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Those Bettakultcha story tellers, they just make it up as they go along…

Friday, December 23rd, 2011
Christmas BettaKultcha 2011. Quality.

Christmas BettaKultcha 2011. Quality.

In the colorful history of Bettakultcha, two pivotal moments have occurred  which have polarised the audience. The first happened a few months ago when a controversial film was shown during the interval. In that instance, Bettakultcha emerged bigger and stronger. The second moment has yet to reach a defining conclusion.

Here is the story of the second incident.

At the Christmas Bettakultcha event in the Corn Exchange, Martin Carter, a drag artist,  did a presentation which involved miming to a musical track about vegemite. Martin displayed images and lyrics on his slides and performed in flamboyant burlesque style. The result was hilariously entertaining. I remember thinking, ‘I wouldn’t like to follow that presentation’.

As it happened, the acts that followed Martin were more than capable of holding their own and the evening finished on a massive high.

So what’s the problem? Well, it appears that afterwards in various hostelries around the Corn Exchange, the audience discussed this performance and divided themselves into two distinct camps. On the one side was the traditionalists who argued that miming was, cheating and shouldn’t be allowed at the event. The other side argued that the event was more of a cabaret and shouldn’t be restricted by simple rules about speaking. It was also related to me in despatches (I was not present in the pub but unglamorously de-rigging and tidying up in the Corn Exchange despite my boast to the audience earlier in the evening that after the show I was going to go to a sex and cocaine party thrown by the Krankies) that some people actually thought that the Random Slide Challenge should be dropped!

Here are my thoughts on the matter.

When I started Bettakultcha with Richard Michie I used to joke to the audience that we were making it up as we went along. Except I wasn’t joking. We really were making it up. If something worked we kept it for the next event, if it didn’t, it was dropped. The fact that the concept was based on talking presentations didn’t limit the potential creativity; talking presentations was just the start. In fact the template of twenty slides lasting fifteen seconds each is just a good way of creating a start point for people who might otherwise be overwhelmed when faced with the entire world to explore. The possibilities for innovation with this format are endless, five minute plays could be written, rap songs performed, comedy sketches… we just needed the adventurous people to explore them.

Most people stick to the tried and tested formula of talking over twenty slides. I have no problem with this. If their idea or passion is strong enough, then the template works every time. However, when someone attempts an innovative variation on the template, I rejoice; creativity, originality and innovation is what will set Bettakultcha apart from all the other speaking events that currently exist—it should be encouraged.

So I was amazed that some people actually wanted to halt the development of Bettakultcha at a particular stage in its evolution (sure, we’re running strongly now but imagine if we could fly too). How could anyone imagine that Martin was cheating? Let’s look at the Bettakultcha rules again;

Did he use twenty slides?
Yes.

Did they last fifteen seconds each?
Yes.

Did he do a sales pitch?
Erm, he did mention vegemite but in a negative way, so, no.

No cheating there then.

But I can see the objection raised by the people in the pub. If you allow miming, what’s to stop someone from just playing their favourite music track, whilst showing pictures of their favourite band and they played air guitar for five minutes.

Nothing*.

We would allow that because anyone who imagines that such an act would entertain the audience is either genuinely good or comedically deluded. Either way, it would be interesting to watch and bound to get a reaction from the Bettakultcha audience.

Oh, I forgot to mention one caveat (which fortunately we haven’t had to exercise yet), if Richard or myself don’t like the way something is being presented, then we pull the plug on them. We’ll use our common sense and intuition for the benefit of all. This approach has worked well so far and as Bettakultcha is a story in the making, we’ll continue to employ the same strategy.

*We wouldn’t be able to post the video of the performance on any internet sites though, because of copyright infringement of the music. Martin’s performance therefore, will have to remain a memory for those who were there on the night.

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Why Bettakultcha has to replace Motivational Speakers

Thursday, October 13th, 2011

BK-t-shirt-1

Before I explain Bettakultcha, let’s look at the business of motivational speaking. The speaker’s brief is usually to ‘motivate’ the audience into working harder or smarter for the organization that hired them. The speakers are generally flown into an organization at great expense and with great fanfare. They are usually ‘experts’ of some kind in their field, but that expertise can be limited to just themselves—they have climbed a mountain or were born with some kind of disability. During their presentation it is their intention to beguile, harangue, seduce, enthrall, advise, inspire and lift the audience with their stories into a feel good, ‘can do’ mood. The very best are paid huge fees and speak internationally.

