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Writing for Learning: Cut the Fluff, Keep the Impact | Otter.ai

Writing for Learning: Cut the Fluff, Keep the Impact

Shannon Tipton59min

Shannon Tipton

00:02

There we go. Alright. So today's topic all about writing, writing for people, so not necessarily technical writing per se, such as your you know your tech, your typical instruction manuals, or how to manuals, I would like to talk about writing in general, not to exclude those topics. Will include them, but just to keep in mind that let's just talk about, you know, how are we writing workbooks? How are we writing instructional materials. How are we writing our PowerPoints? How are we writing any sort of learning aid? And this is where I thought we all need a little bit of help, because our subject matter experts come to us and they give us reams of information, right? So it's like they throw the whole manual on your desk and they say, Here, do something with this. And now we've gotta do something with it. And sometimes what we do is we include everything for the fear of excluding something that might be needed. So really, what I'd like to talk about is, what are your learning hacks for writing, and how do you keep yourself from being, you know, from writing war and peace. So in the blog post that came out yesterday, I had read an article over last weekend about Hemingway's tips for writing. And it rang a bell with me one because I knew it was a topic coming up today, but also I was like, You know what? To me, there is synergy. There. His his tips. There were 13 of them, I got them down to eight. But his tips really did resonate and were applicable to what we do, you know, things like keeping it short, cut out the fluff, right for scanning, not for reading, you know, so those sorts of things I felt were immediately transferable. So if you had an opportunity to review, read the blog that I sent over to you yesterday in the email that went out last night, I'd love to hear what your thoughts were. My Lisa, My best experience to improving my writing was to have a former English professor as my supervisor, absolute, right? That'll do it. That'll do it. So what were what are your thoughts about the post? They put the blog, put the link in there for you. So I'd love to hear your immediate feedback. Do or you can put it in the chat.

Shannon Tipton

03:16

That's okay.

Shannon Tipton

03:20

That's okay. Leslie, you haven't read it, that's alright. So what's so I would love to open up this conversation. So if somebody wants to come off mic or come off mute and share your thoughts, not necessarily about the blog post, that's okay, but just what are your thoughts about your techniques around how you keep your writing simple? How do you do that? Kelly,

Elizabeth

03:50

yes, ma'am, um, I, you know, and I always, every time, no matter the task, no matter you know, the person, people that I'm designing and writing for experience this tension between, like, what you just said, Let me lower my hand, or otherwise I'll forget. There we go, this tension between writing war and peace, or, you know, keeping it so or afraid that I'm keeping it too simple and basic and but I I am still reading it. But Julie Dirksen, who wrote, I'm trying to remember the her first book, I think it helps design for how people learn, yes, ma'am has her book that came out almost well in August. It'll be two years titled, talk to the elephant, right? And fabulous book, still like on the last few chapters, but she instead of, you know, I guess, explaining the what? That's in it for me, with them, she frames it as, what can I do with this meaning this, whether it be, you know, a job aid, an infographic, right? You know, e learning, storyline module or video, etc. And I, yeah, I'm not all, hardly ever successful with doing that the first time around, but I do try to keep that in mind, to like the like your blog, like your blog article, summarize, you know, like in, like you just said, cut out the fluff. Keep it clear, but also trying to keep it emotionally and cognitively. And I hate this word because it's so watered down these days. Quote, engaging. People, you know, always have different definitions of that. You know, yeah, you know, I'll, I'll add a button, and that's engagement. You know that they click, but you know, again, it's right, but anyway, right? Um, so you know, and I think myself being a in the former life, a English Composition rhetoric professor, you know, I always hearken back to know your audience, right? And again, literally and as simply as possible, explain or quote, Tell them without lecturing and talking down to the person or group or people learners. You know, what can I do with this?

Shannon Tipton

06:39

Exactly, uh, anyway,

Elizabeth

06:41

that sometimes helps keep me on track. I

Shannon Tipton

06:45

and I totally agree with that. It's for me. I used to think about it as not the with them, you know, not, as you said, the W, i, i, f, M on your radio dial, right? It's that's not, that's not it for me, it was always the so what a person is going to read this, and then they're going to go, Yeah, so what? So what? Now, what? So we so the piece that people are reading needs to be needs to be able to answer that. So what? Now, what question, and if it doesn't, then somewhere, somewhere we've lost the thread, right? Kate, I see your hand,

