Ever since I started writing The Social Beat for Forbes, I’ve been wondering what to do with this, my beloved home blog. I have an idea. I currently crowd source my column ideas on Twitter and Facebook to get content, quotes and ideas that often find their way into the my columns.

But people send me lots of content that just doesn’t fit. It is not their fault. My descriptions are space limited at Forbes and my requests are often too open ended.  So I thought I would try expanding descriptions here. We’ll see how this works out.

Right now, I’m writing a story about Google+. My perspective is that Google+ could shape the future of Google, and that the company is in danger of being unimportant. I had hoped to have a Google spokesperson tell me why this is wrong, but after more than a month of requesting an interview, I’ve given up on having a conversation with anyone authorize to discuss it.

Here are my questions:

Have you used Google Plus? What was your experience?

Have you increased or decreased you use of it?

What do you think of their integration of Google+ with all other Google products? Is it anticompetitive? Does it make Google’s culture more social? Does it matter to you?

Do you have an anecdote about something that happened on Google+ that could not have happened on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Skype?

Additional Comments?

Please email me your answers. It is far easier for me that way than in a tweeted response.

I am writing a column for Forbes.com called The Social Beat. Everything I write related to Social media, the web, startups and the tech sector will appear there. It will be the primary venue for my online writing. Please come and visit me there.

Occasionally, I will have something to say on other topics, particularly related to my book and speaking projects. I will use Global Neighbourhoods when that occurs.

Until then, I hope you will come and visit me in my new home.

I have often felt that publishing a book is the closest I–as a male–can come to experience what it’s like to have a baby. Earlier this week, I delivered my fourth, but you would think it was my first because the experience has made me jittery to say the least.

So yesterday, when someone on Twitter pointed me to Jane Friedman’s  Please Don’t Blog Your Book and I was , I was crankier in my tweet response than I should have been. I apologize for the argumentative tone I adopted, but at the core of it, I believe her advice was really bad. I think she  displayed more ignorance than wisdom in her piece and I mean that in the politest of ways.

It’s a subject that I have a good deal of experience exploring and I doubt that I would be enjoying the success that I have– had it not been for how I used social media to interact with people.

My first book was Naked Conversations, co-authored with Robert Scoble. Robert had the heretical idea that we would blog our book as we wrote it. I humored him, reasonably no publisher would allow it. But some smart risk-taking people at John Wiley like Jim Minatel who was instrument in getting our publisher to allow us to publish interview notes and the first drafts of every chapter. This had never been done before, and it has never been repeated, so it may have been that Robert and I went through a brief window that slammed shut after we were done.

I don’t have the stats, but I am willing to bet that most people who followed the book online bought the final product. I know I signed hundreds of copies from people I got to know while blogging the early drafts.

Then all sorts of people from all over the world jumped in. Some corrected facts. Others pruned typos. Still others suggested stories to add and a few of them were the best in the whole book. One follower led a campaign to stop us from calling the book “Blog or Die,” which would have likely hurt us with the corporate readers we targeted.

So first off, bloggers helped us write a better book, far better than if we had worked under the cloak of silence that most traditional publishers required.

But wait, there’s more. When Naked came out, bloggers became our champions. Most of those who were consulting in the enterprise knew most of what we had written, but they loved how we said it and the brought the book into the enterprise where it did quite well. It is often called a seminal blog for business blogging and that would not have happened without the collaboration we enjoyed with hundreds of bloggers all over the world, as we wrote the book.

By the time I wrote Twitterville, social media had changed dramatically. Much of the conversation had moved from blogs onto social networks. My new publisher, Portfolio, was unwilling to let me post early chapters, but they were willing to let me maintain an ongoing conversation about the book and what I was writing about on Twitter.

The result was that over 50% of the stories I wrote about in Twitterville were delivered to me by tweeters. When the book was published, Portfolio did a remarkable job of traditional PR. I got interviewed by almost every major business publication I can think of. But I remain convinced that the word-of-mouth of people on Twitter made my book among the two-or-three most successful of the 43 books published with some derivative of Twitter in  the title.

