Porter the Penguin: Close to final.

Getting a peek behind the scenes can sometimes be a let-down. Think Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. You find out that the Great and Powerful Oz is just a man once the curtain has been pulled back.

But sometimes, it only serves to further satiate one's appetite. I find myself thinking of watching hours of "behind the scenes" footage on DVDs for my favorite movies (in fact, this is maybe one of the only reasons to buy DVDs anymore...as an aside).

We're going to meet somewhere in the middle here, as we take you behind the scenes in the process of creating a character--but without spoiling any of the fun (in case you happen to be an audience member).

The process of creating a character pretty much goes like this:

A mid-course correction to illustrate eye shape.

1. Pick a character
2. Sketch the character
3. Animate-test the character
4. Put the character into their 3D environment
5. Refine the character
6. Refine the character
7. Refine the character... (And then refine, refine and refine.)
8. Get the final product.

Our latest character is Porter the Penguin. He's the coolest bird on either side of the equator, and he's showing up to help emcee the e4 event in Phoenix. We can make anything into an AniMate--a company logo, a person, a mascot, a spokesanimal, an abstract design, a talking product...anything.

We ended up settling on the Penguin because the event was titled "The Cool Wave" and, well, penguins are some of the coolest--and coldest--birds around.

We then did quite a bit of research (which entailed watching quite a few penguin videos) on different types of penguins and decided on general species that we wanted to emulate. Our first penguin animation was, well, a lot different than our final result. Observe: 

The emperor penguin's new clothes?

We settled on doing a more cartoon-based look. The feathers and body and such would still retain realism, but we would then exaggerate some features; the eyes and the beak, chiefly. What we got was still recognizably Penguin--but was also a lot friendlier looking.




We liked this little guy quite a bit...but the shape of the eyes was off. We decided to change to a more horseshoe shaped form...and also started to experiment with eye color.




We also loved this Porter, but thought he looked a little, well, perpetually sad. Also a bit juvenile. We course-corrected by changing the size of the eyes...

This is very close to the final result.

Feet-in-progress in the animation program.

It's always an iterative process. Along the way we got plenty of client feedback. The character develops physically right along with the script, so it always feels like the "right" words are coming out of the character, and, conversely, that the character has the right look for the script. It's a highly customized process and it's always a joy to have a new AniMated character to interact live during events. Porter's name may change if future clients want to use this penguin for their events, but we'll never forget how he was born. Happy Birthday, Porter the Penguin!

(Note: This entry will also be posted at the Experient E4 Blog)

(Note: This entry will also be posted at the Experient E4 Blog)

In the Brain-Based Events Exchange Café--recently presented at e4--we talked about ways to engage an audience at an event and make sure that your message is communicated in a way that people will remember.

Emotion has been proven to increase the rate of recall in events. When there’s an emotional context, the brain secretes adrenaline and this helps to fuse memories. This creates a powerful event where more key information is retained by attendees.

Within our café session, we asked participants to brainstorm ways that they can add emotion into an event. Here are some of the great answers we received:

Share stories: Stories activate the brain and engage us emotionally. A story can be an anecdote or can even be the “story” of a product.

Create a personal connection: Good speakers get audiences to relate to them using rapport, anecdotes, humor, etc. Creating a personal connection could also mean making it possible for people to bring and share their own experiences within an event. Setting their own powerful, highly-personal goals and outcomes.

Incorporate humor: Ellie and Eddie the Eagles are good examples of incorporating humor into an event. You don’t have to have a giant talking eagle co-hosting to engage the audience in a humorous way, though. Jokes, anecdotes, videos, etc. are also ways to add humor.

Create competition: In the Brain-Based Events session, we played an audience-response game show to re-engage participants, but also to create the emotional experience of competition.

Inspiring videos: Hollywood spends millions of dollars producing products that will emotionally connect with an audience. In the right context, an inspirational video can be extremely powerful. (The locker room scene of “Miracle on Ice” comes to mind.)

