The Subtle Art of Public Speaking | Stage, Page & Screen Podcast

Back in September of last year I had the wonderful honour of virtually chatting with Josh Shipp and Jesse Rice for the above podcast.

I’ve slept since then so had forgotten what we chatted about but boy did I love experiencing this conversation again as a listener.

There’s lots of insights here from my lived experience as a speaker coach and speaker myself plus how to present online effectively. I also got to ask some questions also of Josh and got some advice / insights from his brain.

I featured Josh in a MediaSnackers podcast back in 2009, met up with him a couple of times during the following years and kept in touch ever since. He’s one of my favourite speakers and humans on the planet. A mentor. Author. MTV advice star. TV personality. Now business leader / youth speaker agency founder. An exemplar of the practice of oratory.

Thank you Josh and Jesse (cohost / producer of the podcast) for their time, questions and wonderful (listen to their wonderful back catalogue of podcasts here).

Have a listen and let me know what you took away in the comments below.

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#59 December 2023 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

A bunch of things (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).

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Before I leave, I ask Loeb what is to be gained from looking for aliens, and his reply is surprisingly humble. “We know from our private life that if we find a partner, it gives new meaning to our existence,” he says. “So finding a partner somewhere in the form of another civilisation that can teach us things that we can imitate, that we can aspire to, will give us a meaning to our cosmic existence. The universe will not be pointless any more.

The alien hunter: has Harvard’s Avi Loeb found proof of extraterrestrial life? | Space | The Guardian

The publication is suing both companies for copyright infringement and asks them to be held liable for “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages” for allegedly copying its works. It’s also asking the court to prevent OpenAI and Microsoft from training their AI models using its content, as well as remove the Times’ work from the companies’ datasets.

The New York Times sues OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement – The Verge

Facial recognition searches match the biometric measurements of an identified photograph, such as that contained on driving licences, to those of an image picked up elsewhere. The intention to allow the police or the National Crime Agency (NCA) to exploit the UK’s driving licence records is not explicitly referenced in the bill or in its explanatory notes, raising criticism from leading academics that the government is “sneaking it under the radar”.

Police to be able to run face recognition searches on 50m driving licence holders | Facial recognition | The Guardian

There was confusion in the plenary hall shortly after the agreement was passed as many parties had assumed there would be a debate over the text. The Alliance of Small Island States, representing 39 countries, said it had not been in the room when the deal was adopted as it was still coordinating its response. Its lead negotiator, Anne Rasmussen, from Samoa, did not formally object to the agreement and believed the deal had good elements, but said the “the process has failed us” and the text included a “litany of loopholes”. “We have made an incremental advancement over business as usual when what we really needed is an exponential step change in our actions and support,” she said. Her speech was met with a standing ovation.

Cop28 landmark deal agreed to ‘transition away’ from fossil fuels | Cop28 | The Guardian

Generating images was by far the most energy- and carbon-intensive AI-based task. Generating 1,000 images with a powerful AI model, such as Stable Diffusion XL, is responsible for roughly as much carbon dioxide as driving the equivalent of 4.1 miles in an average gasoline-powered car. In contrast, the least carbon-intensive text generation model they examined was responsible for as much CO2 as driving 0.0006 miles in a similar vehicle. Stability AI, the company behind Stable Diffusion XL, did not respond to a request for comment.

Making an image with generative AI uses as much energy as charging your phone

On Friday, the California-based company said in a regulatory filing that the personal data of 0.1% of customers – or about 14,000 individuals – had been accessed by “threat actors”. But the filing warned that hackers were also able to access “a significant number of files containing profile information about other users’ ancestry”. The company confirmed to TechCrunch on Saturday that because of an opt-in feature that allows DNA-related relatives to contact each other, the true number of people exposed was 6.9 million – or just less than half of 23andMe’s 14 million reported customers. Another group of about 1.4 million people who opted in to 23andMe’s DNA relatives feature also “had their family tree profile information accessed”, the company also acknowledged. That information includes names, relationship labels, birth year, self-reported location and other data.

Genetic testing firm 23andMe admits hackers accessed DNA data of 7m users | Hacking | The Guardian

If you do not want your website’s content used for this training, you can ask the bots deployed by Google and Open AI to skip over your site. Keep in mind that this only applies to future scraping. If Google or OpenAI already have data from your site, they will not remove it.

