Max Atkinson's Blog

UK Speechwriters' Guild annual conference video

Brian Jenner of the UK Speechwriters' Guild has just posted a video on YouTube of the first annual conference in Bournemouth last month.

It was filmed and produced by Tim Clague, who as Brian rightly says 'has communicated brilliantly what we all stand for.'

You can also watch it and read a more detailed report on the conference by Martin Shovel HERE.

Think twice before you read or write

Late last night, Google Alerts took me to an article by Danny Finkelstein that was about to appear in The Times today about the point in David Cameron's speech last week where he surfed applause and which I'd written about a couple of times last week HERE and HERE.

Reading it at dead of night on a computer screen and in this morning's cool light of day in the actual (rather than virtual) newspaper yielded quite different reactions.

At first sight, I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. But this morning, the questions that came to mind then look like an unhealthy cocktail of paranoia and megalomania (and I'd only had two nightcaps, honest).

As I know that some of my garbled twittering got a few people wondering what I was on about, a word or two of clarification may help to solve the mystery.

Here are the questions that troubled me last night, followed by my answers after reading the same article in a hard copy of the newspaper earlier today:

1. Should I be pleased to be referred to as a 'guru' by such an eminent journalist and glad that the speech that had changed my life had changed his life too (Claptrap 1)?

Ans: Yes.

2. As one who writes books and runs courses on the subject, should I be annoyed that he makes it sound as though speechwriting is such an easy and straightforward craft?

Ans: No.

3. Did his casual use of the phrase 'surfing applause', as if everyone knows what it is, and his focus on the poverty point in Cameron's speech mean that he'd been following my blog and was now recycling some of it without much in the way of attribution?

Ans: Don't know.

4. Was he saying or implying that Ann Brennan didn't mean what she said in her speech and/or that I had claimed that Cameron hadn't meant what he said?

Ans: No.

5. And why hadn't he mentioned any of my books on all this, or at least supplied a link to my blog?

Ans: Because he's a journalist and doesn't have to.

Memo to self:

Be wary of jumping to conclusions on the basis of reading articles on computer screens late at night.

Remember that computers and the internet have made it far easier to write and post things without anything like the amount of care and reflection that was necessary to get anything out to a wider audience in days gone by.

Memo to journalists:

Remember that, with 115,000+ books being published each year, it matters a very great deal to authors to have their books mentioned in the media occasionally, and that you have the power to open and close an important door to public awareness (or lack of it) of particular titles.

Regular readers will know that I've blogged on this before in relation to BBC plug-a-book shows. Today, the mere mention of my name in The Times has already prompted enough people to type it into Google to double the number of visits to my blog (and there are still about 5 hours to go until midnight).

Today has also seen Speech-making and Presentation Made Easy and Lend Me Your Ears rise to their highest positions in the Amazon UK bestsellers rankings since the last time they got a mention on the BBC website.

So I am grateful to Mr Finkelstein and The Times for today's small mercies - but not half as grateful as I would have been if one of the book titles had appeared in print and/or if there'd been a link to this blog from their online edition.

And that, I suppose, is what really explains the initial irritations that struck me in the early hours of this morning.

POSTSCRIPT (Thursday)

I take it all back! Danny Finkelstein has done me proud - and predictably, for 3 reasons, the third of which also comes in three parts:

1. Mention of the name seems to be enough, as indicated in the comment below from Mr Anonymous (plus various emails and phone calls I've received today.

2. Blog visits yesterday were three times more than on Monday.

3. Danny Finkelstein has done me proud with two posts on his Times Online blog this afternoon in which he

mentions and links to one of my books and this blog,
shows the YouTube video of Ann Brennan's speech at the 1984 SDP conference and
ends with a hilarious story about how Roy Jenkins reacted to one of the best lines in the speech.

2009 Conference season summary

Quite a number of new visitors, to whom welcome, arrived here during the party conference season, which inspired, if that's not too strong a word, the following 27 posts.

You can link directly to them by clicking the title. The ones in italics include video clips or links to a video illustrating the particular point under discussion.

• The TUC, where ‘fings aint wot they used to be’

• Why is Mr Brown bothering to speak at the TUC?

• Gordon Brown tries out a 4-part list at the TUC

• Not the LibDem Conference –BBC website news

• Clegg’s conference speech: ‘definitely OK, absolutely fine, without any doubt not bad’

• Methinks Labour doth protest/spin too much

• Gordon Brown goes walkabout (again)

• Why doesn’t anyone warn politicians about becoming autocue automatons?

• If Mandelson has to struggle to win applause, what are the Labour Party faithful saying?

• Was it Mandelson’s self-deprecating humour that won the day for him

• Brown surfs applause (briefly) before reverting to type

• Gordon Brown: The way he told them