talks – Hello, I'm DK – justadandak.com.

500,000 TEDxNelson Talk Views | Celebrating With A Giveaway

Half a million views equates to 19mins x 500,000 = 9,500,000mins / 158,333hours / 6597days / 942weeks / 18years of watching time.

That’s quite a juicy number in a little over a year and by way of thanks to the community I thought I’d create a fun offer to further aid the promotion of the talk…

…so if you:

share the YouTube video of my talk on LinkedIn / Twitter / Instagram / Threads (or any social media platform), and / or
feature it on your blog, and / or
shout it out in your email newsletter, and / or
leave a comment on the YouTube video

…you will go into the draw for the following package:

1x 75mins of 1-2-1 speaker coaching (for you or whomever you gift the time to); or
1x 75mins Presenting Engagingly Online masterclass for a group (whether it be a bunch of souls you bring together, your own leadership group in the organisation you work for or again gifted on to another deserving project);
2x codes for free access to the Presenting Engagingly Online course;
5x ebook / audiobook codes for free access to the Speaking With Purpose bundle;
My thanks!

Deadline for participation is Valentines Day 2024, February 14th and winner chosen by random.

And if you’re new here or haven’t seen the talk here it is:

Small print: Winner will be drawn at random. My ball, my rules, my final say. (#1) 1-2-1 and / or the (#2) online masterclass to be completed 6-11.30pm GMT weekdays or on a Monday or over weekend, before 31st March 2024. You either must tag me into your LinkedIn post or send me a link to it / other social media platform shares / features in blog posts / email newsletters etc. via my contact form. Many thanks and good luck.

ADDENDUM 14.2.24: thanks to all who participated. Winner has been chosen.

250,000 Views On My TEDx Talk | Celebrating Milestones

It’s with much surprise and pure delight I noticed my little TEDxNelson talk has reached over a quarter of million views in nine months of being live:

Put another way, that’s 9 years and 3months or 3298.625 days or 79,167 hours or 4,750,000 minutes of viewing time accrued.

In that time you could watch the extended versions of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies 3,900 times!

During my near-long-decade TEDx licensee / producer / speaker coach, many speakers would ask what viewing number should they expect and / or aim for and my response was always the same: it’s not the amount of views but who viewed that’s important.

However, I have to be honest, reaching this number makes me feel bemusedly-giddy as it’s something as I never expected (nothing I’ve ever done has matched these figures).

The impact has been an increase in my website views, a flurry of emails saying ‘thank you’ and follow up questions related to the topic, my ebook / audiobook on the same subject making me some side-coin, as well as several agencies offering their services to boost my views further (have not taken anyone up on the offers).

So a chunky thank you for all these views up till now, to those who shared on as well as reached out directly, and here’s to the next quarter of a million!

The Public Speaking Lesson You Never Had | My TEDxNelson Talk

Got an important presentation or pitch coming up and struggling to prepare? This will help (or your money back): exploring the three elements which make up a great talk plus a Jedi-mind trick which will reframe those debilitating nerves once and for all.

What a joy to be invited to give a TEDx talk last month in Whakatū Nelson, at their first ever in-person event.

After nearly a decade of developing and delivering the TEDx offerings for Te Whanganui-o-Tara Wellington, was an honour to be stepping on that red rug as just a speaker to share my ‘idea worth spreading.’

As discussed in the talk, scripts are rubbish, and just to prove here’s mine which I prepared my talk from after developing different options via the post-it note medium (if you’re speaking from lived experience this is all you need):

Thanks to all the good people behind the scenes at TEDxNelson for the opportunity to share my story/ies plus the attendees and other speakers for making it a great day.

BUY NOW Speaking With Purpose: A guide to delivering impressive presentations!

For only $10NZD this bundle deal featured an ebook with a juicy 37 chapters, nearly 14,000 words across 89 pages plus a 1hour34mins audiobook version (read by me).

Read the blog post announcement or purchase below:

Exploring My Playful Innocence | Creativity Webinar

Honoured to be invited to participate in a hosted by Groov (a mental health and well-being platform for the workplace plus past client).

