Building Better Developers, Episode 671

Welcome to building better developers, the developer podcast, where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back. We are into a whole bunch of interviews. We are in part two of our interview with the mighty clown himself, Don Colliver. And if you were paying attention last time, you'll know that that is clown in a positive sense. And an interesting background story that he has that produced some really good content last episode and more of it this time, really going to get into some of the nitty gritty about the quote rules around presentations and what you could call best practices and where they may not actually apply in the situations we're talking about in the presentations, that we are putting together. So let's get into this without holding back anymore. Here's our return to a conversation with Don Colliver. That perfectly goes into the next question. Is the idea of, for lack of a better term, I get like technical storytelling is how do you because that is you mentioned you touched on the hero's journey is in a typical presentation, like a general forget what the topic is. That's one of the things you do to give your audience something to tie in. You have that story. You have something that draws them into it. How do you see doing that? Or what are maybe some questions they can ask or some pointers somebody can have to look at what they want to present and turn that into some sort of a hero's journey or at least a Joe Schmo's journey or something. So at least it's interesting enough to keep them hanging on and to keep them going from slide to slide. Well, it's interesting because the more I teach storytelling techniques in these technical presentation classes, the more I'm like, this is not useful. Like nobody is going to write this. Like it's great for marketing stuff. It's great for like creating like an avatar and telling a story at a trade show. But for somebody presenting in a team meeting, they don't want to hear a story. It's a little bit challenging because it's kind of a buzzy thing storytelling these days. But I think really what people want is context when they're looking for that, when they're asking for that context or narrative. And the way I see that is, first of all, asking that question, who's in the audience, figuring out what is their problem and then two other things. First of all, what are the drivers of that problem? What has what has made that problem occur from your audience's point of view? OK, so for example, if you have executives or a team manager, I keep going back to this error thing because it comes up a lot. We have a lot of errors and we don't have enough people to deal with all the errors. What are the drivers of that that apply to your audience? Well, you know, we lost, we had some layoffs, so we have less people, we have more users. This is another driver of this problem. The platform has changed, so there's more confusion. These are all things driving the problem. But also part of context is what are the results of that problem? We are people, the employees are really frustrated, they're complaining more. We're losing people to other companies. Users are complaining. We're losing money. So these like both the drivers and the effects create context. And it's easy to think context is like, oh, it's just background. We can talk about the pandemic, we can talk about all these other things. But if it doesn't directly impact the problem from the point of view of your audience, it's not part of the context, it's just part of the bigger background. And it's a waste of time. So sometimes when people are looking for storytelling, they're really just looking for context, meaning what are the drivers of the problem and what are the effects of the problem? So it sounds like when you look at business writing courses, just general, not presentation, but just is there is a often a drive to be as I look at it as precise and concise. It's like cut it down, don't throw a lot of extra flowery stuff in it. It's like get to the point, make your point clearly distinctly, and then you can move on to the next point. Is that sort of the rule of thumb that you see with the presentations as well, is it's one of those like, hey, if it doesn't contribute, then cut it out. If you've got a question about whether it matters or not, then maybe just push that out because it's not directly related enough to the information. And so instead of trying to create a presentation that fills 30 minutes or whatever it is, instead you say, hey, I'm going to tighten this thing up as much as I can. And if, hey, if I get a, you know, I have a 30 minute block and I get it done in 10 minutes, and hey, we've got 20 minutes for Q&A or something like that. Agreed. I mean, yeah, if it doesn't achieve what your audience, what you want your group to do, don't have it in there. They it's I think it's it's, you know, speaking just from a public speaking perspective, it's not really valuing your audience's time a little bit. If you'd really want to go deep and explain things and you think it will help your audience learn by all means, add those things, but make sure that that is clear in the abstract of the title or the intent of the talk and everybody's there for the same reason. