Unfortunately, more often than not, larger-scale online presentations default to the lowest common denominator…infobarf over PowerPoint.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

And if you care to watch this recording, I’ll walk the talk.

Spoiler alert: I promise you 13 tactics. I deliver about two dozen.

Let me repeat that. And then I’ll share some recent research.

Changes in the broader culture regarding how people consume content will affect how people want your content.

And while I’m sure it’s not true everywhere in the world, here in the United States consider what has happened with television by way of a question:

When was the last time you planned your life around watching a show you like at 8pm on Tuesday evening?

Young folks may say, “Never.” But a GenXer like me will likely we laugh. We don’t do that anymore.

Except in two contexts.

Broadly speaking, people still want sports live versus on-demand. And to a degree the same is true with news.

I call it “Netflixification.”

Need some academic validation?

Recent research published in Biomechanical Engineering Education substantiates my thesis (at least in their specific context). Look at the chart from Synchronous vs Asynchronous vs Blended Remote Delivery of Introduction to Biomechanics Course and do that math: of the 86% of students expressed a preference, 78% of those essentially said, “Give me the video to watch” for the lecture.

Put another way, they’re saying, “Your talking head lectures are less valuable to me when they’re in real time” (and you know I think this is a failure of instructional design or the deliverer, not the medium itself).

Of course, a broad problem is that many communicators still over-rely on lecture (in any context). Even interaction with a non-human can improve results.

Another broad problem in the synchronous communication/collaboration industry: No vendor is going to tell you that sometimes you shouldn’t use their platform. And to be fair, if I worked for one of them I would, too. But to badly paraphrase Abraham Maslow, to those who swing hammers, all the world’s a nail.

The bottom line

Hear me clearly: If your takeaway from this is, “I should do more on demand content,” I will have failed. I’m an advocate for finding and delivering what is uniquely valuable about real time content and how to do more of that. That’s what I help people with professionally (that and finding the right strategic balance between modalities).

There is a time for lecture. We’re not kicking that modality to the curb.

There is a time for live (synchronous). Especially if you’re concerned about the role of human connectedness.

But the world, broadly speaking, is going to increasingly be asking, “Why should I show up to your event or class at 11am on Wednesday if I could have just watched a video?”

Which means that you should have a strategy to optimize the value you deliver based on the the modality.

From an executive perspective, those results tend to fall into four categories: top line, bottom line, risk, and time-to-result.

Even in non-profit or government environments that may not use the same language (e.g., you don’t “make sales”), the essential categories of productivity, stewardship of resources, mitigating risk, and time-to-result govern (or should) a leader’s or strategist’s perspective.

And as we get rolling, one warning: this is a long form post wherein we’ll look at

• The organizational dynamics that drove me to create this explanatory framework to begin with (including an example story of a headscratcher decision)
• Determining the value of data, why orgs often only give it lip service, and what to ask
• Using the framework: questions to ask when strategizing content (particularly learning and development content)

Why the Mediated Interaction Framework came to be (and why it’s important)

The Mediated Interaction Framework attempts to help communication and learning strategists consider the nature of interpersonal connectedness relative to tradeoffs and decisions about the media through which communication/learning happen.

I developed it after repeatedly interacting with people stuck working in organizations with overly simplistic learning strategies related to virtual classes, events, and webinars. And it’ll take some space in the post, but here’s an example by way of story:

The setting: a workforce-learning conference where I was speaking a few years ago. Sitting down at a table, a gal saw the “presenter” tag on my badge and asked what I was speaking about (which was thinking strategically in designing virtual classrooms into an overall learning ecosystem).

Her quick reply: “Oh, good. I know one session I don’t need to go to.”

I inquired as to why.

It turns out that she worked for a global footwear brand (of swooshy persuasion), and she told me that the mandate from on high was to move all training to on-demand media. I clarified, “All of it? No synchronous, instructor-led training of any sort, online or onsite?” Nope.

As you might imagine, I asked additional clarification questions. Their simple (simplistic) reason — a reason you see illuminated in the framework – came down reach and cost (the far right). In their case this like would have been evaluated as “lowest cost per unit of knowledge delivered.”

The point here isn’t to throw Swooshy Shoes under the bus. It’s to point out an all-too-common example: they were “buying on price” instead of effectiveness.

To be sure, on-demand media sometimes is the right choice, but she assured me this had not been evaluated relative to effectiveness…it was a cost-driven decision. And she agreed that the overall cost to the organization wasn’t part of the discussion (read: one department maximized their spend at the expense of greater overall organization cost).

The value of data… and the challenge of being data-driven

Besides intra-organizational turf wars, why do orgs fall into this trap? Not following the data.

Usually because they don’t have it, albeit for good reasons – reasons you should be able to illuminate.

Everyone loves the term ROI (return on investment), but few actually invest in calculating it at a level granular enough to guide operational decisions.

To explain why, let’s ‘bottom line’ this thing with a single principle:

Optimization drives valuation.

