Beyond SUS

Many sabha-ologist have asked what comes after SUS. This is an excellent question since it implies a truth that many sabha-ologist have not really contemplated. SUS is just the starting point. (Gasp!) One of the next step in crafting a great talk is to refine what we are going to say and how we are going to say it. This will require deliberate practice which is a fancy way of saying giving lots of talks and getting lots of feedback (a sabha-ologists version of a good time). There are many excellent speakers who after their SUS write down each word they are going to say line by line to hone their presentation. Evan Puschak (the Nerdwriter) has an excellent example of crafting a message (hat tip Jarvikbhai) by deconstructing a Louis C K joke.

You know, more than anything else I think I’m obsessed with articulation, with the magic of putting things just the right way. There are 207 words in this joke and not a single one is wasted. They’re used either in meaning or in rhythm to contribute to the overall effect, an effect that lets us see the world from a different angle, and more importantly, makes us laugh.

It is this idea of articulation that SUS attempts quantify. SUS is just one of many methods to do this. We don't need SUS to make a great talk, but we need something. Using SUS is infinitely better than using nothing at all. After SUS we need to sharpen the saw. One method is to wordsmith in the manner that Louis CK does with his material - looking at every word we are about to say and evaluating if there is a more concise and impactful way of articulating our thoughts. Put another way: is there a better way to say our story to convey our simple message. We may not be able to script every word, but let's start next week by looking at one story.

What makes a great TED Talk?

The Harvard Business Review has an interesting post trying to answer this question. They speak with Chris Anderson, the curator of TED, and get his opinion on this question. His answer will not surprise many of our regular readers since they echo the Made to Stick SUCCES paradigm. However Anderson leads with emotion (the E in SUCCES). It is interesting since when we try to learn these techniques we usually lead with unexpected (that Anderson calls surprise), stories (related to what Anderson calls visual), and simple. We focus initially just on these three since they get us out of doing something boring. However to really engage an audience's attention and calls them to action we really do need to engage their emotion. It takes practice and forethought. When reviewing a talk we naturally ask ourselves or others - "what is the SUS?" To get to the next level we need to augment that to - "what is the SUSE?" Here is what Anderson has to say about this.

What makes for a great presentation — the kind that compels people’s attention and calls them to action?  TED talks have certainly set a benchmark in recent years: HBR even asked Chris Anderson, the group’s founder, to offer lessons drawn from the three decades he’s run TED’s signature events in an article published last summer. 

But experience and intuition are one thing; data and analysis are another. What could one learn by watching the most successful TED talks in recent years (150 hours’ worth), talking to many of the speakers, then running the findings by neuroscientists who study persuasion?  I did just that, and here’s what I learned: 

Use emotion. Bryan Stevenson’s TED talk, “We need to talk about an injustice”, received the longest standing ovation in the event’s history. A civil rights attorney who successfully argued and won the Supreme Court case Miller v. Alabama, which prohibits mandatory life sentences without parole for juveniles convicted of murder, this is a man who knows how to persuade people. 

I divided the content of his talk into Aristotle’s three areas of persuasion. Only 10 percent fell under “ethos” (establishing credibility for the speaker); 25 percent fell into the “logos” category (data, statistics) and a full 65 percent was categorized as “pathos” (emotion, storytelling). In his 18-minute talk, Stevenson told three stories to support his argument. The first was about his grandmother, and when I asked him why he started with it, his answer was simple: “Because everyone has a grandmother.” The story was his way of making an immediate connection with the audience. 

Stories that trigger emotion are the ones that best inform, illuminate, inspire, and move people to action. Most everyday workplace conversations are heavy on data and light on stories, yet you need the latter to reinforce your argument. So start incorporating more anecdotes – from your own experience or those about other people, stories and brands (both successes and failures) – into your pitches and presentations. 

Be novel. We all like to see and hear something new. One guideline that TED gives its speakers is to avoid “trotting out the usual shtick.” In other words, deliver information that is unique, surprising, or unexpected—novel. 

