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 ;-)”
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
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.
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.”
It was a year of living my personal and professional standards.
This meant orienting away from people and a path which had already eroded much of my time, had taken me away from cherished communities, emptied my energy / bank account / sense of belonging and left me adrift.
These decisions were massively challenging although were right to make, and made easier by those who ask for mundane, those who say things then do the opposite, those who prefer to stay small and who have yet to develop the courage to take responsibility for situations they have created!
It truly was not a good year for others bringing positiveness to my life, however, it was one in which I discovered my own worth… then I added tax!
The talk is flirting with the one-million-views mark so currently working out what to do to recognise this. Sign up in the sidebar to get that notification as will announce it on my blog.
The accompanying Speaking With Purpose book continues to sell in its tens… many purchasers have gotten in touch afterwards saying nice things and / or asking follow-up questions.
I’m currently story-boarding a ten-part videos series on my three pillar approach and it being applied in different ways, so again stay tuned to that in the first half of the new year via this blog.
FEATURES
Was quadruply-thrilled to be invited to participate / featured in the following podcasts:
After chalking up a healthy five-figure return which sustained me through the lean-years of post-Covid-times, will now be folding the lessons and insights into the following:
NEW SERVICE
Launched publicly after a successful pilot with a multi-national (who promptly ordered a second cohort plus now in talks for future ones in 2025), the Purposeful Storytelling Impact Course is a tailored leadership learning experience, aimed at greatly improving storytelling techniques and oratory skills, as well as enhancing the capability to deliver exceptional showcase presentations across diverse fields.
Here are some quotes from those who have participated:
“I appreciated the three pronged approach that DK showed us, backed by the wealth of experience he brings to the training. Public speaking is such an art and with practice and the right training, can be a powerful tool for delivering story and message.”
“This course provided me with the mindset, toolsets and experience/feedback to confidently approach speaking in a modern context. The quotes inspired me, the challenges felt relevant and the peer support (in addition to expert feedback) helped me develop quickly.”
“Overall, the entire course was wonderful. Really appreciate the guidance provided by DK. It was also a great opportunity to network and build connections with colleagues across the globe, with such diverse backgrounds and areas of work expertise.”
“Thank you for an amazing few weeks. I learned so much, i was pushed out of my comfort zone, and I’m looking forward to applying these techniques to my work.”
“DK and the overall training have been extremely professional, appropriately safe and fun. I enjoyed it plenty and learned a lot! Judging this as a highly impactful and worthwhile investment into the success of our people and with it our company at scale. I was and am grateful for the chance to participate in this first cohort.”
“I appreciated the three pronged approach that DK showed us, backed by the wealth of experience he brings to the training. Public speaking is such an art and with practice and the right training, can be a powerful tool for delivering story and message.”
“I really enjoyed this program and am so glad we piloted it with the group we had. There was community within the cohort and I look forward to working alongside a powerful group of speakers. Thank you DK for sharing your brilliance. Your coaching and guidance was supportive and affirming, and you created a space that encouraged respect for the craft. Appreciate you!”
If you care about having your leaders internally gain crucial oratory / communication skills then this is something to check out and then get in touch to explore booking.
SPEAKER COACHING
Always a joy to sit and collaborate with others on their voice and story, plus how they will share that with the world.
As I continue to hone my speaker coaching skills I’m finding a lot more fluidity in approaches I’m taking, informed by the accrued years of practice, an intuition stemming from the thousands of individuals I can now say I’ve interacted with. And even so, I continue to learn constantly and constantly reevaluate the limits of my own understanding in this discipline.
Along with the 1-2-1’s (which now includes an Olympian in my alumni of clients), I continue to offer speaker coaching through my established half/full day ‘purposeful storytelling’ masterclass sessions (foundation and advanced options available), again, get in touch for more info.
CREATIVE PRODUCING
Apart from some pro-bono and friend-consulting in this space have done very little this year. Although triple-keen to explore briefs from those looking to gather humans in one room for ‘delicious learning experiences’—check out my pedigree and lets talk.
I did sign up for Mastodon and Bluesky although not interested in diverting my time from other things to cultivate a following on there or diluting my curative / creative efforts.
