Arguably the most important part of any presentation is the beginning. It sets the foundation for the rest of your talk. If you come across as a strong, entertaining speaker at the beginning of your presentation, people will be forgiving if your material gets a little more routine as the talk progresses. Most peoples’ judgment is reserved for those first few seconds of the talk. So if you want to get people listening you need to hook them fast.

Think about it. How many times have you heard a speech that begins with, “I’m here to talk with you today about….” Or “Thanks for coming out to listen to my talk about…” or some variation of these intros. While they do get straight to the point, they do absolutely nothing to grab your audience, to rivet them so they’ll listen, or in other words hook them. With that in mind, here are a few ways to get your audience’s attention right off the bat.

• Quote, Anecdote, Rhetorical Question – These are some of the most common ways to hook your audience. You must be sure to use a quote, anecdote, or rhetorical question that segues nicely into your material. If, for example, you were talking about the current recession, you could give an anecdote about the Great Depression and use it to underlie the point of your message. Or you could ask the rhetorical question: Just how similar is our current economic crisis to that of the 1930s? These types of lead ins will get people wondering, and help them tune in to what it is you’re saying.
• New Twist on the Familiar – Take a common story, quote, saying, or anecdote and change it. This will give your audience a new perspective on the familiar as well as grab their attention. If you handle the twist skillfully enough, you can actually make quite an impression. Let’s say you were giving a presentation on nutrition in America. You could say something like, “To eat, or not to eat. That is the question.” The bolder the twist, the better the reaction will be. However, you must make sure it makes sense and fits into your material. One of the best ways is to simply find popular aphorisms online and try switching the wording around.
• Personal Story – This will help introduce you as a speaker and gives a personal take on the material. Part of what gives you credibility as a speaker is the authority you have to talk about a subject. A good way to do this, for example, could be to lead into your presentation with a personal story about how you got involved in the field, started your business, or became an expert on the subject. The key is to be either funny or endearing so people will trust you.
• Audience Participation Exercise – This is useful as an icebreaker, but typically only works in small settings. The simplest example is to have everyone introduce themselves. However, you can get creative, depending on the setting. Often in classrooms teachers will have people work in pairs and find out 5 interesting facts.
• The screening question – Also known as the “Show-of-hands Question,” this gets the audience to participate, engages them in the material, and gives you, the speaker, an idea of how much the audience already knows.

With all of these options and a dash of creativity, you should be able to think of a good way to grab your audience’s attention quickly.

It’s hard to imagine anything more routine than a weekly meeting. Typically scheduled at the same time every week, the meeting starts ten minutes late. People filter in and chat about the week. You try to get some things done: discuss the previous week of work and projects, lay out a foundation for the next week, some people take notes, some don’t, and then someone says meeting adjourned and everyone gets back to work—most likely grumbling. Okay. It may not be this bad—but still, it may not be all that good either. Routines are helpful, but they can lose their spunk. By this I mean they turn more into a rut than a routine. With regard to weekly meetings, your team may start to think they’re mundane, a formality, a little unimportant. In reality, a weekly meeting is very important: it can catalyze new ideas, get people back on track with their projects, and it’s a great way for everyone to keep abreast of the bigger picture, keeping some perspective on what your company or organization is doing.

So here are some ideas to help squeeze more out of your weekly meetings.