In his 2009 TED presentation on the impact of malaria in African countries, Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates shocked his audience when he opened a jar of mosquitoes in the middle of his talk. “Malaria, of course, is transmitted by mosquitoes,” he said. “I brought some here so you can experience this. I’ll let these roam around the auditorium. There’s no reason why only poor people should have the experience.” He reassured his audience that the mosquitoes were not infected – but not until the stunt had grabbed their attention and drawn them into the conversation. 

As neuroscientist Dr. A.K. Pradeep confirms, our brains can’t ignore novelty. “They are trained to look for something brilliant and new, something that stands out.” Pradeep should know. He’s a pioneer in the area of neuromarketing, studying advertisements, packaging, and design for major brands launching new products. 

In the workplace your listener (boss, colleague, sales prospect) is asking him or herself one question: “Is this person teaching me something I don’t know?” So introduce material that’s unexpected, surprising or offers a new and novel solution to an old problem. 

Emphasize the visual. Robert Ballard’s 2008 TED talk on his discovery of the Titanic, two and a half miles beneath the surface of the Atlantic, contained 57 slides with no words. He showed pictures, images, and animation of life beneath the sea, without one word of text, and the audience loved it. Why did you deliver an entire presentation in pictures? “Because I’m storytelling; not lecturing,” Ballard told me. 

Research shows that most of us learn better when information is presented in pictures and text instead of text alone. When ideas are delivered verbally—without pictures—the listener retains about 10% of the content. Add a picture and retention soars to 65%. 

For your next PowerPoint presentation, abandon the text blocks and bullet points in favor of more visually intriguing design elements. Show pictures, animations, and images that reinforce your theme. Help people remember your message.

The Secret to go from Worst to Best: Deliberate Practice

Would you like to know the secret that can propel you from being one of the worst speakers to being one of the best? Andrew Ng, a professor at Stanford University and a founding member of Coursera shares his insight on how he accomplished this exact feat. After understanding the mechanics of how to create and deliver a great talk, what we really have to do is the hard work of practice. The Pareto principle (80/20 rule) tells us that we can get an 80% improvement in our speaking skills, but we need to put in the 20% of work in the form of practice. Focused practice with very good feedback is how we can improve much faster. This is why we have a preview and review cycle in our sabha and our syllabus is focused on this cycle and the concept of SUS. This in a nutshell is what deliberate practice is all about. Here is what Prof. Ng has to say about it.

How can you rapidly improve your presentation skills? When I began teaching at Stanford University in 2002, I was one of the weakest teachers--bottom 13% according to my student reviews. Eleven years later, in 2013, students named me one of the top 10 professors across all of Stanford University. During that journey, there was one short period when my teaching and public speaking rapidly improved, through a process called deliberate practice.

We all know that to get better at a musical instrument or a sport, you have to practice. Practice does not simply mean “doing the activity over and over.” Instead, you learn fastest when you engage in a focused process called deliberate practice, in which you repeatedly attempt an especially challenging part of the task.

When the best musicians are working to improve, they don’t just play their favorite tunes for hours. Instead, they pick a short but challenging passage in a larger musical piece, and repeatedly play that passage until they get it right. Athletes use a similar process to hone their skills. This is hard work---you focus in every attempt, try to figure out what you’re doing wrong, and tweak your performance to make it better. If you do it right, you might be mentally drained after 30 minutes.

Deliberate practice is common in music and in sports, but is rarely used in the context of speaking or teaching. In fact, knowledge workers in most disciplines rarely engage in deliberate practice. This limits how rapidly we get better at our jobs; it also means that deliberate practice might help you progress faster than your peers.

Key elements of deliberate practice include:

• Rapid iteration.
• Immediate feedback.
• Focus on a small part of the task that can be done in a short time.

Here’s a 30 minute deliberate practice exercise for improving your presentations:

1. Select a ~60 second portion of a presentation that you made recently, or that you plan to make.
2. Record yourself making that 60 second presentation. Use a webcam, camcorder, or your cellphone video camera to capture video and audio.
3. Watch your presentation. If you haven’t seen yourself on video much, you’ll be appalled at how you look or sound. This is a good sign; it means that your speaking ability is about to improve dramatically.
4. Decide what you’d like to adjust about your presentation. Then go back to Step 2, try again, making any changes you think will improve your speaking.
5. Repeat the cycle of recording, watching, and adjusting 8 - 10 times.