I didn’t make as much noise in social media with Stellar Presentations, which launched two days ago as a Kindle-only book. This was because, I had originally planned it as a Kindle Single, which requires nothing be published in advance. Now that I’ve changed courses, I will post selected sections in the coming weeks.

But on this the second day, the only way anyone as ever heard of Stellar is on one previous blog post and a few dozen tweets that I have posted. To my surprise and relief, the book is doing quite well, thanks to the support of social media people who are spreading the word–not to benefit me so much–as to tell their friends about something they like.

Friedman noted in our tweeted conversation that she doesn’t acquire books to publish in social media. That explains why she wasn’t a pioneer. But to advise authors of any subject not to blog all or part of their books is pretty backward thinking or so it seems to me.

She knows as does just about everyone else that traditional publishing is in deep trouble. By now she should realize that online distribution and conversations have a great deal to do with the disruption of her profession. My advice to any aspiring author is to follow your reader who now is likely to hang out in social venues, who now is likely to buy books recommended by online peers.

Five times in the last two days I have offered to send my book to people for free. Five times they have refused saying they would prefer to support me by purchasing the book on Kindle.

Has anyone ever said something like that to a publisher? I don’t think so,

John Naughton, writing in the Guardian has a good piece based on email he received from Mark Zuckerberg, forecasting the death of email. It will be replaced, if Zuck has his way, with Facebook’s new Messenger service. Naughton does a good job of refuting the self-serving prophesy, but I think there are more reason why the imminent death of email is less vision and more hallucination.

Naughhton is wrong on one point. Predicting the death of email is not new. I’ve been hearing such forecasts ever since blogging and social media started gaining momentum. Dr. Danah Boyd, the a professor at UC Berkeley researching the impact of social media on youth, made the prediction at a 2004 conference, and she built her case on the same premise that Zuckerberg uses: Young people are using less and less email.

Seven years have gone by. Many of the youth Boyd studied are now college graduates and in the workplace where I’m betting most of them now have to use email and see the wisdom of that requirement. Dr. Boyd herself is now at Microsoft Research, where I’m betting the company requires her to use email for her confidential business communications.

And that word “confidential” hits a nerve when we discuss Facebook Messenger eclipsing email. I can think of no company to trust less than Facebook with your confidential business information. Facebook has a much-noted and hopefully, long-remembered disdain for user privacy. They seem to think that if you post content there, then they own it, and they just might elect to reuse it in collaboration with advertisers.

There are other reasons that email will endure. For example:

• The archiving is better and more searchable.
• Managing and downloading attachments remain superior to Facebook
• It’s easier to review long threads that take place over lengthy periods of time
• It’s often easier to find a specific conversation in email
• With GMail, it is easier to manage and delete spam than it is in Facebook

But at the end of the day, with all the social networking we use, there is a time to communicate online in private. EMail remains an excellent choice in many, many situations, and for me, when Facebook and privacy are mentioned in the same sentence, I find myself becoming immediately uncomfortable.

I tend to avoid predictions, because the neat thing about the future is it always brings surprises when it becomes the present. But I will predict that email will outlive Facebook. Don’t get me wrong. I recognize that Facebook is the great success story of the first decade of this century.

Today the conventional wisdom is that the company is unstoppable in its attempt to transform the Web into one huge walled megalopolis called Facebook.

The tech cemeteries and old age homes are filled with other companies that held similar aspirations and positions in their times, companies that took down giants to become giants then, in turn, got taken down by some disruptive upstart that they had disdained.

Facebook is just a company. Like those before it will flourish, grow fat and old and be replaced. On the other hand email is a generic thing and in one form or another is likely to last a much longer time.

Marc Orchant was my friend. He made a single statement that may have saved Global Neighbourhoods from becoming yet another failed book project. In March 2005, Scoble and I talked our publisher, Jon Wiley into hiring Marc as our editor.