Kate

07:30

yeah. So I had a couple of different thoughts. Looking through the blog, is the idea of white space and using bullets is that I write for an older population, so they can, some of them have visual restrictions, and so making sure that what's on the screen they can, you know, it's large enough font and there's enough white space, so it forces you to be succinct, because you can't Put that many words on the page. So having those bullets and limiting yourself to the bullet line can only take half this. Half the line really gets creative. Like that's one of the things is you is, rather than just having a block of bullet list, is try and vary the lengths of them. And so you have a short one and maybe a little longer one, but they still shouldn't take the entire line at the page. It really forces you to get creative with your verb choices and some of your other word choices to get that succinct piece right so, and I saw a couple people in the chat putting in about using short paragraphs and bullets as that's just something that I try and think about is making sure that it is that you can retain the information by reading it, but also that you you're it's easy on the eyes, because if you have to work to read it, then you're not going to retain it

Shannon Tipton

08:53

right, right? And it is. And I think you bring up a really good point here about knowing who your audience is, you know, so I've often said, training designed for everyone means nothing. You know, training for everyone is not going to work. So writing for everyone equally, writing for everyone is not going to work. And so understanding who ultimately is going to be the key user for your content, you know, so when we when we write normative, then what we're trying to do is we're trying to cast out very wide net. But I think really understanding that, yes, you're going to put out a piece of documentation or workbook or whatever. You know, you're going to throw that out into the world, into your corporate universe, everyone's going to have access to it. But really, who? Who is the reader? Who is it? Who's that core person, who's going to keep going back to it again and again? And again and writing to that person. So I think you bring up a really excellent point, and one of the things that we didn't discuss in the blog was about overall design, content design, right? And so when you talk about bullet points and being succinct in that way, and giving lots of white space and letting the paper breathe. That's such an excellent point, right? And as I'm reading through the, yeah, edit, edit, edit, well, we it's so hard, right? Because when do you stop editing? You know? So there's that in as the quote is in the in the blog, and also in the newsletter. You know, there's that, you know, shitty first draft, right? So it's that, here's that bad first draft that's going to go out, that's always terrible. Then how, how do you edit that down, and how far do you edit it. And here's the here's how I used to think about it in my head, when it comes to when it comes to content, it is, I think of it as like a Jenga tower, right? So my workbook, or whatever it is, it's like this Jenga tower. So I throw all of the blocks up there. All of the blocks end up on the Jenga tower. Then you start taking out blocks, start taking out blogs. And once it gets to a point where that Jenga tower is going to fall, in other words, where the content stops making sense, right? So if I took out this one piece of content, if I took out this one sentence, then the whole thing doesn't make sense anymore. Then I know I've gone far enough. So this is where I start thinking, well, if I take this little bit out, and take this little bit out, oh, now as I read it again, it feels too skeleton. It feels like really, nobody's going to know what I'm saying. So now we gotta put some blocks back into that Jenga tower. And that's just kind of how I visualize it in my head. You visualize it the way you need to, but that's how I always see it in my head, you know? So that's a little bit of the inner workings of how my brain works. I know it's scary, right? And so here we go when teaching people how to be succinct on a stage or a slide. Oh, well, we weren't really talking about PowerPoint with this, but we could probably have a big, long conversation about some of the things that we need to do or not do when it comes to PowerPoint, right? For sure, and let's, let's, we'll save PowerPoint for just a little bit. Let's, let's continue on talking about things such as workbooks, handouts, checklists, cheat sheets, how to guides. So let's focus that conversation there, and then in a little bit, we'll get to our PowerPoint tips. Because, like I said, we we have and we can do a whole other coffee chat about just PowerPoint in of itself, right? So extra space and chunking helps with neurodiverse colleagues and students. Oh, Lisa, so I would love to hear your thoughts around that sort of science.

Lisa

13:29

Oh, thank you. Well, at the college where I work, we are since the Department of Justice has changed digital accessibility guidelines on the W i A, C and W i A, and all the other ADA and all the other laws we have till next year to make sure that everything we have is digitally accessible, and it's also giving us an opportunity to look at everything printed how we even conduct, you know, our conversations in our classrooms and lectures, and one of the things that we're really finding is the focus has always been on screen readers and are blind and low vision or deaf and hearing impaired. And we're really opening up now a really huge conversation around neurodiversity, and our neurodiverse colleagues and students, and one of the areas that we're really looking at is how do we communicate, either verbally or written, and especially with chunking, so keeping things very chunked and organized using Line Spacing. Somebody had said about white spacing and bullets and things of that nature. Font size, you know, again, you can unpack PowerPoint all day, but in Word, there is a really good reason why it's one inch margins and eight point after each paragraph, 1.15 between the lines. In a paragraph, and the default is 12 point. So it's just a lot of consideration that neurodiversity, often, at least from our perspective, has been overlooked when it comes to digital accessibility, and we're making sure we kind of open that up, and we have a lot of workshops around it, and a lot of work that we're doing around it. Those are just some tips and tricks that we're trying to implement as well sans serif versus Serif fonts, right? You know, things of those, you know, it seems like these are, you know, easy steps, if you will. And they also not only serve our neurodiverse colleagues and students. But from a universal design standpoint, this is all great best practices, because everybody could benefit from organized literature or writing and, you know, this chunking and spacing. So that's what we're doing.

