“People often forget about engaging the audience in their performance” - an interview with Roman Pochorchim, presentation coach

In the new edition of No Slides, Roman Poborchy , an expert in the preparation of presentations, became my guest. Most recently, our blog published an article by Roman with an analysis of the report by Sergey Kuksenko at JPoint 2016. And now it's time to publish an interview with Roman himself. What did we talk about?

• How does a technical report at a conference fundamentally differ from a university lecture on the same topic?
• What are the most typical speaker mistakes?
• What is the difference between playing with slides and without slides ?

Under the cut, as always, there is a complete transcript of the interview.
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How it all began

First question: Roma, how did you get from techies to such an area as the preparation of speeches?

- The answer goes back to my time at the Intel office in St. Petersburg, 2004-2008. It was a rather small office, at the peak of 60–70 people. As a small colony overseas metropolis. Many have worked in American or other global companies faced with this.

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

This is still a bit complicated by the need to speak English. But in English, we all who need it, spoke in general normally. But to take and clearly tell, 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 it became necessary to make it so that people could clearly explain their overseas colleagues, what we are doing, why it is important and what benefit this may be. It just took to be able to talk coherently.

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

- What is such a course like?

- He is very basic, one-day, you need to make up a lot then yourself. Some very simple things: “Here you know, my friend, it is useful to have morality at the end of the story and clearly highlight it. And in the beginning it is useful to tell you what problem you are actually solving. ” Important behavioral things - how to look, how to wave your hands - it’s all the same for everyone; But if you at least have a coherent story, it will not be shameful, but normal.

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

- I have not met Kapterev yet. 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 “Death through PowerPoint” presentation?

- Well, in the same place there are eternal values, one cannot disagree with them. “Death through PowerPoint” is a classic in the sense that 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. There is no need to make the mistakes listed there, which is a necessary condition for a good presentation. But not always enough, I think. That is, this is just a 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 “bad”?

- I have several unrelated criteria. Suppose if I spoke, and I was not asked a single question, it means that I didn’t say a little about that, and somehow I didn’t get one. If, on the contrary, some kind of discussion ensued, and people ask not idiotic questions, but questions about that, then I spoke well. This is not a description of a good / bad presentation, but this 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, according to the results of which the listener has some opportunity to change his life for the better. If he is clear about what to do, how to do it and why. Then, God forbid, three out of a hundred people will do something, and the world will be better. Well, cool?

- You are now actively preparing speakers, including for technical conferences like HighLoad ++ and Heisenbag , right? What are the main problems you face when you help the speakers to do the material?

- Yes, this is a good question, I wanted to talk about it. It is true that speakers come in different levels. There are very experienced people, although they are not insured against the jambs. And there are those who not so long ago began to speak. And, probably, it is more interesting to talk about the mistakes of beginners.

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

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 put, and they are immediately very visible. These are the "three millimeters." Conveniently, yes, that you have such a hairstyle, managed to illustrate it all.

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

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

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

- Well, they have no 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 an instrument. And you definitely need to show somewhere some small letters, five rows of the menu, something else, some multicolored things. Nothing is visible, nothing is clear, but for some reason, this screenshot must be shown.

There is such a problem that if the viewer sees any text on the screen at all, he tries to read it, somehow comprehend it, and spends on it his mental powers, which, honestly, are few. And the screenshots are relevant 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, for some reason, people often instead of screenshots already show the code. So I redid something, I have the code ...

- And what is convenient - took your favorite tool, say, IntelliJ IDEA. I made a screenshot on Retina in good resolution, and it fits perfectly on the slide.

- There are well-known tools, yes - IntelliJ IDEA, search engine screenshots. Everyone understands how the search for Yandex works. If you can show something familiar to people in a familiar context - this is normal.

- 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 this is just some sort of plague! It happens massively. If I am preparing speakers, I’m struggling with this: buddy, take this away, better damn it, tell me in words. Generally press the button B, extinguish the screen and tell with words.

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

Here is a mystery. 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 the speaker?

- In general, in terms of the organization of the process.

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

- In short, you are not interested, you know everything.

- Well, I do this professionally, yes.

- Yes, I believe that the fundamental difference is that in one case the students have a test or an exam at the end, and so you, like a lecturer, have a whip. And with the help of this stick, you can force people to return to this material, to revise it, even if along the way it is not very interesting. And at the report at the conference it is not so. And if you are not fascinated, not interested, did not get into the topic immediately, then they will never return to this.

