June 20th, 2008, 2 Comments »
At Web Content 2008, I gave a talk and also ran a two-hour workshop. I thought I’d share a technique I used for the workshop, which was entitled “29 Web 2.0 Tools: What They Are, How They Work” I didn’t much feel like building a two-hour slide show, and anticipated dodgy web access. Instead, I wanted to encourage plenty of interactivity and audience participation. My hope is that, if people come to the session with questions, they’ll get them answered.
For this session, I developed a very low-tech educational aid. I wrote the names of the 29 tools on 5″ x 8″ index cards, and hung them, in random order, from a long string that stretched across the room. Here’s a blurry photo of what it looked like. I was fortunate to have a 50′ clothes line in a room that was 35′ wide.
I asked the audience to yell out the name of a particular tool. I’d pull that one off the string, toss it on the floor, and then talk about it for a couple of minutes. Sometimes I’d ask the audience member who choose the topic whether they had specific questions, or I’d ask the room if anyone had a related story to tell. Once that topic was exhausted (that took anywhere from 15 seconds to 10 minutes), I asked for another topic suggestion from the line.
29 Plays in 59 Minutes
I lifted this idea wholesale from a Theatre Skam show I saw more than a decade ago called “29 Plays in 59 Minutes”. The play begins with cards numbered 1 to 29 hung on a string across the stage. Each card has the name of a very short play or sketch on the back. The audience yells out a random number, and actors perform that sketch. Another number, another play. They try to get through all 29 in 59 minutes.
Back in 1996, I wrote a review of the show for the Victoria News (wow, that website suffers under my ad-blocking plugin). Unbelievably, I see that I faxed my reviews in. Here’s a bit of what I said:
“29 plays in 59 minutes” covers a lot of ground. More ideas were present in this tiny, awkward space in one night than have been at the McPherson Playhouse all year. While it is not for the feint of heart, this is theatre as it should be: current, confrontational and provocative.
In looking for that review, I found something else I wrote–a little essay called “Random Theatre”. My favourite part of this kind of construction is the unlikely juxtaposition:
By themselves, most would be at least mildly engaging. It is their juxtaposition that makes them fascinating. How do we receive a skit about trying to get laid after seeing an affecting piece about the killing of fourteen women in Montreal? Are we touched or repulsed? Isn’t this just like changing channels?
It’s also a little like blogging.
Theatre Skam lifted the idea from the Neo-Futurists, who started it as “30 Plays in 60 Minutes”.
Next Time, Clothespins
It seemed to go over well. It’s a gimmick, though I’d prefer to call it a prop, or a bit of staging. I think it kept people on their toes, and it became obvious which topics people really cared about. It also gives the audience a preview of what I plan to talk about, and enables me to frame the topic without being limited to a prepared script.
When I do this workshop again, I’d make these changes:
- For each topic, I’d asked the audience member who chose it why they did, or whether they had something specific they wanted to learn about. I’d probably talk a bit first, then check back with them, so as to not make it a prerequisite of yelling out a topic.
- We got through all 29 topics in 90 minutes. For an hour session, I might prepare by making a quick note on the back of each card, reminding myself about a case study or explanation I could quickly rattle off.
- It would have been handy to have web access. I didn’t need it often, but explaining RSS is way easier with a live browser. I would have liked to play the Commoncraft explanation for Twitter (yes, I bought a license from their store).
- I’d buy clothespins to keep the cards on the line. I used tape, and it was unreliable. This made for a little entertainment during the talk (”MySpace fell again”), but it would make things simpler. Plus, the cards would be easier to re-use.
All in all, I enjoyed the random, slightly messy sense that accompanies this gimmick. I hope the audience did, too.
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September 3rd, 2007, 74 Comments »
An Unlikely Education
I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while, and was inspired to get it done by Merlin Mann’s recent piece about improving his use of PowerPoint.
I do a lot of presentations. Each time I give a talk, I try to improve on something. I have a good base on which to build thanks to an unlikely education. Despite my career in technology, I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and Theatre.
I learned a lot of good public speaking practices from theatre school. They come in two flavours–content and technique:
Content - What You Say
- Respect the Narrative Arc. Every good story has a beginning, middle and end. The beginning promises the audience something, the middle threatens to take that promise away, and the end pays off on the promise (or, in the so-called ‘third act twist’, it doesn’t).
- Tell Stories. If you take one piece of advice from this article, it’s this. We make meaning by telling stories–to ourselves and each other. If you can construct your entire talk by embedding your points in a series of anecdotes and tall tales, do it. You’ll entertain your audience a lot more, and your message will be much stickier in your audience’s heads. Watch Seth Godin speak–he’s all about the clever anecdotes.
- Embrace Metaphors. Metaphors are another important means of how we make sense of the world. Use similes (”this site is eBay for seniors”).
