Over the past few years, as I’ve moved into a more public role at the Mercury News as a business and technology columnist, I’ve found myself being called on to do more and more public speaking. At the same time, I’ve also been involved in organizing various digital journalism conferences and bar camp-type conferences.
One of the trickiest challenges that I’ve found in all of these settings is finding ways to engage the audience and drawing then into a conversation and turn them into participants. This is particularly important when the format is geared toward conversation, like a bar camp. But it matters just as much when I’m up there speaking solo, or moderating a panel.
As I’ve begun to study how others do this, one person I’ve been following is Heather Gold. She does so many different things, it’s hard to put her into one category. But a few of her roles: Presenter, stand-up comedian, consultant, former Apple employee, new media star (check out The Heather Gold Show here). But a common thread that runs through all of her work is the question of how to draw people into a conversation. For a good overview of her thoughts on this, check out the video at the end of the post from a Web 2.0 conference last year. And I also suggest checking out her TummelVision podcast, which Gold says is about “human connection in tech, biz and culture in an era in which the ‘audience’ is the medium.”
I’d been in touch with Gold, a former Bay Area resident who now lives in New York, about these questions, and earlier this year, she invited me to attend one of her UnPresenting workshops in San Francisco. The goal, in short, is to “learn how to read the room and transform your presentations into conversations.”
It was done in a flowing style, where the various participants were called on to stand up in front of the room and tell stories while at the same time trying to involve the rest of the group into the conversation. The goal is tell your story, be as authentic as possible, draw stories from the audience, and build on those to create a kind of momentum around the conversation. Let me tell you, as a relative speaking novice, it’s incredibly hard to pull off without feeling forced and stilted.
One important distinction here is that we were trying to get away from the idea that this was a performance where you take on a different personality. The goal is to be more authentic, more yourself, which can be terrifying. “We are all afraid of being judged,” Gold said at the start. “We’re afraid who we are isn’t okay.” So, the tendency is adopt a kind of showbiz personality on stage.
These days, as presenting has become even more critical in corporate and tech settings, there’s pressure to over-prepare and over-rehearse. Part of that trend includes the growing use of PowerPoint both to dazzle the audience but also as a performance crutch, to create a format to fall back on when you’re on stage. The problem, in Gold’s view, is that this creates distance between the presenter and the audience because there’s no sense of who the person on stage really is.
“You can so stuck in structure, there’s nothing of you in there,” Gold said. “I’m trying to get people to prepare less.”
There’s no easy way to boil down the various tips and critiques we got that day: Make lots of eye contact with the audience, even when you’re talking to 2,000 people. Tell lots of personal stories using “I” as much as possible to personalize things. Ask questions of the audience, but even more important, listen carefully to the responses and find a way to build on them to keep the conversation going. This can involve a fair bit of improvisation, which can make things seem a bit, well, terrifying if you’re used to having every moment carefully scripted.
If there was a single key takeaway for me, it was how important listening is in such a setting, something I don’t hear a lot of people mention when dishing out public speaking advice.
“The challenge is for you to go for that feeling of connectiveness,” Gold said. “Everyone wants to be listened to.”
It was time well spent, as I think we were all far more comfortable (certainly less terrified) of putting ourselves in front of a group without a complete map of where the whole thing would go and how we’d get there.
If you’re interested in learning more, Gold will be in the Bay Area next month for a mini-tour, including offering her UnPresenting worksh0p on August 8. More details are here.
Upon returning from vacation this week, I saw that Reel Video in Berkeley had indeed closed. I had written about its problems before leaving. Founder Stuart Skorman was trying to pull together some investors to buy it back from the corporation, but couldn’t get a group together in time.
Sorry to see it go, but thanks for many years of happy viewings and good memories.
HP gadget guru Phil McKinney is among those who believe everyone will eventually own at least two or three computing devices, choosing according to individual needs from among PCs, smartphones and everything in between. Right now, though, it’s that sweet spot in between that companies like Hewlett-Packard are racing to fill, with new products that try to strike the balance between mobility and user experience.
That’s where HP’s recent acquisition of Palm and its webOS software comes in. McKinney, the chief technology officer for HP’s personal systems group, was careful not to reveal plans for specific products during a talk at the MobileBeat 2010 conference Monday. (And he managed to get through a 30-minute presentation without once mentioning Apple or its iPad by name.) But he reiterated that HP plans to use webOS for what most people are calling tablets — HP calls them “slate” devices — as well as for phones and printers.
