Dave's Whiteboard

When I started using Facebook, I needed a photo for my profile.  I hit on the right one, and I use it on Twitter as well.  But it’s not me.

It’s my dad, who joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 1934.  He was 21 years old. He left the Mounties a few years later, then rejoined in 1941 and served throughout the war.

Being in the RCMP was not the high point of his life.  You could say that he had a whole mountain range of high points, from old friends who’d drive miles out of their way to see him, to some tea and biscuits, to his joy in recalling one sunny afternoon playing with two greatgrandchildren.

He’d slowed down in the last few years, but as recently as my wedding in February of last year, he told stories, joked with the caterers, and tapped his cane in time to music.

His health failed in the past two weeks–though when time came to arrange for hospice care, my mother had to get a referral from her doctor.  Dad didn’t have a primary care physician of his own.

Dad died a little after 8 this morning.  He was 96.

I know he’d have been pleased for people who’d never met him to share one of his great pleasures: music from down home.  If you’ve got 10 minutes, listen to some Cape Breton fiddling.  The fiddler is Buddy MacMaster, a great friend of Dad’s–who if he were here would say of Buddy, “you couldn’t ask for a nicer fella.”

I especially like the set that Buddy’s playing here (from a 2000 concert in Boston).  The first air is Niel Gow’s Lament on the Death of His Second Wife. Buddy eases from that into three dance tunes, and if your feet don’t tap, you may want to check with your own primary care physician.

(I’ve decided not to have comments on this post.)

Talking about live backchannels recently led to talking about feedback, which is good (in my view).  It’s feedback that offers the chance not to change, which was the first word trying to get in as I wrote this, but to decide. As in, decide whether to change or to keep on doing what you’re doing.

The difference?  Well, here are the basic steps of a process:

You can take the point-of-view elevator down (say, to the process for harvesting barley) or up (operating the Talisker distillery).  Processes go inside larger ones, link to others; an output here becomes an input there.

But you’re not getting the full picture.  You don’t know how you’re doing without feedback.  Thus items 7 and 9 on this diagram:

Item 9 on the diagram is feedback about the process (here’s how things are going).  You can see item 7 as both short-term and long-term feedback to the performer.  That’s the answer to “how’m I doing?”  (Sure, there’s crossover between the two, especially if it’s a single performer, but I was going for simplicity here.)

I talked recently with Dick Carlson about the backchannel.  He’s far more technically skilled than I am; he sometimes uses custom backchannel software in a session.  Each participate creates an anonymous ID (like, say, a favorite comic book character or root vegetable).  He displays the backchannel during the session, which means everybody gets to see when Granola&Grits says, “been there, declined the tshirt.”  Or when ParsnipAmazon says, “YES! ima usin this TODAY!”

Potential for an interesting bit of DIY research: do some sessions with the Veggie ID, others with name-based ID, then see if there’s discernable differences between the quality or quantity of feedback.  Okay, now, back to the post…

Not to say a backchannel is a requirement.  I have reservations, especially if most participants don’t have access to it–e.g., 60% lack devices to get to it. Shooting an anonymous remark into the stream is easier and potentially less intimidating than standing out by speaking up.

I’ve already said I’d be very distracted viewing a backchannel if I were presenting on my own.  Though on that topic, Aaron Silvers just today told me he found great value in reviewing a backchannel following a session he’d given.  During the session, he didn’t think he was doing that well, but what he saw in the stream afterward helped him see differently.

All of which is to say that software like Twitter is one way, not the way, to collect and retrieve feedback.  Which reminds me that collecting (storage) and retrieval (application) aren’t a bad way to think about the fundamentals of learning.

That’s my own “Looking for trouble?” chart.
My process diagram adapted from these CC-licensed images:
Ripening barley by net_efekt / Christian Guthier;
stills at the Lagavulin distillery by Freddie H / Frederique Harmsze;
glass of whisky by smiling_da_vince / Eelco.