You want to select only a ~60 second portion of your presentation to practice. By using only 60 second segments, you can go through the steps above maybe 8-10 times in half an hour (i.e., you can perform many iterations in a short time). The first time I did this, I recorded myself talking for 30 minutes. But you don’t really want to watch a 30 minute video of yourself talking—it gets boring—and in a 30 minute video, you’ll also find far too many things to change that you won’t be able to keep them straight in your mind.

This was the process I used to improved my teaching. For about a year, I had a camcorder set up in my living room, and I went through the record-watch-adjust cycle whenever I had a few moments to spare. Although I still have much to learn, a series of many practice sessions helped me to improve my teaching more quickly than anything else I’ve done, and ultimately allowed me to develop and launch my first MOOC in 2011. In the later parts of my teaching career, when I was learning how to create MOOC-style online lecture videos, the process of deliberate practice helped me get much better at that too.

Avoiding Rookie Mistakes

Prezi has walked into the spotlight as a snazzy alternative to PowerPoint. They featured a guest post a month ago highlighting some common presentation mistakes that we've excerpted below though the accompanying Prezi is only viewable on their site.

In this guest post, Terry Gault, Managing Partner and Vice President of The Henderson Group, provides insight into how to become a better presenter by avoiding a few common mistakes. Terry oversees all curriculum and services at The Henderson Group. In addition he is responsible for the selection, training and development of all trainers and facilitators for The Henderson Group, and has been an instructor with the Henderson Group for over 15 years. 

Having coached clients on presentation skills since 1997, I’ve noticed some clear patterns in the behavior of inexperienced presenters.

The list follows with detailed explanations below. I’ve included suggestions on how to be more effective.

1. Using small scale movements and gestures.
Most rookie presenters are afraid to take up too much space. This hesitance comes across like an apology to the audience. For more on this topic, check out our post titled “What the heck do I do with my hands?!?"

2. Speaking with low energy.
Actually, this problem is not restricted solely to rookie presenters. 80 – 90% of the presenters that I observe do not expend enough energy. Hence, they come across as uninvolved, uninteresting, and unenthusiastic. Crank up the energy level! You will command more attention and project more confidence and charisma. I cannot stress this strongly enough. For more, check out our video on Speaking With Passion.

3. Not preparing enough
Granted, many rookie presenters don’t know how to prepare effectively other than preparing their media. Experienced speakers do plenty of research so that they feel confident in their material and their ability to respond to any question the audience might throw at them. They daydream about their topic even during ‘down time’ and often find the most creative ideas when doing other activities. I often come up with great ideas while driving, shopping, or running. It’s important to go through multiple drafts or iterations of your material, revising and editing, to arrive at the most finished form of your talk.

4. Not practicing enough
Not practicing your talks and presentations on your feet is one of the single biggest mistakes you can make. Experienced speakers will often do a dry run of their material with a trusted audience of friends, family, or colleagues. They will simulate the environment of their presentation using a projector and slide remote. They’ll choreograph their movements and gestures which will dramatically increase your ability to remember your material. They recognize areas of challenge (weak segues, awkward media transitions, etc.) and come up with tricks and tactics to help them flow seamlessly through their material.

5. Data centric presentations.
If your talk is focused on data rather than the vivid human story the data tells, you are in trouble. In the June 2013 issue of Fast Company magazine, Leslie Bradshaw, the COO of Guide is speaking about Big Data. She states: “The art is in preparing the content for optimal human consumption. The data doesn't just talk back to you. You collect, you analyze, you tell stories. Think of an iceberg. Underneath the waterline are data storage and analysis. Those are your engineers and scientists. Up above is the interface. It's both literal and narrative. It starts with the hard sciences–the math, the analytics–but it ends up with the softest: how to tell the story.”

