I met Whitney Hess at the 2008 IA Summit in Miami, Florida while sharing a table to discuss Kevin Cheng’s book on comics for Rosenfeld Media. Since then, she’s made a number of changes–from becoming a full time freelancer / owning her own business to writing a well-visited blog to her weekly “Whit Hour” to giving the closing plenary at the 2010 IA Summit in Phoenix. Whitney happily shared some of her own insights and lessons learned from presenting.

How do you create a new presentation, specifically in the conceptual phase?
Over the course of several weeks, I write one-liners as they pop into my head on post-it notes. Once I start thinking of the same one-liners again, I realize my brain is empty. I lay out all of the stickies on the floor and do a sort of affinity diagram, grouping the like items into categories. Then I label each category, and those become the sections of my talk (I try to create 3-5 sections). I put the sections in an order that I think will create the best flow, then type in each one-liner onto a slide and move the slides around within each section while talking out loud to myself to create the strongest story. Sometimes I rearrange the sections, or add transitional slides to ensure that everything flows well.

How do you prepare for the presentation once you have your content in place?
I don’t like to over-prepare, because when I do my talk ends up sounding forced and inauthentic. Instead I walk through each section, writing in any voice over that I want to be sure to hit into the Notes area for each slide. Then I walk through the whole thing once in real-time, speaking the voice over to my computer screen. I make any necessary tweaks to improve the flow, and then I put it to bed.

I might wake up the morning of the presentation with one new thought, which I’ll then add to the deck somewhere.

What are your “pre-presentation” rituals that help you get ready? Any rituals during the presentation that keep you in the flow?
Jared Spool taught me to always eat breakfast the day of a talk, so I do it even if I feel like throwing up. And I usually want to. I wake up with the shakes, they usually dissipate after breakfast, and then I’m fine until about 30 minutes before my presentation. I go into the bathroom, sometimes cry a little, and imagine ways to get out of having to give the talk — If I hide, will they find me? What will it do to my career if I just run away? — then I realize how ridiculous I’m being, splash some water on my face, and stride up to the stage. Once I’m up there looking out at the audience and I open my mouth, something else takes over and all the nerves go away.

How do you recover from losing your “flow”–when you’re in the middle of a presentation?
Sometimes I just can’t find the word I’m looking for or I forget the point I was trying to make. So I immediately skip to the next slide.

How have you combated stage fright in the past and/or how do you combat it today? What are the techniques you use–not the whole “see the audience in their underwear” stuff, but the real tricks that make it work for you.
See above. Also, once I’m up there, I’m no longer there in the present moment. I kind of black out, and only come to once the presentation is done and I’m off the stage. I rarely remember saying whatever I said up there — the entire hour is blank. Something else takes over and the fear just isn’t there.

About Whitney Hess
Whitney Hess is a user experience design consultant based in New York City. She helps make stuff easy and pleasurable to use.

As a strategic partner with Happy Cog, Whitney recently completed an extensive research initiative for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s website redesign. She was also the user experience consultant on Boxee’s beta redesign, and has worked with many other startups, agencies and major corporations.

Prior to going independent, Whitney was on the design team at Liquidnet, an international financial software company that runs the leading electronic marketplace for wholesale stock-trading. Previously, she was an interaction designer at two marketing agencies, Digitas and Tribal DDB, where her clients included American Express, The New York Times, Allstate, Claritin, Tropicana, and EarthLink. Most notably, she helped to conceive, design, and test an innovative card search tool for American Express, and is named as a co-inventor on its U.S. patent.

Whitney received a Bachelor of Arts in Professional Writing and a Master’s degree in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University. She writes about improving the human experience on her blog, Pleasure and Pain, and can always be reached via Twitter @whitneyhess.

Karl Fast is one of this guys you wish you knew better (unless you already know him really well, in which case you’re just really happy about it). I’ve had the chance over the course of the past year or so to have a couple of great, informative chats with Karl, and I’m certainly better off for it. In addition, he’s a professor, which means that he’s putting himself up in front of a group of people on an almost daily basis, which means that I’m pretty sure he’s got some great advice when it comes to presenting. Let’s learn from Karl, shall we?

How do you create a new presentation, specifically in the conceptual phase?
I walk because walking helps me think. It’s the best method I’ve found for thinking through the ways I might approach a presentation. It’s a trick I use to tackle conceptually thorny problems. Good presentations fall into that category. Actually, most of the creative challenges in my life fall into that category.

While walking I start a monologue in my head. As I get more engaged in the problem this monologue builds. Eventually it spills out and I begin talking out loud. The voice in my head always sounds brilliant and flawless. Talking out loud helps me recognize when I’m not expressing myself clearly. Our culture associates people who talk to themselves with a need to be medicated, so I prefer to walk in places where I’m unlikely to meet other people. Given the car-centric nature of the modern world this is easier than it might seem. 

After walking and talking I move to pen and paper. This is a process of jotting down short phrases, key concepts, and stray thoughts and then stringing them together into a narrative. Jotting is how I take the meandering ideas from my walk, identify the conceptual landmarks, and bash them into a coherent whole. My notebook usually looks quite messy at this stage with words and phrases stitched together to indicate flow and relationships. The result wouldn’t make sense to anyone else, but it makes sense to me.

This is when I finally open PowerPoint or Keynote and start working on the visual components for the presentation. My jottings are the source material. There is a lot of iteration, but the final slides mostly follow my jottings. The slides start as text. Then I minimize the text, or eliminate it altogether, and add the necessary visuals.

