Preparing a Talk

Many people – especially technical folks like me – focus way too much on the data that they want to present to their audience. Tom always asks me how I want the audience to feel after my talk. Before I learned his technique, my answer would be something like, “I want them to feel that they understand the design goals and architectural details of ?”

At this point Tom would interrupt: “Feelings are one word. Angry. Proud. You know – emotions.” You can have a small phrase describing what the feeling is about. “Disappointed in our performance.” “Proud of our new release.”

Next, Tom would ask what I wanted people to do differently after my presentation. He argued: “If you don’t want them to do anything different, why are you wasting your time talking with them?” If you’ve reached an important milestone in a project, like a key code-freeze date, you might want people to feel proud of what they’ve accomplished so far, but to keep working hard until they’re done. If a project is way off track, the feeling of disappointment in the progress so far could motivate people to accept and engage a new approach. If a competitor is beating you, perhaps anger will help drive action. Part of the trick is to choose actions and emotions that naturally reinforce each other.

When you are clear on the feelings and actions that you hope to inspire with your presentation, then, and only then, should you start to worry about the content – about what data to share to inspire those feelings. You can say, “I want you to feel excited about what you did,” but it might work better to show the sales figures or benchmark results that prove people did a good job. Then the audience will naturally be excited. Or if the results are bad, naturally disappointed.

When I start with feelings and actions, it makes my presentations much better. Good content is important, but it’s only a tool. Feelings and actions are the goal.

At first, I struggled with Tom’s method because I wanted to share too much information. Now, I’ve learned to appreciate the elegance of finding the smallest amount of data required to drive the feelings and actions I want. For exhaustive detail, a web site or white paper is a much better communication tool. Sometimes go read the white paper is the action I want to inspire. Even in a classroom setting, lectures don’t replace textbooks.

I used to worry that removing details would result in over-simplified presentations. Now I believe that my job as a public speaker is to over-simplify.

But I still try not to over-over-simplify.

-- reference: http://blogs.netapp.com/dave/

We are Virginia Tech

We are Virginia Tech.

We are sad today, and we will be sad for quite a while. We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning.

We are Virginia Tech.

We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly, we are brave enough to bend to cry, and we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again.

We are Virginia Tech.

We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it, but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by the rogue army, neither does the baby elephant watching his community being devastated for ivory, neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water, neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy.

We are Virginia Tech.

The Hokie Nation embraces our own and reaches out with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong, and brave, and innocent, and unafraid. We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imaginations and the possibilities. We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all our sadness.

We are the Hokies.

We will prevail.

We will prevail.

We will prevail.

We are Virginia Tech.

~ Nikki Giovanni, University Distinguished Professor, poet, activist

Tragedy at Virginia Tech

This incident that happened today at Virginia Tech would go in US history, albeit in a wrong way and I am sad to be a part of this.

I was boarding the Blacksburg Transit (BT) bus today morning and we were just about to move; when the BT radio cracked with a siren to stop all buses going to campus. Apparently, there was a gunman loose on campus. I immediately returned home to log on to the internet and check the status. Within minutes, we got an email from the university saying all campus was in lock-down mode. Our local news channel confirmed the death of one person in the shooting. News slowly trickled in of more casualties initially starting with 7 and moving to 32 by the end of the day; all caused because of a shooting by a guy who reportedly shot 40 shots. Dateline NBC aired interviews of 2 students who witnessed the incident and luckily survived this tragedy.

This shootout surpasses all previous records and VT is now part of history for the worst ever campus shootings. We all are shocked to find all this happening in such a "safe" town of Blacksburg. It will take a long time in healing and regaining VT's pride as a great educational institution. Let us all pray for those victims and hope such a thing never happens again anywhere.

Past 2 months

Followers of this blog will notice a long gap. Worry not friends, i m still alive. The last two months have been a flyer, literally. I travelled coast to coast a couple of times. But all that has settled down now - the patience has 'paid' off, again literally. I have decided to join NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP), a leading storage software company. I am all excited to be a part of this great company which ranks in the top 10 Fortune Best Places to Work For, even above the likes of Microsoft!

Ok, that was the journey till mid-March. I was in Blacksburg for the entire last month (i cant believe it myself). Had to catch up on my thesis implementation. Once things began to work and experiments gave success, i moved to writing. I have almost finished writing a draft at this point and passed it on to my advisor for reviews. Today, is the 1st time in last two months that I dont have anything to work on ( i expect to get more work tomorrow after my meeting; but this very moment needs to be enjoyed to the fullest). Ate loads of Kaju -draksh icecream that we got from an Indian store, followed by rasgullas!...Blogging seems to have actually helped me in writing skills - thank you Blogger!