Our friend, T.J. Walker , CEO of Media Training Worldwide and top communications expert, offers practical advice about getting feedback from the home team before you take your speech on the road in front of bigger audiences. He encourages you to try out your speech with a smaller audience – a “free focus group.”

Evoca can help you rehearse and get feedback. Record your speech using your phone, just like a mic, use Skype, or our online recorder.  Then email the voice recording right from your Evoca Express account to your inner circle to get feedback. Listen to it yourself, too. Once you’ve perfected it, you can email the entire recording or excerpts to the media in the cities where you are scheduled to deliver it. Need a transcription, too? You can order it online or email it to your in-house transcriber.

Take it away T.J. …

So you have just finished what you think is one of your run-of-the mill presentations, but this time it is to a group twice the normal size in one of your regional offices. After your speech, you are approached by three people.

• Suzy says to you, “Great job on the presentation.”

• Sam says, “Nice speech today!”

• Finally, Jim says (with a big smile), “I won’t forget your speech today, that’s for sure.”

You smile to your colleagues and you smile to yourself. You think, “Darn it, I AM good.” There is only one problem: your speech may have been horrible. How can that be, you may ask, given all of the unsolicited praise? Unfortunately, praise like that is meaningless when it is so general and abstract. Let’s look again at the praise you received.

• Suzy says, “Great job on the presentation.” What she really means is “Please recommend me for that promotion to New York City.”

• Sam says, “Nice speech today!” What he really means is, “I deserve a raise.”

• And when Jim says, “I won’t forget your speech today, that’s for sure.” He really means, “I won’t forget it because you put me to sleep in the first 30 seconds and I never heard it in the first place. Thanks for the time to catch up on my shuteye!”

When you receive praise from audience members immediately after you speak, here is what you should do if you are looking for meaningful feedback.

• Say, “Thank you. What part of the speech stands out for you?” or “What part of the speech was most helpful.”

If the person complimenting you says something like, “Oh, everything about your speech was great,” then you know your speech was a disaster and the person complimenting you is just giving your praise for other reasons, perhaps sympathy.

You should always probe audience members for what they remember in your speech. Which stories stick in their brains? How would they summarize your speech to a colleague tomorrow who was not in attendance? This research is golden for a speaker and it is FREE!

If you try out new material or a new story in a speech and nobody comments on it, maybe it wasn’t so great after all. If everyone tells you after the speech that they loved the story you told (almost as an afterthought) near the end of your speech about the time you went to San Diego and pulled an all-nighter with your team in order to close the sale the next day, then maybe you give that story a more prominent placement in your next presentation, as long as it makes the point you desire.

Great speakers are often great because they use each and every single speech as an opportunity to get a free focus group on how to improve for their next speech. You can to, as long as your probe your audience members after you receive compliments.

Copyright 2010 TJ Walker

Recording your voice has always been easy with Evoca using any phone, Skype, or computer mic. For Evoca subscribers using their phones to record valuable content such as interviews, conference calls, voice-overs, opinions, testimonials, language lessons, and stories, we have added France, Denmark, Finland, and Norway. This brings our Evoca worldwide phone coverage to 28 international cities and 34 cities in the United States.

Denmark: +45 78 77 50 08
Finland: +358 94 2419 190
France: +33 1 82 88 25 37
Norway: +47 21 05 82 36

Evoca access currently includes the European countries of Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, along with Israel and Australia, and countries in Asia and South America. International numbers are listed at the end of the blog post. If you would like to request a phone number for your country, email Evoca Business Development and we will research its availability.

If you are new to Evoca, you can sign up for a free trial subscription and start recording from your phone immediately:

• Call, speak, hang up (or listen, erase and re-record)
• Recordings are instantly saved to your Evoca Express account as MP3 recordings
• You can email the recording, share it online using a standard viral player widgets, post it to Twitter — or keep it private
• For subscribers who want to customize player widgets, they can use our Evoca player wizard to brand it, size it, include an image to make a talking photo, select different player behaviors like loops and instant playback, and lots more.
• It is also convenient to record a phone interview or Skype interview. Conference call recordings are just as easy.

You can learn more at our online How To section at www.evoca.com/how-to and our Evoca YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/evoca. To use another Evoca audio content creation tool, WordPress users can get information about adding the Evoca Audio Recorder plugin to their websites or blogs at the WordPress.org website or the Evoca website.

