Signal to Noise Ratio

For this post-holiday post, I had planned to write a short recap of our public speaking series and to thank Roger Brown and Vince Stevenson for sharing their experience and insight. Then, I happened to read a blog entry of a presentation gone wrong – really wrong when the Twitter backchannel became too powerful. The signal to noise ratio went off the scale, and I started wondering if Toastmasters shouldn’t include “speaking in the age of social media” as an advanced manual. Then, stay with me here, I started thinking about some material for this blog I had received from my former boss and friend Charles Bourland and, finally, Dux Raymond Sy a.k.a. @meetdux, Tweeted about a PowerPoint add-on and it all started to make sense.

Several weeks ago, Charlie sent me a blog entry about his experience with a pioneering distance learning program at Western Michigan State University (WMSU) in the early 1990s. Charlie was somewhat of a pioneer in education as well, having owned and operated Computer Processing Institute in New England in the 1960s. I’ve been holding onto Charlie’s post until I can assemble a few other guest bloggers to talk about modern distance learning, but there’s one part of Charlie’s post that I found intriguing and that I need to reveal today. The system at WMSU incorporated a 10-key device that the students used for communicating to the instructor. Charlie says:

"…Now to the 10-key device, which to me was the real power of the setup. A student could hit a key saying she had a question; the computer could log her in and when the professor was ready to answer a question, he could select the student he wished, first-one-in or generally-most-interesting…

When I was in college, I was as shy as could be. I would hide behind the person in front of me so as to be invisible. With this system a student could hit a special key which would signal a professor “I don’t understand your point.” If enough students so signaled, the professor could go back and use a different approach to make his point."

If you read the Spectacle at Web2.0 Expo, you can see how communication from the audience, early on in Danah Boyd’s presentation might have helped since, apparently, people only wanted her to slow down. Her account invoked three emotions in me. First, I was angry with the audience for being so rude. What we say, regardless of the medium in which we say it, is a reflection of our personality – I wonder if these people realize that. Second, I was concerned that an accomplished speaker might stop sharing her valuable message. Reading the post to the end, I realized Ms Boyd plans to overcome this particular obstacle. Third, I started to be a little afraid; I speak in front of audiences, what if this happens to me? Well, the good news for me is I don’t speak that often and recent audiences have been kinder and gentler than the crowd at Web 2.0. But still, I wondered, how do we best deal with backchannel or static?

I posted a link to the Ms Boyd’s blog on the Toastmaster forum on LinkedIn and suggested that Toastmasters, the organization, should address this. Some private email I received is encouraging but the public discussion causes me to fear it will be a long process. Still, I’m encouraged; even if the organization doesn’t get a handle on this issue, Toastmasters, the individual members of the organization, will experiment with many techniques and share their experience.

Where does Dux fit in? Well, he re-Tweeted a link to a piece of software that you can add into PowerPoint that appears to be the modern day equivalent of Charlie’s 10-key device. The add-on, from Timo Elliot at SAP Web 2.0 lets the presenter follow the Twitter backchannel in his/her presentation. I downloaded this software earlier today and I am planning to use it in some “safe” presentations. Dux says he plans to use it in his next presentation. Dux is a dynamic speaker, well suited to the Web 2.0 crowd so I will follow his experience with this feature and try to benefit from his trailblazing.

There are many other methods for adding back-channel comments into your presentation and many reasons to avoid the attempt. I recommend reading: “10 Tools for Presenting with Twitter” by Olivia Mitchell, or “How speakers should integrate social media into presentations” by Jeremiah Owyang. Unfortunately, none of this software would have helped Ms Boyd. This software may be distracting to a single speaker and, as she pointed out early in her blog entry, the folks at Web 2.0 weren’t able to let her use her laptop during her speech – how forward thinking that was.