I just read Personal Kaizen: 15 Tips for your continuous improvement at Garr Reynolds’s Presentation Zen blog.  “Kaizen,” which in American business terms tends to mean “continuous improvement,” was all the rage for a while, one of those fads like canary-yellow neckties–some years back, walking down K Street in Washington DC, you could go blind on a sunny day.

I don’t mean there’s no such thing as continuous improvement.  I do recall companies frantically trying to “change the culture.” Often that’s boss-speak for telling people, “Stop doing that; do this instead.”

Reynolds makes the point explicit: continuous improvement is daily, continuous, steady, and takes a long-term view.  Which connects well with other ideas I’ve been mulling over, including the nature of habits, efforts to improve my own performance, and a tendency to beat myself up when I fall short of a goal.

Reynolds’s post has a list of 15 ideas for your own continuous improvement.  Right in the middle, one sparked off the screen for me:

Learn to take better photos. Since you’ll be taking so many snaps to learn from and to share [in another tip, he suggests keeping a digital scrapbook of images that you find interesting], why not get much better at the art of photography?… You don’t have to become as good as the pros, but you can get much, much better. Learn what separates the great photos from the ordinary. The lessons from photography will help in your general guest to become a better visual thinker.

I put the spark-sentence in bold because it triggered the kind of reflection that leaves me still.  I’m very prone to say that I don’t have much graphic sense.  In the past, that’s meant I’ve been pretty lean with graphics I’ve created or selected (for example, to illustrate a presentation or an online lesson).

And I’m probably not going to become a professional photographer–partly because I haven’t had any interest in becoming one.  What I hear, though, isn’t just about a mindset toward imagery, but an encouragement to be not only mindful but active.

That last idea reappears in another of his points: teach others what you learn. In a recent #lrnchat discussion, Aaron Silvers, in search of a motto, asked what the Latin would be for “Everybody teaches. Everybody learns.”

I haven’t thought this through well, but I have in mind two aspects to what we think of as learning: storage and retrieval.  You can’t get stuff out (either individual facts, procedural skills, or tacit knowledge) if you haven’t gotten it in.  And that retrieval, I think, is almost always a case of application: we’re recalling for some reason.

Moreover, each time we try to recall–when we try to act on what we’ve been learning–we’re doing more than pulling a fact out of some neurological file folder.  We’re reprocessing the information. We’re connecting it with what we already know, and with what we’re just now finding out.

In a very real sense, the learning never stops, because  that activation over time leads to physical changes in our brain.

This is a follow-up to my previous post about one of the keynotes at the Higher Ed Web Association’s conference this past week.  I wanted to do a couple of things: provide some context, dig deeper into what the #heweb09 tweet stream contained, and think out loud about what I’ve learned about a situation I was not at all involved in.

Some context

I’ve talked at least a bit with four people who attended the keynote.  Michael Fienen’s already discussed it on his own blog, and gives some background suggesting that the choice of speaker was unfortunate.  The speaker’s background may have stirred up some resistance, but so too did his apparent inability to connect with a technically sophisticated audience.  (HEWEB members design, develop, manage, and create the future of college and university web sites.)

A similar viewpoint appears near the end of this post from Nick DeNardis on the Wayne State University web communications blog.

Plunging into the stream

I downloaded all the tweets for #heweb09 that day, extracted those from 11:59 am to 12:59pm (my arbitrary boundaries for the keynote tweets), and took them on a ride in Excel to see what I could learn.

Who was talking?

There were 536 tweets with the #heweb09 hashtag, sent by 119 different Twitter accounts.  In terms of low volume:

• 49 individuals tweeted only once (9.1% of total tweets)
• 17 tweeted only twice (6.3%)
• 9 tweeted only three times (5.0%)

So on the low end, 75 individuals (63% of the total) sent 110 tweets (20.5% of the total).  Meanwhile:

• 1 person tweeted 28 times (5.2%)
• 1 tweeted 27 (5.0%)
• 1 tweeted 23 (4.3%)
• 1 tweeted 20 (3.7%)
• 3 each tweeted 17 (51, or 9.5%)

These 7 high-volume  individuals (5.9%) accounted for 27.8% of all the tweets.