Thirty days later, Robert and I had not yet produced a single chapter to edit. In fact, we had not filed a single word. We were too busy fighting like Oscar and Felix in the Odd Couple. We disagreed on everything about the book, including the title, the language the writing process and inadvertently, we had placed Marc in between us like a ping pong ball between two paddles.

Marc called me late on a Sunday afternoon to inform me that he was resigning from the project. “You guys don’t need an editor,” he told me. “You need a marriage counsellor.” Marc’s resignation jarred Robert and I into the reality of our situation and we started collaborating in earnest. We produced a pretty good book and I told Marc that we owed him a debt of gratitude for the wake up call.

Marc died suddenly on Dec. 2, leaving a wonderful wife and two kids. I think of Marc from time-to-time, as most people remember friends who have gone, but I had no plans to share this story, until Twitter today, recommend that I follow Marc. I clicked on it, and saw that his last tweet is still in December 2009.  As I thought about it, I realized that I almost certainly still follow Marc. It shouldn’t matter because he is not posting and most of us don’t think to unfriend and unfollow people we care about when they die.

I did mention the incident on Twitter and Facebook and received several comments on people who have had similar experiences. Deb McAllister mentioned she had received a similar invite from Facebook on the first anniversary of her friend’s death.

Deb and I and other people who share similar experiences will survive the little twinges of sorrow that such macabre reminders cause. The question is why should we?

It should be a pretty simple process to take down all accounts that remain inactive for a period of time–let’s say 90 days. The social networks do not need to investigate why an account goes inactive, but if someone does not use their account for 90 days, it should be classified as inactive and not be counted.  Accounts that have gone dormant should certainly not be recommended to active users at any time for any reason.

So why doesn’t Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or other socnets exercise the good taste and sensitivity to quietly de-active aging dormant accounts?

I don’t know the answer but I suspect it is headcount. There is news value and ad revenue attached to headcount. It can impact investment dollars and company valuations. For us users, such practices may be sad reminders of people who we’ve lost for some company decision makers, it can be a case of the more the merrier–or least the more lucrative.

They used to call Chicago’s election day “Resurrection Day,” because it was when the dead would rise to vote–often several times. It explains such mismatches that have Twitter claiming 200 million users, while others estimate those who are active at closer to 80 million.

It might also explain why Facebook claims the incredible number of 800 million accounts, or about one in seven people on Earth. The percentage grows higher very fast when you start deducting people who have no electricity, are illiterate, old, infirm, under the age of 10 or perhaps just, plain dead.

With Facebook’s estimates being generally regarded as true, I begin to wonder when they will have more users, than the Earth has people.

As for me, I have to admit, I’m just a bit thankful. I was reminded of someone who I really liked and how his one-liner very likely changed the course of my life while demonstrating a great example of what we would soon call a naked conversation.

A few days ago, I posted a piece about the Pepper Spray incident at UC Davis. When people saw the original video clip, they overwhelmingly supported students and felt the police had acted harshly and without justification. When I posted a longer video clip, those who commented on my blog, on Twitter and Facebook were about evenly divided on whether police actions were justified or not.

The point of my post seems to have gotten a little lost. I was calling for a need for balance in citizen-generated news content. I was emphasizing that when we see content from sources we don’t know, we need to keep an open mind on what we see.

Yesterday, an Oregon Judge ruled that Crystal L. Cox, had to fork up $2.5 million in libel damages because she was not a journalist, and therefore not protected by Oregon Shield Laws. This ruling, in my view, is hogwash. It goes against at least two previous rulings and I am reasonably certain that if Ms. Cox stops trying to defend herself in court, a decent lawyer will win her case on appeal.

Social media and traditional media is all media. Every company is now a media company and every person who posts on Facebook–or anywhere else–is now a journalist. And as has always been the case, there is a chasm of difference in the quality of reporting in the media–all of the media.

So while I think Cox deserves to be called a journalist, protected by Shield Laws, I don’t think she is a very good one. Take a second to read the post that got her into trouble. It is more name-calling than it is a report. The names that could be considered libelous are: “Thug, thief and liar.” Those terms can certainly be considered defamatory, a key issue in any libel suit. Her tone of writing seems intended to hold an executive up to public scorn, another component of libel.

