Melissa Marshall: Talk Nerdy to Me

Several months ago, we had the privilege of attending a workshop ran by Melissa Marshall. She was previously involved in technical communication research at Penn State University but now works as a consultant to help scientists better deliver presentations.

While we may not be traditional scientists, her insights can readily be applied to the science of sabha. She mirrored many of the insights we have expressed since this blog's inception. Here's two concepts she addressed worth considering before the next karyakar meeting.

Problem: We start preparing presentations using Powerpoint.

She compared giving a presentation to guiding individuals up a mountain. As a trail guide, it's our job to identify the salient landmarks en route to the peak. Stopping at every grass, shrub, and rock drains our audience before they reach the peak. Similarly, we waste the audience's attention when we start with slides and lose sight of what's important by cramming details, slide after slide. 

Solution: Start with idea mapping.

• Start with identifying the peak (main idea). (Unsurprisingly, Made to Stick was listed on her references list.)
• Identify 2-4 points that can help you build up to the main idea. 

• Determine the details that should fit underneath each point.
• Review your outline with someone else to make sure your ideas flow. 
• Now, proceed to Powerpoint.

Problem: Bulleted lists pervade slides.

She points out in her TED Talk, "Have you ever wondered why they're called bullet points? What do bullets do? Bullets kill, and they will kill your presentation."

In an average talk with text-heavy slides, most individuals filter information in one of three ways.

• Read slides but ignore speaker 
• Listen to speaker but ignore slides 
• Tennis between speaker and slides 

Solution:  People learn much more deeply from words and relevant images than from words alone. 

• Complement bullet points with graphics. (Here's an example).
• The Noun Project offers many free icons to use for presentations.

Agree or disagree, please let us know how insightful you found these points.

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.

Gearing Up as Group Lead: Ghosti 101

With another shibir soon approaching, perhaps one of the most rewarding yet challenging opportunities is the group lead seva. Pit with a group of sometimes complete strangers and tasked with making the interaction friendly in a matter of days, it's not a job for the faint of heart.

Thus, let's deconstruct one of the most basic responsibilities of a group lead: moderating a ghosti. Below are some tips coupled with examples in italics to better illustrate the point.

#1: Know your audience. Simply calling your group members before meeting them at the shibir can help ignite the interaction. Not only will it help in learning names, but it can help get a feel for where they stand in their samjan thus allowing for a ghosti guided more to something relevant.

"What do you like to do for fun?"
"What do you find most enjoyable about mandir?"
"What are you hoping to get out of the shibir?" 

#2: Priming the participants. This strategy requires the ghosti has been planned out in advance, but giving a heads up to the ghosti participants, especially if sensitive topics like niyam-dharma are to be discussed.

"We're going to be talking about our struggles with other haribhakto, so think of a situation where you had a conflict with another haribhakt and how you maneuvered it."

#3: Crafting the question. Open-ended questions are easy to generate, especially on the spot.

"What is agna?"

Unfortunately, they are the often met with an awkward silence. With so many possibilities, nobody wants to be wrong, especially in front of strangers.

Instead, try binary questions where the answer is either a yes or no. While the questions appear straightforward, they can generate ample discussion when wielded well.

"Can you follow agna without realizing it?"

Alternatively, try using questions with more than two choices, but tread carefully. More choices can create more confusion and the greater chance someone abstains from voting altogether. Allow for time to think out the choices.

#4: Respond to the response. Sometimes, moderators ask questions, but don't use the responses to build a point. Open-ended questions are frequent offenders for this problem, and doing so implies a failure to acknowledge someone's input.

Moderator: "What is agna?"

Group: "Things we follow. What Swamishri tells us to do. Something that will help us get moksh."

Moderator: "Great. Today we are going to talk about agna."

With a binary question, take turns asking each side of their opinion.

Moderator: "Can you follow agna without realizing it?" 

(2 voted yes; 3 voted no.)