I strive for the minimum set of slides to convey my message. Once I have a complete deck, I reduce it by thirty to fifty percent. My presentations are mostly about next-generation interfaces so I can rarely get away no slides. But I can always cut out a vast swath of my slides.

As I become a better speaker, I have found that I am more likely to give a good talk when I focus on the words and the art of speaking, rather than the visuals. All great speakers can hold an audience rapt with words. The visuals can help, but I’ve never seen a great talk based on great visuals and weak words. I’ve seen plenty of great talks with great words and weak visuals, or no visuals at all.

This sounds like a fairly neat linear process. It’s not. It’s actually quite messy and highly iterative. Messiness is creativity.

How do you prepare for the presentation once you have your content in place?
I run it through in my head a few times. I don’t speak in front of a mirror. But I will talk out certain parts to myself. The introduction is one of those parts. I always want the first few minutes to be smooth. This allows me to quickly get into the flow, and it’s a critical part of the talk for connecting with the audience. 

Once I have worked out all the details I usually set the talk aside and don’t worry about it much. If the talk has a lot of pre-written material—more script than slides—then I will time it and make sure I’m within the time limit. However, in most cases, I just set it aside until the talk.

I wish I could say that I always finish my talks ahead of schedule. It doesn’t happen as often as I would like. But even when I’m putting something together at the last minute, I have still been working through the talk in my mind—walking to and from the office—for at least a week. I’ve been jotting as part of that process. So I always have something to work from.

What are your “pre-presentation” rituals that help you get ready?  Any rituals during the presentation that keep you in  the flow?
I go through the presentation sometime within the hour leading up the talk. This usually involves three things.

• First, I flip through the entire deck, if I have one, to refresh my memory about the overall structure of the talk.
• Second, I rehearse the opening part of my talk. I don’t rehearse it all. I simply start doing my talk and stop after a few minutes. This is my main trick getting into the flow. I want to engage the audience immediately, so I try to memorize at least the opening segment.
• Third, I go over parts of the talk that I want to emphasize, that have specific phrases I want to say, or function as conceptual landmarks around which I have mentally structured the talk. These are usually transition points where I am ending one section and starting another, or summing up a series of points and stepping back to emphasize the central idea. I want to be clear in my mind about what those parts are.

How do you recover from losing your “flow”–when you’re in the middle of a presentation? 
I pause. I know I can say nothing for at least ten seconds before anyone will start to get nervous and wonder if something has gone wrong. That is usually plenty of time to gather my thoughts and move one.

I’ve never found flow to be much of a problem when giving a talk. Not if I have prepared well. My preparation is all about articulating the jumbled words in my head and corralling them into a meaningful sequence. By the time it comes to speak the whole speech is in my head and losing flow isn’t an issue. If it does happen, it’s minor, and a brief pause to collect my thoughts always puts me back on track.

How have you combated stage fright in the past and/or how do you combat it today?  What are the techniques you use–not the whole “see the audience in their underwear” stuff, but the real tricks that make it work for you.
The only time I remember having stage fright was in junior high, when I gave my first presentation to a group of peers. I was probably 12 years old. After my first few talks, my nervousness evaporated. I haven’t worried about stage fright since. I’m sure I have various physiological reactions—elevated heart rate or dilated pupils—but nothing that I would call stage fright.

Curiously, I used to get extremely nervous during Q&A sessions, not as the speaker, but as an audience member who wanted to ask the speaker a question. When I thought of a question, instead of listening to the talk, I would mull over how best to express it. I would obsess over possible phrasings and miss the rest of the talk. Eventually I learned to write down my question and redirect my attention to the talk. In most cases the speaker would answer the question later, someone else would ask a similar question, or I would decide the question wasn’t that important. My real insight was realizing that most Q&A sessions are boring. So now, if I still have a question, I approach the speaker after the talk and try to engage in a one-on-one discussion.

About Karl Fast
Karl Fast is a professor of User Experience Design at Kent State University. He is a founding member of the Information Architecture Institute. He researches the messy nature of complex information work and the epistemic benefits of interacting with visual abstractions. He’s also Canadian.

You may have heard of Jesse James Garrett from the book “The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web and Beyond (2nd Edition) (Voices That Matter)
“, or possibly even from the term “AJAX“, or perhaps even as one of the founders of Adaptive Path. Heck, you might have heard of him from his closing plenary at the 2009 IA Summit in Memphis, too. While I’ve got no new reason to have ever heard of Jesse, he was very obliging of his time and shared some of his own thoughts around creating and performing presentations. And that’s pretty cool of him. Read on…

How do you create a presentation, specifically at the concept phase? (ie for me, I write an outline while doing research, create note cards, move them all around, and then get inside of keynote when I have this all figured out)
My presentations are generally built around a handful of anchor points, strong, concise statements of my major ideas. Everything about the talk is oriented around these, and I’ll usually craft those first. I jump into Keynote pretty early. I need to start seeing the slides coming together to get a sense of how much depth to go into for each point.

Then it’s a process of bridging the gaps — figuring out what the audience needs to know heading into each of those anchor points and what makes for a logical progression from one to the next. I’m a big fan of presenter notes, especially for these transitions. I can remember my anchor points easily enough, but the transitions, where I’m drawing connections between ideas, are harder for me to keep in my head. So my presenter notes will always contain a couple of key phrases: the first thing I say when the slide comes up, and the last thing I say before I move to the next one.

How do you prepare once you’ve got your content in place? (Do you rehearse in front of a mirror, etc.?)
I used to do a lot of rehearsal early in my speaking career. (Not in front of a mirror, though, that would be way too distracting.) In part that was because I hadn’t learned how to use presenter notes effectively yet, and in part it was because I had no idea how to estimate the time it would take to deliver the material I had developed.

