e4 Blog » experience http://experiente4blog.com Building a Community of Collaboration! Thu, 01 Dec 2011 22:50:10 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Designing a Brain-Based Event: Adding Interaction http://experiente4blog.com/2010/10/25/designing-a-brain-based-event-adding-interaction/ http://experiente4blog.com/2010/10/25/designing-a-brain-based-event-adding-interaction/#comments Mon, 25 Oct 2010 13:00:37 +0000 Dan Yaman http://experiente4blog.com/?p=2451 In the Brain-Based Events Exchange Café at e4, we talked about ways to engage an audience at an event and make sure that your message is communicated in a way that people will remember. Adding interaction to an event and within presentations is absolutely critical to success.

Studies cite different attention span limits (Dr. [...]]]>

In the Brain-Based Events Exchange Café at e4, we talked about ways to engage an audience at an event and make sure that your message is communicated in a way that people will remember. Adding interaction to an event and within presentations is absolutely critical to success.

Studies cite different attention span limits (Dr. Medina stated 10 minutes), but on average, the adult attention span in a live event is from 5-7 minutes.

That means that in most typical presentations, there is going to be a lot of attention atrophy, and the messaging will be lost. So how does one mitigate against this effect in a typical, 60-minute presentation? By adding interactive elements at regular intervals.

During our exchange café, we brainstormed ways to add interaction within a presentation, and here’s what we came up with as a group:

Add a game:  In our own presentation, we played a game show. In addition to being a way to review, preview and present the information in a unique way, it also added an element of energy and competition that broke up the content.

Do a skit: At an event we produced, instead of just giving the finer points of coaching, the presenter brought an assistant on stage and modeled the coaching interaction.

Have discussion: Give the audience opportunities during a presentation and an event to reflect and discuss your content with a neighbor or at their tables. Not only does it reinforce content and add interaction, but it also creates personal relevance.

Demonstrate: If it’s a new product presentation, don’t just rattle off bullet point features—have a prototype to show, or things that the audience can “play” with and interact with. If it’s a new process, actually go through the chronology.

 Show a video clip: Media is a great way to break up a presentation, add emotion and captivate the audiences’ attention.

Ask questions: When a speaker interacts WITH the audience, it makes they audience accountable for their participation in the presentation. Gathering their opinions, thoughts, misconceptions, etc. makes a presentation more personally relevant.

Switch speakers: While the best-intended panels of mice and men may often go awry, the concept behind a panel or interview or tag-team speakers is a good one. Switching speakers resets the attention clock.

Use different sounds: When this was brought up in our session, it referred mostly to the modality of a person’s voice—varying tone and timbre to be a dynamic, continually engaging speaker. However, using music, sound effects, etc., could be a way to add novelty and re-engage the audience.

Add activities: An audience wants to play. Participating in hands-on activities not only increases interactivity and extends the attention span, but it also gives the opportunity to practice with key concepts and content.

Tell a joke: Humor is a wonderful way to re-engage the audience, because it evokes a strong emotional response (also causing the brain to secrete chemicals that aid in binding memory). Getting the audience to laugh is a great way to keep their attention. (This is another reason why we use live animated characters, like Ellie and Eddie the Eagles.)

Tell stories: Speaking of emotional engagement… A good story can captivate attention far beyond the typical attention span, because that’s how we’re wired to receive information, process and learn.

]]> http://experiente4blog.com/2010/10/25/designing-a-brain-based-event-adding-interaction/feed/ 0 Napping in the Free World http://experiente4blog.com/2010/07/23/napping-in-the-free-world/ http://experiente4blog.com/2010/07/23/napping-in-the-free-world/#comments Fri, 23 Jul 2010 12:00:44 +0000 Dr. John Medina http://experiente4blog.com/?p=2148 Given that sleep rhythms fight their battles 24 hours a day, researchers have studied the skirmishes occurring not only in the night but also in the day. One area of interest is the persistent need to take a nap, and to do so at very specific times of the [...]]]>

Given that sleep rhythms fight their battles 24 hours a day, researchers have studied the skirmishes occurring not only in the night but also in the day. One area of interest is the persistent need to take a nap, and to do so at very specific times of the day.

