Keeping it Brief

Body

Next week I am "briefing" a client on a variety of topics, everything from our overall strategy, to our DS4000 disk systems, LTO tape, the DR550, and storage virtualization. A lot to cover, and they only gave me 60 minutes!

The challenge is not gathering the material, as it is shrinking it down to cover all the key points into a fluid story. Which reminds me of a saying we have inside IBM: "Develop with prose, Market with poetry." When I was in development, I had to write some huge specifications. Now that I am in marketing, the fewer words the better. In looking to see if this saying was a modified version of a famous quote from someone else, I encountered this interesting quote below. John Windsor of YouBlog might argue this could apply to most marketing attempts just as easily as most poetry.

Most people ignore most poetry
because
most poetry ignores most people.
--- Adrian Mitchell

Roger over at Creative Think asks ifChip Heath is the Next Malcolm Gladwell?, relating to a book called "Made to Stick". I just started reading this book yesterday, but it starts out with how some stories are more memorable than others. Some just "stick" in your head, like songs, and others are quickly forgotten.

I tell a lot of stories, some stick, some don't. For example, I had read in a Barnes and Noble flyer a description of a book that interested me. I went to the store, but had forgotten to bring the flyer with me. When the person at the help desk offered to help me find it on their computer system, I realized that I could not remember the author, the title nor the publisher. The only thing I could remember was that it was a dark green book. It was actually a collection of short stories that were all 55 words in length, all winners of a 55-word story contest. She then took out the flyer itself, and we found it easily from there. She asked why I only remembered that it was green, and I told her: "Because I collect green books."

I am amazed that the writers could cram a setting, characters, plot and resolution into only 55 words, and then I saw Anecdote's post Let's Be Brief which talks about the latest 6-word story contest, inspired by Hemmingway’s shortest story, which was only six words long.

Now that's brief!

technorati tags: Chip Heath,John Windsor, YouBlog,Malcolm Gladwell, prose, poetry, Adrian Mitchell, short, story, contest, anecdote, IBM, DR550, LTO, DS4000