Insanely Great Slideshows – the story so far

Since the age of 16 I wanted to be an agricultural journalist.

OK, that was after I decided that the prospect of becoming an astro-photographer was probably unlikely. I can still remember at about the age of oh, maybe 10 or 11, standing in the kitchen with my mum. She had on a green and white apron and there was lots of flour. She was baking. There were some of her friends there. Or maybe only one, I can’t quite remember. What I DO remember was an adult asking me that age-old question: “What do you want to be when you grow up, dear?” When I answered, quite seriously, “I’d really love to be an astro-photographer” there were guffaws of laughter. I couldn’t work out what they were laughing at, and I’m pretty sure my mum was horrified. She’d made it quite clear I could do anything I wanted. I’ve included this picture of the Iris nebula, 1300 light years away in the constellation Cepheus, because my mum’s name was Iris.

As it turns out, becoming an agricultural journalist was no walk in the park either. I decided to learn agriculture first, then work out how to do the journalism bit. While I was fortunate to have worked out what I wanted to do at an early age, the obstacles seemed endless.

I’m not so good at science subjects. I struggled with chemistry, didn’t much like physics, quite enjoyed maths until I got a teacher who took all the joy out of it. I enjoyed english and geography and social science subjects. These days you can combine them. Then, way back in the dark ages of secondary education, it was maths/science or arts. Either or. Yes, but…

I wrote to every tertiary institute offering agriculture in Australia and New Zealand (this was way before computers and the internet) to find out the entrance requirements. Every single one of them said maths/science. So there was nothing for it, but to select maths/science, wave goodbye (metaphorically) to all my friends, my joy of learning and that wondrous sense of capability, and embrace subjects that I struggled with daily to understand. Of course, I still had english and a marvelous teacher who made everything else worthwhile.

Then there was the little matter of applying for agriculture courses. This was the early 1970s. Young women took up nursing or teaching or business, sometimes. Certainly not agriculture. Finally I found one that was accepting women, it was four hours drive away so it meant living away from home. I was in the first intake of women to be allowed to live on campus. That was after an Act of Parliament had to be changed. Did I mention there were a few obstacles?

So, agriculture finally sorted, I started on the pursuit of journalism. I landed on my feet with a job that provided me with journalism cadetship and working with some of the most talented people on the planet. This is where my love of words was nurtured, and where I discovered much more – typography, design, layout. And remember, I’d wanted to be a photographer once, so I already had a love of visual arts and images.

On to university for a degree in media studies where I discovered a subject called ‘Cinema Studies’. It involved watching movies, every Tuesday afternoon. Classic movies. And talking about them on Wednesday evening. How I loved that subject. I discovered subtext and storytelling and how movies reflect the world, cultures and events.

A few more jobs, branching away from, yet still connected to, my agricultural journalism roots. The ’80s & ’90s provided ample opportunity to be bold and creative, and in the mid 90s I started my own business, and completed a Masters in Agriculture & Rural Development. This was a real turning point. A self-directed adult learning masters with some fantastic professors who provided – and still do – amazing inspiration.

And so we fast forward to the present. I’m now a facilitator and a wannabe screenwriter. Along the way I’ve discovered improvised theatre, blogging and the Web 2.0 world. I’m fortunate to do work with fantastic people, sometimes in amazing places. My work has taken me all over Australia and to 13 other countries. Not a huge number in the grand scheme of things, but an extraordinary number for me who never expected such opportunities would emerge.

This week Geoff Brown and I delivered our Insanely Great Slideshow training. I’m loving this work, for a number of reasons. I get to deliver this with a friend, so much more fun than working alone. I get to indulge my love of typography, design, and photography (pity the love isn’t matched by talent, but it’s never stopped me in the past!) And there’s all the Web 2.0 connections – Garr Reynolds of Presentation Zen fame, Nancy Duart of slide:ology fame who inspire; Slideshare to see what’s possible. It’s also about communicating, sharing messages, changing hearts and minds with story and emotion (much better than bullets!) And an opportunity to learn and build my own skills, to maybe inspire others.

And here’s my all-time favourite slideshow, using dynamic type.

Some reflections on the bushfire recovery process

It’s nearly five months on from the Victorian bushfires that claimed many lives, homes, livlihoods, habitat, livestock and wildlife. I don’t live in the affected area. I’ve done a few workshops with people who do, and with people who have been affected indirectly.

I’ve seen some of the effects – physical and emotional. I’ve seen the blackened trees, felt the stillness, and the emptiness. Yet have been surprised by the resilience of nature, as the sound of a single bird fills the void and the sight of new, green shoots seems to sprout as I watch. I’ve listened to stories and to accusations, to questions and to answers. I’ve seen multiple emotions cross people’s faces in a moment. And I’ve seen great pain and great joy.