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I did one of the things you've thrown in there that I had not really thought about, but it's always it's I think it's a good thing that anybody can learn from is, you mentioned the idea of adding humor into your presentation, even if you're not funny. And I think adding humor in your life, if you're not funny, may be a good skill for some of us to have. So what are maybe some ways that you can do that, where you can you can add that? I mean, some people, it's just like, hey, I'm going to grab a Dilbert slide and then they just dryly walk through it. But it's something that, you know, what are some ways that they can do, particularly like, hey, I'm not really a funny person. Generally, I'm a I'm an engineer or something like that. I don't find myself funny. How did it what are maybe some things they can do to add that and maybe lighten up the presentation a little bit? Well, I think first of all, don't write jokes. That's that's rule number one. Well, that's a recipe for trouble. I've tried it. I think the first thing is laugh at yourself. Be able to laugh at yourself. That's a big rule. That's one of the things I learned in clown training is you start to train and you'll notice that people start laughing at surprising times and you don't even know why they laughed. And usually it's something that you try to hide or you're ashamed of. But once you realize that it can become a source of power. So the way it applies to your audience and technical speakers, if you are taping your presentations or it's a conference talk and you can watch it back, know if you hear any giggles in the audience and try and figure out what were they laughing at. And oftentimes you can then use that as a tool going forward and kind of double down on it. And it usually means having some fun with yourself. Like, I know what you think, folks. This guy looks like he drank three cups, three gallons of coffee. It's just way I roll or something like that. I know in cybersecurity conferences, I'll also often engage audiences or pass or buys with cybersecurity dad jokes. And for those of you who don't know what those are, they're just like really plenty bad jokes. And it's not really the intent is not that people are going to laugh at the joke. The intent is they're going to laugh at me trying to tell the joke. And I embrace that. I'm like, yeah, I'm not a great joke teller. But anyway, let me get into my presentation. Like that sort of thing. I'm happy to take feedback on my jokes or something like that. I think the important caveat for your folks listening here today is have fun with yourself, but never joke about your expertise or your content. That's kind of the thing that is the Holy Grail. I see some people like kind of make fun of their research or something like that, that you don't want to start impacting your credibility. But I think having fun with yourself as the medium of communication is totally on board and will also get your audience more engaged with you because of your vulnerability. And last quick tip. Familiar is fun. Familiar is fun, meaning what do you all share in that moment that you can reference? At trade shows, I'm always talking about, wow, did you have that lunch today? What did you pick, the chicken or the fish? Like people love it. It's not hilarious jokes, but it's lighthearted banter. It's in the present. You ever been to Mandalay Bay Conference Center? Like the food court with Subway and stuff. It's so busy, like every time. Like you have to wait like 30 minutes to get just a hamburger and it never fails. It's something I can talk about. We can all relate to. It's familiar. It's fun. And then I can move on. We're all kind of on the same page. So I kind of lean towards that stuff rather than jokes. Well, and I think that's part of the challenge is you sort of touched on being able to laugh at yourself. And a lot of times that self-deprecating humor is, is works for people, but then, you know, it's, it's finding that without basically kneecapping yourself, which is out, basically kneecapping yourself when you're doing a presentation, you need to be able to have that, hey, you know, it's not, and sometimes it is, but maybe it's not, it's not that serious, but also still have the level of being serious and, and presenting it. I'd not to pick on a competitor, but years ago there was, you know, another software company that we'll just talk about that they had a new, new CEO and just went nuts and, you know, well-known went crazy, was having a good old time and all that kind of stuff. And it took a long time to get credibility back because it was not something that was, you know, it was one of those like, oh, okay, it'd be cool if it was, I don't know if I was, it was watching a, you know, an opening act for a conference or something, but if this is somebody that's about to present to, you know, about a multi-billion dollar organization, you don't really, you want them to be a little more stiff and, and, you know, starched collar kind of stuff. And so it's where you can, and that's, again, it goes back to your, your audience is where you can find some ways to, to get that, that connection. And maybe it is, I guess that's, it sounds like that maybe it's that familiar over, don't, don't push it and try to get humor as much as is find that familiar thing. Maybe it's a little bit of, you know, poking something that's around, that's a shared experience and well that, you know, lightening it up a little bit, but not doing it too much because you do still want to have that level of, of seriousness. And particularly, I'm wondering, like, you know, you've mentioned the, you know, the dad jokes because cybersecurity is something that I think, I think people tend to be, they don't want their, their cybersecurity people, you know, laughing and yucking it up. They want them to be, you know, they're like your accountant. You want it to be just serious and, and delivering a serious message. So is that, are there any other things like particularly in that realm that you find that work or there are some techniques that allow it to be, I guess, to soften the blow sometimes because particularly in cybersecurity, it's like you're not, you're probably lining up negatives. These are, these are the scary things in the world. And then how you sort of turn that around so they don't walk away and, you know, I've curled up in a ball saying, oh my gosh, you know, all of the hackers in the world are going to destroy our company. Well, great question. I think. At the conferences, I speak at we're speaking