@benn - do you think this advice of rapid movement through a presentation (I know you said "rapid in slides, moderate in speech" but still "rapid" in some sort of conceptual/cognitive processing way) still holds true if you think there are significant secondary language speaker issues and also potential major cultural gaps/differences in a large proportion of the audience? Even your point about "everybody knows the Boromir joke" hasn't actually been true in a fair number of cases where I've presented.
My gut feeling is that it wouldn't necessarily - the secondary language speakers are often struggling to even understand very standard English when I'm being very intentional about avoiding idiom, American/pop media cultural references, and irony/sarcasm. Humor and irony are the two most difficult things to understand in another language. It feels like what you're talking about here is "If I were presenting at Coalesce with my peers and an audience that I can be relatively confident about having native, or at least strong fluency in the language along with a common sense of humor and cultural idiom in general." For that scenario I would agree with you but what is the ratio for you presenting to that kind of audience versus the kind I described in my first paragraph?
Giving a talk is almost like standup comedy. You've got to decide if and how you're going to work the crowd, you've got to figure out your delivery style, and you've got to practice it b/c it's a performance, not just off the cuff stuff.
I found Toastmasters to be useful mainly for forcing myself to get the reps in on public speaking. They have you go through different styles and topics to try out what works for you. I do recommend it, but I don't recommend it past a year or two :)
A great article Benn. I am a great admirer of Sir Ken Robinson's TED talks..not a single slide or visual, still the way he delivers the talk and the kind of engagement he could create, it's quite amazing. You might be already aware of his talks, if not, here is the link ( out of 3, this is the most popular one): https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_do_schools_kill_creativity/c
This was the most fluid newsletter I read so far, the writing is immaculate
@benn - do you think this advice of rapid movement through a presentation (I know you said "rapid in slides, moderate in speech" but still "rapid" in some sort of conceptual/cognitive processing way) still holds true if you think there are significant secondary language speaker issues and also potential major cultural gaps/differences in a large proportion of the audience? Even your point about "everybody knows the Boromir joke" hasn't actually been true in a fair number of cases where I've presented.
My gut feeling is that it wouldn't necessarily - the secondary language speakers are often struggling to even understand very standard English when I'm being very intentional about avoiding idiom, American/pop media cultural references, and irony/sarcasm. Humor and irony are the two most difficult things to understand in another language. It feels like what you're talking about here is "If I were presenting at Coalesce with my peers and an audience that I can be relatively confident about having native, or at least strong fluency in the language along with a common sense of humor and cultural idiom in general." For that scenario I would agree with you but what is the ratio for you presenting to that kind of audience versus the kind I described in my first paragraph?
Giving a talk is almost like standup comedy. You've got to decide if and how you're going to work the crowd, you've got to figure out your delivery style, and you've got to practice it b/c it's a performance, not just off the cuff stuff.
I found Toastmasters to be useful mainly for forcing myself to get the reps in on public speaking. They have you go through different styles and topics to try out what works for you. I do recommend it, but I don't recommend it past a year or two :)
11/10 post -- content, word choice, tone, everything. Epic!
Yet another great article by Benn. And not just talking the talk, it literally walks the walk.
Excellent advice, Benn! Could I get this as a deck?
A great article Benn. I am a great admirer of Sir Ken Robinson's TED talks..not a single slide or visual, still the way he delivers the talk and the kind of engagement he could create, it's quite amazing. You might be already aware of his talks, if not, here is the link ( out of 3, this is the most popular one): https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_do_schools_kill_creativity/c
Ah! So is that where you got the idea of having a second (non-visual) narrative of inside jokes in the footnotes?
As someone presenting on Tuesday, this is incredibly timely and great advice!