Place and Time
Tools For teaching.
For Job Talk. Exposing, Slides
Informing
Show to your listeners your stuff is cool and interesting. You have to be able to: -show your vision of that problem -show that you’ve done particular things (by steps) All of that should be done real quick in no more than 5 min. Persuade your listeners you’re not a rookie (Prof. Winston contrived to do that from the very first seconds of his talk)
Getting Famous If you want to your ideas be remembered you’ve got to have “5 S”
How to End
Scenarios
Wherever your company lands on this sliding scale, one thing will always remain true: you have to be able to sell your product or service. If you don’t sell it, no one else will. You team is relying on you to explain the benefits of the company and how it’s changing the world. It’s your job as the founder to communicate that vision. And realistically, you may not have a company for long if you can’t sell. Because it’s not just about doing interviews with journalists or sitting on panels. You have to pitch your idea to VCs if you really want a shot at building your startup into a lasting business.
What should I know before preparing the talk?
The idea here is that it’s good to get as much background info as you can, because whether you’re aware of it or not, it will influence your talk as you put it together.
How to structure your talk?
For Tech Demonstrations Prepare your machine AHEAD OF TIME. Nothing disrespects an audience like making them wait while you ask “Can you see this 8 point font? No? Oh, let me change it while you wait.” Setup every program you could possibly use, including all Command Prompt shortcuts, before you begin your presentation. That includes VS.NET, Notepad, XMLSpy, and any others, including any small utilities.he most readable, mono-spaced font out there. Prepare your machine AHEAD OF TIME. Nothing disrespects an audience like making them wait while you ask “Can you see this 8 point font? No? Oh, let me change it while you wait.” Setup every program you could possibly use, including all Command Prompt shortcuts, before you begin your presentation. That includes VS.NET, Notepad, XMLSpy, and any others, including any small utilities. For simplicities’ sake, I like to keep a separate user around call “BigFonty” (choose your own name). He’s an Administrator on the local machine and he exists ONLY for the purposes of demonstrations. All the fonts are large for all programs, large icons, great colors, etc. It’s the easiest way to set all these settings once and always have them easily available. For simplicities’ sake, I like to keep a separate user around call “BigFonty” (choose your own name). He’s an Administrator on the local machine and he exists ONLY for the purposes of demonstrations. All the fonts are large for all programs, large icons, great colors, etc. It’s the easiest way to set all these settings once and always have them easily available. HAVE A RESET STRATEGY (ONE-CLICK)If you’re going to give a talk, you’ll probably have to give it more than once. If you have demonstrations of any kind, have a “one-click” way to reset them. This might be a batch file or Powershell script that drops a modified database and reattaches a fresh one, or copies template files over ones you modify during your demo. Personally, I’m sold on Virtual Machines. I have seven VMs on a small, fast portable USB drive that will let me do roughly 12 different presentations at the drop of a hat. You never know when you’ll be called upon to give a demo. With a Virtual Machine I can turn on “Undo Disks” after I’ve prepared the talk, and my reset strategy is to just turn off the VM and select “Delete Changes.” A little up-front preparation means one less thing for you to panic about the day of the talk.
Single Idea in one crystal clear sentence (supported by three points). I learned this the hard way. When we launched ThirdLove in 2013, our executive team was three people: my co-founder Dave, our Chief Creative Officer, Ra’el, and me. We drove around San Francisco, meeting with different reporters to do interviews about our seed round and launch. None of us had done these types of interviews before. And we quickly realized we had too many people in the room. The three of us were speaking in different styles and presenting an overwhelming amount of information. Each article reflected a different angle because we were inundating the reporters with too many talking points. That experience taught me an important lesson: When announcing news to the press, you should always make it about one thing. Pick one point you want to get across and stick to that core story. Usesupporting points, but keep the focus on the idea. What am I trying to accomplish? And what is the single idea I want the audience to come away with? What will people feel as a result of hearing my presentation? In a perfect world, this is what they learned – this is the future state you want them to get to. These points will guide you while putting together the entire thing. You can “test” your talk against these points.
