Communication

Here's my presentation from last night. It was entitled "3 Types of Happiness". Maybe it could be titled: "What makes people happy?"

The last couple of minutes got cut off, but you get all the slides, and you get the idea.

Enjoy!

It was part three of "The 3 Things You Need to Find Your Freedom". This week we were talking about "the process".

I started by reading "The Nine Billion Names of God" by Arthur C. Clarke. I got my supporting visuals from Flickr.com, and marked on the story script where the slide changes were.

Then I compared this to a Muslim saying that when there is no tongue on Earth that utters the name of Allah, the world will end.

Then I talked about the 99 Names of Allah in the Qu'ran, and read some of them out from the list on wikipedia.

Then I talked about the Tetragrammaton of the Jewish scripture, mentioning the loss of knowledge of its pronunciation due to the Babylonian exile and a subsequent language change.

Then I discussed personal and impersonal names (titles), and primary and secondary names.

Then I showed some different pictures of Krishna with His different relationships and talked about those names.

Then I told the story of Lord Caitanya and Prakasananda Sarasvati (there seem to be at least two differing versions, possibly three, in the Caitanya-caritamrita). This involved some explanation of the social and philosophical evolution and differences between Buddhism, Sankara's Vedanta, and finally Caitanya Vaisnavism.

The power of God's name, and the process of glorifying it is not an edge belief / practice - it is a mainstream part of all major religions of the world. Lord Caitanya's movement, however, has really taken it to the next level.

Then I wrapped up by introducing some modern followers of Lord Caitanya and proponents of chanting the Holy Name: Bhaktivinode Thakura, Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati, and Srila Prabhupada.

I finished by playing the 5 minute track from the Krishna Conscious Happening LP (at least that's where I think it's from). It's the one where Srila Prabhupada explains the chanting and says that it is "not an artificial imposition on the mind".

The second part in the series "Finding Your Freedom"

Saturday 5 pm, Saturday September 27 at Atma Yoga.

I took some time out while preparing Sunday's presentation to check out this excellent presentation by Dr Candidasa: How to give a presentation (about Krishna consciousness). Highly recommended.

You can also check out my comic book "Communicating for Change: How to give a class" for some pointers.

Mahavan prabhu gave an excellent seminar on the topic of giving class, accompanied by a great handout. His class focused more on generating the content than the presentation side of things, so it's a nice complimentary piece of material. I'll track it down and post it for you also.

Last night's presentation was a blast. The Sunday Feast crowd was the biggest it's been for some time, with a lot of university students. I'd estimate the numbers at around 80 - 100 people.

The technology worked for me perfectly, which is always a really pleasant surprise.

I used:
For visuals: A Nokia E61i cellphone using bluetooth to control an eeePC 901 running Openoffice.org Impress. BenQ 1024x768 projector

For sound: Wireless Shure / Countryman E6 earset mic, line out from eeePC to PA for the sound from the videos.

My eeePC with Ubuntu performed flawlessly, picking up the projector on the external monitor port.

The eeePC is a low cost ultraportable "netbook" made by Asus. It has no moving parts in it except for a fan. It uses solid state memory instead of a hard drive, and has a low power Intel Atom CPU (4w vs 10w for a standard CPU).

I bought the 20GB Linux version from Hong Kong via eBay a couple of weeks before they were available locally in Australia. It came with Xandros installed, but I replaced that with a new version of Ubuntu Linux specially modified for the eeePC.

The advantages of the eeePC are that it is tiny, about the size of a hardback Science of Self Realization, and that it has a four hour battery life.

I don't have an SSR here at work to show you, but I have a hardback Gita. The eeePC is wider, but shallower than the BG.

One disadvantage is that while the eeePC 901's very bright and clear 9" internal laptop panel has a resolution of 1024x600, when I set the projector to 1024x768 the internal screen went to 800x600. What I usually do is set the laptop up facing me so that I can see what's on the screen without having to look around. That way I stay facing the audience the whole time. At Northpoint and other cutting edge churches in the States (and I'm sure here in Australia too) they have large screens on the stage out of the line-of-sight of the audience for the presenter to see what's on the audience's overhead screens.