In other words, to use the failed “swooshy shoes” example as a case, we’d want to have explored the results delivered from ILT/vILT relative to (meaning compared to) the results from on-demand media, and those in relationship to their respective costs.

The premise of optimization is that every medium has a right time and place wherein a given medium of communication is the best possible choice.

By analogy, you can tell a story in a book or a movie, but the discipline and cost (and a bunch of other things) are very different for producing them. And while someone you know will argue that books are better than movies (or vice versa), the point is that they’re different…some things you can deliver much better in a book than a movie and vice versa.This is true for tradeoffs to be evaluated in choosing media as part of learning and communication strategy.

And therein lies the challenge:

Technically anything can be isolated, measured, and monetized (how you’d actually get to calculating ROI).

But gathering data itself is itself an expense. <– Read that again.

This leads to the primary reason why most orgs don’t actually have fully data-driven optimization:

• The value of data is NOT (fully) that it helps you make better decisions (e.g., see the executive metrics at the beginning of this post).
• The value of data IS the delta between your improved decision (“X”) versus your less-informed decision (“Y”) that is then weighed against the cost of acquiring that data (“Z”).
  • The value of data: X-Y/Z.

This means most orgs, like individuals in their daily lives, don’t make fully-decisions according to the data. They exercise judgment and intuition.

Which is where a framework comes in…to at least think through the gut checks in terms of principles and tradeoffs versus overly-simplistic numbers (like cost alone, in the case of some division inside the swooshy shoe company).

One principle that’s easy to communicate to others: optimization drives valuation.

Using the framework: understanding the categories

Again, the Media Framework attempts to help communication and learning strategists consider the nature of interpersonal connectedness relative to tradeoffs and decisions about the media through which communication/learning happen.

For me, given that my expertise was first in understanding the theory of transactional distance and medium theory in light of real-time-but-distant communication (e.g., webinars, vILT, virtual keynotes, etc.), the problem to resolve was the disparity between a) most webinars (if not virtual classes) being “talk AT you” experiences when b) the research on androgogy (theory of adult learning) points to the need to have participants be just that – participating, actively, not passively.

I’m not the first to suggest a framework suggesting place and time. A typical 4-box grid wherein the X-Y axes are place and time, and these are distinguished by “same” and “different” (e.g., place can be same or different as can time).

But such a frame yields two problems. One, users always look at the “same place, different time” box and wonder how it fits (the media form would be something like a self-directed kiosk). Two, it doesn’t instantly illuminate the tradeoff of intimacy/impact vs reach.

Perhaps most importantly, what I’ve found over teaching this to thousands of people is that they need something they can repeat in shorthand.

That became “conversation versus publication.”

To be certain, you could stand in an in-person setting and deliver the equivalent of “publication.” That’d be a lecture with no Q&A.

At the other end, publication on something like YouTube or Facebook or an LMS may involve asynchronous interaction at a rapid enough clip so that it’d would be, at least for brief periods of time, synchronous. This would be like you trading a series of text messages with someone – you might focus your attention for some period of time (you’re communicating semi-synchronously or even synchronously), but then you put it down only to come back to it 15 minutes later.

The takeaway: The question I always lay on the table is, “What is the best part of human connectedness, and how do we bring the best of that to our learners or audience?”

And just so we’re clear: that’s pretty much “never” when it comes to infobarfing over PowerPoint.

Using the framework: asking questions

All of this leads to the importance of thinking more critically (if not strategically) when planning and designing. What follows is not a system or method, but simply questions that follow from the above observations that may serve as prompts when thinking through anything from simple (i.e., delivering a live webinar) to the complex (i.e., a multi-part, multi-media learning program).

What’s the value (to us) of human interaction (if not connectedness)?

One of many potential examples, but perhaps the most poignant offender, in asking this of people knowing that they’ll say, “High!” The idea of then quantifying the value versus additional expense will nearly always be foreign, but you can then prompt discussion of what it might be, even if it’s a gut check. If you don’t, it’s about as useful as asking if someone would rather drink a $150 bottle of wine or a $10 bottle.

What’s the value of ensuring every participant has the same experience?

Here are two examples of potentially many. Perhaps the worst offender is hybrid onsite/online audiences (driven by someone’s desire to not present online) – the online audience has a totally different psychosocial experience. A less obvious example would be a webinar or virtual class that includes some participants on mobile devices (with small screens, possibly with less or less usable features).

Does it need to be real time (synchronous)?

Example: If you’re going to deliver a live, virtual presentation, but the audience experience is passive (akin to watching a YouTube video) why do it live? You’re asking a higher ticket price from the attendee (show up at 11am on Tuesday) for something that could possibly be at a more convenient time (they can watch when they want to) or even better user experience (fast forward or rewind buttons).

What’s the rationale for a higher-cost investment in a richer media form?

