Skip to main content

Invisible conversations

It is extremely difficult to do a presentation these days. Because there are two conversations in the room. One, the visible conversation where the person is talking, sharing views and so on and so forth. The second - which is the invisible conversations is the messages and the whatsapp flying across the room (and perhaps even outside the room).

Some conferences have made this into a fine art by allowing twitter feeds and hashtags - but not every meeting is amenable to being shared publicly.

These invisible conversations set the pace across the room. If an 'influencer' finds the talk boring or painful - the sentiment is transmitted across the room in a nanosecond. (And again, it is not the influencer - but the fact that the sentiments shared across the room are affirmed and confirmed so quickly that if your talk is a bore, it sinks faster than a stone that cannot swim.)

Cracking this is difficult. What does one do from a design standpoint? Well, simply put, harness it. Which means, double the engagement - digital and real. How does one that do that? There are many ways - is all I would say right now.

The 'second screen' as they say is a reality at all points in life - not just in front of the TV.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

No conferences

Decided not to attend any conferences this year. Atleast not the typical ones I have often ranted about here. Will be both choosy and intentional about which ones to attend.  The ones to attend are the ones put up by practitioners of a craft. The rest is marketing one way or other. 

And the unconference happened

 Most conferences have an agenda. No, not the stated agenda, but an agenda of marketing, airtime to sponsors, ensuring the past and future customers are invited, of ensuring that the "stars" of the industry are invited and attention showered of them. All in all it is a your scratch my back, I scratch your back syndrome. Some of these become cliques and claques and therefore the real point behind a conference is lost. And then there is the unconference - organised and run by the alumni of the ISABS ODCP program. And as the name suggests, this is truly an un-conference organised by the alumni, for the alumni. No funders - except the alumni themselves. No sponsors. Just the team.  I havent seen a more tastefully organised conference (yes, its an unconference).  To begin with - the location - not a typical star hotel, but an outdoorsy place. The food - simple. The welcome - personal. It was like a homecoming. The setting was warm and welcoming. It was a smaller conference. Ju...

The power of jotting down ideas

 Long long ago, I always used to carry a small letterpad with me. To jot down ideas that might occur. Over the years, it has changed from a notepad to evernote to google keep, but the power of jotting down ideas is immense.  Small ideas go into keep.  Anything to be quickly typed goes into whatsapp as a self message.  Bigger or better formed ideas go into Google docs A few are still written, but I manage to copy them into a digital format sooner rather than later.  But the power of jotting down is immense. My google keep is an encyclopedia of ideas - most of which may never get implemented.