6. Playing it safe.
Many presenters, rookies included, avoid taking risks. As my mentor and co-founder of our company often said, “Not taking a risk is also a risk.” When your presentation content is too safe, it usually comes across as boring. When the most important ability as a speaker is the ability to garner attention, can you afford to avoid taking risks?

7. Avoiding vulnerability.
This will seem very counter-intuitive to many young presenters but you must find ways to show vulnerability if you want to be seen as credible. If you are obviously trying to hard to seem perfect, savvy audiences will see through your act and become even more suspicious. Tells stories about times when you made dumb mistakes and then reveal what you learned. In Brene Brown’s talk on Vulnerabilty at TED, she states, “The original definition of courage, when it first came into the English language—it's from the Latin word cor, meaning heart—and the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart… very simply, the courage to be imperfect.” For more on vulnerability, here are some related posts on our blog.

8. Taking oneself way too seriously.
Many speakers tend to be very serious and formal. If they could bring more of their natural, informal style into their presentations, they would be more authentic and engaging and authentic. The stiff formality and rigid “professionalism” many tend to slip into when presenting may garner respect but respect only has value if people actually want to spend time with you. If you defer too much to your audience, you are projecting that you are not of an equal stature. Respect the audience’s professionalism but relate to their humanity informally. By speaking to them more informally, you project that you are equal. They will read that as confidence. As I often say to clients, “If you are not having fun, you are not doing it right.”

9. Presenting too much material
Though it’s always better to have more material than you need, you also need to know what you will cut if you run out of time. Rookie presenters feel compelled to get through all their material even if it means going past their allotted time. I’ve heard of speakers who have gone as much as 45 minutes over their time commitment. This is inexcusable. If you want to estimate how much time your talk will actually take in front of an audience, practice on your feet and time yourself. Expect your actual talk will take at least 25% longer and maybe even 50%. Speakers often expand even further on their topic when they see audience’s reactions.

10. Rushing
Rushing further exacerbates any existing delivery or content problem you may already have. Phrases will lose impact because you are rushing. Slowing down will make you seem far more poised and confident and experienced. Using more pauses will also:

a) Increase audience perception as well as your feeling of confidence and ease.
b) Give your audience time to digest your key points and give those points greater impact.
c) Give you time to formulate your thoughts into more succinct and cogent sentences.

S-l-o-w d-o-w-n!

Brussel Sprouts and PowerPoint

Brussel Sprouts have a bad reputation. Many people don't like them, because the primary way of cooking them in the past was to boil them, and when you boil brussel sprouts it is not very pretty. There has been a renaissance in sprouts as of late as people starting roasting them with a bit of olive oil and salt. They taste (and smell) infinitely better this way. The problem was not the sprouts - it was how we used the spouts.

Powerpoint is in the same boat as brussel sprouts. Most of us have sat through egregious powerpoint presentations. Edward Tufte has railed against them and Saba.ology has touched on this subject. However powerpoint is a tool. It is not powerpoint that makes bad presentation, it is people that make bad presentations. John Foreman, on his blog, gives an excellent analysis of this, as well as the biases that informs Tufte's stand.

Having been a consultant to the federal government for a number of years, it was hard to not hear about Edward Tufte. The style of communication used by government consultants and their clients (particularly the military) are anathema to the longtime information design,data viz luminary. So when I was at Booz Allen, my team used to think about his perspective as a counterpoint to how we built data visualization products.

Today, I had the privilege of attending one of Tufte’s training sessions in person. I along with a few hundred other folks gathered in a hotel ballroom for a 6 hour tour of his many books and theories. 

He’s got awesome points. Let me summarize some that will be pertinent to this blog post:

1) Humans have a good vision system. So we shouldn’t hide data (especially related data) behind hierarchical layers. Rather, data should all be displayed on a single canvas where readers can delve into it and digest it with speed. If data points are related, then that relationship can be called out by allowing the data to share space. To emphasize these points he contrasted the National Weather Service’s  local forecast website with most corporate websites (using an XKCD comic to underline his point). 

The NWS uses simple, intuitive dumps of data, and they plop it all on one page, whereas many websites would hide this amount of info behind layers and layers that “disrupt the signal.” As Tufte puts it in one of his books:  

“Visual reasoning usually works more effectively when the relevant evidence is shown adjacent in space within our eyespan.” 