to people who know we're not really in the scare business per se. It's I'm more talking about, listen, we know this is happening. You know, you're already overworked. Let's talk about how to make your workload less. That's really the focus. I mean, from a broader perspective, if I was just developing a presentation for the general public about the dangers of infrastructure security, like electrical grid or something like that, that would take some thought. Like, how do I do this without just doom and gloom and terror? Because as anybody who works in marketing or advertising knows, that's the way to get people to listen is you scare them. And I don't know how I feel about that all the time, but I know I do know getting to how it impacts someone on a day to day level and what we share in that is the best way for me to connect in my world. I think this is a good time. It's like a nice little segue there as well, as we've gotten into these very serious topics. And I'm sure people are like, you know, I've got hand cramps from taking notes on a lot of this stuff. Let's switch gears a little bit. So how did you how did you go from professional training into clown? What like what made that? Was that like a childhood dream or how did you make that step? And actually, I guess then what brought you back out of that? And particularly, like it sounds like you were doing some stuff that sounds, you know, it sounds pretty fun being a blue man. And some of those things are sounds like you had some opportunities. So so what what brought you into it and what brought you back out? Yeah, great question. Well, I was I was building training videos for the big three automotive companies. I grew up in Detroit and I was also producing nonfiction television in Los Angeles, like HGTV, Food Network, that sort of thing. And as so many transitions are motivated by, I was got divorced and I was pretty bummed. And I did I did one of those things where it's like, what can I do that has absolutely no benefit at all, that I just is just going to be fun. So I took an improv class, my first improv class ever. I'd never done any of that stuff, Rob. Like, I'd never done any kind of comedy. And this is probably when I was like 30 late 30s, early 40s. So I'm like basically a grown, grown man. And it was one of those things like, where's this been all my life? I loved it. I just loved it. And so I was lucky enough to be able to follow the love and just continue to making choices just because I loved it. And all it did was it was only costing me money, like every every additional thing. I had moved away from Los Angeles. I moved back to Los Angeles to take more intense courses, train with better people. Through improv, I found clown. I was training with Cirque du Soleil clown. Again, like I happen to have this skill that just inherent and through people referring me, I ended up with these great opportunities. And again, grown man, like 40 years old, everybody I was with was like 20 years younger than me. And I was like, of course, I'm going to do this. Like who gets these kind of insane chances? Whatever happens is a win for me. And so I kind of went on those things and it was super intense and really crazy. But I realized, like, oh, I love communicating. I love engaging with audiences and I love helping audiences engage with each other. And so after the blue man and the clown thing ended, I was doing Toastmasters and I also started speaking at trade shows because I was like, how can I use this skill in a way that combines somehow with my existing skill set? And the easiest way, the quickest way was trade shows. And as I was there, I was like, man, these S.E.s, these engineers need so much help. They need so much help in delivering their presentations. And so that kind of brought me and I ended up teaching at Google because I moved up to Silicon Valley and that's where I am today. And it's the best. It's so, so fun to see people transform. I work with a lot of non-native speakers and it's just incredible to see people kind of shift out of I need to be perfect to, oh, actually, my imperfection can help me deliver my message even more compellingly. It's been fun. Yeah, that's some. And I've had a guest on before that had improv in the background. And it's to me, I'm luckily I stumbled across it when I was in when I was in my 20s and did some stuff then. And to this day, there's things I look back at as I it's there is a lot of skills. I think it's almost something that should be taught in schools. Everybody should be forced to essentially take an improv class or two because it's it does. I think it does help you with that. You don't take yourself too seriously. It helps you get in situations where you have to you sort of have to take that situational context that you're in and then you turn it into something that's amusing or interesting or connecting into the crowd. And then just especially with a lot of the improv stuff where you do have a lot of that, you know, that audience participation, you have that feedback and you you get to sort of get the wheels rolling in your head basically to do some of those things. So that's tell me about what was your improv experience. Did you take it in college? Yeah, it was actually it was when I got to college. There were there was a there was a little improv group and like little. I mean, it was I think four or five people and they want it. It was one of these in college. You have all these different clubs. So they were working on an improv club and I was like, oh, that could be interesting. And so I went to a couple of the of the meetings. Basically, what you do is you just go and just start doing straight improv games like you'd see it for people don't know, like whose line is it anyways, or some of those kind of improv shows. And then it actually it worked into what after I left college, I went up to Chicago and everybody's heard it. Well, most people, whether they