Twittering during presentations

I really haven’t got into “Twitter” and the like. Although I’m a fairly avid reader of blogs and make some use of Facebook, I can’t see the point in continually broadcasting what I’m doing or thinking to the ether. I’m not sure that anyone would be interested if I did!  I know, however, that it is used by  as a communication tool by some professionals, particularly those involved in the world of technology. The use of Twitter and how to deal with it has also been a “hot topic” recently on quite a few presentation and public speaking blogs. It seems that some audiences are busy tweeting during presentations – either

• to make comments relevant to the topic because theyre interested in what is being said,
• to make non-complimentary comments about the speaker, or
• because they’re bored!

In such cases speakers need to have appropriate strategies to address this. At the very least they need to stop it disrupting the session. However some people see Twitter as an opportunity – and are coming up with ideas on how it can be used constructively. Olivia Mitchell, whose blog “Speaking about Presenting” is one of my regular reads,  is one of these, and she has released a free e-book on “How to present with Twitter and other backchannels” which raises some interesting points.

I think that some of the ideas set out in Olivia’s book are particularly relevant for conference organisers. At too many conferences I attend there is usually only time for one or two questions (if any) from the audience and it always seems that the same people (confident and pushy enough to raise their hand – often the ones who like the sound of their own voice and who are well known to the chair!) get to ask them. I can see value in trying to adopt the “new technology” as a way of getting more involvement. I think it will only work, however, in groups where the use of Twitter etc. is already well established.

Making training stick

“Made to stick” by Chip and Dan Heath – a book widely recommended on various blogs on presentation and management. Its about how to get ideas to “stick”, and the principles outlined can be applied in various contexts, but the one I’m interested in is teaching and training.The core idea in the book is that to make ideas stick the message need to have a number of attributes, summed up by the acronym SUCCES. They should be

* Simple

* Unexpected

* Concrete

* Credible

* Emotional

* use Stories

The last of these is particularly important as stories usually involve concrete examples, can get to the core of the idea and can be framed to include unexpected and emotional aspects. The Heath’s practice what they preach with stories (lots of examples) forming the basis for the book.The occupational hygiene profession is not very good at making things “sticky” – the very name we use for our discipline is perhaps a good example of this!

Although we often can work out what our core ideas and principles are, we are not always very good at using the other aspects discussed by the Heath’s to put them across to an uninterested audience we are trying to influence, whether management, workers or regulators. For example, I was discussing the COSHH principles of good control practice with a colleague a few days ago, and we both agreed that while the principles are good and sensible, they are anything but “sticky” and its perhaps not surprising that very few people, including many general safety practitioners, have not really heard of them. From a training and teaching perspective, making ideas “sticky” is important if the learners are to remember what you’ve tried to get across, and the SUCCES principles can be applied to make the instruction more memorable.

Making things “simple” doesn’t mean “dumbing down” but making sure ideas, however complex, are put across in a way that can be understood by learners new to the principle. Things that seem obvious to an expert need to be carefully explained. This can be made easier if the ideas are illustrated by concrete examples. Every good trainer will have “war stories” that can be used to illustrate application and implementation of the principles. Case studies too are types of stories and can be based on concrete examples and are a good way of getting the learners to think through the principles. The stories and case studies clearly need to be credible if they are to be seen as relevant by the learners.

The idea of using emotion might seem a bit airy fairy but is really about making the ideas relevant to the learners by showing them that what they are learning is relevant to them, either as individuals or as part of a group. Unexpectedness is probably the most difficult principle to apply – I think that it can only be used sparingly – you can’t make everything unexpected. However its a good way of waking up the audience and grabbing attention and can be particularly useful during awareness type training, particularly where the audience might be uninterested, and can help to get the emotional “buy in” you are trying to achieve.

One thing isn’t covered in the book, which is particularly important in making training and teaching “sticky”. The book focuses on getting a message across and making it stick by presenting people with information i.e. by presenting the information verbally or in writing. Learning isn’t just about listening and reading- quite the contrary. People learn best by doing – sometimes finding things out for themselves or reinforcing the points put across in presentations and written material. Perhaps some of the ideas in the book could be applied to practical exercises. As I’ve already mentioned above, they can be applied to designing effective case studies.

So all in all, a useful book. The ideas it contains have certainly stuck with me!

Information overload in presentations

At the conference on REACH I attended a few weeks ago, as usual, all the speakers used slides crammed with information – far too much to cover in the short time slots they were allocated.  In every case they either moved  through the slides too quickly (so the audience didn’t have time to finish reading the individual slides) or ended up skipping and missing a number of slides.

Why do they do this?