- Dialogue Starts on the Page. I find my talks are much more cogent and compelling when I’ve written them as informal essays first. Then I try to commit as much of it as I can to memory, and write out the key points on index cards. Too many speakers seem to think they’ve prepared a talk by creating some slides. The slides should come last.
- Slides are Your Costumes, Lighting and Set, Not Your Speech. Your slides exist to reinforce the things you’re saying, not the other way around. Like your clothes, they provide context and framing for your message. As such, I almost always eschew bullet points for a single word or phrase per slide, accompanied by lots of photos. An overly complicated set will distract an audience, and so will overly busy slides.
- Your Set Design Needs Soul. Use lots of photos in your slides, but pick photos with soul. You’ll know them when you see them. Here’s a tip–there’s more soul on Flickr than iStockPhoto. And avoid obvious illustrations. You don’t need to show two generic hands shaking to imply a relationship. I recently gave a talk that included a brief summary of the history of communications–from few-to-few to few-to-many to many-to-many. These are the three photos I used:
- The Play’s As Long As It Needs To Be (or Not To Be). People like to say “you shouldn’t have more than five (or 15 or 23) slides”. This implies that there’s a standard duration for each slide, and that you’re a simpleton. When you don’t use bullet points, this rule no longer applies. In one of my talks I run 60 slides–all photos–in about 3 minutes, and other slides sit up on screen for five minutes while I’m making a point.
- Surprise Your Audience. We’re delighted when the unexpected happens. Change gears midstream, take your theme in a new direction, or show a little video in the middle of your talk. It piques the interest of the audience and refreshes their attention. Everybody perks up when the ghost of Hamlet’s dad returns in Act 3.
- Begin In Media Res. It’s Latin for ‘in the middle of things’, and a lesson from Playwriting 101. Start in the middle of the action. Start with an anecdote out of left field, and let the audience catch up later. Don’t be afraid to use a flashback to fill in the background in the middle of your talk.
- Find the Funny. This is dangerous, because there’s nothing worse than a joke (or a joker) that bombs on-stage. If you’re not a naturally-gifted comic, find other ways. Embed humour in your slides, bring a prop or gently abuse the audience. I recently used a volunteer and a prop in a talk:
It’s hardly a stroke of comic genius, but it can change the tone for a few minutes, which never hurts.
Technique - How You Say It
- Go to a speech coach. Why do British actors always sound smart? Because, usually, they’ve got superb vocal training and are exceptionally articulate. Discover all the muscles in your mouth, throat and chest dedicated to speaking, and learn how to exercise them.
- Warm up your voice. You stretch before playing pickup hockey–why don’t you warm up your voice before putting it through the paces? Your speech coach can help with this. As part of my pre-speaking ritual, I spend about ten minutes conducting an embarrassing vocal warm-up before speaking. I try to do it backstage, in an empty bathroom or in some other out of the way corner.
- Quit moving around. It’s a common bad habit of the young (and, in my case, really awful) actor. When you’re not rooted firmly in one place, you water down your message and distract the audience. Stand in one spot, and move only to emphasize a point.
- Talk slower. You’re almost certainly talking too fast. Even if you have a complete handle on your nerves, there’s a lot going on during a talk–slides, distracting audience members, and so forth–and people take longer to absorb information. Practice slowing down until people tell you that you’re talking too slowly.
- Consider Your Pacing. That said, you don’t always have to talk slowly. The speed at which you speak is just another tool–be sure to use it. Speak quickly for comic effect, or to emphasize the complexity of a process.
- Wield the Pause. Playwrights often write (Pause). I’ve used it as a lazy transition, and a way to notify the actor that a speech’s tone or subtext changes. You can use a pause in the same way–implying a shift from one section to the next. More importantly, the skillfully-wielded pause sharpens the audience’s attention, and builds anticipation of your next point.
- Costumes Matter. I keep saying this, but here it is again: clothes are costumes, and costumes are powerful symbols. Whether you’re speaking to six of your colleagues or 600 strangers, your clothes matter. They offer both context and subtext for what you’re speaking about. People are looking at you for a while–even if they don’t process your clothes consciously, they’ll do so in the background cycles of their brain. Guy Kawasaki spoke after me at Gnomedex, and he wore this cool, casual shirt and jeans. Maybe that’s a carefully crafted image, or maybe it’s just what he threw on that morning, but it says a lot about who he is as a speaker.
In short, make your presentations a little more like a play or a film. A little creativity and humour goes a long way, so don’t overdo it. I think it was George Bernard Shaw who described entertainment as “the jam that coats the pill of morality”. Your pill is probably more education or marketing than morality, but the lesson applies. Entertain your audience, and they’ll buy more of whatever it is you’re selling.
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