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The Busy Person’s Guide to Learning from the Network (a guide for IBMers)

| ibm, learning, presentation, tips, work

I promised to put together a talk on learning for an IBM virtual conference for new hires. Here’s a rough draft, just to get it out of my head and into a form I can work with. I’ll add URLs internally. The next steps I want people to take are:

  • Find a mentor, or even several mentors.
  • Bookmark Lotus Connections so that they can easily search it in the future.
  • Learn to find people based on documents and other shared information.

One of my mentors told me that at IBM, it’s okay if you don’t know something. If you don’t ask for help and things get messed up, though, that’s when you get into trouble. So I want to share with you some tips I’ve picked up on how to learn as quickly as you can, from as many people as you can.

I’ve been with IBM for almost four years. I know what it’s like to feel overwhelmed by all the different things there are to learn: working with Lotus Notes and other applications, dealing with technologies, working with team members and clients… It can be really intimidating. Fortunately, at IBM, there are plenty of people who can help – but sometimes you need to step up and ask.

  • Mentors

    If you don’t have a mentor yet, find one. Even better, find several mentors. Mentors can help you figure things out: the specific technology you’re learning, the tools you need to work with, the processes in your team or business unit, even your career plans.

    How can you find a mentor? Share your questions with your manager and ask your manager to refer you to some people who might be good mentors for you. Look for people on Bluepages or Lotus Connections. Take advantage of the speed mentoring events that IBM Learning sometimes organizes and see if you can connect with anyone. Attend presentations and connect with speakers or other participants. Once you have a mentor, ask him or her for introductions to other people who might be able to help.

    Maybe you’re feeling shy. Maybe you think, “Well, I’m new to IBM. Why would anyone mentor me?” I found it hard to ask people to mentor me, too, but I was amazed by how generous people were when it came to helping new people. Many mentors help others because other people mentored them. Others mentor people because they learn a lot in the process. Mentors have lots of reasons for helping, so don’t be afraid to ask.

    Social networking tip: Look for mentors and role models who blog or post updates in Lotus Connections or on the Internet. That way, you can easily learn from people in between your meetings. You can even learn from people around the world, and people whom you might be too shy to reach to right now. For example, if you’re curious about what IBM Fellows do (they have the highest technical rank in IBM), or what vice presidents are like, or so on, you can learn from their blogs, tweets, and other posts. Maybe you’ll find something you can comment on or ask about!

    How to work with mentors: Talk to your mentors about your goals and figure out how they can help you. Take the lead in setting up meetings and asking questions. Show your appreciation through thank-you notes – and even better, show your appreciation through the results that come from taking your mentors’ advice.

    Okay. You’ve got mentors. But you can’t go to your mentors for every little thing you need to learn, so you still need to figure out things on your own.

  • Documentation, assets, and other sources of information

    You’re probably already used to searching the Internet for information when you’re trying to learn something new. It can be harder to find just the right document within IBM. If you’re new to a topic, it can be difficult to find beginner-level resources, or even to know what and where to search.

    If you’re stuck, ask your coworkers or your manager for help in getting started. Take notes! Make a list of the resources you find useful as a beginner, and you’ll be able to share that list with other people who join the project. It’s a quick way to create value – and people are more likely to invest time into helping you if they know that your notes will help them and other people save time in the future.

    Don’t stop with the documents you find, too. One of the best things you can learn from a document or an asset is where you can go to find more information. Are there related communities? Can you look up other things the author has written? When you come across a useful document, look for any author information or lists of related experts. If you need help finding the right resources or you have a question that’s not answered by the document, you might be able to ask those people for help. (Look for communities or forums first, though – this helps avoid e-mail overload, and you can ask more people for help. We’ll talk more about communities later.)

    Okay. Formal documentation is great, but there’s often very little of it, especially for new tools and technologies. What do you do when you need to learn about something that doesn’t have a lot of articles or manuals yet?