This may be viewed on the framework either horizontally or vertically. A horizontal example might be the live-vs-on-demand example in the previous question. Another might be “Why do an in-person class when one online will work?” Vertical examples might be something like, “Why produce an on-demand video when a simple audio recording will work?” (in the ‘on demand’ section to the right). Or it might be “Does the presenter really need a PowerPoint deck?” (for the “in person” section on the left).

What’s the rationale for doing this in one session versus multiple sessions?

Why is a webinar typically one hour long? Or if you move an all-day training online, might you better take advantage of spaced repetition (if not make it easier on the learners) by splitting it up?

The bottom line

The above queries are not, by any stretch, all the questions you might ask. The point is to start asking questions.

And because you’ll inevitably bubble up issues for which there is no data, inference to the best explanation may be what you need to rely upon. In other words, this doesn’t mean there isn’t some form of research or evidence that might inform the decision – the question is whether or not you can form an argument to support your position.*

Importantly, this also is where you’ll run into organizational politics. Because everyone’s got an opinion and thinks their gut-check is valid.

Maybe. Maybe not.

But hopefully you’ll be better prepared to ask questions that lead to better strategy and design for your communications and training programs, onsite or online, real time or on demand.

Roger

*For example, I’ve often answered the question, “When delivering a webinar, should I speak at the same rate of speech as normal, or at a higher or lower rate of speech?” There is no data, but there are at least two studies that looked at rate of speech (one for college debate teams, another for efficacy of inside/telephone sales). From here I present an abductive reason that “if this is true in these studies and in these circumstances, I posit that you should…. (not the point of this post! <snicker>).

Sadly, though, as pointed out in The Panel Discussion Report: A 2014 Snapshot on the Effectiveness of Panel Discussions at Meetings, Conferences & Conventions, close to 2/3 of audience members rate them as just “okay” or worse.

Now you compound that issue by putting said panel discussion into a shorter attention span format (e.g., virtual events, conferences). So if you don’t purposefully design something different, you’ll deliver what everyone else is – and the research suggests that it may not really engage the way you probably hope to.

Here’s the good news: Panel discussions aren’t hard, but they are different. And what follows is going to be different in approach – a focus on categories of connection as a basis for thinking through “UX.” UX is “user experience.” It’s a way of thinking about design.

Virtual panel discussions: what is given

Some elements of virtual panel discussions are so elementary that we’ll call them ‘the givens.’ It is a given that you

• Know who your audience is
• Select a topic that’s interesting
• Select a panel that represents viewpoint diversity if not other forms of diversity

Finally, it should be a given that it’s the selection of the moderator that makes or breaks a panel. They’re the glue that provides compelling intros and outros, distributes questions, manages time. Ideally they are excellent at transitions and callbacks.

But now let’s think about this in the virtual world. In most cases, the audience’s UX is passive, live watching television. And it’s likely that your panel isn’t quite as riveted-to-the-screen exciting as Gandalf taking on the balrog.

I contend, then, that the path to excellence is more in terms of thinking about connectorship…your skill in connecting the audience psychosocially to various elements that are possible…and usually unused or underutilized.

Virtual panel discussions: what creates value?

When I served as president of National Speakers Association of Oregon, I told my board the principle which I believe undergirds many, if not most conferences (and particularly for associations):

People show up for content, but they stay for people.

Put another way: Your audience can get content anywhere, and they can get it inexpensively or for free. Yet there are three important things they pay for:

1. Social interactions and being part of a community
2. The ability to ask a question of an expert
3. And sometimes the certificate of completion.

And the last point makes my above point…I can get a master’s-level education for dang near free, but I pay good money to get the continuing ed credit or the diploma that says ‘been there done that.’

So if you want to create value beyond the content itself, remember this: optimization drives valuation.

Virtual panel discussions: five levels of connection

If the above argument – people show up for content, but they stay for people – is true, then it becomes quickly clear that the power of meeting virtually is more than just reach…it’s still about making space for people to connect with each other.

In terms of virtual panel discussions (or any virtual communication for that matter), I think about connection in terms of five levels:

Level 1 connection = technical

It may go without saying, but this is the ability for each attendee to “show up.” I’d include functional tech in this level – ability to see and hear – and operational.

Think through: Will participants be at their desk or mobile? If the former, will they be on the same size display (like employees at the same company) or potentially different sizes? If the latter, how does our platform support that? Is there an option to dial in on a regular telephone number? What, if any, data needs to be collected (e.g., polling) and if so, how will that be used (i.e., in real time to inform the discussion? After the fact to support follow up? Or certification?)? How do we want them to interact with each other (see Level 5)?

Level 2 connection = interestingness

“Interesting” may mean different things to different people, of course. It may be fascinating, but it may be interesting because it relates to job success. Or achievement of an outcome like “earn my requisite continuing education credits” this year (which, as many professionals in fields that have continuing ed requirements will tell you, might be a check box).

