Unpresenting workshop style

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Non­profit blog­ger Beth Kan­tor often finds gems about pre­sen­ta­tion. Yes­ter­day she shared a “unpre­sent­ing” style of work­shop. She writes:

I do a lot of pre­sent­ing and am spend­ing to much time writ­ing bul­let points, cre­at­ing slides, and prac­tic­ing what I’m going to say. I think that this puts a stop to cre­at­ing con­ver­sa­tion in the room. I wanted to learn some con­ver­sa­tional mechan­ics — so I could stop talk­ing at peo­ple and begin talk­ing with them.

Beth’s main link is to a Google Tech Talk “unpre­sen­ta­tion” by Heather Gold. Might be good back­ground lis­ten­ing today. I’m par­tic­u­larly inter­ested in this for two rea­sons: first, obvi­ously, is that pre­sen­ta­tions are often very bor­ing and it’s nice to think about more inter­ac­tive ways of engag­ing with an audience.

But sec­ond, many mod­ern Friends have defaulted to a lec­ture style in their reli­gious edu­ca­tion. I’m not sure it works. I’ve met peo­ple who have par­tic­i­pated in mul­ti­ple Quak­erism 101 classes and still don’t know basic facts. I myself have rebelled against power point pre­sen­ta­tions and pre-set cur­ric­ula to be more engag­ing but I’m not con­vinced that this has made me a great presenter. It’s always worth find­ing new ways to present in a clear and direct and engages them with the issues they expe­ri­ence day to day.

I imag­ine this would be of inter­est not only to lib­eral Friends who give work­shops, but pas­toral Friends with a con­cern to stay open to imme­di­ate rev­e­la­tion dur­ing wor­ship–Cherice B has a great post about this yes­ter­day , a response to part four of Brent Bill’s Mod­est Pro­posal series.

Some inter­est­ing points from Heather Gold’s pre­sen­ta­tion on “tummling”

  • The best way to tummle is to be a very big ver­sion of your­self. Tummle means to make noise.
  • If you’re happy, i’m happy. The num­ber one way to do that is to care and to notice them—especially the peo­ple who don’t seem that involved.
  • I’m notic­ing [the dis­en­gaged per­son in the back]. if i can involve him a lit­tle bit i’m much more likely to involve more of you faster than if i pick the per­son in the front row with their arm up. a tech­nique to pull every­one in is to go to the fringes. go to the peo­ple who seem on the end, who seem like they have lower sta­tus in what­ever com­mu­nity you’re in (speak less, more nervi­ous, know fewer peo­ple) and go up to them.
  • Some peo­ple will be mad at you. Some peo­ple will be schmucks. Some peo­ple will want to talk a lot. You have to let all that be okay. Tools and rules will never ever do as good a job as your con­fi­dence that you can han­dle any­thing. It’s time con­sum­ing to run through fifty rules in your mind; it’s not so time con­sum­ing to just be there.
  • Chris­tine

    As a Quak­erism 101 teacher, I know that sev­eral of us have moved away from the work­shop style to solicit con­ver­sa­tion, ques­tions, and engage­ment. When teach­ing at a meet­ing, I gen­er­ally ask sev­eral long-time mem­bers to tell me what is most impor­tant about being a Friend to them (this is long before the first “class”). Even though I may have notes, that’s a dis­ci­pline to remind me of impor­tant things… real­iz­ing that other ques­tions may arise — and they usu­ally do.

  • Wych89livecn

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  • Wych89livecn

    I like that .
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  • lisa­han

    With the thanks­giv­ing day com­ing soon,it is time to show your thanks­giv­ing heart.Don’t ever get presents one day before the thanksgiving.And try to choose some­thing special,something will remem­ber you by when you are not around​.Do you feel hard to choose some­thing valuable?I can give you some advices:a hand­made video tape or CD on which you have recorded his/her favourite songs;evening dresses or suits which you can wear them in many occa­sions and Chi­nese silk embroi­deries which you can have them custom-made accord­ing to your pho­tos and so on.Don’t hesitate,get going now!

  • http://twitter.com/heathr heather gold

    I really appre­ci­ate your interes in UnPre­sent­ing. The lit­tle tiny bit I know about Quaker meet­ings is that there is an ele­ment of open par­tic­i­pa­tion in which peo­ple are moved to speak and any­one can and there is space for that. There’s an ele­ment of that in what I’m doing and teach­ing (http://​unpre​sent​ing​.com) in that it’s very much a flow ori­ented thing. For me this came from per­for­mance and the kind of inti­macy and con­nec­tion I’ve learned how to cre­ate there. But I know that reli­gious and AA meet­ings are exam­ples of more democ­ra­tized participation.

    There is tech­nique that works and you’ll also find some notes at unpre​sent​ing​.com and on Beth’s blog. I hope to make video classes at some date in the future in addi­tion to the live workshops.