Here is a complete list of Evoca international phone numbers:

With media companies around the world seeking ways to increase their journalists’ reach and productivity, Evoca (www.evoca.com), the leading global voice-to-web recording service, has been cited as the essential tool to do it. Both professional and citizen journalists use Evoca to record and podcast interviews with newsmakers in the political, financial, environmental, entertainment, travel, domestic and international security, and other dynamic sectors. They also can instantly tweet the entire interview recording or use audio clips for radio programs, voice-overs in videos, and audio highlights embedded in online articles.

Evoca subscriber Orlando Montoya, Savannah-based news producer for Georgia Public Broadcasting (http://www.gpb.org/), is the Voice of the Coast across the state and nation.  Montoya explains how he uses Evoca’s phone-to-web service to record timely interviews from anywhere.

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Montoya cites “With Evoca I can do interviews for the radio wherever I am with a cell phone. Before, I had to make an appointment, drive to the radio station, and hope the production room was free.” In addition to initiating his outbound mobile call from the field or his home office, he adds, “Now I can give my subjects my telephone number. If I am driving I can pull over; it comes directly downloaded to my account and sends me an email that it’s there. And it sounds good.”

As a veteran reporter, Montoya observes that “in these times that we are in, we are doing more with less and we have to be more efficient as an organization.” He says he has been able to “become more flexible and efficient as a reporter.” Orlando Montoya’s reports can be heard across the state on GPB’s 16-station state-wide radio network and locally on WSVH 91.1 FM in Savannah and WWIO 88.9 FM in Brunswick. Montoya’s beat includes such diverse issues as tropical storms, troop deployments, the environment, political scandals, education, art, music, history and culture.

Instructions for recording an interview using any phone are found at Evoca’s YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/evoca#p/u/0/f_kpsEus9Ho and online How To guide: www.evoca.com/how-to/create-recordings/record-phone-interviews/. Recording interviews using Skype is just as easy, as the Evoca team explains on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/evoca#p/u/4/FugVzEUtAG8 and in our online How To guide: http://www.evoca.com/how-to/create-recordings/record-skype-interviews.  With interviews as a popular method of communication, many writers, researchers, human resources professionals, historians, genealogists, psychologists, and alumni groups find Evoca an easy tool for both the interviewer and interviewee when in-person meetings are not convenient.

Pointing to Evoca’s mission to offer easy-to-use web and phone services to support journalists, bloggers, activists, and anyone with something to say, Evoca CEO Murem Sharpe recalls, “Evoca chose the tagline ‘Empower your voice’ to underscore this mission.” She adds, “We have become an ideal tool for professional and citizen journalists, bloggers, writers, and activists, who understand that real voices from real people make their stories fresh, compelling, and genuine.” Transcriptions of recordings are also available through online ordering.

About Evoca
Evoca (http://www.evoca.com/) is a leading global Voice-to-Web services provider, enabling businesses, organizations and individuals to easily create and share interviews, testimonials, opinions, stories, and language lessons using phone, Skype™, and its browser microphone. Its online recorder also enables recording through any computer mic. Evoca subscribers can share recordings on Facebook, Twitter, websites, and blogs by posting player widgets streamed by Evoca or use recordings within a private group. Evoca’s YouTube channel subscribers how to use its features to record and share interviews, conference calls, testimonials, comments, language practice sessions, voice-overs, storytelling, and for many other audio-based content creation purposes.

Evoca Express is available online as a 30-day free trial, Pro, Local, or Toll-free subscription. Subscribers access the call recording feature by dialing any of its worldwide public phone numbers or Skype (http://www.evoca.com/skype/), and also can get dedicated local or toll-free telephone numbers in over 45 countries and more than 5,000 cities around the globe to invite their audiences and followers to record news, comments, and opinions. It is delivered through Evoca’s highly scalable “Software-as-a-Service” media platform. Large organizations, other web services, and telecommunications partners also can license Evoca Enterprise, its multi-media, enterprise-grade platform delivered through a flexible interface (RESTful HTTP API – applications programming interface).

For more information, visit www.evoca.com or contact Evoca at +1.212.372.7670, toll-free U.S./Canada +1-866-940-9988, businessdevelopment@evoca.com, use our online contact form http://www.evoca.com/contact.php, or record your message using our Skype call recorder contact: evoca-bizdev-call-recorder. Any Evoca Express subscriber can receive the Evoca Express webinar training schedule by emailing: customerservice@evoca.com.