Dr. John Medina

It must have taken some getting used to, if you were a staffer in the socially conservative early 1960s. Lyndon Baines Johnson, 36th president of the United States and leader of the free world, routinely closed the door to his office in the midafternoon and put on his pajamas. He then proceeded to take a 30-minute nap. Rising refreshed, he would tell aides that such a nap gave him the stamina to work the long hours required of the U.S. commander-in-chief during the Cold War. Such presidential behavior might seem downright weird. But if you ask sleep researchers like William Dement, his response might surprise you: It was LBJ who was acting normally; the rest of us, who refuse to bring our pajamas to work, are the abnormal ones. And Dement has a fair amount of data to back him up.

LBJ was responding to something experienced by nearly everyone on the planet. It goes by many names—the midday yawn, the post-lunch dip, the afternoon “sleepies.” We’ll call it the nap zone, a period of time in the midafternoon when we experience transient sleepiness. It can be nearly impossible to get anything done during this time, and if you attempt to push through, which is what most of us do, you can spend much of your afternoon fighting a gnawing tiredness. It’s a fight because the brain really wants to take a nap and doesn’t care what its owner is doing. The concept of “siesta,” institutionalized in many other cultures, may have come as an explicit reaction to the nap zone.

At first, scientists didn’t believe the nap zone existed except as an artifact of sleep deprivation. That has changed. We now know that some people feel it more intensely than others. We know it is not related to a big lunch (although a big lunch, especially one loaded with carbs, can greatly increase its intensity). It appears, rather, to be a part of our evolutionary history. Some scientists think that a long sleep at night and a short nap during the midday represent human sleep behavior at its most natural.

When you chart the process S curve and process C curve, you can see that they flat-line in the same place—in the afternoon. Remember that these curves are plotting the progress of a war between two opposed groups of cells and biochemicals. The battle clearly has reached a climactic stalemate. An equal tension now exists between the two drives, which extracts a great deal of energy to maintain. Some researchers, though not all, think this equanimity in tension drives the nap zone. Regardless, the nap zone matters, because our brains don’t work as well during it. If you are a public speaker, you already know it is darn near fatal to give a talk in the midafternoon. The nap zone also is literally fatal: More traffic accidents occur during it than at any other time of the day.

On the flip side, one NASA study showed that a 26-minute nap improved a pilot’s performance by more than 34 percent. Another study showed that a 45-minute nap produced a similar boost in cognitive performance, lasting more than six hours. Still other researchers demonstrated that a 30-minute nap taken prior to staying up all night can prevent a significant loss of performance during that night. If that’s what a nap can do, imagine the benefits of a full night’s sleep

]]> http://experiente4blog.com/2010/07/23/napping-in-the-free-world/feed/ 2 Keeping Safe Onsite – Part Two http://experiente4blog.com/2010/07/19/keeping-safe-onsite-part-two/ http://experiente4blog.com/2010/07/19/keeping-safe-onsite-part-two/#comments Mon, 19 Jul 2010 12:00:39 +0000 Tim La Fleur http://experiente4blog.com/?p=2100 Building on some of the fundamentals discussed in my first post on July 12, now we are going to discuss following intuition, and more importantly why people do not listen to it – along with talking about ways to predict violence.

I think we all know what intuition is; it’s the feeling in the [...]]]>

Building on some of the fundamentals discussed in my first post on July 12, now we are going to discuss following intuition, and more importantly why people do not listen to it – along with talking about ways to predict violence.

I think we all know what intuition is; it’s the feeling in the pit of our stomach, it’s the common sense that we have, it’s the automatic feeling we get about someone, something, or some place – as soon as we see it.  It is something that happens automatically thus making it the single greatest self-defense mechanism we have because we don’t have to try for this to happen.  The rub comes when we don’t listen to it, and there are many reasons we don’t listen to it.

