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When Tech Fails...

7/31/2018

Today I was doing a four-hour teacher training workshop for secondary school English teachers and my tech let me down big time. This wasn't my first rodeo. I've taught hundreds, if not thousands, of classes and conducted well over one hundred workshops in a myriad of conditions but today the tech failures still threw me off and left me feeling bad about how things went.

It started with the computer monitor. It worked at first but fairly quickly it had the floating window telling me that there was no source connected. No biggie, I thought, just jiggle all the cables in the back. No joy. Next, I went back to my training as a computer lab tech, and turned the computer off and back on again. Still nothing. Fine, at least the projector was working and I could see what I was doing over my shoulder. Not the best situation but I could make due.

Then something happened that I've never experienced in almost twenty years in the classroom. The PowerPoint slides started advancing on their own. Sometimes one click, sometimes more than one. It was like a ghost had hacked the computer. It got so bad that I had to take it out of slide show mode and just show the slides next to my slide deck (goodbye slide animations), and it STILL kept advancing on its own. What a mess... Needless to say, this was not my strongest training session. However, upon reflection, I feel like I did my best considering the circumstances. I actually cut my two sessions short and replaced them with activities on the fly. I tried every fix I could think of while attempting to maintain my rapport with the trainees. I honestly don't know what else I could have done.

Not all presentations and classes will go the way you planned. They won't all be perfect and sometimes it is simply out of your control; but the more experience you have and the more prepared you are to handle the problems that can arise when using tech for your presentations, the better off you will be. I just hope for your sake that reading the post will help you anticipate potential problems and you won't have to experience a tech meltdown for yourself to increase your readiness for the next time things go wrong.

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What I Taught About Pitching Last Week

7/24/2018

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I'm not going to lie, I wasn't very inspired to write up a summary of the main issues that I observed and taught at Bizworld and the Global Entrepreneurship Camp at KAIST over the last few weeks but seeing the feedback from the participants and how much they appreciated learning about the communications side of startups and business lit a fire under me. So here we go.

I only spent two days with the Bizworld participants so there wasn't a lot of time for one-on-one chats but I was at the camp all day, every day for a full week. That made it possible to talk during meals and breaks and really hear what the participants were worried about or unsure of. The number one issue was attitudes when approaching the oral pitches. Most people (myself included when I was a terrible presenter in university) focus inward and think about what they will mess up instead of focusing on the audience and what the listeners want and need to see and hear. My last post goes into more detail about this.

So, attitude is the first roadblock preventing speakers from being successful. Now it comes down to common mistakes and stopping yourself from making them. They include using words like "cheap" and too many conditional and qualifying words, standing in the projector light and blocking your content, leaving slide numbers off the slides, not having contact info on the last slide, not maintaining enthusiasm from one speaker to the next, not introducing the next speaker properly, not understanding how to manage your time, not persuading your audience due to a lack of eye contact or distracting/weak body language, filling pauses with noise, not figuring out how to use all the tech before you present, and not checking that stylistic elements are consistent across your slide deck. Remember, the objective of a pitch is not only to get the investor to believe that your idea is unique and viable but that you are the right person or team to successfully achieve it.

Between Bizworld, working at the census conference in Vietnam, and co-coordinating the startup camp, I see that even though public speaking skills are not being offered (or maybe "not required" is more accurate) at many schools and companies, there is a strong demand from the people who need them to succeed. I hope there will be more opportunities in the future for me to help people achieve their goals by training them to speak in front of a group of people where the stakes are high and the environment is very competitive. Those are the people I find value communications skills training the most and are the most appreciate afterward. As I tweeted last week, "I think I love teaching presentation skills because one little suggestion can lead to a huge improvement."

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Hurricane in the Brain

7/20/2018

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This week I'm working with students at an entrepreneurship camp. The week of brainstorming, idea development, and teamwork will culminate in a 7-minute pitch on Friday afternoon. Several participants have noted that when they speak in front of a large group of people they notice that they have trouble remembering what they said and did once it's over. I call that the hurricane in the brain.

What causes this inability to recall details or their presentation experience? I have a theory about this. Presenting is like juggling and the hurricane occurs when the speaker tries to juggle too many things at once. Think about all the things a public speaker needs to pay attention to: time management, body language, speaking speed and volume, working with technology, and then add presenting in a second or third language (the running chainsaw)! Add in trying to recite a memorized script in these stressful conditions and the brain can't handle all those things at once.

What can presenters do about this? One suggestion is to try to work more on understanding what your audience needs to know and then using your slides to help you deliver the content in manageable chunks. Each slide is its own chapter of your story. Also, remember that you (should) know more about your topic than your audience and your mission is to inform and/or persuade them. Focus on helping them understand your content. Concentrate on communicating clearly and efficiently with them (focusing outward) and stop thinking about all the mistakes you might make (focusing inward). Think positively before you start speaking. The audience wants you to succeed. Nobody goes to a presentation hoping the presenter will get confused and lose their confidence.

Better preparation will help reduce the disorientation that many public speakers experience. Approach your presentation will a "service mentality". You have a gift to give. If that gift is useful to the audience then you should feel good about giving it. Your presentation is an opportunity as much as you might consider it a threat. It's all about the way you choose to approach it.