Think through: Does the panel’s content address felt (vs latent) needs? Is What part of the “who” you’re inviting to be on the panel is interesting (e.g., celebrity, credentials, viewpoint or other forms of diversity, etc.)?

Level 3 connection = skillful delivery

A frequent question I get asked, particularly of trainers, is “I work in a boring field, how do I make it more interesting?” And when I’m feeling snarky I say, “There is no boring content, there are only boring trainers.” Just like a storyteller can make or break the story based on the telling, so can and do trainers, subject matter experts, and various other deliverers of content.

Think through: Are we willing to engage a professional moderator? How will introductions and transitions occur? Are content sub-sections timed? Will you require participants to include a dry run/walk through/prep session in their schedule? What’s the backup plan in terms of technical or personnel failure? Do invited subject matter experts need coaching to improve their presence? Does the moderator have permission to frankly provide feedback, manage those who are too talkative, etc.?

Level 4 connection = interactive delivery

Remember that the word educate comes from a root meaning “to lead or draw out.” It doesn’t mean “pound more crap in.”  Of course there is time for lecture or stage-to-audience delivery, but a key principle of andragogy (the art/science of adult learning) is activity (vs passivity). Involved learners and audiences pay better attention and retain more information.

Think through: What’s the plan for including the audience? Will questions actually be used? How will you create a sense of “presence” for audience members so they feel seen? Are there things that can be shared in alternative means (e.g., dropping a hot link to bonus or supplemental material into chat)? Will interaction at the end or throughout (which is more engaging!)? What’s the balance between formal/planned content or discussion and informal/on-the-fly? In other words, are you open to “crowdsourcing” input that would actually shape the flow the panel discussion? If so, how will you do that (and still manage to time, appropriately involve panelists, etc.)?

Level 5 connection = peer-to-peer interaction

To be fair, there is a significant contextual component here. For instance, an important part of value at a conference is connecting with peers over lunch, the afternoon cookie break, or networking after hours at the bar. In other words, the hallway chat.

Think through: If people show up for content, but stay for people, what is the plan to increase the likelihood that they interact with other participants? If not directly during the panel, might that be motivated by the panel to happen at another time (i.e., “during the lunch break that immediately follows, grab your lunch and join a ‘birds of a feather’ breakout session to discuss XYZ in greater detail)?

The bottom line

Virtual panel discussions are obviously not the same context as a class that might involve something like hands-on demonstration of competencies via role plays/teach backs, so don’t expect them to be.

That said, pursuant to an early thesis in this post, it’s likely that unless you’re purposeful about it, virtual panel discussions will be passive, talking-head experiences (that may not even have the “interestingness” of slides changing the view). But it doesn’t have to be that way! It may go without saying, but the lynchpin is typically a skilled moderator who gets involved with strategy and design early.

Finally, here’s one thing that’s particularly beautiful about doing these virtually: every participant has a front row seat. The opportunity to differentiate your panel by really connecting with each person is significant. It’s not hard, it just requires skillfully employing a different approach.

Now they’ve totally stepped up their game, and this regional conference was all virtual. Here’s my contribution to the hundreds of Toastmasters that were there. Enjoy!

And when we move them online, a poor meeting is just a poor meeting online.

The good news is that there is a growing host of tools that’ll help you improve meetings one slice at a time. 

Before the meeting

• MeetingBird tackles the ever-present challenge of coordinating meetings. This isn’t a new problem or solution, but syncing calendars from multiple accounts and/or integrating with other apps? That’s useful.
• ZmURL adds registration pages and additional security to your Zoom meetings. 

Around and in the meeting

• Navigator is designed for remote meetings, putting agendas, notes, action items, and even the attendance link in one spot – and organizes it all by topic. 
• Jottie centralizes and organizes notes, to-do lists (and presumably, therefore, decision-making), and assigning those action items.
• Range integrates with Slack and keeps your team updated on each other’s progress by manage “check ins” or “stand ups” 
• RateTheMeeting helps you measure – and presumably improve – meetings by gathering data and powering insights for improvement.
• HUGO helps you take notes in a collaborative, shareable, and findable way – integrated with your calendar and other apps.
• Tooqan facilitates transparency and (hopefully) cultural improvement by gathering honest feedback and serving up analytics.

Instead of the meeting

• Loom seeks to replace email and meetings with recorded videos (screen, voice, and camera) in an asynchronous messaging (and replying) format.
• Veed functions similarly to Loom, but adds video editing and titling (and might be more useful if you also want to create videos for social media)

Repurposing meeting assets

• MyVIDEO.rip will help you turn your meeting recording into transcripts, audio-only files, and captions.

Have fun…or bail out!

• Need to randomly make a choice? Plug your ideas into Wheel Decide and give it a whirl.
• Finally, for those times when you need an excuse to get out, Callback will fake a call to you. Not that I’ve ever done that, but…

The bottom line

If we’re honest, tools alone don’t solve the issue of poor meetings (it’s a people issue, right?). But they can be particularly useful in nudging behavior in a direction. And who doesn’t need to keep working on productivity?