  • Files, bookmarks, wikis, and blog posts

    When I need to find out about something new, informal, or obscure, I often check people’s files, bookmarks, wikis, or blog posts. This is where Lotus Connections really shines. You can search people’s public files and presentations for new information, search bookmarks for information other people have found useful, check out wikis to see what people have collaborated on, and read blog posts for people’s notes and articles.

    What if you still can’t find what you need, and the people you ask don’t know of any resources, either? This is where you might need to ask more people.

  • More questions and answers

    Have a short question? Try posting it on IBM Answers. You’ll get an e-mail notification if anyone replies. While you’re there, see if you can answer any of the pending questions.

    Tip: Don’t just post your question on IBM Answers and walk away. Reach out to specific people to see if they can share anything. If you use Profile status updates, post your question with a link to the answer page.

    Regarding experts: If you have a question that needs deep expertise, you might want to give Expertise Locator a try. You don’t want to waste experts’ time, though, so if your request is non-urgent, it’s probably better to start at a lower level. People can escalate your request if needed.

    Sometimes it helps to ask many people instead of focusing on just a few. This is where Lotus Connections Communities and IBM forums come in.

  • Lotus Connections Communities

    Whatever you’re looking for, there’s probably a community or forum related to it. Search Lotus Connections Communities to find groups related to the topic. IBM Forums has older groups, too.

    Many communities have discussion forums. You’ll need to join the community in order to ask a question. Look at other posts to see how people ask for help. Provide as much information as you can in your message, but don’t post any confidential information. Show that you’ve “done your homework” – describe how you’ve tried to solve the problem or where you’ve looked for information. That way, people might be more encouraged to help you.

    Important: Ask the community owners (see the Members tab) Some communities use the “Mail community” feature to handle questions, before mailing the community. Many communities have thousands of members, and too much community e-mail can make the community useless.

  • Building your network

    What about all those questions that people haven’t answered before, and for which there are no active communities? This is where your personal network becomes important. When you’re faced with questions that need much broader or deeper experience than you have, or you have no idea where to even start learning, your network is essential.

    If you can’t think of anyone who would know the answers you need, try thinking of people who might know people who would know the answer. Ask them for referrals. You can also look for people in Lotus Connections Profiles or Bluepages and try reaching out to them.

    Social networking tip: Lotus Connections Profiles is a great way to ask questions and get quick responses from whoever’s available in your network at the time. You need to build your network before you can use this effectively, though. Look at the main Profiles page to see who’s been participating, and invite them to your network. If they agree, you’ll be able to see their updates in your timeline, and they can see yours. That means that if you post questions in Lotus Connections, people might see it and answer it.

    Why would people spend time checking out Lotus Connections and possibly answering questions? For many people, it’s like a quick break by the virtual office watercooler, a way to catch up with lots of people and to help out people if they can. Try it – spend a little time each day or each week building your relationships by reading people’s profile updates, answering other people’s questions, sharing useful resources, and posting notes of thanks or encouragement.

  • Wrapping up

    You’ll need to learn a lot at IBM, and you’ll need to learn it quickly. Not everything will be written down, and you might not find everything you need using w3 or an Internet search engine. You’ll need to learn from the network.

    • Learn from managers, coworkers, mentors, and role models about things you might not even know to ask about
    • Follow the clues from people’s files and assets to find related communities and experts.
    • Search people’s files, bookmarks, blog posts, and profile updates to see the latest.
    • Check out Q&A sites for additional resources.
    • Reach out to communities and forums if you need help from more people.
    • Gradually build your network so that you can easily ask for people’s help when you have new questions.

    Good luck!

