I do not buy into the idea that all presentations (or gigs) should be done in the same kind of form. In particular I will argue here that we need new forms of presentations adapted to the changing nature of people and our media.

Garr Reynold have for a long time maintained his fantastic blog Presentation Zen. Clearly he advocates a presentation style where ”the key is simplicity, harmony, and restraint in design”.  Reynold frequently stresses the importance of great visuals and a minimum of text (if any) on the slides as well as an engaging speaker that stays focused on the (single) story. Whereas this a a great form of storytelling, please note that there are other options.

In a post today Reynold asks Too much clutter on the screen? He summons the answer as:

The cluttered TV displays make sense in airports and waiting rooms when the sound is off. But when we are listening to someone speak, visuals make sense only when they augment and enhance the message or illustrate the particular point the speaker is making. Graphics and effects completely unrelated to the topic are simply a distraction

Hey, have you never heard of the kids who have five five online chats going on, while making the homework assignment, listening to music, texting a friend, calling another one on the phone, and watching TV? To them it makes sense managing multiple topics simultaneously. And I wonder how smart it is to always give them lectures (in school) where only one (boring) topic is up in the air.

Those of you that have attended one of my gigs during the last two years or so know that I explicitly make a point of telling a number of stories during the same presentation. In other words, a try to juggle with many topics at the same time. I am practising a form of storytelling, increasingly used in popular culture, that Steven Johnson calls ”multiple threading”. (For a context, search for everything is bad is good for you). I started to do this many years before I learned about Johnson’s idea. Why? The simple answer is that I was fascinated by the changing nature of television content. To create presentations like that seemed like an interesting idea.  If not only because I thought future audiences would not enjoy traditional talks.  In hindsight Johnson told me what I was doing.

Back to Reynold’s clutter discussion. He quotes the comedian Lewis Black’s recent rant to TV executives at the Emmy Awards (video here):

Your job is to tell stories, it’s not to tell us in the middle of the story what show is coming on next or which one is premiering two weeks from now!

I saw the clip, and would like to add another qoute from Lewis:

We’re not idiots. Except for being dumb enough to try and get the news feed. The only thing you give us is attention deficit disorder.

Who are we? What if the audience have ADD, or ADHD, which is a more developed term? I know I am dancing on a sharp edge here. True, I believe there are mental conditions that cause severe implications for an individual irrespectively of its (social and medial) enviroment. At the same time I think it is dead wrong to diagnose the recent generations of humans as ”sick” just because their brains are perhaps wired differently, maybe due to an unprecendented media environment. And I guess we all have to learn that the number of moments a particular speaker have all the attention is steadily decreasing. Pearhaps another way to tackle this dilemma is to start thinking of ”we” as presenters.

I am only sure of one thing – I want to experiment  more with complicated, cluttered, emotive, and cognitive stimuli in my gigs. Is that OK with you?

p.s. iStockhphoto returns 38.707 hits for ”simple clean”, but only 69 for ”complicated clutter”. d.s

[Update 2007-10-29] My whole presentation is now available as a live recorded video.

[Update ater the gig] I have uploaded my presentation slides (pdf) and made room for a link to the opening plenary session’s webb TV (not published by EDEN yet). Some of you might be interested in my 2003 conference paper Marketing and Public Education – multimutual benefits. If you understand Swedish, check out my blog (since 2004) Skolmarknad.info, and the associated podcast Skolsmart.

EDEN is an acronym for the European Distance and E-learning Network. One of their strands is the Open Classroom Initiative, which ”focus on distance education and new technologies in school level education and training”. Earlier this year I did a gig for CFL (in Swedish), one of the organizers of the Sixth Open Classroom Conference: Real Learning in Virtual Worlds. As a result I have been invited as one of the key note speakers during the opening plenary session. I am of course very honored, but also somewhat concerned. What should I say?