While giving no sign that HP would dump Microsoft as the operating system provider for most of its PC business, McKinney’s comments were probably no comfort to Microsoft’s mobile software folks. “We see Windows having its segments of the market,” McKinney said. But when it comes to mobile devices, he added, rather than relying on third-party software, HP believes that success lies with providing its own “end-to-end experience.”
McKinney also repeated his recruiting pitch for independent app developers, who are crucial to HP’s plans for building popular adoption of webOS. Echoing comments he made in a video recently posted on Palm’s website, McKinney suggested developers should consider building apps for webOS because HP has the scale and resources to sell “tens or hundreds of millions” of webOS devices, to both businesses and consumers around the world.
I wrote on Monday about a problem with the camera system on Apple’s new iPhone 4 that was affecting users’ ability to not only take pictures but use FaceTime, the new video chat feature. My colleague Maria Avila helped me put together the video below that illustrates the issue. (H/t to another colleague, Greg Young, who helped me illustrate the FaceTime issue.)
But now a new issue is coming to light: a faulty camera system that not only affects your ability to take pictures, it can foil your attempts to use FaceTime, the video chat feature that is the iPhone 4’s top talking point.
I ran into this issue over the weekend. Apple kindly sent me two iPhone 4s to test out. I’ve been trying to convince my wife that we need to upgrade our iPhone 3G’s to the new model, so I thought I’d show her how FaceTime works, figuring she’d be as wowed as I was when I tested it on a friend’s phone in the office.
But it didn’t work. While the phone I was using received my wife’s image, the small box that was supposed to display my image wasn’t showing anything. Meanwhile, on the phone my wife was using, she could only see her own image in the small box on her screen; she didn’t get any images from my phone. Read the rest of this entry »
Columnist Troy Wolverton has gotten his hands on an iPhone 4. Follow his reactions here. Note: If you’re having difficulty seeing the widget below you can check out Troy’s posts on Twitter @troywolv.
The conference brings together past winners of the foundations’ News Challenge program (of which I was one) along with some other folks working at the edge of new journalism forms. The News Challenge program funds innovative ideas to build new news tools. I’ll be posting some summary thoughts from the sessions over the next few days. But to start things off, the foundation is announcing the 2010 winners of the News Challenge program.
Each of the grantees provides a little glimpse at how people from a wide spectrum of backgrounds looks at the future of news: video games for news; local wikis; community video editing tools; live news maps; community funded journalism. I wanted to highlight a two from the Bay Area:
During much of the election, the tech world’s attention has focused on former eBay CEO Meg Whitman and former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina in their respective gubernatorial and senate races. Both had big war chests, and both won big. Now we’ll see if they can do the same in the general election.
But there were two other valley tech candidates running last night, and both lost. Let’s take a look.
That Reel Video has become a treasured community institution in Berkeley is an accident of timing and strategy.
Beloved by local cinephiles and neighborhood residents alike, the 8,000-square foot video store is actually a relic of the dot-com bubble that developed a devoted following among people who love to browse its extensive collection of titles that range from the biggest hits to the most obscure cult films. While I’m well aware that the trend of renting DVDs online is undermining the local video store, I was still surprised to learn a couple weeks ago that Reel was on the verge of being closed. There is such passion around the store still, I figured it might be the exception.
In fact, Reel is still profitable, but it’s caught on the wrong side of a corporate bankruptcy. Back in February, Movie Gallery, which owns the Hollywood Video franchise of rental stores, filed for bankruptcy and said it planned to close and liquidate most of its stores. Most folks, including me, didn’t realize that Movie Gallery owned the Reel Video store. Indeed, word that the store is in peril is only just trickling out to the store’s staff and the community.
But behind the scenes, Reel’s founder Stuart Skorman has been leading efforts to save the store. He wants to preserve what has become an unlikely cultural touchstone while also exploring how such a place might be transformed to remain socially and economically relevant as its old business model inevitably whithers away.
Beyond the sentimentality, this effort raises two interesting questions. Can Reel be saved? And even if it can, should it be saved? Whatever fixes can be made in the short term, the trendline in clear. Renting videos from stores is a dying habit. Wouldn’t Skorman just be postponing the inevitable?
