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STC Summit Atlanta Adventures: The Agony and Ecstasy of Presenting

Tom Johnson — Fri, 08 May 2009 22:57:34 +0000

STC Summit in Atlanta

This week I returned from the annual STC Summit in Atlanta. Every year is always a series of adventures at these conferences. I’d never been to Atlanta before. I arrived a day early, because I was originally scheduled to give a workshop on blogging, but it was canceled due to lack of participants. Attendance at the STC Summit overall was down by about 35%. I was relieved, however, at not having to put together a long workshop in addition to three conference presentations.

As soon as I got to the hotel, I ran into Alan Houser, the program chair of the conference, who asked if I wanted to eat dinner. I attribute much of my good luck in getting conference proposals carefully considered to the fact that Alan is a long-time listener of my podcasts.

The next day I decided to get some exercise. I’d been reading about a Run-n-Shoot Athletic Center, which had 10 indoor basketball gyms. The concierge confirmed the place existed, even though they never answered their phone. I took a train and then bus out into the West End to find the place. Getting outside the downtown district with all the fancy hotel and conference centers was an eye-opener, reminding me of scenes from the Bronx.

When I finally got to the address, the Run-n-Shoot center had been converted into a fitness center, the gyms converted to bowling alleys and skating rinks and playlands. The only remaining basketball court had a limited court time that ended a few hours ago.

I returned to the hotel and worked on my presentations some more. A couple of years ago, I was converted to a visual-based method of presenting. I hate extended bullets on slides, so my slides consist of nothing more than a title and an image.

To find the right images, I sometimes drag icons from Visio into Illustrator, make a few tweaks, drag them to Photoshop, make some more adjustments, flatten them, and then insert them into PowerPoint. The way I set up my blogging presentation, each slide was supposed to trigger a story, and then I had several points to cover, which I hoped to magically remember during the presentation without having a bulleted lists on the slide. This flexibility allowed me to go with the flow as I presented.

As I looked through the program, I realized that for some reason my presentation was an hour and a half instead of an hour. I only prepared for an hour and wondered when they might have told me my presentation was supposed to be 90 minutes instead of 60. They probably did tell me at some point—long ago—but my email inbox has a constant stream of messages that I often miss. I decided to splice in some tips on blog usability that I’d given in another presentation, just in case.

The Sunday before the conference begins is Leadership day. A few years ago I attended Leadership Day in Minneapolis and was excited about it, since I was a new chapter president at the time. This time around, however, I found my interest anemic almost from the start. Even with the first speaker, I surfed on my Windows mobile instead. It turns out the Society is either $500,000 or a million dollars in debt, and plans to rely partly on chapter finances to make it through. (Since our chapter seems to have an annual budget of $5 anyway, the restricted budget didn’t seem to have much impact, but quite a few people were vocal about it.)

After slipping away from Leadership Day, I returned to my hotel room to work on my presentation, to read more of Gladwell’s Outliers (which had totally hooked me on the plane), and to nap a bit.

The opening keynote by David Pogue the next morning was engaging and completely interesting—not so much because of his message, which was about the power of simplicity, but because of his theatrical, dynamic style. He knows how to deliver a keynote. I was laughing, shaking my head in agreement, twittering about it. The whole place was mesmerized. His presentation skills filled me a bit with dread towards my upcoming presentations, because I knew I couldn’t present like that.

Later that evening, I ran into Kirsty Taylor from Australia. I knew her from comments on my blog and Twitter, but she really is a fan of my wife’s blog, whataboutmomblog.com. She said she had some gifts from Australia for Jane and the kids. This amazed me—that she’d brought gifts all the way from Australia. I know I have a lot of blog readers, but my wife has blog disciples. I later interviewed Kirsty for a podcast, asking her why some blogs inspire devoted followers while others, like mine, simply invite casual attention. Not surprisingly, it’s the personal aspect of the blog, she said. Speaking to the reader’s heart and revealing appropriately, she explained.

When I presented on blogging, the session was full. I found I was able to remember most of what I planned to say, and not having bullet-by-bullet points on slides resulted in a conversation-like style, someone later told me. I breathed well and didn’t run out of content for the full hour and a half. My back started to hurt, though, from standing in the same general place so long.