©2010 Evoca LLC. All rights reserved. All copyrights and trademarks mentioned herein are property of their respective owners.

As an avid user of Evoca phone-to-web services to podcast her literary work online, Alice Shapiro, Atlanta-based poet and Pushcart Prize nominee has partnered with Evoca to launch The Change Interviews project to enable Pushcart Prize winners and 2010 nominees to share their spoken words online. Authors’ voices are recorded and podcast For The Change Interviews project using Evoca’s phone-to-web services.

Annually about 60 authors from dozens of presses in the independent publishing field are named Pushcart Prize winners. Outstanding works of fiction, poetry, memoirs and essays are published in the anthology The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses. Founding Editors of the annual anthology include Paul Bowles, Ralph Ellison, Joyce Carol Oates and Reynolds Price. Since 1976 thousands of authors have been honored by the Pushcart Press, recognized as one of the most influential publishers in American history. It was founded by Bill Henderson in 1972, publishing its first book in 1973, Henderson’s The Publish It Yourself Handbook. A harbinger of the contemporary self-publishing market, Henderson initially distributed his book by foot and auto.

Inspired by an author’s instinct to convey the sound of words through readings, Alice Shapiro explained, “I use Evoca as a virtual Internet microphone. I can turn the world into a poetry reading stage, reaching a much broader global audience than traveling from bookstore to bookstore.” Using the phone registered to her Evoca account to make each interview recording, Shapiro asks each author to describe the impact of their association with the prestigious Pushcart Prize and to recite their poems. Upon hang-up, the interview recording is instantly saved as an MP3 recording to her Evoca account. Then she copies and pastes the Evoca-generated player widget code into her website.

Featured poets include Elena Karina Byrne, Bryan Borland, Alice Shapiro, Ray Sharp, Cassie Premo Steele, Lynne Thompson, Bobbie Troy, and Lorraine A. Vail. For example, Ray Sharp, nominated poet, talks about what led him to compose Threnody for the Survivors of September 11, 2001 and recites his own poem.

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The Change Interviews also are available online at Shapiro’s Evoca account for listening and downloading for non-commercial use. Anyone interested in automatically savings new recordings to iTunes or a computer file can subscribe to The Change Interviews RSS feed. Author of poetry collection Cracked: Timeless Topics of Nature, Courage, and Endurance, Shapiro’s poetry readings are streamed from Evoca servers to her website. Shapiro chose Evoca’s phone interview recording method; other Evoca subscribers use the Evoca Skype call recorder to record interviews.

Evoca CEO Murem Sharpe observes, “At a time when the publishing industry is grappling with fierce competition, disruptive technologies, and content ownership controversy, it is refreshing to simply listen to writers recite their work and talk about it. Evoca makes it possible to have this very human listening experience. The Evoca team is pleased that our easy-to-use digital media technologies have contributed to the creation and distribution of authors’ voices.”

About Evoca
Evoca (http://www.evoca.com/) is a leading global Voice-to-Web services provider, enabling businesses, organizations, educators, and individuals to easily create and share interviews, testimonials, opinions, stories, and language lessons using phone, Skype™, and its browser microphone. Its online recorder also enables recording through any computer mic. Evoca subscribers can share recordings on Facebook, Twitter, websites, and blogs by posting player widgets streamed by Evoca or use recordings within a private group. Evoca uses Google Translate to enable its worldwide subscribers to sign up, access its user guide, and record and share languages from around the globe.

Evoca Express is available online as a 30-day free trial, Pro, Local, or Toll-free subscription. Subscribers access the call recording feature by dialing any of its worldwide public phone numbers or Skype, and also can get dedicated local or toll-free telephone numbers in over 45 countries and more than 5,000 cities around the globe. It is delivered through Evoca’s highly scalable “Software-as-a-Service” media platform.

Large organizations, other web services, and telecommunications partners also can license Evoca Enterprise, its multi-media, enterprise-grade platform delivered through a flexible interface (RESTful HTTP API – applications programming interface).

For more information, visit www.evoca.com or contact Evoca at +1.212.372.7670, toll-free U.S./Canada +1-866-940-9988, businessdevelopment@evoca.com, use our online contact form, or record your message using our Skype call recorder contact: evoca-bizdev-call-recorder. Any Evoca Express subscriber can receive the Evoca Express webinar training schedule by emailing: customerservice@evoca.com.