Shannon Tipton

15:58

I think that's really fascinating and really important. You know, it's you're right. A lot of time and attention goes to, especially when it comes to writing, goes to those who have difficulty with vision, right? And we don't really think about what the cognitive overload is. So you know, when? I'll take, for example, once all of the green initiatives started kicking up about, I don't know, 10 or 15 years ago or so, and we all moved to, you know, putting stuff either in PDF or keeping it online, rather than printing materials. And even then, if you weren't putting it online and you were still printing materials, then it was, how many words can we fit on a page? So we don't have to print out so many pages. Anyone remember those days? And some of them may still actually be doing that. You know, where you're using a 10 font, right? Because it's like, let's try to squeeze as much information as we can onto a page and then make it double sided, so that way, you know, we're just, you know, being good citizens. We're not cutting down a bunch of trees in order to create our workbooks. But the result of that, to Lisa's point, is that we've got the supreme cognitive overload. Somebody opens that up, and they may it makes it's overwhelming. You open it up, you immediately shut it. Because I just cannot, I cannot read that, and I'm going to put it away, right? And that's not where we want to be. So I appreciate thinking about the different types of people. And I don't think you even have to be neurodiverse to appreciate that, you know? I think all of us have our own preferences when it comes to what we like to read and how we like to read it, but I think some things are universal. Make it easy for me, right? Let's see here. What's happening in the chat. Do you find more graphics or less graphics? Oh, I think that's a great question for you. Lisa is, do you find more graphics or left less graphics work best for neurodiverse people. I you're on mute.

Lisa

18:25

One of our psychology professors is teaching how to design for neurodiversity, and one of the recommendations that Dr Tannenbaum has made is, is it extraneous or just distracting? You know, we used to hear the term eye candy, or is it actually germane? Or, you know, is it benefiting, because sometimes an image can make impact, or is it just, you're throwing up a piece of clip art to be jazzy? The other area that we're also looking at that kind of, yeah, I'm working with one of our colleagues in our Deia department. Is about inclusive language. So are you saying, you know, when you reply to an email? Oh, that sounds great. Well, that's enable us, or ableist language. So instead of saying, sounds great, or please see when I give feedback to students, please see the instructions. I'll say, please review. Oh, so okay, we're going away from, again, that ableist language, you know, and trying to make sure that we're a little more conscientious about the language that we're using and the images. Again, is it germane? Does it benefit or contain that information, or is it just extraneous? And you can get into cognitive load issues because it's just, again, the brain processing way too much universal design. Nobody wants to have eye candy images up there, you know,

Shannon Tipton

19:59

and be more thought. Thoughtful, right? Be more thoughtful. And I think you also make a great point here. So I think when we think about writing, there's a fine line between germane cognitive load and the cognitive load that puts people into a spin, right? So when we think about germane cognitive load. Your main cognitive load is helping people think. You know, that's the good cognitive load. We always talk about the bad cognitive load, but there's the good cognitive load. So we want to help people think. And can our writing do that? Does our writing help people think through a problem, an issue, etcetera? Do they help them think through steps? Right? I we always use the IKEA manual as an example, right? As an example of things probably what not to do, because that's not really helping people think through steps a lot of times, right? And so how? How do we manage that fine line, I think, is really the question that a lot of us have had, and is and continues to be something that we struggle with, because we want to put in enough information that's going to help people think and help them do the thing, but not so much where we're writing war and peace, right? And some of you and somebody already said it here, I think I don't remember if it was said out loud or if it was in the chat, but it was about, you know, doing things like, do we need all these extra adjectives? Do we need all these adverbs? How do we scale it down? Right? And I think that's so yes, writing, writing too much, can also come across as talking down to people. Oh, that's a great point. Elizabeth, that's a really good point. So when we're being over explanatory, I assume that's what you're talking about, yeah. And I think also there's, again, that's another area where it's a delicate balance, isn't it? So, Elizabeth, how do you find that balance?