But how does this help the people in the audience? If the speaker has a unique story to tell then it can only be relevant to the typical audience member in an oblique and abstract way—if I can do it, you can too. The speaker is also, more often than not, a stranger to the organization that they’re speaking to and has no knowledge of the culture that exists within the organization.

If the speaker is able to raise the energy in the audience then they go away with their cheque and with their ego suitably bolstered. They have done something that is motivating in itself. The feel good mood in the audience, however, dissipates almost as soon as they re-enter the workplace—or the real life situation that they were seeking help for or were distracted from—by the presentation. Occasionally the speaker comes back to run various workshops to try and maintain some sort of momentum from their initial visit but the truth of the matter is this: just paying attention to people is what makes a difference—what kind of attention is largely irrelevant—it is the attention which gives the result. There’s even been a study done of the phenomenon and a name given to the effect: the Hawthorne effect.

If this is true, then you might as well hire a comedian as opposed to a motivational speaker for your conference (and in truth, most in-demand speakers are just good entertainers with aphorisms thrown in). The other truth is this: motivational speakers are motivating themselves. Motivational speakers get off on showing off their own motivation, by climbing a higher mountain than their competitors, by getting a higher fee than their competitors, by getting louder applause that their predecessors. That is not to deny that some are well intentioned, and genuinely want to help their fellow human beings.

The other problem with motivational talks is that we all like to be told what we want to hear: yes, you can be a millionaire… yes you have what it takes to climb a mountain… yes your value systems are correct… Well, if you only tell people what they want to hear, then you can’t be telling them anything new, you’re simply reinforcing old ideas but delivering them in novel packaging.

So how does Bettakultcha revolutionise motivational speaking?

The people who attend a Bettakultcha event can testify to the transformational power generated by the experience although they’re not quite sure what that power is. This is because the entire focus of the event shifts from ‘appointed speakers’ to volunteers from the audience. The audience, therefore, motivates itself.

Who are the experts?

If you are in an organization, then the person who is most qualified to speak to you about your organization is you… because you work there. The only consultants you should be hiring into your organization are facilitators, not speakers. Outside consultants have to start from scratch: any useful advice about the practical running of an organization that they can give is totally predicated on the culture existing within that organization, so they have to study the culture first. You already know the culture.

How does Bettakultcha motivate people?

The way you motivate people is by giving them real power, not by giving them a speech.

Good speakers follow certain techniques to engage with an audience and one of the best is direct engagement with an individual member of the audience. They ask a general question and then have a short conversation with whoever answers their question. They engage like this because they know it keeps the audience on their toes and involves them personally. From the audience member’s point of view, they will feel good about themselves for contributing to the proceedings and because they do actually mean something to the event – they count as a person.

Bettakultcha gives the audience real power because it actually lets them speak.

Bettakultcha empowers the audience by making them responsible for the event. If the good speaker is so concerned about making a connection with the audience, about empowering the audience, about motivating the audience, why doesn’t he or she relinquish control of the event? Become a spectator rather than a contributor? Surely, this is the desired outcome of a perfectly successful motivational speech? “A great leader makes the people think they had achieved everything by themselves”? The greatest outcome that any good speaker could wish for is to think ‘that was a good presentation; my work is done here; I have given the organization the tools to be able to progress without me.’

And as for the members of the organization who contribute to the event by presenting, how much more powerful is it to have these people in your organization for months on end inspiring and motivating the other workers instead of someone who visits for a couple of hours every year or so? Imagine the sense of community that this will engender—the workers will learn more about themselves and feel inspired by some of the stories they will hear from people they can chat with on a day-to-day basis.

And as previous presenters from Bettakultcha have told me, their sense of achievement after their presentation is intoxicating and gives them the confidence to attempt other things outside of their comfort zone.

From a managerial perspective, the presentations could give an indication of the morale within the organization and highlight some of the issues concerning the members. The management could even be alerted to potential skills and experience within their organization, which they had no idea existed and which might be utilized in the future.

The key to having a successful event, however, is the curation and delivery. It has to be perceived as a fun activity and one that is generally outside of the formal structure of the organization. The facilitator of the event then becomes crucial in this regard. To simply lift the format without regard for the above considerations is a recipe for disappointment.

