“People often forget about involving the audience in their speech” - interview with Roman Poborchim, presentation coach



    In the new issue of “Without Slides”, my guest was Roman Poborchiy , an expert in the preparation of presentations. Most recently, Roman’s article appeared on our blog with an analysis of the report by Sergey Kuksenko at JPoint 2016. Now it’s time to publish an interview with Roman himself. What were we talking about?

    • How is the technical report at the conference fundamentally different from the lecture at the university on the same topic?
    • What are the most common speaker mistakes?
    • What is the difference between speaking with and without slides ?

    Under the cut, as always, there is a complete transcript of the interview.



    How it all began


    First question: Roma, how did you get brought from techies into such an area as preparing performances?

    - The answer is rooted in my time at the St. Petersburg office of Intel, 2004-2008. It was a rather small office, at the peak - 60–70 people. Like a small colony of overseas metropolis. Many people working in American or other world companies have come across this.

    And, of course, a small colony hangs on a cost-saving thread all the time, no matter how good, talented, helpful people work in it. As if all the time, the scissors next click. From time to time, representatives of the metropolis come on inspection visits, and we need to tell them what we are doing, how cool it is, it is useful and important that they leave in awe of them.

    This is further complicated by the fact that you need to speak English. But in English, everyone who needed it spoke normally normally. But to take something clearly and meaningfully to tell something, as it turned out, was a problem. And people did not understand the importance of this, and I myself did not immediately realize everything, of course. And there was a need to make it so that people could clearly explain to overseas colleagues what we are doing, why it is important and what good it can be. I just needed to be able to speak coherently.

    That's about where it went. We started to attend some kind of training there, Intel has its own training system. There is an opportunity to take a course and after that become a certified Intel coach.

    - And what is such a course?

    - It’s very basic, one-day, you have to make up a lot later yourself. Some very simple things: “You know, my friend, it’s useful at the end of the story to have morality and clearly highlight it. And in the beginning it’s useful to tell you what problem you are actually solving. ” Important behavioral things - how to look, how to wave hands - everyone still has their own, and for the day of training, this does not work out, this is later. But if you even have a coherent story, then it will not be shameful, but normal.

    - Good. Do you communicate with other people who deal with this issue? Of those with whom I talked, for example, Alexei Kapterev comes to my mind .

    “I still haven’t met Kapterev.” I am not familiar with him, but I follow what he writes, and in general I know him from his work.

    - Yes. Do you agree, for example, with his famous presentation “Death through PowerPoint”?

    - Well, there are eternal values, one cannot disagree with them. “Death through PowerPoint” is a classic in the sense that the truth is written there. But there is just the first step of the truth.

    As in the proof, where there are necessary conditions and sufficient. That is not to make the mistakes listed there - this is a necessary condition for a good presentation, of course. But not always enough, as it seems to me. That is, this is just the basic thing that everyone needs to know, but then after that there is still work, work, work.

    What is good and what is bad"


    - In your opinion, what is a “good presentation” and what is a “bad” one?

    - I have several criteria that are not interconnected. Suppose, if I spoke, and they didn’t ask me a single question, it means that I didn’t speak a little about that, and somehow I didn’t get there. If, on the contrary, some kind of discussion ensued, and people ask not idiotic questions, but questions “about”, then I spoke well. This is not a description of a good / bad presentation, but it is a criterion, for me one of the main ones. This is true for technical things, and for some more universal.

    In fact, a good presentation is such a presentation, as a result of which the listener has some opportunity to change his life for the better. If he understands roughly what needs to be done, how to do it and why. Further, God forbid, three out of a hundred people will do something, and the world will become better. Well, cool?

    - You are now actively preparing speakers, including for technical conferences such as HighLoad ++ and Heisenbag , right? What are the main problems you face when you help presenters make material?

    - Yes, this is a good question, I wanted to talk about it. It is true that speakers are at different levels. There are very experienced people, although they are not immune from stocks. And there are those who not so long ago began to speak. And it's probably more interesting to talk about beginner mistakes.

    Lyrical digression: training is appropriate to compare with hair growth. Now, if your hair grows by three millimeters on your head, then it will be very noticeable compared to what it is now. If I also grow up, it will be less noticeable. And our operator has long hair, and if they grow another three millimeters, it will be completely invisible.

    And from this point of view, training at the very beginning, on beginners, gives the maximum effect, because there are basic things that are quickly set, and they are immediately visible. These are the three millimeters. It’s convenient, yes, that you have such a hairstyle. We managed to illustrate all this.

