ALA Midwinter Conference: Informal Learning (in Conference Hallways)

Most of the learning at conferences takes place in the hallways, I learned from American Library Association (ALA)  Strategy Guide Jenny Levine during a conversation we were having in an enormous hallway here at the ALA 2014 Midwinter meeting in Philadelphia before she delivered the obvious punch line: “And ALA conferences have a very large number of hallways.”

Anyone involved in training-teaching-learning knows that Levine’s observation about hallways (and, by extension, other spaces such as the conference Networking Uncommons and exhibits areas) parallels conclusions firmly grounded in research done on informal learning in our workplaces. And anyone who habitually participates in conferences arranged by the organizations serving specific professions (ALA for libraries, ASTD for trainer-teacher-learners, and many others) know that those hallways are increasingly blended to combine onsite and online interactions via Twitter and a variety of other tools to respond to those who might otherwise feel left behind.

Informal learning in the ALA 2014 Midwinter meeting Networking Uncommons

My own informal learning at the ALA 2014 Midwinter meeting began on Friday—the first full day of the conference—when I decided to visit the Networking Uncommons before the exhibits area opened. The fact that I never made it to the exhibits area—one of my favorite informal learning spaces—that evening is a testament to what ALA Strategy Guide Jenny Levine has created: Finding a group of colleagues engaged in an impromptu conversation about technology in libraries, I realized I didn’t have to cruise the aisles of the exhibits hall to meet those colleagues—the group of people I needed and wanted to be seeing were gathered right there in the Uncommons.

The same thing happened the following morning when I walked over to the cavernous area housing the ALA onsite bookstore, the conference registration desk, and an area being used for demonstrations of Google Glass. On assignment for the American Libraries blog, I was hoping to photograph a few people trying that wearable technology, interview them, and learn more about how Google Glass might be a useful tool in the work my colleagues and I do. With my usual good luck, I arrived just a few minutes before former ALA President Barbara Ford did, so I was able to photograph her trying the device and then conducted a follow-up interview that was included in that blog article providing readers with projections of how the voice-activated device might work its way into libraries and other learning environments dedicated to facilitating training-teaching-learning.

My informal learning continued over lunch that day with Peggy Barber, a cherished colleague who always manages to bring me up to date on something I wasn’t smart enough to be exploring on my own. She had recently published an article on “contagious marketing” in American Libraries, so I asked her about one of the sources she had quoted (Jonah Berger’s Contagious: Why Things Catch On) and told her about a similar book I had read a few years before (Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die). What we learned informally from each other over lunch will deepen as each of us reads the book recommended by the other.

The sort of expanded onsite-online hallways I’ve noticed at earlier conferences reappeared while I was attending an onsite session Sunday morning on ALA’s “Libraries Transforming Communities” initiative. Presenters Maureen Sullivan and Cheryl Gorman. As they were discussing the positive impact the initiative has had in fostering collaborations and partnerships between libraries, library staff, and members of the communities they serve, I tweeted out summaries of some of the highlights. Some of those tweets were immediately retweeted by other conference attendees so that the information reached a larger audience than might otherwise have been possible, and at one point a tweet attracted a response from a novelist who objected to a comment made by one of the presenters. Seizing the opportunity to further expand the conversation, I read the comment to Sullivan and Gorman during a question-and-answer period, took notes on their response, and condensed it into a tweet to briefly extend the conversation with the novelist. The informal learning that morning traveled down some very long and intriguing ALA hallways that eventually drew responses from colleagues who aren’t even formally affiliated with ALA.

Similar exchanges continued throughout the days I’ve been here in Philadelphia, and the expanding hallways continue to take some intriguingly unexpected turns. Conversations in a wonderful session this morning on libraries as catalysts of change began within the formal setting of the session itself, expanded a bit through tweets and retweets, then unexpectedly continued briefly when the presenter—Lisa Bunker—and I ran into each other in the Networking Uncommons, and really deepened when the two of us decided to continue our informal conversation over lunch, which provided the most wonderful learning nugget I acquired during this Midwinter conference: “We don’t have to be perfect. We just have to show up.”

As long as those hallways that Levine and many others help create are available, I will be exploring them. And reporting informally on what I learn.

Garr Reynolds and the Zen of Engaging Presentations

In a world committed to effective training-teaching-learning, publication of Garr Reynolds’ beautifully produced and engagingly written book Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery three years ago would have resulted in the disappearance of “death by PowerPoint.”

The world seems to have other ideas. We still suffer through poorly designed PowerPoint presentations, where far too much text is crammed onto slides that are then read to painfully bored and tuned-out learners. Which is a shame since so much of what Reynolds suggests and displays throughout his book and on his ongoing Presentation Zen website makes so much sense and is so easy to incorporate into our work.

“PowerPoint…is not a method,” he reminds us early in the book; “it is a tool that can be used effectively with appropriate design methods or ineffectively with inappropriate methods” (p. 12).