HealthyPlace.com, the largest consumer mental health site on the Internet, invites real people to record first-person stories using Evoca’s voice-to-web services. With one in five Americans having some form of mental illness in any six-month period, information about mental health topics is in demand. Responding to this growing need, HealthyPlace.com is providing authoritative information and support for people who have mental health concerns, estimated at 35 to 50 million people in the U.S. alone. HealthyPlace chose Evoca to deliver its engaging social media feature, “Share Your Mental Health Experiences”, accessible by calling toll-free 1-888-883-8045. Evoca’s digital media technology service transforms any phone into an Internet microphone.

To hear what other people are saying on HealthyPlace.com, visitors can click on the Flash player widgets located throughout the HealthyPlace.com website. Some examples are:

* HealthyPlace home page: http://www.healthyplace.com/
* Sharing Your Mental Health Experiences feature: http://www.healthyplace.com/support/home/
* Guide to share experiences: http://bit.ly/45xeTM
* Focus on a specific disorder: http://bit.ly/ONBUW

“Before using Evoca, we had people share their stories in writing. But you don’t get the full emotional sense of what somebody is going through if it’s just on paper”, explains Gary Koplin, HealthyPlace CEO and founder. “Most people aren’t great writers. And so to hear them talk and share their story and feel the full emotion in their voice brings their story, their feeling to a whole different level.” Followers can also respond to other people’s audio posts and the e-newletter’s topic of the week.

Evoca has increased valuable user-generated content for this multi-media business, which also includes HealthyPlace Internet TV and radio. Koplin adds, “I love Evoca and the people who come to our website love Evoca. It’s extremely simple to use. All you have to do is dial an 800 number and use it. So there’s no big trick to using it and that’s why our customers like it too.” Experts scheduled to appear on its TV and radio shows also use Evoca to record audio clips that are posted to attract audiences.

New and returning visitors to HealthyPlace.com make audio posts about mental health treatments or any mental health subject. Participants also can talk into an in-browser recorder, another Evoca recording creation method. The HealthyPlace team easily screens, tags, and publishes recordings through viral player widgets using a convenient, secure online dashboard. To embed a player widget into their blogs, websites, Facebook, and other social media, or email it, anyone can click on the player’s share button.

Listen to the interview recording of Gary Koplin, HealthyPlace CEO, by Murem Sharpe, Evoca CEO. Gary has an inspiring story to tell about the founding of HealthyPlace and also shares his experience with using Evoca to empower the voices of HealthyPlace.

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About Evoca

Evoca (http://www.evoca.com/) is a leading global Voice-to-Web services provider, enabling businesses, organizations and individuals to easily create, post, and share fresh, engaging voice recordings using any phone, Skype™, and its browser microphone. Evoca Express is available as a free 30-day trial, Pro, Local, or Toll-free subscriptions. It provides voice recording and online digital content distribution services through its highly scalable “Software-as-a-Service” media platform, providing worldwide public phone numbers, as well as dedicated local and toll-free telephone numbers available in over 45 countries and more than 5,000 cities around the globe.

Evoca’s Twitter audio update feature, TweeVoca, enables posting of audio recordings to this popular micro-blogging site. Evoca subscribers can also share recordings on Facebook, MySpace, websites, and blogs by posting digital media players streamed by Evoca. Large organizations and partners can license, Evoca Enterprise, its multi-media platform delivered through a flexible interface (RESTful HTTP API – applications programming interface).

For more information, visit www.evoca.com or contact Evoca at +1.212.372.7670, toll-free U.S./Canada +1-866-940-9988, businessdevelopment@evoca.com, use our online contact form http://www.evoca.com/contact.php, or record your message using our Skype call recorder contact: evoca-bizdev-call-recorder. Any Evoca Express subscriber can receive the Evoca Express webinar training schedule by emailing: customerservice@evoca.com.

TJ Walker, friend of Evoca and one of the one of the leading authorities on media and presentation training in the world, shares his insights about the power of using stories in your presentations. His message: dialog makes your message genuine. Even if you’re not a born public speaker or joke-teller, the humor and emotion of a true story can put a smile on the faces of your audience members or an “uh huh” of understanding and connection.

