Professionally Speaking

Each year the National Speakers Association honors five of its members with the coveted CPAE Award (Council of Peers Award for Excellence). There are only 120 living members who have the CPAE designation.

The highlight of the formal dinner on the last night of the conference was the CPAE Awards. I tracked down one of these distinguished speakers after the banquet to find out how it feels to win an Award like this.

Susie Vanderlip is a Youth and Family Issues expert from Orange County, California. She created quite a stir when she came onstage to accept her Award in character as a gang member from her schools talk. She transformed before our eyes into the foxy lady she is in real life, resplendent in evening gown and jewelry. Quite a transformation.

Susie's latest book 52 Ways to Protect Your Teen presents the realities with which teens across all socio-economic groups are confronted. She addresses drug and alcohol abuse, rape, violence, depression and self-mutilation issues. She wrote the book based on lengthy one-on-one conversations with 25,000 individual teens following her LEGACY OF HOPE® assemblies at their schools and youth conferences. Since 1991, she has presented to one million teens and adults in 47 states and Canada.

On Thursday evening her NSA peer's recognized her achievements.

Click on the podcast icon below to hear Susie's reaction to the CPAE Award, recorded a few short minutes after the event ended.

My 14-year-old son, Neil, accompanied me to NSA and attended the Youth Leadership Conference. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my colleague from Sun Microsystems, Mark Ivey, who first persuaded me join NSA and told me how much his kids had enjoyed the Youth Leadership event.

I sat down with the Chair of the event Sunjay Nath to hear the story of the Youth Leadership Conference.

Next year in New York the leader will be Rory Vaden. If you have a child aged between 10 and 16 you owe it to them to check out what Sunjay says by clicking on the podcast icon below. Neil is already booking his ticket to Times Square.

After hearing from Ian Percy I decided to ask around to see what conference attendees thought of the 'disruptions' he had set out to achieve. Were they able to deal with issues they don't agree with?

Jenny de St. Georges is a fellow member of the NSA Northern California chapter. She's a long-term member of NSA and has attended many past conferences. She found the majority of first-time conference attendees have been disappointed by Ian Percy's Agenda. Her extensive network of contacts with International attendees were frankly confused by the event.

She makes an impassioned plea for 'Speakers speaking to speakers' in future events.

To hear Jenny, click on the podcast icon below.

In the final hours of the 2007 NSA Conference I sought out the person responsible for the Agenda - Ian Percy, CSP, CPAE.

This conference has been seen by more than a few as a radical departure from past NSA Conferences. Heated discussions took place in the hallways over everything from the agnostic tone of Randy Gage's speech on Prosperity Consciousness to the tone of the five minute "Om" chant, and, as was humorously observed, the glazed-over tones of the NSA Youth singing in praise of Afghanistan's largest cash-crop, the tall Poppy.

So I asked Ian: What have people been saying to you about this year's conference?

To hear what he says, you know what you need to do. That's right - click on the podcast icon below.

The value of large conferences like this year's NSA Convention in San Diego is as much in chance conversations over lunch as in listening to presentations from the podium. "It's not what you know, it's who you meet in the hallways."

I was delighted meet Rebecca Staton-Reinstein over lunch on Thursday. Working as a speechwriter at Hewlett-Packard, I hear stuff all the time about the vision and strategy of large organizations. Technology companies, by their very nature, tend to look to the future and speak in terms of innovation, R&D and the new, new thing. So I was surprised to hear Rebecca explain company strategy in historical terms. Imagine, an American with sense enough to try and understand the present in terms of the past!

Her current project involves interviewing CEO's about their strategic vision and how this is translated into reality. Her research was stimulated by her understanding of the strategic vision of the 18th Century framers of the US Constitution. She talks to captains of industry about the ways they employ this vision in running their 21st Century businesses.

If you like what you hear in the podcast (click the icon below) then be sure to visit Rebecca's website and check back when her book is published later this year.

Immediately after talking with Fripp, I had a brief conversation with Las Vegas resident, NSA member, inspirational speaker and author Judi Moreo.

Her most recent book You Are More Than Enough: Every Woman's Guide To Purpose, Passion & Power is in it's second edition within two months. In this powerful book, Judi shares ideas and techniques which clarified her path and made easier her journey to becoming the person she knew she could be.

To hear Judi talk about the process she used to write the book as well as her views on the conference, click on the podcast icon below.

One of the joys of a Conference like the NSA meeting is the serendipity of chance encounters. I lucked out after lunch when I met Patricia Fripp, doyenne and past-President of the National Speakers Association. She invited me to sit up front at the same table with the past-NSA presidents. We heard a keynote by Ross Schafer which made a huge impact on the audience.

Fripp is one of the best speech coaches in the country. Her website has a great collection of free articles sure to be of interest to every business or professional speaker.

Hear Fripp's unique take on the Conference by clicking on the podcast icon below.

I was introduced to Holly Stiel by Barry Wishner of the NSA Northern California Chapter.

Holly is known as the World's Greatest Concierge. She offers superior customer service training that works for a wide variety of clients, from major hotel chains to Nordstrom, Hewlett-Packard and numerous state and local tourist boards. She is probably the only conference attendee who owns a forest in Gualala.

She can be reached via her website.

To listen to the interview click on the podcast icon below.

Continuing the series of happenstance podcasts from the National Speakers Association 2007 Conference in San Diego, I sat down with Helice "Sparky" Bridges who told me about her amazing blue ribbon campaign 'Who I Am Makes a Difference'. This campaign involves an incredible 26 million school children around the globe.

Helice is the winner of the 2005 Gandhi Nonviolence Award and the author of the book by that title which is filled with heartwarming true stories that reflect the need for acknowledgement, love and gratitude by children everywhere. Something as simple as the blue ribbon acknowledgement process has saved more lives than we'll most likely ever know. Being pinned with a blue ribbon often is the most encouraging experience some kids will ever encounter.

In this interview Helice discusses her vision for the Blue Ribbon campaign and some of the ways that leaders in churches, schools, businesses and neighborhood organizations can get involved. More details are on the blueribbons website and Helice can be contacted at 760-753-0963.

To listen to the interview click on the podcast icon below.

In the first of a series of podcasts with attendees at the 2007 NSA Convention in San Diego, I sat next to Rebecca Dunbar at Tuesday's lunch.

Rebecca is the author of the book Mariah Jennings: The Battle.

In this interview she talks about the book, which is subtitled 'Too holy for the corporation; not holy enough for the church'. She describes how she came to write the book as a result of combining her job in corporate America and her experiences as a Christian. The book teaches timely lessons for modern corporate ethics.

Rebecca is a first-time NSA Convention attendee and talks about her experience of the conference to date.

To listen, click on the podcast icon below.