In order words, it’s the author’s job to serve up the data on a broad platter, and it’s the reader’s job to chop it up and make sense of it. Data should not be served precut in bitesize chunks a la Chinese food.  For what it's worth, I think the NWS website is ugly as balls, but that’s neither here nor there for this post.

2) The audience of a presentation should be given data and reading upfront (Tufte loves paper) and allowed to digest data at their speed.  As he puts it in his book Beautiful Evidence:

“It is helpful to provide audience members with at least one mode of information that allows them to control the order and pace of learning – unlike slides and unlike talk.” 

3) Visual adornment for the sake of visual adornment in data presentations should be avoided. He calls this “chart junk.” Amen! Here’s a great animation that drives this point home. 

Those were the three well-reasoned takeaways for me. But he had a forth point he kept hitting over and over...

PowerPoint is Evil

When I say that Tufte thinks PowerPoint is evil, I’m not making a joke. Tufte  argues that visual communication is a “moral and ethical” undertaking for the presenter. To chop up information between slides, force readers to drill down, hide relationships by separating them on disparate slides,  slow down information transfer by minimizing words on a slide (low information density and throughput) is to communicate dishonestly. 

The use of PowerPoint to split apart data and ideas and deliver them piecemeal to an audience is an amoral power play. I disagree. 

Brussel Sprouts & Why Slides Don't Kill People, People Kill People

Brussel sprouts have had for a very long time a bad reputation. On after school cartoons (Rugrats comes to mind), they always ranked up there with liver as dreaded food items. Why? Because if you boil them, they’re foul. And for years and years, that’s how they were prepared in the U.S. But these days, brussel sprouts are making a comeback. Every new restaurant I go to from hipster speakeasies to lawyerly steakhouses is putting them back on the menu. What changed? The preparation. They’re not boiled any more. They’re often split and roasted with olive oil  and served with salt, lemon, goat cheese, pine nuts, parmesan, etc. It's delicious. Brussel sprouts were never the problem. People were the problem. They were preparing them wrong. 

PowerPoint is the same.  

About halfway through Tufte’s presentation, I noticed that much of his time was spent flipping through slides. He showed a slide of this beautiful graphic beautiful graphic from the New York Times and then he flipped to a slide of Tim Berners-Lee’s proposalfor creating the internet and so on. His slides were single, information-dense graphics. Nothing that couldn’t go on a PowerPoint slide.  So really his problem isn’t with PowerPoint then is it? It’s with how the enterprise uses PowerPoint. What he’s really criticizing is not PowerPoint as a tool, but rather the default use of PowerPoint by an old guard. When I create a new PowerPoint deck, the first thing I do is delete the title and text box of the default sheet and start with a blank slate. Then I build up slides not much different from those I saw Tufte present.  

“But wait!” you might say, “The fact that the default slide in PowerPoint has a bulleted list PROVES that it’s intended for evil!” The default preparation instructions on the side of my bag of store-prepped and washed brussel sprouts are to boil them. Does that make sprouts inherently evil? Nah. Just ignore it and use the tool/vegetable how you wish. 

What’s wrong with POWER?

In Beautiful Evidence, Tufte calls PowerPoint “pushy” and “tends to set up a dominance relationship between speaker and audience, as the speaker makes power points with hierarchical bullets to passive followers.”  I heard a lot of language like this today. PowerPoint in its default use was equated to no less than the figurehead of hegemony himself – Dick Cheney.  

Hey, I get it. I’m all for active listening, especially in film and television. That’s why I’m such a huge fan of reference-based rapid-fire dramadies like Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars. They make the reader work and pay attention in ways that inane laugh track garbage can't. 

But let's follow some other bits of Tufte's logic and see where we end up. One thing that Tufte kept saying was “if you want to play with the big boys,” you’ll get rid of PowerPoint. And his biggest boy of all was Apple. Tufte loves him some Apple products. He feels that the iPad in using a touch screen (doing away with interface elements such as pointers and scroll bars) has freed up more visual space for data. Good point. That’s awesome. Tufte pointed out that, naturally, Apple does not use PowerPoint in their meetings. Indeed, Steve Jobs dropped the f-bomb four times in one sentence when discussing PowerPoint with him. Go Steve! 

