It’s Rough, But It Works

IT WASN’T A LIFE-CHANGING EXPERIENCE, but I got a wonderful glimpse of the future this weekend, courtesy of my friend, Laura Fitton (in the picture at left), and the folks at Startup Weekend2 here in Boulder. The picture above is a screen grab from a session they ran, where Laura hosted various entrepreneurs-to-be making pitches to Guy Kawasaki (above, at right) and others.
        The intriguing thing was that the startup experts weren’t in Boulder, they were patched in via simple video feeds. And people could send comments or questions that were displayed below the video images. You can see these episodes here.
        There’s a great object lesson for all business communications in what you see in these clips. These aren’t polished, professionally-produced efforts — but they are immediate and authentic and very compelling. That’s what Laura was going for, and she nailed it.
        Authentic trumps Polished any day. This is true whether you’re working on a presentation for a large crowd or trying to make a pitch to your boss for more help. Getting to the point of what really matters is far more important, and more compelling, than having a perfectly choreographed speech.
        Keep your eye on Laura’s Mediacasters site. It’ll be fun to see what she comes up with.

Comments

[Rhett Laubach]

John, great post and thanks for the link over to the pitches. Cool stuff. I added your post to our Personal Leadership Insight Del.icio.us tags under the Authenticity tag. We are up to 500+ tags if you and your readership want to go check them out. Just go to Deli.icio.us and search for pliblog. Thanks for the post!

[John Windsor]

Thanks for your comments, Rhett, and for adding this to your tags!