This isn't quite how the curtain-raising science busking in Green Park was supposed to turn out.
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I struggled for years in an agony of conscious incompetence with my powerpoint presentations. I knew inside there was a better way, but still I resisted and told myself lies, such as, "the audience will never notice the difference", "seeing the words will reinforce what I say", "how can I remember what to say unless I put all the key points on the screen?"
Yes, this approach takes longer to prepare presentations.
Yes, this approach means you have to know your presentation much better in order to deliver it with confidence.
But this approach also shows your audience that you respect them and that you actually care about how well they understand your message.
So go out there and spread the word - there is another, non-lethal, way to use powerpoint. But the process of changing your powerpoint habits is a bit like the chain-smoker who becomes an anti-smoking zealot. Remember there may be many presenters out there who are still using the lethal version, but who desperately want to change, and be sensitive in your critique of their slideshows.
]]>Ian’s drastically over-length, casually dangerous, utterly ridiculous performance won the coveted ‘Best Demo’ award. This is a still from the video, which I’ll get around to cutting any decade now.
]]>But hey, the point of doing this was to start climbing the learning curve. Turns out it’s not quite as trivial as I’d hoped.
Update Sunday 26th July: OK, we’re back up and running, having torn down and completely rebuilt the blog. You should be able to register, and I’ll add you to the system so you can write up sessions or add thoughts following the event.
Sadly, most of the tweets added during the event have disappeared, since they’ve dropped off the first page of Twitter search results. You can still find them via Twitter, but they’re not archived here. I’ll see if I can find a way of adding them back in, but that looks like it’s going to involve my reading Twitter’s API documents. Bleurgh.
]]>Not quite. I’ve had a blast, some good arguments, and feel a smidge of remorse for having being rather negative about the ISOTOPE project. I hope at least some of my criticism was positive. I’ll write it up here and you can judge for yourself.
Also to come over the weekend, hopefully:
Dear Science Museum,
I am a science teacher at a secondary school in north London. I watched your “Danger High Voltage” show at the BIG event on Wednesday 22nd July and I am sorry to report that I won’t be booking you for my school. I was deeply disappointed by the show, as were many of other people who watched. I’d like to share with you some of the reasons why I wouldn’t want my students to see it.
My concerns are primarily at the levels of structure and detail, rather than performance. Giving explainers a show of this standard is asking too much of them; as a result, their performances, in my opinion, lacked sincerity.
Specific concerns:
Science wrong or inadequately explained: There were numerous factual errors in the script and in the animations you showed on screen.
Disappointing or inappropriate demonstrations: The Tesla coil is an impressive piece of apparatus, but, on its own, is not sufficient to make for a truly exciting demo-based show. You missed the opportunity to show a number of classic static electricity demonstrations, which would have been more informative and entertaining than the approach you took. I was not alone in finding your use of the Faraday cage at the end of the show confusing. I’m not sure that it was even explained.
The audience participation seemed largely gratuitous. It needn’t be. When done well, audience participation can help people to engage more deeply with the subject you’re presenting.
The tone of the show was strange. It felt like it was trying too hard to be funny and that this was the show’s main goal.
You can probably respond to my criticisms by telling me that you’ve had positive feedback from thousands of children and their teachers. I’m sure you have — children love a break from their lessons and teachers love it when other people come in and take up lesson time. It’s easy to amuse a bunch of kids for an hour or so — I do it on a regular basis. But I also teach them stuff.
As I said at the start of this letter, I was disappointed by your show; “The Science Museum” is a recognised brand, one that teachers like myself associate with quality in science communication. I’m not a marketing expert, but I suspect that a show of the quality presented at the BIG event would, if seen widely, “damage your brand”. To be honest, I don’t care about this, but I do care about the standard of educational material that is presented to young people, so I hope you’ll take on board some of the comments above and make the appropriate changes to your show.
Yours,
Alom Shaha
]]>More later.
(The puffin, by the way, is a performance/voice exercise from Elin Roberts of the Centre for Life. It's just ridiculous enough.)
]]>Will try to post pics later. There's video, but you've stuff all chance of getting that out of me tonight.
]]>…which fed rather nicely into Andy Lloyd’s session on excellence, drawing comparisons from the arts sector. Ironically, I missed half of that because I was having a discussion in the corridor about how important it would be to have a discussion about… er… the same thing. That’ll teach me to read the programme.
Continuing the theme of ‘deep discussions in the corridors,’ however, I’ve just had a rather head-bending chat with Jen de Witt of Kings and theatre director/consultant Stephen Wrentmore. Key points I want to remember:
This may all sound a bit head-in-hands dour. That’s not the mood here. It feels like the discussion has moved on rather dramatically from the session Paul McCrory and I did last year (‘You’re all Rubbish!’), and that people are much more keen to discuss peer review, shared goals, and ongoing vision. I’m very excited about what I’ve seen today. I’m not sure what it’s for, yet, but that’s not the point.
]]>Mind you, he’s often fizzing with rage. I think he enjoys it.
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This isn't quite how the curtain-raising science busking in Green Park was supposed to turn out.
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BIG Chair Noel Jackson gets proceedings underway in the Faraday Theatre
]]>If you're present at the Ri, sign up here and prod me to grant you access. I have a couple of spare laptops with me if you left yours behind, and for lashing together YouTube video or wrangling stills.
Alternatively, tweets with the hashtag #big09 will be pulled into this page. I'm working to make the output a bit less rubbish, but no promises there.
Let's see how it goes.
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