On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 23:21:20 +0200, Gail Shaw wrote:

> "Jim Henderson" <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote in message
> news:48767938$1@news.povray.org...
>>
>> That's something that I started doing back in about 1998 - speaking at
>> conferences.  I've got a good friend from Ireland who also was an
>> instructor - he describes himself as an "extroverted introvert" when
>> he's teaching.  It's actually a very common trait amongst technical
>> instructors, it seems.  Surprisingly more common than one might expect.
> 
> Sounds about right. Describes some of the speakers I've seen at
> conferences very well.

The friend I mention here has a fairly bad stutter and a very thick Irish 
accent as well - watching him teach, he goes through an almost *total* 
transformation; his accent softens considerably and his stutter 
*vanishes*.  It's quite amazing to watch.

Jim

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On Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:40:06 +0100, Invisible wrote:

> As an aside...
> 
> My therapist seems to think that I'm nervous of public speaking because
> I'm autistic. I was under the impression that *all* people are nervous
> of public speaking. (Or at least, the vast majority of people anyway.) I
> didn't think this was "abnormal" in any way...?

I think most people are nervous about public speaking to some degree.  
Whenever I get up in front of a class (or one of the toughest crowds - an 
audience of other instructors, which I do at least once a year for a 
whole day - along with several other presenters that I select), I'm 
always nervous and I *always* think I've done a poor job.  It's 
reassuring to have these people - many of whom are lifelong instructors - 
come up and tell me what a good job I did.

The first time I did one of *those* talks, I was asked to lead the day's 
sessions 5 minutes before it started.  The conversation with my VP at the 
time was something like:

VP:  "So, who's leading the proceedings today?"
Me:  "Well, [boss] was planning on doing this, but he's moved on to a 
different job a week ago."
VP:  "I guess it's your show then."
Me:  "Uh, OK...."

I basically had to completely ad-lib the opening bit.  I was *sure* I was 
making a total ass out of myself.  But everyone thought I did a great 
job, even though I wasn't prepared - they didn't know I wasn't prepared 
and thought it went off very smoothly.

Jim

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On Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:35:18 +0100, Invisible wrote:

> It massively increases the probability of people liking you. (Which is,
> after all, the most important thing in life.)

I would disagree.  The most important thing to me in life is to be 
respected.  People who like you but disrespect you are not friends; 
they're people who generally see you as a means to an end.

I also rank highly along with respect is that people see me as being 
ethical, fair, and honest.  I wouldn't give up those principles just to 
have "people" like me.  People come and go.  Ethics, honesty, fairness - 
these things stick with you your entire life.

Jim

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>> It massively increases the probability of people liking you. (Which is,
>> after all, the most important thing in life.)
> 
> I would disagree.  The most important thing to me in life is to be 
> respected.  People who like you but disrespect you are not friends; 
> they're people who generally see you as a means to an end.
> 
> I also rank highly along with respect is that people see me as being 
> ethical, fair, and honest.  I wouldn't give up those principles just to 
> have "people" like me.  People come and go.  Ethics, honesty, fairness - 
> these things stick with you your entire life.

I would say that I want to be liked by the right people.

Those are the kind of people who wouldn't like me if I *wasn't* fair, 
ethical and honest.

Different axioms, same conclusion.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Jim Henderson wrote:

> I think most people are nervous about public speaking to some degree.  

Good. It's nice to know I know *something* about something...

> Whenever I get up in front of a class (or one of the toughest crowds - an 
> audience of other instructors, which I do at least once a year for a 
> whole day - along with several other presenters that I select), I'm 
> always nervous and I *always* think I've done a poor job.  It's 
> reassuring to have these people - many of whom are lifelong instructors - 
> come up and tell me what a good job I did.

See, this is the part I'm missing. I always think I did poorly, but 
nobody ever comes up to me and says "hey, you did that really well". 
Possibly just because I don't have any friends, I'm not sure.

The *best* thing about performing Shakespear live is... the audience is 
asleep anyway! ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On Fri, 11 Jul 2008 18:58:10 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>> It massively increases the probability of people liking you. (Which
>>> is, after all, the most important thing in life.)
>> 
>> I would disagree.  The most important thing to me in life is to be
>> respected.  People who like you but disrespect you are not friends;
>> they're people who generally see you as a means to an end.
>> 
>> I also rank highly along with respect is that people see me as being
>> ethical, fair, and honest.  I wouldn't give up those principles just to
>> have "people" like me.  People come and go.  Ethics, honesty, fairness
>> - these things stick with you your entire life.
> 
> I would say that I want to be liked by the right people.
> 
> Those are the kind of people who wouldn't like me if I *wasn't* fair,
> ethical and honest.
> 
> Different axioms, same conclusion.

Well, it's fair to say there are people *here* who like you.  So that's a 
start.

Jim

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On Fri, 11 Jul 2008 19:00:08 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
> 
>> I think most people are nervous about public speaking to some degree.
> 
> Good. It's nice to know I know *something* about something...