If the future is going to require adaptable, capable, confident members of society, then there is no better place to find them than at a Bettakultcha event.

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Pimp my presentation!

Thursday, January 20th, 2011
The fuel of change

The fuel of change

So you’ve been to a Bettakultcha event and been inspired by a presenter who cared passionately about something, and wanted to tell the world about it. And you thought, “I care deeply about, something, and no-one knows much about it, why doesn’t someone tell the world about that?”

Well, this article is for you.

I’ve spoken with a number of people who have been to a Bettakultcha event and they said exactly that to me and when I asked them, “Why don’t you tell the world?” they replied, “I don’t have the confidence to speak in front of a crowd.”

Let me tell you a story…

There’s a reason why a group of, ex-public school millionaires, run this country. It’s largely because of what they learn in those schools. Aside from the socialising and squash, they also learn supreme confidence and towering ambition. This means they can strut into a roomful of people and tell them all what to do, even when they have little, or no idea of what they are talking about. And the weird thing is, that roomful of people will generally do what they are being told to do because the speaker has the authority of confidence and ambition – it’s a self fulfilling prophecy!

Now if you don’t happen to like what they’re telling you, what are you going to do about it – we’re supposed to be living in a democracy remember? Well, if you tell yourself, you know they’re wrong but don’t have the confidence to speak out, then you get the government you deserve and you need to hurry up and follow your orders.

But if you realise that confidence is, in fact, a learned skill and that there are willing people out there who could help you, you could build your confidence up to the point where you felt capable of making your voice heard. This is how democracy is supposed to work, so why isn’t presentation skills taught in ALL schools?

Anyway, before I get too passionate, here’s my message; if you care about the community you live in and you want to make a difference there, or you just want to be able to share your passion with the people at Bettakultcha but lack the confidence, you can get some help and advice from some of the past presenters at Bettakultcha.

At this stage, we’re just getting an idea of numbers, so if you are interested in a confidence building ‘playshop’ (like Bettakultcha, we want it to be fun and informative!) DM me (@ivortymchak) with your name and email address and I will start a mailing list, then together, we can begin generating some real people power.

UPDATE: The Round Foundry in Holbeck, Leeds, have kindly agreed to host the event.

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The boiled frog fallacy

Wednesday, January 5th, 2011
Frogs just want to make more frogs.

Frogs just want to make more frogs.

A popular story in motivational talks goes something like this; if a frog is put into a pan of boiling water it will leap out of the pan immediately but if the frog is put into a pan of tepid water and the pan is then heated, the frog will stay in the pan until it is boiled to death.

Well, you know me, I question everything, so I thought I would do a little experiment. But rather than harm an innocent frog, I thought I would experiment on myself. So I took a bath, a hot one. Here are my findings.

When you go to sit in the bath, you move from the temperature of the air into the temperature of the water. Your body quickly detects the change and calls various bodily responses into action. If the temperature change is slight, very little stimulus is experienced – the body is more aware of sensation rather than temperature . If it is extreme, an overload of stimulus is experienced and you are forced to take some sort of action – like jumping out of the bath. So the first part of the frog story holds good.

If the temperature change is just within the pain parameters, something interesting happens. A rush of stimuli is experienced which tells the body that a significant change has occurred. This rush can be extremely pleasant as the body makes adjustments for the new temperature. The intense feeling of warmth can last for several seconds and the effects of it, for a few minutes. But after that time, the body has made the necessary adjustments to the new temperature and attempts to accommodate the new temperature as, ‘the norm’. This is done by sweating and sending blood to the extremities. Quickly then, the rush is replaced by a new norm and we are pretty much back to the lack of stimulus we experienced before we stepped into the bath except that we are several degrees hotter. To perpetuate the rush we have to introduce new sensations which make demands on our body to adjust to the changes. We can either add more hot water to the bath, in which case we might cross the threshold to pain and burn ourselves or we can add cold water and experience the cooling adjustment. Or we can simply lay in the bath and do nothing (as per the frog in the story).

My experiment so far, tells me that my particular organism seeks a comfortable existence whilst at the same time, maintaining an element of adventure for such times as changes in the environment demand action.