Here is TJ’s sound advice, excerpted from his recent blog article:

Most of us use dialogue quite naturally when we are telling our friends and families interesting stores about what happened in our day. Many great humorous stories are told in a dialogue format. But the first thing most business presenters do is to strip the dialogue out of presentations because they think it is somehow not “professional” or “businesslike.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Of course it is possible to say things that are unprofessional during a presentation, but that is a function of what you are saying, not because you said it in an interesting manner.

When you tell a story using dialogue, several positive things occur all at once:

1. By introducing another character, you make your story more interesting.
2. Speaking in dialogue takes you away from the position of a God-like narrator from above and puts you down on the ground in a non-abstract position for your audience.
3. When you say the words that someone else said to you, you change the tone of your voice. This makes you less monotonous to listen to.
4. When you insert dialog, you naturally pause in-between characters. This pausing makes you sound more conversational and more interesting.
5. With dialog, you might even slightly mimic the other person’s tone of voice, thus providing more sound variety for your audience.
6. By using dialog, you are by definition, making your presentation more conversational, less abstract, and therefore easier to follow for your audience.
7. By using dialog, you are necessarily slowing down the delivery of new facts to your audience, thus giving them a chance to catch up and absorb your most important points.

Of course it is possible to give a good presentation without using stores with dialog, but you are making it much harder on yourself if you try. All great speakers sprinkle dialogue throughout their presentations, no matter how complex, difficult or technical the subject matter. All lousy, boring speakers studiously avoid the use of dialogue.

Thank you, TJ for your permission to share your words of wisdom!

Here are a few more ideas from the Evoca team:

• Practice your presentations — stories and all — using Evoca Express. You can use your phone, Browser Mic, or Skype to record and then email the recording to a trusted friend or mentor to give you feedback before you step into the lights. Try it out at: https://www.evoca.com/signup/signup.jsp

• Share your recorded presentation online on your website, blog, and Facebook page using Evoca’s viral Flash player widgets. Use the copy/paste code we auto-generate for you.  If you record your final “live” presentation, you can upload the recording to your Evoca account and then embed the Flash player widget exactly where you want it to appear. Just like this:

• “Tweet” the recording to your Twitter account using Evoca’s handy TweeVoca feature that enables you to “click and post” Twitter audio updates.

• Ask your fans,  supporters, and customers for feedback. You can embed a Browser Mic in your WordPress blog, other blogs and your website to invite audio comments. Keep the recordings private to help your learning process, or if you want to share the comments with the world online, post them using an Evoca Flash player widget.

You can get More Insights from TJ Walker & Jess Todtfeld at http://www.tjwalker.com and www.SpeakingInsider.com.

TJ’s article – Media Training Worldwide  – Copyright 2010

Evoca LLC – Copyright 2010

Inspired by the annual “National Day of Listening” sponsored by StoryCorps and National Public Radio, Evoca makes family storytelling and recording a daily event during the holidays and year-round.

Using 21st century Internet and phone technologies Evoca launched “Every Day of Listening” to enable family members who are getting together at Grandma’s house or even across the ocean from each other to record using any phone, Skype, and a computer mic. With a shared Evoca account, creating a family audio memory album is possible whether family members can get together in person or not.

Getting underway is easy. The family “organizer” signs up online for an Evoca Express Pro subscription and registers up to 30 phone numbers of the family members who can call to record stories, memories, and humor. For family members located in different countries or any Skype users, 30 Skype accounts can also be registered. The organizer can sign up for a free trial subscription to practice. Then any family member with a registered phone number or Skype account simply dials any Evoca public phone number, hears the cheerful Evoca greeting: “Welcome to Evoca. Record after the beep and hang up when you’re done”, talks, and hangs up. The recording is instantly stored in the family account as an MP3 recording. Recording a Skype call starts by clicking on the Evoca Skype Call Recorder contact in your Skype account. Since Evoca is a web service, no software downloads or updates are required.

J’miah Nabawi, national award-winning storyteller, teaching and performing artist, and Evoca’s Artist-in-Residence offered, “Everyone has a story to tell. With Evoca, precious stories of family members, especially our elders, can be captured, shared, and saved for future generations.” He added, “We applaud StoryCorps and National Public Radio for encouraging the telling and sharing of family members’ stories. We are thrilled that Evoca makes it possible for anyone, anywhere to share their stories, short or long, simply by picking up their phone. They also can include singing, music, and laughter for their loved ones to hear.”

