The Second Secret to Giving the Presentation Everyone Will Remember
Reader Hans Mundahl commented on my post The Secret to Giving the Presentation Everyone Will Remember, and his comment was so good it deserves its own post. He says:
If conference attendees:
- take a paper document following a presentation (barrier 1)
- it needs to be kept (barrier 2)
- and filed (barrier 3)
- and recalled (barrier 4)
before it can be useful down the line.
That’s excellent illustration of the inefficiency of printed documents because of the mechanics involved in handling and storing the information – and you can’t even search it!
The reality is that many of these conference handouts get jammed in bags, only to be seen again when you clean out your bag. And then the handout gets tossed out with the garbage.
A wiki can contain links, the keynote from the presentation and engage participants in dialog after the presentation, all with a simple bookmarked link in a browser (eliminating barriers 1 & 2). So it does more with less work. That’s a strong case for adoption.
I think the wiki also eliminates barriers 3 and 4. Filing (barrier 3) is no longer a barrier when multiple people are collaboratively contributing to the organization of information on the wiki, and recalling (barrier 4) is no longer a barrier because:
- By participating on the wiki, people have a better sense of the information it contains, and can get what they need faster.
- People can search the wiki and get what they need in a matter of seconds.
On the homepage of his wiki, Hans has embedded a recent presentation on technology in education, and the last slide exemplifies the approach he’s suggesting. On that slide, he says:
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Hans says:
May 13th, 2008
Hi Stewart – glad I could contribute to the dialog!
Love the blog – we’ve used several of your 21 Days videos to help in implementing a large wiki project.
Cheers,
Hans
Hans says:
May 13th, 2008
I’ve been thinking about a couple of barriers that I didn’t consider at first to supplying course materials on a wiki:
1) the participant needs a computer with an internet connection and they need to know how to use it
2) the participant needs to be willing to engage in dialog online
I think these are interesting concerns that I often overlook since I take them both for granted. While it is rare that you will find folks who can’t do 1 I’m often surprised by folks who have trouble with password management say, or organizing their emails. All barriers to more in depth technology adoption.
I think barrier 2 is a wider trend and much of this blog is working to help folks figure this one out. Passive consumption of web pages is definitely still the norm and sharing ideas or dialoging in a public forum is still very outside the box for many of my colleagues at least.