Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

IABC conference coverage

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The International Association of Business Communicators is holding its annual International Conference this week, and I'm sorry not to be there to this year to cheer, jeer, leer, loathe and fear.

But an hour spent gaping at the conference Twitter stream felt so amazingly like being there that I was inspired to turn some key tweets into a poem, to take you there with me.

Ode to the 2009 IABC International Conference

Overheard from Lyndon Cao's session on China: "White cat, black cat — whichever catches the mouse is the good cat."

make predictions that come true! You might be wrong 50% of the time but you will be right 50% of the time!!

BJ Fogg's session is fantastic — and his dog, Millie, and monkey, Bongo, are adorable.

One more fashion note shout-out to @JamaalOmar for the yellow tie/purple sweater combo.

How to get a seat at the table—you're the person who says "what's next"

How do I get a seat at the table—be prepared to make suggestions to move the process forward.

How do I get a seat at the table—management doesn't want cowards at the table!

How do I get a seat at the table—management is done in real time—decisions are made in real time – advice needed On the Spot!

How do I get a seat at the table—if all problems are manageent problems – then all problems are leadership problems

How to get a seat at the table – #iabc09 – negativity is not strategic

How do I get a seat at the table— if all you have offer at table is comm, you won't get traction at the table

Communicators shouldn't want a seat at the table, they should want to set the table.

when it comes to the getting to the table – you are the table!!

seems unanimous [COO] Brian Dunn and Best Buy Comms team rock stars in industry.

Who doesn't want to work for Best Buy now? Their leadership rox!

Best Buy comm team is 70 people strong

After two general sessions I now want to work for Cisco & Best Buy!

best buy writes fake stories for employee news site for fun

Why don't hotels – especially downtown SF luxury hotels – just do all-over free wifi? It's 2009 people, connect me!

people walking out of session while gen y speaker talking…

listen to employees: if u engage ur resources, then u will have better resources 2 engage

Global Comm session at IABC conf. Authenticity rules

Is it just me or does all this talk about being authentic seem inauthentic?

Mixed message: Angela Sinickas prohibits tweating during her session. A blow to #iabc09 social media creds

I think I have a slight linking problem

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I remember the very first time I heard about "hyperlinking," where a writer would willingly give readers wormholes to follow out of his story and out onto the great blue Internet. Seemed like just about the dumbest idea I'd ever heard of.

As if readers didn't have enough distractions!

Now my problem may be that I link too much. Like, in the blog item below, I linked "W.H. Auden" to his Wikipedia page.

But I did worry that the English majors who read this blog would resent the implication that they needed a brush-up on the poet. (As when a nervous in-law-to-be was talking to my dad about Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and mentioned parenthetically that Edward Albee was a 20th century playwright. My normally temperate father reacted later, "I don't need some traveling salesman from St. Louis to tell me who fucking Edward Albee is!")

I can think of at least two other reasons to control your linking: 1. Too many links makes an article look like a research project. 2. And by God, you don't want to give people too many paths out of your story.

Has anybody seen a guide to moderate linking?

Why do speechwriters have to be ghosts?

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Last week, President Obama's foreign policy scribe Ben Rhodes sat with reporters and previewed the big Middle East speech the day before its delivery.

To many speechwriters, this was a new low on a steady fall away from the traditional speechwriter's creed of anonymity.

Their perspective is well-represented by longtime freelance speechwriter Erick Dittus, who wrote in response to my query in last week's Executive Communication Report over whether the practice was a good idea:

From my perspective, the answer is almost an absolute no.
 
Someone from the State Department, yes; or maybe the Press Secretary, but not the speechwriter. This is a bad trend that seems to be getting worse. Peggy Noonan was the first Presidential speechwriter of note to raise her hand and say, "I wrote that great line," simultaneous to when it was being given, and then George Stephanopolous and a few others followed with President Clinton.
 
Before President-elect Obama even gives the inaugural address we learn about the lifestyles (Red Bull or Mountain Dew, Video games or Film, etc.) And then a discussion of sources (who they talked to or their assistants talked to put it all together)… and then the post mortem raising of the hand.
 
Fortunately, the ethics of the Obama people are light years ahead of Noonan. They at least seem to understand that the President just might be a step ahead of them, and that they are the sometime vehicle, not the driver of the speech.
 
Yet regardless of whether it's post, or pre-delivery each time we raise our hand (and yes I know the press is prodding for information) we undermine the brand (our speaker).
 
If you talk to Clark Judge—who wrote a bunch of Reagan and Bush-I speeches—you won't learn of a word that he wrote. Same went for James Fallows when he wrote for Carter, and to the best of my knowledge William Safire and company didn't claim credit (where it may have been due) for Richard Nixon's utterances.
 
Do I read with great interest what White House speechwriter are talking about their before a particular speech is presented? Yes. As a ghost who's written for 61 CEO's, and several elected officials I read most anything I can about craft [and the burdens] of fellow wordsmiths.
 
Yet, regardless of this natural curiosity, I would rather not have access to these ideas until well after a particular speech is written.

Why? Again, I believe it undermines our goal of promoting the speaker's [and I presume our] agenda. 
 
While the outing of the speechwriter may meet the feint curiosity needs of the unsavvy citizen who knows little about the craft and the partnerships most good speeches entail, it decreases the dynamic energy of the message and the messenger. And that's not what we're supposed to be doing.
 
So… let the speechwriters write memoirs about their contributions and do the talk show circuit AFTER they leave the White House, not before the speech is given. We're collaborative ghosts not pure authors. If we want to see our name in print write a book or quit the relatively high paying job of ghosting speeches and become a journalist. 

Over the years as editor of Speechwriter's Newsletter and now ECR, I've been forced to take a stand on this issue, and I've chosen Dittus's stand. Witness my stern lecture to the White House's chief speechwriter only last fall, when I predicted that his attention-seeking would get him bounced out of the job within a year.

But I've never felt quite as strongly about it as I've tried to sound.

And you know what? I think I'm coming around to another point of view—the one that says:

Fuck it: If speeches don't hold up to transparency—if we can't be moved despite a general understanding of how they're made, then maybe we should question how they're made, rather than scream for more secrecy.

I've been around this business a long time, and I know how speeches are made and I don't think my ear is any more jaundiced. A good speech well delivered is a good speech well delivered. The very best speeches—Obama's Philadelphia speech on race a year ago comes to mind—are always deeply rooted in the soul of the speaker, whether a speechwriter helped craft them or not. That's a law of spiritual physics.

It's the only law, as far as I'm concerned, and one that can't be broken even if we try. If you heard that Philadelphia speech, and a speechwriter came out and said she wrote it from whole cloth and handed it to Obama 30 seconds before he went on … you simply wouldn't believe it.

Because human beings know authenticity when we hear it (or we ought to), and we can measure it in a hundred increments by a thousand different means. Whether or not we know the name of a speaker's literary collaborator ahead of time or afterward is a very small factor in our consideration.

If I had a speechwriting client who told me she wanted me to be a ghost, I'd be a ghost. And if a speechwriting client didn't specify how I ought to behave, I also think I'd err on the side of the ghostly. But like President Bush before him, President Obama doesn't mind having his speechwriters talk about the speeches they write, and so to go to battle on this issue as if it's some kind of moral code—well, I respect speechwriters who do, but I ain't gonna do it anymore.

Readers, what do you say? Is ghostliness next to godliness, or ixnay on the nonimityay?