From the Ada Lovelace Day blog…

There are just two weeks to go until Ada Lovelace Day 2010, and we still have a fair few bloggers, Twitterers, podcasters, web comic artists, and videocasters to recruit. We have 1114 pledgers and need 1958 more people to sign up. That’s a challenge with only 14 days to go, but if everyone recruits just two more people, we’ll still make it!

There’s loads of stuff going on around Ada Lovelace Day this year. We have events in London and worldwide (Copenhagen, Dresden and Montreal, with the promise of others to come). The London Potluck Unconference, to be held at the Centre for Creative Collaboration in Kings Cross, 6.00pm onwards, still has some places left, so please nab yours now, whilst you can.

We have T-shirts on their way – we’re just polishing off the design and hope to get them up and ready for you to buy very soon. We also now have an Offers page which currently carries a 10% discount from the lovely people at AdaFruit Industries. Again, we hope to have more there for you soon!

If you’d like to get involved, then our main need at the moment is promotion. We need to get more people signed up, and here’s how you can help:

• Send a Tweet, update your Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn status
• Write a blog post about Ada Lovelace Day
• Email your friends and/or relevant mailing lists
• Post an item on LinkedIn or Facebook Groups
• Encourage other people to do something to promote Ada Lovelace Day!

There’s more info on how to help, including a Tweet you can just cut and paste, on the blog!

We do have more goodies in the pipeline, so stay tuned for more news!

There’s a habit amongst journalists to act as if there’s a continuum between opposing viewpoints and that the truth must therefore lie somewhere roughly in the middle, especially on health, science and certain tech stories. We saw it before with the reporting on now disgraced ’scientist’ Andrew Wakefield and his very well debunked claims that MMR causes autism. And we’ve seen it regularly since.

Now the House of Commons science and technology committee has examined homeopathy provision on the NHS and has concluded that evidence shows homeopathy works no better than placebo and that the NHS should not provide or recommend it. The media seems to have decided that solid science is one end of a continuum of truths with homeopaths at the other end, and that it’s their job to shilly shally around in the middle and to present both sides in a ‘fair and balanced’ manner. To which I call bullshit.

Science isn’t about the balance of opinions but the balance of evidence. Evidence is bigger than any one person or research institute: it’s the findings of experiments that can be consistently repeated by anyone, anywhere with the right knowledge and equipment. When the evidence stacks up in favour of one theory, then that’s the theory that we must hold as true until/unless reliable and repeatable experiments lead us to refine or change it.

And that’s the thing. The reliable and repeatable experiments show that homeopathy performs no better than a placebo. Yet journalists seem intent on portraying this story as “MPs say one thing, homeopaths say something else, and who knows who’s right?!”. The Guardian, for example, uses a lot of fightin’ words (my bold):

To true believers, including Prince Charles, homeopathy is an age-old form of treatment for a wide range of ills. To most scientists, it is nothing more than water. Today the sniping between the devotees and the denialists became a head-on collision, as the House of Commons science and technology committee challenged the government to live by its evidence-based principles and withdraw all NHS funding from homeopathic treatment. …

…the money could be better spent, said the committee, accusing the Department of Health of failing to abide by the principle that its policies should be evidence-based. …

The Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health countered the MPs’ attack by citing a peer-reviewed scientific study in the International Journal of Oncology which, it said, proved that homeopathic remedies were biologically active. …

But this isn’t a fight. It’s not seconds out, round one. Evidence points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that homeopathy doesn’t work.

The Guardian, along with many other news outlets, also gives quite a weight to pro-homeopathy voices as if all opinions are equal and that this is a debate. Ben Goldacre is collecting examples over on Bad Science. The BBC, for example, comes in for a lot of criticism in Ben’s comments:

fgrunta said,

I just saw this story break on BBC News. They brought on a Homeopath GP who just went and told I don’t know how many millions of viewers that the “evidence is clear” that homeopathy works and she then proceeded to start quote papers.

Grrr….

And:

ALondoner said,

An excellent report, nice to see that MPs can sit down, review the evidence and then say something intelligent.

On the other hand, The BBC (and some other news outlets) seem to be so obsessed with giving each side of the story, they make it sound like there is reasonable evidence for both points of view.

When someone is found guilty of a crime, journalists doesn’t put guilty in quotation marks. Nor do they pick a self appointed expert to rant about why that person was actually not guilty. So why doesn’t the BBC simply report that supporters of homoeopathy say it works, but all independent reviews shows that it does not.

Instead, we get “many people – both patients and experts – say it is a valid treatment and does work”, without at least caveating that with “but all systematic reviews show it is no better than placebo” and explaining who these “experts” are. Experts in giving homeopathy perhaps, but are they experts in telling whether it works better than placebo?

Just sent a few comments to the BBC via their well hidden complaints website:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/forms

The problem is, this is not a debate. The evidence is in: Homeopathy doesn’t work. Perpetuating the myth that taking ‘remedies’ which amount to nothing more than sugar pills or water that’s been shaken up a bit is potentially harmful. In fact, people die because they are convinced that homeopathy will work and so don’t seek proper medical attention. The media is complicit in those deaths because they help to keep the myth of homeopathy alive.

What I don’t understand is why journalists feels the need to create this false dichotomy in the first place. When astronomers discover a new planet orbiting a distant star, journalists don’t start looking for dissenting astrologers. When palaeontologists discover a new dinosaur, journalists don’t seek out creationists or intelligent design advocates to say that it’s all just a big trick by God. Why is it that in other fields they feel at liberty to talk utter hogswash and to ignore solid evidence?