What are your “pre-presentation” rituals that help you get ready?  What about during the presentation that keep you in the flow? (I do workout routines, breakfast, walking the room, etc.)
Getting ready for a morning talk is really different from an afternoon talk. In the morning: Get there early enough that you can get comfortable with the room itself. Have coffee, but do it well before you have to be onstage. I will have something small to eat, not a full breakfast or anything heavy. Don’t forget to visit the restroom as close as you can to talk time.

In the afternoon, it’s a little different. It’s more a matter of watching the other speakers and looking for connections to what you’re going to talk about. I don’t ever change my presentation — that’s too much disruption too late in the game — but I will sometimes add a note referring back to a similar or related point made earlier in the day.

How do you recover from losing your “flow”–when you fall out of character, or the moment, when you’re in the middle of a presentation?
If it’s really obvious to everybody (usually because of some technical glitch) I’ll try to make a joke of it. Getting a laugh reminds you that the audience is on your side. Don’t force it, though: if you can’t think of a way to make light of the situation, you’ll just make things worse racking your brains for a joke.

If it’s a little thing that only I would know about, I fall back on my presenter notes to reorient myself and get some momentum going again.

About Jesse James Garrett
Jesse James Garrett, co-founder and president of Adaptive Path, is one of the world’s most widely recognized technology product designers. At Adaptive Path, Jesse supports the company’s designers and strategists with creative guidance and helps them advance the company’s thought leadership position.

Jesse blogs at http://jjg.net and has a much longer biography on the Adaptive Path website.

David Armano, possibly best known for his talents in the social media space, is a pretty regular guy with lots of smarts, a decent sense of humor and an ability to grow facial hair at 10x the rate of the guy writing this copy. I first met David a few years back, thanks to the connection-making skills of Ms. Whitney Hess, and I count myself as pretty fortunate to call him not only a friend, but a co-conspirator at times, and even a co-presenter at SXSW in 2009. David is generous with his time and talents, and this easily makes him a standout in the very populated crowd of “internet celebrities”–but he’s also genuinely interested in all of those “greater good” things, and won’t hesitate to step up for a good cause, and has done so many times. In addition to that, he jumped at the chance to share his experiences and advice about presenting, when he easily could have been too busy busting his hump for clients. Anyone willing to trade-in some “plane nap-time” for well-thought responses is a pretty good egg in my book.

And with that, here’s some wisdom from Mr. Armano.

How do you create a new presentation, specifically in the conceptual phase?
Presentations are first created in my mind and they don’t start as presentations they start out as fragments, ideas and parts of a story. The pieces of the narrative then show up in a variety of forms. Sometimes in work deliverables, other times in articles and occasionally a blog post or tweet. The narrative begins to take root. Then, when the time is right and all the pieces are scattered in a variety of forms—I begin to pull the master narrative together in the forms of words, pictures and whatever else helps me tell the story.

What are your “pre-presentation” rituals that help you get ready?  Any rituals during the presentation that keep you in  the flow?
I never, ever do dry runs. What I do is put some notes to the slides or sometimes edit them. I never read the notes—it is the act of writing them that helps me to recall the story. I also flip through slides in presentation mode whether on laptop, iPad or whatever. I need to see the slides over and over again until they are burned into my mind.

How do you recover from losing your “flow”–when you’re in the middle of a presentation?
Great question, this happens from time to time. Not everyone notices it—but I know when I’ve lost optimal flow. What I do is look to the audience and find someone who is highly engaged. I focus on that person even though they probably never know it. I take that energy and bring it back into the presentation. This usually works and I regain my footing. I often find that I’m only as good as my audience. But I’ve been pretty fortunate to have some good ones.

How have you combated stage fright in the past and/or how do you combat it today?  What are the techniques you use–not the whole “see the audience in their underwear” stuff, but the real tricks that make it work for you.
This is going to sound odd but I typically get very calm before an audience. The larger the audience—the calmer I get. This doesn’t mean I don’t get nervous. I do. But I’ve noticed something interesting that often happens after I speak. I feel the effects after, not before. Sometimes in my lower back! I often feel depleted. I like to joke that I’m a “closet introvert” and people never believe me because I’m very social and outgoing. But interactions in public such as presentations and the meet & greets after drain my batteries as opposed to charging them. I have no tricks to offer here, but would suggest that you try to focus your presentations on subjects you feel passionately about. I think that’s probably one of the reasons my stage fright is pretty minimal.  

About David Armano
David Armano is currently a senior vice president at Edelman Digital, the interactive arm of global communications firm Edelman. He has 14 years experience in the industry with the majority of his time spent in digital marketing and user experience design. An active participant in the industry, he writes Logic + Emotion which is ranked in the top media + marketing blogs according to Advertising Age. His writing and visual thinking has been cited by Forrester, The Boston Globe and has landed him in BusinessWeek on several occasions including their “Best of 2006”. He also writes at the Harvard Business Review.

Prior to Edelman, David spent time as a creative & strategic lead at notable firms such as Critical Mass, Digitas and Agency.com—putting in a combined tenure of 8 years in the large digital agency environment. He has led multiple initiatives for clients such as HP, Allstate, Fifth Third Bank, Miller Brewing, Grainger, and Bally Total Fitness. Previously, he earned his interactive stripes working with The Chicago Tribune on their site initiatives balancing content with functionality.



Today, David blends strategy with design and looks for new business opportunities around the social Web to enhance the customer experience, connect individuals and innovate.  He currently lives in a near-northern suburb of Chicago, not far from Lake Michigan. When he’s not working, surfing the net, or riding his motorbike—he can be found spending quality time with his family.



