opinion – Hello, I'm DK – creative producer and speaker coach

2025 Annual Review | Valuing To Creative Abundance

sun setting - wellington - justadandak.com — Own shot, sunset over West Wellington

Noting the adventures and insights gained in 2025 plus highlighting the intended pathway(s) for the next 365 days.

As shared previously, this past year was about valuing the reality which my ingrained principles has created.

It was also about…

RECOVERY

Without sounding dramatic, my body / spirit needed to ‘land’ and heal from the previous eighteen months which was a mess of challenges—after all, you bleed more when the knife is withdrawn.

Stasis was forced into my being after a couple bouts of ear infections and flu, then acute bronchitis (a new experience for me, and it only gets a half a star as it’s truly rubbish), with the latter laying me low for over three months.

With nearly a third of the year wiped out I took the opportunity to journal more (prompted in part by The Artists Way), and reading through the notes it was a lot to do with viewing those aforementioned negative experiences through a learning lens. In doing so they have faded in their potency and formed into unintended gifts, integrated into a more rounded world-view and a result of being (proudly) bold, because at the end of the day who wants to be mundane‽

ONE MILLION VIEWS

1000000 TEDx Talks Achieved - justadandak.com

This astounding numerical threshold was reached early February and if you missed it, check out the How To Get One Million Views On Your TEDx Talk blog piece which might help you or someone you know who’s in the same position.

Thanks for the support / watches / sharing-on and I still crack a bemused smile knowing my talk is featured on ted.com.

CLIENTS

Deep gratitude to those who were generous enough to explore a collaborative relationship this year—I truly tried hard to add positive value in all my interactions and delivery for every single one of you:

It was a healthy mix of creative producing and speaker coaching via my masterclasses / workshops / consulting plus there were over a half a dozen one-to-one humans (not featured in the list above) who trusted me to aid crafting their stories with them.

Thank you!

WINDY WELLY

wellington, new-zealand-map - justadandak.com — Made via MapCanvas

Since my return to the capital of New Zealand early this year my summary of the mood and feel in Wellington is scarcity.

Justifiable for the administrative center of the country due to austerity measures from the new conservative government, the massive public sector job cuts plus the same said leadership slashing community driven things along with fracturing societal / cultural gains. Add that to the continued global polycrisis stripping levity from anyone with a degree of intellect and empathy, the rise of technofeudalism (see video below), the migration of 50,000 souls last year, then scarcity is more than understandable:

Paradoxically though, I ended the year feeling full of gratitude and swank on the red carpet at the NZ premiere of Avatar: Fire and Ash. A wonderful experience full of sunshine, optimism (aligned to my ‘hope generator’ speech from 2019 TEDxWellington) and bouyancy.

Avatar Fire & Ash Wellington Dec 2025 premiere – red carpet view

Much like other hopeful things happening / I’ve noticed / participated in since my return:

WellyForge: founded by Ralph Higham with the aim to bring the tech community together in this monthly showcase evening gathering;
Goodlife Collective: a soul-filling initiative led by Freda Wells with the goal to build connection, agency, and our collective potential;
Creative Mornings, Wellington: attended a couple of these and apart from the timing it’s always good to be surrounded by curious-minded humans;
TEDxWellington: my ‘alma mater’ have plans to kick off with some studio talks next year after a quiet 2025.

So if opportunity allows I’d like to stay and contribute to the growing need for creative action in this fair city and beyond.

Which leads to my…

ATTENTION

HATCH 20th group image — The impressive group of HATCH 2024 humans.

Inspired by last years HATCH 20th anniversary experience, the question “what are you attending to?” has been like a thought-refrain, and has aided my understanding of where distractions have taken root.

With that in mind and after 16 years, I divested from LinkedIn, which followed on from me stopping tweetmailing last year, and to add to this I turned off all the stats relating to this website (and others).

I can’t stop my hunger for digital wonderment and it continues to feed my monthly digital breadcrumbs posts (on which I’ve had some positive feedback recently from several sources), although I find myself purposefully seeking out more creative fuel instead of the current dire news cycle.

Moving on from bothersome past conversations / experiences is more of a challenge, however, I’ve had some success by formulating competing and more compelling positive discourses / visions.