Use music: Our brains are wired to engage with music. The music you use as the audience walks in, leaves, and reflects/discusses during the event can have a huge emotional impact. On example of musical mis-use? I attended an event where the opening song, as the audience walked in, was “Rainy Days and Mondays (always get me down)”. Talk about setting an inappropriate context for the event!

Scents: We saw scents being used at the e4 event to draw people into areas. Scents can have a powerful emotional connection—the smell of popcorn in the lobby, fresh-baked bread, the sharpness of peppermint etc. Keep in mind, though, that scents are somewhat risky to employ at an event because there can be so many sensitivities, and strong scents can be a trigger for headaches.

Nostalgia: Company heritage pieces are a good example of using nostalgia for emotional impact. Old photos, sound clips, etc. can also be employed.

Novelty: Changing up the program and adding elements that are completely new and surprising can provide an emotional experience.

Photos: There’s a reason that people display “happy snaps” on the morning of the second/third day of an event. It reconnects people with their experience at the event.

Environment of the room: Lighting, seating, staging, etc. can all subtly influence emotion in the room. Dark rooms with close seating create a different feel than an open room with theatrical, flashy lighting.

Interaction: Interacting with the audience at an event can foster an emotional experience… but more on creating interaction later!

Emotional connection with an audience doesn’t have to be complex, and it doesn’t have to be one single emotion. Making an event FUN adds emotion. Having a team competition adds emotion… And that all leads into higher content retention and a more effective event for you and your clients.

Dan Yaman is the Founder and CEO of Live Spark, the event design firm that produced Eddie and Ellie the eagles. Live Spark also consults on presentations and events, designs custom game and audience-response experiences and more. You can check out our blog for more tips and event insights—or check back here for more postings to come.

(Note: This entry will also be posted at the Experient E4 Blog)

In the Brain-Based Events Exchange Café--recently hosted at E4-- we talked about ways to engage an audience at an event and make sure that your message is communicated in a way that people will remember. Adding interaction to an event and within presentations is absolutely critical to success.

Studies cite different attention span limits (Dr. Medina stated 10 minutes), but on average, the adult attention span in a live event is from 5-7 minutes.

That means that in most typical presentations, there is going to be a lot of attention atrophy, and the messaging will be lost. So how does one mitigate against this effect in a typical, 60-minute presentation? By adding interactive elements at regular intervals.

During our exchange café, we brainstormed ways to add interaction within a presentation, and here’s what we came up with as a group:

Add a game: In our own presentation, we played a game show. In addition to being a way to review, preview and present the information in a unique way, it also added an element of energy and competition that broke up the content.

Do a skit: At an event we produced, instead of just giving the finer points of coaching, the presenter brought an assistant on stage and modeled the coaching interaction.

Have discussion: Give the audience opportunities during a presentation and an event to reflect and discuss your content with a neighbor or at their tables. Not only does it reinforce content and add interaction, but it also creates personal relevance.

Demonstrate: If it’s a new product presentation, don’t just rattle off bullet point features—have a prototype to show, or things that the audience can “play” with and interact with. If it’s a new process, actually go through the chronology.

Show a video clip: Media is a great way to break up a presentation, add emotion and captivate the audiences’ attention.

Ask questions: When a speaker interacts WITH the audience, it makes they audience accountable for their participation in the presentation. Gathering their opinions, thoughts, misconceptions, etc. makes a presentation more personally relevant.

Switch speakers: While the best-intended panels of mice and men may often go awry, the concept behind a panel or interview or tag-team speakers is a good one. Switching speakers resets the attention clock.

Use different sounds: When this was brought up in our session, it referred mostly to the modality of a person’s voice—varying tone and timbre to be a dynamic, continually engaging speaker. However, using music, sound effects, etc., could be a way to add novelty and re-engage the audience.

Add activities: An audience wants to play. Participating in hands-on activities not only increases interactivity and extends the attention span, but it also gives the opportunity to practice with key concepts and content.