Oh, and he doesn’t have a middle name, considers himself a connoisseur of beef jerky and has been occasionally known to wear cowboy hats, but only if the mood strikes him. He also loves the karaoke, and is known by his first name at The Blue Frog in downtown Chicago.

I “met” Eytan Mirsky more than a handful of years ago after discovering his music and tracking down just about everything I could find by him–I’m a sucker for really strong pop music, and Eytan’s all about that, in a great way. Some of my favorite songs from Eytan are in the “Tao of Steve” soundtrack, but there’s little he’s done that I’ve not been a fan of. He’s also made a few acting appearances (if you saw “American Splendor” he wrote the title track and played it in the movie), and was a perfect candidate to get some information on handling public performances. In unrelated news: one of these days I’ll make the trip to one of Eytan’s live shows and/or I’m going to hold him to letting me sing backing vocals on a track in the future. He clearly doesn’t know of my love for Hootie and the Blowfish or he’d have already been all over this.

Surprisingly — or maybe not surprisingly — most times people are not as aware of any mistakes as you might think. They are not focusing on things the way you (as the performer) are.

Have you ever been at a podium–done a presentation, a reading, played music, where you had to prepare in advance for it? If so, how do you create that presentation (song list, etc.), specifically in the conceptual phase? Maybe a better question is “how do you structure a new song when you’re starting from scratch?”
Yes, I have had to do live shows and present set lists for the shows. First I will pick the songs I want to do at the show. Then I will determine how the show will start and finish then I will try to fill in the material in between. Clearly you don’t want songs that are too similar right next to each other, so I try to mix it up as much as I can. I also try to come up with some clever between-song patter, but I like to keep that somewhat extemporaneous. I really don’t agonize too much about the song order though, to tell you the truth.
 
How do I structure a new song? In my case, I usually have the overall concept and try to develop that into a chorus that I like. That will basically include both the words and music. (Sometimes the initial concept can be a phrase, so I develop that into a larger idea of what I am trying to say.) At that time usually the overall structure of the song will come to mind in an abstract sense. When the chorus is done I try to come up with verses that will work with the chorus. That is probably the trickiest part. You want the verses to be sufficiently different from the chorus and yet still sound like they were meant for each other. Once the verses and chorus forms are determined I will write the bridge or middle eight, assuming I feel the song needs one. This is another part that gives you a break from the verse-chorus routine and introduces more variety. I often use this to comment in a different way about the topic at hand.
 
As musician, how do you get into the mindset of “playing live”? That is, as a presenter, I more or less “turn it on” when I’m presenting and know how I do it, but how do you get on stage?
In my own case I try to be as natural as possible. That is kind of my schtick: I am very deadpan. I can’t say whether or not that is satisfying for the audience!  Obviously my persona onstage is somewhat of an exaggeration of my own personality, but it’s not radically different.

What are your “pre-playing” rituals that help you get ready? What about during the performance that keep you in the flow?
My main concern with playing live is that I will forget the songs! I am not that concerned about the lyrics, but I do worry a lot about forgetting the chords of the songs. Obviously, you just need to rehearse so it becomes second nature.  Something about the actual performance seems to focus my mind though, so that I end up not making the mistakes I am worried about making.

I try to do some songs I am most comfortable with in the beginning because I know that if/when those go well I will become more relaxed about things and things will continue to flow more easily.

How do you recover from losing your “flow”–when you maybe choke in the middle of a song, or the moment, when you’re in the middle of a gig?
Surprisingly — or maybe not surprisingly — most times people are not as aware of any mistakes as you might think. They are not focusing on things the way you (as the performer) are. And even if they do notice some little mistake they most likely not going to focus too much on it, especially if they are enjoying the overall performance. Of course if the whole thing becomes a train wreck then that’s a problem. You just have to keep pushing on. You can also make a joke out of the mistake if that suits your performance style. 

How have you combatted stage fright in the past and/or how do you combat it today?  What are the techniques you use–not the whole “see the audience in their underwear” stuff, but the real tricks that make it work for you.
I seriously do not have stage fright. The audience doesn’t bother me at all. Between the songs I just do patter and sometimes talk directly to people in the audience. As I said, the only thing that worries me is that I will forget the words or chords. So I need to focus. But it doesn’t really end up being a problem 99 percent of the time.

About Eytan Mirsky
Eytan Mirsky is a singer-songwriter best known for his original contributions to film soundtracks, including the title songs for the critically acclaimed films Happiness (sung by R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe) and American Splendor (in which he himself appeared singing the theme). He also contributed three songs to the film The Tao of Steve, including the title song and “(I Just Wanna Be) Your Steve McQueen”. Other films to which Mirsky has contributed music are Palindromes, The Company and Desert Blue.  He has put out four CDs: Songs About Girls (& Other Painful Subjects), Get Ready for Eytan!, Was it Something I Said? and Everyone’s Having Fun Tonight!

See also: Eytan Mirsky’s Music at AmazonMP3

My first interview is with actor and musician Alex Dittmer, of New York City. Alex and I happen to know each other from some community college days and have shared a stage for the musical “Godspell”. Many years have since passed, and Alex is a full time professional actor. I hope you learn from his insights.

I don’t really have stage fright anymore. The only time I get nervous or rattled is when I am unprepared. I subscribe to two mantras when performing. The first is, “Repetition is the key to mastery” and the second is “Nervousness (fear) is caused by lack of preparing”.

