I sat down at my compute tonight, and something promoted insisted that I look at Twitter.  I knew somehow I had to listen.  Almost immediately, my eyes fell on a retweet by Natalie Christie (The Tiny Soprano) which had a link to the video below.  I don’t want to say anything about it, other then to ask you to take the time to watch it.  It’s 9 minutes long, and so worth it.  Don’t miss the surprise at the end.

I have so much I want to say about this, and at the same time, I don’t want to say anything quite yet.

So I’ll do something different, and ask you to begin the conversation in the comments, then I’ll chime in there as well. There is so much here to talk about!

Yesterday I talked about Daniel Pink’s book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. I think it is so important that I wanted to devote a 2nd post to it.

This video is a talk that Dan gave at TED in May of 2009 on some of the concepts at are in the book. The material is priceless and will give you a taste of what he does in the book. The presentation is also done amazingly well – notice how as he makes a big deal about how he’s not telling a story that he weaves amazing stories. Watch this right now! you’ll be glad you did. (I know I’m jumping up and down about this, but I really am that excited by it!)

I have been a huge fan of Daniel Pink’s writing since I read his book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. In this book, Dan makes a powerful argument that virtually all left brain, sequential tasks are either being automated or outsourced. He goes on to suggest that what is needed is the incredibly powerful combination of creative, right brain thinking, supported by sequential, left brain thinking. If you haven’t read this book, I strongly encourage it. But what I really want to talk about in this post is Daniel pink’s new book: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

It's time to recognize a new type of motivation that actually is motivating.

This book blew my mind, it made my eyes roll back in my head and blink “tilt,” and smoke come pouring out of my ears. Well, not literally, but it kind of felt like that, only in a good way.

Like so many people in our modern society, I was brought up to believe that people are basically motivated by two primary things, reward and punishment. I can remember many times, being frustrated at not being able to get myself to do something which I felt I “should.” I often thought to myself “well I guess not doing this doesn’t hurt badly enough, when it does, I’ll do it.” Dan refers to this as “Motivation 2.0″ and described it as a motivational system of the industrial age. He argues that what we need in the modern world is “Motivation 3.0″ which is intrinsic in nature. He describes this new type of motivation as having three primary aspects: autonomy, mastery and purpose.

He lays out an incredibly solid case of research which has been known over the last 50 years, demonstrating that the industrial age extrinsic motivation concepts are truly problematic and in many cases end up REDUCING motivation rather than increasing it. This fits very well with my own experience.

He gives many powerful examples and suggestions for how to implement Motivation 3.0 in our lives, workplaces, and schools. I’m still processing how to apply this most effectively in my own life. But this is powerful stuff, and I would strongly suggest you read this book — whoever you are, whatever you do, this is something that you need to know, really know, deep in your bones, in order to be truly happy and successful.

Note: the Amazon.com links in this post are affiliate links, and I get a tiny commission if you purchase through them.

Are you terrified when you need to present?  Are you worried about whether you’re going to “get through?”

Think about it, whenever someone gets up to give a presentation presumably they are looking to communicate something. Or if not, someone else is looking for them to communicate something.  I believe that by thinking about that communication as a dialogue of story, we, as presenters have much greater ability to move our audiences. It is only through moving our audiences emotionally that we can communicate intellectually in a way that is memorable and meaningful.

Let me say that again, it is only through moving our audiences emotionally that we can communicate in a way that is memorable and meaningful. This is a key tenant of my work, where ever it’s been. Whether designing for theater, producing special events, performing on stage, speaking to an audience, creating content for the web or even just having a meaningful conversation, when I think back to the times I’ve been at my best is always about creating an emotional connection.

One of the most powerful ways I know to create a connection is through storytelling. I’d like to offer you two incredible examples of storytelling in settings where you might not think about it that way. I’d like you to watch both of these pieces of video in their entirety, are both worth it, filled with content that you will find useful and ideas that you will find inspiring. I’m not going to provide any introduction to the videos because I want you to watch them with an open mind, and without me imposing a context. As you watch, and enjoy these videos are just a little bit about what these presenters are doing that makes them so engaging.

Did you watch both videos? If you didn’t please go back and spend the time. I promise that they’re both worth it,  and I’ll still be here when you’re done.

So why are these presenters so compelling? I think that the first key issue, which Gary Vaynerchuk speaks so eloquently about, is passion. I think that it would be rather difficult to find more passionate people than Gary Vaynerchuk and Benjamin Zander.   The passion alone is not enough for effective communication, they are each doing more than that. They are both telling stories. When I say they’re telling stories, I’m not referring to the small stories that they tell about experiences as a part of the talk. Each of these presentations is a story in its entirety.

