Story Time
I was recently asked to be one of the keynote speakers at an event called CMX Global Connect, a virtual conference for Community Professionals. The title of my presentation was: The future of the Industry: How one community changed a company forever”.
As a part of my prep for any big presentation I go through a visualization exercise. I picture the audience listening, the room I’ll be in, and stage I’ll be on. I deliver the whole presentation word for word and anywhere I trip up I know I have tweaks to make. This is a different exercise when it’s an entirely virtual event. A new experience for everyone!
CMX Global Connect was hosted on an innovative new event platform called Hopin. On the platform the keynote speakers are brought into a virtual green room, then as the time for the presentation gets closer you’re brought to a virtual backstage. When it’s your time to present, you’re then brought onto a virtual stage. When on “stage” you can only see your slides and yourself. This is where I kept getting tripped up in my visualizations. I didn’t want this to be an Erica talking head presentation while I clip through a bunch of slides. I wanted it to be memorable.
By now you’ve heard the term “Zoom fatigue”. I found this great article which helps identify some of the reasons behind it. With this in mind, I really wanted to try something different and create a different virtual experience. I wanted it to be engaging since I wouldn’t be able to feed off the nodding heads and walk the actual stage to interact with the audience. As per usual my best ideas come when I’m out for a run and this time was no different. I was racking my brain - what can I do that’s unique but still valuable to the audience and gets all the content covered in the allotted 20 min (which is NOT a lot of time!). It came to me in a flash and I stopped dead in my tracks. Story Time!
The presentation was already a series of stories that were critical turning points in the Salesforce Community journey peppered in with learnings along the way. You collect up quite a few interesting stories after being at a company like Salesforce for almost two decades! So I made my presentation into a book! I literally printed up each of my slides with notes and taped them into a book. Then I covered the book like I used to do when I was in elementary school (yes that dates me!) and printed the title of the presentation on the front.
When it was time to come on “stage” I explained to the audience that I was going to try something new. I told them to sit back, relax, and grab some milk and cookies as I was going to read them a story. I opened the book and began as many stories do…”Once upon a time long, long ago…” The point of Story Time was to engage and open my audience’s heart with the key being storytelling. Story telling harnesses imagination and unites an idea with an emotion. In a good story you get across information but also capture your listeners energy and feelings.
I followed the basic flow of any good story. It starts with a personal desire, a goal/objective, and then shows the struggle against forces that block that desire and objective. I wanted to show how I was torn between expectation and reality. I also wanted to tell a truthful story packed with the highs, lows, and everything in between all in 20 minutes time. I wanted this to be memorable and not just a bunch of bullet points on a powerpoint. It was a challenge!
It was an unnerving and vulnerable experience to try something brand new and not know what the response would be until after it was all over. Imagine the scene: I’m sitting in my office reading a book I covered with a Whole Foods paper bag with taped in pages of my presentation . At the same time I’m also flipping through my actual slides to show the audience the images I was seeing in my book. I have NO feedback coming in as I’m reading and I can’t see a single face for validation.
As I left the “stage” I sat for moment in complete silence with my heart racing. I was filled with self-doubt and wondered if Story Time had landed at all with my audience. The very next moment the texts, emails, and chats came flooding in letting me know that Story Time was a success…I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Not only did the audience appreciate the fresh new format they also gleaned some great information along the way. Mission accomplished!
The moral of this story is, with a little creativity and vulnerability I was able to share my Salesforce Community journey in a new way by being an “open book”.
