Nabs Fast Fwd - great night

I went to a talk last week as part of the NABS Fast Forward course that I mentor on. It was a fantastic night for two reasons.

The first was a talk on PR from Chris Satterthwaite who gave a fantastic talk on PR to the teams.

He also told a brilliant joke about PR as follows:

Moses and his flock arrive at the sea, with the Egyptians in hot pursuit.
Not knowing how to proceed, Moses calls a staff meeting.
"Well, how are we going to get across the sea?" Moses asks. "We need a fast solution. The Egyptians are close behind us."
"Normally, I'd recommend that we build a pontoon bridge to carry us across," the General of the Armies says, "but there's not enough time - the Egyptians are too close."
"Normally, I'd recommend that we build barges to carry us across," the Admiral of the Navy says, "but time is too short."
"Does anyone have a solution?" Moses asks.
Just then, his Public Relations man raises his hand.
"You!" Moses says, "You have a solution?"
"No," the PR man says, "but I can promise you this: If you can find a way out of this one, I can get you two or three full pages in the Old Testament..."


The second was a talk by Jon Steele

Jon Steele Talk:
- he needs no introduction but here it is anyway. Several things impressed me about this guy. Firstly, he was in Perth Australia at the time and we were in London, and was happy to give a talk via video conference at 2.30am his time to a group of young people in the industry - not many people would or could do this. The second was that he was by far the best, most engaging, insightful, and inteligent speaker on the entire course. He was incredibly charasmatic and haqd us all hanging on every word.

This isn't the speech he gave but its pretty interesting and gives you an idea of how he communicates.

and you can hear a summary of his speech in this interview with Russel Davies on his blog here

Also highly recommend reading his book The Perfect Pitch -

This guy get's it, knows what he is talking about and has done it all, and won it all. He gave some very funny and inspirational stories and annecdotes about the Porsche Pitch, an argument about Acqusiition and retention and his mobile phone, and the Sainsubry's pitch amongst other things.

Nice one Jon and thanks for making not only the grads night but also mine.