So lets go back to our motivational speaker. They usually exhort you to make a significant change from your habitual experience of life – climb that mountain, change that thought, go on a diet etc. And yes, should you make the effort, there is an initial rush of adjustment to the change, both physically and mentally. But over time, your body seeks to normalize any changes. So once climbing a particular mountain is achieved (or whatever) you are back to where you started in terms of stimuli (assuming, of course, that the weather remains uneventful on the mountain). In order to experience the rush of adjustment again, you have to climb a different mountain, usually higher or more difficult. Eventually, your hunger for stimuli will be comparable to a drug addiction – greater quantities will be required to produce less satisfactory results. The obvious  corollary of this is that you attempt to achieve a stimulus too great for your organism to bear. In other words, you step into a bath of boiling water and die.

Your body will attempt to make the new change, the new norm, that’s how we adapt as a species. If we take the motivational idea to its absurd conclusion then, the perfect way to live your life, would be to watch paint dry for several hours before playing Russian roulette or maybe have sex continuously with the irregular interruption of a wild beast hunting you or you, it.

Most people don’t live their lives like that, so what else is missing from this story?

Well, in the frog’s case, its main goal is to make more frogs, so it will avoid boiling pans of water because that does not help it in its cause and luckily, it rarely encounters boiling water in the wild. In our case, we want to make more humans too but we have the added complication of ideas and intellect. The motivational speaker appeals to the intellect and sells the idea of ‘positive change’. But not everyone likes climbing mountains, or working harder, etcetera. And here is the key.

The trick is to find what you like doing. You generally like doing something because you have a talent for doing it (but not always). Our prime motivation is still the desire to make more of ourselves. This used to be literally through babies, but today it can be achieved intellectually through fame and reputation. You can make more of yourself through the aggrandizing culture of our society.

Unfortunately, most motivational speeches don’t explain that simply attempting to do something positive is not enough, change for its own sake is nonsensical, you have to like what it is you are attempting to do, you have to like taking hot baths… And certain talents are unrecognized in today’s lop sided society – you might be a genius at not spending money or avoiding hard work.

This story of the frog is, of course, totally misleading and largely apocryphal. Common sense tells you it simply isn’t going to work in reality. It is a symbolic generalization, but do not accept symbolic generalizations, they are fallacious and dangerous. They can make you mistakenly believe that the map is the territory*

And anyway, you are not a cold blooded amphibian, you are a hot human being – demand higher standards, demand better stories, demand relevance.

* Alfred Korzybski

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Professor Raymond Tallis talking at Leeds Salon

Wednesday, December 15th, 2010

According to the blurb I was emailed by Leeds Salon, he’s one of the world’s top polymaths – philosopher, poet, novelist, clinical scientist.. the list went on and on. Basically, he’s clever. Before he started the formal part of his presentation, he warned us that when he gets excited, the rapidity of his speaking increases significantly. Oh boy, I do like to see a presenter get excited!

Then he launched into his er, script. Which he hadn’t bothered to memorise. So he kept his head down as he read every word of his essay from the printed out pages piled on the lectern. He hadn’t even bothered to familiarise himself with the spoken delivery of the text either as he frequently tripped up over the convoluted sentence structure.

He did have some slides to accompany his script though. Ah, no, wait a minute, they were largely slides of the dense text he was reading, sometimes verbatim, sometimes not. This made for a distracting, ‘spot the difference‘ game and I found myself wandering from his argument. You see, Mr Tallis may be a genius in many disciplines, but when it comes to the art of presentation, he’s a simpleton.

He is predominantly a writer and as any writer should know, ‘writing’ is not speech. It is the difference between fantasising about sex and actually performing sex; different organs are used. And as he progressed in his recitation, my tumescent interest slowly drooped. If this was him being excited, boy, I’d hate to see him when he’s feeling off colour.

One of his complaints, highlighted in his diatribe, was that interest in knowledge for its own sake was waning during these modern times in the general population. Well, on the evidence of his presentation it was easy to see why. Knowledge presented in this manner is about as interesting as reading the UK’s Twitter stream during the broadcast of an x-factor episode. When today’s youth have wifi connected video games that engage them totally at all emotional levels, the choice between searching out fascinating knowledge in a hit and miss fashion and being engrossed in a virtual world is a pretty simple one. Maybe someone should invent a philosophy video game that asked youth how we should live and forced them to make moral decisions. That might get them engaged in the pursuit of knowledge.

The purpose of a live presentation is to persuade the audience to do something differently – even if it is to think about something differently. If you want to persuade someone, you need to engage with them, make eye contact and display some passionate belief in your message. Mr Tallis read from his script. I can read a script from my computer screen – just send me the sodding pdf. What was the point of him being there?

