The toughest room I had this month

After a month of promoting Confessions as hard as I can, and doing more than 30 talks or media appearances in the last talks in 4 weeks, I finally have some down time.� And what’s more fun in down time than to review the worst things that happened on the road? :)

I spoke in many places and kinds of venues. At web 2.0 expo, I was on stage in front of thousands (video here).� At various cool corporations and universities, I spoke in lecture halls large and small. I had a few hecklers here and there, or rooms with bad audio or uncomfortable chairs.� But the toughest room I had on the tour was actually at Google.

Chapter 4 of the book is called ‘How to work a tough room’ and it explains how important and overlooked the physical space you speak in is, and how to manage rooms to your advantage. This story fits that chapter well.

The host was a friend, and he was great. The tech guys were cool. The googlers who came were mostly friendly and definitely interested. I’ve spoken at Google’s Mountain View, CA HQ� 4 or 5 times before, and the crowds are always smart and friendly. This time they even had someone selling my books in the back which is quite nice. But there was one thing beyond all of their control: the cafeteria next door.

My talk was at noon. The loudest time of the day, especially if you’re within shouting distance of a cafeteria.

The ‘room’ we were in, Benghazi, seats about 50 people, but it’s not a room, it’s more of a space (see photo below). A space cornered on one side by a cafeteria, and on the other by a wide hallway everyone uses to get to the cafeteria. The other two sides are shown in the photo below, and looks, from this angle, like a normal room.

But from the reverse view, my view as the speaker, it’s a different story:

google-tour-reverse

One of the last chapters in the book is called what to do when things go wrong – it lists tons of situations I’ve been in, situations that terrify people, from laptops crashing to hecklers, to microphones not working, with countermoves and ways to avoid. But one situation I omitted is what happened at Google: the dreaded attack by impossibly loud events in the neighboring rooms.

Here’s why serious background noise is such a killer:

Speakers depend on audio superiority.� The only real advantage I have over the room is I’m louder than everything else. It demands people’s attention. People stay quiet because it feels inappropriate to be loud. But with loud, persistent background noise there is audio competition. Even if people don’t want to be distracted, their brains will be.
It annoys the audience every few minutes. No one likes to hear the clanging of dishes, the crashing of trash, and the loud hallway conversations of gangs of Googlers making their merry way to lunch. Once is fine, twice is ok, but by the third time people are just plain annoyed. I’d be too.
Being videotaped changes the dynamic. It usually doesn’t matter much, but being videotaped means people will see this later, amplifying my sense of the room vibe. The lapel microphone they had didn’t work, so my choice was use the lectern microphone, or a hand-held (on a wire), I went with lectern. But as I like to move, this might have been a mistake. I hate wires so I went w/lectern microphone for that reason.
The speaker sees the chaos going on in the back, but no one else does. Since I’m the only one facing the back, I see all the noisy people doing their noisy things. But everyone else is looking at me, and just sees a typical ‘guy at lectern’ scene. The distraction level for the speaker is higher than for those in the crowd.
You keep thinking it will stop, but it doesn’t. Since it comes in waves, it’s easy to think and hope it will just go away. But in this case it didn’t. If there was a fire or an explosion, something that was big enough to interrupt me, it would have created an opportunity to stop the talk to investigate. But the waves of noise, while loud, didn’t get quite loud enough to drown me out completely, and often faded away after 5 or 10 seconds.
If the talk is videotaped, which this was, there is no recording of the background noise, or any view of the cafeteria. For anyone who wasn’t there, my mediocre performance just looks mediocre, as there’s no sense it was a room with a high degree of difficulty. The only audio is mine, not any of the loud background noise that was in the room much of the time.
There is no counter-move.� The room is the room. I couldn’t go into the cafeteria and ask people to stop eating. The room had no doors, so it was exposed to the hall and the cafe. We were basically all stuck there.

I was more rattled by this than anything else that happened on the tour, which is fascinating. Unlike most other situations, I couldn’t think of a way to respond, or change directions, to get past the noise. I realized if the acoustics are truly out of control, I’m at a loss. I’d much rather lose video than audio – audio control is way more important.