This isn’t a science problem, or a science communications problems, this is a serious journalistic problem. This is journalists imposing a frame onto the story that is utterly inappropriate. This leads to a misrepresentation of the evidence and does a serious disservice to everyone who reads these stories and takes them at face value.

There is always some doubt in science, but this does not mean that science is unreliable or that opposing views are always as valid. In homeopathy, the level of doubt is very, very low, so low in fact that I feel perfectly happy saying “homeopathy doesn’t work”, because that’s the hypothesis that’s been proven correct time and time again.

Other scientific theories have more doubt and there we do need to be careful to be clear about what levels of confidence we should have. But this doesn’t mean that even in those stories that we need to give equal weight to for and against: we just need to be clear about how tentative or firm the science is.

And again, let me reiterate: This is important not just from a journalistic integrity point of view, but because misinformation kills. Actual people actually die. They actually get ill, actually fail to get the right treatment, and actually suffer because of it. Any action on the part of journalists that encourages people to believe in provably ineffective treatments is unethical. I just wish more journalists thought through what they are writing when covering stories like MMR and homeopathy.

A couple of weeks ago I went to an event organised by Laura North aimed at helping people become better public speakers. I do a lot of presentations. I recently added them up and realised to my surprise that I have done 60 planned presentations over the last five years, not to mention all the unplanned ones! But I still feel that my technique could use some improvement so I was really glad that Laura put this event on. She is now planning a series of speaker training events, which I look forward to.

Meantime, here are my notes from the evening. You can watch the videos and see the slide decks on Speaking Out.

Host: Laura North
Dave Bell, Merrill Lynch
Katie Streten, Imagination
Christian Heilmann, Yahoo!

Dave Bell, Merrill Lynch
When he met Laura, who did the intro, they were discussing her dread of public speaking, and he gave her some insight into his experience, and later was accosted and asked to address a meeting like this because it’s a common fear. We all have to do it, whether we present to colleagues or clients. But the main thing is that everything comes with practice. Don’t worry if you feel nervous – you’re not on your own.

Most of Dave’s roles have included some sort of presentation aspect. Some events would be very large, and there’d be a hall of 400 people, but each time you do it you learn a little bit more about your content, your slides, what worked, what didn’t work. [Tip from me: Don't spend quite so much time talking about yourself up front, just give the audience to establish context.]

Style and delivery varies according to the type of meeting and your role within it.

- Small meetings: Most extreme form of presenting is to present to one person, need to think about how that individual is thinking and feeling, how can you change what you are doing to suit what they need. Try to work out when they are following you, and when you are losing them or things have got too complicated. Learn to read the person on the other time of the table. Work out what you can do to meet them half way.

- Chairing meetings & large meetings: Let everyone in the meeting have a fair say and to contribute. Work out who are the key influencers, the people who need to participate. Who are the core constituents? Who needs to understand your message? Not the same level of communication as a one-on-one, but trying to build a consensus and that can be a challenge.

- Making presentations in meetings: When you have people who are not engaged, it’s an excuse for them to switch off, so try to make a connection with them. Look them in the eye. When we are presenting we are trying to communicate and make that connection to them. Address yourself physically to the whole room.

- Pitching ideas: When you’re introducing a new concept to people, especially if it’s new, it make take some time to build things up, don’t rush. How would you approach this if you hadn’t heard it before. If people don’t know who you are and what you’re on about. particularly if you’re external and you don’t have that rapport straight away, take your time and don’t rush to get to your message. Why should they be interested? Why should they come with you? Think about their position, not just about your content.

- Asking questions at conferences: Very nerve-wracking, but important in building reputation. Great if you can come up with some ways to get over the nerves and address a question to a conference. It’s ok if you have a question but don’t get to ask it exactly as you want to – don’t beat yourself up about it.

- Presenting at conferences: Biggest arena that you will face. It’s not as much about connecting with that audience [not sure this is what he really meant], but about having the confidence to speak from the stand.

Preparation is the key for being relaxed.

Audience: Who are they? Why are they there? Who are the key influencers in this meeting? What message do you want to leave them with? Who do you need to get on side in order to make your concept/idea get some legs? You can only leave people with a couple of ideas.

Cliche but true: Tell the audience what you’re going to tell them. Tell them. Tell them what you told them.

Materials: Detailed slides can help, but can be a distraction. Presenting is at its best when it’s the big picture. Give people enough to give them energy. Don’t need the fine detail, give them something to take away. Strip back your material to the core ideas.

Objectives: Important point – a presentation is about a transition through a relationship. Often, you are trying to build a relationship. How is the presentation going to help you get from A to B, and how are you going to take your audience with you?

Don’t over-think! But put enough work in.

Style. Once you know what you’re talking about and you’ve thought about the audience, think about your style. Often it will reflect your personality. There are no real rules, but a few things to bear in mind:

Who’s the audience? Tone should be right for the audience. Think about how to connect with people. Think about the subject. Be consistent.

Summary:

- connect with your audience
- preparation is the key to being relaxed
- be selective with your material – think big picture
- your style will develop and it will come with time
- presentations are performances, some times they go better than others. When it goes well, give yourself a pat on the back.
- …and everyone gets nervous! You are not the only one! Your audience is willing you on, they want you to be successful, so they are on your side!