1. Make Sure You Have a Weekly Leader – Your organization may be somewhat informal and your meetings are more like discussion time. While in some respects this is good and can breed fruitful ideas, in other respects it can be quite damaging to your meeting’s productivity. Having a leader is important because he or she will keep things moving. They can settle disputes, bring up the next point on the agenda, make sure the meeting starts and ends on time, make sure people stay on topic. Your leader needn’t be the same one each week. But a meeting without a leader is like a ship with no captain at its helm – it will drift off course. To watch a discussion about the importance of a meeting leader, see Broken Meetings (and how you’ll fix them).
2. Make Sure Your Meeting Starts on Time – People are busy, and it’s annoying when others don’t respect others’ time. Therefore you should always start your meeting punctually. This seems like a given, but how many times have people showed up a few minutes late apologizing and everyone just shrugs it off? This can actually be damaging because it subconsciously primes people to take the meetings less seriously: they figure, meh, no one cares if I’m on time, it’s a pretty casual meeting anyways. A simple system of rewards and punishments will encourage people to show up on time. It doesn’t necessarily be anything big—you could reward those who show up on time with their first choice of projects, for example. Or, for those who are late, they may have to do more work that week. Or, more simply, the person who is late might have to take meeting notes and email them to everyone. For a more exhaustive list of ways to get your meeting kicked off on time, see here.
3. As Meeting Leader, Set Clear Agenda – Weekly meetings will run most efficiently if you have a clear, step-by-step agenda. This can be organized with a broad topic and a checklist. For example, this week’s broad meeting topic may be “Increasing Customer Base.” Under that broad topic you would then have an agenda by which you proceed: Brief Intro – 3 minutes; Brainstorm – 10 minutes; Pick Strategies – 10 minutes; Plan for Implementation – 7 minutes. Having a time-stamped breakdown will keep things moving fast, keep things on topic, and generally help keep the meeting productive.
4. Keep Meetings Short – A meeting should waste no unnecessary time just like a painting should waste no unnecessary paint. One of the common ailments of a weekly meeting is simply that it’s allotted too much time. Keeping them brief-20-25 minutes-is good because it allows your team to focus on a few key items, lets people get back to work, dissuades people from showing up late, and is respectful of everyone’s time.
5. Use Tools Available For Organizing and Timing – The Internet has recently sprung to live several free web apps that will help you organize meetings. For keeping meeting notes, we recommend Evernote – it syncs all of your notes in the cloud, meaning they’re available on all of your devices and can be shared with your whole team. Another great app for minutes is minutes.i, which is devoted to meeting minutes. You fire up the website and it generates a minutes template that can be shared immediately after the meeting. Timebridge coordinates everyone’s calendars, finding the best times to hold your weekly meeting, check it out here.

An often overlooked aspect of a presentation is your voice. I’m not talking about the things you say; this post isn’t about filler words or the context of your presentation, but about the actual quality of your voice. A study conducted at UCLA by Dr. Albert Mehrabian found that when visual, vocal and verbal sounds are inconsistent, the actual content of your presentation counts for a mere 7 percent of the entire message. Everyone’s paying attention to what you do. In fact, 55 percent of the message, according to Mehrabian, comes from your facial expressions and body language. The remaining 38 percent comes from your voice. Sure, it’s less of a factor than your posture, your gestures, and your facial expressions combined. But mastering your voice gives your message a 38 percent better chance of getting through. With that in mind, here are some tips for improving your voice quality.

• Let yourself be heard…by yourself - Have you ever heard yourself on a recording and discovered that your voice sounded different than the way you hear it in your head? That’s because it does. Your voice enters your inner ear via vibrations in your chest, throat, and mouth. This is called bone-conditioned sound, because it hits your inner ear after traveling through the tissue of the head. All external sounds travel through the air, where they’re dispersed, then enter your ear. This is called air-conditioned sound. The latter sound type typically sounds less rich, higher in pitch. So one of the best ways to get an accurate idea of what you sound like is to leave yourself messages or speak into a recorder. You can try different things out and alter the pitch of your voice to get the best clarity.
• Animate Your Voice – Some people think it’s best to sound casual when they speak. But if you sound too casual you may come off as dispassionate, monotone, or downright boring. Instead, focus on animating your voice, delivering key emphasis on important aspects, varying pitch and tone. With some practice your talks will become livelier, your audience more engaged.
• Physical Vocal Support – There are a number of physical things you can do to improve voice quality. You can sit or stand up straight, which ensures your airway is unhindered. Take deep breaths; the more air the better. As you talk you can use your lower diaphragm to push the air back out, helping your voice to sound clear and confident. You should also focus on using the muscles in your tongue and mouth to articulate the words correctly and avoid slurring.

