Travel Update with TJ, News and More

Speaking with TJ Walker, the show where we dissect how and what world class leaders communicate.

Welcome to the program, ladies and gentlemen.

I'm TJ Walker.

Thanks for joining me. We are virtually live today. It's Thursday afternoon, November 10th. This program is going live Friday morning the 11th. And some program notes for you here. A little bit of change. I'm about to do a whole lot of travel. I mean I always travel some, but this is a little more than usual. In the next month and a half, two months, I'm going to be spending time in Switzerland, in Hungary, Portugal, Bangkok, Thailand, spending time out on the west coast, spending time near the D.C. area. So I'm just going to be on the road a great deal. That combined with the holidays, Christmas, Thanksgiving, that time of year, plus combined with a lot of technical problems I've had recently, thankfully I think we've cleared them all up. Doing something a little bit different for the remainder of the year on the program here on the podcast, I'm going to be putting out short form content, evergreen content that means stuff that isn't tied to the news, how to information on public speaking, presentation, training. These are short form podcasts that some of you, you haven't heard these, but they're from additional series I have on itunes on public speaking communication skills, PowerPoint tips. So for the remainder of the year till early January, you're going to mostly if you're a regular listener subscriber to this show, you're going to hear mostly 3, 4 minute how to tips, one topic at a time. I hope you like it. Traditionally, those have been some of the most popular features I've done, whether it's on YouTube, on the podcast or elsewhere. Come January, I know you've heard me tease this for a while. Come January, we're going to go into our new format, which is long form in depth interviews with newsmakers with key influencers around the globe in various subject matters, not just news and politics and not just communication experts, but experts from all over. They could be world class chefs, they could be world class scientists. We'll be talking to them about their books, their expertise and specifically how they speak. Speak about their expertise and you've gotten those of you who are regular listeners have gotten a taste of those occasionally in the last three months. But that's what we're going to be delving into even more deeply. In the meantime, if you do have questions about public speaking speaking to the Media Communications PowerPoint, you can always post the comments on YouTube, on my Facebook page, on the new blog at speakingwithtjwalker.com and I'll always answer you. And while I might not get a video up right away or a podcast, an answer to you. Typically, even when I'm traveling or training or speaking in another country, I can get back to you with an answer within 24 hours. So always feel free to email me tjediatrainingworldwide.com also love to hear your suggestions on interesting guests you'd like to see me interview on the program in the New year. Now for those of you who have paid attention regularly, you've heard me often extol the virtues of podcasting and frankly, why everyone should do it and how easy it is it is to do. And this is coming from someone who has been in the Internet digital audio world for 20 years. I was doing Internet talk radio way back in the 90s when there were maybe three. This was before anything was even called a podcast. This is when you had to take apart your computer and put in another dialing sound card. So I've been at this a long time, so it's with a little bit of embarrassment I tell you, I've had a massive, massive amount of technical problems trying to go from doing simple audio interviews to slightly more polished podcast interviews.

A lot of it has to do with the fact that my initial setup with my TV studio is a little more complicated than most people's computer. I have an extra soundboard video card in my computer because I do high quality how to videos and news analyses for my YouTube channel and for the website. And apparently when I plugged my mixer and microphone everything into that, it just became chaotic and for some reason it's making my Pamela software, even when recording audio through Skype, go absolutely crazy. Well, in the last month I have bought one new computer. I have also installed everything on a new Apple laptop. I use a PC for most of what I do. What I'm doing now. I bought every kind of mixer heil PR 40 mica and you don't have to have all this. I have extra digital recorders. Bottom line is I now have several ways of recording audio at any one time. And the reason that's important is because if you do an interview with someone and you're just recording it through software on your computer at the same time, there's always the risk that something doesn't work, some kind of error creeped in and it's bought. Let me tell you, that is a painful, painful experience if you've spent an entire hour with someone an hour out of their Life. And some of the people I work with, they may charge a thousand, they may charge $10,000 for an hour of their time for a keynote speech. So it's extraordinarily painful to waste an hour of their time, not to mention an hour of my time. So that's why it's important. If you're doing more than an occasional one off and you're recording a podcast, you want to have the so called redundancy. You want to be able to record it a couple of different places. So if you're recording it using software, Pamela or ECAMM recorder on a computer, you're also recording it off, away from your computer on a digital recorder and everything has to feed in. So I've taken a lot of time, effort, energy, hired consultants, been on my hands and knees reconfiguring computers. I finally have solved the problem. So the good news is come mid December when I'm back in the country, I will be able to really gear up all of the recording and start going into a production mode with these long form interviews. I'm very, very excited about that, looking forward to it. So if you have suggestions for guests, I would love to hear from you. I'm not afraid to ask anyone. I mean people can. Worst thing that can happen if you pitch somebody to be interviewed on your podcast or a TV show or radio show is they just ignore you or they say no thanks. That's the worst thing that can happen. So if you have a suggestion, it could be anybody. It could be President Obama. I'm hoping to get him on one day. He's probably a little bit busy right now. Could be the new president. Well, that's, that's an issue for another day. Speaking of which, the reason I'm going to be out of the country so much is not necessarily because of the recent election. I've not been asked to leave the country. It's not self imposed exile. It is a coincidence. But I can understand if people think otherwise. Folks, thanks for joining me again. I'm here with you. I'm monitoring the news. I'm continuing to look at how newsmakers, policymakers communicate through the media to the public. I'll continue to do some programs in the new year on that topic. I think what will likely do is I'll have short form programs on the weekends where I analyze what's going on in the news from a communications perspective, answer your questions and then our main Monday through Friday program will be the in depth interviews. I pretty sure that's the format we'll be settled on. But if you have any other suggestions on that, please let me know. As always, I'd love to hear from you. You can reach me on Twitter jwalker. You can find me on Facebook. TJ Walker Interactive is our Facebook page. You can go to our new blog at tj@speakingwithtjwalker.com and the main grandpa website. The business home for all of this, the thing that pays the bills, mediatrainingworldwide.com and by the way, if you do stop off at that site, be sure to sign up at no obligation for our online public speaking and media training course and a couple of our books that will be sent to you at absolutely no charge. I'm T.J. walker. Have a great weekend. I'll be back here tomorrow. It won't be ripped from the news analysis but but I'll be here with you every single day. Thanks. See you tomorrow.

Thanks for listening to speaking with T.J. walker.