Elizabeth

22:20

I can never find the unmute

Shannon Tipton

22:26

quiz. Where's the unmute button

Elizabeth

22:33

I've when I was working, I was taking some doctoral level courses for about five years, and I ended up choosing not to finish the the program. But there, there were two people of note that were in my classes who had visual issues. So even though they didn't consider themselves neuro divergent, they just considered themselves lacking in vision. That's all. One guy was legally blind. The other was couldn't handle any light, and they said when, we had classes, they when we had this course, The Design of Everyday Things was part of our universal design course, and they said, Don't treat us like little children, because they were offended when people would not say things like, see this. They because it was like, I know I can't see so I'm not going to be offended by you saying that, because that's what the majority of people can do, and they felt actually isolated and kind of called out by absence of that language, when when look at would be the normal thing that they would see there. And it wasn't that they couldn't see it was just they had to work harder to see it. One one guy had the the computer blown up crazy big and use special glasses, and was able to scan the pages. I mean, he was reading normal, normal articles that were, I mean, he was in a doctoral program. There was no dumbing it down, and he didn't want it to be dumbed down in any way, shape or form, because, you know, this is how he'd been all his life. So he he was offended by people trying to make it simpler

Shannon Tipton

24:55

Interesting. Yeah, interesting. And

Elizabeth

24:58

that was eye opening for. Me, and that's something that I keep that in mind when people start talking about how to teach people who are neurodivergent,

Shannon Tipton

25:10

interesting, yeah, yes, I think that that's fascinating. Two sides of the coin, right? Yes, and it just goes back to where we started. It was. It's about knowing who your audience is. I

Lisa

25:27

think it comes down to you need to ask people, do you need extra support with this? Not Are you having problems with this, but do you need extra support with this? Right? Let them say, Yes, I do. No I don't. I also did a lot with the accessibility, with website for the Division of mortgage lending in Las Vegas, in for the state website in Nevada, and my website, they were so excited because I was at 98.7% you know, what do they call it? Compliance with it compared to the average for the the state was 78% and and it primarily had to do with contrasting colors. There was some on using non serif versus serif right pipe, and considering the size if you're going to use a serif, and not using PNC and the rest of that kind of thing. So there were a lot of different aspects to it, and it was all and the state wasn't required to meet the federal guidelines, and they still aren't required, but we were using the federal guidelines as our measure for whether we were meeting compliance. So just to share on that,

Shannon Tipton

26:58

yeah, I appreciate that Absolutely. There. There is a lot to think about here, which is what makes our jobs difficult at times, right? Because we want to try to reach the appropriate audience in the most appropriate way, you know, and just trying to think about all of these things, do I What's the font I should use? What size should I use? Do I say this? Do I say that? But it's really understanding again, your organization, the culture within your organization, and what do your people need, especially when it comes down to writing. And I like this here, Andrew, you said this a little bit back in the chat about writing content for an international audience. So I would love for you to expand on that a little bit.

Andrew

27:50

Yeah, I had to Well, I was writing training for for global firm, and some, you know, some of our writing, especially in the materials we're providing for the faculty, not so much the slide where that kind of thing, but, you know, we got some feedback that it was it just took longer to read. So we went back to my writing for the web. What I learned years ago, I saw someone linked to Don Norman's stuff, and learned a lot about writing and not it to say it's dumbed down isn't really the best way to do it. It's it. It's almost like an artistic effort to take this beautiful prose that I wrote and write for a different audience, really and Right, right, communicate and help them do what it is they need to do with what I'm producing. And so, you know, with that in mind, and lots of iterations and lots of humbling feedback, it's like, okay, I got to know, you know, the tools in Microsoft Word to take a look at your writing level, those kinds of things.

Shannon Tipton

29:05

Yeah, and, and the tools there are, there's, there's a lot of tools to help you with that. And now, with the, you know, advent of AI, there's no reason why you can't simplify your writing, scaffold your writing better, you know, so that it makes sense. And as I said, and I made mention of this in the blog post, it's that writing for that eighth grade reading level or sixth grade reading level is not to assume that people are stupid. It's that they're in a hurry. And if we can use a nickel word instead of a $5 word, then let's do that, because it's going to help people read through information more efficiently, right? And they don't have to think about it. Wait, what was that? What was that word? And then, you know, you gotta jog your memory a little bit. Oh, okay. And then you go back to. It. So in order to keep that reading seamless and efficient, it just makes sense, right? And that's really, that's really the goal. So when we're thinking about the goal of learning materials, it's to help people do the thing. That's it. That's it, you know, so we're not, we're not, we're not writing the next great American novel. We would, we'd like to think so, but, you know, that's not it. And so how do we help people do that? And that's part also in the the blog itself was taking out the fluff. And I have said this, you know, many times. I'm sure those of you who've been around me often have heard me say that our job is not to teach people the history of time. Our job is to teach them how to use a watch, right? And so it takes a little bit of rethinking our process to do that, because innately, we want to fill in the back story. We want to use that phrase for context, dot, dot, dot. And sometimes context is important, but most times it's not

