At this year’s Adelaide Fringe I saw Josie Long’s show Trying is Good. She’s an up and coming young Brit comedian from whose performance I gleaned these pearls of communication wisdom:

Find your own voice

A lot of standup comedy is of the typical setup-punchline-windup Microsoft Word template routine. Josie’s show was a breath of fresh air. It blended warmth and cheer and was delivered in a generous conversational style. I felt like I was visiting Josie’s house listening to an old friend. Topics ranged from Puritan artists to obese boys being blasted off a pontoon with a hose into a pool. Josie has great empathy and sympathy for the objects of her comedy - no mocking, insults or scorn here!

We DO need to know correct technique. But don’t let technique strait-jacket you. Be yourself and communicate what you’re passionate about in your own way like Josie. Experiment with your presentation style until you find a way to communicate which most allows you to be yourself.

Welcome your audience

When we entered the Nova Theatre Josie was bouncing around the room and personally greeting everyone with her handwritten program (which includes a choose your own adventure). Then she started playing Minesweeper projected onto the big screen. Out there? Yes! Whacky? Yes. With someone else this pre-show interaction may have been cringe inducing but with Josie and her personality it worked a treat. It was her way of welcoming and connecting with us.

Just like Josie we need to put our audience at ease. So you’re giving a technical presentation? Don’t start with a joke but give some of your credentials so they know you’re someone worth listening to. If you’re trying to stir up your workgroup to action don’t speak as if you’re over them, but speak as if you’re one of them and display empathy so they will take your words as encouragement. Work out what is required to put your audience at ease and do it.

Use Visual Aids

No only does Josie write over her face, she also draws on her belly and then flashes the pictures during her show. Slides, video clips or diagrams would suffice for most of us!

Give Your Audience What They Expect - And Then Give Them More

I found Trying is Good a bit unsettling in the first seconds. Would Josie’s personal welcome equate to a show with lots of audience interaction when I just wanted to sit down? (No). Would her rambling manner actually be funny? (Yes). Was her over-the-top chardonnay enthusiasm an expression of her personality, could she keep it up, or was it a ruse? (Yes, Yes, No). By the end of the hour I was a Josie convert. She answered me by giving me what I came to her show for: laughter.

Every audience has expectations. Before you talk make sure they expect what you are going to give them, then make sure you give it to them, and then give them some more. Not only did Josie give me laughs (which she told me she would), but she also left me feeling that it’s good to be alive.

**This post is based on Josie Long’s show Trying is Good.
When: 2008 Adelaide Fringe Festival (22nd Feb-16th Mar)
Where: The Nova Theatre
Audience: 40 people approx.

Image courtesy of ^riza^

I’m composing this post during a blackout. My modem is off. The lights are off. No access to flickr for images. The only blog-thing that works is my notebook but thanks to the free Live Writer it’s almost business as usual.

Windows Live Writer is a blog editor which makes it easy to publish to your blog. You can write articles off-line and then when you’re connected post them. So if you’re off to relax in the Bahamas or safari in Africa you can write your posts on the road, then put them live when you find your next Internet connection.

The first thing to say about Live Writer is that it has an intuitive interface. If you want to add a font, style, link, quote, picture, video, hyperlink it’s just a click of a button. If you can handle a standard word processor then Live Writer will be a piece of cake.

You can even add map locations with ease through a tool which accesses Virtual Earth. To show you how quick it is I’ll just pull up a map of where I am and compare it with a map of where I would like to be.

I am in Adelaide, Australia but I would like to be in…

Adelaide, The Bahamas! That little exercise took 90 seconds and I’m slow at typing.

Another handy Live Writer feature is its auto save function. Just choose your preferred time interval between saves and you won’t need to worry about it a second time. No need to worry about accidentally closing a Wordpress admin window with a near-finished article again! Then, when the article is up to scratch, just select the “publish” button and your article will be live. If you need to make changes you can load the post back into Live Writer (it’s as simple as opening a folder on your computer) and republish.

This application comes into its own if you are trying to manage multiple blogs. Every blog you have can be controlled from a single interface without logging into multiple admin pages.

Before you start drooling into your soup there is at least one area in which Live Writer does not live up to its hype. Live Writer claims to display the blog as it will appear when posted. I say “claim” because sometimes this is not the case. When I first uploaded my Wordpress template Live Writer displayed my posts exactly as they would appear live on this site. But I was disappointed that when I made some changes to my template the Live Writer look was most certainly not the same as my blog look. Live Writer still works, and I still use it, but what I’m saying is not to make this the feature that causes you to make your blog editor Live Writer.

The Verdict: If you don’t already use a blog editor and are serious about your blogging then get Windows Live Writer. It’s simple, powerful, versatile and free.

** This review is based on Version 2008 (Build 12.0.1370.325) en

How long it will take 1 million bloggers to list their own blogs? That’s the aim of the Million Blog List. With over 70 million weblogs at April, 2007 this is not a matter of if, but when.

Why not help build the momentum and list your site? Come on, you know you want to!

Image by gualtiero

You could order ProBlogger Darren Rouse’s new book (I have and I’ll review it when it arrives), but a cheaper option is to sign up to John Chow’s free e-book titled “Make Money Online with John Chow dot com”. Just visit John’s site and subscribe to his free newsletter and then you can download the book. You’re not locked into the newsletter subscription and can cancel any time.

This book is much more than a tool to make money. It will tell you how to blog well. It’s no co-incidence that the good blogs are the ones that make the money, and this book gives plenty of advice to help you improve your blog.

Basic topics covered include

• Tips for beginners
• Mistakes to avoid
• The seven habits of highly effective bloggers
• How to handle negative comments about your blog (an area where John has much experience!)
• What to blog about when you have nothing to blog about
• Pumping out the content
• Syndicating your blog

But John doesn’t stop with the basics. Here is some of the more detailed stuff:

• 15 must have Wordpress plugins
• How to increase RSS subscriptions
• How to get RSS readers to visit your blog
• Google Optimization

And then here’s the subjects John covers addressing the topic of making money through blogging:

• Recommended advertising moneymakers
• Monetizing your RSS feed
• The proper way to do affiliate marketing
• How to get more ReviewMe reviews
• How to get more text link sales
• Google section targeting

My verdict? Get it. Read it. Do it.