    - Friends, learn in your performances to choose the right metaphors!

    - So. There are several things in the speeches of novice IT people who just blow my brain all the time. I struggle with it tirelessly. The first thing is the addiction to screenshots.

    Here I have some kind of internal tool. And no one knows how it is arranged, but it is not very beautiful. Internal tools are rarely very beautiful.

    - Well, they don’t have a task to sell. Therefore, investing in beauty is not the most useful ...

    - And the person says: here we are doing such a thing, but for this we have such a tool. And you must definitely show somewhere some small letters, five rows of menus, something else, some colorful things. Nothing is visible, nothing is clear, but for some reason you must definitely demonstrate this screenshot.

    There is such a problem that if the viewer even sees some text on the screen, he tries to read it, somehow comprehends it, and spends on it his mental powers, which, frankly, are not enough. And screenshots are appropriate in those places where you tell how you remade some kind of interface. So I had it, I solved this problem, and it became so. In this place it is all appropriate and good. But in such places people for some reason often instead of screenshots already show the code. So I redid something, I have a code ...

    - And what is convenient - I took my favorite instrument, say, IntelliJ IDEA. I took a screenshot on Retina in high resolution and it fits perfectly on the slide.

    - There are well-known tools, yes - IntelliJ IDEA, screenshots of search engines. Everyone understands how Yandex search works. If you can show something familiar to people in a familiar context, that's fine.

    - Because this person associates with himself immediately.

    - He understands this, he knows what is happening. But here they show some of their own, completely unknown, strange pictures ... And it's just some kind of plague! This is massively happening. If I prepare speakers, then I’m struggling with this: buddy, take this away, better, damn it, tell me in words. In general, press button B, put out the screen and tell us the words.

    In general, incomprehensible screenshots are one plague, one scourge. The second scourge, which, it seems to me, is due to our technical training, from university experience.

    Here is the riddle. What is the fundamental difference between a technical report at a conference and a lecture at the university on the same topic?

    - From whose point of view? From the point of view of the listener or speaker?

    - In general, from the point of view of the organization of the process.

    - My understanding is this. A student comes to a lecture in order to get a test or exam. He has an ultimate goal, and everything obeys this. When a person comes to a conference, it is not always clear what is his ultimate goal. And therefore, it is more difficult with motivation.

    - In short, it’s not interesting with you, you know everything.

    - Well, I do this professionally, Yes.

    - Yes, I think that the fundamental difference is that in one case, students have a test or exam at the end, and so you, as a lecturer, have a whip. And with the help of this whip, you can force people to return to this material, to revise it, even if they are not very interested in the process. But with the report at the conference this is not so. And if you are not carried away, not interested, did not get into the topic right away, then they will never return to this.

    Therefore, I very much believe that the methodical presentation - “but it is divided into these four categories, but it is divided in turn like that ...” - is appropriate for a lecture, but much less appropriate for a technical report at a conference, because it lulls people.

    - An interesting dichotomy is obtained. It is probably no secret that the quality of teaching at universities is disgusting. Why? Because the students are somehow motivated to get the test, and the teacher is less than usually motivated. There are exceptions, but the setting of the process and environment set such conditions that the teacher reads anyhow (usually disgusting), and the student is forced to somehow struggle with this. Reading additional literature, talking with neighbors and so on. But at a technical conference it turns out the opposite, more requirements for speakers.

    - Well yes. But the speaker’s happiness is that he usually usually speaks for forty minutes or an hour at a technical conference, rather than a semester course. To prepare a semester course of such quality as one performance per hour is, of course, a huge job. And it, of course, has been done for years. And where to go? Yes, it’s hard.

    Actually, what are we starting from? If people did not specifically think about it, they have a model in front of their eyes. And in accordance with this model, people, in fact, begin to speak.

    Here, for example, is a very frequent case, which also saddens me very much. We need to talk about a tool, and the whole story is built around the documentation for this tool or library: “There are such functions, there are such functions, there are such parameters,” and all this is consistently told.

    A person can then read the documentation himself. Moreover, you still cannot replace the documentation with a report. Because if I want to use this library or this tool, I still have to read the document, I will not limit myself to a report.

    In the report it is better to focus on some motivational things, on why this is necessary, what tasks can be solved with the help of this thing. And what interesting features there are that you won’t immediately read about in the dock. I do not know if you have come across, are you actively programming at all, or not already?

    - I program a little.