Q: Should you do a dry run?
It helps you master the material, and the more comfortable you are with your core messages, the happier you’ll be doing the ad libbing. If it helps you relax, it’s a good idea. Use colleagues as a sounding board. You might think you’ve mastered the material, but when you get started you find you don’t know it as well as you could.

Q: What do you do if you think you’re starting to lose the audience?
Think about just slowing down and regrouping. The biggest thing is realising that you might be losing them is the important thing. Softly reposition what you are saying, perhaps say it again in a different way. Acknowledge to yourself they aren’t quite with you rather than charging through. But keep calm and try to address it.

Also, people sometimes close their eyes or stare at the corner, it doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t listening. Some people learn aurally.

Q: Camden Speakers’ Club. Found that getting over the phobia, speaking to the club, 15 people, was the same as speaking to 1000. It’s the same. You said there were differences, what do you think they are?
If you have 15 people sat round a boardroom table, within that room you’ve got a dynamic, some people who are more influential who might lead a consensus, so gauging how they are going is important. That’s different to when you are on a platform, you can’t connect on more than a fleeting basis, you can’t tailor what you are saying for everyone. In a small group, if you lose the key influencer, you lose everyone.

Q: What about presenting over the phone?
Keep calm, don’t try to get out everything you are trying to say straight away. Almost like when you’re losing someone in the audience: adapt what you are saying, take your time, be confident. Have an elevator pitch. What is your one little hook? You need that on the phone as they don’t know anything about you. Why are they going to be interested?

Q: When you need to convince people of your credibility, how do you win them over? Particularly if you are young and talking to much older people?
Demonstrate your experience and knowledge. Until you’re tried and tested it is very difficult. Know your material really well. Be clear when answering questions. Who else in your organisation can you reach out to? Who could do the meeting with you? Who of your colleagues has more experience who can give you back-up?

Katie Streten, Imagination
Goes to a lot of conferences where the speaker programme is packed with men, yet competent women don’t get asked, and don’t push themselves forward as much as they should. Has done two courses on how to present, and they make you very fired up, then you go away and don’t do any of the things you are taught! Have a LAMDA Spoken English qualification, and they do really great programmes where you learn to read aloud, ad lib, etc. Still gets nervous ahead of time and hates asking questions.

Reasons not to like public speaking and suggestions for dealing with them. Asked others why they hate public speaking.

Reason 1: “No one will be interested in what I’ve got to say”.

Well, they are there. They are there for a reason, and that reason is you. In meetings at work, they feel you have something valuable to offer, so remember that when you feel your opinion is irrelevant. Think about them and what you can give them. This isn’t about you, it’s about why they have asked you the question. They want something from you and they think you can give it to them.

Reason 2: “I will start speaking and go completely blank.”

Prepare. If you’re giving a really important talk or if you’re not confident, write your script out longhand. It’s a pain in the arse, but it’s the best way to get it out. Read it aloud to yourself, read it to friends, and just keep going to it. You will realise some of your jokes were bad, it was too long, and gradually you’ll get familiar with your subject matter. Then write out card notes, which should be as simple as possible and just give you your key points. Just glance down when you get lots. Highlight key moments on your slides. Don’t practice too much, because your brain will start to expect a certain rhythm and if you falter, your brain will freeze. Now what you are saying, use the cards to help you maintain your flow but don’t try to have it off pat.

Reason 3: “Everyone out there will find out that I’m a fraud.”

You have been asked to speak, you are there for a reason. People think you have something to say so you are not a fraud. Everyone thinks that. Everyone from Oprah Winfrey to Armando Ianucci, who has talked about “the fear of being found out for being a bit rubbish”

Reason 4: “I will look out over the crowd and see their faces and go blank.”

If you can make a connection with the audience, that’s great. But if you’re nervous, don’t look at the crowd. Before hand, pick 3 spots in the room, or place your mate at the back to smile at you. Start talking to the first point say something and move on to the next point and talk to that, then the third. If eye contact makes you uncomfortable, then it will throw you, so fake it. Remember that people are more interested in the talk than in you. They are not interested in the colour of your shirt, or your accent, or your hair. They want to hear what you have to tell them.

5: “I will lose my place and just stall.”

This is common, that you’ll kick off, then lose your place and it’ll all go up in smoke. So: Cards. Practice. And remember, the audience is on your side. Everyone is desperate for you not to make a fool of yourself for their own sake. They want you to succeed. It’s ok if you stall. And if you do, ‘fess up. Say “I’m sorry, I’ve just lost my place”, look at your cards and carry on. No one will judge you for that.

6; “I will ask something that everyone else understands, and I will look like an idiot.”

Everyone in this situation is thinking the same thing as you. And others may have the question too, but by asking it you have saved them the trouble. But if you are in a situation where you have paid to be at a seminar or conference, you have a right to ask. The speaker has a duty to you, to explain anything that is unclear. It is their problem, not your. And if you wait long enough, there is usually someone in the audience who makes a statement instead of asking a question, so by asking a question you are doing the right thing and saving the audience from statements. Asking questions is a good thing!

7: “It feels artificial. It should feel like a conversation, I hate the awkward feeling.”

The audience often hate it too, they don’t want formality except in serious contexts. The audience wants to make a connection, to feel relaxed. They want to enjoy it. Say ‘Hello!” at the beginning. That makes it more informal, makes people feel relaxed. Also, your arms. Don’t hold them by your sides but don’t gesticulate too much either. If you move your hands at about waist height, that’s what you naturally do in conversation, and it just makes it less formal and breaks up the space. Don’t have a rigid script, but notes that let you ebb and flow with the audience’s attention.