Tell a joke: Humor is a wonderful way to re-engage the audience, because it evokes a strong emotional response (also causing the brain to secrete chemicals that aid in binding memory). Getting the audience to laugh is a great way to keep their attention. (This is another reason why we use live animated characters, like Ellie and Eddie the Eagles.)

Tell stories: Speaking of emotional engagement… A good story can captivate attention far beyond the typical attention span, because that’s how we’re wired to receive information, process and learn.

Dan Yaman is the Founder and CEO of Live Spark, the event design firm that produced Eddie and Ellie the eagles. Live Spark also consults on presentations and events, designs custom game and audience-response experiences and more. You can check out our blog for more tips and event insights—or check back here for more postings to come.

What you see above is a "graphic recording" of a session we hosted at e4 in Orlando this year. (The session was Brain-Based Events, and you can click on the graphic above to see it at a larger, easier-to-read size.)

E4 has always been great about introducing new innovations in the event and meeting industry and putting them into practice at their own event. This was no exception--we were treated to a graphic recorder right on the side of the room in the general session. The objective was to provide the audience with an instant, graphically stimulating portrait of the presentation to appeal to visual learners.

Like many innovations, there were some great elements and some not so great aspects to the graphic recordings. Here are our general impressions from a brain-based perspective:

What worked:

• Having the graphic recordings posted around the room past the session they were "drawing" was a great recap and reminder of what was covered. It also provided a colorful, visually stimulating environment.
• Having the graphic recordings scanned and available post-event was extremely cool. It was easy to reference a presentation.
• The graphic representations made it easy to recall chunks of information in a presentation and they made for a great review tool.
• Graphic recorders had an opportunity to go back and "amend" the recordings with extra information past the session (or at least they did during our session).
  

What didn't quite work:

• Having the graphic recorders at the front of the room pulled focus. The novelty aspect of the graphic recording was constantly demanding your attention (and seeing something moving out of the corner of one's eye while focusing on the presenter was slightly off-putting).
  
• The brain can't multitask, and the tendency was to switch from the drawing to the presenter with little success at "getting" the information from either source while it was occurring.
• When the recordings were i-mag'ed on the main screen, they were incredibly distracting.
  
• The graphic recording wasn't instantaneous, and as a result if one was watching that element, it tended to drag quite a bit or was incongruous with the information at hand.

If one were to use graphic recording, our suggestion would be to have the graphic recorders on the side or back of the room, and use the recordings primarily as a review tool post-session. (And we *love* the idea of walking in the second day, or after a break on the first day, and having those big, bright sheets detailing the previous days or presentations before.)

It's been a *very* busy summer for us here at Live Spark. We'll do a more thorough update and add more articles soon, but we thought we'd let you know where we're at right now.

The answer is the Hilton Bonnet Creek in Orlando, Florida at the e4 (Experient) conference.

Last year, Eddie the Eagle--an AniMated character produced by us--was the co-host of the event with Experient's Teri Tonoli. Eddie couldn't make it this year (due to various family commitments and a need for variety), so he sent his new wife (and nest partner) Ellie to fill in for him on hosting duties.

Ellie looks quite similar to Eddie--only with a bow--and, like Eddie, belongs to an association of meeting planners (of the eagle persuasion). She and Eddie first flirted at eHarmony--that's eagleHarmony--being matched on 5 different levels of compatibility. (Not least of which, a mutual love of roadkill.) They then grew their romance in the feather at e5--the e4 event...for eagles.

Now Ellie is at e4 to learn how to talk the talk and squawk the squawk. The opening session on Monday already went really well, and you can bet she'll be sitting in on one of Dan Yaman's "Brain-Based Events" presentations on Tuesday at the Exchange Cafes. (Hey, if an eagless can't shamelessly promote once in a while. . . )

So if you're at e4--look for us here! And if you're not, well, this introduction to Ellie the Eagle probably seems kind of out of place...but you should definitely explore how an AniMated character could add humor, engagement, reinforce key points, and be a delight with impact at your next event.