Drawing from my varied time and experience across multiple domains, plus doing my best to be honest and vulnerable, the webinar starts with a very personal narrative exploring why I do what I do (and why it means so much to me). You’ll also hear me advocate for the creative process being one of ‘not knowing’ and playful discovery, concepts which aren’t new although I rarely see / hear when exploring this in organisations / company settings.

Hope you get something from the watch and thanks to Kim, Simone and Fiona for each being part of making this happen.

Hit us up in the comments or via the contact form if you have any further thoughts / ideas / questions.

My ‘Presenting Engagingly Online’ Course Is Live | REGISTER NOW

Radically increase your online storytelling & presenting skills⁠—20% OFF FOR FIRST WEEK!

It’s a niche offering, only for those who spend any time on virtual platforms such as Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, Jitsi, Livestorm, Blue Button, Skype, WebEx etc. and / or deliver webinars to clients / colleagues and / or been invited to speak at any online engagements.

For only $149NZD approx £90GBP / $120USD / $150CAD / $160AUD (+20% off for this first week), you get:

Since the pandemic kicked in two years ago, half of my professional income was wiped out instantly (producing in-person events for clients and the Creative Leadership NZ conference I founded). The speaker coaching plummeted also but slowly came back as more and more were now going online, so I diversified my offerings to match.

I developed and have been delivering a scaled back version of the above course⁠—positioned as a mini-masterclass⁠—to an array of clients these past 18months⁠.

A few months ago I invested in a ‘learning management system’ (LMS) and devoted a whole heap of time to learn it (will blog about this separately as it’s been a challenging experience). I outlined all the ideas and insights I wanted to convey, mapped the participants journey, chapterised them down, recorded and edited down all the content, designed the branding plus collateral, then put it all together as a virtual learning experience.

Already have two other ideas for aligned courses although for now my energy will be going into promoting and getting the word out about it.

Truly hope you will take up this opportunity and if you could share it through your networks plus to others you know who are presenting online often I would be very grateful, thank you:

CLNZ19 Talks Are All Live | Watch, Learn, Share

Including conference opening remarks (above).

At the end of last year, the third sold out Creative Leadership NZ conference brought together nearly 200 leaders (read full event review here) plus created another wonderful challenge to curate nine impressive humans to inspire the delegates.

Curating voices is one of the best aspects of being a creative producer and my process focusses on finding folks who are doing and / or have done great stuff plus have the ability to share that in a compelling way. It’s less about the titles and more about the personal traits these individuals can offer a madly curious audience.

CLNZ19 was the first time I took financial sponsorship which enabled me to up the production options to include recording and editing of the nine keynote talks (for legacy and showing others what they missed):

So any gems from above which stood out for you? What and where are you going to apply some of the lessons shared? Oh and have you signed up to receive email notifications for CLNZ20 so you can attend this year‽

Venture Up 2018 | Finding Your Voice In Storytelling

How exposing yourself to out-loud speaking opportunities is one of the keys to finding voice.

Venture Up is a four-week entrepreneurship programme for young leaders. I visited to share some insights on the art of storytelling and delivering it publicly (I have visited in previous years and talked about social media):

“DK delivered a workshop that gave our cohort rich insight into delivering a story that hits the hearts of audiences, while helping many to begin overcoming a deep rooted fear of public speaking.”
Aaron Power, Venture Up Programme Manager

At the session, was wonderful to hear the groups are invited every day to give a one minute ‘pitch’ or update on progress. This continued ‘exposure’ to hearing ones voice out loud and to gain that visual / emotional response from the rest of the group is one of the purest ways to get better at this stuff.

Just like a sportswoman needs to train and constantly work on specific aspects of their game, nothing can replace the true nature of that learning she gets during ‘match-time’—this ‘match fitness’ is what separates great speakers and story tellers from the rest as they have again and again, with intention, shared stories and hopefully, noted the impact and iterated when things did not land.

Thanks again to Lingy for the invite and the superb teams at Venture Up 2018.