    2011-04-02 Sat 21:42

Quick notes from Emacs Org-mode talk at GTALUG

Posted: - Modified: | emacs, presentation, speaking

My Emacs Org-mode talk at GTALUG was a lot of fun. I had made a quick outline of things I wanted to cover, and the discussion took us to all sorts of places – really more like a romp through the world of Emacs. I kept my talk plan small and tightly-focused – not even Org-mode, just note-taking in Org-mode – but I ended up talking about all sorts of things because they were cool and that’s where the discussion took us. This means that my outline isn’t much use for reconstructing the talk, but maybe whoever recorded it can share the audio and the video. =)

Unexpected wow moments of the day, completely not in my outline:

  • Someone’s question about my tablet PC led to showing off M-x artist-mode, drawing using my tablet, and the line and spraycan tools. (I’d never tried it before. It works!)
  • A conversation on the way to the talk led to my showing M-x snake.
  • Someone’s joking query about whether you can run vi in Emacs (following up on someone who mentioned the vi emulation mode, perhaps) led to my demonstrating vim in M-x term, which naturally led to running console Emacs within my Emacs.
  • Someone mentioned mail, so I showed Gnus, and another person mentioned adaptive scoring, and we talked about news-inspired techniques for dealing with e-mail.
  • People asked me how big my config file had gotten. The word count tool says 226k characters – ah, the process of accretion. You can learn Emacs and customize it a little bit at a time, though!

I’ve given two Emacs talks so far, and both of them had delightful audience interaction – among the best of any of the talks I’ve given. I think it’s because with Emacs, even people’s jokes give me a starting point to mention something I’ve learned about or come across or built. The energy of the session is really something different. It’s almost like an infomercial-ish “But wait, there’s more!”, but everyone’s in on the joke, they’re part of what’s happening. It’s an adventure.

I don’t want to give the impression that Emacs is just about fun. ;) Of all the software I’ve ever used, I think Emacs has contributed the most to my productivity and my learning. Not only do I find the direct benefits useful, I also really appreciate the inspiration I get from all these other people who use and improve Emacs.

So the key question I want to address with more thought is: where does one find the time to learn these things? I think you answer this the same way you make the time for things that matter – strategic optimization. Like in code, premature optimization doesn’t work. You need to figure out what actions are important and where improvements would have the most effect – where your moments of truth are. For example, it really pays to improve my abilities in programming, writing, and note-taking, because I do that a lot and it creates a lot of value at work and in life. On the other hand, I don’t stress out about typing even faster, because that’s not my bottleneck. And I also make sure to invest time into all sorts of other aspects of life, because those are important to me too.

Back to Emacs and the presentation. My goal for the talk wasn’t to convert anyone or show people specifically how to set up their environment. I wanted to give people an idea of what my workflow looks like, expose them to some of the things Emacs can do, and perhaps inspire people to learn more about their tools. (I made sure to mention lots of cool things about vi, too!) We started at 7:30 and had a great discussion for two hours (two hours!) that flew by until the organizers suggested it was time to wrap up. Quite a few people came up to me afterwards and told me that they were inspired to learn more about Emacs. Whee!

That was tons of fun. I’d do it again. It has to be an interactive group, somewhat casual (so that people feel free to interject questions) and technical (helps to have a few other Emacs users in the audience, and a general interest in tools). Voice is probably a huge component of it – both being able to communicate enthusiasm and for the conversational aspect of the discussion. Screen-sharing or projection is vital; this kind of talk wouldn’t have worked with slides. So it’s probably a talk I’d need to give in person, considering webconference interaction patterns and screen-sharing delays. Hmm…

(Maureen: there is a screenplay mode for Emacs. Isn’t that amazing? Might be worth learning Emacs. More writing resources on the EmacsWiki. If you’re intrigued by it, check out the Emacs Newbie resources.)

2011-03-08 Tue 23:40

Presentation experiment: Shy Connector, Six Steps to Sharing, and other presentations in March!

| presentation, speaking

Slideshare’s new Zipcast feature nudged me to experiment with giving more online presentations externally. I regularly give presentations inside IBM using our Lotus Live Meetings service. Because of the usage charges, though, I haven’t gotten around to offering many externally-available presentations. I accept invitations to speak, but I tend not to organize things myself.