Shannon Tipton

31:24

right. If

Andrew

31:25

I can sure, I would teach people on my teams, as we are working with people, to use the journalistic inverted pyramid style in writing emails exec, especially to executives they're looking on their phones. You're, you're You can't introduce why we're asking them to review this document. We need to put as the very, if not in the subject line, as the very first thing, please review this document. Give them the three day deadline, and if we don't hear from you, we all assume you're fine with this, and then we give, here's the process we agreed on our last call, and then you can give all of what it is that we did. If they want to go that far, that's great, but the very first thing is what it is I want them to

Shannon Tipton

32:11

do. Yes, completely agree with that. Completely agree with that. And email writing is a whole different animal, isn't it? I mean, and even still I get emails from, I can always tell when I'm getting an email from a person with a learning background versus person with a business background, because there will be paragraphs versus bullets, right? And one of the most favorite things that I learned from somebody that I worked with many moons ago, and this was before instant messaging, is that he would write the question in the subject line, are we meeting today? EOM, End of message, that was it, so there'd be nothing underneath it except for his name. And it's like, that's brilliant. I am, I am taking that, you know, because that's all you need. And you know. So when you think about, okay, how can we reach the audience that we need to reach, it does become about appropriate scaffolding, like you said. Andrew, is it that upside down, you know, triangle, or is it some other way? So what does that scaffold look like in order to get people the information that they need? Absolutely, yeah. Now I like this. Lisa, this is a good question. Should we adjust our writing style for digital computer, tablet or phone versus print? If it's the same information, that's a good question. What do you guys think

Lisa

33:58

my initial reaction would be yes, because there's a big difference between what I can read here and what I can read here, because this is going to automatically shrink this down. I want it to be bigger font, simpler structure, maybe more graphics, all the things we've been talking about, um. So, yeah, it makes a huge difference. And there's also, like, that fatigue that you get from staring at a screen all day, which I know we all do, but so yes, I would say that there should be a difference between print and digital, right?

Shannon Tipton

34:39

I agree. I think there, there should be. It's, it's hard, right? It's again, where are people going to make use of the information? So if they are looking at your checklist, is it a checklist that's going to be lamb? Needed and put in a work truck, or is it a checklist that's going to be on their mobile device? Where is it going to be used? And that's one of the discovery questions that we really need to drive home more often when we're in the discovery and design phases of some of our writing is, where is this going to be used? And then you can write appropriately for that, where's it going to be used, who's going to be using it, and towards what purpose? Here's here's an example. Um, I was just a few months back, I was creating some training videos and some training materials for a roofing company. And so when I went out with the workers to see what they were doing and how they were using information, everyone back at the office said, Well, we have all of this stuff for them to use. They can go online, and they can click it on their phone and they can see it. And I'm like, Okay, well, that sounds intuitive. It sounds easy, but when I got to the work site, that's not what they were doing, what they were doing. And again, brilliant, right? This is why we have to do work alongs is when I went to the work site, they had their work van, and when they opened up the doors to their work van, written in like permanent marker on the door was the checklist. They wrote the checklist on the when you open the door was right there. I was like, oh my god, How about them apples, all of this work that people had did, let's be sure it's on their mobile app and they can click it and they can access it. Nope, they right there, right and written in the way that they spoke. So it wasn't fancy, it wasn't anything. It was like, check this, do that, make sure this. And that was it. It was written in the language and the vocabulary that they used, complete with little squares, you know. So I they didn't check off the squares, but it was funny to me that they actually added the little squares, you know. So when you look at these things and really pay attention to what people are doing and how they do it, then that tells you something. And I think Lisa to to answer your question, then I think that informs how we write, when we write, what we write, you know. So that was, that was a lesson for me where I just went, Oh, Shannon, you're overthinking stuff. Don't need to be that difficult. Got it right there on a door, you know. So how can we help them with that? Can we put something that they can put on a door, that they can actually write on, so that way they're not damaging work company, pretty you know? How can we help them with that, you know? So that was, that was a learning moment for me, you know. So I think we just, you know, open up our eyeballs and take a look around a little bit more. Yeah, learning has to meet people where they are. And I did. I saw earlier, I saw earlier, where you all were suggesting, you know, passing the documents around to people outside of your department. You know. So I would love to hear from someone who is using that technique, and what did you discover? I

Shannon Tipton

38:45

uh, as I'm reading the chat, that's my silence. I'm reading what y'all wrote in the chat. So who's using that technique? You write something and then you send it to someone else to read that's not in L and D, that maybe not even be the subject matter for which it's intended.