I’m glad I had the opportunity to present on a topic I’m so passionate about. There are many things I’m somewhat knowledgeable about, but only a few things I’m truly passionate about. Blogging is one of them. My passion for it was apparent, and this enthusiasm made any nervousness disappear.

It seemed that after my blogging session, I ran into people I knew everywhere. Not just people who listened to the session, but people who had been following my blog, people in past chapters, past conferences, people whose blogs I followed, or people I knew from Twitter, and so on. I could hardly walk through a room without running into someone I knew, or encountering someone who knew me and wanted to say hello. My colleagues later told me that I was “amazingly social,” even though I find that comment surprising still.

After my blogging presentation ended, I started thinking about my next presentation—a 20 minute presentation about usability (“What you learn by watching others use your documentation”) in the Usability SIG progression. Usability is not my strength, but I’d given a videocast and written a post or two on the topic, which caught the attention of a SIG coordinator and he invited me to speak at a progression table.

I remembered a video I’d taken of Jane being frustrated at the computer, and I decided to use it to open up a few observations about what users do when they’re frustrated. Mainly, they don’t use help, even when they’re wringing their hands and cringing. I recommended moving the help into the interface, following some pointers Mike Hughes gave me in a podcast months before.

Progressions work differently from normal presentations. About six different presenters have round tables that seat a dozen people. Participants go from table to table, switching tables three times during the hour.

My table was next to some well-known experts in the field—Ginny Redish, Caroline Jarrett, Karen Bachman, Whitney Quesenbury, Chauncey Wilson, and Mary Deaton. Almost every one of them has either written books on usability or works as a usability consultant. When the SIG progression leader introduced me, she said, “And at the back table, we have the famous Tom Johnson …”

I thought this was funny, but it turned out to be somewhat true. It seemed that practically everyone knew me from my blog or podcasts. Even people I didn’t think knew me later added, casually during a conversation, “I feel like I’m in one of your podcasts, listening to your voice.”

My presentation wasn’t outstanding, but I don’t think it was bad either. Some said that overall the progression was the best progression they attended (I’m not sure if the same people actually came to my table). But I have to admit the progression format turns me off a little. It’s noisy. It’s weird. It’s short and seems rushed. Not many other people I met liked the progression format either.

I had one more presentation to give, this one a co-presentation with my Gryphon Mountain colleague about quick reference guides. Co-presentations, I’ve decided, are actually more difficult than single presentations, because you have to make sure the other presenter is prepared and that he or she won’t overlap topics, that your handoffs will be seamless, that you will appear as one rather than switching back and forth in awkward ways.

Also, I was a little concerned because my colleague was fairly new to presenting. He’d never presented at the Summit before, and he had a soft-spoken voice that made him hard to hear. I told him to speak up and avoid slipping into a monotone rhythm. He had a few note cards he used to remember his points on various slides, as did I.

The presentation wasn’t until late in the next day, so we still had some time. While walking about the vendor expo and meeting with people, I ran into incoming STC Toronto president Anna Parker-Richards, who I didn’t know. But as she was talking to me, I asked her about her chapter’s new meeting model, in which they charge $100 to $150 per meeting (or “event”). What she explained—the “Five and Five Model”—was so interesting I decided to record a podcast with her right there. That interview got me in the mood to record other podcasts, and soon I started carrying around my Zoom H4 recorder everywhere.

I interviewed Ginny Redish about her book Letting Go of the Words (which is really about writing web content). I interviewed Caroline Jarrett about her book on forms (Forms that Work) and why forms are important and interesting. I talked with Mike Hamilton about Madcap’s upcoming Flare-DITA solution, to Alan Porter about his book, the History of the Illustrated James Bond (and how James Bond relates perfectly to technical communicators). I talked with Sarah O’Keefe about her latest study on the state of structured authoring. I even spoke with some guy from the Netherlands and his method for prototyping with refrigerator magnets.

