Kudos to the far-sighted guys at Speed Communications who, looking for a journalist’s view of spokespeople for their weekly newsletter, decided to consult the chief solution advocate of Talk Normal.
Posts Tagged 'Talknormalism'
Great thinkers of today
Published October 3, 2009 Interviews , Links Leave a CommentTags: Talknormalism
Friday afternoon: Free mugs and pictures of naked people
Published September 17, 2009 Contact Tim , Links 1 CommentTags: Talknormalism, Why we bother
Note: there are no naked people in this blog. I’m messing with you. But, if I get a flood of traffic, it’s full frontal all the way from now on. There’s 70 million blogs out there: it’s a war for eyeballs, as the experts tell me.
Meanwhile I note from the stats that the page on Talk Normal that everyone looks at is the one that promises free mugs, so at the end of the week I need to explain how the process works in a bit more detail. If you’re thinking: can I have one of Tim’s mugs? the answer is…
Of course you can.
But you can’t have one yet. Not until you have earned it! Here is the scenario: one day in the future I’m going to wake up and realise that I can’t think of a thing to write. Maybe I’ll post a bogus lament for the passing of the golden era of journalism or start criticising erroneous use of the hyphen, stuff that I know little about and care about even less. When that happens you have my permission to take me out to a patch of wasteland and beat me with spiked club.
To avoid this type of physical harm I’m going to need your help. If you tip me off for a story or give me ideas or request things you want to see, I will occasionally pop a mug in the post in return. It’s community thing.
Or maybe you might decide to write something on your blog about Talk Normal like There’s a new blog in town and it’s one I think we should all be reading and make the time I put into this experiment worthwhile.
Or you’re going to help me prepare podcasts and videos for the site.
But you might have plenty of mugs already and don’t like helping other people. You were probably attracted by the word naked and are still clinging to the faint hope of finding something here that’s Not Safe For Work; if so, these mugs might be more your speed.
Here are five things I will do:
1. Post anything about how we talk to each other at work (and in the press and on TV, because that’s my work) that’s driving me crazy
2. Name names of people who I think are the enemies of Talknormalism. I’m not scared of you! Maybe because you don’t know I exist. Yet.
3. Name names of the friends of Talknormalism. You are out there, and you have gone unrecognised too long.
4. Interview expert friends of Talknormalism and blog or podcast their advice on how to improve your interviews, webcasts, podcasts, blogs or web sites.
5. I have some really nice Make the bad noises stop mugs, which I will send to deserving causes for free.
Here’s what I won’t do:
1. Though I may, on occasion, use amusing or sad stories from my media training, I won’t identify anyone or wash your dirty linen in public. The training is our secret.
2. I will disclose an interest, when it’s relevant. I won’t say nice things about companies just because I have earned money by training them.
3. I won’t just whine about things that irritate me. You can go here or here for that.
4. I won’t plug my many books or media training services, except when there is such a clear commercial advantage in doing so that it’s unavoidable. You have a choice of 70 million blogs where I don’t sell you stuff; it’s not unreasonable.
Here’s what I want from you, yes you:
1. The odd comment or link or offer of help would go down well.
2. If you want to pass on the word to others, do it. If you’re a really good friend of Talknormalism, I’ll send you a mug. Everybody likes free mugs.
Why Talk Normal?
Published September 3, 2009 Words Leave a CommentTags: Talknormalism, Why we bother
Sometimes I’m asked to provide media training. I enjoy the job, but it’s not without problems.
The biggest is that the companies I train are, accidentally or on purpose, teaching their staff a strange language that sounds like English, but isn’t. They often talk about synergies, leverage, solutions, facilitation, challenges, issues, action items, low hanging fruit or win-win scenarios, all words that we wouldn’t use outside the meeting room, because we know it would make someone punch us.
We dress up ordinary tasks as if they are somehow significant. We don’t ask people to do something, we reach out to them. We don’t arrange a call, we set up a bridge, as if we are the magical engineers of interaction – interacting, of course, used to be called talking to each other until we decided that wasn’t a sufficiently important description for the magic that occurs during a conference call.
And so I’ve set up Talk Normal to help me put this right, in a small way.
Talk Normal is, I hope, a resource for people I have media trained, and a taster for those who I will train in the future. I hope also it will stimulate some conversation about how we communicate in business, if only for someone to tell me I’m wrong. I can take it. As a freelance journalist, it’s my job to take a bit of a kicking occasionally, and blogs where the comments are a bit tasty are always so much more interesting.
It is not an instruction manual, so if I put a comma in the wrong place or split an infinitive, you can point it out to me, but I will probably ignore you.
I will stick to a few rules, in the next post.