On the one hand, judging from a quick glance at the keynote slides from the Fifth conference and the overall idea of the network, our new Web 2.0 tools should come as no suprise to the attendees. On the other hand, somewhat generalising from fields other than education, I am not so sure about that. Are these guys really eating their own medicine? A search for ”Facebook”, ”Myspace”, and ”Youtube” on the EDEN Web site yields zero returns. ”Podcasting” and ”RSS” gave only a handful of hits. The EDEN President’s blog has one post, dated august 29, with a reader comment and the president’s response. Therefore, I think I will at least deliver a couple of cool demos of the latest stuff.

But I am betting that most of the people there are pretty well updated. So, I will probably take the opportunity to ventilate some of my far off ideas and visions that relates to EDEN’s mission. These thoughts concern to the brand images of ”Learning” and ”School”, who should ”Learn”, the end points that defines ”distance”, and why we think we have to ”learn”. Hence I entitled the gig ”re-thinking Learning”.

As I publish this post the conference is 35days away and I will have 30 minutes to play with when the moment arrives. Any comments, ideas, suggestions?

p.s. This web site is mainly in Swedish, but please feel free to browse the english category and check out what is behind the english menu items. d.s.

[Update after the gig] Thanks Daniel and … for your fast comments. Here are my slides (pdf) from the lecture. Enjoy – and let´s keep the conversation going.

Upon request I will deliver an updated and extended lecture at the Stockholm School of Economics (compare my previous Om Sociala medier gig). The course is the same, that is Media psychology and media development.

Here is a quick review of ad school presence in Facebook. Last week the Swedish trade paper Resumé (print edition, August 23) took a look at the advertising schools in (physical) Stockholm. Resumé summons their brief survey as ”Godkänt” (eng. passed, a grade which btw is void in the European Bologna process).  But they also recognized, amongst other things, that agency people (potential employers) would like to see more of training and education in ”Web production”.

My contribution on that end is primarily channeled to GI-IHR (Department of Advertising and PR at Stockholm University, not even recognized by Resumé :-) through my fat teaching experiment giicod. Furthermore, according to Resumé, the business folks also considers how well students present themselfes (portfolios), and the need of improved networking skills. Hence, the obvius task is to paraphrase use new media to prove new media (from Joseph Jaffe) and use new media to assess new media (training). In this case Stockholm’s ad schools use of a social media, i.e. Facebook (because it is currently very hype).

So, I took Resumé’s list of schools, added GI-IHR. Marknadsakademien, and MCXL (see desclaimer below), and went into Facebook looking for groups formed around those schools. You need to be logged in with a Facebook account in order to follow most links below. Note, I only used Facebook/application Groups/Search for groups (global across all networks) with the name of the school as listed below. Since to some extent the names are generic I undertook a quick glance at the groups to determine if they were related to the school in question. The time when I did the search is listed for each school. To my best knowledge (please correct me) it seems that none of the schools have officially created any groups in Facebook. Instead the groups have been formed by their stakeholders, e.g. (ex) students. Because a picture is worth more than a thousand words I remark on the group pictures. Facebook is full of question marks, but in my view nothing stands out as MCXL’s group logotype.

• Beckmans (12:25). 1 group, using the Beckmans logotype as group picture. Member count is 118.
• Forsbergs (12:58).  3 groups, 1 using Forsbergs logo, 1 another illustration 1 none. Member count is 97, 6, 39.
• Hyper Island (13:05). 6 groups, 0 using the Hyper Island logo, 4 using other illustrations, and 2 no picture. Member count is 306+18+11+42+28+47.
• Farfar+Berghs (13:35). 0 groups (although one for ”Farfar”, which presumably is related to the advertising agency cooperating with Berghs).
• Medieskolan (13:40). 2 groups, 1 using Medieskolan’s logo. Member count is 75+8.
• Konstfack (13:45). 3 groups. 1 using Konstfack’s logo, the other 2 uses own illustrations. Member count is 30+3+17.
• Berghs (12:20).  9 groups. 2 are using (variants) of Berghs logotype as the group picture, 2 are using some other illustration, and the rest no picture. Member counts are 45+9+20+10+297+17+9+25+15.
• GI-IHR (12:15).  1 group, using the stylized face of a person as group picture. Member count is 49. (Through ”Related networks” I found another IHR group, 11 members, no picture).
• Marknadsakademien (13:50). 1 group, using an illustration. Member count is 86.
• MCXL (14:25). 1 group with a wonderful logo! (who created that???). Member count is 57.