    - Yes, here I am. But my experience, when you watch something new, says that usually the examples in the dock are very simple, and the non-obvious “step right, step left” in the dock are not covered at all. Naturally, on the first attempt, this always does not work, and you have to dodge somehow. When I started, there was no StackOverflow yet, nothing, there was really no Internet, and I had to call someone: “how is something done here?” Terrible thing.

    Well, well, don’t have to talk like that. It is better to talk about what is not there, about what is interesting, and about what can be done with this.



    About motivation and performance


    - An interesting question is the motivation of the speakers. I saw many speakers who start asking the question: “why do you need this”? He says, "for this." Why do you want this? “Um, hmm ...” and that’s it. When you start working with a person, do you find out his motivation?

    - If you recall the same Kapterev, then in order to find out the motivation of a person, you need to work with him for several days. And to get to the bottom, you need to create a very trusting relationship. This is not always possible; there simply is not always time for it.

    I suggest that there are several typical motivations. One of them is recruiting. If I came to talk about what we did, then it is impossible out loud, but I want to somehow shout implicitly with the whole non-verbal voice: look guys, what cool things we do, come to us to work. I think this is a common case.

    - Yes, quite frequent.

    - It happens in the opposite direction: guys, look what cool things I can do, hire me, please, someone for a lot of dollars. Sometimes, less often, it happens that a person really says: “Look, what I found an interesting thing, the whole world should know about it simply because - well, hell ...” Of course, it is most interesting to work with such people. And they, however, do happen.

    “Are these the people that are easiest to work with?”

    - Not easier - more interesting. Because the most interesting thing is to work with a person who has something to say. If a person with a recruiting purpose has come, he does not always have something to say. He sucks something out of his finger, extrudes, tries - hard. And if a person has something hot inside, it bursts into it, and he wants to share it with the world - with such a person it’s just interesting, you are very energized from it.

    “So you are an energy vampire?”

    “Yes, of course.” My own energy is small, yes.

    - Let's say you prepared a man. Then you look what comes out of it, the speeches themselves, or is there usually not enough time to watch? I slightly transform the question: as a rule, what can be done, what cannot be done?

    - It happens in very different ways. There is another such topic about "friend or foe", now there will be a long digression.

    Why, in fact, it is interesting for me to work with technical specialists, with IT specialists: I myself have been an IT specialist in the past, and I can talk about some of the IT topics, demonstrate some kind of erudition, at least. And although these are generally unrelated things, but if at the beginning of the conversation I manage to ask the person some informative questions on the technical side of the matter, then for some reason (mysticism!), This increases his confidence in me as an instructor by presentation.

    “Why mysticism?” This should increase confidence. “Friend or foe,” you said it very clearly.

    - Test for your friend or foe, yes. If you manage to get through, then you can do more. Then I do not have to somehow struggle and convince a person at every point, but he readily tries to do everything himself.

    - Well, he begins to trust you in one particular area ...

    - ... and this applies to surrounding things. In general, in the process of work, I often know myself that I managed to do a lot with these people, and almost nothing happened with these people. And I won’t lie that everything is working out right with everyone. Of course, there are people with whom I cannot find a common language, and this is normal. I’m comforting myself so much that this is normal.

    And, of course, I myself am also a person, it’s especially interesting for me to watch where, it seems to me, a lot has been done. At the same RIT ++, which was in May-June, I talked with about 80 speakers. Of course, I couldn’t see all 80 reports on the spot, because many of them go in parallel. But I’ll gradually watch the video as it is ready. This is not to say that I will definitely look at everything, but I will try. But there are those that you definitely want, because ...

    - ... a lot has been invested there.

    - And a lot has been invested, and there the material itself is interesting, that is, the start is good.

    - Do you have some approximate percentage separation inside, how many have managed to help, and which not? In how many cases do you see the effect?

    - I would say that probably a third to a third to a third. That is, about a third of the cases give a great effect, about a third some kind of moderate effect (rather in details), and in about a third of the cases the effect is very small.

    - But it’s also interesting: it’s more methodologically correct, probably, to first make a review of reports, and then make a decision about whether a person speaks or does not speak?

    - Yes, we discussed this with Oleg Bunin, and, in general, he also came to the same conclusion. It’s just technically very difficult, because you need to collect all the applications in advance, look at all this in advance, and only then do something. Well, are you organizing conferences yourself?

    - You just need to expand the training period.

    - To collect something in advance, to do something in advance - this is not at all in our national cultural tradition. That is, it is simply difficult.