It was mentioned by Mr Tallis in his preamble, that he and Michele Ledda, the host for the evening, had a brilliant conversation in the pub beforehand and he hoped his impending presentation was a fraction as good. Clearly the main event happened in the pub because nothing sparked when I was listening. Why was that? Maybe it was because Mr Tallis wasn’t reading from a prepared script when he was in the pub, maybe it’s because he and Michele engaged with one another in a natural and spontaneous way.

On his entry into the building, Mr Tallis wore a striking, bright red felt hat with a black band, so he clearly acknowledges the need for good presentation in his wardrobe. Why then, does he stop when he closes the wardrobe door? Is he unable to extend the metaphor into public speaking?

He did manage to change my attitude though in one area that evening. In the Q & A that followed his presentation, polite exchanges were made about his argument. I resolved henceforth to make it my mission to criticise publicly any presentation that falls way short of the respect I am due for giving up my valuable time and attention to listen to it.

You have been warned.

I’m also going to get me one of those bright red felt hats.

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How can we measure ideas?

Wednesday, September 29th, 2010

rule

“We owe almost all of our knowledge not to those who have agreed, but to those who have differed.” Charles Caleb Colton

At a recent speaking engagement, I noticed the evaluation forms neatly distributed around the seats of the room. The audience were to measure my presentation. My immediate and unconscious reaction was, ‘I hope they like me.’*

But then I started to think…

What are they measuring? The fact that the forms were neatly laid out and had exactly the same questions on them, spoke volumes about how we view our society and how it should be run. They could only be measuring a narrow band of data from the entire experience of hearing me speak. Who decides if that narrow band is the ‘best’ one to measure?

Should I have studied the evaluation form and then attempted to modify my message in whatever way I could, so that I could score more highly in the areas the client seems interested in? If I am a professional speaker, it makes sense to please the client so that they will recommend me to others or even hire me again. To do this, I need to know what the client really wants to hear, and to give them what they want in an attractive package. A high evaluation score would result and I would be pleased.

But should I be pleased?

If I tell them what they want to hear, am I not just confirming prejudices, misconceptions, and false confidences? If you are following my reasoning, you will have noticed that I just made an assumption. How can we be sure if they are prejudices, or misconceptions or false confidences? Well, who is asking the questions that re-examines cherished and long held beliefs? If none of your values and beliefs are challenged, how can you be certain that they are sound?

You can’t.

So what is the job of a professional speaker? If it is to ‘motivate’ the workforce to work harder, research has shown that any kind of attention will do the trick, in which case, forget the expensive speaker and just take the workers out for a meal or provide free massages in their break times. If it is to facilitate change or to improve productivity in the long term, then the speaker will have to address significant aspects of the world views held by the audience members and get them to re-examine them. This can be uncomfortable and challenging. People hate change, even if that change can be of benefit in the long run.

Thus, if a speaker proposes something unpleasant to an audience, how is that going to affect their evaluation score? Does a low score mean more has been achieved? Is a high evaluation score a badge of anodyne blandness, and a lack of originality?

Or is the mark of a truly great speaker, the ability to make the difficult seem desirable, and render any sort of evaluation irrelevant?

* A natural mistake. Being liked, has nothing to do with the job of communicating ideas.

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Michael Angelo meets Stanley Milgram

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

prof
In the middle of a presentation by a successful professional speaker, a slide came up which illustrated his next point. It was a quote that read;
The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.
Michael Angelo

My immediate reaction was one of amusement but as his presentation continued, something remarkable happened, my amusement turned to doubt.

This particular speaker is incredibly successful at what he does and commands a lot of respect (and fees) as a result. He was on stage in front of a large audience and his voice was amplified. This meant that he had authority over us. We, the audience, had given up our valuable time to listen to him and gain the benefit of his wisdom.

At the end of his presentation, he asked for any questions. I was on the cusp of asking him. “Who is this ‘Michael Angelo;? I had heard of Michelangelo the artist, is it the same person?” But his authority stopped me.

If I asked this question, somebody was going to look stupid, and I wasn’t 100% sure, it was going to be him. His position of authority had sown the seeds of doubt in my mind.