Write are the major talking points to support those learning points? put them in order – “to tell this story, I need to talk about X, then Y, then Z.” This divides your talk up into sections, which is important. Talks need to progress like a story – there needs to be a build-up, a center section, then a conclusion. A movie separates these with “plot points.” You don’t have plot points; you have section transitions.
Do your title slide and your transitional slides right away, so you have a framework of the talk to work with. You have your sections set now, so you can concentrate on supporting them individually and telling the story around the transitions between sections. Also do the last slide — it should always be your contact information. So you should have the beginning, section headings, and final slide done first, which gives you a framework to embellish.
Incrementally embellish each section. Treat it as a mini-talk by itself – “to tell this story (section), I need to talk about X, then Y, then Z.” Don’t edit too much when putting this together. Go nuts. Pretend you have all the time in the world and make it as long as you want. Each point should open with stories, metaphors, analogies, numbers, and statistics that your audience can relate to. Close with a clear point or a transition to the step you want the audience to take. Use Metaphors, Imagery, Repetition. PGP: with every subtopic, move from the Particular to the General and back to the Particular. Even though the purpose of a subtopic is to convey the general information, bracing it with particulars is a good way to draw attention and promote retention. Rehearsal is when you start cutting the thing down, and it’s better to start with too much information than too little. Don’t be surprised if the content of your talk changes considerably through this process. Not only the specifics, but the entire nature and message. This sounds weird, but as you say things out loud and create slides to illustrate it, this has a way of catalyzing things in your own head. You don’t truly understand something until you have to explain it, and the process of explaining it will often make you think differently about it. (See “Rubber Duck Debugging.”) There have been several times when I was mid-way through rehearsals and suddenly realized, “I’ve been thinking about this all wrong…” or “My main point is not that important after all. Rather, this smaller point is really want I should be teaching them…” If this happens, don’t be scared – it’s a gift.
When I was in Malaysia for TechEd, I spent 3 full days exclusively with locals before the talk, I learned snippets of each of the languages, tried to understand their jokes and get an idea about what was important to people in Malaysia. American analogies, much humor, and certain “U.S. specific” English colloquialisms just didn’t make any sense to them. When it came time to give the presentations, I better understood the Malaysian sense of timing, of tone and timbre, and I began each of my presentations by speaking in Bahasa Malaysia. I changed aspects of my slides to remove inappropriate content and add specific details that would be important to them.
To be able to explain something - which you have understood - eloquently and succinctly to someone, one just needs to start with a strategic framework in the mind, and a working understanding of how information can best be organised and structured in an explanation path. From my own experience in coaching people, information can be best organised and structured as follows, from the explanatory standpoint:
In consulting, the ability to structure the message using the Pyramid Principle is extremely important. The goal is to communicate top-down with the most important message first (‘tip of the pyramid’). The supporting conclusions are presented at the next level (following ‘MECE’), resembling a pyramid. This makes it easier for the reader (and especially for busy executives) to grasp the gist of the message instead of being bombarded with a lot of rambling details. While telling the story, most use a variation of an approach called Situation, Complication, & Resolution to drive to a clear course of action. All of these are equally important for product managers while communicating a product vision & strategy. (Good presentation on applying Pyramid Principle for structured communication).
Mini-Tactics
Repeat the question when asked When an audience member asks a question, it is a good idea to repeat the question, asking the questioner whether you have understood it, before answering the question. This has three benefits. You ensure that you have understood the question. When thinking under pressure, it can be far too easy to jump to conclusions, and it is bad to answer a question different than the one that was asked. A related benefit is that you get to frame the question in your own words or from your own viewpoint.You give yourself a few moments to think about your answer. If the audience member does not have a microphone, the rest of the audience may not have been able to hear the question clearly. Be willing to answer a question with “no” or “I don’t know”. You will get into more trouble if you try to blather on or to make up an answer on the fly.
Repetition Simple reiteration is important.Steve Jobs did this often. Before moving onto the next product announcement, he’d spend thirty seconds and go over the same information he just presented. It’s a very simple way of keeping things memorable for your audience. I make this explicit by giving recap sections big green stamps in the upper corner saying “RECAP”. I also giving the start of each section of my talk bright orange backgrounds with colorful, bold text. Simple reiteration is important.
