Vickys structure is sort of the opposite. Start with the most important part (You should use Linux), go deeper (for example Gnome, for desktop) or add surprise (it's very easy to install), open the conversation with a question (do you use Linux?) or close it with an answer (it doesn't have automatic updates).
That's why this blog post is kind of a mess, with conflicting ideas.
Of course the web has sort of ruined this, but I'm talking old school newspapers.
Then you get a couple of on-topic sentences followed by another deluge of fluff.
Oldschool newspapers were great because space was at such a premium that this kind of garbage wouldn't happen.
- Abe Simpson
Ask most of the people who write those recipes - they claim to hate writing all that fluff, and that's why all of them have a "Jump to recipe" link.
See this, for example: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-explains-how-it-r...
The commonly believed reason is that a simple list of ingredients and steps would not be copyrightable. So they add fluff which can be copyrighted.
There's a lot of machinery in our brains that automatically parse chronological stories for dependencies and correlations. If you break up the order you throw it all away and everything becomes manual. It makes it easier to force people to agree with your interpretation, nothing feels "off".
It's like writing sequential imperative code vs a bunch of callbacks. Pretty obvious what's easier to debug.
I find it's as much a writing tool as it is useful for getting to the point quickly with presentations: the goal of presentation is not to surprise the audience, or have a clever twist. It's to be plain, open and honest.
(Which is to say, anytime you don't see this structure in any context other then fiction, you're probably being market pitched and what you see is fiction).
Sometimes it is.
>you're probably being market pitched and what you see is fiction
Sometimes you are being market pitched.
It's all Steve Jobs did yet he's the classic example of good Power Point presentations.
- Summary - Conclusion - Results - Analysis - Hypothesis - Context - Context
There is the ideal form for Researchers:
- Problem Statement (Abstract) - Context - Context - Hypothesis - Analysis - Results - Conclusion
Almost opposite ordering
I think the part i liked boils down to: have a thesis and be very upfront on what it is. Everything you say should build up that thesis.
To a lesser extent, i also agree with the idea that presentations should (usually) have a narrative structure, but i wouldn't put it the same way they did.
But at the same time, when they started to go into examples, everything started to sound click-baity. "One important thing you have to know about X" just feels like a click-bait headline. It also kind of assumes that i want to know one thing about X. Maybe i would rather know zero things. The "why" is left unadressed.
Agree that the phrasing feels a little clickbaity, but don't think it detracts too much.
There are scenarios that you can safely assume that someone does want to know about X — maybe you're presenting at a conference or giving a lecture; asked a "Tell us about a time when…" question in interview or, as in her example, you're giving a report about what your team did to senior managers.
On the contrary, i think that is one of the biggest mistakes people make when talking at conferences. It is very important to justify why the audience should care about the specific aspect of the issue you are presenting on.
"X important things you have to know about Y. Number N will surprise you!"
Engagement is like dating: be attractive, don't be unattractive, and remember that it's a numbers game. "Be attractive" meaning, learn how to tell a good story. "Don't be unattractive" meaning, don't make stupid mistakes like not using a microphone and speaker in a large group, or hitting send at 7 PM on a Friday night. "Remember that it's a numbers game" meaning, don't spend all your energy on your first audience and get discouraged if they don't engage; just do you and tell your story to as many people as possible until you find those who do engage with you.
The dark side of all this "how to tell a good story" stuff is teaching people how to suck up other people's attention on something that is fundamentally unworthy, like marketing drivel.
It's Darwinism at play not an attempt at science.
Situation: I was asked by my wife if we should sail around the world for a few years.
Task: I agreed on the spot now we had to work hard towards looking for possible sail boats that could be our home for a few years and keep us safe while sailing.
Action: We travlled around the continent looking at boats, at the same time we saved up as much money we could. When we found a boat we bougt it, sold our house and lived on the boat. We took sailing and navigational classes and used a lot of time researching where in the world we wanted to go.
Result: We went sailing on May 17th 2023 and at the moment we are in the pacific helping environmental organisations de-plastic Hawaiian islands.
I found it being a good framework getting to the actual point!
AWS and several others use this in interviews.
I use STAR/SPAR:
[S]ituation or context
[T]ask or [P]roblem
[A]ction or solution
[R]esult or expected outcome
Basically, tell me the background, tell me the problem or thing that needs done, tell me all the ways it was reviewed, and the actual picked solution or action, and finally what is the expected outcome or result. As an exec I can be a stateless machine and with that set of details, I can make a decision.
