I'd Rather Be Writing » SXSW

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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Lots of Conferences Taking Place

Tom Johnson — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 15:26:15 +0000

Ben Minson and me at the last STC Summit

Have you noticed how many good conferences are scheduled lately? I remember a couple of years ago, when Doc Train conferences ended, and some of us thought the STC Summit was approaching its last time — I thought conferences would become extinct. Today there are almost too many conferences. Here are some of the interesting looking conferences taking place within the next couple of months:

SXSW Interactive – March 11-15, Austin, Tex.
WritersUA — March 13-16, Long Beach, Calif.
IA Summit – March 30 – April 3, Denver, Colo.
Confab (Content Strategy) – May 9-11, Minneapolis, Minn.
STC Summit — May 15-18, Sacramento, Calif.
Congility — May 24-26, Gatwick, UK
Web Content 2011 — June 6-7, Chicago, Ill.

Last month the Intelligent Content conference took place. It seems that the number of conferences are growing. The only conference I’m planning to attend during the next three months, however, is the STC Summit. But that’s only due to time and budget. The Content Strategy conference actually looks really appealing.

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Photo courtesy of STC on Flickr

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SXSW Conference Versus STC Summit: Anne Gentle and Janet Swisher at the STC Summit, #stc10

Tom Johnson — Mon, 10 May 2010 04:23:17 +0000

How does the South by Southwest Interactive conference (SXSW) compare with the STC Summit? Are technical communicators behind the times when it comes to web trends and interactive media? I asked Anne Gentle and Janet Swisher, two Austin locals who have attended SXSW, to compare SXSW with the STC Summit. We recorded this video at the STC Summit in Dallas.

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Uncooperative Subjects: A Comparison of Two Failed Interviews and How to Turn Them Around

Tom Johnson — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 03:12:46 +0000

I watched a couple of interviews this week that spiraled downhill. The first is a Luke Burbank interview with the Icelandic band Sigur Ros. The second is a Sarah Lacy SXSW interview with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Sigur Ros Interview

With the Sigur Ros, the interviewees have little to say. Despite Luke’s continual questions, their responses are terse, uninsightful, and often consist of 1-3 word answers. Luke recognizes that the interview is bombing, but he doesn’t quite know how to fix it, and the interviewees don’t ever open up.

It’s partly the band’s fault for their unresponsiveness, but it’s also Luke’s fault for asking questions that don’t elicit good responses. Questions like, How do you write your songs? How do you feel being a phenomenon? And so on.

There’s no question that the interview is a complete failure, but Luke makes an ingenious comeback with a follow-up commentary, where he invites Jancee Dunn to give a play-by-play analysis on the wreckage. I absolutely loved watching this. It shows Luke’s humility and humanity — and endears his audience back to him.

Zuckerberg Interview

With the Mark Zuckerberg interview, Sarah Lacy gets Zuckerberg to open up quite a bit (apparently he’s a little like the Sigur Ros band — shy and untalkative). But near the end of the interview, the audience revolts and insults Sarah’s interviewing style, which makes her defensive, a little confused, and stunned.

If you watch the Zuckerberg interview, it doesn’t seem too bad. Sarah is relaxed and playful, even teasing the Mark a little, telling stories and making jokes about throwing water on him. But for some reason, much of the audience hates her style. They want her to be a lot more invisible, shining the spotlight more on Mark.

The interesting parts are from minutes 49 to the end. Also, if you listen to the MP3 recording, you can hear Sarah’s reaction while the audience cheers for her to simply shut up and ask questions.

Weave’s comment on the video best sums up the audience’s discontent. He says there are 5 things to learn from this failed interview:

1) Understand your audience, regardless of what you think of them. If you have contempt for them, keep it veiled. This group: pretty vocal.

2) Ask questions, step aside and allow your speaker to engage directly with the audience…even if the speaker is not the most practiced. “Mmm-hmms” and interruptions are unnecessary and detract from what the audience wants to hear.

3) Remember who the audience is there to see. Leave your own book, TV show, etc., out of the conversation. It wasn’t a panel, it was a keynote.

4) If the audience isn’t as professional or mature as you’d like them to be, don’t be unprofessional or immature back to them.

5) Twirling the hair, jokingly threatening to throw water at the keynote, belittling/laughing at the keynote, yelling to someone else in the back for clarification, saying “screw all you guys” to your audience: COMPLETELY UNPROFESSIONAL AND UNBUSINESSWEEK.

But unlike Luke, Sarah is unrepentant. She doesn’t acknowledge the interview’s failure. She doesn’t ask someone to step her through it play by play to learn where she went wrong.