Moderator: "Hasmukhbhai, why did you say yes?"

Hasmukhbhai: "Let's say someone becomes vegetarian. That's also Swamishri's agna, but they don't realize it."

Moderator: "Does anyone disagree?"

Lalubhai: "But how can you call it agna if you don't do it with understanding? You can randomly do something that happens to be in line with the Satpurush's wishes, but it's the understanding that defines agna."

#5: Acknowledge responses right/wrong. Not everyone will get the right answer nor should they. Ghosti is a shared learning experience, so don't forget to recognize contributors. Their input pushed the discussion further then where it was before.

Moderator: "Shivambhai, that's an interesting distinction and a very important point to note. Aksharbhai, thanks for sharing your insight as it's important to identify this common misconception when considering agna."

#6: Anonymize sensitive topics. Topics like niyam-dharma are newer easy to talk about let alone in the presence of those unfamiliar to us. Try using a method to remove names, like index cards.

"Think of a time where you did something you regretted later. Describe the situation on the index card in the few lines. When you are done, pass them up, and we'll review them together."

#7: Apply understanding. Simply having participants restate a point may not indicate complete understanding, so test with application.

"For Chaturmas, assume a kishore decides not to watch movies. Under what circumstances, would he NOT be following agna?"

#8: Schedule silence. When nobody responds, awkwardness joins the interaction, and it becomes irresistible for moderators to go into pravachan mode. Fight the urge by offering up periods of silence so that participants can ruminate freely without being pressured to offer up an answer.

"Let's take some time to think, and when you have an answer look up so we know you are ready to discuss."

Carpe Diem

Krishna was once asked what was the most miraculous thing in all creation, and he replied, "That a man should wake each morning and believe deep in his heart that he will live forever, even though he knows that he is doomed." - Christopher Pike, Phantom

Moksha is a concept most of us are familiar with. We have heard in Bal/Balika Mandal that our goal is to attain moksha. In fact we probably already know that moksha is the same as attaining Akshardham, which is the same as overcoming the cycle of birth and death, which is also the same as becoming Brahmroop, which is the same as becoming exactly like Swamishri. This message we have heard over and over that we can recite it anytime we need to (especially in a presentation about Moksha).

The interesting thing then is really that after realizing this truth how much have we done to achieve Moksha? Have we seized the day? A good unexpected way to start a presentation on Moksha could be to show this video (which is especially apt since Robin Williams passing several days ago)

Chalk Talk: Revisiting Ghosti

About a month ago, a fellow Sabhaologist shared with us an extensive list of strategies to mix up sabha, ghosti, or even meetings.

We decided to take him up on one of his recommendations, Chalk Talk, and apply it to kishore karyakar ghosti. Often times, we struggle with getting people to open up in ghosti, especially with larger groups, so this activity took advantage of silence by having participants respond on paper (as seen below).

Define how you think each aspect of Ekantik Dharma applies to your karyakar seva.

Which of the four pillars of Ekantik Dharma do you find easy? Hard? Explain.

To avoid repetition, tallies were noted next to comments that others also shared.

Overall, it was an interesting way to collect everyone's opinion and helped the moderator see the varying levels of understanding. As there were about 5-6 people present, a bigger writing space would have helped reduce wait time.

Nevertheless, we thank the Sabhaologist who shared with us a treasure trove of techniques. Want to try another one out? Check it out, and let us know what you think.

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)."

5 Things Every Presenter Needs To Know About People

One common presenting tip is to “know your audience,” but what exactly should we know about them? While we may present to many different people (bal/kishore/yuvak/vadhil), here is an universal list of 5 things that every presenter should know about his or her audience.

People learn best in 20 minute chunks.

