawasaki, and Dr. Simon Raybould of Presentation Skills have all talked about the importance of telling a good story when giving a presentation or a speech.

Beyond that, if you had any doubts as to the importance of having a good story, then all of us were given a great example with President Barack Obama's nomination of Justice Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Right away there were various newspaper accounts discussing her story and not her judicial record. A New York Times article summed it up well by starting a major article on Sotomayor with the following:

She was “a child with dreams,” as she once said, the little girl who learned at 8 that she had diabetes, who lost her father when she was 9, who devoured Nancy Drew books and spent Saturday nights playing bingo, marking the cards with chickpeas, in the squat red brick housing projects of the East Bronx. She was the history major and Puerto Rican student activist at Princeton who spent her first year at that bastion of the Ivy League “too intimidated to ask questions.” She was the tough-minded New York City prosecutor, and later the corporate lawyer with the dazzling international clients. She was the federal judge who “saved baseball” by siding with the players’ union during a strike. Now Sonia Sotomayor — a self-described “Nuyorican” whose mother, a nurse, and father, a factory worker, left Puerto Rico during World War II — is President Obama’s choice for the Supreme Court, with a chance to make history as only the third woman and first Hispanic to sit on the highest court in the land. Her up-by-the-bootstraps tale, an only-in-America story that in many ways mirrors Mr. Obama’s own, is one reason for her selection, and it is the animating characteristic of her approach to both life and the law.

Notice how there wasn't anything that dealt with her decisions on certain cases or her stance on certain issues. This was not a coincidence. The Obama administration is using a good story to help them ensure that their candidate gets through the senate confirmation hearings and placed on the Supreme Court.

Don't get me wrong - I am not claiming that Sonia Sotomayor is not qualified for the position or that the Obama administration is trying to fool anyone. I have not researched her qualifications nor have I delved into the debate about if she should be appointed to the Supreme Court or not. My point is simply this: the Obama administration is doing what all great speakers and presenters do. They are using a compelling story to get people on their side. 

In the same way, this can help your speeches and presentations. Knowing how to tell a good story gets people interested in what you have to say. Regardless if you agree with Obama's choice or disagree with it - you should recognize how effective their story is.

Travis