Therefore, I strongly believe that the methodological presentation - "but it is divided into four categories, but it is divided in turn, so ..." - is appropriate for the lecture, but much less appropriate for a technical report at the conference, because it lulls people.

- An interesting dichotomy is obtained. Probably, it is no secret to anyone that the quality of teaching in universities is disgusting. Why? Because students are somehow motivated to get credit, and the teacher is not usually motivated. There are exceptions, but the actual formulation of the process and the environment set such conditions that the teacher reads anyhow (as a rule, disgusting), and the student is forced to deal with this somehow. Reading additional literature, communicating with neighbors and so on. And at a technical conference, it turns out the other way round, there are more requirements for speakers.

- Well yes. But the speaker's happiness is that at a technical conference, he still usually speaks forty minutes or an hour, rather than a semester course. Preparing a semester course of such quality as one speech per hour is, of course, a lot of work. And it is done for years, naturally. And where to go? Yes, it is difficult.

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

Here, for example, is a very frequent case, which also distresses me very much. We need to talk about some kind of 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 described.

Documentation a person can then read 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 doc, I will not confine myself to the report.

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

- I program a little.

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

Here, well, and do not tell so. It is better to talk about what is not, what is interesting, and what can be done with this.

About motivation and performance

- The most interesting question is the motivation of the speakers. I have seen many speakers who start asking the question: “why do you need this”? He says: "for this." Why do you want it? "Um, hmm ..." and that's it. Do you, when you start working with a person, find out his motivation?

- If the same Kapterev is remembered, 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. It is not always possible, it just does not always have time.

I guess there are a few typical motivations. One of them is recruiting. If I came to talk about what we have done, then it is impossible out loud, but I want to implicitly somehow shout out with all nonverbalism: look, guys, what cool things we do, come to work with us. 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 interesting thing I found, the whole world should know about it simply because — well, damn it ...” Of course, it’s more interesting to work with such people. And they, however, are.

- Are these people the easiest to work with?

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

“So you're an energetic vampire?”

- Yes, of course. My own energy is small, yes.

- Let's say you prepared a man. Do you then watch what comes out of it, the performances themselves, or is there usually not enough time to watch? I’m slightly transforming the question: as a rule, what can be done, what cannot be done?

- It happens very differently. There is another such topic about “friend or foe”, now there will be a long lyrical digression.

Why, in fact, it is interesting for me to work with technical specialists, with IT specialists: I myself have been an IT professional in the past, and I can tell and demonstrate 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 a conversation I manage to ask a person some substantive questions on the technical side of things, then for some reason (mystic!), This increases his confidence in me as an instructor by presentation.

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

- A test for your – someone else’s, yes. If you manage to pass, then you can do more. Then I don’t have to fight and convince a person at every point, but he readily tries to do everything himself.

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

- ... and this applies to the surrounding things. In general, in the process of work, I often myself know that I managed to do a lot with these people, but with these I didn’t succeed with almost anything. And I will not begin to lie that everything works out right with everyone. Of course, there are people with whom I do not find a common language, and this is normal. This is how I console myself that this is normal.

And, of course, I myself am also a person, I am particularly interested to see where, I think, I managed to do a lot. At the same RIT ++, which was in May-June, I spoke with about 80 speakers. Of course, I could not see all 80 reports on the spot, because many of them go in parallel. But the video will gradually see as it is ready. I can’t say that I’ll see everything, but I’ll try. But there are those who definitely want to, because ...

- ... there is a lot invested.

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

- And do you have inside some approximate percentage separation, how many managed to help, and what not? How many cases do you see the effect?

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

- But it is also interesting: methodologically correct, probably, to first review the reports, and then decide whether a person is speaking or not speaking?

- 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 have to collect all the applications very much in advance, watch all this much beforehand, and only then do something. Well, you organize conferences yourself?

- You just need to extend the period of preparation.

- Collecting something in advance, doing something in advance is generally not in our national cultural tradition. That is, it is just difficult.

Sometimes this is due to the fact that you have really loaded all the time. And you just have the opportunity to do something only at the last moment. But more often, of course, it comes from razdolbaystva, than from the objective workload. This is a universal comment, and not in relation 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, “the leadership comes from America from America, we need to do something for them”? Where is the motivation higher?

