I'd Rather Be Writing » conversations

Presentations Versus Conversations

Tom Johnson — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 14:34:40 +0000

Recently I listened to Moira Gunn interview Steve Rosenbaum about content curation in her podcast, Tech Nation. I heard Steve present on a similar topic at Confab. Interestingly, I found the podcast, which was a conversation between Moira and Steve, more interesting, fluid, and natural than Steve’s Confab presentation.

Steve’s presentation at Confab was great. But all presentations, by nature, have a different rhythm and organization than conversations. In a presentation, you usually have a deck of slides that you move through sequentially, following a predefined structure to your ideas.

In contrast, conversations are more spontaneous. At times you may pursue tangents, or skip around to topics that you might have originally thought to delay until later. Order is decided at the moment, based on the interviewer’s questions, his or her responses, and the level of perceived interest. Overall, I think conversations allow for more discovery and excitement based on the unplanned direction of the conversation.

In addition to presentation and conversation formats, other formats blend the two. Last Friday I participated in a MindTouch webinar that was a hybrid between a presentation and a conversation. Scott Abel is the host of a series of webinars by MindTouch. Before the webinar, he asked me to send him a slidedeck of my presentation. He then selected out the slides he wanted to discuss, and modified them a bit. He also inserted some of his own slides. About 15 minutes before the webinar, he sent me a PDF of the slides, but I hardly glanced at half of them before the webinar began.

During the webinar, we moved through the topic in a conversational way. Scott used the slides to move the conversation forward when it lagged. Sometimes this worked well, as the next slide provided a great segue to explore a new angle on the topic. Other times I realized that I already discussed the information on the next slide, or the slide took us backwards instead of forwards in the conversation. Regardless, the slides gave a sense of structure to what might otherwise be a loosely focused conversation touching a lot of different points somewhat randomly.

Regardless, I admit I prefer conversations more than presentations. Many presentations, particularly at conferences, can often lack engagement. In contrast, the conversation format puts the listener as a player in the topic game. You have some control about the direction and momentum, rather than just being a spectator.

At South by Southwest Interactive (SXSW), a lot of times the formats are panel discussions. A presenter may give a 20 minute presentation followed by 30 minutes of question and answers. I haven’t been to SXSW, but in listening to the recordings, these sessions are appealing hybrids of conversation presentations.

Preparing for a conversation to take place during a presentation is a somewhat risky move for a presenter. At the STC Summit, I presented for 30 minutes, and then opened up a question and answer session. It went all right, but the Q&A component was multi-directional, since it’s a conversation with a crowd rather than an individual.

The crowd conversation doesn’t work as well as a one-on-one conversation because the crowd’s questions are much more random. The questions don’t have the same focus and flow as the questions that a skilled interviewer might follow. A skilled interviewer will pick up with your response and build on that response with a new question. The conversation has a direction it’s heading, even if neither person knows exactly where it will end up. In contrast, the crowd Q&A is a start and stop motion, with no sense of forward momentum or progress building on the responses.

Having a conversation in front of an audience is another approach, somewhat like listening to a live podcast. The limitation here is that the interviewer’s questions may not represent the crowd’s questions.

Overall, what’s the best format for delivering information to a group? A conversation, a presentation, or a hybrid of the two? I’m not sure. Conference season has ended, so I don’t have any upcoming presentations I’m planning. But when I need to give another presentation, I think I’ll move toward a short presentation followed by a conversation. The job of the presentation should set up the fuel and momentum of the conversation. The presentation should naturally start the conversation.

I doubt this format will catch on for most conferences, though. It requires too much on-the-spot performance and risk. It’s much easier to bank on your own presentation content, load up your PowerPoint with 50+ slides, and sail your way across the harbor — even if your audience remains on the shore.

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“Blogs are Still Where Substantive Conversations are Happening.”

Tom Johnson — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:21:34 +0000

A recent Blogher study finds that blogging is still the dominant place where conversations of substance are taking place (despite rumors about blogging being dead or ideas that microblogging on Twitter and Facebook would replace the more time-consuming blog). I always knew this to be the case. For more info, check out “Blogs are Still Where Substantive Conversations are Happening.”

Blogher study on blogging

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Does Twitter Fit into Your Branding Strategy?

Tom Johnson — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 03:56:26 +0000

Twitter, often referred to as the water cooler of the Internet, teaches us the art of brevity by limiting communication to 140 characters or less. But unless you can compress instructional content in ingenious ways, you’ll find Twitter limiting as a method for delivering documentation. Instead, Twitter is better used for the following:

Eavesdropping on customer conversations
Putting a personal face on your company
Increasing the reach of your announcements

Eavesdropping on Customer Conversations

You can eavesdrop on customer conversations by subscribing to queries that search for specific keywords in the Twitterverse. To subscribe to a Twitter search query:

Go to http://search.twitter.com and type your product name (for example, Camtasia).
Click Search. As needed, refine your search by adding + before words you require and – before words you want to omit. You can also enclose phrases in parentheses.
Click the Feed for this query link (circled in the image below) and add the feed to your news reader, such as Google Reader.

Link to the RSS feed for this Twitter search query

Tip: While you’re setting up product search queries, head over to Icerocket and set up the same keyword search across blogs and other online sites.

Why exactly would you want to eavesdrop on Twitter? Michael Arrington says Twitter provides companies “an excellent early warning system to flag possible brand implosions.” In other words, when people are complaining about your product, you’ll be well aware and may even head off a product crisis.

In fact, Arrington has an entire post narrating his experience of twittering negatively about Comcast. Arrington writes:

Within 20 minutes of my first Twitter message I got a call from a Comcast executive in Philadelphia who wanted to know how he could help. He said he monitors Twitter and blogs to get an understanding of what people are saying about Comcast, and so he saw the discussion break out around my messages.

(Thanks, Anne, for the link.)

Puting a Personal Face on Your Company

In the following Commoncraft video, Lee Lefever explains the point of Twitter is to allow your friends to know what goes on in your life between the emails and blog posts. Almost no other virtual medium allows this glimpse in to the personal space of your life as Twitter does.

To put a personal face on your company, you can encourage your product evangelists to twitter. I follow Betsy Weber, a product evangelist for TechSmith (makers of SnagIt and Camtasia). Betsy travels a lot. It’s interesting to see where she’s going (often the latest conference) and what she’s doing. I do feel a little closer to SnagIt and Camtasia by following her on Twitter.

I also follow Sharon Burton, a product manager at Madcap Flare. Her presence on Twitter makes Madcap more accessible to me. While I was beta testing Flare 4, I once expressed that it was a little discouraging. Seeing my comment, she called me to talk about my concerns.

Increasing the Reach of Your Announcements

Although using Twitter to only broadcast announcements isn’t good Twitterquette, it’s a good idea to include announcements about upgrades, new products, special events, etc., in your Twitter feed. A lot of people are drowning in RSS feeds, and they can easily miss a title floating through their RSS readers. Others have stopped using RSS altogether and rely solely on Twitter. Emails are problematic because they’re associated with all the other spam in your inbox.

By including announcements in your Twitter feed, you increase your reach. Additionally, those who search for keywords on Twitter will more likely find you.

Are you using Twitter in your documentation? If so, I’d like to hear how.