At Adaptive Path, while giving a talk the same night, the microphone had feedback issues, so eventually I abandoned it, first checking that the room could hear me without it. Easy fix, provided I’m still the loudest thing in the room. Impossible otherwise.

I should have at least acknowledged the noise to the crowd, or even asked my host or the audience if there was something we could try, but I was rattled enough that I forgot to do it.

Or was there something else I should have done? If you have a counter-move, leave a comment.

Posted Monday, December 14th, 2009 at 12:05 pm

in public speaking | 18 Comments » |

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Drew @ Cook Like Your Grandmother - December 14, 2009 at 1:19 pm #

Assuming you had wireless mic and wireless pointer/slide control … while still talking, walk right up the middle of the room into the cafeteria. Look for an empty chair at a table about two or three rows in from the edge. Bonus points of the rest of the table is exceptionally noisy. Sit on that chair — or stand, if you really want attention — and keep doing your talk.

For the 15-20 minutes it takes for that wave of people to eat, you’ll at least have one corner of the room thinking, “Oh, we should probably be a little courteous to that dude.”

Once the din recedes a little, walk back to the podium, and the whole time keep doing your talk as though nothing was happening.

It might not actually help objectively, but the audience will get the idea.

Scott Berkun - December 14, 2009 at 1:31 pm #

Good idea in theory, but 3 problems in this case:

1) It was being filmed, so I had to stay at the front
2) The wireless lapel mike was not working, so I had to use the lectern mike
3) The rows of seats, as pictured, would have to turn around in their chairs to watch if I went in the cafeteria

But the idea of making the cafe part of the room by going into it is interesting.

You’re also making me think it would have been smart to put up signs in the hall, and in the area of the cafe right by the lecture, to let people know they should be quieter than usual.

Scott Berkun - December 14, 2009 at 1:44 pm #

Interesting: if the back-channel is a separate stream about the event, what do you call the noise in the background that’s about something else entirely? The side-channel?

Sharon Roy - December 14, 2009 at 2:30 pm #

Scott -> Interesting: if the back-channel is a separate stream about the event, what do you call the noise in the background that�s about something else entirely? The side-channel?

Maybe we should have something called the aside channel?

Mike Nitabach - December 14, 2009 at 2:36 pm #

I was recently serving on an NIH peer review panel in a hotel conference room. There was another panel occurring simultaneously in the adjoining conference room. Unfortunately, this was one of the reconfigurable spaces where the wall between the conference rooms was one of those movable doohickeys, and it was way undersoundproofed. The murmuring coming from the other room was surprisingly distracting, even though it wasn’t too loud.

In terms of what you could have done, the fact that you staying at the podium in that specific room was non-negotiable pretty much eliminates all reasonable options. If that were not a constraint, I would have said to the audience, “This noise is really annoying. Whaddya say we go outside (assuming that it was the usual beautiful weather in Mountain View) and I’ll talk to you there?”

Simon Raybould - December 14, 2009 at 3:13 pm #

You had to use the lectern Mic? Really? In a room that small? I know, I know, easy for me to say ‘cos I wasn’t there, but unless the background noise was REALLY, R E A L L Y loud a well projected voice should work.

I notice you refer to mics a lot in your writing but I’m always sceptical of them – what would an actor have done in that situation, rather than a presenter?

Interesting that you described the host as cool – I think if anyone had done that to me I’d have been referring to them as an ‘EX’ friend! :) :) :)

Simon

Jose Paez - December 14, 2009 at 3:43 pm #

I guess a lesson is to always try to get to know where you’ll be speaking. I would believe such a thing might be hard to do when on a tour, but I know that tip always helps formula 1 drivers and pretty much anyone who wants to be prepared. Possibly already in your book (which I haven’t read, I know, shame on me) but that is what came to my mind while reading. That and the opportunity to use the situation as a way to explain your point and be extra loud or even make a quick poll you can use for your next book :) – “in our situation, what do you find the most annoying?”