Paying attention to the actual quality of your voice is one of the best ways to captivate an audience. Though it may seem tedious, taking the time to learn the above steps is one of the best ways to improve your public speaking.

In a given day you make hundreds of decisions. What time to wake up. What to wear. What to eat for breakfast. New research published in the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has discovered that each decision taxes our brain’s ability to make decisions, so that as the day wears on and we make more and more decisions, our ability to ponder different options and choose wisely becomes hindered.

In the NAS study, they offered the following example (via the New York Times). Three Israeli prisoners went before a parole board on the same day. Prisoner 1: An Arab Israeli serving a 30-month sentence for fraud. Case was heard at 8:50 a.m. Prisoner 2: A Jewish Israeli service a 16-month sentence for assault. Case was heard at 3:10 p.m. Prisoner 3: An Arab Israeli serving a 30-month sentence for fraud. Case was heard at 4:25 p.m. Of the three prisoners, can you guess which one was paroled? The researchers analyzed 1,100 decisions over the course of the year. In their research they found a pattern: prisoners whose cases were heard early in the morning received parole 70 percent of the time.

Prisoners whose cases were heard late in the day were paroled 10 percent of the time. True to this statistic, the prisoner whose case was heard at 8:50 a.m. was the only one who was paroled, despite his case being very similar to that of the prisoner who appeared at 4:25. For the late prisoner, the judges’ brains had given up. Their ability to make tough decisions had been sapped. Studies similar to the above have been duplicated time and time again. In another instance, for example, people on a diet were offered M&Ms and chocolate-chip cookies throughout the day. A control group was offered nothing of the sort throughout the day.

Later both groups were given difficult geometry puzzles to solve. Researchers found overwhelmingly that the group who hadn’t forced themselves to turn down chocolate-chip cookies and M&Ms all day, the group who hadn’t sapped their will power, were able to stick with the problems and more likely to solve them than the other group. The M&M- and chocolate-chip-cookie group simply gave up more easily. So what can these findings teach us about making decisions in our own lives? Here are a few things to try

• Schedule important decisions in the morning – In the morning your mind is fresh and ready to think. Your decision ability hasn’t been drained.
• Make decisions on a full stomach – Giving your brain a dose of glucose, which is contained in food, can recharge your decision-making ability and your willpower. (Unfortunately, a catch 22 for dieters!)
• Establish habits which avoid things that test your willpower – For instance, schedule a workout time so you go every day, no matter what. This makes it a habit, something you don’t have to force yourself to do, which eliminates the mental effort of making choices.
• Schedule downtime in between important decisions – Simply allowing your brain some time to idle will give your willpower a chance to recharge.

Speaking a second language is a great way to broaden your communication abilities. But many people assume that learning a second language is something they should have tackled as a child, that it becomes too difficult as they grow older. In actuality, children don't necessarily learn languages more easily than adults. Rather, there are certain parts of the language-learning process that are easier as children, while other parts are easier as adults.

When children are young, their brains are in the process of developing. They are malleable and spongelike, always changing and soaking up information. For this reason, learning a first or second language takes place without conscious thought. For children it's more like second nature. A study conducted by Dr. Paul Thompson at UCLA, for example, found that children use a part of their brains called the "deep motor area" to acquire new languages. This area of the brain is activated when you're walking, tying your shoe, or taking a sip of water; it controls unconscious actions. The fact that this same portion of the brain is employed by children when learning languages lead Thompson to conclude that language acquisition is a natural process, something that is second nature, something that a child doesn't have to actively think about. Adults, on the other hand, must think actively about learning a second language. For them it is not second nature, but an intellectual process. This is because an adult's brain has already formed--the circuitry and synapses have been wired to fit the parameters and pronunciations of their first language. Luckily, as an adult, you've already developed the capacity for intellectual learning.