Well, you've demonstrated that repeatedly here.

>> Whenever I get up in front of a class (or one of the toughest crowds -
>> an audience of other instructors, which I do at least once a year for a
>> whole day - along with several other presenters that I select), I'm
>> always nervous and I *always* think I've done a poor job.  It's
>> reassuring to have these people - many of whom are lifelong instructors
>> - come up and tell me what a good job I did.
> 
> See, this is the part I'm missing. I always think I did poorly, but
> nobody ever comes up to me and says "hey, you did that really well".
> Possibly just because I don't have any friends, I'm not sure.

It's got nothing to do with having friends or not in the audience.  I 
consider the vast majority of the people in my instructor program to be 
professional colleagues.  A few are good friends, but not many (less than 
1% certainly - the program's not that big).

I think the audience also does matter - in retrospect, having an audience 
of people who teach, they know the importance of telling a speaker 
they've done a good job.  General audiences tend not to unless they're 
asked to do a formal evaluation (and even then many don't - I've 
presented to groups of a couple hundred and only had 3 or 4 formal 
evaluations come back - and almost *always* from the ones who weren't 
happy about something).

With a general audience, no feedback is generally considered a good 
thing, because *most* people will tend to say something only if they're 
unhappy.

I hadn't really thought about that before.  It's not really that 
different from my experiences in the Novell Forums as a SysOp there, 
though - the only customers who came in were the ones who were having 
problems - people didn't come in and say "just wanted to say, 
everything's working fine - well done, Novell!".

> The *best* thing about performing Shakespear live is... the audience is
> asleep anyway! ;-)

There is also that possibility, though I find usually if someone in the 
audience is put to sleep by a presentation, they'll be one of the 
complainers.  Often they will complain that you didn't cover something 
that you did - they just weren't paying attention and missed it.

Jim

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Jim Henderson wrote:

> Well, it's fair to say there are people *here* who like you.  So that's a 
> start.

Aye, that I'll grant ye.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Jim Henderson wrote:

> I think the audience also does matter - in retrospect, having an audience 
> of people who teach, they know the importance of telling a speaker 
> they've done a good job.

Aye, that makes sense.

> With a general audience, no feedback is generally considered a good 
> thing, because *most* people will tend to say something only if they're 
> unhappy.

No news is good news? ;-)

>> The *best* thing about performing Shakespear live is... the audience is
>> asleep anyway! ;-)
> 
> There is also that possibility, though I find usually if someone in the 
> audience is put to sleep by a presentation, they'll be one of the 
> complainers.  Often they will complain that you didn't cover something 
> that you did - they just weren't paying attention and missed it.

I still remember Zimin Wo. (Yes, that was is actual name.) Nobody ever 
listened to his lectures. People were openly using it as an excuse to 
catch up on sleep after that wild all-night student partying that normal 
students apparently get up to.

Ways to wake up a sleeping audience:

Lecturer: "Uh, ok, uh, so den we have ah fisicol layer, da data link 
layer, an den presentashon layer..."

Guy at the back: "PRINCESS LAYER!"

Mmm, OK, I guess you had to be there... Trust me, it was damned funny! ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On Fri, 11 Jul 2008 19:29:10 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>> With a general audience, no feedback is generally considered a good
>> thing, because *most* people will tend to say something only if they're
>> unhappy.
> 
> No news is good news? ;-)

Yeah, generally speaking.  :-)  Maybe nobody was wowed to the point of 
telling you, but nobody complained either, and that's a good thing.

> I still remember Zimin Wo. (Yes, that was is actual name.) Nobody ever
> listened to his lectures. People were openly using it as an excuse to
> catch up on sleep after that wild all-night student partying that normal
> students apparently get up to.

LOL, I had a chem professor like that.  He used to lecture the chalkboard 
for 2 hours at a time while doing chemical balancing equations.

I also remember going to a presentation by an IBM software engineer on 
NDS (Novell's first generation directory service) on IBM mainframes.  He 
lectured the podium in a very soft voice.  I was quite upset, actually, 
because I was interested in the topic, but even in the 3rd row, I 
couldn't hear him.

> Ways to wake up a sleeping audience:
> 
> Lecturer: "Uh, ok, uh, so den we have ah fisicol layer, da data link
> layer, an den presentashon layer..."
> 
> Guy at the back: "PRINCESS LAYER!"
> 
> Mmm, OK, I guess you had to be there... Trust me, it was damned funny!
> ;-)

I could see that....Back when I used to go to church, we had a pastor who 
was known to have thrown an American football into the congregation at a 
football player who used to fall asleep during the sermon.

While probably not something I'd do - physical interaction does tend to 
keep people awake.  When teaching, I occasionally liked to have spiffs to 
throw out to the class in order to wake them up.  I did that at my 
instructor summit last year as well as part of the "warm up" in the 
morning (and again after lunch and each break).  Of course, that only 
works with *soft* spiffs - I wouldn't want to give away, say, an external 
hard drive by throwing it into a crowd. :)

Jim

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