One reason is because as a society we have generally deemed rude behavior as a socially undesirable trait.  Attackers know this so they will play off this social construct to their advantage.  I was told this story by a woman about how she and her husband were walking into a hospital from a parking garage with a stranger walking behind them.  They had to travel a series of air walks and eventually come upon an elevator bank. Throughout the series of air walks, this stranger stayed behind them walking at exactly the same pace, except for when they were getting close to the elevators to go up.  At that point he sped past them to open the elevator door and hold it open until the couple got inside.  At this point the woman’s intuition told her not to get in, so she meandered around hoping the stranger would give up and let the elevator door close.  As seconds turned into minutes and the stranger kept the door open, the woman’s husband whispered into her ear, “let’s get on the elevator, we don’t want to be rude.”  The husband wanted to get on the elevator out of fear of being rude, effectively giving into the social construct that says being rude is inappropriate and undesirable.  The stranger was – either intentionally or unintentionally – manipulating the couple with the social construct of being rude as an undesirable trait.  To bring conclusion to the story, they did not get on and eventually the stranger let the door close and he went up.

Who knows what would have happened if they got on, but it falls under the “why take the chance” category.  This type of scenario could happen just as easily on-site as it could in your personal life, so being aware and understanding this concept on-site and at home is vitally important.

This is one of a few reasons why people don’t listen to their intuition.  Knowing why people don’t listen to their intuition and understanding how attackers use this  to exploit and manipulate can help you act appropriately if you ever find yourself in a situation like this.

The time to make a high-stakes prediction about someone’s future actions is not when you are in the middle of an attack or self-defense situation.   The time to make that prediction is before the situation even occurs.  Life has taught lessons on human prediction, but understanding how it relates to self-defense will help us hone those skills.  Every single one of us can make predictions on human behavior and we do it every time we get behind the wheel – every day we predict if the car next to us will let us into their lane or the flow of traffic; If the car that is approaching the yellow light will stop or try and run it; or how a friend will handle the bad news we are about to give them.

We use environmental context clues from our surroundings to make these predictions. The same context clues are what we use when we are trying to predict potential and future violent behavior.  Does the individual or attendee approaching me look escalated or angry (i.e. red face, fidgety, furrowed brow, demonstrative body language, etc.) – keeping in mind it is sometimes irrelevant if the person is angry at us, escalated individuals will sometimes release their anger on innocent people just because, “they happened to be standing there”.  Does the attacker look panicky or do they have a calm demeanor as they are probing you for information or sticking you up for your wallet?  A panicky demeanor in someone usually makes them unpredictable and unpredictability makes people dangerous.

Is someone using words like, “Gimme all your money” – or are they saying “I have to get the money in your wallet or all is lost and my life is over” or “I have to get into this session for my CEU’s or my boss will fire me and that would devastate me”.  The difference?  The second and third scenarios portray someone who is more desperate and desperate people are also dangerous – so listen to the words they are using.  These are just a few examples of awareness of a person’s presentation and knowing what to look for to help you predict the likelihood of someone becoming violent or dangerous.

I have barely scratched the surface on this topic and there are many more ways in which to keep safe while traveling or on an everyday basis.  The conversations we could have on this are virtually limitless and I look forward to discussing this with everyone.  I hope that this short introduction to how violence occurs (plus a few simple avoidance tactics) helps you think about your own safety and things you can do to increase your chances of remaining safe while traveling.  Please let me know if you have any questions or if you have any stories you would like to share for the common good.  I look forward to hearing from you all!

Tim La Fleur

]]> http://experiente4blog.com/2010/07/19/keeping-safe-onsite-part-two/feed/ 1 Three Elements that Make an Event Memorable: The Brain-based Way to Engage Your Audience. http://experiente4blog.com/2010/07/07/three-elements-that-make-an-event-memorable-the-brain-based-way-to-engage-your-audience/ http://experiente4blog.com/2010/07/07/three-elements-that-make-an-event-memorable-the-brain-based-way-to-engage-your-audience/#comments Wed, 07 Jul 2010 12:00:15 +0000 Dan Yaman http://experiente4blog.com/?p=1893

There are always memorable elements to any event—a great teambuilding activity, a humorous keynote speaker, great networking opportunities, etc. Sometimes the individual pieces that stick are content and objective focused, but often times they’re not. For an event to be truly memorable as a whole—engaging the brains of the audience with the content at a deeper level–three elements need to be employed on a larger scale.

