I got a migraine after taking in too much in a day.
I read a lot in a day. I kind of have to, it’s an (healthy) addiction of mine.
Now, this isn’t some kind of boast. I don’t necessarily read the most intellectual stuff – 90% of all that I read is basketball-related – but this does mean that I’m wired to receive only useful and/or interesting content.
Bang for buck matters. And even if the point or format of your article is long-form in nature, the journey had better be an absorbing one.
And yet, there are some avenues, which are supposed to be enlightening, that increasingly end in utter disappointment. I recently attended a few panel discussions at a large conference that left me with several instances of rolled eyes and lots of muttering under my breath.
I don’t think I’ve spent 1.5 hours so wastefully since my NS days. Luckily, my ticket was free.
The panels were an abhorrent mix of Captain Obvious’ greatest hits and a multitude of PR messaging*. I go to these things to learn, but I did. not. get. a. single. piece. of. useful. information.
(*PR messaging is basically what communications departments tell their spokespeople to push when they’re on stage: stuff like key stats and figures, and one or two key pointers such as “champion data sharing” or “emphasize our community development efforts”)
It was like being in a one-way conversation in which I was just a receptacle for gibberish. And maybe it’s just me, but I actually have a physical reaction to an overload of this kind of crap – I got a headache that night, and I at least partially attribute it to the frustration I felt.
I feel that the best learning opportunities are those in which you are an active participant. Conversation-making ability is incredibly valuable – it gets the other party involved.
And although you might say that that doesn’t apply to panel discussions or keynotes, I’d argue that it does, because in either case, there’s an audience. And a quick Google search for public speaking tips will always bring up the pointer that it’s all about the audience. You may be doing all the talking, but the content is for them.
There’s a greater onus on the speaker(s) to not talk out of their ass or just vomit out stats and figures. I can look those up on a computer on my own.
People need to think about what they want to say before they go out and do it. It has to be useful or at least entertaining, because even going neutral is a failure by default – the audience’s time would have been wasted.
Speaking isn’t easy – I wish I could do it better, myself. But I hope people come to realize that just having an agreeable accent or subject matter knowledge isn’t enough; if they aren’t sharing anything useful, it’s a bad talk.
And I really don’t need more headaches in my life.