More drama! Example: “I’m no longer just a candidate. I’m the president. I know what it means to send young Americans into battle, for I have held in my arms the mothers and fathers of those who didn’t return.” Obama, Democratic National Convention speech, 2012 Favreau: “These lines were going to be at the top of the speech, but we moved them to the end because it was worth having a dramatic moment before speeding up and getting people going again. To do that - to get the best applause - say things like, ‘Make your voice heard’, ‘Are you with me’. That’s how Bobby Kennedy would end his speeches.
Just as you should not read text verbatim, you should not read diagrams verbatim. When discussing the architecture of a system, don’t just read the names of the components or give low-level details about the interfaces between them. Rather, explain whatever is important, interesting, or novel about your decomposition; or discuss how the parts work together to achieve some goal that clients of the system care about; or use other techniques to give high-level understanding of the system rather than merely presenting a mass of low-level details.
Example: “You know, they said this day would never come.” Obama, opening to the Iowa caucuses victory speech, 2008 Favreau: “I tell the president to start speeches in the most organic way possible. You wouldn’t start a conversation by saying ‘As John F. Kennedy once said…’, so you shouldn’t start a speech that way either. When he won the Iowa caucuses a lot of people said he should start with a bunch of acknowledgements. I said no, the whole world’s going to be watching so he needs a big opening, but it can’t be too cheesy. What we came up with was a natural thing to say, but also has a lot of meaning.”
Example: “You [Mitt Romney] might not be ready for diplomacy with Beijing if you can’t visit the Olympics without insulting our closest ally.” Obama, Democratic National Convention speech, 2012 Favreau: “What might seem like a good needling of the opposition on paper sounds a bit harsher in reality and you won’t get the applause. So a little goes a long way - the press will always pick up on it when you try to ‘draw a contrast’ as we call it. Humour is a great approach. Or look at what we did when we ran against Hillary [Clinton] in the primary: the president rarely used Hillary’s name but everyone knew he was talking about her.”
Example: “You know, they said this day would never come.” Obama, opening to the Iowa caucuses victory speech, 2008 Favreau: “I tell the president to start speeches in the most organic way possible. You wouldn’t start a conversation by saying ‘As John F. Kennedy once said…’, so you shouldn’t start a speech that way either. When he won the Iowa caucuses a lot of people said he should start with a bunch of acknowledgements. I said no, the whole world’s going to be watching so he needs a big opening, but it can’t be too cheesy. What we came up with was a natural thing to say, but also has a lot of meaning.”
Presentation Style Tips
design for people three rooms away from you.
References:
Rehearsals
Practice. Utterly Prepared. Know your topic well!. Short of an unexpected BSOD (and even then, be ready) you should be prepared for ANYTHING. You should know EVERY inch of your demos and EXACTLY what can go wrong. Nothing kills your credibility more than an error that you DON’T understand. Errors and screw-ups happen ALL the time in Presentations. They can even INCREASE your credibility if you recover gracefully and EXPLAIN what happened. “Ah, this is a common mistake that I’ve made, and here’s what you should watch for.” Be prepared with phrases that will turn the unfortunate incident around and provide them useful information.
Go to other people’s practice talks. This is good citizenship, and cultivating these obligations is a good way to ensure that you have an audience at your practice talk. Furthermore, attending others’ talks can teach you a lot about good and bad talks — both from observing the speaker and thinking about how the talk can be better (or is already excellent), and from comparing the the feedback of audience members to your own opinions and observations. This does not just apply to practice talks: you should continually perform such introspective self-assessment.
Giving The Actual Talk
Example: “You know, they said this day would never come.” Obama, opening to the Iowa caucuses victory speech, 2008
Favreau: “I tell the president to start speeches in the most organic way possible. You wouldn’t start a conversation by saying ‘As John F. Kennedy once said…’, so you shouldn’t start a speech that way either. When he won the Iowa caucuses a lot of people said he should start with a bunch of acknowledgements. I said no, the whole world’s going to be watching so he needs a big opening, but it can’t be too cheesy. What we came up with was a natural thing to say, but also has a lot of meaning.”