Finally, credit where credit’s due, some of the ideas here came from ProductHunt (a site I love to keep the ideas flowing!). Check ‘em out.

1.   Edit the system-generated meeting invite to include meeting-relevant information

2.   Let people know in advance that they’ll be on camera

3.   Include a link to a time zone converter

4.   Teach presenters only what they need to know

5.   Know what attendees are seeing so you can help guide their experience

6.   Save time by scheduling recurring meetings

7.   Teach attendees how to mute/unmute themselves

8.   Let participants know you’re recording

9.   Design the “user experience” of your meeting with mobile users in mind

10.  Save meeting chat digitally to save re-typing notes

11.  Turn features on and off to keep participants focused

12.  Pause your screen to avoid sharing private information

13.  Use chat to share a hot (web) link

14.  Verbally instruct people how to use a tool or feature

15.  Keep presentation or speaking segments shorter than in-person

16.  Ask people explicitly to avoid multitasking

17.  Use speaking indicators to call on people by name

18.  Change your display name to how you want people to refer to you

19.  Use a Word document (or equivalent) as an editable working agenda

20.  Adjust gestures and expressions for the camera’s eye

21.  Be aware of what’s behind you to avoid distracting participants

22.  Collaborate on a single document by sharing keyboard/mouse control

23.  Use USB headsets instead of computer microphone and speakers

24.  Know the system requirements for the meeting recording

25. Combine the follow up email with an invitation for the next meeting

***

Curious about the context of any of these – how it applies in your technical environment or how to execute in your team or organizational setting? Give me a shout.

Roger Courville is the first speaker in the world to earn his Certified Speaking Professional designation with a predominantly virtual business model. Once dubbed “The Michael Jordan of Virtual Presentations,” Roger is a multi-book author, award winning writer, and multi-company entrepreneur. His consulting and training clients include organizations as diverse as FedEx, Australia Institute of Training and Development, American Management Association, US Bank and, of course, that little company down the street that you’ve never heard about but who rocks the world every day. And he loves habaneros.

I don’t have my own stories for the presentations I make. What do you suggest?

Hey Liam,

Few people start with a bag full of stories, and even those with a bunch should be adding to their collection. Over time you’ll find a few different skills useful to develop, including

• Defining story for yourself
• Finding versus constructing stories
• Developing your storyspotting skill
• Building your “swipe file”
• Finding multiple angles in one story

By the way, too — keep checking this space. I’ve got a webinar coming up with my friends at GoToWebinar you’ll want to check out (and I’ll drop the link here when I’ve got it).

Defining story for yourself

One of the things I’ve found in a lot of work with clients (especially trainers and marketers) is that it’s easy to find “a” form of story and try to force-fit what they do into that definition. A good example is “the hero’s journey.”

Research about stories universally confirms the value and effectiveness of story in understanding, learning, and/or persuasion. What researchers differ on is exactly how many forms of story there are. In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath do a good job of arguing that there are three essential forms of story (a good summary of which at the bottom of this page).

I’m going to argue something even more foundational that’s useful to consider when storyspotting, however: the complete and utter commonality with all story is transformation from one state to another, a before-and-after if you will. This usually comes in the form of overcoming conflict.

Here’s why I think it’s useful to think in terms of a problem (current state), promise (desired future state), and path (how you overcome the conflict):

You may find it useful to relax your version of “story” to also include anything that helps illustrate the before-and-after you are communicating. Sometimes this may come more formally with the structure of a story. Sometimes it may accomplish the same thing simply with an image or metaphor or something that makes the point.

Finding versus constructing stories

Finding stories takes time. It happens when we see or experience at story that would make a good illustration of a point. We can and should develop our storyspotting radar.

Constructing, stories, however, is often overlooked. It’s useful to remember that there’s a difference between “factual” (really, actually happened) and “communicates a truth.” A good example of the latter are Aesop’s Fables.

There’s an in-between, too — one in which you find a story that’s close to fitting what you need to communicate but isn’t perfect. One adage of many professional speakers, storytellers, and trainers is “Don’t let the truth come between you and a good story.” I’m not sure that’s my favorite way of putting it (I never want to be telling untruths), but I do think we can adjust the facts in a way that maintains integrity.

Here’s an example:

I recently opened a speech with a story about something that really happened to me when I responded to an unruly audience member. The story perfectly illustrated the short talk I was going to give. My problem is that I was the hero of the story (and we want the audience to see potentially see themselves as the story). So the story I told was one where some other audience member responded to the unruly one (thereby removing me as the hero and giving every person in yesterday’s audience a chance to see themselves as such). Was this factual? No. Did it communicate a truth? Yes. Was anyone harmed in the change? No. Was anyone helped? Yes — the very audience for whom the story improved.