Since adults are capable of grappling with language on an intellectual level, they are actually better suited for becoming proficient in a language more quickly than children. Often we think it's the other way around. We may, for example, observe a child saying a couple of phrases in two languages and conclude that he or she is bilingual. But David P. Ausubel, a linguist at the University of Illinois, points out that children have small vocabularies and use simple constructions to communicate their needs. Adults, on the other hand, communicate in much more complex ways and command very large vocabularies. This gives people the false assumption that children learn a language more quickly. In actuality, adults simply have more to learn to communicate on the same level that they communicate at in their first languages. Moreover, according to Ausubel, adults and adolescents are able to generalize and think in abstract terms. A child needs to hear a phrase time and time again to distinguish a recurring pattern. This type of discovery takes a lot of time and a lot of exposure. Adults can hear a phrase once and understand that that phrase can be universalized across the entire language. The same goes for grammatical patterns: an adult is more likely to realize that many of their first-language's patterns can be applied to the second language, whereas a child's brain has not developed the maturity to think in such abstractions and is therefore unable to make the same connections.

Aware of the differences in language-acquisition processes and aptitudes, experts have realized that teaching methods ought to differ, too. In order to teach a child a second language it is important to expose them to both languages at school and at home. Full immersion will help a child pick up on patterns more readily. Also, using mnemonic techniques like singing songs or having repetitive drills will help wire the new language and its pronunciations into a child's brain. Older language learners often get hung up on pronunciation but learn to understand the grammatical and syntactical patterns more easily. Therefore, adults should concentrate on getting the grammatical fundamentals down so as not to get discouraged by pronunciation difficulties. Once the grammar is down, the difficult specter of correct pronunciation can be slowly chiseled away at and refined over time.

In the field of linguistics there has for long been a debate on how human beings develop the ability to communicate. Often referred to as the nature versus nurture debate, the argument is over whether we are born with an innate ability for language or learn to use language through our interactions with environmental stimuli. Over time, both sides have presented convincing evidence. For example, Noam Chomsky, a linguist from MIT, demonstrated that babbling newborn babies produce phenomes (the smallest units of sound) which they could never have heard in the language of their present country, but which are used in a variety of languages all over the world. Babbling babies’ use of phenomes proves, according to Chomsky, that the human brain is prepackaged with a “language faculty.” Meanwhile, proponents of the nurture theory say babies merely make these sounds independent of any prewired linguistic ability. Given the nature of our vocal chords, any human has the potential to make these sounds; certain phenomes only become more difficult as a particular human grows more accustomed to the sound of the language in which he or she is immersed. It’s a matter of cultural evolution, according to the nurture camp. Depending on your interpretation of the data, the debate leans to one side or the other. But it’s most likely a combination of both: humans have some sort of built-in, prepackaged ability for language, which formed slowly via mechanisms of Darwinian evolution, but which quickly develops and matures based on input from the environment.

No matter which way the debate leans, all seem to agree on one fact: each one of us begins developing our linguistic intelligence at an early stage. Now that we’re older, we can hone in on this linguistic intelligence and put it to use. After all, before you master something, you must first understand it.

Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner says humans developed language as a tool. It’s a means at our disposal for achieving an end. Every time you speak, according to Gardner, you use language to achieve one of four ends.

They’re broken down as follows:

1. People use language to convince or induce other people to a course of action. A boss, for example, may tell his employee that he needs his TPS reports by the end of the week, or a friend may ask another friend to pass the salad dressing at the table. According to Gardner, lawyers and politicians have developed this ability to a high degree, but it’s also an ability that begins to form at a young age—like when a three-year-old wants a second helping of cake.
2. Language is used for mnemonics. Before humans had language, memorization was far more difficult. Language, however, functions as a tool for codifying and memorizing things. We use chunks to memorize phone numbers. We use mnemonics like Never, Eat, Sour, Watermelons to memorize the cardinal directions.
3. Language is used as a tool for explanation. In fact, it’s the primary tool for teaching. Whether explaining literature or mathematics, anyone trying to teach someone something does so through the use of language. This is part of the reason why the human lexicon is forever expanding. As new developments and breakthroughs are made, new vocabulary words are needed to explain them. Google it.
4. Finally, language is used to talk about language. That is, language is used to reflect upon language. This is called “metalinguistic analysis.” We can see this when a child asks his parent about conceptual words, like “dream” or “wish.” These questions would require the parents to think about the word and use language to explain its meaning.