In reading the Cox blog post, I am unsure whether or not what she wrote is true, and truth is the ultimate defense of libel.

In short, while I absolutely defend Cox’s right to be a journalist, I do not defend a blogger’s right to slander someone. The content is justifiably challengeable, if you ask me, whether the publisher is Crystal Cox or the NY Times.

To me this case and the Pepper Spray Videos are two closely related issues. It is self-evident that we are now the media. But what needs to evolve is that we need to behave with the same level of responsibility that professional journalists have been expected to use since long before the first blog was posted to the internet.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Apple Computer and its steadfast, top-down policy of avoiding online conversations. As an Apple product enthusiast who spends much of most waking hours following and evangelizing social media, the issue has been a nagging thorn in my side.

A couple of weeks ago I was interviewed by a Hebrew language blogger/journalist about social media. I talked about the extremely cool things being done by Dell Computer, SAP, Ford Motors and IBM, when he dropped the “A question.”

“What about Apple. They don’t do anything in social media, and they are doing just great. If social media is so important why is Apple doing so well?”

Good question. I’ll try to answer below.

Simultaneously, I’m reading Walter Isaacson’s brilliantly balanced authorized biography of Steve Jobs. This is a book, the Jobs, knowing the secret that the cancer that had attacked him was going to kill him, repeatedly urged Isaacson to write a book that would remind us of all the Apple founder’s many character flaws and inform readers of some previous unknown. It puzzles me, that Mr. Command-and-Control, would authorize and encourage such a tell-it-all biography.

Now, yesterday, my friend and namesake Shel Holtz wrote a blistering condemnation of Apple Computer, for it’s lack of transparency. I agree with almost every observation that Shel makes in his broadside. Where he and I differ is that because of Apple’s refusal to join the conversation, Shel refuses to buy the company’s products.

Conversely, I swim in Apple Products. I’m currently sitting at a desk, looking at no less than six Apple products [MacbookPro, Bluetooth keyboard, mouse, iPad & iPhone 4S].  I have consistently underestimated the quality and brilliance of them. Perhaps my worst all-time call was when I called the iPad “an oversized cellphone that doesn’t allow calling and generally an ugly puppy.”

I also wrote scathingly several years back about a company arrogant enough to call its product support staff “geniuses” and a company so foolish as to rent expensive retail space and leave the square footage so dramatically sparse.

Since then, I have spent my share of time leaning over the Genius Bars of several Apple stores. I have found the quality of staff to be consistently excellent. I have never walked away without my problem being solved. In fact, it is probably the best retail support I have ever experienced.  Likewise, I have learned what Apple planned to do with all the “Zenly” open floor space–they have filled it with customers–almost all of them happy.

So how do I reconcile my argument that all businesses need to join the conversation, while simultaneously being an Apple products and support zealot.

Well, let me take a step back. Since 2005, I’ve consulted about 100 companies on some aspect of social media strategy. I’ve also written about another 300-400 companies. I’ve covered all sizes and many categories of companies and I am convinced that online conversation is becoming a universal, valuable and mandatory way of doing business and providing support solutions. It is essential for recruiting the best and brightest of people, particularly of  newest generation to enter the workplace. Social media allows companies to bring new and improved products to market faster, at lower cost and with reduced marketing expenses.

So why does Apple Computer get away with ignoring it?

Well, one of the few common threads in these hundreds of companies I’ve talked with is that each had a problem, an turned to social media as a solution or at least part of it. Apple did not. Apple has been under the thumb of one of the most brilliant command and control people of industrial history.

The brilliant part is a key. He seems to have known what we customers wanted before we did. There are few industrialists who have had this talent. One was Henry Ford. Ford, supported Adolph Hitler for many years, published America’s leading anti-semitic newspaper, hired professional thugs to bash the heads of strikers, had far more contemptuous traits than did Steve Jobs.