Developing your storyspotting skill, part one

For the sake of this post, let’s assume you’ve decided that your version of story is something that  “helps someone see themselves in a new way.” How do we find stories?

I’ve chosen “storyspotting” for a reason. It’s not “story hunting.” If you need to communicate something and know what that is, if you don’t immediately have something come to mind you can spend a long freakin’ time hunting for just the right thing (the same is true when you go looking for a stock image that demonstrates just what you want). In other words, you develop the habit of spotting stories as you go.

The essential skill in storyspotting, therefore, is clarifying what story is to you and making that an important, habitual part of your life.

We see, literally or figuratively, what’s important to us, and our reticular activating system screens out other stuff to keep us from being overwhelmed by the noise. Once you’ve identified that you’re looking for stories (and have an idea of what that means to you), you’ll start noticing them. This might not be a perfect analogy, but it’s like you suddenly came into possession of a red Volvo station wagon — and suddenly you start noticing all the other Volvo station wagons on the road (and particularly the red ones).

Building your “swipe file”

A “swipe file” was originally a collection of tested sales letters or some such thing, but I experienced it as a child when grandpa, a preacher, would see something in a newspaper or magazine and literally cut it out. He’d write some label across the top (e.g., “leadership”) and file it under “L” in a draw with a zillion manila folders in it. Then, when needing an illustration on leadership, voila!

In modern terms you will likely have to develop a system that works for you. Do you cut/paste, open a voice recorder on your phone and audio-jot yourself a reminder, or…?

I find that Evernote’s an indispensable tool for this because 1) I can clip, drag and drop, or otherwise capture stuff in multiple ways and 2) sync it across multiple devices.

Even if you don’t have Evernote, though, you can save and file. It could be a zillion word documents and folders. You could just name or rename files so that they’re easily findable using computer-based search.

Either way, it’s important to tag or label something in a way that means you’ll find it because over time you’ll end up with a pile of these things (or you should hope to, anyway).

This leads to a slightly more advanced idea…

Developing your storyspotting skill, part two: finding multiple angles with one story

A friend of mine is a television reporter with a zillion stories to tell. One day we were “looking for the angle” of a heartwarming story he covered about a mentally slow boy who served a high school basketball team (with towels and such). The payoff was when, for the kid’s last game with the team, the coach put him in and the other team let him score a basket. The auditorium, predictably, erupted with cheering.

What struck me, however, was that this one story doesn’t just have one angle. There’s a story of persistence with a kid who never gave up on showing up. There’s a story or two of compassion from the coaches’ perspective. There’s a story of parental pride about the kid’s parents sitting in the stands. And on and on.

Your storyspotting skill shouldn’t stop at a “one story, one lesson.” There may not be more than one angle, but as you develop seeing things from multiple angles, you may be able to repurpose that story in more than one way for more than one audience.

Which leads to the tagging and filing we just spoke about. It’s hard to file one piece of paper in more than one manila folder. It’s also hard to file one digital piece of paper in more than one digital folder. But if you used a tool (a database, Evernote, whatever) that enabled you to tag stuff in multiple ways, those tags could not only be multiple different lessons you could derive from the story, but you could tag by audience type or anything else.

The bottom line

The power of having good stories at the ready for nearly occasion can’t be overstated. Your communication impact will soar. Better yet, when you collect-as-you-go, you’ll end up with many — including many that you’d have otherwise 1) missed by not seeing them in the first place or 2) forgotten in the busyness of life.

Thanks for the question, Liam. Hope this helps.

I think there’s a way to resolve this tension and, done right makes everybody happy: making sure there are five questions answered for your presentation. (If, by the way, you want to practical “how” to structure a presentation in a simple, methodological way, be sure to join me for Advance Your Pipeline: Influence Decision Makers with Persuasive Presentations with my friends at BrightTALK).

Intrinsic Value: Why do this — for both sides?

You have a sales pipeline with prospects who are at varying stages of affinity for your products and services.

Those same prospects are on a journey to solve their own problems (which may or may not include you). As mentioned before, they’re not looking to be sold, but they will place a high degree of value on genuinely educational content that helps them on their way.

For your part, the presentation needs to serve your ability to drive the intelligence needed for more appropriate follow up. After all, if you don’t learn something that improves segmentation, move some of those prospects identifiably to the next stage of your pipeline, have more relevant conversations, and/or improve your close ratios, why do this?

Topical Precision: What is the angle we’ll take on “ what problem do we solve for whom?”

Buyers are looking for different things along their path from discovery to decision. Solving one problem, however, could have different solutions. Your objective should be to pick one angle on the topic. For example, there are many different aspects of how one could advance their pipeline, but in this webinar we’re going to tackle just one: how to structure content in a compelling, brain-friendly way.

Topical precision serves you as you serve others for two big reasons:

• You know that those who respond resonate with that. What great insight for fueling appropriate follow up!
• You also avoid infobar. It’s way too easy to get sucked into a vortex of “we’re doing all this work to get an audience to our event, so we want to tell ‘em everything, including how we rescued a cat out of tree twenty years ago and seven other ‘look at me’ things.”

