Victoria Cumberbatch: And third stage of four total is interactivity.
And let's be friggin real. There's got to be some interactivity in a virtual event, presentation, whatever you're using, right? Because Of the attention factor. And again, I won't go on a tangent, but I'll just say there is more. Well, yeah, I could definitely go on this tangent, but there is more neuro divergence than ever before.
Right. So then obviously than ever before, because it had never been studied before. Yes, we get it. But most certainly during this pandemic moment where many of us have been, you know, we were forced to be inside for such a long amount of time and a lot of dormant, we're all on a spectrum of attention and divergence.
That started to really, I see it as like the snow globe that you shake and it's starting to come up. So we're now, all of us are battling instantaneous gratification and attention span capacity in a way we just never have had to before. So interactivity is really a way, in my opinion, to actually get people out of listening to you talk and get into either their body, or their own mind or their own creative process, even if it's momentarily.
So with some of that being said, be atypical, right? So I love, these are all, everything that I'm sharing with you are things that I do. So like take it as you will doing the unexpected. Like introducing yourself in the fourth slide. We're just going to talk. We're just going to talk like we've known each other for a minute.
And then I'm going to tell you who I am. That's unusual. People are waiting to track for when you're going to introduce yourself, right? Because they want to know whether you're credible or not. Like, let's be real. The thumb, the thumb war. Idea, simple, easy. We're laughing. Any other sort of icebreaker that's not expected, adding music at the beginning having Q and a at the start instead of at the end or in addition to at the end, I think you could think of that's just different.
That will have people be turn their neck, you know, have people turn their camera back on and be like, wait, what? That's what we want. So be creative. I'm not going to tell you my list because you, I don't want to soil your list. Reviewing the pre work together. So I could have kept that slide up on Mural and actually said, Hey, I'd love for the first three people to come off mute and talk to me about what you wrote in.
And we just converse like there's very little opportunity for the conversation to occur. And it's really a glorious thing when it can because what drives me is connection, community, and collaboration. So if those are the things that drive me, that's what I want to try to be ensuring as much as possible.
So requesting feedback. It has this psychological addition where I don't know everything and I'm inviting you in. It's subtle. It's also lovely. So it can be done. If you use zoom, you could just set up your poll in advance. You can have a word cloud. We're going to get to our interactivity soon, but there are a variety of free tools that you can use that can add some activities that you want.
Breakout rooms. Yes, yes, yes. With clear prompts and a time counter. But let me actually also say, here's your atypical make breakout rooms of one person only. So it's like every single person in the call is in their own room for two minutes doing their own creative process of whatever it is you've asked people to do.
It's unexpected. They also don't have to worry about the social anxiety. Oh, did I get it right? Did I get it wrong? Do I really understand? I wasn't paying. I guess we bond their own. So that's something the energizers we talked about creating harmony, the point of the other energizers to create harmony between activity and passivity, because that's what people will need in that 90 minute block of time to remain in it with you.
Facilitation cards. I forgot that I even had this in here. I have a ton of literal cards like this, for example, if you can see my little face, but working together, there's a ton of these sort of decks. There's a card decks. You can just pull cards out and it allows you to go a layer deeper with people.
People can answer in the chat or what have you. So in order, okay. So in order to Ensure maximum engagement that you can potentially achieve. It really helps to be aware, as aware as you can possibly, right? There's a ton of like, there's, there were 136 people that RSVP to this, 45 people are here.
It's still a lot for me to discern who's really here. Like where you came from, who brought up, how old you are, right? I understand you're not going to know the entire demographics, but can you get a general idea of the persona of the, or the myriad cultures that are going to be here with you? I might think, okay, these are people that.
May be entrepreneurs or may work at a company where they are presenting. They're sharing all hands calls. They want to add something exciting to an event that's upcoming that they're in charge of kind of have an idea of who some of you might be. You have a community right and you're here leading it. So There's a way can create as much of a personalized experience as possible without it taking up all of your time.
And so I've mentioned neurodivergence a lot because it, I mean, it's something we're all, I am imagining we're all dealing with. If it's not you yourself, someone in your world is and me myself definitely have ADD at a bare minimum and really high functioning, high performing anxiety. Right. So I'm focusing on how I can amp up.
Simple tweaks the typography. If you're having a hard time focusing, I bolded exactly what's important on the slide. There's not too many words in my opinion. There's some sub bullets. There's different colors. I added the stars just for a little something different. It may seem. infinitesimal to you if you're not dealing with neurodivergence of some kind.
But again, what we're doing here is setting up the space for success for everyone in it, not just you. So keeping that in mind, how can you just amp up what you already have here simply and subtly. When it comes to regions, for example, if you're working cross culturally, or if you have people from all over the world in your presentations or events.
I aim to lessen my own cultural slang, which if you know me in my real life, I am the slang queen. I think I said lit a few times in here already by accident. But, hey, I'm trying to do what I can. I'm not saying I'm 100%. Trying to learn a smidgen about what jargon is utilized by the people in that world.
Region can also kind of be synonymous with culture. It could be product team culture. It could be you're working with an affinity group that it's mom's at work or something. Then you can kind of get some of the jargon that's utilized. Always inviting people in using concise syntax, of course that is understood by the, by the average of your attendees.
Like, for example, if many of my participants are Australian, I'd like to at least know the correct pronunciation of Melbourne instead of saying Melbourne so that they're not sitting there thinking now for the next 10 seconds that I said it wrong. And here's another American that doesn't know how to say this and right go down the list.
And now I've lost them. So that's why, in my opinion, that's important and small and subtle. So regarding ethnicity, for example, I. Aim to steer clear or not steer clear, but stay aware rather that some cultures may not want to answer a question that's broadly asked of everybody. So, hey, how does everybody feel about being atypical with interaction?
Anybody come off mute, anybody? Like, that's probably not going to work most of the time, maybe you'll get one or two takers. You'll probably get more takers in a chat and you still may be boxed in by cultural norms of people that need to be singled out. And invited in directly, just keeping that in mind.
So what does that mean? You could simply say, if you're interested in coming off mute, feel free to raise your hand. If you want to share something in the chat, we'd love to see it and read it later. And if actually you'd, you'd like to share. But you feel a little uncomfortable, feel free to DM me and I'll take a read of it later.
You just, just, it's about options, it's about the invitation. Again, take any of these, any one of these as you will. So yeah, coming off mute at this time, breaking out, having breakout rooms is always a great intimate option. If there's If there's 43 of you in here, maybe I'd make breakout rooms so there's no more than four people and you have, you know, one minute each to talk and that might feel more graspable.
So, okay. And then of course, cultural differences of even what late means, right? So, and, and Sharing in advance how that will be handled. So just saying in your agenda that you had set earlier, that's really clear and has a visual share there. Hey, the virtual doors will close five minutes after the start.
So if you're five minutes after you will not be let in. We've let you know there will be a replay. It's okay to have boundaries. Just share what they are in advance. So no one is, you know, thrown. Okay. Recognizing that was a lot stages. Yeah,
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