Elizabeth

39:07

Shannon, this is Betsy, and I use that technique a lot. I'll send it to a coworker who may not be as familiar with it. I'll have my husband read it. I'll send it to a friend and have them, you know, does this make sense to you? Here's what I'm looking at. Could I, you know, get rid of any of it, you know, that sort of thing.

Shannon Tipton

39:34

Yeah, I love that. I love that. Bring the spouse in.

Shannon Tipton

39:39

But I did it for him, so he's doing it for me.

Shannon Tipton

39:44

He owes you, yeah, he owes you, yeah. And I think the importance of that is because they have zero knowledge, and if they can get it, then you might be on the right track. Is that is.

Elizabeth

40:00

Your goal? Yeah, yeah. If, if somebody that's not familiar with it, because I'm familiar with it, I know what I want to say, what I want to get across. If I cut it too much and it's not coming across to those folks who don't know, then I can add back in.

Shannon Tipton

40:18

Mm hmm, right, right? Because now your Jenga tower doesn't stay up, right, exactly, taking too much out, right? I love that, and I think that we can, we can do those sorts of swapping, you know, marketing, I'll read your stuff. You read my stuff, you know, I why not? Why not? Yeah, and Thomas, we have a red folder with tools and checklists and clothes for field use only, yes, yeah. I like that because that's a very visual cue back in the day. Is it back in the day, when I was in restaurant management, we used to have different colored books. So you had a blue book where you wrote notes that were operational issues, and then you had a red book that were employee issues, and then you had a I think Green books were safety, yeah, I want to say it was safe. It was a long time ago, but we each of these books had different purposes, but they also they weren't just regular line sheets. They were different templates where you could fill out things, which I thought was very thoughtful during that period of time, because then I didn't have to think about how I structured my writing. It was already there for me, you know. So everything had a purpose. So I'm with you with that, Thomas, I think anything that's a visual indicator that helps people get to where they need to be is important. My one note, one note notebooks are color coded, right? Yeah, you guys know me. I love me. A good post it note. I I color code my post it notes. I'm a post it note person always have been, you know. And they all have different things that they have. They have a purpose to me. If you were to walk into my office, you'd go, you'd think that there's like, brilliant mind stuff happening in my office, but I it makes sense to me, and that's what counts, okay, you know. And now we've got, we've got a few minutes left, and I think we can bring in some of your PowerPoint writing tips. So when we think about PowerPoint writing tips, which is different from overall writing tips, you guys had, y'all had some thoughts earlier about what what we need to do. All started off. So PowerPoint tip writing number one, PowerPoint is not for the complete sentence. If you're writing complete sentences and using punctuation on a PowerPoint slide, you've written too much. That's my that's so that's mine. What are yours? Who wants to go unless it's a quote, All right, Jason, it's not your speech. It's your highlights. There's a good saying. I like that. What else I saw it earlier? I think somebody said eight words, that's the eight by eight, right? Eight bullets, eight words, no more than

Lisa

43:31

I don't even let them have eight bullets. No, that's too much. Too eight by five. Maybe these are people who are putting in like, whole paragraphs plus a graph, and then like, oh, I need something cute on here. And they put in like a completely irrelevant little piece of clip art. And I'm like, no, no, stop it. Please stop please stop with the clip art. What do you want people to walk away from this slide with? Because this is way too much, right,

Shannon Tipton

44:01

right? I agree. I agree. The as I'm also reading everybody's comments here. One idea per slide, right? That's it. One idea per slide,

Kate

44:13

one. Sharon, if I can tell you a funny Shannon, if I could tell you a funny story, we hired a keynote we hired a keynote speaker. $15,000 I think they were for our you know. PD, that starts the year off, and they flipped out because their PowerPoint was done on a Mac. They didn't format it. And this was many years ago when mac and windows weren't compatible and refused to go on. And my boss turned to them and said, We did not hire you for your PowerPoint. We hire you for you. And it really resonated with me, because no matter what happens, if your PowerPoint fails, you better be able to still do your presentation, because that PowerPoint is not what people paid for or people want to and. The same, even with our students. If your lecture is dependent on that PowerPoint, then maybe we shouldn't have hired you to deliver this course. You're the subject matter expert, not your PowerPoint. It's there to enhance not be an my boss was about ready to cancel their $15,000 because, again, if they can't do it, then so sad. Too bad. The flip side was we had another keynote right after the Virginia Tech have, I don't even know what we refer to it. There's the incident that happened, the Virginia Tech shooting, and they wanted an overhead projector because they were using acetates, and they would write on the overhead, you know, slot, remember the acetate sheet. So we've had, we've had multiple extremes with keynote speakers in the past.

