Dear Conference/Meeting Planners and Directors of Centers
and Faculty Development:
Have you picked your speakers for your fall 2011–2015 events
or next decade yet? No? Then you need to get on the stick.
Have I got a speaker
for you! I just saw him in Calgary and San Diego and he will blow your beach
chair right out from under you.
With all of the financial cutbacks, you may be crunched for
funds to import super-star speakers, but you can consider those lower on the
food chain or not even on the food chain, but dangling on a hook like bait.
For example, I know this speaker personally (he sends me
birthday e-mails) who will work with you to cut expenses, plus he will pay your
mother’s social security in August if the President doesn’t.
This means he will
1. sleep in your garage (with a bucket of ice if you don’t have ac) instead of
a hotel, but not before washing your vehicle,
2. fly WITH Southwest’s free baggage,
3. hitch a ride from the airport to your garage,
4. walk to his home airport (25 mi) to save mileage and parking fees,
5. deliver his handout to faculty door-to-door,
6. eat just navel oranges & Fig Newtons,
7. drink tap water only, and
8. not tip anyone.
Those sacrifices can make a major dent in the expenses. He
will also slash honoraria under 5 digits to fit your budget. Should I
continue? Is this a dream come true?
Anyway, he speaks on 17 topics on humor and multimedia, Net
Generation, multigenerational classroom/workplace, stress reduction, student
assessment, faculty evaluation, and PowerPoint. Abstracts are available on his
Website (www.ronberk.com). His most
popular topics appear on his LinkedIn profile (www.linkedin.com/in/ronberk) and
2011 brochure.
Testimonials by buckets of clients, some of whom may be your
peers, and a few extraterrestrials are listed on the brochure and posted on
those sites FYI.
If you would like further information, please contact the
speaker, who is currently preparing his PowerPoint in a garage in Biloxi, which
is in Wyoming, while sucking key limes.
Have a wonderful decade and go pick up your beach chair!
An anonymous blogger
COPYRIGHT © 2011 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
ADDENDUM TO PRE-SUBMISSION BLOG:
In my zeal to focus on colleagues to review a manuscript, I forgot to mention a traditional strategy most of us used throughout our pub career, probably beginning in grad school: PLAGIARISM! Oops! Wrong strategy. I meant: PRESENT THE PAPER AT A CONFERENCE. Linda McPhee mentioned this in one of her blog comments yesterday.
A conference presentation can furnish 2 sets of reviews:
1. When you submit a proposal to your conference committee, you can obtain reviews from 3 anonymous reviewers in a blind-review process, and
2. If it is accepted and presented, at the conclusion of your presentation session in a paper or symposium format, 1 or 2 discussants will critique all of the papers. Although this critique is not as detailed as a written review, it will usually hit the main points, both positive and negative. Sometimes, the discussant will give you a copy of his or her comments; if not, request them.
What valuable feedback this step provides before you submit to your fave journal. Thank you, Linda. (NOTE: Please continue to read the comments on the Higher Education Teaching and Learning group of LinkedIn. They’re too numerous to repeat here.)
QUESTION: Should you make the minor or major revisions?
ANSWER: Yup. Take Nike’s advice: “Just Do It!” Despite the bruised ego, it is worth the effort to revise. You can whip out the “minor revisions” lickety split. You already have conditional acceptance.
However, many professors do not make the “major revisions” because they become very discouraged. Fight that urge to give up if the editor gives you the opportunity to revise and resubmit. Your career in academia could hang in the balance. No pressure to revise, huh?
WHAT’S YOUR QUITING QUOTIENT?
What’s your “Quiting Quotient” or QQ? What does it take in the form of reviewers’ comments to bring you to your knees? Certainly, after pouring your mind, heart, and soul into a major work, whether it’s a research article, review, essay, or another work of significance to you, the comments you receive can be painful. However, you need to raise your QQ, get up from your knees, and KEEP MOVING FORWARD. We’ve all been there and we’re still writing, submitting, getting rejected, revising, resubmitting, and revising; along that path we’re receiving acceptance e-mails for our contributions.
Does revision improve your chances of publication? What do you do if the editor asks for more changes and another revision? Those issues will be addressed in my next blog.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
In academia as well as the trade marketplace, subject lines in e-mails and titles of newsletters, blogs, journal articles, books, and conference presentations are typically business-as-usual, gag-in-the-throat boring, albeit scholarly, pretentious, and possibly difficult to understand. Of course, there are occasional exceptions, and those outliers are welcome breaths of fresh words.
STOPABILITY
There are so many electronic and paper communications; so little time. How do you stand out from the rest of the pack in an already super-overcrowded field, such as hundreds of e-mails to scan or 10–30 other concurrent conference presentations in the same time slot as yours? Instead of gagging, we need to be grabbing or throttling our readers’ throats with a title that stops them in their tracks. Your criterion for an effective title should be STOPABILITY. Create a stop for the pause that entices your readers to read. E-mail-wise, you have about a nanosecond to stop them before they hit DELETE.
How do you create a sizzling title for any professional message or document that may still be boring? At least, your reader may start reading before deleting.
EIGHT STRATEGIES FOR SIZZLING TITLES
Here are 8 strategies to consider from the world of marketing and advertising with my academic spin. Your title should convey the following:
1. Tell me what you can do for me. How can your title convey that your content will help me be a better teacher, researcher, business leader, manager, conference presenter, faculty developer, writer, or mousetrap? As a student, does your title suggest how you are going to help me finish my dissertation, present a paper, or get a job?
2. Tell me something I don’t already know. Adopt the cynical mindset of some of your colleagues and make sure your title doesn’t connote you’re recycling same ole same ole. The title should suggest what unique, new, meaningful contribution you are providing?
3. Keep it simple, succinct, and precise. We’ve all heard of the KISS model (Keep It Simple Stupid). This is the KISSPCS version (pronounced “Kisspicks”) if you retain the Stupid part. Apply it to your title. Carefully choose every word so that it precisely captures your message. Be terse and clear with your language. Whack unnecessary words.
OOPS! I’ve blogged past my word limit. I’m so embarrassed and ashamed of myself. What was I thinking? Please forgive me. The list of strategies will be continued tomorrow. Can you guess the other ways you can make your titles sizzle? Maybe you use techniques I haven’t tried. Please let me know your ideas.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
