"Click to Add Title"/ Thoughts on Presenting

“Click to add title”...Some thoughts on presenting
Michael Edson
Director, Web and New Media Strategy
Smithsonian Institution, Office of the CIO
April 2, 2013

What you do with
this is a matter of

I have given a lot of presentations

I have made mistakes in judgment and execution

http://www.flickr.com/photos/airforceone/4724520242/ ”Air Force One” by Stefano Petroni CC-NC-BY

I have felt disappointment and humiliation

http://www.flickr.com/photos/51493609@N00/2849352139/ (used with permission of the photographer)

Here are
5 things
I’ve learned

Photo (C) Dan Hill (used with permission) http://www.flickr.com/photos/cityofsound/5099410640/in/photostream/

Still from High Noon (1952) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Noon

1. Take a stand


1. Take a stand

You get paid (with time, attention,
the cost of travel, the opportunity
cost of not being somewhere else)
to say something meaningful.

So take a stand and tell us what you believe in.

1. Take a stand

No
Passive voice
Navel gazing
Passing the buck
(e.g. “Museums should be more open...”)


1. Take a stand

Yes
Active voice
Work on stuff that matters
Own the solutions
(e.g. “Museums should be more open
in these 5 ways...”)


Taking a stand in
public changes you,
and accelerates
real learning

2. Prepare
Jerry Seinfeld, the richest and
most famous comic in America,
regularly performs at small clubs
in front of 10 people to practice
and perfect his craft.

Seinfeld will nurse a single joke for years,
amending, abridging and reworking it
incrementally, to get the thing just so.
“It’s similar to calligraphy or samurai,” he
says. “I want to make cricket cages. You
know those Japanese cricket cages? Tiny,
with the doors? That’s it for me: solitude
and precision, refining a tiny thing for
the sake of it.”

When he can’t tinker, he grows anxious.
“If I don’t do a set in two weeks, I feel it,”
he said. “I read an article a few years ago
that said when you practice a sport a lot,
you literally become a broadband: the
nerve pathway in your brain contains a
lot more information. As soon as you
stop practicing, the pathway begins
shrinking back down. Reading that
changed my life. I used to wonder, Why
am I doing these sets, getting on a stage?
Don’t I know how to do this already? The
answer is no. You must keep doing it. The
broadband starts to narrow the moment
you stop.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/magazine/jerry-seinfeld-intends-to-die-standing-up.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

3. Don’t spread BS

Photo cc-by Michael Edson, from On Bullshit by H. G. Frankfurt

3. Don’t spread BS

There’s too much junk thought
In the world already: Say what you
know, do your homework, and check
your facts. Subject your own work to
the best BS detector you can find.

Photo cc-by Michael Edson, from On Bullshit by H. G. Frankfurt

4. Do build a foundation

~ 22 years

Darwin Online: http://darwin-online.org.uk/EditorialIntroductions/vanWyhe_notebooks.html http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=PC-Virginia-Francis-F373&viewtype=image&pageseq=1

• Footnote and hyperlink
your assertions
• Be clear and complete, so
others can build on what
you know
• Format your slides for
slideshare
• Record your talk and
publish a transcript

“The genius of Darwin wasn’t
that he thought of modification
with descent, it’s that he wrote
it down in such a way that the
idea would never drift away
again...”

{I don’t know the source for this,
but I read it years ago...}

5. Keep trying
“You could write the entire history of science in the last
50 years in terms of papers rejected by Science or Nature.”

Paul C. Lauterbur, Nobel prize winner for his original research on magnetic
resonance imaging. His seminal paper was rejected by the journal Nature in 1973.
Quoted in Kevin Davies article Public Library of Science Opens Its Door (found via
Scott Berkun’s The Myths of Innovation , p.54.)

http://usingdata.tumblr.com/post/31654556655/you-could-write-the-entire-history-of-science-in

Adapted from Untitled, Rebecca Siegel, http://www.flickr.com/photos/grongar/4966015822 CC-BY

In a lot of professions, conferences are
about professional advancement,
dominance displays, and ego.


But we’re different. We’re building something
together for the public good. It’s a big, difficult
job, and everyone needs to contribute.
WE NEED EACH OTHER.
WE NEED YOUR HELP.


@mpedson
Slideshare.net/edsonm

"Click to Add Title"/ Thoughts on Presenting

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