My Dell XPS 1530M is great for this - the 15" wide screen is clear and easy to see. With the eeePC's 9" laptop monitor at 800x600 I can't see the whole slide. It's not such a big deal because I can still tell that the slide has changed and which slide we're on, and there are only one or two slides which require me to say something exactly as it appears on the slide. I use words on slides only for verses and short quotes. As one person put it: "when you're presenting you're meant to be doing the talking. If your slides are doing the talking what are you doing - interpretative dance?"

Slides are supportive visuals, to activate the brains of the audience, to reinforce your message, and to make it more memorable. As a side note to this, I had to turn the lights back up again. Well meaning devotees turned them down - after all, don't you watch movies in the dark? However, as I put it to Vrajadhama, who videoed the presentation - "I'm the main show - the slides are the support act".

Anyway, until we have a fixed facility with all this kind of stuff set up in it, we have to set up and break down each week, so I'm going with the portable option. The small "feedback" or monitor screen is the trade off.

My cellphone worked perfectly to control the slide show via the open source amora (A Mobile Remote Assistant). This program runs as a server on a bluetooth capable computer and as a small applet on the phone. The phone scans for available servers and allows you to connect to them and control them remotely via bluetooth. My cellphone, a Nokia e61i, is bigger and more bulky than the small remote control that came with my Dell XPS M1530, but it works with my eeePC, which is the main thing. It kinda looks cool when I "dial up" the projector with my cell phone too.

I had to upgrade from Ubuntu 8.04 to the development stream of 8.10 to get amora to work with my phone. There is some instability with 8.10, but it works for what I need it to. (update: I see a note on the amora front page today explaining the problem with 8.04, aka Hardy Heron)

The main disadvantage with my Dell XPS machine, and the reason I got the eeePC, is the size of the Dell. I use it at work as my primary machine and I use it to play my way through the single player mode of games like Call of Duty 4, Half Life 2, and Medal of Honor Airborne. It rocks out for that, and for building presentations, but it's no good for carrying around.

For the program last night I took my eeePC, my Shure wireless mic kit, my Countryman earset mic, a mrdanga, and a change of clothes. Oh, and my son Prahlad too. Having a small machine is priceless when you have to carry and look after so much gear.

The earset mic worked perfectly as well. In the beginning there was some low level booming, but Vrajadhama adjusted the EQ and it went away. I got the E6 mic because it is very inconspicuous and it is great for speech. We have other headset mics that are fine for singing, but not so good for speech. We have other mics, like the SM58, that are great for speech but are very imposing - you have to either hold them in one hand and stick them in front of your mouth, or else stand in one place behind a mic stand. I prefer to present standing up so the audience can see me, and to move around to keep the energy up. And I like to have as little as possible between me and the audience. Technology should be utilized and it should be transparent - people should focus on the message and not the medium (hey, and that includes the presenter). Just like when you go into a movie - you forget about the delivery mechanism and become engrossed in the story. That's the power of technology when it is correctly used - it can create a powerful immersive experience.

I embedded some videos that I downloaded from youtube using keepvid.com. With Keepvid.com you enter the url of the youtube video and it gives you a link to download a high quality .mp4 version for viewing offline. I used two videos, one a personal testimony by a self-confessed internet addict, and a one minute CBS newsitem on internet addiction. The eeePC played them both flawlessly and the sound to the PA worked fine.

I'm really blown away by the fact that so many pieces of technology all fell together seamlessly and allowed me to present the material with no problems. Last time I presented at the Sunday Feast I was struggling with getting the Dell (which runs Fedora 9) to connect to the projector all through the kirtan. I finally exported my presentation to a pdf file, and rebooted into Vista to get it all to work.

The Dell has an nvidia graphics card, which is great for 3D gaming, but the eeePC has an Intel graphics chipset with an open specification, which is better for open source software support.