The Art of Theater: Nothing engages the human mind like emotion. It’s the connection to our fellow man, our jobs, our world. It’s the primary influence in many decisions. An event should be an emotional experience—and a little theater goes a long way in producing an emotional outcome that supports content retention.

Theatrical elements can include game play (game shows, team activities, etc.), powerful video clips, stories etc. Theater isn’t about being ridiculous or novel for the sake of novelty, it’s about engaging your audience on an emotional level.

The Science of Learning: 95% of what is delivered in a typical meeting environment is forgotten 24 hours later. That’s a scary statistic for any meeting professional. This is primarily because, in general, events are not designed with the science of learning in mind.

Brain-based learning techniques can include giving breaks in between presentations for reflection, paring down information—sorting the nice to know from the need to know, preframing, informing and reviewing for all key content points, and utilizing activities to practice and apply knowledge.

The Psychology of Persuasion: An event is all about buy-in. An audience needs to buy-in to the content, to their participation in the event, to interaction, key content points, etc. A truly persuasive event is framed properly; eliciting commitment from the audience to play full out during the event, getting attendees to write down their own personal goals for the event and—after content pieces or presentations—recording how the new information will be relevant to them.

Going into the specifics of a presentation, presenters tend to lead with what persuades them. Everyone will buy-in to AN argument—but that doesn’t mean they’ll buy-in to YOUR argument. Play to all persuasion styles: data evidence, social proof, personal guarantees of success and relevance to achieving their goals.

Dan Yaman

I’ll be discussing more specific examples of theater, learning and persuasion in my “Brain-Based Events” session at e4.

]]> http://experiente4blog.com/2010/07/07/three-elements-that-make-an-event-memorable-the-brain-based-way-to-engage-your-audience/feed/ 2 OPTIMIZING YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERIENCE http://experiente4blog.com/2010/01/22/optimizing-your-social-media-experience/ http://experiente4blog.com/2010/01/22/optimizing-your-social-media-experience/#comments Fri, 22 Jan 2010 12:00:37 +0000 Michael M McCurry, CMP http://experiente4blog.com/?p=1496 Like many people, you probably have more tasks on your daily “to do list” than you can shake a stick at.  Have you added any Social media applications to your business toolkit?  More [...]]]>

This article was published in the January Issue of Meetings:  Minnesota’s Hospitality Journal.  You can find that article by clicking here.

Like many people, you probably have more tasks on your daily “to do list” than you can shake a stick at.  Have you added any Social Mike at podium alternate 800X800media applications to your business toolkit?  More importantly are you engaging yourself consistently in leveraging their value in your business communications?

A comment I often hear from business colleagues is “I just don’t have time to put anything else on my plate, or I am too busy for social media.”   Sound familiar??  Well, read on…

In the past year a major shift has occurred in the way people do business.  The financial pressure of the poor economy combined with the continuous introduction of web 2.0 applications into the marketplace has generated a major focus on social media as an effective business solution.

The Meetings and Events business is particularly well-suited for use of social media.  Educational and informational content can now be delivered not only with face2face meetings, but also using added virtual components such as webcasts, or webinars.  Organizations are enhancing those digital experiences with back channel communications such as Twitter hashtags to create additional buzz and conversation before, during and after their events.

These communication channels are very effective and economical, and thus, their staying power is obvious.  New business models and markets for meetings and events are emerging as a result of these innovations.  Quietly, a paradigm shift (from skepticism to validation) of this technology has been occurring in many businesses.   Early Adopters are already miles ahead of their competition.  Looking ahead, the reality is organizations dismissing social media as irrelevant will begin to lose market share as their customers abandon them for more forward thinking business partners.

