Social Media. People vs. Graphs

         

         [Egypt's Wael Abbas posts videos to YouTube about
         police brutality. His is one of the stories I tell about social media & culture.]

If I were to summarize what I've been doing since 2005 it would be that I've been following social media wherever it goes. First, there was "Naked Conversations," where I got to interview nearly 200 people all over the world. Then came the SAP Global Survey on Social Media, Culture and Business, which has allowed me to interview nearly 100 more people in 32 countries. And now that ongoing project has been enhanced by GNTV, which allows me to video interview people about how social media is changing work.

Without doing it consciously, I have become a major collector of people's stories. I collect them and then I share them through text, video and speaking engagements. The speaking part has often been the most challenging. While other speakers step onto the dais fortified by incredible PowerPoint charts and graphs and 3D pullouts. 

I am not a great PowerPoint lover. To me, there is something command-and-control about the slides, something that comes between me and the audience, in a one-directional sort of way. Yet, speakers who use slides seem to be generally perceived as better prepared than speaker who do not, I keep getting told.

Last week,  I was a keynoter at Community 2.0. I decided to make the central component 8 stories of people I have interviewed. Each slide showed their picture and had a single quote from their interviews. Then I talked for a few minutes about what each of them has done to change people's lives & businesses through social media.

It came out better than I thought it would. In confirmed something I have suspected. People, particularly in  business, crave statistics. They need measurement. They like the confirmation of bar graphs and flow charts.

But what they remember are people's stories. People stories stay with them longer than do pie charts. People's stories inspire others to change, to innovate and to disrupt. Their may be comfort in numbers, but there is inspiration in story telling.

Comments

[Jeremiah Owyang]

While people may remember stories longer, management (aka dollars) flow where numbers go.

Is that a poem or something?

[shel israel]

Jeremiah,
Funny, the other person who was heavily commended at Community 2.0 for exquisite story telling was Charlene Li. Have you heard of her?

-Shel

[Jeremiah Owyang]

Nope. Should I?

;)

[kdpaine]

Shel and Jeremiah, management may remember numbers but they'll tell and retell the stories. The stories you told in Las Vegas I've already told to dozens of people. thank you for a great session!

[Janet Tokerud]

Shel, you are really onto a fundamental issue: numbers vs. story. It is my sense that you can get away with just a few convincing and hopefully surprising numbers/statistics and then use that as a jumping off point for stories. Maybe it is a hassle to do the numbers piece but it gives the left brain of your audience something to tide it over while the right brain laps up the stories.

[vaibhav]

Social Media is much popular now a days. The visit of the people for reading or sharing stories are also increased on social media. To present the traffic we can use pie charts or numbers. Lot of stories which are inspiring others are available on the social media site. According to me the graph is the best way to get the clear information.

Vaibhav
India’s one and only end to end CISCO based IP network.