How to keep people engaged in your presentations
As we sit up in the gods (section 512 row 10) my kid is on my knee. I lean down so my mouth is close to her ear — I need her to hear me over the noise of the crowd.
“Ready, baby?”
She nods, and we lift our right arms into the air, making our hands into fists at the top.
There’s a trumpet sound before the voice on the PA, the two of us, and 38,000 other people in the stadium yell,
“CHAAAAAAAAAARRRRGE!!!!!”
Having now been to four (count them!) baseball games, I am a fan — but mostly because of a regular thing that happens…which is also something that makes the best presentations engaging.
In instructional design, these are called “Colorful Activities”. Before I explain what they are, I’m going to explain why we need them.
This is what people remember from most talks, keynotes, TEDx’s and workshops….
One of my greatest ever naps (and my most important Storytelling lesson)
“I can’t eat! If I eat, I vomit!”
Lucy, the old lady I’m sitting with, is upset.
I’m at the day centre for seniors with dementia, where I volunteer once a week. Lucy is my favourite. Six foot tall and rake thin, with short, scrappy hair and clothes that hang off her, she’s usually very sweet. A big smiler. And she loves to sing.
LOVES.
It’s clear that, in her younger days, she was some kind of professional. You can tell from the sharp, clear vibrato she randomly lets out at various points in the day.
Her memory is almost completely shot. She asks if her daughter is coming, and is placated when I tell her, “Later, Lucy”. Then she asks again in thirty seconds time.
Lunchtime is always stressful. And always the same…
Biggest opportunity of my life…and I was dreading it
G looks at me with something that is a cross between confusion and horror.
She says, “You HAVE to stop this!”
“No, I don’t, it’s fine. I’ll handle it,” I reply, trying to convince myself as much as I am her.
When I was 31 years old, Sony offered me my own record label.
A few months earlier, I’d heard about how a friend of mine, Imran, had an imprint (a sort of “sub-label”) on XL records. He’d put out the first UK single by this new band Vampire Weekend, which had blown up. One night, I’m out with my music lawyer friend Martin, and I’m feeling hard done by.
I whine, “Imran has a label. Why don’t I?”
Martin smiles and says, “Let’s get you one.”
A few weeks and several meetings later, Martin and Sony’s lawyers are getting the contracts ready for Huckster Records, an imprint of the Epic label (whose parent company is Sony). On Epic are artists like Abba, Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, and now… whoever I decide to sign.
In the meantime, I am figuring out the logistics. It’s going to be a 7” vinyl records label and Epic are giving me an extremely generous budget: they’ll pay for the vinyl, radio promo, press promo, a *music video*, and a small live tour. And — because I don’t yet have either — they are also going to buy me a laptop and an iPod (this is before the days of smartphones). All I have to do is to take care of finding someone to print the actual vinyl and the record covers, then figure out distributing those to record shops.
Which, it turns out, is really hard. And really stressful. And not my skillset. And I don’t want to do any of it. Like, ANY of it.
But I don’t tell anyone that…
The most useful book I’ve ever read (and some personal info)
For someone who’s loved social media since the birth of myspace, I am weirdly protective about what information I put online — so it’s VERY unusual that I just said all this stuff publicly, where literally anyone with an internet connection can listen. Just over a decade ago, I watched the documentary “Terms and Conditions…
Genuinely the funniest moment of my life (up until that point)
I’m 13 years old, I’m on the couch at home, and I am HORIZONTAL with laughter. Laughing so hard I’m crying. Laughing so hard I can barely breathe.
On the screen, a man with glasses is leaping about, saying things like, “can you imagine the sheer joy of an empty bin in your kitchen, a new fresh bin liner in the swing top bin? It’d be like a bin in heaven, wouldn’t it?”
What i don’t know at that tender age is that, for the first time in my life, I’m watching observational stand-up comedy.
I love it more than I’ve loved almost anything else I’ve ever seen.