I think this is a reasonably wide spectrum.  33 individuals account for 70% of the tweets.  All but two of them were present at the keynote, and among those 31 present, everyone sent at least 6 tweets (one every 12 minutes).  The average was 11.4 tweets.

Where were they?

I tried to see who among the group was actually present.  If I couldn’t tell, I assumed the person was there.

Under that criterion, 23 people (19% of the total tweeters) were not present at the keynote but chiming in from elsewhere.  These NPs tweeted 61 times in all (11.4% of total).  NPs with 4 or fewer tweets: 19 people, 36 tweets (59% of the NP total).

So, more than 80% of the tweets were from people actually present.

What were they saying?

“RT” (retweet, a repeating of someone else’s tweet) occurs 170 times in the 536 tweets, though some tweets have more than one (e.g., “RT @alex RT @betty” — I’m sharing what Alex said Betty said).  If each RT were unique, that’d be 31.7% of the volume; I’m guessing the actual number is closer to 27% or so.

Not to discount that–if you’re sitting next to me in a presentation and whisper something insightful or clever to me, I might just whisper it to the person on the other side: a non-digital retweet.

Not all the tweets in the stream related to the keynote–remember, this is a hashtag stream.  In the first 100 tweets (the inital 23 minutes), about 20 were clearly unrelated.  For example, a vendor was having a drawing for a prize, and three or four tweets in that group of 100 dealt with that.

I didn’t analyze the entire stream, but even if that 20% factor held up, more than 400 tweets still dealt directly with the keynote.

First impressions

At 11:59, the start of my stream time, someone said “hella drop shadow” — a criticism of the PowerPoint format.  Within ten minutes, people were asking, “how old IS this presentation?”  And by 12:15, this:

watching people try to figure out how they can get out, starting to see the OMG I AM TRAPPED looks on faces.

What I’m seeing

I wondered about some kind of groupthink–a kind of techno-mob getting carried away.  I see that as a real possibility, especially if there’s a gulf between a relatively small number of Twitter users and most other attendees.

• One attendee estimated as many as 400 at the keynote.  If that’s the case, then close to 20% of them were on Twitter, not to mention texting or Facebook or some other means for making real-time comments electronically.
• And, other than one or two expressions of sympathy or pity, no one in the stream came to the defense of this presentation.

I’m thinking about a speaker who doesn’t have access to a backchannel (whether on Twitter or some other vehicle).  I know that I wouldn’t feel competent to present and to monitor a stream even periodically.

• But I could try to have a partner whose main job would be to do that–act as a combination link jockey (tossing additional information into the stream), scribe, and ally who could lean over and say, “Hey, Dave — people already know about having a blog.  They’re asking about managing wikis.”

I’m wondering what I would have done as part of this audience.  25 minutes into the hour, tweets began to emerge hoping for an interruption.  At another HEWEB09 session, there was a mock “Kanye moment,” with someone breaking into the talk to promote a competing one.  Tweets at the keynote wondered about that, first in jest.  Then someone, seeming to react to the speaker’s works, wondered, “Would he like the immediate feedback of us all walking out?”

• Nobody interrupted the speaker to suggest he wasn’t connecting.  In her blog post, presentation specialist Denise Graveline talks about the special position of a speaker–the implied authority and the general reluctance to disrupt.

The whole keynote concept needs rethinking.  Look at a Ustream video of this keynote.  Ignore the sound quality (being picked up by a PC to the back of the room) and just notice the setting: big ol’ ballroom, round banquet tables, chandeliers, two display screens, and a vast expanse that the speaker is patrolling.

• Why are the screens on all the time?  Presentation 101 says turn the damned things off when there’s nothing to pay attention to.
• Could the participants explain why this speaker is the keynote?  I’m not talking about Galper, unless you’re a HEWEB member.  I’m talking about how well the organization’s choice aligns with the interests of the people who’ll participate.

The final thought for me, perhaps the biggest change — I’m not going to talk about audience any more.  An audience is what you have at a performance, like a concert or a play or a taping of Wheel of Fortune.

When it comes to a professional presentation, what you have are participants–people who want to take part, who plan to take part, in what’s going on.