Just don’t do it. Get specific.

Actionable Point of View: What worldview would fuel a “no brainer next step?”

Notice that I didn’t use the term “call to action.” It’s not that that’s a wrong idea, but the risk is that we end up with technique-y, sales-y close that is off-putting to all but the latest-stage prospects.

Instead, if you teach someone something that changes how they see the world, they’ll more likely take a step in the direction you want them to go. And how do we do that? Educational content that is intrinsically valuable!

By analogy, there’s a reason why a salesperson hopes to get to a buyer early enough in their journey to “plant” questions in the prospects RFP – because if we can influence the criteria they use for decision making, we influence the likelihood they’ll choose us.

Remember, our objective is still to influence. Giving legitimate value can be done with integrity and in a way that moves the needle for us.

Engaging Presenter: How will the presenter help the cause?

Any form of communication is helped – or hurt – by the person delivering it. Instinctively we know that it’s not just the story being told, but how it’s told that has a lot to do with engagement.

The first downside of a less-than-stellar presenter is that someone may leave early. You may have captured them as a lead, but they miss the message (or fail to have it impact them).

The upside, besides commanding attention, is that webinar platforms can capture additional engagement data that can fuel follow up conversations.

Actionable Intelligence: What will you do with the additional insight?

If you have no more plan in place than to capture a name and email address to drop into some marketing automation system, perhaps this makes no difference to you. With a little foresight and planning, however, the additional information gained can be money in the bank. A few examples might be:

• Qualitative responses captured in Q&A can be given to the sales team to fuel warm follow up calls (“Hey Bill, I saw from the webinar that you asked about… Here’s some additional information about that.”)
• Polling or survey data could be appended to CRM records to improve segmentation or qualification.
• Trend data that shows that a particular prospect registered for certain webinars in a series gives you insight into their interests.
• Behavioral data might fuel a lead-scoring system that helps you gauge where the prospect is at in their journey and deliver more targeted messages.

As you can see, some of these involve the presenter being able to keep the audience’s attention and get them to engage conversationally – quantitatively or qualitatively.

The bottom line

We usually think of a “bad” presentation as one where the presenter was boring or the topic irrelevant. And those may be true.

More frequently, however, “bad” is more a descriptor of the results that happen – or don’t – as a result of said presentation. In other words, there’s a return on the investment.

As the old saying goes, “People don’t want to be sold, but they love to buy.” Better yet, consider adding to these five questions a content structure designed to create momentum in the direction you want prospects to go.

One thing is for sure: if you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll getting what you’ve always gotten.

Here’s to your growth and success!

The word “engagement” is so broadly used it risks becoming meaningless. The general assumption when using it, however, usually follows a logic flow like this:

“If I can be more engaging in my marketing webinar/virtual class/online meeting or sales presentation, then I’ll be more effective in accomplishing my goals.”

So, if many people have an idea of what they want and they can’t necessarily articulate what that looks like, then what?

I had coffee with Scott Driscoll, VP of Products at Rally Labs, conferencing industry old-timer, and longtime business partner (investor in my company, 1080 Group, LLC) to think out loud for a bit on the question, “What’s going on in the world, and how might that inform what the conferencing industry should be thinking about?”

What follows are my reflections from the discussion.

Why: Four trends are converging to reshape behavior and attitude

Much of the technology that enables real time communication hasn’t changed much recently; some of it hasn’t changed much in a long damn time. And I’d argue that what’s going on in the world is (re-)shaping user expectations at a rate faster than vendors are keeping up.

Mobility

At its foundation, mobility is a shift in accessibility, but the broader trend is attitudinal. Expectations are being (re-)shaped that anything is possible anytime.

Socialization and generational diversity

Digital relationships are (re-)shaping us into new neighborhoods of psychographic, not demographic affinity. To be sure, the world uniquely straddles a line between those who find this natural and those who do not, and often that division is age related, but increasingly this isn’t because connecting with technology is hard, it’s just because it’s different.

Consumerization

The consumerization of app use increasingly means that we expect apps to be instantly usable, instantly available, interoperable, and disposable. If it disappoints, there are many more like it. If it’s too hard, they delete. People install, use, and move on.

Data

Data-information-knowledge-wisdom is not new, but again, expectations are rapidly shifting. We have apps that give us stats about anything, aggregate data from multiple sources, and/or apply algorithms for the sake of rendering us something that delivers, hypothetically, more actionable insight than we had before.

Paradoxically and consequently, the conferencing industry is experiencing what Clayton Christensen described in Seeing What’s Next: product features have outstripped the market’s adoption of them. There’s a general pressure on maintaining margin and retaining customers.