Tracking people down for podcasts is mostly a matter of chance. If I ever had a conversation with someone who was particularly interesting, addressing something new, such as a book or study or trend, I pulled out my recorder and asked if I could do a podcast right there. (When it comes to podcasting, I have no reservations about approaching a total stranger and interviewing him or her for a podcast. It makes the conference so much fun.)

Our quick reference guide session was scheduled for 5 p.m. on Tuesday—unfortunately at the end of the day, when everyone is tired. My colleague and I skipped some of the afternoon sessions to prepare. He practiced in the room, saying aloud his parts. On one slide I thought he had too many points for the lack of visuals, so I asked if he could make the commentary during some of the example slides. I rehearsed what I planned to say about design, but had to ultimately concede that, as much as I tried explaining it, design was like music. You could try to describe and explain how it works, but it was slippery and hard to pin down. Designs that work just feel right, regardless of any specific principles.

At five o’clock, the room was packed. No chairs were empty, people stood at the back and sides of the room, and there were even about 7 or 8 people watching from the hallway.

The lapel microphone wouldn’t stick on my colleague’s floppy shirt collar, so he held it in his hand. I buttoned up my shirt collar a notch so the lapel mic would be closer to my mouth. It worked, even if I looked nerdy. The room lacked a wireless mouse clicker, but at the last minute Jackie Damrau (who received a president’s award at the conference) retrieved one from her hotel room for us.

To start the presentation, my colleague began reading, in a funny voice, a cartoon he’d drawn. This made people laugh. Then we launched into the presentation. It went well for about the first 20 minutes, and more and more people started coming into the room. I could hardly believe how popular the session was.

Little by little, raised hands started to appear in the audience. First one hand, and then another, and another. It seemed everyone had questions to ask, which we tried to answer. Some of our answers related to slides to come, but I thought it best to give the answer now, with full elaboration, rather than wait. I think that proved to be a bit of mistake, because too many questions can kill the flow and rhythm of a presentation. For everyone that asks a question, there’s another person that doesn’t want to listen to someone asking a question.

Still, the majority of people remained engaged and interested in what we had to say. The quick reference guide examples provided visual appeal and were practical. My colleague projected well and covered good ground. More than a dozen attendees stayed after to talk to us individually, and for the next day people complimented us on the presentation.

But later in the evening, when we returned to our hotel room and checked the STC 09 Twitter feed, a tweet did provide a bit of a downer, because the person said we needed a moderator, more concrete examples, and that we were more frustrating than interesting. Negative feedback is sometimes hard to take, but it is more instructive in the long run, and I could see how to improve our delivery the next time.

That night, even with the sour tweet, having completed all my presentations, I felt a burden lifted from me. At the same time I wanted to collapse from exhaustion. I went to dinner with my colleagues and a few new friends. I thought a woman who joined us (Trina) had a foreign accent, but she turned out to just be from Milwaukee. Another LDS technical writer from Connecticut (Chris Keeling) joined us. A former drill sergeant and game aficionado, he had a love for his old blind and deaf cat, which he gave an IV to every day, he explained. The cat also drooled on his head in the morning. He and another woman, coincidentally, were both former military intelligence officers who translated Russian, or something.

As the night ticked away, I couldn’t help but feel satisfied both emotionally now that the presentations were over and physically now that I was eating.

After the final conference luncheon the next day, I still had a few more hours to kill. I had a goal to interview ten people for podcasts, and given my theme of recently published books, Karen Bachman recommended I talk with John Hedtke, who has published 26 books, his most recent one on Disaster Preparedness.

This was my first encounter with John. He was articulate and well-spoken. He explained why he wrote about disaster preparedness—”for the money,” he said. I prodded him a little more. Perhaps you had a disaster in your own life that motivated you to explore this topic? I asked. No, he said. I really just wrote it for the money.

While I was talking with him, though, he mentioned that he wrote in the evenings and weekends, after work. You mean you have a regular day job besides your book writing projects? I asked.

Apparently, yes. Computer books (most of what he’s written) have a short shelf-life, he explained. And most nonfiction books don’t make back their advance checks, which are usually between six to ten thousand dollars. Listening to John made me think twice about book publishing.