Oh, one thing did fail. My iRiver E100 was plugged into the line out on the PA doing a line-in recording. At some point during the presentation it bricked. I thought the battery had run out (which was funny because I just recharged it during the day), but it won't start no matter what I do. I'll take it back to JB HiFi at lunchtime.

I have an iPod touch, which is awesome for listening to things, but useless for creating content to share with others. The iPod touch starts in less than a second. The iRiver takes a couple of minutes. I don't have minutes to waste like that, so the iRiver is a fail for a listening device for me. However, while the iPod is great for that, it has no way to do a recording.

I was doing the line-out recording to allow Vrajadhama to make another video / slide show mashup of the presentation. Even without the line-out recording we can still do it - Vraj has the sound recording from the microphone on his camera.

It's taken me a few years of working to assemble this equipment, but these are the tools of the trade for a 21st century presenter.

I'm going to shoot for one presentation like this per week. Next week I'll present at the Saturday night Krishnafest at Atma on "The Three Things that are Necessary and Sufficient for Liberation".

Anyway, enough geeking out on technology and communication. But man, people get really engaged with the message when you put energy into it like this. Spread the word!

Srila Prabhupada explained: "It is said that every muni has a different angle of vision, and unless a muni differs from other munis, he cannot be called a muni in the strict sense of the term."

A muni means a sage. Sometimes this statement is misused to stifle the creative spirit, which is obviously a natural feature of the spirit soul. After all, the individual spirit soul is like a drop of sea water, and Krishna is like the ocean. Since Krishna is the creator of the entire cosmic manifestation, you'd think we'd have a little creativity constitutionally.

The important context to bear in mind is the sentence that comes before that in the Bhagavad-gita purport where it appears (Bg. 2.56): "The word muni means one who can agitate his mind in various ways for mental speculation without coming to a factual conclusion." (my emphasis).

Anyway, this idea of trying to be different for the sake of being different has never been more applicable than in the area of photos of birds and cages, it seems.

I'm preparing my presentation for Sunday. I'm going to use my video gaming example, and I'm going to segue from there to the bird in a cage example (why do one or the other when you can harness the genius of the "and"?). I've had no problem finding photos on flickr for the video gaming stuff (heaps of shots of Warcraft and Second Life), but do you think I can find a good photo of a bird in a cage?

No way. Cat in a bird cage, human in a bird cage, bird on a cage - anything to be different, to be arty, to be anguished and misunderstood. But different from what? The original concept has become so under-represented that it now represents a departure from the norm.

As Srila Prabhupada once characterized it: "Put your clothes on backwards, walk on your hands, whatever you do, be different."*

Here's an idea to be different from everyone else: take a photo of a bird in a cage.

Thanks.

* sorry if that made you think of Kriss Kross - and uh, sorry if you didn't but you just did now. Always remember Krishna!

Re-presenting Srila Prabhupada involves tracking the current culture and keeping it real.

Good preachers present a timeless message in a timely and relevant fashion - mainly by using relevant cultural examples. Witness Jesus' use of stories of fishes and animals, lost coins and greedy farmers - all elements of the daily life of his audience.

Some of Srila Prabhupada's examples are dating and could use some brushing up to keep them, or make them more accessible to the mainstream.

We can make a humble contribution of re-presenting the essential ideas that he presented using contemporary examples and illustrations to help contemporary audiences engage with and understand them.

I'm working on a slide presentation to give next Sunday at the Sunday feast. I've got an updated version of the "Bird in the cage" example that I am going to use.

The "Bird in the Cage" Example

In the Bird in the Cage example an owner keeps a bird in a cage and dutifully shines the cage each day, but neglects to feed the actual bird. In this way an analogy is drawn between maintaining the body but not doing anything for the soul within the body.

No-one I know has a bird in a cage. It's the kind of thing I remember my grandparents having - is it an older generation thing, or just an older person thing?

Another analogy in this same line is the car and the driver. The driver may wash the car and put in petrol, but if he doesn't eat, he's in trouble. This one is closer to my daily experience.