I think that’s worth experimenting with. Not only are web conferences a good way to get ideas out to more people, they’re also a great way for me to learn from the questions and answers people have. I’m going to organize weekly presentations, taking advantage of Zipcast’s beta and seeing whether this is something worth investing in going forward.

Why come when you can get the content from my blog or posted presentations?

  • Get extra energy from hearing and seeing me talk about things I’m excited about
  • Ask questions and share your thoughts in the text chat
  • Connect and help me and others learn

Here are the presentations I’m thinking of doing. They’ll be every Saturday in March, 12 noon – 1 PM Eastern Time, and I’ll see if I can hack a way to record and sharing the presentations. Feel free to share these events with others!


The Shy Connector, March 5, 2011, 12pm-1pm EST, http://www.slideshare.net/sachac/meeting
Are you an introvert? I am too! Use these seven tips to help you make the most of your introvert strengths and connect with people.
Add to

Six Steps to Sharing, March 12, 2011, 12pm-1pm EST, http://www.slideshare.net/sachac/meeting
Want to get started in blogging, but don’t think you know anything worth sharing? Here’s how small steps can help you build the habit of sharing and learning online.
Add to

Remote Presentations That Rock, March 19, 2011, 12pm-1pm EST http://www.slideshare.net/sachac/meeting
Want to get better at reaching, teaching, and inspiring people through online presentations? Find it challenging to connect with people or continue the conversation? Use these seven tips to create and deliver remote presentations that rock.
Add to

Get More Value from Blogging, March 26, 2011, 12pm-1pm, http://www.slideshare.net/sachac/meeting
How can you make blogging pay off for you better, personally and professionally? Pick up tips and ask questions in this session!
Add to


Can you think of other people who might find these presentations useful?

What else would you like to learn more about?

Trying out Slideshare’s new Zipcast feature

Posted: - Modified: | presentation, speaking

image

I gave Slideshare’s new Zipcast feature a try today in order to learn more about it and rehearse for my upcoming presentation of "Remote Presentations That Rock". I announced it on Twitter a few minutes before I wanted to present. Around 12 people turned up to say hi, learn, and share. I was a little nervous with excitement (and lack of water nearby), but I relaxed as I got into the swing of it.

Zipcast has the usual web conferencing system features, with more in the works. Attendees need an account with either Slideshare or Facebook. You can flip through slides, broadcast video from your webcam, and use the text chat for discussions. Where it shines is in its ease of sharing: no unusual plug-ins or software downloads, Twitter and Facebook announcements built-in, and no meeting limits.

People can flip through slides on their own, too, which could be either useful or distracting for people. You may want to avoid slide-based jokes with lots of lead-up, considering that people can flip ahead and see your punchline. Winking smile

You can’t point to specific things on the slides or record your presentations, but I hear those features are in the plan. You also can’t get the list of attendees yet, so you might want to ask someone to track that for you. Don’t look for screen-sharing in this system yet, but who knows what the future will bring?

Zipcast’s an interesting entry in a crowded web-conferencing space. The ease of presenting and attending will probably win over many users of other conferencing systems, and the price is hard to beat: free at the moment, no matter how big a web meeting you have.

Zipcast’s a promising way to reach lots of people on the Internet, and I’m going to experiment with it more. I’ll still use LotusLive for my IBM web conferences. I like the features of LotusLive, including the ability to draw on my slides in real-time and the ease of inviting people without requiring accounts. (Besides, LotusLive is IBM!) But Zipcast is a nifty (and currently free) way to reach people online, so it’s worth a try.

Tips on using Zipcast:

  • People need Slideshare/Facebook accounts to attend, so give people time to sign up if needed.
  • You can broadcast audio using your computer – no need to dial in. The audio conference information for Pro users can be confusing, though, so you may need to tell people they don’t have to log in. (Slideshare: It would be great to have a small place where speakers can post persistent messages: useful URLs, notes about communication, etc. Maybe right under the video or under the conference info?)
  • Encourage people to ask questions and share their thoughts in the text chat.
  • The drop-in nature of the presentation can be disconcerting as people filter in throughout the session. Try schedule your presentations with a bit more warning time, or build it so that you regularly recap throughout the presentation.
  • Check out https://sachachua.com/blog/remote for more tips for remote presentations.

