Since I've been in Toastmasters, I list to presentations as presentations, trying to figure out how, why and above all whether they work. I'm afraid that while as speakers, everyone seemed very, very knowledgable, but yet their presentations suffered from the curable presentation problems. There were no pauses to enable the audience absorb information, little vocal variety, mostly unclear introductions lacking memorable statements of purpose and conclusions with minimal practical calls to action.
They put so much effort into education, but if it does not lead to action (such as better advocacy) what is the point? We really do need a Toastmasters program for these people.
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I volunteered to moderate the Heritage Tourism panel because my friend and colleague Regina put out a general call for help on the WPTL listserve. I gave the usual "if no-one else will do I, then I'll be the back up." By now I should realize there is no substantive difference between this and actually volunteering for the position, but I'm a slow learner ;-)
I had qualms. I have no experience moderating panels and no expertise on the subject matter.
Regina reassured me, "No problem!"; she sent me a list of questions to ask the panel and some links on the subject to study. I smiled confidently, knowing I can read questions aloud with the best of them!
BUT: At our final preparation meeting, I suddenly realized I'd missed a few things.
1. I was to introduce the speakers. This was no problem; I simply asked them to send me the introduction they wanted and added that to the script
2. I was also to introduce the panel itself. This is where my blood ran cold (dun-dun-DUN!!!!). As the first to speak, it was my job to connect the audience to the panel so that the audience would be interested from the start. They needed to know why they should care beyond merely getting educational credit. We might even want to urge them to do better at something related to the subject matter.
And: it was the last panel of the day. You know what that means. We had to wake up the audience!
Connecting with audiences is something we work on quite a lot with Toastmasters. The easiest way is through story. Humans love stories; even when we are performing relatively analytical thinking, what really grabs our attention is the story. In this case:
- This is a CLE, so the story must be grounded in law
- A good story has people in it we relate to; maybe us, maybe tourists, but best of all the people of the heritage sites
- Over the internet, image and sound are primary, but it's helpful to involve as many senses as possible, to accommodate different perceptual styles
- This particular story must flow from the legal issue and lead to the panel discussion.
This is what I drafted:
[SHOW SLIDE WITH BULLET-POINTED LEGAL DEFINITION]
"The US National Trust for Historic Preservation (https://savingplaces.org/ ) defines "Heritage Tourism" as "traveling to experience the places, artifacts and activities that authentically represent the stories and peoples of the past".
Tell me: this definition is written from whose point of view?
The Tourist.
Not the People Touristed
What if we flip the script?
Define "Heritage Tourism" from the point of view of the people who are or were there?
[NEW SLIDE]
“Coming to our place to look at our stuff. And maybe at us”
Do you ever wonder: The people who are or who own the objects of tourism, how do they feel about our lawyerly analysis of their legal rights to their own heritage?
Do they care?
What do they want?
Our earlier speakers today showed great knowledge of this, but what about the majority of lawyers?
My personal heritage is Majoritarian-American.
Can I feel what Angkor Wat may be to Cambodians, or whaling to the Makah?
[THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN A GOOD PLACE FOR A NEW SLIDE]
Pffft! You can not feel the feelings of another person.
But: we can be better allies, we can serve them better as lawyers if we try to empathize
Let us try something small, right now
[THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN A GOOD PLACE FOR A NEW SLIDE]
Close your eyes, in your imagination, come with me, to an ancient cathedral, located in a beautiful bustling old city
We enter, touch the sacred water, smell the incense, kneel on the padded kneeler and light a candle for my mother, start a silent prayer, and
In comes a tour group!
With T-shirts and flip-flops!
[THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN A GOOD PLACE FOR A NEW SLIDE]
The guide points at the stained glass, at the candles
Everyone takes pictures
We are the background to their heritage tourism experience
My mother’s candle is part of their heritage tourism experience!
How do you feel?
The tourists are not trying to be annoying
The church, the people of the locale, the country need tourist money,
But sometimes we can't help thinking about whipping the moneychangers from the Temple
That would be an overreaction
But this thought experiment may help us empathize
With people who are connected to heritage tourist sites
And the law of heritage tourist sites."
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Now that the audience was emotionally engaged with the people of the subject matter (and entirely avoiding the tough issue of the rights of locals vs world heritage), we launched into the questions and discussions. It went pretty well.
Step back: Let us analyze this introduction.
It starts with a legalistic definition of "Heritage Tourism", bullet pointing elements like good little lawyers.
Then it asks about people: "Whose point of view is this?"
Then it asks about people: "Whose point of view is this?"
It introduces the parties to the problem - Tourists and The Touristed - by flipping the script.
Problem: the latter are hard to relate to because they're not here and - mostly - We Are Not Them.
Problem: the latter are hard to relate to because they're not here and - mostly - We Are Not Them.
So: the script invites us into a story where *we* are the touristed
It excites an emotion connecting us to the objects of our legal analysis.
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ALSO:
In a live panel, the speakers themselves are the image that draws in the audience. On the internet, it's different. As it happens, our presentation tool does not support a "Talking Heads" format, but even if we were using one that did, nothing is less interesting than a row of talking heads.
WSBA had prepared for us a minimum image (thank you!) but it was my job to come up with something that better supported presentation effectiveness.
WSBA had prepared for us a minimum image (thank you!) but it was my job to come up with something that better supported presentation effectiveness.
The panelists sent me a list of tourism sites that they wanted to talk about. I grabbed a bunch of wikimedia images to put up as slides (being careful to credit them on the slide as required - disrespecting rights to the image is bad, but doubly bad given our subject matter!).
In other programs, the slides advanced in rigid order. But during the show, because it was a discussion, we hopped from site to site and so had to show a slide of whatever site the speaker was talking about. This is a different way of doing things than previous presentations I'd worked on - not worse - just different. Figuring out how to synchronize image with speaker is something to think about.
I also put up slides with the text of the prepared questions. I felt that might help listeners, because sometimes I don't catch the audio version of a question. Was that actually useful? I would like to experiment with the tool to see about posting the questions from the audience - I think that may be the purpose of the "Push To All" feature.
We proactively encouraged audience members to submit questions and observations; I read them to the panel as if they were other panel members. I had to remember to monitor both the "Group Chat" window and the "Q+A" window for audience participation. Also I now realize that it might have been helpful to use "push to audience" so the audience would have the visual as well as the audio of the question.
I sent the introductory script and images to panel members for review. This really helped. It is just too easy to fall in love with one's own words and not hear them from the point of view of another. Also, Panelists Know Things - after all, they are on the panel for Reasons. The comments and edits sent back were absolutely essential for quality.
I would like to do this again, after studying the skill of moderation more. I would better prepare the script and visual support, with plenty of spare images to support where the Q+A hopped. Perhaps we could also practice a panel discussion or in other ways prepare for this new format.
This might be something other Sections are working on too. Let me know if others are interested; joint efforts can be helpful!
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