Tumblr has become my go-back-to curation platform and have enjoyed the interesting things it thinks I should be interested in, but again, spend no time on there shaping the feeds and not using it beyond feeding my monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
As where I get my information and stimulation from, am going back to the more ‘traditional’ blogs and online communities like Reddit plus personal newsletters (especially ones with RSS feeds I can pull into my reader).
So for now the focus will be blogging and creating here (again, sign-up in the sidebar please).
2025
I’m hungry to find the edges of things, to build, rebuild, to collaborate, to Shake The Dust, plus orient towards those who are principle-led and celebrate / nurture creative actioneers.
For this reason I’m taking the opportunity to return to Aotearoa New Zealand (for at least six months) and in terms of future travels, unless something radical and wonderful occurs, will be staying put for a while as really need to ‘land’ somewhere to counter the adrift-ness being felt deeply.
So what about you? Where do you find yourself at the beginning of the new calendar year? How can I serve / add value in your adventures in 2025?And if nothing else, please feel me sending you light:
“On one hand, the predators in the Dark Internet Forest are the mega-platforms themselves, at the core of which are machines for turning human action and feeling into saleable data objects. On the other hand, the predators are clearly us: Individual people doing galaxy-brain bad-faith readings of other people’s banal posts for the juice and swarms of people looking for ideological opponents to mob, largely as a way of claiming or defending quasi-spatial territory: This is ours, not yours. We don’t do that here.” against the dark forest
“…Amazon had refused during the inquiry to disclose how it used data recorded from Alexa devices, Kindle or Audible to train its AI. Google too, he said, had refused to answer questions about what user data from its services and products it used to train its AI products. Meta admitted it had been scraping from Australian Facebook and Instagram users since 2007, in preparation for future AI models. But the company was unable to explain how users could consent for their data to be used for something that did not exist in 2007. Sheldon said Meta dodged questions about how it used data from its WhatsApp and Messenger products.” Amazon, Google and Meta are ‘pillaging culture, data and creativity’ to train AI, Australian inquiry finds | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian
“For most people in the U.S., the threats that they face and the methods by which they are likely to be surveilled or harassed have not changed, but the consequences of digital privacy or security failures may become much more serious, especially for vulnerable populations such as journalists, activists, LGBTQ+ people, people seeking or providing abortion-related care, Black or Indigenous people, and undocumented immigrants. EFF has decades of experience in providing digital privacy and security resources, particularly for vulnerable people. We’ve written a lot of resources over the years and here are the top ten that we think are most useful right now:” Top Ten EFF Digital Security Resources for People Concerned About the Incoming Trump Administration | Electronic Frontier Foundation
“Spotify, I discovered, not only has partnerships with a web of production companies, which, as one former employee put it, provide Spotify with “music we benefited from financially,” but also a team of employees working to seed these tracks on playlists across the platform. In doing so, they are effectively working to grow the percentage of total streams of music that is cheaper for the platform. The program’s name: Perfect Fit Content (PFC). The PFC program raises troubling prospects for working musicians. Some face the possibility of losing out on crucial income by having their tracks passed over for playlist placement or replaced in favor of PFC; others, who record PFC music themselves, must often give up control of certain royalty rights that, if a track becomes popular, could be highly lucrative. But it also raises worrying questions for all of us who listen to music. It puts forth an image of a future in which—as streaming services push music further into the background, and normalize anonymous, low-cost playlist filler—the relationship between listener and artist might be severed completely.” The Ghosts in the Machine, by Liz Pelly
“StumbleUpon commanded a massive influence in the early 2010s. For many, it became the go-to place to waste time online. People were hitting the Stumble button over a billion times a month at the height of its powers. By some measures, more than half of the traffic that social media platforms sent to other parts of the internet in 2011 came from StumbleUpon – it sometimes beat out Facebook, even though StumbleUpon had hundreds of millions fewer users.” ‘There was almost a utopian feeling to it’: How StumbleUpon pioneered the way we use the internet
“Quantum computing – which harnesses the discovery that matter can exist in multiple states at once – is predicted to have the power to carry out far bigger calculations than previously possible and so hasten the creation of nuclear fusion reactors and accelerate the impact of artificial intelligence, notably in medical science. For example, it could allow MRI scans to be read in atom-level detail, unlocking new caches of data about human bodies and disease for AI to process, Google said. But there are also fears that without guardrails, the technology has the power to crack even the most sophisticated encryption, undermining computer security.” Google unveils ‘mindboggling’ quantum computing chip | Computing | The Guardian
WATCH
EXPLORE
Make It Yourself is a pdf with links to a 1000 useful DIY projects.