They both open with strong beginnings. The beginning serves to hook us, to get our attention.  In Gary’s talk he first addresses the people in his audience “just because you’re here, I know that you are going to kill it, and that’s what I want to talk about.” In one statement he begins to create a powerful rapport. Then he awakens our curiosity by telling us that what he wants to talk about is “PP.” What the heck does that mean? By causing us to ask that question in our own minds, we are powerfully drawn in.

Ben starts his talk with a humorous story that has a message. All three of these points are important. People like stories, starting with the story invites us to open up. We also love to laugh, and with this use of humor he sets a light tone for the talk even know what he’s going to talk about is quite significant. But notice, he’s not starting with a joke or a funny, but insignificant story. He’s starting with a story that has a message, that’s inviting us to be open to a new possibility and that’s setting the stage for where he’s going to take us. Once again, by the end of the first few seconds he’s caught our attention.

You see, both of these presenters are starting a powerful storytelling technique of a hook.  Giving us a reason to care, and drawing us in. I could continue to analyze these presentations and how they follow the age-old storytelling forms, I’m not going to do that. I’ve already asked enough of your time, and I want to leave you with this to think about:  think about how both of them reached out and connected emotionally first, and how powerful that is!

That, and one more thing.   Notice, that neither one of them use any PowerPoint slides.

Note: This post was inspired when I watched the Gary Vaynerchuk video as a part of Adam Baker’s excellent blog post How NOT To Suck At Blogging

While I was at the Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference yesterday, I had a chance to see a presentation given by a wonderful teacher. John Fladd is an eighth-grade social studies teacher at the Deerfield Community School, in Deerfield, NH.   He gave a talk called “Inspiring PowerPoints – NOT an Oxymoron,”  during which he showed us a large variety of PowerPoint presentations which he uses with his students. These presentations all use sound, video  and many many wonderful images to bring to life the topics that he teaches, and to do it with a theatrical flair and a great sense of humor.

On his blog, Teacher Toys, John has created a page with quite a number of links and resources that he uses in creating presentations.   If you use PowerPoint with any regularity, take a look at his page, I suspect that you’ll find quite a number of useful things. It’s at http://teachertoys.weebly.com/nelms.html.

John opened his presentation with a YouTube video by comedian Don McMillan which does an amazingly good, and amazingly funny job of demonstrating the problems of so many PowerPoint presentations. Watch it now, just make sure you’re not drinking anything you could spit out all over your keyboard when you break out laughing.

When I googled to find Don’s website, I discovered that he has a brand-new version of his Life After Death By PowerPoint video which you can watch on his site. I actually think I like the original version a little bit better, but there is some great new bits in the new version. Check it out at http://www.technicallyfunny.com/blog/blogdon.htm

I just got back from making two presentations at the Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference in Nashua, NH. I really enjoyed presenting both longer and shorter versions of the talk I call “Once Upon a Supercomputer — Technology Assisted Storytelling.” This is a talk I first developed quite a few years ago for the Faculty  Instructional Technology Summer Institute at the University of New Hampshire, and have given to a variety of other audiences since.  I really enjoyed meeting so many inspired educators, and sharing with them some of my ideas.  Specifically, I believe that we can learn from thousands of years of human experience, transmitting knowledge through story and apply that to the modern classroom. Imagine for a moment drawing on the power of the storytelling techniques that make a great movie so engrossing, and using them to make classroom lessons equally engrossing. I really believe that this is powerful stuff, and that by using technology effectively we can multiply its power.   This is really the next step from what I wrote in my recent post PowerPoint is the Enemy of Effective Communication!

When I have given this talk in the past, I’ve always handed out a list of resources which I thought would be helpful to teachers as they begin to implement the ideas that I shared. This is always been a single sheet of paper, basically a list of links. I’ve never really been happy with it, and I always felt there was a lot more that should be included. This time, I decided to do something about that. So, for the first time I’m giving a “digital handout.”  I want to share it with any of you who may be interested. It’s not completely finished yet, what I’ve done so far is an annotated list of software and hardware tools, which I felt would be useful and a few books as well. What I haven’t finished yet is going through the pages and pages of notes that I have on potential sources for content to use in presentations (images, audio clips, video segments and much more,) but that will be coming soon. Besides, I was shocked when I finished the first part of my list and discovered that it was over 2800 words. If you want to take a look, find it at http://andydolph.com/cmtc.  Understand, this list is not intended to be exhaustive, but rather a selective list of tools that I recommend. If you think there’s something that I should look at to include, please let me know about it in the comments below.