Once distractions are out of the way a juicier question reveals itself: what is your…

INTENTION

Archie Moore, ‘kith and kin’ exhibition at QAGOMA - justadandak.com — Own shot taken at the arresting Archie Moore, ‘kith and kin’ exhibition at QAGOMA

Personally, my spirit delights in intentionality—deliberate actions and causal intent are becoming drivers for my own imagination as I reorient the souls audaciousness into inviting new chapters.

My purpose still remains fixed:

I’m driven to enable people find and have voice.

This obviously manifests in my speaker / story coaching and all the activities around that (hoping to get a few more ‘impact courses’ sold in the coming year and do a lot more masterclasses / talks / coaching), although the creative producing side of things is morphing into daring new business plans.

All this will manifest through the…

2026 THEME : CREATIVE ABUNDANCE

Evening star (Washington, D.C.), November 23, 1923 - creative abundance - justadandak.com — Via Evening star (Washington, D.C.), November 23, 1923 / Library of Congress

The aim is to bring this spirit into my discussions (both internally and externally) and use it as fuel to drive action (in myself and others).

I’ll soon be sharing a multi-year research / thinking / iteration project around human creativity and productivity for organisations / companies and in doing so, quiet my inner disparager and tease out the wilting confidence which has been damaged from the previous years experience.

A personal example of this is my dedication to:

ASEMIC WRITING

This year I (re)discovered an artistic practice.

I have been creating calligraphic expressions of my mood for decades as throwaway doodles and scribbles.

I then discovered not only is it a artistic form but also a enchanting use of my time.

These offerings bypass expected semantic reasoning and align to the emotive range of my / your inner state(s). There is still structure although only used as a constraint in which to liberate my imagination.

For me, this practice of mark-making is intentionally post-literate and gestural in its composition, defined by a rhythmic cascade utilising the following classification:

“Asemic writing is closer to art than to writing. The word “asemic” comes from the same root as the word “semantic”, i.e., that which is a-semic has no semantic meaning. Artists who engage in asemic writing attempt to create forms that look like letters, pictographs, or other meaning-marks without themselves carrying any significance. The results can look at first glance like anything, from a foreign script to an alien crop circle to a geometric diagram to an illegible set of scribbled notes.”
Via On Asemic Writing: The Art of Meaning Beyond Syntax

I have created many hundred of pieces since giving myself the permission to shake off classical communication expectations and instead trust in the process of sitting, being, creating.

What is created is an invitation to explore and allow any understanding on my / your own terms, or if not, in the attempt the success has occurred anyway.

Watch this space.

BLOGGED

These are blog posts offered up in 2025:

Subscribe here to get an email every time I post:

SO…

…the aim is to cultivate a bias towards creative abundance, be deeply intentional about the conversations I have, the energy I devote to things and to whom.

So what about you my lovelies, what’s been the highlights / lowlights / lessons / intentions…?

Previous years reviews: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2013, 2011, 2010, 2009…

Ourselves To Know | Liveris Academy Oratory Practice

Brisbane - uni of queensland - justadandak.com

Full day workshop reflections and testimonial.

Etched into the sandstone Michie Building of the University of Queensland, in Brisbane (as part of the very impressive Great Court) is the last line of the poem An Essay On Man: Epistle IV, Alexander Pope, a provocation of self-awareness, curiosity and exploration of knowledge acquisition:

“That Reason, Passion, answer one great aim;
That true Self-love and Social are the same;
That Virtue only makes our bliss below;
And all our knowledge is, Ourselves to know.”
An Essay On Man: Epistle IV, Alexander Pope

I was there to deliver a full days ‘purposeful storytelling’ workshop with the first year cohort of the Andrew N. Liveris Academy for Innovation and Leadership, providing the students with a learning adventure exploring the different approaches in the narrative form, with the aim of igniting a passion in the oratory plus leaving them with a bunch of approaches / experiences for future application:

“This is one of those cases where the “relationship” category here catastrophically breaks down. DK and I have done work together in many different contexts since we met in 2012 when we were both giving keynotes at the same conference. Since then, he’s brought me in to give workshops at BizDojo and a keynote and workshop at the Creative Leadership New Zealand 2018 Conference, I’ve been a participant in a couple of the TEDxWellington satellite events that he organised, and recently, we flew him over from Wellington to run a workshop for the Liveris Academy Scholars on presenting authentically.