Powerpoint

Two key things:

* Bullet points. This is not the place to write your script. (Don’t use a script, use cards!). Don’t put too much on your powerpoint, just do it in short bursts.
* Pictures: The things that stick in your head are images. Make the pictures appropriate to what you are trying to say. Makes it less formal too.

Conclusion
* People genuinely want to hear what you have to say. If they have invited you, they think you are capable, and you are capable.
* Think about your audience – what can you give them? Why have you been asked to do what you are doing? What can you bring to them?

If all else fails, try to remember the details of one speech you have heard in your life. You don’t. Some speeches really stick in your mind, as in you remember them, but you don’t remember the detail. So if you feel really bad about it, just remember that no one will remember anyway.

twitter.com/watusi

Q: What about humour?
Pictures can be very useful because a picture can be humorous without you having to be funny. If you feel you have to be funny, that can be massive pressure. You can get humour in via pictures. Obviously depends on context, so it’s not always appropriate.

Q: Struggle with going too fast. How do I calm down and articulate? What are your tips? And also, women should make more statements like men [instead of asking questions at a conference]?
Well, statements don’t hold people to account, so if you disagree with something don’t just refute it, ask them to back it up. You have to make yourself do it, you have to grab the opportunity to do so. Regarding speaking slowly, if you’re very nervous, put your reminders to speak slowly, raise your head, use your arms, on your first card. In terms of tone, the more relaxed you get the more conversational you get, and the more your tone will rise and fall. Think about the words you normally emphasise and do that.

Q: Jokes, sometimes they work once but not again? What’s your view?
Good pictures, quotes that other people have said. Because it’s not yours, then if it falls flat then it’s not your fault.

Q: Biting off, repeating oneself and then realising and ending the sentence abruptly.
Be aware of yourself when you’re speaking. It’s a bit weird, half of you is speaking, and half of you is trying to be aware of what is going on. As soon as you are aware, do something. Also, what that boils down to, is a desire to get your point across, and a feeling that either you’re not getting across well or that they are not listening to you. So be confident of yourself. Ask if someone has understood it, try to get to a point where you’ve said it and then ask, does that make sense?

Q: What do you do when people are behind you?
Depends on your room set-up and what’s your point. Either move out to the side, or turn round. it is worth doing that. Depends on how long your’e speaking for. If it’s short, it doesn’t matter. If a room is set up for training, people should face each other and you walk around. If it’s a presentation, then don’t have people behind you, even sit on a windowsill. Explain that you don’t want anyone behind you. If need be, rearrange the room so that you have no one behind.

Q: What’s the best way to say I don’t know?
Comes back to ‘fessing up if you make a mistake. Best thing to do is to say something along the lines of, “That’s a really good point, I don’t know but if you give me your email address I will find out and get back to you”. People can be a bit mean and want to put you on the spot, but if you don’t know be clear that you don’t, and follow it up. Or ask the audience, “Has anyone here had that situation? Can someone help?” Bring audience into the talk. Worst thing you can do is fake it, because they will know.

Christian Heilmann, Yahoo!
How to inspire as a speaker. Interesting to have this kind of event. Always a bit concerned about how everyone says that there aren’t enough women, as hasn’t had that problem when organising his own conferences.

Focused on how to teach people without them realising. Inspire people to learn more about the topic. Inspire them to find out and do something.

Was voted ‘most inspiring speaker’ in the SlideShare Zeitgeist. Upload the audio to his Slideshare.

Presentation is the flashcards – just one sentence. Records talks so he can remember what he said. You can do it too if you just trust yourself.

Why was he voted the most inspiring? He has very distinctive hair. Has its own tag on Flickr. Clearly it’s his hair…

He tries to look at the topic from a different point of view. What is different? Why would people care? Get out of the spot you are in, and look at it from a different angle.

Shows a photo that is missing a person in the middle. People laugh at the woman who didn’t jump, but people don’t notice the missing woman in the middle.

Toblerone. People don’t realise that if they look at the logo, there’s a bear in the logo. What is the story of the bear? Find the story that makes the difference. Even if it’s just anecdotes, make it lively, make it human.

Speaks in many different countries, different cultures.

People look at speakers first, then the information, then the audience. Although the audience is one of the most important things, people are seeking information. What do people take out of that info? How is that info useful to everyone else?

Know what your audience needs is the most important part of any presentation. What do people want? What is their problem? How can you solve it? This can be hard. Sometimes when you are invited at the last moment, or if you face a hostile audience. What do people waste their time on? How does your info make their time better spent? We should go into every conference asking what the audience asks themselves, what is in it for them? No matter how enjoyable a speaker is if they don’t give the audience what they need, they aren’t good. What would I want off me if I was sitting there?

Having the right mindset as a presenter is also very important. People came to see you speak. They had a choice and they chose to see you. So you’ve got nothing to lose. Even if you’re terrible, even if your slides are terrible, you can still say “I did it”, and dare yourself to get better. You can only get better if you keep going. We all suck, we just get better at faking it or don’t care anymore.

Look ahead at what might be interesting. Don’t just take the obvious topics. Just make something better. Tell a story. Find a story. Your presentation should be a story with a start, a climax and an end, with the repetition to drive it home.

How do you get to that stage? Relax, know your stuff. Not the presentation, but the stuff that you are talking about. People will ask you a question. If you just rehearse the presentation but can’t answer questions you lose everything you built up in the presentation. It’s not about dazzling people, but about learning something. Take the time to prepare your topic. It’s dangerous to just go out there and dazzle.

