Johanna Rothman, Management Consultant
Expert in Managing Product Development
Part 1 was mostly about unintentional plagiarism. Part 2 was about copyright and when to reference other people’s work. Now, you’re pretty sure someone has used your words. You’re not talking about someone scraping your blog for your posts. You really mean Person A has stolen your words and passed those words off as Person …
Continue reading “What Writers Can Do About Intended Plagiarism, Part 3”
Many of us writers integrate other people’s ideas. Or, we use those ideas as inspiration for our writing. Can we avoid plagiarism and still acknowledge other people’s work the right way? And, if you can, get “credit” for your “thought leadership?” There’s a lot there to unpack. Let’s start with copyright. Start with Your Copyright As …
Continue reading “How to Use Other People’s Words and Not Plagiarize, Part 2”
I spoke with another writer, Sam, earlier this week. He’s pretty sure a colleague, John, is plagiarizing his blog posts. Not in writing, but in conversation. Yes, John is using Sam’s original words and phrases and passing those words off as John’s ideas. In videos, podcasts, all kinds of “thought leader” work. This happens. All …
Continue reading “What Writers Can Do About Informal Plagiarism, Part 1”
I have finally opened my first writing workshop, Writing Workshop 1: Free Your Inner Writer again. It took me a while to figure out how to organize the workshop so everyone (including me) could succeed. I’m planning to offer the workshop once a quarter. See Q4 2020 Writing Workshop 1 for more details. This workshop …
Continue reading “Writing Workshop to Free Your Inner Writer Open for Registration”
You might wonder why I don’t start writing a proposal with a title. In my experience, a great title is something I need to ponder and experiment with. I do often start with a placeholder title. When I developed this multitasking talk, I used this title: Stop the madness. End the multitasking. That was a …
Your bio establishes your expertise, authority, and credibility in your field. If your conference proposal has a speaking experience field, use that field to explain your expertise, authority, and credibility. I like to think of the bio and speaking experience fields as ways to connect with and invite the right people to your session: These …
You know who your audience is because you framed the proposal. You started with outcomes, and you refined those outcomes when you wrote the abstract. Now it’s time to complete the rest of the proposal, excluding your bio and the title. Bios and titles are different from the rest of the proposal. (Those will be …
You decided who your session is for: the people with the problems. You’ve got the outcomes. Now, it’s time to write the abstract. Conference proposals always have a short abstract. Some conferences, such as the Agile 20xx conferences, also have “Information for the Program Team.” You might think of that as the outline or more …
Now that you’ve framed your proposal, start with what you want people to take away from the talk, the outcomes. Why? Because too many descriptions are a promise for an outcome or what people will learn. If you’re coy about the outcomes, people can’t select themselves in or out for your presentation. Speakers who say, …
You want to present a talk, workshop, experience report at a conference. (Or, a lightning talk, Pecha Kucha, or more.) You have something important to share. How can you create a proposal that the program committee will accept? I’m writing this series to explain how to do just that. The series parts are: Understand who …