Shannon Tipton

46:01

So dates. Oh my gosh, that's hilarious, although I'm sure they come in handy. You know, when you're trying to show somebody how to do a thing, I suppose, but, but, yeah, the if you don't need me, if the PowerPoint tells the story, then you don't need me. And I guess I'm going to say I have a certain amount of ego where I'm going to say I need you to need me so you get the information that's going to keep the story moving forward.

Lisa

46:31

Can we convince the C suite of that? Can we make that a memo to the C suite and like every company, because they believe that that is their handout. And that's why I went to that earlier, because so often they will put, like, multiple blocks of information, not just one big, heavy block, but yeah, multiple blocks of information, because they know that people are getting those PowerPoints and printing them off. And it's like this, I just tell them

Shannon Tipton

47:02

to put it in the notes section. So when they send them to me, I say, Okay, can we put the headline in here and put everything else in the notes section? Because if they're going to print it off, they'll still get it.

Andrew

47:13

So I worked for a consulting firm, and there's a way of using power PowerPoint to create a place map where all the information that they're going to have account with a client is they slide across the table and it's all there, and they just talk to that. And that's the language we use the same tool. They use it very differently. So I would say I love this. This is five slides worth of content. I can write this story in about five slides. You guys, you gave me the graphics you gave me, you know, I had the recording or whatever, so I totally had to learn that because of that exact thing. They're like, just put it all on one slide. I'll talk to it. You're like, they can't the guy in the back that can't read that.

Shannon Tipton

47:56

Yeah, that's it. That's it. And, yes, Victoria, I personally have done this where there is one version, one PowerPoint version for the handout, and the other PowerPoint version that's actually for the presentation. And Andrew to that example, you know, he used to use that technique a lot. Was Bob pike. Bob pike used to put his presentations on place mats, which I always thought was brilliant, something that I was like, I need to do that. And it's just one of those things that I need to do that never got around to doing it. But it's such a brilliant idea to be able to do. And I, you know, and PowerPoint, unfortunately, gets such a bad rap. So we see that. I see it in the chat there Patty death by PowerPoint. The part the problem is not PowerPoint. The problem is the human behind the PowerPoint. PowerPoint itself is a fabulous tool, and you can do so many things with it if you give it grace and consideration, yeah, you know. So it's bad PowerPoints. Don't create themselves. Bad humans create bad PowerPoints. That's what happens, you know. And

Tom

49:13

I'll I got a good story on that. Shannon, go ahead, if you don't mind. So, no, yeah. A few years back, I was asked by the Vice President to put together a PowerPoint for he was presenting to a national conference on natural gas utility new products. We sat down and I put together a PowerPoint, and to kind of keep it short and simple, if, if I put something up on the slide again, short bullet points and so on, and then I put it into the narrative that he would read. He said, Well, if it's on the screen, then why am I reading it? And if I'm reading it, it shouldn't be on the screen. I mean, I'm dummying down my audience. He said, If they can't read, then why would I tell them what to read? So entry. So it was so enlightening, and it made a huge difference in every PowerPoint I did from that point on, because he just simply said, if it's on the screen, I shouldn't be saying in it. And if it's, you know, if I'm saying it, you know, that kind of thing, he said, it needs to be relevant and important. And I mean, I took a 3030, slide PowerPoint down to about 12, and it was, it turned out really well, but that was a lesson learned from me, from one of the President, Vice President. So