Two family members can easily record together with one of them asking questions and the other giving the answers. StoryCorps calls them “interview partners” and offers a terrific “Great Questions” guide. Evoca provides step by step instructions about how to record an interview by phone or Skype. The family can even record a group of people in “conference call” style using Evoca’s phone or Skype features. Evoca also provides its subscribers with a Browser Mic, an in-browser Flash recorder, which can also be embedded in a family genealogy website or blog to collect voice recordings using any computer mic.

The recordings can be kept private, emailed to family members, downloaded to a CD to mail to Grandma, or posted to family and genealogy websites, blogs, and social networking profiles such as Facebook. RSS feeds can alert family members to new recordings that they can add to their  Tunes, iPhones and iPods. Transcriptions are available through Evoca’s online transcription service.

About Evoca

Evoca is a leading global Voice-to-Web services provider, enabling businesses, organizations and individuals to easily create, post, and share fresh, engaging voice recordings using any phone, Skype™, and its browser microphone. Evoca Express (www.evoca.com) is available as a Free 30-day trial, Pro, Local, and Toll-free subscription. It provides voice recording and online digital content distribution services through its highly scalable “Software-as-a-Service” media platform, providing worldwide public phone numbers, as well as dedicated telephone numbers available in over 45 countries and more than 5,000 cities around the globe.

Organizations of any size can easily integrate and customize Evoca features into their online properties, marketing programs, education and language training courses, and customer-facing operations. Evoca launched its Twitter audio update application, TweeVoca to enable posting of audio recordings to this popular micro-blogging site. Evoca subscribers can also “share” recordings on Facebook, MySpace, websites, and blogs by posting digital media players streamed by Evoca. Large organizations and partners can also benefit from Evoca Enterprise, its multi-media platform delivered through a flexible interface (RESTful HTTP API – applications programming interface).

For more information, visit www.evoca.com or contact Evoca at +1.212.372.7670, toll-free U.S./Canada +1-866-940-9988, businessdevelopment@evoca.com, use our online contact form http://www.evoca.com/contact.php, or record your message using our Skype call recorder contact: evoca-bizdev-call-recorder. Any Evoca Express subscriber can receive the Evoca Express training schedule by emailing: customerservice@evoca.com.

©2009 Evoca LLC. All rights reserved.  All copyrights and trademarks mentioned herein are property of their respective owners.

Evoca for Educators™ provides educators and students with an easy, affordable method to record language learning exercises and other subjects that benefit from audio recording and teacher feedback.  Now a teacher or professor can register their students’ phone numbers and/or Skype accounts to make it easy to record audio assignments straight from their phones or computers.  It’s a web service so no downloads are required.  Read on.

How Evoca for Educators™ was launched is described by Murem Sharpe, Evoca CEO: “High school and middle school teachers asked the Evoca team for a way that students could use their phones to record practice assignments because many students and families could not afford a computer at home. They needed an accessible, affordable solution to offer to their Advanced Placement (AP) language students preparing for the College Board tests in Spanish, French, German,  and Japanese, and while learning other foreign languages during their cultural and religious instruction.  English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers also wanted their students to practice outside of class.”

The story is somewhat different, but equally compelling for higher education. Sharpe continues, “University and e-learning professors needed a way for their active students to use their mobile phones to record audio assignments. Students are often on the move between classes, work, and home. Evoca is meeting these important logistical challenges and delivering tangible learning opportunities with its Evoca for Educators program.”  As adults, university students often get their own Evoca accounts and email the recordings to their professors to get feedback.

Evoca turns any phone into a digital microphone. The phone is connected to the Internet without the user having to download any software or worry about updates. Students simply dial any of Evoca’s publicly available numbers. Evoca’s technology instantly recognizes the students’ registered phone numbers and saves the recordings to the educator’s Evoca account as digital (MP3) recordings, auto-tagged with the students’ names and course numbers. The recordings are always available online for the educator to listen and email the recording to the student with valuable feedback. Educators also can register their U.S. and international students’ Skype accounts, enabling them to record from anywhere in the world, just like having a global toll-free phone number.

Educators with a blog or website can also invite their students to record online using the embeddable Evoca Browser Mic, an in-browser Flash recorder. After recording, the student can add her/his email address, comments, or other identification in data fields associates with their recordings. Recorder “plugins” are available for popular web programs such as WordPress TypePad, Blogger, and Drupal, as well as a generic plugin for any website, blog, or social media profile.