Have you ever been at a podium–done a presentation, a reading, played music, where you had to prepare in advance for it? If so, how do you create that presentation (song list, etc.), specifically in the conceptual phase?
All of my work comes from being prepared, even if it’s during an improv show.  You prepare the basic tenants of improv, the guidelines if you will and the structure builds itself. If it’s an acting gig, my job is to bring as much to the character as possible.  In my business we call that “homework”.  An actor has to do his homework and delve into his character and bring that to rehearsals so the group can share that and grow.
 
To prepare for the role conceptually can be as simple as reading the script several times. I tend to go over board.  I read the script and any history on the author or productions.  i also do a name search to see if there is significance to the name.  Also location history is important as is time the play is set in and the date the play was written in.  All of these factors offer a broad range of colors that the actor can use to paint the canvas of the character.
 
As an actor, how do you get into the mindset of “acting”? That is, as a presenter, I more or less “turn it on” when I’m presenting and know how I do it, but how do you become the character?
My answer may sound kinda silly or untrue, but it’s honestly how I feel.  I love acting.  There is nothing on earth that I have found anywhere that I feel more comfortable and confident doing. There is such a wonderful symbiotic relationship with the audience- a shared energy- that even if I were down, I couldn’t be once I crossed into the lighted stage.  So to give anything less than 100% would be like cheating on a spouse or loved one.  
 
I grew up in a blue collar home with blue collar parents and the work ethic they instilled in me still continues.  I realize that while my job is different from the 9-5 grind or factory work, I still have a job to do and I try to approach it that way.  Someone is paying me decent money to do something I would probably do for free because of my love and passion for it. So if I cash that check, I better deliver on what they are paying me to do.  So, in a long round about way, I guess I am always “on” once I walk into the theatre.  It is a kin to the reverence some people feel when they walk into Cathedral.
 
What are your “pre-acting” rituals that help you get ready? What about during the acting performance that keep you in character / the flow?
I have some pre-show things that I always do.  First I always stretch and get physically warmed up.  I do no less than 25 push-up prior to getting into costume and then the same amount when fully in the opening costume. I also vocalize.  My favorite thing in working the vocals is working on diction.  There is this consonant exercise that I learned in grad school that incorporates all the vowel sounds and the majority of consonants. It takes a little concentration and was something that I struggled with early on in Grad school.  So to do it in warm up reminds me that I always have room to improve.  I also re-read all of my lines in all of my scenes before the stage manager calls “places”. I do this in costume and sit in front of the make-up mirror.  I also always go pee when they call “five minutes to paces”. I’m not sure how I started that habit, but it seems to relax me.
 
The part about keeping in character / flow is a great question.  I think you may have meant about keeping in character in a two hour show.  That’s easy, the thing that I found difficult is doing the same show, twice a day for 6 – 8 months.  There was a time around the 2 -3 month period where I was saying the same dialogue, the same way and I felt I wasn’t being as fresh to the audience as I would have liked.  So I told the other actor (it was a two person show) that I am going to change the intention of some of my lines and let’s see where it goes. While the lines were exactly the same, the intent changed the dynamic of the scene which in turn changed the dynamic of the show. We would do this, from time to time, without telling each other.  That way we were forced to listen and it made the show fresh and alive for us and for each audience….even after 8 months.
 
How do you recover from losing your “flow”–when you fall out of character, or the moment, when you’re in the middle of a presentation or character or gig?
In acting we call it “going up”.  Everyone has a horror story on this.  Everyone has done it and everyone has been in a show that someone else has gone up and t affected the show.  My favorite on I’ve ever heard involves an older gentleman, but a community legend  who was playing the Friar in Romeo & Juliet for a summer stock professional show.  It was the scene where he was supposed to tell Juliet about the poison and the antidote.  He completely forgot his lines.  He looked at the actress playing Juliet.  Looked out at the crowd.  Looked back at the actress, and with abject fear on his face he yelled to her, “I’m going up!”.  The trained actress, fed him his lines by asking him questions and the scene was soon put back on track.
 
This is what should happen if there is an interruption in “the flow”.  If you know where the scene is supposed to go, even if you start going up you can usually find your way back.  It’s when you start to panic as an actor and not trust the work that you’ve done, that problems come along.  Mistakes happen, but problems are there when we focus on mistakes. Mistakes can be overcome in a second, problems can require a whole new set of tools. If I make mistakes I tend to push right on through and, if time permits, run back to my dressing room and write down the line or scene or moment that I F***ed up on.  This way I can go back and figure out what happened and reduce it for the next time.  I try my best to make any brief mistake appear smooth to the audience by not drawing attention to it. However, there are times that the audience wants in and it makes the moment more communal and the audience goes crazy.
 
I did a show where, in the final few minutes of the end of the play, one of the actors was to burst on and  improvise a line and then correct himself and say the real line.  This actor was pure genius and the improved lines were always hysterical. On the final night he ran in and blurted out his improved line which was, “Improv line!” the majority of the actors onstage just started cracking up, as we were waiting for some real line. The audience saw we were laughing and started laughing with us.  It was like a Carol Burnett moment. I honestly don’t remember how we ended that show, but I remember the audience waiting for us at the stage door and thanking us for such a fun time.
 
So if you go up, see how the audience reacts and don’t EVER fear. Just go with it, where ever the moment takes you and know where the story ends.  In the meantime, enjoy the new route that you took getting there.
 