Own your talk. This is your talk. If someone sends you a slide deck, change it to something you feel comfortable with. Have seen people trying to tell other people’s jokes. It’s your talk, it’s what you define.

Practice. Any chance you get to give a public talk, do it. Go to unconferences. Talk to your friends.

Practice some more. The more you do it the better you get. When you get good, you can start to slip stuff in that people aren’t expecting. Grab people’s attention, and follow it up with lots of good information.

How can you practice? Loud reading in different voices is great training. If you have a kid, or can borrow a kid, read books to them with the different voices. Room on the Broom, great way to entertain the kids and you can train yourself to be a speaker.

Listen to audiobooks. Very good training. Stephen Fry is an excellent reader. Learn how to make breaks in the right spot. Accents. Hear the voice.

Listen to yourself. This is excellent training. When we speak our head vibrates, so our voice sounds deeper than we do to other people. Listen to your own talks, e.g. at the gym. Become your own critic. Find out mannerisms that you didn’t realise you had. Discover your own tics and weaknesses. Force yourself to listen to yourself.

Powerpoint karaoke. Friday afternoon. Beer. Download random Powerpoints off the internet. Then everyone has to give a five minute presentation to a random powerpoint deck. Everything from caring for crocodiles, to environmental physics. Good bonding experience too!

Lightning talks. 5 x 5 x 5. Good way to share information, to learn how to speak. 5 minute presentations of a problem encountered, 5 minute talking about how it was resolved, 5 minute discussion about whether the solution is good enough. Whatever you do at work, you can do this. Everyone in the team has to do one sooner or later. Very good to find new speakers too.

Get inspired by great examples. Sometimes, the quirky ones aren’t actually the best. TED is a great site for videos. Good introduction. Always pick people who are interesting.

Josh Blue, was at Last Comic Standing, and he’s got a Cerebral Palsy, and is very, very funny. US guy. Very in your face. Makes people realise that those with disabilities have something to offer too. Not just being funny, but also saying that we are out there, we are interesting. Anyone can do that too – show people that you are there.

Avoid at all costs:

* Imitation. If you imitate someone else’s style, that makes you a karaoke singer. Find your own style.
* Read your slides. It’s appalling if you read your slides. Slides are a guideline, outline of your story, reminds you where you’re going. Information for people who can’t be bothered to listen.
* Forget your story. It’s not just information. Make it personal if necessary. Use anecdote.
* Blinging it up. Don’t use the fancy transitions. You should never end up having to wait for your slides to build.

Overcoming the fear.
Some people say you should ‘dress a bit better than the audience’, but that’s not the point. Your presentation will talk for you. If you have to abide by company speaker guidelines, smile and nod and think of something happy. Be honest, accept your flaws. The audience is as afraid of you as you are of them. Some audiences are happy and supportive, others are very hostile because they think they are better. If you don’t talk to the audience and get them involved, you’re talking to yourself. The audience wants your information, give your slides to them online, let people relax and focus on your talk.

Instead of seeing a crowed or a sea of faces, pick a new person to talk to with every part of your story. If you’re experienced, try to figure out what they are trying to get out of them. Talking to people one after the other, people who look interested, makes you subconsciously talk to them more.

Has a presentation ebook online for free. developer-evangelism.com. How to write slides, how to get invited to speak, how to deliver the talk.

Twitter.com/codepo8.

Q: Format and structure of presentation. What the background should be? Bullets or no bullets? If you have a 10 mins presentation, how many slides?
There’s another game, Pecha Kucha – 20 slides in 20 seconds. Very fast. Good way to pace yourself and find out. Normally take a minute a slide. Always be faster than you think you are, don’t be scared of 45 minute talk. Don’t like bullet points because they distract the audience. If you structure the points, and show them one after the other and talk them through the process, then it’s ok. Summary slides, that’ where they are good. Other than that, one piece of information. Background – black background with big (36px upwards) white text works everywhere on every technology. Other than that, it’s up to you what your style is. Don’t go after someone else’s style. Think about what might break, and one thing to remember is that everything will break. You will never have a set up that works.

Q: How do you combat nerves of just getting up there?
Be in the mindset. You’re already there, people have already booked, you can’t let them down by not going on. There’s nothing much you can do that would make them hate you. Everybody is afraid at the last moment. You cannot change it just before you go on. You just have to do it. Find a way to calm yourself when you’re stressed. You’ve made the commitment, you’ve prepared, so you’re ready.

Q: How do you deal with people who take over the meeting, and make sure everyone has a chance to talk?
Wish we had more female managers; male managers get into vocal fist fights, talk in circles because they want consensus. Have an agenda, because if you don’t it’s a waste of time. Say at the beginning, this is the agenda, say you are going to stick to it and stick to the time, and be firm but polite with people. When people go round in circles, say, “We’re not going to fix this now, so let’s deal with it after the meeting.”

Q: How do you deal with a microphone?
See it as sceptre. I just earnt this because I have something important to say. It’s my turn. Spotlight situation: you want that question answers. You’ve made the commitment to ask it. A lot of others have the same question, and they’ll love you for asking it.

Oops, forgot to do my Computer Weekly: The Social Enterprise round-up last week, so here are two week’s worth of links for you.

Asymmetry: The problem with social networks
Shoot the alpha males
Does your personality influence how you use the web?
Listening – Connecting – Publishing
IntraTeam 2010
How important is Twitter to your blog’s traffic stats?
Report: Pew’s Social Media and Young Adults
Report: Edelman’s Trust Barometer 2010
Everything you need to know about comments
Google Buzz: A user testing fail?