know it or not, have heard of Second City. But then there's also sort of like the the redheaded stepchild of Second City called Annoyance Theater that's there that they did and I think still do have improv classes. And they've got people that have, again, not to the same level as Second City, but they've had people have gone on to like, you know, starting out live and stuff like that. So it was I was able to actually spend some time with people my age and then train with people that that do their stuff that had professionally done this for years. They'd written movies, they'd written all kinds of screenplays and stuff. And it really helped, you know, enhance that that thing and turn it into something a little better than a hobby. It was a hobby. But then I actually had a lot of skills that came out of it because there's so many rules around it or rules of thumb that allowed me to to advance and then also to be better as a public speaker when you go into meetings and things like that. And particularly because I'm not an extrovert at all by nature. But I think some of that stuff, it's that allows you to hide behind a mask even when you don't have a mask on an improv. And that's allowed me to to step out into things that otherwise I would not have been able to, I don't think. Oh, that's so great. Yeah, it's for your listeners out there. It's such just a simp. There's probably an intro to improv class within 10 miles of where you are. And the thing I tell my students is don't worry about being funny. In fact, that'll get in your way if you think you need to be witty and funny. But what it taught me initially was I could trust my impulses. A lot of times students or technical folks will get a question and they'll feel like, OK, I need to sit down and write my answer out. I need to make sure it's all right. But what I learned in improv is oftentimes my impulsive response is actually better than anything I could have pre-thought and written out. And that's what improv starts to drill into you like, oh, trust that, trust that. It's you think you can write it out, but it'll be better if you just trust your impulse. That's the biggest thing I took away. Yeah, I think a lot of us have learned that if you have too much time on something, you overthink it. It's one of those you're like, gosh, if I just like gone with it, I would have been fine. But then I started thinking about it and then everything unraveled at that point. Totally. So we're getting close on time. So I want to and I want to respect that your time and thank you for your coming coming out virtually and having this discussion. If there's somebody that's out there that says, hey, I'd love to get to know more about Don or some of the things you connect with him. What are some of the best ways for them to get a hold of you? Sure. Well, WinkTechTalks.com is the website for this kind of stuff. WinkTechTalks.com. Love to connect with everybody on LinkedIn. And I also have a free exercise that people can get if they're interested. It helps you because a thing for technical speakers, I find, is they're really good at holding their content in their brain. But what they they need work on is also holding the audience engagement in their brain. And this exercise helps them do both. If your audience is interested in getting that, just head over to Don Colliver dot com forward slash tech engage. Don Colliver dot com forward slash tech engage. It's a free PDF and you can play around and drill your whatever you have upcoming and get a little more engaging with it. Excellent. Yeah. And that'll be for the listeners. There'll be links in the show notes so you guys can go check those links out and connect with Don, because this is as you can tell, he's a very entertaining presenter and he's not just clowning around. So I got to have see got my little dad joke in there. Got to sneak that work. All right. Well, we'll let you get back to it. Thanks again. Thanks a whole lot for coming out. And everybody, if you want to catch up, we'll have the links and go check out Don when you get a chance. Thanks, Rob. Thanks, everybody. And that will wrap it up. I hope that you had as much of a good time listening to Don as I did in that conversation. Like I said, I got a lot of great notes out of it, a lot of interesting perspectives that we have not run up against before. I hope those have helped to inform you as well and maybe opened your mind to some some different approaches you can take as well. Get you out of the sort of the rut of some of these standard presentations and approaches that we've talked about, particularly when you combine that with some of the discussions we've had around like PowerPoint and slides and presentation materials and some of the keywords and some of those other things that we've hit along the way with presentations. Hopefully now you've built yourself a nice little arsenal of things to take a look at and to use when you get into that next important presentation that you want to knock out of the park. But for now, it's time to go knock your day out of the park. Go out there and have yourself a great day. A great week. And we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Noor podcast. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts. We are there. And remember, just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success. Please check out school.developa-noor.com. That is where we are starting to pour a lot of our content. We've taken the lessons, the things that we've learned, all of the things that make you a better developer, and we're putting it there. We have a range of courses from free short courses up to full paid boot camps. All of these include a number of things to help you get better. We have a lot of great content that you can learn from. All of these include a number of things to help you get better, including templates, quick references, and other things that make us all better developers.