    If my under­stand­ing of Quaker meet­ings is accu­rate then why would Quak­ers have begun teach­ing in a dif­fer­ent way?

    • http://www.martinkelley.com Mar­tin Kelley

      @Heather: cool, thanks for spot­ting this and giv­ing us the unpre​sent​ing​.com URL. I hadn’t seen that in my link travels…

      It’s always a bit dicey to com­pare Quaker min­istry to any­thing performance-based. Friends have always placed a big value on meek­ness and humil­ity and hav­ing the mes­sage come from the Holy Spirit. Friends talk about “out­run­ning the Guide” when they go beyond a mes­sage they’ve been given and start talk­ing from their own knowl­edge. One bit of wis­dom was to never come to a Quaker meet­ing pre­pared to min­is­ter but to also never come pre­pared not to minister.

      There’s a cou­ple of hun­dreds of years’ worth of rea­sons why this model has been over­shad­owed. Can we admit that a lot of it is eco­nomic? There’s con­fer­ence cen­ters want­ing to fill in week­end slots with pop­u­lar pro­grams that will pack the vis­i­tors in. I’m more com­fort­able with the Old Time Reli­gion myself but get asked to give these work­shops often enough. For me it’s usu­ally an excuse to see friends from the other side of the coun­try but I won’t get asked back if I arrive at one and decide that the Holy Spirit isn’t giv­ing me any­thing to say (“and can you please reim­burse me for the plane and pass that yummy organic vegan vinai­grette?”) My conun­drum is to find a way to keep some­thing like this rooted in wor­ship. The unpre­sent­ing style keeps pre­sen­ters more engaged with the spir­i­tual energy in the room. It’s more-or-less the tech­nique I’ve been using. I like to over-prepare pre­sen­ta­tions in my head over show­ers the month before and then skip the slides and impro­vise at the event itself. If a work­shop is suc­cess­ful then there will be a point where par­tic­i­pants break out of the expected dynamic and start inter­rupt­ing me. I become just another par­tic­i­pant. The Holy Spirit takes over the pre­sen­ta­tion. It hap­pens, though not every time. It’s a goose­bumpy moment.

    • http://www.martinkelley.com Mar­tin Kelley

      @Heather: cool, thanks for spot­ting this and giv­ing us the unpre​sent​ing​.com URL. I hadn’t seen that in my link travels…

      It’s always a bit dicey to com­pare Quaker min­istry to any­thing performance-based. Friends have always placed a big value on meek­ness and humil­ity and hav­ing the mes­sage come from the Holy Spirit. Friends talk about “out­run­ning the Guide” when they go beyond a mes­sage they’ve been given and start talk­ing from their own knowl­edge. One bit of wis­dom was to never come to a Quaker meet­ing pre­pared to min­is­ter but to also never come pre­pared not to minister.

      There’s a cou­ple of hun­dreds of years’ worth of rea­sons why this model has been over­shad­owed. Can we admit that a lot of it is eco­nomic? There’s con­fer­ence cen­ters want­ing to fill in week­end slots with pop­u­lar pro­grams that will pack the vis­i­tors in. I’m more com­fort­able with the Old Time Reli­gion myself but get asked to give these work­shops often enough. For me it’s usu­ally an excuse to see friends from the other side of the coun­try but I won’t get asked back if I arrive at one and decide that the Holy Spirit isn’t giv­ing me any­thing to say (“and can you please reim­burse me for the plane and pass that yummy organic vegan vinai­grette?”) My conun­drum is to find a way to keep some­thing like this rooted in wor­ship. The unpre­sent­ing style keeps pre­sen­ters more engaged with the spir­i­tual energy in the room. It’s more-or-less the tech­nique I’ve been using. I like to over-prepare pre­sen­ta­tions in my head over show­ers the month before and then skip the slides and impro­vise at the event itself. If a work­shop is suc­cess­ful then there will be a point where par­tic­i­pants break out of the expected dynamic and start inter­rupt­ing me. I become just another par­tic­i­pant. The Holy Spirit takes over the pre­sen­ta­tion. It hap­pens, though not every time. It’s a goose­bumpy moment.

      • http://twitter.com/heathr heather gold

        Mar­tin– apolo­gies it took so very long to reply. Some­how, I am not noti­fied of replies. Some­times I get goose­bumpy moments in my shows. I enjoy the unex­pected a lot. Thanks for explain­ing what you’re doing. In a play (eg http://​heather​gold​.com/​c​o​o​kie) of course I have a lot of it pre­pared but it’s “scored” often rather than always specif­i­cally scripted. And I find once I open the room peo­ple do want to jump in. Isn’t that great feel­ing what folks want in con­nec­tion? It’s a do-able thing at con­fer­ences. I often speak at con­fer­ences. But I find the qual­ity of the expe­ri­ence dif­fer­ent when there’s room to include pos­si­bil­ity in the room.