Last week, I heard a great presentation at Computers in Libraries by Tasha Bergson-Michelson, a Search Education Curriculum Fellow at Google. One of the first things she asked the audience was whether anyone remembered the specific search techniques they had learned the day before. Very few hands were raised.
That got me thinking about the disconnect between presentations that are intended to transmit skills and those that are intended to provide insight. The latter, if done well, are always memorable; one of the reasons I love Twitter is that I can tweet insights from a presentation so that I find them later. A presentation that teaches skills – search techniques, for example – can often devolve into a recitation of features. “Google does this. Google does this other thing. Bing does this thing...”
The challenge for speakers is to make the information in practical presentations sticky. Tasha and I both use stories to engage audiences. When Tasha is teaching children search skills, for example, she challenges them to find information on D.B. Cooper, or the curse of King Tut’s tomb using Google. Give them something fun to search and they’ll learn how.
Summary: show people why and then they’ll pay attention to how
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