My Analysis

In both interviews, the interviewer faced uncooperative people. With Luke, the interviewees themselves were uncooperative. They didn’t want to open up. With Sarah, her interviewee was cooperative, but her audience was not. Rather than play along, they mutinied against her in a “Digg-style mob revolt,” as she says.

So what do you do when you’re interviewing someone and you realize something is going wrong? In the moment, when you realize something’s not working, that something isn’t right, you’re filled with stress and paralyzing confusion. You know you should change course and move in a different direction, but you’re flooded with emotions and you have to continue saying something.

While your reaction may be defensiveness or anger, or sarcasm, the best response is to be humble and honest. Admit vocally that something isn’t going right. Luke could have candidly asked the band why they weren’t responding to his questions. When Sarah sensed her audience was turning against her, she could have asked them — in a humble way — what she was doing wrong.

After admitting things aren’t going right, Jancee’s advice seems the best strategy for getting things back on track. She says to memorize 10 emergency questions you can ask any time you’re in danger. For example, one question of her questions is, “What was the name of the first band you were in?” This helps people start telling stories about themselves.

In Sarah’s situation, she could have simply said to her audience, “What questions would you like to ask Mark?” and then turned it over to them. She eventually did this, but not before saying a few things that turned her audience even more against her.

As I prepare for some upcoming conferences, I know I’ll be interviewing people on the spot, without much preparation beforehand. At the last STC conference, I usually ran out of conversation topics after 5-7 minutes. This year I will work on memorizing some emergency questions that will elicit more personal stories. And if I sense something isn’t going right, I’ll try to humble confront the reasons why.

Music Note

While writing this post, I’ve been listening and re-listening and re-re-listening to the three Sigur Ros songs Luke posted in the original NPR article:

Their music is beautiful and moving, so much so that it doesn’t matter that they’re singing in a totally made-up language.

Click the links to listen to their music. They really are good. Especially that first song/link (desire? e-sire?). This post is going on an hour now and I just keep listening to them.

Body Hacks and Optimization

Tom Johnson — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 13:00:10 +0000

In this SXSW podcast — Body Optimization: Why Stop at Health and Fitness? –panelists describe techniques for health and fitness in the language of tech geeks and designers. They share “hacks” you can do to “optimize” your body profile. (Listen directly to the MP3 here, or right click and select Save Target As.)

Although the advice they give isn’t revolutionary, it is inspiring. One panelist explains what it feels like to have more energy. When you finish eating, you don’t lay down on the couch and say ugghhh as you digest for 2 hours. Instead, you say, great, what’s next? You maintain an active level of energy despite having just eaten.

Another panelist recommends carrying healthy snack food with you wherever you go so that when you’re hungry, you’re not grabbing the most immediate thing in site (e.g., hamburger and french fries).

They all say to drink a lot of water. One panelist recommends Omega 3 Fatty Acid supplements. Astoundingly, Ray Kurzweil, the futurist author behind the Singularity theory (where man and machine become one), takes 250 supplements a day.

Another panelist recommends keeping a food journal, and another says to bike to work. The more you bike, the more you bike, he says ingeniously. In other words, as you bike more, you begin to increase the distance that you are accustomed to biking. Kind of like writing — as you write more regularly, you tend to write more abundantly.

Why am I writing about body hacks and optimization on a tech writing blog? In case you haven’t felt it yourself, writing is a sedentary act. You sit in front of a computer all day. (One panelist says he can sit in front of his laptop for 40 hour straight.) The sedentary day job can turn into a sedentary lifestyle, and you know what happens at that point.

After listening to this SXSW podcast, I decided to forego the grilled ham and cheese sandwich with french fries today and instead opt for the cheesy brocolli soup with the sandwich. I also started a food journal on my BlackBerry. Apparently if you’re serious, one panelist recommends beginning with a 48-hour juice fast, presumably to purge your body of high fructose cravings.

Another panelist was a vegan who said that after not eating dairy for 7 years (the body wasn’t mean to eat dairy, he adds), you go into a state of toxicity with dairy. If you suddenly chug a pint of milk, you’ll experience discomfort akin to food poisoning, as your body rejects it.

Whatever you take away from the podcast, definitely add the word “body hacks” to your vocabulary. And start using the word hacks to replace “tips” and “tricks” and other “strategies.” In fact, I’m thinking of changing the word “tip” in my online help to “hack.”

While I’m on the topic, my cohost Heidi said she lost 25 pounds using SparkPeople, a site that allows you to track your food and other goals. And did you know I used to work at a place called BodyHealth, which just joined the blogosphere last week? Apparently triathletes, who are extremely meticulous about nutrition, make an average of 100K a year and are often times company CEOs.

Please share your body hacks with me in the comments below.