Things that would make this even better for me:

  • Message box for details like communication instructions, URL for further resources
  • Participant list and stats: when joined, when left (and on which slide, if possible)…
  • Way to easily save the text chat
  • Pointer. Pen too, if possible, for annotating slides.
  • Download link for presentation?
  • Easy tweeting from within presentation
  • Raise hands / polling interactions

Here’s an interesting thought: How would you structure a presentation to take advantage of the sharing capabilities of Zipcast, including the “post to Facebook” checkbox in the text chat? Maybe you can sprinkle “Twitter/FB/Q&A” breaks throughout your talk. If you get someone (or program a macro) to paste in retweetable or repostable soundbites, that would be a way of sharing ideas with people’s networks. Hmm…

I’m thinking of doing presentations every Saturday in March, from 12 noon to 1pm EST, at http://slideshare.net/sachac/meeting. My planned lineup: The Shy Connector, Remote Presentations That Rock, Get More Value from Blogging, and Six Steps to Sharing. It’ll be good to share tips and learn from others. Anything you’d particularly like to see from my past presentations or blog posts?

What’s a good way to plan these upcoming events so that you can easily save them to your calendar and receive updates? Eventbrite and other event-management systems seem a little heavyweight compared to the ease of Zipcast’s sharing. Any suggestions?

In other news, I think I’ve figured out my studio setup: bounce the daylight-balanced lamps off the ceiling (low setup) or use umbrella reflectors (fancy setup), position the folding background in front of the cabinet to hide the My Little Cthulhu doll and other distracting things, and broadcast away. Now if I can figure out where to put a small hairlight…

Posted revised “Remote Presentations That Rock” presentation

| presentation, sketches, speaking

Next week, I’m giving Remote Presentations That Rock in person at IBM 3600 Steeles Avenue on Monday. I decided to hold off on the extensive revisions I’d been thinking of doing. Instead, I re-drew the slides and I changed a few points.

See https://sachachua.com/blog/remote for full notes / discussion.

Remote Presentations That Rock (2011) Click on Menu – View Full Screen to see this in full-screen mode.

The older version, for comparison:

and the "e-book"-type presentation:

Remote Presentations That Rock (v2)

View more presentations from Sacha Chua

Some speakers are very consistent when it comes to content and delivery. I keep working on my material, gnashing my teeth over titles I want to reuse, because I’m still learning so much. I’m consistent about a growing number of things, though. I’ll have a blog post up with the resources, I’ll probably bubble over with energy when I give the presentation, and I’ll record and share as much as I can.

ITSC guide to conference awesomeness

| conference, connecting, event, presentation, sketches, speaking

Darren Hudgins liked my Shy Connector presentation a lot, so he asked me to put together some quick tips to share with the ~400 people at the Instructional Technology Strategies Conference. Here’s what I came up with:

ITSC Guide to Conference Awesomeness

They’re going to play it live at the conference at 12 PST. =) I’ve kept it short so that I can share a few quick tips and then get out of the way of all that awesome networking. It sounds like a great crowd.

If you’re here from the ITSC, you might also be interested in my sketchnotes from David Zach’s keynote. Click on the image to see the full version.

image

Here are other pre-ITSC conference networking tips I’ve shared:

For more networking tips, check out:

The Shy Connector

View more presentations from Sacha Chua.

(Also see my full notes for the Shy Connector presentation and other blog posts about connecting)

I made the video with the guide to conference awesomeness using Microsoft Onenote, Microsoft Powerpoint, a Lenovo X61 tablet PC, Camtasia Studio 7 (which doesn’t get along perfectly with the Windows 7 on my tablet). I’d love to go back to the free Inkscape drawing program for drawing if someone can help me figure out how to get it to smoothly digitize. =) Thanks to IBM for sponsoring this effort!