Enjoy!

Please see update at bottom of post!

There has been, ahem, quite a bit of buzz about Google Buzz since they started rolling it out across the Gmail network a few days ago. I first saw an invitation to it when I logged into my inbox yesterday evening. Being curious, I accepted Google’s invitation to try it out, but fairly rapidly started to think that perhaps it was a bad idea.

My problems with Buzz are twofold: Firstly, it sits in Gmail, both as a menu item under my inbox and as live messages in my inbox. Secondly, there are some serious privacy implications that Google appear to either have ignored or not thought about. Either explanation is a poor show, frankly.

Buzz off out of my inbox!
I have written and spoken before about the problem with email, but for those of you unfamiliar with my views I shall summarise: Email is causing significant problems for people, not just because of the volume of email we get these days but because dopamine circuits in our brain encourage us to seek new information and cause us to check our email more often than we realise. Every time we check email, we waste about 64 seconds getting back into doing what we were doing before. Some people check email every 5 minutes. That’s an 8-hour day each week that we waste in mental limbo. Email is a significantly counter-productive tool yet it’s our default for almost all communications.

By adding in a new source of random reward – Buzz – Google have made their inbox even more addictive and unproductive. Not only do you have a new unread Buzz messages count to lure you into checking and rechecking, Buzz also tangles up Buzz replies with your email in your email inbox. Whilst that may seem sensible from an engineering point of view, or for someone whose inbox is quiet or beautifully organised, for me and the many people like me for whom inbox is a daily struggle, this is a disaster. I just do not need extra fluff filling up my inbox.

Privacy issues
For me, this mess of an inbox would be enough to put me off Buzz, but it gets worse. Google have historically not been great at doing social stuff. They are really great at their core business, which is search and serving ads against those search results. They also excel in some other areas, such as document sharing. And yes, I even appreciate the use of labels instead of folders in Gmail. But social stuff seems to be a bit beyond them.

Google Buzz lays bare Googles social weaknesses, illustrating the lack of thought given to potential social problems caused by their design and engineering decisions.

Privacy problem 1: Google Buzz exposes your most emailed contacts
Nicholas Carlson pointed this out in his Silicon Valley Insider piece, WARNING: Google Buzz Has A Huge Privacy Flaw:

When you first go into Google Buzz, it automatically sets you up with followers and people to follow.

A Google spokesperson tells us these people are chosen based on whom the users emails and chats with most using Gmail.

That’s fine.

The problem is that — by default — the people you follow and the people that follow you are made public to anyone who looks at your profile.

In other words, before you change any settings in Google Buzz, someone could go into your profile and see the people you email and chat with most.

This is a significant problem. I use my Gmail account for business and personal email, so many of my most-emailed people are not my friends but my clients. It’s not appropriate for Google to expose my clients like that. I maintain a client list on my site, but that’s at my discretion and doesn’t give away individual names and email addresses. Google Buzz could.

My email contacts list is not a social graph. It is not a group of people I have chosen to follow, but is instead full of people with whom I have a (sometimes very tenuous)professional relationship, as well as my family and some of my friends. Interestingly, my best friends don’t email me very often, so they do not show up as a part of my Buzz following list.

This answer to this is to go to your Google Profile and uncheck the tickbox next to “Display the list of people I’m following and people following me”.

Didn’t know you had a Google Profile? Nope, me neither! God knows when it was set up, or whether I agreed to it at some point in the past without realising what I was doing, or what. My friend Kevin Marks reminded me that he nagged me into creating a profile when Google first got them, which explains why I forgot all about it! But still, now I know I have a Google Profile I can give it the information I choose to.

Privacy problem 2: Poor default settings and no central control panel
Carlson goes on:

A Google spokesperson asked us to phrase this claim differently. Like this: “In other words, after you create your profile in Buzz, if you don’t edit any of the default settings, someone could visit your profile and see the people you email and chat with most (provided you didn’t edit this list during profile creation).”

This is appalling behaviour by Google. It’s well known that users tend not to edit their default settings. The people currently playing with Buzz may well be early adopters, more experienced in the ways of the web and more curious about settings and defaults. But you can guarantee that most people will accept the default settings as they are, without realising how much information that they are exposing to the world.

When you first join up to Google Buzz, you get a screen that shows you the people you’re automatically following, and who is following you. It doesn’t make clear that this information is visible to others, nor is it clear how to change the settings. If you go to your normal Google settings (at least for me) there is no ‘Buzz’ tab where I can manage all my privacy settings. Instead you have to ferret about in the interface in order to find the different privacy settings.

This is just not good enough. Right now, I can’t even find half the settings that I saw earlier. I found them through clicking on all the links I could see until I got to the page I wanted: This is the sort of usability mistake that Google should not be making.

Privacy problem 3: People can hide themselves from you
One of my followers is anonymous to me.

This is completely appalling. I should be able to see exactly who is following me, and not have them be able to hide themselves from me. The opportunity for abuse here is huge – ex-boyfriends stalking their ex-girlfriends, bosses spying on their employees, random internet trolls watching their victims.

Anyone can get my email address – it’s out there on the web. It has to be, because I’m a freelance consultant and people have to have a way to get hold of me. This means that anyone can hide their profile and I won’t know who they are or why they are following me on Google Buzz. This is creepy in the extreme.