No Robots(.txt): How to Ask ChatGPT and Google Bard to Not Use Your Website for Training | Electronic Frontier Foundation

And finally, 66 Good News Stories You Didn’t Hear About in 2023, which we all need!

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EXPLORE

If you need to create a maze for free then check mazegenerator.net out.

This paper exploring and showing how to Animate Anyone from AI visual training sets.

Pick best time to schedule conference calls, webinars, online meetings and phone calls with worldtimebuddy.com.

A colossal amount of tutorials for those looking to create small bit artistic expressions via Pixel Art Tutorials – Saint11.

On useminimal.com there’s a collection of beautiful, minimalist printable calendars, habit trackers and planners (available in 31 languages).

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
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#57 October 2023 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

A bunch of things (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).

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This is a sweet interview with Billy Connolly by his wife.

Hope with this suitcase sized desalinization system which can produce up to 4-6litres of water per hour.

More James Webb telescope findings of planet-like objects in Orion.

This is a meaty read but boy oh boy does it uncover the knowingly devastating role that Facebook / Meta played in the disgusting act of social engineering which led to ethnic cleansing in Myanmar.

Then there’s news that 42 states in the US are suing Instagram for it’s negative impact on the mental health of young people.

Now Elon Musk is under investigation for buying Twitter.

And MP’s and peers in the UK are calling for the police to stop using AI facial recognition tech.

Plus still in the UK, how the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) use of AI has produced potentially ‘discriminatory results.’

WATCH

Read blog post
Read blog post

EXPLORE

If you ever wanted to buy the chairs you saw on Star Trek check out this database.

All the Whole Earth publications, a series of journals and magazines descended from the Whole Earth Catalog, published by Stewart Brand and the POINT Foundation between 1970 and 2002.

The 293 writing systems worldwide.

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
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#51 April 2023 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

Nope.

A bunch of things (which I tweeted) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on.

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Here’s a completely non-technical explanation of AI and deep learning which really does help you get how they do what they do (and through the metaphor used discover it has nothing to do with intelligence).

Another article on how awful Bitcoin (& crypto mining) is for the environment and another for good measure.

This article about Long Covid is scary stuff, which is echoed in some conversations with those in my networks who are suffering the same fate.

A great exploration of the secret list of websites that make AI like ChatGPT work with bonus link of how this site is listed even though probably without them carrying on the terms when referenced.

A cheeky monkey who entered an AI created image and won a photography competition.

A different taken AI (that’s “Augmented Imagination”) to spark some thoughts.

How one company scraped 30 billion images from bookFace & other social media sites and gave them to cops: it puts everyone into a ‘perpetual police line-up’, douches!

A clean energy milestone the world is set to pass in 2023 which is news we all need more of.

Where I live in Wellington there is a danger of every street lamp falling out (which weighs that of a full grown turkey) plus the nation is becoming less attractive for rich foreigners based on visa numbers.

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EXPLORE

Draw a character, upload and animate. So much fun for the little & large humans!

Just live air traffic control with lofi hip hop.

Iceberger: draw an iceberg and see how it will float.

Humaaans, which is a mix-&-match illustrations of people, CC0 free for commercial or personal use.

Mockdrop is a free device mockups site.

Ukiyo-e Search, is a collection of a wide variety of Japanese woodblock prints.

This podcast with to Rex Weyler (one of the founders of Greenpeace) on Team Human, good for the ears and brain.

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
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Leadership Now Podcast With Dan Pontefract | Sharing Insights From My Speaking Coaching & Creative Producing Experience

Chats about public speaking, coaching, presenting online vs in-person, event design and delegate experience development etc.—all the stuff I’ve been doing these past few years condensed into 30mins.

Dan produces a very impressive podcast with an eyebrow-raising amount of featured talent (like Daniel Pink, Tom Peters, Arianna Huffington etc.). Was lucky enough to spend some time rapping about what I’ve been up to in the past few years and hope you enjoy!

Here’s all the places you can subscribe for further episodes: Apple | Spotify | Amazon | Google | YouTube Channel Video Interview | Forbes Column

Thanks again Dan for your interest and invitation to share some stories on your esteemed platform.

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Helping People Perform Podcast | My Journey & Current Approach

A guest podcast feature.

