Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the Measure IT meeting hosted at the National College of Ireland on behalf of Mulley Communications. I finally got to meet @damienmulley himself, though I had been at one of his presentations before. He was kind - he said he occasionally read my blog.
The event was divided into three parts. First @Rowan_Manahan, who runs Fortify Services a consulting and career management firm, gave an excellent presentation on how to present data. His essential message was to keep things simple, and not to clutter the screen. He showed us how to strip away unnecessary clutter so that data can be presented to your audience in the most effective way. He can also do some cool things with PowerPoint. Either the guy is a genius or a natural - his timing for everything was perfect. One of the best presentations using PowerPoint that I have seen.
Next up was @stephenoleary who is an online media analyst at O'Leary Analytics - he showed us some clever outputs from marketing campaigns by trawling the web (Twitter, Facebook, etc) for mentions of a particular product, in this case Juan Sheet kitchen paper. Is it really cool what he can do to determine if comments and responses of Internet users indicate a positive or negative reaction to an ad. While Stephen produced a lot of data, I was hooked on the idea of using analytics for measuring marketing impact. Plenty of food for thought about how to use this idea for disciplines other than marketing.
Finally, Damien Mulley gave us a task to establish the best time to post on-line. In our group we mostly talked about Twitter. We didn't suggest a particular time, but did discuss a lot about the effectiveness and context of a post. I found that there are a lot of clever things you can do to get your message across, though the most interesting thing to remember was when one member of the group said that she knows that it is time to go to sleep when Ellen DeGeneres starts tweeting!
Excellent session - I hope Measure IT comes back to the College again.
Hi Eugene,
ReplyDeleteI just came across your post - a great analysis of what was a very lively morning in NCIRL and thank you so much for your feedback on my contribution.
I'd like to confirm that I am neither a genius nor a natural - my 10 minute talk was an attempt to show how Slideware, when properly used, can enhance the delivery of information, like the survey result case study that we used.
The successful ebb and flow of a short talk like that is very much dependent on two things - absolute clarity on what you wish to impart, combined with deep rehearsal so that the verbiage and visuals come together to deliver that message.
So, no bolt from the blue and no hardwired talent required - just hard slog over a hot keyboard. The single most common piece of feedback I get when I work with clients on presentations is: "I had no idea how much work it took to get any good at this."
As Muhammad Ali always said: "You train hard, so you can fight easy."
Thanks again
Rowan