TED talks. That’s right, we’re referencing it again. If you take a look at TED talks, they are around 20 minutes long, and that’s part of the reason why they are so captivating. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that shorter is better since a shorter presentation forces the talk to be more concise and focused. However, don’t get stuck on the notion that every presentation must be 20 minutes to be good. For example, many times in sabha, presentations are planned to be more than 20 minutes long. The ideal presentation length is exactly the number of minutes it takes for you to get your simple statement across, not a second more. In order to incorporate this study, however, it would be idea to try to build in some kind of change every 20 minutes. Especially in bal/balika sabha, it’s important to give the kids a break from all the information they just received. This could be a great way to incorporate an activity/exercise that relates to the session. 

Multiple sensory channels compete.

When you are giving a speech, there are two sensory channels that are the most active: visual and auditory. According to Dr. Susan Weinschenk, our visual channel is stronger than our auditory channel. Therefore, if your presentation has complicated information for people to digest, then it will be hard to balance the auditory channel while trying to decipher what your visual aid says. A common tip is to put together a presentation without using any slides first and then decide if it can be enhanced with a visual medium. 

What you say is only part of your message.

Research in psychology over the last few decades has revealed that people process information unconsciously. People not only react to your message, but they also take into account your facial expression, voice, stand, and even hand movements. Think about how you are saying what you are saying. 

If you want people to act, you have to call them to action.

Be very specific about what you want audience to do. This is where the simple statement comes into play. It’s always a good habit to go over the main points of your presentation at the end as a call for action.

People imitate your emotions and feel your feelings.

When you are passionate about your topic, your audience will be passionate. People like to listen to someone who is animated, and passionate about a topic. Even if you are not so interested in a particular sabha topic, pretend like you are, and the message will go a long way. For example, in bal/balika sabha, it may require you to be more animated than usual in order to keep the balaks & balikas attention in a certain topic.

Presentation #FAIL

Nancy Duarte shares with us this reenactment of a talk doomed to fail. Though the points numbered many, the following caught our attention.

"Mediocre icebreak joke"
"Poignant quote from unknown philosopher to kick off presentation in dramatic fashion"
"Juvenile slide transitions to spice things up"
"Unexpected technical difficulty"
"Going through a long list of facts one by one by one"

To see it from the audience's perspective gives us the empathic connection needed together to put together a presentation worthy of honor. 

Seize the Shibir

Bill Clinton, Lady Gaga, and Chris Rock all have one thing in common - they know how to work a crowd, and we can too at a shibir or a convention! 

Sure, it’s a larger audience, but to be an effective shibir speaker, we will have to do a few things different from what we already do on a Sunday-to-Sunday basis. Aside from a larger audience, we have a new setting, a new microphone, and new faces in the crowd.

As always, we will need to do our SUS in order to to give our talk meaning, but an article at Lifehacker gave us a few more pointers:

Know Your Environment: Presentations always start with knowing the environment. How many people will be there? Am I presenting to K1, K2, Kindergarteners, or 8th graders? Will I have a screen? Remember, you, the presenter, are responsible for getting the message across to the audience. Therefore, don’t be afraid to make a simple request in order to make your presentation flow smoothly.

Body Language: Every Sunday, we have the chance to have one-to-one eye contact with every single person in the room. When talking to a bigger crowd, eye contact is still important though much harder. Therefore, we have to be strategic. Break down the audience into different blocks, and work with each of the blocks one at a time. Imagining the audience as a huge mass will make it harder for you to develop a connection with your crowd.

Keep it Simple: Try to avoid using a large amount of special effects in the presentation. Don’t sacrifice clarity for animations, sounds, and/or background images. Even if we’re using PowerPoint, it’s best to keep the slides straightforward and clean.

Interactivity: Without being a afternoon talk-show host, there are certainly ways that we can connect with our audience at shibirs. Because there is a large audience, things might get tricky when we’re trying to get interactive, but we can always create exercises to make it happen by asking the audience to do any of the following.