Now that you have (I hope) a better understanding of the uses of language, try thinking of ways that you can put it to use. You can be confident in your linguistic abilities—after all they’ve been evolving since before you were born. Ask yourself the following questions: How can I put language to use to get a colleague at work to do something for me? What mnemonic techniques can I use to memorize things? How can I better use language to teach someone something, to make something run more smoothly on my next conference call or at work? If there is a difficult concept you’re working with, look at it at the quantum level. Look at the actual words you’re using to describe it and see if you can’t break those words down into easier-to-understand concepts. Who knows, a little metalinguistic analysis may very well make the answer to your problem crystal clear.

Conference calls on the iPhone are a good way to meet with multiple people while on the go. With the AccuConference app, talking with multiple people on the iPhone can be accomplished almost effortlessly. This post will explain the steps you need to take in order to be conferencing within the next 10 minutes. While we think the AccuConference tools are the best means for conducting calls with multiple people, this application will allow you to connect to conferences hosted by any teleconferencing provider. Also, the iPhone has a built in capability for holding small conferences. T his method will be included in the lower portion of the post.

Conference Calls on iPhone - AccuConference App

• Get the free AccuConference App from the App Store
• Open the app and select “Add New Conference”
• Fill out the fields (conference name, number, and code). If you would like to add other options such as conference date & time or other participants do so on the screen (optional). Save the information.

Now, whenever you need to connect to that conference, simply open the app, press join conference, and it will keep track of all of your codes and dial them for you. Your connection is reduced to one button.

A Delta pilot who was arrested just before takeoff in Amsterdam on Monday for being drunk has underscored an issue that appears more frequently than most travelers imagined.

According to USA Today, US pilots who blow over the legal limit for flying (.04 percent) crop up one time a month on average.

The FAA data shows that 12 commercial pilots, out of the 11,000 tested yearly, are found to violate the FAA standard each year.

The legal limit for driving is .08 percent in most states, and the airlines have become more rigid about legal limits for pilots, setting the limit at .04 percent after a few high-profile cases in the 90’s.

The most notorious case occurred in 1990 when three Northwest Airlines crew members, including the pilot, tested positive for alcohol after landing a commercial airliner in Minneapolis. The pilot blew over .10 percent.

Elaine Weinstein, former head of safety recommendations at the National Transportation Safety Board, told USA Today that she felt there should be a zero tolerance rule for alcohol and drug use by pilots.

“If a pilot is drinking before he flies, it raises the question in my mind about whether this person has a substance abuse problem,” Weinstein told USA Today.

In order to keep pilots from consuming alcohol before flying the FAA conducts unannounced tests and trains flight attendants and co-pilots to disallow any drunk captain from get behind the controls.

Delta issued a statement concerning the pilot in Amsterdam, explaining that the flight was cancelled because the pilot appeared “unfit for duty.”

He was called in by a suspicious crew member. The passengers of the flight were put up in hotels near the airport and flew out the next day.

Maybe Galileo had it wrong when he said the earth gravitates around the sun.

Today, I arrived at work ready to consume my news. I didn’t flip open a newspaper. I didn’t look for a remote to watch Good Morning America. I didn’t grab my iPhone to first turn to the New York Times or The Washington Post to sift through 100 stories that I didn’t want to read in order to find three that I did. I opened up my Google alerts, then checked my Twitter, then checked my News Feed on Facebook. Here I found stories that I had seeded the internet for, that my friends were taking part in, or that my friends had, because their preferences parallel mine, recommended to me. Hmm, my news seems to revolve around me.