The thing that jumps out at you about DK in all of these different settings is that he is a wonderful human being. Connection and collaboration are at the heart of everything that he does, and this animates all of his activities. The second thing is that he is a SUPERB assembler of talent. I am still friends with several of the awesome people that he pulled together for CLNZ18 – both because they’re awesome people, and also highly skilled. Finally, DK is an outstanding speaker himself. He has clearly thought through the issues around speaking at a very deep level.

The workshop that he gave for us in the Liveris Academy for Innovation & Leadership last month illustrated many of his skills. While working with a younger cohort than he normally does, DK was still able to work out how to meet them where they are at, and he designed and delivered a fantastic day for the students.

If you ever have a chance to collaborate with DK, I highly recommend taking advantage of it!”
Tim Kastelle, Professor and Director, Andrew N. Liveris Academy for Innovation and Leadership, Co-Founder The Intangible Labs, Innovation Guy

Huge thanks to Tim and Kate from the program in making this happen and for the opportunity plus the students for their attention, trust and wonderful participation.

To Em Dash Or Not Em Dash, That Is The Question | Generative AI Tell Which Copies Human Discernment

Apparently, many generative AI text spitting platforms produce content with em dashes “—“ versus just a en dash or hyphen “-“, but I’ve been using them for 20 years…

…check out my first ever MediaSnackers blog post circa May 2006, above (yes I know there’s also a typo there but it’s been online for nearly two decades so digging the fact it’s going to remain).

I’ve been using em dashes in my online work due to knowing the difference between punctuation and showing the difference between a range of figures or connecting two words together. It also has a better aesthetic and I’ve pre-programmed the text replacement on my Mac / iPhone so that when I double type “-“ it replaces it with “—“ (in those linked instructions even Apple uses it as a suggestion in the ‘Use smart quotes and dashes’ section):

“Automatically convert straight quotation marks to typographical (“curly”) ones, and double hyphens to em dashes (—).”

As someone who is not yet convinced of the positive impact of generative AI and don’t use it in my writings, I thought it quite ironic my online offerings (both historic and current) might be identified as such.

For a more witty article on this matter check out The Em Dash Responds to the AI Allegations – McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

For Those Who Want To Tell Better Stories #16 | Conducting Emotion, Demonstrating Deconstruction, Painting Whilst Interviewing

A few chosen narrative examples, to uncover forms, inspire the soul and stir the creative spirits.

A lovely ‘behind-the-scenes’ snippet here with conductor Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Philharmonic (as they tackle Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3, see number 4). The range of physicality and articulation of emotion he’s imbuing to express the sentiment offers a summarising vignette of his overall teaching approach (see a longer example from a year ago).

A deconstruction of one of the best songs on the planet (check out the Alchemy live version—you’re very welcome). Illustrated with demonstrative talent, intersecting performance and historical / lyrical context, with no jump-cut and all done in one-take. Masterful.

The Idiosyncratic Nightmare Podcast discusses and explores painting with a guest artist whilst the two interviewers paint a portrait of said guest. The five camera set up offers a unique and multi-layered evolving experience and is damn impressive. Would be wonderful to have seen the response from the guest to their portraits.

Check out all the ‘For Those Who Want To Tell Better Stories’ posts.

Image credit.

16 Years Of LinkedIn | Divesting From A Broken Platform

By Poolcode – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link + my mod.

It’s taken me months to individually contact the majority my 3,100+ connections in my LinkedIn network via the direct messaging option.

After a personal opening paragraph saying hello and looking at what they are currently up to, I mention their work and / or how long it’s been and / or reminder of where we met plus ask of how I can support their endeavours. I then continue with the following reason for the message:

“Am reaching out to let you know I don’t know how long I’ll be actively using LinkedIn going forward, so if you’re not already please subscribe to my site / blog to ensure you get all the important updates from me: https://justadandak.com/blog/ -> there’s a box on the right hand side to pop your preferred email into or there’s the RSS feed to snag and add to your reader. It’s never more than a handful of posts a month plus you can unsubscribe at anytime, your data is never shared on ;-)”

I then standardise mentions of a few things of what I’m up to and after that share details for those more inclined to go deeper: how after 30 years online I’ve seen in the past decade the erosion of ethics and trust on social media platforms regarding engagement, then how specifically the LinkedIn algorithms hide anything useful even though I have tried to ‘train’ it (plus in turn how my stuff doesn’t get through to those I’m connected to), and finally I ask about their site / blog / newsletter / YouTube channel in which I can subscribe to / grab the RSS from plus hope we get to speak / meet again soon.