Sometimes I dig into it a bit to see if proper due diligence was done, if there is real info & data is present, but once I am comfortable that the person distills it properly, it is a no brainer decision. I can say, "yes, go forth with your action/solution" or "no, because XYZ, go back and consider that" (usually from the T/PA/R areas).
There might be a way to craft this for story telling, after all, most things are stories.
The most powerful example would be a meta video that explains the concept within its own content.
Like the acronym GNU (Gnu's Not Unix).
I’ve used them regularly to great success. I tried to give this advice to some of my friends for interviews who followed STAR method a bit too rigidly. It didn’t work out…but over time they organically became better story tellers through practice.
This is a large tangent, but the post gives good business communication tips. I wrote a more succinct guide for my team, but I think I’ll share this too. Our company suffers from slack disease, so stuff like this can really help.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickup_artist
Situation Task Action Result
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situation,_task,_action,_res...
Instead, provide the bigger picture: e.g. "I'm currently trying to climb that benchmark, I'm close to the top and only need a few % points that I could get with this new feature"
For me it worked wonders: a PR that I had been awaiting for some time was done overnight by an enthusiastic and helpful coworker!
The hero's journey is not good Framework for a technical talk.
Be interesting, create a hook, what do you find interesting? What style draws you in? Emulate that, then branch off.
Conversation is a lot more complex and depends on reaction, audience, expertize. Every verbal interaction is a lot like writing.
If you're gonna read a book about it it should be How to Make Friends and and Influence People.
Corny title but a timeless working strategy for communication.
On Writing by Stephen King is fine too but tldr; be honest.
A lot of technical talks are essentially a story on how you (or your team/company/whatever) solved some problem. Essentially you are the hero, and you are regailing everyone with the tale of how you solved some technical problem. That naturally forms a sort of narrative story, that isn't that different from fictional stories where the hero's peaceful life is interupted by some call to action, go through some hardships, and eventually slay the dragon.
That makes the hero relatable but is not a strategy you can always easily include in a corporate technical talk.
"Just buy more of last year's product and let me enjoy my vacation, but no, you needed more features!"
If you're horrible at communicating it'll help as it forces you to simplify yourself as a character of simple motivations but it's not a recipe for success or attention or quality content, especially when you kill most of what people found interesting about the Iliad/Odyssey as theatre plays: Violence, Sex, Death, Love, Hate.
Death/Rebirth moment would best be embodied as a massive failure and some positions don't allow that kind of honesty or framing without risking your job, although it would indeed be more interesting.
The hero's journey is a bread and butter narrative from stage plays from 8th century BC. I'm of the belief that the structure is useless and what engages us are the emotions at display.
Even act structures are just an excuse so actors can change clothes during the play - there's no divine insight about writing there.
Which is super common in tech talks.
Tech talks often have the form: there is some legacy solution we tried really hard to make work, but eventually we realized that despite all the hacks to make it work for us, it simply wasn't viable so we did something else.
[0]: https://www.writersdigest.com/wd-books/wgf-plot-structure
If that's just an opinion then I'd rather have it backed by something more than "it worked for you"
Did it work for you despite this, or thanks to this?
Would somebody else's 9 step program work better?
Did somebody distill it down to some other more elegant principles that you just happened to follow by doing the 8-step thing?
There's never anything rigorous in the realm of marketing & communication courses
The reaction you may get:
https://youtu.be/rnso4nfdM9w?si=YixDlKDmBXB7xrXc
(From "Something about Mary" film.)
After all, if only number of words written mattered, the best thing to do would be to just have an empty slide.
Being concise is better than verbosity all things being equal, but not at the expense of failing to clearly get your point across.
I actually thought they were quite good.
Original: "Survey results"
Suggested: "Survey output indicates main root cause of churn is awareness of better value for money offering."
My suggestion depending on the context would be: "Survey: we're too expensive" or "Survey: churn due to cheaper alternatives" which will be read by 5x more people.
I, for one, think the specificity is worth the extra couple of words.
Her video is pretty good, though.
All that matters is presentation and then you'll have "engagement".
No need to be talking about anything interesting.
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
The way I see it, 'content creation' is all about quantity not quality or having any message/goal.
And 'engagement' is about getting people to react emotionally (doesn't matter if positively or negatively) to get them to spam your 'content' to others.
When Sting was being interviewed by Rick Beato, he said that when he listens to a new song, if he isn't surprised by something real quick, he loses interest.
"If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. Oh wait! Everyone IS doing it."