What: UC (including video, web, and audio conferencing) is struggling

UC and the discussion around it often still misses the point

Innovation happens when we break down barriers to technologically-enabled communication so that multi-point engagement is better facilitated. I’ll avoid the “Does tech shape communications or communications shape tech?” philosophical rant, but as an industry we still talk a lot about features. That’s a problem.

Adoption and retention isn’t (entirely) a technical problem

Users need to get work done. If it’s reasonably easy to use and does the job, they don’t need to switch. If your product requires training, it still needs design work. If your market doesn’t get it, they need skills training, not product training.

UX should guide usage and discovery

To say that this is only a skills problem would be erroneous. Just like the tacit-explicit relationship in knowledge, technology is a way of doing things, an operating system if you will. But users don’t know what they don’t know. At some level, workflow should guide success. More importantly, a brilliant taxonomy or schema of that usage may start with immediate and simple, but ideally it enables discover and usage of advanced features in a natural way.

How: Engagement should be natural and frictionless

Synchronous versus asynchronous

If you’re a conferencing vendor and want to better enable collaboration, facilitation, presentation, segmentation, conversation, or whatever angle you serve, consider what we do in person:

We walk to a meeting, we stop by the printer, we have a conversation at a water cooler, and all this is informal. Then we enter a room with a formal meeting, trade business cards, and sing kum-bah-yah. Then we exit and the formal fades back to informal.

Online, however, there’s still a rather hard stop between synchronous and asynchronous technologies. Social collaboration is solving a lot of asynch problems, but if we’re going to enable people to engage more naturally, their life flow will need fewer speed bumps.

Right tools, right time

Take the great divide of basic online meetings with advanced, specific use cases (virtual classes, or events). Different products for different use cases. In one sense this isn’t wrong – different use cases integrate different things into the work flow.

Meeting-oriented conferencing is the most prevalent because meetings are more frequent and less specialized than other use cases. But the vast majority of the market still years later doesn’t get why they need your virtual classroom product versus a basic meeting product. Or your webinar product versus your basic meeting product that simply accommodates more concurrent sessions. Or heck, why your few-seat meeting product that also happens to broadcast out an entirely passive view stream to solve your scale problem is a problem.

As mentioned earlier, many people don’t have skills to even know what they should be doing, so they don’t value the more advanced features as you’d hope they would. But therein lies the problem: it’s all the same damn tech.

What users don’t find is the ability to discover stuff as they grow into it. Most of the time they don’t need registration pages or breakout rooms, but instead of thinking “my conferencing vendor must have another product that better accommodates my ability to engage my audience,” they just work around it (and complain about how it’s a sub-par experience to doings stuff in person). Or they sit in their marketing or training department and complain about what they have received from the IT department who doesn’t know any better in what they are buying.

Theoretically one setup page or process could provide every user a progressively revealed set of features that enable simple configurations for their most common usage and the ability to go, “Oh, what’s this?” along the way.

Bonus: a clever vendor would also see that this perfectly maps to understanding user/usage metrics in a way that helps determine which features people value in a way that helps determine what should be free, premium, or somewhere in between. And it’d no longer a product marketing marketecturing swag so much as a data-driven analysis.

Communications intelligence

One big advantage of anything happening on the web is that it’s trackable and reportable, right?

Oh, except when it comes to the synchronous communications. As a sales manager I can see how many meetings my team had, but not what the content of those meetings were. As a marketing manager I can see who communicated formally on a registration page or in a poll, but not informally at the sentiment-of-communication level (the digital equivalent of walking around a room and listening to what people are talking about). As an individual communicator I have nothing but an audio recording that would waste a lot of time to analyze (if I wanted to analyze the real time meeting posthumously), but I also don’t have a connection to the getting a “read” on the room before I walk on stage or gauge them during my presentation. Outside of my ability to see a few people on webcam, I feel cut off relative to if I was doing the same thing in person.

But, as one friend of mine said, “What if you could know what your wife was thinking before she said something?”

That kind of stuff exists everywhere except in RTC (real time communications). Yes, I know about your attention meter and that you track drop-off rates and integrate Twitter streams, etc. But take it from a guy who presents virtually for a living and teaches others to do so: most people don’t know how to hork together their own solution or have the skills to what to do if they did (I teach both).

But that’s the opportunity for the industry to help users engage. Your UX probably sucks because they have to go hunting for the tools that enable engagement, and that’s if they know what they’re looking for.

The opposite would be not only exposing those tools to the users, but doing so in a way that helps them discover what they didn’t know they needed.

The bottom line

In a professional context, engagement serves the purpose of gaining attention, shaping meaning, and building trust. Unlike doing so in-person, using technology further enables capture and analysis to improve both present and future discussions.

There are plenty of examples in the world where technology has become nearly transparent in the process of serving a purpose. In time I trust the world of conferencing will become more so, too, as some leader somewhere figures out how to make it a more natural, integrated, and intelligent part of remote communication.

Or maybe it won’t. Just don’t be surprised when your shelf ware-as-a-service doesn’t bring in the renewal dollars you’d hoped.