Hey Everyone!

I hope you all made it home safely from the Summit, and that those of you who are still on break are having a good time. Some of us had to head back to school yesterday.

When I was at the Summit, one of my favorite speakers was Paul Begala. Honestly, I didn’t know who he was before he spoke on Thursday, but I pretty much loved him just a few minutes in.

Mr. Begala started by talking about how people get information, and that those who are at the “top” of the pyramid (the decision makers) were the ones that were the most informed. He said that 79% of people were in the Mass Opinion section, and were choosing to be ignorant about certain things. As campus leaders, we needed to make people wanted to jump out of the Mass Opinion category and into the Highly Informed one.

John 3:16 can be read in 7 seconds. Did you know that? I didn’t, and I was the one that read it! Mr. Begala taught us that when you only have 7-8 seconds, like most presidential candidates do, you can still convey a strong message. He also taught us that there are six things that are important about a message:

1. A Message is a story - don’t use statistics, use stories! It brings people closer to the issue.
2. Keep it Brief - 7 seconds is all you need sometimes.
3. Make it Emotional
4. Make it Relevant
5. Be Unique - The hard thing about this one is that you still have to be ready to answer any question. Sometimes the ones that seem the easiest, are the hardest.
6. Repeat it, repeat it, repeat it, repeat it, repeat it - Build A Bridge, anyone?

Well, I hope you all enjoyed the Summit (and Paul Begala) as much as I did. Have a great Winter Term!

This entry was posted on Friday, January 4th, 2008 at 2:01 pm and is filed under Power 100. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.