- Of course, the motivation is higher for an individual person who himself came. This is a person who understands (or thinks that he understands) the need for this preparation. He has no feeling that he was driven here. Here in the case when a person comes by 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. You start digging - and you understand that either a person does not want to talk about it, or not get to the bottom of it. It is difficult, because it is not clear what his goal is, what needs to be improved, how to improve. Digging out the ultimate goal is one of the key stories.

- Not so long ago, I spoke with people at the HR conference “Find the Answer”. And there HRs come and ask: how do people get to act? HR can not always, looking at a person, understand whether he has something to say meaningful or not. Because it is another subject area.

- They simply do not have the relevant 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 took root, and there is clearly some benefit. And during the project there were some difficulties, but he overcame them successfully and learned something. You need to catch such a person, and there are great chances that he will have something to say. That he has some kind of knowledge that is directly bursting with him.

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

- Also, for example, you can pay attention that the person has become less coding and more with the team to communicate. Any such things. But this is already some kind of HR, and, no offense to HR’s will be said, it seems to me that they cannot do this either. It seems that all HR in our industry degenerates into recruitment.

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

- It seems to me that without formal separation, with the intended, implied, some of these functions are delegated to the managers of these employees. At the same time, the leaders themselves do not know about it.

- And nobody teaches them?

- Nobody teaches, and no one warns. Well, in general, is it considered that the leader should deal with 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 such a situation, in such, in such.

- The manager has specific technical knowledge, while HR has a methodology. Well, in an ideal world, it somehow works. I have never lived in an ideal world.

- Most people with whom I communicate do not have an understanding that this should be. This is some amazing fact. It seems to me that there is potential here. Maybe by developing such a culture, we will reach some kind of awareness by companies ... Speeches are not only conferences. There are rallies inside. , , , . , , .

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- 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 of information, preparation? For example, at technical conferences, most people are used to having slides. As at the institute, when I was studying, we got used to the fact that there is a blackboard and chalk.

- Blackboard and chalk are, in fact, also a kind of slide, just to make them slower. Absolutely without slides is when you just say and show nothing.

The difference is very simple actually. If I tell some philosophical concepts, then I can without slides. I am a big supporter of showing only things that require visual perception on slides. For example, the scheme. A larger scheme is easier to show than to explain in words. As the road is much easier to look at the map than to listen to the voice. Well, right?

Then everything is very simple. If you have any things that cannot be explained with a voice, then these things should be thrust onto the slides. And if it is possible to tell everything with a voice, and with no meaningful pictures this is not demonstrated, then we speak with a voice.

“This is also an interesting dichotomy, because within the framework of the same conferences or seminars, usually all people say“ and where to find slides? ”. You are well prepared, you have a minimum on the slides, which does not distract attention, you lay them out, and you are told - nothing is clear on your slides, you have told some kind of crap there. It turns out suddenly that the slides that you show during the performance, and the slides that you want to leave separately - these, apparently, should be some different slides.

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

But if we publish PowerPoint or Keynote, then there is an opportunity to write text comments in slides. And this text makes sense to write there. And it 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,” in fact, this means “I am generally interested in the topic you are talking about, but I don’t have time, motivation or anything else to go for your presentation.”

- Interesting, yes. That is, the person actually says: “Here you have dug something, this is interesting, but you yourself are not particularly interesting to me.”

- Or something parallel is happening to me, that is, not “you are not interesting to me,” but simply could not. That means I’m wondering what you’ve dug up. In general, the viewer, the reader does not care what form it is to get, if he is interested. Maybe in the form of an article is also ok.

- The final question. What do you plan now, in which direction 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 - note by the author) I want to hold two open events. One "universal", about the script of the speech. And the second is focused on interaction with the audience. What are the forms of interactive, how to prepare for them and how to conduct them. I want to collect examples from famous speeches there so that they can be watched. And some things to try on the spot, so that people can feel it all.

The topic with interactive is especially interesting for me in the near future. I used to have research, more precisely, digging deep into the topics of diagrams, there is also a lot of good things to do there, but with diagrams I have now more or less finished and moved on to interactive.

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Roman Poborchego website: poborchy.ru

Video from CodeFreeze meetings:

• "A / B Testing Rakes"
  "Evaluation of the quality of search": part 1 , part 2