Scott Berkun - December 14, 2009 at 3:46 pm #

I should also note that a room like this is a sneak attack situation – at 11:50, when i took the 2nd photo above, it was quiet. But at 12:05, when we were going, it was a different story.

Jose Paez - December 14, 2009 at 3:56 pm #

I kept thinking and I have another suggestion: Tell your audience that on a count of 3 everyone should laugh as hard as they can, that will shift the attention of the people at the cafeteria into the room, some people will join and get the joke while others will just wonder but surely will lower the tone of voice (happens in public spaces), plus your audience will acknowledge the noise, be happy they were part of the solution and will have a laugh at the situation afterwards. You can use this everytime the noise grows in the back and by the end everyone will be laughing for real.

Lisa Braithwaite - December 14, 2009 at 4:02 pm #

What a drag! I imagine that the distraction factor for you was the worst part of this whole thing.

I don’t have a counter-move; my suggestion would have been to find out about the space in advance. I’m a huge stickler about this, having also spoken in rooms that had loud A/C or other equipment, or had blindingly bright open windows, or noisy neighbors, etc.

If you had known in advance what the room would be like, you might have asked for a different room altogether. But even knowing about it in advance and being unable to switch would have allowed you to mentally prepare for the turmoil, and definitely to address it with the audience.

Olivia Mitchell - December 14, 2009 at 4:15 pm #

Hi Scott

This is a really tricky situation. I really understand that rattled feeling which then sends you onto autopilot. Here are some thoughts:

1. I wonder if acknowledging the problem would have helped. For example you could say:

“I’m finding this room really noisy and distracting. How are you finding it? [if nobody else is finding it a problem, then carry on, but if they're finding it a problem then ask] Does anybody have any ideas about what we could do?”

If nobody else is bothered by it, once you know that, you’ll probably be able to get over it. And if they are bothered by it, they may have some ideas eg: a free meeting room that you could move to, or all squash in together a bit more etc.

2. Only real solution to this is prevention (I know that’s not much good when you’re in the thick of it – but it can help prevent future similar problems). The best form of prevention is to have a simple one-page pdf with your venue and technical requirements that you send out to the host well before the speech.

Olivia

Scott Berkun - December 14, 2009 at 5:04 pm #

Couple of other factors worth mentioning:

1. This was not the organizer’s scheduled room. They were bumped here a day or so before, so the room wasn’t their choice either.

2. It wasn’t loud right away, so there was this gradual, intermittent, realization it was a problem, rather than a consistently loud background noise. It was hard, while speaking, to sort out exactly how much of an issue I had, and there was reason to assume, each time it got quite again, that it was over.

Percy - December 15, 2009 at 11:38 am #

I’m wondering whether it would’ve helped if you didn’t have to see the people (in the cafeteria) as well as hear them. Maybe not having the people’s movements distract you could’ve made the noise a bit more manageable? (Could the organizers arranged for a screen / curtain of some sort?)

Ted - December 20, 2009 at 6:56 pm #

Hey Scott,
I was there and have to say that if you were rattled by the noise, you handled it well �� cool as a cucumber. I was sitting by the curtain, and did find the hallway noise grating, but I was under the assumption that it was only the people in my immediate vicinity affected.

I’m not sure its a good idea for the speaker to acknowledge the issue unless its *really* annoying. Acknowledging the noise mid-talk might have messed up your rhythm.

I don’t think anyone is to blame (chalk it up to bad luck / poor timing), but in general it may be good to make sure you have some sort of MC for your talk who’s looking out for you (maybe the AV guys or host, etc.). As the speaker you’ve got enough to worry about without worrying about the background noise �� but if someone else had closed the curtain (it was still open in the back) or walked outside and reminded people to keep it down �� that might have helped. Perhaps it should have been me! I thought about trying to close the curtain but skipped it. Anyway, sorry about your bad experience, but again, I thought you handled it pretty well.

My talk at Google HQ, on Confessions « Scott Berkun - January 25, 2010 at 5:43 pm

[...] wrote a few weeks ago about how my talk at Google about Confessions was the toughest room I’d had all year (with photos, and countermoves). The room was adjacent to a noisy cafeteria,at lunchtime, and an [...]