I think that one of the reasons is that speakers at conferences usually have a limited time slot, but have a lot of information they want to communicate. By cramming information onto slides you reduce the total number and fool yourself into thinking that the amount of material you are trying to get across is manageable in the time available. It’s a little like burying your head in the sand. The problem of too much material disappears – until you try to present it!

Slides should support the presentation – they’re not a substitute for it. However, where they are used they need to be well designed if they are to perform their function effectively. I think that most presenters don’t put too much thought into that aspect of their presentation. They tend to default to using the standard Powerpoint template that focuses on using words, structured as bullets and sub-bullets.

Research has shown that its better to minimise the number of words on a slide and to use pictures or other visuals where possible. I don’t intend to go into it here, but there is a good explanation of the theory in a recent post on Olivia’s Mitchell’s blog “Speaking about Presentation” which includes a summary of some recent work by Chris Atherton, a cognitive psychologist from the University of Central Lancashire.

Some good advice on slide design is available also available  in a number of books such as Beyond Bullet Points by Cliff Atkinson, Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds and Slideology by Nancy Duarte.

Slideology Webinar

Nancy Duarte

Yesterday I participated in a webinar held by Nancy Duarte of Duarte Design, the author of “Slideology“. I’m a big fan of her book and her approach to presentation design so was keen to listen to what she had to say. I had some computer problems so missed the first twenty or so minutes of the 60 minute session, but it was still worthwhile logging in.

The points made by Nancy really covered the same ground as her book, but it was good to hear them presented “in person”, so to speak. I also found it interesting to look at the slides she’d designed for her presentation. The key points that I took away from the session were:

• when preparing for a presentation, stand back from the computer. Presentation design programs like Powerpoint can lead the user and limit their imagination. The brain isn’t digital and its good to use old fashioned tools like paper, note cards and sticky notes to brainstorm and arrange ideas
• Don’t try to cram too much on one slide. “Slides are free”. Split ideas over many slides rather than cramming them all on to one.
• A good slide designer needs to be a communicator, a graphic analyst and a draughtsman!
• Deliver a profound experience to the audience – a “STAR” moment (Something They’ll Always Remember)

Safari Books will be posting a recording of the webinar on the net in the next day or two. I don’t know whether it will be generally available but as I participant I’ll be downloading it and watching the presentation again.

Slides and Screens

I took this photograph at the conference on REACH that I attended last week. There are a number of things worth noting

The design of the slide is typical of those shown by just about every speaker during the conference. It consists entirely of words and there are far too many of them.

• It’s impossible to read such wordy slides and pay attention to the speaker at the same time
• there is too much information to take in at a glance
• the speakers often moves on to the next slide before you’ve had time to finish reading the slide.

The other main problem is the positioning of the screen directly in front of he large windows.  This meant that

• there was distracting glare to each side of the screen
• when the sun was shining directly through the windows it wasn’t possible to read the slides as the sunlight came through the screen, overwhelming the light from the projector
• activities taking place outdoors (e.g. gardeners clearing up leaves) or even movement of birds, were distracting

Conference organisers really need to think carefully about the visuals and the room layout. This was particularly poor for a conference of occupational hygienists who should know about these things.

Sketchnotes

I came across this idea for producing visual notes via the Moleskinerie blog.  It was developed by Mike Rohde who has posted a number of “sketchnotes”, mainly recording events he has attended, on his Flickr site.

He’s also posted a report from a cruise holiday in Alaska.

One of the main ways Mike uses the technique is to make notes when attending conferences, such as the following example:

It’s an interesting approach. Taking notes is important to ensure information is processed and retained. It ensures you listen, pay attention to what is presented and makes you process the information by actively putting something down on paper. However, in my experience, there is always a tendency to try to copy the words from slides during presentations – particularly when they are heavily overloaded with bullet points. I fall into this trap myself. Given this habit, I guess it could be difficult for some people to take notes when the slides are produced using the more visual Presentation Zen approach. Sketchnoting could perhaps be a good way of recording key points from these types of presentations.

Mike has made some slides available on Slideshare on how to use the technique:

Powerpoint frustrations!

Last year I updated to Office 2007, mainly because I wanted to take advantage of a new feature in Powerpoint. One problem with older versions is that when running a screenshow, what was on the projected image was whatever was showing on the computer screen This has two main disadvantages

• when switching between programs the viewers can see whatever is on your desktop – including things that you may not necessarily want them to see
• I could only see the current slide on my computer screen – making it difficult to know what was coming next (unless I ran off a hard copy of the slides – or had a very good memory

Powerpoint 2007, however, allows you to use a “Presenter view” where the current slide is projected while the computer screen shows the current slide plus a ribbon of other slides in the presentation plus any notes that go along with the current slide. This is great as it allows me to skip slides and move backwards and forwards within the presentation without the viewers being aware that I’m doing this. I can also use the notes to remind me of key points thereby avoiding the temptation to adopt the bad practice of creating slides with bullet points that are used as prompts. So I think that this is a great improvement and I’ve been using the presenter view for the past 6 months or so.