What a joy to be invited by Paul Teasdale (ex-Operational Performance Specialist for racing team McLaren and now Leadership Performance Coach) to participate in his great podcast he has going:

This podcast focuses on the individuals who have chosen a career path of helping others perform, in whatever guise that takes. Hear from coaches, trainers, teachers and lots of others about what it takes to perform in the industry of helping others.

In this 45minute chat I get into the following:

  • potted career history
  • new vs social media
  • relationship with failure
  • designing TEDx experiences
  • details on what I do now
  • presenting online skills
  • who I want to work with

Hope you enjoy and if you do, check out more podcasts and subscribe at Helping People Perform, thank Paul.

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Radio Active C&A Interview | The Origins Of Creative Welly

A 15min radio interview.

Last Saturday got interviewed by the wonderful Mark Westerby on the Radio Active Caffeine & Aspirin show:

Caffeine & Aspirin is Wellington’s weekly arts and culture fix. From 10am-1pm each Saturday tune in and hang out with one of our hosts – Jay Hollows, Mark Westerby, Janan Jedrzejewski, Meredith Robershawe, Brigid Connor and more – as they present a show filled with interviews with makers and shakers from the Wellington arts world, news and views on the culture scene, and a playlist of their personal music faves.

Always fun to react to good questions and we mainly focused on my current side project, Creative Welly.

Sorry about the audio quality as was interviewed via the phone and should’ve used different headphones for sure (lesson noted) plus move away from the windows as it was windy and you can hear the whistles.

Thanks again to Janan and Mark for featuring me and allowing me to share my stories.

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Creative Welly Episode #2 | More Courageous Conversations

Another two good souls exploring all manner of wonderful topics, ideas, stories, experiences etc.

We curate and collide intrepid talent from the coolest most creative little capital in the world (with a few out-of-city friends as well from time-to-time).

Subscribe and catch the first episode via Creative Welly.

Again, this project is totally self-funded and wouldn’t be possible without these amazing collaborators:

All episodes are shot and edited by the wonderfully talented Jono Tucker, Empire Films. An extremely diligent and personable soul who has added a polish to the resulting video which I never could’ve achieved, thank you Jono.

Hosted at Xequals, a centrally based web development agency who provide us with a kick-ass office which totally gets kitted out for the shoot. Thank you Alex Matthews for being so gracious with your space.

Learn more about the background in this ‘Creative Welly Launched | Learning Out Loud‘ post.

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Creative Welly Launched | Learning Out Loud

A new long-form video podcast for curious and creative humans.

Creative Welly is a new project from an old idea repurposed and reborn during the isolation of lockdown:

We curate and collide intrepid talent from the coolest most creative little capital in the world (with a few out-of-city friends as well from time-to-time).

This project is totally self-funded and wouldn’t be possible without these amazing collaborators:

All episodes are shot and edited by the wonderfully talented Jono Tucker, Empire Films. An extremely diligent and personable soul who has added a polish to the resulting video which I never could’ve achieved, thank you Jono.

Hosted at Xequals, a centrally based web development agency who provide us with a kick-ass office which totally gets kitted out for the shoot. Thank you Alex Matthews for being so gracious with your space.

This first episode represents about four to five day or pre-production experiments with lighting and seating scenarios plus editing options. The result of which is something quite different and unique.

Two further episodes are already ‘in the can’ with another two lined up for this month plus a very long list of possibles from my network here in the capital.

Each episode takes about two hours to set up (one hour to pack down), another two hours to shoot then there’s the editing time of both the video and audio. After that there’s posting the curated bios and relevant content online plus sharing out across channels.

There are also ‘hard’ and recurring costs:

WHATCOSTS (NZD)
Table (round table from thrift store)$55
Chairs (x3, comfortable and supportive)$379
Backdrop photographic paper (for style)$105
Libsyn (audio podcast hosting & distribution)$275pa
Vimeo (video hosting)$130pa
Domain + hosting$25pa
TOTAL$969

I find myself feeling so privileged to be able to start this journey and explore a new format during these challenging global times. It truly serves my purpose of ‘giving people voice’ whilst also my skill base of ‘curating’ as well.

Oh and why not YouTube? Have no intention of monetising the content and don’t like their forced adverts plus the time it takes to figure out the algorithms with the hope they choose my content over others. Vimeo is a wonderful creative community which aligns with the brand values of the intention behind the initiative.

Please let me know what you think and triple please subscribe to receive the bi-monthly episodes via Creative Welly.

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