Tag: presentations

Innovation, communication, and the Errors Tour

An important lesson: sometimes our efforts to connect with an audience fall flat.

It was great to be back on the Missouri S&T campus earlier this week to give the keynote talk for the university’s first Innovative Communication Conference. (Huge thanks to Dr. Jossalyn M. Gale, director of S&T’s Writing and Communication Center, for inviting me to speak.)

In my talk, I wanted to expand on the idea of the conference theme — “Innovation Requires Communication” — to emphasize the importance or storytelling in communication and innovation. I also wanted to impress on students the importance of embracing failure, and I needed a catchy title, something that would resonate with the mainly Gen Z audience, so I decided to borrow from 2023’s biggest pop culture event, Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, and call my presentation “The Errors Tour (Andy’s Version).”

Reactions to my cover slide were mixed. The older folks in the audience (read: faculty and staff) appreciated the wordplay. The students either smiled politely or remained expressionless. It seems they were over 2023 and all things Swift.

But …

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On presentations, accolades and nametags: an update from CASE District VI

I’ve been in Denver since Sunday at the CASE District VI “Great Adventure” Conference, where I presented back-to-back sessions (Monday) titled “Crisis Communications in a Networked World” and “Communicating Change, Inside and Out.”

It seems that both sessions were well received,. No rotten tomatoes, anyway. But I wish I hadn’t tried to cram so much into the crisis communications presentation. I wanted to talk share some info about monitoring and measuring your online reputation, but that ought to be a session in and of itself. (And it will be in a couple of upcoming conferences. Watch this blog for details.) People don’t realize just how many online tools are available for monitoring image, brand and reputation online. Nor do they realize how easy to use many of them are. And that they’re free. Anyway, trying to share all that info in a 45-50 minute presentation was like turning on the fire hose. I’ll post both presentations via Slideshare later in the week, and I’ll link to them from here.

As great as it was to present again in my home district, the high point of the conference was last night’s awards ceremony. Our university won a grand total of 13 awards for communications, marketing, PR, design, alumni relations, development, etc. — the most we’ve ever won. Included in that list is the coveted Sweepstakes Award for overall excellence in institutional advancement, a designation we also won last year. It’s a shame more members of our communications team and our overall university advancement team weren’t on hand to share in the excitement. Only four of us from Missouri S&T made the trek to Denver this year, two of us as presenters. But we will celebrate appropriately back home. I consider myself very fortunate to work with so many talented and hard-working people.

Two other highlights: a good friend of mine, John Amato, won the district’s distinguished service award this year (well-deserved, John!), and I thoroughly enjoyed Sunday evening’s opening keynote by Scott, the nametag guy, who also happens to be quite a blogger. Too bad I couldn’t have met him before we launched our hello campaign to introduce people to our university’s new name.