Passivity Kills Face-to-Face Meetings

Posted on 2013/03/052013/03/06 by Jason Hensel

I work in an industry that places a high value on face-to-face interactions, which made me more attuned to Amanda Palmer‘s recent TED talk, “The Art of Asking.” What struck me was the natural notion of making a human connection to receive and give.

“…through the very act of asking people, I’d connected with them, and when you connect with them, people want to help you” she said.

In the industry I’m in, this is most often accomplished through a format called an “un-conference.” Basically, people gather in small groups to discuss problems and search for solutions to challenges. As you can guess, it’s quite popular, primarily because it’s interactive and because of the face-to-face networking.

That networking is nothing, though, if you’re afraid to ask for help. I think that’s why smaller groups work so well. A large, lecture-style situation is intimidating, whereas, a small group gathering is comforting.

Technology is helping this process, Palmer says. Sure, we may be part of a large group, but the weird thing is that we can feel connected more than ever using the Internet. Maybe it’s just me; I feel like I have more of a chance of communication with a celebrity (use that term loosely) through social media than I do at a huge event.

“Celebrity is about a lot of people loving you from a distance, but the Internet and the content that we’re freely able to share on it are taking us back,” Palmer said. “It’s about a few people loving you up close and about those people being enough.”

Technology can only go so far. It’s a means to an end, and that destination is face-to-face interaction.

“Now, the online tools to make the exchange as easy and as instinctive as the street, they’re getting there,” Palmer said. “But the perfect tools aren’t going to help us if we can’t face each other and give and receive fearlessly, but more important, to ask without shame.”

This brings me to my main point: There’s no reason to meet face-to-face if we’re passive in our interactions. The days of lecture learning are waning. We’re not going to solve problems, find solutions, or change directions if we’re just sitting, nodding our heads and crossing our arms. To me, that’s Palmer’s main point. Even if she is focusing on music, the overall soul of her speech is about enacting change in giver and receiver. That can’t be accomplished by one party being passive. Both need to be active.

Please watch her TED talk, and let me know what you think about it in the comments below

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Page Views and Comments Motivate Bloggers

Posted on 2012/11/212012/11/21 by Jason Hensel

This blog currently receives 30 page views a month on average. The number of comments is minuscule. It’s safe to say, then, that I write entries for my pure enjoyment and not as a sense of obligation to a huge reader base. That’s not to say I wouldn’t enjoy more page views and comments. I really would. When I see my view average go up, I get excited because I believe I’m making connections with people who enjoy reading about things that interest me. This encourages a continuation to write more.

And wouldn’t you know it, there have been studies conducted about blog writing and motivation. According to researchers from Penn State, traffic-measuring and comments are just the things that may give bloggers more motivation to write. Carmen Stavrositu, one of the researchers, says female bloggers enjoy blogging because it makes them feel empowered and part of a community.

“Women who received a high number of site visitors felt a deeper sense of agency about blogging compared to those who received fewer visitors, ultimately leading to a greater sense of influence,” Stavrositu said. “Also, women who received many comments felt more empowered than those who received very few comments, due to a strong perceived sense of community.”

S. Shyam Sundar, who worked with Stavrositu, says that comments indicate connections and page view stats indicate influence.

To test their theory, the researchers surveyed 340 female blog writers about their blog activities and feelings of empowerment.

The survey of bloggers, who were drawn at random from a Web directory of blogs written predominantly by women, showed that those who blogged for personal reasons felt a greater sense of community in the blogosphere, whereas bloggers who wrote about external subjects believed said they felt that blogging made them competent, assertive and confident.

In a follow-up experiment, researchers asked 106 female college students to create a blog and write over two days about a personal topic — for instance, personal relationships or their health. Another group of 108 participants were asked to write about external issues that were important to them, such as racism, science, social issues and politics.

The researchers then manipulated site metrics indicating the number of visitors to the blog to test how they affected the bloggers’ sense of agency. The site metrics were tweaked to indicate that some blogs received 50 visitors each day, while others received just 20.

To test how a sense of community affected the attitudes of bloggers, the researchers added more comments to some blogs, while leaving only a few comments on others. Even though the content of the comments did not differ, bloggers who received a greater number of comments felt a higher sense of community.

“Those women who write mostly about their personal lives and daily experiences become more empowered by developing a strong sense of community,” Stavrositu said. “That is, they connect with others who share similar experiences and feel like they are a part of the community.”

Stavrositu and Sundar chose female blog writers because they create more more blogs than men and continued them longer.

“In general, it seems that, unlike in a lot of technology areas, women have widely adopted blogging and social networks,” Sundar said. “However, there’s no reason to think that these results would be restricted just to women.”

If you write blog entries, and money isn’t a reason, what keeps you writing?

(Story materials from Penn State. Image via Flickr: Adam Tinworth / Creative Commons.)

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Review: The Chairs are Where the People Go

Posted on 2011/10/192011/10/20 by Jason Hensel

I work in the meeting and event industry. And one of the things that attracts me most to this field is group dynamics and learning. I love figuring out why people get together to exchange ideas, what ways best foster interaction, and how all of this can make us better humans.

Misha Glouberman loves it, too.

Glouberman, a Toronto-based event planner and facilitator, is also a thinker, a ponderer. His book, The Chairs are Where the People Go: How to Live, Work, and Play in the City, is an exploration of his opinions on a variety of topics. Primarily, though, they focus on interactions and how best to nurture them.

The book is co-written with his friend, Sheila Heti, who originally set out to write a fiction book based on Glouberman. She didn’t get too far into it, because she realized that a fictionalized Misha is no match for the real deal. She decided she would ask him his thoughts about several topics and transcribe verbatim (some of you grammarians may squirm a bit).

Examples of these mini-essays include: “Conferences Should be an Exhilarating Experience,” “Don’t Pretend There’s No Leader,” and “Sitting Down and Listening as a Role.” Each topic analysis is strictly Glouberman’s opinion. This isn’t balanced, journalistic reporting. And that’s what makes this book enjoyable and interesting.

For, you see, Misha Glouberman is a modern-day Montaigne. His thoughts are never settled. He leaves himself room to let alternatives enter into view. And that’s the book’s main theme: Think of others. Learn from them. Entertain other viewpoints.

“It’s easy to underestimate the fact that other people have had similar problems to yours and that you can learn from their experiences–and learn from people who’ve spent lots of time thinking about certain problems,” he tells Heti in the chapter titled, “A Decision is a Thing You Make.”

Glouberman’s thinking about certain problems will cause you to think, as well. And for me, that’s the sign of a great book.

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