Archive for April, 2008

When you meet people for the first time it’s always nice to make eye contact and smile. It’s a simple courtesy and leads to a relaxed conversation. If you tend to be a shy person, this may be somewhat difficult for you. You may tend to look down or away when greeting someone. This can break the conversation right away.

In his book, How To Connect In Business In 90 Seconds Or Less, Nicholas Boothman offers a really simple solution to the problem. When you meet or greet someone for the first time, just make a mental note of their eye color. This simple technique is amazingly effective. If you are looking for their eye color you’ll automatically make eye contact for a second or two.

I have found this works well one on one and is also effective in small groups. It really helps build rapport when giving a speech or presentation as it lets the audience member know that you are paying attention to them.

I speak quite often to groups of 10-20 people in Toastmasters. When I use this technique to make eye contact as I scan the room, I pause just long enough to build rapport with each audience member.

When you first try this you may find yourself saying blue, green, brown, etc in your mind, but you’ll find it soon becomes natural and is an easy habit to develop. It’s a simple exercise but you’ll notice the difference right away.

Try it in your next small group speech or presentation. Instead of an impersonal gaze over the room, if you make eye contact, you’ll find that you’ll build almost instant rapport with your audience. They will pay better attention to what you are saying and it may keep them awake after that long lunch.

I walked into our home office the other day and I found my wife yelling at the computer screen. She was trying to create a flyer for her Bunco group and she just wanted to change the type font. She had done this hundreds of times before in Microsoft Word, but now everything had changed.

Her new computer had Office 2007 on it and the Ribbon interface at the top had her confused. She kept clicking on the big type boxes and all of her type was changing. She just wanted to change one line to a different font.

After 10 minutes of trying she was almost in tears. Since I was headed out the door, I finally fired up our laptop which had the older version of Word on it and she completed her flyer in just a few minutes.

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I downloaded the new version of Wordpress the other day and after some research I updated this blog with it. When I logged into the admin interface, I was surprised at the changes. The look and feel were completely different. It took me a few minutes to find the usual areas that I routinely access.

The interface seemed to be “dumbed down” with the more technical areas of the program hidden away. It took me a few minutes to find the plug-in and settings buttons which are small and over to the side. Once I found them and clicked on them, the interface seemed to look more familiar.

I spent about 10 minutes clicking and exploring the new interface and the new version of Wordpress started to make sense. While the interface is different, it didn’t reach the frustration level of change. There were enough things that were the same that it soon became old hat.

The difference between my wife’s experience and mine was that she ended up frustrated and mad and I was surprised but able to continue working.

10 minutes seems to be some kind of limit.

If you can’t figure it out fast, the program becomes the enemy. Most people just want to do their work and get on with life. Users may have a real problem with Office 2007. From my experience, the learning curve of the new office suite is about two weeks. To really get proficient will take much longer.

Where I work, we have hundreds of users on Office 2003. Going to the new version of office will be a big change and I really think we will have to offer training before the roll out.

Unfortunately… training is time consuming and expensive. And Office 2003 works just fine for our users.

So here is a question…

Do you change the interface and improve things or do you change the interface and cause frustration?

I have a limit of about 5-10 minutes for most things… If I can’t figure it out in that amount of time you can have your program, gizmo, or book… back!

Maybe this is why Apple is doing so well…

With the advent of low cost, large format, flat screen monitors, it has always been a goal of mine to see how they would work as a Powerpoint solution. I have a 23 inch widescreen that I picked up a year ago that I’ve been testing at different distances, with a variety of media.

I like to use emotional photographs in my presentations along with minimal text. Photographs are a little harder to see at a distance than title text, so they are a good test of legibility. I have had good results with the 23″ monitor at distances up to 15 feet which make this a great solution for small conference rooms and an audience of up to 25 people.

This solution is ideal for Toastmasters meetings, rotary clubs, and many other small group settings. Basically this is an electronic replacement for the average paper flip chart. The main challenge is to mount the monitor high enough so it can be seen by people in the back row. It works especially well with title sized text.

I have looked around for tables or other mounting devices and have found that most of them are too low to work well. So far the best solution has been a taller cocktail style table or a display rack that is commonly used for retail sales.

I ordered a 6 foot gridwall wire rack unit from Display Warehouse to test out the idea. The unit I purchased was six feet high and has a very sturdy wire mesh. It comes with two legs and adjustable feet. The unit will accommodate monitors up to two feet wide and the open wire mesh will allow you to mount the monitor at varying heights.

The main thing I have run into in my testing process is to find a good way to attach the most common flat screen monitors. There are a variety of hooks and shelves available, but computer monitors vary widely on their mounting options.

Currently I have tested it with a couple of hook brackets at the bottom of the monitor and mounted a shelf on the back for a laptop. While this is not ideal from an aesthetic viewpoint it did give me a chance to test the concept. The rack does have a slight amount of sway, but is very stable in an upright position.

Overall the monitor can be mounted about 2/3 of the way up the rack which is a nice level for most meeting rooms. The cost for the rack and shelves is under $60 which makes it a very affordable solution for your company, club, or civic organization.

My next goal is to work with our maintenance department to come up with a way to mount the monitor without the external brackets and come up with a permanent and easily removable solution. The closer the monitor can be mounted to the wire, the better the center of gravity, and the less chance of any swaying/tipping problems.

With the cost of larger flat screen monitors coming down, this type of solution can be done for 300-400 dollars which is much cheaper that buying a projector. I’m sure you could easily scale this up and use a 30-40 inch monitor with a stronger rack or table.

If you add a small table to place your laptop on, you can easily use the presenters view in Powerpoint and take you presentations to the next level. You’ll just need a monitor cable long enough to reach from the monitor to your laptop.

Overall I am pleased with this project so far. It works well for small rooms and the black wire mesh adds a nice aesthetic. You can easily add pictures or signs to the gridwall for a nice standalone display for a showroom or display window.

April 1st, 2008 marks our three year anniversary here at Success Begins Today. It has been a fun and exciting journey so far and we have met many great people along the way. I want to thank all of you who visit here regularly for your support and feedback.

I also want to say “Thank You,”  to all of my blogging mentors who keep the conversation going and keep raising the bar on what can be done with this web based conversation tool called a blog. There are so many of you now that it would take two pages just to list all the names. Thanks for the persistence to keep writing!

Here is to a great 2008!

Cheers!

John Richardson