But wait.  

How can Tufte align himself with Steve Jobs? Jobs is the antithesis of open-canvas, all-on-one-slide, read-ahead data communication. While Tufte criticizes PowerPoint presentations as “aggressive” and “over-managed,” there is no more over-managed presentation than a Jobs presentation. Don't believe me? Read here. 

There’s even a word for Jobs' highly controlled, authoritarian presentation style: the  Stevenote.
And the hallmark of the Stevenote was “one more thing.” 

The act of declaring “one more thing” at the end of a presentation is inherently opposed to Tufte. It’s all about keeping information back, not laying it on a canvas, not putting it in front of the audience. The relationship is not one of "respectful teacher and student" but one of king and awestruck subject. But if Jobs’ method of presenting is so reprehensible, as I'd hope Tufte would admit, then why is he lauded as one of the most effective presenters of all time?

We Present to Convince
For Tufte, the objective of a presentation is maximum data throughput. The speedy, digestible transmission of data to the audience. Hierarchy and layers just get in the way of a data buffet.
But for Jobs and indeed for many presenters, this is a secondary concern.  The primary concern is to make an argument. (A sales pitch is an argument). Tufte is an academic. He said over and over again that the best examples of his philosophy can be seen in scientific and mathematical literature. In these contexts, data speaks for itself. 

But in Jobs’ context, an argument is made not by vomiting data before the audience but by teasing it out in just the right way. Save the best for last. This is no different than a comedian timing punch lines perfectly. A comedian would never give you the jokes on a “high density paper read-ahead.” That’d spoil the presentation! 

Wrapping This Up
So those are my two main reasons for why Tufte is wrong about PowerPoint:

• He uses the enterprise's typical use of PowerPoint as a straw man for PowerPoint itself
• Not all presentations are given for the sole purpose of transmitting raw data. And when this is not the case, the style of information delivery can affect the outcome of the meeting.

That said, Tufte seemed to like Excel. Which we all know I freaking love. So I’m still a fan. Now on to make some PowerPoint slides for my talk in Arkansas next week.

Made to Stick in Bal Mandal - an Example

A young bal sanchalak wrote up how he used the SUS principles to give a talk on yoga (from several months ago) in Bal 2. Notice the creative use of unexpected and using activities along with stories to drive the point home. This sounds like a great Bal 2 sabha. 

I started with displaying a quick video of Austin Rivers’s buzzer beater and then  another small video of the Top Ten Dunks in the NBA. After these clips we had a discussion on which video was more enjoyable and thrilling. The answer of most of the balaks was what I expected: The Austin Rivers’s video. That was my unexpected. I had them discussing things with me and they were not really sure what the main topic was going to be. 

The tough part came next when through the discussion I introduced the SIMPLE of my presentation. First was to understand why the buzzer beater video clip was more enjoyable. One of the older balaks had a very straightforward response, it is harder to do and thrilling to watch. He also mentioned that it was harder to do because in the NBA many people can dunk the ball, but not many people can perfectly time their shot to make it a buzzer beater and beat their rival team. After this answer I asked them as to why Austin Rivers is able to do such incredible feats. Most of the answers were very common such as practice and hard work.

However the simple was introduced through another video clip of Austin Rivers giving an interview in which he mentions  that he listens to concentration music to enhance his abilities to focus and to keep his mind calm and collected during pressure situations.
The next section was stories and exercises to enhance this main point of concentration and focus. I asked all the Balaks to list some things people do to keep calm. The foremost answers were concentration music and exercises, leading into my next assignment. I put on some concentration music, and gave them a yogic exercise to complete, the Bee Posture. After the completion of this, I invited a few kids up to the front of the room to attempt to complete some yogic postures. These yogic postures are now also completed monthly during our BST sessions. Lastly, I concluded my presentation by informing the balaks that when you want to do anything, be it play sports or concentrate for studying, it is always best to calm your mind before you start. I also mentioned that the procedures learned were not the only procedures for calming the mind, and that there are many other things one can attempt to do so. 