    Sometimes this is due to the fact that you really have all the time loaded. And you just have the opportunity to do something only at the last moment. But more often, of course, this comes from gouging than from objective workload. This is a universal commentary, and not with respect to any specific organizers of specific conferences.

    “Do you like working more when a particular person comes to you, for example, and says,“ I want to speak there, ”or with a conference that has a pool of speakers who are somehow preparing there? Or, for example, when a company comes to you and says “we have management coming from America, we need to do something for them”? Where is the motivation higher?

    - Of course, the motivation is higher for an individual who has come. This is a person who understands (or thinks that he understands) the need for this preparation. He has no feeling that they drove him here. But in the case when a person comes himself - this is the rarest case, of course, but it happens - motivation, of course, is above all. And usually this is just the kind of person who has something to say.

    - Motivation, it seems to me, is generally the most difficult moment and one of the key in this matter. Because, in our experience, it often turns out that the speaker has no motivation. If you start digging, you realize that either the person does not want to talk about it, or not get to the bottom of it. This is difficult because it is not clear what its purpose is, what needs to be improved, how to improve. Digging up the ultimate goal is one of the key stories.

    - Not so long ago, I talked with people at the HR conference "Find the Answer." And there, HRs come and ask: how do people get to speak in general? HR can’t always, looking at a person, understand whether they have something to say meaningful or not. Because this is another subject area.

    “They just don't have the right knowledge, yes.”

    - No knowledge. And there is no silver bullet. Maybe she is, but I do not know her.

    Firstly, there is always a person who has recently successfully completed a project. The project has been implemented, and there is clearly some kind of benefit. And in the process of the project there were some difficulties, but he overcame them successfully and learned something. Such a person needs to be caught, and there are great chances that he will have something to say. That he has some kind of knowledge that directly bursts him.

    Do not take any person and make him speak. We must look for a person who has something burning inside, and he wants to share it with the world. But there are probably fewer such people than the places of speakers at the conference. What to do? I do not know.

    - Still, for example, you can pay attention that the person began to code less and communicate more with the team. Some kind of thing. But this is already some kind of HR, and, no offense to HR'am will be said, it seems to me, they can not do this. It seems that the entire HR in our industry is degenerating into recruitment.

    Classic HR is a bunch of everything: hiring, training, retention, evaluation. Also, as our friend Ilya Balakhnin likes to say, in HR there are two additional things: HR marketing (HR brand) and corporate culture. But out of the six, basically, IT Co. is engaged only in the first - recruitment. And to do everything else and acquire skills that allow you to analyze what kind of person, where, at what moment you need to cling to and what to do with it, they simply do not know how.


    - It seems to me that without formal separation, with the alleged, implied, part of these functions is entrusted to the leaders of these employees. Moreover, the leaders themselves are not aware of this.

    - And nobody teaches them?

    - No one teaches, and no one warns. Well, in general, is it considered that a manager should do this?

    - In theory, the head in conjunction with HR'om. It seems to me that HR should simply be a methodologist and explain to the manager what he needs to do in this situation, in this, in this.

    - The head has specific technical knowledge, and HR has a methodology. Well, in an ideal world, it somehow works like that. I have never lived in an ideal world.

    - Most people with whom I communicate do not understand what it should be. This is some amazing fact. It seems to me that there is potential here. Perhaps, developing such a culture, we will come to some kind of awareness by companies ... Speeches are not only conferences. There are rallies inside. If your team leader can’t connect two words at a rally, then it’s a blow to you, in the whole of your team and business, in the end. Because he does not communicate, he does not know how to speak, he does not know how to explain intelligibly.

    - Yes, for example, we recruited two or three newcomers, and we need to tell them some introductory lecture. What are we doing here, what is happening, why is this necessary.

    - And all these problems about which you speak, get out there too. What is the difference, I speak in a foreign audience or for beginners, for example?

    - No, absolutely.

    About the culture of manipulation and silence


    “Or I tell at some annual gathering of my company what our department has done.”

    - Well, here’s “what our department did,” these quarterly or annual reports - this is still a little separate song.

    - And why?

    - This, generally speaking, is the most nasty kind of speech that I can only remember.

    - Why? A great place to, for example, boast of some results.

    - To brag ... Often such speeches are more or less regulated, and you need to tell not only about where you have something to brag about, but about everything else. It often happens that in some place there is no progress. Or vice versa, in general, some kind of trouble happened, and you still need to talk about this.