I’ve read reports of the inquiries. I’ve listened to people recount their stories. I’ve heard analysis. I’ve heard blame. And I’ve heard thanks. Directly and mediated.

And most poignant of all, to me, are pleas from people rebuilding their lives for ongoing support. Not for more money, although that helps; not for more visits from the agencies, although it’s good to know they haven’t been forgotten; not from tourists, although it’s good have their money flowing into the affected communities. Sometimes they don’t even have the words. They want their community back. They want the connection. The feeling of belonging.

I can’t give them what they want. Nor can anyone else.  This has to come from within. Community-building is community-centric. The time for facilitators from outside of these communities is passing quickly, although we can still provide valuable support through training, coaching and mentoring. In the end though, it will be up to these reinvented, fledging communities to bring their own groups together to re-build local capacity, and resilience. And a sense of belonging again.

Sharing the love

I love this. A group of people are meeting in Halifax, Nova Scotia this week and I’m there with them. Not in person. They are blogging the event. This enables me to be a part of the event, albeit differently from physically being there and certainly quite a lot better than reading about it afterwards. Apart from the content I like the way the blog is set up and the helpful guidelines, especially for those who may be new to blogging. Go on, go and have a look.

New Facilitating With Confidence Course announced

Victoria University is hosting one of our Facilitating With Confidence Courses. They have agreed to make some places available for people from outside the University.

The dates are:

Part A: July 13 & 14

Part B: August 17 & 18

Part C: September 1 & 2

If you’re interested contact Ida Callea (03) 9919 4007 ida.callea@vu.edu.au

The power of modelling behaviours

I’ve always understood the importance of modelling behaviours, although I’m not entirely sure where or how I learnt this. I do remember when I changed jobs, oh, 20 something years ago, and finding myself working with two amazingly talented people, Terry and Sarah (hi, guys, if you’re out there!). Terry was, and still is, a performer. Put him in front of a group and he would have them entranced within minutes, telling stories and captivating their imaginations in a way I’d never seen before. Sarah was a brilliant teacher – and also a performer. She gave the best talks I’d ever seen. I’m not sure how either of them learnt their skills, but I’m pretty sure I learnt a lot from them, simply by observing.

Fast-forward to now and I find myself in front of groups, yes, performing. I find it daunting and exhilarating in equal measure, and more often than not I enter a ‘zone’ where nothing else exists but what I am doing there and then. It’s a wonderful privilege and a great responsibility, so I try to model what I am teaching. Because let’s face it, more often than not, I am in a teaching mode – transferring knowledge and skills about facilitating.

So it is with great pleasure that I received these two pieces of feedback over the weekend regarding a slideshow that I had used as part of a facilitation event.

From a learning event in China: “Use of big pictures and key words (instead of sentences) was able to capture participants’ attention and focus more effectively.” And from another event in Zimbabwe: “It went really well…no bullets in my PPT!”

The feedback is indirect, but I think you’ll agree it reinforces the power of modelling how things can be. These people received no training from me about HOW to create better slideshows, all they saw was what I’d produced. If you want to see what they saw, here it is.

TED Talk: Communicating real news

If you are still in any doubt that we are in the midst of phenomenal change, watch this. It’s Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organising Without Organisations, talking about the impact of new technologies. The events in Iran during this last week is the latest in a series of examples of the ‘tranformation to amateur media’ as Shirky describes it. Even President Obama mentioned in a talk on the weekend the ‘professional and amateur reporters’ from Iran. We are now all capable of bypassing ‘mainstream media’ and/or censors.

If you are in the business of communication (and who isn’t these days?) and if you want your messages to be heard, then an understanding of how these changes fundamentally affect how and what we communicate and, importantly, the channels of communication, will help make the most of your communication.

An experiment with sharing processes

I’m often asked for notes about the processes that I use, so I’m experimenting with using slideshows to describe processes. My first attempt is with one of my favourite activities called Pass the Zap! This might be a step before making some animated videos.

I’d really be interested in your feedback. Thanks.

Wise Words

When Chris Corrigan writes something that Harrison Owen says ‘is a masterpiece’ the rest of us mere mortals should take notice 🙂

Here’s what Chris wrote:

My standard take on things is to riff on the mantra of “when we don’t know what to do, and we need to involve lots of people and to trust their intelligence, passion and responsibility, Open Space is the fastest way to get to work.”  World peace and social justice remain, to the best of my knowledge, elusive states which makes me think that the more hands and hearts we have in the mix the better.  An Open Space conference will quickly access this collective intelligence and passion and build a field of relationships that will put ideas to work.  And it will do it faster and deeper than almost anything else.