Although I was familiar with the art works of Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni,  I was not familiar with his writings, and so I couldn’t be sure that the person referred to in the quote was the same Michelangelo. The possibility remained that there was another Michael Angelo who is a professional speaker and has an improbable name, just as Zig Ziglar has.

At the presentation, I remained silent.

When I got home, I was straight onto the computer. An internet search revealed that there is indeed a Michael Angelo. His fame though, lies in being a heavy metal guitarist who plays an improbable looking twin necked guitar. Further searches did not reveal him to be a professional speaker on the side, with a history of producing memorable quotes.

Interestingly, more research showed that, nine times out of ten, the quote used in the presentation was attributed to Michelangelo, but the tenth one was incorrectly attributed to Michael Angelo. It became apparent that the speaker had seen the quote somewhere, thought it would be useful in one of his presentations, and so copied and pasted it verbatim. Unfortunately, because he was not familiar with the artist, he took the attribution on trust and copied an incorrect one. I guess most people have done this kind of thing at some point in their careers.

The dangers though, are apparent;

In terms of his presentation, as soon as I noticed the error, he had lost me. Not only was I preoccupied with the veracity of the quote, I was also questioning the entire content of his presentation – if he had got that wrong, what else had he simply copied and pasted without thinking.

His apparent authority of his own subject matter made me doubt my own knowledge. I was reluctant to bring up the point in discussion because of the hierarchical nature of speaker presentations. Despite what anyone might say, it is not an equitable exchange of ideas and knowledge. It is his job to speak, therefore he must know what he is talking about. A recent example of acceding to authority, is the way ‘financial experts’ managed to convince seemingly ‘intelligent’ bankers that sub prime mortgages were an infallible way to make money. Experiments by Stanley Milgram, confirm this tendency of ours to submit to any sort of authority.

On a philosophical note, short of travelling to Italy and seeing original documents, I cannot be absolutely sure that Michelangelo made that quote or that his name is spelled as most books have it. So is my knowledge of Michelangelo any more certain than the speakers?

Perhaps I should end with this quote, allegedly attributed to Buddha;
Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.

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How to feed your audience

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009

Often a keynote speech has to be adapted for different audiences and for different time constraints. If the presentation requires shortening, the temptation is to simply include the most sexy bits of your speech to keep it as punchy as possible. This can sometimes work against you.

The best way to look at preparing a speech is to imagine you are serving a meal to a hungry audience. No matter how short or long your presentation is, the demands of hunger remain the same.

Here are a couple of starter incidents to whet your appetite.

The first was when I was showing Paul Thomas, a friend of mine, my latest slide show presentation. I described a visual trick I do with a cup and spoon to demonstrate how inept we are at predicting outcomes. I then showed him a couple of slides which basically illustrated similar illusions. Paul warned me to be careful about overwhelming my audience with too much stuff, they only have a limited capacity for new information. Good point.

The second incident involved a conversation I had with David Hyner earlier today. We were talking about a presentation he had made to a school a couple of weeks back and which I had attended. The only real criticism I could find with his excellent content and delivery was the lack of some gravitas, some profound bit of meat to chew over. David acknowledged this feedback as valid and described the scenario as mentioned in my first paragraph.

This set me thinking about how to avoid this seductive trap. If you always think of the meal analogy, it should help you give a balanced presentation.

You are feeding the audience
It’s about them, they’re hungry, not you, so don’t feed your own ego.

They have limited appetites
Their stomachs can only hold so much food and they are probably used to particular foods so presenting them with a huge banquet, no matter how tempting it looks, is just wasteful and some people will subconsciously feel frustrated that they couldn’t taste it all. Also, exotic spicy foods can upset delicate stomachs so if your ideas are radical and challenging they may need to be watered down a bit with a suitable sauce.

They need sustenance
Remember it’s the food they need, not the wrapper.

They need quality
A lot of presentations try to appeal to the immediate demands of hunger and are full of sugar and saturated fats – in effect fast food. This gives a quick sugar rush of energy but it is not long before the audience will require another quick fix and their health in the long term will decline.

They need a varied diet
Give them a tasty starter or two, serve the main dish somewhere in the middle or near the end, garnished with suitable examples and anecdotes then finish with something sweet or minty.

Your audience will feel satisfied and probably come back again to enjoy another fabulous meal.

If you want to leave a tip, a comment would be nice.