    And besides, the purpose of such a story, often a message to the audience, a message to the authorities, it is this: everything is fine with us, do not touch us, do not interfere with our work. When you had a breakthrough, you discovered something, made some new instrument or something else cool, you can say: “Look, what cool thing I've done, look, use it all, here you are such will be the joy of it. ” Or "Here, look, we have saved 3,000 man-years per year for our users through our implementation."

    This is right my favorite quote. There is an employee in Yandex Andrei Plakhov, a very interesting person. You can read it both on LiveJournal and on Facebook, and directly enjoy it. And one day, according to the results of his introduction, he said that with our new search engine algorithm, we saved 3,000 people per year for users. According to my estimates, this is about 15 seconds a day. 15 seconds a day is not interesting for a person. And 3,000 man-hours per year at all is cool.

    - Let's talk about manipulations, this is very interesting. I helped some companies prepare various reports, and often saw people starting to manipulate this.
    For example, we had such numbers there, these became. And instead of showing a graph from zero, they zoom in on a specific piece of that graph and show a fucking-up curve. And a person who does not really look at the numbers has the feeling that there is some kind of wild progress in this place of business. And when you really look at the picture, you see that there, in general, the cat wept.


    - This is the best-known example of data manipulation, yes. This is even Steve Jobs did.

    - Well, everyone is doing it one way or another. How do you feel about this?

    - I have a negative attitude to this, of course. Because I position myself as a specialist in technical presentations, and not in sales. Probably, everything is different in the sellers; there you can’t be fooled - you won’t sell, pysch-pyshch, all things. And I never knew how to sell, and this is a big problem in life, of course. Because you often need to sell.

    In general, many situations in life are the same sale of an elephant or a cat in a poke. But, nevertheless, in sales presentations, you can also do without it, or, if you can do it so that you are not suddenly taken out to clean water, then it may be okay.

    In technical presentations, people often do this not even out of malicious intent. Sometimes a person simply sees: well, yes, I have a little difference there, but it has always been 50%, all my life, five previous years. And now it has become 50.5%. It must be demonstrated. Maybe it's 50 million dollars a year.

    - Well, yes, if it really displays some real numbers. I liked the story with Amazon that they have, 100 milliseconds - this is ...

    - ... this is 1% of sales. And for Amazon, 1% of sales is a lot.

    - In such cases, I clearly understand why to show it.

    - I, in fact, a supporter in such a situation to do so. First we show an honest schedule, from zero. And then we say: look, we have changes on the scale of the whole chart that are small, but on the scale of some money and something else they are actually significant. After that, we can flip the graph, clearly warning the audience about it, and continue to reason on some small scale.

    When I worked in the same Yandex, everyone watched the market share, this is such a popular internal dimension. But it moves somewhere from 50 to 60% on a scale of years. And on the scale of one year, this is some plus or minus interest. And, nevertheless, it is clear that there is a lot of money. And it is necessary to act in this way and to look.

    That is, I am an opponent of manipulation. Especially if a person easily comes across this, and you can clearly see that this is a manipulation. If he hid several floors of the chart from below or from above, and anyone notices it right away ...

    - It's just that there is culture. If this is again in the format of some quarterly presentations, then you are faced with such a problem that many free wills do it.

    If you go and tell your colleague, “Listen, you lied here,” then he will be angry with you and may take revenge on you at work. And if you don’t tell him that, then a certain culture of silence arises and something like mutual responsibility. That we all do this, we, in general, we understand that all this is some bullshit, not a report. Fraud and all that.

    Here a loop of positive feedback arises, roughly speaking. This phenomenon becomes part of the culture. Does it make sense to fight this?


    - Well, firstly, this can be fought outside. As a person who has come from outside and helps someone, it costs nothing to me: “Listen, my friend, you are doing some kind of nonsense.” He will say, let’s say, “Yes, I’m doing nonsense,” will be corrected. Or he will say “No, we all do this, in a different way ...” Well, how? But in life, how? Not presentations, but in general. Often you have to cut corners somewhere and do something that everyone does, otherwise it doesn’t work.

    There are very principled people who never make a deal with their own conscience. But they have two ways. Either they get knocked out somewhere into super-great people, but there are very few of them, or somehow they finish their life path very quickly.

    - I came up with an interesting role for you, it is called a "prosecutor." Imagine: the CEO of the company hires you, who says: “Here I will have presentations here, and for sure people will jam something in them”. You as a specialist, you can probably quickly see that you are being deceived.