Lessons from the field (part 2)

So I learnt some stuff about facilitating. That’s not all I learnt in Indonesia:

• Aid workers tell some of the best, and funniest stories – and best of all is when they try to gazump each other!
• Roti = white bread, not the yummy roti we know and love
• There’s no such thing as a short drive in Indonesia – and if they say it will be between 2 – 4 hours, they mean 4 hours
• Similarly, a one-hour jaunt on the rim of a volcano turns into a three-hour epic (OK, I’m exaggerating about the epic bit, but not about the 3-hour bit)
• Speaking of the volcano – inspiration is everywhere. Part way up the volcano we saw a group of young people playing a communication game involving string, a bottle and a nail (buy me a drink one day and I’ll explain it). Low tech, do anywhere, something I could use one day.
• White line fever is alive and well. Put people into teams and get them competing with each other and, watch out! Maybe competitiveness IS in our genes?
• An iPod (especially loaded with TED talks) is a saviour from crap television
• You can’t go past shared experiences, even as common-place as meals, to build relationships, connection and friendships.
• Kabaddi is a cool game

This week’s cool links

• This simple idea is so effective, and creative – love it! Thanks to Patti for the link.

• I’m tempted to make the trip to Wellington just for this Presentation Zen masterclass!

• Les Posen is a fan of Keynote and audience-centred slideshows (as am I, and that’s where the similarities end!). I aspire to his level of understanding and competence with Keynote. This is is an interesting post about his recent meeting with the Keynote developers. Here’s a few bits to whet you appetite:

…my take on presentations was both complementary to Garr [Reynolds] and Nancy [Duart], but also came from a different place, away from designper se, and more from human learning and the brain sciences.

I showed how contemporary media are employing some of the graphical designs I too employ in my slide construction, and why.

What’s at the heart of Presentation 2.0? Think for a moment where we are now with Web 2.0. There is a direct line between service and product provider, and consumer, such that consumers or end users can blog, or tweet, or facebook about providers and influence the decisions of other potential consumers. We get valid information about product reliability for instance from bloggers and commenters on blogs, as much as we do from mainstream media reviewers. Think about the reviews you read on Amazon which includes “official” editorial contributions and reviews by purchasers, perhaps much more like us, and thus to be considered more reliable than biased writers.

Put these the concepts together, as I did to the KN team, and you come up with two properties in short supply currently (or more than ever before): Authenticity (who do you trust) andAttention (who should I attend to, given competing sources of information and competition for my time?).

I wanted the Keynote team to understand that when I construct my slides these two ideas stay in my mind, and they are more to do with my audience than they are with me. I need to establish my Authority and Authenticity for my audience to keep engaged, and I need to know how the brain works, so that despite my endeavours to increase the former two A’s, I embrace the challenges to the other A, Attention, which can wander due to how our brains function.

I spoke of these concepts early in my presentation, because it helps explain why I choose to perform certain slide constructions, and how I contemplate the intended impact on particular audiences.  Now I don’t know how any individuals in the KN team responded to my audience-centric approach, but I do know on occasions in responding to their questions, I had to work a little to get my point across, given the team is very much about the end user experience. But in my case the end user is myaudience, and Keynote merely a tool to achieve a particular series of effects upon my audience.

• And if I had the means, maybe I should introduce Graeme Pearman to Les Posen. Graeme Pearman is one of Australia’s most eminent scientists with an international reputation in climate science. I heard him speak once. There was no doubt about the veracity of his science, the urgency of his message and power of his evidence. Pity about the powerpoint preso though! There’s an article in todays’ Melbourne Age newspaper by Jo Chandler (yep, I still read newspapers) that explore’s Dr Pearman’s excursion into behavioural science to try and understand our inaction on the climate change message. Here’s a taster:

[Pearman] had a revelation. He had  been suffering under the delusion that as knowledge of the physical world improves, ratoionalt-based information would lead to rational responses to such threats as climate change.

What behavioural scientists tell us is that rationality is circumstantially based. So what is rational to me is not rational to the next person because they come from a different circumstance. They also tell us that when we are confronted by a threat such as climate change, people experience many alternative emotions, and employ different coping mechanisms. The anxious might deny; the sad might avoid; the hopeless become resigned; the frustrated, cynical; the depressed, skeptical; the angry, just fed up.

• The Unconventional Writing Contest is on right now over at The Art of Nonconformity. Be quick – the deadline is July 11.