Someone I follow on Twitter was at the Higher Education Web Association’s conference in Milwaukee this week.  HighEdWeb is “an organization of Web professionals working at institutions of higher education. We design, develop, manage and map the futures of higher education Web sites.”

What caught my eye were tweets about yesterday’s general session.  (Session description)  These were live tweets–in other words, a backchannel.

One interpretation of  “backchannel” is a public display of comments in real time–for example, on a screen visible to participants and to presenter.  The keynote didn’t include such a screen, and apparently the speaker wasn’t following tweets with the #heweb09 hashtag.

Almost from the start, things didn’t look good at the Keynote Corral:

• hella drop shadow
• too much background music
• We’ve had two keynotes, neither of whom build websites
• conspiracy theory about the keynote: it’s a test of the power of the back channel; social experiment.
• Can we say preaching to the choir? Save this speech for my faculty
• watching people try to figure out how they can get out, starting to see the OMG I AM TRAPPED looks on faces

Those came in the opening 15 minutes.  From noon till 1 p.m., there were some 550 tweets with the #heweb09 hashtag, the vast majority related to the keynote.  (You can see the entire day’s stream here.  Warning: it gets snarky, but it’s instructive.)

Honestly, I’d hate this to be about my presentation.  One participant used the term “harshtag.”  I liked the color of that, and Holly Rae was kind enough to talk with me later so I could understand the context better.  And we agreed on a number of points, including how much you can learn if you do pay attention to what’s going on.

This post isn’t about this particular conference or keynote, but about how we connect professionally. I tend to see “formal presentation” as something like the Nobel laureate lecture; what I’m talking about is any “structured presentation” — a planned event where one or more people focus on a topic with other people at the same time.

I believe we’re moving from audience (those who hear) to participants (those who take part).  From receiving through reacting to interacting.

Not all participation is necessarily positive: in the #heweb09 stream, you’ll find wisecracks, distractions, and just plain mockery.  And a publicly-displayed backchannel can give extra weight to comments from those who comment on the backchannel.  (It’s a fact.)

The presenter didn’t see the stream, and the Twitters knew he didn’t, but no one seems to have stood up and said, “Hey, you’re talking down to us.”  What would have happened?  I have no idea–but I’ll tell you this: I’m primed for someone saying that to me some day.

Still…

The wisecracks and distractions are there anyway.  You’ve made them yourself, to your neighbor or just to your appreciative self.  One thing the backchannel does is make them visible–which means if you as a participant are only a buffoon, your buffoonery will be more widely evident, just as the presenter’s shortcomings or skills are.

The backchannel also offers the potential for immediate feedback.  It invited participant to contribute to and enrich the discussion — via links, via information they came in with, via ideas to explore later.  And even, as with Holly Rae, by what you say that catches someone else’s attention so you can connect later.

To say nothing of a presenter (or part of a presenting team) deciding to monitor and respond to the stream.  Just like “any questions,” only with bits.  And with the possibility of using the stream after the fact, as I’ve done here.

Yes, people could have spoken out, but at live sessions you’ve been to, who raises a hand?  Who asks questions?  Who adds something?  The framework doesn’t always encourage this behavior, especially in large keynote sessions.

In fact, the main feedback mechanism we currently have, other than mutters and groans, is people voting with their feet: heading out the door, something I saw once when a person whose work I admired make an amateurish, unrehearsed, poorly organized, one-way presentation.

This isn’t a coming phenomenon; it’s here.  Maybe you didn’t see it much at the ASTD ICE conference or the ISPI conference, though I’d argue it’s because those two organizations are further behind than they suspect. I’d like to be going to DevLearn 09, where I expect participants will insist on a high level of participation.

Revised and updated on Oct. 10:

• Here are practical suggestions for presenters from Denise Graveline — whom I learned about, of course, from my conversation with Holly Rae.
• Further context, details, and opinion from me in a more recent post (links to, comments from HEWEB attendees).
• As part of the revision, I got Denise’s name right.

CC-licensed image:
Comedy-club “no heckling” sign by Rick Audet.