- If you can, start with some comment about the event or something that just occurred: “I was just talking to Mark in the hall” This sets people at ease and takes you immediately off-script, so it sets expectations on the conversational tone of what follows.
- Replace uh, um, er, ah, like, you know, and other distracting sounds by silences. Any good piece of oratory has silences naturally built into it, as indicated by commas, periods, semi-colons, colons, and other forms of punctuation. We do not normally notice them. And if we do, we usually call them “pauses” rather than silences. However, they amount to the same thing.
- If you think of an anecdote, tell it. Remember, you’re not on a strict script here. Feel free to weave in and out of your rehearsed outline. I don’t think I’ve gotten through a single talk where I didn’t extemporaneously say something that I never rehearsed.
- Care. There’s nothing more important that truly caring about your topic. If you care, it’ll show. Avoid presenting on topics that you don’t care about. Avoid it like the Plague.
- Listen, Empathize,
- “Volume and Diction,” my High School Drama teacher said to me. Speak clearly, authoritatively, project your voice to the back of the room. The best speakers don’t even need microphones. If you have a speaking affectation (I had a lisp growing up) or you tend to say, um, etc, or find yourself overusing a specific phrase (“a priori”, “fantastic”, “powerful”, etc) take it upon yourself to NOTICE this mannerism and avoid it.
If you want some more good tips, take a look at this: . In particular, read the comments there – lots of great stuff submitted in the comments. It’s also worth noting that Scott Hanselman is the presenting style that I really try to emulate: he’s so wonderfully relaxed when he talks that you feel like you’re in it with him, rather than being lectured to. If I could replicate one talk (in vibe and style, not so much content), it would be this one: It’s not what you read, it’s what you ignore. That’s Scott at WebStock 2012 in New Zealand. It’s fantastic. It helps that Scott has spoken at my company, sitting at my breakroom table. It’s easy to like someone when they do that for you.
How to handle unknowns?
See things as an opportunity, rather than as an adversarial situation!
You won’t be able to plan for everything that happens in an interview or a conference room. So that means you have to get used to dealing with the unknown. If you’re asked a question you’re not prepared for, don’t scramble just to come up with a quick answer. It doesn’t matter whether you’re sitting across from a journalist or a VC—just tell them you don’t know. You can say, “That’s a great question. Let me have my team pull that data and get back to you.” Easy as that. Now you have time to make sure your answer is correct, as well as to reflect on how you want to answer the question later on.
When something wrong happens
“I am going to pretend that didnt happen….”
“Ok. Go ahead.break my day….”
“If you that thats bad, wait before i start singing….”
No response from joke? Don’t apologise, carry on, don’t bring attention to the fact
“ok’ name’ thats the last time I’ve used one of your jokes.”
How to end
“You’ve heard the saying ‘alls well that ends well. Where speeches are concerned, I believe alls well that ends, and now is my time to end.”
“my talks usually have a happy ending. Its because everyone is happy that it ended”.
“When a speaker says ‘To make a long story short’, its usually too late. I dont want you all to feel that way about me. Goodnight.
“I dont want any applause, not that I was going to get any, but Id like everyone to stand up”
“Now lets open for question and answers. if I KNOW THE ANSWER, i’ll give it to you. else I’ll just make something up.
How can you best communicate complex ideas simply?
If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.
(a) Work really hard to first ensure that I myself understand the complex idea well enough to be able to discern its most critical components from just the necessary but minor details.
(b) Think about what your desired outcome is: Is it to help someone just understand something, or go beyond that and take an action, or something else?
Start with the Simplest Explanation Think about the KISS principle that has been used for decades or Occam’s razor that has been philosophized for centuries. Simplicity works. Start with something that can be covered, ideally, in a couple of sentences or within a minute or 2. If there is a critically important technical detail, mention it quickly. IF the audience wants more detail, they can, and will, ask.
We’ll start with six basic principles, then move to an applied example.
One analogy is worth five explanations. Our brains shut down easily when learning about unfamiliar concepts. Whenever possible, create a strong bridge between what your audience knows and what you’re hoping to teach them. Come up with the simplest possible analogy in a domain the audience is familiar with to convey the idea.
Example: WSJ article. The first paragraph summarizes the complex idea and the second one delivers to easy-to-understand analogy.