In addition to foreign language and ESL (English as a Second Language) training, educators in “seated” public and private schools and universities, as well as e-learning organizations around the world are benefitting from Evoca’s Voice-to-Web services for a wide range of audio assignments. Any educator can use the convenient online sign up for an Evoca Express Pro subscription and have their students recording the same day. The program’s applications include:

High schools and middle schools
•     Advanced Placement (AP) foreign language test practice sessions
•     Beginning through advanced level language course assignments
•     English — including ESL (English as a Second Language)
•     Performing arts, writing, poetry, elocution, and speech classes
•     Oral history and storytelling courses
•     Job and college admissions interview role-playing

Universities, colleges, and eLearning organizations
•     Foreign language courses and practice sessions
•     English — including ESL (English as a Second Language)
•     Clinical training and intake interviews — psychology and other professions
•     Performing arts, writing, poetry, elocution, and speech classes
•     Oral history and storytelling classes
•     Clinical intake interview training
•     Job and graduate school interview role-playing
•     Journalism field assignments
•     Scientific research projects

About Evoca
Evoca is a leading global Voice-to-Web services provider, enabling businesses, organizations and individuals to easily create, post, and share fresh, engaging voice recordings using any phone, Skype™, and its browser microphone. Evoca Express is available as a Free 30-day Trial Pro, Local, and Toll-free subscription. It provides voice recording and online distribution services through its highly scalable “Software-as-a-Service” media platform, providing worldwide public phone numbers, as well as dedicated telephone numbers available in over 45 countries and more than 5,000 cities around the globe.

Organizations of any size can easily integrate and customize Evoca features into their online properties, marketing programs, education and language training courses, and customer-facing operations. Evoca launched its Twitter audio update application, TweeVoca to enable posting of audio recordings to this popular micro-blogging site. Evoca subscribers can also “share” recordings on Facebook, MySpace, websites, and blogs by posting digital media players streamed by Evoca. Large organizations and partners can also benefit from Evoca Enterprise, its media platform delivered through a flexible interface (RESTful HTTP API – applications programming interface).

For more information, visit www.evoca.com or contact Evoca at +1.212.372.7670, toll-free U.S./Canada +1-866-940-9988, businessdevelopment@evoca.com, use our online contact form, record your message with our Skype call recorder contact: evoca-bizdev-call-recorder.

We’re pleased to let you know that our Browser Mic plugin for  WordPress 2.7 and above users is available, making it easy for customers, fans, and supporters of WordPress users to record comments, opinions, stories, and feedback.  By adding Evoca’s online Flash recorder widgets to their websites, blogs, and social media profiles, they can increase interaction with their online visitors, who they can invite to add comments, opinions, stories, and language practice sessions of value to the host and the visitors. The Evoca Browser Mic operates like a global toll-free phone number without any telecommunications fees.

Our mission is to increase ROI — Return on Interaction™ — by enabling our subscribers to engage their online visitors with audio commenting. Given the enormous popularity of WordPress.org as a web publishing platform, Evoca is supporting the WordPress community’s interest in useful plugins by offering the Evoca Browser Mic.  Evoca’s Browser Mic attracts fresh, compelling user-generated content every day. The genius of WordPress is that it combines the dynamic content of a blog with the static content of a traditional website.

In addition to the Browser Mic plugin available for WordPress version 2.7 and above, Evoca offers plugins for WordPress 2.6 and below, TypePad, Blogger, Drupal, and a generic plugin that will work on all sites that allow copy/paste HTML and enable Flash objects. Recorders can be embedded on one or more pages to invite comments about different topics. Recordings are instantly saved to the Evoca Express subscriber’s account and can be streamed through Evoca Flash players on any website, blog, and social media profile to share with the world or kept private to share with a customer service team.

Using the Browser Mic online visitors can opt in to tag their recordings with their email addresses and additional typed comments, which is highly valuable information for commercial, nonprofit, and political organizations that are building email lists. Evoca also alerts the subscriber with an email message when a new voice comment is created and saved as an MP3 recording to their Evoca Express account.

“Evoca’s WordPress recorder plugin is a terrific tool to help companies connect with their customers. Using actual voices to deliver customer testimonials, supporters’ opinions, and fans’ enthusiasm makes the online experience genuine and believable”, contributes Jonathan Nery, CEO of the Kloudgroup, the digital media consultancy. “Because it’s our job to create strategies and design for effective web communication, we have embraced WordPress as a web development platform for its agility and easy integration with social media applications like Evoca.”

