I told my story on Sunday…

And it was tough and rewarding. I learned about myself, about the generosity of others, about establishing a connection. I wanted to share with you my main insights:

• Find a great intro story: You don’t need to have an exotic, out-of-the-world story, but you need an initial story that has most of the components that will be further developed. And make sure you show your feelings (anger, sadness, disappointment). Stop the story when you have said enough to keep people interested and don’t answer all the questions at the beginning, leave them asking for more
• Make sure your story flows: This was the most difficult part for me. And I iterated on the flow/structure probably 5 times. It’s just very hard, but the flow should be focused on answering the questions that are raising in people’s minds. Once you have finished one story, questions arise, so make sure you answer this questions in the next story. And people want a clear flow, not necessarily linear but clear
• Try to involve your audience: Provide details they can relate to. For example, I used some situations in which I could call out the names of some of the classmates I knew would be there. It just makes the audience feel closer to you
• Show how this story is important to you: I told them at the beginning the reasons why I was giving this talk, which was mostly that I wanted to share about myself before leaving business school, showing them that I was much more than just a smile. I framed my story as “the story behind the smile” what creates this smile and the tears that sometimes are behind it

Hammer Speaks

A couple highlights from Hammer’s visit to class this past Monday

“Why do people use Twitter for trivial information? ‘Who cares what you are eating for breakfast’?” - Hammer responded, saying that Twitter is a way for him to humanize his brain at times.

Hammer’s thoughts on negative YouTube comments - It is important to remember that the people that leave comments usually arent your fans. This is why the majority of them are negative and also why YouTube views dont necessarily translate into album sales.

How’d you get connected into Silicon Valley and prominent investors such as Ron Conway? - Early on Hammer was interested in finding ways to get his videos up on the Internet – which brought him to Silicon Graphics in the Valley.  However, at the time (early to mid 90’s) Hammer was about 8 years too early in making this goal a reality.  He encountered many issues regarding broadband capabilities at the time, but he kept with it and spent time at YouTube in the early days.  During this time, he became an expert on the internet and remained on top of the trends in silicon valley.