Gordon Brown goes walkabout (again)

A few days ago, I questioned the ‘management guru walkabout’ style of delivery adopted by Nick Clegg in his speech to the LibDem Conference.

A year ago, in the first post on this blog, I advised Gordon Brown against it in my tips for his speech to the 2008 Labour Party conference.

But yesterday, he was it it again, combining regular pacing from side to side with randomized double handed gestures. Is it just me that finds it distracting?

See what you think HERE.

Anniversary of a year of blogging

I started this blog a year ago today, after being asked by The Times to offer a few tips for Gordon Brown's speech to the 2008 Labour Party Conference. As I could think of more things to say than amount of space allowed, blogging seemed simple way to add a few extra tips - and held out the promise of 'publishing' anything else I'd written that hadn't found a proper publisher.

A year ago, I hardly knew what a blog was, and one of the benefits for me has been to discover the extraordinary wealth of interesting material that's available on the blogosphere.

Motives
When I started, I had three other vaguely formulated motives in mind. One was that I thought it might drive some traffic to my main business website, which it has done. Another was that I thought it might help to sell a few books, which it has also done.

The third one was to see if I could write things on a regular basis that were topical and/or interesting to a general audience.

For example, I've long been thinking about writing a book about conversation, and wanted to see if it would be possible to translate some of the brilliant, but rather inaccessible, research literature on the subject into more readable language. Whether or not that's worked is not for me to say, but I’ve listed a few examples below that you can check out for yourself.

Progress
The average number of hits has steadily increased and is now about five times more than it was during the first three months and continues to grow enough to make it worth continuing to make the effort.

Occasionally there have been massive surges, as when the BBC website or top bloggers like Iain Dale have included a link to this one.

I also discovered fairly early on that Google delivers a large amount of traffic whenever the title of a post includes words like 'Obama', 'rhetoric' or 'oratory'– and have had to resist the temptation to use promising key words just for the sake of it.

Thanks
If there’d been little or no interest in what I write, I’d have given up blogging long before reaching this, the 296th post.

So to all of you who’ve taken the trouble to visit, and especially if you've added or emailed encouraging comments, thank you for playing a more important part than you realise in keeping me going for as long as this.

And any suggestions you might have about how it could be improved and/or about which kinds of post you like best are always very welcome.

Examples of posts inspired by conversation analysis:
• What’s wrong with saying “Hi”?
• Planning to say ‘um’ and ‘er’
• Gordon’s gaffe explained
• Why lists of three: mystery, magic or reason?
• How to use video to study body language, verbal and non-verbal communication
• Monty Python, conversation and turn-taking
• Interview techniques, politicians and how we judge them
• Derek Draper breaks a basic rule of conversation
• ‘Sound-formed errors’ and humour’
• Gordon Brown is finding the Jacqui Smith expenses story more ‘delicate’ than he says
• The ‘delicacy’ of Mrs Clinton’s ‘consequences’ for North Korea
• Pre-delicate hitches from the White House
• Pre-delicate hitches from Brown as he avoids answering a question about the Queen

Why are there so many quotations on Twitter?

This is a genuine question that's perplexed me since joining Twitter a few months ago - and it's one to which I really would like to hear some answers .

Admittedly, I do tend to follow (and am followed by) others with an interest in public speaking and communication, and that no doubt has something to do with the daily dose of quotations that pops up on TweetDeck (see below for 10 latest examples).

I also think that quotations can play a useful part in speeches and presentations. I've written a bit about them and have included quite a lot of them in some of my books.

But if I'm looking for one, there are plenty of dictionaries of quotations on my bookshelves and plenty of dedicated quotation websites online.

So, if I could see any point in it, I could tweet quotations at people all day long.

My question, therefore, is a simple one that's addressed to all of you who send quotations winging in my (and who knows how many other people's) direction:

Why do you do it?

Is it intended as aid to my sluggish imagination, to make me think, to amuse me, to inspire me to pull my socks up - or what?

10 latest quotations to reach me from Twitter:

• The greatest mistake you can make in this life is to be continually fearing you will make one.
• Recognition not given where deserved is a form of theft.
• There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses.
• Authentic praise inspires. Disingenuous praise patronizes.
• The minute you stop learning is the moment you stop leading.
• Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.
• Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.
• A word aptly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.
• You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
• Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day

P.S. The problem's getting so serious that, whilst writing this, three more have appeared:

• An unused life is an early death.
• The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more.
• The world stands aside to let anyone pass who knows where he is going.

???