Regardless of whether I ever write a book, I reflected on the idea for a while in a dreamy way—thinking about possibilities and topics and who might publish it and whether it would be in color or not. Shortly after my conversation with John, I flew home.

Overall, the Summit is always a good experience because it gets me engaged in the profession. It engages me with presentations, which requires my best thinking, organizing, and delivery skills. It engages me with podcasts, interviewing people on the spot, drilling deeper into their knowledge. It engages me with new ideas through sessions from experts and authorities in the field. And it engages me with a new environment, surrounding me with new friends and a new city. It is a short stretch of time, about four or five days, but its effects last throughout the year.

By the way, this year all presentations (except the progressions) were recorded. You can buy the presentations from the STC (called Summit@aClick) for a price (no one knows how much yet). I’m told that I can also post my own presentations on my blog for free, which I’ll certainly do when they’re available.

If you enjoyed this writeup, see my write-ups from previous conferences:

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How to Get Out of a Slump, and Handle Pressure Situations Calmly

Tom Johnson — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 06:31:56 +0000

It turns out that you can get out of a slump or handle pressure situations comfortably by merely changing your facial expressions. I have been trying this over the past several days and have been completely stunned with what happens.

Background

This is not my own theory. In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell talks about a mind reader, Silvan Tomkins, who can see and interpret the expressions on people’s faces so well that he seems to read their minds. He can pick up on the microcosmic muscular movements of the brow, lips, chin, and understand the emotion it represents.

Tomkins’ mind-reading capability was so shocking that two psychology researchers, Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen, undertook a detailed study of every facial expression possible and its meaning. Their research culminated in a 500 page document titled Facial Action Coding System (FACS).

For example, they discovered that facial expressions made by “contracting the muscles that raise the cheek (orbicularis oculi, pars orbitalis) in combination with the zygomatic major, which pulls up the corners of the lips” indicate happiness (Gladwell p. 204).

Research Leads to Unexpected Findings

As Ekman and Friesen researched the different facial muscular movements, they began to realize that just making the facial gestures affected their emotional state.

For example, making an angry facial expression caused their heart rate to start beating faster and their hands to get hot. When they made expressions of sadness or anguish, they started feeling bad inside. The image below is from Ekman and Friesen’s FACS.

Their conclusion?

“What we discovered is that the expression alone is sufficient to create marked changes in the automatic nervous system” (Gladwell p. 206)

Gladwell further summarizes their findings by saying,

“The information on our face is not just a signal of what is going on inside our mind. In a certain sense, it is what is going on inside our mind.”

What’s extraordinary about this claim is the reversal of causes and effects. We’re used to thinking our emotions cause our facial expressions. And that’s probably true. But the expressions can also cause our emotions.

A Study that Solidifies the Hypothesis

Gladwell records that a group of German psychologists conducted a study that solidified the idea about facial expressions affecting emotional states. Gladwell writes,

“[The psychologists] had a group of subjects look at cartoons, either while holding a pen between their lips – an action that made it impossible to contract either of the two major smiling muscles, the risorius and the zygomatic major – or while holding a pen clenched between their teeth, which had the opposite effect and forced them to smile. The people with the pen between their teeth found the cartoons much funnier…. What this research showed, though, is that … [e]motion can also start on the face. The face is not a secondary billboard for our internal feelings. It is an equal partner in the emotional process.” (pgs. 207-08)

If you try holding a pen between your lips, the world does look a bit gloomier.

Comparison to Pavlov’s Dogs

The idea of facial expressions causing emotional states may be hard to believe, but if you remember Pavlov’s salivating dogs, the reversal of cause and effect is more understandable.

Ivan Pavlov triggered a conditional reflex (salivation) in his dogs by consistently ringing a bell before giving them food:

“If the bell was sounded in close association with their meal, the dogs learnt to associate the sound of the bell with food. After a while, at the mere sound of the bell, they responded by drooling.” (nobelprize.org)

In other words, even without the presence of food, they began to salivate because they heard the bell. Our facial expressions are like the bell. Even without the emotional state, the brain notes the expression [hears the bell] and triggers a conditional reflex in our emotions.