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Worcester breakfast club

Saturday, April 25th, 2009

Professor Ivor Tymchak

So. After Wetherby High School came the Birmingham Professional Speakers Association master-class group. The audience was made up entirely of experienced professional speakers. I delivered the original SatNav for the Soul® presentation verbatim including the slides I had shown at Wetherby plus some extra ones I had devised.

The feedback was disheartening and painful.

‘You talk about talent’, they said, ‘but where is your talent, your artistic skills?’

‘You talk about passion’, they said, ’so where is your passion, why do you constrict yourself with a straight jacket of memorised lines?’

It was not all one way though, the SatNav metaphors were absolutely brilliant, they said, why don’t you concentrate on them?

But their criticisms undermined the very foundation of my working model, namely, to learn a speech word for word. They were suggesting that I abandon this model and improvise. It seemed I had learned nothing from the Wetherby experience.

Afterwards I spoke with Clive Gott, a successful and experienced speaker, about the feedback I had received and about my doubts about the speaking model I had adopted. After much soul searching on my part Clive crystallised the experience by summarising that what the Birmingham audience had been asking of me was to be authentic, that was all, and by being authentic I could then connect with them.

This made a lot of sense and after I had finished speaking with Clive I felt a whole lot better about the next speaking engagement coming up which was the Worcester breakfast club. It was an unpaid gig and Clive convinced me that I had nothing to lose by throwing out the script and improvising.

The next few days saw a frantic preparation of new slides which showed my artwork and various creative avenues I had explored during my life. ‘Tell us your story’, the master-class group had advised, so I intended to.

Ten minutes before I was to deliver my speech to the breakfast club I felt surprisingly relaxed, even eager. I didn’t have to worry about forgetting my lines because I was going to make them up as I went along. And the collection of slides I had put together gave me confidence – even I was impressed with the array of creative ventures I had undertaken.

So the speech now contained all my triple A grade material distilled into thirty minutes. I had even plundered my other keynote speech, ‘Assume Nothing’ for its best bits. It all made sense though, nothing was gratuitous or arbitrary.

I felt pretty good as I finished my last line and sat down to my half empty cup of cold coffee to wait out the remaining minutes of the meeting. I felt good but not good enough to prepare me for the feedback from the well wishers who came up to congratulate me afterwards. I was astonished. Every single accolade was offered. A man introduced himself and said it was a pleasure to meet someone who knew how to use PowerPoint properly (boy, that felt good). Another said that he was already sitting up during my presentation but when my first slide came on of my own work he sat up even more (what a master stroke it was to follow the master-class advice). A couple of people asked if they could have a copy of one particular slide which was a caricature of me as a mad scientist concocting a distillate of creativity (see above).

Driving home I was higher than the moon. It felt like my speaking career had just experienced the orgasm of its conception and was on its journey of development into a fabulous creature that had its own glittering destiny ahead of it. Success is the most powerful aphrodisiac known to creativity. Today has seen an orgy of ideas that danced and mated with each other and produced offspring that will enhance and improve the presentation even further.

I kid you not, SatNav for the Soul® is now a killer presentation who’s time has come. Its message is pure crack cocaine to those people stuck in the senseless loop traffic around the Capitalist city of Consumerism.

I’m ready.

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Speaking in schools

Monday, April 6th, 2009

The map is not the territory

The road to Wetherby was my road to Damascus. On this journey I saw the light. A blinding light.

Wetherby High School had booked me to speak to their Key Stage 4 students. I had no idea what Key Stage 4 was. I had never spoken in a school before.

I was to deliver my new keynote presentation, SatNav for the Soul®, which basically points out to people that consumerism has us imprisoned and is slowly starving us to death spiritually and creatively. The keynote was originally written for adults caught up in corporate purgatory but after I had presented it to a Rotary club and an audience member told me afterwards that he wanted his teenage son to hear it, I wondered if adolescents would find the message instructive too. It was then that I looked to present it in schools.

Getting into schools though proved incredibly difficult and it was only through Richard McCann, a fellow speaker, that I managed to get the Wetherby gig.

The member of staff responsible for the citizenship stand-down day was understandably wary of letting anyone run loose with the young minds of her impressionable charges and so she asked to see a transcript of SatNav for the Soul®. which I duly sent her. After reading it, she acknowledged it was a good message but thought it might be too erudite for fifteen and sixteen year olds and suggested that I ‘dumb it down a bit’. As I had learned the speech by rote, I resolved to change one or two words for simpler ones where I could remember to do so. There wasn’t enough time to memorise an alternate version. She then asked me if I had any slides to go with the speech. I said no, I was simply going to deliver it verbatim as the transcript. She balked at this and suggested I source some images as teenagers today are largely visual and holding their attention without them would prove a major challenge. There was only a couple of days to go before I was supposed to deliver.

