How to Get Your Talk Accepted (Not Just Submitted)
Reviewers spend their evenings wading through submissions that read like a form got filled in because a form needed filling in. This is how to avoid being one of them.
Communication
Communication and meaning — how clarity moves between people, and where it fails. Essays 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.
The talk that ate the afternoon
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.
The analogue recommendation engine
A hot Sunday, a stand full of tat, and my 12-year-old turning into a formidable negotiator.
Every Presentation Is an Exchange
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.
The man who took out half of Sheffield
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.
There Is No Perfect Notebook
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.
When a Meeting Isn't a Meeting
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.
The Circles of Contribution
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.
Speaking as Sense-Making: Why Public Speaking Shapes Leadership
Being good at the work isn't the same as being good at explaining it. Public speaking is how ideas move through an organisation — and how to make yours travel.
The Architecture of Clarity
I thought I was researching old printing presses. Instead I found myself studying operating systems. A journey through the archives of the GPO, Braun, Lufthansa and the BBC — and what they were really building beneath the surface.