Intro Post AND a Flowchart!
Hello and welcome to what I hope is truly A Helpful Thing—a newsletter with presentation and storytelling tips and ideas from yours truly, an author (The Brilliant Ms. Bangle - Macmillan), comedy writer (The New Yorker, UCB), and someone who worked at Google for 12 years.
The end goal of all this is to help you (the reader!) connect with your audience during meetings, presentations, panels, and whatever else you’ve got goin on. If you're wondering why that matters so much, you're in luck! My first order of business was to create an OFFICIAL flowchart to answer that very question:
GET IT NOW?? Good! Moving on. Here’s what you can expect from this newsletter:
Presentation/storytelling Tips - Things I’ve learned firsthand from trying to capture and keep the attention of wildly different types of audiences: children (via my picture book), executives (during my time at Google) and drunk people in a basement (my time at UCB, but also just in life in general??).
Actual Story Ideas - Stories/fun facts you can build off of and make your own.
Other ideas for how to connect with your audience - Icebreaker ideas, game ideas etc.
Worksheets - Contents of worksheets tbd, but everyone loves a worksheet. Don’t deny it!
U IN???????
Story Idea: We’re Goin’ the Long Way
Opening a meeting or presentation with a story is a great way to connect to your audience. And in case you don’t remember why that matters, it’s basically the only chance you have to get your ass to Hawaii!
A story, however, doesn’t necessarily have to be personal. Sharing a story pertaining to pop culture or current events still helps the audience get to know you as it tells them what types of things you are interested in outside of work. It does, however, have to tie into what your actual presentation is about in some way. Below is an example of a pop culture story and some potential ways to tie it into the themes of a business presentation:
“The Copa Shot”
During the making of the 1990 mobster masterpiece Goodfellas, director Martin Scorsese had a vision: he wanted a clear shot of his main character Henry Hill (played by Ray Liotta) entering the famed Copacabana Nightclub with his date, Karen (played by Lorraine Bracco). When they arrived Scorsese was informed the club would not allow the crew to enter through the front and if they wanted this continuous shot they would have to go…the long way.
What resulted was a three minute long continuous shot following Liotta and Bracco through various hallways and the kitchen as they make their way to the main room of the club. It is now widely known as “The Copa Shot” and is considered one of the most iconic shots in movie history. Not only was it a huge technical feat as it ended up requiring unprecedented use of the Steadicam, but it was also revered as a genius narrative device as it gave the audience a voyeuristic view of Liotta’s life as a mobster. See it for yourself here!
THIS IS COOL! I think (?) we can all agree on that. But how can you tie something like this into a presentation? Well…here are some thoughts:
Themes The Copa Shot could relate to:
Sometimes obstacles end up leading to an even better solution.
A seamless experience is incredibly powerful.
Everyone needs a Larry McConkey: While it was Marty’s vision, Larry McConkey was the Steadicam operator who had to execute it
Other themes??? Whatcha got??
How to make it your own:
Let’s say you hate this story (WTF!!), then simply use it as a jumping off point to find a story you are excited about. Here are some questions/suggestions to get you started:
What’s your favorite movie? Research how it was made or listen to a few interviews with the director/actors etc. There is likely an interesting story in there somewhere.
When was the last time you had to pivot from your original plan and what happened?
Who is your Larry McConkey?
Ok BYEEE!!