Follow me on Twitter (@sachac) for more updates. I’ll be around from 12 PM to 1 PM PST to answer questions or share other tips. Use the #itsc11 hashtag or mention me by adding @sachac to your tweet. If you’re here after February 21, feel free to leave a comment on this blog post for Q&A. Hope this helps!

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Webinar: Energy, Interaction, and ROI

Posted: - Modified: | presentation, speaking, tips

I’ve been invited to re-do my Remote Presentations That Rock presentation this February. I can’t resist improving presentations every time I give them. What do you think of this?

This presentation and speaker notes will be available at URL. (If giving this remotely: Please feel free to use the text chat to ask questions and share your thoughts throughout the presentation.)


Remote presentations are harder than in-person presentations, but they can also be more powerful. Yes, you’re limited in terms of body language and delivery. Yes, you have to compete with e-mail, Sametime, and a million interruptions. But if you know how to work with the strengths of remote presentations, you can reach people more effectively and more intimately.

Let’s talk about the biggest challenge for remote presentations: the fact that it’s so easy for people to get distracted or to walk away. In real life, most people won’t walk out the back door. They’ll stick around long enough for you to make your main points. Online, if you lose people’s attention, it can be very hard to get it back. And it’s doubly tough because you can’t read people’s body language. You can’t see if people are interested or if they’re off checking mail, and you can’t pull them back by saying something interesting if they’ve already hung up.

You’ve got to offer people something they can’t get from reading your the slides or listening to the recording. Why is it worth paying attention to you? For me, that comes down to two things: energy and interaction.

Energy

Why should people attend your presentation? People aren’t going to come just to hear the facts or numbers. They can get that from the slides. If you’re a leader, they want to hear your confidence, maybe get a better sense of who you are as a person. Even if you’re not an executive – even if, say, you’re an IT specialist presenting a technical topic – you’ve got to bring your energy to your presentation, to show people why it matters to you and why it matters to them.

A huge part of this is your voice. You need to sound like you, and you need to sound like the presentation is worthwhile. If people give in to the temptation to multitask, your voice is going to be the only thing that can bring them back. Emphasize your key points by changing your pace, changing your pitch, pausing, repeating things. Let your message come through in your voice. Energy. Urgency. Confidence.

You’ll be surprised by how much little things matter. Get a phone headset so that you can breathe properly and so that you don’t get a crick in your neck. Stand up if that helps you get into the “presentation mode”. Have pictures of people around if that helps you remember that you’re talking to real people so that you can make that connection. Turn off the conference entry/exit tones so that you aren’t competing with (or distracted by) beeps.

Another, powerful way to share your energy is to add video. Now you might be thinking, “I don’t look good on video.” While we may never look as polished as Sam Palmisano with a video crew, it’s actually easy to look decent. Get a webcam. Even if you pay for this personally, it’ll be worth it. Find a quiet place – no coworkers on conference calls, no dishwashers going whrrr. Find a clear background and good lighting – maybe a blank wall near a window. If you have glasses, dim the light from your laptop screen so that they don’t reflect off your lenses. White shirts make it easier for your webcam to pick the right colour-balance and exposure. Practice.

It’s a good idea to tell people when you’re going to be on video. I know someone who found this out the hard way. She was giving a presentation, and then her husband walked past in the background… in his underwear! So make it clear that you’re going to be on the air, and close the door. Then you can make a much better–and more professional–connection with people.

Video can bring you much closer to people than most in-person presentations can. Sure, you probably won’t be able to do as many gestures, but people can see your facial expressions. Use them. If you step back a little, you can do some gestures.

How can you bring all these tips together? Figure out what you want to say, but don’t stop there. Figure out why it matters to you and why it matters for other people. If you can’t figure out why something is worth giving as a presentation instead of as an article or a set of slides, don’t do a presentation. Just send the information. Save presentations for where presentations can make a difference – when you want to persuade people.

