Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

My latest on Huffington Post: The courage to communicate

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Why speeches still matter (sez me, in my latest Huffpost, on what I've learned in a year of editing Vital Speeches):

The social utility of speeches is undiminished by technological advances such as YouTube, Twitter and even the Kryptonite of rhetoric, PowerPoint. There comes a time—a crisis in confidence, the crescendo of a debate (and, yes, commencement season)—where everyone knows: One member of the society has to screw up the courage to stand naked before other members of the society and share what he or she believes is true. The act is significant for the same reason it always has been: The audience has the speaker outnumbered and can accept or reject the speech before, during or after its delivery.

And the more communication tools we have to hide behind, the more the public speech comes to matter.

Hard fingers

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"The good thing about my body," six-year-old Scout said this morning as she untied a rope on the lean-to she'd constructed in her room, "is I have hard fingers. My fingers can do good stuff."

China is opening up, OK?

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In a speech to be included in the next issue of Vital Speeches International, China vice president Xi Jinping makes the country's economic policy quite clear:

What we have is an open world and an open global economy. Under such circumstances, countries need to develop an open economy if the were to accelerate development. The pace of growth of an open economy hinges on how wide it opens, and its prospect is determined by how well it opens. China will expand the breadth and depth of opening-up to deepen opening-up along the coast, accelerate opening-up in the hinterland and upgrade opening-up of the border regions. We will promote reform, development and people's living standards all through opening-up.

Any questions? Yeah, I didn't think so.