Software Firms Scramble to Jump Into Containers
“What makes containers so compelling? The technology encloses a program (or a piece of one) in a layer of software that connects seamlessly to the operating system and other computing resources it depends on to run. Putting a program in a container has a number of benefits, but a crucial advantage is that it can be moved quickly and easily from one computer to another—say, from a programmer’s laptop to a test system to the cloud. Given the pace of Internet time, harried chief technology officers are desperate for anything that speeds up the process.”
“Think about a cake,” said Scott Johnston, senior vice president of product at Docker, likening the cake part to a server and the icing to a program. “You want to be able to change frosting from chocolate to vanilla. If there’s paper between the two, you can lift up the frosting and replace it.”
Example:
“Well, we had 2 VARCHAR, fields from the M2S legacy system that were being concatenated before the websphere interface batch job … bla bla bla … The SAP iDocs were correctly configured, so, bla bla bla… Eventually we noticed that the fields were being truncated … bla bla bla… so finally, we were able to fix it by …womp womp womp… yeah, so now it works.”
Director (to me): “Can you explain that in English, please?”
Me: “The errors were caused by a misalignment between the old system and SAP. We figured out the problem, aligned the fields and everything is working as expected now.”
Director: “That was easy.”
Example: When someone is pitching an innovative new idea
“It’s like Facebook, but for dogs.”
“It’s like Spotify but for independent artists.”
Ok, now a practical example. Let’s say your mission was to explain search engine optimization to a crowd of non-technical business owners.
A good approach might be:
Our goal today is to give each of you a practical understanding of what SEO is, what SEO isn’t, and what you should and shouldn’t do when you leave here.
The purpose of good SEO is to make sure that search engines promote your website or content when searchers demonstrate a specifically relevant interest.
The purpose of good SEO is NOT to make sure your website ranks well for a large dictionary of generic or vaguely-relevant keywords.
Here’s our roadmap. We’re going to discuss four points this morning: (a) Google’s perspective; (b) the searcher’s perspective; (c) tactics to avoid; and (d) tactics to use.
Our first topic is Google’s perspective. Understanding this is the key to understanding everything else. I’m going to give you a soundbite that I want you to remember: “Searchers are Google’s customers first.”
In the first case, delivering the best results means more folks using Google.This results in more ad revenue for them. If I search for a local plumber and end up on a spammy site owned by a shady company, that influences my trust in Google. In the long run, this means decreased ad revenue.
5.4 So, to recap, Google hires rocket scientists because high-quality search results mean increased revenues for them. They’re happy if it means revenues for you, too, but searchers are their customers first. They’re willing to protect them vigorously, at great expense.
Ok, so now that we understand Google’s perspective, let’s see it from the perspective of the searcher. Our soundbite for this point is: “If I ask for a burger, don’t give me a menu; if I ask for a recommendation, don’t lead me wrong.”
6a. Let’s use a thought experiment. Say you’re hungry, in a rush, and you know exactly what you want: a bacon cheeseburger. You go to a food court to feed that appetite. When you arrive, you find ten vendors, all of which advertise their “delicious food”. You go to the first one, browse the menu, but don’t see a burger on it. You go to the second, third, fourth one – same thing. You go to the fifth one, and this time the person behind the counter actually acknowledges your presence.
The dialogue goes something like this:
“Are you hungry?
“YES!”
“Would you like something to eat?”
“YESS!”
“Do you know exactly what you want?”
“YESSSSSSSSS!!!!!!”
“Cool. Here’s a menu.”
grown man exits, sobbing; vows to never return
Now let’s repeat that same scenario, imagining that the food court provided a host who greeted visitors on their way in.
“You’re here because you’re hungry. What are you in the mood for?”
“The best bacon cheeseburger here.”
“No problem. Here’s the top three options, ranked in order of known quality. Bon appetite.”
Which experience is better?
6b. Let’s now do a second thought experiment, this time imagining that you were hungry, but had an unidentifiable craving. How would you hope the conversation to go?
“You’re here because you’re hungry. What are you in the mood for?” “Umm. Mexican food + no gluten + take out.” “No problem. We have a range of quality options I think should fit. Let me tell you the top recommendations, using just one or two sentences to describe each.”