I had deliberately avoided using any slides as I wanted to keep the presentation as simple as possible technically but I took her advice and looked at developing some memorable slides. This was the first flash of light.

When I started to think about how I could enhance an important section, the images began to take on a life of their own. It was fun creating alternative ways of looking at things. I ruthlessly followed the basic ground rules of slides; no more than six words per slide, avoid just repeating what you have already said, etc and I started to collect an impressive collection of images. Many a difficult concept was magically simplified with a well thought out cartoon, something I could execute in a few minutes being an accomplished artist. I also discovered slides were a great aide memoir should I forget where I was in the speech. I was ready.

On the day, I was to present two sessions, one immediately before lunch and one immediately after lunch. The morning session I delivered as I would do for an adult audience, reciting the speech as I had memorised it but changing the odd big word here and there for a simpler one. I could see that the four or five teachers present in the audience were thoroughly absorbed in the speech and following every word but some of the kids looked blank. By the end of the presentation the students started to get restless and I was disappointed that I hadn’t been able to hold their attention throughout.

Over lunch I spoke to Peter Muddiman, the teacher who booked me, and he said the language was still too dense, the speech would have been fine at a conference of teachers but adolescents were an entirely different box of frogs. The epilogue, he said, sounded like poetry and went way over the heads of the kids. The next group were a year younger and they were going to find it difficult, if not impossible, to follow any of that.

A year younger!? My heart plunged to the bottom of the Pacific ocean. I would never hold their attention; a year can make a huge difference to someone’s understanding of the world. I realised I would either have to present it as rehearsed and subject them to forty minutes of incomprehensible ‘poetry’ or… or what?

I didn’t want to do the second session, I wanted to go home and debrief. But then a strange thing happened. I decided that I had to do it, no matter what. I couldn’t let people down. But I couldn’t present it as it was, I had to change it radically and I had five minutes in which to think up how. The light started to get brighter.

I decided to throw out the script and speak from the heart using my slides as a reference. This was frightening for me because I wanted to present certain complex concepts in a particular order using precise language, that is why I had learned the speech by rote. Improvising was a dangerous, unknown quantity. An eerie calm flooded through me as I realised I was crossing the Rubicon. I was perfectly relaxed as the children filed into the hall and I prepared to deliver the second session.

One of the teachers from the first session spoke to me as he walked past and said, “I’m looking forward to hearing this again”.

“Oh, it will be different this time.” I answered somewhat taken aback.

The member of staff responsible for the citizenship stand-down day came in last and told me that she had had good feedback (I reasoned this has to be from the teachers, as a lot of students looked indifferent) and that she would sit in on this one.

“…and so give a warm welcome to Ivor Tymchak…”

Still calm, I dived in. And hey! the water was warm! I launched into my subject matter. And what’s this? Hey! I can swim!

I felt like a session musician who had only ever followed the dots previously but suddenly learned, to his astonishment, that he could play improvised jazz. Because I had to rephrase practically everything in simpler language, the words were fresh and vital and I could look directly into the childrens’ eyes and divine if they had grasped the concept or not. If they had not, I explained the concept again using a different analogy. I left out huge chunks of the presentation which I thought were just too far removed from their everyday experience to be of any relevance. When I had finished, I was astonished to discover that the length of the second session was still forty minutes long – how come?

Speaking to Peter Muddiman afterwards (who listened to both sessions) he said the second session was far better for the kids and that I took the time to explain the concepts until they were understood. As an adult, he preferred the first session but from a child’s point of view the second session was much more accessible.

He told me he was impressed with way I had managed to shift gears so suddenly and come up with virtually, an entirely new presentation.

I must confess, I surprised myself too with my new found ability to improvise. It was one of those life enhancing moments, where you let go of something precious, only to discover that by letting go you have found something even more precious.

I’m already working on the revised version of the presentation. It will have more interaction, practical demonstrations and challenging puzzles. It will be ten times better than my last presentation, for on that day in Wetherby, I put away manish things and became a playful child.

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