It also means that I can’t block that person. In order to block someone, you need to go to your follower list, click on their name and then click ‘Block’.

If I can’t see a follower’s name, I can’t go to this page and I can’t block them. Huge fail.

Privacy problem 4: Mobile Buzz can publish your precise location, but gives no option to make it fuzzy
If you have a browser on your phone, you may be able to use the mobile version of Buzz. When you open it up, it asks if it can use your location. Say yes to this, and your precise address will be published at the bottom of every Buzz you create. It doesn’t give you a choice in terms of how detailed you want to be, you can’t say ‘London’ or ‘UK’, it just determines your street address to the best of its ability and uses that.

This issue was highlighted by Molly Wood over on Cnet, and is as unhappy about it as I am. Molly has an Android, and her experience was this:

When you first visit the mobile app on your Android phone and attempt to post something, you’ll be asked whether you want to Share Location or Decline. The “Remember this Preference” box is prechecked too, so be sure you’re ready to have everyone know right where you are, whenever you post to Buzz. At minimum, uncheck the Remember button so you can decide whether to reveal your location post by post.

On the iPhone, there’s no “Remember this Preference”, so you are asked every time you open the site. You can turn location on or off on a per-Buzz basis very easily, so it’s not as bad as it sounds like the Android is, but the lack of choice about level of detail is dreadful.

If you do publish your location, you are not just publishing it to those people following you on Buzz, you are also, by default, also publishing it to everyone who is geographically close by. The ‘Nearby’ tab on the mobile Buzz site gives you a list and map view of everyone who has published a location that is within a certain distance. Again, this is fine if that’s what you want, but it shouldn’t be the default. You can, on a per post basis, set your privacy settings to “private”, but you don’t seem able to set that globally via the iPhone.

Once you have published your location you have to delete the Buzz in order to delete your location. You can’t just strip the location off the Buzz.

What’s also annoying is that it asks to use your location every time you open the site up. And every time you open up the Buzz Map. Every time. Lord, that is a real buzz killer.

(Molly flags up some other issues too: The use of photos from her Android that she hadn’t uploaded, and the revelation of her email. Her post is worth reading.)

Privacy problem 5: The opportunities for spammers and PR hacks
Jennifer Leggio has already had PRs spamming her via Buzz (on page 2). Oh dear lord, what a grim thought.

[T]he brand spamming and public relations pitching has already started. It’s bad enough that a lot of these people have my email address, but now they can buzz me just by adding me. (Whether I add them back or not, I found. Was this a glitch?)

The idea that Buzz is going to make me more available to PR people and to spammers, against my will, is not one that fills me with joy. I already get heaps of crap press releases in my inbox, I do not need more of this stuff cluttering things up. The true spammers aren’t there yet, but they will so find a way to abuse Buzz and make the whole thing a horrible experience. And right now, Google seem to be making it easy for them.

Privacy problem 6: Buzz automatically links you to other Google properties like Picasa and Google Reader
Jennifer says:

If you are using Google Picasa and Google Reader yet are not wholly aware of Buzz, you may not realize what you are publishing and promoting to your Buzz stream because you may not know it exists.

Again, would it be so hard to hold off automatically publishing stuff to people’s Buzz streams and make them go through a configuration process before they start publishing anything? Of course, that wouldn’t suit Google, who want as many people to be using Buzz as soon as possible. They don’t have a new tool here, they are just integrating Jaiku, whom they bought in Oct 2007, into Gmail. (Wait! What? It took them over two years to think of this?) So they don’t have a really compelling reason for people to change from Twitter or Facebook or FriendFeed. Buzz is not a killer app, it’s a mess. A TGF.

In conclusion
I haven’t even begun with the usability problems Buzz has. How poorly considered the interface is. How annoying it is when your Buzz stream is flooded with someone’s Google Reader output. But I do have a cure:

Go to the bottom of your screen and click “Turn off Buzz”.

That should pretty much solve the problem. Google can get back to me when they’ve hired someone who actually understands social functionality and, y’know, people, and has fixed the awful usability and privacy problems. As Steve Lawson said:

There’s a reason why I don’t keep a ‘who I’ve emailed this week’ page going on my blog, and it’s not just cos it would be dull as shit.

UPDATE: 12 Feb 2010, 10am
Google have responded very rapidly to users concerns regarding Buzz. In a blog post on the Gmail Blog comes the news that they are making changes to the way that Buzz works and will be rolling those changes out soon.

The changes they are making are:

1. More visible option to not show followers/people you follow on your public profile
2. Ability to block anyone who starts following you
3. More clarity on which of your followers/people you follow can appear on your public profile

My advice to all new Buzz users would be:

1. Edit the default list of followers that Buzz suggests when you first join the service. Make sure that you are only following people you want to follow.
2. Decide if you want that list to be public. If you are in any way unsure, make it private.
3. Keep an eye on who is following you, and use the block functionality if you find someone following you who makes you uncomfortable in any way
4. Edit your public profile page and make sure you are happy with the information it displays. The minimum Google will accept is a name.

Having used Buzz already, I can’t check what the defaults are on initial sign-up now, but I’m hoping that Google has made some better choices about default levels of privacy. It would be better if Google doesn’t automatically tie Buzz into its other properties, but asks people to choose that up front. It will certainly be good to be able to see (and block, if I choose) everyone who is following me, not just those with public profiles.

There’s still no word on fuzzy location on the mobile app. My personal preference is not to use geolocation apps, but that’s just my own squickiness. I might use it more if I could set the level of detail in my location, e.g. “London” as opposed to a street address.

