Conferences, Camera Angles, Videos: ID Links 9/1/26

As I read online, I bookmark resources I find interesting and useful. I share these links about once a month here on my blog. This post includes links related to conferences, camera angles, videos, scenarios, working with clients, and LinkedIn tips for job seekers.

Conferences

In Defence of Conferences – by Tom McDowall

Tom McDowall reflects on how conferences serve different purposes depending on where you are in your career and what your professional goals are. Consider his questions when making choices about what’s worth your time and money to attend. The biggest and most popular conference might not be right for you, depending on your goals.

Ahead of booking or agreeing to go to anything, ask yourself two questions: What elements of my practice do I want to focus on? What do I want to deliberately improve over the coming twelve months? Once you know the answer to that, then and only then should you start thinking about: Which events in the calendar could support me on that journey?

—Tom McDowall

elearn Magazine: Writing (And Reading) Conference Session Descriptions

Clark Quinn reminded me of this article from 15 years ago about writing proposals to speak at conferences. Even though the article is older, the advice is evergreen, and it overlaps with some of the same key points I shared in my recent podcast interview on conference speaking. He also talks about titles and other aspects I didn’t address.

What makes a compelling audience experience? What will make them leave in a state of gratitude for the time spent with you?

You need to be answering three questions: Why should I care, how will this accomplish my goal, and why this speaker? In business, what’s the pain point I’m feeling, how will this session address it.

—Clark Quinn

Camera angles

The Psychology of Camera Angles: How Perspective Shapes Every Photo – PhotoWorkout

As I work with AI images and video more, I find myself needing to learn more about camera angles—how to describe what I want and how to be more deliberate in my choices. This article about the psychology of camera angles and how they affect how the viewer feels about an image.

The Ultimate Guide to Camera Angles & Shots (with AI Prompt Examples for Storytelling)

A guide to different types of shots plus camera angles. This includes examples so you can see the difference (although they’re not amazing AI-generated images, they still serve the purpose). The sample prompts give you examples of how to describe and ask for different results. There’s also some tips on combining shot types and camera angles (like close up and low angle) for different effects.

Videos

I hired an AI agent to edit my videos

Ross Stevenson explains how he uses Riverside’s AI features for editing videos to avoid the tedious parts of editing and polishing.

Seedance 2.5 animation prompts: the ultimate guide to 10 styles | Magnific Blog

While I feel fairly confident describing images in prompts, I know I have a ton more to learn about prompting for video, including for animation. This article gives examples of prompts in different animation styles. It’s helpful to see both the repeated patterns in the prompt structure (starting with the medium, listing numbered shots, describing emotions) and the specific keywords to convey different styles.

Scenarios

How to Design Better Branching Scenarios: Start With the Decision

This article by Garima Gupta has a lot of overlap with my own process for writing branching scenarios (e.g., asking questions to narrow down the specific behavior, identifying decision points first). I like her explanation of the “mental model” behind the choices to get more believable options.

A stronger approach is to make each choice represent a different way someone might genuinely interpret the situation. One manager might think, “I need to establish authority before this gets out of control.” Another might think, “They are upset, so I should probably leave the performance issue for another day.” Someone else might decide they need more information before responding. These are not random distractors. They represent different mental models.

The question I would use is: what is the least complex structure that still allows the learner to practise the thing that matters? Branching complexity should follow the learning need rather than become a goal in itself.

—Garima Gupta

Name Generator Tools

Wordineer has name generators organized by continent and country, primarily European and Asian names. You can generate first and last names and pick options like the type of surname and the meaning.

SCQA: What is it, how does it work, and how can it help me? – Analytic Storytelling

I’d run across this model before in business communication, but Jean Marrapodi brought it to my attention again recently. This is really a story framework for presentations or reports where you want to communicate information. It could work as an overarching pattern in an explainer video or training too. It’s less suited to interactive stories or branching scenarios, but you could adapt it to work there too.

Working with clients

Why Silence Scares Your Clients (And How to Fix It)

Clients get anxious when they don’t hear from you, even if you’re working hard and making great progress. Proactive status updates reduce client stress and make you easier to work with. This is a great approach for L&D freelancers and consultants, and very similar to the structure I use for my own weekly updates to clients. I learned this lesson myself early in my freelancing career.

Clients don’t judge your expertise purely by the quality of your final deliverable. They judge it by how safe they feel while waiting for it.

LinkedIn tips for job seekers

LinkedIn Content Strategy for Job Seekers: 5 Posts That Get You Noticed

Knowing how many folks in my network are looking for work, I thought this list of tips for job seekers for posting on LinkedIn would be helpful.

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