Times New Dumbass is inspired by Elon Musk’s attempt to do a star-jump.
Does what it says on the tin: Page Printer creates a printer ready pdf from a url.
121 Brands That Matter in 2024 is Fast Company’s attempt to list those who have made a mark in marketing rather than anything else—still a list to peruse.
B612 is a free and open source font and is the result of a research project initiated by Airbus to improve the display of information on the cockpit screens.
A little ‘manifesto’ regarding humanity’s place in the Universe and our role in its future, by investor Yuri Milner (basically advocating for evolving our species into the cosmos).
Nominations for the Trustbuilding Awards are open which aim to recognise and uplift outstanding organisations and individuals in trustbuilding, empower youth efforts to create a more cohesive future, and inspire higher standards for trustbuilders worldwide (applications close on 15 February 2025).
Was thinking on my feet lots in this podcast inspired by the superb provocations by Alexis and learning from her as I go. Let us know your thoughts on some of the concepts explored in this one via the comments as keen to learn more.
“When a Leader restores civility and fair play, eliminating dysfunction, it is not unusual for the Community Builders to join the good guys as they discover the personal empowerment inherent in authentic belonging. No longer able to manipulate circumstance and sully reputations, Dragons and Shapeshifters willingly leave, are dismissed, or they change their behavior to adjust to the new culture. Figureheads follow, or they are transferred out of leadership roles, opening up a space for the Creatives to get to work.” Surviving Work: A Creative’s Guide to Dysfunctional Cultures | Psychology Today
“The hasty imposition of a deal at the UN climate conference, Cop29, in Azerbaijan, over the objections of poorer nations has fractured global trust and undermined recent progress. This was supposed to be the “finance Cop” when two dozen industrialised countries – including the US, Europe and Canada – promised to pay developing nations for the damage caused by their rise. Instead, developing nations – led by a group including India, Nigeria and Bolivia – say this weekend’s agreement for $300bn a year in 2035 is too little, too late. Worse, rich-world governments will be able to escape their obligations by being able to rely on cash from private companies and international lenders.” The Guardian view on Cop29: poor-world discontent over a failure of rich countries to deliver | Editorial | The Guardian
“On a much grander scale, she and Zhao tell me they hope that Glaze and Nightshade will eventually have the power to overhaul how AI companies use art and how their products produce it. It is eye-wateringly expensive to train AI models, and it’s extremely laborious for engineers to find and purge poisoned samples in a data set of billions of images. Theoretically, if there are enough Nightshaded images on the internet and tech companies see their models breaking as a result, it could push developers to the negotiating table to bargain over licensing and fair compensation.” The AI lab waging a guerrilla war over exploitative AI | MIT Technology Review
“As the physical reality of the nation slips beneath the ocean, the government is building a digital copy of the country, backing up everything from its houses to its beaches to its trees. It hopes this virtual replica will preserve the nation’s beauty and culture – as well as the legal rights of its 11,000 citizens – for generations to come.” Tuvalu: The disappearing island nation recreating itself in the metaverse – BBC Future
“A paper by Tang and colleagues published in Nature Neuroscience in May 2023 gave an example. When one participant listened to the words, “I didn’t know whether to scream, cry, or run away. Instead, I said, ‘Leave me alone!’”, the AI decoded the thought as: “Started to scream and cry, and then she just said, ‘I told you to leave me alone. You can’t hurt me.’” “It’s not perfect, but it’s shockingly good for using fMRI,” Huth said at a February 2024 meeting of the National Institutes of Health’s Neuroethics Working Group, where he discussed his and his team’s work.” We Want to Hear Your Thoughts | Discover Magazine
An extension which works on Chromium browsers to transfer your Twitter followers to your Bluesky account.
What’s New In Unicode 16.0 (or latest emoji’s to drop which includes Face with Bags Under Eyes, Fingerprint, Splatter, Root Vegetable, Leafless Tree, Harp, Shovel, Flag: Sark).
December 6th is the deadline for the Fast Company ‘World Changing Ideas Awards’ which focuses on “products, concepts, companies, and policies that are designed to make the world safer, cleaner, more sustainable, and more equitable.“
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