Now, if Google gives us the option to spin Buzz off out of our inbox and into a separate app, I might be more inclined to give it another go. But keeping it in the inbox is still a dealbreaker for me. I have enough problems managing my email already, I don’t need Buzz to add to the cognitive load.

I doubt that Google will separate them, though. Just read their opening paragraph where they coo over how many users they have. That’s why they did it like this: It gave them an immediate user base that they probably would not have got if they had launched it as a stand-alone service. My friend Max said to me on Twitter yesterday:

Wave is a separate app that should have been part of GMail, Buzz is part of GMail and should have been a separate app…

And I think he pretty much nailed it there. Buzz still feels uncomfortable in my inbox, but at least Google are making some progress towards clarity and better privacy controls for users. Here’s hoping the solve the other problems soon.

UPDATE: 12 Feb 2010, 1pm
Jessica Dolcourt of Cnet has put together a very clear guide on how to opt-out of Buzz. Turning it off doesn’t purge your profile or stop people following you, so a few more steps are needed.

Last year, over 3500 people pledged to support Ada Lovelace Day, the international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science. Over 1200 people added their link to our map mash-up and we got lots of coverage in the national press and even appeared on the BBC News Channel. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We wanted you to tell the world about these unsung heroines, and you did. Thank you!

But our work is not yet done. This year we want 3072 people to sign up to our pledge and to write their tribute to women in tech on Wednesday 24 March. We have 197 signatories so far, we just need another 2875, which is where you come in. Please sign the pledge and let all your friends know about it.

It doesn’t matter how new or old your blog is, what gender you are, what language you blog in, if you do text, audio or video, or what you normally blog about – everyone is invited to take part. All you need to do is sign up to this pledge and then publish your blog post any time on Wednesday 24th March 2010. If you’re going to be away that day, feel free to write your post in advance and set your blogging system to publish it that day.

To keep up to date with what is happening:

The Pledge: http://findingada.com/
The Blog: http://blog.findingada.com
on Twitter http://twitter.com/FindingAda
on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=253179284089

Please, join us on Ada Lovelace Day. Together we can raise the profile of women in technology around the world!

This week brought two really fascinating insights into the world of statistics. The first was from a most unusual source: The Daily Mail (not my usual read – the link was posted to the Bad Science forum). They had run with the story Cracked it! Woman finds six double yolk eggs in one box beating trillion-to-one odds, which was then pretty rigorously debunked by the Mail’s own Michael Hanlon.

In Eggs-actly what ARE the chances of a double-yolker? Hanlon points out that young hens tend to produce more double yolks than older hens, and that flocks tend to be of the same age, so six double-yolkers is not an unusual occurrence for a young flock. Further more, double-yolkers are heavier than single yolked eggs, so when the eggs are sorted by weight they will tend to wind up in the same box. So really, a box of six double-yolkers isn’t that much of a surprise.

The second was from WNYC’s RadioLab, a great radio show and podcast from NPR in the States which has now become a must-listen for the gym. I love RadioLab – they cover science stories in an engaging, entertaining and though provoking way. Their programme from Sept 9 last year was called Stochasticity, “a wonderfully slippery and smarty-pants word for randomness”. The first two sections should be compulsory listening for every journalist:

A Very Lucky Wind
Laura Buxton, an English girl just shy of ten years old, didn’t realize the strange course her life would take after her red balloon was swept away into the sky. It drifted south over England, bearing a small label that said, “Please send back to Laura Buxton.” What happened next is something you just couldn’t make up – well, you could, but you’d be accused of being absolutely, completely, appallingly unrealistic.

On a journey to find out how we should think about Laura’s story, and luck and chance more generally, Jad and Robert join Deborah Nolan to perform a simple coin-toss experiment. And Jay Koehler, an expert in the role of probability and statistics in law and business, demystifies some of Jad and Robert’s miraculous misconceptions.

And then the first half especially of:

Seeking Patterns
Fine. Randomness may govern the world around us, but does it guide US?? Jonah Lehrer joins us to examine one of the most skilled basketball teams ever, the ‘82 – ‘83 ‘76ers, and wonders whether or not the mythical “hot hand” actually exists.

Then we meet Ann Klinestiver of West Virginia, an English teacher who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 1991. When she began to take a drug to treat her disease, her life changed completely after one fateful day at the casino. Jonah discusses the neurotransmitter dopamine and the work of Wolfram Schultz, whose experiments with monkeys in the 1970s shed light on Ann’s strange addiction and the deep desire for patterns inside us all.

Statistics is something that you constantly see journalists getting wrong. The Bad Science forums are rife with examples of statistics abuse. It’s not surprising, because it’s actually very easy to get statistics wrong: Probability in particular can be very counter-intuitive and assumptions that seem to be common sense are frequently just our brains playing silly buggers with us. Personally, I think that all journalists should have to study statistics, even the freelances, because it’s so easy to get it wrong and so useful when you get it right. But, in the meantime, I’d settle for more people listening to shows like RadioLab and reading blogs like Good Math, Bad Math, Bad Science, or Junk Charts.

Kevin spotted a great Tweet yesterday from Peter Corbett:

And I’m afraid I just couldn’t contain the geologist within (click to see full size):

For your reading pleasure this week, from The Social Enterprise:

Social media and productivity
Privacy is not dead
Melcrum survey reveals widespread use of social media behind the firewall
Making the case for internal community managers
Customer outreach doesn’t trump genuine change
Enjoy!