Reclaimed: TEDxBoise 2020
In March, TEDxBoise, like so many other events, was postponed until April of 2021.
Not long ago, our board met again out of concern over the viability of having a spring 2021 event.
We decided to have our 2020 event after all. (Take that, COVID-19.)
It looked vastly different from the 400+ person event it normally is; we held it outside on the Idaho Shakespeare Festival stage with a very small (masked) audience last Saturday.
Read MoreClingy. In the Best Way
Y’all know I love words. They’re kind of my thing.
I was drawn to explore a Hebrew word last week after reflecting on the story of Ruth. The imagery of Ruth “clinging” to Naomi was compelling. Though Naomi had instructed her daughters-in-law to stay in their native Moab instead of accompanying her back to Bethlehem, Ruth clung to Naomi.
The women wept together, parting was clearly difficult—they’d buried their husbands together, too.
Clingy.
It’s a word that, in our modern use, seems to have connotations of desperation.
We often view desperation as a negative thing.
Read MoreYour allotted time to present just got cut—dramatically. Now what?
If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s taught it us to be flexible, to hold our plans loosely. Nothing, it seems, has gone “to plan” since March. That truth as shown us the necessity of being adaptable. And it applies to presentations, too. Sometimes the amount of time we’re allotted to present gets significantly cut due to the agenda falling behind or the unexpected early departure of the key stakeholders. (Or—inexcusably—you don’t manage your own time well while speaking.)
How does a speaker adapt to the new time allotment?
Read MoreWhen things change…but maybe you don’t want them to
Change is hard.
Even when it’s good, it can be difficult to let go of what we’ve known and planned for.
But sometimes it’s necessary.
Sometimes we don’t even know why it’s necessary.
If we know (even through circumstances) that God has called us onward to a new thing, a new season, a new place, how do we cope with that change?
Read MoreIf you have more than one image on a slide, do this
I’m a proponent of a single image on a presentation slide.
Just a single, clear, compelling image. As the old adage goes, it’s “worth thousand words.” More images are likely to confuse the image with too many “words.”
If, however, you really need to incorporate more than one image on a slide in order to convey the intended message of the slide (as in the case of a “team” slide in a pitch deck, for example), here are a few ways to make that message come through clearly and minimize visual clutter:
Read MoreA prayer for heavy hearts and troubled minds
The last few weeks have been a wild ride for my household—in every way, shape, and form. Two kids off to their college experiences (altered as they may be), and one going back to school part-time in person. Shifts in our professional landscapes. Spiritual challenges. And health procedures… to name just a few.
It got the best of me the other day. I ended up in a heap of tears. And when that happens I’m honestly not much good at praying… the words just get tangled up in sobs.
Read MoreWe’re all afraid of something
America’s top three fears—in order—are public speaking, heights, and bugs. While #1 holds no power over me, #2 has been a paralyzing fear since third grade when I refused to climb to the dome of the state capitol building in Denver.
When I started working with David Anderson on his TEDxBoise talk last year, I knew I’d be confronting my fear.
And it finally happened on Saturday.
Read MoreWhen We Share Our Broken
Be encouraged by these words from one of my fellow Our Daily Bread writers, Elisa Morgan, and her podcast co-host, Eryn Eddy. What I love most about their words here is how they looked past their “obvious” differences and shared their stories with candor to find common ground—something we all need to be doing more of today. And in the process they unearthed the profound treasure that God loves us in spite of our messy brokenness. Learn more about Elisa and Eryn and about the God Hears Her podcast at the foot of the article.
Guest post by Elisa Morgan and Eryn Eddy
Our first meeting was something like a friendship blind date. It happened on a summer day in Grand Rapids, Michigan—home to neither of us. We’d each been tapped by Our Daily Bread Ministries to pilot a podcast for women as co-hosts. After flying in late at night from our home states of Colorado and Georgia, we introduced ourselves early one morning over coffee at the hotel’s breakfast bar.
From first sight, we knew we were different. One old, the other young. One blond the other one brunette turned gray. One artsy and tatted and cool, the other edgy but pretty status-quo.
Would this work? Could we become a team together—cracking open and connecting our hearts so that women listening—who we hadn’t met either—would receive what we all desperately long for? To be seen. To be heard. To be loved just as we are?
Read MoreHow to keep your audience engaged (using Zoom’s most underutilized tool)
Keeping meeting participants awake and engaged during virtual presentations is among the greatest challenges in the work-from-home dynamic. We’re all struggling with the fatigue of so many online meetings. That fatigue is further compounded by the lack of attention presenters are giving to crafting content that truly serves the audience.
Even if the speaker or presenter has cultivated a message with care, how does one keep the audience engaged?
A skilled presenter will lure—and re-lure—the audience back into the conversation at regular intervals. They can (and should) do that through a variety of means, including introducing tension through the use of story-telling principles. Asking questions that prompt responses from the audience/meeting attenders is an effective tool as well. It’s especially important when you need their input to establish consensus and arrive at a decision. The chat feature is most commonly used for that kind of engagement. Tip: you’ll get more chat responses if participants are asked to simply enter a number or letter than corresponds to a choice, such as “Y” for yes, or “2” or “B” to indicate they prefer the second of several options.
Garner more engagement by asking participants to enter a single letter or number corresponding to their choice.
But there’s an even more effective tool for engagement that most presenters don’t know how to utilize:
Read MoreHow to build friendships when you can’t see each other—or just don’t see eye to eye
Friendship during COVID has presented an incredible challenge. Recently updated research from Cigna showed that a staggering 61% of people feel lonely. And that loneliness is as detrimental to our health as smoking and other well-known health problems.
And those findings were BEFORE coronavirus. I can’t imagine those statistics have improved in recent months.
We need each other. That’s been true since the earliest days of humanity when God said it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone. The Bible speaks a great deal to our being designed for community (and offers much wisdom on how to do it well). I’ve often written and spoken on friendship because of how much I value it.
COVID is testing friendships in unprecedented ways (though it’s certainly not the only challenge to relationships; political divides and geographic distance are too.). I saw a post on social media in which a person lamented the collapse of 40-year-long friendships because of the differing perspectives on COVID. This makes me ache. While we can avoid topics of conversation we know create conflict (I have friends who’ve agreed to not talk about politics because they both get a big too angsty), coronavirus cannot be avoided as a conversational topic because our (potential) differences affect whether and how we interact at all.
So, how are we to build friendships right now? How do we make new friends if we’ve recently relocated? I’ve got a few guiding principles to share and then a handful of tips to offer.
Read More