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Tips for Chairing a Conference Session

7/11/2018

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This morning as I was preparing to emcee a conference, one of the session chairs approached me and confessed that it was her first time to chair a session. This turned out to be the case for several of the session chairs and they asked for some tips. I thought I'd share those tips here in case you find yourself in a similar situation.

DO
- make sure all your speakers are present and introduce yourself to them well before your session begins (this will help you identify them and track them down if someone disappears right before your session)
- learn how to pronounce your speakers' names and ask their job titles and affiliations (this will help you introduce them confidently and professionally)
- make sure all your speakers' know how to use the remote control and other relevant technology (this means you might have to learn how to use it yourself)
- manage each speaker's talking time and the entire session time (some chairs use a bell to notify the speakers that their time is almost up, others use "5 minutes" or "2 minutes" reminder cards)
- be prepared to summarize the key points from the session (also be prepared to mention a couple of key points from each talk)
- manage the Q&A session and announce whether you will take questions after each talk or at the end of the session (also be prepared to ask a question to get the ball rolling if their are no questions from the audience)

DON'T
- chat with other session members while another speaker is giving their talk (it's distracting and you look unprofessional)
- let the speaker go over their time (it might help to find out how many slides they plan to use so you can predict if they will finish on time)
- lose control of the session (if there are too many questions, remind the audience that they can email questions to the speakers or ask them personally during breaks or meal times)

Remember, chairing a session should be much less stressful than actually presenting. Your job is to help the speakers manage their time and be more prepared so they can appear as professional as possible.

Source: Kristin J. Arnold https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/8-roles-panel-moderator-kristin-arnold/?published=t

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A Lesson for Teaching Impromptu Speaking Skills

7/5/2018

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One of the topics I didn't go into in my book on how to teacher presentation skills is how to teach impromptu speaking skills. Most of the formal presentations you and your students will give will be planned out and rehearsed (well, hopefully). However, there are times when you are called upon to stand in front of a group of people and share your experience or just "say a few words".

One example of this was when I was representing KOTESOL at a conference in Russia and was asked to come to the front and say a few words about the conference that KOTESOL would be hosting the next year. No warning, no time to prepare, just get up there, smile, and wing it. This situation can even throw experienced presenters for a loop. No PowerPoint slides to fall back on, to time limits to base our amount of content on, just freestyling it in front a room of your peers.

The biggest problem that occurs in this situation is that we revert back to all out bad public speaking habits. We forget to make strong eye contact with different parts of the room. We lose track of what our hands are doing. We forget that most audiences want to hear less, not more, so we ramble on and on with no organization to our thoughts.

It's good to give students the opportunity to experience what it's like to be called on to speak in front of a group without being able to sufficiently prepare. I do this with my students in three stages.

Stage 1
In groups of three or four students, I give them a personal topic such as their hobby or favorite restaurant (listed on a PowerPoint slide) and give them three minutes to prepare and then one minute each to speak. I use the timer on my phone to keep track of the time and the beeping means the time is up. The students can stay for this stage seated but they need to adjust their chair so that they can easily see all of their group members. All of the group members talk about their experience with the same topic.

Stage 2
This time I give them a new topic and only give them one minute to prepare. The talking time is 45 seconds. I usually have them stand up for this stage. Be sure to start with a different group member this time.

Stage 3
This time they will not be given any prep time and the speaking time is 30 seconds. The twist is that when it's time for the second presenter, I change the topic. For this round, every student has a new topic. *evil laughter*

It's important to explain to your students the difference between high-stakes and low-stake presentations. They won't lose their jobs if they mess up in your class. Your classroom needs to be a safe space where students view a bad presentation as a learning experience and not something that will damage their reputation or harm their grade (when it's for practice). If you can get your students to relax and look at the class as an opportunity and not a threat, this activity will be both practical and empowering for your students. Best of all, it can be done in less than thirty minutes. Good luck!

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Freelancing - Getting Paid

7/3/2018

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If you ask people who are thinking about moving into the freelancing realm what their biggest concern is, they will probably mention the unsteady income. It is true that freelancers go through busy periods and dry periods but for me the biggest concern isn't the down times, it's the length of time it takes to get paid after a project is finished.

Clients are often fanatical about deadlines. They need the paper checked by 6pm, you need to show up 20 minutes early to the test site, you should be the first person there before conducting training, but when it's time to pay you for your work, here come the excuses. It's payroll's fault. Our funding didn't come in. The manager who has to sign off is on a business trip. We forgot. You forgot?!?!

One of the things that eases the burden of unsteady income is having a healthy accounts receivable balance. Yes, it's just another thing to keep track of but this is your money we're talking about. It's worth tracking. Generally, clients that you have a strong personal relationship with will nudge the appropriate people to get you paid on time but you don't always get to work with people you know well and like.

I strongly recommend that people who are considering freelancing full time try to keep a "cushion" of two months of your average salary as your bank account balance. Account receivable are good in the sense that you know that money will be arriving eventually but when you have to pay the bills and buy groceries, that cushion will come in handy when business is slow.

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When Tech Fails...

What I Taught About Pitching Last Week

Hurricane in the Brain

Tips for Chairing a Conference Session

A Lesson for Teaching Impromptu Speaking Skills

Freelancing - Getting Paid

Tim's Thoughts

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