Yet he created the automotive industry as we know it. For better or worse, his own mind created the first mass-produced automobile for everyday people and thus changed the world. He too, did not listen to customers, abused employees and kept his cards so close to his vest that they might have been tattoos. He is famously quoted as saying that customers can have any color car they choose “so long as it is black.”

What happened next is often overlooked. A startup that would eventually be called General Motors [GM]  started producing cars in multiple colors–even two-tones. Henry Ford lived far longer than did Steve Jobs. He lived to see the decline and fall of his political views and the decline from pre-eminence of his car company.

Steve Jobs did not. He left a legacy of great products and services that will be remembered for a very long time. But sooner or later–as happens to all leaders–Apple will stumble. And when it does, it will not be in position to join the online conversation and it’s failure to be a social company will be a factor in it’s downfall–or so it seems to me.

As far as social media, Apple Computer and the choices I make. My loyalty doesn’t stay with any company. It stays with users. I will favor the company that offers the best product and the best service–until it is replaced by a new company doing a better job. My next car is likely to be a Ford, because I like their new products and and am convinced that the people who run the company today do not adhere to the founding Ford’s political views. My next computer is likely to be an Apple product–unless of course another company comes up with something better.

[Dell SM Listening Command Center. Dell File Photo]

I just read a New York Times item announcing that the Public Relations Society of America [PRSA] is launching a campaign to redefine the term “public relations” to make it more current in the 21st century.

I pointed to the article on Twitter and immediately got new jokes about the “spinners spinning their spin.” I see the humor, but it makes me sad. PR has so many true values to a company. One way or another every organization practices PR and it shapes who they are and how they fare in the marketplace.

The definition has remained the same for centuries. “Public Relations” is a self-defining term. It is the relationship between organizations of any size and people who make a difference to them.”

This has not changed, it is also highly unlikely to change moving forward.

What has changed are the tools of communications and the venues. The tools are now social and the venue is increasingly online. These two facts have upended virtually every profession and institution. They have forced the enterprise and corner store, governments and those who wish to overthrow them. It has changed advertising, news, religions, white-collar crime and just about all things–including public relations.

I can tell you the essential difference for the PR industry. People can now talk back at you and about you. They can do it with great speed and what they say can spread like wildfire faster than you can call a conference room meeting t discuss messaging or damage control.

I commend PRSA for understanding that something is broken. But I think they are trying to fix the wrong thing.

PR, for the past 60 years, has focused on broadcasting. They send messages out. When one approach doesn’t work, they try a new way to send the same messages in different forms. When talking doesn’t work, they shout.

In fact, what PRSA needs to teach its members is that they must learn to listen. They can now talk with customers, prospects, investors, potential employees and bring back the wisdom of vital crowds to organizational decision makers.

This is not touchy-feely thinking. This is serious business strategy. Dell Computer spent many millions of dollars to build a listening center. A staff listen to what is said about the company online every day. They monitor about 150,000 comments a week.

This listening engine fixes product flaws faster and less expensively than was previously possible. It turns ranting customers into ravers. It reduces time to market for new products and vastly lessens the burdens of customer support.

At Ford Motors, Scott Monty, the company’s top social media officer answers directly to the CEO. Ford has no desire to appear cool. But it understands that social media is where you spot problems and trends first and how you get the word out fastest.

If you don’t think these two cases are connected to public relations, then I just don’t know what to tell you.

My advice to public relations practitioners is that we live in a new, still-forming Conversational Age. It has replaced the Age of Broadcast. You need to join the conversation. It is where your customers are going and it is also where you should really shine.

After all, professional PR people are outstanding communicators, right?

PRSA is right that something is broken. The PR industry sees itself as being in he image business, yet they collectively have a truly awful image.

When I started speaking about social media in 2005, I used to joke that someday, conferences discussing social media will be about as relevant and well-attended as conferences on the business uses of the Fax machine.

I’m wondering if that day has come.