Some quick reflections. Berghs and Hyper Island stands out, but the latter is much younger, smaller, and focused on digital media. Also note that I have not put the numbers in relation to how big/old the schools are. Seems the ad schools have (had) no Facebook strategy. As typical in social media, the use is driven down-up. In most other cases I think that is understandable, but not when it comes to schools who are supposed to educate and train future communicators. My own giicod group was not found because at its creation I forgot to include ”GI-IHR” in the description (corrected now). Member networked quality is most likely more important than member count. But our mass media wired brains still put more value on quantitative rather than qualitative data. There is Swedish group named Marknadsföring på Facebook (Marketing in Facebook, 650 members and exploding). As of now, and presented at my account, no ad school group is listed in ”Related groups”.
[Update 2007-08-29: I missed the group Reklamsverige (Adsweden, 900+ members, exploding, and has no ad school groups related to it.]

The social medium is the message, not Facebook. I wonder if Swedish agencies that are in the process of hiring students are checking out portfolios in social media? Are students making every effort to build a digital well tagged portfolio precence in social media? ”Copy” means different things to directors of print versus mobile media. The same goes for ”networking”, where hooking up is just a click away.

Disclaimer: For around 10 years I was affiliated with Marknadsakademien. MCXL was included because I know its founder Micael Dahlén. I am currently producing and leading a course at GI-IHR and will conduct a few seminars at Berghs. Over the last 10+years I have had various minor teaching assignments at both those schools. If any other school feels left outside or gets pissed off by the focus on Stockholm I blame Resumé and my limited (free) time. Make your additions by commenting. Or be more creative and expand my experiment.

Blomquist Annonsbyrå is a member of the independent network Worldwide Partners, inc. I have been invited to share thoughts with them when they meet in Stockholm. Will most likely be a really interesting event.

[Update 2007-09-28] Regarding my question about you and changed business models, I just found an interesting piece featuring Bob Garfield where the big point is that ”ad agencies have to change how they are compensated”.

[Update 2007-09-27]: Sitting outside in the cafeteria at Summit and have uploaded my slides (pdf). Due to the change in schedule I never had time for the buzzword Twitter that I announced. Sorry, about that. But you may check it out yourself at www.twitter.com, or at Wikipedia, or elsewhere in the social media spaces. Thank you for a truly valuable conversation and enjoy the rest of your stay in Sweden! Waiting eagerly for Rogers version of Melody’s video. as an inspiration take a look at xapplmatic’s.

[Update 2007-09-06]: I replaced ”Blomquist” in the posts’s title to ”Worldwide Partners” because the latter constitute the audience. I am also impressed by the fact that Worldwide Partners sends a web survey to the attendees because it ”gives our speakers have a better feel for what the main issues are to address”. I wish more meeting producers did that. Regarding subject I asked (unless they tell me to publish the answers, the responses will be my little secret):

• How many of the following Web 2.0 tools (loosely defined) have you PERSONALLY used interactively in your private/business life. Blog publishing, photo sharing, video sharing, RSS feeds, wiki, social network, discussion forum, podcasting, presence application, widget/gadget, social bookmarking, 3D world.
• Regarding your personal profile in Facebook. Please indicate if you have one or not, and the reason why.
• How is your agency’s business model affected by Web 2.0 and the social media developments?

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