Applying All This to Get Out of a Slump

On a more personal note, I’ve been in a basketball slump lately. For about the past six months, my shot has been off, and I haven’t been able to figure out what’s wrong. I’ve been playing less frequently, practicing less (ever since I started podcasting, actually). When I’d jump into a pickup game, I’d become a bit tense and nervous because I couldn’t play at my normal level.

Then last week I started thinking about Blink. Gladwell talks about situations where our unconscious judgment fails us. One of those situations is high stress/arousal. He explains that many police departments have banned high speed chases because it puts the police officer in such a high state of stress/arousal, they consequently make poor decisions.

For example, several riots (including the Rodney King beating) took place because of police officers’ decisions after a chase. Police simply don’t make good decisions when their adrenaline is pumping and their heart rate is racing. This is because, Gladwell explains, the body’s evolutionary response to threats is to minimize all sensory intake (such as sound or touch) not relevant to the threat at hand. The sensory distortion may be what impairs our judgment.

In any case, he says after your heart rate goes past 145 beats per minute, our brain starts to go downhill. He quotes Dave Grossman, author of On Killing:

“At 175, we begin to see an absolute breakdown of cognitive processing … The forebrain shuts down, and the mid-brain … reaches up and hijacks the forebrain…” (226).

Gladwell continues:

“Vision becomes even more restricted. Behavior becomes inappropriately aggressive. .. Blood is withdrawn from our outer muscle layer and concentrated in core muscle mass. The evolutionary point of that is to make the muscles as hard as possible – to turn them into a kind of armor and limit bleeding in the event of injury. But that leaves us clumsy and helpless.” (226-27)

Most of the high stress/arousal states Gladwell explores involve police chases, shootings, dialing 911, and other life or death situations. But I think the same thing happens on the basketball court – someone passes you the ball, 9 other guys shift positions on the court, your defender closes in and swipes at the ball, the score is tied, a lot of people are looking on, teammates are moving quickly, raising their hand for the ball, you unconsciously consider paths to the basket, or shooting options. Not a lot of conscious analysis goes on, and when your heart is racing at 160 beats a minute, your sensory perception declines and your shot, which may have been right on target during casual practice, suddenly misses the rim.

The last time I found myself in this situation – my slump – I remembered the cartoon experiment from the German psychologists, and I squeezed out a smile. Whenever I got the ball, I smiled – not a big cheesy grin, because that’s not authentic for me. But a moderate I’m-happy smile.

To my surprise, I became more relaxed, felt less anxiety, and my shots started to fall. My shot started coming back!

High Pressure Situations

I found the technique worked on more than a basketball court. A couple of days later, I had to deliver a brown-bag presentation on a software project I’d documented at work. I was a little nervous, so I made an effort to smile, similar to when I was shooting on the basketball court.

After 5 min. or so, I started to feel comfortable and relaxed. Instead of a stiff, forced, or defensive demeanor, I was calm as can be, moving effortlessly through the presentation and enjoying the questions participants asked.

Yet Another situation

The other two situations may have been chance, but the other morning I had yet another experience.

Foolishly, I was upset at my wife because we were late to church. About 10 minutes after sitting with contempt on the pew, I tried smiling. It actually hurt to smile. I kept trying – why would merely making a facial expression be so difficult, if it weren’t applying some torque to change my inner state of emotion?

After several smiling minutes, I came to my senses and was content again, acknowledging to her that the fault for being late was mine.

Conclusion

When we are happy, we are relaxed. Our heart rate isn’t racing, our muscles aren’t stiffening, and we can think and respond clearly. Our sensory perception is acute, and our performance increases. We can partially induce this state through a facial expression of happiness. Our brain associates the facial expression with the emotion, and fosters it where it was previously absent.

So the next time you’re in a slump, or are walking into a high-pressure situation, clench a pencil in your teeth, or contract the muscles that raise the cheek, pull up the corners of your lips. You can trick your brain into triggering a more advantageous emotional state. Within a few minutes you’ll find you no longer have to try — the smile forms naturally.