The analogy that I am using, however, is one that is more geared to people of my generation in the culture that I live - it draws an analogy with online gaming. Here are a couple of examples:

• S Korean dies after games session - A South Korean man has died after reportedly playing an online computer game for 50 hours with few breaks.
• Man dies after 3-day gaming binge - Medics fail to revive 30-year-old man at cyber cafe in Guangzhou, southern China

In the analogy with online gaming we see what happens when a person projects themselves into the world of the sense objects, but neglects the senses (the body). Similarly, when we focus only on the senses we neglect the soul.

The bird in a cage example carries along with it the idea of imprisonment and lends itself to a follow up discussion of liberation. The online gaming example lends itself to a follow up revolving around the Matrix, or the Krishna's explanation of the relation between the sense objects, the senses, the mind, the intelligence, and the soul.

OK, so the Bird in the Cage example might be a little awkward or cause the audience to reach to grasp it, but it's not incomprehensible to people, so why use another one?

Good illustrations are accurate, relevant and engaging. Examples and illustrations serve at least three purposes:

• 1. To create an analogy that allows the audience to draw a parallel between something they already know and are familiar with and an as yet-unknown truth that is being communicated (accurate)
• 2. To create a bridge between the speaker and the audience, establishing some common knowledge and experience (relevant)
• 3. To add color and interest to the talk and vary the flow, as a means of stimulating and keeping interest and attention (engaging)

The Bird in a Cage example works here for point number one - it's accurate, but it's not so good at two and three, relevancy and engagement, in our environment. Analogies lose their power when you have to explain, or audiences have to grasp for both the point and the analogy. If it's not something within their experience it doesn't establish the bridge, and if it's not sensational then it doesn't stimulate. You don't always want to stimulate, but you have to do it periodically to maintain attention and interest.

Of course you have to be careful that your illustrations don't overshadow the actual idea. The online gaming illustration is potentially an epic one, as you can see from the picture above, and it will be the biggest one in the presentation that I'll give. I'm using it as the overall "engaging factor".

The "Ask Your Mother" Example

There are other examples, however, that are more problematic than the Bird in a Cage one, which is staid but still solid. Take for example this one, which I was reading to Prahlad last night from the Science of Self Realization:

If a boy wants to know who his father is, the simple process is to ask his mother. The mother will then say, "This is your father." This is the way of perfect knowledge.

This is actually a really good analogy, in the right setting. However, while it is great with the right audience, for a contemporary Western audience this example may introduce more problems than it solves.

There are two problems with this: relevancy, and accuracy.

First of all, relevancy. How closely does this map to the experience of the audience? Today the reliability of the mother's authority is not so clear cut. The mother may not give the correct answer, either because she is unwilling, or because she is unable.

Take for example the recent revelation that France's Justice Minister Rachida Dati is pregnant.

She declines to name the father, saying that her private life is "complicated".

We live in a world of infidelity, paternity lawsuits and multiple sexual partners. In France and the UK over 50% of children are born out of wedlock. In the US the figure was 40% in 2005. The analogy is no longer as relevant as it was in a previous social setting.

The example fails on accuracy too, and this is more serious.

Everyone knows today that the "way of perfect knowledge" in ascertaining the paternity of a child is through an impersonal, objective DNA test. "Asking around" is pre-scientific and inaccurate by modern standards.

Since the analogy being drawn here is that the "perfect way of knowing" about God is to approach a personal authority, and the analogy stumbles on this, the main point you are making is similarly compromised when using this illustration.

Your point becomes derailed when someone points out the flaw in the analogy (besides feeling that it does not relate to the actual social situation) - a DNA test is the way, not "asking a person".

Using this example risks giving contemporary audiences an impression of being pre-scientific and primitive, irrelevant to our modern, scientifically advanced reality.

Of course, it might also create a sense in people that we are coming from a different place socially than modern western society (and we should make sure that we are). However, the problem remains - today the way of perfect knowledge in ascertaining paternity is a DNA test, not a personal interview.

Any suggestions for a contemporary refresh of that example?

Sunday Feast - Sitapati style.

Props to Vrajadhama for mixing it up.