I stepped up the intensity of the “action item” proclamations at my recent seminar at MSM. This was the first seminar at which I recorded video, rather than audio as in previous seminars.

The result: video definitely fires up a new part of the brain! I am definitely going to use this again.

These performers at MSM certainly rose to the challenge. At the culmination of the seminar, I asked if any students would like to volunteer to do a short video recording. They got a bit nervous, but everyone in the group stepped forward to participate.

Most everyone included a touch of humor or levity to their delivery. Some made the entire room, myself included, erupt into laughter. This was different than the audio action items at previous seminars which tended to come out a bit dry.

My strategy is to do anything possible to make a memory out of the experience. Performing in front of their peers and in front of the camera seemed to do just that. It is difficult to make a seminar on the business of singing anything other than dry, so I was delighted to close the workshop with some laughs and some firm commitments.

The videos came out great! I used my new iPhone 4 and a really slick iPhone-to-tripod attachment called The Glif.

Because The Glif was back-ordered, I picked up the attachment from the designer’s studio in Greenwich Village. I was able to meet with Tom Gerhardt and learn a bit about their fantastic entrepreneurial project. Tom and his partner used Kickstarter to raise the funds to launch this amazing product to the mainstream. According to theglif.com:

… We decided to put the Glif’s fate into the hands of the masses and begin a Kickstarter campaign to raise the money required to make it a reality. Kickstarter is a platform that connects creators with people who are interested in helping them out. Our contributors on Kickstarter pledged money towards our goal with no guarantee that we would ever be successful. They took a leap of faith, backed our project, and $137,417 and 5273 backers later here we are. The Glif is a full-fledged crowd-funded product.

If you need to do any video recording for applications, you can certainly get by with the iPhone, The Glif, a tripod, and a good digital voice recorder. The audio on the iPhone won’t be good enough quality for an application, so you will have to dub in your own audio track.

I let these participants know that I will be emailing each of them their individual video clips two weeks, one month, two months, six months and one year from the date of the seminar. My hope is that they will remember the fun they had in making the video and then feel a good positive sense of accountability to the group.

Ultimately, my job is to help inspire an entrepreneurial attitude. The granular skills they pick up and my specific approach (working from priorities -> goals -> action items) may fade or become less relevant over time. But helping to shape attitudes has staying power.

I greatly enjoyed working with these positive and intelligent singers at MSM and I look forward to following up with them.