Presenter Pointers #6: SMS in Sabha

Every Sunday (or Saturday), Sabhaologists are on the field monitoring, observng, and analyzing presentations. This series brings to light their observations and points of improvement in a bite-sized blog post.

This week in kishore/kishori sabha, we looked at the concept of upasana. One presenter wanted to see how much his message would be perceived by the audience, so he started off his sabha with a common scenario:

One of your classmates asks you, "What do Hindus believe?" Answer this question in one sentence, and text me your number (or e-mail if you don't have data).

Most of the audience had smartphones and happily obliged at an unexpected chance to interact with their phone. It also made the presentation personal when the presenter read off some of the responses he received.

At the end, he repeated the same question to see how individuals changed their responses, and of course, he included Swamishri's response in Cleveland when asked the exact same question by a local newspaper reporter in 1984,

"To live a pure life of good character, believe oneself as atma (the soul), and then worship God. (Paramatma)."

One minute SUS Example

If you have a minute (literally) you should watch this talk. We talked about Wadsworth Constant. You can remove a great deal of our matter and still make our point stick. The talk below is a great example. Simple message, unexpected using the rocks, and a great story. Also Rosling's is passionate about the subject - that always helps. Could you do this same thing with your Sunday talk? It would make for a very quick - yet sticky - sabha.

Presenter Pointers #5: Assist (not Assault) II

Every Sunday (or Saturday), Sabhaologists are on the field monitoring, observng, and analyzing presentations. This series brings to light their observations and points of improvement in a bite-sized blog post.

Last time, we looked at how to present prachar, from pounding it into our audience mercilessly to using it as a beacon to bolster our audience, and last week's presentation in kishore/kishori sabha on katha provided us with another opportunity to revisit this lesson.

In one sabha, the presenter remarked why we don't listen to katha: laziness, lack of understanding Gujarati, lack of time, etc. Such negativity serves nobody, but in review, we learned that this presenter was merely following the syllabus's speaking points.

Every audience in every mandal is different and has different levels of understanding present. Katha might be an addiction to some, a distraction to others, and a waste of time to the rest, so we have to tailor our message to hit home with these segments. Perhaps pointing out flaws may work to move those already seeking to improve themselves, but we know that many of our audience members have yet to reach that stage.

Next time we have a syllabus in our hands, lets take a step back and think of our audience before mindlessly regurgitating the syllabus. It's also not enough to reword the syllabus and present it. The Vachanamrut is replete with examples where Shriji Maharaj details one concept to a sabha filled with just sadhus very differently to one mixed with householders.

A little thinking can thus move mountains.

Presenter Pointers #4: Assist (not Assault)

Every Sunday (or Saturday), Sabhaologists are on the field monitoring, observng, and analyzing presentations. This series brings to light their observations and points of improvement in a bite-sized blog post.

In presenting passionately, it's easy to get carried away with feisty rhetoric, but we must remember that we're here to help our audience. They are the true heroes waiting to realize their potential, and as presenters, we need to edge them along the way. 

For example, kishore/kishori mandal had the topic of prachar in their sabhas this past weekend, and it can easily be misconstrued into the extreme - far from what Pramukh Swami Maharaj has shown in his life:

In 1982, Pramukh Swami Maharaj was in Leceister and noticed a Christian man present before him with a reserved countenance. Upon meeting with him, the man disclosed how he needed to find peace after his son committed suicide since people blamed him and his wife for it.  

Swamishri asked, "Were there any difficulties with the boy?"  

The man replied, "Yes, he was mentally handicapped." 

"Did you fully love him?"  

"Completely." 

The man explained that the boy had been hospitalized for the severity of his condition. He tried to escape from the window but killed himself in the process. Swamishri then explained that since the parents loved the boy fully, they were not at fault. 

The man became so ecstatic upon hearing these words and offered a donation, but Swamishri told him that if he wanted to give money, then to donate at his church. The man felt surprised at meeting the first spiritual leader who did not so readily accept money. 