LIANZA 2017 NZ Tour | From Lightbulbs To Flares

Social media learning / social media teaching.

Last month I finished up delivering seven social media presentations and masterclasses for Library and Information Association of New Zealand (LIANZA). The mini-NZ-tour took me to New Plymouth, Palmerston North, Christchurch, Dunedin, Wellington, Hamilton and Auckland.

Curation is still a mayor skill-set theme along with the idea of asking what’s best not what’s new (see above) to highlight that technology and social media is a suite of tools to utilise not just a shallow trend focussed on only the latest.

Librarians get the idea of nurturing and enveloping new knowledge. They are curious and open by nature, and was a pleasure to collaborate in building new practises and was thrilling to see the adoption during the hands-on workshop portion of the sessions.

DK delivered an innovative series of social media workshops for us, that got great feedback from our members. He was the ultimate professional and really easy to work with. Comments from attendees included:

“It’s not often I come across someone who can alter the way I use the internet.”
“DK was a brilliant presenter – enthusiastic, entertaining and helpful.”
“I really like his teaching style (watch, listen, then do).”

Here’s to another series later in the year!

Joanna Matthews, Executive Director of LIANZA.

Big thanks to LIANZA for the opportunity, too the 100 or so librarians who participated plus the venue hosts.

Eagle Labs | Activating Latent Resources

A bank who does co-working / maker-spaces / incubating / mentoring.

Due to online and mobile banking, the use of branches is in decline. So if you run a business which own an array of centrally located urban real estate nationally, what do you do?

Well, Barclays UK (in collaboration with a couple of other folks) have launched Eagle Labs, an experiment in activating their latent spaces and making them available to the startup community as incubators whilst wrapping around supportive services as well.

With nine locations across the UK, it’s a great start to an intriguing project:

Was wonderful to be able to visit Eagle Labs Brighton a few days ago and deliver a session plus spend some time advising some of the fantastic startups in the space:

DK gave a brilliant keynote at the Eagle Lab Flight Programme for me where I am Creative Director. The programme is an accelerator run By Creative England in partnership with Barclays UK and their Eagle Lab Programme.

He delivered and inspiring talk with slides and resources for the companies on the programme at the Eagle Lab in Brighton UK on April 21st 2017. Having known and worked with DK at previous events I have run it was great to have him in person in the room with the businesses and clients. The keynote was on “putting the social back into social media” – and with a strong focus on authenticity and voice and remembering that the ‘audience has an audience’ too. Thanks DK – here’s to the next collaboration.
Marcus Romer

A superb example of an organisation needing to diversify, repurposing their latent resources (instead of simply selling them off) to add value to a community whilst still ensuring alignment with a potential customer base.

NetSquared Wellington Unconference | Giving Is Receiving

Participatory learning.

Originally, I intended to be a simple paid-up attendee of the NetSquared Wellington Unconference last week (Fri 10 February 2017).

Soon after registering the organiser reached out to invite me to say a few ‘inspirational’ words at the beginning. With the theme of “networking technology for social change” definitely lighting my fire it was an easy yes, however, leading three social media sessions and one on creating videos on your mobile phones sessions later, being a simple attendee was somewhat scuppered.

As with all good unconferences, the agenda is never set with the participants defining the events content. Switching mindsets early on and being open to offer as much as to take from these community focussed affairs certainly increased my enjoyment, plus the conversations provoked by the sessions definitely added to my knowledge / understanding.

Huge thanks to the organisers and sponsors of the event. Volunteering, attending and supporting such initiatives is so important in building informed communities of practice from which good things always are born.

“When I asked DK to share some insights about what he’d learned from running TEDXWellington at our community unconference, his answer was a very quick yes. His opening words really set everyone up for the day in terms of creating an atmosphere where people were willing to freely share. The well chosen stories gave people confidence to take a leap into the unknown. From there, many participants, probably two thirds, took the opportunity to join a impromptu session DK ran. It was a delight to have DK involved in our day, something I hope we are able to do again.”
Stephen Blyth, Organiser, NetSquared Wellington