The Benshi

YOU GET BACK WHAT YOU INVEST

So here’s the sad and simple truth of communication.  EVERYONE dreams of doing it well, but almost nobody wants to put in the time and resources needed.  That’s pretty much the truth of it all.  Institutions run communications workshops thinking, “we’ll give this communications stuff a day then everyone will be all set for eternity.”  I swear, they really do.  But it doesn’t work that way.  It takes time and long term commitment.  This is why we’re going with the term, “Narrative Training” to refer to what we are now advocating with our Connection Storymaking workshops.

If you value effective communication, you have to INVEST in it.  We certainly did for this event.  We had an initial, obligatory conference call.  I had to push the guys for a second one.  But by the third week they began to realize we were concocting something challenging.  That’s when the tide shifted.  THEY began pushing ME to have more communication.  I stopped having to push them.  They started turning up the heat — saying look, if you’re going to throw us out in front of 1,000 people, we’d better get this thing smoothed out.

But from the start it was destined for success because the two guys had so much material to draw from, plus they have such good communications instincts to begin with.   The only thing they could use some help with, as is the case with absolutely EVERYONE in the ENTIRE WORLD, was narrative structure.

This is why Hollywood movies are made by TEAMS of people.  Not just one scientist sitting alone in his office organizing his slides.  You HAVE to collaborate if you want to make the good stuff.

IF YOU CAN’T GIVE ME THE ONE WORD, I’LL SETTLE FOR THE THREE WORDS

It started with me asking the guys my standard question of, “What is the ONE WORD that encapsulates this ENTIRE subject of sea level rise”  I pushed and pushed them.  But they pushed back.  They couldn’t find any “one word.”  However, they did finally settle on three words.  I said, “Close enough,” and those words turned into the title for the session — new, certain and everywhere.  Which ended up sounding like the title of a book — like “Guns, Germs and Steel,” or “Hot, Flat and Crowded.”

From there the rest was a breeze.  Once we had our three topics, it was just a matter of shaping their material into a solid template of, “1 – Perception, 2 – Reality, 3 – Communication, 4 – Humor.”  For each of the three “stories” I helped them structure their material around this pattern, then we got on stage and they delivered the final ingredient — the performance.  Gary came through with a lot of humor, Mike brought to bear his commanding oratorical presence, finishing the session with his list of four solemn recommendations on how we must start getting ready for sea level rise.

It really was a tremendous event.  I was just the host of the party.  The two guys were the life of the party.  Overall, it was a whole bunch of fun.  And there was one more element which was our “crowd contributions.”  Using the ABT template we had contributions from people around the country — from Alaska to California to Florida — including an amazing spontaneous performance from Nic Kinsman (a former student of Gary) talking about sea level rise problems in Alaskan coastal villages.

And on the humor front, I interviewed Andrew David Thaler last week about his hilarious, “Drown Your Town” feature.  He sent me some great samples to share with the crowd (thanks Jackie Yeary for initially telling me about his website) including the fact that of the first 1,000 people asking him to “drown towns” a third wanted to see Washington D.C. underwater because of the shutdown, plus they asked him to make the water brown.

WE DON’T NEED MORE SCIENCE, WE NEED GREAT COMMUNICATION LIKE THIS

When we finished, the first person for the Q&A was a young woman who stepped up to the microphone, literally turned her back on us, then spoke to the entire crowd of a thousand.  She said basically, “I know some of you may find this offensive, but we don’t need more science — what we need is effective communication like this.”  It was such a wonderful and powerful endorsement that Gary asked me later if I had hired her — I had not (and by the way, the last time the first speaker in a Q&A turned their back on me it was the guy at Syracuse who told the 250 people in the audience, “This guy’s book is great, but this talk of his sucked” — but that’s a different story).

It was a very gratifying experience.  Mike, Gary and I went to dinner the evening before and kind of braced ourselves for the big experiment.  No one felt certain the thing would work.  But you know what, there’s a kind of excitement that comes from taking chances like that.  Both of them absolved me of potential guilt — saying that even if it ended up as a mess, they were excited to just be trying something different.

And in the end, all I can emphasize again is how much effort it took.   There was very enthusiastic applause at the end and a whole crowd of people came up to the stage to rave about how much they enjoyed it.  One of the organizers said he had taken part in probably two hundred panels over the years, but this one was the very best.  Which was great.  But let me just make it abundantly clear.  I don’t think any of the three of us have put that much effort into a public presentation, ever before.  I know I haven’t (and btw, back when I was a scientist I was notorious for, “organizing my slides on the plane”).

So just ask yourself — how important is communication?  That’s the bottom line.

PLENARY PANEL:  THE HOME MAKEOVER EDITION

Here’s the “Before and After” of the event description on the CERF website over the past month — the initial description of the event before I was recruited, then the “makeover” the three of us gave it — adding “narrative structure” to the content.  This is the exact goal of our new book, Connection:  Hollywood Storytelling meets Critical Thinking — which by the way, Dorie, Brian and I discuss in detail in this great podcast with Skeptic Magazine that they posted yesterday.