Of course, Skorman thinks not. He’s convinced that if he saves the store now, it will buy him some time to reinvent the store’s role in the video marketplace and the community.
“The reason I’m involved is community,” Skorman said. “It’s an important part of a community, and it’s worth saving therefore. It’s so sad if it goes away for so many people. But long term, maybe something more can be made of it.”
Am I killing Reel?
I live in North Oakland, and the change in my own video renting habits mirror the larger forces bearing down on Reel. When I first moved here back in January 2001, everyone made a point to tell us about Reel. It was the place to rent a video in North Oakland and South Berkeley. Forget the ample number of Blockbusters and Hollywood Video stores nearby.
My family became Reel regulars. I still have my Reel video rental card on my keychain. But my loyalty changed after subscribing to Netflix. I love Netflix, and became an evangelist to all my friends. Then we expanded to downloading videos from iTunes, streaming them online, and of course watching OnDemand from Comcast.
This trend has accelerated the past couple of years. According to NPD, a consumer research services based in Chicago, the percentage of individual DVDs rented from a store has dropped from 64 percent in 2007 to 37 percent the first quarter of 2010. People are moving to a subscription model, from both stores and online., with this category now accounting for 37 percent of rentals. It’s hard to count pure online rentals because places like Blockbluster offer hybrid models, one price for online and store subscriptions.
And yet, I still make the occassional trip to Reel. Sometimes the kids just need something right now. Or the set of videos we have on tap from Netflix are not right. A trip to Reel can still sometimes be faster — and cheaper — than using Comcast’s horribly designed OnDemand menus. And sometimes, I just plain like the feel of being in a place surrounded by walls of DVDs.
So I was stunned while attending a neighborhood barbecue recently when the chatter turned to the impending closing of Reel.
“No!” I said. “How have I not heard about this?”
It turns out, I wasn’t the only one in the dark.
The accidental success
Skorman came to the Bay Area with a background in video rental stores. He’d started a small, local chain of them in Vermont, which he sold and moved West.
When he discovered the Internet, he started building a site to sell and rent movies. Reel.com was launched. But here’s the forgotten twist:
Skorman said when the site launched in 1996, he figured no one would make money on the Internet. Instead, he thought the site would be a marketing vehicle for bricks-and-mortar stores. He would build a new chain of retail stores in tandem with the Web site.
He put the first one in South Berkeley. It was a town he figured he knew well because of its similarities to Burlington, Vt., where he’d operated another store. Super Liberal college towns both. And he found the perfect spot in South Berkeley. There was a spot along Shattuck Avenue where neighbors were fighting the decision to build a Hollywood Video because they didn’t want a chain store. Skorman offered to take the property off Hollywood Video’s hands and build a truly local video story, making him a neighborhood hero.
The store he built there was tailor made for Berkeley. It stocked more than 25,000 titles, about three times as much as the average chain store. And they were organized along all sorts of categories like “Action” to sections devoted to one director or actor. It catered to the obsessive fan. And of course, it had loads of cult movies you couldn’t find anywhere else.
At the time, the sale enraged local residents who had fought the Hollywood Video store. They saw Skorman as a traitor. But Skorman says he had a handshake agreement with Hollywood’s CEO that the Reel store wouldn’t be touched. True or not, the store has been allowed to operate as it was intended without being forced to endure a chain-style makeover. That remained true even after Hollywood was later acquired by Movie Gallery.
By operating as the anti-chain store within a chain store, Reel has remained profitable. A lesson that appeared to go unlearned as the larger chain sunk into the red, bankruptcy, and now liquidation.
I talked recently with Richard Phillips, a shift leader at Reel, who has worked there for five years. We talked about what males Reel special and different. He agreed about some of the big things, like the selection and the various ways movies are categories. That has attracted customers like Pixar Studios, which has a special account at Reel. When the studio is considering using a vocal talent for one of its productions, it likes to come into the store and rent all of that person’s movies, Phillips said.
Phillips also noted that many of the 14 staffers at Reel have worked there for a long time, and that they love it. That enjoyment shows up in little ways, like the oddball choices for videos that play in the store. Or their surprising knowledge of movies and ability to talk to customers about the subject endlessly.
“We all really love movies,” he said. “It’s a differnet kind of store than any kind of chain store you go to.”