How have you combatted stage fright in the past and/or how do you combat it today?  What are the techniques you use–not the whole “see the audience in their underwear” stuff, but the real tricks that make it work for you.
When I was younger I used to run around and try to get all the energy running through my body, out of my system.  I thought that this way, I would be able to perform better…to have more focus.  I used to get a case of the nerves when friends or family were coming to the show I was certifiable if I knew there was a reviewer in the house. Theatre folk tend to enjoy the histrionics. They thrive on the buzz of nerves and anxiety.  Nowadays, I can’t stand to be around those kind of people.  It’s wasted and unfocused energy.

I don’t really have stage fright anymore.  The only time I get nervous or rattled is when I am unprepared.  I subscribe to two mantras when performing.  The first is, “Repetition is the key to mastery” and the second is “Nervousness (fear) is caused by lack of preparing”.  They both pretty much mean the same thing. I only get nervous or concerned if I know I didn’t prepare properly.  As an actor, the majority of the time we are auditioning for a job. Sometimes we are told what to prepare and those are the gret auditions .  you can bring whatever you like from your prepared arsenal and blow them away.  Other times they send you (via your agent) parts of the script to memorize and want to see you do it in two days. You may have plans during those days, or a day job to pay the bills, but time will be working against you and you’ll want to act those scenes fully and only have a few hours to really focus on it.  It those auditions that make me nervous.

The key to getting through them is to make a mental deal with yourself that you will do the absolute best you can for that day and that moment. One of the things I’ve found most helpful was some advice one of my instructors gave me during grad school.  She told me to learn something from every audition and to make sure you take something positive away from it.  All too often actors, most people it seems, beat themselves up over moments like these when they are not at their best. They relive it in their minds a hundred time playing out the most damaging moments.  The perspective is where the difference is.  It the difference of saying, “Shit, I totally blew that line!” or “They never laughed when they were supposed to!” instead of, “Well that monologue doesn’t work well, I can dump it and learn something that works”. 

I realize this isn’t about nerves so much as perspective, but to me they go hand in hand.  If you prepare and approach it from a “win” standpoint, then nerves really don’t play into the scene.

About Alex Dittmer

Alex Dittmer is a native of rural Illinois but a recent transplant to New York. He received his BA in Theatre from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, IL and received his MFA in Acting from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. He has been seen onstage at the Tony Award winning CINCINNATI PLAYHOUSE IN THE PARK and has worked at the OBIE award winning PEARL THEATRE COMPANY and has had the honor and pleasure of sharing the stage with Tony and Emmy Award winning actress Julie Harris. He has been seen onstage throughout the midwest and parts of the East coast. Visit Alex’s website at www.alexdittmer.com.

Oh, and she hates that damn tamagotchi.

Paola Antonelli’s Bio:

Paola Antonelli is senior curator of architecture and design at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, where she has worked since 1994. Before MoMA, she curated design and architecture exhibitions in many countries and worked as contributing editor for Domus magazine and design editor of Abitare. She has lectured on design and architecture worldwide and has published numerous articles in publications ranging from Seed and Nest to The Harvard Design Review. Antonelli is author of a number of books, including Workspheres (2001), Objects of Design from the Modern Museum of Art (2003), Humble Masterpieces (2005), and Design and the Elastic Mind (2008).

Talk To Me Keynote Description:

Whether openly and actively, or in subtle, subliminal ways, things talk to us, and designers write the initial script that will let us develop and improvise the dialogue.

My Notes on the Session:

• We are now at the point with technology that we’re no longer drunk with it and we can finally do something really humane, has humane interfaces and make it elegant.
• She is more comfortable with objects than she is with people–objects talk to her about their properties.
• Technologists make revolutions, but designers bring it to life
• Computers evolved from being tools to being pets in your home–they started to have personalities.
• Post-it note was a mistake in the 60s that became a success in the 80s
• Real-world interfaces in the real world have become friendlier and friendlier–beginning to be pithy, have a degree of humanization to them.
• Throwie: an LED light with a battery and a magnet that you can throw up high and stick to metal. People make graffiti and give boring objects personalities with them.
• Laser Tagging by the Graffiti Research Lab – Used lasers to write on the sides of buildings.
• Seeing is Understanding
• Ref: Tufte (ick)
• Eames – Brought about multimedia before it really existed – Mathematica
• Access to Networks & Systems
• Access to networks & systems allow us to collect very disparate and complex sets of data and turn it into something visual that we can understand better/easier.
• Networks and systems can make devices somewhat irrelevant–as long as you have the data <somewhere> the device can easily be replaced.
• Making & Mixing the Worlds
• AR, Simulations, alternate ways to live & build
• Designers are now aware of resources, sustainability, etc.
• Grand Theft Auto is a wonderful simulation of a world that already exists.
• Portable systems may go away; it’s not augmented, but a blurring of the reality
• The connection between the real world and digital world will become seamless and this will make your experience “bigger”
• The symbol of this all is: @
• It’s not about possessing things now, it’s about tagging them. Where’s Gene Smith?
• Paola_Antonelli@moma.org if there’s anything about this you want to talk to her about
• Designers not only need to learn Anthropology, but need to take some screenwriting, drama, acting classes!

Here’s hoping my notes may give you a bit of that, too.

Timo Arnall’s Bio:

Timo Arnall is a designer working with interactive products and media. Timo leads an international research project on mobile technology, collaborates on interaction design work and lectures in design, media and technology. Timo’s work spans design, media and technology; interested in the ways in which products are used in everyday life, the emergent uses of new technologies and the design of products and services in local contexts and situations. Timo’s history of design work has included projects on the web, location-based and mobile services, film and interactive television production, art direction, motion graphics, installations and exhibitions.