About a month ago I attended TC Disrupt, one of the biggest startup conferences and one dedicated to spotlighting companies that are likely to change the way we live and work. I noticed two terms that were never mentioned:

Web 2.0. Lots of us did not like the term to begin with, but it was needed to show the move from static sites into a new conversational web. Most of the world’s leading software developers have shifted their focus in this direction. We have entered a period where mobile apps are the focal point of innovation. It is no longer Web 2. It is just the web.

Social Media.I did not hear this term used once during the entire Disrupt conference. Yet every company presenting or exhibiting used social media as a vital component to their new companies. Some uses were unique and unprecedented. But social media has evolved as an obvious part of any app, certainly any mobile app.

Of course, I live in the San Francisco Bay area. I am exposed to early adopters wherever I turn. I have a focus on what’s new and what gets changed. Including social media has become obvious. What this enables has become far more relevant to the conversation.

However, this is Silicon Valley myopia. If you throw a rock into a large lake, where the rock plunks into the water is Silicon Valley. The ripples that roll out concentrically from that center are the rest of the world.

Much of the world is still struggling with social media issues, with how to shift from broadcast to conversational online engagement with customers, partners, investors and so on. This is certainly true in the parts of the world where everyday business has nothing to do with online conversations.

So social media is certainly not dead. Then neither is the fax machine. Both are essential to modern businesses, and in both cases the novelty has worn off. So has the disruption.

Social media has disrupted a great deal of everything in the last ten years. I call that the Decade of Disruption. Social media is now an essential ingredient to every modern marketplace. We have entered a new Age of Conversation. I think it will be around for a very long time.

But as for disruption and what’s new in the minds of the bright, irreverent, urgent culture that is Silicon Valley, I would turn attention to mobile apps and that is where I would look if I were a conference producer.

In the next few weeks I’ll be talking to a group of Spanish entrepreneurs in San Francisco at a StepOne event and then  participating in Nasscom, India’s largest startup conference.

In both cases, I’ve been asked to speak about how to make a great business presentation. The irony is that these two deals were cut just as Steve Jobs died. Jobs, without question was the best presenter the tech industry has produced to date.

He dressed in a uniform that was decidedly different from others. Thirty years of presentations followed a certain cadence and format, yet almost each of them was memorable, powerful and exciting.

Jobs was one of a kind and not one of you can emulate him. Jobs was one of a kind and the best parts of who he was came out in how he presented.

So my first advice to anyone planning a business presentation is to look, not at Jobs, but at yourself. What are your best presentation qualities? Are you funny? Eloquent? Creative? Whatever qualities you have, you should capture and exploit the way Jobs did.

There are certain tips that I think fit for most presenters. And that is what I will focus on advising these two roomfuls of entrepreneurs. This is a work-in-progress, so please tell me what I might add or remove:

1. Rehearse like crazy. Malcolm Gladwell noted that what most of the world’s most successful people–artists and entrepreneurs share in common is that they rehearse like crazy. If you didn’t have time to rehearse, then you are not ready to present. If you did not prepare the audience will see it. Your lack of readiness will reflect on their perceptions of your product and company.

2. Your product is your star. Almost every tech startup by definition is about a new and hopefully disruptive startup. Introduce your product as early into the presentation that you can. Build everything else: position, opportunity, model, team around product.

3. Simple is best.  Use the fewest, clearest and least ambiguous language you can use. Say as little as you can while still covering all key points. Do not show how hard it was to make. Show how easy it is to use.

In ”Good to Great” by Jim Collins, he tells the 1987 story of Jerry  Kaplan who pitched his idea for Go Corp, the first pen input device. The VCs “Good to Great” by Jim Collins expected to see a prototype, or at least a PowerPoint slide of the photo along with artist renderings. Instead, Kaplan took a notebook portfolio he was holding tossed it into the air and watch as it landed with a loud clap in the middle of the conference table.

“This is my model for the future of personal computing,” he told the stunned investors. It was a move that Jobs would have admired.

He got the money.