Out of the folks contacted I’d say 10%, maybe 15% responded. A third of those shared support / understanding with the issues of the platform (whether it be direct experience of lack of utility / reach / use). Got about 100 new subscribers to my blog via email (no way of telling who snagged the RSS feed) and had three direct speaker coaching clients which was a nice unintended outcome.

I joined LinkedIn during 2009.

I had 15 years online under my belt by that time and that year marked 3 years into MediaSnackers, where we were championing the astonishing creativity and collaborative force social media offers through training courses / talks delivered across several continents and for / to an impressive group of clients.

I still truly believe in the magnificent power of connecting humans / ideas through online mediums plus the incredible ways it enables others to have voice. However, as exemplified by Facebook and Twitter, the corrosive strategy to hollow out of any kind of human-first approach and replace that with everything run by algorithms / data-sucking-bots illustrates the aim of commodifying attention to the degradation of it’s own usefulness (see ‘enshittification’)

For what its worth, LinkedIn has an opportunity to differentiate with the following:

remove the alorithmic or at least allow an opt-out version of the main feed, serving content only from 1st connections (they could even go further and introduce private groups where you can curate humans into topic areas which only you can see)
remove or label or have an opt-out to any AI text / image in someones feed (although being owned by Microsoft can imagine it’s a sales funnel play for Co-pilot LLM plus all of the content on the platform has already been sucked up into the database)
allow a block feature on certain words or phrases to again cut through the trend-aligned posts and content

Until then and for the time being, I’ll log in every now and again to see if anyone has left me a message or tagged me in something of interest. For the reasons shared above, LinkedIn has now been relegated to an amazingly useful modern-day-Rolodex for when I travel and need to find folks in a particular place (within my network) until such time they remove that feature also.

Presenting Academic Work | Victoria University of Wellington, Te Kura Waihanga / School of Architecture

One of my early MidJourney experiments: Solarpunk high-rise parametric building with Zaha Hadid style, black and white

Coupling storytelling styles with academic substance.

Last week I was lucky enough to deliver a couple of sessions at Victoria University of Wellington, Te Kura Waihanga / School of Architecture.

The first was a ‘purposeful storytelling’ presentation and Q&A with the whole third year student body of about 100 souls. After which, a self-selected group attended a two hour masterclass experience in which students presented. During the latter, we explored different critiquing and feedback techniques so they could continue to aid other peers in this arena, whilst also seeing how they can apply some of the lessons from the initial presentation in their future presentations.

DK gave a brilliant presentation to 3rd year architecture and interior design students at the School of Architecture, Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington in May 2025. Following the presentation, DK gave a masterclass in public speaking/presenting to a smaller group of the students. The students got personal feedback and coaching.
DK was very engaging, entertaining, and informative. He demonstrated some aspects of presenting that can’t be unseen afterwards! The students loved it and gave very positive feedback. They learned valuable techniques to bring grace, credibility, and emotional resonance to their presentations.
As an experienced public speaker myself, I also got excellent value from organising and attending DK’s presentation. I will certainly be reshaping my future presentations based on what I took away from it. And I will be looking for future opportunities to bring DK back again to work with our students.”

Elrond Burrell, Program Director for Building Science, Faculty of Architecture and Design Innovation, Victoria University of Wellington

It’s a delicate balance creating presentations for an audience versus finding your own voice and expressiveness—especially if you’re early in your career—although, if one can absorb tried and tested approaches which hold attention whilst also allowing room to explore you’re own way of sharing story, then it sets one on a path of confidence and effectiveness.

As way of an example, this could simply mean unburdening slides with so much data and allowing more of a conversational tone to the work being shown—and with more space the most impactful elements such as the graphics can take center stage).

Lots of gratitude to the students for their time, attention plus to those who were brave enough to stand and speak in the masterclass.

Thanks also to Elrond and the rest of the staff for the opportunity to collaborate.

Redefining Wisdom Podcast With Daniel Cianci | This Is Why You’re Still Afraid of Public Speaking

How to be impressive at public speaking by exploring the intersecting disciplines of storytelling and oratory (they are two different things).

