Have you joined my 12 Speaking Challenges for 2012 yet? Build your "confidence muscles" with 12 monthly challenges designed to help you get out of your comfort zone and build confidence in a variety of settings that will prepare you for your upcoming speaking engagements! For the month of January, the Full program is only $1! See you soon! MORE >>

First published in Inside Learning Technologies, January 2012. In this final part, we look at tools for special occasions: Creating animations. There is nothing trivial about creating animations and this is usually a job for specialists. Video editing. Desktop publishing. We could go on. Some tools you will use every day, some just once. MORE >>

From first-time attendees to 10-year veterans, attendees at the 2012 Ragan Speechwriters Conference were uniformly impressed with the event. Hear what a random baker’s dozen of the audience had to say. Speechwriting Ragan Speechwriters Conference MORE >>

I’ve been saying for years now that while facts and figures are important an often integral to your presentation, it’s your story that will have your audience uncrossing their arms, leaning forward, listening and remembering. received a tweet this morning pointing me towards this video from brand consulting agency Landor. MORE >>

Last night, hubby and I attended a dinner hosted by one of the distributors he works with in his job at a specialty foods store. We've been at a trade show for the past few days, and this is a typical evening: cocktail party hosted by one vendor, dinner hosted by another. Of course, I was thrilled! love this stuff, right? Including my husband. MORE >>