Designing for the Web in the World Description:

From NFC mobile phones to Nabaztag and Nike+, there is an entirely new class of consumer product that becomes almost useless when disconnected from the network. How can designers deal with the vast complexity of designing not only interactive physical products, but the connections and resulting interactions with the data that they produce? In the Touch project we have been working with designing interactive products and services that involve RFID, NFC and mobile devices. The project has developed useful models for designing across tangible and mobile interactions, networks and the web, that allow us to see where existing products succeed or fail, and to get to a grip on the design of new networked products.

My Notes from the Session:

• Shows copper-lined pockets so people can’t scan his RFID “stuff”
• Shows “RFID-Proof” wallet to protect your personal wares (froms canning)
• References “Shaping Things” by Bruce Sterling (@bruces); calls it out as a short, fascinating read, but if all our products are trackable & traceable, maybe it has an impact on lifecycle, recycle-ability, etc.
• NFC is “Near Field Communications”
• NFC – The integration of RFID into mobile phones
• You can embed tags in everyday objects and then take actions upon them – similar to stuff I worked on for <insert mobile phone manufacturer here>.
• We are keen to “reframe” technology to make it fun, not talking about the utility of it all, but more about the exploration, the game-y-ness of it.
• RFID/NFC with youth testing seems to have gone from passive to active usage in a very short amount of time. Learning curve was quick & easy and it was fun for children to have simple controls that delivered fun, consumable actions.
• Showed RFID stickers; previous discussed those types of re/actions at <insert mobile phone manufacturer here> and it’s great to see that we really were looking at the future about 5 years ago.
• The part of the problem with this genre of products is that they become worthless without a network.  This echoes my feelings/fears about working in the cloud (that is, if the cloud.
• 3 Levels of thinking about designing network objects
• 1. The tangible experience.
• It’s become important to create things that live in our everyday lives & attach to our everyday objects
• 2. Objects need to have a connection to the outside world
• They need to also have a reason for doing this! In many ways, this ends up also being very social–sharing data of your workouts, your sleep patterns, etc.
• 3. Visualizing and perfection
• Once you start to collect and create data about/around a device, you need to start to visualize it, show people what’s going on with it.
• Design decisions for products that are connected need to be taken very seriously and need to considered for the *very* long-term. If the network and/or engagement dies, the usefulness of the product dies.
• This seems like an enormous risk (to me) when creating new products.  Does it kill the entrepreneur?
• Nike+ used as a good example. Absolutely; and the advantage of Nike money coupled with Apple money and long-term, low-risk of either/both of them going away. The product *should* have a pretty long shelf-life & you should be able to use it for a very long time.

We may have had the best darn seats in the house. This presentation blew our minds. TRKBRD is far from a perfect nor finished device, but it’s a clever prototype that was fun to learn about.

Hands-down, more of our conferences need more talks like this. We learned of failures and successes and hacks and end-runs, and there was energy just in watching the story. This was definitely one of the highlights of an outstanding conference.

TRKBRD: From Idea to Conception to Physical Prototype Description:

Physical prototyping allows you to see and touch your design. You don’t have to pretend to use your design in order to test it, you can touch your design and feel the interactions firsthand.

My final project, in my first year of grad school, started as a theoretical idea for a brand new way to interface with a portable computer. The interface had never been done before, so there wasn’t hardware available for me to realize my idea or even test it with people. The only way to realize my idea physically was to use the Arduino electronics prototyping platform and create the interface device myself. With a lot of research, testing, and talking with other Arduino users, I brought my idea to fruition, the TRKBRD (trackboard) was born!

Read more of the TRKBRD Description >

Rob Nero’s Bio:

Rob is currently working on his Master’s thesis at the Interaction Design Masters program at Malmö University, in Malmö, Sweden. Before deciding to move to Sweden, he designed enterprise web applications for large and Fortune 500 companies for 10 years. Rob’s design projects while attending the Masters program include a music remix web site that was used in a national campaign for refugees, a Bluetooth-enabled music distribution box for an inner-city hip-hop club, and multiple physical prototyping projects with the Arduino platform.

After graduation in 2010, Rob is seeking employment opportunities in the physical and tangible interface areas. He hopes to continue his work in rapid physical prototyping, electronics, and people interaction in every adventure and future employment.

My Notes on the Session:

• Rob is a student at Malmo, Sweden and the last bit of his work for his degree was “Anything”. Yep, anything he wanted, but he had to create something.
• He was at a coffee shop doing work; his laptop barely fit on the table, as usual, and couldn’t use his mouse–hates the trackpad.
• He found a spatial problem to solve with his laptop and the space to work in–and trackpads keep getting smaller, and they’re a pain in the ass to use.
• The only way to make a smaller netbook is to sacrifice the trackpad space.
• Had the idea and the tools, wanted to make this new thing.
• Thought of: TrackBoard (keyboard and trackpad?)
• Combining keyboard and trackpad so as to create more available space.
• Recognized “zones” on the keyboard based upon where your hands sit on a keyboard for typing.
• Checked out the Arduino board (Arduino Duemilanove) – www.arduino.cc
• Rec: Getting Started with Arduino by Massimo Banzi
• Sparkfun.com is a good electronics site to check out.
• Built it
• Put 3 sensors around the board – Left, Top, Bottom
• Put 2 lasers–bottom-left, bottom-right
• Used Infrared lasers to avoid issues with light in the area
• He was able to get the x & y coords through this simple set up.
• Problem with Infrared: you can’t see it!
• But, you can hack a webcam and you can then see infrared – you can remove the lens or you can add over some exposed photo film (seems almost like an antique to find!)
• The Arduino programming language is pretty simple, some basic background in coding may help you.
• The memory on the Arduino is really small
• Arduino forums really helped to optimize the code and queries to make it much smaller in memory size.
• The end solution was 110 light sensors. The laser in the corner was to create the plane of light.
• Problem: He showed a professor, professor posted to Arduino blog, MakeZine.com picked it up….
• Then Engadget picked it up! Rob nearly died.
• Big exposure: 11,000+ video views (10-50 a day), 90,000+ links
• Now a Russian wants to rebuild as the equivalent of what Smart Boards/Walls are in the US (at my kid’s school)
• Final Prototype
• 
• Tested & Iterated
• Did “Man on the Street” Guerrilla User Testing
• Gave lots of demos, too
• Had focused feedback from the demos that he gave; felt people gave him real loves & hates
• trkbrd.it is the website, @TRKBRD is the twitters.
• He’s only doing this for his Masters; it’s not anything beyond that (at this point).
• He does some “faking it” in Flash since he doesn’t know Windows or Macintosh coding.
• Can double tap to open
• Single tap [X] to close it
• Independent control of both interfaces
• Can select/highlight text
• Can type without moving the cursor – but on the entire trackboard, not a real keyboard
• Also: This was awesome.