And as we all know from those ineffectively designed slides delivered in inappropriate ways, we still have a long way to go before we overcome our kneejerk horror at the thought of sitting through even one more PowerPoint presentation that is less than completely engaging and inspiring.

Where Reynolds is most effective is in having produced a book that practices what he preaches: it’s clearly written, engagingly incorporates clean design and strong visual imagery to produce a cohesive work on the art of presentation, and cleverly wraps in upon itself by offering suggestions that are on display throughout the book for readers astute enough to watch for them.

Approximately halfway through the book, for example, he suggests the effectiveness of “chunking”—grouping “similar ideas while looking for a unifying theme. The presentation may be organized into three parts, so first I look for the central theme that will be the thread running through the presentation. There is no rule that says your presentation should have three sections or three ‘acts’ from the world of drama. However, three is a good number to aim for because it is a manageable constraint and generally provides a memorable structure.”

It’s at this point that we notice how Reynolds himself has broken his book into three large interwoven sections—preparation, design, and delivery—and we become even more conscious of how well he uses clean, effective photographs and minimal type in or around those photographs to transfer his ideas from his mind to ours. If we see the book at a variation on the sort of presentation he is encouraging us to produce via PowerPoint, we viscerally understand the wisdom and attractiveness of what he is proposing. And we have to ask why more of us aren’t already doing what he suggests.

There’s nothing fancy here—which is, course, one of the book’s biggest strengths. Clarity and simplicity are the overarching themes he encourages us to explore and incorporate into our work. His brief surveys of a variety of other works including the Heath brothers’ Made to Stick, Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind, and even Brenda Ueland’s classic book on writing, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit and presentation methodologies including PechaKucha keep us focused not only on the creative aspect of what we need to offer as trainer-teacher-learners, but remind us of the importance of creativity and a user-centric viewpoint if we’re going to be effective in our endeavors.

As he leads us toward his final chapters, he reminds us of the potential power of effective presentations at a very human level when he suggests that presentations are contributions: “I don’t think I have ever given a presentation that was not at some level about making a contribution. Certainly, when you are asked to share your expertise with a group who are on the whole not specialists in your field, you have to think very hard about what is important (for them) and what is not (again, for them). It is easier just to do the same presentation you always do, but it is not about impressing people with the depths of your knowledge. It’s about sharing or teaching something of lasting value” (p. 196).

If we needed any further proof that Reynolds cares as deeply about his audiences as we should care about ours, we find it explicitly in his admonition that “If your content is worth talking about, then bring energy and passion to your delivery. Every situation is different, but there is never an excuse for being dull” (p. 211).

Reading—and rereading—Presentation Zen leaves us with plenty of inspiration. And examples. And encouragement. Perhaps what we most need to do is carry a copy with us whenever we are attending presentations—or offering them ourselves—and simply wave it as an offering to anyone who has not yet moved from death by PowerPoint to life through inspirational—and inspired—presentations.

Training, Story, and PowerPoint (Part 3 of 3)

Having looked at how PowerPoint presentations with and without bullet points work in Part 1 of this series, and how Cliff Atkinson’s Beyond Bullet Points gives new life to an old tool in Part 2, let’s turn now to Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick and Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind to see how we can use these ideas to our advantage.

The Heath Brothers, in their book on “Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die,” use engagingly simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, and emotional stories to make the point that ideas stick when they are Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, and Emotional and include Stories (SUCCESs, as they remind us with a word designed to make the message even stickier). They do this in a way that makes any of us who are familiar with Beyond Bullet Points immediately recognize that these are concepts to be woven into our face-to-face and online learning offerings.

When they discuss the importance of helping someone learn through simulation –-imagining how they might react if they were part of the story they are hearing – and through inspiration, we easily make the leap to seeing how our own stories and those of our students can lead to simulation and additional inspiration. When we read the Heath brothers’ story about a Subway sandwich advertising executive who wanted to run a campaign promoting the taste of the company’s food rather than the much stickier story of how an obese young man lost more than 200 pounds on a diet of little more than Subway sandwiches, we have to look at ourselves and wonder what lessons we are burying under reams of facts and figures and bullet points.

“The goal here is to learn how to spot the stories that have potential,” the Heaths write (p. 230), and we are again struck by how SUCCESsful this advice might make our work.

Pink’s A Whole New Mind is equally effective as a tool for trainer-teacher-learners. His SUCCESs stories—like the one about how he went from drawing stick figures to producing a reasonably accurate self-portrait in a one-week period under the guidance of a fantastic instructor – make us sit up and ask, “Why can’t I teach and learn like that?”

The encouraging answer is that we can. By adapting the lessons offered by Atkinson, Pink, the Heath brothers, and many other creative trainer-teacher-learners, we recognize that old tools can bring new, powerful, and encouraging results which keep us all alert, inspired, and engaged.

N.B.: An earlier version of this article was originally posted on Infoblog.