On Twitter today, I stumbled across a link to a NYT article by Nick Bilton. Bilton writes, “If you pull out your smartphone and click the button that says locate me on your mapping application, you will see a small dot appear in the middle of your screen. That’s you.” After this, Bilton pointed out that as you move, your proxy, that little dot on the map, stays still; it’s the map that moves to keep up with you. Hmm, my mapping application likes to keep me in the center of the world.

As I jumped from link to link to link on Facebook today, I noticed an advertisement for Dallas- Cowboys-colored M&M’s that kept appearing on each page: my profile, my Facebook home page, my cousin’s photo album of her trip to Amsterdam. The ad was following me around! And it wasn’t the only advertisement stalking me. I seem to be the virtual host for a “Groupon” ad that pops up in the strangest places: “Deal of the Day: sushi half-off,” the ad tells me when I read The NYT, CNet, and the Wall Street Journal. Hmm, my advertisements seem to orbit me like officious peddlers in a Chinese market.

Bilton explains that this new online universe, the one that is geared toward the individual, is the way of the future. It’s a world where people don’t buy maps of the zoo, of Paris, or of the state of Missouri, they buy maps of themselves; maps that go where they go and change with their changing locations.

The same goes with the consumption of information. Consumers are now their own gatekeepers. They decide which news comes to them through their acquaintances, through their preferences, and, in advertising, through the trail of cookies they leave on Web sites as they surf.

“Now you are the starting point,” he writes. “Now the digital world follows you, not the other way around.”

The Internet has spawned a new generation that forces media to bend to each individual’s preference. My friends don’t watch Modern Family when it comes out Wednesday night. They watch it on their smartphones during class.

This generation wants the media consumption experience hyper-personalized. Therefore, content creators need to be diverse. Content should be consumable on televisions, computers, smartphones and tablets. The new generation wants the digital experience. They want to comment, to like, to get involved. They want to be in the center.

Galileo may have been right when he said the physical world orbits the sun. As for the digital world, it gravitates around me.

The F.C.C. will vote on Sept. 23 to make wireless Internet service available over airwaves, unlocking the potential of “Wi-Fi on steroids.”

If approved, the move will allow the white space portion of television broadcast spectrum to be used for wireless networks, which will do away with the need to find a wireless hot spot and will open the door to super powerful Wi-Fi networks.

The move will likely pave the way for a new suite of enhanced Wi-Fi devices capable of passing through walls and transmitting data over much greater distances than current technology. The stronger signals will bring wireless to rural areas, minimize dead zones, and help connect vast corporate campuses, hospitals and the like.

Furthermore, the FCC is doing away with the traditional practice of auctioning off the spectrum for revenues. The whitespace spectrum will be available without a license and for anyone to grab. The unused bands of television spectrum have been languishing all this time, but now, given the approval by the F.C.C. this month, start-up companies that have traditionally been unable to afford spectrum will be able to compete.

The idea is not without issue: broadcasters fear the new use of signals will interfere with their transmissions, and industries using microphones, such as theaters, stadiums and churches have objected to similar decisions in the past for fear of microphone interference.

 The F.C.C. tried to skirt these problems in the past by requiring new devices to include a feature that electronically searches for airwaves that are unoccupied. This failed to reconcile the problem, however, because the feature and the increased engineering intensity would have made devices more expensive.

As of the time of this writing, there is uncertainty regarding exactly how the F.C.C. plans to cope with the problem of interference, but analysts speculate that wireless microphones and broadcasts will be given certain transmission priorities.

According to CNET, the F.C.C. has mapped TV channels and major wireless microphone usage areas such as Broadway, and will require the devices using the white space to be configured around the frequencies of the mapped areas. Still, this posits the same problem as the previous ruling: developers may be unwilling to foot the hefty bill.

Nonetheless, Wi-Fi on steroids appears to be just around the corner as the F.C.C. seems poised on an affirmative vote. Early next year, certain Wi-Fi hotspots will be able to range for miles rather than half a football field.