End on a high note. If you’ve done a good job at convincing people for the need for action – and you’re always doing this with a presentation, even if you’re just presenting information – make it easier for them to take action by showing them what they need to do next. Don’t fade out with just Q&A. Wrap up with a quick summary and maybe a memorable tip, and make sure people know what the next actions are. If you’re doing a remote presentation, think of websites people can visit to learn more or actions people can take to commit to doing something, while they still have the buzz and energy from the presentation. This means you need to plan your time well. People have back-to-back meetings and commitments. Plan to end a little early so that they have time to act on your message before they get distracted by something else.

Interaction

This also means you need to get people’s buy-in along the way, so that when you get to the end of your presentation, people are where they need to be. This brings us to the second part of making remote presentations that rock: Interaction. Q&A. I’m not talking about the five minutes near the end that you think you’ll have for questions. You know that hardly ever happens. You run into technical difficulties. People start late. People take a while to think of their answers.

Don’t leave Q&A to the end of your presentation. Make it part of your presentation. If I have an hour for a presentation, I’ll typically plan between seven to twenty minutes of content, with the rest of the time for Q&A and about five minutes at the end to summarize and send people off with actions. This works really well. It forces me to fit my key points into a short attention span, and leaves room for the interesting part: the conversation.

How do I make sure things fit? I figure I should talk at about 160 words per minute. (I actually talk faster, but I try to slow down to 160.) If I’m planning for 20 minutes, then that’s roughly 3,200 words. If I write down what I want to say and I’m over 3,200 words, then I have to cut and simplify. Don’t start with the slides. Start with what you want to say, and make room for what’s important. If you’re trying to say too much, split it up into multiple presentations or refer to additional information that people can use to learn more.

Q&A can be much more powerful in a web conference than it is in person. In person, you’re usually limited to three or four questions. In person, people have to remember their questions and wait for the Q&A period, then line up for the microphone, say their question, and wait for your response. In person, you don’t really get a choice about which question you want to address first. Online, if you ask people to share their questions throughout the presentation using the text chat, you not only get an instant feel for where people are curious or confused, you can also pick the most interesting questions–or the easiest ones–to answer first. You don’t have to read people’s body language – they can tell you what’s on their mind.

When you’re starting out, you might want to have a moderator watch the text chat for you. If you find that you can occasionally glance at the text chat without getting distracted from what you want to say–and this takes a lot of practice–then you can even start weaving those questions and answers into the flow of your presentation. It’s fantastic when you can pull this off.

Q&A is good for people and it’s good for you. You can learn so much from Q&A. You can find out what’s important to people, and what you should include when you’re following up. If you’re lucky, you’ll end up with lots of questions, some of which you might not even know the answers to yet. Great. That not only gives you opportunities to learn more, but also to share those lessons with others. We’ll talk about this again when we talk about radically increasing your ROI from presentations.

You can still have people ask their questions over the phone. Now this is important: you should wait at least seven seconds for questions before you move on. Maybe wait even longer. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been on a conference call where the speaker said, “Any questions?” and then after a very short silence, says something like “Thank you, goodbye!” and I’m thinking, “I’m still coming up with questions I want to ask!” As a speaker, you should wait until the silence becomes uncomfortable, and then wait some more. It takes time for people to absorb what you’ve just shared and think of what else they want to learn. If you need to fill the silence, share some questions other people have asked you, or share some questions people might be thinking about.

When you’re speaking to an international audience, Q&A might be harder. People in some cultures aren’t comfortable with asking questions during presentations. You can get people used to the idea by starting off with typical questions people might ask, and encouraging people to share their questions through a text chat if they don’t want to use the phone.

If you really don’t get any questions, then you can share more examples and backup material. Flexibility pays off, and it shows that you know your stuff.

Radically increasing your ROI

Now you might be thinking that it takes time to prepare good presentations like that. It takes only a few minutes to throw together slides if you’re going to figure out what to say on the fly and you don’t mind if people forget or tune out. It takes time to plan your presentation so that you have a clear, concise, engaging core message. It takes time to prepare for Q&A. It takes time to learn how to use web-conferencing tools. But it’s a bigger waste of time if you don’t.