• "Turn to the person on your left and talk about..."
• "Write 3 things on your sticky note that..."
• "Raise your hand if..."
• "Rub your tummy, stomp your feet, etc." (for bal mandal of course)

Getting out from behind the podium is also another way to connect with the audience as well as getting a wireless mic to ask the audience questions to get interaction. Of course, we would be wise to avoid frivolous inquiry like, "Who is the President?" "What is agna?" "Who can define raajipo?" 


All in all, a shibir talk just requires a modified approach that would not be possible without the basic understanding of a Sunday talk, for only after captivating a sabha audience can we hope to hold a shibir audience. 

The Wadsworth Constant: Ignore 30% of Everything

Lone Gunman reveals to us an interesting strategy for speech writing:

Last year Steve Yegge wrote about life at Amazon.com and what it’s like work­ing under Jeff Bezos. On the topic of pre­sent­ing to Bezos, Yegge gave this tip: delete every third para­graph.  Why?

Bezos is so god­damned smart that you have to turn it into a game for him or he’ll be bored and annoyed with you. That was my first real­iza­tion about him. […]

So you have to start tear­ing out whole para­graphs, or even pages, to make it inter­est­ing for him. He will fill in the gaps him­self with­out miss­ing a beat. And his brain will have less time to get annoyed with the slow pace of your brain.

---

Around the same time as Yegge’s post­ing, a Red­dit user known as Wadsworth pointed out that the first 30% of “nearly every video in the uni­verse” can safely be skipped. As such things go, this soon became a YouTube URL para­me­ter: just add &wadsworth=1 to skip the first third of the video.

This ‘law’ soon became known as the Wadsworth Con­stant. It works.

What does this imply for the sabha.ologist? It seems as if we could safely sleep through 30% of presentations, so the deeper meaning is that when giving a talk don't be stingy with the editors knife.

Get rid of 30% of your matter and refine the rest to make it stick.

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.

That's So Cliché

Detach from the world. Eliminate worldly desires. No [insert niyams here]...

Week in and week out, we grow accustomed to hearing statements like these. It's not that their message is valid, it's just that they are heavy doses for our heroes. They don't invigorate the audience at-large and fall under the category of cliché, phrases that we think carry appeal but rather fall flat on their feet to carry change forward.

The folks over at Duarte.com show us just how blind-sided we can be passing them off as cool. Of course, it's difficult to know if we abuse this habit, so record yourself next time to find out. Even if you do, it's not the end of the world.

A Samaiyo Recipe

This past Sunday marked Swaminarayan Jayanti, the first of five days where we defy our body with a waterless fast.

Sitting in on some post-samaiyo feedback really got us thinking - at least on something other than food.

What makes a great samaiyo?

Many point to dances, dramas, and kirtans.

Dramas engage us with comedy and suspense.
Dances enamor us with vivid costumes and fast music.
Kirtans involve us with melody and lyric.

Few point to the speeches; they only have words.

Conclusion: Great samaiyos have more singing, acting, and dancing.

And that's where our formula falls apart, for what empowers a program is a message. Shriji Maharaj's purpose behind encouraging samaiyos stemmed from their ability to inspire countless individuals to a life for the better only because they walked away with that message.

Dances, dramas, and kirtans may entertain us, so let's enhance their effect by combining them with a central message. If the elements of a program cannot connect back to a core theme, what we have is a lifeless list on a cue sheet.

Just as a speeches without SUS will inevitably lose the audience, let's craft a program with a punch the next time it's samaiyo season.

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.

The Clues to a Great Story

Andrew Stanton wrote the first film produced entirely on a computer, Toy Story. But what made that film a classic wasn't the history-making graphic technology -- it's the story, the heart, the characters that children around the world instantly accepted into their own lives. In the video below he shares some of his insights into the art and science of story telling. Many of these are applicable to crafting a sticky sabha presentation.


Note between 1:08 and 1:011 in the video some colorful language is used.