Sounds ideal, right?
This is basically all that Google is trying to do: determine the problem you’re trying to solve, then match you with the highest-quality solution for that specific problem.
6c. So, to recap, searchers are Google’s customers first, and Google keeps them happy by determining and fulfilling their needs. The customer doesn’t care about them or you – they just want a burger or a recommendation; either a specific thing or a specific direction.
Alright, now we’re getting to the meat of it: the tactics you shouldn’t use. Our soundbite here is: “Never offer a cheeseburger to a vegan.”
7a. As we discussed earlier, some people have tried to “trick” Google into ranking their sites and content higher than deserved. Without getting too technical, how did they do that?
One of the more popular methods was called “keyword cramming”. Think of it like one of those food-court restaurants having a forest of banner-stands in front of their counter, packed with large-text phrases like “best burger”, “best burger foodcourt”, “best burger ever”, “foodcourt burger”, “burger, burger”, etc.
Their theory is that by being incredibly, overbearingly aggressive in declaring what they offer, you’ll pick them first.
Unfortunately, they’re overlooking three key things: (i) some people want a recommendation, not a specific food item; (ii) those that want a burger would prefer to see a qualified statement like “#1 rated burger 2015; local choice” to something unqualified and generic like “best burger ever”; and (iii) some people don’t want meat burgers.
Ultimately, “bad” tactics are any that fail to integrate specific solutions on all those points. If the pitch an SEO firm gives you doesn’t include contextualized approaches on all three fronts, run.
7b. When people keyword-cram (or use similarly lazy and/or devious tactics), they risk being penalized by Google. This can be incredibly costly, often resulting in the equivalent of a black-list. In those cases, you’ll be worse off than if you never did any SEO at all.
7c. So, to recap, searchers belong to Google, whose sole interest is identifying what they want and giving it to them – as specifically as possible. Trying to game the system with generic content and gimmicky strategies will result in them putting incredible distance between you and their customers.
So, now we arrive at what you’ve all come for today – the good stuff: the tactics you should use. Our context here is simple: “To catch a customer, think like a customer.”
a. This is simple concept that’s difficult to execute. Most owners think they understand their customers, while in reality they really just understand their industry. Sadly, the two things are not the same.
It’s important to note that I don’t mean we should try to divine the inner being of our customers in some philosophical way. This is about basic psychology. Nothing more.
Before a customer makes a search, they formulate a question. Before they formulate that question, they fall prey to a desire.
The desire can be for many things – prestige, peace-of-mind, pleasure, etc. – and you’ll consistently fail to sell anything to them until you figure out what it is.
Think back to the food court scenario. Before someone walks into one, they have to decide they want food. This is rarely an analytic decision. It begins with a feeling. The decision tree roots itself in a primal desire.
That said, not every form of hunger is equal. Some just want to feel full. Some want specific nourishment. Some want to scratch a specific itch.
Until you identify that – until you identify your primary customers and the desire-to-action process that they undergo, how can you possibly know what signs to post and what greetings to offer?
More meaningfully, if you can’t answer those questions today, what did you tell your SEO team to optimize for yesterday?
In most cases, companies with limited budgets pay money they can’t afford and all they get for it is a collection of “best burger” banner-stands.
8b. We have just one practical consideration left. Once we’ve identified exactly what our customers want, and once we’ve reverse-engineered how they break down the translation of desire into action, what do we do in response?
The heart of real SEO is building solid content around those specific desire-paths, creating posts and pages and videos that speak to each of them individually. (Well, not all – focusing on just the top 5 scenarios is usually enough.)
Learning how to format and promote that content is where you’ll need the help of a quality SEO firm. If worth their salt, they’ll know the best practices to appease Google. Just remember that their expertise is taking what you give them and optimizing it, not figuring out what you should give them in the first place.
(Yes, some firms can walk you through that, too. But it’s pretty rare that it makes sense for you to pay them for that. These are questions you should already be asking yourself. You should be the expert on your own business.)
8c. So, there we have it. You now know the basics of what every business owner needs to understand about SEO.
To ensure it sticks, let’s recap it one final time.
References