On a personal level, using social media applications a person may initiate and build new and existing relationships as well as share knowledge and experiences with other like-minded individuals.   If you haven’t already done so you would be wise to engage yourself with these business tools, and do so quickly!

Incorporating social media into your personal routine is more complex than just signing up for a bunch of these accounts.  You must commit yourself to “learning the ropes” for the chosen applications and then work vigorously to establish credibility for yourself within them.

The first step in the process is developing an action plan.  There must be a balance between the time you spend with SM and other job responsibilities.  Due to their interactive, dynamic and sometimes addictive nature, some people find themselves preoccupied with these tools.  Subsequently their overall job performance may suffer.  Needless to say, a mistake such as this could be career-limiting.  So, here are some tips on how to make your journey with social media smooth and successful.

Step #1 — Plan Well — Create a written statement outlining your vision of what you wish to accomplish with each Social media application.

Sample Plan:

  • Facebook
    • learn more about clients’ background and interests
    • strengthen personal connections
    • make consistent personal touches with them
  • Twitter
    • Collaborate with other industry Twitter users, exchanging information, relevant articles and perspectives on hot business topics.
    • Develop my personal brand and reputation in the online community
    • Build and maintain new & existing business relationships
    • Monitor the customer service of my company and respond to clients posting comments/complaints/issues.
  • LinkedIn
    • Develop an online business profile validating my credibility as a business person and individual.
    • Participate in relevant industry Group communities demonstrating thought leadership and building personal reputation.
    • Strengthen existing industry relationships and develop new ones.

Step #2 — Schedule Strategically — develop a routine allocating certain times of the day for social networking.

Sample Routine:

  • Early Morning (7am – 8:15am)
    • Visit Facebook page and review posts made, check message inbox and respond accordingly.
    • Socialize with Facebook friends online.  (water cooler talk)
    • Open Twitter and review tweet posts made by users followed.
    • Follow up tweets of interest (Retweet, or acknowledge value to author).
    • Review News feeds, and post relevant tweets with article links to followers.
    • Review growth of follower base from previous day.
  • Mid Day (12noon – 1:15pm)
    • Check LinkedIn site for activity in member groups.
    • Respond to any discussions of interest and clip any relevant articles, posting them to Twitter for followers.
    • Review LinkedIn Inbox messages and respond.
    • Check Twitter messages, and review new tweets posted by users followed.
    • Follow up tweets of interest (Retweet, or acknowledge value to author).
    • Stop by Facebook to review any new posts and comment on those as appropriate.
  • Late Afternoon (4-5:15pm)
    • Stop by Facebook to review any new posts and comment on those as appropriate
    • Check LinkedIn message inbox and respond.
    • Check Twitter messages, new posts and follower volume since the morning.
    • Follow up tweets of interest (Retweet, or acknowledge value to author).

Note: This schedule is theoretical, and depending on your work responsibilities and routine, could shift from day to day.

Step #3 — Learn the features of the Social Networking applications and use them prudently.

  • Schedule Your Posts — Twitter has a few sister applications allowing users the flexibility of creating their tweet posts at their convenience and then scheduling them to be posted later.  One such application is called “Socialoomph.com“  There are many other applications like this available… the analogy I would use is that these tools function in much the same was as Tivo does for television.
  • Tweetdeck – is a powerful external twitter client application (with Facebook interface) that enables a user to organize and filter through all the Twitter and Facebook posts they receive.  Here is a link to a really good article providing some tutorial guidance on this great tool!
  • Manage your Online Friends — Each application has its own functionality for this process.  There is a time commitment to building these relationships so make good decisions regarding who you initiate an online relationship with.  If you have some folks on your friends list not contributing to the connection, then you may wish to evaluate whether they should continue being part of your network.

I firmly believe you will receive a return on your time investment into social media commensurate with the effort you put into it.  I am available to you as a resource, should you have further questions about incorporating these very important tools into your business routine.

Contact me anytime at:

Michael M McCurry, CMP

Phone:  847-825-0243

Cell:  312-961-5486

Email:  mike.mccurry@experient-inc.com

Twitter:  http://twitter.com/michaelmccurry

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