    - Well, it depends on the art of deceiving.

    - That is, this is such a struggle.

    - Of course. It seems to me that the most interesting thing to talk with accountants on this subject is that they know most about it. There is a struggle, as they say, of armor and shell.

    - Indeed, it turns out like the struggle of the seller and the buyer. I sell the results of my work for the year, for example. And my boss is trying to buy from me, or vice versa.

    - Well, this is not very interesting for me to do.

    - On the other hand, this is a business, it is good, maybe money.

    - Oh well them. It is not interesting. What we do, we do not only for the sake of money, but also because it seems interesting to us. There is such a wonderful author Bob Townsend, I don’t know if he is still alive. The book that I want to quote, sixty of some year of release, is called “Up the Organization” . I don’t remember if it was translated into Russian, I read it in English.

    This is the dude who made the Avis rental office. Now Avis and Hertz have everything in neighboring stands, they are all friends there already. But at the time of Townsend there was a concrete struggle. And he did a lot to promote this company. And the book “Up the Organization” is such a collection of tips, each of which fits into one page, or even less. And one of his advice is this: you can’t do business for the money. Business needs to be done in order to do something useful, and money should just be a by-product of this. I read it, and just somehow very well lay on the soul. In general, I recommend Townsend's book to everyone.

    - There are different approaches. There are a number of smart and respected people who say the opposite: that business should serve to make money. We are all such, especially the high-profile audience, exalted: "Challenges", "make the world a better place." But in my opinion, the other side ...

    - ... is also there, but I'm not on it.



    About format


    - Good. Have you worked a lot with non-technical presentations? We talked about them here, because "what I see is what I sing," but there are a lot of business presentations, there are corrupt ones. Someone, maybe, at the institute makes them. There are generally presentations without a speaker, you know? For example, which you send by mail, I sometimes do this by the nature of the service. There are generally different rules. Have you ever done this?

    - Let's just say that in this I have more theoretical knowledge than practical. But to send the presentation by mail ... The presentation format is simply not very suitable for this. Here you have a hammer, with a hammer you hammer nails. Do you have a drill, you drill holes with a drill.

    You can also hammer nails with a drill handle. Well, and if you forget something, it’s like luck. It is simply better to use a profile tool for this. By mail, it is better to send text or a link to the wiki page where it is all written. There may be a lot of text, pictures and all things. Why do slides do this? Unclear.

    And, summarizing, it's all about communication. In any communication channel you have some kind of signal and noise. You need to cleanly transmit the existing signal and minimize noise. Just a choice of an adequate direction, an adequate means ...

    - Do you think the presentation does not add this? On the contrary, I like it, because the general approaches, it seems to me, remain the same. One slide is one idea. But you can use other tools. Say, if you speak at a conference, you cannot do a lot of text, because no one will read it.

    If you send by mail, you can make a lot of text, because this way the page will be easier to read. It will be just an A4 page, which is not as expanded as we are used to, but like that. In general, I do not see much difference. Again, you can illustrate something, add a picture and reinforce your thesis with visual proof, as they like to say.


    - Well, I do not know. For example, in the slides, when you open them, it’s at least inconvenient to click on the links, right? In addition, there they always open in the default browser. And if, for example, you want something different, then this is not so convenient.

    I believe that it is better to write a document if you need to send it to read. The difference, perhaps, is not very big, you can hammer a nail with a drill. It will clog normally, it's just not so convenient.

    - This is still changing, and quite interesting: I also travel to conferences a lot, I do them myself and began to notice what can be done and what cannot. Previously, for example, you couldn’t place a link on a slide, because it was not clear what to do with it. And now everyone has Twitter, Instagram, cameras, a mobile phone. A man took it, pulled it out - that's it, he took a picture of you. Interesting things generally appear, for example, QR codes. That is, a person places a QR code on a presentation, they click on it and get anywhere: on a wiki page, on a website, on a specific book on Amazon that the speaker recommends, and so on. Are you introducing something to people in this direction?

    - I somehow do not have such a problem, because the people I work with are quite calm about placing a link on a slide. Well, and to be honest, not such a large crowd of people does all this directly from the phone, and, unfortunately, the Internet from phones does not work as well as we would like everywhere else.

    - As we would like, yes, everyone.

    - But, in general, links are completely normal. And, moreover, people in any case later receive these slides, and can follow this link. At the same time, the link should not be part of the content that you talk a lot about. It is rather an accompanying thing that a person can additionally see. But, in general, it’s normal to put them there.

