Content Paint

Communication (Wiring)

Communication and meaning — how clarity moves between people, and where it fails. Articles in this layer explore listening, feedback, trust, language, and the habits that make communication reliable.

Let them eat PowerPoint

A field note on the deck that becomes the point. And brioche.

A photo of Rob Lambert organising a talk using index cards

Here's how to structure a talk with a two-pound stack of index cards - plus the full step-by-step method, free to read in a complimentary edition of The Department of Interesting Things.

A photo of a stall from a carboot sale

A hot Sunday, a stand full of tat, and my 12-year-old turning into a formidable negotiator.

Copies of the Zero to Keynote book

Every presentation is an exchange. The audience gives us their finite resources, and the speaker gives value, perspective, meaning and something worth paying attention to.

A photo of an old telephone

A brilliant, vastly interesting man, a telegraph pole, and half of Sheffield's phones. On the strange gift of fast feedback — and how much better work gets the moment the signal comes back quickly.

Public speaking and the power of the stage

Dame Judi Dench, Louis Theroux and feeling alive on stage. The power of public speaking.

A collection of different notebooks, for different purposes.

There's no perfect notebook — only the right container, with the right rules, for how long a note needs to live. Here's the method, and the six on my desk.

A photo of a desk - Schreibtisch by Möbius, Walter (Herstellung) (Fotograf) - Deutsche Fotothek, Germany - CC BY-SA.

Most meetings that fail aren't badly run. They produce agreement instead of alignment — and the difference between the two is what people do on Thursday.

Japanese circle artwork - Image sourced from the Public Domain Image Archive / Rijksmuseum

A model of how contribution actually travels across a working life. Four concentric modes — Practitioner, Multiplier, Reader, Author — communication as the carrier, and the practice underneath that keeps good ideas moving through work rather than dying on a Thursday afternoon.

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