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August 13, 2005

Academic Rock Show!

It was a nice coincidence that right after blogging about how academics can be made accessible to a wider audience, I was able to attend a talk by a genuine academic rock star: Edward Tufte. He wrote The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, among other books, is retired from academia, and is on some kind of national tour (a woman who I do a lot of side contract work for paid my way to the workshop). Tufte is a guy with genuine intellectual insights and an impressive franchise. A killer combination, and he slayed me! At the end of his talk (which he made a point of ending a little early -- what a genius! More about this below ...) I was ready to stand up with a lighter in my hand and scream, "DO FREEBIRD!!" but, discretion being the better part of cool, as his roadies broke down and he signed books, I filed out in an orderly fashion with the other 500 attendees to check out the merch table. And what merch there was! Books, posters, special graph paper -- frankly, I think he missed a real opportunity by not offering t-shirts and coffee mugs, but I guess you could consider that some kind of integrity. The merch he does offer is quite nice -- wonderful production value, beautiful to look at and hold, engaging and interesting to read. He publishes it all himself (I'm telling you, he is a franchise).

Anyway, ET (as he calls himself) while specializing in the visual representation of data, had a lot to say generally about making presentations which gives me new perspectives on the issues I raised in my last entry, as well as confirming much of what I already thought. He reproduces some of it here.

His website also has an interesting forum on making presentations where he quotes Terry Teachout's guide to public readings at length -- I notice that Teachout and I agree on much! But I am extra impressed to see that he suggests an even shorter period of time for performances than I do -- 30 minutes:

"(3) Time the speech exactly. Do not under any circumstances exceed your allotted time. In fact,

(4) Never speak for as long as you're asked. In my experience, thirty minutes is ideal, especially if you're new at this."

He's talking about readings, not lectures, but still, 30 minutes!!

The thing about Tufte was, he was a great model of all this stuff: He gave us lots of cool stuff to look at while he talked so when our attention wandered we were still getting his message; he ended early; he had interesting visuals but didn't over-rely on them. One thing that I noticed him doing which he doesn't mention as a specific strategy was that he began the sessions after each break by talking about things that weren't directly related to the topic, but were interesting enough to get you back in your seat in a hurry. In other words, he didn't try to herd us back into our seats, but drew us to them, and he also didn't start with things that people who came in a bit late and missed would be screwed without having heard (actually, since most of what he said is in his publications, it wouldn't really matter, anyway). As an overtly bossy person, this carrot approach to getting people back in their seats was a good model for me.

Finally, although it was something like a 6 hour seminar, because each segment ended early and the whole thing ended early overall, at the end of the day I felt refreshed and excited at the end rather than exhausted.

He also challenged my assumption that for a learning experience to be "interactive" you have to break people into groups or what have you. What he said was something like, if you give someone with a bunch of information to think about, like a complex chart, that is itself interactive because people will start interpreting it on their own. I still think that you have to be a rock star to get away with lecturing people for 6 hours, but then again, what about those get rich quick on real estateseminars?. Those things last a weekend. I'll bet I could learn a little something about engaging presentations from them. Maybe not so much about how to convey information, or even how to make money at real estate, but I'll bet you don't get bored.

Anyway, if you have the chance to see his talk (and have a lot of money or someone will pay for it) I'd say definitely go. He has a student rate, too. Otherwise, his books are cool, and his website is pretty good, too. Maybe I'll start following him from town to town and call myself a Tufte-Head (or something).

P.S. I almost forgot -- one of my favorite parts was when he told us all to use the gender neutral plural, "their," rather than switching around with "his or hers" etc. in presentatations or trainings to avoid sexism or speaking awkwardly. I've been in favor of this forever and it was great to see someone senior endorsing the approach. I do it in writing, too, which he may or may not endorse but I figure it's just one of those things we have to change from the ground up.

Posted by mary at August 13, 2005 12:58 PM

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