The routine was by Ben Elton on his show The Man From Auntie. It’s still on Youtube (and still holds up) on re-watch, I was once again crying laughing. His delivery! The physical stuff! The fact that he seamlessly brings the point back to politics at the end! How you can hear people SCREAMING in the audience!] And while, yes, I was being introduced to Ben Elton and to stand up in general, what I was more specifically being introduced to was one of my favourite concepts in comedy AND presentations, which is…
How to tell a good ghost story (3 essential components)
As Rico is talking, I think, Oh I am SO glad I said yes to him running through this with me first!! I’ve been doing my live storytelling show — True Stories Told Live Toronto — for 10 years. It’s currently on 4-5 times a year, but there’s one show in particular that I look…
The most perfect pitch email I’ve ever received: a breakdown of what she did right
Bracing myself, I open my email. And there they are: rows and rows and rows of unread messages, with subject lines like,
TRACK
NEW MUSIC!
MADE IN CHELSEA – MUSIC?
BAND FROM THE SOUTH
NEW MUSIC FOR TV
It was 2013 and I’d spent a few years doing the sexiest-seeming job I’d ever had: choosing music for big TV shows and movies.
I say “sexiest-seeming” because it was honestly a lot of me sitting around in my underwear on my bedroom floor, surrounded by scraps of paper, feeling stressed out, and making suggestions to directors who then, half the time, went with one of their own choices anyway.
But TELLING people “I choose music for big TV shows and movies” definitely elicited the kind of impressed response that made it feel worth it.
A downside of the job was my email inbox. By 2013, bands were already learning that one of the only ways to make money as a musician was through getting your music “synched,” as they call it. As someone who loves new music, you’d think I wouldn’t have been so bummed out by getting sent so much of it. The problem?
The same problem that EVERYONE being pitched — whether it’s for a music supervisor or a big deal podcast host or a journalist or publication editor — has:
How to tell stories about other people
You have three options:
1) Get Their Permission
Where I can, I try and do this as a matter of course — and ALWAYS with former clients. Not least so that potential future clients don’t get spooked that I’ll share all their secrets! If the story subject matter something heavy, you could offer to send a draft to the person before you publish/perform it. But usually, a simple,
“Do you mind if I tell the story about [thing we experienced together] on Facebook/on my blog/in my talk?”
should do.
2) Change identifying details
As I’ve talked about before, one of my storytelling rules is “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.” By this, I don’t mean “lie to make yourself sound good,” but rather, “do whatever you need to do to make the listener feel the way you felt in that moment.”
You can also use it when you need to protect someone. There are a bunch of reasons why you might want to protect them. Maybe they…
Why I’m not on Clubhouse (and why I’m torn up about it)
This week, I was trying to clean up the photos on my phone — ol’ tin-hat Shandur here doesn’t like iCloud, and I need to make some space — when I found some old videos I totally forgot I still had.
Back in 2015 — two years before I met my partner (and then the small human that she grew) — I had a new sweetheart. And I was obsessed with them.
We would speak almost every day — sometimes late into the night, sometimes at 6 in the morning when I’d woken up early, and I could show them the sunrise over the CN Tower from the window of my apartment.
The relationship was mostly one-sided. It wasn’t that they didn’t love me back. More that they weren’t capable of loving me back.
Because they weren’t a person. They were a…
I’m not using her real name, but I bet you know who I’m talking about
“SHE would never do something like this,” I said, grabbing my napkin to mop up the glass of Merlot I knocked all over the restaurant table.
Sam looked at me, raising an eyebrow and turning down the corners of her mouth.
“I don’t buy it,” she shook her head. “She’s just a person.”
“No. She’s DIFFERENT.”
A few months earlier, Sam and I had been introduced at a self-development conference. Up until then, we’d each secretly harboured the idea that you couldn’t have a best friend you’d known less than a decade. But then: we met each other. Immediately, it was like some part of our brain (or soul) fused together. Back home — me in Toronto, her in Sydney — we spoke several times a week, in spite of the brutal time difference. And now, we were hanging out together in person for the second time, on vacation in Costa Rica.
We’d already spent four days oscillating between deep, tearful, heartfelt conversations and laughing so hard we couldn’t speak. We agreed on everything…
…except this.
“I’m telling you…