The drama was great, but more important he demonstrated in a way so simple and clear, that no one could miss that a wireless mobile small computer was the right direction. It turned out he was right. It just took longer than he figured.

4. Be very aware of who your audience is and what they want from you. Investors wants to hear about how you’ll make them rich. Journalists want a great story. Potential employees want a good home in a friendly neighborhood. Structure what you say for them and not for you.

5. Leave drilling to miners and dentists. The objective of a good presentation is to start a conversation, not end it. Keep your presentation at a high level, customizing it for what your audience wants. Let the details come in questions after you have completed your monolog and get into dialogue. Let your listeners do the drilling on the topics they choose.

5. Cut the crap. In “Naked Conversations,” my book with Robert Scoble, we coined the word “Corpspeak,” referring to the adjective-packed hubris put out by a great many marketing and PR teams. We have all become jaundiced to inflated claims  and overstated claims can cause you lasting damage. Credibility is like virginity: once you lose it, it is extremely difficult to get back.

6. Show your team, culture & spirit. Many VCs tell me that they invest in team more than technology. Team does not mean an impressive list of resumes. It means people who work together, play together and help each other win. You show team by style. It is almost impossible to capture in a PowerPoint. But your apparel–and the words you use–reveal your culture. The components I look for when interviewing or consulting a start up includes:

• Optimism. In the US, I’ve read that 90% of all startups fail. I like to see a team that really believes they will succeed where everyone else has failed
• Urgency. All startups have to deal with constraints. Yet, with limited time and money they need to beat competitors to the market and prevail. I just don’t trust entrepreneurs who do not somehow reveal a sense of urgency.
• Attitude. I can’t tell you just what the right attitude is. But I’m pretty sure I know it when I see it.

7. Paint both a grand picture and a detailed miniature.  When I still had my PR agency, I represented Homestead Technologies. It’s founder/CEO Justin Kitsch started his presentations with: “We are building a company to last 100 years. Now let me tell you what we are doing this quarter.” Brilliant move.

8. Disrupt something. If you are a startup, you need to wedge your way onto a crowded playing field. Your presentation should make it clear how you are going to change the world and why won’t the incumbent can’t stop you.

9. Tell a story. People have told stories in just five minutes that have endured 5,000 years. By contrast, I have seen entrepreneurs spend five minutes on a PowerPoint slide and it felt like 5,000 years. We humans are addicted to story telling and good ones, that illustrate your points, are far more memorable and enduring than all the analytics, metrics, charts and graphs you can jam into a presentation.

10. Personalize. The best presentation story-telling almost always personal. When Robert Carr introduced Framework, an integrated software package of the 1980s, he began with, “I developed Framework so that I could work on a computer they way I work in real life.” The line is much imitated over the years. In fact, variations of it have well outlasted the product.

I consulted Munjal Shah in 2006, when he founded a company called Riya, a photo recognition company, sold eventually to Google. He launched it by describing his difficulty of finding his baby’s photo among thousands in his digital collection. Into his formal launch presentation, he posted the baby picture and stated: “There’s my baby! Isn’t she a cutie?”

For the remainder of the conference people talked about Riya and how you can find photos of people you love. The technology breakthroughs were faded to background, which immensely helped the product.

11. Lighten up. Even seasoned serial entrepreneurs get jittery and intense in planning a presentation. That’s fine, but never let your audience see you sweat. Actors, I imagine, are nervous  before a play opens. But when you start, lighten up. Almost no audience is out to get you. They want to see-and-hear something useful and interesting to them. They didn’t pay the admission price to see you suck. Have fun when you present. It seems to me that in business, fun is vastly underrated for it’s value.

12. Finish early. I have rehearsed a great many companies before they presented to investors, the press and at conferences. I absolutely insist that they finish well short of the allotted time. When you present it will invariably take longer than when you rehearse. You want to talk at an easy, comfortable pace. Rushing will ruin it.

I am only speaking for a short while at both events and 12 points seem like the most I can get in while adhering to my own advice of finishing early. What am I leaving out? What should I add in? Got a case study for me to illustrate any of these points?