    I am also a supporter of the need to politely indicate the source. If you, for example, have dashed a picture from somewhere and want to speculate on it somehow. If you received the data from somewhere, it’s quite polite to put a reference where the data came from.

    About the unobvious


    - You recently talked about A / B testing at the CodeFreeze rally and conducted an experiment showing that if a person tries to conduct some kind of speculative testing, take two examples and predict the results, then the result is worse than randomness. Are there any non-obvious things when preparing the presentation, about which it seems that we should do it, but practice shows that this is death?

    - There is a flip side: things that people, on the contrary, often forget and about which they don’t even think about.

    For example, people often forget that in addition to the speaker and slides, there is also an audience, and in addition to telling and showing something, you can often ask her to do something. And proof by practice is a very powerful argument.

    The most beautiful of what I saw is Maxim Dorofeev with his numbers. Everyone must have seen these numbers - this is proof of practice. He asks people to do something, and in one case they succeed, but in the other case they fail. He says: “do you see the difference? I’ll talk about this difference with you now. And that’s it!

    “In this case, you are appealing to the personal experience that you are generating at that moment.”

    - Yes. There are so many different ways to interact with the audience, to engage even a very large audience.

    - To ask questions…

    - You can ask questions in different ways. A question like “who has such a computer and who has another computer” is the most basic, simple level. You can make people think about some things that you show them: "and who believes that this is so, and who believes that so." And people are already involved, they are thinking.

    You can ask people to do something, not just shout in chorus. But sometimes I saw this in the big hall - Orlov and Pankratov did it. It’s not that they got super cool, but it was interesting. They asked people to pair up and do one exercise together. And the hall is large - for several hundred people.

    And the involvement of the audience in their speech, the generation of this personal experience is such a thing that people often forget about. It seems to them that this is difficult, but in fact, the more people you involve, the more friendly they are to you.

    This is the first thing I urge you not to forget. Moreover, if people do something, they do not sleep. And when they listen or look, they can fall asleep. To come to a lecture as a listener after a sleepless night is hard, you will fall asleep. To come to a lecture as a lecturer after a sleepless night is much easier. Because you won’t get anywhere, you’ll come out anyway.

    - Especially in our realities, we understand what the lecturer did at night before the lecture for which he was preparing.

    - Well, for example, yes. The second thing - often people think "everything that I say in one form or another should be reflected on the slides."

    - That is, duplication?

    - About duplication, people already understand that having the full text of their speech duplicated on a slide is bad, because it is a conflict between the auditory and visual channels in the audience. These channels have different bandwidth and speed. What I read, and what they say to me, doesn’t simultaneously enter the brain, and this is bad.

    But that’s not even the point, but “everything that I say should be somehow illustrated on slides.” And here I am telling everyone an example of TED lectures. There is a system there, they are dragging them into it, obviously: you can often notice that people show something, then turn off the screen and tell something without slides, because slides are not needed in this case. Then, when they again need to show something, they turn on the screen again, show: often this is a picture, or a joke, or a diagram. And then they turn it off again and say again.

    - This is so as not to distract?

    - Well, if I can not illustrate something beautiful, bright and understandable, then it’s better for me to not engage in nonsense at all. Do not try to write a text, nothing.

    About animation


    - Interesting, because how it looks classically when a person speaks: there is a person, there is a presentation. And indeed, the focus is back and forth. I often catch mistakes when people make animations on slides, they want to do something beautiful. As a result, it turns out that all the attention is there, no one is listening to the person, and this, of course, absolutely takes the brain out.

    - I’ll also advertise my favorite book, can I?

    - Of course you can.

    - The book is non-profit, you can’t buy it, you can only find it somewhere. As for the slides, the author Alfred Yargus was a great discovery for me. He is a Soviet scientist who wrote the book “The Role of Eye Movements in the Vision Process” in 1965.

    - Eye-tracking?

    - Eye-tracking, yes. This is one of the founders of i-tracking in its modern form, as we know it. He conducted a lot of interesting experiments. Then it was very expensive: he made a physical device that was attached to the eye (you still need to find a volunteer) - a suction cup with a mirror, on the mirror it shone with a beam, and the beam was reflected on photo paper. And thus it was possible to record the trajectory of the eye. It's complicated.

    Now it costs almost nothing to reproduce most of these experiments, because i-tracking has become available. But fundamentally there are some things that it makes sense to simply read and understand for yourself. One of them is just about animation. The movement of our eyes and where we look in the picture are for the most part determined by our mind and what task we consider relevant at the moment, what task we are solving.