The feature relies on the activation of “multiple monitors” within Windows. It won’t work unless this feature is set up on the computer.  This creates a number of problems for me

1. I can’t rehearse using the Presenter view on my desktop computer which isn’t set up for multiple monitors.
2. I have not been able to work out how to show videos or photographs unless they are embedded in a Powerpoint slide. I’ve found that Powerpoint can give me problems with videos that don’t work properly (if at all!) when they’re embedded, so I prefer to show them using an independent program. I can’t do this and have had quite a few frustrations with embedded videos that won’t work without being able to fall back to showing them in Media Player
3. Sometimes I want to demonstrate something on screen using another program – e.g. a spreadsheet file or a pdf document. Again, I’ve not been able to work out how to do this without resetting the computer so it’s not using dual monitors.

I’m sure there are ways to get round these problems, but, as usual, Windows Help is next to useless (actually, that’s not true – it IS useless). I’m not a great fan of Microsoft and its because of things like this. They’ve included something very useful in Powerpoint with the Presenter view – but it’s not been thought through properly from the point of view of the user. Ce’st la vie!

Virtual Flip Chart

The problem with Powerpoint and the like is that they are passive tools. They’re great for presenting pre-prepared material (if used carefully and the slides are well designed – big ifs!) but don’t allow for input from the audience and for the presenter to display something that arises during the presentation itself.

I’ve believed for a long time that training should be interactive – it should be more like a discussion or conversation than a lecture. One technique I use quite a lot is writing on a flip chart. I either use it to summarise points made during a discussion, to pull together findings and key points from practical exercises or for “brainstorming”.  The problem with this is that my handwriting is not so great and, despite my best efforts, tends to deteriorate as the discussion progresses. So, for a while, I’ve been on the lookout for a software tool I could use as a sort of “virtual” flipchart. As usual, I don’t like paying for anything (especially software!) so I’ve been trying to find a good, but free, program  that would fit the bill. I’ve considered using Freemind, a mindmapping tool that’s been around for a while, but I find that the charts it produces are rather cramped. There are a number of web based tools I’ve tried out, but they’re not really amenable for use in the class, requiring an Internet connection which, in UK hotels, is expensive, and there’s also the risk of the system or connection failing. However, I think I’ve found something that will do the job for me. Dropmind is another online mindmapping tool, but a downloadable desktop version is also available and it looks promising.

As I see it, the positive aspects of using a mindmapping tool on my laptop with a projector include

• legible charts!
• the charts can be changed as we go along, something that isn’t really possible with a flip chart
• the charts produced can be saved for reference in a more convenient format and can be printed out

Inevitably, there are negatives, too. The ones I foresee are

• using a computer based tool will tie me to the laptop and restrict movement around the room
• the projector would still be switched on. One of the nice things about using a “real” flipchart is that it introduces variation – turning off the projector makes a nice change.

There are bound to be other pros and cons. I think I’ll give it a try and see how it goes down.

Comedy lessons for presenters

Stand-up comedy routines are really nothing more than a type of presentation. Like anyone else addressing an audience, comdeians’ routines are about putting across their “ideas” or “points”, albeit in the form of a series of jokes or as humourous observations or stories.

Good comedians have to be effective presenters. They have to “grab” their audience’s attention and then keep it. And they have to be masters of timing.

I was watching Dara O’Brian’s performance on his DVD – Dara O’Brian – Live. One of the things he is particularly good at is engaging and involving the audience. He picks on individuals (note – keep well to the back if you take in one of his shows!!) holding a conversation with them, but without losing the attention and interest of the rest of the audience. There are some lessons here for presenters of lengthy “keynote” speeches and lectures.

Another feature of stand-up comedians is that they can manage to keep an audience engaged and interested for relatively lengthy periods without using slides.  They aren’t obsessed with Powerpoint but rely on the quality of their material and power of their delivery. Again there are lessons here for presenters.

Picture credit -wvermeulen via stock.xchng

Garr Reynolds Keynote at Synergy Conference

This is a relatively long video of a talk given by Garr Reynolds to a conference of software designers.

He sets out his ideas from Presentaton Zen and relates them to software design

Its interesting to see him in action and how he applies his own principles (I’m sure there’s scope to analyse his talk in this context)