• Story telling is joke telling
• [Story telling] is knowing everything you are saying from beginning to the last is leading to a singular goal.
• [Story telling] is confirming some truth that deepens our understanding of who we are as human beings.
• "Frankly there isn't anyone you couldn't learn to love once you've heard their story."
• Story commandment: Make me care. [this one really resonates with us, this is the goal of sabha]
• Great stories start by making a promise that this talk or story will lead somewhere that is worth your time. [again this is the promise we need to make in sabha, and fulfill it]
• The audience actually wants to work for their meal [they want to be engaged and made to think]. They just don't want to know that they are doing that. [again in any sabha, the audience wants to think, but they do not want to know before hand that they have to think - entertain me.]
• Stories are inevitable if they are good, but they are not predictable.
• Stories infuse wonder.
• Drama is anticipation mingled with uncertainty.

Presenting Vicharan

Several Sabhaologists have inquired about tips for giving a Vicharan presentation in sabha.

"Most times, there is little to no material in the syllabus for this. As a presenter and even as a sabha sanchalak I find myself showing a video from baps.org of Swami's vicharan. Of course there's no story there, no context (except when it's an utsav and there is some topical tableau setup for Swamishri), and no words."

So this week, let's break down Vicharan. The beauty of this method is that no syllabus is required.

Think of the last time you saw some late-breaking news update and that sense of excitement and interest it generates. We want to drum up the same type of sentiment here and may as well be your shakeup start.

Simple

• We have late breaking news about Swamishri. 
• What is Swamishri doing right now?
• What happened last week with Swamishri?
• If you were traveling with Swamishri, what would you be experiencing?

Shakeup
Indeed, it's a tough one as everyone knows what is about to happen, but there are still some things we can do.

• Pictures from website
• Videos from website
• Use a story

For example, two monks were returning to the monastery in the evening. It had rained and there were puddles of water on either sides of the road. At one plac,e a beautiful young woman was standing unable to walk across because of a puddle of water. The elder monk approached her, lifted her into his arms, carrier her to the other side of the road, and continued on his way to the monastery.

Later in the evening, the younger monk inquired, "Sir, as monks, we cannot touch a woman ?"

The elder monk answered "yes, brother".

"But then Sir, how is that you lifted that woman on the roadside?"

The elder monk smiled at him, "I left her on the other side of the road, but you are still carrying her. "

This story is unexpected, now use this to relate to Swamishri. He exemplifies this vairagya. As the pictures are rolling on screen, we can emphasize this. Here is Swamishri in Mumbai Mandir, but he is detached from all the things around him.

Stories
Gather prasangs from the website, including Bliss.We can even relate older prasangs that fit into what is happening now.

Look at this picture

We can clearly see that Bapa has just had his mundan done (shaving of hair and beard).

Now we may not know any prasangs that happened during this mundan, but we do know older prasangs
pertaining to his mundan, like the one featured on today's daily prasang:

"In Sarangpur on July 3rd, 1998, it was the night before mundan (monthly shave). To enable everyone to have darshan of Swamishri's mundan, a barber's chair, which was of adjustable height, had been brought. Swamishri was shown the chair.

Meanwhile, Gnaneshwar Swami asked Swamishri, "When you were young, did the barber come to your house to give you a hair cut?"

"Yes," replied Swamishri, "the barber had been contracted. In return for his services, he would get some grains. He would know when to come, so he came regularly ."

Then, Shvetvaikunth Swami asked, "How did you part your hair - on the side or in the middle?"

"On the side," Swamishri replied!

Everyone smiled with joy on hearing Swamishri's innocent and honest reply."

So while showing these pictures, we can say that in Mumbai, Swamishri just had his mundan done. In 1998, Swamishri had his mundan done in Sarangpur and something interesting happened; he revealed bits of childhood.


Conclusion
Vicharan comes around once a month, so don't let this opportunity go to hone in on a unique style of presenting. It's not rocket science, and approaching it with the science of Sabhaology can help the audience samjan of Swamishri soar to new heights.