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Yesterday, at the unconference part of the Informatology conference, I had the opportunity to present some ideas around social software. The style of presentation was a new one on me: Pecha Kucha. Basically, you have 20 slides. They each move on after 20 seconds. And the presenter has to stop after 6 minutes 40 seconds.
It was the most scripted presentation I've ever done. Each slide had three sentences, and woe betide me if I strayed from the script!
The presentations were given in 2 groups of 4, with no space for questions or discussion until the end of the whole session.
To me, the whole thing felt rather unsatisfactory. For a number of reasons:
- I'd tried to put far too much into the presentation. I should have stuck to no more than 3 ideas.
- With such a small audience (<20), we could have had some really good conversations, but there wasn't time.
- Ideas and questions got lost in the rush through the slides.
- In Clive Shepherd's words, it felt more like "a performance art" than a means of stimulating thought and learning.
So, as I do, I've been thinking about how to improve the process.
It's guided by an underlying principle, that face-to-face time is too valuable to be spent doing stuff that is better done on your own. Face-to-face time should be about conversation. It's through questioning, debate and argument that we then change our opinions and behaviours.
The diagram below shows a process that I think would work:
Basically, what's happening is this:
- The presentation is recorded in advance.
- Anyone who's attending the unconference can create a presentation.
- To make sure it's not just existing work being resubmitted, the organisers could ask all the presentations to contain the conference logo.
- Delegates have the opportunity to view the presentation before the day.
- Delegates can rate the presentation as being one they want to discuss or not.
- Delegates can raise questions and comments online.
- On the day, the conference facilitators prepare some starter questions based on the pre-conference activity.
- All the unconference time is spent in conversation. If the delegates wish to view a particular presentation again, then that can happen.
Why Jing & Moodle?
In thinking about this, my aim was to keep the process as simple and low cost as possible. Jing is a free tool for Mac or Windows that lets you create 5 minute (maximum) narrated screen-capture movies. It's very basic. There's no editing. And it produces a swf file that will play in any browser. (If you opt for the paid-for Pro version, you can create a file to upload to Youtube. But that's making it more complicated.)
The conference will need a web site on which to display the movies. Moodle is the stable, easy to setup, allows access control, will handle self-service uploading, displaying the swf, rating and discussions. There are other tools around that act like a self-contained Youtube site, but these tend to be quite expensive. With Moodle you pay for what you use (in hosting, consultancy, support) rather than a license fee per potential user.
5 comments
Jon Ingham and I (who both also presented pecha kuchas) were far less scripted. We opted instead to simply talk around a concept illustrated by each slide until it disappeared. It worked for us.
Different strokes…
I hope you’re fed your suggestions through to Stephen Citron. They are looking into ways to improve this for the next conference.
I’m delighted to learn that you chose our informatology unconference to break your Pecha Kucha duck!
This was our first unconference.
It benefited from great content presented at speed; but it suffered from insufficient time for conversation. I will remedy this for next time.
I agree that it would be great to enable presentations to be viewed and voted upon ahead of time. But I would be uneasy to rely on this in case many presenters would not submit their slides until the day of the event (as happened this time), and many attendees would not make time to view them.
Any thoughts?
Stephen
Hi Stephen,
I think, if presenters’ expectations were set about creating presentations in advance, that would solve that problem. The only reason some people didn’t submit their slides until the day was because that was what they’d been told they could do.
Similarly, if attendees had their expectations set well in advance, that they would be able to engage in conversation with the presenters, then they would make the time to view the presentations.
Just take a look at the Manager Tools conference preparation materials to see how they do it. Their conferences have little, if any presentation, as they assume people will want to spend the time engaging with the content, rather than just listening to it.
I agree wholeheartedly that there needs to be a generous amount of time for peer conversation at conferences. In fact this lies at the heart of what we do. I should not have accepted proposals from everyone that applied to speak, and this would have allowed more time for conversation at the unconference.
FYI at this year’s conference, even though I explained that they would not be able to copy them to the venue laptop, and that we needed them emailed ahead of time, about half the people brought their slides (or updates) on the day on a flashdrive, which made life very difficult for our support team. You emailed your presentation in advance as requested, thanks.
I am thinking to display short clips from planned presentations in advance of next year’s conference, and to encourage voting to help select those that speak.
We will feature (a smaller number of) short presentations at the conference itself because people want to hear others speak at conference. In practice I think many would not view all videos ahead of time; being too busy, not having the technology at work or being last minute bookings.
This strategy would allow people to be involved in helping create the agenda itself, to hear more from the speakers of interest at the event and to engage in the all-important peer conversations.
I have posted this conversation at the informatology LinkedIn Group, to encourage others to join in.
Thanks for the link to the manager-tools website.
Regards
Stephen
Thanks Stephen,
I think a lot of people missed the instruction about sending the presentation in advance. It’s difficult to know how to make it clearer, but that sort of important message probably needs to be reiterated a few times to help it get through.
You’re right that people won’t watch the presentations in advance, but that’s only because their expectations are not set up front. With Manager Tools conferences (which are always over-subscribed even though they’re very expensive) those expectations are clearly set right from the outset. The conferences are about practice and conversation with experts, not about one-way presentations.
I think we’ve got lazy. We tend to come to conferences to absorb by osmosis, rather than to actively engage and learn.