Shannon Tipton

50:30

absolutely, I think that's a great lesson to take away. I Let's see what we got here before I go in. Oh, the link to bright carbon so somebody can find that and throw that into the chat. We've had bright carbon, but it's been, actually, I think it's probably been a couple of years since we've had bright carbon on. And we, and the owner there at Bright carbon is just such a generous person, Richard. He did it for free. He came on and did all sorts of PowerPoint tips. I should probably bring him back, but they do those monthly webinars, and it's excellent, excellent work. And I think we get it right for the most part, we get it. So now, how do we communicate that to the others that don't get it? And I think it's just continuous. It's a continuous thing. It's helping them understand that PowerPoint tells a story, right? The story of So, the story of our annual results, the story of our quarterly results, the story of instructional design, whatever your program is, right? It's telling that story. And if on the slide, nothing connects to the story, then it doesn't belong. And I've used that metaphor with leadership often, and they seem to resonate with that because they see themselves as, you know, the storytellers of their organization. And so when you can put it into words that they understand and they get it, and then I always add in there, you know, for the love of God, can we stop putting Excel spreadsheets on slides for all that is holy? Can we please stop doing that? And so my my message to them about that is show them what you want them to see. They don't need all of this. What's, what is the story of the Excel spreadsheet? Well, the story is this great. Let's show them that. Let's put that into a chart or a graph or something. And it doesn't take a whole lot of extra work. Here you go. And then, you know, we just have to keep saying it over and over again, just like with anything else, right? You know, it's reminding them of where it needs to go and that they don't want to they don't want to kill people. I've always said, you know, if you have to start your PowerPoint presentation with I know those of you in the back can't read this, then you're then you're starting off wrong. So we need to change that, and that's all about successful writing as well. So thank you, Heather for posting that in there. Let's see. And we are. We are at the top of the hour already. That didn't take long. So next, our next Coffee Chat. So for those of you who haven't been with us for a while, or this is your first time, the coffee chats typically happen every other week, so not next Friday, but the Friday after we're talking about being your cultural anthropologist, your workplace anthropologist. How are we finding information? How are we digging up historical data? How are we sharing the stories within our organization? Talking about storytelling, right? A lot of what we do is based off of tribal knowledge within organizations, stories, beget stories, beget stories, and they get lost in translation. So what is our role in helping those stories come to life? How do we keep them purposeful. Where do we store them? How do we find them? So that's what I want to talk about here in two weeks. And I know that you all you know you're working through this in your organizations yourself, so I know that some of you probably have some really good ideas and tips and examples of what you're doing to curate the stories within your organization, and that's what we are talking about in two weeks. And let's see here the link to that. As most of you know, I try to keep it simple so same zoom link for the next like eight ones, just click Register. You're all the way down, then that way, you get all of the recordings. You get everything you need, even if you can't be present. So it's it's all there for you. So what exciting things are you going to be doing this weekend? Anyone doing anything fun? Laundry? Laundry. Well, I some people might think laundry is fun. I am not one of those people, but whole party, yes, kayaking, Heather, you always do the most interesting stuff. I tell you, I just live vicariously through you. Walk with a friend's visit. Oh, Niagara Falls. Oh, gosh, it's been a minute since I've been out there the Canadian side or the American side. Where are you going? Both? Oh, good. The I think the Canadian side is has a better view, but everybody has a different perspective on that. Alright, camping. Wow. You guys have your y'all are busy this weekend. That's awesome. But you know, if you live where I live, so out in the Midwest, when you only get like three or four months worth of warm weather, you you try to pack it in for sure, mountain racing and beachcombing, excellent. Well, I'm thrilled that you guys are all out there doing fun things. That's wonderful. Good for you, and I look forward to seeing you guys in two weeks and take these tips. Of course, you'll get the resources from Amanda here today, Monday, usually when they come out and take these tips, take the blog and maybe I'll turn this into some sort of checklist or something for everybody. But, you know, share this blog post. If you've got subject matter experts who you struggle with, send them the link to this blog post. Say, what do you think? Can we talk about this? Where do you struggle? How can I help you? You know, provide them with some guidance. Use this as a tool, right? So, yes, as always, great discussions. Thank you everybody for joining, and I will see you all in two weeks. Bye, bye, everybody. You

Shannon Tipton

57:31

buddy, Hi, Heather,

Lisa

57:35

hey, come down for the farmer's market. I'm in California right now. Oh, well, that explains the the hotel room, yeah, decor, yeah,

Shannon Tipton

57:47

yeah. I gotta get my stuff together. I was praying. I was trying to get online earlier today, and it load, load, load, and I'm like, Oh my god. So I was like, I Jason's on because I can make him like a co host or something, just in case something you know, goes sideways, you know, but you always take your chances when you're in the hotel room.

Lisa

58:10

Yeah, yeah, last night, speaking of exciting things. So the downtown neighborhood association in Elgin has a newsletter, and I'm just scanning it. Last you know, yesterday afternoon, and there was an improv show. So my oldest kid and I went to the improv show.

Shannon Tipton

58:30

How fun. I love improv shows. Yeah, it was like comedy for

Lisa

58:35

the moment thing, yeah. But the group that was doing that last night they're coming back for Elgin fringe in September. So have you done the Fringe Festival? No, so it's like Friday night to Sunday night, and it's you buy like, a little a badge, a little pin, you know, for a set price, and then you can.

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