What a wonderful experience to participate in this podcast and have such a curious human steer the conversation with superb questions, provocations and personal insights—Daniel described the episode in the following way via this LinkedIn post:

“You’re not weak.
You’re not broken.
You’re just wired to survive, and standing in front of people feels like a threat to that.
But what if you could rewire that fear into confidence?
What if your voice became your superpower, not your source of anxiety?”

A brilliant summary and invitation to watch.

Here are the show notes if you want to jump to certain topics:

0:00 The Power of Storytelling and Public Speaking
2:20 Storytelling vs. Public Speaking: Which Is More Impactful?
6:46 How to Capture and Hold Audience Attention
12:50 Avoiding Overwhelming Audiences with Data
15:12 Designing a Presentation From the Audience Perspective
17:50 Breaking Self-Imposed Limitations in Public Speaking
20:55 The Lizard Brain: Why We Fear Public Speaking
24:10 Reframing Fear as Excitement
26:26 Adapting to Different Speaking Styles
29:04 Shifting Focus from Validation to Giving Value
33:08 Grace, Credibility, and Resonance: The 3 Pillars of Great Presentations
41:28 Mastering Grace in Virtual Presentations
43:40 Tools for Engaging Online Audiences
48:20 Humanizing Data for Impactful Storytelling
50:01 Navigating Speech Creation: Scripts vs. Bullet Points
57:55 What Makes a Talk Truly Unforgettable?
1:03:36 Closing Question (The Courage to Speak)
1:09:33 Where to Find DK

Watch more / subscribe via the Redefining Wisdom YouTube channel and / or listen / subscribe via these audio options:

Thank you again Daniel for the opportunity to share my voice, to be part of your offering to the world and to simply spend time with you (looking forward to part two)—pure honour!

Beyond The Surface Podcast | Getting Personal, Origin Stories & Coaching Insights

Exploring my own public speaking journey and how that has evolved into my coaching practice.

Honoured to be invited to participate in the Beyond The Surface podcast by Noa Woolloff.

Along with my personal / professional history, am sharing here direct lived-experience strategies of how I work with others when it comes to their own oratory practice—making the case for not using scripts and how to manage nerves as well as analysing the impact of the success of my recent TEDx talk with a nice little social media rant at the end.

Thank you again Noa (and Ash from the tech side) for the opportunity to participate and for what you’re doing by creating this platform / space for others to share their stories along with your wonderful curiosity which drives the conversation in all the episodes.

Check out some other podcasts I’ve been on.

For Those Who Want To Tell Better Stories #15 | Bass Breakdowns, Revealing Complex Choreography, Mmm x4

Amazing Stories v26 n10 [1952-10] - William P Mcgiven

A few chosen narrative examples, to uncover forms, inspire the soul and stir the creative spirits.

Loving the conversational manner of this video deconstructing and showing / applying / exploring the bass playing of Steve Harris from Iron Maiden (one of my favourite bands from youth). The two camera set-up and post production narrative editing to creates a distinct format flow which keeps your attention (even if you’re not a bass player or into the music).

Revealed through a static view of a fixed cam, here’s a visual feast showing all the camera operators and angles, dancers and tech people, backdrops and lighting, in-sync and aligned to create this one-shot music video by Jungle. This literal and layered choreography makes my brain tingle in all the right ways as a producer!

A nostalgic look behind one of the most popular songs of 1993, watch and learn from the song writer and uncover both the stories behind a song and also the wonderful insight in how the place-holder of the “mmm’s” becomes the hook to the whole tune.

Check out all the ‘For Those Who Want To Tell Better Stories’ posts.

Image credit.

Rewriting The Artist’s Way Basic Principles | Remixing Towards Clarity

Distilling the core tenets to align more to my own personal values.

Been exploring Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way” twelve week course for the past few weeks and took the time to turn my attention to the ‘basic principles’ as one of my ‘morning pages’ activities:

“CREATIVITY IS NATURAL AND GIVES ENERGY TO LIFE.
UNLEASH AND EMBODY AND CELEBRATE YOUR OWN CREATION TO GIFT BACK TO THE WORLD YOUR NATURAL AND CREATIVE SELF.
MOVE IN THE DIRECTION OF ABUNDANCE AND POSITIVENESS.
IT IS SAFE TO OPEN YOURSELF UP TO GREATER AND GREATER CREATIVITY.”

“

Maybe it will aid someone else out there.