And they’ve stuck around despite all the financial uncertainty. But Phillips said even the staff was caught off guard by news of the store’s closing. Back when Movie Gallery filed for bankruptcy in February, the thought was that only some stores would be liquidated. But in early May, the staff learned that Reel was scheduled to be shut down. That news is just now trickling out to the community.
I called the press hotline for Movie Gallery, by the way. It contains a pleasant message saying to read the legal documents on the company’s Web site about the bankruptcy. And if no one calls back, just write that officials couldn’t be reached for comment.
Officials couldn’t be reached for comment.
Skorman to the rescue?
The news of Reel’s dilemma reached Skorman a few weeks ago. Skorman was still nursing his wounds from the closing last year of Elephant Pharmacy, a chain of local pharmacies he’d started in the Bay Area to try an provide an alternative setting to take on the big pharmacy chains.
Skorman started trying to figure out scnenarios to raise the money to buy Rell back from Hollywood/Movie Gallery. So far, no luck. At one point, he thought he had investors, but the deal fell apart. So he decided to make his efforts public in the hope of attracting other interested parties.
Beyond the sentimental reasons, Skorman thinks there’s a real opportunity to take what exists and reinvent it, rather than just shut it down and sell the parts.
Skorman’s plan in the short term is to expand the store’s business to include trading DVD and selling used DVDs. Swapping and used DVDs are growing businesses, and he said Reel would be in a good position to get into this game because of its reputation as a place for cinema lovers and its strong customer base.
Longer term is less clear, but Skorman figures this shift to a new business model could buy him some time to figure that out. Could it evolve to include educational functions about movie history? Could it be a gathering place for community members to meet and discuss movies? Who knows? But Skorman thinks it’s worth it to try.
None of this sounds quixotic to me. For all the wonders of the Internet, we still have a fundamental need and desire to connect and shop in the real world. That habit has persisted much more strongly than many people assumed a decade ago when digital utopians mocked stores that clung to their bricks and mortar operations as dinosaurs.
And even today, when digital streaming is finally becoming a reasonable option thanks to faster broadband connections, we are seeing an interesting trend that provides a counterpoint to the growth of Netflix’s online rental and streaming of movies. Upstart Redbox has also enjoyed explosive growth by rolling out thousands of signature red kiosks at grocery and convenience stores, a reminder that many other people still prefer renting a physical DVD to watch their movies. Indeed, according to NPD, the kiosk trend is proving to be even more disruptive than the Internet. The percentage of DVDs being rented from kiosks has risen from 3 percent in 2007 to 27 percent during the first three months of 2010.
The other reason some of this seems doable is the price tag. Skorman said he needs to raise about $250,000 to buy the store, invest in some long overdue upgrades to its systems, and start the used DVD business. That seems like a relatively small risk.
Looming over all of this is the question of time. Neither Skorman nor the store employees have been able to learn when the store is scheduled to be closed. It could be tomorrow. It could be several weeks.
I’ve got my fingers crossed for him. But the community’s love for the store is no longer enough. What happens to Reel over the next couple of weeks will tell us just how far residents of this fiercely independent town are willing to go to prove they really want to champion local ownership over big chains.
I spent Tuesday at the Internet Identity Workshop at the invitation of Kaliya Hamlin. I met Hamlin a couple of years ago while working on another conference, and had some fascinating discussions at the time about the Semantic Web and the future of news.
Hamlin was named by Fast Company last year as one of the most influential women in technology. She’s the organizer of numerous un-conferences around the valley. But in this case, she was being recognized for her co-founding and ongoing role in the Internet Identity Workshop. Started five years ago, the group gathers twice each year and was holding its 10th conference this week at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.
The subject of identity on the Web is especially timely right now with the controversy swirling around Facebook. The social media giant wants to essentially be the main repository of your online identity, and allow you to carry that around the Web with you. There are a lot of benefits to that, but there are also reasons to be wary. The folks at the workshop are developing more open alternatives.
“The issue at hand is fundamentally about FREEDOM: the freedom to choose who hosts your identity online (with the freedom to set up and host your own), the freedom to choose your persona – how you present yourself, what your gender is, your age, your race, your sex, where you are in the world.”
So I stopped by the workshop for a few hours to sit in on some sessions and talk to Hamlin about the subject of identity on the Web. It was a great conversation, so let me summarize some of her thoughts. And at the end, I added a copy of her presentation that kicked off the three-day gathering.
That 
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