    This system has exactly one exception - tracking moving objects. Our eye automatically grabs any moving object and begins to follow it. If the object is large enough, then it is impossible not to follow: the process is interrupted only if you close your eyes. And the brain begins to process what the eye sees. It is clear why nature did this: if something moves towards me, it would be useful for me to pay attention to it.

    - You need to either gobble it up or run away from it, otherwise it will gobble up you.

    “That probably makes sense.” But the practical conclusion is this: if there is an unplanned movement, either on a slide, or I go back and forth, then it will surely distract people's attention. Because any moving object attracts the eye. And a person cannot even physically emulate the tracking of a moving object: he cannot make his eyes move this way, this happens against his will.

    - That is, if a person starts to run, it automatically distracts from the presentation. If a person makes animation at a presentation, then this automatically distracts from the person who is standing.

    - Yes. Therefore, it makes sense to do all this only by thinking carefully, and when you really want to achieve this particular effect.

    - That is, if I want to show the animation, I have to say: “Now we are all looking at the picture.” Everything else will be useless, right?

    “They'll look at the picture anyway.”

    - The focus of attention will be there, of course. Nothing else makes sense at this moment?

    - Depends on what you want. You just need to understand that this thing spontaneously attracts your eyes, like any movement. If we used to tease a cat with a candy wrapper, then we understand that it reacts to movement in the same way as a person: well, that’s it, well, let's see.

    About slides


    - Since we are called “Without Slides” - what can you say about performances without slides and performances with slides? Are there any fundamental differences in terms of the final result, reporting, preparation? For example, at technical conferences, most people are already used to having slides. Like at the institute, when I was studying, we are used to having a blackboard and chalk.

    - Blackboard and chalk are, in fact, also a kind of slides, just making them slower. Absolutely without slides - this is when you just say and do not show anything.

    The difference is very simple actually. If I tell some philosophical concepts, I can do it without slides. I am a great supporter of showing only things that require visual perception on slides. For example, the scheme. A larger diagram is easier to show than to explain in words. It’s much easier to watch the road on a map than to listen with your voice. Well, really?

    Then everything is very simple. If you have any things that you can’t explain with your voice, then these things should be put on slides. And if you can tell everything with your voice, and this is not demonstrated by any meaningful pictures, then we speak in a voice.

    - Also an interesting dichotomy, because in the framework of the same conferences or seminars, usually all people say "where are the slides?" You are well prepared, you have a minimum on the slides that does not distract attention, put them out, and they tell you - nothing is clear on your slides, you told some kind of crap there. It suddenly turns out that the slides that you show during the performance, and the slides that you want to leave separately - this, apparently, should be some different slides.

    - And this is completely normal. I fully believe that you can make two versions of slides. This is not always the case, because it is often PDFs that are published where it is difficult to enter additional information and comments. Although if you really want, then you can go there.

    But if we publish PowerPoint or Keynote, then there is the opportunity to write text comments in slides. And this text makes sense to write there. It also makes sense to write an article and refer to it, damn it. This is perfectly normal. Because these pictures are here to illustrate my story.

    That is, when a person says, “I need your slides,” it really means “I’m generally interested in the topic you are talking about, but I don’t have the time, motivation or anything else to go to your presentation.”

    - Interesting, yes. That is, the person actually says: “So you dug something, it’s interesting, but you yourself aren’t especially interesting to me.”

    - Or something parallel happens for me, that is, not “you are not interesting to me”, but simply could not. This means that I'm interested in what you dug up. In general, the viewer, the reader does not care what form it is, if he is interested. Maybe in the form of an article - okay too.

    - The final question. What do you plan now, which way will you dig?

    - This is a good question, I like it. Somewhere, either at the end of July or at the beginning of August (the interview was recorded in June - approx. Ed.) I want to hold two open events. One "universal", about the script of the speech. And the second - focused just on the interaction with the audience. What are the forms of interactivity, how to prepare for them and how to conduct them. I want to collect examples from famous performances there so that you can watch them. And to try some things right on the spot so that people feel all this.

    The topic with interactive in the near future I am particularly interested. Previously, I had a study, or rather, digging deeper into the topic of diagrams, there is also much to be done, but now I have more or less finished with diagrams and switched to interactive mode.





    The site of Roman Poborchechny: poborchy.ru

    Video from CodeFreeze meetings:


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