Here are some FAQs:

How does the Evoca Express Browser Mic plug-in work?
When you install the plug-in, we will place a voice recorder in your blog or website’s navigation bar. Any user that visits your site can leave you a voice recording using this plug-in.

Where will the voice comments go?
Any new voice recording that is made will be stored in your Evoca Express account. You will find the recordings made using the plug-in under “Comments” in your Evoca Express home page.

Can I post the voice recordings to my blog or website?
Yes! All recordings that are made will come with a custom HTML code you can use to post a voice comment into your blog. So, if a reader leaves you a voice comment that you want to share on your blog, all you do is copy and paste the HTML code provided into your blog post, and your readers will be able to listen through the players we provide. The “Share” button on the player enables your online visitors to instantly post it to their Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, and other social media sites as well as email and bookmark it.

Does the person who leaves me a voice message need to install any software?
No. The Evoca Express Browser Mic plug-in uses standard browser technology to enable readers to record using their existing settings. All they need is a computer microphone. By simply clicking on the “Record” button, they are ready to go!

Are the recordings saved as public or private?
All recordings are saved as “private” in your Evoca Express account under “Comments”. You can move the recording to your My home page , keep it private, or make it public to stream from a player in your Evoca Express account or that you embed in your website, blog, or social media profile.

How will I know when a reader leaves me an audio message?
We will send you an email each time you get a recording with a handy link to go straight to listen.

About Evoca

Evoca is a leading global Voice-to-Web services provider, enabling organizations and individuals to easily create, post, and share fresh, engaging voice recordings using any phone, Skype, and its browser microphone. Evoca Express is available as a Free 30-day Trial, Pro, Local, and Toll-free subscription. It provides voice recording and online distribution services through its highly scalable “Software-as-a-Service” media platform, providing worldwide public phone numbers, as well as dedicated telephone numbers available in over 45 countries and more than 5,000 cities around the globe.

Organizations of any size can easily integrate and customize Evoca features into their online properties, marketing programs, education and language training courses, and customer-facing operations. Evoca launched its Twitter audio update application, TweeVoca, to enable posting of audio recordings to this popular micro-blogging site. Evoca subscribers can also “share” recordings on Facebook, MySpace, websites, and blogs by posting digital media players streamed by Evoca. Large organizations and partners can also benefit from Evoca Enterprise, its media platform delivered through a flexible interface (RESTful HTTP API – applications programming interface).

For more information, visit www.evoca.com or contact Evoca at +1.212.372.7670, toll-free U.S./Canada +1-866-940-9988, businessdevelopment@evoca.com or using our Skype call recorder contact: evoca-bizdev-call-recorder.

The first in a series of free WordUp Workshops for aspiring and experienced storytellers to learn about, practice, and share storytelling techniques is scheduled for Wednesday, August 26 at 7:00 PM at the Bull Street Library Branch of the Live Oak Public Libraries, located in the first floor auditorium at 2202 Bull Street (north of 37th Street), Savannah, GA.

The program begins with a “How To” session delivered by J’miah Nabawi, Savannah’s national award-winning Master Storyteller, Teaching Artist in the Chatham County school system and educational and community programs throughout the United States, and Performing Artist at the renowned Savannah Music Festival.  “Everyone has a story to tell”, says Mr. Nabawi, “especially here in Savannah. We are reaching out to storytellers of all ages and experience levels to create stories from our treasure trove of memoirs, humor, folklore, history, and experiences.”

Participants will receive hands-on assistance with developing and performing their stories, non-fiction and fiction, and can take home a CD with their recordings. To continue to record following the workshop, Savannah storytellers can receive a complimentary subscription to Evoca Express, the Voice-to-Web audio recording service from WordUp Workshop co-sponsor, Evoca. The Savannah-based audio web services company enables anyone to easily create and post audio recordings to their private accounts as well as blogs, websites, and social media profiles using any phone, online recorder, and Skype.

For more information about the Wednesday, August 26th WordUp Workshop in Savannah and future workshops, please call 866-860-9988 or email wordup (at) evoca (dot) com. Inquiries also are invited about launching WordUp Workshops in other U.S. and international cities and to learn how to host “virtual” workshops using Skype, the free international phone service.