Augmented Reality: Is it Real? Should We Care? Description:

This year, we’ve seen the mobile market make incredible strides in technology. The iPhone, Android and Palm platforms have increased their functionality well beyond just being a phone and have added critical functions such as faster internet connectivity, video cameras, GPS and compasses. Handheld gaming devices have also converged, adding cameras and accelerometers to their devices.

The combination of all of these pieces have made Augmented Reality—overlaying information and technology virtually over what you see—become a true possibility. Suddenly, science fiction has become much less fictional.

This presentation will:
- share my personal experiences and insights from developing a game for this new medium
- cover some of the challenges and considerations when designing for such an experience
- the viability of this medium
- how we could apply aspects of augmented reality to projects
- include other examples of such projects on the market ranging from entertainment to practical applications

Kevin Cheng’s Bio:

Kevin Cheng splits his crayon time between many endeavors. He is a product manager at Twitter, the co-founder and artist for OK/ Cancel, a webcomic on user experience, and the author of the upcoming book, See What I Mean: How to Communicate Ideas with Comics. Most recently, he is also co-produced an iPhone augmented reality ghost hunting game. Kevin blogs at kevnull.com and has been known to Twitter as @k.

My Notes on the Session:

• Kevin saw a video on AR and thought about how this would be a cool ghost-hunting game.
• ARGH (Augmented Reality Ghost Hunter) is the app he built.
• Tom Caudell coined the term AR when he was working at Boeing on a project. 18 years ago. That’s right–18.
• Wikipedia def: Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are merged with (or augmented by) virtual computer-generated imagery – creating a mixed reality. The augmentation is conventionally in real-time and in semantic context with environmental elements, such as sports scores on TV during a match. With the help of advanced AR technology (e.g. adding computer vision and object recognition) the information about the surrounding real world of the user becomes interactive and digitally usable. Artificial information about the environment and the objects in it can be stored and retrieved as an information layer on top of the real world view. The term augmented reality is believed to have been coined in 1990 by Thomas Caudell, an employee of Boeing at the time[1].
• Our reality is already being augmented–look at the 1st Down line overlay in football games, HUDs in video games, etc.
• AR is possible via LBS, Audio, etc.
• AR is here to stay; it’s main stream now, but not meeting it’s potential just yet.
• Why is NOW the right time?
• Google trends show it skyrocketing in 2009.
• Mobile seems to be a key reason for it to take off–especially cameras/video cameras.
• Reasonable Internet Connectivity
• GPS
• Compass
• Accelerometer – less, but you can do some cool things like running/motion, etc.
• What’s it being used for now?
• It’s being used in Art.
• Toys – Lego has a cool app where you can hold up the box and see the 3D version of what your end result will be.
• Topps baseball cards has some “attempts”
• Zombie killer game by Skittles–skittles are bombs for killing zombies
• USPS postal service demo – see if your item fits in the box.
• There’s a “live tweeting” app–Kevin pointed his phone to the room to see who is tweeting and got heat points. Pretty cool.
• Problems:
• Lack of design patterns
• And none of the existing ones are good
• The usage of AR is pretty immature
• Need to get some standards created for AR
• What if you wrote a “BurglAR” app? If objects are tagged and shared in the cloud and I see that you just bought at Plasma TV, I could know which house to watch and steal from!
• Clearly, no one is thinking about the deviant side of AR Design!
• GPS is not that accurate again. It’s not going to show you in exacting measurements where “things” are.
• Image recognition
• Processing on mobile – it’s just not there yet.
• RFID proliferation – not everyone (or enough people have all of the features to make this work well)
• Technology is not there yet!
• Looking Ahead for AR
• Jupiter Research: “The market for mobile AR services is expected to reach $732 million by 2014″. Was less than $1 million.
• Annual # of Mobile DLs featuring AR content is expected to rise to less than 1 million in 2009 to MORE THAN 400 MILLION by 2014.
• Smartphones are becoming more common
• Someone’s actually working on AR Contact Lenses!
• BMW and AR for Training of mechanics/engineeers.
• Google Goggles is an app that could have legs, too.
• Kevin says, “What’s interesting is that we (UXers) appear to be not all that interested”
• I don’t think we’re not interested, I just think the good ideas aren’t getting to US!
• Our technology consumption isn’t as fast as Japan, for example.  When I (Russ) worked in mobile, the US was at 18 months for a phone lifecycle and EMEA was more like 6 months.