Presentations are surprisingly expensive. There’s the time you put into preparing it: maybe half an hour for a quick update, maybe four hours for a regular presentation like this, maybe days for a high-stakes presentation. There’s the time you spend giving the presentation. And then there’s the time people spend listening to you. Now I’m in Global Business Services, so utilization is always in the back of my mind. If I’m talking to a group of 35 people for an hour, I probably need to offer you more than $100 in terms of value, and I need to create more than $4,000 of value for IBM and our clients. Is it worth it? I want to make sure it is.

So let’s talk about radically increasing your ROI for presentations. When you’re preparing and giving presentations, how can you get even more leverage on the time and effort you’re investing? There are two parts to that: before and after your presentation. Let’s talk about what you can do before your presentation.

First: Figure out if you can get more people – and more of the right people – to get value from your presentation. It takes the same time to give a presentation to 20 people as it does to give a presentation to 200. Remote presentations make this even easier, because people don’t have to be in the same area and they don’t have to arrange for travel. They just have to dial in. This depends on the purpose of your presentation, of course. If you’re planning a small-group collaborative meeting, go ahead and keep it at six people. But if you’re sharing something of general interest, open it up. Post it on Inviter, which is this IBM service for sharing calendar events. If you’ve got a blog, write about your upcoming presentation. Post it on your Profiles board. Tell people about it. Make it easy for people to find.

Second: Share as much as you can while preparing. See if you can share your outline, your slides, your draft speech. If you’ve got a blog, write about your presentation there. I’ve been blogging my speaker notes and my slides on a blog. You’d think that would mean that people can skip the presentation because they already know the key points, like the way you might skip a movie if you already know how it ends. Instead, what happens is that people suggest ways to make the presentation even better, and then they come anyway for the energy and interaction. Result: better presentation, better interaction (because people have been thinking about things deeper), better reach, and better ROI. Share whatever you can share.

The same goes for after your presentation. When you’re giving a presentation that’s not confidential, make sure you record and share it. That’s one of the benefits of giving a remote presentation – they’re easy to record and share. It’s a few extra clicks using LotusLive Meetings, and then you can share your presentation with other people. Share your slides. Figure out if your presentation or a subset of your presentation can be shared externally. Take the extra five minutes to scrub it and share it on a site like Slideshare.net. Share your speaker notes. Share the questions people asked and your answers to them. It takes a few extra minutes and greatly improves your reach. When your presentations are shareable and searchable, they become a very powerful networking tool. And they’ll save you lots of time, too. I can’t tell you how often I refer people to my past presentations in order to help them learn something I’ve shared.

And this is where remote presentations can really help you rock. Work with the strengths of the webconferencing tools that we have, and you can really connect with people. Invest a few extra minutes to share your presentations and recordings, and you can radically increase your ROI. Use remote presentations to reach more people than you can bring together in a room, and that will pay off for you in professional and personal connections.

Here are seven small things you can do to improve the energy, interaction, and ROI of your remote presentations:

  • Get these slides or my speaker notes so that you can review them going forward. (URL)
  • Make your life better by sharing these tips with other people who give remote presentations.
  • Volunteer for a remote presentation if you don’t already have one on your calendar. Practice will help you learn.
  • Take a good look at your upcoming presentations and practice putting some energy into them. Make sure they’re worth listening to.
  • Get a webcam and learn how to use it well. Figure out where in your workplace or your home you can do a good presentation.
  • Cut your next presentation in half so that you can leave room for questions and answers.
  • Review your past presentations for things you can share, and share them.

We’ll come back to these tips five minutes near the end of this session so that they’re fresh in your mind. I want you to be able to walk out of here with a clear understanding of how you can apply these tips and how they can transform the way you present. What’s holding you back from giving better remote presentations? What do you want to learn more about?

2011-02-15 Tue 07:58