Next Sunday, the man spoke to the audience about his experience with Swamishri.

We see from this example that Swamishri showed prachar to reflect from his actions and not from preaching, manipulation, or even deception. 

Perhaps our audience may sport mandir t-shirts or cite BAPS on their resumes when they may shy away from talking to strangers at mandir, but if we can recognize their efforts and nudge them along, their superpowers will shine sure enough.

Presenter Pointers #3: Punish Thy Prasangs

Every Sunday (or Saturday), Sabhaologists are on the field monitoring, observng, and analyzing presentations. This new series brings to light their observations and points of improvement in a bite-sized blog post.

As we bear witness to the Occupy Wall Street movement taking root across the nation, we can't help if history is repeating itself. After all, France in the late 1700s stood witness to a bloody new beginning in the wake of the French Revolution.

Enter the guillotine: a razor-sharp blade falling down in the blink of an eye to dish off the head of yet another.

Just the sight of one in action would make us cringe - a similar sensation we evoke with prasangs if they come straight from the paper. Think back to the last time you got excited about something be it a gift, a sports victory, or a pleasant surprise.

That's the feeling to imbue in the prasangs we narrate in our presentations. Just reading them off a sheet of paper kills the power vested in them, and with each faltering prasangs, we take one step back from the point we try to present to our audience.

Here's a rule of thumb: how well can we narrate the prasang without the syllabus? Try it out in front of a mirror, and prasang-varnan will reach a whole new level.

Prasangs are thus the life of our presentation. If not, it's to the guillotine and off with our het - to Maharaj and Swami that is. 

Presenter Pointers #2: First Learn, Then Teach

Every Sunday (or Saturday), Sabhaologists are on the field monitoring, observng, and analyzing presentations. This new series brings to light their observations and points of improvement in a bite-sized blog post.

First seek to understand then to be understood: the age-old adage on how to communicate.

Since presenting is nothing more than communicating to the audience a memorable message, we must ask ourselves, "What have we gained from this presentation?" We've noted earlier how important it is to guide our audience towards a goal. Thus, we must understand that goal before we can even begin to present!

Common sense, we think, but when we have a syllabus to guide our presentation, we often tune out our inquiry and curiosity. The syllabus is a great tool but like any tool it needs to be used correctly. Have you ever tried to drive in a nail with a screwdriver - we have it works but not well. The screwdriver is designed for screws. The syllabus in the same way is to help us understand. It is full of great information and ideas that we need to read with our curiosity filter open. We need to think about the different aspects of the topic and delve as deep as we can to understand the topic. For example, friendship, yesterday's topic in kishore/kishori sabha, may seem drab on the surface but can be analyzed in different ways:

• What did Maharaj teach us through His friendships?
• Are friendships always beneficial?
• In our life, do we have different types of friendships?

When we fail to learn from a presentation, we let an opportunity go - an opportunity to bring our audience closer to Maharaj and Swami. Sure, it may require a bit preparation, but that's why we need two weeks to research and refine our idea.

Thus, let's seek to understand the topic then to expect the topic to be understood by our audience.

Presenter Pointers #1: All Points, No Proof

Every Sunday (or Saturday), Sabhaologists are on the field monitoring, observng, and analyzing presentations. This new series brings to light their observations and points of improvement in a bite-sized blog post.


In kishore sabha last week, we heard a presentation on desh/kaal. The syllabus listed the eight factors of influence as mentioned by Shriji Maharaj in the Vachanamrut: place, time, action, company, mantra, scriptures, initiation, and meditation. The presenter figured simply listing them would do the job.

Reality check: The audience tuned him out as quickly as they heard him say, "Here's factor #1..."

What did he miss? He lacked stories/examples to breathe life into each of these eight factors. Point after point reduces a topic to technicality and leaves the audience behind in boredom.


Part of preparing entails finding these stories/examples. For instance, seeing others sneeze can affect our thoughts. In describing company, we can certainly pique someone's interest.

So let's remember, prasangs propel the points into our audience. Without 'em, our points go nowhere.